Work Text:
..
The funny thing is, he’s pretty sure Natasha had assumed he already knew. (Except it’s not funny.) After she had conked him on the head, and after he had woken up in the room she had dragged him off to, she must have figured she didn’t even need to say it.
Because she knew about him—had ever since Bangladesh and the FUBAR mission that it had been. She was one of two people who knew his secret—three if Barney had ever believed him.
..
“Shit,” she whispers harshly, her voice washing over him – drowning him in relief.
He can’t help the twitch of his mouth, edging into a smirk. His whole face hurts like it is broken—because it mostly is—but he doesn’t care. She’s getting him out of here.
“Clint?”
She’s worried. Scared, even. Not that anyone could tell it from her voice. But he can feel it.
He makes a slight humming noise, just in case the twitch and the slow breathing aren’t enough to let her know he’s alive.
“Don’t move,” she cautions.
He wasn’t planning on it, like, for at least a few weeks. He’s been hoping more for a hospital though, and drugs, and getting to bitch about being made to stay in bed when really he will just want to sleep for days on end and forget everything that had happened.
“Coulson, he’s alive, but—”
He stops listening, because suddenly, he remembers Coulson must be nearby. With an ease that is actually stronger than the ease of breathing right now, he slows the parts of his brain that will distract him—ignoring the pain, the sounds, the careful touch of Natasha’s thin fingers as she assesses his damage. It is a practiced habit, borne from childhood, or he would never have the wherewithal to go reaching. But he closes off his physical senses, and begins searching with his other sense, grasping for Coulson.
It’s surprisingly easy. He spreads out, thinking he might have to go far to find the man, but he’s close. Much too close.
He lets out a pained noise as he gets jolted back into himself.
Natasha must have jostled him hard, because he feels like he may throw up now. She’s spitting curses at him in Russian, daring him to die right now, because if he does then she will rip his ass from his body and...well, he isn’t sure he even wants to remember that threat for later use, so he tries to block it out.
“I’m ‘kay,” he breathes, trying to open his eyes and prove it to her. (He mostly fails.) “I’ll be ‘kay,” he says, his words blending together.
“Your breathing got shorter,” she growls at him. Accusing.
“Yeah,” he agrees, because he can’t really argue. “It’s a...thing. Sorry.”
“Coulson’s asking if you’re having trouble breathing. Any ribs I should know about before I throw you over my shoulder?” She doesn’t sound like she’s joking.
Part of him wants to cry at the thought. This is going to hurt.
But he’s getting out. He’s getting out of here. So he shakes his head a bit (and regrets it) even though his ribs probably really shouldn’t receive any extra pressure right now. But he doesn’t really care. He wants out, fastest route possible.
And Coulson is standing at the very front of the building, talking to one of the guards of the facility. Most likely playing the part of a lost tourist from the fake confusion Clint could feel on him.
Hours later, when he’s lying in the hospital, drugs coursing through his veins, he realizes again how lucky he is for his ability. Most people left in a room to be tortured for days on end would not have been able to survive it like he had. And not in the physical sense. He was beat to hell, there was no getting around that.
But he had been able to distract his mind. Able to leave himself a bit—though never quite disconnecting—so that he could sense Natasha and Coulson. He had concentrated on them being healthy, safe, alive, even if they were frustrated as they searched for him. He held close to them, swimming in the emotional whirlpool of his two closest friends on Earth.
And they were friends, he realized. It finally hit him. They were friends, maybe more. Something about them was safe, even though they were two of the most dangerous people he had ever met. But clinging to their presence while his body was being shattered...it...it had bridged some sort of gap that had been unnoticed before. He could feel them more clearly now. More so than ever before. Almost like they were family.
Because see, it only ever worked this clearly with people he cared about. People he felt close to. Connected to. It had been strongest with Barney when they were kids, when they were just joining the circus. Then everything had gone to hell with Barney, and his life had been taken over by the Swordsman and Trickshot. Then for a long while, he stopped sensing anyone, just blocking it all out.
Over the years, there had been some people here and there. A buddy in a bar here, a girl he spent the night with there. Everyone gave off a slight...something. But the more time he spent with someone, the stronger he could feel them when he allowed himself to search for them. The more he cared about someone, the more he connected with them, the easier it was to feel whatever they were feeling, emotional or physical.
And now, apparently he could feel Natasha and Coulson almost as strongly as he had once felt Barney.
It was both an amazing discovery, (hampered somewhat by whatever was in his IV,) and a terrifying nightmare, knowing that he was tied so closely with two more people in this world. They could essentially make his life sunshine and roses, or make it go to utter shit at the drop of a hat.
“Breathe,” someone reminded him, loosening the fingers of his unbroken hand from where they were clutching bed sheets.
He opened his eyes, and stared up at Coulson dumbly. Natasha appeared by his side, peering down at him with an expressionless face.
They were so closed off to the world. Never wanted to show what they were thinking. But he could feel it. Their relief. It was almost tangible.
And that set his heart racing.
His mouth curled into a smile, and he didn’t bother to hide it.
..
He didn’t tell them his secret then.
..
He did tell them after Bangladesh.
After Natasha was captured during what should have been a simple surveillance op. He and Coulson had raced across the city as quickly as possible, but she was miles away from the warehouse by then. And not knowing what else to do, Clint had flung his senses wide, searching for her.
Then he had taken off, not listening to any of Coulson’s questions as he followed the thin ribbon that connected him to Natasha. He could feel her frustration, and it angered him. Then, as he was beginning to near, he felt her spike of actual fear, and he poured speed on to his attack.
Fortunately, Coulson kept up.
They landed in the new warehouse and shook its defenses to its core with a swiftness that Clint could barely even believe. Then they got Natasha untied and got her out of there.
Four hours away, in a stolen vehicle, Clint explained his gift.
..
Clint had always been different. He didn’t like being alone as a kid. And not in the normal way of getting lonely or bored. Clint didn’t like being alone because the lack of emotions filtering through him was unnerving.
His father felt sturdy and sure. He was strong, and he felt big feelings of ambition, and protection, and courage. Clint never felt his father’s fear except for the split second before that other car hit theirs.
His mother was soft and warm. She loved so thoroughly that he always forgot about the kids from school when he came home. She wrapped him in her arms and just the nearness of her presence was enough to make everything okay. She was sunlight and warmth in the winter. And she never saw the other car coming.
Barney wasn’t in the car that day. They had been driving to pick him up from a friend’s house. Even at seven, Clint could recognize the harsh tones of guilt that resonated in Barney’s soul. It didn’t matter that Clint told him it wasn’t his fault. In fact, it made it worse, because Barney thought if his baby brother had connected the dots, then it must be true.
Clint wasn’t his mother. He didn’t know how to fix that feeling. But he tried to radiate love towards his brother every chance he got.
It didn’t work.
It was three weeks after the accident when he realized Barney didn’t sense people like Clint could. He didn’t understand when Clint tried to explain. He got frustrated when Clint kept trying. Eventually, Clint stopped. And once he began to pay attention to everyone around him, he realized finally that no one else seemed to feel the things he felt either. No one else hurt as if their heart was being squeezed every time Mary Nelson walked into the room in his second grade classroom, tugging on her long sleeves. No one else shied away from the one janitor’s touch when his heart rate went up and his pupils grew wider, stopping a student to talk for a moment. No one felt the things he felt.
And it was too much. All too much. There were terrifying feelings in this world. The other foster kids in their home had dark thoughts, and their hearts weighed heavily in them. It was hard to spend time around the other kids because it was like any chance of hope was being decimated slowly but systematically.
Clint wanted to cling to Barney during this time, the first two years after the accident. And Barney tried for a while to be what he needed, even when he clearly didn’t understand why Clint acted the way he did around certain people. But it wasn’t enough. Barney couldn’t always be there when an adult felt something too complex and horrible, or when a child’s heart was breaking.
Sometimes he would find Clint later, huddled under his bed, clutching a pillow with tear-stained eyes.
The foster parents thought it was something wrong with him because of the accident. PTSD, they said. Brain injury, some of the other kids whispered among themselves. It didn’t matter what they called it, because it hurt every time someone realized something was wrong with him. Every time someone thought he was broken.
..
The circus was better. There was less pity. Everyone came from somewhere, and nobody really wanted to hear the story of the two Barton brothers. All that mattered was that they were here now.
Clint let himself sink into the comfort of finding a family again. He was drawn immediately to the gypsy woman, when he felt her softness. She pretended to be a harsh woman, rough around the edges, but she took a single look at his face, and he could feel her hackles lower automatically.
Then he began looking for a father figure as well, though he wouldn’t realize he had gone actively searching until years later. He found the Swordsman. Because the man was immovably steady. He could sense some of the darkness even then when he first began to follow the man, but it wasn’t enough to stop him.
..
Even with Barney, he had never been able to send something through the link, but only to receive. He had wondered, as a young adult, what it would be like to know someone else could feel him like he felt them. But he locked the thought away, realizing it was a pointless dream.
He was alone in this.
..
So after the hell that was Loki’s attack on the Hellicarrier, and after his mental reboot, Natasha didn’t say anything. Because she knew he would realize on his own.
Except he didn’t. Because it didn’t even cross his mind to check for Coulson.
..
It was after everything, when they were eating shwarma of all things... And it was Tony who actually told him too, though not on purpose (because this was Tony Stark).
Tony raised his cup of soda, clearing his throat for a brief moment, as the rest of the team—and god, they were a team now!—paused their eating long enough to look up.
“Um, I feel like we should probably drink to the man who saved all of our asses in getting us to this point. I never thought a few years ago that we would ever actually need a group of people—and gods, sorry Thor—to save our planet from aliens, but...”
Clint had to huff slightly in amused agreement. But no one else was smiling. And the table suddenly felt heavy with thick emotions. Natasha looked at him, something off in her eyes, in the way she felt.
“Anyway,” Tony continued, “words won’t really do him justice, but...to Agent Coulson, for putting up with our shit long enough to get us together, and for giving his life to make sure we had time to get the job done. He was—”
For giving his life...
It nearly knocked him over to realize why the sympathy Natasha had been trying to radiate at him was so thick. Why she could hardly meet his eye without descending into the depths of a sadness he didn’t want to view.
She thought—
They all thought...
He felt nauseous. Natasha clenched his bicep when he laid his head on the table, arms coming up to cover his head. He slowed his breathing, though his heart wanted to race out of his chest. He closed his eyes, and he threw his senses out as far as he possibly could, needing to find some hint of Coulson.
In some distant part of his brain, he could hear the rest of the team asking if he was all right. Could feel Natasha clutching his arm desperately, willing him to come back because she already knew he would find nothing.
He ignored the team.
He stretched through the destruction, wincing away from those who were mourning lost ones, piggybacking for brief moments on those who were being reunited with family and friends in order to build his strength to reach farther. To stretch harder.
He strained against the pull of his body, shoving farther and farther from his physical location to grasp for the Hellicarrier. At first, he could barely touch it. But with a forceful jolt he could feel all the way back to his physical toes, he threw himself inside and began searching.
Medical was teaming with movement and rushed emotions and an undercurrent of hurry-move-assess-fix that was impossible to ignore. It took him a long time to find it. And not surprisingly, that was where the biggest flurry of action was happening. But he felt Fury in the room, and a quick inspection revealed that Fury was healthy, was fine, was worried. Downright tense.
He waited, wondering what it meant. The doctors were almost frantic with movement.
Then something popped, like the popping of your ears when your plane takes off the ground. Except it went deeper than any physical reaction. Something exploded into being. He recognized it immediately. It stuttered for a moment, and Clint clutched at it—at Coulson—refusing to let go for any cause. He held the man close, trying to calm the now-racing heart. He stayed there for a long moment, clinging to the man, willing his heart to keep beating.
Then, with one hand metaphorically still clutching the man, he made his way slowly back to the shwarma restaurant, careful not to lose track of Coulson as he made his way back across the sea of destruction and loss and reunited hearts, back to the Avengers team.
He sat up with a deep groan, shaking his head. Everyone was talking at once, all at him, but he grabbed Natasha’s arm and managed to bite out, “Hellicarrier...alive,” before he passed out.
..
Someone was trying to drag him away. But it was warm, and strong, and soft, and perfect. So he wiggled closer to it, ignoring the touch invading his senses.
..
Clint woke three days later. The doctors told him he had passed out from exhaustion and dehydration. They couldn’t explain why he had stayed unconscious for over seventy-two hours. They didn’t need to though, at least not to him. He felt rather like his soul had been swimming in Coulson’s. He still felt connected so thoroughly that it seemed the man was right beside him.
He wasn’t.
Fury was still pretending that Coulson was dead. And while the rest of the Avengers hadn’t understood what Clint had said before he passed out, Natasha understood. She waited until they were alone to confront him. And he told her the truth, because how could he not?
..
He didn’t tell the rest of the Avengers then.
..
He did tell them about a year after Loki, and after that first alien invasion. (And since when did his life consist of alien invasions as a weekly thing!?) He told the team after another routine-gone-FUBAR mission that should have been a walk in the park, but was actually in his list of “top five worst missions ever.”
At first they didn’t really get it. Tony tried to avoid him for a while, apparently nervous that his angst would drip all over Clint. And Steve got this worried face whenever he realized he had started thinking about his past, mourning the life he had lost. Thor kept trying to cheer him up, even when he wasn’t upset at all.
It was actually Bruce who had sat the rest of the team down (minus Clint, but he knew about the meeting because Natasha had told him later) and lectured them on how to act like normal human beings again. From there it got better. And soon enough, he was connected to the whole team as closely as family.
When he woke from a nightmare, or when he was bored and tracing lines across the roof, he could scan the Avengers Tower and find each of them, doing whatever it was they did when normal people should have been asleep.
..
As Coulson healed over the next few weeks, and as he gained strength the following two months, Clint updated Natasha on his progress, letting her know what he had gathered from his presence several floors away from them in the new HQ, where Fury thought he had hidden Coulson from anyone’s view.
When Coulson made his reappearance, much to the shock of the rest of the Avengers—though they were all relieved to see him, in varying degrees—Clint couldn’t really make himself look surprised, so he didn’t really try. And Coulson just tipped a smile in his direction, radiating a relief that Clint hadn’t been worried he was dead.
..
Later, Coulson would ask if Clint had been there the final time he coded in the medical bay, before the doctors managed to get his heart pumping steadily again. Coulson would admit he had vague memories of Clint being near as the doctors were swarming around him frantically.
Clint would smile.
He would reach out, stretching to pull the other man close. And Coulson would feel it. The older man’s eyes would widen in surprise and something softer, before he would cross the room to pull Clint up against him, pushing their mouths together in a needy press.
And Clint would finally learn that he wasn’t alone.