Notes: Oh yeah, Arly, that kid DESERVES to be spoiled! I mean, he's got two full teams of heroes that adore him, but sadly, that also means he has two teams full of superheroes' worth of villains to deal with too! Poor kid. *snuggles Clint*

Chapter 10: You Were Wrong, Dr. Blue

Clint hadn't woken up as the little group transferred from the blackbird into the mansion, and he hadn't woken up when Logan had carried him down to their room. He hadn't woken up when Logan had put him down in K's bed, either — and the only indication he gave that he was even remotely affected by all the movement in his sleep was the fact that he curled up tighter to K once she and Logan climbed in bed as well.

K was nestled in between Clint and Logan as she started to drift off, too — since she had been in Sinister's clutches for longer, and the healing was starting to take its toll.

And Logan simply made sure that K was comfortable and stayed with both of them, knowing that just because they were both exhausted enough to fall asleep didn't mean there wasn't still going to be a lot to clean up after this mess.

Eventually, Logan fell asleep too, but of course, that was about when Clint woke up again — not because he'd slept off the rough night but because he'd started to make little whimpering noises in his sleep, and then his eyes flew open, and he sat bolt upright in a panic.

He was climbing out of the bed before he was even fully awake, almost shaking from how upset he was, and he only paused when Logan asked in a quiet rumble where he was going.

Clint paused and bit his lip as he looked back at Logan. "I… I need to find Rachel," he whispered.

Logan frowned at that, but he wasn't about to stop Clint either — not when he could smell the sharp tang of fear in the room, and not when he knew who'd had Clint and K. And it was the middle of the day, so it wasn't like Clint would be waking anyone up.

When Clint saw that Logan wasn't going to stop him, he didn't hesitate to rush out the door, intent on finding Rachel — or at least one of her parents so that he could make sure she was okay.

He did eventually find Jean at least, talking easily with Storm in the living room — though both women stopped when they saw the upset little boy in the doorway and turned his way. "Clint, are you alright?" Storm asked, the concern obvious in her tone.

Clint paused, his chest still heaving from running, before he bit his lip and shook his head. He started to raise his hands to sign — that was still his default language when he was upset — but paused and decided better of it before he asked Jean, very softly, "Is Rachel okay?"

Jean was surprised by the question at first, but when she looked into Clint's mind and saw the nightmare he'd had — that he was right back with Sinister and that Rachel and Jean had both been there too, and so had Barney and Jan — she rushed over to close the gap between them and pull Clint into a hug. "She's fine, Clint. She's with Scott. We're all fine, alright?"

Clint nodded and tried to hide the way his breath hitched just the slightest bit as he clutched onto Jean. She could hear everything he was projecting without meaning to — the panic and the fear and the confusion and the overwhelming protective drive all merging into a mess of emotions that made it hard for him to think straight.

Not that Jean blamed him. Dealing with Sinister… that wasn't something anyone his age should have ever had to deal with.

When Clint kept hanging onto Jean for dear life, she shifted so that she had pulled him down into a sitting hug so she wasn't as crouched over, and she gave him a soft kiss on his forehead. "I'm so sorry, Clint," she said. "I'm so sorry that happened to you and your mom."

Clint held onto her a little tighter for a moment before he took a deep breath that caught a few times, though Jean pretended for the sake of Clint's pride that she didn't hear that. "I… I just don't want him to touch anyone," he whispered, almost too softly for her to catch.

"I know," Jean said, almost as softly. "I know exactly how you feel, because I'm absolutely furious that he got to you and your mom."

Clint glanced up at her and gave her a quiet smirk. "But your hair's not on fire like it was when you got grabbed," he pointed out.

Jean couldn't help but smirk at that. "I try not to let my hair catch on fire if I can help it," she teased lightly. "It makes it hard to do this," she added, and then pulled him over to pepper his cheek with little kisses until he was half pushing her off with a moaned, "Jeeeeeean!"

Jean grinned. "I can't help it!"

"Well, try a little harder," Clint grumbled, though he at least didn't look like the world was falling down anymore, so Jean privately counted it as a win anyway.

Jean smirked at him and brushed his bangs back. "Sorry, can't. I just love you too much."

Clint rolled his eyes at that, but instead of arguing it as Jean expected, he surprised her by going in for a hug — not that she was going to complain about that. "You're weird, Jean."

She laughed at that before she pulled him to his feet. "So, are you going to hang out with us for a while or go back to sleep?" she asked, knowing he had to be pretty tired still after not getting any sleep the night before — not to mention he had to be worn from blood loss and everything else that came with a visit with Sinister.

Clint shrugged. "I dunno," he admitted.

"Well, why don't I take you upstairs and you can decide if you're going to curl up or if you want to just spend a lazy day with Arrow and a movie or something?"

"I can go myself," Clint said quickly. "You were talking with Storm…"

"I don't mind," Storm promised — which at least got a tentative sort of smile out of Clint before he and Jean headed upstairs.

And the whole time, Jean wasn't exactly trying to hide that she was peeking into Clint's head. Normally, she tried to give him a little privacy because of how rocky his introduction to the team had been, but with something like this, she wanted to know — and she wanted to have as much information as she could so that she could help him, too.

When they got up to K's room, Jean had to put one hand over her mouth to hide the wide grin when she saw how neatly K was tucked into Logan. There wasn't any space between them if Clint had wanted to get in there — and Jean knew without even needing to peek how big that was as a show of trust.

Clint tipped his head when he saw the two of them all curled up and then let out a long sigh. "They do this all the time," he confided in Jean — though she was still peeking, so she could see that he also knew it meant his mom trusted Logan. And that was a big help to him, too.

Jean smirked at that and then ruffled Clint's hair. "So, naptime's out for you?" she teased.

Clint rolled his eyes. "I'll just grab Arrow. Mom says his job's to be an oversized footwarmer anyway."

Jean had to laugh at that. "She's not entirely wrong."

Clint gave her a little smile and a short hug before he headed off, leaving Jean to her thoughts — most of which revolved around how relieved she was to see that Clint and K were back and how glad she was to see that K and Logan were so obviously relying on each other for comfort. It was healthy and good, and exactly what she wanted for her friend.

Now if she could just get a certain overly interested geneticist to leave her family and Logan's alone, it would be perfect.

By the time the little family in K's room got around to such pedestrian things as being awake, it was close to dinnertime — and that was actually what woke them up. Even Clint could easily smell the food that someone was bringing up the stairs for them, which was enough to get him to the door to let their visitor in, since he knew his mom and Logan were really comfortable and probably didn't want to move at all.

"Oh, hi, Doctor Blue," Clint said with a small smile as he opened the door a bit wider to let Hank come in — with a few bags of food that seemed to Clint like a lot more than just dinner, but then, Logan and K needed to eat to make up the healing, too.

"Hello, Clint," Hank said with a warm smile. "I trust you've been taking full advantage of this lazy day?"

Clint nodded. "Yeah. Kitty came and got Arrow so he could go for a walk and stuff."

"For entirely unselfish reasons, I'm sure," Hank said with a twinkle in his eye that had Clint smirking slightly and nodding.

"Uh-huh, sure," Clint said with a smirk. "We'll go with that."

Hank smirked at that before he set down a couple bags of food by Logan and K and then handed Clint the smallest one — which had a cheeseburger and fries and a shake in it. "Most of the mansion is ordering out today. Mercifully, Bobby did not manage to burn the entire school down in his attempts to cook, but the results were inedible all the same."

"How come you let him do it, then?" Clint asked as he unwrapped his burger and tore into it, suddenly realizing just how hungry he was in addition to being tired.

"Only a vain hope that he might, at some point, get better with practice," Hank said in a sigh.

"It's an excuse to order out," Logan corrected. "When we're not headed down to Harry's."

"Yes, well, there is that," Hank said with a little laugh.

"I think it's a great excuse," Clint said, dipping a few of his fries into his milkshake. "Besides, Barney hates getting greasy food, so I like to get it in the summers when he ain't here."

Hank smiled at that. "A little firebird may have told me as much."

"Jean says she tries real hard not to be a firebird," Clint said around the cheeseburger in his mouth.

"It's a lot harder when she gets ticked off," Logan told him.

"That's what she said. She said she was real mad, and I told her her hair wasn't on fire," Clint said. "And she said she tries to not do that."

Hank smirked at that as he sat down next to Clint. "And how are you doing? I'm sure a little rest and grease hits the spot."

Clint shrugged quietly into his burger. "M'okay."

"Is there something you're looking for?" K asked softly, still pretty well tucked into Logan.

Hank smirked her way. "I know the remedy for anyone healing from Sinister's so-called 'studies'," he said. "But I wanted to be sure my third patient is healing nicely as well."

"M'fine," Clint muttered again.

"I'm sure you are," Hank said. "Still, I—"

"No," Clint said, stopping Hank short. His eyes were wide, and he'd put his food down. "No, don't... "

K frowned as she looked between Hank and Clint and straightened up slightly. "You can try again later for him," she said. "But if you need some blood from me …" K pulled off the flannel shirt she'd stolen from Logan. "... tap's open."

Hank frowned for a moment toward Clint, who still looked like he was ready to bolt, before he let his shoulders drop and turned K's way. He knew K wasn't at all as laid-back about this as she was trying to project to Clint, but he appreciated what she was doing to ease the boy's mind, too. "I'll be quick," he promised, his body language open and relaxed too — he was well-aware Clint was watching.

Still, it was plain to Hank that K was tense as he did his work, and he had to hide his frown before he gave Clint a quiet smile as he put his supplies away. "See? Nothing to be worried about."

Clint swallowed hard and glanced toward K before he sort of nodded. "Yeah, I just… I just don't want to do that," he said quietly. mmhmm

"You don't have to," K said. "I just want to make sure nothing was changed."

Clint stared at K for a moment before he turned to Hank, looking much more upset than before. "Does he do that? Does he change stuff?" he asked.

"He does," Logan admitted, though he looked irritated about it.

"How are you gonna know if he did, though?" Clint asked, his gaze locked onto Hank. "Because… because you didn't get it right about me bein' human, so ... so how you gonna know?"

The two men in the room looked surprised at that, but Hank was quicker to recover. "What is it, exactly, that he said?"

Clint bit his lip as he looked between them. "Well, he said… he said I ain't human, but not a mutant either. Which… which is weird, right?"

"It isn't exactly normal, but there are always individual variations," Hank said. "But I have to admit, Clint ... I didn't exactly delve very deeply into your genes. The test I used only showed if there was an active 'X-gene'."

"So you got it wrong," Clint said. "He said I got one of those. But… but a weird one. I dunno. He was muttering a lot about how it was in the wrong spot and I didn't understand, like, most of it. At all. Even the stuff I lip-read."

"Mister Sinister has far more sensitive genetic tests than I do," Hank admitted. "All that tells me is that he was looking very hard to find something to keep studying with you."

Clint scrunched his shoulders up at that. "I dunno why. I'm nothin' special."

"I could say the same thing about me," K argued. "Stop that."

"But you are special!" Clint said. "You can heal and stuff and you've got all these people after you because you're that amazing!"

"Well I happen to think you're pretty amazing too," K said. "And that's not a mom line. That's the truth."

Clint gave her a look before he shrugged. "Yeah, well, I wish I didn't have it," he muttered. "Maybe he'd just go away."

"Don't work like that, kiddo," Logan said quietly.

"He would," Clint said, almost defensively. "You said he only cares about mutants!"

"And anything that's outside of the norm," Logan replied. "He's a geneticist. That's what they do."

"He's a supervillain and he's evil and crazy and I wanna put a quiver of arrows in his face," Clint grumbled — though the complaining seemed to be helping, as Hank sat down beside him and gently addressed the wraps he'd put on Clint while he was asleep in the blackbird.

"I won't argue that," Logan agreed.

"Well, good," Clint said, though his tone was a bit more distracted with Hank sitting right there, and he bit his lip and then simply held his breath and closed his eyes until Hank was done. The hardest part, of course, was when Hank took a moment to get a little blood — but as Hank explained, he wanted to know what it was that Sinister had found so he could also know for himself if anything was changed.

"Thank you, Clint," Hank said gently. "I know you truly wanted nothing more to do with any tests — and I'll endeavor not to bother you with them any time soon."

"Uh-huh," Clint said without moving.

"Yes, well," Hank said softly as he quickly gathered up his things. "I'm sure that you'll find that Jean has been working on no-bake cookies for the past hour. Perhaps she'll have them mastered by the time you decide to leave the suite."

"Thanks, Henry," K said with a forced smile. "I know this has to be the worst part of your job." She untangled herself from Logan and made her way over to give him a solid bear hug. "We know you're not the bad guy in any story."

Hank was surprised by the hug for a moment before he returned it with a more honest smile. "Yes, well, I know it's difficult to tell the difference between myself and an overly puffed up vampiric gentleman with century-old fashion sense," he teased lightly.

"The urge to hug you is far stronger than the urge to even be in the same zip code as him," K agreed.

"My dear, that's not a high bar to pass," Hank said. "No one with any self-preservation instincts can tolerate his presence."

"And no one with a soul can miss giving you a hug," K pointed out. "Thank you — again. For the dinner … and the solid excuse to just stay tucked away. I really do appreciate it."

"Try not to need my dinner-in-bed services again, my dear," Hank said with a warm smile. "I appreciate your company far too much to see you laid up."

"It's something I try desperately to avoid," she agreed before she left Hank to finish gathering up his things on her way to get back into bed.

Hank was smiling to himself as he slipped out the door — it had clearly done him good to hear what K had to say — but the door had hardly even shut behind him before Clint bolted. Not, surprisingly, to K, but straight to Logan, almost smacking into him for how quickly — and how hard — he attached.

"You sure you're alright, kiddo?" Logan asked, though he was also very careful to wrap Clint up too.

Clint took a second to bury his face in Logan's shoulder, so the way Logan knew he was nodding was that he could feel it as Clint's head moved. "Uh-huh," he muttered. "I'm okay."

"You wanna hit somethin'?"

"I dunno. Maybe," Clint said, then finally glanced at Logan. "I'm trying to be okay, okay? I don't mean to — I wasn't trying to—"

"Hey," Logan said gently. "It's okay."

Clint let out a breath and hid his face again. "It's not," he said softly. "They hurt Mom and you and—"

"And you," Logan said. "We heal. We were okay before … well. Before your mom tore him a new one."

Clint smirked at that. "No one can stop my mom."

"I don't like it when idiots screw with my guys," K said as she reached over to brush Clint's hair out of his face. "Sweet duck fluff."

"I'll let you call me that this time 'cause I know you got hurt," Clint said, getting back some of his usual teasing smile.

"But I love your duck fluff," she said with a little smile.

"I know, 'cause you're weird," he said, letting go of Logan so he could turn her way and stick out his tongue at her.

"I think you secretly like it when I talk about your fluff, quack quack."

"Mom." Clint looked almost scandalized. "You can't quack at me!"

"I think I just did," K said, sure to tip her chin up with a smirk. "Quack."

"Mom, no," Clint said, the perfect picture of an embarrassed kid as he dragged his hands over his face. "Just… just no."

"Would you feel better at the tower?" K asked.

"I dunno," Clint said, then glanced over at Logan. "Where ... are you gonna be here or the tower?" he asked. He was trying to play it off like the questions weren't related, but it was pretty clear he wanted to be wherever Logan was.

"I'm supposed to teach here when the semester starts on Monday," Logan said. "If I backed out on Slim now, he'd probably drop."

Clint nodded slowly. "Well, you ... you should not do that because I think Rachel needs her dad," he decided. "So… we'll stay here. If that's okay."

"Of course it is," Logan said. "You got your room still, don't you? It's fine."

"Good." Clint took a deep breath and then sat back down with his shake. "We can play with Arrow. He likes it here a lot because he can run around a lot with Kitty and stuff."

"And he likes followin' your mom on the trails," Logan agreed.

"Yeah, he sticks to us 'cause he's a good guard dog," Clint said with a smile. "Not just a foot warmer. Mom."

"He's a fuzzy footwarmer," K argued. "And you're my sweet little quack."

Clint rolled his eyes and turned toward Logan. "She's just… she's just like this."

"Want me to make 'er stop?" Logan asked.

Clint looked between the two of them and winced, knowing exactly how Logan would 'stop' her. "Ewww. I'll just take my milkshake outside if you're gonna kiss 'er."

"You'd leave me here with him bein' all kissy kissy, tweet wil' duck fluff?" K teased.

Clint stuck his tongue out. "And — and I hope you get a baby," he shot back — because he knew it would irk her.

"I'll name him Francis so you match," she shot back. "And tell him you picked it out."

Clint shook his head quickly. "That's mean, Mom! You can't give someone a name like that. My dad already did that horrible thing!"

"What about Toivo?"

"Why you gotta be like this, Mom?" Clint asked, shaking his head.

"Because you like it. Clyde? Eduardo? Frrrrrrrrrancisco?"

"I'm just gonna go outside and let you an' Logan kiss and make a baby — and I hope it's a girl so you can name her something normal!" Clint shot back, sticking his tongue out at her.

"Francine."

"You're so mean, Mom," Clint called over his shoulder, though he was almost grinning as he slipped out the door.

K was smirking to herself as Clint left, and it didn't take long to settle in before Logan did lean over to kiss her into the pillows. He really didn't seem to have any trouble honestly getting carried away — until, of course, she pushed him back by the shoulders. "Hey. You do know he was being a little shit, right? It's a joke."

"Every joke has a little truth," Logan had to tease, but that just ended up with a hard shove before she smacked him with a pillow.

"You. Are not. Funny, you hunyak," she said through her teeth — hitting him with every word until he got the pillow away from her and started up kissing her again.

Which was funny enough on its own — but further in the house, Jean was busting up laughing. She couldn't 'hear' the ferals very well, but she had overheard Clint's thoughts and the teasing going back and forth, and she was very entertained.

"What's got you so tickled?" Scott asked with a smirk as he played with Rachel.

Jean smirked. "Oh, just Clint and K dealing with things by being them."

"Oh, yeah, that would be entertaining," Scott said with a smirk.

"And I think we should definitely follow their lead."

Scott paused and then gave her a look. "We are not—"

"Oh, just because it's Logan—"

"Jean." Scott shook his head and then leaned over to kiss her. "That's not what I said."

"Then stop saying it," Jean shot back, though by that time, Rachel was giggling and clapping before Jean stole another kiss just for good measure — and to get the point across.