A Lead In Madripoor

1 0 0
                                    

It was late enough when Natasha called Clint that Wade had fallen asleep, slumped over several files, and Kate was drifting off on the couch close by. Kurt had already teleported back to the mansion to put Krissy to bed — she had fallen asleep on his chest only to wake up at Wade's snoring, so Kurt had gone to find her somewhere a bit quieter to sleep.

"Hey, Nat," Clint said quietly, rubbing a bit of the sleep from his own eyes as he strained to focus on the phone call. He went to the coffeemaker as he spoke and poured himself another cup. "You find anything in Belarus?"

"I'm not sure if it's solid," Natasha said carefully, but that just had Clint grinning, because it meant it was probably juicy and she was just being cautious about falling into optimism. "But it's definitely worth looking into, at least."

"Send it to me and we'll check it out," Clint said, starting to grin. "Might be a dead end, but if it's got you this excited..."

"I'll send it to you if you quit smiling like that," she told him, smirking herself on the other end of the phone — he just knew it. "It's unprofessional."

"I don't recognize that word. Is it Russian?"

"I'll teach you something new in Russian later," she promised, the smirk easy to hear by the tone of her voice.

"Love ya too, Nat. See you in a bit," he said, grinning wide now.

"Where we headed, boss?" Wade asked before Clint could entirely hang up. He was rubbing his hands together and nearly bouncing in place — but had been surprisingly quiet until then, which was impressive, because Clint hadn't noticed him awake until then.

Clint held up a finger to tell him to hold on, and a few moments later, the phone chimed with the message from Nat. "Madripoor, apparently."

"Been a while since we played there," Wade said. "What's the plan? Hawks or Hawk and Ronin? You know, since we're going to the far east. You could pull out the old threads. Might be a fight started over that name ... either way, sounds like a party, right?"

"I'm not wearing that old suit," Clint said, shaking his head.

"Then I'll wear it — where is it?"

"Not. Here." Clint shook his head harder as he went to the couch to very gently shake Kate's shoulder to wake her up.

"I hear ya. It's at Widow's place. You just don't want to wear it in public."

Clint rolled his eyes. "No." He shook Kate's shoulder a little harder, and when she tried to push him off, he just chuckled. "C'mon, Katie Kate. We got a lead."

She picked her head up the slightest to look at him. "Is it another back alley roundtrip dead end — or a lead?" she asked, her voice thick, still only half awake.

"Nat sent it in, and she sounded excited."

At that, she pushed herself up and nodded, using Clint as a lever to pull herself to her feet before she quickly grabbed some coffee to wake up a little faster, shrugging her quiver on as she looked for her sword. "Where?"

"Madripoor," Clint said.

She looked up at him with one eyebrow raised. "And she thinks it's solid?"

"Not in so many words, but I know how to speak Nat," Clint said, grinning outright. "C'mon, I'll fly, and you can catch some z's on the way out."

She nodded and reached for her phone to let Kurt know they were headed to check out a lead. At that point, after a few weeks of searching, it was really just second nature — text each other, find a dead end, call each other on the way back, and someone made sure Krissy was taken care of in between.

Chance For ReunionsWhere stories live. Discover now