Iowa Bros in Space! The Spacening. Starring James T Kirk and Clinton Barton

[smartass_captain]

Fighting with Verity had done something for Jim despite all the vitriolic feeling swimming around his system. It had made him determined to go home. It wasn't as though he couldn't anymore. He knew exactly where the doorway leading back to the Enterprise stood. It was just...making himself open the door. Jim stands in the long hallway lined with doors to other worlds, staring intently at the 'Caution: Radiation risk' etched into the glass of his world's door. Shaking fingers reached for it, to push it open. Retracted.

He couldn't do this. No, bullshit. He was Jim Kirk, he could open a stupid door. Just. Not at the moment. Apparently. Jim shouts a string of fluent Orion curses at the door before stalking back off into the Nexus. To the plain door with the sideways 8 on it that leads to CLint's world. He pulls up a chair and waits. Clint would come sooner or later. He'd ask him to come with. Been meaning to show him around the ship anyway, might as well do it now.

Why couldn't his time have comms anyway? Jim smacks the back of his head against the wall while he waits, idly replaying the argument between himself and Verity in his head. What better way to kill time than to hate yourself?

Comments

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint lifts off his shirt (revealing bandages, lots of bandages, with burns under them--char-broiled Hawkeye, the purple plate special). "Yeah, I'll bet. I never heard of a doctor who liked their patients getting hurt at all."

[smartass_captain]

This does earn him a raised eyebrow and a deep frown. The bandages are going to be removed delicately but quickly.

"Doctor McCoy? You're going to want to see this..."

The nurse switches biobeds so she can continue trending to Jim's injuries, despite grumbling from Bones add he storms over. The good doctor didn't like other people looking over the captain, apparently. Or he's just always this gruff. Or both.

"My God man! Are you trying to get an infection? Sit up. Jim what the hell were the two of you doing?!"

Bones grabs a hypo and a few devices. It's about as pleasant as it looked like Jim felt. Which is to say not.

"Bunch of damn fools."

[aw_hawkguy]

"Well, I had bandages," Clint points out. "From a hospital, even. This's just, y'know, part of the job."

Doctors hate it when Clint's blase about his injuries. It's his payback for needles and aw, what the hell was that?

[smartass_captain]

"Sucks, doesn't it?" You have Jim's sympathies, Clint. At least Bones was gentler to him than he is to the Captain.

"You shut up, Jim." All it takes for the blonde to sit back and let Christine look him over. McCoy's game is strong.

"What kinda backwater planet hospital just slaps a bandage on a man and sends him to fucking space, full of disease and death with open goddamn wounds." He's not lecturing Clint anymore, just grumbling to himself while devices are being waved over his injuries and thankfully, no more hypos are getting injected into his neck.

McCoy falls silent, frowns. Looks back at Clint.

"Where are you from, kid? You've got..." He rounds on Jim. "Mind telling me why the sporting young man with the gaping burn wounds has antibodies for diseases we ain't seen in two hundred years, Jim?"

"...Uh..."

They are so busted.

[aw_hawkguy]

Okay, this looks bad.

"Wouldja believe... Iowa?" Clint offers hopefully.

[smartass_captain]

"Iowa." Clint can see the muscles tick in Bones' jaw. He nods and Clint might think for a moment he's bought this explanation until he's hypod again.

"Christine, finish the regenerator on our mystery hick." Bones pulls Jim of the bones and back into his office.

**gentlemen are getting caught up on the Nexus and past plot...**

By the time Jim and the good doctor return Clint is good as new. But like, for real this time. The regenerators have treated his burns and fixed any bruising he got from the bar brawl earlier.

McCoy hauls Barton into his office as well and shuts the door behind them.

"Tell me Jim's got a hell of a concussion and you are not a mister Clint Barton from goddamn 2013." That bottle of bourbon Jim took is open now. Bones needed it.

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint gives a wan chuckle (although he has got to get some of that future medicine for his first-aid kits at home). "Sorry. 'S what it says on my driver's license," he apologizes. "I'll tell you the whole thing, but one, you're gonna think I'm crazy, two, I'm gonna hafta use the words 'alternate universe' at least twice, and that's not my favorite phrase, and three, you're gonna think I'm crazy. I said that already, but it bears repeating."

[smartass_captain]

Jim raises his eyebrows as if to say 'see?' Good news is, they've seen alternate universes, time travel and crazy before.

Bones still sits down hard in his chair, looking kind of shocked.

It takes him a minute to process this.

"Okay. Right. So if Jim's telling the truth, y'all are in for a ride. I'm gonna draw some blood, in case anything you've been exposed to reacts with your immune system."

The fight had gone from doctor McCoy, replaced instead with a worried friend who's doing good best to look out for Jim.

"We're going to keep this between us, by the by. And, for the record," Bones gives Clint a long look "next time y'all get hurt come back home with Jim. 2013 medicine my aching ass."

That's how you know he cares.

[aw_hawkguy]

"Keep what between us?" Clint asks, with a wink and a grin. "Gotta say, though, offer like that, you'll think I'm part'a the furniture around here." Those medical scans probably bear that claim out; Clint's in amazing shape for someone still recovering from as many beatings as he is (or was, before magic space medicine fixed him up).

"Seriously, it's nice to meet you, by the way."

[smartass_captain]

"He'll be the patient you wish I was." Jim quips, leaning against the far wall and grinning now that it looks like Bones isn't about to blow a gasket over this whole thing.

"Ugh, don't be." McCoy shakes his head and stands over to Clint's side to get a sample of blood before he opens the door to his office. "JUst...sit here a minute. Don' touch anything Jim." He adds, heading out for the labs.

Jim watches him go, a smile on his face that's seldom there in the Nexus. Not that he doesn't like his friends there. He does. But you treat your first and only (for a long damn time) friend special.

"Had to tell Bones where th'door was." Jim's voice has turned quiet. He looks a lot more sober than he'd been when they beamed up. "I think he feels responsible somehow..." He sighs. "He said 'next time' though, so I don't think he's gonna try t'stop me coming and going so long as it doesn't get in the way of the mission."

[aw_hawkguy]

It's okay, Clint understands that smile.

"Maybe he'll feel better if you bring him some'a Verity's cooking," he suggests, watching Dr. McCoy as best he can from his vantage. He fidgets a bit, hating to sit still, but this place seems to have a distinct lack of the usual doctor-office toys (tongue depressors, cotton balls, swabs, even paper clips) with which he can do a bit of target practice.

[smartass_captain]

It has a ton of those PADD things Jim occasionally is playing with, a modest desk, and a holopic of a little girl giving a toothless grin tucked away in a corner.

Otherwise, it's a pretty timeless doctor's office, if you discount the constant thrum of the engines that remind you 'holy fuck' you're in space.


Mc.Coy isn't gone for long. And he looks upset again when he comes back.

"You. C'mere." He doesn't explain anything but drags Jim off toward the labs. Far enough away where Clint can't hear anything, but if he can read lips he'll probably still be able to pick up on everything.

"Jim. I gotta ask you a question--and, keep in mind I'm asking as your doctor here. Your friend really doesn't want to know. Please tell me you aren't shacking up with this guy."

"Wh--Bones I told you I wasn't. Clint's not like that, also it'd be weird somehow. So no."

"Oh thank fucking god." McCoy scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. What? Is CLint terminally ill and doesn't know it? Seriously. What.

"WHAT?!" Okay yeah, Jim is in agreement with whatever 'what' is.

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint learned to lip-read when he was a kid (it's a long, unhappy story). He leans forward a little, following the distant conversation with interest.

[smartass_captain]

"No." Jim is shaking his head. "There's--you know why Bones. There's no way."

"Do I look like I'm goddamn kidding around, Jim?" Oh man. Is it Bone-itis? Some kind of rare genetic disease that's going to turn him inside out in a year? Who knows what kind of crap they know about medicine in the future.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

"Well what are we supposed to say?"

"Not a damn thing."

"You can't expect--"

"You know damn well why!" More fighting, mostly back and forth. And then Jim is throwing his hands in the air in defeat and sulking off. Back to the office.

"Uh...Hey." Jim swallows and forces a smile. "You feeling well enough to get on back soon here?"

[aw_hawkguy]

"Hey," Clint greets in answer, before signing: [I can lip-read, Jim.] If something's up, he feels he deserves to know--especially if it's about him.

[smartass_captain]

Jim stares at him for almost a minute. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Grins like a goddamn idiot and starts laughing.

"You too, huh?" Okay so probably not something terminal. Jim wouldn't be laughing about that right? Right? Not cool, Jim.

He leans out to see where Bones is. "So, uh." Coast's clear. Bones is checking up on some other patients for a minute. Jim sits on the edge of McCoy's desk.

"At the risk of making everything really weird between us...y'know how we're always jokin' around? About havin' the same luck and being from Iowa and all that?" Jim bites at his lower lip and tries not to laugh because honestly this is crazy. Ten kinds of crazy.

"Apparently we're related. Bones thinks times gonna pop if you know that, since you're from some kind of the past. Like, directly related--not some kind of 15th cousin xth removed."

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint has seen weird. He's seen strange. He has taken a seat on a city bus in the Bronx.

This? Blows all of that out of the water (even being one of three guys in a Hawkeye uniform on that bus). "What, like, direct-direct? Like... I'm gonna-...?" Give him a minute. He runs his hand through his hair. "I'm not sure how that's possible. I mean, your past doesn't have, like, mutants and Captain America in it, right? So how does that work?"

[smartass_captain]

"Hell if I know, Grandpa. Or great great...eh. 200 year worth of greats in there." Jim gives a shrug.

"Probably alternate timelines. I'm assuming even if Captain America was never a thing, Steve Rogers and Clint Barton still were somewhere along the line. Just in a different mashup. As an alternate timeline Jim Kirk already, I can pretty much guarantee you'll start to taste purple and get a migraine if you think about it too hard."

[aw_hawkguy]

"I like purple," Clint murmurs, coming to terms with the strangeness of it. "Yeah, that makes sense. I've fought some evil-other Hawkeyes, there'd have to be a decent-family-man Barton out there somewhere. At least, I hope he was a decent family man."

[smartass_captain]

"Let's not think too hard about whether our mutual abusive childhoods affected us in hypothetical ways. Because my ma and dad were great. It was Frank who...a anyway. Point is, nothing that's happened to me--any me, is your fault."

Jim is smiling more and more while he talks.

"I...think it's kind of neat, actually. You'd be the first relative of mine I trust." Something occurs and that smile becomes strained. "I mean, we can also just pretend I didn't say anything."

[aw_hawkguy]

Clint can't help but grin, as well. When you get past the dimensional weirdness, it's nice to have a little bit more of a family, especially someone good like Jim. "No, no," he's quick to dismiss the idea of pretending it didn't happen, "it's good, I'm glad I know. This is actually really cool. And hey, we just had a family outing, right?" There's that grin again.

"Man, Verity's gonna flip."

[smartass_captain]

He didn't mind being related to Jim? That's...a first, actually. The captain's face splits into a huge grin.

"For simplicity's sake, I'm just going to treat us like brothers. Feels weird otherwise, us being similar ages and all."

If all family outings with Clint are going to end in disaster, Jim thinks maybe that's okay too.

[aw_hawkguy]

"Brothers." Clint tries the idea on for size and smiles. "Sounds good. This is gonna blow Barney's mind if I tell 'im."

Disaster: it's a Barton family tradition!

[smartass_captain]

"I've always wanted an older brother." Jim smiles but it's strained as he hops off the table and heads toward the door.

Guess it hadn't been the same for Sam. Replacing him should feel good. It didn't.

"We clear for dismissal, Bones? I've gotta see my guest home after all."

"Try not t'get in trouble before he gets gone, kid." Clint gets a slightly uncomfortable look from Bones, but hey. It is pretty weird.

Jim's already walking off back toward engineering.

[aw_hawkguy]

"And I've always wondered if I could hack not bein' the little bro," Clint muses.

It's not replacing Sam--Jim isn't losing Sam, just gaining Clint.

On his way out, Clint calls, "hey, uh, thanks again. Best I've healed in years."

He'll be catching up to Jim in short order.