Bed of Burning Snarl || amnesia!verse || closed

[stillnotlegolas]

Clint thinks that, quite possibly, he might lose his mind. It won’t be a fast process, going insane, but he’s pretty certain that eventually he’ll just make the step forward right over the edge and go completely and totally bonkers. There are things they’ve been trained for, and then there are things they were never trained for - magic and gods and

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[nottheworsthing]

For all that the situation is still weird and awkward and wrong, lately things have settled into a tentative sort of equilibrium. Of course some things haven't changed. Tony's still holed up in his workshop every waking hour, alternating between doing things nature never intended to the gutted Ferrari and working on the designs for the modified helicarrier, and generally failing to eat, sleep, or keep himself properly supplied with anything other than coffee. Business as usual. Except that now half the time Natasha's there too; making idle comments on whatever he's doing or just...watching. It weirded him out at first. But now he's used to it, it's not so bad. At the very least it's nice to have someone other than Jarvis to talk to, and it's not like she gets in the way or anything.

He's not sure why she's taken to hanging around. Okay, so the workshop's a good place to lay low - mostly because between Jarvis' security protocols and Tony's tendency to cause minor explosions and/or generally be insanely irritating to be around when he

[stillnotlegolas]

Clint is not normally a man prone to worrying about people--he spends his time surrounded by achingly competent humans and super humans and gods--except for Natasha, but he worries about her constantly and that exists as a sort of background constant in his life. But, every now and again? He sees Tony in the middle of one of these bouts of creation he gets stuck in and worried a little for not only his sanity but the state of his body. It's not healthy to spend days awake and eat nothing but coffee and protein bars--

--but Tony has a whole crew of people who have made worrying about him a profession (made a damn talking voice in the CEILING to worry about him), and Clint doesn't figure he needs any sort of lecture. Still--he's going to need to watch those not-quite-burns. And maybe get some sleep. Jesus

[nottheworsthing]

"She's what?" Tony says incredulously, "Natasha? Our Natasha? About so high, red hair?" Okay, so apparently he was just entirely wrong when he thought that there was no way anything could possibly surprise him any more. Give him a good old alien invasion any day. That at least he has some idea how to deal with. This? Not a chance. Assuming, of course, that Clint hasn't just had some sort of nervous breakdown. Or maybe it was drug-related. Something inducing hallucinations at any rate

[stillnotlegolas]

"You have to have noticed," Clint replies, keeping his attention on the model, cutting his eyes over to the engineer once before they return to the glowing diagram. "But look, I mean, I know she's gorgeous, of course I do," And he's just sort of talking now, realizes maybe he should stop, but he can't help it. He's just--he can sort of deal with Nat being Natasha, and he can sort of deal with half of SHIELD still thinking he's a fucking turncoat, and he can sort of deal with the fact the longer this goes on the less likely it is that Nat is ever coming back, but put all of it together and he's feeling a little crazy around his eyes. "but seriously, she's not right, you and I both know that, and just--" He fades out because dammit. He doesn't even know. He can't think about this. About Tony and Natasha and the fact that she looks at him sort of how she looked at Clint when he'd brought this version of Nat into SHIELD a decade ago

[stillnotlegolas]

Clint finds himself at Phil's that night. He knows he should go back to his quarters and check on Natasha and see how she was doing, but--he couldn't bring himself to do it. To have her look at him and still be missing all the emotion in her eyes he'd gotten so used to seeing. He couldn't really stay in the Tower, either, not with Tony as pissed at him as he was, and he didn't want any chance of making things worse by running into the guy, and while he knew Tony was likely to stay in his workshop for the night, he was just--too emotionally drained to run the risk

[nottheworsthing]

Tony is in the workshop, of course. Where else would he be? He's been right here ever since their argument the day before, burying himself in work to avoid having to think too much. It's been a productive sort of night at least. The unsprung is all welded up, and he's moved onto replacing the bearings on the drivetrain. And maybe he's wielding the hammer a little harder than knocking this particular press-fit out of its housing strictly requires, but that's beside the point. It's better than taking his frustration out on anything else.

Normally he's fairly thick-skinned. It's a skill you really have to learn when you've spent your entire life in the public eye, and hence are inevitably being trashed by some media outlet at any given time; over the years he's cultivated a certain air of 'fuck what everyone else thinks' which has served him well. But it's different when it's coming from someone whose opinion he actually does give a shit about

[stillnotlegolas]

He settles the coffee cup gently on the side of the workbench, where Tony can decide to reach for it or not and then crosses his own arms over his chest, his own coffee clutched in his hand. It's lucky it's a ceramic mug and not one of those flimsy things from starbucks, because he's not entirely certain he wouldn't be squeezing it tight enough to cover both of them in coffee. He deserves the expression, the brittle coldness in Tony's eyes, but that doesn't make the fact that he put it there hurt any less

[nottheworsthing]

His eyes flicker down to the coffee and then back up to Clint, his expression guarded. So maybe the coffee smells incredibly tempting. But it's staying exactly where it is until he knows where he stands and what the hell is going on. The fight the previous day had caught him completely unawares; he freely admits that he's never exactly been good at people, and it really had blindsided him. He's not going to make the same mistake twice.

He leans back against the workbench and sticks his hands in his pockets. "I'm listening," he says in a neutral sort of tone.