Chapter 4
Sam doesn't think he's ever seen Clint as nervous as he is now.
It's rather peculiar, actually; Clint usually holds himself a witty, confident and satisfyingly mild-mannered sort of person when he isn't behind his infamous bow and — though he clearly does care for the people he surrounds himself with, because he'd have taken himself out of the building and back home to his family if he didn't — he's never seemed as anxious for their safety as he is for Peter.
When Sam ponders about it more, he comes up with two reasonable conclusions; the first is that Clint is suddenly aware of how normal — as in, not superpowered like nearly everyone else in this building — and defenceless the kid really is. Sure, he can clearly take care of himself; but when people more powerful and as sick-minded as the ones they confronted earlier come into the equation, it really highlights how so very average and young he really is.
Which brings Sam to his second conclusion; Peter reminds Clint of his kids back home. Clint adores his kids — heck, there are pictures of them in his wallet and everything — and it wouldn't be considered odd for him to subconsciously think of Peter in sort-of the same way. He cares for Peter. He wants to make sure he's okay. And now he's hurt, he's worried for him.
Not to say that he himself isn't worried, of course; Sam maybe doesn't feel as much for the kid as his teammate does (he hasn't known him for very long, after all), but there remains a special spot for Peter in his heart. The kid doesn't deserve what he got. He doesn't deserve being out on the streets, or whatever drove him there in the first place.
It's all one very big worry-fest, really.
The archer is sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, staring at nothing in particular and biting his bottom lip. His hair is a mess and his knuckles are grazed and barely bleeding, but he seems otherwise okay. Perhaps a little too full of nervous energy, if his bouncing leg is anything to go by.
"Clint?"
Seated across from him, Clint looks up at Sam. "Yeah?"
Sam takes in his tired eyes and offers him a warm, hazy smile. "We should probably let Stark know there's a homeless kid in his infirmary soon," he says, voice thundering in the tense quiet of the corridor. He admires the cracks in his knuckles with a sense of half-hearted pride. They serve reminders both good and bad to earlier's events; good because he got to punch terrible people, and bad because he had to in the first place.
"JARVIS," the sharpshooter says decidedly to the ceiling, "tell Tony to come to the infirmary, please?"
In his soft British intone, the AU obliges. "Certainly, Mr. Barton."
Sam isn't sure how Tony will react to the information, but he's confident it will mostly be positive. The billionaire will probably be insistent on researching Peter as he has done to everyone who has stepped into his Tower and he might needlessly complain (because that's what he does best, of course), but there's no way even someone as casually uptight as Tony Stark will deny the kid of the help he needs.
He just isn't that kind of person.
Besides, Bruce had been more than happy to help upon seeing Peter's bruised face and blood-stained hair, and he hadn't even asked questions — if Tony were to object to the treatment, Bruce would be one of those gently persistent people who are able to convince him otherwise. Most likely with words along the line of, 'it's not like you can't afford it!'.
Just then, the door to the infirmary opens, and Bruce steps outside with a beaming grin on his face; which Sam has learned, over the time he's been living in the same building as the intelligent doctor, usually means that everything is going well. His whole body sags in immediate relief, exhaustion settling instead of worry. "What's the news, doc?" he asks raggedly.
"It's good," Bruce says, rocking on the balls of his feet. "No telling brain damage to report, though we’ll know for certain when he’s up. Likely a bit of a concussion, but it shouldn’t be anything he can’t handle. No broken bones, though his ribs are a bit on the bruised side. He'll be fine in no time as long as he doesn't move too much and jar his gashes."
"The blood on the back of his head?" Clint prompts anxiously.
"Just a small cut, Clint. Head wounds bleed a lot."
The archer seems to watch Bruce's face for any lie for a good minute, but the doctor's soft smile is as honest as it always has been, and so he falls back into his seat with a sigh of relief so dramatic that Sam collects the energy to giggle. "Oh, thank the Lord," he breathes, grinning at the ceiling as if he just won a marathon. "I've been worrying for so long that I can't imagine what it's like to not worry."
"It's good," Bruce says again as he takes a seat beside Clint, reclining back a little and stripping his hands of his blue medical gloves. Then his expression changes to one of the slightest confusion, the smile remaining. "In fact, it's better than good. Some of the bruises are starting to fade around the edges already..."
"That's fast," Sam comments. The 'almost too fast' is an unspoken truth.
"Yes, strangely so," Bruce agrees apprehensively. "You can see him once JARVIS tells me he's awake. I don't think he'll appreciate being woken up with the headache he's going to be nursing."
Sam puffs out his cheeks. He can only imagine what the kid'll wake up to; with that many blows to the head, there's going to be some serious backlash. Something tells him that there's going to be quite a few headache pills gone after all of this is over. "I'm certainly not envious of him," he says, chuckling halfheartedly.
Just then, the elevator at the end of the corridor opens, and Tony Stark steps out with a spring in his step and a hot paper cup of coffee in his hand. The sweats and hoodie he's wearing are covered in oil and some sort of unknown white powder (if he weren't tired as anything, Sam would've made a cocaine joke of it), suggesting that he's been working on some project again — and his bitter expression means that he isn't glad to be interrupted.
"JARVIS told me that Clint is in the infirmary," he states, clearly unpleased, "and that he needed me up there. Is it really so important that I had to stop halfway through my work to come and see what you idiots did this time?"
The archer looks scarcely guilty, but then his expression hardens. "Yes, Tony, it is important. And I'm not the patient. Not this time."
Tony's expression changes for the briefest second and Sam takes the chance accordingly. He clears his throat to gain attention to himself. "Clint and I have this, uh, friend. We were getting breakfast muffins — because you gave me food poisoning last time I ate something you cooked — and went over to give him an extra one..." He trails off, looking to Clint for help.
"And he was getting beat on. So we helped him." Clint pauses, rolling his tongue in his mouth as he thinks. Then he adds, "But we got there a little late and he's a bit banged up, so we took him here."
"First of all, the cooking thing offended me," Tony begins. Then he turns to look Clint in the eye, gaze a threshold of unreadable emotion. "So, I take it that friend knows you're Avengers?"
From where'd been sitting quietly, Bruce snorts. "Who doesn't?"
Tony, too, snorts. "What was I thinking? Of course he doesn't." Then his expression melts into one of swelling pride; a turn which mildly surprises Sam, because it isn't often that the billionaire is proud of anything save for his own work. He steps forward to clap Clint and Sam on their shoulders. "I'm proud of you two for looking after this friend of yours. What's his name, then?"
"Peter," Sam supplies.
He hesitates to add anything more; partly because he feels uncomfortable disclosing information of someone else, but mostly because he doesn't know much more himself. Now that he thinks about it, the only thing he really knows of Peter is his name and that he likes his cheeseburgers without any pickles. Everything else hasn't really been deemed important until now.
When he looks over to Clint, he observes that the marksman looks just as conflicted as he feels. He would have thought that he'd have more on the kid since he's known him a little longer, but, if his expression is anything to judge by, he doesn't know much more than Sam does.
Peter is one big mystery, and now Sam is curious enough to crack it.
"... is that all?" Tony prompts carefully. "No last name?"
Suddenly all too aware of just how little he knows, Sam awkwardly rubs the back of his neck. "Not that we know of," he confirms eventually, upon realizing that Clint isn't going to do so. "He's a little... uh, quiet about himself. Actually, he's a little quiet in general. Uh."
Tony's eyes narrow and his head tilts a certain way. "That isn't suspicious at all," he says, suspiciously.
"He's not bad, Tony," Clint inputs, hurrying to recover Peter's reputation in the eyes of the billionaire. It's so very unlike Clint to behave in such a desperate sort of manner that Sam finds himself wondering whether he's been replaced by a completely different person; it seems that ensuring Peter's well-being has thrown his entire character on a loop. "Honest to God, he's a good kid."
"Kid?" Tony repeats.
It's now that Bruce chooses to speak again from where he's slouching oddly in a chair, scrolling through something on his phone. "He's really young, Tony. My guess is around fifteen or sixteen — couldn't be more than eighteen by the size of him. Though that could just be the malnutrition..." He trails off distractedly, showing particular interest to something on his screen.
"Malnutrition? Kid?" Tony repeats again, worriedly taking a sip of his coffee. He looks entirely conflicted now, like he isn't sure what to do about the situation - an expression not common on the billionaire's usual intelligent composure. "If you two kidnapped a fucking kid from his fucking parents, I swear to God..."
Clint stammers, "the thing is about this kid is that he's, uh, a little homeless," and offers Tony the sweetest shit-eating grin he can manage in his half-exhaustive state - which, to be completely honest, looks more like a ragged grimace than anything else.
The billionaire goes quiet for all of two minutes. Not a lot of anything about Tony Stark can scare Sam (he's half the size of him, for fuck's sake), but if there's one thing that does, he cannot deny that his silence shakes him to the core. It's not often that the man is silent, even as he thinks; he's always filling up the room with his constant stream of chatter, whether he's talking to a teammate, Pepper, an intern in his public labs downstairs, or even just the loyal AI in his ceiling.
It's never particularly annoying, though. His sort of chatter is the kind that can either engage people into conversation or just melt into comfortable background noise and make the room just that tiniest bit less tense; his talkative nature is sometimes what keeps the team from falling apart after certain events and he doesn't even realise it most of the time.
Regarding this, his silence is strange and entirely unreadable. Sam can't latch onto what's running through his mind, because he usually says it all anyway. Part of him is anxious that he'll decide Peter isn't worth the quality medical care he has in the Tower; that he'll heartlessly cast the kid aside onto the street.
(Which definitely won't happen, he tells himself.)
It's a few minutes before the billionaire eventually speaks again. His eyes are knowing and bright. "If I'm allowing a homeless kid in my infirmary, I'm going to need to know all the deets. Can't do a lot of research with just his name, but I'll manage. You said it was Peter, right?"
"Yup," Sam confirms, popping the 'p'. It's entirely expected and understandable that Tony'll want to look up this kid; he's sure that Peter wouldn't feel the same, but he doesn't have a choice in the option anymore.
The billionaire gives Sam his most charming smile and a thumbs-up (that makes him feel far more validated than it should, but he keeps it to himself) before he spins on his heel like he's billowing a cape and strides back to the elevator he came in on. "I'll be back!" he calls over his shoulder. "JARVIS, tell me when he wakes up?"
"Of course, Sir."
Clint and Sam promptly highfive.
.
"Mr. Barton, Dr. Banner has asked me to inform you that Peter is awake. Would you like me to tell him that you will come when you have eaten your cereal?"
At the sudden appearance of JARVIS' voice, Clint's hand flinches and sends milk violently flying across the counter-top. "Aw, shit," he curses under his breath, watching the milk puddle across the surface and drip onto the floor. He casts a glare to an unparticular spot in the ceiling. "Way to scare the shit out of me, J."
JARVIS replies, "I apologize."
He discards his bowl of half-soggy cereal and unused spoon in the sink and rolls the sleeves of his worn green sweater past his elbows. The milk is still dripping onto the floor from the counter and the thought of having to clean it up himself releases an internal groan that shudders through his body. "Get someone to clear this up?" he says as he hardheartedly dabs at the puddle with a dirty washcloth.
"Of course. I will send one of Sir's personal cleaners." The AI pauses for only a moment, and then says, in a tone of insistence, "Dr. Banner tells me you must come to the infirmary immediately."
And that's when Clint finally registers it; Peter is awake.
The whole world seems to stop. The archer, forgetting about the spillage entirely, drops the washcloth onto the floor and nearly slips over on it trying to rush to the nearest elevator. JARVIS helpfully opens the doors and takes him up to the sixteenth-floor infirmary -- where they took Peter, because it's the newest one Tony has installed and Peter deserves only the best -- without having to be told.
(And people wonder why AIs are so nice to have around.)
When he gets there, Sam steps out of the elevator at the end of the other end of the corridor at the same time as he steps out of his own. The man looks to be both happy and extremely nervous all at once — no doubt that Clint's expression looks very much similar — and his eyes are still somewhat grey with the remnants of sleep. He must've taken a nap.
They both stop outside of the infirmary, sharing a look. "Why are you nervous?" Sam asks.
Clint's eyes narrow comically. "I could ask you the same thing," he counters. There's something particularly nerve-wracking about heading into anything medical and Clint has never been able to understand it — he doesn't even have a medical phobia or anything.
"It's just Peter," Sam says next, turning back to face the door and releasing his bodily tension with an audible exhale. As if hyping himself up (or as if to rid of excess energy, which is the more likely reason), he briefly jumps up and down on the spot. "Just Peter and Bruce. Really, I don't know why I'm nervous."
"Neither do I," Clint answers, and opens the door before he loses the nerve to.
It's quiet inside. Dauntingly so, really; even to Clint's impaired hearing, every footfall seems to cut through the air like a warm knife through butter. There isn't even the soft, constant beeping of the heart monitor or the gentle whirr of an oxygen machine to break the tension.
Bruce is sitting on a swivel chair and signing papers, softly humming a nameless under his breath as his pen flies across the page. He's not in his lab coat anymore, but instead in a t-shirt and old black jeans, his hair akin to a bird's nest. The blue medical gloves are discarded in the bin under his desk and he doesn't seem to be paying mind to the patient in the bed at all.
Said patient's face lights up when Clint and Sam shuffle into the room and he nearly bursts forward on the bed with the rustle of bed sheets. He's looking a lot better than he did earlier; his hair is damp from water instead of blood, and there are little stetri-strips holding the worst of the gashes on his head closed. The blood that had previously been dripping down his face is cleaned off and his skin, where there aren't bruises, isn't so pale anymore.
Clint comes to realise that whatever magic Bruce performed has worked, and a smile spreads across his face.
"Hey, kid!" Sam grins, parking himself on the side of Peter's bed. "How're you feeling? That head of yours hurting?"
The archer sits on the opposite side of the bed, crossing his legs across the bedsheets. The kid looks positively beaming at their presence and it causes something warm to settle within Clint's chest. "Hey, Pete," he greets, his tone the picture of kindness. He's careful to not let any sort of pity soak through into his voice. "Bruce been treating you good?"
Peter shoots a certain look at the doctor's back. "He called me a squirt," he huffs.
Bruce doesn't turn to look at them, but Clint can see him smiling down at the paper he's signing. "I did not," he claims, though his somewhat guilty tone suggests otherwise.
The sound of Sam's laughter seems to melt the heavy tension away like sand through his hands. For that, Clint is glad; Peter seems to be getting more and more comfortable as time passes despite his predicament. Clint would have thought that he'd be a little more scared to wake up in an unfamiliar environment with someone he hardly knows such as Bruce.
Not to say that he's complaining, though — no, Clint is over the moon that Peter feels comfortable around them. Part of him thinks that he's more relaxed with Bruce around because, without his lab coat and latex gloves, he looks less like a doctor and more like a guy that just wants to help. Knowing him, the knowledgeable ass probably took it all off just for that reason.
Clint regards Peter as he attentively listens to whatever story Sam is telling him. The bruises and gashes on his face look a lot better — strangely so, for only a couple of hours could have passed since he got them in the first place — but they're still horrifically dark and just as unsettling as they'd been when he first saw them.
Boy, does Clint hate people who beat on kids.
The lighting of the infirmary, as it is in every medical facility, it seems, is harsh and coloured an ugly white, casting shadows across Peter's skin and defining just how skinny he really is. Clint can see his collarbones and his cheekbones and how his jaw is too sharp where it should be more of a soft slope. He'd never noticed it much before, but now every detail just screams at him for attention.
Nevertheless, the bruises and the malnutrition don't matter as much as Peter's happiness does right at this moment. His tawny hair is starting to go from dry to adorably fluffy and the corners of his pale pink lips are upturned in a soft smile, his scrawny body leaning forward in anticipation as Sam's drawn-out story eventually comes to an end.
"Amazing," he whispers, still watching Sam with wonder in his eyes.
Sam's eyes scrunch up when he smiles. "You're adorable, did you know that?"
At this, red dusts along Peter's cheeks, and he rubs at the back of his neck. Clint feels warmth spread across his chest. "The most adorable," he confirms.