#and I dig archer in dai because I can nope away from danger while still attacking

[dovahgriin-archive]

Meet-Cute and Other Adventures {2/100}

Pairing: Clint Barton/Reader

Rating: T

Chapter Notes: N/A

In the weeks since you’d been cornered in the alleyway between your home and work, mutant-human relations have been in a steady but constant decline. The news regularly covers scenes where mutant-friendly businesses have been picketed by angry humans. Apartment complexes where mutants live are vandalized. You keep your head down, and hope that no-one will notice you. You really shouldn’t be too surprised when someone tossed a Molotov cocktail into your open living room window.

Shattering glass is what startles you out of sleep. The yowling of your cat by your bedroom window has you scrambling out of bed. Your brain is still cottony as you fling open the casement, letting Sprinkles out. The feline hops out onto the fire escape and wails again.

That’s when you notice the smoke.

Coughing, you pad out of your bedroom and into your kitchen, where you can see fire — fire — flickering off of the cracked linoleum. The smoke and the rapidly growing flames have you blinking back tears and swearing loudly. Someone pounds on your door.

”Help,” you cry out. “I’m in here!”

The fire is between you and the front door. Shit. You scramble to get back into your room, grabbing an empty duffel bag on your way past the utility closet. When you get into your room, you slam your door shut,

You toss clothes haphazardly into the bag, grabbing the comfiest that you can find. Now you remember why Professor X had told your class why you needed to keep a bag packed at all times.

”Humans… normal people… don’t always understand what’s different, and they can be dangerous. It is always best to be prepared to move.”

You have gotten too comfortable in the little life you’ve built for yourself, and this is the result. Stupid, stupid, naïve, you scold yourself, sliding your clunky old laptop in amidst the soft sweatpants and worn t-shirts. This is why you listen to your elders, dumbass.

Biting your lip, you briefly debate digging around in your closet for the delicate gold chain that you’d been given when your family dropped you off at Xavier’s so many years ago. You scoff to yourself. It’s the only thing you have of them; it’s a non debatable necessity.

You’re on your hands and knees waist-deep in the junk that you’ve tossed into your closet when someone taps on your window. You don’t hear them at first, finally wrapping your fingers around the knotted gold chain. They knock on the white-wood frame this time. You hear them and stand up too fast, smacking the back of your head against the lower clothes bar.

“Fuck!”

Rubbing your hand over the newly-formed goose egg, you turn to your window with a scowl. Your apartment is three stories up and the fire escape’s ladder to the ground is always rusted stuck — there’s no way anyone could climb up it. “Who are you?”

”What, you don’t recognize me? I’m hurt.”

That voice… You definitely recognize it, but you can’t place where you’ve heard it before. How do you know him? “Who are you?”

The man slides in your window like it’s second nature. He’s wearing a mask-hood hybrid. A super? He pulls the cowl back, and recognition dawns on you.

“Clint?”

“Hey, sweetheart. Miss me?”

You splutter at his use of ‘sweetheart’. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but what the hell are you doing here?”

He raises an eyebrow at you. “Do you really want to have that conversation while your apartment is on fire? Come with me, I can keep you safe.”

Safe, right. Safe is good. You spread your hands out in front of yourself. “Lead the way, oh mighty one.”

Clint makes to grab your duffel, but you beat him to it. “Nope, there’s delicate stuff in here, man. I’ve got it. Can you give me my cat?” He looks confused, but then you point at your incredibly dumb cat; he’s rubbing up against Clint’s legs. The man scoops Sprinkles up and hands him to you. The little idiot is purring like crazy. You unzip the bag and let Sprinkles sit on the top of the clothes before zipping it up.

Clint snorts. You roll your eyes. Sprinkles does look a little ridiculous with just his poofy head poking through the zipper. In your hurry to get to the window, you brush up against the doorknob and hiss. It’s hot enough to burn your skin now. You clap a hand over the burn.

”Okay, I’m good to go. Can we go now?” Your voice shakes with the pain. You’d never been good with injuries in school, and that hasn’t changed over the last two years.

”Yeah, of course. C’mon.” Clint helps you through the window and onto the metal platform of the fire escape. It’s cold outside, and you remember that a weather anchor had predicted snow later on in the week. Clint waves you towards the stairs going up. “This way.”

You give him a very thorough side-eye. “Shouldn’t we be going down?”

Clint jerks his head at the angry crowd below. “You sure you wanna go down there right now?” You shake your head. He nods. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now come on, I have a place where you’ll be safe until we can get you to Xavier’s.”

The two of you spend the next few minutes climbing up the fire escape before reaching the roof. Clint hasn’t even broken a sweat, you notice. Meanwhile, you’re panting and bracing your hands on your knees as you catch your breath. “How,” pant “are,” gasp “you,” wheeze “not,” deathrattle “dying?”

“Because I’ve trained nearly every single day of my adult life to do stuff like this,” he says. You place a hand on your chest, as if that will stop your heart from leaping out behind your ribs. Clint frowns. “Are you okay?”

“I’m… fine,” you say, breathing heavily through your nose. “Just… give me… a minute.”

Sprinkles meows at you. You idly scritch begins his ears. Your heart rate slows to a more manageable pace, and you swallow past the lump in your throat. “Okay, I’m good, I think. Unless there are more stairs. If there are more stairs, just let me perish.”

Clint gives you a strange look. You shrug. Stairs suck; you’re not afraid to voice your opinion and you tell the archer as much. He rolls his eyes.

Smoke is beginning to cloud the air. “So…” you breathe in and cough. “How do you plan on getting us down from here?”

Clint holds up a finger and makes a one-eighty turn, muttering. You strain to hear what he says, but he’s just far enough away that you can’t quite catch it.

Something sizzles and sparks beside Clint, and you scramble backwards as an orange portal — a portal?! — opens. While you’ve seen some weird shit in your life (Logan peeling potatoes with his claws while on kitchen duty was pretty fucking weird at the time, okay?), this really does take the cake. You’re pretty sure that the orange circle is permanently emblazoned on the inside of your eyelids. It’s bright.

“Go on, I’m right behind you.” You hadn’t heard Clint approach you, and in your surprise you shriek, pitching headfirst into the portal. As you fall, the only thing you can really concentrate on is not squishing your cat.

Your shoulder hits the ground hard, and you groan. Sprinkles meows and licks one of your fingers. Clint’s shoes appear in your peripheral vision as he offers you a hand.

“What the hell was that?”

“Dimensional portal, à la Doctor Strange.” Clint pulls you upright with little trouble when you grasp his hand. You don’t let go of his hand. “It’s safe here, I promise.”

”Where is this place?” You peer at your surroundings. It’s a beautiful building, whatever and wherever it is, with heavy woods and plush carpets and a distinctly art nouveau vibe to it. If you hadn’t just tripped off of the roof of your apartment building and landed inside of another one, you might have relaxed enough to ask questions about the history of the place, but you did just trip through a portal, so your lack of questions could be forgiven. Clint opens his mouth to reply, but another voice cuts across the room.

“This is the Sanctum Sanctorum,” a man in a red cape says as he glides down from the balcony above. Your eyebrows rise. “I am Doctor Stephen Strange. You must be a mutant from Agent Barton’s quadrant.”

“Pleased to meet you,” you say, and then you introduce yourself, pulling your hand out of Clint’s in order to shake the man’s hand. Doctor Strange then returns to the second floor, leaving you alone with Clint. You turn to him, your hand finding a place on your hip. “Alright. What’s going on? Why were you oh-so-conveniently near where I lived? I could’ve gotten away from the rioters just fine on my own.”

“My people — the Avengers — and your people — the X-Men — have joined forces temporarily,” Clint tells you. “There’ve been… threats… against mutants with the new tolerance laws that were passed recently. “

“That’s it?” You are distinctly unimpressed and it shows in the curl of your lips. “Mutants have dealt with worse in the past. What’s so big about this that Professor X has strangers evacuating mutants? Why hasn’t anyone contacted those of us who don’t live at the school anymore?”

Clint runs a hand through his hair. “Uh, well, we’re — I’m — not sure. It’s all very hush-hush, and I’m not an A-list Avenger, so…” He spreads his hands out before him. “I wish I had more information for you.”

“Alright, then,” you sigh and glance around the foyer of the Sanctum. “Is this where I’m supposed to stay? Or is there another stop on this ‘Underground Railroad’?”

”Huh? Oh, ha ha. Funny.” Clint doesn’t sound amused but the corners of his eyes are crinkled up, so you count that as a successful attempt at humor. “No, this is just a pit stop on the way to Xavier’s. Do you have a hoodie or something in that bag of yours? We’re gonna have to walk to my place before I can get you to Xavier.”

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