InsaneJournal

who | Clint Barton and Meg [with a special guest appearance by the Hulk]
what | There's fear toxin in the air. Meg refuses to let the one interesting guy in the city fall victim to it.
when | [Backdated] August 7th; early evening
where | In an abandoned lake-side building outside of the city.
rating | PG-13(ish), to be safe
status | Complete; Log

To say that Meg wasn’t happy would be a bit of an understatement. At first, when people had started freaking out for no apparent reason, she’d been happy - very nearly thrilled - at the idea. Then, she had grown a bit tired of the constant shrieking and pure bouts of panic. However, she had held in there, convincing herself that the annoyances of the average meat-suit were worth the responses that those who “mattered” had exhibited. Until, of course, it had started to affect the handful that she considered hers.

And by handful, she obviously meant one person.

When she had first come across Clint shortly after the toxin had spread across the bulk of the city, he’d seemed fine. He’d had a gas mask and was doing his part to help people like a good little white hat would do. But apparently, somehow, that had changed and, the next time Meg had come across the guy a few days later, he had most definitely not been okay. In fact, he had been acting very much like everyone else who was exposed to the toxin, minus the fact that he’d still had a gas mask on.

Needless to say, Meg had immediately knocked him out and taken him as far away from the toxin as possible. Which had landed them in a small house beside the lake just beyond the city limits, where the toxin seemed incapable of reaching yet the neon-colored worm who tried to eat people didn’t happen to dwell. And it was there that she had done her best to ignore an immeasurable amount of time spent on the rack under the careful ministrations of Alistair and had, instead, tried to actually help nurse back to health a man she’d once tortured.

Which was what she was still doing when she returned to the small cabin shortly after sunset on their third day hanging out there. Arms loaded with food and various other things he might need to stick it out for the long haul, Meg made sure, as she made her way inside their safe house, to raise her voice just enough to be heard without shouting and risking him going into a panic.

“Hey, hotshot. You sane today or are we still going to look at rubber rooms on Friday?”

The greeting was the typical one she offered, something about making light of the situation helping to keep her from hunting down the dick responsible for having poisoned Clint and killing him in a slow, yet oh so fulfilling, sort of way.

It had just been a small tear.

Clint wasn’t the type of person to stay inside when there was danger. He never had been and he probably never would be, no matter how many times his propensity toward throwing himself into crises fucked him over. The fact was that there were people who needed help and he wasn’t about to back away from that because there was some freaky gas fucking with people. He’d been in enough situations with freaky chemicals in his time with S.H.I.E.L.D. to know to put a goddamn gas mask on when throwing himself into situations with potentially - or really, fuck potentially, this was a situation where it was definitely - hazardous materials.

Which would have been all well and good, and had served him well at first, except for the fact that he’d ended up in the middle of a skirmish between some people who were out of their damned minds from the gas and somewhere in the chaos his line had torn. It was small, and he hadn’t even noticed at first. Little bits of gas seeping in over time. It had snuck up on him, wariness turning into paranoia turning into pulse racing, hyperventilating panic. There was no way to fight something he hadn’t even seen coming and it wasn’t long before he’d been overwhelmed by the same consuming fear that was tormenting most of the people in the city.

After that, he didn’t really have much recollection of what happened. It was all a blur of pain and blood and other things a small part of him knew wasn’t real but that had him screaming in terror anyway. Everything was tinged a strange, unearthly blue, and he’d clawed at his skin to try to escape from bonds that weren’t there. His mind wasn’t the safest place on the best of days, but this was different and so much worse and he couldn’t escape from the images and the feelings. But gradually it got better, the horrific visions fading away into something resembling reality, and he no longer felt like tearing open his own flesh to escape from it. He felt tired and weak and aching from days fighting against things that weren’t there. Things still weren’t quite right, but it was better.

The greeting confused him, left him wondering if this was another twisted hallucination. He sighed, and figured that if it was then at least she was being nicer than anything else he had seen. "Can we spring for a padded cell?" he asked, voice hoarse and rough. "Probably more comfortable." He turned his head to look at her, the movement wearing him out. "Are you real?"

Meg wasn’t one for feeling hopeful about situations. She was too much of a realist, too accustomed to watching her best laid plans go up in flames - sometimes even literally, back home - to really put much stock in things just working themselves out in the end. However when Clint finally seemed to acknowledge her, even going so far as to answer her jokingly made question, she couldn’t help but feel the smallest touch of hope that maybe, just maybe, he was going to pull through this mess after all. Which was definitely good, because as far as she was concerned he was one of the very few interesting meatsuits in the city and she really wasn’t too keen on something killing him off.

Except for her. But that was still a long way off, and not something she’d even decided for sure was going to happen.

Setting down the bags of items she’d been carrying, she turned to Clint with her trademark smirk and casually leaned back against the counter. “As real as you are, homeslice,” she assured him. Eyes sparkling, she slowly arched an eyebrow. “We could always go for round two, if you need proof.”

Not that she was planning on actually torturing him again. That would defeat the purpose of having saved his ass in the first place. Besides. The next time they went head to head, she wanted him on top of his game. Breaking him would make him far less interesting.

Clint still didn’t feel quite right, and he doubted he would for a while yet. He felt like he’d been through hell, possibly literally, and come out the other side. It wasn’t the best feeling in the world, but he’d had worse. And at least this time he had someone looking after him, even if that someone was a demon bitch who had tortured him just a few months ago. It probably said something about his life that he wasn’t even all that bothered by the seeming about-face. In his line of work, it wasn’t unheard of. Just look at Tasha. One day they were enemies and he was assigned to kill her, the next they were partners. That was just how his life went. He still didn’t trust Meg as far as he could throw her, but there was a sort of understanding.

It might have helped that it was hard to hold any sort of grudge with her, when he was too busy feeling a low level of hurt and betrayal that, of all the people who should have helped him, she was the one who did. It made him wonder how little he meant to the others that she was the one who had come to his aid, made him wonder if they’d even noticed he was gone.

He shook off the thought, forcing himself to let it go. It didn’t matter. He was fine now. Mostly. At the very least, he was no longer seeing things that weren’t there and trying to claw off his own skin. It was an improvement.

"Maybe another time, sweetheart," he said, giving her a cocky but tired grin. "I don’t think I’d be that much fun for you right now. Besides, you didn’t play Florence Nightingale just to toss me on the rack before I’m good and healed up." Sure, there was a chance that she would go right to it now that he was reasonably coherent, but something told him that she wouldn’t want to do anything until he was back to full strength. And he could respect that, even if he had no intention of being at the receiving end of her tender mercies again.

"So," he said after a moment, "is this the part where I thank you and pretend we’re all good now and I think you’ve turned over a new leaf, or can we skip that bullshit this time?"

Meg let out a low chuckle. This. This was why she liked Clint. Sure, he was a good intentioned meatsuit who stood for everything she despised, but he was fun. It was hard to find that in heroes these days. More often than not, they just tried to kill her and didn’t even bother with the banter. As far as she was concerned, that was worse than being a hero in the first damn place.

“If you want to waste your breath thanking me and ruin the moment,” she replied, “don’t let me stop you.” With that being said, she turned back to the bags she’d brought with her and began taking out the various items she’d collected while in town. “Or, you could just eat something so that body of yours doesn’t shut down and, who knows? Maybe you’ll even get back up to strength in time to rush back to the city and play hero some more. I’m sure there’s a crashed bus full of nuns that need tending to or some crap.”

Turning back to face him, she held up a can of soup in each hand. “You’ve got chicken noodle and chicken with rice. Which is it going to be?” Both were, of course, no sodium. As were the crackers she’d grabbed as well. It might all taste terrible but, well, Meg really didn’t give a damn. No way was she bringing salt in any form into the picture. That just had bad idea written all over it.

Clint shook his head, laughing lowly. It hurt just a little, and he knew it would be a few days at least before he was back to one hundred percent, but he also knew it would have been worse if Meg hadn’t helped him. Still, that didn’t mean he was going to go and do something ridiculous like thanking her. That wasn’t how this worked and they both knew it. This was nothing more than a temporary ceasefire, and he wasn’t going to dress it up as anything else.

"Much as I love to ruin a good moment," he drawled, "I think I’ll leave this one intact." He snorted at the idea of rushing back to save nuns before his lips pulled up slightly in a wry smile. For all that he’d been out of it, he knew she’d been gone longer than previous times. Unable to resist the urge to prod at her just a little, he raised an eyebrow. "You know, I was riding the crazy train for a bit there, so I could be wrong, but I can’t help feeling like you were gone longer than you should have been. What happened? Did you have to stop to save an especially panicky kitten from a tree? It’s okay. You can tell me. I won’t judge."

He looked between the two cans of soup, noting the lack of sodium that would probably leave them tasting like shit but not really bothered. He had no doubt he’d eaten worse. That was the thing with being a spy that James Bond usually left out. You ended up undercover in the worst places sometimes, and you had to eat some godawful things. "Rice is probably the safest choice," he admitted.

Rather than immediately answer his question about what had taken her so long to get back, Meg busied herself with opening the soup and dumping it into a bowl. Unfortunately lack of electricity meant he was definitely going to be eating it cold, but something told her he’d deal. That was the thing with Clint. He could deal with a whole lot more than most other meat-suits. It was definitely a turn-on, as far as she was concerned.

Finally deciding that she should probably just answer his question whether she wanted to or not, lest he decide to keep asking her until she wanted to beat him with his own arms, Meg purposefully kept her back to him and finished gathering the items for his meal as she answered in an almost too nonchalant sounding tone of voice, “So I was running a little late. Sue me. I saw something that needed dealing with, and I dealt with it.” Finally glancing over her shoulder at him, she added pointedly, “And it didn’t involve a damn kitten, either.” Turning back to the bowl of soup and pack of crackers, she muttered almost inaudibly, “It was a couple of snot-nosed brats who managed to get themselves cornered by a pissed off mob of meat-suits hopped up on that crap that’s in the air.”

Setting the bowl down in front of Clint as though the muffled thud would somehow deter from what she’d just grudgingly admitted, she tossed the crackers down beside it then met his gaze with a look that all but dared him to taunt her for what she’d just said. “Eat up, hotshot,” she said after a second or two, her expression turning back into its trademark smirk as she pulled a beer from the six pack she’d grabbed and took a long drink from it. “I sure didn’t risk my ass to pull you out of that mess just to have you waste away to nothing in the middle of a shack in the desert.”

Most people would have been intimidated by Meg, particularly after the level of torture he’d endured at her hands. But Clint was the kind of guy who bounced back from most of the things life threw at him. If he wasn’t, he would have lost it years ago. He’d been through too much and seen too much shit to let little things like mind control and torture and fear gas get the best of him. Sure he hadn’t exactly been a sterling example of how to cope when shit got bad, but he’d eventually got past it, and that was more than most would have done in his place, so he felt sufficiently well-adjusted.

The point was that he wasn’t intimidated by Meg. The very fact that she was standing there nursing him back to health with low sodium soup took away from any badass mystique she’d ever had with him, and the description of what had held her up, of stopping to save some children from a mob of toxin-crazed assholes provoked a deep laugh. "Sorry," he said with a grin that said he really, really wasn’t. "I’m sorry. But that’s just...that’s just fucking perfect, sweetheart. So much better than a kitten. Goddamn...I think that right there made me all better. It’s seriously just...kids. You were saving some kids. The only way it could possibly better is if it was an orphanage. Or a bus full of nuns.”

He took the soup from her, looking down at it for a long moment before taking the spoon in his hand. It looked awful, and probably tasted worse, but he didn’t care all that much. He swallowed it down without a hint of a grimace, even though his suspicions about the taste were most definitely confirmed. "Mmmm, cold soup," he said dryly, shooting her a smirk that verged on a smile. "My compliments to the chef." He continued eating in silence, pausing to cock his head to the side at a sudden loud noise. "Expecting company, princess?"

Meg rolled her eyes at his comment about the bus full of nuns, lips curling a bit into a sneer even if there wasn’t very much oomph behind it. Yes, it wasn’t exactly in her nature to help others simply for the sake of doing so. However, she also knew she had a very fine line to walk in the city of Colligo if she didn’t want be gutted like some sort of fish, and she wasn’t about to run the risk of a couple of kids showing up at some inopportune moment when someone who could do the aforementioned gutting was around, asking her why she hadn’t saved them when she’d been right there. Really, when she looked at it that way, it was definitely a case of protecting her own ass and not nearly as humiliating as doing it out of the kindness of her heart or something equally wholesome that made her want to bathe herself in holy water just to feel the burning of the flesh she wore.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately considering Clint might have easily debunked her ‘reason’ for having helped a couple of kids, the loud noise got her attention as much as it did his. With a slight shake of her head, because no she definitely was not expecting company and was pretty sure anything that made that much of a noise wasn’t the sort of company they needed around right now regardless, her eyes turned black and she reached out with her senses to figure out what was out there.

Big. Green. Angry. And moving a hell of a lot faster than anything that wasn’t supernatural in nature had a right to move.

“Well, damn,” she breathed, eyes returning to her meatsuit’s natural color as she re-focused on Clint with a lazy smile. “Looks like our time is up. Calvary’s on its way.” There was a loud roar and the building gave a great tremble. Covering the distance between her and Clint in less than the blink of an eye, Meg smirked. “See you around, hotshot.”

Then she grabbed the front of his shirt, hauled him close, and planted a kiss on his lips... just in time for the roof over their heads to be yanked away to reveal a very peeved looking Hulk standing there. Releasing Clint, she winked at him before disappearing from sight and leaving him to explain to his comrade why he was shacked up with a demon in the middle of nowhere while the city was in chaos and there was panic in the streets.

What? She’d done her good deed in saving him. Salvaging his reputation was his job.

Of all the people he expected to be calvary, the Hulk wasn't it. It wasn't that he didn't think he and Bruce were friends, but he didn't think his going off the map would be enough to bring out the other guy. And that worried him. Because that meant something else had happened to bring out the Hulk, and he didn't think it was anything as simple as Bruce reacting to the toxin. Bruce was a genius, he wouldn't just go out in the stuff. He'd be working up a cure. So something else had done it. And not knowing what had left Clint worried for his friends. Had one of them been hurt? Worse? He hoped it wasn't that, but he couldn't help but worry it had. He wasn't sure if it was residual paranoia or if he had just come to know his friends in his time in the city.

Not that he could fall too deep into his worry, what with Meg getting all up in his business and mouth-raping him, not that it was bad, but still...ask first, Jesus Christ. He glared as she flounced off, knowing he was now going to have to explain to a giant angry green dude, not to mention Bruce later, why he was swapping spit with a demon whore who had tortured him. "Fuck you very much," he called after her before looking up at the Hulk.

"Hey, big guy," he said in a tired tone, giving a weak wave. "That...wasn't what it looked like."

The Hulk simply stared at Clint for a long moment, his expression not quite as enraged as before as much as simply irritated. With a loud huff that was powerful enough to rattle the few windows in the building that were still in one piece, he reached inside and grabbed Clint by the back of his shirt. Lifting him into the air with ease, he held the man out in front of him so they were eye level and pinned him with an unimpressed look.

“Stupid Cupid,” he grumbled before setting Clint carefully on his shoulder, keeping one hand on the man to make sure he didn’t bounce off and plummet to what could easily be his death. “Hang on,” he tacked on almost absently before he began charging forward then leapt into the air.

For a few seconds, it almost felt as though they were flying. The ground beneath them was whizzing by at a rapid rate. Then gravity caught up with them and the Hulk landed, a loud boom that was nearly sonic in its intensity echoing around him as he dropped into a crouch and smoothly deposited Clint onto the ground. “Stay,” he ordered the man, pinning him with another irritable look. Then he did something that he rarely did.

He relinquished control back to Bruce, allowing the much easier to navigate through the city human to take his friend home rather than continue rampaging about the loss of a woman they both cared about. There would be more time for that later. Right now, Clint needed help.

Okay. Apparently he was getting picked up and carried. That was fun. For one very bizarre moment he felt like a kid being picked up by their dad, not that he had any idea what that was actually like since his dad had been a real asshole, and he was struck with the odd urge to stick his arms out at his sides and pretend to be an airplane. Except he didn’t do that because he was a grown up. Arguably. Okay, maybe he was still a little out of it. Or a lot.

"Very stupid," he agreed at the Hulk’s comment, smiling as he was settled on one of his teammate’s massive, green shoulders. This was actually fun. He wondered if he could convince the big guy to let him ride up here during battle. It would make for a great spot to shoot from. He laughed slightly at the command, nodding his head. "Will do, Jade Jaws," he said cheerfully. What? If the Hulk could call him Cupid, he could come up with a nickname for him. It was even alliterative so his genius friends would appreciate it.

He chilled out for the ride as they headed back toward the city, wondering how much of a lecture he was going to get later. Honestly, he was at least seventy-six percent sure this wasn’t his fault. How was he supposed to know Meg would be the one to find him? Really, it was poor planning on the Avengers’ part that had led to this. He’d been drugged at the time. He couldn’t be held responsible for who rescued him from peril. Okay, no. That made him sound like a Disney princess or something. And Clint wasn’t a Disney princess. Unless they were talking Merida.

And, okay, his thoughts were going weird places, so he just let himself lean against the Hulk and settled down for a nap until they got back to the city.