Fic: Travelogue (5/5)
2/8/12 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchTravelogue
Avengers
Rating for all chapters: adult
(content notes, this chapter: lots of arguments, with a brief threat of violence; action scenes involving actual violence and character injury; kissing.)
Characters: Clint/Bruce/Natasha, Tony Stark, Maria Hill, Nick Fury, Victor von Doom
Wordcount (total): 25,000 (this chapter): 5,000ish
Summary: Post-New York, Clint's still having trouble dealing with the whole Loki-controlling-his-brain situation, and Natasha seems to be avoiding him. Bruce Banner, meanwhile, just wants to get back to Kolkata.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Morse drops Clint and Natasha off and promises to wait for them with the plane in case they need to make a quick getaway - it gives them a good excuse to leave Morse at the airport instead of dragging her into what Nat still insists is a mission and what Clint is pretty sure will be a huge fight. Once Morse is dealt with, Clint and Natasha break into Bruce's room, which is probably going to annoy him, but it's thematic and anyway, it's fun, especially after the awkward silence of the flight over. Natasha sits on Bruce's bed while Clint ignores her and snoops through Bruce's stuff.
There's nothing on the walls, but the chest of drawers next to Bruce's bed has a bunch of drawings that look like they were done by kids, maybe from one of his nursing jobs. Socks, shirts, boring things, and then a notebook full of dense notation and formulas that Clint doesn't understand. Looks impressive, though.
"Running away from the science," mutters Clint. "But the science just won't leave him alone."
Nat shoots him a glance that could mean that she doesn't think much of his observation or just that his observation was incomprehensible. Or both, they're not mutually exclusive. Clint replaces the notebook, just in time for the door to swing open. Clint pushes the drawer shut again and coughs, trying to announce their presence without actually shouting 'it's us! Clint and Natasha!' Now Natasha's glaring at him.
"Hey," calls Bruce. He sets his toolbox at the top of the steps and closes the door. "Both of you at once? Is this about the anniversary?"
Clint freezes and starts counting dates. Six and a half months since he saw Bruce in Sevastopol. About a week since Doomstadt. Who knows how long since Bruce and Tasha hooked up, but he glances over at Tasha and she seems as clueless as Clint is.
"Okay, I guess not," says Bruce, when a couple seconds have gone by and Clint still hasn't come up with an appropriate date.
"Do you want to enlighten us, Bruce?" asks Nat.
"It's about a year since the last Hulk incident." Bruce brushes his hair back, and doesn't look at either of them. "I'm back to where I was when SHIELD picked me up."
Oh, fuck. Clint can't believe he managed to forget - this means about a year since NYC, about a year since Loki, about a year since Clint got SHIELD agents - men and women on his own side - killed or hurt, about a year since he actually shot at Director Fury.
Dimly, Clint can hear Tasha telling Bruce congratulations, and then she asks Clint if he's all right. Clint says something, but apparently it wasn't satisfactory, because Bruce is right there.
"I'm going to hug you," says Bruce, and Clint pulls a Natasha, just stands there, careful and still, as Bruce pulls him into his arms. Nat comes up behind Clint a moment later, doesn't say anything, just hugs his waist. That, that is what pulls Clint out of it, because Natasha never gives hugs, just takes them.
"Sorry," he says. "Sorry, sorry."
"Don't worry about it." Bruce's hands are warm on Clint's back.
"You're not over the Chitauri invasion," says Nat, like it's a revelation, a missing piece of a puzzle.
"No, it's-" begins Clint, but Bruce is looking over Clint's shoulder, eyebrows raised.
"Obviously," he says. "Have you talked to Clint in the last year? He's so paranoid that it actually hurts me to watch."
"I'm fine," says Clint, and shakes himself free. Nat and Bruce let him go, but their eyes follow him.
"I can understand a bit more cautiousness around you, Bruce," says Nat, like she's testing out a theory. "We all saw the Hulk at New York, what he can do-"
"I'm not scared of Bruce," says Clint.
"You shouldn't be," agrees Nat, all ready to preach the gospel of the recently converted. Clint scowls at her.
"No one said you were scared," says Bruce, and that's true, but Nat tried pretty hard to imply it.
There's a pause. Bruce sits down on his bed, mumbling something about working all day and being tired, but Clint and Nat stay standing, while Clint thinks of what to say next.
"I don't treat you any differently than I treat anyone else," tries Clint, and Nat snorts but Bruce says "That's what I'm worried about," and Clint's attention snaps to him.
"It would be exhausting to be as careful with everyone as you are with me," continues Bruce, and his voice is calm and steady, but his eyes are fixed on Clint's and Bruce doesn't do that, doesn't look someone in the eyes for that long. "And you are so careful around me. You think I haven't noticed, Clint? The way you keep in my line of sight, the way you warn me before you do anything, the way you don't touch me unless I'm practically already in your lap? And even then, you ask."
"Nothing wrong with sincere consent," mutters Clint. "Thought you'd appreciate that."
"No, I do," acknowledges Bruce. "But I think it's part of a pattern. Look at the way you act in crowds, in unfamiliar spaces, in-"
"It's not like you," says Tasha. "You're reckless, and tactless, and headstrong, Clint." Clint almost manages a smile at that, because she says it fondly instead of despairingly, but there's worry in Tasha's eyes.
"You're still a little reckless." Bruce's half-smile tries to stage a comeback as well, and it works better than Clint's, but it still looks kind of shaky. "Doomstadt was pretty high risk for you. And you've never asked me anything about the other guy, even when you probably needed to know."
"That's not like you either, not getting information." Nat's eyes are wide and her mouth is thin, looking at Clint like she's trying to assess what else is missing. "People have tried and failed to change you before, so why change now?"
Clint rolls that around in his brain, and he doesn't like any of the things it dislodges.
"Okay, maybe I am scared!" says Clint, because he is, just now. "Can you blame me?"
"No," says Bruce, and he sounds resigned, but understanding.
"Yes," says Nat, and she sounds angry. Clint rounds on her.
"You don't want me to be scared because then you have to admit that sometimes people are afraid of things and it's fine! You've got the unhealthiest fucking attitude toward your own anxieties that I've ever seen, and believe me, I've seen unhealthy-"
Nat throws a punch, but she's angry enough that Clint can see it coming, move out of the way. She doesn't try another one, just looks over at the bed where Bruce is sitting, eyes squeezed shut and hands tight on the mattress, like he's motion-sick.
"Wild punches aside," says Clint, and his breath comes out in shudders, and Bruce looks up. "Nat could kill me anytime she wanted. It's not like you're special, Banner."
"I won't," says Natasha. "Not here. Not you."
Clint's shoulders sag, and he reminds himself that he likes these people. "I know you won't, Tasha-"
"Don't do that," snarls Natasha.
Clint snaps back, feeling like Nat landed that punch after all. "Don't do what?"
"The names." Natasha tips her chin up. "I'm tired of trying to figure out who I'm supposed to be, Barton."
Clint chokes on her hypocrisy, chokes and sputters with it, until Bruce's hand is on his back and Bruce's arm is around Natasha's shoulders, and Clint doesn't relax into it, but Bruce is a steadying influence all the same.
"You call me Nat when you respect me, and you call me Tasha when I do something you like," says Natasha. "And-"
"You don't understand," snaps Clint. "You don't understand why-"
"I think," says Bruce, deathly calm, "that we're getting a little too worked up."
"Fuck you, Banner," says Clint, and his voice feels raw and bleeding. Natasha grimaces at the sound. "Some of us can have an argument without turning into green wrecking balls."
"You are scared of the Hulk," says Natasha, and she sounds triumphant. Clint hates her for that, just a little bit.
"No, he's not," says Bruce. "Or, look, I'm not going to dictate your problems to you. But Natasha, I think you're projecting. And I think Clint is just a little anxious right now. Generally, I mean, not just around me."
There's a pause. Natasha shakes off Bruce's arm, and Clint steps away from his hand. Bruce shrugs, and sticks his hands in his pockets, looking down.
"I'm guessing," he says, to his feet. "I don't have much of a frame of reference for how Clint acts when he's not around me."
Natasha moves, and Clint looks away from Bruce and meets her eyes. She's checking her fingernails, like she might find some empathy underneath them.
"You still leveling out after Loki?" she asks. "Counselors make a mistake, putting you back on mission duty so early?"
"I'm fine," says Clint, again, which is probably undercut by the way his hands trembled when Natasha said 'Loki.' Clint can tell Bruce noticed, from the concerned expression that crosses his face. And of course Natasha noticed, she notices everything when she's there to see it, the whole problem is that she hasn't been around to see him-
Clint's jaw clenches. This is bullshit. They are adults, they should be able to handle their problems on their own. That means no recriminations, no expecting anyone else to pick up your burden.
"You've never been compromised like that before," says Natasha, and it feels like she's interrupting Clint even though he doesn't have anything else to say. "Everyone would understand if you needed time to-"
"To get your head together," finishes Bruce, when Natasha runs out of words.
"Don't either of you say anything about my mental health." Clint tries to match Bruce's tone, calm and reasoned, but his voice breaks into shards, meant to cut. "I'm not the one who thinks that sleeping with someone will make him less of a threat. I'm not the one who thinks that being in India will somehow solve my problems."
"What else, then?" asks Natasha, like she expects an answer. "How am I supposed to make Bruce less of a threat, other than getting to know him? How is Bruce supposed to solve his problems, other than being somewhere that makes him happy?"
Clint doesn't know, but that doesn't mean this makes any sense. He sets his jaw again. It aches, and he wonders if he has bruises there or if he just hurts from arguing.
"It's all stop-gap measures," says Banner, quietly. "That's all we've got left, stop-gap measures. You're right, and it's terrible," and his lips quirk and Clint wants to rip that tiny half-smile off of his face, wants to kiss it and make Bruce laugh, "but Natasha's also right. What else are we supposed to do?"
Clint is going to say something antagonistic, and ruin everything, or he's going to say something needy and make Natasha look at him, and really it's all for the best that this is when the Doombots attack.
"Oh my god," says Bruce, when the first metal fist punches through his wall.
"Oh, right," says Clint. "This is what we were here to warn you about."
---
There are dozens of Doombots on the street, ignoring the fleeing civilians as they fire at Clint, Natasha and Bruce.
Clint and Natasha are firing back, of course. Clint had his bow and quiver in his travel duffel, and Natasha had no less than three guns under her sundress - Clint has undressed her after missions, and he still doesn't know how she does it. But he's glad that she does, because watching Natasha take out Doombots is a delight, every shot another broken pile of machinery. Clint tries to match her, robot for robot.
Bruce is huddled behind the remains of his wall, apparently concentrating very hard on not turning into a big green wrecking ball.
"Maybe you should just let go," says Clint, because more Doombots are landing all the time, and he's only got so many explosive arrowheads. He fires one, waits for the blast, and that makes three arrowheads left, and twenty more Doombots to replace the six that he just destroyed. This is probably why it took Doom about a week to launch any reprisals on Bruce - he had to build his army.
"Civilians," says Bruce.
"They've all run away," says Clint. "Smart people. I should try that sometime."
Bruce shakes his head, and Natasha shouts at Clint to stop talking and pay attention, and there go two more explosive arrows, into the growing mob of metal men, and one regular arrow into the eyesocket of the 'bot that was about to fire at Natasha.
Too bad Clint didn't see the one that was aiming at him.
The ray gun blast knocks Clint off his feet and burns his left arm, but he rolls with it and fires his last explosive arrow into the 'bots.
"Boom," he says, which is a good sound, but the rest of the sounds are bad: Natasha's last gun clicking on empty, the clack of boots as more Doombots land. They are royally screwed.
Bruce gets up from behind his shelter.
He looks over Clint, and Clint just shouts at him to change, already, because the number of Doombots can currently be calculated as a fuck ton. And then Bruce looks over at Natasha, and Clint's heart sinks, because she's going to say no and then Bruce will tear himself apart no matter what happens, caught in the choice between scaring Natasha and saving everyone from the killer robots. And Clint couldn't blame him, because he doesn't know which he would choose either.
Natasha kicks a Doombot's head clean off its shoulders, and then looks at the fifty or so more that are moving to replace it. And she nods.
Bruce changes, and then the rest of the fight is a blur of green and trying to dodge flying robot parts. Clint laughs, just once, when a green cape from a Doombot hits Natasha in the face, and she tears it off and manages a smile.
Clint could swear he saw the Hulk grinning, though maybe that was just a reaction to the smashing.
---
Bruce wakes up slow, with his head in Clint's lap and his feet across Natasha's legs, naked except for the blanket Natasha scrounged from a busted-up shop. They're sitting together in a somewhat structurally unsound building, and Clint is just waiting for the sirens, waiting for the stomp of boots and then he'll have to explain this to the police, he's already going to have to explain it to Fury, and-
"Calm down," say Natasha and Bruce, together. Natasha's voice is sharp and Bruce's voice is soft, but the concern in their eyes is exactly the same.
Clint's shoulders drop, inch by inch. He hadn't realized how tense they'd gotten.
He's been doing that a lot, lately. Winding himself up without realizing it, and god, he'd never noticed all the space he'd been giving to Bruce, how much space he was giving everyone, because he's paranoid but not that paranoid.
"I skipped out of post-mission counseling early," Clint says.
"I noticed," says Natasha, cool and dry, but her hand is warm on the back of Clint's neck.
"Recognizing the problem is a good first step," says Bruce. His eyes are almost shut, and he misses the first time he tries to pat Clint's unburned arm. Gets it the second time, though. "My problem is that I'm in public and I don't have any pants."
"We got you a blanket," says Natasha. Her sundress is torn and her voice holds no sympathy. "What else do you want?"
Bruce beams at her. Clint almost laughs - guy gets loopy, after de-hulking. "Lots of things," says Bruce. "But this is good for now."
"We should move," says Clint, because paranoia or not, some kind of authority is going to show up soon. "Is there a safehouse around here?"
"Five blocks," says Natasha, and pushes Bruce's feet off of her, stands up. She helps Bruce up next, and Bruce wraps the blanket around himself, like some kind of toga or sarong except infinitely more awkward. "Try to look as helpless as possible, Bruce, and everyone will just think you got injured during the incident."
"No problem," says Bruce, slumping, and Clint catches one of his arms, swings it over his shoulder. "I'm exhausted."
"I can understand that," says Clint, as they move out of the basement and into the dusty, broken street. "The H-" Clint stops himself, remembers that people don't appreciate being called by coded names, starts over. "I mean, you took out a lot of those Doombots."
Bruce blinks, staring at the ground like he's processing, or maybe just thinking about where he should put his feet. "You can call the other guy the Hulk," he says, finally. "We're not- I don't think we're the same person." He stumbles over something, and Natasha steadies his other side.
"Watch the severed robot heads," she says. "We need to find shoes for you."
"Yeah," says Bruce, eyes tracking the ground now. "Did the other guy do this?"
Clint glances around the block. It looks rough, now that everything is silent and there isn't any adrenaline to keep his focus on the things trying to kill him.
"Busted buildings are mostly the Doombots' fault," he says. The Hulk took out one or two walls, but the Doombots can take the blame for those, too. "The whole robots that are down are from me and Natasha, and the ones torn into pieces and thrown all around are from the Hulk."
"I'm going to have to move," says Bruce, infinitely sad. "And the other people who lived here-"
"No one was seriously injured," says Natasha. "And I told a few people who came to check on their houses that Victor Von Doom and SHIELD will pay a hefty finder's fee for any Doombot parts they get. Between those two, the area should be rebuilt soon enough."
Bruce smiles, and Clint gives into an urge and ruffles his hair. Natasha reaches up to do the same, and their hands meet and tangle together before Bruce stumbles again and they let go, sacrificing sweetness for stability.
"You might want to move to the other side of town anyway," admits Natasha. "I'm not sure if anyone saw you change."
"Yeah, about that," says Clint. "Sorry we broke your record." He tries to be flippant, but he does feel responsible - like he and Natasha should have been enough, should have been able to take on Doom without making Bruce fight.
"That doesn't count as a real incident," says Bruce. "I let the other guy out on purpose, not because my control slipped, not because of a mistake."
"You let him out in New York on purpose," points out Clint.
"I was counting from the Helicarrier," says Bruce, and they all stop for a second.
Clint doesn't remember the incident in the Helicarrier, just felt the bruises on his head afterwards. But he remembers the videos, Natasha running from the Hulk and Clint moving with someone else pulling his strings. He breathes, shakes the secondhand memory off. Bruce's eyes are still far away when Clint looks over, but Natasha is moving again, tugging them both forward.
"One more block to go," she says, and Clint can only just hear the catch in her voice that comes with her own firsthand memories.
They're all still a little fucked up, but if it made Clint mad an hour ago, it comforts him now. They're fucked up, but they're fucked up together. They can't fill each other's broken places, but they can make it work, get each other help, make allowances, live. And Clint can try and find out about Coulson, where he is, alive or dead; find out all the things that he was scared of learning because he didn't really want to know-
"I should call Tony," says Bruce, out of nowhere. "There's a conference being held in Science City that he might be going to."
"Science City?" asks Clint. It sounds like the name of the Jetsons' hometown, or something.
"It's a science museum," says Natasha. "You should sleep first, Bruce. Look, we're here." She disentangles herself from Bruce, letting Clint support him. The safehouse looks like every other building on this street, until Natasha pops open the concealed keypad and starts typing in the passcode.
"You can use my phone after," says Clint, and then the door's open and they stumble in, Natasha closing the door after them.
"Yes," says Bruce, when Natasha flicks the lights on. "Yes, a bed, that is perfect."
That's about all there is, as Clint looks around. The safehouse is pretty spare, with a bed, a closet, and another room around the corner, probably a bathroom.
"Where are the rest of us going to sleep?" he asks, half joking and half concerned with the logistics. It's not a big bed, one pillow and a tiny duvet. Bruce takes his arm off of Clint's shoulder, and turns to look at him, considering.
"We'll make it work," says Natasha, firmly, and moves between them.
Bruce kisses Natasha, gently, and Clint clamps his jaw, but only to keep it from dropping. It's something to see, even with Bruce half-asleep and Natasha looking a little worn out also. Natasha holds Bruce by his hair and Bruce picks Natasha up off the ground, hands on her waist, and they're so gorgeous.
Clint must make a noise, because they break and turn toward him, their mouths a little swollen, their eyes very bright. Bruce kisses Clint first, the slow comfortable kiss that they practiced in that hotel, and then Natasha tugs him down to bite at his lips and they push into each other, hands on each other's asses.
Clint can do this - call all of Natasha by the same name, but keep a line between Bruce and the Hulk; kiss slow and sweet with Bruce and hard and fast with Natasha; work out the rules as they go along and remember that they're different people with different things to give and take.
"You look like you're fighting while making out," says Bruce, and Clint laughs and Natasha shrugs and wipes a bit of blood away from the corner of his mouth.
"Hey," says Clint. "Hey, I really like you guys."
"Good," says Natasha, and pushes Bruce into the bed. He goes down easy, falls asleep as Clint and Natasha get undressed and turn the lights off.
They do fit, just barely, tucked up into each other with Bruce's blanket over all of them, three sets of legs so tangled together that no one can fall out of bed without taking everyone else with them.
"I like you too," murmurs Natasha into Bruce's shoulder, her hand in Clint's hand.
"Good," whispers Clint, smiling into Bruce's other shoulder, squeezing Natasha's hand.
"Stop talking and be asleep," mutters Bruce, eyes clamped tight shut, and Clint takes his advice.
---
He still likes them in the morning, when Natasha gets up to do stretches and Bruce borrows Clint's phone out of his quiver, and Clint is wrapped up in Bruce's blanket, taking advantage of having the bed to himself.
"I'm in Kolkata," says Bruce to the phone. "With Clint and Natasha."
"Say hello to Pepper for me," says Natasha, upside-down and easing into a splits.
"Stop talking and be asleep," moans Clint, and jams the pillow over his head.
"Headquarters called," says Natasha, pointedly ignoring his request. "We're to come to debriefing as soon as possible."
"Yes, with both of-" Bruce takes his phone away from his ear and stares at it before resuming his conversation, at a much lower volume. "Tony, that is an inappropriate question, and I will have to answer it some other time when I don't have guests in the room. But also yes."
"Hill will understand if it takes us a couple extra hours to get in," says Clint, still trying to valiantly cling to sleep. "Also, fuck debriefings. All I have done in the last year is go on missions, eat, debrief, sleep, go on more missions, and debrief again."
"And have sex," adds Bruce, and then he winces. Even Clint can hear the excited jabbering coming out of the phone, and Natasha smirks. "No, Tony," says Bruce. "I wasn't talking to you."
"Hill isn't debriefing us." Natasha flips herself back into an upright position, then rolls her shoulders. "Fury's doing it personally."
"Noooo," moans Clint, and tries to sink deeper into the bed.
"And Morse is still waiting to take us back," continues Natasha, mercilessly, and by nine am local time, a web of obligation and orders have come together to get Clint dressed, mobile, and at the airport.
He's not happy about it, but Natasha is there, and Bruce is coming along, and Morse is pretty nice, for a trainee, so Clint grits his teeth and goes with it.
---
Clint has a simple policy in regard to debriefings: say everything that's relevant. The CO and his or her minions will tell you that you should disclose everything, because you're not in a position to judge what's relevant. This, in Clint's humble opinion, is ridiculous, and, what's worse, impossible. No one wants a report that includes the color of the sky that day, or how many cobblestones made up the street, even if you paid a lot of attention to the sky and took the time to count every cobblestone. (Clint is good at stakeouts, because he never gets bored. There's always something to occupy him.) At some point, an executive decision has to be made. And if this executive decision includes excising some of the less impressive or more self-indulgent things that Clint has done while on a mission, so be it.
Natasha is generally on board with this philosophy. Clint made an attempt to explain it to Bruce, but obviously it didn't sink in, because he volunteers some TMI. Not gross-TMI, just Fury-didn't-need-to-know-that-TMI. And now Fury is staring at the three of them like they are aliens from the planet Dingus.
"So," he says, drawing out the word. "Two of my finest agents failed to deliver an urgent warning about Doctor Doom putting out a hit on Doctor Banner, here," Fury points his pen at Bruce, "because you had to take a time out to talk about feelings?"
Clint slumps a bit in his chair. "To be fair, Sir," he tries, "there were a lot of feelings. To be discussed."
"I thought I was paying you not to have any feelings!" says Fury. Next to him, Agent Hill winces. She's probably caught it for letting Clint and Natasha go to Kolkata, and maybe even for not flagging Clint's behavior during earlier missions. Clint reminds himself to make it up to her later - it wasn't her fault that he was a mess.
"Director," says Natasha, calmly, "Agent Barton and I had been told that the warning was non-urgent. If we had known that Doombots were en route, we would have-"
"Acted the same damn way," snaps Fury. "Except you might have moved to the safehouse beforehand, instead of after. What the hell-"
"Do I even need to be here?" asks Bruce. For a moment Clint thinks that it's a rhetorical question, and Fury certainly does, because he ignores Bruce and keeps railing at Clint and Natasha. Clint's survived these kind of debriefings before; the trick is to wait Fury out until he's gotten all of the incredulity at your incompetence out of his system. It can take a while, but you get there in the end.
"Excuse me?" says Bruce, after a second, and that's when Clint realizes that he's serious. Fury's still ranting, so Bruce turns to Agent Hill. "Do I need to be here?"
"You're part of this situation," says Hill, smoothly, but then she grins. "And I believe Director Fury was planning to give you some kind of 'if you hurt either of my agents, I will send you home in a bodybag' speech."
"Maria," says Fury, looking wounded. "You're stealing my thunder."
Bruce shakes his head and gets up from the table. "Call me back when you get to that part."
"Sit your ass back down." Fury's voice slips into conciliation. Too late, because Bruce is already out the door.
Bruce calls "I don't work for you!" over his shoulder, and the door shuts.
"Yeah, we'll see about that," mutters Fury, and then looks at Clint and Natasha. "And what are you two doing still here? Go get after him! Bring him back!"
Clint's up like a shot and running through the door, Natasha loping after him. They catch up to Bruce just down the hallway, and Clint's grin feels like it's stretching his face.
"You shouldn't walk out on the SHIELD Director," says Natasha, but she looks about as pleased as Clint, even if she doesn't show it with a smile.
"I just don't like listening to him yell at you because of me," says Bruce, which is exactly how Clint was feeling, and Natasha too, by the looks of it. "Is Fury mad?"
"Probably just wishes he'd been able to read you his speech." Clint slaps Bruce on the back, lets his hand linger when Bruce doesn't object. "I bet he wrote one all for you, with a list of maiming sites. Have you seen my room? You should see my room."
"And then my room," says Natasha.
"My bed is bigger," says Clint.
"Marginally," concedes Natasha. "But I have a full bath, and you have a tiny shower stall."
Clint thinks about that. "Point," he says. "But how did you get a bathtub installed in the Helicarrier?"
"That's classified," says Natasha, and Bruce starts snickering, quiet and behind his hand, and Clint's grin stretches impossibly wider, and Natasha slips her hand around Clint's waist, and they walk down the hall like that, together.
Okay, sometimes they have to break apart to let other agents by, but that's not especially relevant, so Clint plans to leave it out in the future.
---
Fury lights a cigar. His doctor told him to quit, and Fury has, but this specific situation calls for a cigar so Fury is going to have one.
"Maria," he says, "how long do you figure before they get back here?"
Maria cocks her head, considering. "Two, three hours?"
"Right," says Fury, and breathes out smoke. "Let's just go back to the bridge. If we need them, we can cut the water supply to Agent Romanoff's room."
Avengers
Rating for all chapters: adult
(content notes, this chapter: lots of arguments, with a brief threat of violence; action scenes involving actual violence and character injury; kissing.)
Characters: Clint/Bruce/Natasha, Tony Stark, Maria Hill, Nick Fury, Victor von Doom
Wordcount (total): 25,000 (this chapter): 5,000ish
Summary: Post-New York, Clint's still having trouble dealing with the whole Loki-controlling-his-brain situation, and Natasha seems to be avoiding him. Bruce Banner, meanwhile, just wants to get back to Kolkata.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Morse drops Clint and Natasha off and promises to wait for them with the plane in case they need to make a quick getaway - it gives them a good excuse to leave Morse at the airport instead of dragging her into what Nat still insists is a mission and what Clint is pretty sure will be a huge fight. Once Morse is dealt with, Clint and Natasha break into Bruce's room, which is probably going to annoy him, but it's thematic and anyway, it's fun, especially after the awkward silence of the flight over. Natasha sits on Bruce's bed while Clint ignores her and snoops through Bruce's stuff.
There's nothing on the walls, but the chest of drawers next to Bruce's bed has a bunch of drawings that look like they were done by kids, maybe from one of his nursing jobs. Socks, shirts, boring things, and then a notebook full of dense notation and formulas that Clint doesn't understand. Looks impressive, though.
"Running away from the science," mutters Clint. "But the science just won't leave him alone."
Nat shoots him a glance that could mean that she doesn't think much of his observation or just that his observation was incomprehensible. Or both, they're not mutually exclusive. Clint replaces the notebook, just in time for the door to swing open. Clint pushes the drawer shut again and coughs, trying to announce their presence without actually shouting 'it's us! Clint and Natasha!' Now Natasha's glaring at him.
"Hey," calls Bruce. He sets his toolbox at the top of the steps and closes the door. "Both of you at once? Is this about the anniversary?"
Clint freezes and starts counting dates. Six and a half months since he saw Bruce in Sevastopol. About a week since Doomstadt. Who knows how long since Bruce and Tasha hooked up, but he glances over at Tasha and she seems as clueless as Clint is.
"Okay, I guess not," says Bruce, when a couple seconds have gone by and Clint still hasn't come up with an appropriate date.
"Do you want to enlighten us, Bruce?" asks Nat.
"It's about a year since the last Hulk incident." Bruce brushes his hair back, and doesn't look at either of them. "I'm back to where I was when SHIELD picked me up."
Oh, fuck. Clint can't believe he managed to forget - this means about a year since NYC, about a year since Loki, about a year since Clint got SHIELD agents - men and women on his own side - killed or hurt, about a year since he actually shot at Director Fury.
Dimly, Clint can hear Tasha telling Bruce congratulations, and then she asks Clint if he's all right. Clint says something, but apparently it wasn't satisfactory, because Bruce is right there.
"I'm going to hug you," says Bruce, and Clint pulls a Natasha, just stands there, careful and still, as Bruce pulls him into his arms. Nat comes up behind Clint a moment later, doesn't say anything, just hugs his waist. That, that is what pulls Clint out of it, because Natasha never gives hugs, just takes them.
"Sorry," he says. "Sorry, sorry."
"Don't worry about it." Bruce's hands are warm on Clint's back.
"You're not over the Chitauri invasion," says Nat, like it's a revelation, a missing piece of a puzzle.
"No, it's-" begins Clint, but Bruce is looking over Clint's shoulder, eyebrows raised.
"Obviously," he says. "Have you talked to Clint in the last year? He's so paranoid that it actually hurts me to watch."
"I'm fine," says Clint, and shakes himself free. Nat and Bruce let him go, but their eyes follow him.
"I can understand a bit more cautiousness around you, Bruce," says Nat, like she's testing out a theory. "We all saw the Hulk at New York, what he can do-"
"I'm not scared of Bruce," says Clint.
"You shouldn't be," agrees Nat, all ready to preach the gospel of the recently converted. Clint scowls at her.
"No one said you were scared," says Bruce, and that's true, but Nat tried pretty hard to imply it.
There's a pause. Bruce sits down on his bed, mumbling something about working all day and being tired, but Clint and Nat stay standing, while Clint thinks of what to say next.
"I don't treat you any differently than I treat anyone else," tries Clint, and Nat snorts but Bruce says "That's what I'm worried about," and Clint's attention snaps to him.
"It would be exhausting to be as careful with everyone as you are with me," continues Bruce, and his voice is calm and steady, but his eyes are fixed on Clint's and Bruce doesn't do that, doesn't look someone in the eyes for that long. "And you are so careful around me. You think I haven't noticed, Clint? The way you keep in my line of sight, the way you warn me before you do anything, the way you don't touch me unless I'm practically already in your lap? And even then, you ask."
"Nothing wrong with sincere consent," mutters Clint. "Thought you'd appreciate that."
"No, I do," acknowledges Bruce. "But I think it's part of a pattern. Look at the way you act in crowds, in unfamiliar spaces, in-"
"It's not like you," says Tasha. "You're reckless, and tactless, and headstrong, Clint." Clint almost manages a smile at that, because she says it fondly instead of despairingly, but there's worry in Tasha's eyes.
"You're still a little reckless." Bruce's half-smile tries to stage a comeback as well, and it works better than Clint's, but it still looks kind of shaky. "Doomstadt was pretty high risk for you. And you've never asked me anything about the other guy, even when you probably needed to know."
"That's not like you either, not getting information." Nat's eyes are wide and her mouth is thin, looking at Clint like she's trying to assess what else is missing. "People have tried and failed to change you before, so why change now?"
Clint rolls that around in his brain, and he doesn't like any of the things it dislodges.
"Okay, maybe I am scared!" says Clint, because he is, just now. "Can you blame me?"
"No," says Bruce, and he sounds resigned, but understanding.
"Yes," says Nat, and she sounds angry. Clint rounds on her.
"You don't want me to be scared because then you have to admit that sometimes people are afraid of things and it's fine! You've got the unhealthiest fucking attitude toward your own anxieties that I've ever seen, and believe me, I've seen unhealthy-"
Nat throws a punch, but she's angry enough that Clint can see it coming, move out of the way. She doesn't try another one, just looks over at the bed where Bruce is sitting, eyes squeezed shut and hands tight on the mattress, like he's motion-sick.
"Wild punches aside," says Clint, and his breath comes out in shudders, and Bruce looks up. "Nat could kill me anytime she wanted. It's not like you're special, Banner."
"I won't," says Natasha. "Not here. Not you."
Clint's shoulders sag, and he reminds himself that he likes these people. "I know you won't, Tasha-"
"Don't do that," snarls Natasha.
Clint snaps back, feeling like Nat landed that punch after all. "Don't do what?"
"The names." Natasha tips her chin up. "I'm tired of trying to figure out who I'm supposed to be, Barton."
Clint chokes on her hypocrisy, chokes and sputters with it, until Bruce's hand is on his back and Bruce's arm is around Natasha's shoulders, and Clint doesn't relax into it, but Bruce is a steadying influence all the same.
"You call me Nat when you respect me, and you call me Tasha when I do something you like," says Natasha. "And-"
"You don't understand," snaps Clint. "You don't understand why-"
"I think," says Bruce, deathly calm, "that we're getting a little too worked up."
"Fuck you, Banner," says Clint, and his voice feels raw and bleeding. Natasha grimaces at the sound. "Some of us can have an argument without turning into green wrecking balls."
"You are scared of the Hulk," says Natasha, and she sounds triumphant. Clint hates her for that, just a little bit.
"No, he's not," says Bruce. "Or, look, I'm not going to dictate your problems to you. But Natasha, I think you're projecting. And I think Clint is just a little anxious right now. Generally, I mean, not just around me."
There's a pause. Natasha shakes off Bruce's arm, and Clint steps away from his hand. Bruce shrugs, and sticks his hands in his pockets, looking down.
"I'm guessing," he says, to his feet. "I don't have much of a frame of reference for how Clint acts when he's not around me."
Natasha moves, and Clint looks away from Bruce and meets her eyes. She's checking her fingernails, like she might find some empathy underneath them.
"You still leveling out after Loki?" she asks. "Counselors make a mistake, putting you back on mission duty so early?"
"I'm fine," says Clint, again, which is probably undercut by the way his hands trembled when Natasha said 'Loki.' Clint can tell Bruce noticed, from the concerned expression that crosses his face. And of course Natasha noticed, she notices everything when she's there to see it, the whole problem is that she hasn't been around to see him-
Clint's jaw clenches. This is bullshit. They are adults, they should be able to handle their problems on their own. That means no recriminations, no expecting anyone else to pick up your burden.
"You've never been compromised like that before," says Natasha, and it feels like she's interrupting Clint even though he doesn't have anything else to say. "Everyone would understand if you needed time to-"
"To get your head together," finishes Bruce, when Natasha runs out of words.
"Don't either of you say anything about my mental health." Clint tries to match Bruce's tone, calm and reasoned, but his voice breaks into shards, meant to cut. "I'm not the one who thinks that sleeping with someone will make him less of a threat. I'm not the one who thinks that being in India will somehow solve my problems."
"What else, then?" asks Natasha, like she expects an answer. "How am I supposed to make Bruce less of a threat, other than getting to know him? How is Bruce supposed to solve his problems, other than being somewhere that makes him happy?"
Clint doesn't know, but that doesn't mean this makes any sense. He sets his jaw again. It aches, and he wonders if he has bruises there or if he just hurts from arguing.
"It's all stop-gap measures," says Banner, quietly. "That's all we've got left, stop-gap measures. You're right, and it's terrible," and his lips quirk and Clint wants to rip that tiny half-smile off of his face, wants to kiss it and make Bruce laugh, "but Natasha's also right. What else are we supposed to do?"
Clint is going to say something antagonistic, and ruin everything, or he's going to say something needy and make Natasha look at him, and really it's all for the best that this is when the Doombots attack.
"Oh my god," says Bruce, when the first metal fist punches through his wall.
"Oh, right," says Clint. "This is what we were here to warn you about."
---
There are dozens of Doombots on the street, ignoring the fleeing civilians as they fire at Clint, Natasha and Bruce.
Clint and Natasha are firing back, of course. Clint had his bow and quiver in his travel duffel, and Natasha had no less than three guns under her sundress - Clint has undressed her after missions, and he still doesn't know how she does it. But he's glad that she does, because watching Natasha take out Doombots is a delight, every shot another broken pile of machinery. Clint tries to match her, robot for robot.
Bruce is huddled behind the remains of his wall, apparently concentrating very hard on not turning into a big green wrecking ball.
"Maybe you should just let go," says Clint, because more Doombots are landing all the time, and he's only got so many explosive arrowheads. He fires one, waits for the blast, and that makes three arrowheads left, and twenty more Doombots to replace the six that he just destroyed. This is probably why it took Doom about a week to launch any reprisals on Bruce - he had to build his army.
"Civilians," says Bruce.
"They've all run away," says Clint. "Smart people. I should try that sometime."
Bruce shakes his head, and Natasha shouts at Clint to stop talking and pay attention, and there go two more explosive arrows, into the growing mob of metal men, and one regular arrow into the eyesocket of the 'bot that was about to fire at Natasha.
Too bad Clint didn't see the one that was aiming at him.
The ray gun blast knocks Clint off his feet and burns his left arm, but he rolls with it and fires his last explosive arrow into the 'bots.
"Boom," he says, which is a good sound, but the rest of the sounds are bad: Natasha's last gun clicking on empty, the clack of boots as more Doombots land. They are royally screwed.
Bruce gets up from behind his shelter.
He looks over Clint, and Clint just shouts at him to change, already, because the number of Doombots can currently be calculated as a fuck ton. And then Bruce looks over at Natasha, and Clint's heart sinks, because she's going to say no and then Bruce will tear himself apart no matter what happens, caught in the choice between scaring Natasha and saving everyone from the killer robots. And Clint couldn't blame him, because he doesn't know which he would choose either.
Natasha kicks a Doombot's head clean off its shoulders, and then looks at the fifty or so more that are moving to replace it. And she nods.
Bruce changes, and then the rest of the fight is a blur of green and trying to dodge flying robot parts. Clint laughs, just once, when a green cape from a Doombot hits Natasha in the face, and she tears it off and manages a smile.
Clint could swear he saw the Hulk grinning, though maybe that was just a reaction to the smashing.
---
Bruce wakes up slow, with his head in Clint's lap and his feet across Natasha's legs, naked except for the blanket Natasha scrounged from a busted-up shop. They're sitting together in a somewhat structurally unsound building, and Clint is just waiting for the sirens, waiting for the stomp of boots and then he'll have to explain this to the police, he's already going to have to explain it to Fury, and-
"Calm down," say Natasha and Bruce, together. Natasha's voice is sharp and Bruce's voice is soft, but the concern in their eyes is exactly the same.
Clint's shoulders drop, inch by inch. He hadn't realized how tense they'd gotten.
He's been doing that a lot, lately. Winding himself up without realizing it, and god, he'd never noticed all the space he'd been giving to Bruce, how much space he was giving everyone, because he's paranoid but not that paranoid.
"I skipped out of post-mission counseling early," Clint says.
"I noticed," says Natasha, cool and dry, but her hand is warm on the back of Clint's neck.
"Recognizing the problem is a good first step," says Bruce. His eyes are almost shut, and he misses the first time he tries to pat Clint's unburned arm. Gets it the second time, though. "My problem is that I'm in public and I don't have any pants."
"We got you a blanket," says Natasha. Her sundress is torn and her voice holds no sympathy. "What else do you want?"
Bruce beams at her. Clint almost laughs - guy gets loopy, after de-hulking. "Lots of things," says Bruce. "But this is good for now."
"We should move," says Clint, because paranoia or not, some kind of authority is going to show up soon. "Is there a safehouse around here?"
"Five blocks," says Natasha, and pushes Bruce's feet off of her, stands up. She helps Bruce up next, and Bruce wraps the blanket around himself, like some kind of toga or sarong except infinitely more awkward. "Try to look as helpless as possible, Bruce, and everyone will just think you got injured during the incident."
"No problem," says Bruce, slumping, and Clint catches one of his arms, swings it over his shoulder. "I'm exhausted."
"I can understand that," says Clint, as they move out of the basement and into the dusty, broken street. "The H-" Clint stops himself, remembers that people don't appreciate being called by coded names, starts over. "I mean, you took out a lot of those Doombots."
Bruce blinks, staring at the ground like he's processing, or maybe just thinking about where he should put his feet. "You can call the other guy the Hulk," he says, finally. "We're not- I don't think we're the same person." He stumbles over something, and Natasha steadies his other side.
"Watch the severed robot heads," she says. "We need to find shoes for you."
"Yeah," says Bruce, eyes tracking the ground now. "Did the other guy do this?"
Clint glances around the block. It looks rough, now that everything is silent and there isn't any adrenaline to keep his focus on the things trying to kill him.
"Busted buildings are mostly the Doombots' fault," he says. The Hulk took out one or two walls, but the Doombots can take the blame for those, too. "The whole robots that are down are from me and Natasha, and the ones torn into pieces and thrown all around are from the Hulk."
"I'm going to have to move," says Bruce, infinitely sad. "And the other people who lived here-"
"No one was seriously injured," says Natasha. "And I told a few people who came to check on their houses that Victor Von Doom and SHIELD will pay a hefty finder's fee for any Doombot parts they get. Between those two, the area should be rebuilt soon enough."
Bruce smiles, and Clint gives into an urge and ruffles his hair. Natasha reaches up to do the same, and their hands meet and tangle together before Bruce stumbles again and they let go, sacrificing sweetness for stability.
"You might want to move to the other side of town anyway," admits Natasha. "I'm not sure if anyone saw you change."
"Yeah, about that," says Clint. "Sorry we broke your record." He tries to be flippant, but he does feel responsible - like he and Natasha should have been enough, should have been able to take on Doom without making Bruce fight.
"That doesn't count as a real incident," says Bruce. "I let the other guy out on purpose, not because my control slipped, not because of a mistake."
"You let him out in New York on purpose," points out Clint.
"I was counting from the Helicarrier," says Bruce, and they all stop for a second.
Clint doesn't remember the incident in the Helicarrier, just felt the bruises on his head afterwards. But he remembers the videos, Natasha running from the Hulk and Clint moving with someone else pulling his strings. He breathes, shakes the secondhand memory off. Bruce's eyes are still far away when Clint looks over, but Natasha is moving again, tugging them both forward.
"One more block to go," she says, and Clint can only just hear the catch in her voice that comes with her own firsthand memories.
They're all still a little fucked up, but if it made Clint mad an hour ago, it comforts him now. They're fucked up, but they're fucked up together. They can't fill each other's broken places, but they can make it work, get each other help, make allowances, live. And Clint can try and find out about Coulson, where he is, alive or dead; find out all the things that he was scared of learning because he didn't really want to know-
"I should call Tony," says Bruce, out of nowhere. "There's a conference being held in Science City that he might be going to."
"Science City?" asks Clint. It sounds like the name of the Jetsons' hometown, or something.
"It's a science museum," says Natasha. "You should sleep first, Bruce. Look, we're here." She disentangles herself from Bruce, letting Clint support him. The safehouse looks like every other building on this street, until Natasha pops open the concealed keypad and starts typing in the passcode.
"You can use my phone after," says Clint, and then the door's open and they stumble in, Natasha closing the door after them.
"Yes," says Bruce, when Natasha flicks the lights on. "Yes, a bed, that is perfect."
That's about all there is, as Clint looks around. The safehouse is pretty spare, with a bed, a closet, and another room around the corner, probably a bathroom.
"Where are the rest of us going to sleep?" he asks, half joking and half concerned with the logistics. It's not a big bed, one pillow and a tiny duvet. Bruce takes his arm off of Clint's shoulder, and turns to look at him, considering.
"We'll make it work," says Natasha, firmly, and moves between them.
Bruce kisses Natasha, gently, and Clint clamps his jaw, but only to keep it from dropping. It's something to see, even with Bruce half-asleep and Natasha looking a little worn out also. Natasha holds Bruce by his hair and Bruce picks Natasha up off the ground, hands on her waist, and they're so gorgeous.
Clint must make a noise, because they break and turn toward him, their mouths a little swollen, their eyes very bright. Bruce kisses Clint first, the slow comfortable kiss that they practiced in that hotel, and then Natasha tugs him down to bite at his lips and they push into each other, hands on each other's asses.
Clint can do this - call all of Natasha by the same name, but keep a line between Bruce and the Hulk; kiss slow and sweet with Bruce and hard and fast with Natasha; work out the rules as they go along and remember that they're different people with different things to give and take.
"You look like you're fighting while making out," says Bruce, and Clint laughs and Natasha shrugs and wipes a bit of blood away from the corner of his mouth.
"Hey," says Clint. "Hey, I really like you guys."
"Good," says Natasha, and pushes Bruce into the bed. He goes down easy, falls asleep as Clint and Natasha get undressed and turn the lights off.
They do fit, just barely, tucked up into each other with Bruce's blanket over all of them, three sets of legs so tangled together that no one can fall out of bed without taking everyone else with them.
"I like you too," murmurs Natasha into Bruce's shoulder, her hand in Clint's hand.
"Good," whispers Clint, smiling into Bruce's other shoulder, squeezing Natasha's hand.
"Stop talking and be asleep," mutters Bruce, eyes clamped tight shut, and Clint takes his advice.
---
He still likes them in the morning, when Natasha gets up to do stretches and Bruce borrows Clint's phone out of his quiver, and Clint is wrapped up in Bruce's blanket, taking advantage of having the bed to himself.
"I'm in Kolkata," says Bruce to the phone. "With Clint and Natasha."
"Say hello to Pepper for me," says Natasha, upside-down and easing into a splits.
"Stop talking and be asleep," moans Clint, and jams the pillow over his head.
"Headquarters called," says Natasha, pointedly ignoring his request. "We're to come to debriefing as soon as possible."
"Yes, with both of-" Bruce takes his phone away from his ear and stares at it before resuming his conversation, at a much lower volume. "Tony, that is an inappropriate question, and I will have to answer it some other time when I don't have guests in the room. But also yes."
"Hill will understand if it takes us a couple extra hours to get in," says Clint, still trying to valiantly cling to sleep. "Also, fuck debriefings. All I have done in the last year is go on missions, eat, debrief, sleep, go on more missions, and debrief again."
"And have sex," adds Bruce, and then he winces. Even Clint can hear the excited jabbering coming out of the phone, and Natasha smirks. "No, Tony," says Bruce. "I wasn't talking to you."
"Hill isn't debriefing us." Natasha flips herself back into an upright position, then rolls her shoulders. "Fury's doing it personally."
"Noooo," moans Clint, and tries to sink deeper into the bed.
"And Morse is still waiting to take us back," continues Natasha, mercilessly, and by nine am local time, a web of obligation and orders have come together to get Clint dressed, mobile, and at the airport.
He's not happy about it, but Natasha is there, and Bruce is coming along, and Morse is pretty nice, for a trainee, so Clint grits his teeth and goes with it.
---
Clint has a simple policy in regard to debriefings: say everything that's relevant. The CO and his or her minions will tell you that you should disclose everything, because you're not in a position to judge what's relevant. This, in Clint's humble opinion, is ridiculous, and, what's worse, impossible. No one wants a report that includes the color of the sky that day, or how many cobblestones made up the street, even if you paid a lot of attention to the sky and took the time to count every cobblestone. (Clint is good at stakeouts, because he never gets bored. There's always something to occupy him.) At some point, an executive decision has to be made. And if this executive decision includes excising some of the less impressive or more self-indulgent things that Clint has done while on a mission, so be it.
Natasha is generally on board with this philosophy. Clint made an attempt to explain it to Bruce, but obviously it didn't sink in, because he volunteers some TMI. Not gross-TMI, just Fury-didn't-need-to-know-that-TMI. And now Fury is staring at the three of them like they are aliens from the planet Dingus.
"So," he says, drawing out the word. "Two of my finest agents failed to deliver an urgent warning about Doctor Doom putting out a hit on Doctor Banner, here," Fury points his pen at Bruce, "because you had to take a time out to talk about feelings?"
Clint slumps a bit in his chair. "To be fair, Sir," he tries, "there were a lot of feelings. To be discussed."
"I thought I was paying you not to have any feelings!" says Fury. Next to him, Agent Hill winces. She's probably caught it for letting Clint and Natasha go to Kolkata, and maybe even for not flagging Clint's behavior during earlier missions. Clint reminds himself to make it up to her later - it wasn't her fault that he was a mess.
"Director," says Natasha, calmly, "Agent Barton and I had been told that the warning was non-urgent. If we had known that Doombots were en route, we would have-"
"Acted the same damn way," snaps Fury. "Except you might have moved to the safehouse beforehand, instead of after. What the hell-"
"Do I even need to be here?" asks Bruce. For a moment Clint thinks that it's a rhetorical question, and Fury certainly does, because he ignores Bruce and keeps railing at Clint and Natasha. Clint's survived these kind of debriefings before; the trick is to wait Fury out until he's gotten all of the incredulity at your incompetence out of his system. It can take a while, but you get there in the end.
"Excuse me?" says Bruce, after a second, and that's when Clint realizes that he's serious. Fury's still ranting, so Bruce turns to Agent Hill. "Do I need to be here?"
"You're part of this situation," says Hill, smoothly, but then she grins. "And I believe Director Fury was planning to give you some kind of 'if you hurt either of my agents, I will send you home in a bodybag' speech."
"Maria," says Fury, looking wounded. "You're stealing my thunder."
Bruce shakes his head and gets up from the table. "Call me back when you get to that part."
"Sit your ass back down." Fury's voice slips into conciliation. Too late, because Bruce is already out the door.
Bruce calls "I don't work for you!" over his shoulder, and the door shuts.
"Yeah, we'll see about that," mutters Fury, and then looks at Clint and Natasha. "And what are you two doing still here? Go get after him! Bring him back!"
Clint's up like a shot and running through the door, Natasha loping after him. They catch up to Bruce just down the hallway, and Clint's grin feels like it's stretching his face.
"You shouldn't walk out on the SHIELD Director," says Natasha, but she looks about as pleased as Clint, even if she doesn't show it with a smile.
"I just don't like listening to him yell at you because of me," says Bruce, which is exactly how Clint was feeling, and Natasha too, by the looks of it. "Is Fury mad?"
"Probably just wishes he'd been able to read you his speech." Clint slaps Bruce on the back, lets his hand linger when Bruce doesn't object. "I bet he wrote one all for you, with a list of maiming sites. Have you seen my room? You should see my room."
"And then my room," says Natasha.
"My bed is bigger," says Clint.
"Marginally," concedes Natasha. "But I have a full bath, and you have a tiny shower stall."
Clint thinks about that. "Point," he says. "But how did you get a bathtub installed in the Helicarrier?"
"That's classified," says Natasha, and Bruce starts snickering, quiet and behind his hand, and Clint's grin stretches impossibly wider, and Natasha slips her hand around Clint's waist, and they walk down the hall like that, together.
Okay, sometimes they have to break apart to let other agents by, but that's not especially relevant, so Clint plans to leave it out in the future.
---
Fury lights a cigar. His doctor told him to quit, and Fury has, but this specific situation calls for a cigar so Fury is going to have one.
"Maria," he says, "how long do you figure before they get back here?"
Maria cocks her head, considering. "Two, three hours?"
"Right," says Fury, and breathes out smoke. "Let's just go back to the bridge. If we need them, we can cut the water supply to Agent Romanoff's room."
