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Nathaniel Adam sat alone at a bar staring at an untouched bottle of beer that rested on the bar in front of him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d drank. “Captain Atom” didn’t need to drink. It didn’t matter anymore that Nate used to enjoy a beer from time to time or some whiskey every now and then. No matter how much he drank he couldn’t get drunk. He could leap into a swimming pool of whiskey and he wouldn’t even get close to being remotely tipsy, let alone drunk. He wouldn’t even need to come up for air anymore. “Captain Atom” didn’t need to breathe. Dugan hadn’t told him that when he signed up for Operation: Atom, SHIELD hadn’t seen any of this coming, but the process had changed him in more ways than one. It had swept away Nathaniel Adam and in his place built a superhero with no need to drink, breathe, eat, or sleep. After a lifetime of needing to do those things it was more than a little jarring to wake up one morning and realise you don’t need to anymore. He was barely even human anymore. At least that’s how it felt.

It was even worse before Nate was capable of retracting his metallic skin. For the best part of a year he was stuck in that form, unable to change back, to see his face without the reflective alien metal that encompassed it. The SHIELD scientists had worked day and night trying to figure out a way to get his appearance back to normal so that Adam could have a life outside of Captain Atom. They worried he’d be driven insane by being constantly awake, not drinking or eating, and looking in the mirror and being unable to see the face he’d called his own for nearly three decades. They were wrong. Nate dealt with it, as he dealt with everything else life had thrown at him to date, by simply embracing his new identity and pushing his old one to the side. He policed the world night and day in search of HYDRA and AIM without stopping for a moment’s break. Eventually after enough testing from Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne he worked it out. You’d think being able to see his own face would make him feel more human but it didn’t change a thing. He wasn’t the same anymore. Life wasn’t going to the same anymore. He’d have to accept that.

Yet here he was sat in a bar alone pretending to be a normal person. The ID he brandished read “Cameron Scott” rather than Nathaniel Adam, but what was in a name? For an hour or two he’d hoped he could sit here, watch the baseball, and pour alcoholic beverages that had no effect on him into his mouth in the hopes that it would make him feel a little more human. He had planned to do that alone until he heard the door to the bar open and Clint Barton, better known to the rest of the world as “Hawkeye”, stepped through and took a seat beside Nate. Without so much as a hello Clint leaned forward and ordered himself a drink, which came a few moments later, and gestured towards Nate’s drink as he took a mouthful of his own.

“Are you going to drink that thing or sit there and look at it?”

Nate sighed.

“What difference does it make? I can’t get drunk anymore.”

“Have you tried absinthe?” Barton said with a smile that went unreciprocated. “It’s not all bad, I think most people would trade hangovers for the ability to fly unaided and shoot energy out of their hands. I know I would.”

He didn’t understand. How could he understand? Barton was a lot of things, confident, quick-witted, swashbuckling, and brave more than anything else, but his was still a human being. He still got to go home at the day end of the day and lay his tired body down to rest after a hard day’s work. He could drink himself into a stupor, shovel down handfuls of food and feel bloated, and get sick. Nate could do none of that. As much as he might try to make light of the situation or empathise with him he’d never know what it was like to be a walking nuclear bomb rather than a person.

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you think? I followed you.”

There was a cheer from the television screen positioned above them as the batter made contact with a pitch and sent it flying across the stadium. Barton took another mouthful of his drink as Adam shook his head, clearly unimpressed with Barton having followed him.

“Why?”

Barton shrugged.

“You looked like you could do with the company.”

“You should know by now I’m not one for conversation.”

Clint downed what was left of his drink and then made a noise that sounded more beast than man as the alcohol hit him. He placed his glass down on the counter and slid it towards the barman and then gestured to him for another drink. 

“Fine by me,” Barton smirked. “You sit there not getting drunk and I’ll do enough talking and drinking for the both of us. How does that sound?”

The wry smirk on his face remained there as Nate looked in his direction blankly for a few moments. He knew what Clint was doing. He was worried about him. Was the whole team worried about him? Did they whisper about his lack of sleep? How little time he spent with people? Nate wouldn’t have been surprised. Outside of Janet he’d done little to reach out to his other Avengers since he’d joined the team and he was aware how close some of the other members of the team were. Stephanie and Natasha were like sisters, Clint and Natasha were almost inseparable, and Janet and Hank obviously had a bond that outweighed all of them. Only with Janet did Nate consider himself close. Outside of Hank he didn’t dislike any of the rest of the team, in fact he thought in their own way they were each pretty spectacular, but he’d had trouble bonding with people since the process. What was the point? He wasn’t even sure if he could die. He didn’t want to have to watch the ones he loved wither and die and the best way to ensure that didn’t happen would be not to get close to anyone.

For tonight though Nate would allow it. He was many things but impolite was not one of them. Clint had gone out of his way to follow him here and the least he could do is sit with him for the night. Only because he would be impolite to send him away and not because he was quite fond of him, of course.

“It doesn’t sound like I have much choice.”

A small but sincere since appears on Nate’s face as Clint pats him on the back.

“That’s because you don’t.”

Clint took another hearty mouthful of his drink and, without looking away from the baseball on the television screen, pushed the untouched bottle of beer on the counter towards Nate. Without thinking Nate picked it up, pressed it to his lips, and poured a mouthful of beer down his throat with an appreciate nod. Maybe he’d never be able to get drunk again, maybe he’d never have a hangover or make a drunken mistake he barely remembered the next morning, but these moments, taking in a ball game with a friend, these were the moments no one, nothing, could ever take from him. These were the things that reminded him he was human.