Chapter Text
Chapter 1
So. This looks bad.
Clint’s being dragged backwards through the sub sub sub basement of a bakery that’s supposed to only have one basement (and awesome babka). What looks worse is who’s doing the dragging away from whom.
“Listen, man. I’m not going to run.” Clint’s aware he’s pointing out the obvious. He’s got a bullet in one thigh and what a nasty part of his brain is hinting might be a broken fibula, because let’s face it, it’s not gonna be the first time. “But if you let me go, I can shoot.” He grunts, a bullet grazing his left bicep and he’s not completely convinced he’s not just here as a human shield.
Because the Winter Soldier’s dragging him along with that metal arm around his chest and shooting with the flesh hand, and they are so, so outnumbered by bakery baddies that Clint’s about ready to make a grab for the SIG strapped to the Soldier’s leg.
Except he makes his grab and the Soldier just shifts his grip and picks Clint up around his chest, carrying him backwards through a double door and dumping him on the other side so he can shove some kind of bar through the door handles. “Up,” he says, turning to face Clint.
“See, I’d love to get up,” Clint demurs, “but—“ But what is cut off with a sharp yelp when the Winter Soldier neatly disappears the SIG back to its holster and decides to haul Clint to his feet and drag him down the hall. At least he’s going forward now.
“There,” he says. “You’re up.”
“Stupid super soldiers and their super — ow!” They’re moving fast enough for Clint to put weight on his leg he really shouldn’t have (yeah, that’s a break), but the Soldier doesn’t so much as acknowledge the yelp and gives every impression he’ll happily drag Clint along until they get where he’s going–wherever that is.
“You don’t want to stay here,” he says, “These are bad guys,” as if Clint hadn’t figured that out already. He’s not even sure which of them the tracksuits are after at this point. It may just be ‘shoot one, get one free’ day at the bratva armory, so it’s not as if he shouldn’t be at least moderately grateful.
Just - he’s not grateful. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you, probably, anyway,” Clint grouses, not really expecting the Soldier to answer; he’s not disappointed. “It’s pointless to ask you where we’re going, right?”
Yeah. It’s pointless. Strong n’ Silent has his own agenda, and Clint’s just along for the ride since the stair railing gave way under the Soldier’s weight when they decided to jump it at the same time. Now that he considers it, the stair banister may actually be what the Soldier barricaded the door with. He can hear pounding, so evidentially, the banister is sturdier than the railings were.
Clint gives up the complaining and concentrates on hopping faster. If he’s extra lucky, they’ll pass a hospital along the way to wherever. Maybe an urgent care. Or a Duane Reade. He’d take a Duane Reade. He would love a Duane Reade right now.
But, he’d settle for not passing out. Clint gets as far as “Aw” before that happens.
Hopping, no.
>>>——->
Clint wakes up in his own bed, and apparently someone has been to a Duane Reade because he’s rocking the telltale stiffness of a good bandaging up and stitches in his thigh and arm. There’s a bottle of water on the bedside table.
He’s finished the bottle before his brain so much as checks in to complain of thirst.
Another bottle replaces the first, and Clint’s suddenly acutely aware of how dim it is in his apartment with the big bright windows’ curtains closed. He squints at the clock and lets out a groan. “Please tell me it’s a solar eclipse and I’m not harboring a fugitive from, half the UN.”
This time, it looks like the Winter Soldier’s feeling chatty. “Only half? Cant be me then,” he says at the foot of Clint’s bed.
“Listen, this is like the worst place in the world for you to hide out,” Clint tries. It’s not even as if he’s making it up as he goes along. “I’m pretty sure it’s not coincidence we both ended up in the middle of a Russian bro-fest back there, and my front door doesn’t even lock.”
The Winter Soldier just raises his eyebrows and shrugs. “Fixed the lock.”
“Of course he fixed the lock.” The Winter Soldier rolls his eyes and turns back to the stairs, water delivery accomplished. Because what is Clint’s life if not to have the Winter Handyman repairing the front door Clint never seems to get around to. “Do you do windows, too?” He calls after the Soldier.
Either he’s not worth answering or - oh. Clint feels for his hearing aid and, yeah, it’s on the side table next to the water.
He puts it in and takes a deep breath. “Hey! How about some coffee?” He never even got the babka.
Only the closing of the front door answers him, and he flops back in bed with a groan. He should get x-rays of his leg, he knows, but that involves stairs. And possibly a cab, because there’s just no way he’s navigating the subway like this.
Right.
He wiggles his toes and calls it good for now. If he’s lucky, it’s just a fracture, but for all he can tell, the Soldier slipped him a little more than Tylenol, so who knows.The Soldier doesn’t seem to take it personally that he’s on the run again thanks to Clint and doesn’t plan to leave Clint the way he left the SHIELD techs Clint and Nat had been sent to extract. He really, truly, did not want to have to deal with the building burning down around him with a broken neck. Or ever, really. But if the Soldier wanted to get rid of him, he could have left Clint to the Tracksuits.
Clint just closes his eyes and floats. He’s getting too old for this shit.
His brain must agree. As soon as he falls asleep, he’s back in the burnt out remains of a Hydra bunker with Natasha and a serious rescue mission failure. He can feel the heat of the flames and smell the inimitable smells of whatever reduced the SHIELD techs to barbecue. It’s a relief all over again to realize the techs’ necks must have been snapped before the fire started.
It’s not a relief when both of their eyes snap open, eerie blue glowing out through empty eye sockets. “Cut off one head.” The words are a sticky murmur, and Clint isn’t going to be the one giving dead doc an examination to find out why. “Two more will take its place.” They grin in tandem, revealing blackened teeth. “Hail Hydra.”
It’s a testament to the horse tranquilizer, or whatever the hell the Soldier dosed him with, that Clint doesn’t wake from the dream then and there. There’s running, shambling horror movie footsteps never far behind, smoke obscuring the air, flames licking at the edges of every door they race past.
Apparently, his brain draws the line when the echo of circus music shivers up Clint’s spine and nopes the fuck out of that fever dream with extreme prejudice.
Clint wakes up on the floor. Cause even horse tranqs have their limitations, and scrapes his way to the side table until he can reach his phone, knocking the empty water bottle to the floor with his clumsy groping and then falling after it. It rolls under the bed. Clint lets it.
He also decides to stay on the floor. While it’s not the most comfortable place in the apartment, it’s not the worst either. Especially if getting back into bed means standing up.
A long inhale, hold, and longer exhale, and he’s thumbing past the Lock Screen on his phone to reddit his way back into oblivion.
>>>———>
It’s the next day before Clint feels ready to limp his way out of bed, because he did mysteriously wake up back in bed.
He steadies himself on his good leg and leans easily into the human wall of muscle that is Steve Rogers, and it becomes abundantly clear Clint is not the one who put himself back in bed last night. He doesn’t even think about complaining when Steve picks him up, well, mostly. “You wouldn’t have an elephant tranquilizer on you, would you?” He grimaces, letting Steve carry him down the stairs.
“Sorry, all out,” Steve says. “But I’ve got the keys to Tony’s town car, I’m double parked, and you’ve got an appointment with medical.”
“You really don’t have to do this,” Clint tells him, enjoying the undeniable comfort of leaning against Steve’s broad chest. He’s human, after all.
Steve shrugs the shoulder Clint isn’t resting his head on. “You’re the one who called me.”
“Back,” Clint says, “I called you back.”
“Well what did you expect when you leave a message like that?” Steve doesn’t sound impatient or angry, which is great, because Clint is racking his brain to remember what the hell he said to Steve in the message after Natasha didn’t call him back. It’s all a blank after asking Natasha about Brunch. Unless it was cocktails. He takes a wild guess.
“Um, I think I expected you to go hunt your Bucky, who, I may add, was extra Wintery last time I saw him. I mean, not trying to kill me, because why send the guy when a guy will do, right?” It makes sense to him.
“I don’t think he’s doing that anymore,” Steve says after a beat, and Clint realizes he’s not in the loop on Clint and Natasha’s last mission. Those two techs definitely fell into the category of “elimination with extreme prejudice.” They just don’t know why.
Clint shifts a little more focus to careful hopping when Steve puts him down on the pavement. “Why aren’t you Bucky-hunting?” Clint asks, suspicion kicking in because they all know Steve’s not not-chasing Bucky to keep the body count down.
Steve grimaces. “Trail went cold. Sam’s following a few leads off the bakery and those guys in tracksuits.” He looks at Clint in a way that could actually be considered worried, if Clint was a guy Steve worried about. “What’s the deal with them, anyway?”
“Property dispute.” Clint waves vaguely at the building above them, but doesn’t elaborate. Nat and Tony know he owns the building, but he likes to keep it otherwise kinda quiet. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Cap. It’s a spy thing. You don’t just unlearn spy stuff. He’d know. He’s a spy.
“Because you stole their dog?” Steve shakes his head.
“It’s not because of Lucky.” Clint considers. “Probably mostly not because of Lucky.” Because they’re only getting that dog back over Clint’s cold corpse.
Steve pushes open the car door and lifts Clint through, easing him into the double-parked town car’s back seat with his leg stretched out in front of him.
“Huh.” Clint runs a hand over the upholstery.
“What? Is your leg - ?”
“The back seat’s actually pretty comfortable,” Clint says before he can finish. It’s only weird because the front seat feels like a Honda Civic. Clint’s driven this one before.
“Yeah,” Steve rolls his eyes and circles around to climb into the front seat. He adjusts the rear view until Clint can see his lips in it. “It’s a class thing.” He gestures to the back seat with a shrug, “Rich guy goes there.” He points to the driver’s seat “working guy goes here. Wouldn’t want the working guy to forget he’s just the chauffeur.”
“That’s stupid,” Clint agrees, even though he is, in fact, a rich guy sitting in the back seat of a luxury town car. But he’s wearing gray sweats, a purple t-shirt he probably got for free, and a single converse sneaker, and the car’s being driven by Captain America, so that has to count for something. He’s only in the back seat by grace of super soldier. A lot has been going on thanks to acts of super soldier lately. “I could have taken a cab,” he offers.
“What kind of teammate would I be if I let you take a cab?” Steve pulls smoothly into the flow of traffic, or what passes for flow in New York. At least three drivers honk at them, and Clint vaguely wonders how much he’d pay for Captain America to flip them off. At least five figures.
“A normal one,” Clint gets around to answering. “Seriously, I’ve gotten myself to the hospital with worse.”
“Not after being attacked by the Winter Soldier,” Steve answers, and there they are. That’s why Steve’s wasting an afternoon in New York traffic to take Clint to the tower in the lap of luxury. He wonders if he should explain it wasn’t exactly that the Winter Soldier attacked him so much as happened to be there while Clint got attacked in his stead. Sort of. It was circumstantial attacking. “Why was he even there?”
Clint doesn’t suggest it’s for the excellent pastries. He doesn’t think Steve would appreciate the humor nearly as much as Clint does. “I think he was hiding out in the sub basements.” Clint’s had a while to think about this, lying on his back staring up at his ceiling. His only conclusion is that the entire fiasco was a complete clusterfuck of an accident Clint wasn’t even meant to be caught up in. He hadn’t even thought twice about ducking down the basement steps when he caught sight of the tracksuits heading for the bakery. It’s second nature now. “And I’m not sure I’d exactly call it attacking me.”
How the hell was he supposed to know he was stumbling through the Winter goddamn Soldier’s safehouse with a Russian gang hot to trot behind him?
The Soldier had appreciated it about as much as Clint would expect. It wasn’t actually the worst choice for a safe house, at least until Clint came barreling through. Which explains exactly none of why the Soldier knows where he lives or, apparently, that he shops at Duane Reade for his first aid supplies or the burner phone number he uses for their rewards program. That part was extra weird: the Winter Frugal Shopper.
Clint has a lot of questions.
Unfortunately, so does Steve, which Clint definitely explains the chauffeur. “Did he give you any idea where he was headed?”
Clint sighs. “Did he give me any idea where his next excellent hiding place was going to be while he’s on the lam from half the UN, the Avengers, and Hydra? No. No, he did not.”
Steve’s mouth twists, either fighting down an unwilling laugh or just that unimpressed by Clint sassing him. He can’t tell with the little he can see in the mirror. “But he taped up your leg,” Steve says, confident at least in that one completely useless fact he seems to be clinging to. “He’s got to be fighting off whatever they did to him.
“He didn’t kill me either, so I’m going to cautiously go with a ‘yes’ there.” Clint carefully shifts, bracing himself against a turn with his stitched leg and wincing through it. “And before you ask, if he came back, I slept through the whole thing.” Clint can’t think of any reason why the Soldier would have come back after abandoning him without coffee or pastry. Not that he isn’t grateful for the first aid and water.
Steve makes a sound that might be frustration, might be impatience, and rakes his fingers through his hair. “Sam thinks he’s in Seoul now.”
The drug-fueled part of Clint’s brain giggles internally over the mental picture of telling Steve that the Soldier had a copy of Korean for Dummies sticking out of a pocket like a baddie from Carmen Sandiego. “It’s as likely as any other place,” he says instead.
Steve looks less than reassured but changes the subject. “You want to join us for dinner after med?”
Clint considers it. He also considers posting up on his couch with Dog Cops, Lucky, and some pizza. He adds some pastries to the image and makes up his mind. “Eh, nobody wants the guy with the broken leg drooling painkiller drool all over their shoulder at dinner.”
“You have your own rooms there. I promise you can leave whenever you want.”
Clint wants to leave before going, so he’s going to stick with his original answer. “Nah, but thanks, Steve. Really. I can catch a cab,” he says at the same time Steve says:
“I’ll drive you back home after Medical.”
It’s unexpected generosity for the sixth most popular Avenger coming from the most popular Avenger, the part of Clint that’s forever still in middle school thinks. “Okay,” he says, already planning to call Simone to bring Lucky back over.
“Okay,” Steve says, and doesn’t ask any more questions about the Winter Soldier - or Bucky.
>>>———>
Clint likewise declines the Avengers assemble call to Sokovia on account of busted leg, and that one he genuinely regrets. He regrets it even more when Natasha comes to his place afterward instead of the tower, looking more haunted than she has since Budapest, and he convinces himself he’s only imagining the flicker of arctic blue in her pupils.
He shivers like it’s cold and wraps the throw blanket tighter around his shoulders. “The scepter?”
“I got it,” she says, like it’s no big deal. She’s handled it before to shut the portal. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. “Thor took it straight back to Asgard.”
A tension Clint hadn’t realized he was holding in his shoulders evaporates with a shiver. “Good.” It’s all he can think of to say, and they both stare blankly at the television playing a documentary on whales. The remote fell down the far side of the coffee table, and Clint’s leg isn’t feeling like getting up so he can fetch it at the moment.
Whales are cool, he guesses.
“There’s a party at the tower tonight,” Natasha says, changing the subject completely. “Thor’s going away party.”
“I thought he already went away.”
One corner of her mouth quirks upward. “Oh, he did. But a party’s a party when Tony’s involved, whether the guest of honor is going to be there or not.”
“I’d come, but - “
“You’re coming,” she says. “Nothing more strenuous than sitting in an easy chair.”
He considers it. He’s done more with worse injuries and they both know it, so he can’t sick day his way out of it. He’s not sure he would anyway, as he’s not sure when’s the last time Natasha outright asked him to be her plus-one. She wants him there, so he’s gonna be there.
“Okay,” Clint says, instead of whatever he’d planned on before. “It’s been a rough couple of months.”
“They haven’t been sunshine and roses,” Natasha agrees, and he’s glad he decided to go if she’s rattled enough to admit the last few missions have gotten to her more than they usually would.
“What do you think? Should I wear the Cap shirt or the Iron Man shirt this time?” He’s aware bets are sometimes placed and could feel offended that his teammates know he’ll show up in jeans and a t-shirt, but why bother when he does show up in jeans and t-shirts?
“The Black Widow shirt,” Natasha decides.
Clint goes with it.
>>>———>
“Sounds like —— a fight,” Sam’s saying to Steve as they come up the steps. “—— missed it.” Clint’s got a chair on the balcony, just keeping an eye on things from up high.
Clint can hear a short laugh from Steve, something about a firefight and he’d call. Clint turns until he can casually read their lips once they’re close enough.
“No, no,” Sam waves Steve off with the glass of bourbon he’s got in one hand. “I’m not actually sorry. I’m just trying to sound tough. I’m very happy chasing cold leads in our missing persons case.” They reach the balcony and lean against the railing not too far from Clint. “Avenging’s your world,” Sam says. “Your world is crazy.”
It’s a sentiment Clint can’t disagree with, even if he’s aware he isn’t the most reliable judge of whether or not a lifestyle qualifies as crazy.
“Be it ever so humble,” Steve says, proving he’s even less qualified to judge than Clint.
Clint snorts.
“You find a place in Brooklyn yet?” Sam asks, looking out over the party.
“I don’t think I can afford a place in Brooklyn,” Steve says.
“You kidding me? Clint lives in Brooklyn,” Sam points out, as if that negates Steve’s point. “Hey, Clint,” Sam says in belated greeting, and now Clint has both their attention on him.
Clint shrugs lamely. “Rent control. What can I say?”
Sam clasps Steve’s shoulder. “Well, home is home, you know?”
“I know,” Steve says. “I know. Clint, anybody moving out of your building any time soon?”
Clint opens his mouth and realizes he doesn’t actually know. He thinks Gil-Grills’ old place is rented out again. Isn’t it? And he’s pretty sure the ex boyfriend is subletting Aimee’s bachelor studio on the top floor. Or was it the guy from Jersey…? He closes his mouth and blinks himself back to the present. “I could ask around?”
Steve smiles at him and gives his uninjured shoulder a squeeze. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll find something, and until then, Manhattan’s not that bad.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Steve Rogers?” Clint asks with absolutely no inflection in his voice.
The squeeze turns into a gentle shove. “Jerk,” Steve says. “Come on. I’ll help you down the stairs.”
Clint could say he sees better at a distance, or he could say he doesn’t need help going down a few lousy stairs, but his leg’s on fire, and the booze is on the floor below them. He slings an arm over Steve’s shoulders, “Take me to your bartender,” he intones, fully prepared to play the clown if it gets him downstairs without one more look of sympathy at his walking cast.
He’s really looking forward to throwing that thing into the Hudson.
Fast forward fifteen, twenty, maybe thirty minutes later (who knows), Clint’s feeling fuzzy around the edges, sunk into the plush cushions of one of Tony’s stupid expensive couches with his leg propped up on a table that probably cost more than all of Clint’s furniture combined.
Thor’s not there, but that’s not stopping anyone from the great debate: Mjolnir - magic or magic trick? He’s still at least fifty five percent sure the thing with Mjolnir is a trick, but he’s too buzzed to put any real mental work into figuring it out.
It’s just physics. Well, physics or gods and aliens and shit, and what is he even doing here surrounded by these people? It’s not the first time he’s wondered and it probably won’t be the last.
“It’s rigged,” Tony’s insisting for team physics.
“You bet your ass,” Clint agrees, waving his glass at Natasha for a refill. She rolls her eyes and takes it from him, flicking him behind the ear as she passes him, neatly missing the BTE.
“——said a bad word,” Maria’s saying to Steve.
“Seriously, Tony, did you tell everyone about that?” Steve rubs his face and looks skyward.
Clint raises a hand. “Not me.”
“No?” Tony looks genuinely surprised and shuffles Bruce further along the couch to make room for himself. “Well settle in, birdbrain, because I’ve got a story to tell.”
Natasha rests Clint’s refill gently on top of his head until he reaches up to take it and throws his other arm along the back of the couch. There’s a distinct possibility Steve is going to have to carry him home and pour him into bed, but hey, he’s injured. He deserves a little cheering up. “Is this one of those stories that makes Steve facepalm?”
“82% of the time,” Tony agrees.
Clint fiddles with the switch on his hearing aid to get a better focus on Tony’s voice. “I’m all ears.”
>>>———>
Steve does, in fact, carry Clint home and pour him into bed.
Clint doesn’t even wonder when he wakes up in the middle of the night and guzzles one of the two new bottles of water left on his night stand and drops it onto the Duane Reade bag next to the bed before promptly falling back to sleep.
He’s not thinking about anything other than sheer gratitude for being deaf when he wakes up to the muffled sounds of hammering and (probably) power tools which he’s entirely too hungover to be figuring out at this unholy time of the….early afternoon. He hauls a pillow over his head and clasps it down over his ears, muffling the last of the noise.
It’s another nap later and closer to four in the afternoon when Clint remembers he actually owns the building and should know why there are power tools and hammers being enthusiastically wielded inside it.
He really, really, really needs a building manager.
And coffee. Painkillers, too, which are miraculously sitting on the bedside table as if conjured by friendly elves in the middle of his tribulations. He fumbles four down his throat and chases them with another bottle of water then stares at the ceiling, willing himself to get up and deal with - he makes a mental gesture encompassing everything in the whole immediate world.
First step. He fumbles the hearing aid into his left ear and lets the sound of maintenance wash over him. Even listening closely, there’s a distinct lack of ‘bro’s and Russian epithets, which dials the urgency down to a 1. Maybe 1.5, at least until the pills kick in.
It takes an embarrassingly long time to get to the bathroom and then down the stairs, but not even Lucky is home to judge him, so he feels perfectly justified in taking a breather on the couch where the TV he forgot to turn off (again) is playing World’s Weirdest Wildlife: Australia edition.
By the time they’ve reached the thylacine, he’s fully embedded into the cushions, broken leg propped up on the table next to the remote he can’t be bothered to grab, and he forgets about the noise in the hallway until it finally winds down and stops.
“So,” Tony says, walking into Clint’s place as if he owns it, looking around with what’s either mild curiosity or vague judgment on Clint’s life choices, “Cap says your security sucks, and surprise, he’s not wrong.”
“Um, thanks?” Clint drops his head against the couch cushions, because why wouldn’t Tony Stark show up in his living room to complain about Clint’s security? He’s showed up to complain about Cilnt’s entertainment system, his coffee maker, and his general lack of grown up curtains. Why should security be any different?
“Seriously, putting a lock on the building door was just too much effort?” Tony wanders over to the window and pushes it outward with one fingertip. “And windows, who ever breaks in through a window, am I right?”
Clint is too hung over to sit through a lecture on his poor life choices. “What did you do?”
“Just an upgrade,” Tony shrugs, circling the bottom floor before jogging up the stairs to repeat the window process on Clint’s bedroom window. “Nothing with bells and whistles, just actual locks. That latch. And have keys. Well, not keys exactly.” Tony’s voice drifts down from the loft. His feet clatter on the stairs and he detours to the kitchen to grab Clint a beer.
Tony hands off the beer and reaches into his jacket where he pulls out his phone to project an exploded diagram of the building. “Front door and individual apartments have biometric keypads, because let’s face it, the world is cruel and there are still people out there with the PIN 1234 and ADMIN for a password. Your fingerprints are the master key, so don’t lose them.”
“How am I supposed to lose my fingerprints, Tony?”
Tony shrugs. “I don’t know; you’re the spy. You tell me.”
Clint can think of four ways to lose his fingerprints offhand, none of which he’d actually do to himself, so he figures he’s safe. “I’ll let you know if I lose any fingers.”
“Excellent,” Tony agrees, looking around Clint’s apartment again, as if there’s enough of interest to warrant that much attention.
There isn’t, so Clint asks: “I mean, not that I’m complaining, because I’ve been meaning to get around to the locks, but… Why?”
“Why? I need an excuse to ensure the safety of my second favorite team member?”
“Second?”
Clint and Tony stare at each other, both aware that was complete bullshit. Tony cracks first. “Okay, fifth, maybe. An argument could be made for fourth.”
That sounds more like it. Clint sighs. “I’m not even going to ask who’s ahead of me or behind me - “
“Sam’s behind you.”
“You’re just mad he got a wing torn off his suit again.”
“Those suits do not grow on trees.” Tony huffs and folds his arms, drumming the fingers of one hand on his bicep. “So, the guys are breaking for late lunch and then they’re gonna come back and do the window latches. Try not to get dragged off by any more infamous international assassins before then.”
“My best friend is an infamous international assassin,” Clint points out reasonably. He could even make a case that he’s an infamous international assassin. In the right circles.
“Another piece of evidence in the case we’re building for your complete lack of self-preservation.” Tony says, which is rich coming from him.
Clint doesn’t even know where to start with that given Tony’s well-publicized decision to join the Grand Prix in Monaco or invite the Ten Rings to his own personal home address, but there’s zero chance Tony’s going to let Clint pay him back for the upgrade, so he just says, “Thanks, Tony.”
“Any time.” Tony sticks his hands in his pockets, sounding pleased. “Anyway, I’ve got a thing happening in Queens, so I’m just going to leave you with the guys. Anyone home is in the system. Anyone who wasn’t home gets the pleasure of your delightful company.” He opens another file and spins the arrangement until Clint’s looking at instructions for setting the locks to new tenants.
It looks...pretty simple. “I can’t actually fix these if they break, you know. Regular locks can be replaced.”
“Regular locks can be picked,” Tony disagrees with a dismissive wave. “And I’m hurt your first thought is about SI technology breaking on you. Deeply hurt.”
Clint doesn’t point out that everything breaks in his presence, eventually, and says, “Sorry, Tony.”
Tony waves him off. “No big deal. Rest up. Get better. It’s not the same out there without a wiseass with a Paleolithic weapon on the comms.” He heads for the door with a wave over his shoulder and disappears into the hallway, shutting the door behind him.
Between Steve, Tony, Natasha, and the mysterious self-replacing water bottles next to the bed, Clint’s feeling strangely cared for. It’s weird. He tucks his phone under his thigh, leans back, and lets his eyes fall closed. This is what they recommend for recovering from injuries, right? Rest.
And Clint can rest with the best of them.
He quietly snores his way through footsteps on his stairs and the creak of his unlocked window. The rattle of the fire escape doesn’t even register.