Archive of Our Own ^beta

Run. Run. Run. Run.

Clint puts one foot in front of the other and runs the foot-wide path along the edge of the mountain for the first time since they arrived at their house just outside of Portland. The morning sunlight is tinted with grey skies and fog that is seeping through the straight, tall pine trees edging the gravel path.

Before Loki, Clint might have said it looked dreary. Now, after, it looks a lot like the way he feels, muted and dull.

He pulls in breath after breath of misty air, feels the moisture on his tongue. It tastes clean, but as it travels into his lungs it clouds, and he’s not sure it’s doing its job, because breathing doesn’t seem easy the way it did before.

Since Loki, breathing has been the hardest thing he does all day.

The path is edged with deep orange pine needles, all pointed in the same direction as if someone placed them there to highlight the path Clint is supposed to take. His feet stay on the path and the needles draw his eyes, detritus from something once vibrant and alive.

Before Loki, he was once vibrant and alive, too.

Run. Run. Run. Run.

“Are you going for a run?” Phil had asked. “Are you sure it’s light enough out there?”

Clint stood in front of the bathroom mirror, took a deep, shaky breath, and called back, “It’s light enough.”

Phil appeared in the mirror behind him. “I’ll make breakfast when you get back.” He had bedhead and was wiping sleep from his eyes as he leaned on the door frame.

Clint didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. Looking ahead even to something like breakfast in an hour seemed ridiculous. He had woken up choking with panic again, had been able to stumble to the bathroom before Phil woke all the way and realized Clint wasn’t breathing right, and that was all.

Phil asked if he was going to run, so he would run. He did. 20 miles.

“You ran a marathon without planning or telling me or –“ Phil ground out around his scowl when Clint returned three and a half hours later.

Clint stood dripping with sweat in the foyer of their apartment, staring at his old shoes. He couldn’t look at Phil. He’d made Phil mad. He’d worried him. He couldn’t predict anything right now, much less Phil’s reactions, so he stood motionless and couldn’t hold back the startle when Phil was suddenly there, pulling him into a hug.

“Clint,” Phil whispered.

“I’m gross,” Clint said after a moment of standing stiffly in Phil’s arms.

“What? No, you’re – oh,” Phil replied, and he pulled back and looked down at his own t-shirt that was now wet with Clint’s sweat. “I guess you are. That’s okay.” He looked into Clint’s eyes and used the power he’d always had to keep Clint looking at him. “Did you eat?”

Clint nodded. “I grabbed a few protein bars at a newsstand.” He closed his eyes. “I’m okay, Phil. I’m sorry I disappeared for so long.” He felt Phil run his hand down Clint’s cheek and couldn’t help but lean into it.

“Take a shower,” Phil said gently.

Clint did. He stood under the hot spray and tired not to think, tried to focus on the heat, on the water bulleting against his skin, on the sense memory of his feet on the pavement as he ran. Blue seeped in, uninvited. His breathing picked up, the memory of giving commands to mercenaries shimmered in his mind; his fists clenched against his side and he didn’t think as he slammed his palms against the hard marble of the shower wall.

“Clint!” Phil stood at the edge of the shower and his sharp voice cut through the memories and water and blue-tinted fear like a sharp blade.

Clint startled and blinked and saw Phil standing there with worry and maybe a little bit of anger in his eyes.

He sucked in a rough breath and nodded. “Sorry. I’m coming.”

Phil looked like he was going to say something, but he stopped himself and just nodded. “Okay.”

Clint toweled off, put on his favorite pair of worn blue jeans and noticed that they hung lower on his hips than usual. He pulled a belt from his closet and then threw on a time-softened green sweatshirt from his closet. He avoided the floor-length mirror on the back of the closet door and headed out to the kitchen.

Phil was holding a glass of juice and had a bowl of fresh-cut fruit and a plate of eggs waiting for him. Clint was trying to think of a way to get away with ‘no-thanks,’ when Phil spoke and motioned to the chair.

“Sit. Eat. No argument, please. You just ran a marathon on a couple of power bars, so humor me.”

Clint noticed for the first time that Phil looked exhausted. He was standing in their kitchen, the same kitchen he’d gleefully stocked with top of the line pots and pans a few years earlier just for Clint, who used to love to cook, back when food didn’t taste like ash most of the time. Phil had let Clint pick the apartments with the best kitchens and balconies, and then Phil had made the final choice based on his ideas of floor plans and bathrooms and storage. It was a good system and they’d ended up with a gorgeous brownstone that seemed to have been waiting for them.

Now, though, Phil wasn’t gleeful. He was tired, clearly, and Clint had seen Phil’s looks of exasperation over the years, had practically catalogued them, and this one wasn’t even on the list. He looked finished.

The food suddenly seemed even less appealing than ash.

Clint sat anyway, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of Phil’s despondent face. “Are you going to ask me to move out?” Clint said, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at Phil anymore. He stared at the yellow eggs on his white plate, wondered where he’d go, what he would do, how fast the blue dreams would consume him whole.

Phil dropped the glass of juice he was pouring. The sound of it shattering in the sink startled them both, and Phil jerked into motion to clean it up. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Clint could only sit and watch as Phil cleaned up the mess and cussed his way through it. When he was finished, Phil sat down heavily at the table across from Clint and reached out for Clint’s hand. Clint placed it in Phil’s and closed his eyes at the warmth of it.

“I am not asking you to move out,” Phil whispered. His voice was filled with tears and his eyes were glistening. “I am simply going to suggest that we get out of the city for a while so that we can focus on each other, on you, on finding our way through this.

“Through it?” Clint said. “Learning to live with it, maybe.”

“Getting through it.”

“How will leaving town help that?”

Phil sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were dry again. “I’ve asked for Nick to temporarily transfer Grace out to our Portland office. We can stay at the house out there and she’ll meet us halfway every other day for a session for you. Nick said she was due to get out of the city herself, and she’s excited about it. A few weeks at the very least.”

Their Portland house.

Phil had inherited it from his grandparents and he and Clint had made it their own over the last few years, using it almost every time they got time off from SHIELD. It was a three-bedroom ranch with a finished basement and a master bedroom to rival one at Stark Tower. It had floor to ceiling windows along the back of the whole house, and they looked out on a small pond that had a maple gazebo and deck on the edge.

They were twenty minutes from Crater Lake National Park and twenty minutes from the sweetest city Clint had ever visited. He often lost Phil for hours in Powell’s bookstore, and he could sit on a corner outside and people watch or draw while Phil meandered the shelves. Their Portland house was serenity, even if Clint wasn’t easily convinced that it would mean the return of his own sanity.

Phil would be more comfortable there.

“Okay,” he said, and Phil’s smile lit the room.

Run. Run. Run. Run.

It’s a new day now; he’s been running this path for three weeks. He gets up at dawn and drinks a protein shake on the twenty minute drive to the edge of the park. Today is damp and drizzly again, but it feels like he’s on the edge of something happening, like he’s ready, prepared for something new. Grace tells him to take the chance and consider something new. It’ makes his palms sweat doing it, but he has to admit that something new finally sounds good.

The pine needles still line the path, the grey pebbles that make up the trail reach off into the fog ahead and promise a break from the chaotic thoughts that therapy and his office duties that he’s trying to ease back into bring. He laces his shoes tightly and stretches until he’s loose before setting off on the pebbled path leading into the misty woods. He’d let Phil cook him breakfast this morning before he left; he smiled at the care Phil had taken in preparing something light. Clint was the cook in their family, but Phil knew how to try, and it always warmed Clint when he did.

Run. Run. Run. Run.

The path is brighter now. The mist is finally cleansing, the sharp pine scent that seems to permeate the whole Northwest isn’t cloying anymore; it’s calming. His feet step the path in pure muscle memory and his mind clears, blanks, stays not-blue. The slope of the path guides his body through the mountain, toward the lake, the lake that has become Clint’s talisman for getting through this.

Crater Lake looks like something not of this earth, and the deep blue color of the water that shimmers like crystal would have sent Clint scrambling for something as mundane as a parking lot three weeks ago. That was before their Portland house, before Phil was up with coffee and toast out in the gazebo every morning. Before Clint stopped having to worry that everyone at base was watching him, waiting for him to step a toe out of line, waiting for Fury to throw him to the wolves of the WSC like they thought he should.

He runs the same path every day, follows the pine needles along the edge until he’s standing at the cliffs overlooking the almost perfectly round bowl-shaped lake. He drinks a protein drink as he sits on a boulder, and watches the water lap at the edges of the lake. There are small, unafraid chipmunks all over the park, and he starts bringing crackers to share with them. Two are eating out of his hand today, chittering at him as if they’re gossiping about a neighbor. He sits back up after they’re done and leans back, closes his eyes. The sun warms his cheeks and after a few minutes he looks back out at the lake again.

There is a tiny island offset of the center of Crater Lake, a volcano-looking place covered in deep green pine trees and powdery snow, and Clint thinks it looks like a nice place to escape the world. But Phil is waiting at home, and Clint has planned to cook a meal today, Phil’s favorite creamy tomato soup and Clint’s specialty grilled-cheese sandwiches. He’s also going to make a cherry crumble, and he stopped at Phil’s favorite coffee company for their top priced coffee that Phil won’t let himself buy on a regular basis.

Clint is hoping the weather holds so that they can have their dessert and coffee in the gazebo and watch the stars fill the sky.

Tonight they’ll talk about heading back to SHIELD headquarters in another week or so, and Clint will tell Phil his plans to get re-qualified for field work and the Avengers. Natasha and Maria will come tomorrow to surprise Phil with a weekend visit, and Clint will make a pot of his signature chili and Nat’s favorite whole kernel cornbread. They will all play cards together and drink Maria’s favorite fruity umbrella drink, and if they’re lucky Nick will surprise all of them with a visit, too.

Clint is still waking every few nights with a full-blown night terror tinged in blue, and when Grace asked if he wanted to cut down on their sessions together he had a pretty solid panic attack, but he’s getting better.

Every day he runs this path, and every day he heals a little more.