Work Text:
Bruce woke up to the feel of a leather-clad hand clamped tightly over his mouth. His nose was free, and he breathed in the choking smell of blood and smoke and sweat. Awareness returned to the rest of his body slowly, as it often did after an unexpected transformation, and he found himself lying down in something narrow and metallic, with another body pressed over him. He assumed the hand belonged to the same body, but he was too disoriented to be sure. Opening his eyes didn’t help at all. It was pitch black.
“Bruce?” Lips against his ears moved in the shape of his name so he felt the sound more than he heard it.
It was Clint.
His lips moved again. “Awake?” Bruce nodded against the hand over his mouth, but it didn’t move. “Com is dead. Be silent. Ok?”
Bruce nodded again and the hand came away. It was easier to breathe without the smell of battle in his face, but the loss of physical contact was sudden and left Bruce feeling a bit like he was leaning over an edge with no guardrail. But Clint shifted around very slowly, distributing his weight as evenly as possible so he didn’t buckle whatever flimsy aluminum sheeting they were lying on, until he had Bruce’s back pressed up against his chest and the back of his thighs against his knees. The position was much more comfortable, and it seemed as though they were going to be stuck there for a while since Hawkeye was settling in for a wait. In the darkness, he couldn’t see even a faint outline of Clint’s face, and if his com was dead, it meant his hearing aids were probably fried, too, so he couldn’t hear Bruce whisper.
So, Bruce grabbed the hand that was wrapped around his chest and cupped it around his own right hand.
“W-H-E-R-E,” Bruce signed each letter into Clint’s hand.
The hand stiffened at first, but then began to curiously shift around until he found a good position to feel the shapes Bruce was making. When he got what Bruce was asking, he turned Bruce’s hand over and spelled back.
“V-E-N-T.”
Bruce drew a question mark on Clint’s palm.
“K-E-E-P S-A-F-E” Clint spelled and then tapped Bruce’s chest.
So the fight wasn’t over yet.
He didn’t need to ask the next question. Clint was already signing into his hand.
“M-A-Y-B-E 1 H-O-U-R.”
Maybe more, Bruce mused. It wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact he was trapped in a black hole of an air duct with his deaf teammate. And, he questioned, why would Cap leave them behind with no coms? A sudden dread washed over Bruce.
“H-U-R-T?” Bruce asked. He couldn’t reach behind to assess Clint’s condition, but the archer could have very well positioned them that way on purpose.
Clint shook his head negatively against Bruce’s back, his forehead pressed in the hollow between his shoulder blades. “S-L-E-E-P” he signed.
It was tempting, especially with those thickly cabled arms wrapped around him, and even Clint’s hip turned a little so that one of his legs lay on top of both of Bruce’s. They were as still as they could be, because any unnecessary movement reverberated on the thin metal, and who knew who was below them. But, the utter darkness transformed the claustrophobic space so that it seemed both smaller and much larger than it was. The experience was entirely surreal. Except for where he was in physical contact with Clint, it was nearly impossible to know where he was even though he knew he was fractions of an inch away. So, the archer had pressed himself along Bruce’s entire length, and the scientist wondered who it was meant to comfort.
Still, there was no way that Bruce was going to fall asleep and leave Clint deaf and blind in the dark.
“Y-O-U S-L-E-E-P. I-L-L L-I-S-T-E-N.”
Clint shook his head again against Bruce’s back, but he seemed to breathe easier.
They both lay awake in the darkness, trying not to breathe too loudly in the echoing tunnel. Once, a fan kicked on, drafting fresh but chill air across their bodies on the way out to the exhaust, and Bruce was reminded he was wearing nothing but thin shorts. Clint pressed closer and folded his arms across Bruce’s chest to shield him from the breeze. He wasn’t wearing sleeves, so his skin was just as goose-bumped, but they warmed each other up.
The pitch black that surrounded them was so dark that it almost didn’t seem real. Bruce blinked a few times, and couldn’t quite decide whether or not to close his eyes. He kept them open to make sure he would stay awake, but staring into the nothingness brought back uneasy memories of hiding under beds and in closets as a child, and of Ross’s experiments later. Or, no, he corrected himself. It hadn’t been Ross that last time in Paris, when he woke up on the bank of the Seine with temporary amnesia and that woman hyped him up on LSD and threw him in a sensory deprivation chamber. He winced at the memory. It hadn’t worked out so well for her in the end.
Bruce was surprised to find that his palms were damp, and he could feel cold sweat trail down the back of his neck. It had taken such a long time to end.
Long minutes passed before Clint took Bruce’s hand again and began asking questions.
“U S-I-G-N?”
Bruce shrugged a little so that Clint could feel it. “A-B-C-S.”
Clint smiled. Bruce could feel it against the bare skin of his shoulder.
“U D-O-N-T S-I-G-N T-O M-E,” Clint said.
Bruce stilled even more, his breath freezing in his chest for a moment. It was true. He didn’t even try to learn because Clint seemed to adapt so well on his own. It seemed like he didn’t need the help, or maybe that he didn’t want to acknowledge that his condition even existed. Bruce’s throat suddenly felt tight, and he wanted to swallow around it, but he was afraid it would be too loud.
Suddenly, the door to the room below them creaked open, and a couple sets of heavy footprints thudded across the floor. The boots were thick enough to be Cap, but the stride was far too short. Bruce grabbed Clint’s hand and squeezed, and he could feel every muscle in the archer’s body tense. The boot steps circled the room below and systematically checked it, but they never sounded interested in the ceiling. Bruce concentrated on keeping his body language relaxed, knowing that Clint was waiting for some kind of nonverbal signal if they had to move. But the door creaked again as the boots stomped their way back out the way they came.
After Bruce was certain that they were gone, he grabbed Clint’s hand again.
“S-H-Y,” he signed.
He felt a light puff of breath on his skin that might have been a sigh.
“D-U-M-B,” he got in return. But there was no mistaking the wide grin pressed into Bruce’s shoulder where no one could see.