IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: Like I say in the summary, I was literally dared to write this. I've had this character sitting around for a while and haven't really done anything with her yet, and my friend bet me that I couldn't fit her into an Avenger's fanfiction with a pairing.

...it may or may not become obvious why this is worthy of a dare. If it isn't, I guess I did my job well.

Also! The girl's supposed to have a very slight Norwegian accent. Yeah, if anyone's read "Half Past Nine in Norway," you'll notice that I'm a little in love with that country. I blame my AP Euro essay. There's another similarity between the stories, too, but it was inevitable if I wanted to keep the character intact.

This'll be written entirely in Clint's point of view unless requested otherwise. And I have no idea what the character's age is supposed to be, but some reason I always imagined him relatively young (and yeah, I know that the actor is like forty, but Robert Downey Jr is forty-seven and I'm pretty sure he's playing a thirty-something year old). Probably because I always imagined Natasha young, and assumed they were around the same age.

Okay, so now that that's over, disclaimer!: I own nothing but my own character and whatever OC pops up for convenience.

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I.

There's a twenty-four hour diner on the corner of Eighth and Forty-Fourth that Clint likes to escape to when he can't deal with anyone else for a while. On a Friday morning at three, after long, post-mission argument with Fury about the use of explosive arrows in narrow spaces, he heads over, hands in his pockets, just wanting to sit down with a coffee and ignore the softly played 80s songs coming from the speakers. It's something like a routine, but too sporadic to really count, and it's never failed him before.

So why, at three in the morning during an early autumn storm, is there a closed sign hanging from inside the glass door of a twenty-four hour diner?

"We never get anyone between two and four when it rains," says a voice from his side. He looks over, and there's a girl he shockingly hadn't noticed sitting on the window ledge under the awning. She has long, curly blonde hair and blue eyes with freckles across the bridge of her nose, wearing the dark green waitress shirt, speaking with a slight accent that he can't identify off the top of his head. She continues, "Ellie and Josh decided to use the time to get to know each other a little better."

She does air quotes around "get to know" and the middle-aged graveyard waitress' name tag says Eleanor, so Clint can only assume the girl means her, and Josh is most likely the decrepit, old cook. He easily could've gone through his life never knowing that, and would regret nothing. "What're you doing here, then?" he asks because the shirt is a dead giveaway that she's an employee.

"My shift ends at five," she answers, expression turning sullen, "so I'm expected to stick here until they get back and finish my last hour. Are that - god, what did they call you? - Hawkeye guy from the whole saving the world thing?"

The recognition comes as a surprise. Normally it's Natasha or Steve or Tony who receive the media attention because he's just that awkward bow-and-arrow person that chills on rooftops (a blogger's words, not his and he finds the use of awkward to be a little ironic since, besides maybe Tony, he's probably the least socially uncomfortable out of all of them). "Yeah," he says.

The girl stands and adjusts the strap of the messenger bag she has thrown over one shoulder. "There's a pumpkin pie that I can't get to my boyfriend because of the storm," she tells him. "Saving the world authorizes you a free dessert if you want it. I can let us in through the kitchen."

Since there's rarely good reason to turn down any type of pie, and the girl looks more like same high school kid rather than a criminal mastermind, he says, "Sure." The girl smiles and he notices that her mouth is a little wide for a face predominately made up of fine features. As he follows her into the alley and over to the kitchen side door, he adds, "You aren't going to get in trouble for this, right?"

She slides the key into the lock and pushes open the door. "What the lovebirds don't know won't hurt them," she answers, flicking on the light and shutting the door behind him. He takes a mental note that she hasn't locked it. "Same goes for Mrs. Alan - she's the owner. Besides, is it really going to take you an hour to eat a couple slices? Sit over there."

He follows directions because there's little point in not and she drops her bag on the tabletop next to him before going over to the over sized refrigerator. He catches a glimpse of a notebook cover and says, "Russian One?"

The girl turns around and he gets his first good look at her. Her chest is small (a fact not helped by the baggy shirt), her hips wide, her arms twiggy-looking from under the short sleeves. There's a bruise half hidden on her upper arm. She's short too, probably only five foot even, with weirdly little hands that should belong to an eight-year-old, not someone fully grown. She could be anywhere between sixteen and twenty-one, and for comfort's sake, he hopes she's at least legal because she's pretty hot in that you're-way-too-young-for-me sort of way.

She says, "Oh, yeah," and puts the two slices of pumpkin pie and a glass of water in front of him before taking a seat too. "It's for college. I'm a multilingualism major at NYU."

College. Right. Odds are that she's legal, then, so sitting alone with her in the back of diner is a little less uncomfortable and definitely not as creepy.

"Cool," he says because he can't think of anything else but he's eating what's meant for her boyfriend so he feels pretty much obligated to talk. And said pie is way better than however Natasha makes it. "So how's that going for so far..." He takes a look at her name tag and blinks. "Jesus, I'm not even going to try."

With a laugh, she says, "It's pronounced Bree-oh-nee. Um, here, a formal introduction." She ticks out her hand. "Briony Frederiksen."

"Clint Barton." They shake. "Just call me Clint."

Again, she smiles. "So how's the pie? Josh made it for me, so you can say if it's bad."

"No, it's good." He can tell it's the cook, too, because he's gotten this before in the early morning, and it tastes the same. "You still have some for your boyfriend, right?"

"Nope," she says cheerfully, tucking her hair behind ear, which he sees isn't pierced. Sometimes it's annoying noticing everything, but after years of observation training, it's become instinct. He also knows just from looking that the best attack point is behind the file cabinet stuck in the corner, pushed a little away from the wall, and the easiest escape route is back through the door to the alley. "But whatever, it was a peace offering thing anyway. Jack will just have to deal with a normal apology for once."

So they must fight a lot, Clint thinks. "Okay," he says. "Thanks for this, by the way."

"Any time." The accents sounds like it comes from one of the Scandinavian countries, even though her first name sounds British. After a moment, she adds, "This is going to be a weird question but as like some secret agent person, do you know anything about Russian grammar? Or is that a James Bond thing?"

As someone who'd only seen two James Bond movies, he hadn't known the iconic character knew any different languages. And though it's a little out of the blue, he wouldn't necessarily call the question weird. "I know mostly slang, but I can try to help," he says because he's assuming grammar doesn't change all that much from dialect to dialect. "What're you having trouble with?"

The girl - Briony - looks relieved as she fully pulls out the Russian I notebook. As she flips through it, she answers, "Past tense. People always say that after learning one foreign language the rest are easy, but I know four and this is still giving me a headache."

He pushes the now-empty pie place aside and looks down at the page in front of him, verifying that no, grammar doesn't change from dialect to dialect. "You're on the right track," he answers, "but at the end of the sentence, you're changing it to future tense."

"What? I haven't learned that yet."

"Do you have a pen?" She looks through her bag and hands him one. It's red. "See, this is what you're supposed to do."

The lesson goes by in fifteen minutes, which feels fast but she seems to be following along fine. When he finishes and she gets another sentence right, she says, "You just made that a thousand times easier than the way Professor Chex taught it."

"That's the way my friend showed me," he says. The date at the top of the page reads October 6, 2012, making these notes date back a week ago. "Why didn't you get help earlier?"

With a shrug, she answers, "My best friend's a classic's major, so any modern language other than English doesn't interest her, my boyfriend only took a semester of German for the credit, and all my classmates are about as clueless as I am - was. Seriously, thank you."

Though Briony is talkative, he appreciates that she's also direct. Most women (and Natasha would kill him if she ever heard him generalize like this) always have to skirt around...well, everything. And tend to phrase things like questions. "Hey, you gave me free pie."

"I guess Mamma's right about food being the quickest way to a boy's heart," she says with a hint of mocking and not the least bit flirty. Her eyes flick to the digital clock on the wall and she groans. "Okay, Ellie and Josh should be back soon, so I better chill out front. Just let yourself out, I have to wash the dishes."

About forty minutes passed, he sees, and wonders how he hadn't noticed time go by so fast. "Well, thanks, Briony," he says, standing. "It was nice meeting you." Considering that he hasn't met someone that he actually needs to be polite to in a while, the words sound unfamiliar.

"Nice meeting you too," she says, already at the sink. "Oh, and Clint." He stops midway to the door and glances back at her. "I'm here from one to five Fridays, Saturdays, and Mondays. You know, if you want free food."

"Sure," he says because he ends up here relatively often anyway and now that he's aware that middle-aged graveyard lady and the cook are off banging somewhere thankfully not in the general vicinity, he isn't sure he'll be able to be around them without remembering the way Briony said "lovebirds."

So she smiles and turns around and as he pulls the door shut behind him, he's pretty sure she's humming "Singing in the Rain."

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Yeah, I know nothing about Russian.

Also, first chapter! I'm going to correct any Clint OOC-ness asap because this chapter for the most part was just me working out their dynamic.

Review please! I will love you. Totally. :3 And please no flames. =/