Chapter Text
At least he's got some cover. Earlier on a garbage truck had tipped over in the middle of the road and now Clint's huddled up behind it, reasonably sure that he’ll be able to hit anyone who comes into his line of sight. The bad news is, he’s got what feels like a severe concussion. Every time he makes a move to stand up his stomach tries to climb up his throat and empty itself all over his boots.
‘Barton! Are you still with us?’
Clint forces his eyes open, straining to focus against the blur. ‘Yeah.’
‘Can you give us an update?’
He doubts that Coulson actually needs one; he's probably just trying to get Clint to keep talking. ‘Sun’s still in the sky,’ Clint tries. ‘People are... still shooting at each other.’ He swallows thickly, breathing through his nose. ‘Can’t you just order an air strike or something?’ The one good thing about this situation is that there are no civilian bystanders, meaning he doesn't have to feel guilty about sitting around on his ass.
‘Believe me, if I could, I would,’ says Coulson tightly. ‘Unfortunately, you’re six feet away from a fuel tank.’
‘My bad,’ says Clint, flexing his fingers around the barrel of his gun.
‘Sit tight. We’ll be with you in less than ten minutes.’
Clint tilts his head back against the side of the truck. Too bad ten minutes will be too late. Coulson’s already breaking rules and records to get to him, but Clint's got cover from precisely one angle and one angle only. Let’s just say that he isn’t wild about his chances.
‘Yeah, OK,’ he slurs. ‘See you soon,’ he adds, and fumbles with his earpiece until it comes loose. He pulls the wire out of his tac vest and throws it off to the side, far enough away that he can no longer hear the tinny noises of Coulson yelling at him to put it back on.
He sticks to his orders. He sits tight. But the sounds from across the road are getting quieter, and Clint finds his eyes drifting closed, his gun hand falling into his lap. His head throbs, and somehow, he’s asleep.
* * *
Clint decided a long time ago that deathbed confessions were not his thing.
Not that he’s all that likely to die in bed.
Regrets, he’s had a few, etc etc. Starting aged way-too-young, he regrets not having kicked his dad in the balls while he still had the chance. On alternate days he regrets either running away from the orphanage, or not having run away sooner. He’s pretty sorry about the way he ended things with Natasha, even though that turned out OK in the long run. More or less everything he ever said or did with Barney after the age of ten is one big fat regret, but it’s not like there’s anything he can do about that now.
Movies love deathbed confessions. Hell, everyone loves them, right back to Shakespeare (shut up, Clint did go to school sometimes), but nobody ever mentions what a stupid fucking idea they are. Telling people all your dark secrets five seconds before you kick it is just cruel. Like, maybe if Clint was moments from death he’d use the time to request that Tony shave off his goatee in a final gesture of respect. That'd be kind of funny. But anything more hardcore than that? No way. He's not that much of an asshole. The only function of a final, reckless last wish is to make yourself feel better, the side effect being that you'll probably make some other poor bastard feel even worse once you're gone.
Since Coulson is the one person who’s guaranteed to be at the other end of Clint's radio whenever he’s in the field, this is a legitimate concern. Clint would rather his last words didn’t end up immortalised in some SHIELD database as being a garbled declaration of love for his handler. Plus, that would totally be the ultimate douche move. So Clint’s got a solid plan in place for when someone finally manages to get a kill shot in and he’s left bleeding out onto the asphalt while ungrateful New York bystanders film it all on their cell phones.
The plan is: shut the hell up.
There have been three times in Clint’s life when he’s been absolutely certain he’s going to die. Considering his job description this probably sounds like a pretty low number, but those are just the times when he’s had enough time to think shit through. He has no idea how often someone’s bullet missed him by an inch. Those first couple of times he was pretty zen about it, but by now he’s been with SHIELD for nearly three years and for the first time in his life, Clint has something to lose. Propped up against that truck, half-congealed blood dripping sluggishly down his neck and into his collar, he'd felt the urge rising in him to start talking.
The thing about Coulson is that most of the people he works with don't really view him as a person. Thanks to his combination of bland hyperefficiency and a highly erratic fieldwork schedule, the junior agents seem to characterise him as some kind of distant, faceless cross between Nick Fury's PA and the Terminator. Fury's the Bad Cop; Coulson's the guy you call when you want someone who'll nod, say "OK," in a thoughtful tone of voice, and come back in a week with your problem quietly solved. But Clint knows him better than most, and he knows that Coulson's as human as the rest of them. If Clint dies in the field while Coulson's his handler, then obviously Coulson is going to feel like shit about it. There's no point in piling on the guilt by telling Coulson that he's got, you know, feelings for him. Then he'd end up feeling like shit and totally weirded out, which is not how Clint would prefer to be remembered. So as soon as he feels his brain swimming off into the realm of poorly-timed, head-injury induced confessions, he ditches the earpiece and closes his eyes.
* * *
He wakes up when they start strapping him onto the gurney. He can hear/feel the heavy throb of a chopper’s blades slicing through the air overhead, and when he opens his eyes he’s not dead and the sun’s blinding him and Coulson’s here and SHIELD people are in the process of wheeling Clint across the road in an emergency stretcher.
Coulson looms over him as the medics lift Clint into the helicopter. ‘Hey,’ Clint says weakly.
'You've been out for eight minutes,' says Coulson. ‘Anything aside from the concussion?’
‘No, sir.’
Coulson vanishes out of his field of vision and Clint winces as someone starts poking around his head wound. The chopper takes off and for a while Clint drifts in and out, Coulson’s voice a reassuring presence in the background as he gives orders to the team they left on the ground. Muzzily, Clint wonders why Coulson’s still here and not down there with them. Eventually, though, Coulson reappears beside where Clint’s propped himself up against someone’s backpack, handing Clint an open bottle of Gatorade.
‘I’ll throw this up on you,’ Clint warns. ‘It’ll be pink. Pink puke.’
‘Do you have a death wish?’ asks Coulson, conversationally. Clint isn’t sure if that’s a non sequitur or not.
‘Are you gonna kill me if I do throw up on you? Because that’s not my fault. I have a head injury.’
‘This suit’s seen worse,’ says Coulson. ‘And I was referring to earlier. Why did you remove your earpiece?’
‘C’mon, it wasn’t like I was going anywhere.’
‘And what if we needed a field report when we were about to land?’
Clint takes the Gatorade, taking a long sip so he doesn’t have to answer straight away. Why did he take out his earpiece? That’s pretty fucking obvious. Because he didn’t want to talk.
‘Sorry, sir. I wasn’t thinking straight. Did I mention the head injury?’
‘I can see the blood from here, Specialist. You don’t need to remind me.’ Clint hands the bottle back and Coulson sets it down under one of the seats. ‘Don’t go off comms again without good reason,’ he orders.
‘Yeah, OK,’ Clint lies.
'Convincing,' says Coulson drily, but it doesn't seem like he's going to refer Clint to one of the shrinks so it's probably OK.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you swoop in and save me, sir,' he says earnestly, gazing up at Coulson because he figures that if he at least sounds like he's kidding, it totally doesn't count.
‘Then I’ll be sure to drop by and give you the blow-by-blow once you’re out of the hospital.' Coulson pulls something from his jacket pocket. ‘Do you want my iPod for the rest of the journey?’
Clint nods, winces, and gives him the thumbs up. ‘Thanks,’ he says, and Coulson squeezes his shoulder before getting up to talk to the pilot. Next time he gets a head injury, Clint decides, he’s going to try for a hug.