Chapter Text
There had once been a point in time when things hadn’t been so bleak, when he could actually look forward to things or at least pretend that things were alright. They never really had been alright. Harold made damn sure of that when he was young, making it well known that the family would have been better off without a mistaken bastard -- even though he was Harold’s son, his mother never would have cheated like that -- He tried not to think too much about anything, because usually it always rounded back to the same thought that had stuck with him after the time that he had been literally tossed across the small living room of their falling apart house when he was a little more than five.
Thus the thought had solidified during the younger years of his childhood, in every waking moment since the time that he turned eleven especially. Something about being knocked around daily for seven or so years had that effect.
When the thought had first moved to the front of his mind he quickly shoved it aside, chalking it up to his shitty situation at home and later in the circus. He once tried to talk to his mother about the feeling, but she quickly fell into tears and Clint realized that he never should have said anything and by the time that Barney had dragged them in the circus the young blonde kept his mouth shut about the feeling and gritted his teeth through most anything that came his way. He never had a clear idea of when the thought had stuck in his head.
Part of him said it was a split between the time Harold had sent him to the hospital after being tossed down the stairs when he was ten and the time he was almost killed after his fourteenth birthday. He had known that he and Marcus would get caught, but at the time he didn’t care and Marcus was so so good at getting him off and Marcus was one of the few good things he had and like hell was he going to give that up. Although Marcus refused to speak to him afterward, Clint had taken most of the beating that night after Marcus tossed him under the bus so really it was the young archer that should have been pissed, but he hadn’t been.
Nothing ever truly became bad enough for him to want to follow through on the thought that cycled through his head a near daily basis. Even though he was quite literally living in his own personal hell. He was never paid enough; if at all, for the shows he trained for, beaten for fucking something up, barely ever had enough sleep to function fully, and hardly enough food to keep him healthy enough to get through everything he kept pushing himself through. He didn’t really have an option when it came down to it. He tried to get better at avoiding mistakes, get better at stealing food off the street and money from the audiences that came to see them perform. Odd that these people didn’t know the hell all the performers went through for their entertainment at the end of the day.
It wasn’t even bad enough when he whored himself out for a little extra money when Carson cut back on what little he paid everyone after one truly bad turn out in some town in Wisconsin. Sure he was only sixteen, but the scars littering his body had hurt a whole lot more than unsatisfying sex he was paid to have. It was luck that kept him from ending up with some infection or disease. There were a few times that he probably should have gone to the police but he kicked and punched his way out and never did. Hell they would probably stick him in juvenile hall for being a prostitute. Maybe one day his actions would get him killed, at least then no one could say he had offed himself.
For as much as he hated himself and a lot of the things he did he knew deep down he didn’t really want to die, even if the thought still stuck with him into his twenties when his life was just starting to turn around, but if something else happened to get him killed he wasn’t going to complain to whatever ended up being on the other side to greet him. He finally had a somewhat stable place to live, a small apartment with barely anything in it but honestly he spent more time out of state and out of country that it didn’t seem to matter. SHIELD was possibly the best thing he could have joined even though initially they wanted him dead for being a contract killer.
However the shrink SHIELD made him see after his psych test came back a little less than favorable had a hard time even attempting to analyze him. He had spent years perfecting a mask to block out those he didn’t want knowing his personal business, but if he was being honest with himself he could have aced the psych test and been left alone… Maybe he did want help. That was impossible. At every question thrown his way by the shrink he would give a vague answer and roll his eyes annoyed at the game that was being played. These people didn’t actually care enough to want to help him, he had gotten this far and was still up and alive so he had to be fine. Right? He always shoved down the idea that he was actually fractured if not broken, though he constantly felt that way. He was fine, he was fine… He had to be fine.
Clint went weeks convincing himself that he was fine and he was okay, though that was shattered the day his shrink stopped by his apartment for a more private session. No cameras, no reports to SHIELD, and started asking harder questions that struck at nerves he had all but thought were destroyed. Though he gave her the same treatment as before only she wasn’t having it and it wasn’t working the way it used to. She had informed his superiors that he had slept with at least half of the new recruits he trained with; for money. He had never asked for the money, they gave it to him once they got off. He only shrugged it off and accepted because if they were going to give him money who was he to say no. He had done a whole helluva lot worse in the past.
She also pointed out how he “let himself get shot” in the field. He hadn’t really let it happen, it was a surprise, although more a surprise at the pain of the bullet tearing through his arm more so than actually seeing it happen. Though in retrospect he probably could have avoided it.
Bullets always hurt he came to realize.
Eventually the shrink gave up that day and left him annoyed and pissed off in his apartment. Alone. Though she had told him to keep away from any and all sexual activities with coworkers. That was going to be more of a disappointment to the three agents that came by frequently. He really did want this job, had a constant place to sleep and food usually provided so the paychecks sort of just kept adding up in his bank account. He never really bought much when weapons were provided. Yeah clothes and some furniture but that was basically the extent unless he wanted to get drunk, then some money went to liquor.
Giving up his sexual endeavors however did let him start to get close to his handler, one of the few people in all of SHIELD that actually gave a shit about him. This was also shortly after that he was done being forced to see the shrink. Apparently she had “had it” with him and signed off on his report claiming he was fine and ready for the field again. What she failed to realize was that the thought was still in his head, though it was there a little less now that things had leveled out and some of self destructive tendencies had been ironed out of him. It was still there nonetheless.
Back to the handler.
Clint had started to get closer to the older man, at first it was just normal work things and trainings, missions and private meetings about filling out mission reports. Truth be told Clint never looked at the reports, most of it made no sense and he hadn’t been to school since he was twelve, so while he was taught to read and write it hadn’t stuck. He could sign his name though, which was all that ever had seemed important. No one seemed to notice his inability to fully read and no one ever asked him to actually write anything and his Handler always seemed more keen on filling out the reports anyway so it was fine.
Therefore Phil didn’t seem to know that. Almost every test SHIELD had had been a verbal test or physical and Clint lied about reading anything, simply signed his name and fell into some semblance of normal. Which was nice, the thought left him alone for a while and he was getting more missions to keep himself busy.
Somewhere along the line Clint had fallen into Phil’s arms willingly. The older man seemed genuine when it came to Clint’s safety and health. It was all a little surreal and he felt like he didn’t deserve such a man. Any time he came back injured yeah he would be chided but at the same time gentle hands patched him up better than any medic tech, which lead to Clint skipping out on medical more and more frequently. Any of his nightmares were always soothed away by a half awake man in his thirties, helping the archer come back to himself, come back to the present. Phil was quite possibly the best thing to have ever happened to Clint. Which ultimately meant he had to ruin it somehow.
Trusting Phil Coulson with everything that he was was his breaking point and a tipping point in his life.
There was one night a few weeks after Clint had turned twenty three; Phil half a year into being thirty one, that they were lying in bed. Somewhere in that state of half asleep and half awake, Clint comfortably curled into Phil’s side as he tried to his mind to stop spinning in a destructive cycle. “...Kinda wanna die..” He said almost inaudibly, or at least low enough that his hearing aids hardly picked up the sound of his own voice.
The man who had been running his fingers through Clint’s hair tensed and the hand pulled away, Phil having moved away slightly to actually see the younger man’s face in the dark of the room. The archer immediately took note of the worry and panic that had already taken hold in pale green gray eyes. Clint didn’t like it, didn’t like the thought that Phil might now somehow pity him for this revelation. The look didn’t suit his Handler’s face, he was always so composed save for secret looks they shared. “Excuse me?”
The archer made a face and shrugged, looking away from those concerned eyes and rolled over so that maybe the look wouldn’t hurt as much. This was the first time in thirteen years he had ever voiced the thought in his head and now it was bound to ruin everything. “Nothin’, sir.” He should have kept his mouth shut.
“That is most certainly something, Clint.” He hated the sound of panic and concern lacing Phil’s voice, it probably matched the slight fear he had seen before he had rolled over. He hated more that he had put those feelings there, Phil didn’t deserve to worry about him in this manner. And to think that he thought he was getting better.
Besides he was never going to do anything about the thought so it wasn’t like it was that big of a deal. A sigh escaped the younger man as he felt the bed shift when Phil sat up to look at him better from the new position, though Clint just stared at the wall across the room because that seemed less judgmental. In retrospect he should have known that would be thing to cause his hand to panic and it would put into perspective all the stupid shit he did in the field, would be a very clear connection of his carelessness and recklessness.
Phil made an irritated sound and pushed lightly at Clint’s shoulder. “You don’t tell me you want to die and then try to pass it off as though you said nothing as you roll over.”
Clint sighed again, a little more annoyed and glared at the wall. “I’m not gonna do anything about it.” he muttered tiredly, already missing the soothing feeling of fingers running through his hair and the light touches along his side.
His statement didn’t seem to make Phil feel any better as the older man grabbed his shoulder and forced him to lie on his back and looked down at him, the concern still most definitely in his eyes. “Clinton, what’s wrong to cause you to feel that way?” His voice sounded genuine in wanting to know and that only provided to make Clint want to build his walls back up very quickly and close Phil out.
Only he’s shared too much with this man, trusted him with things he has never told anyone else before. There was no way out of this that didn’t hurt one of them and while he could take it he didn’t want to hurt the man looking down at him. A million questions in his eyes, but enough knowledge to know not to push. Pushing only ever drove Clint into a corner that made him shut down and Phil had first handedly had seen a few of his mental breakdowns.
“Nothin’s wrong.” Clint turned his head away from green gray eyes, “It’s just a thought that’s been around for a while.”
“Just a thought?” Phil echoed, which seemed to drag a knife through Clint’s heart. “Clint-”
“Can we drop it? I’ll never do anything about it, but if I happen to die it wouldn’t be so bad I guess.” He said quickly, voicing the rest of the thought without thinking. He was good at that, not thinking before he spoke or did anything and usually that always turned out not in his favor and someone typically got hurt. Sometimes it was him but usually it was the people around him that ended up hurt because he was too stupid to think first.
“Wouldn’t be so bad? Barton, do you have any idea how incredibly important you are? How devastated I would be if something like that were to happen? Hell it’s part of my job to keep you from getting killed in the field and you’re telling me you want to die?”
Clint didn’t meet his eyes as he watched the wall on the far side of the bedroom. “I’m not questioning my value and when I start to think about it I know that I don’t fully want to, but if it happened I wouldn’t try to stop it, I dunno.” He turned his head to look up at Phil. “To be fair I’ve tried a little harder to stay alive out there. Since we started whatever it is that we are.”
Phil still looked a little distressed at the thought of Clint dying. “How long have you thought this?”
“Thirteen years give or take, not really sure on that.”
He ended up back in therapy although this time not through SHIELD. Ultimately he felt betrayed at this. He thought he was done seeing people who wanted inside his head under the pretense of being “helpful”. How or why, rather, was it so hard for people to understand that this was normal to him. Thirteen, almost fourteen years of it and he was still up and about and breathing. Nothing they did was going to make him any better.
Needless to say this doctor gave up on him as well, telling Phil that he was fine and not an inherent threat to himself or the people around him. His handler begged to differ. Surprisingly their relationship lasted another few years with little problems and the two of them actually found themselves happy despite there being that underlying issues between them. But of course nothing good can last too much longer in Clint’s life.
Half a year into being twenty-five they had run a particularly rough mission that saw to Clint falling a few stories through a glass roof into a pool. Queue several weeks in the hospital with a number of broken bones and healing time from a few surgeries, in the future he knows exactly which scars state the break in what he had with Phil.
They fought, not much to Clint’s surprise, and it didn’t end well. Phil made it clear that whatever they had was severed the second Clint had jumped rather than calling for back up. Though Clint held the point of that if he hadn’t their target would have gotten away and in the long run more damage would have been caused. Phil had only glared and listed off all the ways the mission could have ended and pointedly made note that if Clint didn’t have a death wish it would have gone any number of those ways instead of them arguing in a hospital room. Kicker being that the door was open and later after Phil had left the nurse pitied him which felt worse than his Handler walking out on him. Truth be told by the end of it the archer was only tired and more concerned about the redhead he had saved instead of killed. SHIELD was going to have a field day with that report.
His actions however had caused him to ruin and lose the first loving relationship he had ever had, but maybe it was for the better. With hil at a distance maybe he wouldn’t be so worried all the time about Clint “accidently” getting himself killed during missions. Although he was too good at his job to actually get killed, a small part of him knew that he would rather be alive.
Turns out the Russian he had saved, SHIELD then captured, wouldn’t stop bugging him the rest of the time they were both in the hospital. She wasn’t much older than Clint, maybe a year or so, at least looked that way. Apparently she had some variant of some super soldier serum that SHIELD was keeping hidden. She would spend hours in his hospital room just for the company probably since she hardly spoke the first week or so she sat with him.
“Why did you not kill me.” She hadn’t really phrased it like a question, but Clint was figuring that was just how she spoke. Very to the point. Though that could also just be her accent. “That had been your objective.”
Clint shrugged, sitting up a little more in the stiff hospital bed. “Saw someone who deserved a second chance.”
“You do not know me.” Bright green eyes turned to him then and the archer refused to look away, even though the gaze could have very well burned a hole in his skull.
“Want me to lie and say I thought you were pretty?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly and she remained silent for the rest of the day, watching the nurses that came in to change out Clint’s IV and healing insussions.
He had no clear idea of when they had started flirting, or when they started to share the same bed after nightmares would plague them at the morning hours. He would walk for hours across town to the small apartment SHIELD had set up for her and climb in through her window when he couldn’t sleep and after a few weeks she had started to do the same thing. He liked it though, they worked well together as a team and they had this odd assassin bond that he hadn’t had with other coworkers and she gave him the comfort he had never really had with Phil. She read him better than anyone ever had and she didn’t seem to care that he was a mess, because he had quickly found out that she was just as much of a mess. Just better at masking it. He somewhat envied her for that ability.
There were no questions about his mindset or feelings or thoughts, she seemingly just knew and would work with him through it once she had a good handle on how he was. It scared some of the other agents how much time they spent together. They trained together, ate together, spent down time together and went on missions solely with each other. They had become incredibly in sync with one another and no one really seemed able to keep up. With Phil as their Handler the three created an unstoppable force in the field, Strike Team Delta. And despite the discord between Clint and Phil at times Natasha seemed to balance the two, eventually calling them both idiots for still harboring hurt feelings over their break up years ago now. They worked things out officially and their team set up worked even more smoothly than before.
It was late one night, they were at her apartment watching some bad movie over pizza and a few drinks of their choice. Clint had his head on her shoulder as she scratched lightly at his scalp when the thought pushed itself to the front of his mind for the first time in several years. It had gone away more with her being around and it didn’t make any sense for it to come back now, his life was honestly going great. With Natasha he felt safe, because she was safe, he could actually talk to her without the slight fear that he would end back up in therapy. They worked so well together and he knew he was very much falling in love with the Russian.
The scratching turned into smooth finger pads moving through his hair as if she could sense he was distracted by his own thoughts, which she read him like a book most of the time so it wouldn’t surprise him if she already had an idea of where his head was at. Credits started rolling on the screen and Clint blindly watched the blur of white along the black screen. “Clint?”
“Have you ever felt like you wanted to die?” He asked before he could get swallowed back up by his thoughts, heart now beating too fast for his liking. He was so terrified she was going to leave the same way Phil had even though he knew she wouldn’t.
There was a thoughtful hum as she continued to run her fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at the nape of his neck when he had gotten a little too tense. “I have.” She felt him sag a bit into her side. “Nothing has ever been bad off enough to follow the thought though. There have been good things that make it worth being here for.”
In some weird, probably sick sense, he was glad that he wasn’t the only one that thought this way. “But if somethin’ were ta happen to kill you, you’d be okay with it?”
“How long have you passively been wanting to die?” Natasha turned the tables on him, looking to Clint as he sat up a bit, clearly not having expected that question. She read in his eyes how he wanted to shut the conversation down now. “I will know if you are lying, remember that.”
“Seventeen years, since I was ten.”
Natasha watched him for a moment, it always had a way of weirding him out the way it felt like she was looking through him as she made a point to read his body language and facial expressions. She was the first to ever actually make him feel vulnerable. “So why not do it?”
While the question sounded innocent enough out of context it took the archer by surprise as they were having a serious conversation about suicide and not one about possibly getting a dog. The whole situation made Clint uncomfortable and figuring that Natasha knew that she wasn’t going to let him squirm his way out or shut her out.
Clint looked away from bright green eyes, brow furrowed slightly. “My situation would always change at some point or another an’ there was always the thought that it might get better too..”
Natasha sighed softly and used two fingers to lightly turn Clint’s head to face her, that same hand moving to cup the side of his face. “Clint, you’re twenty-seven years old and you’re still here. You have a job that some would honestly kill to have for what you make and you work in the shadows they way you want to. You have a boss that goes easy on you because he cares and you both used to fuck. And you have a girlfriend who understands you far better than anyone you’re sad ass has ever come across. I understand the thought, but don’t let it consume you.”
A crooked looking grin spread across his face as he leaned into her hand and met her eyes. “Called yourself my girlfriend.”
“Of course that’s all you would hear.” Natasha laughed lightly and rolled her eyes. “I’m your best friend first, remember that, you can’t hide anything from me anyway.”
“You said you were my girlfriend.”
“You’re a mess, Barton.”
Clint only grinned more and kissed her, happiness actually making itself known. Which after so long of not being sure what it was felt incredibly nice.
Natasha kissed him back, running her fingers through already messy hair. Not minding when he moved them both to lie back on the couch, not while calloused hands drew random patterns along her sides under her shirt.
Before the make out session could get too heavy she pushed at his shoulder some so he would lean up and look down at her. Blue gray eyes hazy with affection rather than troubled thoughts. It was a good look for the archer. “How about this though, if one of us dies in action the other follows. Think that would keep that thought away from both of us?”
He didn’t like the amount distance he had put between them when she pushed him up and nuzzled into her neck as he thought, still tracing random patterns along her side. Though he became a little distracted by the way her hand had pushed his own shirt up and followed similar patterns along his back. “I think it would.”
“We live for each other and no one has to know about our pact.”
“Agreed.”
Natasha smiled softly against his temple as he mouthed along her neck to try and pick up where they left off. He knew he was the only one that ever saw any of her real smiles and it warmed his heart in a manner he didn’t understand, emotions were never his strong suit. Granted the thought was still in his head, and he knew it was hers, but it was their secret and they had each other. No one knew that they were broken individuals when the worked seamlessly as a team.
“Now no more death talk.” She prompted, leaning her head to the side some and one hand threading into his hair again.
“No more death talk.” He promised.
He could live for her. He could and he would.