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‘The Hulk’s been secured.’
‘Iron Man, do you still have a lock on Hawkeye?’
‘He’s still in place, Cap. I think we need a team up here.’
‘Try and talk to him.’
The voices all come at Clint as if from a distance, even though he’s hearing them via earpiece. There are so many people in the street below that he can’t keep any eye on them all, he’s -- he’s going to fucking die. This position is way too exposed, and he’s lost track of at least two of his teammates since the Hulk freaked out. And he can’t remember how he got here, which is just --
A loud, red blur zooms into view and lands across the roof from where Clint’s standing, the whirl of lights coalescing into the shape of Iron Man.
‘Hey there,’ says Tony cautiously. ‘How’re you feeling?’
‘Don’t come any closer.’ His arm is shaking as he draws back the bowstring. That hasn’t happened since he was a kid.
Tony puts his hands up. Not very reassuring because now Clint can see the blinding glow from the repulsors in each of the suit’s palms, pointing straight at him.
‘Yeah, Hawkeye definitely got hit with whatever they gave the Hulk,’ says Tony on the open comm channel. ‘Clint, do you think you could lower your bow? I come in peace.’
‘Power down the suit, then maybe we can talk.’ He blinks, sweat stinging his eyes. What does Tony think he is, an idiot? Tony was right next to Bruce when the canister exploded, so who’s to say Tony isn’t suffering from exactly the same effects? Clint doesn’t want to get pulverised by one of his own teammates just because he was dumb enough to let his guard down.
‘How’s it going up there?’ Steve’s voice. Clint whirls around, scanning the rest of the rooftop. His vision’s going weird at the edges, like he hit his head or something. There’s way too much space in every direction, and for the first time in decades he’s hit with the urge to hide behind the door in his father’s old kitchen, where he used to go when he was a kid and wanted to feel safe.
‘It’d be going a lot better if we had someone up here with, say, a tranquilizer gun,’ Tony is saying, and Clint turns back to aim at him. ‘Wow, OK, no need to be like that.’
‘You’re wearing a full suit of armour,’ says Clint flatly. ‘I think you can handle it.’
‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I want someone to shoot me with an explosive-tipped arrow at point-blank range.’
‘Coulson’s on his way up now.’ Natasha's voice.
'Black Widow, I thought someone said you were sending a team.'
'Coulson counts as a team,' says Natasha.
Clint hits his comm button. ‘Tell him to stand down,’ he says sharply. ‘It’s too dangerous up here.’ He doesn’t need any more variables, more things to worry about.
‘Hey, here’s an idea. If it’s so dangerous, why don’t you step away from the edge of the roof?’
Like Clint has a problem with heights. ‘I don’t take orders from you, Tony.’
‘All right, Iron Man,’ says a familiar voice, this one not over the comm unit. ‘I’ll take it from here.’
Clint’s heart feels like he’s just run a marathon. ‘Get out of here, Phil.’
Coulson steps away from the fire escape door, walking across the roof towards him. ‘Clint, can you step away from the edge of the roof, please? You’re making me nervous. I won’t come any closer if you don’t want me to.’
Clint hunches his shoulders. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling,’ he says. It’s stupid because he knows they’re in danger, that something’s going to go wrong any second now, but not in any way he can reasonably explain. ‘Are you armed?’
‘Yes, I have my sidearm,’ says Coulson calmly. ‘Do you want me to take it out?’
‘He’s fine with you having a weapon but I’m not even allowed to stand here with my hands up?’ asks Tony.
‘Stand down, Iron Man. Go help with the cleanup.’
‘Seriously?’ says Tony, and Clint almost jumps out of his skin as the Iron Man suit takes off in a cloud of brick-dust and hot air.
‘Do you remember inhaling some sort of gas earlier, Clint?’
‘...Yeah.’
‘OK, it’s good you remember that,’ says Phil. ‘You’ve been drugged, and I think it’s better if you put your bow down.’
Clint’s fingers tighten around his bow, conflicted. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.’
‘How about if I come over to you? That way I can cover you if something happens and you’re not ready.’
‘I’m always ready,’ says Clint indignantly, and Phil cracks a smile, drawing his gun. Something in Clint relaxes and he swings his bow over his back, clipping it in beside his quiver.
‘You look terrible,’ says Phil, once they’re side by side. He’s covering them both; textbook stance.
‘Well, I feel like shit,’ says Clint, starting to get a little unsteady on his feet from adrenaline comedown.
‘I brought something to help with that,’ says Phil. ‘It’s an antidote to the drug in your system. Once you’ve taken it you’ll be able to see more clearly and give me a hand out here, how does that sound?’
‘Good, that sounds... good.’
Phil pulls something out of his jacket pocket and hands it to Clint. ‘It’s like an epi-pen. Just press the end against your leg and hold down the button.’
Clint takes it, hesitating for a second. ‘This isn’t gonna knock me out or anything, is it?’
‘No, I need your eyes up here.’ says Phil. He’s not looking at Clint, his gaze sharp and quick as he looks around, finger on the trigger guard of his handgun. Clint relaxes.
‘Sure, no problem,’ says Clint, and presses the syringe into his leg until there’s a loud click. ‘Shit, that hurts!’ he has time to say before his knees are buckling under him. There’s just a slim moment for a feeling of betrayal before Coulson catches him with an arm around his shoulders and everything goes dark.
* * *
The helicarrier’s medical bay isn’t exactly unfamiliar but the feeling of restraints around his wrists is. Clint blinks, eyes gummy, and cranes his neck to look around his hospital room. ‘You gonna unlock these?’ he asks, and Tony looks up from where he’s playing with his Starkphone in the corner.
‘Depends,’ says Tony. ‘Are you still freaking out?’
‘Can I get a drink, at least?’
‘Yeah, I draw the line at spoon-feeding, I’ve only known you for like two months,’ says Tony, and helps Clint out of the restraints, handing him a plastic cup of water from the bedside table. ‘Don’t stab anyone with a scalpel or whatever, OK?’
Clint gulps down all the water, memories trickling back to him. Everything after the gas canister exploded is a blur of aimless terror and confusion until Phil showed up at the end and saved him. Kind of like Clint’s entire life.
‘How’s Bruce?' Clint asks.
‘Woke up a couple of hours ago. He’s doing yoga with Natasha, I think.’
The door swings open and Dr Thermopolis comes in, glowering at Tony. ‘Of course you already let him out of the restraints.’
‘He’s been unconscious for six hours and has like fifty monitors crazy-glued all over his body, I think I could take him,’ says Tony.
‘You really couldn’t,’ says Clint, as the doctor bustles around him, scribbling things on his chart.
‘That’s the love I get for faithfully waiting by your bedside all this time?’
‘He’s only been here for fifteen minutes,’ Thermopolis informs him. ‘I’ve been checking on you every twenty.’
‘For Tony Stark, fifteen minutes is pretty damn faithful,’ says Clint.
‘I’m beginning to feel seriously undervalued, here,’ says Tony. ‘First you threaten to shoot me, and now this?’
Thermopolis raises an eyebrow at Clint from behind Tony’s back, like, Is this guy for real?
‘I was out of it,’ says Clint. ‘Were you expecting me to not feel threatened by the guy wearing the thousand-pound weaponized Transformers costume?’
‘Yeah, but you let Coulson come up to you with his gun out, what’s that about? I mean, whatever happened to bros before... bros before SHIELD agents, huh?’
‘I am a SHIELD agent,’ says Clint patiently. ‘And Coulson’s...’ Suddenly he feels weird about saying it to Tony Stark, who has all this attitude when it comes to SHIELD, who has a different nickname for Phil every time they’re in the same room together. ‘Coulson’s like my Pepper,’ he finishes, and lets Tony interpret that how he likes.
Tony shuts up.
‘Is team bonding time over now?’ asks Thermopolis, nudging Tony out of the way. ‘Because I need to do some blood tests.’
* * *
He finds Coulson in the corridor outside Fury’s office.
‘I was just coming to visit you,’ he says, flipping the catch on his laptop case.
‘It’s OK, Tony took over Florence Nightingale duty.’
Phil guides him towards the elevator, hand steady between his shoulder blades. ‘And the doctor signed you out, I hope? I don’t want to have to escort you back to the medical bay because you broke out again, it’s getting embarrassing.’
‘No, I’m totally fine. Except for this really ugly epi-pen shaped bruise on my leg.’
‘Would you have prefered the tranquilizer gun?’ asks Phil, because he’s considerate like that.
Clint grins as the elevator doors ding open. ‘You know me, I prefer the soft touch.’
Phil’s office is, as usual, a total mess. Phil’s in here so rarely that it’s more like a storage unit than anything else, stacks of evidence boxes littering his desk and a hazmat suit hanging from a pot plant on top of his filing cabinet. Clint kicks the door shut behind them and Phil puts his laptop down on the desk chair, going over to the weapons locker to shut his SHIELD-issue sidearm away for the night.
‘Hey,’ says Clint to the back of Phil’s head. ‘Thanks. For earlier.’
‘You’re thanking me for putting you in a hospital bed for six hours?’
‘Treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen?’ Clint suggests, but the cast of Phil’s shoulders is tensing as he closes the locker. ‘Too soon?’
‘Maybe save the jokes for a day when I haven’t had to talk you down from the roof of a forty-storey building,’ he says, and that’s when Clint realises, belatedly as usual, that he’s being an asshole. He steps over Stark Industries packing case and pulls Phil into a hug.
‘But you got me in the end, right? Even when my brain’s trying to hulk out I still listen when it’s you.’
Phil’s hands slide up his back, hooking into the worn fabric of Clint’s t-shirt. ‘I think Stark was jealous,’ he says after a moment, voice dry even though his face is up against Clint’s neck.
‘Who wouldn’t be?’ Clint wonders, and feels a smile press against his collarbone.