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"Should I be trusting him?" Clint asked Tony, eyes narrowed at Bruce.
"When you're asking me for interpersonal advice you know you're barking up the wrong tree," Tony said, mustache wiggling with amusement.
"Yes, you should trust me," Bruce said, sounding exasperated. "I'm a medical doctor, and I passed my surgical residency with flying colors. I am fully qualified for this."
"Really? You're fully qualified for experimental surgery with a completely untested medical device and new polymers never used on long-term in sub-dermal implants?" Tony asked.
"Not helping," Clint and Bruce chorused at Tony.
"It'll be fine," Bruce assured Clint, lining up instruments.
"Yeah - your old hearing aid was absolute crap. I can't believe SHIELD let you out with that travesty. I can't believe we didn't NOTICE that travesty earlier."
"Hey." Clint was affronted. It had taken a lot of trust and a catastrophic technical failure to get Clint to tell the team about his partial hearing loss, and Tony and Bruce had taken it as a personal mission to make him the most technically up-to-date cyborg in the world. One IED too close at just the right angle had taken out almost 90% of his hearing on his right before he had joined up with SHIELD. Coulson had recruited him from the hospital while he was recovering from the concussion and abrasions. He was still uncertain if recruit-the-head-injury had been legal, but he loved his job at SHIELD so he'd never asked.
"You know what he means," Bruce said, glaring at Tony. "You'll feel a prick with the local and then it will feel a bit like drilling a numbed tooth." Bruce's affable look, with him armed with a syringe, was not in any way comforting.
Clint sighed, dropping his face in the cradle and allowing Bruce to strap his skull down securely. There was a buzz of the electric razor as Bruce shaved the hair behind his ear in a neat patch. "If you screw me up I'm sic'ing Fury on you guys," Clint warned. Tony's shoes walked into view and a palm settled on his back , and in spite of himself, it was reassuring.
"We got you. I won't let him screw you up."
Clint regulated his breathing at the prick of the local and tried not to think about the numbness spreading across his scalp. The smell of antibac made his heart pick up briefly but he had it under control in a few breaths. Bruce's shoes were in scrub booties, and the rest of him was in scrubs and gloves and a face mask and a bonnet no doubt. "I'm making the incision now," Bruce said, ultra-calm. A moment later, "I've reached the mastoid. Preparing the area to drill."
Clint really wished Bruce would stop the play by play, but he knew it was necessary to coordinate between Bruce and Tony. The drill started whirring, and he could smell the meaty, mineral-y tang of bone dust. "Measuring," Bruce intoned.
"We're going to need a few more millimeters," Tony said.
"You're right - drilling again." More whirring. "We're good. Applying the bio-polymer." They had explained everything to him before he'd agreed to the procedure. The bio-polymer would help the hearing aid bond to his mastoid bone, the lead would go through a tiny perforation in his cartilage. It would be nearly invisible except for a patch where the tympanic receptor sat under his skin, nestled in a hollow in the bone. It would draw power from his body heat, and it networked with Jarvis and the SHIELD sat-com to double as a receiving-only comm. There was a distinct pop that he felt or heard when Bruce pierced the cartilage of his ear with a hollow-tipped needle. "Feeding the lead through. It's in position."
"Testing," Tony said, putting a sound-dampening headphone over his mostly good ear and snapping next to his other. Clint gave a thumbs up. "We're live. Deactivating until further notice."
"Applying UV to polymer. It's hardening nicely-"
"I told you it would," Tony sniped.
"-and fusing with bone." That was a good sign at least. There was a long pause presumably while UV rays were pounding into his tender headbone. "Okay, that looks good. Just going to stitch you up and you should be good to go." Bruce talked directly to him for the first time since the local, and Clint let out a breath he hadn't known he had been holding. Bruce was efficient in his stitches, and before long a warm hand was settled on his back again.
"Just hang out for a bit while the coagulants do their thing. You need anything?" Tony's hand was comforting, and Bruce had stepped off to strip out of his surgery gear.
"Could you just... hang with me for a bit?" The newly installed tech wasn't turned on and he felt blind on one side, and more than a bit vulnerable STILL STRAPPED TO A SURGERY TABLE BY HIS HEAD. Clint whimpered, just a bit. "Why did I let you guys talk me into this?"
"Because you know we're the most awesome amateur surgeons this side of the Pacific. Oh, here - I hooked it into your StarkPhone so you can do adjustments to volume and filtering from there." Tony waved a phone in front of his face on the cradle. Clint made a grab for it and Tony let him take the device from his hands. Clint played with the phone controls, one handed for a few minutes to take his mind off of BEING STRAPPED TO A TABLE, but Tony's hand remains there, warm and heavy, and Bruce returns, snapping on another pair of gloves and checking the stitches.
"You're good to go." Bruce says, unstrapping him. "You may have a headache the next few days. Whatever you do, NO BLOWS TO THE HEAD. I told Natasha and Happy that but you have to not do anything stupid, otherwise there could be permanent damage."
"Yeah, yeah." Bruce and Tony's hands were on him to help him sit up.
"Maybe we should get you a cone so you don't lick the wound," Tony suggested.
"I can shoot you from space," Clint replied ominously.