Template:Featured Articles/11-2023

Moment of Awesome - Quentin Quire/Omega: After receiving news of his father's impending death, Quentin receives unlooked-for comfort from Clinton Barton. Had Quentin just been sitting there in silent contemplation for a whole minute or longer? No one had even died yet and he was already going crazy and misperceiving time. Worse, he was losing it in front of the white knight of Xavier's Institute. How shameful. He quickly tempered his expression and stood up, leaning against the wall with faux-casualness. "Don't worry about it, Barton," he said, though his dead tone did not match the demeanor he was trying to pull off. Well, that was a weird juxtaposition. "Q," Clint said, stepping over to lean against the wall beside the younger man and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I'm not worrying about it. I'm maybe a little bit worried about you, but like. Mostly cause I don't think you should be stewing all by yourself with... y'know. Whatever you've got going on right now. So we don't have to talk or anything, if you don't want, but I'm here. Just in case." Of course, Quentin's first instinct was to tell Clint in graphic anatomical detail where he could put his concern, but for once, he did not see the fun in that. Instead, he pulled up the text thread with his father and handed his phone to Clint to review. There was not much, mostly short messages about where one or the other would be at a given time, with timestamps separated by weeks or months. Not a single gif or emoji. It looked more like automatic email notifications bouncing between professional colleagues than conversation between father and son. "So, you see, him croaking isn't really going to change anything. I won't even notice he's dead 'cuz he's hardly alive to me now." Clint handed Quentin's phone back to him and nodded slowly, then stopped and tilted his head to the side as he squinted up one eye. "I get what you're saying, but there's also the like. Finality of it? Whether you think you want it or not, there's always that possibility that... I dunno. Something else could have happened somewhere down the line." He leaned over to bump his shoulder against Quentin's. Sometimes being physically present was the best you could do. And Quentin bumped him back, though maybe it was more of a sharp jab of the elbow against Clint's torso. Still, something approaching a grin appeared fleetingly on Quentin's face. "He was never going to change. We were never going to. I'm barely a son to him. I'm sure if he'd had his way, I never would've been. All he ever gave me was his name, his credit card, and his penchant for promiscuity."