Author's Note:
This chapter is dedicated to:
Tomgirlbre, Courtesy Trefflin, Erikstrulove, Loki's Glorious Purpose, hellomynameisv, Silverstripe234, penguinofthewaddles, MandalorianPirate, anglophile1981, Dream Plane (Guest), raysofsunshine613, DixieWriter, aiah121312, RumoredToBeCygnus, volant_endeavor, bibliephilic_bitch, Writinthestars, jenjojen, Friendly Anon, per sassy, leabharbhach,TwistedSisterzz, makai, mackwritesstuff, flyagaric, YawningAbyss, bad_weather, fanfictionwriterinprogress, Espana, Cecrod, JM, Foxychan, zaan, ShadowyFuture, Darkness_Tainted, RedwoodHorse, Inagaddadavita, TPurr, AndersonKi, Ragingstillness, SingSongSilence, Royalequestrian, jaggedapple, Katarina, Achika_pl, perplexedandpossessed, Evilkitten3, rexluscus, clh_372, volant_endeavor, smileytiger28, Whitespiree, cabezas_de_vaca, Buttercup71, Kuki24, Dollyprincess, Cra2ycat8077, randomdork11, kahlualeia85, Vaeryn3947, Ingrid_rose, ProcrastinatorGeneral, Coco, Feelthecoldwindblowingmyhair, LinaBell, PeanttheThor Icey5105, Whatevergirl, neeniya, Lepidochelys_kempii, NoaNazo, Carlisle, 4w350m3, Nelle_Pirelle, PurpleElephantSocks, jaggedemeraldsofgold, and to anyone else who supported or sent me warm vibes. I love you all. I wish I had the energy to reply to every comment. (sorry if I misspelled your username)
Standing on my sop box for a moment, you have literally no idea how much this meant to me these last few weeks. All of your kind words were exactly what I needed and despite coming to the unnerving realization of just how big my audience is (it's no longer me and like ten loyal followers that would comment on my garbage fics), I...don't feel nervous to post this. I don't feel nervous to share my work with you guys. All I feel is safe. Yeah, there's gonna be some a-holes out there, but 99.9% of all of you are so warm and nice. I know that I can entrust you guys with all of this and you'll handle it with care. From the deepest part of my depressed heart, Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm giving all of you an individual hug and a personalized thank you note. I love you. 3
With that aside, I hope you enjoy the chapter. :)
Warnings: Blood, past amputation, implied/referenced child abuse.
"I am WAY too sleep-deprived to deal with your negativity right now."
-Brooklyn 99
Chapter Five:
Clint isn't exactly sure where they're going, but he guides them out of the hall and toward the barracks. Fury told them to sleep, so Clint assumes he meant on an actual bed rather than all of them collapsing on the floor in crumpled heaps with the rest of the staff forced to accommodate. The faceless security team lurks behind them, a haunting, armed shadow.
It makes Clint's skin itch.
After finding an empty barracks meant for eight people, pointedly closing the door in the faces of the security team, and releasing Loki from his handcuffs, Clint goes into the adjoined bathroom and searches underneath the sink's cabinet. As he expected, there's a small first aid kit sitting beside a bunch of other miscellaneous bathroom supplies. He grabs it, stands upright, catches a glimpse of his reflection from the corner of his eye, and freezes.
Dark hair, deathly pale skin streaked with dirt and blood, vivid green eyes. Clint left-hand twitches. He looks at the mirror head-on, stomach pulling. He's staring at a murky version of Loki. He's watching himself. Is there even really a difference anymore?
He blinks.
His own haggard, exhausted appearance stares back at him, not Loki's, the image clearing. He breathes out sharply, blinking again. It doesn't change. It's just him.
He looks terrible. His eyes are rubbed raw with gray lines underneath them like some sort of vivid fashion statement. His posture is practically sloping with fatigue. He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing out sharply.
His fingers tighten around the first-aid kit.
He swallows hard.
Clint forces his body to turn, every movement feeling mechanical and stiff. It's fine. It's not the first time it's happened. It's fine. He walks out of the bathroom, turns out the light with his elbow, and returns back to the main room, trying to pretend like nothing happened. Loki and Bruce have taken a seat next to each other on one of the lower bunks on one of the four bunk beds, the Asgardian carefully removing his jacket. Clint can see him peeling it off his skin near his elbow from saturation and grimaces.
Please don't let him be bleeding out.
Clint hands the first aid kit to Bruce and studiously ignores the fine tremor in his hand, then backs up several feet until his back brushes against the opposing bunkbed.
The chemist's mouth is drawn into a thin line. He and Clint share a brief look that Clint can't determine the meaning of. Mutual concern, maybe? Loki manages to wiggle from the jacket revealing the dark T-shirt and his forearms. Clint swears under his breath and beside him, Natasha sighs.
"Pulling stitches" was a generous understatement on Loki's part. His right arm down from the middle of his forearm to his wrist is practically soaked. Actually, that's a lot of blood, holy crap. How is he still functioning? He looks a little dizzy and maybe tired, but nothing indicates proper anemia. Which could mean absolutely nothing in regards to Loki. The man is a master at hiding pain.
The initial wound has stopped bleeding heavily, sluggishly draining down his arm like exhausted honey.
Loki breathes in sharply, bracing himself, before carefully lifting out his right arm toward Bruce. His other clenches into a fist, resting in his lap. The chemist slips on a pair of blue, plastic disposable gloves from the first-aid kit before gently taking the offered arm and smoothing a thumb across the ring of mismatched stitches beneath the blood to look for the broken ones; almost like he's wiping away red raindrops from a window.
Loki's face is impassive even though Clint knows, at a minimum, it can't be comfortable. Feeling strangely twitchy, Clint leans back heavily against the ladder for the bunk bed behind him and folds his arms across his chest tightly. He pushes the pad of his thumb into his third finger. He doesn't want to just stand here. The silence is a chokehold. His mind is reeling. He needs to do something. Now.
"Can you still move your fingers?" Bruce asks.
It takes a second, but Loki's hand flexes slowly. His eyes crease around the edges. "It is painful, but yes."
Bruce nods, then thumbs around for a moment more before stopping. He frowns, grabbing a gauze pad from within the first-aid kit to mop up some of the blood. Clint tilts his head a fraction to see what Bruce is looking at and presses his lips together. That wasn't popping the stitches, but one of the few patches of healed skin.
Awesome.
The injury of five months and counting has somewhat sealed over now, more so on Loki's left arm than right, leaving patches of sealed over skin with intermediate sections of black sutures drawn tightly into the flesh. Thick, heavy scarring around the area reveals months of mistreatment and continued re-stitching. Any hope that there was of preventing scarring got lost because of repeated trauma to the skin.
Staring at it makes Clint feel faintly nauseous. It's not as bad as what it could be, but that's not exactly a comfort. It's still bad.
It's the only injury that has remained from Asgard's prison. Somewhat. It did heal over a couple of different times, at one point for a little over a month, but then Loki used magic and it split open again.
Everything else from the prison has put itself back together. Loki's face doesn't even bare scarring from the whole lips-getting-sewn shut thing, which was honestly the minor concern at the time with Loki's arms basically hanging off his body, attached crudely with the equivalent of Asgardian duct tape.
Thor had to cut them off to get him out of the prison. The chains Loki was bound with were enchanted and he didn't have time to wait for a sorcerer to take apart the spell. There was a near-immediate intervention on the part of the Asgardian rebels when Thor got him out of the palace to reattach everything, but while it kept Loki together, it was a patch-job, not a surgery.
Maybe if Loki had had a medical intervention on a magical level, he wouldn't have the problems with nerve damage or his arms splitting open at the wound site because his traumatized magic hasn't quite figured out where it's supposed to leave his body: his fingers or the old amputation site. Hard choice, really. Take the easy way out where the skin stays intact or split the skin open and leak blood everywhere.
Until Loki's magic figures out what's going on and stops spurting out of his body at will, no magic.
If only they could actually convince Loki's subconscious of that.
Bruce pushes his glasses up his nose with the edge of his wrist, then turns to the first aid kit and withdraws a basic suture kit. Clint exhales softly, intimately familiar with the tools. Although out of everyone on the team, Clint is the most likely to seek medical help on a wound-not after the Battle, he's just…it's harder-Natasha isn't. She'd sooner tape a mortal wound together than find a doctor. Clint has cleaned up and stitched plenty of wounds on her.
Bruce withdraws the instruments and threads the curved needle. "I don't have anything to numb it," Bruce warns.
Loki does something very close to rolling his eyes, then, with actual sincerity, he says, "It's just a needle, Dr. Banner. I will be fine. But thank you."
Bruce looks at him for a moment, expression unreadable, then picks up the demon scissor-like instruments that Clint never bothered to learn the name of and carefully slips the needle beneath Loki's skin. Unaffected, Loki breathes out slowly and then looks up directly at Clint.
It doesn't seem to be an intentional choice, Clint is just in his line of sight, but he feels like he got caught staring all the same. Clint bites sharply on his lower lip and looks away. Part of him is afraid that if they hold gazes long enough that the Asgardian will figure out what happened and what Clint heard. Clint wants an explanation, but…not now. Not like that. There has to be a better time or way to bring it up.
A few minutes later of awkward silence beyond a dry joke by Loki, Bruce finishes the sutures and checks for other areas to stitch before cleaning the blood up with a wet rag that Natasha gets from the bathroom. Bruce wraps the area with gauze "just in case", hands Loki a water bottle, and then instructs Loki to get some sleep.
While Bruce puts away the kit, throws away Loki's bloody jacket, and cleans his hands, Clint and Natasha, now shifted to sitting side-by-side on the bed across from the Asgardian, silently watch as Loki drains the entire water bottle before laying down carefully on his back and tucking his right arm close to his chest.
Whether it's the pain from his arm or the emotionally taxing couple of hours, Loki's defenses fall and murmurs quietly, "You will keep watch, yes?"
Keep watch. Against the Chitauri? Against S.H.I.E.L.D.? Against what? And yet, even without that knowledge, Clint knows that his answer is yes.
Clint shares a brief look with his partner that speaks a thousand words before Natasha promises softly, "Of course. Get some sleep, Loki."
Loki nods once before squeezing his eyes shut and exhaling a breath wrapped into a shudder. With his arms wrapped around his stomach like that and his back pushed into the mattress, it almost looks like he's trying to cover all the vital areas of his body. But even though he's uncomfortable, he's still going to try and get some sleep. It's a simple gesture, one that Clint doesn't even think Loki is conscious of, but it makes something in Clint's stomach pull all the same.
Holy crap.
Loki really trusts them, doesn't he?
Right now, after all that the Chitauri just threatened him with, after the history of what Clint suspects was filled with some form of violence between the two, he's actually going to let his defenses down and rest. Because they're in the room with him, and he genuinely thinks that this fact makes it safe enough to try.
The realization feels like Loki just handed him something private, breakable, and sacred. Something hot burns in his chest. Clint looks away.
000o000
"Clint? Do you have your aids in?" Natasha's voice is so soft it's barely audible. Judging from the edge in her tone, it doesn't sound like the first time she's asked the question.
After an hour of mindlessly staring at the top bunk with his mind refusing to shut up despite Natasha assuring him she'd take first watch, Clint's brain feels like it's walking backwards through a thick, muddy soup of mental confusion. It takes him several long seconds to realize his partner said anything at all.
"Hm?" he hums, keeping half-lidded eyes focused on the edge of the bunk above them.
The room is illuminated by a soft overhead light that won't shut off and Clint has been tempted more than once in the last hour to forcefully disconnect it from the power. It's almost noon at this point, the light is intended to stay lit for emergencies during the day. How does anybody get sleep on this bloody thing? It's not like S.H.I.E.L.D. is known for its reliable sleeping patterns. Either the electrician was a sadist, or this is a major design flaw. Maybe both.
The sound of Natasha shifting next to him almost makes him jump. Beyond faint humming from the light, Bruce and Loki breathing deeply on the other side of the room, and the occasional set of footsteps outside the door, the room is utterly silent. Clint turns his head a little, watching as Natasha props her head up on one hand. He watches her lips move as she says something else, but he doesn't pick up anything beyond "there."
Whispers have a habit of all sounding the same to him now. Just a pitch of meaningless, breathy air. Sometimes really loud voices do the same thing, but that's only when he's really stressed.
He squints at her in confusion, shaking his head to indicate he doesn't understand.
Natasha's mouth tightens into a tense frown.
Clint shifts, rolling onto his side so they're facing each other, gesturing to her, and lifts up a hand, fingerspelling O-K? and raising his eyebrows. The Widow considers the question for a long moment before she shakes her head once. She lifts her free hand up for lazy, one-handed signing, carefully mouthing the words she's trying to sign so Clint can follow along.
"What happened in there?" she signs. Sort of. Clint focuses more on her lips than he does her hands, because they won't really help him. Much to Clint's private amusement and Natasha's eternal frustration, the woman's ASL is terrible. She tries, honest to God, but she thinks in mostly Russian, then has to translate that to English and then ASL's grammatical structure and her brain refuses to adapt or make it easier because it decided a few years ago that ASL was its mortal enemy until the end of time. She can understand it with relative ease, but signing something back to you is the challenge.
Clint's brow furrows. He lifts up his pointer finger and shakes it back and forth. "Where?"
Natasha's expression flattens as if she's annoyed. Written into the edges he can see concern. "In the prison. Did something happen to you? Like with Tony and Steve?" She fumbles with the name signs for a moment, drawing a circle over her chest for Tony and just waving a flat hand in front of her chest for half the normal shield they typically sign for Steve.
Clint's stomach tightens reflexively. She saw. Of course she saw. Clint wasn't being sneaky about the whole thing. The Chitauri started speaking and Clint lost any and all thoughts about trying to cover for himself. Everyone else had seemed so focused on the aliens. Actually, there's a horrifying thought, what if Fury or Hill saw him? He doesn't want to talk about it with Loki, let alone them.
He has to, though, doesn't he? At some point?
Clint hesitates. Staring at Natasha's face, he feels a tight, wordless energy coiling inside of him.
Panic. Anxiety. Shame.
"No." He signs back. "Not like Tony or Steve." Clint's hand drops for a moment, but he can see Natasha waiting. He doesn't know what to think, he doesn't know what to say. He just wants someone else to deal with this. He stays still, feeling desperate and guilty because for a wild moment he considers blatantly lying to her.
Sure. Great way to deal with problems, Barton. Just lie. That never goes wrong ever.
Clint's hand starts to lift up. He has no idea what he's going to explain, but it doesn't really matter in the end anyway. His brain-emotionally, physically, and probably spiritually, too, just for kicks-tired decides that nope, we're not doing this garbage game anymore. Clint has about all of two seconds to begin to spiral into another violent panic episode before he blurts out in a whisper so low he can't hear it, "I understood what the Chitauri were saying."
Natasha goes rigid. He doesn't look at her. The shame and overwhelming sense of guilt that crashes into him makes it impossible to. He's failed her. He was supposed to be getting his head back together post-scepter, and now he's running around with his brain melting into goopy piles everywhere he goes.
Natasha exhales, sharp. Her hands move aimlessly for a moment.
Clint feels a shudder wash through him, gnawing him to bone. He thinks he's going to shake apart, and when he does, splitting down the middle, there won't be anything left but a reflection of Loki. He doesn't cry, he doesn't implode, but it feels like he's teetering on the edge of something dangerous.
The game, however, is up. No more secrets.
"I don't know why," Clint signs to her. Mouthing the words as he moves his hands makes his entire throat hot even though he's not speaking. He feels inexplicably dirty. His partner's eyes are trained on his mouth, but he can see that her walls have tumbled and she's desperately trying to rebuild. Alarm is creased into her body like it was branded there.
Maybe this makes him a worse person, because he's pretty sure he's already a bad one, but seeing her freak out about this makes him feel a little better. This isn't normal then. Part of him had begun to wonder if it was.
"I don't know," Clint signs again. Natasha watches, swallowing hard. Her mouth parts slightly, but she doesn't say anything he can hear. "My brain is a mess. Ever since Loki"-name sign the gesture for grumpy with a quick shake of L afterwards-"got back to Earth, I keep dreaming his memories and now I can suddenly speak Chitauri? What the-?!"
He shakes his head, pushing hard against his forehead with his knuckles for a moment. He feels wrong.
Natasha's quiet for long moments, processing. It's after a careful consideration before she signs, "You're…dreaming his memories?" Clint can't read her face. He has no idea what she's thinking. It terrifies him.
Compromised. She thinks you're compromised. Natasha values trust and being able to tell someone something and knowing it will be taken to the grave. She thinks you're compromised and spilling her secrets all over everything. She's borne her soul to you for years and now she's worried you're giving it all up into a void and why did you say that why did you say that why did you say thatwhydidyousaythatwhydid-
Clint frantically backpedals, rubbing at the back of his neck. Please still trust me. He fumbles through the next few signs, making a mess of the grammar as he tries to make it make sense, "It's more like I'm…picking up radio waves, I guess? Maybe. I don't know. It's not all the time." Liar, liar, liar, "You're not…having that?" he asks weakly. "Maybe Loki's giving off dream radiation or something."
Actually that would make sense.
Sure, a soft, sickly sweet voice whispers in the back of his head. It sounds like Barney. And it has nothing to do at all with the fact that all your brains were in the same gunky soup via scepter influence for days. Nothing at all.
"No. I haven't had that," Natasha signs. "I've barely dreamt about him at all, and when I do, it's…not with him as a victim." The signs she uses don't make sense in the context of her words for the last part, but Clint ignores that.
Right. Scepter. Loki running around being a psychopath for a few days before an alien attack in New York. The Chitauri. Taunting Loki. Threatening him. They don't understand the invasion.
"Yeah," Clint signs. "Yeah. It's not like that for me."
Natasha breathes out slowly. She rubs at the lower half of her face for a moment, then her hand slides back, fingers rubbing at her ear to push at piercings. Anxious tic. "Is this why you haven't been sleeping?" she asks.
Clint hesitates. This feels like a trap. He doesn't know how much he can tell her. He doesn't want her to cut him out of her life forever because he's compromised. He feels like a child. He's seven and trying to explain about the fact that he's hungry to Barney who tells him to shut up, he's ten and he's explaining to Barney about wanting to go to school and his brother is slamming his fist in the wall next to Clint's head, he's twenty-two and telling Barney that he won't work with murderers anymore and Barney puts a hand on his gun.
The information Clint can tell people is always limited before they explode. Natasha's acceptance of him may be wide, but it's finite. Tasha is going to hate him for this. She can accept his past of sins because her own reflects it, but this is different.
Natasha takes his silence as a yes before he can say any differently. "You could have told me," she signs slowly, her expression tight with hurt. The shadows crossing over her face make her look haunted and slightly ethereal, red hair a halo around her pale skin.
No, I really, really couldn't.
"I'm sorry," Clint whispers in breathy English. He can feel his voice in his throat, but he can barely hear it. "I didn't know what they were. I thought it was just PTSD for a while, but it's not like that. They don't feel like dreams. It's like I'm actually there." He shifts his feet, his toe pushing up uncomfortably against the edge of the bed frame. "I didn't want it to be real."
Natasha raises an eyebrow. Her hand is sharp and jerky as she signs, "Your solution was to ignore it and hope it went away?"
That strategy sounded better in his head. He winces, then signs, "I guess?"
Natasha studies his face. Clint doesn't meet her gaze, afraid to. He's waiting for something to go wrong. Violence. Shouting. This isn't the first time that they've spoken about heavy topics with each other, and nothing traumatizing happened last time, but there's something about this entire thing that feels like a character flaw. He's revealed himself too much and now there's no going back to the safety of before. And Clint is terrified of the after.
Natasha's fingers, gentle and warm, rest on his arm. Clint forces himself to look at her. Soft green eyes stare back at him. He studies her face desperately, searching for the hidden anger and frustration, but all he sees is compassion and sympathy. "I'm sorry," she signs, withdrawing her hand, "I'm sorry that this is happening to you. I know you're scared. I am too. I wish this wasn't-" she fumbles for a moment, clearly having forgotten the sign she wanted. She exhales with annoyance then mouths, "wasn't your reality."
Clint squeezes his eyes shut. She's sorry. She's not angry. She's sorry. He blinks heavy eyelids open again, then shakes his head, whispering, "Don't apologize, please. I-I did…I deserve this. It's a recompense. Karma coming to collect its debt."
Natasha whacks him softly, annoyed. "No." If someone can sign firmly then Tasha is doing so. "You didn't do anything to earn this."
Clint huffs weakly. "You don't think?" he signs.
"No."
Funny. Cause Clint sure remembers his childhood and his job as an assassin differently than Natasha does. He killed sixteen people in the invasion alone, discounting his prior body count. Clint shakes his head, rubbing at his face. His wrist is beginning to go numb from leaning on his hand for so long. "And even if it's not that…then what? My brain is still tangled with Loki's? Because everyone said that everything was back to normal. There weren't any long-term effects until he came back and now?" he signs.
Natasha chews on the inside of her cheek. "I don't know." She admits, shaking her head with the sign. "I don't know what's going on. We can figure it out." Literally, the direct translation she signs to him on that last part is help you will, which feels him with a sense of overwhelming relief. I will help you. She's not going to leave him out here alone. Natasha signs, awkwardly, "There has to be something that can help."
"What if there's not? What if, for the rest of my life, I'm tethered to him?" Clint signs in question, desperate. And it's not the fact that it's Loki that makes this such a bad thing. It could be anyone and he wouldn't like this. It's the idea of no longer feeling like he owns his body. As if he has to co-host himself and then dedicate space to Loki's mess. He doesn't feel like he belongs to himself anymore. He's been bargained, bought, and sold to the scepter without anyone reading him the terms and conditions.
"Then we'll figure something out," Natasha promises. As if it's as simple as that.
What if we can't?
Clint rubs at his face. "I don't know what to do."
Natasha nods. "Have you told Loki about this?"
Clint hesitates, but his partner hasn't started yelling at him yet, so maybe he can squeeze in a few more sentences. "No. I know I should. He's the resident magic IT guy. I don't...want him to…do anything with it if he doesn't already know."
Natasha considers that. "Do you think that he would?"
"Do you?" Clint counters, eyebrows raised.
His partner's response is immediate. "No." Clint looks up at her and holds her gaze. He's not sure if he's relieved or annoyed by the answer. Relieved because he thought the same, annoyed because logically they should be paranoid. Natasha appends after a moment, "He doesn't have anything to gain by messing up your head. Not this time."
Logical, concise, and cold.
Clint exhales slowly. It feels like defeat. Loki is supposed to be their enemy. He's supposed to do all these bad things to harm them. And yeah, sure, Clint likes to goad him sometimes and they'll rub each other the wrong way, but Loki just…wouldn't do that. Not anymore.
Natasha's hand moves in the corner of his eye and he flinches, almost jerking back from her bodily. The Widow's fingers grip sharply at his bicep to stop him from tumbling off the bed, and both of them stare at each other for a long moment. Clint swallows hard. Natasha's fingers slowly tighten before she lets go.
Heavy, weighted sorrow settles onto her face. It's a look that he's seen on her more than once in relation to him. Which is kinda funny given how messed up both their lives are that they can still recognize when something really crappy happened.
"Clint," Natasha signs, using his sign name of bird. It's one that she gave him after she started learning ASL. It was also the first one he got that wasn't "C", "B", or derogatory. Even now, years later, his stomach still twists with warmth at the sight of it. "It's okay. I'm not going to hit you."
Clint licks his lips nervously. Miserable and embarresed, he signs reluctantly. "Sorry. Habit."
Natasha's expression darkens, but there's no usual entourage of following threats against spooning out Barney's organs with a fork, vivid skinning of his outsides, or whatever dark torture that pops into her mind. Right. Clint asked her to stop doing that because it of the following anxiety attacks. Sometimes he just wants to talk about his crappy brother without everyone promising vengeance about it.
Clint shifts his position a little, forcing Natasha to adjust the blanket they're sharing. So she is cold, then. At some point before they went to bed, she changed clothing into a loose gray tank-top on top of camo pants, and despite how the Helicarrier seems to have a stable temperature of about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, she hasn't said a word of complaint.
"What about you? You're not sleeping either." He points out. Natasha is more than willing to talk circles around everyone about themselves to avoid having a conversation about herself.
Natasha shrugs, looking away from him. She exhales, then admits, "What's there to say? I'm not okay. No one is. I just want to get some sleep."
Clint raises an eyebrow.
Natasha pointedly lays back down, settling her head on the pillow. Clint waits for a moment, then settles next to her. His partner sighs and brushes stray hair from her face. "Can we talk later? You keep watch?"
Clint is tempted to push her and force it out while she's exhausted with her filters down, but he respects her too much to push. He nods. Natasha looks relieved and shifts across the bed and lays her head on his chest. Clint wraps his arms around her shoulders and stares up at the bed frame above them again. His ears ache from wearing his aids for so long, but he doesn't feel safe enough to remove them.
He squeezes his eyes shut and holds Natasha tighter, wishing her presence was enough to chase away the nightmares.
000o000
Clint doesn't sleep, but he dozes. He doesn't wake Natasha up for another watch, figuring she's exhausted enough as it is. His senses are on high alert. Everything feels sharp somehow. Natasha shifts and he gets an adrenaline spike. Bruce gets up to use the bathroom and he gets an adrenaline spike. Loki moans lowly. Someone passes the door.
Eventually, the alarm for four hours that Bruce set before they all laid down goes off and Clint hears Bruce and Loki start to move around. Bruce, the sadist, turns on the light and the room is flooded with blinding artificial white. Natasha groans and shifts her head, burying her face against his shoulder as if she fully intends to never breathe again.
Clint squeezes his eyes shut and turns his head away from the light, before giving up and throwing the arm not wrapped around his partner's shoulders across his eyes instead. There is no greater irony in the universe than not being able to sleep and wishing with every passing minute that the night would end, and then the night ending and that somehow being worse.
Natasha shifts her head to breathe again but makes no further movement to get up. Which Clint is completely fine with. The bed has turned into a five-star one in seemingly seconds, desperate to keep them captive. He's never been more comfortable in his life.
Both Bruce and Loki enter and exit the bathroom before Bruce asks, dryly, "Are you still alive over there?"
"No. Leave me to die." Clint moans dramatically.
"Alright then." He can practically hear Bruce's eye roll. "How did either of you end up on a most-wanted list?"
"With extreme skill and precision," Clint grumbles.
"I'm sure." Bruce's voice is thick with sarcasm.
Natasha shifts her hand a little before sacrificing it to the bitter cold outside the blanket to raise her finger in a rude gesture. Clint smirks. Bruce sinks heavily onto another bed, biting on a huff of laughter. There must be some sort of wordless conversation between Loki and Bruce because the chemist encourages "do it" and a moment later a pillow smacks into Clint's face. He twitches, shoves the pillow down, opens one eye to glare at the Asgardian, and then throws it back.
Loki catches it one-handed, face completely deadpan. Natasha grumbles something meaningless in Russian, eyes firmly shut.
"You know," Bruce says conversationally, doing something that Clint can't quite see from this angle with his hands. "I'm beginning to understand why Fury rarely lets you work together. If all you do on missions is cuddle then it's a wonder you two run half of S.H.I.E.L.D."
Clint rolls his eyes. "Manipulation, Doctor. That's a no-no. And it's only like a third, but thank you. Very generous to throw in that extra seventeen percent."
Loki throws the pillow at him again. Clint squawks in protest, scowling harshly at the Asgardian. There's a faint flicker of fond amusement in Loki's gaze that vanishes rapidly behind a wall of impassivity. Clint feels his mood sour a little looking at him, remembering earlier today. Lightheartedly, he says, "Rude. You're so grumpy, Lokes, oh my gosh."
"Get up." Loki says flatly.
Clint sighs heavily, submitting to the will of the universe, and Natasha's hands tighten on him as she feels him relent. "No." She mumbles weakly. She hasn't even opened her eyes yet. Clint bites on the inside of his cheek, wondering if this is the longest she's slept in one period since they left for France. That was what? Two and a half hours. Maybe three.
"Sorry," Clint sighs and leans down to kiss the top of her head.
"Traitor." Natasha grumbles, but nonetheless drags herself upward with effort. She blinks open heavy eyelids slightly swollen from sleep, scowls, and flops back down face-first onto the pillow. Clint pats her back twice in sympathy and forces himself upward on shaky legs. Everything hurts. Every joint in his body feels swollen and tight, like if he even tried to reach down and touch his toes-something he can normally do without a problem-he wouldn't make it past his knees.
A headache has also decided to start pounding behind his eyes, just because it can, and Clint squints unhappily. Great.
Clint stretches his arms up and makes a weird sound in his throat before visiting the bathroom. He studiously ignores his reflection after doing his business, scrapes a hand through his hair as a feeble attempt at containing it, and then exits and loudly says, "I'm happy to report that no one snores. Good job guys. We're a dream team. Best sleep over buddies. Five stars. Two thumbs up."
There's a momentary lull before Bruce asks, "Did you sleep at all?"
Clint snorts with amusement, reaching out a hand to poke Natasha on the back several times. She shifts, trying to escape him, but he keeps moving with her. "Make your best guess." He says.
"No." Loki answers.
"Yahtzee."
Natasha catches his wrist in a vice and he looks down at her mildly. She returns his stare with a vicious scowl. "If you keep poking me, the next anniversary that we share will be when I gave you the Syndey send-off."
His eyebrows raise. "Tasha." He complains.
Natasha releases him and crawls off the bed, slinking into the bathroom a few moments later. Clint laughs quietly as soon as the door is shut. He turns back to face the other two men and sees that while Bruce is watching them with quiet amusement and a soft sadness, Loki looks almost sick. His left thumb is anxiously rubbing into his right palm.
Clint tilts his head. "Are you going to throw up? You don't look good."
Loki blinks several times. He breathes out sharply. "She threatened you with dismemberment and you're laughing?"
Clint's brow furrows. He looks at Bruce for a second. "Yeah…?" Loki just stares at him, so Clint adds, almost awkwardly, "she's not serious? The only time she's actually hurt me was when we met and during your invasion. Y'know, discounting sparring. But-" A thought occurs to him, and Clint stares at the sorcerer with dawning comprehension. The Chitauri. Right. That is an ugly can of worms to poke at this early in the morn-this early in the afternoon. Late? What time is it? Clint fumbles over himself. "But you've heard her make that joke before and she never follows up with it. She wasn't serious."
Loki picks at the inside of his palm. "I see."
He doesn't, clearly, but Clint doesn't want to poke at that right now. Not in front of anyone. When-because it is a when, not an if, even though he wants it to be-when he explains about the Chitauri thing to Loki, he wants to do it one on one.
Bruce runs hands through his hair in agitation. "I guess, uh, Tony texted me and asked to meet in the cafeteria."
"When?" Clint asks, forcing his gaze away from the Asgardian.
Bruce winces. "Almost forty minutes ago? I don't know if he's still there."
Clint forces out a breath. Forty minutes. He doesn't know where Tony's head is at right now and while he's mostly concerned, part of him is dreading the interaction. Clint doesn't know how to help. All of them just sitting there and patting him on the shoulder isn't going to help anything long-term. But Tony wants them there to begin with, so that has to count for something, right?
"Food would be good." Clint agrees, resigned.
Author's Note:
Next chapter: May 19th.