Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Tony was forever tweaking the electronics on the quinjets; the one that was serving as the command center during active operations had gotten a new imaging and video system only a few days earlier, so Bruce had a sharp, clear view of everything. He saw the building implode and was up and tearing off his headphones even as Steve was barking, "Hawkeye, status--"

"Get me close," Bruce said to the pilot. “Far side, where his nest was.” The pilot gave him a thumbs up and Bruce wrenched himself out of the cockpit and back toward the open rear panel of the 'jet. He'd seen a dark blur on the vid screen, one was moving ahead of the debris thrown clear by the blast. He fixed the trajectory in his mind and stamped down hard on the fear that it might not have been Clint, that he hadn't gotten a rappelling arrow off before the explosion. The pilot put the jet into a spiraling turn that let Bruce catch glimpses of the chaos on the ground, but then the jump light turned green and Bruce let himself drop out of the ‘jet.

It was bright when Bruce came back to himself, nothing but rocks and debris under him and dust still hanging in the air. He laid his head back and took a slow, deep breath, but that same dust was all in his lungs--the Other Guy tended to ignore stuff like that--and wound up in an endless loop of coughing and not being able to clear his lungs.

“Doc!” A hand came down on his shoulder and another one appeared in front of his face, holding an oxygen mask. Bruce grabbed for it and inhaled gratefully. His lungs still threw him another round of coughing, but it was less frantic this time. He breathed in one last time and then passed the mask back to Clint.

“Thanks,” Bruce managed to say, and then frowned as his eyes and brain finally synced up and he got a good look at Clint.

“Yeah,” Clint said. “I know: I look like shit.”

He did, too, covered in cuts and scrapes and trails of blood that acted like magnets to the dirt and debris in the air. Still, he was alive and well enough to smirk at Bruce’s inspection, even if it wasn’t particularly up to his usual standards.

“Occupational hazard,” Clint said, with a laugh that turned into a wheeze.

“Put the damn mask back on, Barton,” Natasha snapped, carrying a second mask and oxygen tank up to where Clint and Bruce were sitting. She muttered something in Russian that had Clint yelping indignantly even as he followed orders and held the mask back up to his face. Natasha reached over and pulled the elastic over his head, snapping it lightly against the back of his head. Clint looked up and blew her a kiss through the mask, and she rolled her eyes.

“Sorry for the delay,” she said to Bruce as she handed him the second mask and shook out a space blanket to drop around his shoulders. “Medical got a little distracted.” Her voice was perfectly composed, but Bruce knew that look in her eye, the one that said things were even more fucked up than usual.

“No problem,” Bruce said, accepting the mask. He was mostly okay, but Clint was watching him with a look in his eyes. Apparently, it was a day for Looks. He could hear the whine of Tony’s repulsors and the roar of the quintjet’s engines, but the Other Guy had left, so Bruce assumed everything was in the final, mop-up stage. “What did I miss?”

Clint snorted and Natasha answered with a grim sort of a smile, but she answered lightly. “Well, after the genius here deliberately drew the fire of the extra-special doomsday weapon of the week and got himself blown up--”

“Hey!” Clint started to take the mask off to argue, but then thought better of it when both Bruce and Natasha rounded on him with glares. Bruce could only hope his was half as terrifying as Natasha’s but in any case, Clint subsided and resorted to sign language.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha said. “Of course what I mean to say is that once Hawkeye provided a diversion designed to allow Iron Man and Captain America to outflank the heavy artillery, and in the process got himself blown up--” Clint threw up his hands and flipped Natasha off before sitting back with a distinct air of sulking about him.

“Well, he did zipline out in front of the explosion,” Bruce said. Clint grinned at Bruce, his hands moving quickly as he signed to Natasha.

“He says that once again, you are his favorite,” she translated. “I’m heart-broken,” she added dryly. Clint signed something else that she didn’t translate, only answered, “In your dreams, Barton,” before turning back to Bruce. “Between Tony and Cap taking out the weapon--Tony says you’re going to love reverse-engineering this one, Doc--and the Other Guy arriving on the scene, things got wrapped up fairly quickly.”

Bruce got the impression she was skimming over the surface of things--and she’d completely left out Thor--but the Medical team arrived at that point, and he was more interested in making sure Clint didn’t gloss over any injuries than finding out details he’d likely hear in debriefings. Aside from the myriad cuts, the worst of which the team said could be closed with glue, and having inhaled a substantial amount of the dust and vaporized building, he seemed to be fine. Bruised and sore and tired, but fine.

“Yo, Big Man,” Tony said, pushing up his helmet to look Bruce over with a familiar, speculative gleam in his eyes. “Feeling better?”

There was only one reason Tony ever eyed Bruce like that, and it fit with Natasha’s edited story and Clint’s worry about him. “What did he do this time?” Bruce sighed.

“Knocked Thor into the next county,” Tony offered promptly. “Literally--the line is just over on the other side of the hill and the big guy got a really good angle with his uppercut--”

“Stark,” Clint and Natasha said in unison, and Tony grinned.

“Got it all on video,” Tony said, flipping down his helmet and firing up his repulsors. “Holiday party gag reel.”

Bruce held the oxygen mask up to his face and breathed into it carefully. Clint leaned in and bumped his shoulder into Bruce’s. “Don’t go there,” he said, moving the mask so he could talk quietly to Bruce. “He was pissed at everyone--them for not taking care of me, me for setting it all in motion in the first place.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said, which was utterly useless, but what else was there to say?

“Nah, it’s cool--I mean, it’s hard to argue with the guy who pulls you out from under a couple of tons of debris right before it’s going to pancake you.” Clint shrugged. “He picked me up and set me down over here and kinda gave me a lecture.”

“Oh, god,” Bruce groaned.

“Yeah, no, it was pretty funny,” Clint said, his smile the one that reached his eyes and usually did good things to Bruce’s moods. “‘Cupid no fly,’ he kept saying. ‘Cupid NO FLY.’ And then Thor came over and was in one of his hale-fellow-well-met-it-was-a-good-and-glorious-battle moods and the next thing we know, Thor’s the one flying and the big guy is yelling at Steve to pay better attention next time.”

Clint stopped to breathe through the mask, but he wouldn’t let Bruce isolate himself, which was either one of the best things about having let him into Bruce’s life, or one of the worst. Bruce couldn’t decide and was too tired to care.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I don’t mean to imply you don’t know what you’re doing--”

“Oh, it was a stupid move,” Clint said. His voice was getting more hoarse and rough with every word. “And I told them it was probably going to happen, but Steve and Tony thought they could get to the firing line before things got hot. They didn’t--too much other shit came up--and we were scrambling. The Other Guy wasn’t wrong, and we wouldn’t have made it through the rest of it without him, so, y’know. We’re good.”

Bruce sat and breathed for a little while longer--and made sure Clint put the oxygen mask back on, too--but when the ‘jet put down next to them, he let Natasha shepherd him and Clint into the back and got himself belted in. Clint was moving slowly and he kept the oxygen with him, but Medical said he was fine to go home, so Bruce tried not to hover. They were set for debriefing the next afternoon, which meant a direct trip back to the Tower, no stops at the ‘carrier or other interruptions. That was never a bad thing, but today Bruce knew he wasn’t the only one happy about it.

Tony was yammering on about food, ordering take-out or whatever, but Bruce just shook his head and steered Clint to the elevator. He wasn’t sure whether he had them going to ground because Clint needed some downtime or if he himself needed some quiet to process the Other Guy doing more than just reacting to a situation, but he didn’t think it really mattered.

They ended up on Clint’s floor, mostly because it was only a flight down from the landing pad and thus, technically, closer. Either floor would have been fine, really. After a couple of months of hesitantly shifting back and forth between their floors, each one of them making sure not to leave clothing or personal items in the other’s rooms, sharing space had stopped seeming like a huge deal and ended up being something that worked pretty well for them. They each retreated to their own floor when the other was away on a mission or at a conference, and Bruce assumed they’d do the same if they needed time apart after a disagreement, but so far, that hadn’t happened.

“Shower,” Clint croaked as they stepped off the elevator. That was standard. Bruce had seen Clint staggering into the showers in much worse shape than he appeared now. He’d asked Clint about it once, when he’d nearly passed out in the shower after a long, bad mission and had gotten the answer that no matter how bad it was, it’d be worse to go back out and start the next one already disgusting. The been-there-done-that in Clint’s tone hadn’t done much to endear SHIELD and how they treated their agents to Bruce. Clint figured that out--because, like Natasha had told Bruce, he really was good at reading the emotional climate of a room--and had thrown in a snarky ‘Besides, it’s Stark’s water bill, let’s run it up,’ in what Bruce assumed was an attempt to defuse the negative feelings. It hadn’t really, but Bruce pretended like it did.

Clint detoured through the kitchen and came back with a fistful of protein bars that he shoved at Bruce. Bruce chewed through three methodically--there was no pleasure involved, but not eating would mean he’d wake up starving long before he’d get enough rest. Clint ate one with a matching lack of enthusiasm. The shower, though...

The shower made up for a lot.

Clint was peeling off his layers of body armour and Kevlar more slowly than usual, but he waved off Bruce’s offer of help. “I’m good, Doc. Just trying not to screw anything else up by accident.”

Bruce took him at his word and got the shower started, hotter than usual--and neither one of them was shy about half-scalding themselves after long days--hot enough that the steam came billowing out in seconds. Bruce made sure Clint could manage the laces on his boots and then stripped out of what remained of his own clothes and stumbled under the spray.

He lost a little time to the water beating down on him, but shook himself back to alertness when Clint joined him, hissing as the water stung the cuts and scrapes on his arms and neck and face. Bruce knew Medical had cleaned out anywhere the skin had been broken, but he reached for the tea tree oil soap just the same.

“Doc,” Clint half-whined in protest--which, yes, it was going to burn like crazy but that was the point, and for all he grumbled, Clint propped himself against the wall and let Bruce make sure he was okay. He was, of course--the paramedics that flew with SHIELD mission teams knew what they were doing and wouldn’t have let him go if anything was wrong, but Bruce liked knowing first-hand. He thought Clint liked him knowing, too.

Unsurprisingly, some days the post-mission shower turned into post-mission shower sex--and some days they didn’t even make it into the shower before they were rutting against each other--but often enough, it was more about just being in the same space, about trusting and being trusted and whatever else was tempted to come crawling out from under all the baggage both of them were dragging along behind them. Bruce thought this was probably going to end up as one of the low-key days, but then Clint got his hands slicked with shampoo and into Bruce’s hair and the energy shifted subtly.

It was still low-key, but there was a definite build to it now, Clint’s hands sliding down Bruce’s back and then back up to rinse the soap clear, Bruce trailing his own hands over Clint’s arms and shoulders. Clint moved in close, one strong thigh pressed between Bruce’s; Bruce tugged him closer and kissed him.

“Yeah,” Clint breathed, a long, quiet sigh of a word that made Bruce want. Clint opened his mouth against Bruce’s and let Bruce press kiss after kiss on him. Bit by bit, the remnants of the day eased away, until it was just the two of them under the rainfall shower, and when that wasn’t enough, it was simple enough to find their way to Clint’s big bed.

“Let me,” Bruce said, and Clint nodded and laid back on the pillows so that Bruce could put his hands and mouth anywhere he wanted. Bruce knew all the right places--the curve of Clint’s collarbone, the dip of his hip--but that didn’t mean it wasn’t pure pleasure to watch the flush spread down Clint’s chest and belly, hear the stutter-stop-stutter of his breath, taste salt-dampened skin. The last time they’d been together, Bruce flat on his back, Clint riding him with a single-minded intent, fucking himself on Bruce’s cock until they were both gasping and spent, Clint had taken what he’d wanted; this time, he let Bruce tell him what he was going to get.

They’d fucked each other against walls and on floors as often as beds; this day, Bruce took Clint carefully, licking him open, tongue-fucking him until he was more sobbing than breathing before reaching for the condoms and lube and opening him the rest of the way with his cock. Clint reached back and pulled Bruce closer, so that Bruce was wrapped around him and buried in him and they both could make sure the other was okay, had made it through another day that had tried to kill them.

“No rush,” Bruce murmured, mouthing along the curve of Clint’s ear, breathing him in. He stayed still inside Clint, let the tight heat of Clint’s body surround him. Clint didn’t object or argue, only allowed Bruce to move them gradually toward orgasm, each small movement building on the previous, every touch coiling them that much tighter. Bruce drew it out as long as he could, longer than he’d thought possible, and when he finally took Clint’s hand and wrapped it around his cock, it took only a single stroke before Clint came hard, still silent but shaking and spilling over both their hands. Bruce stayed still a few heartbeats longer, but Clint was whispering to him, his voice barely there but still filling all of Bruce, babecomeoncomeonletitgoletmefeelyou, and Bruce couldn’t deny him for a second longer.

Clint liked being up high and seeing everything; he had the most lived-in terrace of all of them. Bruce usually wasn’t quite so enthusiastic, but there was a quiet, sheltered corner that got the late-morning sun and ended up working well as a place to meditate. Bruce found himself out there often enough that there was a spare yoga mat tucked up under the overhang and Clint knew to look for Bruce there if they’d spent the night on Clint’s floor. It was one more tick in the Together column even if neither one of them ever mentioned it.

Clint had showered and was dressed in his usual black fatigues by the time Bruce came in. He was pacing around the apartment, arguing with Tony on video conference, but he pushed a mug of Bruce’s favorite tea toward him. Bruce ignored the argument--he knew the tone and it was one that said both men were actually having a good time and didn’t need anybody to distract them--and drank his tea. JARVIS interrupted the increasingly ridiculous posturing that was going on with the information that the SHIELD debrief team was inbound and due to land in three minutes. Without pausing the argument, Clint pushed his feet into his boots and held the elevator while Bruce rinsed out his mug and ran his hands through his hair.

“Later, Stark; I’ve got stuff I gotta do before we go tear apart yesterday’s clusterfuck and only three minutes to do it,” Clint finally said, killing the video and audio and turning to Bruce. “Hi, Doc.”

“Morning,” Bruce managed to say before Clint’s mouth covered his. The elevator was dropping but Bruce didn’t think that had much to do with the sudden giddy rush that hit him.

“Hold that thought. We’re coming back to it,” Clint said as the doors opened on the conference room level and they were met with a full complement from SHIELD, with the extra-special bonus of Director Fury joining in on the video screen.

“I’m counting on that,” Bruce said, not bothering to keep his voice down. Clint grinned at him and held the door open for him and the Avenger portion of the day got underway.