For the fic title meme " Monsters have hearts you know?
Hmm! I could have used that for my Monster AU dang!
Monsters Have Hearts, You Know?
Clint hears his dad coming and hides under his bed. “Move,” he tells the shadows, which shrink back in surprise. He hopes his dad is drunk enough that he won’t go looking for him–sometimes when he’s that drunk, he forgets what he was gonna beat Clint for, and Clint doesn’t have to worry about it until the next time his dad gets drunk, usually.
It’s not one of the nights where he’s that lucky.
“Where are you, you little shit,” his dad mutters, grabbing under the bed, and Clint shrinks back further, shaking. He can’t help a whimper as his father’s fingers hook in his shirt.
Then a paw slams down on top of his father’s hand in the sliver of light under the bed. Clint shakes when he sees the claws dug into his dad’s hand, the blood seeping out onto the floor, hears his father’s angry, pained growl.
His dad’s growl has nothing on the one the shadows let out, and then the claws release his dad’s hand so that the creature, whatever it is, scrambles for the gap between the bed and the floor. It’s scaly, kinda, or maybe furry? Clint can’t tell, but the sound it makes as it scrambles into the light is terrifying. He can hear his dad attempting to say something, but can’t understand what it is over the monster’s snarls and growls. Finally, the monster flings his dad out of his room–at least, it must throw him, Clint thinks, because his father’s feet had left the ground and then he’d landed six feet away at the door.
Clint shakes again as the monster crawls back under his bed, but it doesn’t turn those bloody claws on him, just curls around him, and it takes a few minutes, but eventually he realizes that the creature is purring. It feels nice against his back. The monster is warm and it curls an arm (leg?) around him and pulls him close.
He wakes up in his bed and thinks he dreamed the whole thing until he sees the bandages wrapped around his dad’s hand the next morning.
Clint’s older the next time he sees the creature, just starting with the circus. He’s somehow pissed off one of the older carnies and is hiding beneath one of the lion’s cages. The lion keeps making angry noises, so he thinks the carnie won’t approach. He sees a hand clawing under the cage after him, and he curses softly, because Barney will be mad when he comes limping to dinner. They’re trying to keep their heads down and if he keeps pissing off the wrong people they’re going to get kicked out.
A paw slams down on the hand reaching toward him, and Clint jolts a little when he realizes the angry noises hadn’t been coming from the lion. The man howls in pain, and Clint realizes two of the monster’s claws are sunk clean through his hand and into the dirty ground below it. The monster releases the man’s hand and then surges out from under the cage, and Clint squeezes his eyes shut as the carnie screams and screams. He hears a thud, and then the scampering of feet.
The monster crawls back under the cage and wraps around him, purring.
“I thought you went away forever,” Clint whispers. The monster chuffs in amusement and curls tighter around him. Clint lets his eyes drift closed. He knows the creature won’t let anything happen to him.
He wakes up to Barney losing his fucking mind because he’s curled up in the lion’s cage. He bolts before the lion can wake up completely, terrified.
Clint’s curled up against some rubble in Budapest the next time he sees the creature. He’s grappling with someone’s hand, trying to point their gun away from him. He’d recognize that growl anywhere, but the paw slamming down on the man’s hand and puncturing it with claws is all too familiar, too.
“Clint, what the fuck–” Romanoff begins, spinning toward him, because he’s supposed to be covering her. Then her eyes go wide, and she manages a terrified, “Holy shit,” before Clint grabs her and drags her down beside him.
The monster lets out a terrible screeching sound, claws rending stone as it crawls at the enemies. Clint thinks he sees wings before he has to duck behind the rubble to avoid gunfire again. He wonders if that’s new. He’s never really seen more than the creature’s feet. Still hasn’t seen more than that, not really.
He hears screaming and the wet sound of flesh rending and jerks Natasha back into his arms when she tries to run. “It’s okay.”
“What the fuck is that thing,” Natasha screeches, then buries her face in his chest and bites her bottom lip when the creature makes another horrible noise.
Neither of them say anything after the gunfire has stopped, trembling, but Natasha does make a terrified sound as something wraps around them.
“You’re pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you, scaring my friend,” Clint asks, exhaustion covering the amusement in his voice.
The creature churrs and laps at his hair so it’s sticking straight up. It feels like it’s laughing at him. He relaxes a little. It’s still purring, apparently not upset about Natasha being there at all.
He wakes up to their handlers screaming at them, asking what happened, because everyone’s dead and the intel they’d needed is set in a neat little pile beside them. Natasha remains stonily silent. Clint doesn’t blame her.
Clint is falling from a building without any grappling arrows in the middle of a battle in New York, reaching out for hands that aren’t there for help, when he sees the creature next. Or, well. Not a creature exactly.
“What would you do without me?” Iron Man asks, amused.
“Be a pancake, probably,” Clint answers breathlessly, too full of adrenaline to try to be funny. That had been close. He’d thought Iron Man had been too far away.
“You’d be a very unattractive pancake, Clint,” Iron Man says, and drops him off on top of another building. His repulsors whirr in a familiar way as he leaves, and Clint can’t help but stare after him, perplexed, before turning and shooting a–it’s an alien, okay, this day can’t get any weirder.
Then the people in charge send a nuclear bomb for New York, but of course they would, leaders were idiots, it didn’t matter who they hurt as long as they stayed safe. It didn’t matter that they’d gotten the portal closed, that it was just a matter of time before the rest of the aliens are quelled. They just had to fuck it up one last time, apparently.
“What do we do, Cap?” Natasha asks softly.
Captain America actually stops fighting for a moment to just look as endlessly old and tired as he probably is. “I don’t know.”
Then Iron Man lets out this–this terrible sound, like metal rending and agony and rage all at once, and the armor starts to splinter and twist.
Clint’s never actually seen the monster before. He kind of thinks it was scarier when he hadn’t, because this… this is a strange creature, but not hideous, not terrible. It looks like a bird and a lizard and a dog had a baby, limbs bending at odd joints and blue eyes glowing in its head, maw gaping open to let out another terrible screech spill past rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth. It twists in on itself once, twice, three times, before surging in the direction the nuke is coming from.
Clint watches in horror as it collides with the bomb, and electricity crackles over it violently before it just… disappears.
It’s quite for a few moments, as if the shock has even stunned the aliens that had still been battling them. But no explosion comes, and with the realization that they’re going to live, at least for the moment, they dive back into battle.
Clint is just climbing down from a building when he sees the creature next. Or, well, “creature” is a strong term.
“I’ve always wondered what schwarma is,” Iron Man–Tony Stark–says around a mouthful of food. “’s lamb. Bite?” he asks, offering his gyro to him.
Clint turns it down, stomach still too sick with nerves. “No thanks.”
“You’re a lot of trouble, you know,” Tony says around another bite. “Every time I think your situation is improved, and then you go and get attacked by some asshole.”
“Sorry,” Clint says, more on instinct than anything.
“It’s okay,” Tony says. “I took responsibility for you that first night, so it’s really my fault, anyway.”
Clint steps closer so he can pull him into a hug. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
Tony blinks, looking honestly perplexed. “You’re mine. Of course I’ll take care of you.”
Clint thinks that should probably upset him, but it doesn’t. Mostly he just wants to hold Tony forever, and maybe buy him another sandwich.
He feels Tony begin to purr and smiles to himself, pulling him closer.
