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vii. Clint Barton

Clint was kind of proud of himself. He'd warned Fury and Hill that he was going to wreck hell, didn't he? Well, he hadn't warned them specifically, yes, but they should have picked it up from his grinning. Now all would be goddamned well, if sleeping next to a cooling vent hadn't given him a cold.

He coughed miserably, digging deeper into the sheets for warmth. He could tell the rest of the Avengers were hovering nearby, fretting, but his head was pounding, his ear was burning and he was so goddamned cold that he could do nothing but wail.

They took turns holding him. He knew that much. He could tell between Natasha's slender arms, Bruce's gentle but firm grasp, Steve's soothing hands and Tony's increasingly worried hold. "Ear infection." Bruce announced quietly. "He's got an ear infection. It's no surprise, considering he was sleeping next to the cooling duct and who knows what's going on in there."

"Fuck." Tony said, his grip on Clint tightening enough for Clint to start sobbing again. He felt like an actual baby, but his ear and head hurt as if someone was driving a jackhammer into his skull, and he bawled. "Oh, shit. Sorry, Clint. Shh. Shh. Bruce, do something."

Bruce sounded desperate. "I gave him antibiotics already. I can't do anything else."

Clint hiccupped and groaned. His stomach was churning, and fuck because he knew what that meant. "Tony." He tried to warn. "Tony, the sink – let me go-" Unfortunately, his gurgle had the opposite effect of what he wanted and Tony clutched him tighter. It wasn't his fault, he decided, that he threw up all over Tony's who-knew-how-expensive clothes.

"Fuck." Tony cursed, but didn't drop Clint. "Fuck, Bruce, what's wrong with him?"

Strong hands plucked Clint from Tony's grip. "Ear infection." Bruce's voice was tight. "Sometimes it makes babies vomit."

Natasha sounded worried and annoyed at the same time. "Clint, this is what you get for hiding next to a cooling vent for five hours."

"Four hours and fifteen minutes." Clint protested. When he felt another surge of nausea, he tried to push Bruce away, but Bruce held him tight as he leaned Clint over the nearest sink. Clint whimpered and tugged at his ear, and Bruce's hand gently held his hand away. "Make it stop." He whimpered, letting his head fall onto Bruce's shoulder. "It hurts."

Bruce winced. "JARVIS, I need a steamed, completely disinfected towel."

"Right away, sir." In moments JARVIS's mechanical arm provided something with a hissing sound, but Clint had thrown up again during the short time and was quivering violently in Bruce's arms, wailing.

A warm, damp something was pressed to his ear and it seemed to soak up the pain almost immediately. He sighed and fell limp against it, spent from both the jackhammering in his ear and crying. The throbbing remained, but it was now dull and bearable. In any case, he still couldn't find the energy to open his eyes. "Let's get him into his pajamas."

"I like these clothes." Clint mumbled against Bruce's chest. "I like penguins." He felt Bruce's chuckle rumble through his chest before he heard it and he lolled his head the other way. Bruce's hand with the warm towel followed without hesitation.

"You make an adorable penguin, Clint." Bruce said. "But let's get you into something less constricting." Clint nodded, sniffling. He felt another hand wipe at his face, and he cracked his eyes open to find Steve's worry-creased face staring at him. He had the goddamned yellow pajama in one hand, but for once Clint couldn't bring himself to hate it. He reached his hands up so Steve could ease the hoodie off of him, somehow maneuvering around Bruce's hand and the towel, and then ease the pajama shirt back on before tugging his jeans off.

There was some jostling, and a change of towels, and Clint found himself gingerly put down into his crib. He sniffled and curled up on his side, but was coaxed onto his back by Steve's hands, and fell into exhausted sleep a few moments later.

"God, it was so fucking heartbreaking. It shouldn't affect me like that. He's not 2."

"When you're in that tiny body, an ear infection is probably the most painful common disease. He probably couldn't help it, and his body didn't know what else to do but cry for help. It's his muscles taking over his brain."

"But he kept crying and wouldn't stop and when he started throwing up, just, Jesus Christ, how the fuck do we make sure this never happens again in the next three weeks?"

"We just keep his ears clean. It shouldn't happen again so soon. We should still stock up on children's medicine, just in case."

"Is he still asleep?"

"Yeah. His fever hasn't gone down, either."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"It'll take a bit of time, but he'll be fine. It's a common disease. I just wish I'd thought of precautions against it before it actually happened."

"I was merely watching over him, and he started to shake so badly."

"Thor, you can pick him up, you know. He's not that fragile."

"I… Perhaps I will give it a try, when he is not so sick. Is he all right?"

"Yeah, he's okay. He's fine, he just had to throw up and get it out of his system. He'll be okay. Don't look like that. Bruce said he was going to be okay, so he's gonna be fine."

The next time Clint was coherent, he realized four things. First, someone was still driving a jackhammer into his head. Two, he was cold. Three, he had to throw up again, and four… Well. His teammates loved him. He fought against an insistent instinct to start wailing on the top of his lung again and managed to sit up by grabbing at the bars. "Clint." Steve picked him up within a second, examining Clint. "Are you – no, you aren't okay."

"Sink." Clint moaned, and Steve hauled him to the sink just in time for Clint to throw up into the sink. "I didn't even eat that much."

"You're not vomiting very much at once." Steve said, sounding more lost then when they'd first dug him out of the ice and told him it was the 21st century. "Hold on. JARVIS, could you… a towel…" Steve sounded awkward, as he always did when he asked JARVIS to do anything. JARVIS responded efficiently, and Clint found the pain being seeped away by the towel again and let his head drop onto Steve's chest. "Feel better?"

Clint sighed in relief. "Yeah." He sniffled. "I'm sorry for being such a bother."

Steve chuckled and walked over to sit on the couch, keeping his hand on the towel. "Clint, you aren't a bother. I promise. Remember we're the one who withheld the antidote from you?"

Clint laughed, but it ended up in a coughing fit that made him whimper. "Yeah, you bastards." He managed to chuckle. "It's okay. I still don't want it."

Steve laughed, but Clint heard the guilty note. He decided to ignore it for now – his head was still too delirious from the ache in his ear. "Oh, hold on. Before you fall back asleep, Bruce said you give you your medicine." Clint felt himself being lifted again – or rather he felt Steve standing up. A few steps later, he found an obnoxious purple – even for him - liquid pressed to his lips, and he opened his lips obligingly. Surprisingly, it was not the saccharine, fake grape-tasting liquid he'd expected. Steve chuckled. "Bruce whipped it up. How's it taste?"

"Good." Clint sighed. "I'm sleepy, and the towel's getting cold."

It wasn't, at all. JARVIS had probably done something to it to keep it from getting cold too fast, but Steve didn't say anything as he quickly got a new towel. It just gave Clint an excuse to thump his head back onto Steve's chest and fall back asleep, listening to Steve's breathing through his chest, the pain in his ear less and less severe.

The next time he woke up he realized he was in a different set of arms. Tony was holding him up with one arm – Tony had mastered its art after three days – and was scrolling through an almost-muted TV with the remote with the other hand. As the TV definitely did not need a remote, Clint figured it was Tony just having an excuse to hold him with one arm. He liked to show off because none of the others had quite mastered the skill. "Hey." Tony said, looking down at him. "How's the ear?"

"Better." And it's an honest answer – the ache is still there, but it's barely noticeable. "Am I healed?"

Tony snorted. "No, though I wish you are. Ear infections don't disappear that easily. Thankfully Bruce and I are chemical geniuses. We mixed a very mild painkiller along with antibiotics and made eardrops, so it's mostly the painkillers at work right now. You've still got a pretty heavy fever. I can feel it."

Clint felt it. His body wasn't in pain, but he felt sluggish and heavy, limbs drooping where he wanted them to be flexing. "Guh." He managed, and Tony chuckled, patting him on the back. Clint noticed the warm towel was gone.

"We have an idea." Clint managed to look up at Tony's words. "To get Thor to touch you." Clint kept his head up, finding energy to stay alert. "We're all going to leave, except Thor. Natasha and I have it all planned out. It'll be like last time, where Coulson or Fury or Hill looked after you, except this time they'll be busy. And yeah, Thor'll probably just watch you from afar, but you're hurt. You're sick, so there's no way he'll just let you be, especially if you do that thing were you cry and wrench everyone's hearts out stomp on it a bit before playing soccer with it."

Clint grinned apologetically. "I didn't mean to."

"Yeah, but it should work on Thor, which is the point. You're going to wake up, no one's gonna be here, Thor's gonna be in the kitchen or something but keeping an eye out on you, and then you're gonna wail your head off."

Clint nodded against Tony's shirt. "If it doesn't work?"

"Well, I won't actually be away. I'll be watching through JARVIS. If he can't get his balls together and give you medication after like five minutes, I'm going to be bursting through."

"Sounds like a plan."

viii. Thor Odinson

Thor was obviously distressed. All alone in the Tower, with the infant Clint. He had tried to plead with the others to switch, but the answer was the same: Thor was too loud, and this particular mission required silence.

So Thor hovered near the crib. Clint-as-a-toddler was sleeping fitfully, coughing and whimpering in sleep. Bruce had explained to him to feed Clint the purple liquid and put a drop of the clear one in Clint's ear if he was in too much pain when he woke up. Thor had been trying to figure out how to do exactly that without laying even a finger on Clint. It was not turning out so well.

It wasn't that he did not want to touch Clint. He wanted to. The other Avengers looked like they found their peace when they came back from a tiring day and plucked the toddler up and just held him, and Clint would grumble and hit with his impossibly tiny fists, but end up grinning all the same. Thor wanted to try it, especially because Natasha had told him infants are warmer than adults.

But human infants were so dangerously fragile. What if Thor squeezed too hard and broke an arm? Or a leg? Or worse, his spine? Thor still remembered when he'd gripped Clint too hard and left a hand-shaped bruise on the archer's wrist, and he trembled. Thor didn't quite do careful, which was what you apparently needed in caring for a child.

All of Thor's thoughts went out the window when Clint let out a particularly pained whimper and his eyes blinked open. Clint's body did exactly what the 2-year-old body instincts told it to do in pain: stick arms up, bawl, and wait for a caretaker to get rid of the problem.

Thor froze. Clint stopped crying for a second to hiccup, opened his eyes and saw Thor. He wailed again and miniscule hands clutched helplessly at Thor's direction. Feed him the clear liquid, drop the purple – no, no. Feed him the purple liquid. Right. The purple one smelled sweet. Feed Clint the sweet liquid.

Feeding was going to be impossible without picking Clint up, so Thor grabbed the squeeze bottle and held it to Clint's ear. Clint held still when he saw what Thor was up to, tilting his head, hiccupping and clutching at the sheets, and Thor squeezed with the smallest strength he could muster, holding the bottle wouldn't pour out.

A single drop plopped into Clint's ear. Thor would have jumped to celebrate his success, but Clint petulantly held his arms up again. "Thor." Clint said, his voice wet from tears. "Pick me up."

Thor hesitated, one hand still holding the squeeze bottle. "Clint, I – I cannot."

Clint gave him a glare, and then did something Thor could not possible comprehend. He stood up with a grimace, climbed onto the edge and deliberately fell off of it.

Thor acted on impulse. He threw the squeeze bottle away and jumped, arms outstretched, and the soft thump of flesh on his hands made him sigh in relief before he realized what was going on. Clint blinked smugly through a face mottled with tears and snot at him, and when Thor tried to put him back, stiff-muscled, Clint held onto his thumb. Clint's tiny fist fit snugly around Thor's thumb, and Thor could fit the toddler in two hands. How was that even possible? "Come on, big guy." Clint said softly. "You're doing fine, just hold me." Thor stood, frozen in place, until Clint sighed and curled up as best as he could on the platform made by Clint's hands. "If you don't hold me better, I'm going to fall off."

Thor saw the logic in that, and he cautiously brought the toddler to his chest, tucking his arm under Clint the way he'd seen Tony do so often. Clint sighed in satisfaction and a tiny fist curled onto his shirt. It felt like he was holding a tiny ball of flame, breathing and so alive in his arms. "Clint." He whispered. "May I… May I keep holding you?"

Clint looked up at him and laughed. "Yeah, Thor. That's the point. Not so scary, is it?"

No, Thor thought, grabbing the purple liquid and offering Clint a spoonful. Clint gulped it down before settling against Thor's broad chest, and Thor wondered how a being could be so tiny. And at the same time he realized Clint wasn't a fragile china thing he had thought. There was a solid weight in his arms – nothing that would bother him even if he kept holding Clint forever, but something solid that was resting in Thor's arms. Thor could feel Clint's labored breathing and heartbeat through his skin, the way his fever-heated flesh pressed against his chest. Tentatively, he walked over and sat on the couch, never taking his eyes off of the toddler falling to sleep in his arms.

Thor was still observing Clint when the baby woke, this time in considerably less pain than the last time. "Have you been staring at me this entire time?" Thor fidgeted, but grinned when Clint smiled up at him. Still exhausted from the illness, Thor noted, and he wondered if he should put Clint down in the crib again, but Clint merely sighed and snuggled back into Thor's arm, eyes shutting again. "Later," Clint said sleepily, "when I get better, you should throw me up and down. God, that'd be fun."

Thor was alarmed, but before he could say anything, Clint had already slipped to sleep. He was still holding Clint when Tony and Pepper returned, Pepper looking pleasantly surprised and Tony looking smug. "He's not so weak, is he?" Pepper came over to sit next to Thor, examining the sleeping infant. Clint did not wake when she placed her hand on his forehead. "His fever's going down. Not yet fully healed, but going down."

"Hey, Thor, buddy, catch." Tony called from the kitchen, and Thor put his hand up just to catch the box of Pop Tarts from hitting him in the face. Not that it would have hurt even if it did. "When Clint gets better and he can keep foods down better, you two can share one."

Pepper frowned. "I don' think Pop Tarts is exactly the ideal food for a baby."

"Give him a break. He's been eating nothing but banana mush for the past 36 hours." Tony came to sit next to Thor on the other side. "I'd usually swoop him back, but he looks pretty comfortable with you. And so fucking tiny."