Octopuses Not Octopi

“You can’t possibly be in love with him,” Natasha said, deadpan, her expression not exactly disbelief, as that would imply a sort of possibility that there was any way one could believe this.

“Don’t mock my pain!” Clint whined, slightly muffled by the pillow he had pressed his face into.

“The only thing you know about him is that he doodles cute octopi,” Natasha reiterated, looking at Clint in a way that was a close to gaping as she could get.

“I know!” Clint moaned. “Also, the correct plural is octopuses, not octopi.”

(Now with a Chinese translation by JennyXu!)

Octopuses (Not Octopi)

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a stupid story, but whatever. Also, I tried to draw the art that went with this, but I'm a pretty bad artist, so sorry about that. > > Trigger Warnings: Vague mention of medical procedures/injury and a character in a coma > > See Chinese translation here: http://www.mtslash.com/thread-110018-1-1.html > Username (用户名): authors > Password (密码): 123456789

Clinton Francis Barton, twenty-four years old and a paramedic, was, for once, sitting in a hospital waiting room. He felt an odd sense of displacement as he stared at the muted yellow walls, studying the smooth coat of paint idly, eyes drifting from one little blemish to another as his mind registered nothing but numbness. He’d never been in this situation before. He’d always been the one working behind the scenes, and the fact that he wasn’t working at all was really grating on his nerves.

He wasn’t scared – not really. A little worried maybe, but not truly scared. It was just appendicitis, he kept repeating to himself, trying to banish the memory of the look of pain that twisted Natasha’s face as she gripped his arm hard enough to bruise and told him to drive her to the hospital. Even if her appendix had already ruptured, her likely hospital stay was only likely to increase to 5.2 days from the average 1.8.

It just sucked that he couldn’t do anything. Most of the time he was actually happy that he was a paramedic and not a surgeon, but right now Clint wished that it was him standing over Natasha on the operating table, knowing that it was his own steady hands operating on her prone form. Not that he wasn’t sure that Natasha’s current surgeon was more than qualified – it was just that, well, it was his best friend being operated on in there.

Clint let out a strangled sigh, rubbing his hands over his face and slumping back on the lumpy waiting room couch. He looked over at the coffee table in front of him, frowning for a moment before snatching up the one lonely magazine that lay there ( _Better Homes and Gardens_? Really? This was New York city! His own apartment was the size of a postage stamp and he certainly didn’t have a garden, unless the cactus that Tony had given him as a gag gift counted.). He leafed through the glossy pages of the magazine, his eyes drifting idly over the high resolution pictures of brightly colored flowers and color coordinated bedrooms as he tried to distract himself.

The paramedic skipped over a few pages, looking for the pumpkin bread recipe advertized on the cover, but he paused in his search as a small square of paper fell into his lap. Confused, he turned it over and examined it.

Clint stared for a moment at the, admittedly cute, cartoon octopus. He couldn’t help the hint of a smile which tugged at his lips as he read the sweet message that went along with it. The paramedic tucked the little slip of paper back in between the magazine’s slightly crumpled pages, smoothing over one corner of the note that had been bent slightly. The drawing stowed away again, he continued to look for the pumpkin bread recipe, eventually finding it after the section on fall garden care.

He tried to memorize the recipe, thinking that maybe he could try baking some of the bread for Natasha as a “Get Well Soon” gift, but he kept zoning out while reading the ingredient list. Clint pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket, meaning to write down the recipe instead, but he realized after a few moments of digging around in his pockets that he’d left his sticky notes back at the apartment in his rush to get Natasha to the ER.

His fingers brushed over the glossy pages as an idea came to him and he pulled the little octopus note out of the magazine again, biting his lip as he wondered how much of an asshole it would make him if he stole the uplifting note that some kind soul had left for the unfortunate waiting room residents.

Clint wrote on it anyway.

\---

Okay, so maybe he was a bit of an asshole, but he wasn’t _that_ much of an asshole. Clint stopped by the waiting room for a moment the next morning before going to bring Natasha a mystery novel and a bouquet of flowers (mainly to annoy her, but also because he knew she secretly liked tiger lilies).

\---

Clint tried to resist the urge to see if the mysterious octopus doodler had responded when he walked through the waiting room again a few hours later. He really did struggle valiantly – in fact, he was literally halfway out the door before he finally gave up and surrendered to the magnetic pull of the hidden post it note. The paramedic gently flipped through the pages, trying to appear nonchalant and not as if he had walked into a hospital waiting room just to read a _Better Homes and Gardens_ magazine.

He tried not to feel disappointed as he continued on and on through the magazine without finding either his original post it note or a reply. However, on the final page of the magazine was tucked away the little yellow post it note that he’d placed in the magazine earlier. Clint almost didn’t read it, assuming that someone had just moved it so they could read the article it had been covering, but then his eyes noticed a slight discrepancy.

Clint was quite sure that the grin that involuntarily lit up his face was bright enough to blind Natasha through concrete, three stories up. He scribbled a quick “I’ll draw you a penguin next time” before closing the magazine again, skipping out through the sliding glass doors.

The paramedic tried not to dwell on what it meant for him that a random stranger drawing a top hat on his own doodle of a fat bird made his day.

\---

Clint didn’t set foot in the waiting room until two days later. The major freeway bridge collapse had every emergency medical professional working on overtime and Clint found himself neck deep in the thick of it for over twenty four hours. He felt a little dizzy as he stepped back into the yellow painted room, slumping down onto one of the couches and just sitting there for a moment, thinking about how he probably should have gotten some sleep before trying to go help Natasha check out of the hospital. His original back up plan was to get Bucky to pick up Natasha if he was working, but considering the state of emergency and the fact that Bucky, as a fellow paramedic, had still been on duty when Clint was sent home, that clearly wasn’t going to work.

Clint stared blankly at the waiting room ceiling, his lips parted ever so slightly and his eyelids slipping down over his eyes. He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to wake himself up at least a little bit, slumping forward and pressing his forehead to his knees, breathing deeply and trying to clear his mind. The paramedic propped himself up with his elbows on his knees, looking out over the lobby and telling himself that he’d get up and go to Natasha’s room in just a moment.