Chapter Text
Clint
—New York City | Saturday 27 October 2012 | 9:00 p.m.—
“Um,” Clint says, very intelligently, when he finally arrives home.
The door to his suite with Jigsaw shuts behind him, and Lucky performs his greeting dance, twirling in a few circles while Clint tries to pet him and then settling down to lick Clint’s hands a few times.
“Did… Alpine change colors?”
That’s stupid, he knows. A real stupid thing to say. But he’s tired. Surely it’s excusable to be this stupid when he’s this tired.
He’s spent the entire day stacking sandbags with the tireless Captain America and the only slightly less tireless Sam Wilson, and he sure as hell didn’t lift with his legs. His arms hurt, his back hurts, his legs hurt. Hell, his feet hurt. His toes. It was a full body workout that lasted for hours with short breaks for travel. He lost count of how many reps he did at the gym of sandbags and tarps.
But most importantly of all, he’s utterly exhausted in the brain as well as the body. So maybe he’s seeing things.
Because there is a jet black kitten, only a little bit bigger and slightly less fluffy than the white kitten he’s used to seeing, on the back of the sofa chasing a bit of feathery fluff on the end of a stick while Natasha laughs—either at the kitten’s antics or at him. Hard to be sure.
Then a white kitten—the Alpine he expected—scrambles up the back of the sofa to join the feather hunt. There are two kittens. There was only one kitten when he left. He’s sure of that much.
“When did we get a second kitten?”
Natasha sends both kittens racing to the floor after the wand toy. “This afternoon. We’re fostering this one during the storm.”
Fostering… Oh. So they didn’t get a second kitten. They’re kind of borrowing it until it’s okay to be adopted somewhere. He’s heard of fostering kittens and puppies and things.
“It took a little bit of time to introduce everyone and chase away the ‘new is scary’ feelings for Liho, but they’ve been playing together, sleeping all curled up together in the cat condo on the tree, even eating together without a problem.”
“Liho is the black kitten.” Clint is feeling so intelligent tonight. It’s like his brain fell out of his skull while he was working and got smooshed under one of the sandbags earlier today.
Natasha’s smile is gentle, not teasing. “That’s right. They were calling her Inky, but that’s a terrible name.”
Clint comes around to sit on the sofa next to her, and the black kitten—Liho, he supposes, at least for her stay with them—stops going for the wand toy in order to come sniff his shoe.
“How did we get Liho, exactly?” he asks. That he knows of, there isn’t a kitten drop-box outside the Tower where people surrender their unwanted bundles of fluff. If there was, the Tower would be overrun by rescues because Jigsaw wouldn’t turn any of them away.
“The vet called and asked if we could foster her, and I said yes.” Natasha hides the wand toy between the sofa cushions. “I think it was probably because she was out of her usual options and already knew she could trust us. You know how black cats can get treated around Halloween.”
Yeah. He does. Or at least he thinks he does, and it isn’t pretty. Maybe on the non-“strapped to a rocket” side of things, they’re some kind of temporary pet and get returned when the season is over. Like bunnies after Easter. Hard to say. Harder to hear, though, so he just nods.
If it’s worse than he suspects, he doesn’t want to know.
“Well,” he says, “at least everyone gets along.”
Clint winces as Liho claws her way up his jeans to reach his lap, and then pets her. She’s just as soft as Alpine, but a bit less fuzzy. He wonders if that means Alpine is fuzzier than the average kitten or if Liho is less fuzzy than average. Maybe it’s a sign of long fur and short fur. He hopes Alpine doesn’t balloon out into that smush-nosed long-haired cat in the Fancy Feast commercials. That’s a lot of fur to keep sorted.
Regardless, he’s pretty sure Jigsaw is thrilled with the two-kitten development and will be reluctant to let Liho go back to the vet. They are probably not just fostering this kitten. They’ve probably borrowed this kitten the same way Jigsaw used to borrow his hoodies and Banner’s yoga pants, which have still not been returned and show no signs of eventually going back to their rightful owners.
“So,” Natasha asks after several minutes of lap time, “what are you going to do about your lesson with Kate tomorrow?”
Ugh. That’s right. Tomorrow is Sunday. Does he cancel on Katie-Kate so she can do whatever storm prep she needs to do and avoid—or join—evacuation traffic? Does he tell her to pack a bag and encourage her to stay with them through the storm? Maybe something in between? Just how bad is the storm supposed to be, anyway? How long does a hurricane last?
“I don’t know,” Clint says. “They’re shutting things down tomorrow, so no subway, no buses. Would the taxies be running? Hm. Maybe, but if they are it’ll be slow getting one.”
“If traffic is the issue, we can just send one of Stark’s cars for her.” Natasha leans back on the sofa and props her legs up on the coffee table so Alpine has a bigger place to curl up. “The real question is whether you want her here or not here. For the lesson, and also for the storm.”
Clint rubs at his eyes. He’s too tired for this. “What do you think I should do? That’s what I’ll do.”
She laughs. “Well, Kate would want to be here for her lesson, and she’d want to help with sandbagging if that’s what you need to do next. And she’d want to help with all the rest, as well.”
“So, what, I invite her to pack a few days’ clothes and things, send a car for her tomorrow morning, and let her tag along?”
“That’s what she’d want. I don’t think it would be bad publicity for her to help, at least before the storm hits. It’s already public knowledge that she’s your student.”
Clint sighs and digs his phone out of his back pocket, causing Liho to abandon his lap for Natasha’s, where the two kittens jockey for position for a few seconds before curling up like a yin-yang symbol.
“I’ll let her know. But she’s not coming with us while there’s a storm out there,” Clint adds. “She can stay inside and follow Pepper’s orders, like a civilian.”
He fires off a text that probably doesn’t make complete sense, but that’s not total nonsense, either. [Probable bring bag for storm would be smart. You can stay here, help out?]
“She may want to be a hero,” Clint says, “but she isn’t an Avenger and we aren’t putting her in harm’s way.”
Natasha nods. “Good call.”
The text he gets in response is near-immediate and full of excited emojis.
“She’s pretty happy about coming over tomorrow.” Clint shows Natasha the phone and she shakes her head.
“Ah, to be so young and enthusiastic,” she says.
Jigsaw
—New York City | Saturday 27 October 2012 | 10:00 p.m.—
There is excitement inside that makes it almost bouncy on the feet as it returns to the rooms for assets after the session with Zoe.
There will be two little cats waiting for it in the rooms for assets, little Alpine and little Liho. Two little cats, and a very good dog, and a ballerina woman. Oh, and maybe by now the other asset will be back, too. It hopes so. It has missed the other asset all day.
Yasmin said it was good to spend time apart, even though they love each other. According to Yasmin, everyone should spend some time away from the ones they spend the most time with. It is not sure it agrees. If there hadn’t been little Liho and the ballerina woman to distract it, it would have been spending the entire day focused on how much it missed the other asset.
If the other asset is back, finally, then it will be a very full room with everyone there waiting for it. But that is okay, because it wants to be near all of them. It even has a new tile on its Names board for little Liho. It had to ask Zoe to look up the name and see how it is spelled so that the tile could be correct. JARVIS helped.
That turned the entire session into an explanation about how words could have completely different meanings in different languages, and then a game about connotation and denotation in the language it is using. Denotation is what the word means, but connotation is more about how the word feels. It is not sure it will remember that, but for now it knows the difference.
The first words they’d discussed were murder and kill. That had made it so happy. Zoe has not forgotten the mission.
Kill and murder, according to Zoe, have the same basic denotation, that someone is making someone else die. But kill apparently has a milder connotation, where it could be an accident—sloppy work, then—or something where a fight escalated into something “spur of the moment,” which means unplanned. But murder has a more serious connotation, definitely intentional, and probably planned out.
It did not want to argue with an expert, but it is not sure about those connotations. Murder is what happens when someone evil makes someone innocent die. Kill is just meeting a mission objective and eliminating a target. It is not ever an accident.
It has killed thousands or more. But it is not sure it has ever murdered someone. The closest it has gotten to murder is going after HYDRA operatives and killing them without an externally imposed mission objective. But even then, it had will and could make its own mission objectives. So those were still killings and not murders. Certainly no one it killed under its own mission objectives was an innocent.
But they had also discussed house and home, and also nest. It liked that nest was included. House was somewhere someone could live, home was somewhere warm and secure and inviting where someone could live, and nest, oh, nest, was the heart of a home, where everything was soft and welcoming and even more secure than a home—somewhere actively protected instead of somewhere that happened to be safe.
And they had talked about smell and aroma and odor and scent. There had been lots of examples, and there was even a level of the basket game on the tablet for putting smelly things into different baskets for all of those words. Peaches go in the aroma basket because it likes the smell. And the other asset’s coffee goes in the smell basket because it doesn’t like the coffee smell but associates it with the other asset and doesn’t want to put it in the odor basket. Flowers go in the odor basket, though. They are stinky.
But what it smells in the hallway closer to the door to the rooms for assets is not stinky. It would go into the scent basket because it smells good to it, but also isn’t as pervasive a smell as an aroma. Aromas get all over the place, in a good way. Scents are more focused. At least, that is the connotation it has.
Connotations can vary depending on who is thinking about a word.
The other asset is back from the sandbag mission, and the other asset worked so hard for so long that it can smell the hard work lingering in the hallway. And still pretty fresh, so it smells the exertion and the power of the other asset’s muscles at work, but not the days-old acrid smell—the odor—of sweat that hasn’t been washed away. That kind of smell signals deprivation, lost opportunity or ability to clean up after hard work.
Everyone should be able to clean up after hard work, whether that’s a car wash or a pool, a hose someone left connected, a sprinkler system, or a shower. No one should be deprived.
Oh, and if the other asset was so hard at work for so long, then the other asset must be in need of a massage to complete the relaxation that is so thoroughly earned. It can send the other asset into the shower—or maybe can observe the other asset in the bath!—and then it can rub and knead all over, seeking the knots and forcing them to loosen so that the blood can flow smoothly through all of the muscles.
The skin face is getting so warm thinking these thoughts, and it pauses in the hallway, feeling the cheeks. Yes, warmer than they should be. Should it not be thinking these thoughts?
Watching the other asset in the bath would be… maybe too much. It has only seen the other asset in a towel before, and then in the soft snug pants that define everything. Never all the way unclothed. Maybe the other asset would be uncomfortable with that. Maybe this asset would be unable to handle the view.
And maybe massaging the other asset skin to skin is too much as well.
It wants, though. And the other asset did say that it could do whatever it wanted. But that can’t be true in every situation. There are kissing rules, after all, to help it know when kissing is appropriate. Sometimes it is not. If there are other people around. If one of them is working on something and cannot be distracted. If one of them—either of them—does not want to kiss right then.
And killing—it still wants to go out and kill HYDRA evil, but the team that is not a cell does not want to do that. And it is part of the team that is not a cell. So there must be a compromise—where everyone loses what they want but is equally unhappy with the results and therefore it is fair. It will try so hard not to kill the HYDRA evil, but there will be more missions and going after targets.
But maybe there can be something that’s only like a compromise, something where both assets get what they want. It could get to sit by the other asset’s bathtub and keep the other asset company in the bath that way. And the other asset could get… It is not sure what the other asset wants that the other asset is not getting right now. But the other asset could choose something, maybe.
It will think on this. There will be time. Right now, though, there are two little cats, a very good dog, a ballerina woman, and the other asset waiting in the rooms for assets. And what it wants most right now is to bury the skin face in little Alpine’s belly and breathe in the little cat’s scent. Definitely scent.
Clint
—New York City | Saturday 27 October 2012 | 10:30 p.m.—
Jigsaw is a bit late in getting back from his session with Zoe, but he’s not upset or anything when he does slip in the door and greet Lucky, so it must have been a positive session despite going long.
And strangely, his cheeks are flushed. It couldn’t be from exertion, just walking back from the session. Jigsaw hasn’t been flushed from exertion even when performing a heavy workout in the gym. Maybe Jigsaw has been thinking embarrassing things, though that hasn’t ever happened before and Clint can’t think of anything that would embarrass him if nothing has so far.
Natasha’s smile says she suspects it’s something juicy. A secret she’ll share later, maybe. Clint can’t tell what is juicy that Jigsaw would be thinking, though. He isn’t embarrassed by a make-out session getting interrupted, so what else?
“Hey, Jigs,” Clint greets him once his attention is off of Lucky for a moment. “Anything exciting happen while I was out hauling and stacking sandbags?”
Jigsaw grins and points to the new kitten. His signs—once he’s put his tablet down on the console table—are a jumble, all over the place in his eagerness to get them out, and in no particular order. It kind of reminds Clint of their early days with ASL, before the tablet and the practice with putting thoughts into order before sharing them.
Clint grins in return and pats the sofa next to himself.
Jigsaw’s excited about the new kitten, and from what Clint puts together from the signs and his knowledge from Natasha, he’s explaining the introduction process, the hatred for the “cat prison,” his decision that they will not put the new kitten in the prison again, ever, and his happiness that the kittens get along with each other and Lucky. It’s a happy family.
He’s also excited about giving innocents—children, in specific—some stuffed animals to comfort them during the oncoming storm. He’s happy that adult innocents get stuffed animals, too, because everyone should have something soft to squeeze when afraid or stressed out. Apparently there are coloring books for the kids, and crayons. But sadly no snacks. Jigsaw is unhappy they don’t get snacks, even though someone explained about foods making people sick.
But he’s most excited to see Clint again, and to smell him. According to Jigsaw, his sweat smells really good, which might be the reason his cheeks are flushed still, and might be what Natasha is now grinning about.
Clint doesn’t quite get it—sweat is not a great smell—but if it turns his partner on, he’s not going to complain. He might even aim to get extra sweaty during his own workouts and not clean up down in the gym showers. He can wait until Jigsaw gets a whiff of him after his therapy before getting a shower and some new clothes.
Or maybe he can hold off on his workouts until Jigsaw can watch, or better yet, participate. Clint would say they could spot each other, but he’s pretty sure Jigsaw doesn’t need a spotter for the kind of weight Clint generally lifts, and that if he was going to get anything out of the workout, he’d need to be lifting amounts Clint couldn’t help much with if there was a need for a spotter.
It takes a long time to get through all of the signing, and longer still to assemble the signing into three logical categories of excitement. By the time Jigsaw’s finished, he has a pair of kittens in his lap, which he occupies himself with until Clint can process it all.
“You had a busy day,” Clint says. “All I did was mess around with sandbags.”
“No,” Natasha says. “You spent the whole day helping people who will be most impacted by the storm. That’s not nothing.”
Jigsaw nods enthusiastically.
Clint supposes they’re right, to some degree. And he might feel some of that sense of having been so helpful and altruistic if he’d come up with the idea. Or if he’d willingly volunteered rather than being dragged along. Or if he’d complained less throughout the day. Or if he’d been enthusiastic about the work. If he had been more Steve and Sam.
Lots of ways he might feel better about his involvement in the sandbag brigade.
He nods as if accepting their praise, but really all he feels is tired.