7. Chapter 7

Clint snarled as he rescued himself with a back flip off the pole. "Damnit!" He kicked it. "This is a piece of shit!"

Clint could almost hear the stage manager, Sitwell, rolled his eyes. "It's the best, sturdiest stand-alone pole on the market. I can't do better, you get that, Barton? Because better doesn't exist! You're the only damn one in the lineup who is using a pole anyway, so just…I don't know, adjust!" Sitwell yelled. The guy had seemed unflappable at first, but Clint had driven him to his last nerve. Clint thought that maybe the guy should at least get an award for holding out as long as he had. They had been in rehearsals all of two weeks, and Clint's routine was so far the most problematic. He actually broke the first pole they tried to use. It had to be portable, if the show was going to tour, but the kind of act Clint did required a piece of equipment built to withstand not just his weight but his torque.

"Yeah, it's the best if you're built like Natasha! There isn't a circus on earth that would travel with this crap." Clint kicked it again. "Phil!" He yelled out to where Phil was hiding, probably assuming that Clint had not heard him sneak into the otherwise empty theater. It was too easy for Clint, sometimes, to let people underestimate him but he was not interested in playing games with the cool-as-ice bar manager just then. The guy had been avoiding Clint generally, despite his habit of sneaking in to watch Clint practice. Clint had wanted to let that go on indefinitely, getting off on knowing that he managed to break the frozen calm of the ex-Ranger. But the problem with the pole outranked Clint's dirty little fantasies, and he was enough of a professional to admit it.

"Yes?" Phil moved out of the back, towards the stage, after he spoke.

Clint almost laughed at Sitwell's small gasp of surprise, but there was no time for petty revenge. "I need a better pole." Clint pointed at the offending object.

Phil sighed. "You heard Sitwell. That is the best pole. And you hate it."

"Then we've got a problem." Clint threw his hands up in the air then plopped down on the floor. "Because I can't do my show on this without breaking something, and by 'something' I mean me."

Phil walked up and jumped onto the stage. He must have given Sitwell some signal because he stomped off without a word, leaving Clint and Phil alone.

Phil came over and crouched down next to Clint, who looked over at him. He knew his eyes were disturbing to see, broken and tracking nothing, because an honest nurse had answered his question about it once. She told him that he looked possessed, one eye clouded over and spidery while the other wandered, unmoored. Clint tried to wear glasses all the time after that but it was too much to ask a performer to practice with them on, so he figured Sitwell and Phil could just damn well get over the creepy factor.

Phil, in fact, seemed to have done just that. "What do you want me to do, Clint? The show needs to be portable. This pole is rated for over 500 pounds, and you're not half that."

"Damn it, it's not about weight. It's torque and tension and suspension." Clint sighed and closed his eyes.

"You don't have to close your eyes on my account."

Clint laughed. "Habit. Anyway I know they don't bother you. You're always willing to get in my face, get on my level."

"Is there a reason I shouldn't?"

"Most people think a blind guy doesn't care where you are when you talk to them. They think we don't notice the things they do just because we can't see them. You don't make that assumption." Clint leaned back on his hands. He heard Phil sit down all the way, probably sitting cross-legged.

"The first time I saw your act, you threw your cane across a crowded dance floor to land in a planter by the front door. Underestimating you seems like it would be a mistake."

Clint snorted. "That's just a parlor trick, Phil. Took me a few tries to nail it, you know. Kate coached."

"Right." Phil paused. "You were a sniper."

Clint tensed up but nodded, because he wasn't ashamed of that. He just didn't like remembering a life he used to love. "Yeah."

"I was special ops. Black ops, actually." Phil smiled while he talked. "Good times."

"Not many people would say that." Clint shook his head, laughing.

They sat in silence for a little while. Clint rolled down and stretched out his legs, doing some hip flexes to try and spread his pelvis. If he was putting on a little bit of a show for Phil, that wasn't anyone's business.

Phil cleared his throat before talking, his only tell that Clint was getting to him. "The pole won't work."

Clint sat up and shook his head again. "Nope." He took a deep breath. "Does that mean I'm out of the show?" He was very proud of himself for not sounding too pathetic.

"You said no circus would travel with this pole. Were you in the circus?"

"Actually, yeah. My older brother and I ran away from the orphanage and joined the circus. It's where I learned…everything, really. How to shoot, how to climb, fall, fight, hide. It was all the circus, the military was just finishing school."

"Trapeze?"

It seemed an odd thing to ask, because most people focused on Clint's missing brother. He shrugged. "Sure. Horseback, trapeze, silks, clown cars, you name—"

"Silks?"

Clint sat up straight. "Silks."

Phil was smiling again as he talked, his voice almost humming. "Silks." He got up and walked out. Two hours later, a professional crew was installing a set of silk lines from the very strong cross beams over the stage. It was portable to any place that had a roof, it was something Clint could do a damn good show on, and it meant he was still on the team.

He tried not to think of it as Phil's personal gift to him, but it was hard to think of anyone else as Clint slid up and down the lines, building a whole new act based on saying "thank you."