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shanachie_quillTitle: Running from the Wreckage
Characters: Clint Barton, Tessa Monroe, Isabella, Olivia Donner, Natasha Romanov, Tony Stark
Fandom: Avengers
Series: Avengers’ Assistants
Written For:
Prompt:
Summary: Clint knows he’s doing the wrong thing, but he just can’t seem to help himself.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: The rest of my series
Warnings: swearing, creepiness by Clint
Disclaimer: No one recognizable belongs to me
Author's Note: And now I can finish the one that comes after this since I’ve got it half done. Um, yeah honestly I’ve got nothing…I need to work on actually doing a write-up on my Assistants though which I’ll probably do soonish. As always thanks to my girls. And I’ll give Isabella a last name soon.
When Clint awoke in the morning, he was warm and comfortable; a heavy weight curled against his side. He cracked his eyes open, afraid that the events from the night before had all been in his head. Instead he was confronted by a sight he'd never dared hope he would have. Tessa was wrapped up next to him, her hand clutching his t-shirt. Although they'd spent the night together before, it had never been in the same bed and never after sharing one of the sweetest, hottest kisses he'd ever had.
Tessa moved in her sleep, snuggling closer to him, and unclenched her hand, resting it against his heart. As if she could sense he was awake, her eyes blinked open and she smiled up at him. "Morning," she said softly.
Clint took a deep breath. He didn't want to hurt Tessa and he was positive he was about to, but he didn't see any other way. Because what she'd started last night topped the charts of bad ideas.
Tessa frowned at his lack of response. "What's going on in that complicated head of yours, tough guy?"
He couldn't resist stroking a hand across her hair, enjoying the way the silky stands wrapped around his fingers. "You know I don't regret what happened last night, right? But that it can't happen again."
She sat up and he had to drag his eyes away from her breasts which were right in his face. "First off nothing actually happened. And what do you mean it can't happen again?"
Wanting to be on the same footing as her, relatively speaking, he hauled himself into a sitting position. "I won't risk you. There might not be an official policy but you and I both know fraternization is frowned upon. I won't get you in trouble. I won't lose you as my Assistant for a quick fuck."
"Who says it’s gonna be a quick fuck?" she demanded. "I think we both know we're interested in more than that."
He threw off the blankets and crawled out of bed, grabbing for his shoes. "No, Tessa. I can't. I just cannot do that to you. I'm a screw up and a fuck up and I'm just not good enough for you." Shoving his feet into his shoes, he fled the room.
By the time Tessa untangled herself from the blankets and made her way to the door, throwing it open; Clint had vanished. She really wasn't surprised, on a good day he was a difficult man to locate but right now she'd be lucky if she found any trace of him.
After a minute of staring down the hallway, she turned back into the bedroom, trying not to let what Clint had said affect her. She knew if she had a chance she could change his mind, but first she had to find him.
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Tony Stark was not a man who shied away from much, unless it was emotionally charged. But the sight of the Avengers’ marksman firing arrow after arrow into the target and never deviating from the center of the bull’s-eye was creepy. Clint didn’t even really pause to reload, but simply kept firing. Tony wasn’t entirely sure where he was getting the arrows from, but waited until it appeared he had no more ammunition before saying, “If you disintegrate the target, Fury’s probably not gonna let us put a new one in for a while.”
“What the fuck do you want, Stark?” Clint responded without turning around. “And since I only hit the center, the rest of you should be fine.”
Tony waved his hand, indicating Clint’s bow. “Want to put the deadly weapon down first? And…hey where’s your keeper?”
“Tessa’s…busy,” Clint answered. “Unlike you I’m allowed to wander around unsupervised. Where’s Ms. Potts?”
“She’s otherwise occupied. Besides unlike some people I haven’t been assigned a babysitter,” Tony responded.
“Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.” Clint picked his bow back up. “Now if there’s nothing else…”
“Well, you’re pricklier than usual,” Tony commented. “Yeah, Owleye. There is something else. Catch.”
The archer turned in time to snag the tube flying at him out of the air. “What’s this?”
“The arrows we discussed. There’s a couple of different prototypes there. Lemme know which one you like the best.” Tony turned back just before he left the range. “And try not to blow the range up. Some of them pack a punch.”
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Tessa looked up as Olivia and Isabella sat down on either side of her. “Unless something is blowing up or someone is dying, I really don’t want to hear about it right now,” she told them, flicking the page on her tablet.
Olivia slipped an arm around the taller woman’s shoulders. “We just wanted you to know you have our support.”
“So when I kill Clint for being a stupid, stubborn asshole, you’ll back me?” Tessa asked.
“If you make it look like an accident? Sure,” Isabella agreed.
“You want to tell us what he did?” Olivia asked.
Tessa glanced around the room, but there wasn’t anyone close enough to overhear them as long as she kept her voice down. “He bought me lethal chopsticks to apologize for the Incident the other night. And then he kissed me.”
“But that’s what you wanted him to do. Or at least you wanted him to kiss you when he was in his right mind,” Isabella said in confusion.
“I did,” Tessa agreed, looking down and her tablet and running her fingers across the screen, scrambling the programs. “Except he told me that it was a mistake when we woke up this morning and ran away.” At her friends’ horrified looks, she hastened to reassure them, “Nothing happened. I mean, he spent the night with me, but all we did was sleep. I mean it’s nothing more than we’ve ever done before but I just…” she sighed. “He told me we couldn’t do this. That he wouldn’t lose me as his Assistant for a quick fuck.”
“Do you want to do the honors or should I?” Olivia asked around Tessa.
Isabella considered the question for a moment. “I think we should let Natasha have at him. Or would this be enough to piss Bruce off?”
“Girls! I don’t want him broken beyond repair,” Tessa protested. “Just maybe. Maimed a little.” She snapped the pencil that she’d picked up. “And I think I’d like to do the maiming.”
“Want us to hold him down?” Isabella offered.
Tessa sighed. “No. Because what I’d really like is to find out what’s going on in that head of his.” She gathered up her tablet and the rest of her belongings. “But right now I’ve got a meeting with Coulson I’ve got to get to.”
“Everything okay?” Olivia asked.
Tessa forced a smile. “Yeah, just the weekly report.”
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“You know you never struck me as a coward.”
Clint did not scream, although it was a close thing, when Natasha spoke from just behind him. She was one of the few people who could sneak up on him and she seemed to delight in seeing how many times she could do it during a single day. Normally he enjoyed seeing if he could surprise her and catch her attempting it, but today he just didn’t have the patience for it. “What do you want, Natasha?” he asked.
She leaned against the wall next to him and he eyed her suspiciously when she picked up one of his arrows. “I mean. I was pretty sure you had balls.” She eyed him in return. “Tessa didn’t cut them off last night, did she?”
“I do have…” he stopped as her words registered. “No! Tessa did not cut off my balls. Damn it, I hate talking to you sometimes. Did you come down here just to bust my balls?”
“No. I came down here to point out that they’ve ignored every other rule the two of you have broken so why wouldn’t they ignore one that’s not even a real rule. What was the point of running away from her this morning?”
Clint took back the arrow she was about to mangle. “Is that really any of your business?”
“Who else are you going to talk to? Stark? You can’t go to your normal heart to heart.” She flicked him on the forehead, causing him to wince. “You ran away from her this morning.”
“Tessa doesn’t need my baggage, Natasha. She sure as hell doesn’t need to deal with my psycho brain patterns in any way that doesn’t pertain to her job,” he answered.
Natasha stifled a laugh. “I hate to tell you this, but you and your psycho brain went waaay beyond job a while ago. Like around the time you decided no one could touch Tessa because she was yours.”
Clint hit his head against the pole next to him. “I’m screwed, aren’t I?”
Natasha patted him on the back. “Men have been saying that for millennia.”
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Tessa felt for the handle to the office door, her eyes on her tablet as she opened the door and let herself in. She navigated the office from memory, even though it wasn’t her own, she spent enough time in it to know it almost better than hers. She looked up only when she didn’t get the creepy familiar feeling of eyes on her as soon as the door was shut. “Oh, seriously? You have got to be kidding me,” she said out loud. “You’re even going to avoid me when its work related?”
When no response came, she tossed the tablet down onto the desk, not concerned with the clatter it made. That was one good thing about Stark tech; it tended to be near indestructible. “Damn it, Clint. It’s one thing to avoid me when it’s something personal. But I need those stats so I can update Coulson. And I need to talk to you about other things.”
She turned to scan the room, looking for signs of Clint’s presence. She knew he had to be somewhere around, it wasn’t like him to leave her for this long without showing himself. As she made a complete three sixty, her tablet pinged from where it had fallen. She glared at it. “Okay, you know what? That is really not funny, Clint,” she told the air as she retrieved it. She opened the file and found the stats she needed. “Damn you.” She dropped into the chair to start compiling them. If he wasn’t going to show himself at least she could get her work done.
Clint lay on his stomach in the ceiling vent, watching as Tessa worked with the data he’d sent her. He was aware he was taking the coward’s option by hiding from her and not speaking to her, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He wanted to drop down and talk to her; wanted to explain all the reasons why a relationship with him was a bad idea, but he just couldn’t bring himself to face her. Instead he rested his head on his arm and continued to watch her until she left the room.
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Clint glanced around the corridor before carefully picking the lock to the door. He knew he was most likely being observed on the security cameras, but it wasn’t that odd for him to enter Tessa’s quarters. It was only the hour and the method of entry that might cause some dismay in the security offices. He was counting on the unusual habits of their comings and goings and their habits of training to cover him though.
Tessa was curled up and sound asleep when he slipped in and he eased the door shut, moving carefully so he didn’t disturb her. He’d observed her sleeping before, been able to hold her close the night before and know what it felt like to match his breathing to hers. Creeping across the room, he sank down next to the bed, wanting to touch her, but not daring for fear he would wake her.
He must have started to doze off because the next thing he remembered was jerking awake as Tessa screamed. Scrambling to his feet, he hastened to reassure her, “It’s just me. Tessa, its Clint. Stop yelling.”
“What. The. Fuck. Are you doing?!” she yelled in response as she clambered into a sitting position. “You’re lucky I didn’t stab you! Jesus, you psycho! I’ve been looking for you all day! Why would you… God damn it this is deranged even for you, Clint!”
“I just… I wanted… I needed to see you,” he tried to explain.
“You… You…” She picked up the pillow and smacked him with it before he could move out of the way. “No, you dumbass! If you needed to see me, you should have been around at some point today! You don’t act like a creeper and sneak into my room!”
Clint’s mouth opened and closed a few minutes before he managed to get his feet under him. He reached out as if he was going to touch her and attempt to speak to her again, but dropped his hand before he said anything. After giving her a tortured look, he turned and fled the room.
Tessa let out a frustrated noise. “I swear to god, Clint! When I catch up to you, I’m going to tie you down and we’re going to have a long, painful talk about our feelings!”
Characters: Clint Barton, Tessa Monroe, Isabella, Olivia Donner, Natasha Romanov, Tony Stark
Fandom: Avengers
Series: Avengers’ Assistants
Written For:
Prompt:
Summary: Clint knows he’s doing the wrong thing, but he just can’t seem to help himself.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: The rest of my series
Warnings: swearing, creepiness by Clint
Disclaimer: No one recognizable belongs to me
Author's Note: And now I can finish the one that comes after this since I’ve got it half done. Um, yeah honestly I’ve got nothing…I need to work on actually doing a write-up on my Assistants though which I’ll probably do soonish. As always thanks to my girls. And I’ll give Isabella a last name soon.
When Clint awoke in the morning, he was warm and comfortable; a heavy weight curled against his side. He cracked his eyes open, afraid that the events from the night before had all been in his head. Instead he was confronted by a sight he'd never dared hope he would have. Tessa was wrapped up next to him, her hand clutching his t-shirt. Although they'd spent the night together before, it had never been in the same bed and never after sharing one of the sweetest, hottest kisses he'd ever had.
Tessa moved in her sleep, snuggling closer to him, and unclenched her hand, resting it against his heart. As if she could sense he was awake, her eyes blinked open and she smiled up at him. "Morning," she said softly.
Clint took a deep breath. He didn't want to hurt Tessa and he was positive he was about to, but he didn't see any other way. Because what she'd started last night topped the charts of bad ideas.
Tessa frowned at his lack of response. "What's going on in that complicated head of yours, tough guy?"
He couldn't resist stroking a hand across her hair, enjoying the way the silky stands wrapped around his fingers. "You know I don't regret what happened last night, right? But that it can't happen again."
She sat up and he had to drag his eyes away from her breasts which were right in his face. "First off nothing actually happened. And what do you mean it can't happen again?"
Wanting to be on the same footing as her, relatively speaking, he hauled himself into a sitting position. "I won't risk you. There might not be an official policy but you and I both know fraternization is frowned upon. I won't get you in trouble. I won't lose you as my Assistant for a quick fuck."
"Who says it’s gonna be a quick fuck?" she demanded. "I think we both know we're interested in more than that."
He threw off the blankets and crawled out of bed, grabbing for his shoes. "No, Tessa. I can't. I just cannot do that to you. I'm a screw up and a fuck up and I'm just not good enough for you." Shoving his feet into his shoes, he fled the room.
By the time Tessa untangled herself from the blankets and made her way to the door, throwing it open; Clint had vanished. She really wasn't surprised, on a good day he was a difficult man to locate but right now she'd be lucky if she found any trace of him.
After a minute of staring down the hallway, she turned back into the bedroom, trying not to let what Clint had said affect her. She knew if she had a chance she could change his mind, but first she had to find him.
Tony Stark was not a man who shied away from much, unless it was emotionally charged. But the sight of the Avengers’ marksman firing arrow after arrow into the target and never deviating from the center of the bull’s-eye was creepy. Clint didn’t even really pause to reload, but simply kept firing. Tony wasn’t entirely sure where he was getting the arrows from, but waited until it appeared he had no more ammunition before saying, “If you disintegrate the target, Fury’s probably not gonna let us put a new one in for a while.”
“What the fuck do you want, Stark?” Clint responded without turning around. “And since I only hit the center, the rest of you should be fine.”
Tony waved his hand, indicating Clint’s bow. “Want to put the deadly weapon down first? And…hey where’s your keeper?”
“Tessa’s…busy,” Clint answered. “Unlike you I’m allowed to wander around unsupervised. Where’s Ms. Potts?”
“She’s otherwise occupied. Besides unlike some people I haven’t been assigned a babysitter,” Tony responded.
“Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.” Clint picked his bow back up. “Now if there’s nothing else…”
“Well, you’re pricklier than usual,” Tony commented. “Yeah, Owleye. There is something else. Catch.”
The archer turned in time to snag the tube flying at him out of the air. “What’s this?”
“The arrows we discussed. There’s a couple of different prototypes there. Lemme know which one you like the best.” Tony turned back just before he left the range. “And try not to blow the range up. Some of them pack a punch.”
Tessa looked up as Olivia and Isabella sat down on either side of her. “Unless something is blowing up or someone is dying, I really don’t want to hear about it right now,” she told them, flicking the page on her tablet.
Olivia slipped an arm around the taller woman’s shoulders. “We just wanted you to know you have our support.”
“So when I kill Clint for being a stupid, stubborn asshole, you’ll back me?” Tessa asked.
“If you make it look like an accident? Sure,” Isabella agreed.
“You want to tell us what he did?” Olivia asked.
Tessa glanced around the room, but there wasn’t anyone close enough to overhear them as long as she kept her voice down. “He bought me lethal chopsticks to apologize for the Incident the other night. And then he kissed me.”
“But that’s what you wanted him to do. Or at least you wanted him to kiss you when he was in his right mind,” Isabella said in confusion.
“I did,” Tessa agreed, looking down and her tablet and running her fingers across the screen, scrambling the programs. “Except he told me that it was a mistake when we woke up this morning and ran away.” At her friends’ horrified looks, she hastened to reassure them, “Nothing happened. I mean, he spent the night with me, but all we did was sleep. I mean it’s nothing more than we’ve ever done before but I just…” she sighed. “He told me we couldn’t do this. That he wouldn’t lose me as his Assistant for a quick fuck.”
“Do you want to do the honors or should I?” Olivia asked around Tessa.
Isabella considered the question for a moment. “I think we should let Natasha have at him. Or would this be enough to piss Bruce off?”
“Girls! I don’t want him broken beyond repair,” Tessa protested. “Just maybe. Maimed a little.” She snapped the pencil that she’d picked up. “And I think I’d like to do the maiming.”
“Want us to hold him down?” Isabella offered.
Tessa sighed. “No. Because what I’d really like is to find out what’s going on in that head of his.” She gathered up her tablet and the rest of her belongings. “But right now I’ve got a meeting with Coulson I’ve got to get to.”
“Everything okay?” Olivia asked.
Tessa forced a smile. “Yeah, just the weekly report.”
“You know you never struck me as a coward.”
Clint did not scream, although it was a close thing, when Natasha spoke from just behind him. She was one of the few people who could sneak up on him and she seemed to delight in seeing how many times she could do it during a single day. Normally he enjoyed seeing if he could surprise her and catch her attempting it, but today he just didn’t have the patience for it. “What do you want, Natasha?” he asked.
She leaned against the wall next to him and he eyed her suspiciously when she picked up one of his arrows. “I mean. I was pretty sure you had balls.” She eyed him in return. “Tessa didn’t cut them off last night, did she?”
“I do have…” he stopped as her words registered. “No! Tessa did not cut off my balls. Damn it, I hate talking to you sometimes. Did you come down here just to bust my balls?”
“No. I came down here to point out that they’ve ignored every other rule the two of you have broken so why wouldn’t they ignore one that’s not even a real rule. What was the point of running away from her this morning?”
Clint took back the arrow she was about to mangle. “Is that really any of your business?”
“Who else are you going to talk to? Stark? You can’t go to your normal heart to heart.” She flicked him on the forehead, causing him to wince. “You ran away from her this morning.”
“Tessa doesn’t need my baggage, Natasha. She sure as hell doesn’t need to deal with my psycho brain patterns in any way that doesn’t pertain to her job,” he answered.
Natasha stifled a laugh. “I hate to tell you this, but you and your psycho brain went waaay beyond job a while ago. Like around the time you decided no one could touch Tessa because she was yours.”
Clint hit his head against the pole next to him. “I’m screwed, aren’t I?”
Natasha patted him on the back. “Men have been saying that for millennia.”
Tessa felt for the handle to the office door, her eyes on her tablet as she opened the door and let herself in. She navigated the office from memory, even though it wasn’t her own, she spent enough time in it to know it almost better than hers. She looked up only when she didn’t get the creepy familiar feeling of eyes on her as soon as the door was shut. “Oh, seriously? You have got to be kidding me,” she said out loud. “You’re even going to avoid me when its work related?”
When no response came, she tossed the tablet down onto the desk, not concerned with the clatter it made. That was one good thing about Stark tech; it tended to be near indestructible. “Damn it, Clint. It’s one thing to avoid me when it’s something personal. But I need those stats so I can update Coulson. And I need to talk to you about other things.”
She turned to scan the room, looking for signs of Clint’s presence. She knew he had to be somewhere around, it wasn’t like him to leave her for this long without showing himself. As she made a complete three sixty, her tablet pinged from where it had fallen. She glared at it. “Okay, you know what? That is really not funny, Clint,” she told the air as she retrieved it. She opened the file and found the stats she needed. “Damn you.” She dropped into the chair to start compiling them. If he wasn’t going to show himself at least she could get her work done.
Clint lay on his stomach in the ceiling vent, watching as Tessa worked with the data he’d sent her. He was aware he was taking the coward’s option by hiding from her and not speaking to her, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He wanted to drop down and talk to her; wanted to explain all the reasons why a relationship with him was a bad idea, but he just couldn’t bring himself to face her. Instead he rested his head on his arm and continued to watch her until she left the room.
Clint glanced around the corridor before carefully picking the lock to the door. He knew he was most likely being observed on the security cameras, but it wasn’t that odd for him to enter Tessa’s quarters. It was only the hour and the method of entry that might cause some dismay in the security offices. He was counting on the unusual habits of their comings and goings and their habits of training to cover him though.
Tessa was curled up and sound asleep when he slipped in and he eased the door shut, moving carefully so he didn’t disturb her. He’d observed her sleeping before, been able to hold her close the night before and know what it felt like to match his breathing to hers. Creeping across the room, he sank down next to the bed, wanting to touch her, but not daring for fear he would wake her.
He must have started to doze off because the next thing he remembered was jerking awake as Tessa screamed. Scrambling to his feet, he hastened to reassure her, “It’s just me. Tessa, its Clint. Stop yelling.”
“What. The. Fuck. Are you doing?!” she yelled in response as she clambered into a sitting position. “You’re lucky I didn’t stab you! Jesus, you psycho! I’ve been looking for you all day! Why would you… God damn it this is deranged even for you, Clint!”
“I just… I wanted… I needed to see you,” he tried to explain.
“You… You…” She picked up the pillow and smacked him with it before he could move out of the way. “No, you dumbass! If you needed to see me, you should have been around at some point today! You don’t act like a creeper and sneak into my room!”
Clint’s mouth opened and closed a few minutes before he managed to get his feet under him. He reached out as if he was going to touch her and attempt to speak to her again, but dropped his hand before he said anything. After giving her a tortured look, he turned and fled the room.
Tessa let out a frustrated noise. “I swear to god, Clint! When I catch up to you, I’m going to tie you down and we’re going to have a long, painful talk about our feelings!”
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