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hathycolI have had a godawful day so I have come home, finished this off, and decided to post it. This is my attempt to try and negotiate my desire to write completely canonical fic but at the same time to acknowledge that I am a die-hard Clint/Natasha shipper and that I love the Hawkeye comics. And I love that Tony is the only Avenger you ever see in his apartment. As such...
Also: this is for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stupidore, who accidentally cameo-ed in this before I'd realised. Sorry Katie.
Title:The License
Author:hathy_col
Rating: Teen and up (some swearing)
Disclaimer:I own nothing.
Summary:"Slow down there a second. One of the other things I've been doing is monitoring internet chat about all of the Avengers, even trying to see what's being passed around the dark web. A group in the last couple of days has been talking about a marriage license for you, so if that exists..." Stark looked, for him, unaccountably nervous. "You have a nice life out there, Barton, and I don't want to be the one that bursts that little dream, but it might be time to move them."
Clint stayed still for a moment. "A marriage license?" he said cautiously. "That's all?"
"Barton, we have a problem."
"Hello to you too, Stark, I do like how we have these little chats," replied Clint drily. These days he was working in rotation between the farm, missions with Natasha and training at the new Avengers facility, which still felt weird and impersonal. His phone had rang just as he had walked through the door of his apartment in Bed-Stuy, hands full of takeout pizza from the little place that refused to deliver on the corner of the block.
"Oh, good, the super-spy is telling me about social niceties. Shall we chat about the weather or shall we talk about a threat to your home on the range?"
Clint went very still. "Stark, stop talking. Your walls have ears I don't trust."
"I know. It's why I've just pulled up outside your building. Buzz me in?"
Clint yanked Tony through the door as soon as he heard the other man approach. His collapsible bow was already packed, a text prepared to be sent to Natasha to put her on the alert. The pizza sat forgotten.
"I'm not saying you needed to panic immediately," said Tony as he surveyed the scene. "Unless your place is this messy the rest of the time?"
"You said there was a problem with the farm, Stark. My children are there. You want to make jokes?"
Tony looked slightly ashamed for the moment. "Okay," he said, pulling a tablet out of the small bag he'd brought along. "You know the files Romanov dumped on the internet last year?"
Clint nodded. He could hardly forget, for all he'd been in Syria on that day.
"Okay, well, I took as many of them possible back of as they related to personal files. Well. JARVIS did." Sadness flickered briefly in his eyes at this, before concentrating on the tablet again, bringing up a list of files and sub-files. "But as any teen starlet with topless shots knows, the internet is forever and some stuff I just can't scrub. Some of it is about you."
"Oh," Clint said, and relaxed a little. "Well, there's nothing about Laura and the kids there, I've read it myself...."
"Slow down there a second. One of the other things I've been doing is monitoring internet chat about all of the Avengers, even trying to see what's being passed around the dark web. A group in the last couple of days has been talking about a marriage license for you, so if that exists..." Stark looked, for him, unaccountably nervous. "You have a nice life out there, Barton, and I don't want to be the one that bursts that little dream, but it might be time to move them."
Clint stayed still for a moment. "A marriage license?" he said cautiously. "That's all?"
"Issued in New York State, apparently. Which I have to say, was a stupid place to... you're laughing at me. Why are you laughing at me?"
--
Like most of the best things in his life, the whole thing had been Laura's idea.
"You already call her your work wife," she argued, loading laundry into the machine. "And it's another line of protection for me and the kids."
"Kid."
"Kids," Laura corrected, straightening up and smiling at Clint. "Cooper needs siblings."
"I love how that has become plural all of the sudden. Also, my marrying another woman will help with that how?" Clint groused from the other side of the basement wall, where he was trying to fix the dryer before winter came in and made drying on the line more difficult. He still wasn't sure how the arrival of Cooper, still tiny and fragile as he hurtled into toddlerhood, had quadrupled the laundry cycles required for the family.
"Clint," Laura said softly, moving over to stand next to Clint. He stilled and put a head on her shoulder that smelt faintly of new baby and laundry power. She curled around him. "Baby. I love you. I want to marry you. I just think you should have a different wife for cover."
He sighed. "I know you're right."
"I know," she replied softly before straightening up. "That's why I've already phoned Phil."
--
Clint pulled out two plates and neatly divided the pizza up into thirds, leaving one third back in the box to cool. Stark watched him warily. "I feel that you should be much more freaked out about this. Why aren't you freaked out?"
"Well," Clint said, passing over a plate before opening the fridge for a soda, "if they've found the marriage license then they will find out that I am a happily married man. It'll be such a terrible secret that it will be passed around the intelligence community, with intense focus and scrutiny on my wife."
"Yes, and this is a bad thing. Seriously, I'm freaking out and I've only met your adorable yet sticky brood once."
"That's why we kept it so quiet," Barton said with a wide grin. "Intelligence experts just love finding this carefully hidden information. You know, I've never shown you a picture of my wedding day, have I? Let me dig it out."
He put his soda down momentarily and picked out an unassuming hard cover book from an assuming shelf, flicking to the back and carefully opening the lining to remove a photograph. He passed it to Tony. "Here," he said, before picking his pizza up and taking a large bite. "She was a beautiful bride, wasn't she?"
"I... wait, what?"
For once, Tony was actually speechless, staring the small 6 x 4 picture of Barton in a rumpled and rented tux, Phil Coulson looking neater in the background and Natasha Romanov resplendent in a short white dress with a small white headpiece.
--
“I'm glad you're letting me be the best man for this ceremony,” murmured Phil, straightening up Clint's bowtie and taking a photo that he carefully sent to an encrypted secure server that acted would act as bait for the three people that could theoretically hack such a server.
“You will be a beautiful bridesmaid in a fortnight, man up Coulson,” replied Clint. “This whole thing is weird.”
“She's already your work wife,” Phil said dryly. “It's just formalising the arrangement.”
“I really dislike that you're all ganging up on me,” Clint groused.
“You've only just noticed?” came a sultry voice from behind him.
“Good of you to join us, Nat,” replied Clint before turning around and wolf-whistling. “Looking good, future Mrs Barton.”
She smiled coyly and twirled, the short skirt flaring out around her. “I think you'll find you're the future Mr Romanov, darling.”
They waited patiently in the City Clerk's lobby with the other couples. “Hey,” Clint said casually to the couple waiting next to them. “We need one more witness. You wanna help out?” Coulson had screened everyone due to wed that day. A casual observer might have thought there was no rhyme or reason to Clint's choice, but this couple had come to New York from Scotland on holiday in order to secretly elope. They were as far from SHIELD as it was possible to get, working safe jobs in a safe city.
The woman's face lit up under her green hair. “Sure! You can witness ours if you like? We're looking for a couple to help.”
Clint grinned back, the woman's happiness contagious. Coulson nodded in the background, almost imperceptibility. “Sure, why not?” The extra paperwork trail could only help cover up Laura and the family.
“See?” Natasha murmured into his ear, looking to the outside world like a lover's caress. “This was a great idea.”
–
"I wish I could show you a picture of our wedding ceremony but it's not safe to keep them in the apartment," Clint said slightly wistfully. "Laura was beautiful and Cooper was the pageboy. Coulson was a surprisingly dignified chief bridesmaid."
"Do you guys not have any real family?"
Clint laughed. "Nah, I'm the only orphan. Laura's sister was pissed that she wasn't the chief bridesmaid until the bachelorette party. I've still not idea what happened that night but Coulson was the most popular man at our reception. Something to do with Vegas and a stripping Elvis is all I've ever found out."
"Did your work wife not spill the beans?"
"Nah, Nat was too busy drinking me under the table. She was my best man." Clint picked up the plates and took them over to the sink, briefly rinsing them before piling them under the faucet. He carefully put the leftover pizza in the fridge before sitting back down.
"Our actual wedding was performed by Laura's bugfuck crazy uncle, who is at least trained as a pastor for all he hates government bureaucracy," Clint continued, picking up his beer again. "He was more than happy not to fill in any paperwork about it. Luckily he still thought I was a travelling farm supplies salesman rather than a government shill."
Tony took a thoughtful draft of his beer. "I have definitely been spending too much time with you guys, because this actually makes a sort of sense."
"Look," Clint said. "I thought it was a bad plan at first too. But if I ever, ever broke cover, even for a moment, anyone searching for my wife will find Natasha Romanov first. And believe me, Aunt Tasha takes her duties very seriously. She would burn the world down first before betraying my family."
"I do have one last question though," said Tony, after a pause, picking at the label on his bottle.
--
"You should name this one after me," said Nat bluntly. "I have to have some privileges for this one. I feel almost proud."
They were sat in a cobbled beer garden somewhere on the outskirts of London. A surveillance mission had gone successfully but they had time to kill before heading to Gatwick, posing as visiting tourists. Clint never spoke about his family during a mission - too many ears - but they had enough autonomy to be trusted to make their own way home without any handlers or other agents. As such, they were alone as they could be, and the noise of the football fans watching a cup final indoors covered anything else.
"So what, just because Barton Bump No. 2 happens to be of the feminine persuasion we get to name her after you? That seems like bullshit."
"After what I did for you? I am betrayed, Clint," Nat said, fluttered her eyelashes before betraying the moment by downing her lager in an unladylike gulp.
"We thought about it," admitted Clint. "But... well, the timings." She stared. Clint looked at her in surprise. "What, you really haven't worked it out? She was conceived on our honeymoon."
"Well, that makes sense-"
"No, no, you're not listening," interrupted Clint. "She was conceived on our honeymoon. Yours and mine. It would be... kinda weird."
"I, er." Natasha, to Clint's surprise, actually reddened slightly as the crowd in the background roared their appreciation of a goal. "Do you know what, I can't argue with that. Damn it, Clint, I had good memories of that solo trip to Antigua."
"And now you have good associations with your trip to Antigua and my trip home," Clint said smugly. Then he took pity on her as they stood up and weaved out of the celebrating crowd. "You can have the next one. I promise."
"You're planning a next one? Already? Two wives does not equal extra children, Clint."
--
"Your apartment looks very well lived in, for someone working upstate and living in Iowa," Tony mentioned as he walked out, Clint holding the door open.
Clint paused for a moment. Tony has come straight to him with the information he'd found on the web, ignoring protocol. Secrets were only worth hiding from the wrong people. "Yeah, I loan it to Kate in return for her looking after the dog when I'm away."
Tony stopped dead in the doorway and turned around slowly. "Who is Kate? Do you have a third wife I should be worried about? Please tell me she's your maid or something."
"Katie-Kate? Nah, she's way too young to be married. She's just the other Hawkeye," Clint said with a grin. "How do you think there are all these sightings of me in the city when I spend all of that time in Iowa?"
For a genius, Tony looked truly lost. "What, wait?"
"Good night, Tony," Clint said, and swung the door shut before Tony could respond. There was silence in the hallway for a moment and then a muffled shout.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE A DOG?" A03 link
Also: this is for
stupidore, who accidentally cameo-ed in this before I'd realised. Sorry Katie.Title:The License
Author:
hathy_colRating: Teen and up (some swearing)
Disclaimer:I own nothing.
Summary:"Slow down there a second. One of the other things I've been doing is monitoring internet chat about all of the Avengers, even trying to see what's being passed around the dark web. A group in the last couple of days has been talking about a marriage license for you, so if that exists..." Stark looked, for him, unaccountably nervous. "You have a nice life out there, Barton, and I don't want to be the one that bursts that little dream, but it might be time to move them."
Clint stayed still for a moment. "A marriage license?" he said cautiously. "That's all?"
"Barton, we have a problem."
"Hello to you too, Stark, I do like how we have these little chats," replied Clint drily. These days he was working in rotation between the farm, missions with Natasha and training at the new Avengers facility, which still felt weird and impersonal. His phone had rang just as he had walked through the door of his apartment in Bed-Stuy, hands full of takeout pizza from the little place that refused to deliver on the corner of the block.
"Oh, good, the super-spy is telling me about social niceties. Shall we chat about the weather or shall we talk about a threat to your home on the range?"
Clint went very still. "Stark, stop talking. Your walls have ears I don't trust."
"I know. It's why I've just pulled up outside your building. Buzz me in?"
Clint yanked Tony through the door as soon as he heard the other man approach. His collapsible bow was already packed, a text prepared to be sent to Natasha to put her on the alert. The pizza sat forgotten.
"I'm not saying you needed to panic immediately," said Tony as he surveyed the scene. "Unless your place is this messy the rest of the time?"
"You said there was a problem with the farm, Stark. My children are there. You want to make jokes?"
Tony looked slightly ashamed for the moment. "Okay," he said, pulling a tablet out of the small bag he'd brought along. "You know the files Romanov dumped on the internet last year?"
Clint nodded. He could hardly forget, for all he'd been in Syria on that day.
"Okay, well, I took as many of them possible back of as they related to personal files. Well. JARVIS did." Sadness flickered briefly in his eyes at this, before concentrating on the tablet again, bringing up a list of files and sub-files. "But as any teen starlet with topless shots knows, the internet is forever and some stuff I just can't scrub. Some of it is about you."
"Oh," Clint said, and relaxed a little. "Well, there's nothing about Laura and the kids there, I've read it myself...."
"Slow down there a second. One of the other things I've been doing is monitoring internet chat about all of the Avengers, even trying to see what's being passed around the dark web. A group in the last couple of days has been talking about a marriage license for you, so if that exists..." Stark looked, for him, unaccountably nervous. "You have a nice life out there, Barton, and I don't want to be the one that bursts that little dream, but it might be time to move them."
Clint stayed still for a moment. "A marriage license?" he said cautiously. "That's all?"
"Issued in New York State, apparently. Which I have to say, was a stupid place to... you're laughing at me. Why are you laughing at me?"
--
Like most of the best things in his life, the whole thing had been Laura's idea.
"You already call her your work wife," she argued, loading laundry into the machine. "And it's another line of protection for me and the kids."
"Kid."
"Kids," Laura corrected, straightening up and smiling at Clint. "Cooper needs siblings."
"I love how that has become plural all of the sudden. Also, my marrying another woman will help with that how?" Clint groused from the other side of the basement wall, where he was trying to fix the dryer before winter came in and made drying on the line more difficult. He still wasn't sure how the arrival of Cooper, still tiny and fragile as he hurtled into toddlerhood, had quadrupled the laundry cycles required for the family.
"Clint," Laura said softly, moving over to stand next to Clint. He stilled and put a head on her shoulder that smelt faintly of new baby and laundry power. She curled around him. "Baby. I love you. I want to marry you. I just think you should have a different wife for cover."
He sighed. "I know you're right."
"I know," she replied softly before straightening up. "That's why I've already phoned Phil."
--
Clint pulled out two plates and neatly divided the pizza up into thirds, leaving one third back in the box to cool. Stark watched him warily. "I feel that you should be much more freaked out about this. Why aren't you freaked out?"
"Well," Clint said, passing over a plate before opening the fridge for a soda, "if they've found the marriage license then they will find out that I am a happily married man. It'll be such a terrible secret that it will be passed around the intelligence community, with intense focus and scrutiny on my wife."
"Yes, and this is a bad thing. Seriously, I'm freaking out and I've only met your adorable yet sticky brood once."
"That's why we kept it so quiet," Barton said with a wide grin. "Intelligence experts just love finding this carefully hidden information. You know, I've never shown you a picture of my wedding day, have I? Let me dig it out."
He put his soda down momentarily and picked out an unassuming hard cover book from an assuming shelf, flicking to the back and carefully opening the lining to remove a photograph. He passed it to Tony. "Here," he said, before picking his pizza up and taking a large bite. "She was a beautiful bride, wasn't she?"
"I... wait, what?"
For once, Tony was actually speechless, staring the small 6 x 4 picture of Barton in a rumpled and rented tux, Phil Coulson looking neater in the background and Natasha Romanov resplendent in a short white dress with a small white headpiece.
--
“I'm glad you're letting me be the best man for this ceremony,” murmured Phil, straightening up Clint's bowtie and taking a photo that he carefully sent to an encrypted secure server that acted would act as bait for the three people that could theoretically hack such a server.
“You will be a beautiful bridesmaid in a fortnight, man up Coulson,” replied Clint. “This whole thing is weird.”
“She's already your work wife,” Phil said dryly. “It's just formalising the arrangement.”
“I really dislike that you're all ganging up on me,” Clint groused.
“You've only just noticed?” came a sultry voice from behind him.
“Good of you to join us, Nat,” replied Clint before turning around and wolf-whistling. “Looking good, future Mrs Barton.”
She smiled coyly and twirled, the short skirt flaring out around her. “I think you'll find you're the future Mr Romanov, darling.”
They waited patiently in the City Clerk's lobby with the other couples. “Hey,” Clint said casually to the couple waiting next to them. “We need one more witness. You wanna help out?” Coulson had screened everyone due to wed that day. A casual observer might have thought there was no rhyme or reason to Clint's choice, but this couple had come to New York from Scotland on holiday in order to secretly elope. They were as far from SHIELD as it was possible to get, working safe jobs in a safe city.
The woman's face lit up under her green hair. “Sure! You can witness ours if you like? We're looking for a couple to help.”
Clint grinned back, the woman's happiness contagious. Coulson nodded in the background, almost imperceptibility. “Sure, why not?” The extra paperwork trail could only help cover up Laura and the family.
“See?” Natasha murmured into his ear, looking to the outside world like a lover's caress. “This was a great idea.”
–
"I wish I could show you a picture of our wedding ceremony but it's not safe to keep them in the apartment," Clint said slightly wistfully. "Laura was beautiful and Cooper was the pageboy. Coulson was a surprisingly dignified chief bridesmaid."
"Do you guys not have any real family?"
Clint laughed. "Nah, I'm the only orphan. Laura's sister was pissed that she wasn't the chief bridesmaid until the bachelorette party. I've still not idea what happened that night but Coulson was the most popular man at our reception. Something to do with Vegas and a stripping Elvis is all I've ever found out."
"Did your work wife not spill the beans?"
"Nah, Nat was too busy drinking me under the table. She was my best man." Clint picked up the plates and took them over to the sink, briefly rinsing them before piling them under the faucet. He carefully put the leftover pizza in the fridge before sitting back down.
"Our actual wedding was performed by Laura's bugfuck crazy uncle, who is at least trained as a pastor for all he hates government bureaucracy," Clint continued, picking up his beer again. "He was more than happy not to fill in any paperwork about it. Luckily he still thought I was a travelling farm supplies salesman rather than a government shill."
Tony took a thoughtful draft of his beer. "I have definitely been spending too much time with you guys, because this actually makes a sort of sense."
"Look," Clint said. "I thought it was a bad plan at first too. But if I ever, ever broke cover, even for a moment, anyone searching for my wife will find Natasha Romanov first. And believe me, Aunt Tasha takes her duties very seriously. She would burn the world down first before betraying my family."
"I do have one last question though," said Tony, after a pause, picking at the label on his bottle.
--
"You should name this one after me," said Nat bluntly. "I have to have some privileges for this one. I feel almost proud."
They were sat in a cobbled beer garden somewhere on the outskirts of London. A surveillance mission had gone successfully but they had time to kill before heading to Gatwick, posing as visiting tourists. Clint never spoke about his family during a mission - too many ears - but they had enough autonomy to be trusted to make their own way home without any handlers or other agents. As such, they were alone as they could be, and the noise of the football fans watching a cup final indoors covered anything else.
"So what, just because Barton Bump No. 2 happens to be of the feminine persuasion we get to name her after you? That seems like bullshit."
"After what I did for you? I am betrayed, Clint," Nat said, fluttered her eyelashes before betraying the moment by downing her lager in an unladylike gulp.
"We thought about it," admitted Clint. "But... well, the timings." She stared. Clint looked at her in surprise. "What, you really haven't worked it out? She was conceived on our honeymoon."
"Well, that makes sense-"
"No, no, you're not listening," interrupted Clint. "She was conceived on our honeymoon. Yours and mine. It would be... kinda weird."
"I, er." Natasha, to Clint's surprise, actually reddened slightly as the crowd in the background roared their appreciation of a goal. "Do you know what, I can't argue with that. Damn it, Clint, I had good memories of that solo trip to Antigua."
"And now you have good associations with your trip to Antigua and my trip home," Clint said smugly. Then he took pity on her as they stood up and weaved out of the celebrating crowd. "You can have the next one. I promise."
"You're planning a next one? Already? Two wives does not equal extra children, Clint."
--
"Your apartment looks very well lived in, for someone working upstate and living in Iowa," Tony mentioned as he walked out, Clint holding the door open.
Clint paused for a moment. Tony has come straight to him with the information he'd found on the web, ignoring protocol. Secrets were only worth hiding from the wrong people. "Yeah, I loan it to Kate in return for her looking after the dog when I'm away."
Tony stopped dead in the doorway and turned around slowly. "Who is Kate? Do you have a third wife I should be worried about? Please tell me she's your maid or something."
"Katie-Kate? Nah, she's way too young to be married. She's just the other Hawkeye," Clint said with a grin. "How do you think there are all these sightings of me in the city when I spend all of that time in Iowa?"
For a genius, Tony looked truly lost. "What, wait?"
"Good night, Tony," Clint said, and swung the door shut before Tony could respond. There was silence in the hallway for a moment and then a muffled shout.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE A DOG?" A03 link
