Office Hours, Tuesday

[so_hawkward]

Clint had a lot of little things to work on today--sending emails to Barney and Fury, working out Portalocity details for his class this week--but all of that got put on hold when his phone chimed with a message and... well, he ended up staring at the picture for a while with a stupid grin on his face before sending back a hopefully correctly spelled response. He was so unbelievably spoiled.

[Open!]

Comments

[whenshewasnice]

It wasn't quite as exciting as girlfriend texts, but Natalie still hoped Clint was going to take her call.

It was more of a check-in than anything important, but yeah, she was calling him.

[so_hawkward]

Clint needed a distraction from girlfriend texts anyway, so he gladly took the call. "Hola! Wait, that's not the right language. Uh, hi!"

[whenshewasnice]

Dork. "Bonjour," Natalie replied, a very faint smile in her voice. "It's Natalie."

[so_hawkward]

""Hey! How's it going?" Clint asked, grinning. "Are you having fun yet?"

[whenshewasnice]

"I think it doesn't look like it from the outside, but I'd say so, yes." Because she was the kind of nerd who found intellectual challenges fun. "We're on the campaign trail, there's been a lot of traveling to distant corners of the world."

[so_hawkward]

"Oh? Sounds like fun souvenir shopping," Clint said. "Or have you been too busy with the campaign to have any fun?"

[whenshewasnice]

"We try to sample the local cuisine wherever we are," Natalie offered. "I'm not really a souvenir person. I bought a guitar from Africa and I'm considering a haircut here."

She was pretty practical with souvenirs.

[so_hawkward]

"Local cuisine is a good thing." Assuming you ate in more expensive places than Clint usually did. "Is the campaign part going well? Is Peter... getting what he's campaigning for?" He'd tried to understand, he really had, but words and politics and stuff.

[whenshewasnice]

Yeah, Natalie got that a lot from people not involved in the process. She was used to it. "The polls are looking good," she said, shrugging. "People are responding well to the points he's making. He has a very real shot of making Hegemon."

Privately she thought it was pretty much in the bag, but that was no reason to get cocky. It wasn't a done deal before it was.

[so_hawkward]

"Well, I'll keep my fingers crossed and everything," Clint said. "If he wins, you get to keep a job, right?" That was really the important part as far as Clint was concerned.

[whenshewasnice]

"To the best of my knowledge." And that was without going into what their relationship was like, and how Peter would probably keep her around for as long as he could, provided she stayed useful in some capacity. "Just as part of a larger staff, I'd imagine."

[so_hawkward]

"Well, then I'll keep my fingers crossed everything works out," Clint said. "Are you coming back to the states any time soon?"

[whenshewasnice]

"Hopefully. I missed Homecoming but I think I should be able to make time for a visit sometime soon." Even if it'd be just for a day or so. "How's Fandom right now?"

[so_hawkward]

"Right now it's nice and quiet, but you didn't hear me say that because I don't want to tempt the wrath of the island," Clint said. "You missed getting to dunk me in a vat of water at Homecoming. It was pretty fun for people who aren't me."

[whenshewasnice]

"Whereas I just agreed with someone that he wasn't going to go near the kissing booths," Natalie replied, sounding faintly amused. "I think that's the closest I've ever been to that part of the carnival. Was the dunking terrible?"

[so_hawkward]

"It was cold," Clint whined. "Although it was kind of reassuring to see how many people in town have good aim. Still, getting wet in October is a terrible idea, for the record and all."