Absolutely gratuitous Clint-whump. Seriously, guys. Gra-tu-i-tous. Written as a response to the following prompt over at LJ's Avengerskink: [Clint] is held captive - in a prison or somewhere else, I'll leave that up to you - and his guards/captors are bored so they decide to play breath games with him. Just for kicks, not for interrogation purposes. No matter how BAMF of an assassin and agent someone is, that's GOTTA be absolutely terrifying. Mouth and nose covered by hands, soemthing tightened around the neck, predicament bondage with a breathplay touch, whatever you can come up with, go for it. Oh, actually, please, no plastic bags over the head or mouth. That for some reason freaks me the freak out. No death fic. I like my Clint alive :)
Air
by MillyVeil
They make him crawl. They make him cross the cold floor on scraped up hands and knees, dragging his shivering self from one side of the room to the other, from one tormentor to the other. Clint doesn't fight it any longer, he's long past that kind of defiance. The only thing left is surviving. The next minute. The next second.
He pulls himself forward. He has to keep moving. If he stops they'll hurt him. They'll hurt him anyway, he knows that, but not until he reaches the other side of the room. It's not much, but the time it takes for him to cross the floor is all the rest he gets. He's learned the hard way that stalling too much means the rest is cancelled. The lessons about refusing or fighting had been even harder. He can't even hope to escape into oblivion if he fights back, they have proved too good at this to let him slip into unconsciousness for more than a few moments at the time.
As soon as they had stepped in and the door had locked behind them, Clint had known with every cell of his being that these two were infinitely more dangerous than the steroid inflated assholes who had dragged him down the hallway for questioning the previous night, the ones who had taken turns beating him when he didn't answer the questions. These two guys are different. Calm. Unhurried. Moving with the kind of fluid casualness that makes him think of prowling Dobermanns. They're the real deal. Highly trained. Highly dangerous.
They're him.
But there has been no questions, no interrogation and the guy had smiled pleasantly when he told Clint they were just passing time. Surely Clint could sympathize with wanting to alleviate boredom.
Quite simply, he's entertainment, so on second thought, no, they're not him.
A boot gives his side a brutal push, and he loses what precious balance he has left. He topples over on his side, and the pain in his head surges up again. Nausea rolls up right behind, and please, no, he doesn't want to throw up, his skull is going to break open, he's sure of it. It hurts so bad. He presses his cheek against the cool floor. He wants to stay down. He wants to close his eyes and go away, not wake up until he's somewhere that's not here. But he's not allowed that. He forces himself to lift his head. Two is standing over him. Clint calls him Two in his head, because number One, the alpha here, is the other guy, the one sitting on the metal construction that has served as Clint's bed for the past two days or so.
Two reaches down and grabs Clint, pulls him up to his knees. He silently supports Clint until he manages to get his shaking hands and knees under himself. He gets a shove that almost sends him down again, but he manages to stay up. He moves one hand. Then the other. By now coordination is something that happens to other people and his movements are jerky and out of synch. He keeps going. He has no choice.
Every move brings him closer to One, and when Clint all too soon reaches him, the angry hiss in his head has turned high-pitched and loud.
He stops just out of reach.
"Closer."
Clint inches closer. Play the game, his tactical side whispers. Stay alive. Don't give them a reason to kill you, every minute is another minute for SHIELD to find you and get you out of this hell.
"Don't make me tell you again." One's voice is even, but the unspoken threat is as plain as anything. There's a touch of Virginia in the words. North Carolina, maybe.
Clint drags himself forward until his shoulder touch One's leg. The contact makes his throat go tight. He knows what's coming.
Play the game. Play the game. Play the game.
"Good boy."
Seconds drag by, and all he hears is his own ragged breathing. Then One's hands are on his shoulders, and sudenly there's s no reasoning with the surge of panic that breaks out from under his crumbling self-control.
He topples over and scrambles away blindly, because no, he can't, he can't, not again, but it's useless, he's too uncoordinated, too weak, too dizzy, and One grabs his ankle, hauls him back with horrible ease. The panic is bright and sharp like a knife, and Clint kicks out, tries to find something to hold onto, but his world starts tilting and spinning, and for a few nauseating seconds his brain doesn't know what's up and what's down. When gravity starts behaving again One has pulled him back and around. He's slumped with his back pressed against the metal bed frame, bracketed claustrophobically by One's legs. There's no escaping this.
He squeezes his eyes tightly shut when fingers start running through the hair at his ear and continue up towards his temple.
"You're all sweaty, baby."
The gentleness is a sickening contrast to what One is about to do, and Clint is so fucked up he wants to cry. He wants out. He wants to go home. Please. Coulson. Natasha. Someone.
"Don't worry. I'll take care of you. I'll take real good care of you."
One's arm comes around from behind and Clint twists weakly, tries to break the grip.
"Shh," One soothes. "It's okay. You're okay."
Clint makes a desperate, wheezing noise. He's not okay, not at all okay, because there's agonizing pressure against his throat. More. And more. He fights, tries to find leverage against the floor, but it's of no use. Stop. Please, stop. The air he is allowed now isn't enough, isn't near enough. Stop. Stopstopstop. A fractured, gurgling noise is squeezed out of him, and then there's no air at all to be had. The arm forces his head backwards. All he sees is the stained ceiling.
One's breath is warm and steady against Clint's ear. "Stop fighting," he says, but it's like telling fire not to burn.
Clint's lungs scream for air, shrill and desperate. He can't breathe. He needs to breathe. Please. Please. Please. Sparks fire up in front of his eyes like sickly fireflies, and he can't breathe he needs to breathe breathe breathe he needs to breathe. He claws at the arm around his throat, but Gray nothingness starts eating away at his vision, and little by little his limbs go heavy and wooden, his movements slowing.
He's skimming the surface of true unconsciousness when One finally lets up on the pressure slightly and Clint is allowed air again. He sucks it down, grateful and despairing, because he knows it means he'll be told to start crawling again. Means it all starts again.
But One doesn't let go. He keeps the arm loosely across Clint's throat for an eternity, then starts tightening it again. Slow. Relentless. Clint can't help the raspy wail. No. Please. It's not fair, he's playing along, they can't change the rules like this. They can't.
But of course they can. One applies more horrible pressure. Clint's body feels numb and heavy, his fingers aren't moving like they should, but the need to fight is hard-wired, impossible to override, and he tries so hard. It doesn't make one bit of difference and again his air is cut off and he's dragged skillfully to the very edge of unconsciousness. Once again he's pulled back at the last moment and allowed a few, all too insufficient breaths. His head is filling with crackling static that grows and grows, and when the arm across his throat starts tightening a third time, he barely manages to get his hands up to pull at it. His limbs are moving slowly, jerking in fits and starts, and Clint dimly realizes that the game might be over. He might die here, at the hands of two sadists who are not even trying to get information from him. He might die because they are bored.
But he doesn't die.
He emerges from the darkness he hadn't even realized he'd sunk into with a gasp that morphs into a raspy, violent cough. He lies on the cold ground and chokes on the huge gulps of air his lungs demand. He's been without air for so long it feels like his body has forgotten how to breathe. He curls up around himself as he coughs and retches, wraps his hands around his throat, protecting it, covering, hiding. He's cold, so cold his teeth are chattering, and for a moment he's outside Slobozia again, cut up and sick and alone, holed up in an abandoned house in mid-February, waiting for an extraction that never showed.
"Come here," Two says, and Romania vanishes. Clint is back on the floor by One's boots.
He curls up tighter and shakes his head without lifting it from the floor. He can't do it.
"Come. Here."
One nudges Clint with his boot. "Move, or I'll do it again, right now, and I don't think you want that."
Clint knows he makes a wet sound of despair. He doesn't want to cross the cold floor again, desperately doesn't want to, but somehow he manages to get to his hands and knees. He's shaking so bad he almost can't hold himself up.
"Know what," One says and pats Clint's shoulder amicably. "You've been so good, I think you've earned walking privileges." He slips an arm under Clint's and helps him up. The whole world slides sideways again and One has to catch him to keep him from falling over. He keeps Clint upright until he can stand on his own, then dusts him off and turns him towards his companion. Two is still on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall.
He beckons Clint over with his finger. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."
The room keeps going in and out of focus. The floor looks five miles across. Clint wishes it was.
One gives him a gentle push in the back and Clint stumbles forward. One step. One more. One more. He's halfway when dizzy turns into vertigo and his knees hit the ground again. The room around him feels distant. He feels distant. His tormentors wait in silence for him to get up. He makes it on the third attempt. Barely.
Again Clint stops just outside of reach, it's all the defiance he's got left, and again he's told to move closer. Apparently he's too slow, because Two grabs him and casually bounces his face off the wall. Clint's legs buckle and he slides down to the floor again, tasting blood. He prefers this guy. Pain is something he's well acquainted with. The pretense of gentleness that One pours over him is a foreign thing.
"Get up."
Clint puts his hand against the wall for balance, but slips and goes down again. Two drags him up by his hair, then digs painfully strong fingers dig in under Clint's jaw and backs him straight into the wall. Two looks down at him. He's almost as tall as Thor.
"Put you hands down."
It's almost impossible, but Clint manages to get his fingers to releases their grip on Two's wrist. He knows countless ways of breaking free of a hold like this, but he's too weak now to stand any chance of succeeding. The last time he tried and failed, Two had put him down on the ground with ease and showed Clint just how little he appreciated it. The rope that he'd wrapped around Clint's neck still lies by his feet.
Two leans in and tilts Clint's face up. "What should we do next?"
Clint's brain stalls out when the fingers tighten painfully around his bruised throat. Two gives him a shake. "I'm being magnanimous here. What should we do next?" When Clint still can't get a word out, he rolls his eyes. "Okay. I'll make it easy on you and give you a choice. You can either go to my good friend over there and let him take care of you again, or you can stay with me and let me re-introduce you to that rope."
Clint knows what they're doing. Let Two use the rope, or let One choke him out. It would feel so much easier if the choice was taken from him, if it was all on them. It is all on them, he knows that, but in the moment, it's hard to ignore that he's about to become an active participant in his own torture.
"Better pick," One tells him from across the room. "Or you'll get both, plus something else. Something new and exciting."
"Last chance."
"Him," Clint manages to get out, his voice just a scratchy wheeze. His mind is wailing in horrified protest, but he still chooses One, because not the rope, no, it's- it's- No.
Two releases him. "Okay. Off you go. Knees."
Clint's more or less falls down. Hot wetness starts running down his nose, dripping onto the ground as he makes his slow and clumsy way towards the torture of his very own choice.
Play the game. Stay alive. They'll find him and get him out of here. They have to.
Far too soon he reaches One and he stops just out of reach again. One reaches over and pulls him in. There's nothing of Two's violence in what he does, he just settles Clint in front of him, back to front, and wipes at his face with the the flat of his palm. Then he hikes Clint closer, and the arm comes around again. Clint doesn't know he manages it, he can barely lift his hands, but somehow he manages to twist and struggle enough that the bruising pressure eases up a fraction. It's a cruel, one-second flare of hope that's extinguished when One reclaims the grip without difficulty. As Clint's air is once again cut off, the analytical part of his brain that's still clinging to existence tells him it's probably what One had in mind all along. Give him just a hint of hope that he can escape, then snuff it out.
Without warning, One stands up. He doesn't let go, simply pulls Clint with him. Clint hangs from the punishing grip around his neck, scrabbling to get his feet under himself, but for a few horrible seconds his own body weight is added to the pressure. Somehow he manages to get up, but then One leans backwards and Clint's back arches painfully. He loses the last semblance of balance and topples sideways. This time he knows, he just knows he won't get up.
He claws at One with hands and fingers that obey him less and less with every second. Emptiness starts pushing at the edges of his vision again, and his ears are filling with the noise of a thousand hornets. One shifts the way he's distributing the pressure, targets the carotid arteries rather than just the airways, and Clint has time to feel a twisted kind of relief.
Then he just... goes away.
'* '* '*
Light.
Shadows.
Odd edges and angles.
Clint gasps and coughs, tries to suck in as much air as he can. He doesn't know what's going on, just that everything is wrong. His breath hitches and stalls, and he's twitching erratically against the floor. His body feels alien, doesn't feel like his own. Air. He needs air. The panic rises, tears at him with jagged nails that draw blood. God, he needs more air, he needs to breathe, to run, to, to, to… he doesn't know, but he has to do something.
His lungs finally allows him another breath, then another, and slowly the ringing in his head recedes a little. It takes a while to realize he hears someone talking. The voice is distorted, far away. Then suddenly it's close, and Clint tries to curl up, but his shaking limbs won't obey. Don't. Please, don't. He sees blurry movement, but he can't make out what it is. His eyes won't focus right. Then someone leans close and Clint cracks his head against the floor in his flailing attempt to get away. He doesn't get far before hands are on him, holding him in place. The proximity is suffocating, he can't breathe, he feels like he's- feels like-
"Easy." A hand cradles the back of his aching head.
The room suddenly spins around Clint. He fumbles for something to anchor him, because it feels like he's falling off the floor. A warm hand wraps around his just as the nausea rises in his stomach again. It's massive and merciless, and this time Clint has no say in the matter, the only thing he can do is turn his head as he throws up. Someone helps him to his side, holds him until he's done. It's mostly water and the remains of a power bar, but it burns, it burns so bad coming up. It feels like his throat is being sliced by razor blades.
There's a hand on his shoulder, just resting lightly. Warm.
"Phil?" His voice is barely there.
"It's okay. Take it easy."
Clint is carefully guided from his side onto his back, then rolled over onto his other side, well clear of the mess he made on the floor. "You can rest, now." His limbs are arranged into something that resembles the recovery position. A hand runs gently over his forehead.
"Wouldn't want you too tired for our next play date."