Entry tags:
FIC: The Things Underneath Our Hearts (Avengers)
So a few months ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arsenicjade was wanting Clint h/c, and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ignipes posted about Steve Rogers: Earth's Mightiest Cuddler, and then this happened. ...Obviously it took me a while to finish. Sorry, y'all! Thanks to inmyriadbits for the beta and ersatzemma for some research help.
Also, I finally managed to title something with Empires lyrics, yay! (....the silent struggles of my life, revealed.)
The Things Underneath Our Hearts
[AO3]
Warnings: mild onscreen violence, offscreen torture, vomit, graphic description of a dead animal, nightmares, and homophobic/sexually threatening language used by a bad guy.
The guards shoved Clint unceremoniously back into the cell, with a parting elbow to his kidneys. With his right eye swelling shut and his ears still ringing, he tripped over the frame of the cell door and slammed to the ground on his right side, his fractured ribs grinding worryingly.
"Great, now I'm unbalanced," he gasped when the pain subsided, not really trying to make sense. Fucking amateur assholes. If he didn't have a fucking remote-controlled explosive collar around his neck, he'd have snapped theirs days ago.
Steve offered him a hand and Clint winced as he was pulled to his feet, though Steve was clearly trying to be gentle. "I don't think anatomical even-handedness was their goal," Steve said, because he was the kind of dork who responded to muttered bad jokes. Clint attempted to smirk at him, but the movement pulled open a cut on his lip and he stopped, sucking the torn spot into his mouth before it bled down his chin.
Steve looked alright - his uniform was more torn and bloody than before, so he’d been taken for interrogation again while Clint was out, but his cuts and bruises weren't bad. They'd be gone before morning, like the ones from the last round of beatings. Clint, on the other hand.... It would be generous to say he wasn’t going to be any help in a fight; it was more accurate to say he would be dead weight if Steve got the chance to escape, because Captain America didn’t leave people behind.
Even when that was the smart choice.
He shook off the thought, and reminded himself that Natasha would figure things out. She'd find them, and the team would come. They just had to keep it together until then.
"Any luck with the collar?" he asked hopefully, but Steve just shook his head ruefully.
"Tony will probably have it off in about three seconds, but even I can tell how badly this thing is wired together. I'd rather not blow my head off, or yours, unless it's absolutely necessary."
Clint sighed and squeezed Cap’s shoulder in understanding, then limped over to the spot that they'd cleared of various vermin droppings. He sank down, carefully lowering himself until he was flat on his back. His muscles were going to stiffen up, but that was sort of inevitable at this point and he mostly needed to rest. The floor was cold, which felt fantastic on his bruises, but he knew it wouldn’t last.
When they’d been ambushed three days ago, all the guards had left him to wear were his uniform pants and the thin sleeveless undershirt that he wore beneath his armored vest. They were Clint’s combat gear, designed for movement and keeping him cool, not for insulating him from a fucking wannabe-dungeon floor; his skin was already prickling into goosebumps. He thought longingly of all the lockpicks and knives and bandages tucked away in his vest pockets, and sighed again. Maybe R&D could build him something that could be hidden in the seams of his clothing - but then again, the next time he got captured by semi-competent villains, they’d probably just take his pants and underwear, too. Lose-lose.
Steve sat down next to him, and Clint could feel him staring even with his eyes closed.
"I'm fine," he said preemptively - Steve was the biggest mother hen on the planet - then promptly ruined it by shivering. He bit back a curse as the involuntary movement woke all his injuries to screaming awareness.
"Right," Steve said dryly. There was a rustling sound, and Clint opened his eyes in time to see Steve lie down next to him, reach out, and bodily haul Clint around to lie on his chest. He tensed reflexively, his face pressed against Steve’s shoulder, and just barely stopped himself from flinching away, which would have been a stupid, painful idea - those were Clint’s specialty, after all. But Steve must have been watching him closely, since he avoided the worst of the bruises and all of the cuts, handling Clint with ease.
“Whoa there,” Clint said, trying to sound amused instead of really fucking confused.
“Would you rather be lying in the rat shit?” Steve asked, and Clint huffed, unable to disagree. “Thought so. Just try to get some sleep, okay?”
They lay in silence for a few minutes – awkwardly at first, at least on Clint's side of things, but steadily less so as time passed. Heat radiated out from Steve at every point that Clint was touching him, and he couldn't stop himself from relaxing into it. Steve seemed perfectly comfortable, even on the hard stone with Clint draped all over him and probably cutting off circulation to his arm.
The situation struck Clint as odd: being comfortable sleeping with someone was a skill he associated with relationships, which everyone in the universe knew Steve had no experience with. The team debate over whether he was actually a virgin or not was ongoing and lively, but Steve’s romantic awkwardness was pretty undeniable, and frequently hilarious.
Clint sometimes felt a little hypocritical about being on the ‘still a virgin’ side of the betting pool - he’d had plenty of sex over the years, but not much in the way of spending the night and all that crap. The only reason he’d learned how to fake that sort of thing was Natasha. After an incredibly awful undercover mission early in their partnership, he’d spent a few death threat-laden training sessions with her forcing him to learn how to hold hands, kiss casually in public, and not wiggle.
He shifted unconsciously at the memory, and wound up gasping silently when a muscle spasmed over his fractured ribs. Steve's arm came up and supported his back for a moment; Clint breathed through it, and the cramp eased.
Like magic, seriously.
"Did you get super secret cuddling skills from the serum, or does that come naturally?" Clint joked, curiosity getting the better of him - and maybe, he admitted to himself, a touch of fever, creeping up his muscles and sinking in behind his eyes, loosening his grip on the world.
"Oh, well.... It's just- I mean, it was...." Steve stuttered, then trailed off, his hands flexing unconsciously.
It was so out of character that Clint immediately backpedaled.
"You don't have to -" he began, but Steve interrupted, his palms smoothing out again on Clint’s back.
"No, it's fine. I was just finding the words," he said firmly. "I guess I'd say my brother taught me."
"I didn't know you had a brother," Clint said, surprised. They were a pretty uniform bunch of orphans and only children – except for Thor and his mess of a family, and the shadow of Clint's brother. At least, Clint had thought so.
"Not blood, but every other way that counted. I got sick pretty easy as a kid. The orphanage could barely afford to feed us in the bad years, much less heat the place, so winters were...hard." He took a slow breath and smoothed a hand down Clint's back. "Bucky used to share a bed with me, to keep me warm. Lucky thing I was so small, or he'd have had more bruise than head from falling out all the time."
"Bucky...That was Sergeant Barnes, right?" Clint said. He'd read Steve's file. I'm sorry, he didn't - couldn’t - say. “I'd forgotten you knew each other before the war.”
Steve laughed unexpectedly. “Yeah, and he never let me forget it. Made sure I slept, made fun of my uniform, then told the worst stories to the men when we had downtime.”
“Like what?” Clint said mischievously.
Steve resettled his hands on Clint's back, warm palms covering another set of bruised muscles, and began, “Well, there was this time we decided to ditch school for the day, and rode up to the city....” His voice was just as warm as his hands, vibrating up through his chest, and Clint let himself be lulled to sleep, pretending they were home and safe in New York.
His dreams were quiet.
Clint woke with fever sinking claws into his skull and the guards laughing at the cell door.
He pushed himself off Steve, fear sinking into the pit of his stomach, because that was bad, it was bad when people laughed like that, like they were circling in for the kill and looking forward to the blood.
“How sweet,” one of them said. “Captain America and his fuck buddy Hawkeye. I bet he’s noisy in bed - he sure was yesterday, right, boys?” The man smiled, shark-like and ugly. “What do you think, Cap? You want to hear him scream?”
Steve leapt up as they came in, his jaw squaring defiantly, but one of the guards stood back in the doorway with his hand on the control for the collars, and Steve had to back away.
They jerked Clint to his feet, and the world twisted dizzily around him, blurring, and he couldn’t shoot like this, couldn’t find his balance.
He bent double, falling into the guard on his left, and vomited all over the man’s legs.
“Jesus, fuck!” the guard shouted, and shoved Clint away. He fell hard, and the man kicked out at him. He flinched instead of going for the leg sweep like he was supposed to, old bad habits taking over, and the boot glanced off his arm. Curling up to protect his ribs, he took a second kick on his thigh, and another numbed his forearm - but nothing broke.
“Shit, I don’t want to clean the interrogation room again,” the guard in the hallway said. “It was bad enough when he was just bleeding all over the place. Let’s take the other one.”
The sharkish guard said, “Fine. But nothing for this one until he talks. Let’s see if Captain America’s willing to let his friend die. I hear choking on your own vomit is a great way to go.”
Clint was shaking too hard to sit up, but he met Steve’s eyes as they dragged him out. Steve was too tough to crack, but he was stupidly noble, overprotective. Clint didn’t want to be the thing that made him break, so he held his eyes and shook his head at him, and hoped Steve would listen.
Their noise faded away, and time stretched like a nightmare.
The cell was too open, too exposed without Steve there: the only sound was the air rasping in and out of his throat, echoing off the walls. He tried to count the minutes by his breaths, but they turned into coins in his hands and Jacques was taking them, and Clint was falling off the high wire, falling forever.
He jerked awake, and the cell was still empty. Sweat soaked his clothes, past its ability to wick away moisture, and he was shivering, his teeth chattering. The sound echoed off the walls, and the rats crept out of the shadows, squeaking in a high pitch that set his teeth on edge and made his stomach turn over. One of the cats at the orphanage had gotten old and died, and he’d snuck outside to bury her, but her corpse had been crawling with rats, because she had been too old to hunt them anymore. He’d screamed and gotten in trouble, but he could still see the way her body had jerked under their teeth.
He hadn’t realized until he was older that it was just their bites that had been making her move; he’d thought she was still alive. And now it was his turn.
Fear rose up in his throat and he heaved, but his stomach was empty and his throat was dry, nothing but acid creeping and burning its way up through his muscles. His skin crawled, and he squeezed his eyes shut because if the rats were coming for him, he didn’t want to see, and he didn’t want to cry because tears made you a target but he couldn’t stop himself.
Something brushed his arm and he jerked away, but someone said, “Shhh, it’s just me.” A gentle, calloused hand cupped his face, stroking away a tear.
"Barney?" he said. But no, Barney didn't come back. He opened his eyes.
Steve was kneeling beside him. That made sense. Steve even came back from seventy years of being dead, he could come back for Clint.
It took a moment for Clint to register that the cell door was open, and he tried to push himself up, but his arms trembled so much that he sagged back to the ground, curled up on his good side. “Don’t think I can walk,” he whispered, his voice scorched bare, and hid his face against the cold floor.
“That’s okay,” Steve said softly, slinging his shield over his back. When had he gotten that? He thought they’d lost it back in the explosion, when they were captured. Now that Clint was looking, he saw that Steve wasn’t wearing his collar anymore, and his suit was back on.
Maybe this was another dream.
Then Steve picked him up, light as a feather - like the time he’d lifted Thor’s hammer, not knowing. Only it wasn’t the same, because you had to be worthy to wield Mjolnir, and Clint was just Clint. But he was warm and Clint was so tired. He was going to be embarrassed by this later, if it wasn’t a dream, but for now he just turned his cheek into Steve's chest and let himself fall away again. It was okay this time. He was safe.
When he woke up, the first thing he saw was Natasha, tucking a strand of red hair neatly behind her ear as she bent over an old paperback, the kind that littered the SHIELD infirmary, easy to pick up when bored and easy to abandon when well again. At least, it smelled like the infirmary here: overwashed, with no familiar scents or fragrances, like no one was there at all.
Clint tilted his head a little to read the cover of Natasha’s book, and she looked up sharply at his movement. “Clint,” she said, her mouth quirking. “Are you awake enough for me to yell at you for almost dying?”
He considered carefully. “No,” he decided, after working the sentence around in his head for a moment to make sure he understood it. Everything was a little fuzzy.
“Okay,” she said agreeably, still smiling at him. It was the real one, the quiet imperfect smile she used when she was being honest and wanted him to know it, so Clint smiled back.
“Hi,” he said muzzily. “I’m gonna go back to sleep now, okay?”
“Good plan,” she said, looking amused now - which, hey.
“Hey,” he said. “Not nice.” Then he remembered - “Steve okay?” If she was smiling, he was probably fine, but Clint needed to know if that had been a dream.
“The peak of human perfection,” she said dryly.
Clint sighed in relief. “Yeah, he does that,” he said fondly. “Did you know he could cuddle, too?”
Natasha was laughing at him now, whoops. “I did not, but I appreciate the intel.”
“Shut up,” he mumbled, closing his eyes, and fell back to sleep in pure self-defense.
Clint decided he’d really like to just be awake for awhile instead of constantly waking up, sort of being conscious, and falling straight asleep again. He went through a few rounds of that with Bruce, Tony, Natasha again, a doctor, and three separate nurses, and then he was really done with whatever unpronounceable ratshit-transmitted virus he was suffering through.
But because karma was a bitch when you were an ex-criminal, ex-assassin, life-long asshole, he woke up with his mind perfectly clear for the first time in days, and Steve was the one holding vigil.
“Hi,” he croaked, and Steve looked up from frowning in confusion at the book Natasha had left - probably wondering how the cover artist had got the woman’s spine to twist like that, Clint guessed - and a grin instantly brightened his face.
“Hi there,” Steve said. “First time you’ve been awake for me. How’re you feeling?”
“Much better. Sorry about... you know, before.” He waved a hand vaguely, then winced as his ribs protested. “No more vomiting or fever dreams, I promise.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Steve insisted. “I told you I was sick a lot as a kid. When I got scarlet fever, I was so delirious that I wandered clear out of the apartment before one of the neighbors caught me.”
Not sure how to argue with that, Clint nodded, and won a smile from Steve. They lapsed into comfortable silence for a minute, until Steve broke it again.
"I was wondering, though," he said slowly, tracing a finger over the blanket. "Who's Barney? You were calling for him."
Sometimes, he really wished he wasn’t friends with Natasha and Steve, because they had a knack for finding the one question you really didn’t want to answer, and then didn’t hesitate to ask it. Steve, at least, was well-intentioned about it; Natasha was just ruthless.
Clint said shortly, "My brother.”
Steve nodded and didn't ask, even smiled a little, understanding, no pressure, but Clint felt like shit anyway. Steve deserved better than that, from Clint. He closed his eyes, and made himself go on. "He was.... I wasn't as lucky as you in brothers."
Steve was silent for a long moment, then a hand folded around Clint's where it was fisted in the blanket. His fingers - still an artist's, even after all these years of fighting - coaxed Clint's to relax, to interlace with Steve's. "I got lucky twice," Steve said, quiet but fierce, and it took a moment for Clint to understand. "Maybe you just needed to choose for yourself."
Clint shook his head, wordless. That wasn't.... he hadn't chosen the orphanage or the circus or SHIELD; even the Avengers. He hadn't been part of the Initiative, he'd just been there and thirsty for revenge when Steve... oh.
When Steve had chosen him, on Natasha's word. The way they'd all chosen to fight together, again and again, in the months since.
He tried to pull his hand away, disconcerted. Steve let him go instantly - and somehow, that made Clint just want to put his hand right back. He wondered how Steve did that: always knew the right thing to do, even when Clint didn't know what that was.
Maybe Clint could just trust him in this. He'd followed him everywhere else, after all: through invasions and resurrections and getting lost in time, to other planets, and into more fights than he could count. Maybe this could be simple.
He found Steve's hand again and pulled, jerky at first, until Steve got the message and rose, climbing onto the hospital bed.
"Sorry, I'm bigger these days," Steve said apologetically, and Clint laughed, shaky and bright.
He wrapped his arms around Steve, and held on.
arsenicjade was wanting Clint h/c, and ignipes posted about Steve Rogers: Earth's Mightiest Cuddler, and then this happened. ...Obviously it took me a while to finish. Sorry, y'all! Thanks to inmyriadbits for the beta and ersatzemma for some research help.Also, I finally managed to title something with Empires lyrics, yay! (....the silent struggles of my life, revealed.)
The Things Underneath Our Hearts
[AO3]
Warnings: mild onscreen violence, offscreen torture, vomit, graphic description of a dead animal, nightmares, and homophobic/sexually threatening language used by a bad guy.
The guards shoved Clint unceremoniously back into the cell, with a parting elbow to his kidneys. With his right eye swelling shut and his ears still ringing, he tripped over the frame of the cell door and slammed to the ground on his right side, his fractured ribs grinding worryingly.
"Great, now I'm unbalanced," he gasped when the pain subsided, not really trying to make sense. Fucking amateur assholes. If he didn't have a fucking remote-controlled explosive collar around his neck, he'd have snapped theirs days ago.
Steve offered him a hand and Clint winced as he was pulled to his feet, though Steve was clearly trying to be gentle. "I don't think anatomical even-handedness was their goal," Steve said, because he was the kind of dork who responded to muttered bad jokes. Clint attempted to smirk at him, but the movement pulled open a cut on his lip and he stopped, sucking the torn spot into his mouth before it bled down his chin.
Steve looked alright - his uniform was more torn and bloody than before, so he’d been taken for interrogation again while Clint was out, but his cuts and bruises weren't bad. They'd be gone before morning, like the ones from the last round of beatings. Clint, on the other hand.... It would be generous to say he wasn’t going to be any help in a fight; it was more accurate to say he would be dead weight if Steve got the chance to escape, because Captain America didn’t leave people behind.
Even when that was the smart choice.
He shook off the thought, and reminded himself that Natasha would figure things out. She'd find them, and the team would come. They just had to keep it together until then.
"Any luck with the collar?" he asked hopefully, but Steve just shook his head ruefully.
"Tony will probably have it off in about three seconds, but even I can tell how badly this thing is wired together. I'd rather not blow my head off, or yours, unless it's absolutely necessary."
Clint sighed and squeezed Cap’s shoulder in understanding, then limped over to the spot that they'd cleared of various vermin droppings. He sank down, carefully lowering himself until he was flat on his back. His muscles were going to stiffen up, but that was sort of inevitable at this point and he mostly needed to rest. The floor was cold, which felt fantastic on his bruises, but he knew it wouldn’t last.
When they’d been ambushed three days ago, all the guards had left him to wear were his uniform pants and the thin sleeveless undershirt that he wore beneath his armored vest. They were Clint’s combat gear, designed for movement and keeping him cool, not for insulating him from a fucking wannabe-dungeon floor; his skin was already prickling into goosebumps. He thought longingly of all the lockpicks and knives and bandages tucked away in his vest pockets, and sighed again. Maybe R&D could build him something that could be hidden in the seams of his clothing - but then again, the next time he got captured by semi-competent villains, they’d probably just take his pants and underwear, too. Lose-lose.
Steve sat down next to him, and Clint could feel him staring even with his eyes closed.
"I'm fine," he said preemptively - Steve was the biggest mother hen on the planet - then promptly ruined it by shivering. He bit back a curse as the involuntary movement woke all his injuries to screaming awareness.
"Right," Steve said dryly. There was a rustling sound, and Clint opened his eyes in time to see Steve lie down next to him, reach out, and bodily haul Clint around to lie on his chest. He tensed reflexively, his face pressed against Steve’s shoulder, and just barely stopped himself from flinching away, which would have been a stupid, painful idea - those were Clint’s specialty, after all. But Steve must have been watching him closely, since he avoided the worst of the bruises and all of the cuts, handling Clint with ease.
“Whoa there,” Clint said, trying to sound amused instead of really fucking confused.
“Would you rather be lying in the rat shit?” Steve asked, and Clint huffed, unable to disagree. “Thought so. Just try to get some sleep, okay?”
They lay in silence for a few minutes – awkwardly at first, at least on Clint's side of things, but steadily less so as time passed. Heat radiated out from Steve at every point that Clint was touching him, and he couldn't stop himself from relaxing into it. Steve seemed perfectly comfortable, even on the hard stone with Clint draped all over him and probably cutting off circulation to his arm.
The situation struck Clint as odd: being comfortable sleeping with someone was a skill he associated with relationships, which everyone in the universe knew Steve had no experience with. The team debate over whether he was actually a virgin or not was ongoing and lively, but Steve’s romantic awkwardness was pretty undeniable, and frequently hilarious.
Clint sometimes felt a little hypocritical about being on the ‘still a virgin’ side of the betting pool - he’d had plenty of sex over the years, but not much in the way of spending the night and all that crap. The only reason he’d learned how to fake that sort of thing was Natasha. After an incredibly awful undercover mission early in their partnership, he’d spent a few death threat-laden training sessions with her forcing him to learn how to hold hands, kiss casually in public, and not wiggle.
He shifted unconsciously at the memory, and wound up gasping silently when a muscle spasmed over his fractured ribs. Steve's arm came up and supported his back for a moment; Clint breathed through it, and the cramp eased.
Like magic, seriously.
"Did you get super secret cuddling skills from the serum, or does that come naturally?" Clint joked, curiosity getting the better of him - and maybe, he admitted to himself, a touch of fever, creeping up his muscles and sinking in behind his eyes, loosening his grip on the world.
"Oh, well.... It's just- I mean, it was...." Steve stuttered, then trailed off, his hands flexing unconsciously.
It was so out of character that Clint immediately backpedaled.
"You don't have to -" he began, but Steve interrupted, his palms smoothing out again on Clint’s back.
"No, it's fine. I was just finding the words," he said firmly. "I guess I'd say my brother taught me."
"I didn't know you had a brother," Clint said, surprised. They were a pretty uniform bunch of orphans and only children – except for Thor and his mess of a family, and the shadow of Clint's brother. At least, Clint had thought so.
"Not blood, but every other way that counted. I got sick pretty easy as a kid. The orphanage could barely afford to feed us in the bad years, much less heat the place, so winters were...hard." He took a slow breath and smoothed a hand down Clint's back. "Bucky used to share a bed with me, to keep me warm. Lucky thing I was so small, or he'd have had more bruise than head from falling out all the time."
"Bucky...That was Sergeant Barnes, right?" Clint said. He'd read Steve's file. I'm sorry, he didn't - couldn’t - say. “I'd forgotten you knew each other before the war.”
Steve laughed unexpectedly. “Yeah, and he never let me forget it. Made sure I slept, made fun of my uniform, then told the worst stories to the men when we had downtime.”
“Like what?” Clint said mischievously.
Steve resettled his hands on Clint's back, warm palms covering another set of bruised muscles, and began, “Well, there was this time we decided to ditch school for the day, and rode up to the city....” His voice was just as warm as his hands, vibrating up through his chest, and Clint let himself be lulled to sleep, pretending they were home and safe in New York.
His dreams were quiet.
Clint woke with fever sinking claws into his skull and the guards laughing at the cell door.
He pushed himself off Steve, fear sinking into the pit of his stomach, because that was bad, it was bad when people laughed like that, like they were circling in for the kill and looking forward to the blood.
“How sweet,” one of them said. “Captain America and his fuck buddy Hawkeye. I bet he’s noisy in bed - he sure was yesterday, right, boys?” The man smiled, shark-like and ugly. “What do you think, Cap? You want to hear him scream?”
Steve leapt up as they came in, his jaw squaring defiantly, but one of the guards stood back in the doorway with his hand on the control for the collars, and Steve had to back away.
They jerked Clint to his feet, and the world twisted dizzily around him, blurring, and he couldn’t shoot like this, couldn’t find his balance.
He bent double, falling into the guard on his left, and vomited all over the man’s legs.
“Jesus, fuck!” the guard shouted, and shoved Clint away. He fell hard, and the man kicked out at him. He flinched instead of going for the leg sweep like he was supposed to, old bad habits taking over, and the boot glanced off his arm. Curling up to protect his ribs, he took a second kick on his thigh, and another numbed his forearm - but nothing broke.
“Shit, I don’t want to clean the interrogation room again,” the guard in the hallway said. “It was bad enough when he was just bleeding all over the place. Let’s take the other one.”
The sharkish guard said, “Fine. But nothing for this one until he talks. Let’s see if Captain America’s willing to let his friend die. I hear choking on your own vomit is a great way to go.”
Clint was shaking too hard to sit up, but he met Steve’s eyes as they dragged him out. Steve was too tough to crack, but he was stupidly noble, overprotective. Clint didn’t want to be the thing that made him break, so he held his eyes and shook his head at him, and hoped Steve would listen.
Their noise faded away, and time stretched like a nightmare.
The cell was too open, too exposed without Steve there: the only sound was the air rasping in and out of his throat, echoing off the walls. He tried to count the minutes by his breaths, but they turned into coins in his hands and Jacques was taking them, and Clint was falling off the high wire, falling forever.
He jerked awake, and the cell was still empty. Sweat soaked his clothes, past its ability to wick away moisture, and he was shivering, his teeth chattering. The sound echoed off the walls, and the rats crept out of the shadows, squeaking in a high pitch that set his teeth on edge and made his stomach turn over. One of the cats at the orphanage had gotten old and died, and he’d snuck outside to bury her, but her corpse had been crawling with rats, because she had been too old to hunt them anymore. He’d screamed and gotten in trouble, but he could still see the way her body had jerked under their teeth.
He hadn’t realized until he was older that it was just their bites that had been making her move; he’d thought she was still alive. And now it was his turn.
Fear rose up in his throat and he heaved, but his stomach was empty and his throat was dry, nothing but acid creeping and burning its way up through his muscles. His skin crawled, and he squeezed his eyes shut because if the rats were coming for him, he didn’t want to see, and he didn’t want to cry because tears made you a target but he couldn’t stop himself.
Something brushed his arm and he jerked away, but someone said, “Shhh, it’s just me.” A gentle, calloused hand cupped his face, stroking away a tear.
"Barney?" he said. But no, Barney didn't come back. He opened his eyes.
Steve was kneeling beside him. That made sense. Steve even came back from seventy years of being dead, he could come back for Clint.
It took a moment for Clint to register that the cell door was open, and he tried to push himself up, but his arms trembled so much that he sagged back to the ground, curled up on his good side. “Don’t think I can walk,” he whispered, his voice scorched bare, and hid his face against the cold floor.
“That’s okay,” Steve said softly, slinging his shield over his back. When had he gotten that? He thought they’d lost it back in the explosion, when they were captured. Now that Clint was looking, he saw that Steve wasn’t wearing his collar anymore, and his suit was back on.
Maybe this was another dream.
Then Steve picked him up, light as a feather - like the time he’d lifted Thor’s hammer, not knowing. Only it wasn’t the same, because you had to be worthy to wield Mjolnir, and Clint was just Clint. But he was warm and Clint was so tired. He was going to be embarrassed by this later, if it wasn’t a dream, but for now he just turned his cheek into Steve's chest and let himself fall away again. It was okay this time. He was safe.
When he woke up, the first thing he saw was Natasha, tucking a strand of red hair neatly behind her ear as she bent over an old paperback, the kind that littered the SHIELD infirmary, easy to pick up when bored and easy to abandon when well again. At least, it smelled like the infirmary here: overwashed, with no familiar scents or fragrances, like no one was there at all.
Clint tilted his head a little to read the cover of Natasha’s book, and she looked up sharply at his movement. “Clint,” she said, her mouth quirking. “Are you awake enough for me to yell at you for almost dying?”
He considered carefully. “No,” he decided, after working the sentence around in his head for a moment to make sure he understood it. Everything was a little fuzzy.
“Okay,” she said agreeably, still smiling at him. It was the real one, the quiet imperfect smile she used when she was being honest and wanted him to know it, so Clint smiled back.
“Hi,” he said muzzily. “I’m gonna go back to sleep now, okay?”
“Good plan,” she said, looking amused now - which, hey.
“Hey,” he said. “Not nice.” Then he remembered - “Steve okay?” If she was smiling, he was probably fine, but Clint needed to know if that had been a dream.
“The peak of human perfection,” she said dryly.
Clint sighed in relief. “Yeah, he does that,” he said fondly. “Did you know he could cuddle, too?”
Natasha was laughing at him now, whoops. “I did not, but I appreciate the intel.”
“Shut up,” he mumbled, closing his eyes, and fell back to sleep in pure self-defense.
Clint decided he’d really like to just be awake for awhile instead of constantly waking up, sort of being conscious, and falling straight asleep again. He went through a few rounds of that with Bruce, Tony, Natasha again, a doctor, and three separate nurses, and then he was really done with whatever unpronounceable ratshit-transmitted virus he was suffering through.
But because karma was a bitch when you were an ex-criminal, ex-assassin, life-long asshole, he woke up with his mind perfectly clear for the first time in days, and Steve was the one holding vigil.
“Hi,” he croaked, and Steve looked up from frowning in confusion at the book Natasha had left - probably wondering how the cover artist had got the woman’s spine to twist like that, Clint guessed - and a grin instantly brightened his face.
“Hi there,” Steve said. “First time you’ve been awake for me. How’re you feeling?”
“Much better. Sorry about... you know, before.” He waved a hand vaguely, then winced as his ribs protested. “No more vomiting or fever dreams, I promise.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Steve insisted. “I told you I was sick a lot as a kid. When I got scarlet fever, I was so delirious that I wandered clear out of the apartment before one of the neighbors caught me.”
Not sure how to argue with that, Clint nodded, and won a smile from Steve. They lapsed into comfortable silence for a minute, until Steve broke it again.
"I was wondering, though," he said slowly, tracing a finger over the blanket. "Who's Barney? You were calling for him."
Sometimes, he really wished he wasn’t friends with Natasha and Steve, because they had a knack for finding the one question you really didn’t want to answer, and then didn’t hesitate to ask it. Steve, at least, was well-intentioned about it; Natasha was just ruthless.
Clint said shortly, "My brother.”
Steve nodded and didn't ask, even smiled a little, understanding, no pressure, but Clint felt like shit anyway. Steve deserved better than that, from Clint. He closed his eyes, and made himself go on. "He was.... I wasn't as lucky as you in brothers."
Steve was silent for a long moment, then a hand folded around Clint's where it was fisted in the blanket. His fingers - still an artist's, even after all these years of fighting - coaxed Clint's to relax, to interlace with Steve's. "I got lucky twice," Steve said, quiet but fierce, and it took a moment for Clint to understand. "Maybe you just needed to choose for yourself."
Clint shook his head, wordless. That wasn't.... he hadn't chosen the orphanage or the circus or SHIELD; even the Avengers. He hadn't been part of the Initiative, he'd just been there and thirsty for revenge when Steve... oh.
When Steve had chosen him, on Natasha's word. The way they'd all chosen to fight together, again and again, in the months since.
He tried to pull his hand away, disconcerted. Steve let him go instantly - and somehow, that made Clint just want to put his hand right back. He wondered how Steve did that: always knew the right thing to do, even when Clint didn't know what that was.
Maybe Clint could just trust him in this. He'd followed him everywhere else, after all: through invasions and resurrections and getting lost in time, to other planets, and into more fights than he could count. Maybe this could be simple.
He found Steve's hand again and pulled, jerky at first, until Steve got the message and rose, climbing onto the hospital bed.
"Sorry, I'm bigger these days," Steve said apologetically, and Clint laughed, shaky and bright.
He wrapped his arms around Steve, and held on.