ᴍɪsᴛᴇʀ ᴡɪsᴅᴏᴍ (wisdoms) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-10-19 12:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, clint barton (hawkeye), pete wisdom |
Who: Clint Barton (Hawkeye) and Pete Wisdom (Fuck Codenames)
What: A bit of purposeful stalking leads to potential Agency recruitment
When: Monday, I believe
Where: Clint's coffee shoppe of choice and beyond
Rating/Warnings: SNARK
Status: Complete
Sometimes, Clint got so sick of his own apartment that he literally did not know what to do with himself -the fact that he didn’t get just a small break from the dreams didn’t help in the least, but he was at least thankful his body was his own for now. Instead of calling Tony or Kate to do something, Clint went onto his next fall back for ‘I am bored out of my mind and my dog is ignoring me’ days and wandered around town. Half an hour into the wandering and Clint was already craving a coffee, so why the hell not feed that addiction? He didn’t have a favourite place, but he did have certain places he tended towards, it was easier when the girls at the counter knew his order at least. Being as it wasn’t an utterly terrible day, Clint took the coffee to go and resumed wandering. At least until his coffee was done and he needed to get another. And here Barton though he’d just be able to grab his coffee and enjoy the caffeine in peace. Well, not so much - because today was his lucky day. Or his unlucky day, depending on how you wanted to put it, but personally, even eternal pessimists such as Pete Wisdom wanted to believe that opportunities could come about from the strangest of places. He’d added a bit of whiskey to his own coffee, something pulled from the small bottle in his suit jacket pocket (that creamer stuff was revolting anyway, you could make bombs from it, and he didn’t have a sweet tooth to stomach sugar - fake or otherwise) when he spotted Clint with the to-go cup. Off he went, getting to the door before his mark and holding it open with a polite smile; despite the lid on Wisdom’s coffee, the fumes of whiskey so strong you could strip paint with it were likely prominent. It was 5:00 somewhere, who cared. “Clint Barton, I presume?” Even having lived without the cloak and dagger stuff he’d sometimes get up to in the dream world, Clint knew that people knowing your name before you’d met them wasn’t the best thing in the world. The dreams made it complicated -was it just someone he’d yet to catch up with? But he’d been dreaming long enough that his eyes scanned all the nearby places he’d settle if this was a hit. Can’t be too careful after all. “Depends on who’s asking.” He should really think about actually carrying a weapon if this kind of shit was going to start happening now. Hey, superhero lifestyle was not a safe career option, dream life or not. “Pete Wisdom,” the Brit introduced himself - with the sort of smooth, radio-announcer tone that often came about by smoking a pack a day. Which he had done, formerly. Now he wasn’t smoking much of anything - but drinking, certainly, he could do that. There was always time for booze, especially in the midst of what one might call recruitment - fuck, it wasn’t even his jurisdiction, really, but they were a bit stretched thin in the Clandestine Operations sect of the Agency. So it was either up to him or Romanoff, and they needed more hands and eyes and ears and generally more everything. People who were fit for the job, people who didn’t mind doing a little dirty work. So, that’s why he’d been stalking Barton for a bit. Not difficult to dig up some info on him, but Wisdom was also familiar with Hawkeye. He was no stranger to the dirty work, for the good of the people or whatever. “I believe we both frequent a certain network. I’ve been meaning to catch up with you for awhile, Mr. Barton, and as luck would have it - we both stopped at the same place to get coffee today.” Yes, a stroke of luck indeed. Or careful planning. Oh, valarnet, you have so much to answer for. “You don’t mind if we keep walking, right? Daily exercise.” Which he got about once a week if he cared, but hey! The life of retirement, right? Which sucked, but still. Fewer chances of getting his legs blown off. Sipping at his coffee, Clint just kept his senses about him, his hearing might be shit but he could focus on enough visually to make sure this wasn’t ending in a ditch somewhere. “And just what would this discussion be going like, Mr Wisdom?” That sounded weird, like the guy should be on an ad for a book company or something. Pete motioned ahead of him, indicating that they could continue on this invigorating constitutional - he looked like any other dapper GQ model, with coffee on the run and an Armani suit. “Nothing awful, I assure you,” he promised, with a gravelly chuckle. “I don’t need to bullshit about the nature of this county or how interesting it is - we both know firsthand.” Barton had been here awhile - he’d experienced the whole gamut of the OC’s temper tantrums thus far, and then some. More to come later as well, how wonderful. Great job thing about this job, if he took it, was that he’d never be bored. “So I’ll start by asking what exactly you’re up to these days? In terms of employment, and such.” Not awful was good, not awful was promising. Not awful meant not ending up in a ditch or having to do some insanely on the spot improvisation involving ruining a very good cup of coffee to escape ending up in a ditch -the way Clint’s dreams went, he would expect nothing less. “Oh, you know, enjoying the lap of luxury, well earned rest after almost blowing up. That sort of thing.” Logically, he should go and get a nice quiet job in a nice quiet place and settle down to never ever having to deal with bullshit ever again. Clint wasn’t logical though. “Y’know, when there aren’t weird vampire things roaming around or giant killer spider things.” Which, yeah. Weird. Weird vampire things and giant killer spiders were par the course - just another Tuesday, when you considered it. But of course Pete knew that Clint wasn’t up to much besides luxuriating in perhaps the regrettable decision to move here - however, he was hoping he could perhaps pep up his life a bit. Give him something exciting to do that wasn’t your usual ‘daily grind.’ “I see,” he hummed, sipping on his coffee as they walked. “You’re also familiar with an organisation called SHIELD, in your dreamworld perhaps? I’m not going to say the Agency is like SHIELD exactly, but it’s a close enough comparison. I happen to work for the Agency, here in Orange County.” Oh, yey. Spies. “I am aware of them, yes.” Bit of a pain in the ass, but all around they were useful in that whole ‘keep the mass public calm’ kind of way. Which was a super nice way of saying ‘lie lie lie’, but hey, they all did it. “You know, I should be more surprised, but I’m really not.” It was kind of understandable, right? Someone needed to keep all this crazy mostly contained, couldn’t have giant spiders leaving the OC and terrorising the world, couldn’t have swirling vortexes of terror and evil spreading to the world. Couldn’t have people talking about it with others either. Because that way led to madness. “Really, though? I would’ve expected something a little more blacked out car and shades than Mr GQ strolling up while I’m attempting to enjoy my mostly burnt but very tasty roast.” This probably was not about recommendations for good coffee places. Keeping Orange County safe was the intended goal - being that he was someone who identified as ‘mutant,’ the last thing Wisdom personally wanted was to end up strapped to a table as Lab Experiment of the Week. He was aware some particularly dumbfuck people were under the impression that transparency was best (and some things they just couldn’t cover up - giant spiders, anyone?) but when it came to the dreams, that was not anyone else’s fight but their own. The Agency did what they could, to keep things under wraps in that regard. But all that would be gone over during ‘new employee’ orientation, potentially. “I’ve got the black car around the corner,” Pete gestured with his coffee cup idly. “Though I thought stuffing you inside for a chat might be rude. The open air’s much better, while we enjoy our shitty coffee.” At least it wasn’t Starbucks - thank fuck for small favours. “Anyway, the idea is to appeal to you, not to the opposite. I’ve heard of you, Mr. Barton, both here and in my own dreamworld - we do share the same one, I believe - and that’s why I’m here now. To gauge your interest in a new line of work.” New, somewhat familiar, like slipping into a comfy pair of shoes - it was all the same, wasn’t it? “That would’ve likely led to one or both of us with broken jaws and I would’ve likely spilled my coffee.” And Clint hated when his coffee spilled. Shitty or not. Similar dreamworlds, or the same one, potentially. Tony had heard of him but it was a completely different stream. But Nat’d already explained that cluster fuck to him. Which, fun. Not. The idea that he’d work his way through this series of nightmarish dream life and then just move on to the next chaotic crap, that was just enough to make him want to punch something. Which apparently could be catered to? “I do enjoy a good sales pitch with my daily walk.” Flippant or not, he was curious. Mostly because the alternative was slowly going insane from lack of doing anything. “What’s the catch?” “No catch, really.” Pete was honest about that - he remembered being similarly cautious when Peggy approached him with a recruitment offer, over a steak dinner, but only because he couldn’t picture himself pushing paperwork at a desk. He’d already been down that road, with British Intelligence, and he didn’t want to traverse it again necessarily. That particular horror was the first thing that popped into mind but she’d soothed his nerves about it. He did have a desk now, but he wasn’t there a lot. Not to mention Lina liked to cover it in Justin Bieber posters whenever she was feeling naughty. “The department I’m in is...well, we specialise in Black Ops and Wetworks. It’s all very hush-hush. When we need to get our hands dirty to keep the county safe, we do. But it’s essentially a government job like anything else. There’s a retirement plan and benefits. The usuals. We’re simply a bit short-staffed, hence why I’m here.” “And is the short-staffing issue because everyone is accelerating their mortality rate?” Okay, so, he was interested. It was difficult to go from the Army for around twenty years to doing nothing all the time. Combine that with his dreams of constant action -even when they weren’t the best sources at all, it was a little mind numbing being a retiree with a dog. The department pitch didn’t even phase him -he was a sniper, in this life and his dreamworld, there was a degree of wetwork in that whole expertise. Besides, he’d worked with Natasha for years. They weren’t exactly good guys. Ah, yes. Knowing Barton was a sniper, and a crack shot both here and there was also why Wisdom had tracked him down. Romanoff would vouch for him too, that Pete was aware of. They were cut from the same cloth, those two - and Romanoff was good. Wisdom had no doubts about Clint’s abilities either. “More like we seem to take our time weeding through potential candidates, and the overall secrecy of the organisation can be a bit much,” Pete snorted, tossing his whiskey-stained coffee cup into a nearby rubbish bin without missing a beat. “Myself and another colleague believe it’s time to get some fresh meat in the place. New blood within the ranks. Hence where you come in. Or hopefully will. Peggy Carter is the Director, but I’ll have a word with her and I’m sure she’ll want to meet with you as well. When I was initially brought on board, she had me do a few observations in the field first to see if it’d be a good fit. Here...” He flipped a business card between his fingers, handing it over. “Give it some thought if you’d like. Then let me know.” “Probably doesn’t help recruitment drives.” The fun of cloak and dagger Black Ops agencies. Couldn’t just take an ad out in the paper, could they? But honestly, he couldn’t see himself doing something normal, depending on someone’s definition of ‘normal’. His own probably wasn’t that normal. And realistically it was something he’d probably prefer doing than whatever other thing he could retrain himself for. Since he hadn’t really left the army because he wanted to. Still, he’d take the card, think about it. Although jumping feet first into things was his usual style, he was maybe starting to figure out that it was a bad idea to jump feet first into shady organisations, regardless of how bored he was. “Sure, okay.” He could try and figure out how above board this all was too. They needed to do a recruitment drive, for the love of god. Garrus was talking about a social gathering of some sort, a mixer, cocktail party, whatever - something to just get potential recruits in the same place so they could be approached about business. And people like Wisdom wouldn’t have to track people like Clint down when he was just trying to grab a coffee. It was an idea that Pete supported. Even so, this seemed to work out decently enough. “Grand,” he flashed a smile, pearly gates on display. “I’ll let you get back to the events of your day, Mr. Barton. But it was a pleasure to meet you.” Hopefully they’d meet again soon. “Right, likewise.” Clint was already almost sure he’d be calling to take the guy up on the offer, but he should probably at least wait until he got home so that it appeared he’d thought about it. Not exactly a big deal, waiting until he’d walked another thirty minutes, had a minor consideration of a nice quiet, normal life with his dog and girlfriend, laughed at that moment of insanity and then call Wisdom and tell him he was in. At least pretend to give it some thought. |