Matt & Clint | Friday Evening (backdated)

[x-hawkeye.livejournal.com]

Clint and Matt chill out over dinner. Vague discussion of the future happens.


Clint sat a bowl of stirfry down on the coffee table in front of Matt and plopped down on the couch next to his brother. "Ugh, seriously," he said, the words mostly filler.

Leaning forward to take the bowl, Matt grinned, "The remote is yours."

"Eh," Clint said, picking up the remote control. He flipped it in his hand, not entirely loving the idea of TV or a movie right now. Instead, he balanced the remote vertically on the end of one finger while he dug into his stirfry with his free hand. "Maybe in a bit. Tell me how things are going."

Matt shrugged, "Working myself to death. The usual. You?" Clint was actually moved into Xavier's whereas Matt was still commuting and the commute was a killer on its own. Really, he was ready for something to give.

"Working out, running with PD, trying to assure people I'm not some shady dude even though I'm asking all these questions," Clint said, flipping the remote so he could catch it before he started balancing it again. "They're remarkably tight-lipped. And that's saying something, coming from a dude who worked for two ridiculous government agencies."

"You're a former government spook," Matt replied. It wasn't technically true. Clint was not a spy. "I spend at least half my time here on my laptop doing work in various places. The nice thing is that I can wander the grounds doing it where I want. The bad thing is that I'm still doing work. But I also sleep a little more here. That's a start." And the powers training.

"Ugh, seriously," Clint said again, sliding the remote onto the end table and picking his bowl of food up so he could shovel it into his mouth properly. Then, mouth half-full, he said, "So quit. I'm sure Steve and Andre would love to hear that. They'll say I'm being a terrible influence on you."

"I can't quit!" he wanted to quit. So, so much right now. "First, bills and all that. Secondly, this is a prestigious placement, especially for my first year. I need to ride it out a little longer and then start looking around for other options. Unless you've got another option?" He wasn't going to rage-quit when the going got tough.

Eyebrows doing a strange up-down-up movement, Clint said, "You have an 'oh shit' fund for a reason. Fuck the prestigious placement. It's making you miserable and I like your boss and all, but he's kind of a douche. Why would I have other options for you? I don't have a job for myself right now."

"Yeah, but..." Matt shrugged, "this isn't 'oh shit.' And Warren isn't my direct boss. That's Joel. I'll start looking for other options at least, keep my ears open," he grinned, "maybe talk to Foggy about our own practice again. We dreamed of it in law school. Could make it happen."

"In New York, that'd be a pretty big thing," Clint said, nodding. "I still have no idea what I'm going to do. Crashing here is... only gonna get me so far." PD padded over there, huffing slightly as he laid down on one of Matt's feet. Clint didn't say anything for a few moment, eating his stirfry in a brooding sort of silence, before finally saying, "Not getting any answers here, no matter what questions I ask. Maybe I need to take a break from... I dunno, from everything."

"Same paths lead same places," Matt agreed. "Take the road less traveled," he snorted. "I hate that poem. Probably because it's so true."

"Eh, poetry," Clint said, wrinkling his nose. "You know I hated English. I feel like they're all waiting for me to fuck up or something. Or prove myself. It's kind of frustrating. So obviously a break is the answer."

Matt in contradiction, had liked English. Then again, it was much easier to put a book into braille or audio format than science stuff. Nemeth code for math had almost been the death of him. "It's a lose-lose whichever way it comes out when you have those two options," he agreed. "Find a third."

Quirking a smile, Clint said, "Working on it, bro. You know how I hate proving people right when they think I'm gonna do something stupid. I'll figure out something awesome - just to be contrary."

"You? Contrary? Never!" Matt laughed, eating more of his stirfry. "You make this? It's pretty good. I've started teaching Monet, one of the high school kids, self defense. You should have seen it. She's invulnerable, super strength and can fly. Came in thinking she was all that and a bag of chips. Tossed her around, literally. Didn't hurt her, but pissed her off enough to start learning how to defend herself properly."

Clint looked at Matt a little askance at that, his eyebrows rising a bit. "Isn't that kind of not fair, though? Like, shouldn't someone who's also got her abilities be the one teaching her self-defense? Like, how to utilize them instead of attempting to figure out how to take down a dude with completely different powers?"

"Whole point is to learn about your powers," Matt replied, "What's the point of her having all that power and no idea how to use it? She never laid a finger on me. And I got some experience in working with that sort of power set. I'm not going to let her wail on me, with or without pads, in some sort of masochistic sparring match. One of the GenX mentors has similar powers, let her be the punching dummy," but he knew more than enough to teach her and get her started. "Most people, powers or not, aren't invulnerable. Or super strong. She needs to be able to work with that, too."

Raising an eyebrow, Clint decided not to pursue that line of conversation. Experiencing fighting didn't necessarily mean you'd be any good teaching, especially a kid with a completely different powers set from your own who didn't have any prior experience. But if Matt wanted to step in that, he was more than welcome to it. So he just ate another forkful of his stirfry before saying, mouth half-full, "But yeah, I made this. Thanks. 's not that hard."

"You know my cooking abilities," he made a mean scrambled egg. Actually, Matt was a good cook when he wanted, but he really didn't care for cooking very much. He preferred eating to cooking. "And my interest in it. I just like being able to feed myself quickly."

"I mean, you haven't burned anything horribly," Clint said. His theory on that front was that Matt was sort of hyper paranoid about burning food because the scent would linger for him for ages, even when it'd faded for everyone with a normal nose.

That was another factor in cooking. That and the smell of food that was no longer fresh. He didn't keep leftovers for very long. They were either eaten or thrown out within a day usually. "Yet," Matt pointed out. "One of my dormmates set fire to his toaster one night....freshman year I think. We had to evacuate for the fire department and all that, but the smell lingered for over a week," it had been awful. Matt had spent even more time than usual at the library and had slept a couple nights at home because of it.

"Don't envy you the super nose, not gonna lie," Clint said, scooping up the last bite of his dinner before spinning the bowl sans fork on the end of his finger. "Spar tomorrow morning? You and me, no holds barred. I could use something more than salmon ladders and jogging or I'm gonna start getting rusty."

"Hell yeah," Matt nodded, both agreeing to the sparring and about the nose. "Gotta stay in shape. We should go out climbing sometime, too. Or hiking," they were both city boys, but sometimes, getting out of the city was a good idea.