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"Clint," Kate protested, her voice too weak even in her own ears. She was in no position to stop him, but she shoved his shoulder with one hand, then crossed her arms in disgust.
Clint's frown was a grim line, but he ignored her dislike of his hovering, carefully worked his key into the lock without setting her down, then got her inside his apartment and finally set her down on the bed.
"I'll be fine," she pointed out through pain-gritted teeth. She'd had worse than an injured ankle and a graze over her ribs.
Clint just shot her an injured look, then got to work wrapping her ankle. Thankfully, he handed her painkillers first because after almost swearing at him through it, sweating pain like she knew he wouldn't, she was considering grazing him with an arrow. They passed out from anger and exhaustion, neither minding all that much that it was on the same bed, bloody bandages in a hazardous materials bag in the corner of the room.
"Clint," Kate moaned as she woke up.
Clint grunted and forced himself to groggily open his eyes. "What—"
It was Kate, shoving at his shoulder with a grimace of pain on her face. "You're thrashing."
She was alive. It was Kate alive in one piece, trying to wake him before he hurt her worse.
He flinched away and scrambled off the bed. "I'll take the couch." He stopped just inside the door and looked back.
She looked terrible, tired, and it was all his fault.
"You need anything?"
She stared at him and finally shook her head.
He nodded and went to try to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw his arrow, he saw Kate step back from hostile fire and right into his. Startled pain and she was falling, falling, falling...
He shot awake and jammed his hands into his eyes, as if he could physically rub the vision out of them. Lucky whined and growled at his elbow. Clint leaned over and wrapped his arms entirely around the dog.
She was alive. She was alive because Sam flew down and snatched her before anything but her foot hit the ground.
Clint swore. He wasn't going back to sleep.
"Clint."
Kate hated needing help, but she hadn't let them jam her in a hospital ambulance or whisk her off to her friends or let the Avengers haul her back to their mansion. She'd asked for Clint, and now she was here, and he appeared in the doorway, guilty eyes staring at her whenever she called.
She gripped the headboard and angled her leg off the bed. "Help me get to the bathroom?" She really needed a crutch, but in a pinch, a Hawkeye would do.
He tucked his shoulder under her arm and helped her hobble her way to the bathroom, then waited just outside the door to help her hobble back.
"It's not broken, Clint. I'll be fine." Kate scratched behind Lucky's ears.
She'd invited the dog up on the couch and Clint was watching intently not because it wasn't okay for Lucky to be up there, but rather because he was worried the dog's extra weight wouldn't be good for Kate's ankle.
She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm fine, birdbrain. Knock off the mother henning, would you?"
He tried to, tried to ignore it all and go order pizza for dinner. But she wasn't fine, and it was his arrow and his fault.
"It's kind of nice being waited on hand and foot," she commented after another eight hours of too solicitous attention and little of his usual grousing.
He was picking up the dirty laundry from his bedroom floor where Kate had let it drop throughout the day and doing it in tight-lipped silence. Clint could whine and complain until the cows came home, and that was without any cows in sight. But he wasn't complaining and that was a problem because Kate didn't feel at all like being responsible for his next slide into depression.
"Brat," he retorted, but his heart wasn't really in it. It was probably reflex.
Kate scowled at him. "Jerk. I can't whack you when you're across the room."
His head snapped up sharply. "You can't do that anyway when you're across the room."
"But I can't just get up and do it," Kate griped back. "Come over here. I need to knock some sense into you."
"Come over there? So you can whack me?" He sounded incredulous but his expression crinkled into amusement alongside the screwed up look of 'you've got to be kidding me.' He also came over and dropped beside her on the bed well within range.
Kate leaned over and settled her head against his shoulder. She let out a sigh as her weight sank against him and she felt like she could breathe a little easier. "I don't blame you, dummy."
His rib cage rose and fell a little more haphazardly for one breath, two. He shook his head and snaked one arm underneath her and around her shoulders to tug her in a little closer. "Just get better, okay?"
She wriggled her ankle to prove she could do so without grimacing. "Five steps way ahead of you, Hawkeye."
After a long moment, she added, "I could shoot you. Make us even."
"Tell me that's not a serious suggestion," he groaned out after a moment of stunned silence.
She smirked at him. "If it made you feel better."
He dropped her off his arm with a thunk, grabbed his pillow, and prepared to whack her.
Oh, he was so going down. Kate snagged her own pillow before he could bring his down.
Somewhere between the laughter and thwacks of an earnest pillow fight, she figured they would be okay.
Clint stared at Kate as she slept, unable to sleep himself. He could imagine her now, telling him it was creepy.
"Sorry, Katie-Kate." He brushed back her hair and kissed her forehead. He hadn't meant to ever hurt her. "Sorry."
She didn't need to hear him say it. He just needed to have it said.