A/N: So strange coincidence my good friend just ruptured her eardrum while diving. Apparently all of my ruptured ear drum symptoms were pretty spot on!

Bagel Thursday

PeechTao

Chapter 9

After a shorter train ride then what initially brought him to Maryland, Clint was at last back in the Tower. He'd texted Bruce and they arranged for Clint to be picked up from the train station in one of Tony's cars. Bruce had something to show Clint and since they were both still awake at this time of the morning, they might as well get to it now.

Tony's private lab hid between two floors of the R and D department in a level that didn't exist on any Tower blueprints. Another elevator stopped between floors and accessed by remote pin and retinal scan gained them access. It wasn't abnormal to find Banner or Clint here working on mutual projects, such as the new interface technology, so it was unlikely to set off any alarms in Tony's mind should he get an alert. The room was also a telecommunications dark zone to keep prying eyes from accessing the video feed. The perfect place to conduct an experiment beyond prying eyes.

Banner motioned to a seat by his work station. He dug around the bottom drawer of his desk for a few stray items and after unearthing them, he placed them on the table. They seemed standard enough, but not exactly what Clint had expected. He picked up one of the devices and played his fingers across it.

"So it's like a hearing aid, right?"

Bruce made a hand motion Clint and he had worked on. It meant Bruce had something to say, and Clint needed to look at him to catch it.

"Yes and no. It's not something you can put in your ear, they're still too damaged for that. As the inside surface heals, we can upgrade. This will attach over the back of your ear, transmit sounds through your skull, and into your undamaged inner ear to interpret. I modeled it after a few of those cochlear implants we talked about, but this isn't something I'm going to have to do brain surgery on you to get working."

"Appreciate that." Clint slipped the device on like and over-the-ear headphone. He could feel the cold metal base press lightly against his head. "Now what?"

Bruce accessed his Jarvis workstation and brought up a rendering of the device. Multiple level adjusters he arranged in space to one side. He also brought up a standard music file and hit the play button.

"I'm going to adjust the device little by little to get it tuned. Let me know when you can start to hear the music."

Clint nodded.

Bruce twisted his hand over the first digital knob and an ear-splitting tone tore through the room. Clint shot out of his chair, Bruce readjust the knob, and everything was quiet.

"Ow." Clint glared, holding a hand to his throbbing temple. "Well, If I wasn't deaf before I sure am now!"

Bruce motioned and Clint faced him.

"Sorry, it's still has the little kinks. Let's try again but much lower."

"Please do."

Bruce started instead with the lowest of the three dials. He rotated his hand, turning the rending clockwise. After leaving it there for a few moments, he moved up to the second dial and adjust that as well. The music was still playing. A separate little scale of all the musical bars was climbing up and down with the notes of the song. Clint watched it and waited. Bruce moved up to the top dial again and slowly adjusted it. The harsh tone returned, but at a tolerable level this time. Clint braved it out, and after a few hurried switch flips the sound of Vivaldi's Four Seasons came pouring mechanically through Clint's brain. He stood again. His body stiffened. He listened, really listened. His hands gripped the table until they turned white. His face was white too.

Bruce rushed to the other side of the table to grab the agent before he dropped from the shock. The chair had been knocked over, and he fished for it with one hand and guided Clint into it with the other. Clint was still for a long time. He just sat there, absorbing it all, listening to the cords of Vivaldi play and thinking it was the most beautiful piece of music he'd ever heard in his life. He was shaking. Bruce knelt next to him. It took a while before Clint realized they were tightly holding hands. Clint's face was wet with hot tears. Hurriedly Clint wiped them away with the back of his sleeve. They'd never speak about that moment between them. It would always be there, a bond they couldn't break. Clint had never cried in front of another person before. He was glad that if had to be anyone, it was Banner and if it had to be any moment, it was this.

The song finished playing and Clint looked up at Bruce.

"I take it's working?" Bruce grinned.

"God, Bruce," Clint whispered emotionally.

"Now we're going to need to fine tune it. Let me play it again, and we'll work with the levels. How does it sound? Clear? Grainy?"

Clint was so happy to hear anything it didn't matter to him what it sounded like. He forced himself to think about it, to return back to his calculating mindset and out of the emotional one, but the transition was difficult. They went through Vivaldi three times straight through until they reached a level both were happy with. The sound wasn't normal but three days of absolute nothingness left Clint with a surprisingly skewed notion of exactly what normal was.

"Let's leave it here for a while and see how you adjust. As you get used to it, we're going to need to increase the volume. Right now you can hear typical speech, but things said quietly you may still have issues with. "

"I guess as far as quality, metallic is a good way to describe it." Clint told him, "Like, robotic. Like I'm listening to a machine not an actual person, you know?"

"We'll adjust more as we improve it. If I can get my hands on some DPI video card chips, like for computer processing, then that would seriously improve the quality. We'll work with what we have for now. But Clint, there is one thing about this. It's going to be a little obvious."

Clint had to pause and think about that.

"You can pretend it's an earphone, but it's not going to fool Tony. Natasha I'd be surprised if she doesn't know at least something is up. Are you going to be ok with that?"

It took a while of consideration. In the end Clint agreed. "You're right. I was going to say something when I knew of something to say. I just- I didn't want Tony and Steve thinking that this was somehow their fault, you know? I wanted to be able to fix it before that. I think this is a good time to pull them in."

Banner seemed a little relieved. "Tony'd be happy to help me fabricate. I was worried he'd finish finding all those algorithms before you were ready to tell him. He's more manageable when he's focused on something else."

"Yeah. I'll tell Natasha first, later this morning when she gets back from Baltimore. See how she takes it."

"Want me there?"

"Yeah. She probably wouldn't believe it straight from me. I need my doctor's note to go along with it." Clint smiled to himself. Vivaldi was still playing in the background. The violins iconic sound echoed through the lab, giving the place a feeling of macabre. It was then Clint realized what day it was. "Hey, you know, its Bagel Thursday?"

:(:):

Natasha woke to the constant, BRR BRR BRR that was Clint's Thursday morning alarm clock. It was annoying, loud, and generally got him tossing himself out of bed within a few seconds in order to turn it off. But not this morning. He must have been awake already, or in the shower, because that alarm just kept going and going and going. She rolled over in bed and crammed a pillow over her face. Technically she should be getting up as well. Thursdays, in Clint's mind at least, had long ago been dubbed "Bagel Thursday". No matter what country they were in, what condition they were in, and whether or not bagels were actually generally available, Clint and Natasha never missed a Bagel Thursday together. If they had to do it via international teletype servers over ten thousand miles apart, then that's just how it was done.

The alarm was still going. Now annoyed, she heaved herself out of bed and stumbled down the hall to his room. If he was in the shower, she was going to reach in there and turn on the ice water. She pushed his door open to the obnoxious ringing of the clock. Clearly displayed on the face was the exact 14 minutes and 35 seconds that it had been going off completely unattended by the SOMEHOW sleeping form curled up in the bed. Natasha slammed her fist down on the top of it.

"I could kill you." she growled. "Since when did Bagel Thursday, which isn't even a real thing, have to start at six in the morning?"

Clint didn't move.

Natasha growled at him, leaned over in the bed and slapped his arm. Normally he would startle awake, and she'd have a good laugh at his expense. Honestly how could he NOT hear that car alarm and she could? This time was different. Clint was startled. He was so shocked that he grabbed Natasha by the wrists and dragged her down into his bed. He was half awake, but his body reacted automatically to whatever intruder it perceived. He grappled with here for only a moment before Natasha found herself thrown on her back with Clint braced over top of her with his hand in a fist.

"Clint!" She screamed.

His eyes refocused, and as suddenly as he'd grabbed her he was off. He got out of the bed, stumbled to his feet and leaned against the nightstand breathing heavily. Cautiously Natasha got up. The bed stood between them.

"You have never, never, done that to me." Natasha said slowly, both on guard and hurt.

"Natasha-"

She held her hand up. The confusion on her face was blatantly obvious. "How long have we been partners? Never once have you done that. What the Hell is wrong with you?"

"Just let me explain-"

She turned away, he couldn't see her face to understand what she was saying. The new earpiece Banner had designed for him was sitting on the nightstand. He reached out to get it but suddenly she was beside him and grabbed his hand.

"You aren't even listening to me, Clint!"

"Tasha, I can explain, it's just your talking so fast and I can't keep up with any of it." Clint told her honestly. "I was going to tell you today, but you didn't give me-"

"Bagel Thursday. You don't even know what day it is and that stupid alarm of yours-"

"Tasha, please, just stop for a second and I can-"

She looked past him to the doorway. Clint had to turn to see who had shown up, most likely aroused by her yelling and him trying to stop her. He could only thank his luck that it was Bruce.

"Bruce, thank God, the alarm. I didn't know, it woke her up. It just slipped my mind."

Natasha looked hurriedly between the two of them. She took a step back, then focused back on Clint. "You two are hiding something? Oh, now this has got to be good." She sat in Clint's desk chair with her long legs folded. Her arms crossed her chest and her chin jutted out. "You better start talking before I kick your teeth in, Clint, because after that I have half a mind to."

Bruce gestured for Clint attention and pointed to the hearing device. Clint grabbed it off the table and hooked it over his ear. No time like the present to give it a whirl. Bruce and Clint sat beside each other on the end of Clint's bed, facing Natasha's full-fledged scrutiny. She'd already been unguarded by the strange communication she picked up between the two of them. And what was Clint willing wearing now? Her hard shell cracked just a little as her mind worked. Bruce and Clint working on a project? Gestures between them she didn't understand? Her hands lowered a little. This was not going to be good news.

"Look, I wasn't completely honest back in Egypt. The mission was over, yes, but it didn't exactly go as planned on a few levels. The sonic weapon was operational, Tony and Steve could both tell you that they don't know, and I never told them, how I was able to get around it and they couldn't. You know I have sonic arrow tips."

Natasha's hands dropped to her lap. His words, spoken a measure too loud, she realized, were disarming her. Sonic device, sonic arrowheads. She was smart, she could already start putting the information together before he could even finish explaining.

"I didn't see another way. We had seconds and that was it before either all of us were dead, or we weren't. Steve shielded me from the initial explosion enough that I was at least still conscious. I did the only thing I thought I could. I told Bruce because I had to. I lied about the Israel office, I had been there before. It was my excuse to get Bruce alone. Since being back we've been working on a solution. I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want to until I knew something could be done."

Natasha's face had turned red. Her eyes blinked a little faster, trying to remove the small terrified tears she was not about to shed. "So what does this mean? You're deaf now? Are you telling me that?"

Bruce took over the medical jargon and explain to her what he had explained to Clint just two nights before.

"Bruce has been working late to make this," Clint removed his amplifier and handed it to her for inspection. She took it as if it was a fragile lifeline. In some ways, it was just that. "It's not perfect yet, but it helps. My phone is on vibrate, so I know when that's going off, but I completely forgot about the alarm. I'm sorry, I had this big morning thing planned to explain it to you."

Natasha handed the device back and Clint hooked it on.

"So, when you and I talked yesterday, you were what? reading my lips?"

"Yeah. It's been a learning curve."

"This absent-minded, you missing out on what I'm saying, the car ride to Jerusalem? All of that."

"Everything since the explosion."

"You didn't call me." Natasha said, more to herself. "You texted me. I didn't think it was all that weird at first. Not normal, but not alarm worthy. You messaged the cleanup team, you didn't call them. You pretended to sleep. Made it easy not to get caught in conversation." She shook her head, trying to figure out now in retrospect how she could have ever missed so many clues.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you." Clint repeated. "Tasha, I'm so sorry. But I needed to figure this out for myself first. I didn't want to just not have anything to say."

After a moment to think she nodded her head a little. "No, I understand. Fury can't know, it wasn't secure at the base to speak about it. But now I know. It's going to take a little adjusting, but we've worked together for long enough now, Clint, its fine. I know you can't handle this, so I can to."

She was still obviously shaken, but in better control of it. This was just one more challenge. They'd had challenges before. And Clint was in good hands. Between Bruce and Tony . . . "Tony, you didn't tell Tony?"

Clint shook his head. "He was going to blame himself. If this wasn't fixable- I wanted to make sure it was fixable before I said anything."

"Captain Rogers?"

"No. It's only been Bruce and me."

She unfolded her legs. Apparently they'd been talking for almost an hour already. Seven A.M. and Steve was sure to still be in the gym. Tony had crept down into the lab early to put the finishing touches on Bruce's challenging algorithms. There was no time like he present to get this over with.

"I'll handle Steve, but Stark is up to you." She stood, letting a hand drift against his chest as she passed him. "I get it, Clint. I don't like it, but I get it." Her hand crossed to his shoulder, lingered there then she went for the door.

"Hey, It's still Bagel Thursday," Clint told her. "When we're done we are going out."

Natasha said something too low for him to hear and she went out. She was only gone for a moment before suddenly she was behind him again. Clint felt one long, hard slap land against the back of his head. Someone shoved him off the bed, threw him to the floor, and kicked him in the side.

"What the HELL!" Natasha screamed. "You could have DIED on that mission Clint! Died! You could have killed Morrissey, me, got caught in a crossfire, no wonder you didn't hear me calling for you from the room!" She kicked him again. Bruce leaped across the room to grab her around the arms and waist.

"Now, Agent Romanov, take it easy now!"

She kicked Clint again. "Too cool for an ear mic? I don't do protocol? Since when? You should have told me before you took the mission Clint, you idiot! Bruce let me go before I shoot you in the face!"

"Shoot me in the face, and Clint (and the majority of the rest of this building) will no longer be intact." Bruce pointed out.

"Ask me again if I care?" Natasha growled.

"I'm sorry!" Clint was repeated, hands desperately trying to protect himself from her assault. "Honest, I'm sorry. Wont happen again!"

"It can't happen again! You can only go deaf once you stupid, selfish little—" She broke away from Bruce, kicked Clint hard in the side and stalked out the door cursing in Russian.

Bruce straightened out his pajama top and reset the glasses on the end of his nose. "You know, that went better than I thought it would."

I loved putting that extra bit in the end. Honestly, how could she NOT freak out just a little?

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