I'm coming home

[makethatwork]

Who: Clint Barton and YOU
Where: Alpha Force Tower, later Trailblazer dorms
When: TODAY. ...yeah, whatever today is.
What: Clint's back from his leave and is clueless about the things he missed. Like half his team disappearing.
Warnings: none (yet)

Alpha Force Tower

Clint could use a haircut and a shave, but all in all he doesn't look too worse for wear when he clomps into the residential area of Alpha Force tower, bow on his back and dufflebag slung over his shoulder. He's fiddling with one of his hearing aids, since he'd gotten kind of used to not wearing them most of the time so it's like getting used to them all over again, but otherwise he mostly looks way more relaxed and less likely to flip out than he did in the immediate aftermath of Mockingbird and Captain Victory's deaths.

"Hey, anyone home?" he calls out. "Fi, I brought you a souvenir!"

Trailblazer Dorms

In the wake of finding out that half of his team has disappeared without a trace, Clint wasn't really sure what to do with himself. "Disappeared" doesn't mean "dead", which is a blessing, but that doesn't make him feel that much better. A shower and a shave later, he's still pretty scruffy, but he feels like he should be doing... something.

And that something, he figures, is he should check on the Trailblazer kids. He always tried to keep an eye on them, even outside of the official mentoring or training, and now he's been gone for more than half a year. If nothing else, he knows there's new kids that he hasn't met yet, and he should do that. He shows up at the dorms and just hangs out in the living area, waiting to say hi to whoever comes by.

Comments

[makethatwork]

"Don't make me noogie you, rook, I will do it with no regrets whatsoever," he warns.

"Though," he adds after a pause, "if anybody's much impressed by me, they probably haven't followed my career very closely."

[withoutaworld]

"Not if I put you on the ground first." She wonders if she could take him now, hand-to-hand. She's bigger than she used to be - not much, but some - and a lot better trained. It might be worth trying, sometime when they've got an hour or two to spar.

"But someone must be, apparently. They sell posters and everything."

[makethatwork]

"Oh-ho, you wanna go, little 'kick?" He gets her in a headlock without warning, just long enough to noogie and release. "On the mat, after breakfast tomorrow, me and you."

He's not gonna comment on the posters and everything. Part of him is pleased as punch, the rest thinks people could probably stand to idolize someone else.

[withoutaworld]

"Clint!" she shrieks, taken by surprise - just because she kind of issued a challenge doesn't mean he gets to attack her out of the blue. Come on, there are rules. He's already let her go by the time she has a chance to struggle free, and she sits back, indignantly smoothing her hair.

"You're on. And I'm getting you back for that. Cheater."

[makethatwork]

"It's only cheating if you play by the rules," he says solemnly. "And that's a good way to lose."

[withoutaworld]

Rikki doesn't answer, just gives him a long disapproving look - she's been giving him those looks since she was roughly eight, but it's certainly been perfected by long association with Cap. She and Clint have been having this argument for ages, and at this point, she doesn't even need to voice her disagreement. The rules are what separate the good guys from the bad guys.