The title comes from a Kacy Musgraves song of the same name.

This story is finished, but will be posted in chapters. I will be editing as I go, please let me know if you notice mistakes etc.

Warnings at the end, please check if you have triggers.

Clint curled up against the railing of the balcony and pressed his face into his knees. They knew. They all knew and they were all treating him differently, just like he knew they would. First came the kid gloves and the pitying looks and soon they'd be telling him to leave. That he wasn't good enough. That the Avengers wasn't a team for broken people.

Fucking truth serum. Well, it was more like a spray actually. Possibly a pollen. He got dosed with it pretty good and it screwed him up for days and he told them everything. All his secrets. He pressed hard on the bandage on his forearm and it hurt in a good way. A good, clean, mind clearing way. He closed his eyes.

"You want to come inside?" Bruce asked, leaning out of the door. "It can't be comfortable out there."

Clint didn't reply. He'd barely said two words since the effects had worn off, which was kind of freaking everybody out. Coulson said not to worry, and it made Clint smile, because Coulson had seen him like this before. Bruce was coping with it better than Clint would have expected too. But then, Bruce was always surprising him.

"Clint?"

Clint didn't respond, just turned further towards the railing.

"Okay." Bruce sighed. "Okay. Stay out here for as long as you need. But my floor is open to you whenever you want. And I'd like it if you ate something at some point."

He wasn't hungry.


There was something about the pattern of the fighting. Something that he was missing. Coulson frowned and watched as Romanov was covered with a vile smelling substance that made her yelp and scratch at the skin wherever it touched.

"They're trying to isolate us," Hawkeye said suddenly, and yes, that was it. "It's a trap. They're trying to get an Avenger to take home to Mom."

"Aren't you supposed to be off looking after the kids?" Sitwell asked, coming to stand beside Phil.

"The kid's are on stand down until Skye completes basic training and Ward's arm heals. Don't ask."

There was a yelp and Phil's attention was back on the battle in an instant. "Hawkeye, report. Are you injured?"

"I've got a gash on my leg and they sprayed some kind of... fuck." The comm went dead.

"Hawkeye. Hawkeye, report!"

"He tossed his comm," Stark said, sounding shocked. "Some of the henchmen cornered him, he beat them back, but they hit him with some kind of chemical. And then he took out his earpiece and threw it away."

"Can you still see him?"

"I- Argh! Fuck, that's acid, it's eating right through the suit, fuck." Stark shook like a marionette on a string, jerking about in an effort to shake off the spray.

"I'll take that as a no. Anyone have eyes on Hawkeye?"

There was a round of worried sounding no's followed by swearing from Natasha.

"Well," Sitwell said, "I'll get some agents out looking for him, but you can't leave the fight," he was speaking to Phil at first, but when he continued, it was clear he was talking to the Avengers as well. "None of you can go after him right now."

"We know that," Steve snapped back. "Besides, I doubt these guys would helpfully step aside and let us leave."

One of the henchmen Steve was fighting threw a cup of something at him and it stuck wherever it hit.

"What's that, some kind of glue?" Natasha asked, frowning as Steve stopped dead in his tracks.

"Ah, I can get free. It just means losing a little skin."

"No, you can never get free from The Chemist!" the head bad guy had arrived with perfect timing and a melodramatic evil laugh.

"Really? The Chemist?" Stark asked, he was back in the fight and in a different suit than he'd been in before. "That's all you could come up with? Not Dr Elemental? As in the periodic table?" He laughed, the noise sudden and pure and not nearly as melodramatic as The Chemist's. "Also, when you throw your chemical compounds at people, you should totally shout 'by these elements combined!'"

"That's not bad," The Chemist replied, rubbing his chin. "But it's all theatre isn't it?" And with that he tossed a vial at Tony which threw up sparks instantly, and started to burn through the metal. But, it didn't get far. The suit released some kind of white foam which stopped whatever chemical it was in its tracks.

"Nice try, but once I realised what we were dealing with I got changed, got an outfit for everything," Stark grinned viciously behind his mask and Steve made a pained grunt as he ripped free of the glue. "Normally I love witty repartee as much as the next guy, but right now, I'm angry. And you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." There was a series of loud crashes. "That would be Black Widow and Hulk taking out the last of your henchmen."

"And you're surrounded," Coulson said, "by SHIELD."

"And no one's very happy with you right now," Steve added. "So why don't you tell us what exactly it was that you dosed Hawkeye with?"

"CHEMIST HURT HAWK! HULK SMASH!"

"No!"

"Someone stop him!"

"We need him to figure out what happened to Clint!"


The next few seconds are chaos.


When things calmed down, The Chemist was lying broken on the ground, and Bruce was lying next to him, unconscious with one of Clint's tranq arrows sticking out of his leg.

"Did anyone see where that came from?" Coulson barked. He got a chorus of no's. Again. "Find him."

The agents began tidying up. The injured (including Bruce, The Chemist and Steve) were loaded up onto ambulances and sent back to SHIELD HQ to take advantage of the infirmary. Natasha was searching the alley ways and they had agents going up to the surrounding rooftops, looking for Clint. A couple of Sitwell's team rounded up the henchmen, loading them into vans. When that was done, Coulson frowned and looked around. He was hoping to find something else that needed doing, but everything was under control.

Then, something happened. The last thing anyone was expecting. Clint stepped out, from who knows where, but he stepped out and walked over until he was standing directly in front of Phil.

Then he dropped to his knees.

He dropped to his knees in front of his team, in front of myriad SHIELD agents and first responders, he dropped to his knees in front of the world. He'd never done that before. In an instant, Phil was kneeling too, reaching out to Clint, wanting to touch, to reassure himself Clint was real. Clint ducked his head.

"Don't," he said. "They sprayed me with something. You don't want it on your skin."

"Okay." Coulson held up his hands. "Okay. I'm not going to touch you." He pressed a finger to his earpiece. "Update on Banner."

"He's still unconscious," was the response. "And he probably isn't going to wake up for at least eight hours. Maybe ten or twelve."

"Great." Coulson shook his head, then smiled at Clint. "Bruce is fine. He's sleeping it off."

"Good," some of the tension slipped out of Clint, as Natasha and Tony both arrived on the scene, standing too close. "That's good."

"You want to tell me about why you went off comm?"

"They dosed me. Some kind of disinhibitor. I can't lie. And I don't really want to."

Coulson considered that for a moment.

"Fuck."

"What? He got sprayed with truth serum? That's why you went off comm?" Tony shook his head, laughing a little. "You scared the hell out of us, you dick."

"This is serious," Coulson said, and Natasha nodded, looking pale.

"He just has to keep his mouth closed," Tony said. "And no one here's going to ask him anything. Well, not anything that might incriminate him." He tilted his head and Phil just knew he was smirking behind the faceplate. "Hey, Clint, what's your favourite colour?"

"I don't-Purple." Clint flinched, like he'd been hit and then just looked really confused.

"You don't purple?" Tony asked and Natasha made a low noise in her throat and smacked the back of his helmet.

"I don't have a favourite colour. I've never had a favourite colour."

"What's your favourite colour Clint?" Phil asked, his heart aching at the confusion on Barton's face.

"Purple," Clint repeated, his tone more sure but surprised at the same time. He ducked his head. "Please."

"Yeah," Phil said. "Okay."


Bruce leaned against the wall beside the balcony door for a long moment. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard and tried not to think of all the ways the past couple of days had gone horribly wrong.

Then he headed back to the common room where all the others were gathered. It wasn't good to be alone.

"How is he?" Phil asked as soon as Bruce was sat down with the rest of them.

"Not good. He's refusing to come inside."

"Is he..." Steve pulled a face, obviously unsure of what he wanted to say. "You don't think he'd hurt himself, do you?"

"No," Bruce replied immediately. "He's a little self destructive, but he's not suicidal."

"He didn't ask about suicide," Phil put in, "and we both know that Clint punishes himself more than he should."

"But that's different and can be dealt with. He's not going to jump off the balcony."

"We sure about that?" Tony asked. He was warming a glass of scotch between his palms but he hadn't taken a sip. "I mean, it seems like most of us didn't know him at all." He glanced at Natasha who hadn't really spoken since the big reveal.

"We must not over crowd him," Thor said. "From what has been said you have erred that way before."

"You're right, he needs his space. But he also needs to know we're here for him." Phil sighed and ran a hand down his face. His tie was loose around his collar and two buttons on his shirt had been undone, a sign of just how much the past two days had taken out of him. "It's a fine line and one I've fallen over before."

Natasha stood up and left without a word.


Notes:

WARNINGS: self harm, self destructive behaviour, self hate, past abuse-present environment is safe, hints of PTSD. Also, there may be hints of non-con later as Clint has some mild sexual contact while under the influence. Not explicit, and neither party sees it as rape as they are in a loving relationship and Clint would have consented if he was in his right mind.