So sorry for not replying to last week's chapter comments. It wasn't a great week. I'm sorry. Hopefully I'll be able to answer the ones you leave on here. ❤️

☝️Yes, this is a chapter from Clint's POV. But I feel the need to warn you, he's really different when not with his brothers. Honestly, I'm not sure how much you'll like it... If at all...

Well, here goes nothing, enjoy!

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Clint leaned back against the passenger side door of his car, staring up at the FBI building. Sunlight glinted off the glass, painting the building gold, amber, and burnt orange. Around him, pedestrians hurried about their lives, failing to look up and spot the simple beauty.

Beauty. So many saw beauty as only appearance in a person. Others saw it as nature. But beauty was so many things and Clint didn't understand how people failed to see all of it.

Beauty was in the way a person found solace in the midst of a storm. The way one person cared for another. How music could echo the emotions someone felt. In a glance between two people. The courage of one brave soul. All of these and more were a form of beauty.

Yet, humans acknowledge so few of these things. Beauty would only be in the appearance of the woman exiting the FBI building and coming towards him.

Most others would fail to see the beauty in the way she walked, with confidence but not ego. They wouldn't see the beauty in the way the corner of her mouth curled just slightly as she saw him. Something that said she was more than happy to see him. It was all beauty to him.

"Hi," Eva said.

Clint leaned forward and gave her a light kiss on her cheek. As far as physical attention went, it was all he'd given her in their one month of knowing each other.

He'd learned. In previous relationships, if he opened the door to the physical, it seemed all his mind could focus on. In doing so he'd lose the fundamentals of a relationship: talking, sharing, connecting.

So a kiss on the cheek was all he'd give because this woman was one he didn't want to let slip away.

"Hungry?" Clint asked.

"Yes."

"What are you in the mood for?"

Eva twisted her lips to the side in thought. It drew Clint's attention to them, but he pulled his gaze back to her eyes.

"It was a stressful day, I would love a steak."

"All right," Clint said.

He opened the passenger door for Eva and closed it after she got in. He took the driver's seat and led them into traffic.

"Do you need to make a reservation?" she asked.

"It's covered."

Clint left it at that. He didn't tell her he had five reservations at different places with different cuisines. He over-planned. James was spontaneous but Clint wasn't. Order made him comfortable. It's what made him good at his job. He took the time to think through every possibility.

"Anything more to say about your day?" Clint asked.

"Nothing interesting enough to share," Eva said.

They felt silent. It felt easy to be quiet with Eva.

In the past, the girls were attracted to him because they liked the strong, silent type. But what they didn't understand that once they started dating that was still who he was.

What they'd first loved about him became the thing they hated.

They feared what he was thinking when he didn't talk, as if he were constantly thinking about someone else. When asked what he was thinking, he'd tell them. Usually, it was something he was analyzing, a comment someone made that struck him the wrong way and he needed to understand why.

They never believed him. And their relationship would end.

But with Eva, her mind worked like his, needing silence and space to run, to break down day-to-day occurrences.

Clint pulled the car up to the curb and a valet jogged to Clint's door as he opened it. Clint thanked the valet and walked with Eva to the restaurant, holding the door open for her. The hostess smiled at them as they approached.

"Hi there," she said. "Name?"

"Keller," Clint said.

"Great," the hostess said, taking out two menus and guiding them through the maze of tables.

With the answer that water was fine, the hostess left them.

"How many places did you have reservations to?" Eva asked.

"Five," Clint said, without looking up from his menu.

She hummed at this but said nothing more. Clint knew she was analyzing his need to be prepared and playing that back to how he grew up. Clint fought a smile at the thought. His previous girlfriends had found it overkill and told him so.

A waitress came, took their orders and menus, and left.

"Now that that's out of the way," Clint said. "Tell me how your research has progressed."

Eva jumped in without preamble. Another thing Clint liked about her, there was no need for chit-chat, for conversation about the mundane parts of their lives.

Why waste brainpower on a boring topic when there were a million interesting ones to dive into? Eva's research of how combat affected brain patterns was interesting.

Clint only knew a small fraction of the science and psychology of what Eva did but that meant he could ask hundreds of questions. Ones she was pleased to answer.

From the way her eyes lit up at his inquires, he guessed that other men had feigned understanding for the sake of not looking stupid.

Clint wasn't under the delusion that asking questions made one an idiot.

His mother had always encouraged his questions, even the ones that were obscure such as: where do emotions come from? And what drives one person to kill and another to save? Her Little Philosopher was what he'd call him.

Her encouragement to always keep questioning, always keep searching made him feel separate from most people he interacted with.

When normal people stumbled upon a fence, they accepted and moved on. Clint would ask why the fence was there to begin with.

With his brothers, he didn't think as much. They were able to bring out a more active, competitive side of him. Without them he imagined he'd have spent most of his life sitting in a chair and staring out the window, puzzling over all of life's troubles from there.

"And that's it for now," Eva finished. "What project are you currently working on?"

Clint broke down how he was taking letters and analyzing writing patterns and how they represented personality. Eva listened with quiet attentiveness. It was the type of response Clint always searched for.

At a very young age, he knew he simply wanted to be married. He didn't want to date around like Brock and James. He wanted one person to share his stories. One person who understood him. He wanted a deep connection. He wanted long-lasting.

As he looked at Eva and took in her kind face and intelligent eyes, he felt a connection he'd never felt before with a girl. It felt so new and foreign that he didn't know if there was a word for it. He'd never felt like this with any other girl before.

He stopped talking, needing silence to take apart what he felt. It was comfortable, but it was also invigorating. It felt old but completely new. It was a constant contradiction to itself. How could one thing make him feel both settled about who he was but also eager to be more?

It hit Clint like a punch from one of his brothers.

"I think I'm in love with you," Clint said.

Eva took a sip of her water and nodded once. "All right, please alert me to when you're more certain about your feelings."

Clint smiled then, because if there had been one thing she could have said to make him certain, it was that.

His love didn't scare her. The fact that he said this after only four dates, didn't phase her at all. If it didn't startle her, it meant she'd had already started down that path as well.

They went back to their conversation like nothing had happened, though Clint wasn't blind to the way Eva watched him with more affection than before.

At the end of the date when Clint walked Eva to her apartment door, he came to a decision. His brothers would think it out of character for him. They would even think it the dumbest thing he could ever do.

But Clint knew himself, he knew his mind and trusted it. Since the admittance had left his mouth, his mind had played out every possible future and now he knew what path he wanted to walk.

Eva opened her door but turned around. Clint held his place outside. He understand the invisible line that was drawn on the floor before her door. He didn't plan to cross it. Not until...

He inwardly smiled.

"Thank you for dinner," Eva said.

"Eva," he said. "I want you to know the next time I tell you I love you, I'll also ask you to marry me."

Eva smiled and eased the door closed.

"I know," she said. "Goodnight, Clint."

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Hi there cutie pie! 🥧

So yeah...did you like it? You can be honest. 💬🗯💭

Clint is just so introspective that it's a completely different tone than Donovan. Donovan only pretended to be the strong silent type, Clint is literally the embodiment of that type.

I did find it interesting that looking back on his past relationships girls like the strong silent type then hated it. Made sense, the strong silent type isn't going to have a complete personality change just because they start dating someone.

Also it should be said Eva is amazing! I know I always write strong female characters but there's something about her that hits different, you know.

She just gets Clint and I love her for that.

Anyway, whether you like the chapter or not I hope you at least feel like sharing some love: vote, comment, follow