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It's taken for granted that they're all scared, that at some point they've all been broken to pieces and stitched back together. It's pretty much unavoidable in their line of work. And Clint's pretty sure that if emotional pain left physical marks, they'd all look a helluva lot worse. But all the same, Clint wears long-sleeved shirts year-round.
Clint is on his laptop, browsing Reddit, when Tony comes into the room.
“Hey, you ever been to Coney Island?”
“Jesus, Tony, would it kill you to knock first?”
“Coney Island. It's, like, I don't know, got a beach and some shitty rollercoasters or whatever. Steve mentioned going there when he was a kid, you know, so I was thinking, seeing as we deserve some time off--”
“Is Natasha going?”
“She said she would if you did.”
“Sure. Avengers family vacation? Why the hell not.”
“Awesome.”
Tony leaves, shutting the door behind him, but Clint hears him run into Natasha in the hallway.
“Heeey, Natashenka. Steve wants the team to go to the beach tomorrow. You coming?”
“Is Clint going?”
“He said he would if you did.”
Clint rolls his eyes at Tony's blatent deception, but doesn't bother to step out into the hall and call him out on it. It's been a long time since he's seen the ocean.
They take a train to the beach, taking up an entire compartment, what with the five of them and their dysfunctional-family style bantering.
“I swear to god,” Clint says. “Steve Rogers is the only person who would unironically wear American-flag patterned swim trunks.”
“At least he's got the right idea,” Tony says. “Who the hell wears a long-sleeved shirt to the beach?”
“You seem awfully concerned about my attire,” Clint says. “I'm starting to think you planned all this just so you could get a glimpse at my sexy bod.”
Tony rolls his eyes. “You keep telling yourself that, Clinty baby.”
And then there's a moment, when they get off the train, where everyone's holding their breath. “It's different from how I remember it,” Steve says, looking out over the boardwalk at the waves crashing on the sand. “But I sure am happy to be here.” And Tony silently punches the air, his smile reflected on his teammates' faces.
Thor plants an umbrella in the sand with the dignity of a man putting his country's flag on foreign soil. That dignity has all but vanished moments later when they kick off their shoes and race into the water. Clint feels almost weightless as he swims out, his body buoyed by the salt water and rocked by the waves.
Hours later, Clint swims back to shore and joins his teammates, sprawled on beach towels, eating sandwiches and drinking something that tastes like lemonade but is probably alcoholic, seeing as Tony brought it. And there's a moment, when Bruce stops speaking in mid-sentence and Clint looks up to see that everyone's staring at him, holding their breath.
Clint stares back, unsure. He slowly looks down at himself, expecting to see the laser sight of distant sniper, or maybe a scorpion. There's nothing. Just the white of his shirt, the tan of his hands-- the white of his shirt, his shirt, soaking wet, turned nearly see-through. And beneath that thin layer of fabric, laid bare for the world to see....
He stays still, not wanting to look up and meet their eyes, see their pity and barely-surpressed morbid curiosity.
The scars are part of Clint. Sure, there's a sad story attached to each and every one of the pale, raised lines that coil from his wrists, up and around arms, over shoulders, meeting at the neck and plunging down the spine – but he's already lived through those stories, replayed them in his head through countless insomniatic nights, told them to shots of whisky, and then later to the SHIELD-appointed therapist who was a better listener than the alcohol ever was. He doesn't need to tell these stories again.
Natasha wraps a towel around Clint's shoulders. Tony tosses him another bottle of “lemonade”. Bruce continues telling his anecdote about some zany mishap he got up to in grad school. Clint looks up, and in his teammates' eyes, all he sees is silent understanding.