Owner	Pose
Clint Barton	It's a balmy New York summer evening, a great time to be outside, especially if you have a nice deck with sun and shade to be found, which of course, Clint and Skye did. They also had archery targets set up against the back fence, because of course they did. Clint lifts his bow, and in a single smooth motion fires an arrow down range to thunk solidly in the bullseye. "So," he grins as he lowers his bow. "Which of our neighbours are going to complain this time? My money is on Mr. Mendelson"
Skye Johnson	"Mendelson, huh?" Skye has dragged out Merido and Julio, and is stringing them. Arrows nearby. "Let's see. Kravitz is on vacation. The Barclays don't care. I think they secretly want to be invited over and be one of the cool kids. I'm going with the Phillips three doors down." No, there was no possible way the Phillips should be able to see what the pair were doing, but Clint had already taken the Mendelsons and they were about the same distance away the other direction, so... "You so cheat," she complains, taking her turn at the range with Merida. Sighting, and letting loose. No. She doesn't strike his arrow down the middle splitting it, but she does hit the ring outside the bullseye.
Clint Barton	"We could always invite the Barclays to one of our big parties, just so /someone/ in the neighbourhood likes us," Clint smiles watching with satisfaction as Skye effortlessly strings her bows. It felt like it was only yesterday she was learning to shoot but now here she was two bows in on her collection and confident shot. "Phillips, a bold choice," Clint observes crossing his arms and leaning against the railing while Skye shoots. "Right? I did that whole not having a childhood cheating thing where I practiced everyday," he teases with a smirk and brows lifting above his purple tinted shades. "Nice shot," he remarks earnestly as Skye strikes close to the bullseye. "Ever figure if you could guide an arrow with your powers?" he asks. He knew she'd joked about it before but he didn't know if she ever gave it a try.
Skye Johnson	"The Phillips just want to be left alone. I think they hate Mrs. Kravitz too. She lets her dog do his thing on their lawn when she thinks nobody is looking. And thank-you." She grins back at him, fairly proud of her shot. She'd worked hard to get where she was in her archery, and gaining powers had set that back significantly at first. "Still say you cheat." Clint gets a fond hip check as she moves over to let him take his next shot. "Yeah. I've been playing around with it. It's a lot harder than it looks. Fine tunining on a moving object is a bit weird. Or even the air around it. Much better at sending it off course than directing it to a spot." She gives him a serious look. "Pretty sure I can stop a bullet, Hotshot." She'd been holding that one in check.
Clint Barton	Clint shakes his head. "Wonder what makes people like that," he says of Mrs. Kravits. "I mean, the folks in my building in Brooklyn werne't assholes, think it it's a money thing?" Because if there was one thing that divided BedStuy from Greenwich it was money. Well, except Clint and Skye. "Welcome, Keyboard," he says and means it, before laughing and hand flapping in response to Skye's accusation. "Uh-huh." Just for that, he barely tries with his shot, just a quick peek down range, a quick drawing back of his string then, thwack, another arrow hits the bullseye. "You're not alone in thinking I cheat though, when I first joined SHIELD to see if my shooting was a meta or mutant thing, totally wasn't of course, but it took a lot of tests before they believed me," he chuckles as he steps back to give Skye some room to shoot. He gives her a nod, "Yeah, just guessing but you'd basically need to make the arrow 'surf' on your vibrations, right? That'd be tricky, but yeah, makes sense knocking stuff out of whack would be easier." "For real?" Clint says, his eyes are hidden by his shades but it's easy to imagine them widening at that revelation. He ventures curiously. "Have you tried it?"
Skye Johnson	"If you ask me, I think she's jealous other people get laid," Skye says, watching Clint take his next shot. She smirks as he tells his tale of 'when I first joined SHIELD..' the story making her both happy and amused. "Nobody asked if my hacking was a mutant thing. I feel cheated." Then again, Clint hadn't been given the 'this or a 4X6 welcome to SHIELD' speech either. When he's done his shot, she steps up and takes aim again. "You can really shoot more than one arrow at a time? How long did that take you to learn anyway?" It takes her a moment to steady her bow, aim, pull, and then release, this second shot nestling tight up against her first on the bullseye side of the ring. "Yeah, for real. And who am I going to get to shoot at me? For real, can you picture me explaining to May what I want?"
Clint Barton	"Probably right," Clint says with a smirk about Ms. Kravitz. "I am sure she could find someone if she didn't act like a little black hole of hate all the time." He shakes his head and chuckles about them not checking Skye, "Are you sure they didn't?" he teases, after all SHIELD and its secrets. "Totally, I'm up to four reliably, five in a pinch, Kate's better at that than me, she's got five arrows down solid," he explains. "How long? Years, and years, had to get shooting one arrow to be second nature before I could work out on the fly where to put more than one arrow where I wanted it. " He offers a fist bump for Skye's shot, total points for consitency there, close grouping like that was tricky. Clint lets out a low whistle, "That's pretty badass, and..." he laughs. "Yeah, /that/ would be a fun conversation. May would either just give you a /look/ or pull her ICER and shoot you on the spot. You know, all Matrix style, 'block this'," he says shaking his head. He steps up to the railing drawing four arrows from his quiver and putting them on the string stuck between his fingers, he takes a breath, concentrates, pulls and lets fly. Thack, thack, thack, thack. The arrows formed a line to one side of the bullseye. "Really want to be able to do six, then I can make a happy face," he quips as he steps back from the rail again.
Skye Johnson	Skye stops dead when Clint asks 'are you sure'. "Fuck me, I forgot about that. They totally did." After all, she'd been handed the file where the results had been kept. Hell, they'd known before they'd picked her up. Fury had, at least. "You know what I mean, though. It wasn't for hacking. Weird to think if I'd never become what I am now, I'd still have been.." Her lips purse as she doesn't follow that up with the words most would use. Impressive. Beyond talented. An asset. Special. They were words that felt odd to the former runaway from the foster program. "No clue why she's the way she is," Skye continues. "You have to imagine she was nicer at one point. There was a Mr Kravitz." He gets a shrug. "Not sure it's badass. I've been playing with directed shielding, though. Figured it out when I was seeing how precisely I could control a stream. It's not really a lot different than knocking something off course. A bit easier, really, as it's all front directed. And not sure an ICER counts?" There's a laugh for the Matrix comment. "Can you picture me all in black, with a trench coat and shades?" Not that her SHIELD gear wasn't already more than halfway there. "Fuck that's impressive."
Clint Barton	Clint nods, they'd had checked into Skye but not because of her hacking but because they knew where she came from and what had been differnet about her DNA, even if they hadn't had the whole picture. "Yeah I know what you mean," Clint says nodding. "Awesome?" Clint suggests when Skye trails off, though he seems to be on the same track as she is, "Yeah, even without the whole Quake thing, you were kicking ass as an agent, I mean when we met you were planning Hammerfall." He shakes his head. "Feels like forever ago, and at the same time not, y'know?" "Yeah, I could see loss doing that," he says about Ms. Kravitz. "You have superpowers, that's badass by default," Clint assures her with a sage nod. "And hmm, might not count, ICERs fly slower to reduce the kinetic impact of the rounds, but , might do for a proof of concept. Not that I'm looking to shoot you or anything." He laughs at the other, "That depends," Clint says with a grin. "Are you wearing anything else in that scenario?" As for the shot? He grins, "Thanks."
Skye Johnson	Skye grins crookedly, "Yeah. Feels like forever ago, doesn't it? And what was I thinking? I wasn't even a full agent then. Walking up to Fury and telling him what we were going to do and why and he.." She looks over to Clint, shaking her head. "That's.. not really normal, is it? Sometimes I wonder what the heck. And then I think about what I'm doing now and think this is why? Or is this because of all that." She's not unaware she's a good agent, if not an exceptional one. Even if it feels odd to admit that to herself. "I'm glad I stuck with it. I mean, I wasn't all the time then, but all those things I was doing before.. and then all the things being with SHIELD allowed me to do. Night and day. I wake up every day and know I'm making a difference. I was.. lying to myself a lot with Rising Tide. I didn't have anything else." His reasoning on ICERs gives her pause. "True. She might go for that. Might make me wear some protective gear, but I bet we could convince her with that reasoning. Better to know now than have to try it in the field." Skye laughs at his question. "More than a trenchcoat? You wish you knew the answer."
Clint Barton	"Totally does," Clint says his eyes going distant as he tripped through his own memories of the past couple of years. "Yeah, that's pretty rare, someone just bursting in on the boss like that and tellihg him how it's going to be, especially as a level one." He shakes his head. "But thankfully Fury likes that shit, look at the people he surrounds himself with. None of them are really the file forms in triplicate type when they know what's right." Clint nods to the rest, "It's pretty great isn't it? Making a difference, plus like you've said before the folks a SHIELD are miles better than the Rising Tide crew, we care about each other, everyone's got everyone else's back, And as someone who got adopted by a circus full of crooks, I know what you mean, when you're alone you grab for any connection you can find." He makes a face when his mind flits back to those hollow days that filled his pockets but not his soul. "Possibly," Clint says of the ICER plan, "I just want to be there when you pitch it to her." He grins then, "And I was thinking /only/ the trenchcoat actually, well, besides the shades."
Skye Johnson	"You'd have to buy m e a trenchcoat. And shades," Skye grins at him. She nods, though. "Much better than the Tide. I mean, there were a few good guys. Genus. Wonder how he's doing. And Fury.. took me too long to figure out I was doing exactly what he wanted me to do. He was kinda smug when I did. He's got enough paper pushers and in the boxes kinds for days. And the funny thing is, I didn't see myself as that person - that competent person. I don't even know when I became that person. Back then I was going on instinct and guts. If I'd stopped to think about it much I probably wouldn't have." Which was utterly amusing if you knew Skye, becausse in what world did she ever not say or do what she thought was right?
Clint Barton	"Oh, I can definitely buy you those," Clint says with a grin. He pushes himself up so he's sitting on the railing, nodding along to Skye's words. "Yeah, that's Fury's superpower, he has us all dancing to his tune thinking we're the one picking the music, it's a good thing he's a good guy," he says with a smile. "And yeah, I think if you did a poll everyone in SHIELD would say the same about feeling competant, well, except maybe May, but yeah, most of us just do what we think is right in the moment and hope that's what we needed to do. I think what set us apart is for us 'what's right' doesn't always match 'what the rules say', which, like you said, is why Fury keeps us around." He chuckles warmly then. "You might have paused for a bit, but I still think you would have done what you did if you had time to think about it, you do what's right, that's who you are."
Skye Johnson	Skye smiles at Clint, and tiptoes up, offering her lips for a kiss. "I think I realized it somewhere in Tidepool. The commpetant thing. Out there in the wild, undercover and alone, I was.. it was really frightening at times. And then suddenly it wasn't. It was like I knew what had to be done and how to do it. I could see it all and.. If I ever doubted where I wanted to be.." Again, she shakes her head. "I couldn't go back. I love what I do. I love this life. This job. The people we surround ourselves with. Even love the jerk who made fun of me.."
Clint Barton	Clint slips back down to the railing to accept those offered lips, giving Skye a slow and adoring kiss. "You know we could always just skip the trenchoat and the shades," he teases grinning. Clint nods, "That's a pretty good sign this is the life you're meant for, that moment where your brain has the choice to break or get shit done and it picks get shit done, not everyone can do that," he smiles. "And yeah, hard to turn your back on all of that when you get a taste of it, belonging, loving what you can do..." He smiles, "Not sure about this jerk though, sure he's worth it?"
Skye Johnson	"Skip the trenchcoat? That's the best part!" Skye protests, laughing. "And if you by the stuff, I'll wear them." Totally a promise there. "I might even let you take them off of me." Also a promise. "Yeah. It was like that. Things were.. and then they were clear." The kiss is returned, until she breathes, softly, at the break of it, "I can't picture being someone else. Not being this." Then she adds saucily. "Not sure the jerk is worth it, but he's good in bed. Should introduse you to him sometime. You might like him."
Clint Barton	There's only one possible reply to Skye's teasing promises, Clint swaps his bow for his phone and opens up his Amazon app, "So what size coat do you wear again?" he teases with a grin. "It's pretty great, huh? That moment of clarity?" he asks. "Like suddenly all those questions, what do I do? Where do I belong? Answered." Leaning his head against Skye's, Clint nods, "Couldn't imagine being with anyone else either." He snorts, "Sounds like a good guy, but you sure you don't mean amazing in bed?" he asks with a grin.
Skye Johnson	"Pfft," Skye scoffs. "He has a huge ego. I wouldn't say amazing in bed in case his head exploded with it all. Besides, this way I can convince him to practice more. And we'll see. I mean, I'd hate to have to share him." She wraps her arms about his waist. "Ladies medium. And it's the best."
Clint Barton	Clint laughs warmly putting away the phone, he'd order the trenchcoat and shades later, rush delivery, and wrapping his arms around Skye's waist. "Yeah, he does seem like a handful and well if he needs some practice, I really shouldn't keep you here," he smiles. "I mean, he's got to work his way up to amazing." He smiles, then and kisses her, laughing as he presses his lips to hers, "God, I love you, Keyboard."
Skye Johnson	"Love you too, Hotshot," Skye whispers against his lips as she presses the sign of it with her fingers into his back. "Care to go practice? I mean, if you're not busy or anything."
Clint Barton	Clint presses the same against Skye's back even as he grins, "I dunno, my schedule is pretty full but I think I could fit some in..." he teases kissing her again. After their lips part, he says, "Let's grab our bow stuff and head inside, last one upstairs has to chase the cats off the bed," he says with a laugh and a final kiss stolen from Skye's lips.
Skye Johnson	Skye just laughs, makes a break for it by grabbing up her bow, and deking inside, closing and locking the door behind her, signing ~Lock the front door behind you~ and deals with her bows before making it upstairs to get ready for bed. Who knows, she might even make it worth his while.