chuju | the archer and the earthquake

Daisy's always been someone whose 'love language' was touch. If she ever went to unpack that particular part of herself in therapy, it could probably be linked back to her childhood of growing up in an orphanage and being constantly rejected by foster families. Being physically close to people is something she needs but never asks for, so every hug given or hand held is savored for the precious experience it is. Clint's arm around her is comforting above all, and she can feel her personal shields lowering further.

"You ask that like I have the answers," she counters with a shake of her head. "I can't remember the last time I had a first date. Hell, I might never have had one before. Most of my relationships have gone from 0 to 60 and skipped the in-between. Which might not say great things about me, now that I think about it..."

With a playful cringe, she realizes she's stumbled back onto a question she'd considered earlier. Might as well get it over with now. So after another swig of beer, she asks, "Speaking of, what would you say your flaws are? Mine include a whole host of rejection and abandonment issues, running when things get tough or seem too good to be true, and usually putting everyone else before myself."

Look, just because she doesn't actively see a therapist at the moment doesn't mean she's not fully aware of what they would say.

"I've had tons of first dates, even recently, and I'm still terrible at them." He stays close to Daisy while he drinks his beer, letting their bodies touch from hip to shoulder. She hasn't said anything about it, but he thinks that maybe she craves this just like he does. He's very tactile because he's never really had that before, from his parents or from his brother. He thinks maybe that's why he and Laura had gotten married so fast, why he'd fought to stay together so hard. He wants someone to be close to. He wonders if Daisy is the same.

"Well shit, going for the hard ones," Clint teases. "And yeah, I definitely have flaws. I'm reckless, I have an ego. I don't like to listen to people, especially when I think I'm right. In a relationship, I can be a bad communicator. I've got loads of daddy issues, rejection issues, so same. I don't consider this a flaw at all, but my kids come first. It doesn't matter what else is happening. They have to come first."

It's caused friction in the past, with people that think that they should come before everything else in his life. He can't let that happen.

Leaning a little of her weight against him to affirm her participation in this connection, she continues looking out at the city, but it should be clear her attention is still fully centered on Clint. Reckless matches the stories she's heard from Coulson, as does that stubbornness when he thinks he's right, though she's certain that presents differently when he's in a relationship than when he's in the field. And the communication and other issues, well, so long as they're both aware, they can work with them.

It's only the last one that needs to be addressed, as far as she's concerned. It's the most important of them all. "That's definitely not a flaw," she agrees, looking at him. "You putting them first — it makes all the difference in their lives, even if they don't realize it. If I'd had that growing up..."

She looks away again, emotion thick in her voice. "I met Coulson when I was 25, and he was the first person to believe in me in a long time. He was the only person to ever put me first, and it changed my life. Everyone deserves to have that, and your kids are lucky to have that in you."

"Some people don't agree with that," Clint replies, shrugging. "And even some that have kids themselves haven't liked the fact that I'll drop everything to be there for them if they need me. It blows my mind a little bit that I have to tell people before we get too deep, honestly."

This is a hard line for Clint, so he's really glad that Daisy agrees. "Ideally, whoever I end up with will love them too, you know?" He's not about to introduce someone to them right away though. He doesn't want to move too fast where that's concerned. And he doesn't want to get ahead of himself either, imagining Daisy coming to the farm with him to spend a long weekend, meet the kids and Laura too. It's too much to consider for a first date.

The relationship she has with Coulson doesn't surprise him. Coulson's always been the kind of guy that sees the potential in someone, even if they're currently not meeting it. He'd done the same with Clint himself. "Yeah, it's the same for me, really. He was at my wedding, he came to see my kids when they were born. He was always more than just my handler, you know? And now he's not my handler so we can have a beers on the roof and he can set me up with his new favourites," he chuckles at the end there, giving Daisy a little squeeze.

Daisy's never really been able to picture having a family of her own. She's thought about it plenty of times, of course, but it all seems like a foreign concept meant for other people. Growing up, the only examples of a family she'd had were the fosters who inevitably sent her back to the orphanage, so they weren't the greatest associations to make with the idea. And then when she'd finally met her own parents... Well, it wasn't exactly a dream come true. Add in her career choice and she's just not sure bringing kids into the mix is such a good idea.

Of course, that's not to say she wouldn't be able to love children if they came into her life, say attached to the person she was seeing. But that's a terrifying notion all on its own. What if they don't like her? What if they decide she's not good enough to be with their dad? They're ridiculous thoughts, this is their first date and they're nowhere near that stage of things yet.

Hearing Clint talk about Coulson is both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. How many of those little life moments had Coulson missed out on over the years in the name of keeping a secret? Her smile is strained as she glances at Clint. "I'm glad he finally told you about..." She lifts her free hand in a slightly helpless gesture. "I'm just sorry he didn't do it sooner. Things were bad for a long time and I know he could've used you in his life."

Clint kind of shrugs at the secrets Coulson had kept from him. It had been incredibly painful to find out that he'd been lied to for years by the one person he'd trusted implicitly (aside from Natasha, but Natasha is Natasha), but he knows that Coulson had his reasons. Clint still thinks that they were bad reasons, but reasons nonetheless. Coulson thought he was doing the right thing and they've gotten past it. He doesn't want to give up the time that he has now, knowing Coulson is alive, because he's being stubborn.

If that's not growth, Clint doesn't know what is.

He wonders what she means by things being bad. Coulson hasn't told him everything, a lot of it being classified, Clint is sure, but some probably just too much for Coulson to want to talk about. They both have their own lives now, and they don't get to spend as much time together as they might want to. Coulson still comes out to the farm for the kids' birthdays, still drops by in New York every so often, but it's not the same as it was when they were basically living in each others' pockets.

Things are getting a little morose though, and it's their first date. They can talk about deeper, darker stuff if they continue this. "So, you wanted ear about how I happened to become the owner of this beautiful building?"

There are certainly a lot of deeper, darker things they'll have to cover along the way if they continue this. They both have secrets, it's just the nature of things with the sort of lives they've led, but there's also no telling what sort of emotional minefields they'll both need to navigate as they get to know each other. Relationships take hard work in order to succeed, especially when things aren't always sunshine and rainbows.

"Yes, please, this is a story I have to hear," she answers with a smile, turning slightly to face him but not putting any distance between them. They're still physically close, but rather than feeling awkward because of how new this all is, it just feels... nice. It feels right.

Clint grins at her and shakes his head. "Please remember, all of this is a little below the board. And maybe don't tell Coulson," he laughs. He's facing her fully with the lights and buildings behind them as a backdrop.

"So, there are these guys, Russians, maybe mob. I was renting my place from them just to have somewhere away from the Avengers and SHIELD. I've come into some money more recently - legal I promise - and I was just kinda sitting on it with no idea what to do with it. So I started hearing that the Tracksuits were doubling and tripling rents here. And like, there are a lot of families in the building, some young couples, and just, kids that are starting out. No one except me could have afforded the new prices and they all would have had to move."

He takes a breath because he needs to control his anger. He's still so furious that the good people that live here were threatened like that. "Anyway, I found out because they wanted to raise my rent too, and then we all started talking. Long story long, I dropped a bunch of money on the head Tracksuit's desk and told them the building was mine now."

Maybe don't tell Coulson? Now she's really intrigued, and also curious what could make Clint think that. How much of himself has Coulson actually shared with his old friend to give the impression he'd still be bothered by less than legal activities?

As she listens, Daisy can certainly relate to needing a place away from the people she works with day in and day out. There's a part of her that relies on it, her sense of security dependent upon being surrounded by people she trusts, but there's another part that misses the freedom she'd had before joining SHIELD. More than a few times, she's considered getting an apartment outside of the company-owned building she's currently in, but that's just not a leap she's ready to take yet.

That little hint of anger he tamps down on might be a red flag for some people, but for Daisy, it's a giant green one. He's angry on behalf of the people he's taken on as his to protect, the same way she always is when it comes to Inhumans. These people are just trying to live their lives — what's more important than protecting that?

She raises her eyebrows at that last part and asks a follow-up question before taking another sip of her beer. "And they just went with it?"

"No they absolutely did not," Clint replies. "It was a whole thing between me and the tracksuits. They were trying to kill me, I was trying to take their organization apart. There was a lot of back and forth, and the occasional Molotov cocktail through my window. They killed one of my residents in cold blood." Clint is still pretty upset that he hadn't been there to protect Grills when his enemies came calling. It's something that he will never let happen again.

"It's been a bit now, though, and since the tracksuit mob has been taken care of, no one's bothered me at all. Nat's looking into getting everything above the board so no one else can just swoop in and take all this and I get to keep charging fair rents and you know, having a bit of a community around here." It's also kind of nice to not be around heroes all the time. Clint doesn't often consider himself one, so sometimes it can be difficult.

"And sometimes my kids come and visit when we're flipping a unit and they get to help out," he adds.

Daisy frowns while Clint describes the obstacles he'd faced from the Tracksuits. Which, for starters, is a dumb name for a shady Russian mob organization, but that's beside the point. What matters most in that story is how he'd stuck with these people and done what he could, even when he'd lost someone. Her respect for him grows, which seems kind of ridiculous given that he's a freaking Avenger.

"I bet they enjoy working with you like that," she comments in response to the last part, offering him a smile. It's a hell of a story he'd shared, with both lighter and darker elements to it. Leaning on the former, she shakes her head playfully. "Look at you living up to the hero image everyone has of you. I'm impressed."

Clint nods and then shrugs. He's never considered himself a hero, just a guy that wanted to do the right thing. He'd had a bad childhood, and even when he'd thought things were getting better in the circus, he'd found the rot. Barney had turned to crime and Clint doesn't even know what he's doing now, if he's even still alive.

Before Clint could join Barney in his less than legal pursuits, he'd been recruited to Shield. That one moment was the turning point for him. Before that, he could have gone either way. Now though, people see him as a hero and it's all he can do to try to prove to himself that he deserves it.

"I'm trying to. It's a lot to live up to, though."

"I get that," she says softly, her tone serious. More than most people, she gets it. Before joining SHIELD, she'd idolized superheroes, those with powers and without; she'd fangirled hard over meeting Mike with his enhanced abilities. But now with everything she's seen and done, even with her own powers she doesn't always feel like a hero. She's just a SHIELD agent doing her job.

"The first time I heard someone had a poster of me on their wall was..." She shakes her head, looking back out over the city before turning back with raised eyebrows. "And apparently there's some spicy fanfic of me out there, which is... something. But the whole hero thing just feels like I'm going to end up disappointing someone, you know?"

"It's so wild to think about. Like, I'm just a guy, just a divorced old dad and these people look up to me? Kate looked up to me so much that she trained to become an archer. I don't think she does anymore now that she knows me but... it's better that way. It's good that she knows I'm fallible now. That way we can be partners. But yeah, it was a bit of a mindfuck to find out."

He's never looked into fanfiction of himself and he doesn't plan to, but that's wild to him too. "Did you read it?" He asks, morbidly curious to know. "You don't have to tell me." He won't look for it either since that would be crossing a line between them. Daisy is a real person and not just some character in a show.

She makes a mental note to ask more about Kate later. If they're partners, that means she's someone important to Clint, and that makes her someone important to Daisy. And look at her, jumping ahead again when they've only just met. She really has to stop that...

"No, I absolutely did not," she assured him with a firm shake of her head. "Apparently, there was a lot of shipping going on with people I've never even met, so while I'm oddly kind of flattered, big no thanks."

"Okay, but. Now we've gotta look to see if there's some of us together." He wasn't going to but now he's dying of curiousity. They've never met or worked together previously, so he wonders what kinds of shenanigans these writers may have come up with. He pulls out his phone, an amused look on his face, and then opens google. He's never read or written fanfic before, so he doesn't know the first place to look for it.

Typing in 'Clint Barton Daisy Johnson fanfic', he steps closer to Daisy so that she can see it too. A whole website comes up and Clint is honestly surprised. "Okay, what?" he says. He hovers over the link, unsure as to whether or not he should click it.

Daisy hates how curious she suddenly is too, but she loves how Clint just pulls out his phone and starts googling. There's something in it that calls to her, like to like, and she leans in a little closer to get a look at the screen. Her jaw drops at the top result.

"No," she protests, her shock almost comical. "No no no. Don't—"

She raises her hand, pointing at him with the hand still wrapped around her drink, but then she laughs because it's so damn ridiculous, she can't help it. "Okay, okay, click it," she instructs him, covering her eyes and then peeking out through her fingers.

Clint hesitates for a moment, knowing that he absolutely will not click it if she doesn't want him to. The she says yes, and Clint presses the link. He doesn't know what to expect, but the page opens to a pretty sophisticated website that actually looks very organized. It's so fucking weird. He holds his phone out so that they can both see the screen and kind of just scrolls through the results.

"This is... a lot." There are sixteen fanfics tagged with them as a couple, and they've never even interacted before. That just tells him that if they see each other again - even though he's really hoping it's more of a when - and word gets out, these results will expand exponentially. "They have you with Nat and Tony too," he laughs. "And me with Steve? Wow. He's way out of my league." Daisy is also absolutely out of his league, but he can't help but chuckle at what he's seeing.

Oh no. Oh no, she knows this site. There are so many things on that site that she's refused to read, though she's absolutely scrolled through search results out of morbid curiosity. But with these stories about them when there might actually be a them — it takes on a whole new level of weird.

"Apparently the ship name for me and Romanoff is Quack," she shares, both amused and exacerbated by this information. "I was told not to look at it because it gets a little steamy, which I did not need to know, but when Billy gets excited, there's no stopping him. He fanboyed hard when I showed up after my vigilante stint, despite the fact we'd known each other for three years already."

"Quack, hm?" Clint laughs. He closes out the page since it's not like he's actually going to read any of this. He figures if they want to keep seeing each other, the reality of their relationship will be better than anything a stranger might come up with. "What would we be? QuakeEye, Hake? Quawk is too much like Quack," he grins.

They're closer now than they had been before; Clint can feel the warmth of her body now that the air has cooled. He slips his arm around her waist and says, "is this okay?" He doesn't want to make Daisy feel uncomfortable, but it feels like things are going very well. He's more than willing to take it slow though, if that's what she wants. Maybe it makes sense, to build something before jumping right into it, for once.

That's just really not Clint's style.

His attempts at creative names leaves her chuckling not because they're funny, but because they're so bad. QuakeEye? If that's the name they get stuck with, she's going to be so mad. Quake had grown on her, but QuakeEye never would.

This is probably faster than they should be going. The healthier approach would probably be to have a few dates before taking any steps like this, but... That's not Daisy's style either, especially not when he's already been vetted by Coulson. With anyone else, she would be battling a million trust issues, but she has nothing but reasons to trust the man beside her. It makes it easier to embrace the possibilities without being completely terrified of opening herself up to someone else.

"Yeah, it's okay," she says softly, glad they're not that different in height so she doesn't have to crane her neck back to meet his gaze. With a smirk, she adds, "So long as you stop trying to come up with ship names for us."

"They're pretty bad, aren't they?" Clint agrees. He picks his beer back up only to find that he's drank all over it. Shrugging, he sets the bottle aside and drops his hand to her hip. He's still not making any real moves, just establishing closeness at this point. "I'm sure that the public will come up with something worse than anything I can come up with." It'll probably be something like Claisy and have nothing to do with their alter egos.

"So, we've established that we don't like fancy bars, and that neither of us really likes spending time out in the public. So, if we were to have a second date, what would you want to do? It's only fair that you plan it, you know, since I came up with this idea," he teases. He knows full well that he'd barely come up with anything, just conveniently had a rooftop garden to use and beers in the fridge.

She sets her empty drink beside his before turning more into the embrace, fully facing him now. Her hands move to rest on his upper arms, her thumbs gently tracing the muscles she can feel beneath his shirt. It feels right to be this close to him, and she's sure that should scare her — but it doesn't.

"Well," she says, drawing the word out while tilting her head to the side in exaggerated consideration, "I think maybe a movie night. Not actually going to a theater, but getting takeout and watching something at my place or yours. I love going to the movies, don't get me wrong, but I'd much rather see what kind of commentary you can come up with."

Hopefully, he's not someone who would never dare talk during a movie.

When Daisy turns toward him, Clint's other hand comes up to circle her other hip, hands loose and casual, but still keeping her close. He wants badly to kiss her, but he's going to wait. As good as things are going right now, it would be so easy to mess them up. He leans his back against the railing instead, and grins at her.

"You got more plans tonight?" he asks. "Because if not, we can have that second date right now." He's been thinking ab out getting a projector for movie nights on the roof, but he hasn't yet, so they'll have to make do with his tv and couch. If she wants to stay, at least.

For just a moment, Daisy tries to talk sense into herself. Going right into the 'second date' has to be a bad idea. She should make up an excuse to end the evening and give herself time to sort out... something. Emotions and the like. Right? But the moment passes and she doesn't want that time. What she wants is to live in this moment and embrace it fully, because she knows all too well how precious time can be for people like them.

"I'm all yours, Hawkguy," she assures him, wondering if she means that in more ways than one. Sliding her hands up to his shoulders, she hesitates briefly and then smiles expectantly. "But if we're ending our first date, don't you think you should kiss me goodnight before we start the second?"

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totally forgot to use the right icons. oops

lol i've done that too, no worries!

Re: lol i've done that too, no worries!

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