A/N: Written for a fill at Avengerkink, though the prompt has been modified a bit with permission. Thanks to dysprositos for outstanding beta work as usual. Shameless whump ahead. You've been warned. Pre-slash as well. Heed that if you must.
Phil's fingernails dig into Clint's wrist and his sweat drips onto Clint's dirt-stained cheek. Clint unclenches his eyes and sees Phil looking at him in panic. Phil is supposed to be calm under pressure; he is a mooring buoy in the crazy sea of Clint's world. He trusts Phil with his life and isn't used to seeing fear in Phil's eyes.
"Phil, we'll get out of this," Clint says, his voice shaking with exhaustion.
"I know," comes the reply through clenched teeth, but Phil looks past Clint at the river below. Night is falling and the air is crisp and cool. The tree that Phil is hanging onto with one hand is leaning way out from a cliff overlooking a river.
They'd been cut off from the rest of their team, chased by a group of gunrunners, and Clint had used one of his exploding arrows to blow up a rock formation to get rid of the bad guys. This was all well and good, except that the rock formation was bigger than he'd thought, and he and Coulson had to do a very cartoonish dash away from the rock fall. It would have been funny, except the result wasn't humorous at all; they'd ended up hanging from a tree on the edge of a cliff.
Their team is a few miles away and doesn't know where they are.
Phil is hanging onto the tree with one arm and onto Clint with the other, and he's bleeding from a gash on his cheek. It goes unnoticed as it drips onto Clint as he hangs below.
"Okay, Phil," Clint says, trying hard to sound calm. And it takes quite the effort—his arm hurts like a son of a bitch, but he's afraid that he'd pull Phil down if he throws his other arm up. "You need to get your legs around that tree for more leverage. It looks pretty sturdy."
Phil nods, looking again at the river below, and tries to swing his body enough to grab at the tree branch with his legs. The motion of Phil swinging startles Clint's weight, though, and he feels his shoulder pop out of its socket. He yells through clenched teeth, so it comes out as a strangled groan, and Phil's eyes snap to Clint's face.
"Clint! What-oh hell, your shoulder," Phil says, panting.
"Just get your legs around that branch, Phil," Clint groans, feeling fire lance through his arm with every move Phil makes. He focuses on breathing. Phil tries twice to swing his legs up, but he just can't get the leverage he needs while holding onto Clint. After a couple of tries he stops.
By that time, Clint's eyes are screwed shut and he's breathing through his nose, trying to keep tears of pain from escaping down his dusty cheeks.
"Fuck, Clint, I can't get it," Phil admits tiredly.
They hang in silence for a moment and Clint is so damned exhausted. He finally whispers, "It's okay. It was a good try." He opens his eyes and looks at the sheer cliff he is facing, hoping to find something he can hold if Phil could swing him over there. They really need Phil to be free with two hands and a rope from his standard SHIELD-issue backpack. There's nothing, though. Clint looks down at the river below and stares for a moment, then looks back up at Phil, trying to calculate how long it would take Phil to get to him if he drops to the river below.
"No, Clint," Phil commands, as if reading Clint's mind. "No, fucking way."
Clint feels Phil's grip tighten, feels blood welling up from where he is digging into Clint's skin.
"I can manage a water landing, Phil, and then you can come get me." It's their only option now that Clint's shoulder is out of socket. It's taking all he has to keep his handhold on Phil.
"Clint, it's at least 80 feet down, and we don't know how deep that water is," Phil says, pleading.
They are quiet again, the sound of Clint's ragged breaths tearing through the silence, but then Phil's grip on the tree starts to slip and he groans through his teeth. He is strong, but they've been hanging here for a while, which would be hell on anyone, even an ex-Ranger.
Clint takes a deep breath. He doesn't want to do this. Phil is his best friend, his boss, and maybe more than both of those things if he's not busy hanging from a tree or lying to himself. He loves being around Phil; it's like Phil is his anchor point and he only really relaxes when Phil is around. Literally dropping out of the picture isn't something he's looking forward to, and while his plan has a chance of working, it probably won't.
Few of Clint's plans ever did.
But Phil is going to fall soon, too, and Clint isn't about to let that happen, not when there's another option. Even if it's a really, really terrible option.
"I can do it. You need to get up there so you can get me out of this mess, okay? You're not going to be able to do that hanging here."
Phil shakes his head and tightens his grip again, saying something that Clint doesn't catch.
"What?" he asks.
"I can't lose you, Clint," Phil says harshly, locking his blue eyes on Clint's. "I said I can't lose you and it's true. This isn't going to work, and you're going to end up spattered on those rocks down there, and then who the hell is going to throw paperclips at me while I work? Or brew me the strongest coffee on the planet to keep me up writing my reports, or bring me cookies and random things like plants even though he tries to sneak them in?"
Clint feels his stomach drop at the protestation, feels a surprising and warm feeling rush through his chest, and then he takes a deep breath and throws Phil a smile. "I will, but not if we both fall. That won't work. You're not positioned right, and one of us needs to be functional sooner rather than later." He pauses. "And you're not supposed to know about the cookies," he says, and before he can think too hard about it, he clenches his hand into a fist, twists his arm, and opens his hand to get out of Phil's grip.
He falls.
Clint tries to use the free fall to twist his body, to get his arms in front of him and his feet together for a better water entry, but Phil was right about the depth. It's too shallow, and even though his form isn't too bad going into the river, he barely registers the icy crash of the water before he hits the bottom and feels his right leg explode. He draws a watery gasp and is choking now, but he is one determined motherfucker and he thrashes, his leg feeling like it's shattering into pieces and waves of nausea rolling through his stomach. But he thrashes and twists and somehow manages to get his head above the surface and gulps in air, aiming himself for the river's edge, hearing Phil call out his name.
But he can't reply because he's coughing, and swimming with one arm and one leg, and his shoulder has knives piercing through it, and his lower leg feels like it's breaking over and over again.
Somehow, though, he manages his way as far as he can to the edge of the river and wedges himself between two rocks, pouring every ounce of energy into keeping his head above water and not passing out from the pain.
He knows Phil will come for him.
"Clint!" Phil shouts as he watches Clint drop to the river, feeling his own stomach fall the second the crazy archer twists and let go of his arm. "Goddamn it, Clint!" He sees him hit the water and he cringes and swears, "Fuck, fuck, no."
He swings his free arm up to the tree and grabs it, wrenching his own shoulder a little as he does. He climbs carefully and makes it to the edge of the cliff, his heart racing as he leans over and peers down to the water below. He can't see anything and so he swears again, and stands and looks around, searching for a path down to the riverbed.
Eighty feet. He decides to use the rope in his backpack and ties it to the very large tree they were hanging from, at its base. He uses it to help lower himself down the cliff face, a sort of hack-rappelling job. It's not far by foot, but he's distracted as he climbs down. Because Clint brings him cookies and doughnuts, and sits in his office with tousled, gorgeous blonde hair and laughing eyes whenever he's bored and he is absolutely the most dependable person Phil has ever met.
Watching Clint drop to the river plays like a recording as Phil climbs down, and he can't get his heart rate to slow, feeling all the way like he's just lost something very important. They've been working together for three years now, and Phil can already feel a hole opening inside his chest as he draws closer to the river.
He steps down to the edge of the water and scans it anxiously, breathing heavily and seeing nothing. He wipes his bloody cheek and then hears something from the rocks to his left and suddenly he sees Clint, soaked to the bone and wedged between two rocks and grasping one desperately, eyes clenched shut and breathing shallow.
Phil wades quickly over and puts his hand on Clint's hand and then reaches down below his shoulders and pulls him out, saying "I've got you. I've got you," as he pulls; Clint groans and pales, and when Phil lays him on the ground he arches his back and writhes in pain. Phil turns and puts both hands on Clint's shoulders to keep him from writhing too much, but Clint opens his eyes and looks at Phil with fear, his breathing rough and quick.
"Clint, try and lie still. I have to put your shoulder back in its socket. We'll get out of here, I promise. Hold still." One thing at a time, Phil tells himself. One thing.
Clint groans and then nods and clenches his eyes shut and Phil positions himself around his shoulder, gets his grip and pulls. Clint gasps and arches again, and then passes out, limp on the ground at Phil's feet, breathing shallowly. Phil drops his chin to his chest and closes his eyes for a moment.
He tries to assess the situation. Clint just sacrificed himself for Phil. Wait. He shakes his head and forces himself to assess the current situation. They have an extraction point lined up, but it's about a mile and a half from the cave where the gunrunners were working, and probably two miles from the top of the cliff. The remaining two agents they were separated from will be heading for the extraction point.
Clint is soaked from the river; his shoulder is going to need attention, and who knows if he has any injuries from the impact of the fall. Phil has to get him stabilized and then figure out how to either get them to the extraction point or get the extraction team to come to them.
He makes a list in his head. He's good at those and he needs the perspective. Wet clothes. Climb out of here. Extraction team. Figure out what the hell just happened up there.
Very carefully, he takes his pocket knife and cuts Clint's wet shirt off, and a strangled sob is wrenched from Clint's throat, but he's still unconscious. Phil clenches his teeth and ignores it, digging through his backpack for the spare t-shirt and the emergency blanket.
Dusk is creeping in and Clint is already trembling, either from pain or from cold. They're both in danger of hypothermia if they can't get to the team, but right now he wraps the blanket around him and pulls him into his lap.
Clint opens his eyes slowly as Phil is working to wipe his face of the blood and dirt and river water.
"You're an idiot," Phil says gently with a smile, and Clint nods.
"Maybe," Clint says, his voice gravelly and low. He takes a shaky breath and Phil does, too; he's trembling with relief that Clint is awake, that he's lying in Phil's arms awake and not floating dead in the muddy river nearby. "I made it, huh?" Clint asks, actually trying to bury himself deeper in Phil's embrace.
They've had to hold each other out of desperation before, but this time Phil keeps thinking of the second Clint let go, the sheer panic in his chest, and the flood of relief when he pulled Clint ashore just minutes ago; suddenly the need to keep him safe he'd felt on other missions is nothing like what Phil is feeling at the moment.
It's just puzzling and strange enough to need to be set aside very carefully in Phil's mind. He has other things to focus on right now.
"We need to get back up the cliff to the extraction point. I know you're cold, and your shoulder is probably on fire, but we need to get up there. We only have an hour to get to the evac crew." He concentrated on keeping a steady voice, but two miles in an hour seemed impossible right now.
"No rest for the wicked," Clint said, clenching his teeth and trying to sit up.
Phil helps him to sit up, being careful of his weak shoulder, and he wraps the blanket back up and stuffs it in the backpack. "Does anything hurt from the fall, Clint?"
Clint draws a shaky breath. "I'm mostly freezing, and my right leg hurts like a son of a bitch, but I'm okay, I think." He pauses and twists to get a good look at Phil. "What about you? Anything to worry about? That explosion was pretty massive. Totally miscalculated the amount of rock available to get thrown our way, sorry."
Phil chuckles. "It's okay. A few cuts and scrapes, but I'm all right. Come on, let's try and get out of here."
Clint nods and tries to stand, but his right leg collapses as soon as he puts weight on it. "Shit! God-fucking-damn it!" He says as Phil goes to pull him back up and he grabs Phil by the shoulders to keep himself up. He pales, too, and sways a little on his feet.
Phil throws his shoulder under Clint's good arm and holds him up. "I've got you, what's wrong?"
Clint takes a shaky breath and puts his weight on his good leg. "Not sure. Kind of afraid to look." He pulls some more air in over his teeth and nods. "Come on, we have to get out of here. I'm guessing that rope is for getting out?"
"Yeah, but. . .Clint," Phil says, gently, increasingly aware of Clint's poor physical condition.
"Coulson, we can't stay here. We have to get to that site. I can handle it, okay? Come on," he replies and hop-limps over to the rope hanging from the side of the cliff and looks up and then sheepishly back at Phil. "Yeah, maybe not the smartest jump, but it's all I could think of."
Phil smiles and grabs the rope, handing it to Clint. "You go up first. We'll talk about your thought process later, over hot chocolate in my office."
Clint groans. "God, Coulson. Way to distract me. I think my legs are turning blue from the ice that must be there." But he takes a deep breath, too, and begins to climb. It's going to be hell on his shoulder, and if his leg is as painful as it seems, that's not going to help either, but there's no other option here, and they both know it.
Clint climbs hand-over-hand toward the top. On a good day he'd pull this off in less than five minutes, but today is definitely not a good day. Yeah, his shoulder is back in its socket, but it's still burning with every movement, and this can't be on the list of therapy activities to get it back in shape. Then his leg, Christ. He doesn't want to say anything to Coulson, but every time it throbs in pain, a wave of nausea washes through Clint's stomach, leaving him trembling on the rope. He tries not to use it on his climb, but the effort of favoring it is draining.
About halfway up, he stops. His chest is heaving and he's afraid he's totally going to throw up on Phil, who is standing below trying to give helpful reassurance to Clint. It's not helpful—it's really just grating on Clint's nerves, but he doesn't have any energy to tell Coulson to shut up, and he knows the guy is just trying to be helpful anyway. Clint takes another really deep breath and climbs again. He recites fletching styles, shaft dimensions, and a whole archery glossary as he inches up the rope, feeling beads of sweat drip into his eyes. His nose even itches.
He ignores it all, just reciting and pulling, and he finally makes it to the top. The grass at the base of the tree feels like velvet to Clint, and he lets go of the rope and rolls over onto his back, sucking in precious air. He hears Coulson beginning his ascent, but he can't focus on it. He lies in the grass and stares at the burnt orange sky, trying to steady his breath and hoping the nausea abates soon.
It doesn't, and he has to roll over again to throw up. He manages to sit up afterward and wipe his mouth with the sleeve of the t-shirt before Coulson crests the cliff, but he sees Coulson's eye brush over the mess as he assesses Clint.
"You made it up," Coulson says, kneeling in the grass next to Clint. He reaches into his backpack again and pulls out a bottle of water. "Here. Go easy, but you need some."
Clint just nods and accepts the water, drinking greedily. Coulson reaches up and grabs the bottle before he can suck it all down.
"Stop. You'll make yourself sick again. Wait a minute and then have more, okay?"
His voice sounds gentle to Clint, not like any of the Coulson voices usually pulled out on a mission. This is a concerned friend, and he thinks back to the random stupid shit he's done for Phil that he apparently enjoyed. If Phil is his anchor point that's one thing, if Clint is something like that for Phil, that's just downright scary. Something to figure out later.
Clint shrugs and reaches his hand out. "Okay," he says breathily. "We need to get the hell out of here."
Phil nods and pulls him up. Clint feels all the blood drain from his face as he's pulled upright onto that leg again. He's sure it's broken at this point-had known since he dropped, really- but there's no alternative to limping out of here. He is grateful when Phil throws his arm under his shoulder and takes some of Clint's weight.
They walk for a while, Clint's entire world pared down to the effort of putting one leg in front of the other and not passing out. It feels like he's breathing fire, and the sweat dripping down his face is worsened by the crisp fall air as the sun drops farther down in the evening sky. Fire from his lungs, heat burning his face, and wind chilling his skin, he knows without a doubt he'd be passed out in the grass if it weren't for Phil carrying most of his weight.
After a bit, Phil stops and lets Clint lean all of his weight onto him. "Clint," he says, the tinge of worry in his voice startling Clint back into awareness.
"Yeah?" Clint says, his voice coming out as if he'd been chain smoking Camel cigarettes all day. He tries to clear it, but that just makes him shudder involuntarily in Phil's grip.
"We're almost there, okay? Just a little further."
"Okay," he says, hoping Phil heard him. His vision is starting to grey out on the edges.
Phil gets them moving again and Clint can't find the rhythm of his step and he stumbles, almost sending Phil careening to the ground. He catches himself, though, and pulls Clint up again. Clint clenches his eyes closed against more nausea and manages to say, "You do like the plants, don't you, Coulson?"
Phil laughs, and it makes Clint feel as good as when he had that drink of water he had a while back.
"Yes, Clint. I like the plants. Even the fake ones."
Clint sucks in another shaky breath. "I figured those won't die when you're busy carrying me across the countryside and can't water them."
"I have gardening skills, Barton. They wouldn't die," he says, and Clint hears a strange conviction in his tone.
"Bet you do, sir," he sighs. "I'll bet you do."
And Phil starts talking about plants and gardens and watering cycles, and how his mom showed him how to care for a lot of different plants as a kid because she had her own green house, and how when he wasn't hiding in it reading, he was watering and pruning and generally keeping plants alive. Clint kind of loses track of the conversation, but he knows Phil is just trying to give him something to focus on, and that's cool.
"Phil, I'm gonna be sick again," Clint says, quietly, after about a half an hour. It's true, and he really doesn't want to barf on Coulson's shoes.
Coulson just nods and stops, and then wraps his arm around Clint's waist so that he can bend over and throw up without sitting or falling down, knowing that getting back up would be hell on Clint's leg anyway.
After Coulson gives him some water to rinse his mouth out with, they keep trudging toward the extraction point, and Clint wonders if getting here was the only reason he dropped from Phil's grip a little more than an hour ago. He is groggy and unfocused, but there's a fleeting realization that yes, he wanted to save Coulson's life because Coulson is at the center of Clint's world, but that wasn't the only thing he wanted to save.
He wanted to save himself a chance for more.
Clint hears the helicopter, but he doesn't have the energy to lift his head up to see it. There's a stretcher inside, though, and Phil and a medic help Clint stretch out on it, and he grins tiredly when he feels a needle full of morphine slip into his arm.
"Rest, Barton," he hears, and then he feels Phil's fingers brush gently through his sweaty hair as he fades away thanks to the drug.
Phil is sitting in his office a few days later, filling out paperwork from the botched mission and generally reliving the whole thing in his head. This does not please him. He's usually very good at putting each mission behind him. There have been a few that he just couldn't, though, and this is one of them.
It's giving him a headache because every sentence he goes to write keeps coming out, "And then Agent Barton let go, sacrificing himself so that a senior agent could get out of the situation," but that's not what he wants to write at all. He wants to write, "Agent Barton sacrificed himself. He knew he might be killed and he let go anyway. For me."
In all of the wrestling with what he needed to write and what his brain wants him to write, he isn't getting very far. A knock on his door jolts him out of his aggravating loop.
"Come in," he calls, and grins when he sees Clint standing in his doorway, holding a brand new spider plant against one crutch.
"It's got dirt and everything, sir," he says with a smile, his voice still tired.
Phil stands and comes to get the plant, gesturing Clint to the nearby couch.
"No more secret plant deliveries?" Phil asks, setting it down on his desk and settling himself down on the couch next to Clint.
"Nah. I'm not up for vent travel yet," Clint says, leaning back and a little bit into Phil's shoulder. Phil doesn't mind.
"No more travel of any kind for a while, Agent," Phil says gently. "I've got you here and I'm not letting you go." Now, his voice sounds flat-out possessive in his own ears, but he can't help it. Clint had startled him with his sacrifice, and Phil wasn't going to let him down by being anything but there for him, whenever he needed it.
"Sounds like a fair trade, sir. I'll keep bringing you plants and cookies and you keep me away from cliffs for a while."
"Just don't jump off of them, Barton," Phil says with a satisfied sigh. "Just don't let go."
And Phil looks over and meets Clint's eyes, and they both feel something shift, but they're okay with that. They'll hold onto each other for a while, over a different sort of cliff.