Clint couldn't sleep. Or more accurately, he didn't want to.
Ever since Loki - Clint still shuddered at the name - had hijacked his mind he was afraid of losing control again, of having his every thought and memory laid bare for someone else to see and use to manipulate him. Or worse, to manipulate Tasha.
So he sat in the kitchen with a strong cup of coffee, because he'd be lying if he said he wasn't exhausted.
Sometimes it was easy to fall asleep. He'd just close his eyes, relax and drift away sort of pleasantly. Sometimes he'd get in bed but would stay half-awake and staring at the roof for most of the night. Worst of it though would be the nights he'd finally make it to sleep, only to be jarred awake just hours later by a dream he could never remember.
This was one of those nights. After the third shock awake, he decided to go downstairs and grab a coffee. There was no point fighting what his body wanted, and what it currently wanted was for him to be fully conscious.
He was unsurprised to find Tony downstairs, given his teammate's reputation for odd hours. They ignored each other, mostly. Clint sipped at his coffee, turning the pages of the newspaper, trying to decipher the pages where the ink had ran. Tony was silently playing with a ping pong ball, bouncing it off a wall and back into his hand, over and over. The repetitive beat eventually lulled Tony to sleep; the bounces became slower and slower until finally they stopped and Tony was asleep on the floor, still sitting upright with his back against the bench, his head drooping to his chest.
Clint smiled and took another sip of his coffee.
There were footsteps coming softly down the hallway, a familiar gait that announced the presence of the legendary Captain America - or in this case, semi-conscious Steve who just wanted a glass of milk before crawling back to bed.
They nodded at each other in greeting, a mutual respect of those who cannot sleep. Steve sat down opposite Clint with his glass, taking slow and small drinks and rubbing at his eyes.
"Can't sleep?" He asked, stating the obvious just for something to state.
"Yeah. You know what it's like." Clint nodded his head towards Tony. "He was awake for awhile too, but drifted off about an hour ago."
"I just assumed he was having another of those days where he'd forgotten what room he was in and slept where he was."
Both of them laughed quietly, somewhat bitterly. That happened more often than they cared to admit. Steve's eyes flickered to the half-empty bottle sitting conspicuously above Tony's head. His gaze fell to the magic marker sitting on the table, probably left from where Bruce had been doing sudoku earlier. Steve picked it up and toyed with it in his hands thoughtfully. Clint took on a slightly sinister smile and looked down at Tony's sleeping form.
"No." Steve seemed to read his mind, dropping the marker and resting his head on his hand. "That'd just be cruel."
"Come on, soldier boy. You were an artist. Live a little."
Steve picked up the marker again, uncapping it with a nervous smile and looking over at Tony. He exhaled and shook his head, handing it to Clint. "You do it. What will you draw, anyway?"
"I could think of a commonly graffitied symbol that sums up Stark's personality pretty well...but you're right, that would be cruel. I'll write something."
A few ideas were bounced between the two of them before they agreed to draw an arrow on one of Tony's cheeks and a star on the other. It was basically, Clint told him, just the two of them getting back at Stark for the water fight (though neither of them would admit it, the water fight was possibly the highlight of their year.) Tony didn't even stir as the marks were added to his face.
Steve sat with Clint for another hour and he couldn't help but grin every time he saw Stark's face.
"I wonder what his father would say."
"Hm?" In the comfortable silence Clint had returned to the newspaper, trying to understand an article on...something hysteria. He wasn't sure because the paper was so badly damaged any hopes of understanding certain sections was ruined. But he was a spy, dammit, and he got paid to read heavily damaged documents while under fire. Reading this newspaper while in the kitchen should have been nothing more than a game. "Aren't you tired?"
"A little bit." Steve got up to rinse out his glass out of sheer habit more than anything, with a fond smile at the memory of his mother lecturing him whenever he forgot to do so. "I don't really like sleeping these days."
They shared a brief look as Clint nodded in understanding. With a quick glance to the clock, he sighed and said, "If you go back to bed now you could get a couple of hours before the sun's up."
Steve doubted that, but he nodded and smiled. "Yeah, I think I will. Goodnight."
"Night." Clint refilled his coffee, picked up his newspaper and watched as Steve walked away. He looked at the clock again and decided to go and see Tasha.
Natasha didn't sleep. It wasn't that she didn't want to, but the unending paranoia of a spy ran through her very being. She didn't sleep. She watched, and waited.
Of course, she did sleep sometimes. It was even easy, some nights. This wasn't one of those nights.
Her eyes barely left her computer screen, aside from the occasional sweep of her surroundings. Her handgun sat on the desk beside her, there was a knife strapped to her ankle, and it was doubtful anyone could attack her and win. But still she looked just in case.
She was unsurprised when the door behind her opened and could see Clint's reflection in the window. She looked over to him with a tired smile.
"What are you doing?" He asked softly, walking over and examining the screen. On it was a split screen of four seperate images that changed every six seconds or so. Clint could see the kitchen, the lounge, the labs, all of downstairs. The only rooms not displayed were the bedrooms.
"It's the security footage for Stark Tower."
"Yeah, Tash, I got that. Why?"
She shrugged, slightly uncomfortable, but knowing Clint would understand. "So I can see everything's okay."
He nodded and sat beside her, forcing her to scooch over so they could both sit somewhat easily on the chair. "Did you hack into Tony's system or what?"
"No. I asked Jarvis nicely."
They both laughed and leaned into the other's body. Tasha shuddered from the chill in the air. Winter was definitely on its way. Fall was one of her favourite seasons, just not in New York. She liked to see red leaves with a sharp chill in the air and the scent of fresh rain; here in the city it was grey concrete with the uncomfortable warmth of too many people in one area, and the scent of exhaust fumes and people and god knows what else.
"Wish we were back in Massachusetts. Boston was great."
Sometimes she wondered if Clint Barton was some kind of psychic, but she knew it was just a knack for reading people. "You and I remember Boston very differently."
He kept talking to her, his voice low and calm, never in monotone but never changing pitch drastically. He laughed softly and agreed they did remember Boston, Budapest, Miami, and a great deal of other places very differently. He started to tell her his side of the Miami story again. Natasha found herself getting drowsy, but she didn't want to sleep yet. She tried to keep her eyes on the screen and focus, but slowly her head fell onto Clint's shoulder and her eyes drifted shut. She trusted him to keep an eye on things. Just for a couple of hours.