Title: So What
Summary: It is estimated that 1 in 1,000 people have Tourettes. He wishes people would stop treating him so differently.
Disclaimer: Not owning anything... (except in the sense of pwnage)
Inspiration: IDK, but i saw the contest on the forum and i remembered helping with the Special Ed kids back in grade school and I wanted to try this contest out.
I did a lot of research (well, all that I could in the last three-ish days) and I think I nailed it pretty well. I hate it when people are stereotypical and uneducated about issues like this, though, so if you think you see any problems with how I portray the disorder PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I want to fix any mistakes that I've made.
Thank you.
It was as if people thought he was retarded because of it- as if he were now suddenly some huge liability.
He wished people would stop treating him so differently after they figured it out.
He hadn't had to take any meds for it for a long time. Probably since he was a teenager. He'd learned how to control it a long time ago. The doctor had had him talk to a lady with the same symptoms, and she had helped him with it. Whenever he had the urge to kick his leg or start tapping his fingers, he would find something else to do, instead. He made it blend into his normal movements so that no one would notice it.
When he was tired or frustrated with something, though, he wouldn't be in control. People who were around him a lot usually figured it out, after a while.
He remembered when Natasha first put two and two together.
He'd been injured on a mission, and she was speaking with him at his bedside in his SHIELD hospital room. His arm was in a cast and his ribcage was wrapped in gauze. There were twenty-some stitches in his head, and he had a puffy black eye. The rest of his injuries were masked by the thin white hospital sheet. She could see the tenseness he had due to the hospital setting and smiled fondly.
She was asking him about what went wrong- she had been off dealing with another section of the building (which had been chalk full of Hydra agents) and she turned back to find Clint in a heap on the floor.
He had his arms at his sides as they talked, above the sheets and in clear view of Natasha. He wasn't paying attention to anything but the pain shooting through his arm and head and ribs. He couldn't blend his motions. He didn't even notice it.
He might not have noticed, but Natasha did. His hand was twitching. Random spazzes every ten or twenty seconds. Natasha eyed his hand silently as they talked.
His leg was doing it too, and she picked up on that, also, quietly making a note in her head about it.
"Alright Clint, I think you need to rest now. I know how you hate hospitals, and doctors, and needles, but you need to calm down and let yourself heal."
He looked at her. "What makes you think I'm not calm? I'm practically dozing off here!" Clint laughed lightheartedly, although he was obviously uncomfortable for some reason. Natasha frowned.
"But…" the twitching had stopped almost completely, and he was now casually flexing his hand in front of his face. He seemed conscious of this movement now. He saw that she staring at his hand, confused.
"That's nothing," he assured her, shrugging it off.
"Clint, do you have Tourettes?" He looked away. She took his hand in hers, "Don't be ashamed, Clint."
His hand twitched slightly in hers, and he pulled it away.
She looked him over seriously, said good night, and leaned over to kiss him on the forehead, like she always did whenever he got hurt and had to spend the night in a recovery room.
She turned the light off as she left.
She never mentioned it again, but he would occasionally find her sending worried glances at him- during fights, during training, over the breakfast table- all the time. Clint learned to ignore it.
He also learned how to cover it better- he never wanted anyone to know. He had let his guard slip once, and his partner had figured it out. Never again.
He remembered when he had been practically forced to tell Tony.
He had just finished a rather rigorous workout with Cap, and was heading to his room for a nap.
"Tony Stark requires your assistance in his lab, Master Barton," Jarvis informed him just as he opened his door. He sighed dramatically and closed his door again, turning back towards the elevator.
He's greeted by the darkness of the basement lab. There were maybe two lights on, one being Tony's arc reactor and the other being one that illuminates Tony as he sat. He had himself stood up on a Frankenstein-monster table thing, his feet standing on the ledge on the bottom of it. It was set at an angle so he was basically standing, but kinda sitting, too. There was a tray full of different tools next to standing next to him for easy access.
Clint drearily noted that Tony's arc reactor seemed to be out of place.
"Clint, you have good aim, right?"
"Excuse me?" Clint said wryly, "If I were so immature as to think that such jokes were funny, I'd say that that's the perfect setup for a 'that's what she said'." Clint grinned, still a little downbeat due to fatigue.
"Yeah, yeah. I need you to replace my arc reactor." Clint eyed it carefully.
"Are you sure?"
"Trust me, Clint, I trust you. I mean, what could go wrong? I could go into cardiac arrest, but that's no big deal. I could potentially have shrapnel rip up my heart, but that's no biggie. I mean, honestly the worst that could happen is that I would die," Tony said dismissively.
"I don't think you understand-"
"Stop being such a drama queen." Clint flexed his hands.
"For your own health, I'm advising you find someone else."
"But Pepper told me she's never going to do it again, and you're supposed to be the 'World's Greatest Marksmen'."
"Yeah. With weapons. I'm not so good with the open heart surgery kinda thing… There's a reason why I'm not a doctor."
"Yeah? Well, what would that reason be?"
Clint paused. He was tired and wanted a nap, and really didn't want to accidentally kill one of the richest men in the world today. Well, he did, but he didn't. Tony was an ass, and Clint did want to kill him- metaphorically.
Tony snapped his fingers, "Hello? Anybody home?"
"I have Tourettes, fuck off." Tony froze mid-snap, shocked. Then he was confused.
"Wait, what?" he asked, but Clint had already made his way to the door and out of sight.
Luckily, Tony never asked him about or told anyone else.
Well, that's what Clint thought, at least, for a little bit…
Until he was approached by Steve about three months later.
He was stuffing his things into his duffle bag after a sparring session. Steve had just pulled on his jeans and a shirt, and also started putting his things into his bag.
"So, Clint," Steve started, side glancing at him awkwardly.
"So, Steve," Clint returned, not even looking up.
"Can you tell me about your condition?"
"Excuse me?" Steve looked at him- he was making the 'I'm the team leader, I must be unbiased on this matter' face.
"Tony told me-"
"Son of a bitch!" Clint cursed, shoving the last item in his back harshly. He couldn't control the urge to kick, and a sharp pain shot through his foot.
"Are you okay?" Steve asked urgently, concerned. Clint shot him a glare as he sat down to take the pressure off of his stubbed toe. "What? Seeing as you have… special needs, I have to look after you the most, seeing my title as team leader."
Clint stood quickly and pushed Steve against the lockers. He pulled back his fist and punched him square if the face. Then he took the front of Cap's shirt in his hands and pulled him close that they were face to face.
"If you ever- ever- say that I have special needs again, I will punch you ten times harder than that, and make your life a living hell. Understand?"
"I don't see why you're so offended by this-"
"You don't see why- I'm offended because you're acting like that's what defines me. Guess what, grandpa- I'm not some twitching special ed freak. I'm Clint Barton, the same guy you've known for years. Now, you're gonna drop the subject right now before I have to give you a black eye."
"But I think we need to talk about it-"
"And I think we just did. And now we're done. And now, I'm gonna leave. Good bye," he slammed the door shut behind him.
Steve finished up, too, and went to get an ice pack.
He figured that Steve probably ended up telling Jan and Hank and T'Challa and Banner, too (and warned them not to try to confront him about it) because he kept getting glances from them all.
Why can't people just leave it alone? They never noticed anything before, he usually had pretty good control of it, so why did they act like it made a difference? He still had perfect aim- he'd had Tourettes since he was a kid but he still managed to obtain the title of the Greatest Marksman.
He just wanted to be treated normally- that's why he didn't usually announce it to just anyone.
He had Tourettes- so what?
He was still Clint Barton, Hawkeye, the impeccably accurate archer they all knew. It wasn't as if he was suddenly a completely different person because they discovered something new about him.
So what if he was Clint Barton, Hawkeye, the World's Greatest Marksman, with Tourettes?
Thank you for reading.
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