Fic for heeroluva: Reasons to Stay | Bruce Banner/Clint Barton | R
Title: Reasons to Stay
Author: florahart
Recipient: heeroluva
Rating: R?
Universe: movie
Pairing/Characters: Bruce Banner/Clint Barton; Tony Stark(/Pepper Potts) and JARVIS
Word Count: about 9150
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. The story is.
Summary: Neither one of them is good at sleeping; too many nightmares.
Warnings: none
Notes: My recipient suggested a scenario in which Bruce figures he's the last person to offer advice about a guy's issues, but he does anyway. I'm not so sure I stayed in shouting distance of that prompt, but that's where I started, anyway.
It's not exactly surprising to Bruce when he wakes up in the obvious aftermath of a visit from The Other Guy. He's in his suite--or what's left of it--and he remembers the hazy beginning of the change, waking from a nightmare of blood and smoke, teammates and horrors, the rage that changes him morphing into the fear of not in time, and of course, that is his nightmare: letting the team down. Letting everyone down.
This kind of nightmare used to happen a lot, but it's been a long time because his response before was to pull away from people he might let down; there: problem solved, and he hasn't let anyone get close again. Until now. He could pull away again, of course; the world is a big place and he could disappear in central Asia or maybe one of the islands of Polynesia. SHIELD would probably find him again, though; he has no illusions left about the extent of their reach, so maybe he'd still fear failure, and somewhere tiny it only takes one disaster for him to destroy everything.
It's not much of a choice. Welcome to his life. At least when it happens in the context of the nightmare, The Other Guy usually quickly observes the absence of threat and retreats, but that doesn't make the whole game any less exhausting or mitigate the amount of destruction he can wreak in seconds. Damn it.
"You awake?"
Tony's voice is a little startling, but it probably shouldn't be. It's his tower, and even though they've all been assured JARVIS isn't recording (much), he's likely got a dozen redundant systems keeping an eye on everything. Bruce wonders idly how many of them The Other Guy could take out if he could just focus him a little ahead of time. "Yeah," he says. He scrubs his hand down over his face and rolls to look back over his shoulder. "Come on in."
"Yeah, did. Figured in the circumstances, you know, landlord tenant laws about emergency entry probably applied. Hey, do you want me to just take this wall out when I fix it? Because it's not load-bearing, obviously, so we could just make the room bigger in the first place, and I mean, maybe that would be nice? A little awkwardly shaped, but I find strange things pleasing. You?" He sips his coffee like he's not standing in a heap of sheetrock and dented rebar. "Oh, kitchen's still okay, so I made us a pot. You're usually kind of dopey when you wake up from, you know."
Bruce shakes his head. "No offense, but you might be the weirdest person I know." He considers the wreckage of his pajama pants, draped in ribbons over his thighs and groin, then looks at the tangled sheet, which is also rent in several places and probably wouldn't be salvageable for covering an infant at this point. Well, if Tony invited himself in, he can just cope. He stands up off the misshapen mattress now leaning more than laying on the distorted pieces of the bed frame, and lets the pants fall as he wanders toward the kitchen to see about that coffee.
Tony's weird, but he's also right about the dopey thing.
"So, I guess we can take the repairs out of my salary?" he asks. Then he stops, coffee halfway to his mouth. "Wait. Am I drawing a salary?"
"Duh. I don't make people work for free. Reports of me being an asshole are, okay, they're right, but they're exaggerated." Tony's right behind him, because of course he is; Tony Stark and personal space have an atypical relationship. "But shut up, this is normal wear and tear. My dime."
"This." Bruce waves a hand around to encompass the shattered bedroom window, the aforementioned crushed wall, the…oh hell, the water pooled where the vanity sink is torn away; he can see the hanging edge of the plumbing from here. "This is not normal wear and tear."
"Is for you."
"Yeah, but normal for me is not a category any landlord would agree to take responsibility for."
"I would. Look, were you negligent?"
"Only in that I let you set me up in an apartment in the middle of a city," Bruce says. He rubs his palm on his cheek, which feels weirdly crunchy which probably means during the transformation he accomplished a little bit of a cut that healed full of dust and/or rubble--nice, that's only going to itch for a week. Yuck. "I knew better."
"Why? It's only money. I have more money than God. Well, more than the only god-type guy we personally know, anyway, and that might be because he doesn't understand the concept very well, but what I'm saying is, I have evidence I have more money than God for some value of god, and what else am I going to use it for? It's not like there wasn't that one time that I redid the whole second floor because I saw a chimney I liked the shape of as I flew over."
"Tony. This is absurd. I knew better than to stay, and this is almost certainly going to keep happening. If I keep living here, I will keep having subconscious worries about, you know, all of you guys, and then I will keep having--"
"Do sedatives help? I mean, to get some sleep without nightmares?"
"No."
"Figured not, since you must have tried them before. Anyway, so the bed frame wasn't tough enough, and obviously you need elastic PJs and hm, the glass was the same stuff as the thing in the helicarrier so obviously that plan was even worse than we thought, which, by the way in case I have not said I was never on board with that shit, and anyway, everything else held pretty well. More data, we try again."
"Or I leave."
"Bruce, seriously. It's only money. I am the only person you know who says that and means it like I would mean it's only bubbles or it's only confetti or something. Come on. Get dressed. We got stress tests to start on."
"You know it's like 3:18 in the morning, right?"
"Ergo my own very fashionable pajamas--didja notice? But, chop chop, no time like the present, time's a wastin', et cetera."
"I still think it would be better if you left this for cleanup in the morning and I found somewhere else to bunk."
"Okay, so look at it like this. Like these. Whatever. One. I hate failing, and this represents my failure of adequate engineering and you know I'm going to keep working on it anyway so you are helping me by providing the testing agent. Two. I have, like, seven friends. Eight if you count the one Fury still says is dead but Fury lies so I'm not holding my breath, so you leaving me makes a fourteen percent dent in my friend quotient, and I don't want a dent like that. Ergo, you should stay. Three. If you move, and have nightmares, you will probably hurt someone because where the fuck are you going to go that you don't? Easter Island, while away your days deciphering Rongorongo? Supai? Tristan da Cunha?"
It's only what Bruce has already been thinking, so he knows very well that Tony's right, but damn it, he can't take risks with people he cares about. He doesn't answer the question. "Where the hell is Supai?"
"Bottom of the Grand Canyon. So, you know, what could possibly go wrong there?"
Bruce considers this for a minute. "Okay, that sounds like a terrible idea. The Other Guy would probably take the Grand Canyon as a personal challenge." He sips his coffee, grimacing. "You make coffee that is so bad I hesitate to call it coffee, by the way."
"Yeah, I know. Still, it works. So, shoot down why you can't stay, if you're going to, or put on pants and let's get to work."
"I am not 14% of your friends."
"No, true, you're more 20%, because, I mean, Pep and Rhodey, then you. I like everyone else but I don't have tons in common with Blondie, and Clint and Natasha are spies for fuck's sake and who trusts spies with his deep darks, and then Steve, well. Okay, maybe you're 18%. Call it 19."
"You seriously assign relative number values to--"
"How many friends do you have?"
"Uh. You, Clint, Nat, Steve, Thor, Pepper, Betty if she still wants anything to do with me which should be a no." Bruce sighs. "Coulson if he's not dead."
"Right, see? Seven. So if they're all of equal value, then about 14%. Suck for both of us if you left. Gaping holes in our lives. Misery and sadness. Gloom. I hate gloom. I have my own personal nightlight against gloom."
"This isn't you failing, Tony. This is me."
"This is you. This is who you are. I had numbers and didn't account for all the variables. The end."
"You're insane."
"You're a little behind. I'm pretty sure the Enquirer ran that story in 1992. People had it a couple of times, 2002 and maybe 95, don't know, what with being busy drinking myself into an early grave in those years. Let's see. The Star went nuts in 1999 after a particular incident in R&D, but that was so not my fault because--"
"Fine. Insanity noted. You're ridiculous."
"Do I even need to start a list? I don't think I need to start a list. Let's look at some of my other known qualities. Genius! Billionaire!"
"Philanthropist! Playboy! I know, I remember. Fine."
"Fine, you'll stay?"
"Fine, I'll stay. Jesus, I can't believe you're arguing for keeping an unpredictable uncontrollable force of chaos in your house."
"Seriously? Have you met me?" Tony slugs back the rest of his coffee. "J, start cross-referencing the window and the column. Force and shear, direction, you know."
"Would you like to see the readout on the bathroom remodel?" JARVIS asks from somewhere in the ceiling.
"Yep, put it on the table in the lab. Bruce, see you in ten. I'll order pizza."
--
"Doctor," JARVIS says, his voice quiet in the dim lab. Bruce has been in here for nearly 27 hours and he feels it; his eyes are gritty but he's pretty sure he's making decent progress here and he doesn't want to lose his train of thought.
Plus, he's barely keeping a lid on his excitement over the idea he might actually be getting somewhere on controlling, you know, anything about The Other Guy, and if he stops working, then where will he put that energy? Yoga only does so much.
He's aware Tony is rubbing off on him, and knows very well that he himself would say anyone working for 24 hours straight was a fool and that he's making excuses for his own self-destructive behavior. But that can wait. "Yeah?" he says.
"Mister Barton is requesting entry, sir. I see nothing that would present a danger to your friend, but you've restricted access." JARVIS, being JARVIS, doesn't add again to that, but Bruce is pretty sure it's implied. He's pretty sure that the additional implication is that he's excluding his friends again and that this is a bad thing. That Tony built an AI capable of all that implication is a little alarming, so he pretends he thinks that's all his own spin on JARVIS's words.
He looks around. It's five in the morning, but he knows everyone living here has sleep disruptions and issues aplenty, so it's hardly odd that someone would come knocking. Or that he's working on hour 27. At five in the morning. He looks at his notes. "Yeah, okay. Let him in."
"Hey, Doc," Clint says as the door slides open. "Can't sleep either?" He backs up against an empty countertop and hops up to sit on it as though he comes here every day. That's new.
"Haven't tried yet," Bruce says. "Make yourself at home, by the way."
"Did. So. Too busy being the resident medical genius to engage in the activities of mere mortals?"
Bruce lifts an eyebrow. "Did you have a reason for coming in here?"
Clint looks way tireder than Bruce feels, so he regrets his tone, a little, but Clint just grins. "No one else is up."
"Even Tony?"
"Pepper said 36 hours was too long and took him to bed a couple hours ago. From the way she convinced him, I'm not all that sure there was going to be sleeping involved, but maybe she wore him out."
"Okay, that might have been too much information."
"I do aim to please."
"Or to kill things, right?" Bruce fills a dropper with the viscous blue gel in the beaker. "Anyway, I'm gonna go down for the count soon enough. I just wanted to finish up this batch." It's a white lie, since if he finishes up the batch, he's going to want to run a couple of tests, and that'll take a while, but still.
"What'cha makin'?"
"Hard to say." He drips three drops each in the first row of four tubes, four in the second, five in the third, and watches the rate of burn. "Huh. Five it is."
"You wanted to finish up a batch of something unknown?"
"Well, no. I mean, for you, it'd probably act as an unbelievably strong and long-lasting sedative. The Other Guy, who knows?"
"You want to sedate--I thought his skin was pretty hard to punch a hole in."
"It is. If by pretty hard you mean so far no one's figured out a way to punch one that doesn't just close up again around whatever did the punching. But--but. I tore up my suite again the other night, and I had this idea."
"Wait, you did? It can't have been that bad if the building stayed standing, but that means--are you, when are you changing? Why are you changing?"
Bruce shrugs. "Nightmares. You know, destroying everything, hurting the people I care about, fucking up the team, the usual. Tony's already got like thirty ideas for a next round of improvements, and it's true, this time was better than last, but still, it's a little disconcerting, waking up into chaos for no good reason."
"Roger that."
Bruce grimaces. "Uh, I didn't mean… anyway. But so, I can't sedate him, but my skin isn't immune to a puncture."
"So… you want to sedate yourself to sleep? Hard enough to knock out Big Green? Dude. That never works. Let me quote my shrink: Dreams, Agent Barton, are the human mind's way of working through difficult problems in a safe space. Without them, the mind looks for a different outlet. None of them are safe. My shrink doesn't seem to get how extremely fucked up my dreams actually are."
Bruce snorts. "Maybe we should collaborate on a textbook: Dream Interpretation for the Killing Machine."
"If you dream of teeth, it probably means that's all that's left of the guy?"
"Yeah. If you dream of yellow feathers and a weird shaped shadow on the wall, it means you just Vadered the whole village of Sand People birds. Or Big Birds, which is probably worse, maybe?"
"Well. This conversation has taken a turn for the gruesome on top of the strange. Anyway, I know just sedating the shit out of myself is a lousy idea. Which was why I dropped this line of research years ago. But then I got to thinking. Oh, hang on." He adds a different amount to each of his five-drop tubes, then puts them in the centrifuge and turns it on. "I can, as you put it, punch a hole in me just as I'm changing. I know because I do, all the time, and then I end up with like a chip of paint or something healed under my skin and it works its way out in a couple of days. So the question is, can I get in a sedative that's enough to slow down The Other Guy just long enough for him to realize there's no threat. Without, you know, knocking me out for four days or something. It'll need JARVIS to make it go, I think, to monitor me while I sleep, but--"
"But that's pretty brilliant. No help for me, obviously."
"You, I can make a sedative of ordinary proportions."
"Yeah, but--gotta dream."
"What, you have them every time you sleep?"
Clint shrugs. "Why do you think I'm not cleared to keep anything pointier than a beanbag yet? If I can't sleep, I can't heal, if I can't heal, I can't sleep, if I can't sleep, I can't shoot… it's pretty much an endless and extremely irritating loop."
"You can't shoot?"
"Only with approved supervision, which means two guys standing to either side with weapons trained on me in case I snap and shoot one of them. It's awesome."
"And only somewhat likely to add to your overall stress portfolio."
"At least I know they still realize I could take down two guys; there's also the third guy they're acting like I don't know is up above. So I guess they think well of my skills, anyway."
"Your shrink sucks, by the way. Far be it from me to tell anyone how to resolve their issues, but seriously, I'm wondering if your shrink actually knows you. If you were going to flip out with weapons in your hand, probably that would have happened, you know, when we gave you some weapons fifteen seconds after you woke up."
"Hey, you wanna tell that to them? Because I tried it, but apparently my self-assessment is invalid. They think that was because I had a legit threat available, and blah blah revenge fantasies and hey, they have a point about all of that, none of which means I'm planning to slice anyone into tiny bits."
"Yeah, I may be familiar with the problem of psychiatric self-assessment and how it holds up. So, how much time are you spending on supervised range activity?"
"Much as I can. If they're so sure I'm going to snap, it's my goddamn duty to help them see the error of their ways." Clint yawns enormously. "It'd be a lot more fun if my eyes weren't crossing."
"Yep, familiar with that too."
"Which explains why you're doing science at five thirty in the morning."
"Hey, science is a good idea any time, I'll have you know."
"That's what Stark keeps telling me, too. I'd say you're both on crack, but I'm pretty sure Hulk on crack would break the universe, so I guess you're just ordinary crazy."
"Good to be ordinary at something. Anyway, if you want something--I'm pretty sure me dispensing a drug to you is totally illegal in every single state, though. But I'm sure I can at least get your body to rest."
Clint rubs his eyes. "Thanks. Not desperate enough to try the Hulk-rated sleepyjuice, though."
"Not this stuff. Normal stuff. Desperate or not, you look like shit."
"Back atcha, and thanks ever so."
Bruce chuckles. "Well, fine. You're welcome to stay and watch me stir variously-blue gunk at intervals."
"My life, so exciting."
"Thought that was the definition of being a sniper."
"Fuck you. …It kind of is," Clint sighs. "But it has purpose." He sits up straighter. "So, I hate sedatives, is the thing, even now. They make my head feel too full and my body stiff and just, no. But can I sack out here while you're working on your thing, and you wake me up if I start thrashing?"
"Always. As long as you know that if I wake you up and you, like, suddenly bite me or, I don't know, have you hidden away any knives on your person?"
Clint smirks. "Who, me?"
"Anyway, if you wake up and attack me, just, we're gonna have a problem."
"Promise. If I bite you, it won't be because you woke me. Plus, I'm basically totally safe in here, because by the time a threat wakes me up, you'll probably have stomped it to mush anyway." Clint slides off the counter and heads over to a wide soft chair in the corner before Bruce can work out what to do with any part of that statement, and is asleep in about five seconds.
Bruce turns back to his beakers and contemplates delivery mechanisms. He doesn't know what to do with the apparent trust, either.
--
"Stark!" Bruce hollers through the door because Tony's welding something and he's not a fan of sparks on his skin. "Stark! Your stupid robot won't let me take a nap."
Tony pushes up the faceplate and turns off the beam. "What?"
"I'm ready to test the stuff, but your AI won't dispense it." Bruce gestures to the collar snugly, but not tightly, around his neck; it's as good a testing medium as any, and he can always think of a better way to manage dispensation later.
"Seriously? J, what's up with that?"
"When Doctor Banner transforms deliberately, the change is immediate; ergo, the injection would need to occur prior to the transformation's genesis. I fear that, if he is injected with the substance and subsequently is unable to deliberately change into the Hulk, it may be sufficiently sedative to act lethally, sir."
"And I'm telling you that won't happen. For one thing, The Other Guy doesn't let lethal things happen to me. Even with really short notice. Just because he doesn't talk to me doesn't mean he's not pretty good at understanding my intentions."
"JARVIS," Tony says, "If Hulk can react fast enough to..." he looks at Bruce and shrugs. "to turn from Bruce and smash the Chitauri whale thing in like one second, surely there's enough lead time from pinprick to effect?"
"I have reviewed the file, sir," JARVIS says. "It discusses the many instances in which the Hulk has emerged to guard Doctor Banner against harm, regardless of source. When the source is himself, even if there is little time to react, Hulk still may be aware, in some capacity, of intent; therefore, I will not draw any conclusions from those instance. Whether he likes it or not, the doctor's biochemistry does not work like any other human's--not even Captain Rogers. Without testing, I remain unconvinced that without sufficient initial agitation, the transformation can occur if the sedative acts quickly enough for the effect to be well underway when the Hulk awakens--"
"--which is a good thing, if you ask me," Bruce says.
"And without the event, we have no test. Please note I am unable to allow any of you to come to harm if I may act to prevent it," JARVIS finishes coolly.
Tony scowls. "Um, okay, that part of his programming is pretty deep. If that's the hangup, I can fix it, uh, probably, but it's going to take a few days. J, if we trigger the Hulk another way?"
"If the transformation has already begun from a source external to Doctor Banner's will, my analysis suggests there is no danger."
Bruce rolls his eyes. "Damn it. I didn't actually want to put anyone at risk if--"
"Is it going to not work?" Tony says, arching a brow. "Because I mean, I think you think it's going to work, and it's not like you're not one of about three, or, okay, one, people I'd consider letting fuck with my suit if I were unavailable because you read the fucking manual and also listen when I talk, don't let it go to your head, so tell me, do you actually think there's a danger?"
"It should work, but the point of testing it is to make sure. Also, tell me you don't think there's some chance your thrusters won't fail when you make sweeping design changes."
"I do think so, which is why I test them, and astonishingly, JARVIS helps me, so, what gives with that, actually? Bruce is more valuable?"
JARVIS offers what Bruce swears is an audible sigh. "No; however, my failure to help you would only lead to you performing the test yourself, and that would be more dangerous."
"Oh, so he should just jam a needle into his own arm?"
"I feel certain I said no such--"
"Feel? JARVIS, did you just indicate you feel? Make a note for me to come back to that later because I know you can't feel. Emotion chips are dangerous, just as Data, and obviously I can overcome the problems but I haven't yet, so. Someone remind me to do something about my AI developing the capacity to feel without my permission."
"Right," Bruce says. "I'll do that. Back on topic: pretty sure I can't do my own needle anyway. Like your emotional AI said, if I start it, I know it's coming."
"Jesus, you guys. Someone go liberate my fucking bow and I'll shoot him. Okay?"
Bruce and Tony glance up to find Clint poking his head out of a vent.
"I don't think that's such a good idea," Bruce says.
"I do. They can't be pissed if I use arrows on the big guy, and also it's free target practice. And also oh hey look, your pulse just went to shit, and Stark do you have anything I can stab him with?"
"In here? Yeah, tons of stuff, but maybe this should go, you know, into any room that doesn't have a lot of high-tech electrical crap which, I mean, I built it and I can do it again, but injury seems likely."
Clint cackles and drops down the floor, landing behind Tony's workbench. "JARVIS, tell me you recorded that for Pepper. Tony Stark just said it would be more responsible to avoid injury. Anyway, fine, Bruce, come on, we're going back to your place."
"No."
"Okay, then we'll stay here." Clint shrugs and whips a knife out of his sleeve and into Bruce's shoulder, then follows it with a shard of steel to the sternum. "Hey, JARVIS, we good?" Tony follows up with a short blast of fire from his welding implement.
Bruce flinches as something snaps audibly in the collar, then shakes his head as his eyes roll back. "Wha..."
"Better be about to Hulk out," Clint says. "I'm not carrying your ass upstairs to sleep it off."
Bruce has no idea what happens next; all he knows is that he wakes up in shreds of pants in the middle of Tony's lab with a blanket over him and Clint and Tony standing at the workbench discussing the remains of his experimental collar.
"You guys are insane," Bruce says.
"You never have any actual news to report," Tony replies.
Clint looks around. "Worked, by the way. You bulked up, the knife and metal fell free, you looked at us, roared something way too loud to hear, and sat down."
"Sat down?"
"With some epic, epic scowling," Clint adds. "And scratching the burn." He points. "All healed."
"Yeah, he does that."
"Convenient."
"Mostly." Bruce gathers up the blanket and wraps it around him. "Uh, thanks for the help?"
"No problem," Tony says. "Also, I told JARVIS this was only level one interference and me and Clint here, we're badasses and can beat the game, if he wanted to be pissy. I think he'll probably play along from here on out."
"Think I need another test?" Bruce asks.
"No, but just in case." Tony goes back to poking at the casing on the collar. "Go get some real sleep. I'll bring you a better one of these in a couple hours. Has to stretch enough to accommodate not strangling…"
"Well, yeah," Bruce says. "Actually strangling him would defeat the concept of convincing him there's no threat."
"And also probably not be that good for you," Clint says.
"That too." Bruce shakes his head and heads for the stairs. "I can't believe I had to come down here and have knives thrown at me. On purpose."
"Glad to help," Tony hollers behind him.
--
Bruce doesn't even realize Clint's in the lab with him until he hears him start to mumble. This has happened a couple of times now--not the mumbling, but the sleeping in Bruce's lab, and it's not like he minds because Clint's started hanging around more during waking hours, too, and Bruce likes the company, but really? This is where the guy feels safe?
This time, apparently not so much.
In any case, there's no accounting for taste.
He finishes fooling with his experimental parameters and starts the trial running, then goes around to the chair. Clint's sprawled on it like it's a personal affront to him to leave any segment uncovered, and his hair is sticking up everywhere. He's sweating, and when Bruce crouches next to him and sets a hand on his arm, he mutters all the louder. Nothing he's saying makes any sense; his words are a mishmash of actual words and nonsense ones, and when he starts to move away and Bruce's hand restrains him, his eyes open wide and unfocused. "Clint?"
Clint obviously can't hear him, and Bruce considers what to do as he tries to get free of his grip, struggling and pushing at Bruce.
"Clint!" he says again, sharper this time.
The effect is startling. Clint freezes, then pulls his arms and legs in tight, curling up in a ball like if he can get small enough, everything will be okay. He's still speaking nonsense in bits and bursts, and every few seconds, he shivers.
"It's okay," Bruce says aloud. He maintains contact with Clint, just the hand on his arm at first, rubbing gently. "It's okay, Clint, but you asked me to wake you." Now that Clint is curled up small, Bruce would fit on the chair with him, so he rises up slowly and eases into place, pulling Clint in against him. "Hey."
Clint still doesn't respond, but he does nestle in against Bruce's chest, so that's something, and after a minute he stops shivering, and then stops talking. Bruce pulls him in close and strokes his hair and tries not to think about how nice it feels.
"Hey," he says again, five minutes later.
"H...ey?" Clint says, lifting his chin and blinking up. "Uh. I was dreaming."
"Yep. You said to wake you. Turns out, you aren't all that wakeable. You do, however, like to cuddle."
"Seriously? Wait, what?" Clint frowns. "Okay, that's messed up, because I'm supposed to be, you know, a spy. Wake if someone rustles leaves nearby. That sort of thing."
"No leaves in here," Bruce points out.
"Yeah, I hope not. Still. What did you try? To wake me, I mean."
"I said your name. I started to shake you, but then you curled up and shivered. I decided to wait and see."
"Huh." Clint lets his feet drop to the floor. "Sorry about the cuddling."
"Yeah, because obviously I mind," Bruce says. He still has Clint pulled up against him, and he doesn't actually want to let go.
Clint squirms around until he's more sitting than lying, and scowls. "Still. And damn it, I haven't had a nightmare while I was here before. After all these times, I was starting to think maybe I was cured."
"How many times have you been here? I mean, I've only seen you four times, including the first one."
"Yeah, but sometimes I slept over there," Clint said, pointing at the couch that's behind a trio of rolling whiteboards and a small graveyard of monitors and assorted electronic detritus.
"You know it only works to ask me to wake you if I know you're here, right?"
"Did you know this time? Before I started thrashing."
"No thrashing, just mumbling. Something about Sao Paulo and a spirit dagger. And a chidwipock."
"A what?"
"Don't think it's a word, but you were pretty insistent about it."
"O...kay. Well, if I'm going to wake up here too, I might as well go try to sleep in my own bed," Clint says.
Bruce shakes his head. "Nah, stay. If you have another one, maybe you'll tell me what one is. A chidwipock."
"I'm not bothering you?"
"Uh, no," Bruce says. "I like having you here."
Clint nods. "Kay." They sit there a minute, leaning against each other because the chair is wide, but not that wide, and then Clint says, "So, I have a question."
"Shoot."
"When you changed in the lab--"
"Your fault."
"Shut up. So, you shredded your pants."
"Uh-huh." Bruce shrugs. "That pretty much always happens."
"Yeah, but why does the Hulk have a lotus flower on his ass?"
"A..." Bruce blinks. "What?"
"You don't have it; I checked. Plus, there's footage of your ass."
"I did, at one point," Bruce says. "Have the tattoo. It was a long time ago. Then there was an incident, and then it was gone."
"So it, like, emerges with the Hulk, and then goes under?"
"Maybe? How should I know?"
Clint shakes his head. "I dunno. I just wondered." He takes a breath and adds, "I didn't mention it to Tony, although I guess JARVIS knows if it ever occurs to him to ask. I didn't know if it was somehow personal or something."
Bruce sighs. "It was--I got it kind of as a symbol of, I don't know. Something that opens up and closes up, and I had this friend..."
"Girlfriend?"
"Had one of those, too. Then her father tried to kill me a couple of times. This was after that, and involved a lot of..." Bruce pauses. "That was when I was working on learning the control I needed. The guy who drew it helped me a lot. And then it was gone, and so was he."
Clint leans his head against Bruce's shoulder. "Our lives are really messed up."
"But exciting," Bruce says.
"It's like demented and sad, but social, only we're both alone."
Bruce shrugs. "Alone and not having killed anyone I love lately is okay with me. If I have to pick." He knows as he says it that actually, alone sucks and he wants something else entirely, but what's he going to do, see if Clint wants to do more than just hang out?
"Yeah." Clint settles his head back against Bruce's shoulder. "Yeah. It's a good streak to keep alive."
Bruce lets his head drop onto Clint's and sits with him until he falls back asleep.
--
"Clint here?" Tony leans far enough into the room he's actually hanging off the door frame with one hand. "Or is he sleeping in his big boy bed yet?"
"Fuck off," Bruce says, although there's no heat in it. "Nothing wrong with liking to have someone around, which I sort of think you know pretty well, unless all the tabloids just make entire people up."
"I wonder how I'd sue them for that," Tony says. I mean, everyone knows I'm a fond of the pretty things, but I do like them to be real." He steps into the room and starts moving around folders.
Bruce watches for a second, then shrugs; nothing of any import is in the folders but leaving them there gives Tony something to do with his hands when he inevitably shows up and starts touching things. "You and I keep having these conversations that seem like they're made up of words, but that then are complete nonsense," he says. "Anyway, Clint's here, but he's asleep." Bruce jerks a thumb toward the whiteboard corner. "You wake him up, it's not my fault if he takes your head off in small, arrowhead-sized increments."
"No, I don't actually need him. Tasha was hoping she couldn't find him because he was actually being allowed to shoot at shit. I said I didn't think so. Hey, isn't this the same stuff you were working on like two weeks ago?"
"Wouldn't she know if he was cleared to play with the adult toys? Given she's also a spy?"
"Huh, probably. Maybe that's why she said she wanted visual evidence of him sleeping in here. Just to make me come down and ask stupid questions. So much hate. Also, adult toys didn't make me think of the thing you meant for me to think of."
Bruce rolls his eyes. "What, she needs pictures because she's never seen him drool? And yes it did, after it made you think of the other thing I meant for you to think of because I do pay attention."
"God, am I that predictable? Tell me I'm not that predictable." Tony huffs, then waves at nothing. "And I'm pretty sure she's seen all of us drool, up close and personal, and none of us have every known she was in the room." Tony shudders. "Okay, that's creepy, forget I said that. What'cha workin' on?"
"I'm still comparing Steve's DNA to mine. Hair follicles, although that doesn't really tell as much about the biochemical story as I'd like. You don't really hate Tasha, do you? Because I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she stuck a mike on you on your way down here."
"No way. J, did Tasha--"
"She did not," JARVIS says. "She merely asked me to broadcast your conversation for her information."
"Are you?"
"I declined. Miss Romanov is in intelligence. I am an intelligence. These are not the same."
Tony chuckles. "Atta boy, JARVIS."
"I also am not canine, if that was your implication, sir."
Bruce points a pencil. "He's got you there. Also, why am I not surprised your AI has a sense of humor? Anyway. It's nothing earth-shattering. Just working through some comparisons, and Clint's asleep, and was there anything else you wanted?"
"Nope!" Tony straightens all the folders, thumping the stack on the counter, and slaps his hand down on top of them. "So, if you'll excuse me, I have a bunch of things to invent, companies to run, you know."
"Wife to kill, Guilder to blame fer it?"
"Not married, don't want to kill Pep anyway, but hey, it's a good reference. Have you been catching up on your pop culture while you don't sleep?"
"Something like that. Mostly, I have an insomniac spy keeping me company some nights and apparently knowing things like this is a feature of the job."
"Good. Well. All right." And Tony claps his hands together and goes out the door.
Bruce shakes his head and puts down his pencil. "You awake?"
"Am now." Clint's feet appear under a whiteboard and he walks past it to lean against the wall. "So, I'm keeping you company?"
"Aren't you?"
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I didn't show you Princess Bride."
"Poetic license."
"Ah. So, are you about done here?"
"Why?"
"Because if you have a lot to do, I'll go engage in some carefully supervised target killing on the range. If you're almost done, wanna go find some pizza to kill instead?"
Bruce considers. "Yeah, okay. Twenty minutes or so? Unless you actually want to go shoot."
"Nah. I like it here," Clint says with a shrug. "Unless I'm in the way."
Bruce laughs. "I'm used to being alone. I wouldn't have said you could stay if I didn't mean it."
"Good."
"Hey, I didn't ask but since you still require supervision--no luck at convincing the shrinks?"
"No. Apparently until I can say I'm actually sleeping when I mean to, and napping here doesn't count because I don't know why but it's napping and there's someone awake watching me and blah blah, he doesn't want to take any chances. Although he finally says maybe I can help out in mission control--which probably means taking out the trash in silence, but at this point I think I'll fucking take it--sometime in the foreseeable future."
"You know, I basically agree with the concept of having psychiatric care available for people involved in a lot of violence--"
"Except when that person is you."
"I'm pretty sure my issues fall outside the purview of psychiatry and the rest of medicine. It's not like I didn't try'em."
"Really?"
"When The Other Guy shows up, it hurts, and also he--I--hurt people. Anything that might have worked, I have tried."
"Yeah, okay, anyway. You were saying?"
"That I basically agree, but your shrink is really, really determined that you can't get well. Is it going well otherwise?"
Clint looks away. "Hate it, don't wanna go, no idea if it's going well. Mostly I want to do my damn job."
Bruce steps toward him and puts a hand on his shoulder, then before he thinks about it too much, pulls him gently into a hug. "Don't we all, man." Clint wraps his arms around Bruce's middle and squeezes back.
"Are we cuddling again?" Clint asks against his shoulder.
Bruce grins. "Maybe. Problem?" He feels the blade under Clint's sleeve and pulls back. "Are you directly ignoring the instructions of your superiors?"
"Yeah, because that's never happened before." Clint steps back and drops his arms. "So. You told Stark you like having me here."
"I'll be sure not to mention the insubordination," Bruce says. "And I do, but if you were awake, you coulda come out."
"Another time," Clint says. "Now, pizza."
Naturally this is when Bruce's phone buzzes, and a moment later JARVIS notifies them that the Avengers are to assemble.
Bruce catches the look on Clint's face, and shakes his head. "I don't have to go. It sounds like something Tony and Cap can handle. Probably. Maybe."
Clint snorts. "Far be it from me to ever hold you back, babe," he says. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and then says, "JARVIS?"
"Mister Barton?"
"Can you see if Fury will let me come in and watch? I'll leave all my knives at home."
"I shall see if he is available," JARVIS says.
Bruce nods. "Be back soon. We'll have pizza after."
--
Bruce is awake when they get back to the tower, and Clint meets them at the door and helps him up the stairs in the spare pants he put on in the car. The Other Guy is a wrecking machine, and he heals Bruce up just fine, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel like he's been hit by a truck when he takes on a runaway train by himself.
He still can't quite believe that Cap got The Other Guy to just stop the train and gently put it back on the tracks, but maybe he's finally mellowing. Or something.
"You good?" Clint asks, as he opens Bruce's door.
Bruce nods, considering the fading sunset and trying to decide whether to bother to turn on a light. He can probably find the collar in the dim purpley glow, although really, he might not even need it--he's tired, and so is The Other Guy. He turns to Clint. "Yeah, fine," he says. Even his voice feels tired.
"Want me to stay?"
"What?"
"And wake you if you need waking," Clint says. "Want me to stay?"
Bruce doesn't mean to nod because Jesus, no, it's dangerous for anyone to stay with him while he sleeps, but he wants the company and he wants a friend and he nods, and when he looks up, Clint's watching him closely.
Watching him for--oh. Bruce has time to shift his weight, time to let Clint shove gently at him to press him back against the wall, and then Clint's leaning up, quietly, softly, to press a kiss to his mouth. "All right?" he asks.
"Terrible idea," Bruce says. He can't not smile; his mouth is doing that all on its own, but he can say that it's a lousy idea for Clint to stay, for him to get involved with any of this. He can say he doesn't need the help. "It's--Clint, this is such a bad idea."
"Good thing I'm an adult with a high tendency for defiance and every reason to want to stay," Clint says. His tone is light, but he's holding Bruce's gaze, and then he moves closer again, tilting his head to kiss Bruce thoroughly, and Bruce can feel his pulse thudding in his face, in his ears.
He breaks the kiss. "I'm dangerous."
"Spy. Good at danger." Clint opens his mouth against Bruce's, licking until Bruce opens too. Bruce groans and shakes his head.
"Not gunshot dangerous. Meltdown dangerous."
"So's Stark, but we all live in his house. Also, I had him make me some of your potion."
"You had Tony-- First of all I don't think I gave him access to my data, which obviously is irrelevant, but second, why?"
"In case JARVIS is busy or offline or out of range. In case you need it in some other context. In case you forget the collar." Clint shows him the tiny ampule of fluid and the folded blade strapped to his wrist and shrugs. "I may have failed to notify SHIELD I was going back to carrying pointy things."
"Clint, no. I'm dangerous." Bruce wants nothing more than to go back to the kissing, but he definitely can't let Clint stay.
Clint shakes his head. "Not to me," he says. "Why do you think there was no smashing today?"
Bruce blinks at the apparent non-sequitur. "It was a train full of--"
"Innocent people, and I was on your comm line. No pointy things, but mikes and earbuds aren't pointy and I gotta be good for something. Ask Cap. I told him to put it down, and you did."
"He did, and you're not good for nothing as it stands, so that's not even a thing."
"And you. He and you put it down." Clint shrugs. "If he'll listen to me then, I bet he will now, and also is why I know this is okay, and that's a much more pragmatic good for something than anything else I've got right now. Not that I want to see him right this minute." He brushes his lips against Bruce's one more time, and then steps back, out of reach, and asks again. "Want me to stay?"
Bruce stares at him for a long moment. "What I want and what I can have..." He shakes his head as Clint nods.
"Are exactly the same thing," Clint says. "Why do you think I made sure first? Why do you think I sleep in your lab? Why do you think I threw a knife at you? Please?"
Bruce wets his lips with his tongue, and against his better judgment, nods.
He's not sure what he expects to happen next. He knows what he wants to happen; Clint's body is all hard muscle and Bruce has seen him asleep, lax and lithe all at once. He wants to touch, to lick, to see how soft and how hard all that flesh is. He has a pretty good imagination, but he hasn't let it spend any time--consciously, anyway--in this playground, and it feels like he has exploring to do.
What actually happens is at least as good. Clint comes forward again, his kiss surprisingly gentle, and while one of his hands cups Bruce's face, the other wends down his bare chest, the toughened skin of his fingers catching on individual hairs and grazing over his ribcage and back up to tease a nipple.
"No fair," Bruce says. "You have clothes."
Clint chuckles and unties the drawstring on the emergency pants, still one-handed because he's carding his fingers through Bruce's hair, gripping the curls as he kisses him again. "And you don't," he says as the pants fall.
It's an easy trip to the bedroom; Bruce steps out of his pants and lets Clint lead him, and somehow, probably more extreme spying skills, by the time they arrive Clint's lost his shirt and his socks, too. Bruce traces over the faded ink on Clint's shoulder--it's an abstract design, and while he likes it, it doesn't hold any meaning to Bruce--then sits naked on the edge of the bed. He pulls Clint to stand between his thighs. "You're sure?" he asks, thumb pressing the button of Clint's jeans through the hole.
"Oh so very," Clint says. He helps Bruce shove the jeans down then pushes him back and crawls over him, and Bruce is still sure this is a terrible idea, but he can't hate that it's happening.
Or hope for anything but more.
--
"Bruce?"
Clint's voice is rough, low, and Bruce opens his eyes slowly. He's aware of Clint behind him on the bed, but when he looks at the clock, he stops and stares at it. "It's nine thirty. In the morning."
"Yeah," Clint says. "I guess we both needed a nap?"
Bruce looks over his shoulder, then rolls onto his back. "I don't think I've slept ten consecutive hours in..." He thinks about it. "Since I was about two."
Clint nods and snuggles in, and it surprises Bruce all over again that Clint is such a cuddler, but maybe it shouldn't. After all, he's developing a great appreciation for touching, and he's sometimes a giant green rage-monster. "You have a lotus on your ass again," Clint says.
Bruce is in the middle of stroking his thumb lazily down Clint's back, and he stops halfway. "What?"
"Hey, I'm just telling you what I see. There's a lotus flower on your ass."
"But--"
"Babe, you turn into a giant green guy. I kind of think magical tattoos are damn near ordinary."
"True, but still. ...What's it look like?"
"Your ass? Biteable, but I figured if I went there while you were asleep, I'd have to break out the special potion, and that'd delay everything."
"Not my ass. The tattoo." Bruce goes back to stroking, and Clint drops a kiss on his chest.
"Like a lotus flower. Open."
"That's just weird."
"Maybe it likes feelings," Clint says.
"Seriously? We're talking about feelings?"
"Nope. Just having them. And it was just a theory. What else does now, Hulk-time, and when you had it before have in common? Not that Hulk is much for the positive emotions in general, but he certainly is in touch with his rage, and that's a feeling."
"Nothing, really. But that's just weird." He lifts his leg up and feels his own ass-cheek, which feels ordinary and a little hairy and not any different than yesterday. "Really, it's back?"
"Yep."
"Huh. I keep being under the illusion I have a handle on all the ways in which my life is weird, and then."
"You live with people who can control lightning, power the world with a thing the owner prototyped in his own body, and survive a stay on ice for 70 years. Why would you expect a limit to the weird?"
"I have no idea."
Clint rolls away and stands. "Speaking of feelings, I feel hungry. We missed our pizza date. You have eggs?"
"And bacon. And toast. Well, bread."
"Sweet. You shower, I'll cook?"
Bruce shakes his head and comes up to his knees, shuffling forward on the mattress and privately enjoying the fact that the tangled sheets have absolutely nothing to do with The Other Guy this time. "We shower, then we cook." He reaches around and squeezes Clint's ass. "And then we take this ass to the shrinks and get you sprung."
Clint crinkles his nose. "What? This is what sex makes you think about? Shrinks?"
"No. But if you and I are sleeping together, I think that implies you're sleeping. If you're sleeping, you're healing. If you're healing, you should be getting back out with the team. You could even get a new symbolic tattoo of your own--dragonfly, maybe, which sometimes is for reclaiming of control? Tell them it's to help you focus, blah blah..."
Clint shakes his head. "Ink, maybe, especially if you'd like it. But the shrinks? Don't know if they'll go for it," he says.
"Yeah, but you want it, and I want it for you. Except for the part where now that we're doing this I want you safe, but since that's probably off the table--"
"Just a little."
"--then I'd rather you were cleared for everything you need to be. Or, okay, I want everyone safe, in general, so it's not just that we're doing this or that I have some special right to decide anything for you just because we did a lot of stuff that's kind of personal, so I know that's not--"
"Jesus, okay. It's fine, I'm not worried you're taking liberties I don't want you to, oh my God don't you dare freak out on me now."
"And also, I'd like it, but it's your skin. Anyway, we can talk about later if you want. But I think you...seem better. Today, yesterday. Recently. Since we started cuddling, I guess."
"So your position is basically that you healed me with your cock?"
"Uh, no. That--no. My position on the cock thing is incidental, but--"
"Oh my God I stop by to make sure you haven't died in here and what do I even get?" Tony's voice probably shouldn't surprise Bruce, but he frowns over Clint's shoulder and points a finger.
"Stark, do you even know what knocking is?"
"I asked JARVIS if you were up. He said you weren't. J, what happened?"
"Doctor Banner is still in his bed, sir."
Bruce sighs. "I think he's still pissed at me about the collar."
"Yeah, moving on, I'm more interested in the situation at hand. Or in your hand. Or--I think I heard something about cock?"
Clint turns. "Yes. His cock, he healed me with it. It was maaaagic. There was even a magical tattoo involved. Now, I have requal-ing to do, and unless you want to be target practice--I mean, I could shoot at you, if you really want to gimme a minute to put on the arm-guard?"
Tony holds up his hands and backs away, and a moment later, they hear the door. Bruce flops onto his back and pulls the pillow over his face. "That was kind of--"
"A dick move, just coming in like that?"
"That, but also embarrassing."
"Okay, I don't know about you, but I got nothing to be embarrassed about. Oh wait, I do know, and you don't!" Clint jumps onto the bed, straddles Bruce's thighs, and tickles the sensitive skin at his groin.
Bruce lifts the pillow off his mouth. "Because this is definitely a good idea with a guy that smashes things when surprised," he says. "I thought we were having breakfast."
Clint purses his lips. "I thought I'd start with an appetizer," he says, and drops forward onto his hands. "Objections?"
Bruce scrunches up his eyes like he's considering, then shakes his head. "Nope."
Author: florahart
Recipient: heeroluva
Rating: R?
Universe: movie
Pairing/Characters: Bruce Banner/Clint Barton; Tony Stark(/Pepper Potts) and JARVIS
Word Count: about 9150
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. The story is.
Summary: Neither one of them is good at sleeping; too many nightmares.
Warnings: none
Notes: My recipient suggested a scenario in which Bruce figures he's the last person to offer advice about a guy's issues, but he does anyway. I'm not so sure I stayed in shouting distance of that prompt, but that's where I started, anyway.
It's not exactly surprising to Bruce when he wakes up in the obvious aftermath of a visit from The Other Guy. He's in his suite--or what's left of it--and he remembers the hazy beginning of the change, waking from a nightmare of blood and smoke, teammates and horrors, the rage that changes him morphing into the fear of not in time, and of course, that is his nightmare: letting the team down. Letting everyone down.
This kind of nightmare used to happen a lot, but it's been a long time because his response before was to pull away from people he might let down; there: problem solved, and he hasn't let anyone get close again. Until now. He could pull away again, of course; the world is a big place and he could disappear in central Asia or maybe one of the islands of Polynesia. SHIELD would probably find him again, though; he has no illusions left about the extent of their reach, so maybe he'd still fear failure, and somewhere tiny it only takes one disaster for him to destroy everything.
It's not much of a choice. Welcome to his life. At least when it happens in the context of the nightmare, The Other Guy usually quickly observes the absence of threat and retreats, but that doesn't make the whole game any less exhausting or mitigate the amount of destruction he can wreak in seconds. Damn it.
"You awake?"
Tony's voice is a little startling, but it probably shouldn't be. It's his tower, and even though they've all been assured JARVIS isn't recording (much), he's likely got a dozen redundant systems keeping an eye on everything. Bruce wonders idly how many of them The Other Guy could take out if he could just focus him a little ahead of time. "Yeah," he says. He scrubs his hand down over his face and rolls to look back over his shoulder. "Come on in."
"Yeah, did. Figured in the circumstances, you know, landlord tenant laws about emergency entry probably applied. Hey, do you want me to just take this wall out when I fix it? Because it's not load-bearing, obviously, so we could just make the room bigger in the first place, and I mean, maybe that would be nice? A little awkwardly shaped, but I find strange things pleasing. You?" He sips his coffee like he's not standing in a heap of sheetrock and dented rebar. "Oh, kitchen's still okay, so I made us a pot. You're usually kind of dopey when you wake up from, you know."
Bruce shakes his head. "No offense, but you might be the weirdest person I know." He considers the wreckage of his pajama pants, draped in ribbons over his thighs and groin, then looks at the tangled sheet, which is also rent in several places and probably wouldn't be salvageable for covering an infant at this point. Well, if Tony invited himself in, he can just cope. He stands up off the misshapen mattress now leaning more than laying on the distorted pieces of the bed frame, and lets the pants fall as he wanders toward the kitchen to see about that coffee.
Tony's weird, but he's also right about the dopey thing.
"So, I guess we can take the repairs out of my salary?" he asks. Then he stops, coffee halfway to his mouth. "Wait. Am I drawing a salary?"
"Duh. I don't make people work for free. Reports of me being an asshole are, okay, they're right, but they're exaggerated." Tony's right behind him, because of course he is; Tony Stark and personal space have an atypical relationship. "But shut up, this is normal wear and tear. My dime."
"This." Bruce waves a hand around to encompass the shattered bedroom window, the aforementioned crushed wall, the…oh hell, the water pooled where the vanity sink is torn away; he can see the hanging edge of the plumbing from here. "This is not normal wear and tear."
"Is for you."
"Yeah, but normal for me is not a category any landlord would agree to take responsibility for."
"I would. Look, were you negligent?"
"Only in that I let you set me up in an apartment in the middle of a city," Bruce says. He rubs his palm on his cheek, which feels weirdly crunchy which probably means during the transformation he accomplished a little bit of a cut that healed full of dust and/or rubble--nice, that's only going to itch for a week. Yuck. "I knew better."
"Why? It's only money. I have more money than God. Well, more than the only god-type guy we personally know, anyway, and that might be because he doesn't understand the concept very well, but what I'm saying is, I have evidence I have more money than God for some value of god, and what else am I going to use it for? It's not like there wasn't that one time that I redid the whole second floor because I saw a chimney I liked the shape of as I flew over."
"Tony. This is absurd. I knew better than to stay, and this is almost certainly going to keep happening. If I keep living here, I will keep having subconscious worries about, you know, all of you guys, and then I will keep having--"
"Do sedatives help? I mean, to get some sleep without nightmares?"
"No."
"Figured not, since you must have tried them before. Anyway, so the bed frame wasn't tough enough, and obviously you need elastic PJs and hm, the glass was the same stuff as the thing in the helicarrier so obviously that plan was even worse than we thought, which, by the way in case I have not said I was never on board with that shit, and anyway, everything else held pretty well. More data, we try again."
"Or I leave."
"Bruce, seriously. It's only money. I am the only person you know who says that and means it like I would mean it's only bubbles or it's only confetti or something. Come on. Get dressed. We got stress tests to start on."
"You know it's like 3:18 in the morning, right?"
"Ergo my own very fashionable pajamas--didja notice? But, chop chop, no time like the present, time's a wastin', et cetera."
"I still think it would be better if you left this for cleanup in the morning and I found somewhere else to bunk."
"Okay, so look at it like this. Like these. Whatever. One. I hate failing, and this represents my failure of adequate engineering and you know I'm going to keep working on it anyway so you are helping me by providing the testing agent. Two. I have, like, seven friends. Eight if you count the one Fury still says is dead but Fury lies so I'm not holding my breath, so you leaving me makes a fourteen percent dent in my friend quotient, and I don't want a dent like that. Ergo, you should stay. Three. If you move, and have nightmares, you will probably hurt someone because where the fuck are you going to go that you don't? Easter Island, while away your days deciphering Rongorongo? Supai? Tristan da Cunha?"
It's only what Bruce has already been thinking, so he knows very well that Tony's right, but damn it, he can't take risks with people he cares about. He doesn't answer the question. "Where the hell is Supai?"
"Bottom of the Grand Canyon. So, you know, what could possibly go wrong there?"
Bruce considers this for a minute. "Okay, that sounds like a terrible idea. The Other Guy would probably take the Grand Canyon as a personal challenge." He sips his coffee, grimacing. "You make coffee that is so bad I hesitate to call it coffee, by the way."
"Yeah, I know. Still, it works. So, shoot down why you can't stay, if you're going to, or put on pants and let's get to work."
"I am not 14% of your friends."
"No, true, you're more 20%, because, I mean, Pep and Rhodey, then you. I like everyone else but I don't have tons in common with Blondie, and Clint and Natasha are spies for fuck's sake and who trusts spies with his deep darks, and then Steve, well. Okay, maybe you're 18%. Call it 19."
"You seriously assign relative number values to--"
"How many friends do you have?"
"Uh. You, Clint, Nat, Steve, Thor, Pepper, Betty if she still wants anything to do with me which should be a no." Bruce sighs. "Coulson if he's not dead."
"Right, see? Seven. So if they're all of equal value, then about 14%. Suck for both of us if you left. Gaping holes in our lives. Misery and sadness. Gloom. I hate gloom. I have my own personal nightlight against gloom."
"This isn't you failing, Tony. This is me."
"This is you. This is who you are. I had numbers and didn't account for all the variables. The end."
"You're insane."
"You're a little behind. I'm pretty sure the Enquirer ran that story in 1992. People had it a couple of times, 2002 and maybe 95, don't know, what with being busy drinking myself into an early grave in those years. Let's see. The Star went nuts in 1999 after a particular incident in R&D, but that was so not my fault because--"
"Fine. Insanity noted. You're ridiculous."
"Do I even need to start a list? I don't think I need to start a list. Let's look at some of my other known qualities. Genius! Billionaire!"
"Philanthropist! Playboy! I know, I remember. Fine."
"Fine, you'll stay?"
"Fine, I'll stay. Jesus, I can't believe you're arguing for keeping an unpredictable uncontrollable force of chaos in your house."
"Seriously? Have you met me?" Tony slugs back the rest of his coffee. "J, start cross-referencing the window and the column. Force and shear, direction, you know."
"Would you like to see the readout on the bathroom remodel?" JARVIS asks from somewhere in the ceiling.
"Yep, put it on the table in the lab. Bruce, see you in ten. I'll order pizza."
--
"Doctor," JARVIS says, his voice quiet in the dim lab. Bruce has been in here for nearly 27 hours and he feels it; his eyes are gritty but he's pretty sure he's making decent progress here and he doesn't want to lose his train of thought.
Plus, he's barely keeping a lid on his excitement over the idea he might actually be getting somewhere on controlling, you know, anything about The Other Guy, and if he stops working, then where will he put that energy? Yoga only does so much.
He's aware Tony is rubbing off on him, and knows very well that he himself would say anyone working for 24 hours straight was a fool and that he's making excuses for his own self-destructive behavior. But that can wait. "Yeah?" he says.
"Mister Barton is requesting entry, sir. I see nothing that would present a danger to your friend, but you've restricted access." JARVIS, being JARVIS, doesn't add again to that, but Bruce is pretty sure it's implied. He's pretty sure that the additional implication is that he's excluding his friends again and that this is a bad thing. That Tony built an AI capable of all that implication is a little alarming, so he pretends he thinks that's all his own spin on JARVIS's words.
He looks around. It's five in the morning, but he knows everyone living here has sleep disruptions and issues aplenty, so it's hardly odd that someone would come knocking. Or that he's working on hour 27. At five in the morning. He looks at his notes. "Yeah, okay. Let him in."
"Hey, Doc," Clint says as the door slides open. "Can't sleep either?" He backs up against an empty countertop and hops up to sit on it as though he comes here every day. That's new.
"Haven't tried yet," Bruce says. "Make yourself at home, by the way."
"Did. So. Too busy being the resident medical genius to engage in the activities of mere mortals?"
Bruce lifts an eyebrow. "Did you have a reason for coming in here?"
Clint looks way tireder than Bruce feels, so he regrets his tone, a little, but Clint just grins. "No one else is up."
"Even Tony?"
"Pepper said 36 hours was too long and took him to bed a couple hours ago. From the way she convinced him, I'm not all that sure there was going to be sleeping involved, but maybe she wore him out."
"Okay, that might have been too much information."
"I do aim to please."
"Or to kill things, right?" Bruce fills a dropper with the viscous blue gel in the beaker. "Anyway, I'm gonna go down for the count soon enough. I just wanted to finish up this batch." It's a white lie, since if he finishes up the batch, he's going to want to run a couple of tests, and that'll take a while, but still.
"What'cha makin'?"
"Hard to say." He drips three drops each in the first row of four tubes, four in the second, five in the third, and watches the rate of burn. "Huh. Five it is."
"You wanted to finish up a batch of something unknown?"
"Well, no. I mean, for you, it'd probably act as an unbelievably strong and long-lasting sedative. The Other Guy, who knows?"
"You want to sedate--I thought his skin was pretty hard to punch a hole in."
"It is. If by pretty hard you mean so far no one's figured out a way to punch one that doesn't just close up again around whatever did the punching. But--but. I tore up my suite again the other night, and I had this idea."
"Wait, you did? It can't have been that bad if the building stayed standing, but that means--are you, when are you changing? Why are you changing?"
Bruce shrugs. "Nightmares. You know, destroying everything, hurting the people I care about, fucking up the team, the usual. Tony's already got like thirty ideas for a next round of improvements, and it's true, this time was better than last, but still, it's a little disconcerting, waking up into chaos for no good reason."
"Roger that."
Bruce grimaces. "Uh, I didn't mean… anyway. But so, I can't sedate him, but my skin isn't immune to a puncture."
"So… you want to sedate yourself to sleep? Hard enough to knock out Big Green? Dude. That never works. Let me quote my shrink: Dreams, Agent Barton, are the human mind's way of working through difficult problems in a safe space. Without them, the mind looks for a different outlet. None of them are safe. My shrink doesn't seem to get how extremely fucked up my dreams actually are."
Bruce snorts. "Maybe we should collaborate on a textbook: Dream Interpretation for the Killing Machine."
"If you dream of teeth, it probably means that's all that's left of the guy?"
"Yeah. If you dream of yellow feathers and a weird shaped shadow on the wall, it means you just Vadered the whole village of Sand People birds. Or Big Birds, which is probably worse, maybe?"
"Well. This conversation has taken a turn for the gruesome on top of the strange. Anyway, I know just sedating the shit out of myself is a lousy idea. Which was why I dropped this line of research years ago. But then I got to thinking. Oh, hang on." He adds a different amount to each of his five-drop tubes, then puts them in the centrifuge and turns it on. "I can, as you put it, punch a hole in me just as I'm changing. I know because I do, all the time, and then I end up with like a chip of paint or something healed under my skin and it works its way out in a couple of days. So the question is, can I get in a sedative that's enough to slow down The Other Guy just long enough for him to realize there's no threat. Without, you know, knocking me out for four days or something. It'll need JARVIS to make it go, I think, to monitor me while I sleep, but--"
"But that's pretty brilliant. No help for me, obviously."
"You, I can make a sedative of ordinary proportions."
"Yeah, but--gotta dream."
"What, you have them every time you sleep?"
Clint shrugs. "Why do you think I'm not cleared to keep anything pointier than a beanbag yet? If I can't sleep, I can't heal, if I can't heal, I can't sleep, if I can't sleep, I can't shoot… it's pretty much an endless and extremely irritating loop."
"You can't shoot?"
"Only with approved supervision, which means two guys standing to either side with weapons trained on me in case I snap and shoot one of them. It's awesome."
"And only somewhat likely to add to your overall stress portfolio."
"At least I know they still realize I could take down two guys; there's also the third guy they're acting like I don't know is up above. So I guess they think well of my skills, anyway."
"Your shrink sucks, by the way. Far be it from me to tell anyone how to resolve their issues, but seriously, I'm wondering if your shrink actually knows you. If you were going to flip out with weapons in your hand, probably that would have happened, you know, when we gave you some weapons fifteen seconds after you woke up."
"Hey, you wanna tell that to them? Because I tried it, but apparently my self-assessment is invalid. They think that was because I had a legit threat available, and blah blah revenge fantasies and hey, they have a point about all of that, none of which means I'm planning to slice anyone into tiny bits."
"Yeah, I may be familiar with the problem of psychiatric self-assessment and how it holds up. So, how much time are you spending on supervised range activity?"
"Much as I can. If they're so sure I'm going to snap, it's my goddamn duty to help them see the error of their ways." Clint yawns enormously. "It'd be a lot more fun if my eyes weren't crossing."
"Yep, familiar with that too."
"Which explains why you're doing science at five thirty in the morning."
"Hey, science is a good idea any time, I'll have you know."
"That's what Stark keeps telling me, too. I'd say you're both on crack, but I'm pretty sure Hulk on crack would break the universe, so I guess you're just ordinary crazy."
"Good to be ordinary at something. Anyway, if you want something--I'm pretty sure me dispensing a drug to you is totally illegal in every single state, though. But I'm sure I can at least get your body to rest."
Clint rubs his eyes. "Thanks. Not desperate enough to try the Hulk-rated sleepyjuice, though."
"Not this stuff. Normal stuff. Desperate or not, you look like shit."
"Back atcha, and thanks ever so."
Bruce chuckles. "Well, fine. You're welcome to stay and watch me stir variously-blue gunk at intervals."
"My life, so exciting."
"Thought that was the definition of being a sniper."
"Fuck you. …It kind of is," Clint sighs. "But it has purpose." He sits up straighter. "So, I hate sedatives, is the thing, even now. They make my head feel too full and my body stiff and just, no. But can I sack out here while you're working on your thing, and you wake me up if I start thrashing?"
"Always. As long as you know that if I wake you up and you, like, suddenly bite me or, I don't know, have you hidden away any knives on your person?"
Clint smirks. "Who, me?"
"Anyway, if you wake up and attack me, just, we're gonna have a problem."
"Promise. If I bite you, it won't be because you woke me. Plus, I'm basically totally safe in here, because by the time a threat wakes me up, you'll probably have stomped it to mush anyway." Clint slides off the counter and heads over to a wide soft chair in the corner before Bruce can work out what to do with any part of that statement, and is asleep in about five seconds.
Bruce turns back to his beakers and contemplates delivery mechanisms. He doesn't know what to do with the apparent trust, either.
--
"Stark!" Bruce hollers through the door because Tony's welding something and he's not a fan of sparks on his skin. "Stark! Your stupid robot won't let me take a nap."
Tony pushes up the faceplate and turns off the beam. "What?"
"I'm ready to test the stuff, but your AI won't dispense it." Bruce gestures to the collar snugly, but not tightly, around his neck; it's as good a testing medium as any, and he can always think of a better way to manage dispensation later.
"Seriously? J, what's up with that?"
"When Doctor Banner transforms deliberately, the change is immediate; ergo, the injection would need to occur prior to the transformation's genesis. I fear that, if he is injected with the substance and subsequently is unable to deliberately change into the Hulk, it may be sufficiently sedative to act lethally, sir."
"And I'm telling you that won't happen. For one thing, The Other Guy doesn't let lethal things happen to me. Even with really short notice. Just because he doesn't talk to me doesn't mean he's not pretty good at understanding my intentions."
"JARVIS," Tony says, "If Hulk can react fast enough to..." he looks at Bruce and shrugs. "to turn from Bruce and smash the Chitauri whale thing in like one second, surely there's enough lead time from pinprick to effect?"
"I have reviewed the file, sir," JARVIS says. "It discusses the many instances in which the Hulk has emerged to guard Doctor Banner against harm, regardless of source. When the source is himself, even if there is little time to react, Hulk still may be aware, in some capacity, of intent; therefore, I will not draw any conclusions from those instance. Whether he likes it or not, the doctor's biochemistry does not work like any other human's--not even Captain Rogers. Without testing, I remain unconvinced that without sufficient initial agitation, the transformation can occur if the sedative acts quickly enough for the effect to be well underway when the Hulk awakens--"
"--which is a good thing, if you ask me," Bruce says.
"And without the event, we have no test. Please note I am unable to allow any of you to come to harm if I may act to prevent it," JARVIS finishes coolly.
Tony scowls. "Um, okay, that part of his programming is pretty deep. If that's the hangup, I can fix it, uh, probably, but it's going to take a few days. J, if we trigger the Hulk another way?"
"If the transformation has already begun from a source external to Doctor Banner's will, my analysis suggests there is no danger."
Bruce rolls his eyes. "Damn it. I didn't actually want to put anyone at risk if--"
"Is it going to not work?" Tony says, arching a brow. "Because I mean, I think you think it's going to work, and it's not like you're not one of about three, or, okay, one, people I'd consider letting fuck with my suit if I were unavailable because you read the fucking manual and also listen when I talk, don't let it go to your head, so tell me, do you actually think there's a danger?"
"It should work, but the point of testing it is to make sure. Also, tell me you don't think there's some chance your thrusters won't fail when you make sweeping design changes."
"I do think so, which is why I test them, and astonishingly, JARVIS helps me, so, what gives with that, actually? Bruce is more valuable?"
JARVIS offers what Bruce swears is an audible sigh. "No; however, my failure to help you would only lead to you performing the test yourself, and that would be more dangerous."
"Oh, so he should just jam a needle into his own arm?"
"I feel certain I said no such--"
"Feel? JARVIS, did you just indicate you feel? Make a note for me to come back to that later because I know you can't feel. Emotion chips are dangerous, just as Data, and obviously I can overcome the problems but I haven't yet, so. Someone remind me to do something about my AI developing the capacity to feel without my permission."
"Right," Bruce says. "I'll do that. Back on topic: pretty sure I can't do my own needle anyway. Like your emotional AI said, if I start it, I know it's coming."
"Jesus, you guys. Someone go liberate my fucking bow and I'll shoot him. Okay?"
Bruce and Tony glance up to find Clint poking his head out of a vent.
"I don't think that's such a good idea," Bruce says.
"I do. They can't be pissed if I use arrows on the big guy, and also it's free target practice. And also oh hey look, your pulse just went to shit, and Stark do you have anything I can stab him with?"
"In here? Yeah, tons of stuff, but maybe this should go, you know, into any room that doesn't have a lot of high-tech electrical crap which, I mean, I built it and I can do it again, but injury seems likely."
Clint cackles and drops down the floor, landing behind Tony's workbench. "JARVIS, tell me you recorded that for Pepper. Tony Stark just said it would be more responsible to avoid injury. Anyway, fine, Bruce, come on, we're going back to your place."
"No."
"Okay, then we'll stay here." Clint shrugs and whips a knife out of his sleeve and into Bruce's shoulder, then follows it with a shard of steel to the sternum. "Hey, JARVIS, we good?" Tony follows up with a short blast of fire from his welding implement.
Bruce flinches as something snaps audibly in the collar, then shakes his head as his eyes roll back. "Wha..."
"Better be about to Hulk out," Clint says. "I'm not carrying your ass upstairs to sleep it off."
Bruce has no idea what happens next; all he knows is that he wakes up in shreds of pants in the middle of Tony's lab with a blanket over him and Clint and Tony standing at the workbench discussing the remains of his experimental collar.
"You guys are insane," Bruce says.
"You never have any actual news to report," Tony replies.
Clint looks around. "Worked, by the way. You bulked up, the knife and metal fell free, you looked at us, roared something way too loud to hear, and sat down."
"Sat down?"
"With some epic, epic scowling," Clint adds. "And scratching the burn." He points. "All healed."
"Yeah, he does that."
"Convenient."
"Mostly." Bruce gathers up the blanket and wraps it around him. "Uh, thanks for the help?"
"No problem," Tony says. "Also, I told JARVIS this was only level one interference and me and Clint here, we're badasses and can beat the game, if he wanted to be pissy. I think he'll probably play along from here on out."
"Think I need another test?" Bruce asks.
"No, but just in case." Tony goes back to poking at the casing on the collar. "Go get some real sleep. I'll bring you a better one of these in a couple hours. Has to stretch enough to accommodate not strangling…"
"Well, yeah," Bruce says. "Actually strangling him would defeat the concept of convincing him there's no threat."
"And also probably not be that good for you," Clint says.
"That too." Bruce shakes his head and heads for the stairs. "I can't believe I had to come down here and have knives thrown at me. On purpose."
"Glad to help," Tony hollers behind him.
--
Bruce doesn't even realize Clint's in the lab with him until he hears him start to mumble. This has happened a couple of times now--not the mumbling, but the sleeping in Bruce's lab, and it's not like he minds because Clint's started hanging around more during waking hours, too, and Bruce likes the company, but really? This is where the guy feels safe?
This time, apparently not so much.
In any case, there's no accounting for taste.
He finishes fooling with his experimental parameters and starts the trial running, then goes around to the chair. Clint's sprawled on it like it's a personal affront to him to leave any segment uncovered, and his hair is sticking up everywhere. He's sweating, and when Bruce crouches next to him and sets a hand on his arm, he mutters all the louder. Nothing he's saying makes any sense; his words are a mishmash of actual words and nonsense ones, and when he starts to move away and Bruce's hand restrains him, his eyes open wide and unfocused. "Clint?"
Clint obviously can't hear him, and Bruce considers what to do as he tries to get free of his grip, struggling and pushing at Bruce.
"Clint!" he says again, sharper this time.
The effect is startling. Clint freezes, then pulls his arms and legs in tight, curling up in a ball like if he can get small enough, everything will be okay. He's still speaking nonsense in bits and bursts, and every few seconds, he shivers.
"It's okay," Bruce says aloud. He maintains contact with Clint, just the hand on his arm at first, rubbing gently. "It's okay, Clint, but you asked me to wake you." Now that Clint is curled up small, Bruce would fit on the chair with him, so he rises up slowly and eases into place, pulling Clint in against him. "Hey."
Clint still doesn't respond, but he does nestle in against Bruce's chest, so that's something, and after a minute he stops shivering, and then stops talking. Bruce pulls him in close and strokes his hair and tries not to think about how nice it feels.
"Hey," he says again, five minutes later.
"H...ey?" Clint says, lifting his chin and blinking up. "Uh. I was dreaming."
"Yep. You said to wake you. Turns out, you aren't all that wakeable. You do, however, like to cuddle."
"Seriously? Wait, what?" Clint frowns. "Okay, that's messed up, because I'm supposed to be, you know, a spy. Wake if someone rustles leaves nearby. That sort of thing."
"No leaves in here," Bruce points out.
"Yeah, I hope not. Still. What did you try? To wake me, I mean."
"I said your name. I started to shake you, but then you curled up and shivered. I decided to wait and see."
"Huh." Clint lets his feet drop to the floor. "Sorry about the cuddling."
"Yeah, because obviously I mind," Bruce says. He still has Clint pulled up against him, and he doesn't actually want to let go.
Clint squirms around until he's more sitting than lying, and scowls. "Still. And damn it, I haven't had a nightmare while I was here before. After all these times, I was starting to think maybe I was cured."
"How many times have you been here? I mean, I've only seen you four times, including the first one."
"Yeah, but sometimes I slept over there," Clint said, pointing at the couch that's behind a trio of rolling whiteboards and a small graveyard of monitors and assorted electronic detritus.
"You know it only works to ask me to wake you if I know you're here, right?"
"Did you know this time? Before I started thrashing."
"No thrashing, just mumbling. Something about Sao Paulo and a spirit dagger. And a chidwipock."
"A what?"
"Don't think it's a word, but you were pretty insistent about it."
"O...kay. Well, if I'm going to wake up here too, I might as well go try to sleep in my own bed," Clint says.
Bruce shakes his head. "Nah, stay. If you have another one, maybe you'll tell me what one is. A chidwipock."
"I'm not bothering you?"
"Uh, no," Bruce says. "I like having you here."
Clint nods. "Kay." They sit there a minute, leaning against each other because the chair is wide, but not that wide, and then Clint says, "So, I have a question."
"Shoot."
"When you changed in the lab--"
"Your fault."
"Shut up. So, you shredded your pants."
"Uh-huh." Bruce shrugs. "That pretty much always happens."
"Yeah, but why does the Hulk have a lotus flower on his ass?"
"A..." Bruce blinks. "What?"
"You don't have it; I checked. Plus, there's footage of your ass."
"I did, at one point," Bruce says. "Have the tattoo. It was a long time ago. Then there was an incident, and then it was gone."
"So it, like, emerges with the Hulk, and then goes under?"
"Maybe? How should I know?"
Clint shakes his head. "I dunno. I just wondered." He takes a breath and adds, "I didn't mention it to Tony, although I guess JARVIS knows if it ever occurs to him to ask. I didn't know if it was somehow personal or something."
Bruce sighs. "It was--I got it kind of as a symbol of, I don't know. Something that opens up and closes up, and I had this friend..."
"Girlfriend?"
"Had one of those, too. Then her father tried to kill me a couple of times. This was after that, and involved a lot of..." Bruce pauses. "That was when I was working on learning the control I needed. The guy who drew it helped me a lot. And then it was gone, and so was he."
Clint leans his head against Bruce's shoulder. "Our lives are really messed up."
"But exciting," Bruce says.
"It's like demented and sad, but social, only we're both alone."
Bruce shrugs. "Alone and not having killed anyone I love lately is okay with me. If I have to pick." He knows as he says it that actually, alone sucks and he wants something else entirely, but what's he going to do, see if Clint wants to do more than just hang out?
"Yeah." Clint settles his head back against Bruce's shoulder. "Yeah. It's a good streak to keep alive."
Bruce lets his head drop onto Clint's and sits with him until he falls back asleep.
--
"Clint here?" Tony leans far enough into the room he's actually hanging off the door frame with one hand. "Or is he sleeping in his big boy bed yet?"
"Fuck off," Bruce says, although there's no heat in it. "Nothing wrong with liking to have someone around, which I sort of think you know pretty well, unless all the tabloids just make entire people up."
"I wonder how I'd sue them for that," Tony says. I mean, everyone knows I'm a fond of the pretty things, but I do like them to be real." He steps into the room and starts moving around folders.
Bruce watches for a second, then shrugs; nothing of any import is in the folders but leaving them there gives Tony something to do with his hands when he inevitably shows up and starts touching things. "You and I keep having these conversations that seem like they're made up of words, but that then are complete nonsense," he says. "Anyway, Clint's here, but he's asleep." Bruce jerks a thumb toward the whiteboard corner. "You wake him up, it's not my fault if he takes your head off in small, arrowhead-sized increments."
"No, I don't actually need him. Tasha was hoping she couldn't find him because he was actually being allowed to shoot at shit. I said I didn't think so. Hey, isn't this the same stuff you were working on like two weeks ago?"
"Wouldn't she know if he was cleared to play with the adult toys? Given she's also a spy?"
"Huh, probably. Maybe that's why she said she wanted visual evidence of him sleeping in here. Just to make me come down and ask stupid questions. So much hate. Also, adult toys didn't make me think of the thing you meant for me to think of."
Bruce rolls his eyes. "What, she needs pictures because she's never seen him drool? And yes it did, after it made you think of the other thing I meant for you to think of because I do pay attention."
"God, am I that predictable? Tell me I'm not that predictable." Tony huffs, then waves at nothing. "And I'm pretty sure she's seen all of us drool, up close and personal, and none of us have every known she was in the room." Tony shudders. "Okay, that's creepy, forget I said that. What'cha workin' on?"
"I'm still comparing Steve's DNA to mine. Hair follicles, although that doesn't really tell as much about the biochemical story as I'd like. You don't really hate Tasha, do you? Because I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she stuck a mike on you on your way down here."
"No way. J, did Tasha--"
"She did not," JARVIS says. "She merely asked me to broadcast your conversation for her information."
"Are you?"
"I declined. Miss Romanov is in intelligence. I am an intelligence. These are not the same."
Tony chuckles. "Atta boy, JARVIS."
"I also am not canine, if that was your implication, sir."
Bruce points a pencil. "He's got you there. Also, why am I not surprised your AI has a sense of humor? Anyway. It's nothing earth-shattering. Just working through some comparisons, and Clint's asleep, and was there anything else you wanted?"
"Nope!" Tony straightens all the folders, thumping the stack on the counter, and slaps his hand down on top of them. "So, if you'll excuse me, I have a bunch of things to invent, companies to run, you know."
"Wife to kill, Guilder to blame fer it?"
"Not married, don't want to kill Pep anyway, but hey, it's a good reference. Have you been catching up on your pop culture while you don't sleep?"
"Something like that. Mostly, I have an insomniac spy keeping me company some nights and apparently knowing things like this is a feature of the job."
"Good. Well. All right." And Tony claps his hands together and goes out the door.
Bruce shakes his head and puts down his pencil. "You awake?"
"Am now." Clint's feet appear under a whiteboard and he walks past it to lean against the wall. "So, I'm keeping you company?"
"Aren't you?"
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I didn't show you Princess Bride."
"Poetic license."
"Ah. So, are you about done here?"
"Why?"
"Because if you have a lot to do, I'll go engage in some carefully supervised target killing on the range. If you're almost done, wanna go find some pizza to kill instead?"
Bruce considers. "Yeah, okay. Twenty minutes or so? Unless you actually want to go shoot."
"Nah. I like it here," Clint says with a shrug. "Unless I'm in the way."
Bruce laughs. "I'm used to being alone. I wouldn't have said you could stay if I didn't mean it."
"Good."
"Hey, I didn't ask but since you still require supervision--no luck at convincing the shrinks?"
"No. Apparently until I can say I'm actually sleeping when I mean to, and napping here doesn't count because I don't know why but it's napping and there's someone awake watching me and blah blah, he doesn't want to take any chances. Although he finally says maybe I can help out in mission control--which probably means taking out the trash in silence, but at this point I think I'll fucking take it--sometime in the foreseeable future."
"You know, I basically agree with the concept of having psychiatric care available for people involved in a lot of violence--"
"Except when that person is you."
"I'm pretty sure my issues fall outside the purview of psychiatry and the rest of medicine. It's not like I didn't try'em."
"Really?"
"When The Other Guy shows up, it hurts, and also he--I--hurt people. Anything that might have worked, I have tried."
"Yeah, okay, anyway. You were saying?"
"That I basically agree, but your shrink is really, really determined that you can't get well. Is it going well otherwise?"
Clint looks away. "Hate it, don't wanna go, no idea if it's going well. Mostly I want to do my damn job."
Bruce steps toward him and puts a hand on his shoulder, then before he thinks about it too much, pulls him gently into a hug. "Don't we all, man." Clint wraps his arms around Bruce's middle and squeezes back.
"Are we cuddling again?" Clint asks against his shoulder.
Bruce grins. "Maybe. Problem?" He feels the blade under Clint's sleeve and pulls back. "Are you directly ignoring the instructions of your superiors?"
"Yeah, because that's never happened before." Clint steps back and drops his arms. "So. You told Stark you like having me here."
"I'll be sure not to mention the insubordination," Bruce says. "And I do, but if you were awake, you coulda come out."
"Another time," Clint says. "Now, pizza."
Naturally this is when Bruce's phone buzzes, and a moment later JARVIS notifies them that the Avengers are to assemble.
Bruce catches the look on Clint's face, and shakes his head. "I don't have to go. It sounds like something Tony and Cap can handle. Probably. Maybe."
Clint snorts. "Far be it from me to ever hold you back, babe," he says. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and then says, "JARVIS?"
"Mister Barton?"
"Can you see if Fury will let me come in and watch? I'll leave all my knives at home."
"I shall see if he is available," JARVIS says.
Bruce nods. "Be back soon. We'll have pizza after."
--
Bruce is awake when they get back to the tower, and Clint meets them at the door and helps him up the stairs in the spare pants he put on in the car. The Other Guy is a wrecking machine, and he heals Bruce up just fine, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel like he's been hit by a truck when he takes on a runaway train by himself.
He still can't quite believe that Cap got The Other Guy to just stop the train and gently put it back on the tracks, but maybe he's finally mellowing. Or something.
"You good?" Clint asks, as he opens Bruce's door.
Bruce nods, considering the fading sunset and trying to decide whether to bother to turn on a light. He can probably find the collar in the dim purpley glow, although really, he might not even need it--he's tired, and so is The Other Guy. He turns to Clint. "Yeah, fine," he says. Even his voice feels tired.
"Want me to stay?"
"What?"
"And wake you if you need waking," Clint says. "Want me to stay?"
Bruce doesn't mean to nod because Jesus, no, it's dangerous for anyone to stay with him while he sleeps, but he wants the company and he wants a friend and he nods, and when he looks up, Clint's watching him closely.
Watching him for--oh. Bruce has time to shift his weight, time to let Clint shove gently at him to press him back against the wall, and then Clint's leaning up, quietly, softly, to press a kiss to his mouth. "All right?" he asks.
"Terrible idea," Bruce says. He can't not smile; his mouth is doing that all on its own, but he can say that it's a lousy idea for Clint to stay, for him to get involved with any of this. He can say he doesn't need the help. "It's--Clint, this is such a bad idea."
"Good thing I'm an adult with a high tendency for defiance and every reason to want to stay," Clint says. His tone is light, but he's holding Bruce's gaze, and then he moves closer again, tilting his head to kiss Bruce thoroughly, and Bruce can feel his pulse thudding in his face, in his ears.
He breaks the kiss. "I'm dangerous."
"Spy. Good at danger." Clint opens his mouth against Bruce's, licking until Bruce opens too. Bruce groans and shakes his head.
"Not gunshot dangerous. Meltdown dangerous."
"So's Stark, but we all live in his house. Also, I had him make me some of your potion."
"You had Tony-- First of all I don't think I gave him access to my data, which obviously is irrelevant, but second, why?"
"In case JARVIS is busy or offline or out of range. In case you need it in some other context. In case you forget the collar." Clint shows him the tiny ampule of fluid and the folded blade strapped to his wrist and shrugs. "I may have failed to notify SHIELD I was going back to carrying pointy things."
"Clint, no. I'm dangerous." Bruce wants nothing more than to go back to the kissing, but he definitely can't let Clint stay.
Clint shakes his head. "Not to me," he says. "Why do you think there was no smashing today?"
Bruce blinks at the apparent non-sequitur. "It was a train full of--"
"Innocent people, and I was on your comm line. No pointy things, but mikes and earbuds aren't pointy and I gotta be good for something. Ask Cap. I told him to put it down, and you did."
"He did, and you're not good for nothing as it stands, so that's not even a thing."
"And you. He and you put it down." Clint shrugs. "If he'll listen to me then, I bet he will now, and also is why I know this is okay, and that's a much more pragmatic good for something than anything else I've got right now. Not that I want to see him right this minute." He brushes his lips against Bruce's one more time, and then steps back, out of reach, and asks again. "Want me to stay?"
Bruce stares at him for a long moment. "What I want and what I can have..." He shakes his head as Clint nods.
"Are exactly the same thing," Clint says. "Why do you think I made sure first? Why do you think I sleep in your lab? Why do you think I threw a knife at you? Please?"
Bruce wets his lips with his tongue, and against his better judgment, nods.
He's not sure what he expects to happen next. He knows what he wants to happen; Clint's body is all hard muscle and Bruce has seen him asleep, lax and lithe all at once. He wants to touch, to lick, to see how soft and how hard all that flesh is. He has a pretty good imagination, but he hasn't let it spend any time--consciously, anyway--in this playground, and it feels like he has exploring to do.
What actually happens is at least as good. Clint comes forward again, his kiss surprisingly gentle, and while one of his hands cups Bruce's face, the other wends down his bare chest, the toughened skin of his fingers catching on individual hairs and grazing over his ribcage and back up to tease a nipple.
"No fair," Bruce says. "You have clothes."
Clint chuckles and unties the drawstring on the emergency pants, still one-handed because he's carding his fingers through Bruce's hair, gripping the curls as he kisses him again. "And you don't," he says as the pants fall.
It's an easy trip to the bedroom; Bruce steps out of his pants and lets Clint lead him, and somehow, probably more extreme spying skills, by the time they arrive Clint's lost his shirt and his socks, too. Bruce traces over the faded ink on Clint's shoulder--it's an abstract design, and while he likes it, it doesn't hold any meaning to Bruce--then sits naked on the edge of the bed. He pulls Clint to stand between his thighs. "You're sure?" he asks, thumb pressing the button of Clint's jeans through the hole.
"Oh so very," Clint says. He helps Bruce shove the jeans down then pushes him back and crawls over him, and Bruce is still sure this is a terrible idea, but he can't hate that it's happening.
Or hope for anything but more.
--
"Bruce?"
Clint's voice is rough, low, and Bruce opens his eyes slowly. He's aware of Clint behind him on the bed, but when he looks at the clock, he stops and stares at it. "It's nine thirty. In the morning."
"Yeah," Clint says. "I guess we both needed a nap?"
Bruce looks over his shoulder, then rolls onto his back. "I don't think I've slept ten consecutive hours in..." He thinks about it. "Since I was about two."
Clint nods and snuggles in, and it surprises Bruce all over again that Clint is such a cuddler, but maybe it shouldn't. After all, he's developing a great appreciation for touching, and he's sometimes a giant green rage-monster. "You have a lotus on your ass again," Clint says.
Bruce is in the middle of stroking his thumb lazily down Clint's back, and he stops halfway. "What?"
"Hey, I'm just telling you what I see. There's a lotus flower on your ass."
"But--"
"Babe, you turn into a giant green guy. I kind of think magical tattoos are damn near ordinary."
"True, but still. ...What's it look like?"
"Your ass? Biteable, but I figured if I went there while you were asleep, I'd have to break out the special potion, and that'd delay everything."
"Not my ass. The tattoo." Bruce goes back to stroking, and Clint drops a kiss on his chest.
"Like a lotus flower. Open."
"That's just weird."
"Maybe it likes feelings," Clint says.
"Seriously? We're talking about feelings?"
"Nope. Just having them. And it was just a theory. What else does now, Hulk-time, and when you had it before have in common? Not that Hulk is much for the positive emotions in general, but he certainly is in touch with his rage, and that's a feeling."
"Nothing, really. But that's just weird." He lifts his leg up and feels his own ass-cheek, which feels ordinary and a little hairy and not any different than yesterday. "Really, it's back?"
"Yep."
"Huh. I keep being under the illusion I have a handle on all the ways in which my life is weird, and then."
"You live with people who can control lightning, power the world with a thing the owner prototyped in his own body, and survive a stay on ice for 70 years. Why would you expect a limit to the weird?"
"I have no idea."
Clint rolls away and stands. "Speaking of feelings, I feel hungry. We missed our pizza date. You have eggs?"
"And bacon. And toast. Well, bread."
"Sweet. You shower, I'll cook?"
Bruce shakes his head and comes up to his knees, shuffling forward on the mattress and privately enjoying the fact that the tangled sheets have absolutely nothing to do with The Other Guy this time. "We shower, then we cook." He reaches around and squeezes Clint's ass. "And then we take this ass to the shrinks and get you sprung."
Clint crinkles his nose. "What? This is what sex makes you think about? Shrinks?"
"No. But if you and I are sleeping together, I think that implies you're sleeping. If you're sleeping, you're healing. If you're healing, you should be getting back out with the team. You could even get a new symbolic tattoo of your own--dragonfly, maybe, which sometimes is for reclaiming of control? Tell them it's to help you focus, blah blah..."
Clint shakes his head. "Ink, maybe, especially if you'd like it. But the shrinks? Don't know if they'll go for it," he says.
"Yeah, but you want it, and I want it for you. Except for the part where now that we're doing this I want you safe, but since that's probably off the table--"
"Just a little."
"--then I'd rather you were cleared for everything you need to be. Or, okay, I want everyone safe, in general, so it's not just that we're doing this or that I have some special right to decide anything for you just because we did a lot of stuff that's kind of personal, so I know that's not--"
"Jesus, okay. It's fine, I'm not worried you're taking liberties I don't want you to, oh my God don't you dare freak out on me now."
"And also, I'd like it, but it's your skin. Anyway, we can talk about later if you want. But I think you...seem better. Today, yesterday. Recently. Since we started cuddling, I guess."
"So your position is basically that you healed me with your cock?"
"Uh, no. That--no. My position on the cock thing is incidental, but--"
"Oh my God I stop by to make sure you haven't died in here and what do I even get?" Tony's voice probably shouldn't surprise Bruce, but he frowns over Clint's shoulder and points a finger.
"Stark, do you even know what knocking is?"
"I asked JARVIS if you were up. He said you weren't. J, what happened?"
"Doctor Banner is still in his bed, sir."
Bruce sighs. "I think he's still pissed at me about the collar."
"Yeah, moving on, I'm more interested in the situation at hand. Or in your hand. Or--I think I heard something about cock?"
Clint turns. "Yes. His cock, he healed me with it. It was maaaagic. There was even a magical tattoo involved. Now, I have requal-ing to do, and unless you want to be target practice--I mean, I could shoot at you, if you really want to gimme a minute to put on the arm-guard?"
Tony holds up his hands and backs away, and a moment later, they hear the door. Bruce flops onto his back and pulls the pillow over his face. "That was kind of--"
"A dick move, just coming in like that?"
"That, but also embarrassing."
"Okay, I don't know about you, but I got nothing to be embarrassed about. Oh wait, I do know, and you don't!" Clint jumps onto the bed, straddles Bruce's thighs, and tickles the sensitive skin at his groin.
Bruce lifts the pillow off his mouth. "Because this is definitely a good idea with a guy that smashes things when surprised," he says. "I thought we were having breakfast."
Clint purses his lips. "I thought I'd start with an appetizer," he says, and drops forward onto his hands. "Objections?"
Bruce scrunches up his eyes like he's considering, then shakes his head. "Nope."