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Yeah, this looks bad.
So Clint hasn’t actually told anyone about the whole former apartment-tracksuit mafia-protégé-dog thing. He’s not counting Natasha, cause Nat was just sort of aware of everything as it went down. But nobody but Natasha knows.
To be fair, it’s kind of hard to say “I lived in a shitty apartment for a long time and now I’m kind of protecting the whole neighborhood from these total assholes who like to beat me up also I kind of have a protégé who’s keeping an eye on my dog” without sounding like a total fuckup, or so he tells himself.
Point is, the Tracksuit Mafia has just kicked the shit out of him and he didn’t tell Kate he was going out tonight, which she is absolutely going to give him crap for later and he is pretty sure he’d rather go for another round with the dicks with baseball bats than face her after this.
He winces in the back of their truck that they’ve kindly put him in while they drive him fuck knows where, seemingly determined to hit every fucking bump in the road. Okay, maybe not another round.
It’s not actually a question of “fuck knows where”. He’s got a pretty good guess of where he’ll end up. It’s just the where of the where he’ll end up that’s a mystery.
He might have a concussion, judgment can go fuck itself.
The truck stops eventually and two guys grab him and chuck him into a dumpster, just like he knew would happen. The two members of the Tracksuit Mafia are laughing.
“Have fun, bro!”
“Yeah, see you next time, bro, if you can stand up, bro!”
It’s a game to them. Christ. Clint waits until he hears them drive away. He carefully tries to shift his weight, see how bad his injuries are, when he hears a groan from underneath him.
His first reaction is, understandably, surprise. His second, less understandably, is annoyance. He yanks himself into a semi sitting position despite the fact that his ribs are yelling “the fuck are you doing Barton we put up with too much shit from you”, and tugs some garbage bags out of the way to see a guy, lying at the bottom of the dumpster, various cuts over his red uniform.
“Get out of my damn dumpster, ass,” Clint snaps. It’s illogical and irrational and stupid, he knows, but if he’s going to get beaten to a bloody pulp by people he hates he would rather recuperate for a while in a dumpster by himself with some peace and quiet.
“I was here first.” The man’s voice grates out like it’s been bruised.
“Unlikely.” Clint’s been in every dumpster in New York. He’s distinctly proud of that.
Oh, Christ. What if he’s not in New York?
Oh, Christ. What if he’s in Jersey?
Clint returns his attention to the guy he’s sitting on. “Hey, where am I?”
“Get off me first and I’ll tell you.”
Harsh, but fair. Clint shifts himself (his ribs give up and demand a divorce) so that he’s lying next to the guy, but slightly propped up against the wall of the dumpster so he can see him. The guy shifts himself to do the same. Clint gets a better look and recognizes him.
“Hey, you’re that dude that runs around Hell’s Kitchen in a devil costume.”
“Yes.” The man’s eyes are covered (which Clint doesn’t think is the best for fighting crime, but hey, that might be why the guy’s in his dumpster, so he won’t push what might be a sensitive subject) but Clint’s definitely getting some “eye roll” vibes from this guy. “I’m that dude that runs around Hell’s Kitchen in a devil costume.”
Clint ignores the wounding sarcasm. “So I’m still in the city. Good.” He brings up something that had been bothering him. “Hey, if you’re supposed to be the good guy, why are you running around dressed like Satan?”
“If you’re supposed to be fighting in the 21st Century, why are you running around with a bow and arrow?”
“Wow.” Clint considers kicking the guy in the ribs. He decides against it on the grounds it would probably hurt his.
“Just calling it like I see it.”
“Hey, I’ve saved the world, buddy.”
“I know. I’ve heard your voice on the news.”
“When was my voice on the-“
“Thing with the reindeer.”
“Oh yeah.” Clint grins reminiscently. He got chewed out for swearing loudly and vociferously on live television. Good times. He remembers the more pressing matter at hand. “Why are you in my dumpster?”
“I wasn’t aware that every dumpster in the city is yours.”
“If I’ve been in it at least once, it’s mine.”
“We should share. I’ve become acquainted with quite a few myself.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I am a dumpster connoisseur.”
“Pardon me for making assumptions.”
Yeah, Clint likes this guy. “So, dumpster, why, what’s the hap?”
“What’s the hap? How old are you?”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I was fighting some guys. They won. They threw me in here. What about you?”
“Pretty much the same.”
The guy snorts. “No. Not pretty much the same. Avengers don’t come to Hell’s Kitchen.”
Clint sighs. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
So Clint ends up talking about the Tracksuit Mafia, and Katie-Kate, and Lucky, and his old apartment, and how he kinda sorta lives in Avengers Tower now but sometimes he kinda sorta lives in his shitty apartment and goes to barbecues on the rooftop with his former neighbors. The guy nods slowly and thoughtfully with each new piece of information.
“So they put you in a dumpster in Hell’s Kitchen?” He shakes his head. “They’re not very creative.”
“Hey, I never said they were smart.” Clint gives him a little salute. “I’m Clint, by the way.”
“Hi.”
“Oh, right, you’re trying to do that whole ‘secret identity’ thing, aren’t you? So what am I supposed to call you?” Clint holds up a finger when the guy opens his mouth. “That was rhetorical. I’m giving you a name. Hold up. Lucy. I’m calling you Lucy.”
The man looks unimpressed. “For Lucifer, I assume.”
“Yup.”
“That’s not nearly as clever as you think it is.”
“All my jokes are twice as clever as I think they are.” Something occurs to Clint. “Hey, how long have you been in here, anyway?”
Lucy thinks about it. “About an hour before you got here.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t feel like moving.”
Clint nods. Respect.
“We should probably get up. I assume you’ve got people to worry about you.”
Lucy shrugs and Clint rolls his eyes. “Telling me that is in no way going to affect your secret identity.” Clint slowly stands up with a long groan. “Your turn.”
“Let the record state I agreed to nothing.”
Clint’s gonna guess that the self-assuredness with which he said that indicates lawyer. That’ll be helpful. “Don’t care. If I’m suffering, someone else has to suffer.”
“You sound like a friend of mine.”
“Ha. I knew it. You do have people.” Clint holds out his hand. “Get up, Morningstar.”
“The Satan nicknames are going to get real old real fast.”
“Don’t run around the city in a devil costume and you won’t have this problem.” Clint helps him up. It’s a long, painful process that involves a lot of groaning and “oh god, why couldn’t they have killed us”, but they manage.
“It’s not a costume. It’s a uniform.”
“You keep telling yourself you didn’t pick that out at a Wal-Mart in October, buddy.” They climb out of the dumpster, Clint wincing.
“You got someone to look at you?” Lucy asks.
“Uh. Not really? I mean, I can’t go to the hospital, and if I try and get looked over at the Tower it’ll be all ‘oh no Barton what have you done tell us your troubles so we can meddle and make it worse’.” Clint loves being part of the Avengers (which he’ll only admit aloud under torture) but historically when they all try and get involved in one specific person’s problem instead of The Good of Mankind’s problem, shit blows up and someone gets a cast.
Lucy looks at him for a long time, then reaches into the dumpster and pulls out a piece of paper, shaking a French fry off of it.
“That’s gross,” Clint informs him as he ferrets around further in the dumpster for something. “Also has no one in this city heard of recycling?”
Lucy finds what he’s looking for (a cracked in half pencil) and scribbles something on a piece of paper. “You can go to her,” he says, handing Clint the piece of paper. “She’s a civilian but she patches me up sometimes when I need it. She’s a good woman.”
Clint squints at the hastily scrawled Claire accompanying an address on the paper. “You really think a civilian’s going to be okay patching up some random guy she doesn’t even know?”
“We met when she helped fish me out of a dumpster.”
“Ah, so she’s insane, too. Awesome.” Clint holds out his fist, which Lucy bumps. “I’ll see around, Lucy.”
“And you, Clint. Good luck with your archaic weapon.”
“Good luck with the tortured anti-hero thing that your costume clearly suggests you’ve got going on.”
Lucy limps off into the night. Clint watches him speculatively, and wonders how hard it’s going to be to find a lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen who can run around the city beating the crap out of Russian mobs and then surprise him at his law office.
This is going to be fun.