"I could have you evicted, you know. It's my tower." Tony said thoughtfully. He was leaning against a wall in an abandoned hallway on the fourteenth floor. At first glance it would appear that he was alone and talking to himself, but that wasn't the case. Up above him, in an air vent, JARVIS had identified a heat signature belonging to none other than their resident birdbrain, Clinton Francis Barton.

Tony paused, listening for a response. When none came, he tried a different tactic. "Or I could turn the AC on full blast until you have to come out." He suggested, though he'd never really do it.

He had done so once before on a similar occasion, but the result had ended in the worlds most stubborn archer being pulled, half-conscious, from the vent and hospitalized for hypothermia, and Tony being furiously lectured by Captain America and the Black Widow at the same time. How was he supposed to know that Clint would rather freeze to death than have his teeth checked? The archer was complacent enough about his frequent audiology and optometry appointments.

When he was met with silence again, the billionaire rolled his eyes and tossed his hands up with an exasperated "Fine!" And stalked away. He met Bruce coming out of the elevator. "I'm tagging out, he's not even responding."

"Maybe he took his hearing aids out." Bruce mused, casting his eyes to the ceiling. "I'll see what I can do."

Tony shrugged, "Good luck."

"Thanks." Bruce watched him head into the elevator, then turned and went to stand under the vent where Clint had set up his nest. "Clint?"

Silence. Maybe he really had taken his aids out. Experimentally, Bruce banged moderately on the wall, hoping the vibration would catch the archer's attention if he couldn't hear. There was some quiet shuffling from up above, then Clint's cranky voice floated down through the vent. "Is that still you, Stark?"

"No, it's Bruce. I had a hunch you'd taken your aids out, hope I didn't startle you."

"Takes more than that to catch me off guard." Clint said, a note of pride touching the edges of his statement. "You might as well leave, though. I'm not coming down."

Bruce sighed, but patiently replied, "Look, nobody likes the dentist, but it's just one of those things you have to do."

"I'm a grown man and I can make my own decisions about my healthcare thank you very much." Clint argued tersely.

"Says the man who refused extraction in Dubai because it was 'just a scratch'."

"It WAS just a scratch." Clint protested.

"It was a stab wound!" Bruce shook his head. "Come on, Clint, please come down."

"My teeth are fine."

The scientist looked in the direction of Clint's voice knowingly, "You've been chewing exclusively on the left side for the past two weeks, and started only eating soft foods since last Thursday. Don't lie to me, we're just trying to help."

"Stalkers."

"It was JARVIS who brought it up, actually. He noticed you were spiking fevers. That tooth's probably really infected, you need to have it taken care of. Clint, look, it's going to be fine. They'll put you under before we go, you won't feel a thing."

"Can you do it?" There was a plaintive note in Clint's voice now.

Bruce smiled slightly, "I'm more than willing to be the one to put you under, if that'll make you feel more comfortable."

The vent creaked slightly as Clint shifted his weight. "No, I meant the teeth part."

Bruce's PhD was in gamma radiology, why did everyone seem to think he was an M.D., a psychologist, or apparently now a dentist? "I'm not that kind of doctor."

"Then I'm not coming down. You can send the next volunteer in if you want." Clint said dismissively. "It's not going to do any good, though."

"Actually... The next volunteer is already here."

There was a sudden echoing thud, a strangled shout, some painful-sounding crashes, and a ball of limbs came tumbling down through the vent access hatch. Natasha had Clint caught in a viscous struggle. She'd get a hold on him, he'd squirm out of it, and the process would repeat itself. Running footsteps approached and Steve was there, grabbing Clint from behind and holding him tightly, trapping his arms and lifting his feet

a couple inches off the floor so he couldn't get any leverage.

"Sorry, Clint." Bruce said sheepishly, pulling a syringe of sedative from his pocket and uncapping it. "We knew a distraction would be our only chance to get at you."

Clint struggled against Steve's grasp. "Traitors!"

Steve looked down at the top of Clint's head. "We're not traitors. We care about you." He said gently, but firmly, and nodded at Bruce to sedate the struggling archer. He didn't exactly understand why putting him to sleep was really necessary, and when he'd asked, he just got a foreboding look from Natasha.

Bruce approached Clint with the syringe, but had to step back quickly to avoid getting kicked somewhere vital. "Hey, I said I'd be the one to put you under, but if you're going to kick me, I'll let Tony do it his way and shoot you with a tranq dart from his suit."

Clint thrashed, something frantic coming into his eyes. "Let me go! Dammit, Steve! Let me go!"

"Language, Barton." Steve said out of habit, immediately reddening and glancing around to see if his team had heard, but thankfully Clint's shouting covered up his slip of the tongue. The super soldier was patiently taking the archer's heels in his shins, but was glad when Natasha grabbed Clint by the ankles, allowing Bruce to dart in and inject the sedative into the archer's bloodstream. Steve let go, thinking he would accept his fate now that there was nothing he could do. He certainly didn't expect a fist to come hurtling towards his face. In fact, only his enhanced reflexes saved him from a truly magnificent black eye, though the blow did manage to glance off his jaw and was sure to leave a bruise. It'd probably be gone within the hour of course, but the point still stood. Barton was absolutely not going down without a fight.

The archer stumbled drunkenly with the drug in his system, blinking furiously and throwing clumsy punches at anyone close enough to hit, though not landing any, "I can make my own damn... decisions about my own damn health and you guys have... Have no right... To... To interfere..." He sagged sideways, nearly falling into a wall, but Bruce caught him before he could hit his head on something.

There was a pause in the suddenly silent corridor, the team looking down at the passed out archer in the center of their circle.

"Well, that was fun." Tony said dryly from where he'd been standing by with the ironman gauntlet loaded with a tranquilizer dart.

"The big baby." Natasha muttered, sounding irritated but there was a fondness around her eyes and lips that said the opposite. "Why does he have to let it get to this?"

Steve picked Clint up as though he was a toddler fallen asleep on the drive home, and looked down at him. He could tell the right side of his jaw was slightly swollen from where his tooth had become infected. He carried him towards the elevator and a short ride in one of SHIELD's tactical vans (nobody wanted to stay behind and it was the only type of vehicle that offered enough room for all of them) brought them to a benign-looking dentists office downtown.

"What, no specialty SHIELD dentist?" Tony asked somewhat sarcastically. "I'm pretty sure you guys have SHIELD standard issue staplers by now."

"Quiet, Stark. Not like you haven't put your name on the side of everything from airliners to sneakers." Natasha shot back before the last word left the billionaire's lips, "Anyway, this dentist is the only one willing to see a patient that has knocked seven other dentists unconscious in their own exam rooms."

The sight in the waiting room was comical enough to fit right in on the funny pages, Steve mused as they signed Clint in. Among the newspapers and magazines, the basket of children's toys, and the big aquarium in the corner sat a spy/assassin, one of the richest men in the world, a giant ragemonster (currently non-ragey) and a super soldier carrying a passed out and drooling marksman, listening to lyricless Jazz renditions of vaguely familiar songs while they waited for Clint to be called back into the exam room.

All Steve could think was, he sure was glad the worst was behind them. Sedating Clint had been quite the ordeal. Well, at least it was over.

It really, really wasn't over.

Steve watched in amazement as a barely-conscious Clint Barton threw a sofa cushion at Thor, who had just returned from Asgard, and made a high-pitched noise at the back of his throat. The Thunder God looked puzzled. "What has happened, Hawk?"

Clint just whined again and sprawled himself out on the common room sofa where they'd laid him down to recover. He'd slept peacefully all the way home, and a good half hour after they'd deposited him on the sofa, too. Steve had expected the marksman to wake fairly annoyed with being manhandled into sedation, of course. But rather, the anesthesia seemed to be wearing off slowly, leaving him groggy, limp, and altogether pitiful, occasionally throwing something halfheartedly at passerby, then looking at the object he'd thrown laying on the floor as though he didn't know how it's gotten there or why everyone was looking at him funny. So, the team had taken up watch from a safe distance.

Natasha strode through the common room door. "Alright, whiny, here's a smoothie. Can you hold it without spilling?"

Clint made a scoffing noise and made grabby hands at the smoothie. Natasha handed it to him and sighed when he fumbled and had to hold firmly with both hands to keep it steady. Sedation had clearly not been kind to the archer. He quickly found that the numbed right side of his mouth refused to cooperate in sucking on the straw, sending the strawberry-banana-mango concoction leaking out the corner of his mouth. He whined, the pitch rising to a crescendo before heading back down the scale to end in a gravely groan.

"Seriously, I don't think my voice has hit that high since I was ten years old, Barton." Tony said, rubbing his ear melodramatically.

Clint balanced the smoothie cup on his knee so he could use one hand to sign something, clumsy with sedative still in his system. Natasha translated immediately for the non-signers in the room. "How else am I supposed to communicate?"

They'd done this a couple times before, once when their archer had injured his jaw badly enough in a fight to really want to avoid talking, but mostly in times when he'd blown out his hearing aids and didn't trust his voice when he couldn't hear it.

After the initial re-alignment of everyone's brains to accept Clint's deafness, it had settled into their lives the same way that keeping the cupboards stocked with Pop Tarts for Thor had, or keeping tabs on Banner's reading glasses after his habit of putting them down and not remembering where later had. So nobody batted an eyelash when he started signing, except to note the usually crisp and clear hand movements were currently fumbling, the sign language equivalent of slurred speech.

"How else are you supposed to communicate? You're doing it right now, birdbrain." Tony rolled his eyes. "You just like annoying us with your whining."

"You caught me." Natasha said for Clint as he signed, a wobbly version of his joking half-smile touching his mouth.

"You look like a stroke victim like that, feathers, cut it out." Tony said.

Clint started to sign something, then stopped midway, paling and starting again. Natasha jumped up from where she was sitting close to him, as though he'd poked her with a hot poker. "Like hell you are!"

Clint made to get up hastily, but immediately toppled to the floor, his knees still deciding to keep up their jellyfish impression.

"Oh for the love of-" Natasha leaned over and hauled one of the archer's arms over her shoulder and pulling him to his feet. "If you're sick on me Barton I swear-"

Steve stepped forward to be helpful, though confusion drenched his features, "What's wrong?"

"The lovely Mister Hawkeye is experiencing a touch of nausea." Natasha replied, "Because he decided that going to the dentist is so terrible that he had to go the General Anesthesia route instead of manning up and acting like an adult-"

/You can lecture me later./ Clint signed clumsily, then pressed his hand over his mouth.

Together Steve and Natasha hauled the archer into the bathroom to be sick in the toilet instead of his friend's lap.

"All this over the dentist." Steve shook his head in disbelief.

Tony passed by on his way to the coffeemaker with a smug look, "Yeah, just remember this the next time you say I'M the pigheaded one."