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Clint really shouldn’t have been exploring the vents. He should have just taken his free time and spent it playing Mario Kart. But since Tony had expanded the air conditioning to other parts of the Tower, he literally couldn’t help himself. After it was all in place, he’d lasted an agonizing two hours before bolting off to crawl into the nearest vent.
It was going well until he got stuck. For some reason there was a drop off before the air actually went into the room. He was military crawling off where he thought was an empty but actually turned out to be Marc’s room. All he wanted to do was look for a minute and not be a creep but he had to get stuck. He had leaned down the shute too far and couldn’t put himself back up. No normal person got stuck inside the vents.
No one who was an Avenger was a normal person however, so here he was in the vents above Marc’s room, forced to watch him play with baby toys. There was a medium sized mirror leaning up against the bed in front of him. He wrinkled his nose as Marc knocked all his little dinosaurs over into a pile and started lining them up again. Why was he still doing that, he’d done it like 4 times!
Apparently this time was acceptable and Marc sat back, bringing his knees up to his chest and just looking at the dash of plastic dinosaurs. He looked up at the mirror and smiled. Unbeknownst to Clint, Steven was in the mirror’s reflection.
“Do you like the toys I got you?” Steven smiled over his knees.
Marc nodded, not verbally responding, too busy chewing his fingernails.
“I’m glad you like them. I saw them in a toy shop and just thought Uh! Marc’s gotta have these.” He made a dramatic movement with his hands. Marc giggled around his fingernails. Once he had quieted down, he reached to the bottom drawer of the nightstand and pulled out a coloring book and a pack of crayons as well. He cautiously looked towards Steven, like he was asking for permission.
Steven chewed on his bottom lip, not knowing how to answer the unspoken question.
“Marc…You don’t have to ask for any sort of permission” Steven started carefully. “I know our mum wasn’t very nice but she’s not here anymore. You can’t play with whatever toy you want, okay? Especially since that’s why I bought them, for you to play with.”
Marc fidgeted and looked away at the mention of his mom but he still spread out across the floor and flipped the coloring book pages until he found one he liked.
“Thanks.” he whispered, so quiet Steven almost didn’t catch it. He smiled like a proud dad. It felt like his chest would explode from how cute Marc was. They had all been adjusting to life after the big ol’ Ammit fight incredibly well.
Jake, surprisingly, was having the most trouble. He still wasn’t very used to going from fronting for five minutes every couple weeks to having every third day his. And he was very much against this ‘sharing is caring feelings bullshit’ as he bluntly put it. Steven himself was adjusting to having much less time in control but overall it was going well.
It was going fine for a couple minutes, Marc coloring in his dragon and slowly kicking his legs back and forth up in the air and Steven coloring in his own page until he heard a weird noise from above him. He looked up at the white ceiling but didn’t see anything.
There it was again, a weird shuffling.
“Marc, do you hear that?” Steven asked, worrying his tongue slightly with his molars. There was no response.
He looked back down at where Marc should be. Marc was too busy reaching all the way under their bed, butt in the air. He was trying to get a bag of candy, hard, strawberry flavored ones. He and Jake stored back, here just in case. It's not like Tony would ever run out of food but you never know. Big him kept food under the bed for emergencies but not having candy since last week counted as an emergency.
“Marc!” He finally grabbed it just as Steven yelled his name again. The loud noise startled him, making him jump up and bash his head against the bottom of the bed. He immediately grabbed the back of his head and let out a small yelp of pain.
“Owwww.” He whined as he rubbed the back of his head. It was pulsing to his heartbeat under his hair, he could feel it. He pulled himself out from under the bed, pouting and ready to be mad at Steven but he noticed how worried he looked before he could.
“Can’t you hear that? I think there’s something in the vent…”
Their eyes met, Steven’s gaze slightly anxious and Marc’s still a little mad. Marc looked up. There was nothing up there, nor any sound he could hear. He turned back to Steven to respond but before he could there was a creaking.
It sounded like something metal-like stretching beyond its limits. Marc quickly looked back up, his mouth open in a small gasp. The vent! It was moving! There was something in the vent.
He reached over to his nightstand while keeping an eye on the ceiling, to where Jake kept a baseball bat with nails hammered in to it. That wasn’t the only weapon that had been stashed around the room, it was just the only one Steven hadn’t thrown a fit about them keeping out in the open.
He would end up not needing it, as the vent could not support Clint anymore and broke off its screws, sending the spy crashing to the ground. He hit the ground hands first and lay there in a heap. Marc screamed a loud, shrill scream that wasn’t all him, as he pushed himself back with his feet and pointed the bat at Clint, who was groaning and slowly rolling around on the floor.
Clint continued to roll around on the ground, holding his wrist in gentle, protective hold. He coughed and sucked in deep lungfuls of air, trying to catch his breath.
“Clint, what the fuck.” He turned to see someone pointing a bat covered with nails (so cool he for sure needed one) at him. He sheepishly smiled, withdrawing from the sharp object.
“Hey…What’s up.. uh dude…” he nervously said, glancing at the bat.
“You tell me. What are you doing in the vent pendejo?” Jake tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, feeling especially dangerous in that moment. He didn’t really like Clint to begin with and this was just cementing the idea that he was a freakin’ weirdo. Spying on them, on Marc while he was like that. It was creep behavior.
“Okay I wasn’t spying on you on purpose!”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I got stuck.”
“How the fuck do you get stuck in a vent?” He lowered the bat slightly.
“Well, okay so there’s like a L in the vent before it goes to some rooms. I don’t know why maybe it helps with air flow or something but I went down and could pull myself back up.”
“S-” Before Jake could respond Clint blurted out.
“I didn’t even know this was your room, honestly I thought it was one of the not occupied rooms, the empty ones for new people.”
Jake glared harshly down at Clint for a moment more, looking like a rhino about to charge, before lowering the bat and leaning on it. He could feel Steven's frustrated presence trying to take over but he pushed him back.
“What did you see?” Clint immediately picked up on the out Jake was giving him.
“I don’t know what you're talking about man, I didn't see anything.” They both stared at each other, each knowing exactly what was being unsaid. Jake clearly saw something in Clint’s face because face relaxed and his shoulders unstiffened slightly.
“Good.” And with that Jake let Steven finally take over and front. Their eyes rolled back until just the white was showing and they started to fall backwards a bit before catching themselves. And just like that, there was Steven. He stared into space for a moment before seeing Clint and putting the bat down.
“Oh Hey Clint.”
“Hey.” There was an awkward pause.
By this point Clint was standing up, still holding his wrist. He looked down at his fingers and hand. It was red and hot to the touch. He tried opening and closing his hand but the pain was too severe. He winced and sucked a breath in.
“Ow fuck.” He bit the inside of his cheek.
“Sorry about Jake.” He said. Jake grumbled at him from the back of their mind, annoyed that Steven was apologizing for his totally reasonable behavior as a protector.
“He can be a bit much sometimes.” He awkwardly smiled and stepped forward, closer into Clint’s personal space. He held out his hand, silently asking permission to inspect. Clint granted it, allowing Steven to take his hand and examine it. He looked it over before pressing down lightly with his thumbs on the most swollen area, letting up when Clint winced again like he had before.
“Yea that’s broke real bad. You should get Bruce to take a looksie at it.”
“Cool. Whateves.” He flexed his hand once more. The adrenaline of falling out of the ceiling was starting to ebb away, leaving him feeling drained
…
“You guys really need to stop coming to me for medical aid.” Bruce said as he wrapped Clint’s hand in fiberglass. Clint was sitting on one of the beds in the makeshift Doctor part of the tower. It was just a couple rooms with tons of medical supplies sorted around half heartedly.
“Yeah but like” Clint drummed the air with his free hand and swallowed. He had chosen purple as his cast color.
“You’re a doctor. Times seven. You’re like Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor Bruce.” Bruce chuckled and adjusted Clint’s arm to better get the cast on there.
“First of all, I don't think they stack like that. Secondly, I don’t have any medical degrees so I don’t know why you airheads think I’m an actual doctor like that.”
“I thought you were a Doctor in India or something.” Steven remarked from the counter he was sitting on. He was rocking left to right and rummaging around in a drawer by his legs, pulling random objects one might use in a checkup.
“Yeah but, I don’t like have a doctorate in medical stuff. I just know how to do basic stuff. Like casts and splints ‘n stuff.”
“Oh.” A silence fell over the room, broken by the sounds of Steven still rooting through his drawer. His left hand had gravitated up to his mouth and he was nibbling on his first two fingers, feeling more Marc than Steven.
The quiet continued for a while longer as Bruce finished up Clint’s arm. He was still drumming a song only he heard and rocking his head slightly. When Bruce finally finished, he looked over the cast once more and deemed it good enough.
“Okay. It looks…decent. Um just keep in mind it won’t be completely dry for a couple hours, like two to three for don’t try to move your arm or anything and you should be set.” Clint stared at his arm like someone in a movie entering virtual reality for the first time. He grinned.
“Gee, thanks Doc.” Bruce simply glared at him for a second before continuing to clean up all the mess from the cast making process.
“That better not catch on.” When he was done dumping everything into the trash can by the door, he turned to Steven. Or not. Compared to the alert and energized Steven who had interrupted his meditation with Clint, this person had scooped his legs up to his chest and was quietly suck-chewing on his fingers. He was staring down at his legs, lightly tapping his fingers in a repetitive motion on the counter. Bruce was ninety percent sure he knew it was.
“Adam? Adam? Hey.” It took a moment for Marc to zone back in and notice someone was calling his ‘name’. He lifted his head to see Bruce smiling at him and Clint staring at him with a new brightly colored purple cast. When the hel-heck happened while he was out?
“Hey bud. What’s uh goin’ on?” Bruce was staring at him, waiting for an answer. Clint was staring at him as well. He was staring back at them, wide eyed and almost motionless.
“Nothin.” The word was muffled due to still having his fingers in his mouth. He looked down and jerked them out of his mouth, embarrassed to be caught acting like a baby.
“Yeah…great yeah so uh Clint this is Adam. Adam, Clint. He’s uh with the Avengers.” Bruce introduced.
Marc held up a thumb up, Clint noticed how lost he looked
“Hey dude. You wanna play Mario Kart while my cast dries?”
Marc immediately gasped and straightened up. He loved Mario Kart! It was a rare interest he and Steven shared outside of Layla. They had bought a switch specifically to play Mario Kart. He nodded energetically.
“Yeah that’s what I’m talking about, someone with taste in games! High five!” Clint grinned and held up his newly cast covered arm before quickly realizing and holding up the other arm. Marc high fived him, the nerves from accidentally regressing in front of a unfamiliar person gone. He hopped off the counter a moment after Clint slid off the exam table.
“Oh Bruce, you wanna play too?” Clint turned to the other man in the room, almost forgetting about him in his little celebration. Bruce had his arms crossed as he watched the both of them.
“I’ve never heard of it but sure what the hell.” Clint’s grin grew and he practically ran out of the room to go set up his Switch in the group living room. Marc went to dash after him but seemed to remember Bruce was still busy and stopped. He turned around in the doorway to face Bruce, who was just wiping everything down. Bruce looked up.
“You can go buddy, I’m almost done.” Marc shook his head.
“Wanna wait for you.” He stuck his fingers back in his mouth. Bruce’s heart melted a little.
“If you’re sure. I won’t be long.” He was true to his word, it wasn’t much longer before Bruce was throwing the last wipe into the trash and walking down the hallway with Marc. They walked into the elevator and up a couple floors to the group living room. Marc looked down at the city while they traveled up.
Stark’s living room was the holy grail of entertainment. Hooked up or waiting to be hooked up was every entertainment system a person could think of. The TV was huge, bigger than Marc had ever seen and it had all the popular streaming services. Stark had subscriptions to things Marc hadn’t heard of, like SHOWTIME and Kanopy.
Clint was already there on his knees, rooting around in a cabinet they used for storing system add-ons, movies and other random stuff. He pulled a box out of loose wires. It connected the switch to the TV. He turned to see Bruce and Marc walking in. Marc was hiding behind Bruce a little, his small wave of confidence from earlier gone.
“Hey y’all! Took you long enough.” Clint said, grinning as he walked over to the TV to plug everything in. It only took him a couple minutes to boot up Mario Kart and get three controllers prepared. Marc had already sat down and curled up on the couch. Bruce occupied himself with grabbing some Coke from the fridge (caffeine free for him) and moving them to the modern glass coffee table. He popped the aluminum seal of this open and started drinking it. Clint handed him and Marc a controller and they started playing.
They had been playing for about an hour before they were all called for Avengers duty, but it was one of Marc's best hour in the past couple weeks.