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Why did it have to be magic? Clint barely has time to curse under his breath before the magic blasts over them like a shock-wave, pushing him off his feet and crashing him into the wall with enough force that he starts to mentally prepare himself for waking up in a hospital bed (if he wakes up at all).
Except...the fall doesn't knock him out. He aches all over for a brief few moments before the pain starts to recede, at an inhuman speed, leaving him feeling better, stronger than he ever has before. Hey, maybe magic isn't so bad after a- - oh wait, no. No. Jesus fucking christ. Bad magic! Bad!
The feeling of strength is leaving as quickly as it came, replaced by an itching, burning need to...for...something. Clint doesn't know what his body wants him to do, all he knows is that he's not doing it and it...god, it hurts.
He can hear the others yelling for him now, as they force their way through the security door that had trapped him and Pietro in the blast radius of whatever-the-hell caused that wave of magic.
Pietro. Crap.
Trying to force the pain away, Clint pushes himself up the wall in the corridor of the abandoned HYDRA base frantically looking for the stupid-ass speedster who didn't follow his instructions to leave him and get to safety, instead ending up on the wrong side of the doors with Clint and an unidentified magic explosive.
Pietro doesn't look good. Clint spies the kid slumped awkwardly on the floor, blood trickling sluggishly from a gash on his head. This isn't supposed to happen, Pietro is the king of walking it off, only eclipsed by Steve when it comes to his healing ability. He should never look so still, it isn't right, it's too much like those agonising moments in Sokovia before the healing kicked in.
Clint lurches towards him, but finds himself suddenly slamming into the next set of security doors, a full hundred yards beyond where he was aiming. And oh God, it had felt good to move like that. It had felt right, the pain vanishing as his body finally did what it was made to do, as he finally let the buzzing energy that was trying to burn him from the inside out release, it was - - realisation comes crashing down.
He's pretty sure he knows what the magic did.
The journey back to New York is a special kind of torture for Clint as he struggles to rein in the need to run, as he struggles to keep his movements at a normal pace. He tries to find some comfort in the fact that Pietro's powers have at least allowed him to heal the damage from the blast but it's hard to feel grateful for that when Pietro is still unconscious.
For all the times that he's wished for some of his teammates enhanced healing (and they were fewer than most people would have thought), he'd never wanted it to happen like this.
“Clint.” Wanda's soft voice interrupts his thoughts, and Clint realises that they've finally landed.
“Is he awake? Is he OK?”
Wanda shakes her head sadly. “He is still out. But you need to take care of yourself. You need to run, you don't want to go through what happens when you do not let the energy free.”
Jesus, Clint thinks, how the hell does Pietro deal with this? He knows Wanda is right, he wants to run, he needs to run. It's not that easy though. “I..I can't control it. I'm scared that if I start running, I'll never stop.”
“I will stop you if you need me to. I promise.”
Clint doesn't need Wanda's help in the end, not even Pietro's power is limitless and Clint finally burns the raw energy out, almost sobbing in relief when he slows to normal speed and is finally free of the ache to move faster. It's still there, he has a sneaking suspicion that it never fully leaves but it's more manageable. He has no idea how long that will last.
Grabbing a bottle of water, he heads to the infirmary, intending to find out how Pietro is doing. The water bottle drops from his hand as he exits the elevator to hear Pietro screaming in something worse than pain.
A burst of speed takes him to Pietro's room just in time to see the kid collapse onto the hospital floor, Wanda crashing to her knees in front of him and rocking him gently back and forth. Pietro's sobs are muffled against her shirt and Clint can't make out what he's saying.
Reaching up to turn his hearing aids up, Clint stops short when he realises that they're not there, probably knocked out during the blast. He knows what Pietro is saying now and the guilt is like a knife in his heart.
“I can't hear anything. I can't hear anything.”
It's much later and Steve is briefing them on what the SHIELD techs think happened. Clint is leaning against the wall, as far from Pietro as he can get while still being in the same room. Pietro is sitting listlessly in the couch, only occasionally glancing at the STARK pad that Tony rigged to translate the voices in the room to text so he can follow what's going on. He looks so damn lost and Clint can't help but feel responsible, despite knowing that there's nothing he could have done.
As for Clint, the energy is starting to build again after only a couple of hours and he feels like crying. How the hell does the kid even manage to sleep like this? He really hopes, for both their sakes, that Steve has some answers.
“As far as SHIELD can tell, this was some Kree device that was built to allow them to swap powers. So, Clint has been gifted with Pietro's speed and healing while Pietro...um, the consensus is that the Kree device recognised the slight enhancement of Clint's other senses as a result of his hearing impairment as a power and, uh, gifted that to Pietro.”
Pietro scoffs loudly at Steve's words. “Yes. What a gift. How do I return it?” His voice is just a shade too loud, obviously unused to modulating the volume without the benefit of hearing and Clint has to hold himself back from tapping his left wrist like Barney used to do in order to indicate that he should speak more quietly.
The aborted movement catches Pietro's eye and Clint averts his gaze quickly, but not before catching the frown of concern on the kid's face.
“Well,” Steve continues, “the good news is that they think it's temporary. According to the markings on some of the fragments we recovered, it seemed to be designed to transfer powers in situations of dire need and the process only lasts for one Kree cycle. Which is around three days.”
There are collective sighs of relief all around the room but Clint can see that Pietro looks as distraught as he feels. He's not sure that either of them can handle another three days of this.
Clint heads back to the track as soon as the meeting breaks, determined to burn off enough energy that he can get at least five hours sleep. He's already worked up a sweat when he notices Pietro sitting on the bleachers, watching him.
Taking a break, he wanders over. Pietro's STARK pad is lying on the space next to him and Clint motions for him to pick it up.
“How are you feeling?”
Pietro laughs as he reads the words and Clint really should have known better than to ask. “How are you feeling?” Pietro answers. “Is not much fun, is it?”
Clint drops to the ground in front of Pietro with a pained groan. “It sucks. How do you cope with this, kid?”
Smiling sadly, Pietro gestures to his ears. “You play the hand you're dealt. I thought you of all people would know that.”
“Yeah, well the way I see it, we both have pretty shitty hands. You're stuck with this constant struggle to slow down because some Nazi scientists duped you into horrific, inhumane experiments and I'm stuck with silence because my jackass of a father beat me black and blue. We make a pretty good pair.”
Clint doesn't know what made him share that with Pietro, only Nat knew the real cause of his deafness. Hell, he hadn't even told Phil. It felt right, though, Pietro knowing. It was the least the kid deserved after having to suffer the results of Harold Barton's abuse.
After a few moments of silence Pietro clears his throat. “If you want to sleep through tonight, you should try to wear yourself out before bed.”
“You propositioning me, kid?” Clint teases, just to see Pietro blush.
“Like you could handle me, old man.” Pietro flips him the finger and Clint laughs. “I usually play ping pong.”
“With yourself?”
“It's harder than it sounds. It tires you out physically and mentally. If you're lucky, you can get six uninterrupted hours of sleep.”
Clint shakes his head in disbelief. He's starting to realise that he might not know Pietro at all.
The next three days, Clint learns just how wrong he had pegged the kid. Pietro Maximoff is one of the strongest people he's ever known. He's also one of the funniest, his dry, sometimes cruel humour gelling perfectly with Clint's sarcasm.
He's smart as hell, as well, picking up the basics of ASL in an afternoon and insisting that Clint teach him all the naughty words to sign first, the two of them giggling like schoolboys.
As the three day deadline approaches, Clint should feel happy but he's not. As much as he hates having Pietro's powers and longs to be free of them, he hates that Pietro is going to have to suffer this again.
They're together when it happens. There are no sparks or whistles, one minute Clint is listening to Pietro laugh loudly at Clint's attempts to control the speed in just his hand by bouncing a ball as fast as he can, and the next, silence. Startled, Clint looks up from the ball to see Pietro shudder as the crawling need ripples across his skin. They smile at each other, bittersweet and final before turning away, Clint looking for his hearing aids and Pietro heading off for a run.
He hadn't realised how much time he'd been spending with Pietro until it stops. It's ridiculous, given that it's only been three days, but Clint misses him. There's a Pietro shaped hole in his life and he hates it.
He finds himself knocking on Pietro's door that night.
“Someone once told me that if you want to sleep through the night, you should make sure to wear yourself out before bed.” Clint rushes through the sentence, as Pietro opens the door.
Pietro's smile is familiar and warm and perfect. “You propositioning me, old man?”
“I don't know. Think you can keep up?”
Pietro's hands come up to tangle in Clint's shirt, pulling him into the room with a wicked grin full of promises. “Just watch me.”
Clint hates magic, but he can admit that it sometimes has pretty decent consequences.