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sarea
Title: Wet Hot Avengers Summer (AO3)
Author:sarea_okelani
Rating: PG-13, for teenagers getting up to what teenagers get up to
Pairings: Clint/Natasha, Tony/Pepper, Thor/Jane, minor Clint/Bobbi and Phil/Cellist, Clint & Coulson, Clint & Tony
Summary: At summer camp, Clint’s met the girl of his dreams. Then he meets her four brothers.
If you missed them: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
//\\
“STOP IT HAROLD STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT—”
“Hey,” Clint says, the beginnings of a headache beginning to develop behind his eyes, “what did I say about screaming, Mary Beth?”
The five-year-old looks at him with huge blue eyes, as if she can’t believe Clint’s taking Harold’s side. Predictably, her lip starts to tremble and her eyes are getting wet.
To forestall a complete meltdown, Clint hurries to say, “Now tell me calmly what happened, so I can help you.”
Mary Beth sniffs, but thankfully does not tantrum. “I was using the green crayon because I need it for grass, but Harold took it. I was using it and he took it...”
“Got it,” Clint says, then turns to the five-year-old sitting across from her. “Come on, dude, give her the green crayon. You can’t just take someone’s crayon while they’re using it. You know that’s not cool.”
“No,” Harold says petulantly, without looking up. He’s using the green crayon to essentially cover the entire sheet of his paper.
Clint plucks the crayon out of Harold’s beefy little hand, causing the boy to exclaim, “Hey!”
“Didn’t like that, did you,” Clint says, handing the crayon to Mary Beth. He stands over her shoulder, daring Harold to take it from her again.
Harold scowls, and tries to hide the fact that he’s intimidated by grabbing a nearby black crayon and using that instead.
“Don’t make me come back here,” Clint warns, “or I’ll move you to the end of the table.” If he’s right, Harold won’t risk it, given the crush he has on Mary Beth.
Clint makes his way down the table, looking over his temporary charges, who are mostly all diligently drawing and coloring. He looks at his watch. It’s hard to believe he’s only been doing this for fifteen minutes. He’s already had to break up three altercations, send two kids to the infirmary (one for a bloody nose, another for a shallow paper cut the kid wouldn’t stop whining about), and fix a little girl’s ponytail, which he’s never done before, so it looks rather lopsided. But she looks happy enough just to have her hair out of her face, so Clint counts it as an achievement. He’s decided that he’s never having kids. Ever.
On the other side of the arts and crafts tent, Natasha is coloring with some other kids, who are huddled around her to see what she’s drawing. Of course she would get well-behaved children on her side of the room, while his seem to be demons in human form.
In forty-five minutes, his rotation will be over. Whoever’s supposed to relieve him better not be late. Damn the SHIELD camp counselors’ all-day session, anyway. If not for that, and Clint’s perennial bad luck, he wouldn’t have been one of the older campers selected to do a shift helping out with the younger kids. If he and Natasha were on speaking terms, he might feel differently, since she got assigned to the same tent at the same time, but since they aren’t, he considers it another one of the universe’s cruel jokes.
There is an unspoken agreement to divide the room in half by an invisible line, and Clint is in charge one half while Natasha is in charge of the other. She’s at least being civil to him, even if it’s the same sort of civility she might afford to a bug she squashed under her sneakers, but still. It’s better than being completely ignored. Clint tells himself he can – and will – be patient. He has extraordinary patience for someone his age; he’s been told that by more than one teacher/counselor/shrink. Or maybe not so much told as having secretly read it in the files they kept on him.
Still, Clint knows he’s good at waiting, especially when it comes to something he wants. And Natasha definitely falls into that category.
He feels free to stare at her right now; she’s so absorbed in whatever picture she’s creating that he doesn’t have to fear her looking up. She’s so pretty. Her pert little nose, those full lips that he’s actually felt against his own, the large green eyes that have looked at him with scorn and desire both, and of course her hair, that hair in a shade of red so vibrant it’s as if she’d been kissed by an angel at birth. It’s no wonder she doesn’t want to be with him. He’s pretty much as far from an angel as anyone can get.
“Clint!”
He hears his name called and turns to squint at the figures approaching from the direction of the infirmary. The sun’s in his eyes so he pulls on his sunglasses and makes out Bobbi, a guy about Clint’s age that he’s seen around, and the two rugrats he’d sent to get first aid within the first five minutes of his shift. The last thing he wants is to have Natasha see him with Bobbi again, but he doesn’t know what he can do about it short of running away and hiding.
“Hi! Oh my gosh, you guys are so cute!” Bobbi says, ushering in her two charges, both of whom look none the worse for wear. A couple of the kids look up at her squeal, but otherwise pay her no mind.
“Hey,” Clint and the other guy give each other a nod.
“Oh, do you know each other? Clint, this is Richard. He’s taking first aid too.”
Even though Clint makes it clear that he’s not interested in talking – or at least, he thinks he does – that doesn’t stop Bobbi from talking to him. He grunts or provides one-word syllables in response to anything that remotely seems like an answer from him is necessary, but this doesn’t deter her; in fact, it seems more than enough for her to continue her dialogue. If Bobbi notices that she’s essentially talking to herself, she doesn’t let on.
Internally, Clint is feeling more and more agitated, especially when he sees out of the corner of his eye that this Richard guy has gotten bored of Bobbi’s prattle and has wandered off to the other side of the room, where he’s trying to engage Natasha in conversation. She’s smiling at him, actually smiling, and Clint isn’t familiar with the sensation that rises up in his chest, something between wanting to be sick and wanting to pummel something. Preferably Richard’s face. That seems as though it would provide the most satisfaction.
He notices that one of the kids is giving him an interested look, and Clint realizes that he’s clenched his hands into fists. He forces himself to relax it and give the kid a distracted smile. The boy returns to his drawing, which Clint notices is a fairly good depiction of a plane. In fact, there are pieces of paper littered around the boy that shows a fair obsession with them. This gives Clint an idea.
“...it was the most horrid-looking bruise, all dark purple on the inside and ringed with this yellowy-green color on the outside, but he swore when I touched it that it didn’t hurt—”
“Bobbi,” Clint says, “shouldn’t you be heading back to the infirmary?”
“Oh,” she says, looking a bit crestfallen that this is practically the first complete sentence he’s spoken to her since she showed up. “Yeah... I guess so...”
Clint feels like a jerk, so he smiles to make up for it. “Don’t want you to get in trouble. You have an important job. What if someone’s hurt and needs help?”
“That’s true,” Bobbi says, her consternation dissipating and a smile returning to her face. “Thanks.” Then suddenly she has her arms around him in a hug, but he’s quick to turn his head to make sure her peck lands on his cheek instead of anywhere near his lips, and pulls away as quickly and firmly as he can without being rude about it.
As soon as she leaves, Clint squeezes in next to the kid drawing the planes and another kid whose artistic talent seems limited to ovals of various sizes and colors. He pulls a piece of paper toward him, writes I’m sorry on it in blue marker, and starts folding.
“What are you doing?” one kid pipes up.
“You’ll see,” Clint mutters, and continues to fold.
“It’s a paper airplane, stupid,” says another kid, and Clint is too distracted to berate him. “But wow... I’ve never seen one like that before.”
Clint can’t remember how he learned how to make paper airplanes, but the method he knows creates a very aerodynamic version. He’s got the attention of several kids now, and when he asks a girl for the straw in her milk carton, she hands it over eagerly. All that’s required to finish the product is a bit of glue.
“Ready for takeoff,” he says, and the kids watch in excitement as he launches it in Natasha’s direction. Clint has always had good aim and it lands right in front of her, causing her to break off whatever she was saying to Richard, who Clint is annoyed to see has stuck around, not having followed Bobbi back to the infirmary.
Clint’s heart is beating a little fast and he doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Natasha unfolds the plane to read his message and he lets it out. Part of him expected her to ignore his paper missile, or crumple it before tossing it to the ground. She doesn’t look at him, but it’s a start.
“It went so far!” the boy who likes planes says. “I want to make one too!”
“Me too! Me too!”
“Okay, we’ll all make planes,” Clint says. “But we’ll need more straws.”
He writes several more notes, including ones that say I’m an idiot and It wasn’t what you thought and Talk to me. He gives the ones with his messages to younger kids who either don’t seem to be able to read or don’t care what’s written on the paper. Then he teaches his rapt audience how to make his paper airplane, going slowly so that everyone can learn the proper folds. In this way Clint oppresses small children into helping him woo Natasha back, and doesn’t feel guilty about it, because his little paper airplane chain gang is having so much fun.
Soon paper airplanes are flying everywhere, though Clint makes sure that at least some of the notes get to Natasha. She reads every one, and the kids on her side of the room send them back, laughing as they do. Richard looks annoyed that he no longer has Natasha’s full attention, and when she finally looks up to meet Clint’s eyes across the room, Clint knows he’s been forgiven. Or at least is very close to it. Richard says something, but Natasha’s clearly not listening, and he leaves, resigned. Clint takes the opportunity to approach her. Slowly, because he could be wrong about the signals she’s sending, and he doesn’t want to ruin what progress he’s made, but when it’s obvious that he intends to talk to her and she stays right where she is, he know it’s okay.
Clint sits down at her table across from her. “Hi,” he says.
“Hi.” There’s a slight twist to her lips that could be a smile. “So... I got your messages.”
He swallows. “And?”
“And I’m sorry too.” She makes a face, not looking at him, as if the words are hard for her to say. “I probably overreacted.”
You think? is the first thing that pops into his head, but he wisely keeps it to himself. “She—”
“I know,” Natasha says, meeting his eyes again. “I just like you too much.”
The confession floors him. It’s the last thing he expected her to say. He would have settled for I’ll let you talk to me or even the dreaded Let’s be friends. What he thinks is YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. What he says is, “I like you, too.”
She laughs a little at that, and Clint smiles.
“Want to go with me to the end of camp dance?” He doesn’t know where that came from, but he’s not taking it back. It felt like the right time to ask, and he almost always goes with his gut instincts.
Natasha doesn’t say yes right away, which makes Clint nervous. He went too far. He blew it. But she doesn’t say no, either. “My brothers will beat the shit out of you.”
“I don’t care,” Clint says. “They’re being protective of you. I’m cool with that.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah. But... if I ever do anything to you that requires the shit to be beaten out of me, I’d rather you did it yourself.”
Natasha actually laughs at that. “Deal. And I’ll go to the dance with you. If,” she emphasizes.
“If?” Clint almost doesn’t care what follows that if.
“If you sneak out of your cabin tonight and meet me.”
His jaw drops. “Meet you where?” He doesn’t want to sound like a nervous Nellie, but they will be in such deep shit if they’re caught. Parents will be called, they’ll get kicked out of camp, the whole thing. At least, that’s what they’ve been told, anyway.
“The lake,” Natasha says. His dubious look must show on his face because she says lightly, “Scared?”
“Of course not!” Clint denies. “You better be there.”
She scoffs. “Don’t you worry about that.”
Before he loses his nerve, Clint leans over the table to give her a quick kiss. She returns it as paper planes fly over their heads.
Author:
sarea_okelaniRating: PG-13, for teenagers getting up to what teenagers get up to
Pairings: Clint/Natasha, Tony/Pepper, Thor/Jane, minor Clint/Bobbi and Phil/Cellist, Clint & Coulson, Clint & Tony
Summary: At summer camp, Clint’s met the girl of his dreams. Then he meets her four brothers.
If you missed them: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
//\\
“STOP IT HAROLD STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT—”
“Hey,” Clint says, the beginnings of a headache beginning to develop behind his eyes, “what did I say about screaming, Mary Beth?”
The five-year-old looks at him with huge blue eyes, as if she can’t believe Clint’s taking Harold’s side. Predictably, her lip starts to tremble and her eyes are getting wet.
To forestall a complete meltdown, Clint hurries to say, “Now tell me calmly what happened, so I can help you.”
Mary Beth sniffs, but thankfully does not tantrum. “I was using the green crayon because I need it for grass, but Harold took it. I was using it and he took it...”
“Got it,” Clint says, then turns to the five-year-old sitting across from her. “Come on, dude, give her the green crayon. You can’t just take someone’s crayon while they’re using it. You know that’s not cool.”
“No,” Harold says petulantly, without looking up. He’s using the green crayon to essentially cover the entire sheet of his paper.
Clint plucks the crayon out of Harold’s beefy little hand, causing the boy to exclaim, “Hey!”
“Didn’t like that, did you,” Clint says, handing the crayon to Mary Beth. He stands over her shoulder, daring Harold to take it from her again.
Harold scowls, and tries to hide the fact that he’s intimidated by grabbing a nearby black crayon and using that instead.
“Don’t make me come back here,” Clint warns, “or I’ll move you to the end of the table.” If he’s right, Harold won’t risk it, given the crush he has on Mary Beth.
Clint makes his way down the table, looking over his temporary charges, who are mostly all diligently drawing and coloring. He looks at his watch. It’s hard to believe he’s only been doing this for fifteen minutes. He’s already had to break up three altercations, send two kids to the infirmary (one for a bloody nose, another for a shallow paper cut the kid wouldn’t stop whining about), and fix a little girl’s ponytail, which he’s never done before, so it looks rather lopsided. But she looks happy enough just to have her hair out of her face, so Clint counts it as an achievement. He’s decided that he’s never having kids. Ever.
On the other side of the arts and crafts tent, Natasha is coloring with some other kids, who are huddled around her to see what she’s drawing. Of course she would get well-behaved children on her side of the room, while his seem to be demons in human form.
In forty-five minutes, his rotation will be over. Whoever’s supposed to relieve him better not be late. Damn the SHIELD camp counselors’ all-day session, anyway. If not for that, and Clint’s perennial bad luck, he wouldn’t have been one of the older campers selected to do a shift helping out with the younger kids. If he and Natasha were on speaking terms, he might feel differently, since she got assigned to the same tent at the same time, but since they aren’t, he considers it another one of the universe’s cruel jokes.
There is an unspoken agreement to divide the room in half by an invisible line, and Clint is in charge one half while Natasha is in charge of the other. She’s at least being civil to him, even if it’s the same sort of civility she might afford to a bug she squashed under her sneakers, but still. It’s better than being completely ignored. Clint tells himself he can – and will – be patient. He has extraordinary patience for someone his age; he’s been told that by more than one teacher/counselor/shrink. Or maybe not so much told as having secretly read it in the files they kept on him.
Still, Clint knows he’s good at waiting, especially when it comes to something he wants. And Natasha definitely falls into that category.
He feels free to stare at her right now; she’s so absorbed in whatever picture she’s creating that he doesn’t have to fear her looking up. She’s so pretty. Her pert little nose, those full lips that he’s actually felt against his own, the large green eyes that have looked at him with scorn and desire both, and of course her hair, that hair in a shade of red so vibrant it’s as if she’d been kissed by an angel at birth. It’s no wonder she doesn’t want to be with him. He’s pretty much as far from an angel as anyone can get.
“Clint!”
He hears his name called and turns to squint at the figures approaching from the direction of the infirmary. The sun’s in his eyes so he pulls on his sunglasses and makes out Bobbi, a guy about Clint’s age that he’s seen around, and the two rugrats he’d sent to get first aid within the first five minutes of his shift. The last thing he wants is to have Natasha see him with Bobbi again, but he doesn’t know what he can do about it short of running away and hiding.
“Hi! Oh my gosh, you guys are so cute!” Bobbi says, ushering in her two charges, both of whom look none the worse for wear. A couple of the kids look up at her squeal, but otherwise pay her no mind.
“Hey,” Clint and the other guy give each other a nod.
“Oh, do you know each other? Clint, this is Richard. He’s taking first aid too.”
Even though Clint makes it clear that he’s not interested in talking – or at least, he thinks he does – that doesn’t stop Bobbi from talking to him. He grunts or provides one-word syllables in response to anything that remotely seems like an answer from him is necessary, but this doesn’t deter her; in fact, it seems more than enough for her to continue her dialogue. If Bobbi notices that she’s essentially talking to herself, she doesn’t let on.
Internally, Clint is feeling more and more agitated, especially when he sees out of the corner of his eye that this Richard guy has gotten bored of Bobbi’s prattle and has wandered off to the other side of the room, where he’s trying to engage Natasha in conversation. She’s smiling at him, actually smiling, and Clint isn’t familiar with the sensation that rises up in his chest, something between wanting to be sick and wanting to pummel something. Preferably Richard’s face. That seems as though it would provide the most satisfaction.
He notices that one of the kids is giving him an interested look, and Clint realizes that he’s clenched his hands into fists. He forces himself to relax it and give the kid a distracted smile. The boy returns to his drawing, which Clint notices is a fairly good depiction of a plane. In fact, there are pieces of paper littered around the boy that shows a fair obsession with them. This gives Clint an idea.
“...it was the most horrid-looking bruise, all dark purple on the inside and ringed with this yellowy-green color on the outside, but he swore when I touched it that it didn’t hurt—”
“Bobbi,” Clint says, “shouldn’t you be heading back to the infirmary?”
“Oh,” she says, looking a bit crestfallen that this is practically the first complete sentence he’s spoken to her since she showed up. “Yeah... I guess so...”
Clint feels like a jerk, so he smiles to make up for it. “Don’t want you to get in trouble. You have an important job. What if someone’s hurt and needs help?”
“That’s true,” Bobbi says, her consternation dissipating and a smile returning to her face. “Thanks.” Then suddenly she has her arms around him in a hug, but he’s quick to turn his head to make sure her peck lands on his cheek instead of anywhere near his lips, and pulls away as quickly and firmly as he can without being rude about it.
As soon as she leaves, Clint squeezes in next to the kid drawing the planes and another kid whose artistic talent seems limited to ovals of various sizes and colors. He pulls a piece of paper toward him, writes I’m sorry on it in blue marker, and starts folding.
“What are you doing?” one kid pipes up.
“You’ll see,” Clint mutters, and continues to fold.
“It’s a paper airplane, stupid,” says another kid, and Clint is too distracted to berate him. “But wow... I’ve never seen one like that before.”
Clint can’t remember how he learned how to make paper airplanes, but the method he knows creates a very aerodynamic version. He’s got the attention of several kids now, and when he asks a girl for the straw in her milk carton, she hands it over eagerly. All that’s required to finish the product is a bit of glue.
“Ready for takeoff,” he says, and the kids watch in excitement as he launches it in Natasha’s direction. Clint has always had good aim and it lands right in front of her, causing her to break off whatever she was saying to Richard, who Clint is annoyed to see has stuck around, not having followed Bobbi back to the infirmary.
Clint’s heart is beating a little fast and he doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Natasha unfolds the plane to read his message and he lets it out. Part of him expected her to ignore his paper missile, or crumple it before tossing it to the ground. She doesn’t look at him, but it’s a start.
“It went so far!” the boy who likes planes says. “I want to make one too!”
“Me too! Me too!”
“Okay, we’ll all make planes,” Clint says. “But we’ll need more straws.”
He writes several more notes, including ones that say I’m an idiot and It wasn’t what you thought and Talk to me. He gives the ones with his messages to younger kids who either don’t seem to be able to read or don’t care what’s written on the paper. Then he teaches his rapt audience how to make his paper airplane, going slowly so that everyone can learn the proper folds. In this way Clint oppresses small children into helping him woo Natasha back, and doesn’t feel guilty about it, because his little paper airplane chain gang is having so much fun.
Soon paper airplanes are flying everywhere, though Clint makes sure that at least some of the notes get to Natasha. She reads every one, and the kids on her side of the room send them back, laughing as they do. Richard looks annoyed that he no longer has Natasha’s full attention, and when she finally looks up to meet Clint’s eyes across the room, Clint knows he’s been forgiven. Or at least is very close to it. Richard says something, but Natasha’s clearly not listening, and he leaves, resigned. Clint takes the opportunity to approach her. Slowly, because he could be wrong about the signals she’s sending, and he doesn’t want to ruin what progress he’s made, but when it’s obvious that he intends to talk to her and she stays right where she is, he know it’s okay.
Clint sits down at her table across from her. “Hi,” he says.
“Hi.” There’s a slight twist to her lips that could be a smile. “So... I got your messages.”
He swallows. “And?”
“And I’m sorry too.” She makes a face, not looking at him, as if the words are hard for her to say. “I probably overreacted.”
You think? is the first thing that pops into his head, but he wisely keeps it to himself. “She—”
“I know,” Natasha says, meeting his eyes again. “I just like you too much.”
The confession floors him. It’s the last thing he expected her to say. He would have settled for I’ll let you talk to me or even the dreaded Let’s be friends. What he thinks is YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. What he says is, “I like you, too.”
She laughs a little at that, and Clint smiles.
“Want to go with me to the end of camp dance?” He doesn’t know where that came from, but he’s not taking it back. It felt like the right time to ask, and he almost always goes with his gut instincts.
Natasha doesn’t say yes right away, which makes Clint nervous. He went too far. He blew it. But she doesn’t say no, either. “My brothers will beat the shit out of you.”
“I don’t care,” Clint says. “They’re being protective of you. I’m cool with that.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah. But... if I ever do anything to you that requires the shit to be beaten out of me, I’d rather you did it yourself.”
Natasha actually laughs at that. “Deal. And I’ll go to the dance with you. If,” she emphasizes.
“If?” Clint almost doesn’t care what follows that if.
“If you sneak out of your cabin tonight and meet me.”
His jaw drops. “Meet you where?” He doesn’t want to sound like a nervous Nellie, but they will be in such deep shit if they’re caught. Parents will be called, they’ll get kicked out of camp, the whole thing. At least, that’s what they’ve been told, anyway.
“The lake,” Natasha says. His dubious look must show on his face because she says lightly, “Scared?”
“Of course not!” Clint denies. “You better be there.”
She scoffs. “Don’t you worry about that.”
Before he loses his nerve, Clint leans over the table to give her a quick kiss. She returns it as paper planes fly over their heads.
