barton (awcoffee) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2020-01-31 16:29:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, clint barton (hawkeye), gaby teller |
WHO: Clint Barton & Gaby Teller (brief appearance of Napoleon Solo)
WHERE: Gaby's Garage
WHEN: Jan 31st
WHAT: Everything is awful >.< (aka, Clint screws up again)
WARNINGS: R; non-graphic descriptions of violence
STATUS: Complete
All in all, the Christmas period, well, December in general, had gone pretty okay for Clint. He didn’t injure himself, or get injured by others, once. Which was weird because he didn’t even stub his toe in the apartment and Clint did that almost all the time. So he’d started feeling like things were looking up.
He wasn’t celebrating anything, Clint didn’t really do Christmas -hadn’t had reason to in a long ass time, so aside from Lucky getting an extra special treat there wasn’t much else to do. Except try to clean up his mess.
Getting the drop on a hitman, one as good as Arkov, it was hard as fuck. Clint was under no illusion that Arkov had probably murdered more than a few people trying to kill him too. The frame up didn’t work, and while Clint still had the dossier of evidence that was most certainly a driving force for Arkov eliminating problems. A problem that Clint had pulled Gaby into.
This was why no one accused Clint of having sense.
Things had been moving along. Clint had almost all the pieces in place to set up the apprehending of Arkov. And then he moved and Clint was almost sure it was because he got spooked and that meant---
Gaby.
He’d fired a few texts her way, but it was early evening and he wasn’t sure if her friends would be at her work or if they’d come back just before she finished or what, he was already booking it across town to get there first when he literally barrelled into her office and slammed the door behind him, trying to catch his breath -note to self, work out more.
“Is there a back door?” And that took too long to get out between panting breaths.
Gaby jumped when the door slammed shut and she watched Clint leaning against it, red-faced and breathless as he asked her if there was a back door. This was the second day that Napoleon and Illya had consented to let her work and collect her at the end of the day: she had her employees and they hadn’t seen the man canvassing her place for at least a week.
“Uh-” she started, “Good evening to you too, Clint.”
She pressed her lips together and had already started getting to her feet.
“But yes, there is. Why, do I need to run? Are you okay?”
She moved forwards, “Are you hurt?”
Clint was a little sorry for the abruptness, but at the same time he’d rather make up being rude to Gaby than get her killed. “Yes, yes, lovely day, having a ball. We need to go.”
As much as his side was telling him that running across the town was a terrible idea and that he was not in his teens anymore, stop doing dumb ass shit, he wasn’t physically injured. Yet. “I’m fine, I’m trying to keep you fine, where are your friends?” Until Clint knew exactly where Arkov was, there was no way he was about to take a chance.
It was just a good thing he’d moved the file, otherwise was sure Gaby would’ve been killed to get it.
“Okay,” Gaby assented, accepting that they’d have to do questions in a little bit. “Let me just-” she moved away from him again, apologised to tomorrow’s Gaby and flicked the power off on her computer at the wall instead of waiting for the ten minutes it would take for it to shut down properly. She locked the drawers and pulled out the key, snagging her fingers on her bag and looking at him.
She nodded, “We can go, I can ask Illya to come and lock up later.” She’d already put today’s takings in the safe anyway, so she wasn’t too worried. “And they’re probably at home, or at work, why?”
Tipping her head, Gaby slipped into her jacket and started walking to the opposite side of the office where she had a fire door that led down a back alley behind the building. “What happened?”
Clint didn’t want to rush Gaby, not really, but at the same time he was painfully aware that they were likely sitting ducks in here if Arkov was in the area and had it out for Gaby or him -probably both, that’s two birds with one stone afterall. “We need to get you somewhere safe.” Which likely spoke volumes of just what was going on.
Making a point of exiting first, just in case, Clint was far more alert than he’d maybe been since he arrived in the OC, after leaving his own sketchy contacts and life behind. It just showed these things really didn’t last in Clint’s life.
“There was about to be a sting on Arkov, the hitman? But he spooked and went to ground.” Which screwed up a few things, not least the deal Clint had made with a contact with the Feds, but majorly when it came to ensuring certain people’s safety. “You need to be somewhere else until he’s found.”
It would’ve been nice if Clint could’ve gotten Gaby to her car, got her home, holed up with those spy and thief friends of hers, and he could figure out how to lure out Arkov. Instead, a bullet hit the edge of the building, just by Clint’s head, making him flinch back, grabbing for Gaby to duck them both back the way they came towards her garage. “Aw fuck.”
“Was that a gunshot?!” Gaby asked, ducking down as though that would make her less of a target and backing up as Clint’s hand waved for her to do so. Her heart was in her throat; she hadn’t been shot at in her dreams much (only by Illya at the beginning) so gunfire wasn’t something she was used to, but was pleased with herself that she flinched but didn’t scream.
She pushed her hair out of her face and tugged Clint closer, yanking the door open again and stepping inside, keeping it open as a sort of cover unless it was deemed safer to step inside properly and use the deadbolt.
“Arkov, I presume?” she asked, moving away to secure the door to her office with the additional lock that Illya had insisted on fitting himself just after the whole hitman fiasco on Christmas Day. “Shit.” Clint had cut it fine; was Arkov here already or had he followed Clint? Not that it mattered either way; their better exit was covered. “I guess going out of the front is not happening?”
She closed the blind, too. Better that someone not be able to see into the room, right?
“That was a gunshot, yep.” Clint was very aware of them, even half deaf he couldn’t miss the tell tale pop of a gunshot, never mind the ricochet of a bullet near his head. He tried really hard to keep himself covering Gaby, making sure there wasn’t a line of sight on her.
Grabbing the nearest heavy thing, which was a filing cabinet, Clint shoved it to barricade the door just a little, noticing that Gaby at least knew to grab the blinds too.
For all that Clint didn’t typically carry a weapon, he was decidedly glad he had tucked his glock into his jacket that day, just in case. Never mind the knife in his boot, he’d be better making sure this was as far away as possible. “I wouldn’t recommend it, no. Can you call your friends?”
Because maybe Mr Spy and Mr Thief would be enough to either push Arkov back a little or at least get Gaby out of the line of fire. A bullet embedding into the door told Clint that the sooner the better. “Stay low, and away from the window.”
“Both of them?” Gaby asked, ducking down behind a filing cabinet. “If I called Illya and told him we were pinned in my office he’d skip Arkov and come straight to you to yank your kneecaps out and force them down your throat.”
She did fumble in her bag for her cellphone though, as they did need back up and she didn’t have any other friends who would even stand a chance against a man with a gun. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure that her current friends would as bullets were pretty hard to charm or intimidate into not embedding themselves into ones flesh.
“Scheisse,” she muttered. “Let me see if I can get a hold of Solo.”
A bullet thumps into the doorframe, right next to the lock and Clint figures that Arkov is trying to blow out the lock on the door to make it impossible for them to barricade the door effectively. “I mean, he’ll still need to come in the front, so at least he might kill Arkov before he shoves my kneecaps down my throat.”
There wasn’t really a way to get a good clean shot back either, getting some way to take aim and get some returned fire.
But if the other one could show up, fine. Maybe one of them could be a sniper and fucking help. “Do you have anything flammable in here?”
“I’ll try him after,” Gaby muttered, scrolling through her phone, flinching and biting back on a startled scream at the sound of a gunshot thumping on the door. “Shit- you can- you can move that filing cabinet,” she said, waving her hand at the heavy one about two foot from the door.
At his next question, her eyebrow arched. “In this room or in general? It’s a garage; there’s flammable things in the workshop but I don’t tend to keep anything in here.”
She pushed the button to dial Napoleon and lifted the phone, sinking down against the wall to make sure that she stays out of the way. “C’mon, Napoleon… pick up the phone.”
Trying not to mutter under his breath, Clint holstered the gun again, because what was he about to shoot right now? Bracing his shoulders against the side of the cabinet and shoving until he could get it off the wall and then dragging. Thank fuck for archery helping to build upper body strength. Even if his shoulder was screaming at him right then from the shoving.
It did help somewhat in that if the lock did fail, there was another barrier. “Can we get to the garage safely from here? Just need to hold him off a bit.” Like until he ran out of bullets or Gaby’s friends could get there. It did strike Clint that maybe he should get Gaby to call the cops, but that was hopefully a last resort.
He was trying to catalogue everything in his head that he’d need to make an explosive that might work without setting them, or Gaby’s business, on fire.
“If we ran across the atrium quickly,” Gaby said, “moving behind the front desk would give us a bit of extra cover but the front’s glass.” The phone rang and clicked to his voicemail. She cursed in German and then spoke quickly into the phone, telling Napoleon that there was a problem at work and she needed him to get to her garage as quickly as possible. Another gunshot sounded, to which she added, “Yes, that was a gunshot. I’m calling Illya next unless you want to grab him on the way over. Text me.”
She moved towards the other door, opening it a crack to look at the lobby, shooting off a text to Napoleon that said, in capitals, CHECK YOUR VM. NOW.
“If he’s hitting that door, we’d have at least a couple of minutes while he moved around the front, right?”
This had to be the biggest clusterfuck he’d ever gotten someone else into. Like it definitely wasn’t as bad as he’d gotten into, oh, he was sure he’d done dumber shit. But getting Gaby involved? Life or death situation like this? Fuck, he screwed up bad for this one. “Okay, yeah, cover will be needed.” Because the glass would not hold up like the wooden frame had been so far.
But staying in the small office wasn’t going to help in the long run either, since they were literally just waiting for Arkov to get through the barricade and pop them off. Defence was only good if you had a foolproof one, and nothing Clint did was foolproof.
“Okay, stay close to the ground, we gotta get in there, get cover and assess.” Because he needed to make sure that they at least had some cover, but at the very least if he had a view he could return fire -for all that Arkov was an impressive hitman, he wasn’t a crack-shot like Clint. But Clint could not fire around corners (not with a gun at least). “Where abouts are the most flammable stuff in there?”
“Cupboard at the back on the far end. The shutters’ll all be down and locked because I was in the process of closing.” Gaby pulled her keys out of her bag and wiggled them at Clint. “I’ve got the keys for the locker.”
Another shot rang out and she nearly shrieked, catching the keys before she dropped them. “I’ve left messages for Napoleon but there’s no answer. I hope he at least can come to help. If not, you have some ideas of what to do without blowing up my garage, yes?”
Her eyes lifted to Clint, narrowing in the corners slightly, “Right?”
Locker, keys, shutters down. Okay, that gave them a window of opportunity, a very small one, but one all the same. Arkov would need to travel around the building, stay out of sight and find cover at the front while they moved.
“Okay, we’re going to get in there, find cover, get the locker open and work something out. I promise I will not burn down your garage or blow it up, I just need something to get outside to draw attention.” Hopefully a nice molotov cocktail of some sort would get attention, get locals calling police, maybe scare Arkov off and Clint would just need to track and kill the son of a bitch.
Maybe not. He was hoping for the former. “You ready to move?” He was pretty impressed that she was as together as she was -occasional shriek aside- but that didn’t mean he was pushing things.
Gaby nodded even though her answer was really ‘no’. She was being shot at. She was being shot at and that hadn’t really even happened in her dreams other than when Illya was trying to take out the car (and Napoleon). She still wasn’t sure if he had wanted to kill her or not as well, but she was relieved that she never had to find out.
“Yes,” she said finally, clearing her throat and pushing her sleeves up. She moved towards the door that led to the reception area, waiting for Clint to give her the signal that indicated she needed to just run across the open area, around the desk to the door to the garage. She didn’t think she’d locked it yet, but she knew she’d locked the shutters and thought she’d locked the front door but Clint’s sudden appearance had her questioning that. “The door is behind the main desk so run to the back right corner. That ought to give us some cover if we need it too?”
How many bullet holes would be in her property? Did insurance cover that?
Clint had to make sure he was right where Arkov was perched, not on the fire escape but nearby it, where there was a little bit of cover from an AC unit in the next building. When they had a window of opportunity, Clint gave Gaby the nod, "Go." He knew were Arkov was at that moment, meaning Gaby had a free run to cover. Once Gaby started moving, Clint vaulted over the desk, making sure Arkov would notice the movement. As much as they didn't want to get killed, he still needed Arkov to head around front.
Pulling the door to the office shut, Clint followed Gaby to the back of the shop, mentally counting down how long he thought they had before the glass would be knocked in and they'd have yet more issues. "Okay, let's get creative." He grabbed a few loose rags, ignoring the oil and grease, since they were just going to get a little more messy. "Do you know how to use a gun? And if you don't it's okay, but do you?"
It was largely just for protection, maybe some cover, so that they could get to work.
“I- uh- don’t,” Gaby admitted, “But how hard can it be, it’s just point and shoot, isn’t it?”
She slid across the garage and slid the heavy bolt across the door, and while Clint was improvising, pulling various items out and she dreaded to think what he was going to do with them. He’d promised not to blow up her garage, and she had to believe that would be the case, but it still made her feel vaguely uncomfortable that he was digging around for flammable things.
“I’m a quick study.”
Clint wasn’t about to tell her that it was so much more than that, really. In this one instance, point and shoot would work provided she wasn’t pointing at him. “Okay, point and shoot can work out for now, we’ll worry about it later.”
The plastic bottles would work to mostly contain things, since nothing was glass to shatter and spread accelerant. Clint really wasn’t trying to get Gaby’s place burned down or blown up after all. He needed fireworks and attraction and noise. That meant he needed it all in the street.
He’d be able to pay for a new window in Gaby’s shop anyway. “You’re only going to be shooting outside anyway, not trying to hit anything. I just need a distraction so that I can get these through the window and draw attention this way.”
“Fine,” Gaby said with a nod, “at the very least I can do that. Just tell me where I need to go and what direction I need to shoot in.”
She swallowed, pushing back the tremor that tried to get into her voice. She flexed her fingers into her palms and took a breath, trying to calm her nerves. She hadn’t heard another gunshot in a while and she was worried that meant the man was outside, what if he was right on the other side of the door? What if he-
No, if he’d broken in they’d have heard the sound of smashing glass. Right?
“Hey, Clint?” She waited until he looked at her. “We’re going to be okay, right?”
Finishing up most of the cocktail of explosiveness, Clint untucked his glock again, shuffling over to Gaby. "Everything is gonna be fine," none of this was ideal and Clint was angry enough at himself for not seeing that he was getting Gaby in this kind of shit. And for everything going off the rails with the plan. But he wasn't going to let anything happen to Gaby. "We're gonna be fine."
Taking the safety off the gun, Clint took Gaby's hands carefully and helped her hold the weapon. "There's very little kickback with this, so just keep your arms loose and you'll be fine." Hopefully, but then he was pretty sure Gaby could handle a gun given her mechanic status. "Just point it towards the window and up, away from the street. It's not a hair trigger, so you'll need to pull with a bit of force, don't be scared of it okay?" Giving Gaby's shoulder a squeeze, Clint's attention turned back to the front of the garage. By now Arkov would've figured they'd moved and headed around, likely finding a spot to scope from.
"You ready? You're gonna shoot when I say, I'm gonna head to the door, and we're gonna get through this." Hopefully with minimal bloodshed.
Gaby took the gun, curled her hands around it and tried to get used to the weight in her hand. It was lighter than some of the tools she used, and Clint mentioned kickback which wasn’t too different to recoil from a riveter or some of the other items in her workshop that jolted her arms. She rolled her shoulders.
“I’ve got it,” she told him, forcing herself to sound more confident than she felt. She was more worried about Clint dropping the pyrotechnics in his hand than she was about pulling the trigger on the gun but still, she kept her grip firm and her brows were furrowed in focus. “I’m ready.”
She could feel it now; when this was over she was going to cry so much. She could only hope that Napoleon had gotten her message.
For the moment, Clint just had to get over any apprehension he had about wandering into the line of a hitman's sight, hoping that the friend he'd dragged into things wouldn't get hurt and work with it. He'd done worse things in his life time -like piss off the mob, get fucked up with loan sharks, this was nothing in the scheme of things. So when Gaby said she was ready, Clint didn't waste time by making sure she really was.
Keeping low, along the wall, Clint tried to stay as covered as possible to avoid getting shot on his way to the garage door. He was going to need to kick out one of the panels of glass to get a decent angle on things, but he was also going to need to stay away from the very open front area to avoid being killed. The fun of working these things out on the fly. "Shoot Gaby." No time like the present, and Clint would just do his usual and hope for the best.
Gaby didn’t hesitate when she was told. She steeled herself, lifted the gun and aimed it where she’d been told, loosening her elbows and unlocking the joints before breathing out as she squeezed the trigger, hard. The gun went off, the recoil catching her only a little, the window she was shooting out of shattering which made her jump more than the echoing crack of gunfire.
Though she was only supposed to fire once, she glanced over at where Clint had gone and took a breath, squeezing the trigger again, firing upwards and away from the street. Outside, she heard someone react to the gunshot with a scream. Okay-- it was working, right?
The second shot caught Clint a little off guard. He'd kicked out the bottom of the glass as Gaby shot the first round, ignoring the flash of pain in his foot, getting himself just a little outside and -- There, found it. Arkov's hiding spot was a little to the corner, not covered and in a tight corner, not ideal for a quick get away. With a swing of the arm, Clint aimed for just near Arkov, but the pop of Gaby's second shot threw him a little, worried she'd spotted something or gotten hurt or he'd missed something, Clint's trajectory shifted a little.
He was leaning to check on Gaby when he head the grunt, then a flail and then --- oh shit. Rather than near Arkov, he'd managed to actually hit Arkov and.... "Gaby, get back in the rear, go to the office." This was not going to be good in the least. Moving back inside the garage, Clint shuffled around to where Gaby was, "Hey, c'mon we need to move you." Taking the gun back, because he didn't want her with that right now, Clint angled to get Gaby as far away from the front of the building as humanly possible.
"You did great, and you're gonna be safe as houses now, but you gotta stay in the office okay?"
Gaby handed the gun over immediately, though her brows furrowed a little. “What about you? Where is he?” She couldn’t see much from where she was positioned, and with Clint pushing her back towards the door so they could get back to the office, her view of the parking lot and street outside was limited. “Clint- don’t- are you- Scheisse what now?”
She could feel her hands starting to tremble slightly, bag on her shoulder thumping against her thigh as she moved, keeping low and running into the office, not closing the door just yet. “Will you be alright?”
The less Gaby saw the better, he dealt with this shit on a far too regular basis and was somewhat desensitized to violence and gore, but he didn’t want to be the reason Gaby needed therapy. More therapy than she might already need at least. God what a mess.
“I’m fine, I’ll be okay, just stay low and stay in here, I will be back, I promise.” There was a shard of glass in his ankle, it wasn’t serious and it hadn’t injured anything important, it was just painful and bleeding. He could handle that no problem. “Gaby, just close the door and don’t come out okay?”
The smell of burning flesh might travel soon and he had no desire to put that in her mind. Hoping that she’d listen, Clint made his way back out the garage, through the hole from the glass and outside. He could hear distant sirens, so at least someone was coming, but he had to wonder if putting Arkov out of his misery was better or worse.
At least the street was empty, until the sudden appearance of a dark haired giant in a suit. “Um…” How do you explain a burning man outside a gara?
“Where’s Gaby?” Oh, oh this was probably one of her friends. Likely not surprised by the burning man on the ground.
“Office,” Clint pointed inside, using his brain to point with the hand not holding the gun, “Um… can you get her out of here?” Clint didn’t think the dramatic eyeroll was needed, thank you very much, but at least both of Clint’s kneecaps were in one piece. So Gaby’s friend slipped off, and Clint opted to just shoot Arkov in the head. Better than burning alive for sure.
Napoleon really would’ve said something, but there was enough going on out there to make him want to get to Gaby sooner, slipping inside the garage and reaching the office door, giving it a soft knock, “Gaby, it’s Solo. Can you let me in?”
Gaby, who had shut herself in the office after being told to and squeezed herself into the back corner, had been covering her ears with her hands, trying to stop them from shaking. She was stronger than this, she was supposed to be anyway, in her dreams she seemed unflappable - though she had been terrified when she was driving Napoleon away from the person who later turned out to be Illya and fear had been a constant but that was a different situation. She’d always thought she’d have been fearless in dangerous situations.
It was disappointing to her that she wasn’t particularly. Now that the moment was over, that there was nothing for her to focus on, the adrenaline gave way to something else that made her feel sick and afraid and a little light-headed. Was Clint okay? Had Arkov got in?
That was her first thought when she heard the sound of a gunshot outside just before the soft knock and she was getting ready to try her luck running out the back when she heard the sound of Napoleon’s voice coming through the door and she could have cried.
She scrambled to her feet and unlocked it, pulling it open and then flinging herself against his chest, arms locking around his waist and hiding her face, whole body trembling slightly.
“Is- is Clint- is he-”
As Gaby barrelled into him, Solo’s arms automatically wrapped around her, shuffling them back into the office. He was sorely tempted to fill in Illya’s shoes at the moment and throttle the idiot that put Gaby in this situation.
She’d been nothing but in control and poised in every single appearance in his dreams, from her cool attitude, her flawless driving and execution of their escape from Berlin to the sassy way she held her ground with Illya.
But Gaby came first, or he definitely would’ve. “Hey, it’s okay. He’s fine, he’s okay. I think your problem is dead though.” Otherwise there would be more explaining and Solo was not telling Illya not to kill Gaby’s friends. “I’m here to get you out of here.”
They weren’t waiting around for police, Solo doubted any of this was legal at all and Gaby was not getting caught up in things. “I’m going to take you home, okay? Clint can deal with things.” Or he could go to jail, that’d be a welcome option too.
“He- Okay. Okay.” Gaby swore under her breath and muttered something in German as Napoleon reassured her that everything was okay and that the problem had been solved. That was a relief, but it was a shame that someone had to die. Arkov, though, probably deserved whatever had come his way. She’d never read the files Clint had given her - well, she’d given them a cursory, curious flick through and realised she was better off not knowing - but she knew Arkov was a bad man, and he had done bad things.
Illya and Napoleon both would agree that the world was a better place without him. Gaby just wished this kind of thing didn’t happen.
She pressed her lips together and nodded, patting Napoleon’s chest and taking a breath, trying to calm her racing heart down. The her in her dreams seemed unflappable on the surface. Gaby knew the dream version of her was afraid, since she was living it, but she was much better at hiding it. The benefits of growing up behind the Iron Curtain, perhaps.
“That would be good,” she agreed, pulling away to collect the bag that had been discarded and to check the exit from her office was locked. “Wait- do we need to leave this way? Can we go out the front?”
There really wasn’t an issue with a man like Arkov being killed, no. Illya and Napoleon’s biggest issue was that Gaby was pulled into things. Smoothing a hand down Gaby’s arm, prepared to comfort through the adrenaline withdrawal, since he was more than sure it’d last a fair while.
“No, Gaby, we’re definitely not going out the front.” Sure, he had to move a cabinet away from the door -because of course he had to move a cabinet, why would he think that the idiot who brought a hitman to Gaby’s doorstep would have any kind of plan. “You can text your friend later, I’m pretty sure he’ll be getting out of here as soon as he can, but…”
But Solo figured that Gaby was going to have enough damage to deal with from this whole thing, adding in the dreams, she didn’t need that sight to go with it. “Gaby you don’t want to see what’s out front, so let’s just go this way?”
Gaby pressed her lips together and looked like she was going to argue for a moment before she just nodded. In all honesty, she wanted to go home and wait for someone to call her to tell her something had happened at her garage so she could be appropriately shocked and get her insurance to cover any major damages.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what was out the front but figured that could wait. Home first. A large glass of whiskey and her pyjamas and then she would see.
“Yeah,” she said, “okay, that sounds really good. I’ve got enough whiskey to knock Illya out.” She glanced up at him, “Think you could stick around for a drink?”
This settled it, though. She needed to start learning to be more than just a great mechanic. If she was going to live here and they were going to deal with…things like this then she needed to be better.
That was a resolution for tomorrow’s Gaby, though, once the hangover had cleared.
“After you.”