allofthefeelings:

teaberryblue:

Alternatively, Laura Barton isn’t a field agent for SHIELD.  She’s a staff veterinarian, whose main job is treating the animals in their K9 units, but occasionally, she gets some weirder cases, like that time SHIELD stopped a wildcat trafficking ring.

But then, there was this one guy. 

The first time, he showed up with a snake. 

“We had a run-in with this weird crime ring that all uses snake names for their call signs,” he explained.  “One of them was, uh, wearing a snake.  I didn’t think that was okay, so after I subdued him…okay.  Uh.  Do you know what to do with a snake?  I think, uh, I don’t know how to gender a snake, so I think they’re underfed?”

Laura put the snake in a terrarium and nursed it back to health, and was quite tickled by this person who, in the middle of a combat situation, was concerned for the health of a reptile.

The next time it was a litter of kittens he found in a burned-out building.  “I didn’t want to take them to a shelter,” Clint– his name was Clint– explained.  “I read about the kill rates, and I know these are kittens and they have a high chance of getting adopted, but…I didn’t want to risk them, so, uh…kittens?” 

He started bringing in other animals, strays he picked up in his neighborhood, an injured bird he found in a bush,  seeming somewhat lost about what to do with all the animals he found, and he’d scratch the back of his head and look very concerned as she worked, like she was treating his own child.  Every time.

And then, sometimes, they’d talk.  He told her about growing up on a farm in Iowa; she told him about growing up Jewish in the suburbs.  Sometimes he’d bring coffee with him; one time he brought a box of cookies from a bakery in Moscow.  They were delicious.  He showed up with Turkish delight, with chocolates from France, with bean cakes from Korea.  Occasionally he stopped by with treats and no animals.   

“Our support staff,” he explained sheepishly, “is criminally underappreciated.”  

Laura wondered if he brought gifts to the rest of the support staff, but she didn’t wonder out loud. 

But then one day he showed up with a dog.  A stupid, affectionate dog that had lost an eye, and she could tell he was really attached to the dog, moreso than the other animals.  

“I thought about keeping him,” Clint admitted. “But I really– I travel too much.  So if you, uh, know a good home for him…he really likes pizza.”  

He turned to go, which was something he never did, he always stayed and chatted while she inspected the animals he brought in, and that was the moment when she knew he was definitely too attached to let go of this one easily.

And maybe that she was, too.

“Clint, wait,” she said.  “I have a suggestion.” 

“Yeah?” he asked, frowning, as he turned around, slouching, hands in his pockets. 

“Why don’t we adopt him?” 

Clint squinted, rolled back on his heels. “We as in…who?” 

“You and me,” said Laura.  “We adopt him.”  

They don’t start dating right away. At first they’re just friends who co-own a dog, that’s not weird okay, it’s totally normal. Maybe they tease each other a little bit more. Maybe they have in jokes. Maybe Lucky has a tendency to tangle them both in his leash like it’s a scene from 101 Dalmatians. But there’s totally plausible deniability.

But even though Clint still brings her injured animals sometimes, he doesn’t need the excuse anymore. He comes sometimes because he found a purple chew toy or a squeaky plastic pizza or just because, he insists nobly to Laura from his place on the floor where Lucky is enthusiastically slobbering all over his face, he had to check in and make sure she’s taking good care of him. (He saw a vet on 60 Minutes once, they’re shifty.) He brings takeout with him and it seems like he’s eating with Laura and Lucky more than anywhere else and he has a few drawers in her bedroom and he thinks about her all the time- like, enough that he can’t just dismiss it as thinking about his dog.

“So I think I’m in love with Laura,” he tells Natasha over lunch.

“We were kind of wondering when you’d figure that out,” she replies.