𝕒𝕨, 𝕔𝕠𝕗𝕗𝕖𝕖, 𝕟𝕠–

Sharon smirked and sat down on the roof next to Clint. Eyes towards the sky as she tried to ignore the plate of food in Clint’s lap. “Something tells me that it’ll come around and you’ll get blamed. Even if you’re not at all involved.” He had a way of finding himself in the center of trouble, even if he was three blocks away from the real trouble. He offered her some and Sharon looked at him as if he had just stabbed her. “No,” Sharon grumbled at first, shifting where she sat. “I like my eggs cooked, actually.”

“i resent that. it’s kinda true, but still. resent it.” trouble should’ve been his middle name. he doesn’t know how he got saddled with francis instead. “but that is very fair, actually. i know this guy that got a sandwich from denny’s at 3 am one time and–” clint winces. “–let’s just say not everything within that bun was fully cooked. and i’m not talking medium rare beef, either. it was rough. uh, you want a drink, then? not from denny’s.” the beer is actually from the liquor store beside the denny’s in question.

Natasha smirked, but she didn’t add to her defense. Clint said it sounded right but there was something in his tone and the way his brow moved that told her that he wasn’t so sure. And Natasha decided to leave him in that limbo. “The second you mention it, they’ll be after you for back taxes. And property taxes?” Natasha whistled. Another thing she had never paid, but she had heard how expensive they were. Leaning back, she shrugged. Tony knew a great deal of things that Natasha would never understand, and Clint, she figured, was in that same box as she was. “He pays someone else to know about taxes, that’s what the rich do,” she commented. “Which is smart. We should try that.”

“note to self: don’t mention it at all, ever.” thank god natasha can keep a secret. property taxes sound... well, maybe fair. although clint kinda has a feeling that ivan never paid them. then again, who knows? selective assholery is absolutely possible. shitty people probably pay taxes all the time. “uh, yeah. that is smart. we should absolutely try that.” he frowns. “how have we survived this far without some miscellaneous smart human doing our taxes? i mean, seriously. where’s the IRS black ops agent coming to shoot us in the collective eyes for crimes against auditkind?”

Scott didn’t usually venture out of Genosha without reason, didn’t tend to leave home without a plan that involved leaving home. He was the kind of man who would much prefer an evening spent in his apartment, where he knew every nook and cranny and wasn’t in store for any kind of surprises… but that wasn’t always possible. Sometimes, other things got in the way. Things like Genosha’s teens disappearing in spurts, sometimes returning and sometimes not. It was something he’d been investigating for a while now, and tonight, he was following a lead that had sounded far more promising than it turned out to be. The source who’d offered to meet him never showed, and Scott was left sulking on a rooftop for hours after the fact because some part of his mind insisted he ought to wait and see if the guy would eventually come around. It was looking less and less likely as time went on…  though he wasn’t alone on the roof anymore. 

He glanced over to the man who appeared to be eating some… imitation of food. Glancing out to the direction the man had pointed, he hummed. “Have you ever seen the real thing?” He asked, watching the light dance in the window. “Aurora borealis. My father showed it to me once.” Lifetimes ago, when Scott was a kid in Alaska with no red lenses blocking out the light. It was one of the few memories he had of his father that didn’t involve him walking out the door. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure if it was real. Other times, he didn’t think it mattered. “It’s… indescribable, really.”

“yeah, just the one time, i think. i was a little concussed on this, uh–” it had been a mission. “this trip to alaska. i don’t know if i really appreciated it properly.” it had been hell, trudging through snow, hearing aids gone dead, cold in spite of all the preparation him and his mission partner had underwent. then again, who wouldn’t have been cold, out there. clint has to admit he’s a lucky bastard sometimes. “indescribable is right.”

the new occupant of the roof has a very superhero-y vibe going on that clint registers as somewhat familiar. “uh, you want a beer? it’s not from denny’s, i swear. it’s actually kinda good.” this last comment is said with an air of genuine surprise. clint was not expecting the beer to be good. “it’s one of those weird craft beers but it had a good name. and it’s purple, see, so i had to buy it.” the can is purple, not the beer itself. clint has tasted purple beer. it’s not something he feels like repeating anytime soon.

“Oh, I can see the lights. I just know it’s not the aurora borealis!” Gabby grinned, taking a large mouthful of her own waffle. “Could be ghosts,” she agreed with a full mouth. “Hm, not sure. Yes? Maybe? I don’t know! Should I?”

There were plenty of strange things Remy had seen in his time. Still, a guy eating breakfast, at midnight, on a roof, was not quite an everyday occurrence. He himself was up on the roof after ducking out of a poker game gone bad–not his fault, for once, either!–but at least he was not eating breakfast. At midnight. “Um, dere’s what now?” Remy followed the guy’s gaze. “Yeah, dat might not be quite what you t'inkin’, but I guess it adds t’ de ambience?” He shook his head slightly. “So is dis somet'ing you do all de time? Or you jus’ decided t’ get a jump on breakfast early tonight?”

clint is relatively unfazed by the newcomer, becoming acclimated to his line of questioning immediately. “it sure does add to the ambience,” he says. “in an artificial kinda way. like ASMR for the eyeballs.” now forced to really consider what it is that he is doing – namely, having breakfast on a roof at an ungodly hour – clint has a moment of silent contemplation. then he shrugs it off. “hey, it’s 8 am somewhere. my sleep schedule’s gone to shit ‘cause of work.” he pats the space beside him. “hey, have a seat. you look like you could use a drink.” he goes for his bag, pulling out the second of two beers and offering it up. “oh, and... do i do it all the time? man, i don’t even know. nope. not nightly, but...” another shrug. “if the universe didn’t want us to have breakfast food in the middle of the night, it wouldn’t have spawned all these 24 hour diners.”

There was blood on his boots. Robbie wasn’t sure whose it was, wasn’t sure if it had come from the bullet hole in his gut that had finished healing by the time he dropped the shooter or the man he’d torn apart just after the one who’d shot him was reduced to dust, but there was blood on his boots and he didn’t have anything to clean up with. He was up on the roof of the building where he and Daisy lived, contemplating the pros and cons of going back out to track down a lead tonight’s gangsters had handed him with their last breaths or calling it a night and going to bed when a voice cut through the silence. Robbie glanced over, raising a brow at the man he’d thought was asleep nearby before following his indication to lights coming from a nearby apartment. “Closest thing you’ll get to seeing the stars in this city,” he acknowledged. Carefully, he took a few steps closer and hummed. “Hey, you got a spare napkin? Think I stepped in something downstairs.”

clint makes a noise of agreement. “is aurora borealis stars, though? isn’t it just, uh, shiny sky chemicals or something?” he frowns. “i can’t quite figure out if that makes sense or not.” he holds a handful of napkins out, eyeing that which was stepped in with a casual air that doesn’t quite betray his mild trepidation. “good luck with the shoe maintenance. that looks like it’ll stain.”

Gabby was always hungry, it felt like. With endless energy came endless need to eat. She had had a powerbar stashed in her pocket, but it had fallen out somewhere (or maybe she’d eaten it and forgotten to replace it? Hm…) and now she was hungry. Hence the Denny’s she had, sitting and eating with Hawkeye on top of a random NYC roof at midnight. It was the perfect place to eat Denny’s after all. “Oh shit, I think you need glasses.”

It had been a long time since Sharon had started reconnecting with the Avengers - and for the man who was both an Avenger and a SHIELD agent? It felt like an eternity since they had a proper conversation. She found him where he always went. The high ground. (He had said something about that before, hadn’t he? He saw better from afar.) She came up behind him, a grin on her face before she recited the quote. “Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?” Sitting down, Sharon looked at the food in his lap and frowned, deeply. “I know Avengers are you know, the frat house of the hero business, but are you really going to eat that?”

“yes,” says clint. “localized entirely within their kitchen.” he holds up his hands, framing himself as the very picture of innocence. “i didn’t have anything to do with it. i swear.” he is not seymour skinner. thank god. clint cannot picture himself thriving as a school principal. when sharon calls his taste into question – the taste of all the avengers, actually, but he’s gonna take this one personally – he looks at her like he can’t believe what she’s saying. “uh... yeah? you want some?”

She hadn’t meant to snap at him, in fact she was already sort of regretting it as soon as she turned to do so but she wasn’t about to let him know that. Instead she busied herself with trying to get any sort clue out of a stupid broken door. Then he spoke again, asking if she was okay, Bobbi rolled her eyes at the question and stood up, raising a brow as he pushed a little, even if he had said he would shut up the damage was done. “No I just really love going on a basic recon mission with my husband - ex husband - is that what we are? Anyway, the guy I was married to before I literally died and got resurrected -” Her tone was sharp and anyone who knew her at all knew this was her spiralling just a little, “- totally cool, fine, not a thing wrong why would you even think that?!”

“uh...” clint awkwardly runs a hand through his hair. “guess i’m somewhere on the husband/ex-husband spectrum.” it’s a very pathetic response to all that she’s said. he tries again. “no, yeah, that’s pretty fucked up. definitely understandable to not be into it at all.” he bets dying and then coming back to life is a bureaucratic clusterfuck, too, something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy, and bobbi is far from being his worst enemy. “you want a beer? or pizza?” beer and pizza heal all wounds. no, he’s not naive enough to think that. but at the same time... they are unifying forces. “if you wanna talk about it. or not! that’s fine too.”

There were a thousand vigilantes, agents, superheros - whatever you wanted to call them - in the city and yet somehow Bobbi had ended up on a pretty basic mission with Clint. The same Clint who she had only a few months ago been married to, was still married to? She wasn’t sure if death and resurrection were covered or if that counted as marriage over. She hadn’t exactly given him a chance to talk to her since the incident and she knew this was someones idea of a joke, maybe Natasha pushing them together again, whoever had arranged it she wasn’t happy with. His tone was so…Clint. In a way that it was getting under her skin and distracting her from the job, she was supposed to be focused and aware of her new strength instead she was here listening to his stupid jokes. Eventually she snapped, perhaps at the idea that someone above her had deemed this an assignment she was required on or because of his Star Wars joke. “Will you shut the fuck up?” Bobbi knelt to the floor of the opening, trying to look for any signs of how it had been breached in the first place, “Or at least go…elsewhere so I can figure out who else has this sort of strength?”

alright, so that’s pretty fair. clint exists in limbo with regards to bobbi’s whole life to death to life journey at times – it’s a cope – because she’s here in front of him, solid and breathing, but it’s not like everything is back to normal. and he gets that, really. and maybe he shouldn’t be pretending that it is. it’s his bad. “yep, shutting up,” he says. his lips are sealed. alright, not that sealed: after silence has been allowed to reign for a few beats, he throws in one last sentence. “listen, uh... you okay? i can clear out if you need me to, but you seem, uh...” he gestures vaguely. tense is the word he’s looking for, but accusing bobbi of something like that doesn’t seem very productive. and in hindsight, maybe pressing the issue is a terrible idea. “okay, nope, sorry. shutting up now.”

“I’m not a citizen,” Natasha replied flatly, her feet up on the bars of the fire escape as she laid across the steps. “That should exclude me from taxes.” It probably didn’t. But Natasha had the added benefit of not having a legal business. “Happy would know. We could ask Tony but he’d probably make that face - you know the one? The one he makes any time Steve speaks.”

clint mulls this over. it doesn’t sound right. “sounds about right,” he says, in spite of how not-right it sounds. “i feel like asking anyone about it is asking for trouble. what if they say we gotta start doing paperwork immediately? nah, what we don’t know can’t hurt us. at least, when it comes to taxes. besides, tony is rich. what do rich people know about paying taxes?” tony is also a mad genius – or just a genius, clint can’t tell – who undeniably understands math better than clint ever will, but. whatever. clint’s just riffing.