Asconoid Hyperdelicacy of Heroicalness
It was late at night and there was no-one around when Clint made his way to the big top. Not that it mattered, because he wasn’t even trying to stay hidden. As a performer on his way to practice, he had every right to be just where he was.
Being back at a circus wasn’t something he was overly fond of, but he couldn’t deny that there was something enticing about the smells and sounds of the circus ring. All the splendor and shine Stark’s money could buy couldn’t compete with the smell of sawdust, sweat, and horse urine. This was Clint’s childhood, and in some twisted way, it felt good to be back.
”Everything alright?”
Coulson had probably heard some slight stutter in his breath and had interpreted his mood with his super ninja skills.
”Yeah,” Clint answered under his breath. ”Going in for some practice.”
Coulson didn’t answer, but Clint didn’t expect him to.
Clint hadn’t been even remotely surprised when this mission had come up and he had been the one sent in. After all, there weren’t that many Agents who were able to go undercover in a circus with only a couple of days warning.
It still didn’t mean he had to like it, though.
Silently, he made his way to the platform, but he had barely shot a handful of arrows (two sets of three, thank you) when he spied a familiar man creeping under the bleachers.
”Well, shit.”
”What was that, Barton?” Coulson’s voice came sharp through the comm link.
Clint shook his head once and zeroed on the hunched form. ”I’ll get back to you,” he murmured, ignoring the annoyed bark he got as an answer. He jumped down, landing silently on the sawdust in the middle of the ring. It billowed around him, and he saw the man’s head jerk up.
”Well, shit,” the man huffed under his breath, stuffed something that looked like a giant ice peak into his jacket, and started towards Clint.
”My words exactly,” Clint said, crossing his arms across his chest. ”Long time, no see, Winchester. What are you doing here?”
Dean Winchester snorted. ”I could ask you the same thing, Hawkeye. We’re on a job.”
”Funny that,” Clint mused. ”So am I. What are you hunting?”
”Demons.”
Clint blinked, opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. ”Sorry. For a moment, I thought you said ’demons?’”
”Yeah. Demons. Ugly fuckers, you know. The best way to get rid of them is to either stab them with a special knife or douse them in Holy Water and then exorcise their asses back to Hell.”
”Clint, what the hell is going on?” Coulson gritted in his ear.
”Info sharing,” Clint snapped curtly back and tugged the comm link out of his ear. He stuffed it into his pocket, ignored Dean’s raised brow, and asked instead, ”So, demons?”
Dean gave him a long look from the corner of his eye. ”Yeah,” he agreed. ”We know they’re here, but we’re not sure who it is.”
”We?”
”Sam’s checking out the perimeter. He’s a bit nervous.”
”About… demons?” Clint asked, slightly hesitant.
”Clowns, actually. The guy can face down Satan, but he gets all squeaky about friggin’ clowns.” Dean shook his head in exasperation.
”Well, I guess that in your line of work, it’s more likely to come across demons than killer clowns,” Clint said.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice asked how was this his life now?
”You’d be surprised,” Dean muttered darkly. ”By the way, your pocket is yelling at you.”
Clint shrugged. He knew that a simple act of taking the comm link out of his ear wouldn’t hinder Coulson, but due to his hearing being a bit on the bad side, he didn’t actually hear Coulson now that the link wasn’t in his ear anymore.
Dean raised his brow. ”Troubles in paradise?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.
For a moment, Clint hesitated, unsure of what to say. Then he figured that if a person dealt with demons on day-to-day-basis, he probably could deal with someone dying and coming back to life.
”He died. And then he was resurrected via some alien thingamajig and got a new team without us knowing,” Clint said, well aware that he sounded like a lovesick teenager.
”Oh, he died? Just get over it.”
Clint stared. How the fuck did you just ’got over’ something like that? ”You done that a lot? Dying I mean.”
Dean shot him a grin full of teeth. ”Yeah, a couple of times. Sucks balls.”
Clint decided he didn’t want to know.
After getting a hold of his brother, Dean sent him back to the motel, wishing him sweet dreams with glitter and clown masks. Clint grinned at the sullen ”Fuck you,” the younger Winchester shot at Dean, but he didn’t have it in him to tease Sam about his fear. Everybody’s got something to be afraid of. Clint was a model example of that himself.
He invited Dean to his trailer to share a beer and silence, which seemed to suit the man just fine. They took long pulls from their bottles and stared at the big top looming in front of them.
”So,” Dean said after some time. ”How’s the gang? Apart from dying and coming back to life, I mean.”
Clint shrugged. ”It was messy for some time. Lots of big egos stuffed in a small space eventually end up in big words and fists.” He paused and thought for a moment. ”Well, violence in general.”
”Tell me about it,” Dean snorted and wiped condensation from his bottle.
Clint shot him a sideways glance. After their first meeting in N.Y, he had tried to dig out information about the infamous Winchester brothers and their angels. However, Fury had been even more close-mouthed than usual, and so far Clint only knew that the brothers rode around the States in their dad’s Impala and fought supernatural creatures.
It still boggled his mind, but after everything the Avengers had been through, he probably didn’t have much say.
”How’s your angel?” He asked, just to be polite.
Dean made a face and downed his beer. ”Fine,” he muttered flatly, sounding anything but.
Clint raised a brow. Dean’s answer wasn’t what he had expected, what with the almost sickeningly syrupy declarations of mutual attraction he had witnessed in the magical beach. But Dean’s personal life wasn’t Clint’s business, so he let it lie.
After a moment of brooding, Dean cleared his throat and asked, gruffly, ”What’s your job here anyway?”
Because he had no reason not to, Clint told Dean how SHIELD had picked up a pattern of odd deaths occurring in the circus route. As SHIELD’s resources were currently spread thin, Clint had been sent undercover to ”clear the fuck out of this shit,” like Fury had so elaborately put. Hence, Clint was revisiting his old circus days in the crappy third-grade business Archibaldi’s Circus of Wonders was.
Personally, Clint thought that the only wonder he had witnessed was the fact that the place was still up and running.
”So far, we’ve been unable to link any of the deaths directly to the circus,” Clint finished. ”None of the deceased had visited the circus while it had been in town, nor had they had any private visits from the circus folk.”
Dean nodded slowly as he listened. ”We think it’s a crossroads demon,” he said. ”More specifically, a crossroads demon gone rogue.” At Clint’s blank stare, he huffed and explained, ”Crossroads demons are a pretty large group of demons. They make deals with people in exchange for souls. Usually, they give their so-called clients ten years before they come and collect, but it’s not set in stone.”
”And you have no idea who it is?”
”Not yet,” Dean said. He didn’t sound overly worried.
”So, how do you kill a demon anyway?”
”With a demon knife or an angel blade,” Dean said. ”But that kills the human as well.”
”You mean they’re alive in there?” Clint almost squeaked. That sounded a little too much like being under Loki’s spell, which wasn’t a particularly fond memory.
Dean shrugged. ”If they’re not already dead. If you want to play safe, we can just exorcise their asses back to hell, but then you’d have either a dead or an extremely distraught civilian in your hands.”
”Well, fuck,” Clint huffed.
Dean saluted him with his empty bottle.
”Is this the route the circus travels every year?” Dean asked the next day when they were jogging around the circus, seemingly in their morning routine (As if, what with Dean in his jeans and leather jacket), but actually checking if any of the trailers had sulfur on their window sills.
Clint frowned. ”Actually, no. As far as I know, it has a couple of routes it follows. This is route three, and they traveled this three years ago.”
Dean pursed his lips. ”The demon probably changed meatsuits along the way.”
”Did what?”
”Changed the person it was possessing. Demons can jump bodies unless you have ways to protect yourself,” Dean explained and stretched the collar of his shirt to show Clint a tattoo on his chest.
”Huh,” Clint said, wondering how the tattoo would look like on his ass.
”So, we’re basically looking for someone who was touring with them three years ago, but isn’t here now,” Dean continued, oblivious to Clint’s musings. ”I figured it would be easier to spray everyone with holy water and see who starts to smoke.”
”Right,” Clint said.
”Awesome,” Dean said brightly.
Clint thought it was perhaps slightly too cheery for the occasion.
”You’re going to do what?” Coulson asked, incredulous, when Clint later briefed him about their plan.
Walking back and forth outside the circus perimeter, Clint shrugged, even though he knew Coulson wouldn’t see it. ”We’re planning on spraying holy water on people.”
”To reveal a demon,” Coulson said flatly. ”Sounds like a plan.”
”Sounds just as good as facing a pissed-off demigod with an untested weapon,” Clint snapped, unable to rein in his automatic response and regretting it almost instantly.
”I thought you were gone,” Coulson said after a beat.
”Yeah,” Clint sighed and rubbed his face with his hand. ”Sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
Coulson fell silent, and Clint could almost see him close his eyes and collect himself.
”Are you sure this will work?” Coulson asked, back in his handler persona.
”It should. Sam and Dean have the most experience on this than anyone. I guess the smartest thing to do is to follow their lead.”
”Alright then. Report me back when you’re done.”
”Yeah. Sure.”
He ended the call and stayed still for a moment, staring at his toes, muttering ”Fucking demons” under his breath.
When he raised his head and turned to go back to his trailer, he found himself face-to-face with Patrick, the slightly slow circus handyman.
”Hows’it going, Patrick?” he called out, not really expecting an answer. Patrick wandered around a lot, and even though he was good with tools and horses, he wasn’t the most social of people. When his eyes flashed red, Clint decided he probably wasn’t dealing with just the good old Patrick anymore.
He also decided he was most likely screwed.
”Patrick’s not… home right now,” the thing in Patrick said. Its voice was almost purring and sent unpleasant goose pumps along Clint’s spine. It reminded him a bit too much of Loki’s intonation.
”Well, give him my best when you see him the next time,” Clint quipped, saluted with two fingers, and tried to back the hell away with as much dignity as he could, cursing inwardly at his own stupidity for leaving his bow in his trailer.
The demon cocked its head. ”You can tell him yourself.”
Clint pursed his lips in mock consideration. ”How about no? See, I’ve done this whole possession thing — not a fan, you know?”
The demon smiled thinly and took a step forward only to freeze in its tracks as its eyes went wide.
Clint blinked and whirled around to see a stocky, bearded guy in black giving the demon a very disappointed face. Clint thought it best to move away from the line of fire — especially when he had no fucking clue if said line was proverbial or literal. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Winchesters standing a bit to the side, looking surprisingly calm.
”I thought I’d made this clear already,” the newcomer said in a raspy, British drawl. ”Professional pride, hello?”
The thing that looked like Patrick opened its mouth as if to say something, but the British guy raised a finger and a brow, and the demon fell silent.
”A wise move,” the Brit approved. ”Now, shoo.”
For the life of him, Clint couldn’t figure out what happened. First, the black-clad guy was staring at the demon, then his eyes flashed, and the demon started to gurgle, puking black, smoking goo all around. It seemed to take forever, and when Clint was about to ask how the fuck you could fit that much black demon-ness inside somebody, the goo somehow sunk into the ground like water, and Patrick dropped like a stone.
Bewildered, Clint looked from the Winchesters to the Brit and back to Patrick.
The Brit examined his nails with a nonchalant air, brushed them against his jacket, and asked, brightly, ”Can I have cotton candy now?”
”Piss off, Crowley,” Dean grunted, walking to Patrick to check his pulse.
”Well,” Crowley sighed with a raised brow. ”I see the love is gone. Toodles!”
”Who the hell was that?” Clint hissed after Crowley had vanished in a puff of smoke that had made Sam and Dean roll their eyes.
”Crowley,” Dean grunted as he hoisted Patrick’s unconscious body up with Sam and started to haul him back towards his trailer.
”Yeah, I got that! But what—”
”He’s the King of Crossroads slash King of Hell,” Sam explained in a hushed tone. ”He takes his deals seriously, and rogue employees piss him off. We called him when we figured out what was going on.”
”You have the King of Hell on speed dial?” Clint squealed. ”Are you out of your minds?”
Dean stopped and frowned as if in deep thoughts. ”Today is Wednesday, right? Yeah, we’re out of our minds on Wednesdays.”
”Think about the bright side,” Sam pointed out. ”At least we didn’t have to bury a body.”
”Salt n burn… Good old times,” Dean sighed dreamily.
Blinking after the brothers, Clint wondered how the hell was he supposed to write his report on this one.