Warnings: language, brief drug use, excessive angst…but when is there not excessive angst?

Thanks to irite for being beta-tastic.

I do not own the Avengers.


Tony seemed ready to pack everyone up and head to SHIELD's headquarters that minute.

Bruce admired his gumption, but had what he thought was a better idea. "It's after 5:00. I know SHIELD's not exactly like a normal government agency, but I doubt Fury's going to make a whole lot of progress on this overnight. If he even tries to make any at all. I mean, he has to go home at some point, right? So why don't we wait until the morning to do anything? It'll, uh, give us some time to think. You know. About this."

Clint thought that 'time to think' was a really polite way to say 'time to get the fuck over your panic attack, Barton.' He found he appreciated the physicist's tact, as transparent as it was. And he was amenable to waiting-walking into Fury's office with vomit on his breath and panic-induced sweat soaking his shirt wasn't exactly the kind of impression he wanted to make.

Although he had some doubts that more time would really help him make a better impression. He'd been fucked up in one way or another for days.

Steve seemed to be Team Bruce on this one. Natasha was still a little iffy about telling SHIELD at all, so she thought taking some time to consider their options was a good idea as well. So, by majority vote, they decided to hold off until the morning. Tony, Steve, and Natasha departed, leaving Bruce to take his shift of what each of them had independently begun to think of as "babysitting."

Not that any of them ever would have uttered that word aloud.

Within forty-five minutes, Clint found himself alone with Bruce in the lab, watching him carefully set up a sample to run in one of the machines.

It was hideously boring. And though he normally handled boredom with patience and grace (his job often demanded it), right now he was in no condition to tolerate what was, to him, tortuous tedium.

"So what's that thing do, anyway?" Clint blurted out, sounding petulant and childish even to his own ears. Nice, Barton, what's next? Going to ask for crayons? Want to play patty cake?

But Bruce didn't notice the tone, or didn't acknowledge it. He just answered mildly, "I managed to isolate something from Thompson's urine sample."

Clint made a face.

"Yeah, I kind of thought I could avoid this kind of thing by going into physics instead of biology. Apparently that was misguided," Bruce chuckled, correctly interpreting Clint's expression. "Anyway, I have kind of an idea what I'm looking at, but I want to make sure. This thing," he pointed at the machine, "Will tell me if I'm close. It can tell me, basically, what kind of compound I'm looking at, like an alcohol or a polymer or whatever."

Clint looked at him blankly.

"That's pretty much how I feel about it, too," Bruce admitted. He tapped a few commands into the computer. "Now we wait."

And that's what they did. In silence. Except for the periodic beeping of the computer, counting down its progress towards completion.

The silence lasted until Clint couldn't take it anymore. About thirty-seven seconds, all told.

"So you've made progress, then? On whatever the fuck was up with Thompson?"

Bruce shrugged. "Maybe. I have an idea. It's really far-fetched, but this whole situation is. Gotta say, a lot of the stuff I've encountered in the last few months...well, it's nothing they taught us in grad school."

"Yeah? Like what?" Clint tapped him fingers impatiently against the surface of the lab table, then hopped up from his stool and peered at the computer monitor, like he had a clue what any of those numbers and squiggles meant. He walked over to the window and looked out before turning abruptly and heading back towards his seat. He changed his mind halfway there, though, and started walking up and down the aisles between the tables, picking things up and examining them briefly before setting them aside.

Instead of answering, Bruce watched the assassin very closely. His movement was exhausting to follow, and his attempts at conversation were strained and overwrought.

This was bad. Because Bruce was pretty sure the hastily whispered instructions Natasha had given him on her way out had included the word "distraction." He had been distracted by his potential break in the case. Clint, though, seemed on the verge of fidgeting his way out of his own skin. Definitely not distracted.

Having grown accustomed to only Tony for company in the lab, Bruce had forgotten that infrared spectroscopy might not hold everyone's attention the way it held his.

Apparently, it hadn't occurred to any of the others that Bruce's 12-hour days in the lab weren't exactly conducive to distracting anyone.

"Are you...bored?" Bruce asked cautiously.

The assassin's whole demeanor had become, in the last few moments, increasingly tense and erratic.

"Bored?" Clint repeated, pacing between the window and the stool that had become his home-away-from-home. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "No, not bored. Just..." Miserable and oh, God, my head is fucking killing me, and it's really fucking hot in here and if that computer beeps one more fucking time I think I'm going to—

Beep.

Snap.

Clint wasn't quite sure how the computer monitor got on the floor, or how it came to be in that many pieces. He thought the chances were pretty good he had something to do with it.

From the way Bruce was breathing, carefully and controlled, as if he were counting to ten, or maybe ten thousand, in some immensely complicated language, Clint figured his initial assessment was right on the money.

"I'm sorry—" he started, but Bruce held up one hand, cutting him off.

After a few beats of silence, the physicist turned on his heel and walked—no, stalked—out of the room.

Clint stood in place, unsure of what to do. The throbbing in his head reached a crescendo, pounding in time with his racing heartbeat. He closed his eyes, and tried to breathe deeply. Slowly, the pain subsided back to its previous level of intensity, and his heart returned to a semblance of a normal rhythm.

When he opened his eyes again, Bruce was standing in front of him, wordlessly holding out a broom and dustpan. Under his other arm was a spare computer monitor. He set it on the table, then carefully disconnected the wires from the broken one. "Garbage can's by the door, Barton," he said, his tone neutral.

Clint took the hint and, accepting the broom, commenced sweeping.

While he cleaned up the mess, Bruce hooked up the new monitor. He was pleased to see that nothing else had been disturbed. But it confirmed his belief that he had to get Clint out of here, or get him distracted. Preferably both.

Returning from the garbage can, Clint tried to apologize again. "Really, I'm sorry—"

"It's not your fault."

Disbelieving, Clint scoffed, "Oh, really? Did someone else sneak in and smash your shit while I wasn't looking?"

One corner of Bruce's mouth turned up in a wry smile. "It's not my shit, it's Tony's. I'm not overly attached. And if that's all the smashing you're going to do, then I'm just going to let it slide. Amateur."

That last bit had been so unexpected that Clint barked a laugh.

The computer beeped again. Clint looked at it murderously. "I thought I..."

"You just took out the monitor. You're going to have to do better than that if you want to silence this thing, Clint," Bruce said easily. "Anyway...this is done. Let me just print the results and we can get out of here."

That was the best news Clint had gotten all day...which wasn't saying much, considering the day he'd had. But... "If you need to stay here, I can..." but he didn't know what he could do. He couldn't leave, at least, he didn't figure that idea was going to fly. And he didn't think staying was going to be beneficial for all the expensive equipment in the vicinity.

But Bruce waved him off. "I've been here since before 8:00 this morning. I'm ready to go. This'll still be here in the morning. You want dinner?"

Clint did, desperately.


The rest of the four hours that Clint spent with the physicist were low-key and surprisingly calming. Clint thought it was odd that being in the presence of a man who had been known to get angry and break entire neighborhoods could be so...soothing. But then, it kind of made sense that he'd have his emotions under control. Still, the zen vibe was...weird.

Over dinner (the best damn Kraft macaroni and cheese that Clint had ever had...he didn't know what Bruce did to it, but it was amazing), Clint had inadvertently stumbled into a conversation that he really hadn't been ready to have.

"Did you ever look at the nutritional content of this stuff?" Bruce had asked, poking at the pile of orange noodles on his plate with his fork. "It's disturbing. How can it have that much sodium?"

Clint shrugged, shoveling macaroni into his face about as fast as he could manage. He took a drink of water before answering, "Doesn't matter to me. I'm probably going to panic and puke it up in four minutes, anyway."

It had been offhand, unthinking. But really, joking was one of the few ways he could address any of this shit, so maybe it hadn't been as unintentional as he'd thought. And Bruce's composure, the way he practically exuded balance and control, invited confidence.

Bruce shot him a sharp look. Then, before he could think too much about it (but with a vague image of Tony's bruised visage in his mind, warning him) he remarked with deceptive casualness, "You know what I don't get?"

"Hmm?" Mouth full, Clint couldn't really talk. At least without approaching a Tony Stark level of egregiously bad table manners.

"Anxiety affects something like 20% of the population of this country. There's medications and therapy and all kinds of treatments for it. It's not exactly...unknown. So why did you..." he trailed off, trying to gauge Clint's reaction so far.

The marksman's face was completely blank. He had stopped chewing, had, in fact, stopped moving completely. After the last few days of ceaseless nervous movement, the effect was almost startling. "Why did I what?" he asked, even though he knew what Bruce was going to say.

He could feel his heart start to pound again. Fuck this, Barton, not right now! As if bitching at his sympathetic nervous system was going to help.

"Why did you decide to go with this?" Bruce finished.

And really, that didn't require any more clarification.

Clint swallowed, his mouth suddenly very, very dry. He took another drink of water. "It seemed..." he began, but was struck suddenly by the absurdity of what he was about to say. He burst into laughter instead.

It sounded manic and nervous, and not at all mirthful. And it subsided as suddenly as it had started.

Concerned, Bruce asked, "Are you all right?"

Clint shook his head 'no,' but replied, "Sure am. It's just...I was going to say...It seemed like a good solution at the time."

Bruce didn't find that quite as amusing as he had, Clint noted.

"Clearly, I was wrong," he added. Then, the words were flowing unhindered. "I mean, I looked it up, after the first time. I thought I was dying. Do you how fucking common that is? There were pages and pages of people who were going through the exact same fucking thing. But that wasn't me. It couldn't be. I'm not...after Loki..."

Bruce thought he understood what Clint was trying (but failing) to say. "You didn't think it could be something so normal, because what had happened to you was so completely fucked up."

Surprised, Clint nodded. "Yeah."

Bruce smiled that wry smile again. "It is something 'so normal,' though. Humans react to things in a surprisingly limited amount of ways, Clint. Even if the causes vary dramatically, the consequences are pretty predictable."

"Think of it this way," he went on. "If someone punches you in the face, or hits you with a two-by-four, the results are pretty much the same. The bruises might look different, but they're still bruises, and the body mends them the same way."

Disbelieving, Clint said, "You can't honestly think that. What I did, I—" But he couldn't finish, couldn't even say the words, couldn't even think about what he had done without the grey fog of anxiety threatening to take him back under.

Bruce held his hands up defensively. "I'm not trying to minimize what happened. Or what you're going through. I'm just trying to put it in perspective. What happened to you was really screwed up. But you can't change it. And how you've been dealing with it...that's really screwed up, too. That, though, you can change." Bruce shrugged and smiled awkwardly, like he wasn't quite sure why he'd said so much.

It seemed a little bit like a platitude, but at the same time, Clint thought it was actually really reassuring.

Maybe there is a way out of this hole you dug, Barton.


He felt differently later.

The guard had changed at 9:30. Now it was 11:00, and he was stuck with Tony again.

Which was all well and good, except he was also, on Natasha's directive, attempting to sleep.

Although, really, he hadn't even made it that far. He was, at this point, actually attempting to attempt to sleep.

"Are you just going to sit there?" Clint growled at Tony, who was lounging in the desk chair on the other side of the room. He had his tablet out, and was, as far as Clint could see, playing some pointless game in between looking at spreadsheets.

Clint couldn't help but notice how the billionaire was spending significantly more time and effort on the game.

"Yeah, Barton. I am. What, do you have performance anxiety?" Tony replied, his snarkiness softened by an undercurrent of legitimate concern.

God, that was fucking annoying. Clint found, in that moment, he hated Tony more than he'd probably ever hated anything. He informed him as much.

"Ouch. I'm hurt. Go the fuck to sleep, Barton."

Easier said than done. Because, even though he could feel the sharp tug of fatigue somewhere under the withdrawal, the headache, the anger and the rock-hard certainty that somebody, no, everybody, was doing this because they hated him...sleep would not happen. The anxiety creeping out of his subconscious and seeping through his pores would see to that. Added to the embarrassment of going through this in front of somebody? In front of Tony Fucking Stark?

"Yeah...I'm thinking no," Clint replied, rolling onto his back, his voice strained and just a touch breathless. Fuck, I can't breathe...

Tony peered at him over his tablet. "Is it because you're afraid you're going to go fucking crazy in your sleep and slaughter us all? Because I appreciate the concern and all, but I think you're being a little irrational."

Well, that was blunt. Clint let out a breathless laugh. "You don't say."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "You know, I've got handcuffs in my room. I could tie you to the bed," he offered, joking. "That'd stop you from going anywhere. Hell, you wouldn't even have to worry about it."

Clint turned his head and shot Tony a considering look. "What kind of handcuffs?"

Tony raised his other eyebrow. "Fuck, Barton, I was kidding. I'm not tying you to the bed." He paused, then smirked and added, "I wouldn't want people to think I was taking advantage of you."

But Clint was still looking at him thoughtfully and ignored his attempt at humor. "Do you really have handcuffs in your room?"

Well. This had gotten awkward remarkably fast. "Uh...maybe." Best not to commit to anything.

Clint sat up. "What kind? Real ones? Or the useless kind with the release on the cuff?"

Oh, fuck, he was not going to drop this, was he? "Real ones. With a key. Okay? But I'm not tying you to the goddamn bed, Barton."

"Why not?"

"Because that's really fucked up?" Obviously.

The look Clint gave him clearly said 'and what about this situation isn't?'

Tony sighed. He couldn't believe he was actually considering this. But there was something he didn't understand. "If I recall, Barton—and I do—you don't take well to being tied up. Pretty sure this," he indicated the healing bruises on his face, "proves it."

Clint shrugged. "This would be different. I want this. I...I'd be..."

Tony waited, looking at Clint expectantly. Finally, the marksman finished, "I'd be in control."

It seemed paradoxical, and not entirely logical, but Tony wasn't going to argue with him. That didn't seem like it would end well. Instead, he quipped, "So do you want a safe word? 'Cause I don't want to traumatize you or something; Romanoff would kill me."

Clint glared at him. "I don't think you really need to worry about it, Stark."

Tony didn't say as much, but he was going to worry about it anyway. "...Fine. Wait here. Don't try to off yourself or anything. I'll be right back."

Clint was thrilled with the level of trust everyone was showing him. Try to kill yourself once, and things were never the same...

Less than five minutes later, Tony returned. Clint hadn't moved, except to adjust the pillows on the bed. He held out his right arm helpfully.

But Tony was still hesitating. "Are you sure about this? Because this just feels really fucking weird to me." 'Weird' wasn't quite the right word, though. It was more like 'sickening,' as in the thought of doing this actually made him feel physically ill, for reasons he just couldn't quite put his finger on. "It won't be comfortable..." he added

With a shrug, Clint stated blandly, "I once spent two days folded into the corner of some little faux-balcony on a building in Morocco. I can do uncomfortable."

And then Tony thought he knew why this sat so badly with him. Clint hadn't come up with this on his own, but he'd accepted it, embraced it, discomfort and humiliation and all. Because it was humiliating. Why would he be willing to do that? Why was he so okay with it? "You don't have to do this. It's not fucking necessary, Barton."

"No? I think it's a damn good idea." Clint shook his proffered arm, sending the unambiguous message: 'just do it.'

With a sigh, and against his better judgment, Tony opened one of the cuffs and fastened it around Clint's wrist. "Lay down," he muttered, and Clint obliged. Tony closed the other cuff around the center of the bedpost, in a place where it couldn't be removed without dismantling the whole bed frame. "How's that? Any circulation problems?"

Clint flexed his hand and adjusted his shoulder, which was screaming at him. "Nope, it's good." Well, that shoulder's been a bitch for days, I don't think this is really going to matter one way or the other.

Tony pocketed the key. "If you need to piss or something, yell. I'll be over here." And he went back to his tablet, trying to rationalize away (or at least ignore) the gnawing feeling plaguing him that this was beyond screwed up.

Distracted by the previous ten minutes' events, Clint's anxiety had subsided. Now, knowing that he wasn't going anywhere, couldn't even if he wanted to, the anxiety did not come back. Left with only his headache, faint nausea, and stiff muscles, the siren call of exhaustion was impossible to ignore.

He was asleep within half an hour.


Apparently, at some point during the next three or so hours, Tony fell asleep as well. Clint awoke to the dulcet tones of Natasha chewing him out around 2:00 AM.

"What the fuck, Stark, you had one job to do here-"

"Actually, I had, like, three jobs. Maybe four. I was trying to run a company, and watch your boyfriend, and be Iron Man, and I was trying to win Bejeweled—"

"You didn't need to be Iron Man, and that fucking game doesn't count as a job, dumbass—"

"Romanoff, relax, your boytoy wasn't going anywhere, he was asleep for Christ's sake and—"

"Yeah, right, and that'll last about three seconds until—"

"Until you two wake me up yelling at each other?" Clint interrupted. He tried to sit up, but was immediately hindered in his efforts by the cuff. "Hey, uh, do you think you could...?"

"What? Oh, sure." Tony stood.

Natasha followed his path across the room, and her eyes settled on the handcuffs as Tony unlocked them, and Clint sat up. "What. The. Fuck. You cuffed him to the fucking bed? He's not a criminal, Stark!"

Clint thought that could be put up for debate (Not much of a debate, Barton, you're a murderer). But instead, he said, "It was my idea, Tasha. Tony had these lying around, I thought I might...feel better...if I knew I couldn't..."

The look she was giving him caused him to trail off. "What?" he asked, unable to figure out what was troubling her.

She sighed, exasperated. "Barton..."

Annoyed, now, he demanded, "What?"

But she couldn't find the words to tell him how much it hurt that he thought he needed to be restrained for their safety. How she thought she would rather deal with him, deranged and out of control, than to watch him passively accept that he was broken. That he was the monster, not that he had been the victim of one. Fuck, she didn't even know if he knew that he had internalized that so deeply. So instead of saying any of those things, she reached into her pocket and pulled out his pill. "Here."

Clint took the pill and swallowed it dry.

Natasha dismissed Tony with an audaciously brusque, "You can go."

Tony immediately thought up about fifty retorts to being ordered around in his own home. He wisely chose not to utter a single one. In lieu of that, he asked, "Do you want this?" He held out the key.

She was ready to give a vehement "No." Because she wasn't going to lock up her partner, her friend, like he was some kind of dangerous animal, even if he thought it was what he needed. Or deserved.

But...at the same time...Clint had been sleeping. Naturally. For the first time in...how long?

"When was the last time you slept, Clint? Without the Valium?"

He couldn't remember.

To Tony, Natasha barked, "Fine. Give me the damn key."

Any port in a storm, she thought.

Clint slept—restless and uneasy, but actually sleeping—for the rest of the night.


Thanks for reading!

I'm going to skip the song lyrics this time.

But, uh, I might be holding Clint hostage, and if you don't review…you never know what could happen to him...