InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Dude, there's a cow behind you"

When Clint got the text from Klaus, it took a few seconds for the penny to drop. He scanned the network for what he'd missed while teaching an archery class to a bunch of delightfully sassy senior citizens, and that's when he got it—what Klaus meant by "I'll clean up the bathroom."

There was no telling how many speeding and traffic laws he ignored between the community center and the Station, but every second was way too long. Clint's imagination worked overtime, his mind spinning up images faster than his car could hope to go. I'll clean up the bathroom. His pulse roared in his ears, and his heart had taken up permanent residence in his throat by the time he'd parked haphazardly in the garage. Actually getting up to their apartment was a complete blur.

He couldn't even call out when he slammed his way inside, his throat was so tight, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The copper smell hit him immediately. Already dazed, he crossed the room and opened the bathroom.

It was somehow both worse than he thought and not nearly as bad as he'd feared. His brain shut off completely. Everything else was autopilot.

He got Klaus cleaned up and put in bed, then he tackled the tub and tiles. Half of him expected his husband to slouch his way out of their room and come help him, but it didn't happen. Fear and anger were a potent mental cocktail, but one he couldn't acknowledge. In fact, it didn't touch him until he was in the middle of starting a load of laundry. He'd already treated the stains like Nat showed him eons ago, and now everything just had to wash.

A sob ripped out of him right as he shut the washer lid, and he leaned heavily on it, nearly crumpling right there.

It wasn't a quick trip where Klaus died and was eager to get back into his body. He has gotten those trips down to seconds, but he'd had a job to do. He found May, and he tried to figure out what to do, but he hadn't managed it.

When the air came into his lungs and he'd happened awake, he was dazed for a moment to find himself back in bed. Had he dreamt it? But there was a tightness in his chest when he heard the sob that told him he hadn't.

Klaus pulled his hair up and out of his face when he stretched to walk out of the room. He saw the back of his husband and deflated at the state of him. He could smell the cleaning product. He wanted to flash him a cocky smirk and make a joke of the whole thing like he'd done with Allison, but he couldn't.

Instead, he moved up behind him and pulled him into a hug. He kissed the back of Clint’s head. “I'm right here.” He said gently.

He'd heard Klaus' approach, right at the edge of his shitty hearing, so he wasn't startled when his husband's lean form was suddenly all along his back. Clint's hands came up to close over Klaus' arms, and he had a flash of thought that he really wanted to pull them away, to turn around and immediately start yelling.

He didn't, though.

"You can't do that," Clint croaked around more tears that spilled hot and fast down his face. "I know you're trying to help, but you can't do that again. Klaus, I can't—I can't do that again."

Klaus’ heart broke at the sound of his husband's voice. He couldn't imagine what walking into that scene would have done to him… which was exactly the sort of thing that he had tried to prevent by letting him know in advance.

Klaus loosened his arms to attempt to move Clint, to turn him to face him. He wanted to brush all of his husband's tears away.

“I had to help,” Klaus told his husband dumbly. “You shouldn't have–you should have stayed at work. I would have taken care of it.” He promised, as if it were truly the cleaning that Clint were upset about. He knew it wasn't, but Klaus didn't know how to address that yet.

As stubborn as he kind of wanted to be, Clint didn't actually resist when he was turned. It gave him the excuse to put his arms around Klaus's shoulders and push right up against him. They were roughly the same height, but Clint had always had more bulk than his husband. It came with the archery. It was the only thing that kept him from completely collapsing against Klaus, which likely would have landed them squarely on the floor.

In any other circumstance, it might have been ideal. Now, however… Clint directed the mere tip of his anger and frustration into the crook of Klaus' neck. "That's not the point, and you know it. What if Molly had been around, or Lila had been sent home because of this new bullshit? Or Ben was the one who tore down the highway to get here?"

Klaus knew that Clint wouldn’t be happy, and maybe Klaus was jaded about the whole life or death thing. He had tried to take precautions so that no one was traumatized, but he didn’t account for Clint ignoring those sentiments. Still, he held him tightly as they spoke, trying to reassure him that everything was okay now.

“Molly is at Pepper’s.” Klaus said with a soft sigh. He had been homeschooling Molly, and they had both been home when Klaus had made his decision. “I told her that I needed to go to the afterlife for a bit, and I asked her to let me take her to Pepper’s. She agreed. I didn’t go into any… large details about it, but I asked her to stay at Pepper’s until one of us came and got her.”

“Lila is at school. Ben is at school. I sent you and Ben text messages that told you that I needed to go to the afterlife and to stay out of the bathroom. If you had both listened, no one would have needed to see what you saw.” Klaus maybe should have locked the door, but it’s not like Ben, or Lila or Clint couldn’t have gotten around something as flimsy as a bathroom lock.

“It’s… not comfortable, but its the only way I had to get to where May was and make sure that she was safe.”

It took a long, long few moments for Clint warred with the still strong urge to be furious. A part of him clinged to it. If he let it go, he wasn't sure what he'd have left, and that scared him. Still, he chuckled, low and hollowed out, and pressed his forehead into Klaus' shoulder. "You're not allowed to use logic on me. It's taking the fight out of my very good arguments as to why you can't do this again. Y'know, the ones not fueled by terror that this might be the one time this place takes away your powers and being dead sticks. Or you get taken away from me while you're in the afterlife, and I don't even have a body to find."

His teeth gnashed together, jaw working. Turned out, he wasn't as done with the anger as he thought.

During those moments, Klaus just held onto Clint. He knew that it wasn't easy to watch someone you love do something destructive. “If Natasha were somewhere— I don't know, a secret base or something— and you could get there and possibly save her, or at least get Intel, you would, right?” He asked Clint. It was a stupid question, they both knew that Clint would be strapping on arrows in a heart beat. “That's what this was. It was dangerous, yes, but… we had reason to think it would be okay. So, I took the risk.”

Klaus’ fingers caressed Clints jaw, silently willing it to relax. “I can't promise it won't happen again, just like you’d never promise not to do anything risky for your family.” He pressed gentle kisses the the side of Clint's head.

“I'm here now though,” he said softly. “And if I can get some help, I might be able to get May home… but I don't know enough about the magic here to do it,” Klaus started to explain, “and I can't promise I won't need to like… go for another visit.”

Doing his very best impression of a child's balloon, Clint deflated even more. He had no arguments that wouldn't turn him into the biggest liar. Or the biggest hypocrite. They hadn't had to do this in a long time, this hero thing. And while Klaus had never exactly been a life-sized action figure, he was a hero. Hard stop.

Clint didn't have it in him not to support him, even if his husband's abilities weren't hard coded to tear out Clint's heart every time.

His next words felt like they were being dragged out of his throat and along his tongue. He didn't want to say them, didn't even want to think them, but he couldn't deny he knew the truth behind each one. "There are better ways. Cleaner. If you're doing something like that again, you come to me, okay? Can we compromise on that?"

Klaus let his head drop onto Clint’s shoulder. He didn’t like his powers, he didn’t like what he had to do, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t do it if he needed to. “Yeah,” Klaus said dryly. “It’s…” He pulled away for a second, just shaking some of his extra energy out.

“I asked Bruce or Pepper if they would… I left you and the fam out for a reason. I know.. It can be traumatic and hard to watch. My nephew accidentally shot me with a harpoon gun once… and we didn’t know about my powers then… the look on his and my brother's face when I came back, it said a lot.” He shrugged. He honestly couldn’t remember if he’d told him that particular story about Diego and Stanley.

“They wouldn’t do it. So I realized that I, uh… had to. But it’s harder when … I have to do it. I can’t explain it. I don’t want to have to… do it myself, but I also don’t want to have you doing it either. You know that, right? Because… I mean, look at you right now.” Klaus saw it in his eyes, all of the emotions, and he hated that it was because of what he’d done.

It was Clint's turn to reach a hand up to card through Klaus's hair. His curls were so soft that, for just a moment, Clint could almost forget about the awfulness of what he'd seen. Truth was, though, he'd seen a lot worse in his Avenger-ing years. Hell, he'd done a lot worse. But it was extra bad when it was someone he loved.

Okay, every time was bad.

But Clint had a sliding scale of bad.

Enough that all Klaus' story did was steel his resolve. He pulled back and put a crooked finger under his husband's chin and lifted it gently. "You're not hearing me, Klaus. I'm saving you the pain of doing it, so long as you swear to come back to me. This head of mine? It's got a pretty vast capacity to compartmentalize, and anything we can't talk out before or after usually gets taken out at the range. Or in bed, when I'm using slightly less healthy coping mechanisms. So. Deal?"

Klaus sighed. He was worried about what it would do to his husband, but there was the appeal of not dying alone, even if it was the briefest of deaths. Slowly, he nodded.

“Deal.” He told him, and he put a hand on Clint’s cheek. “But, I need you to talk to me if it gets to you, okay?” Because, even though he didn't intend to do this often, it did happen occasionally.

“Do you think that we could cuddle a bit? Before we pick up Molly?” he asked.

"Yeah," Clint agreed readily, because that was the kind of stipulation he could get behind. In theory, at least. In practice, it might be a little more difficult, because Clint felt a lot of things all the time, but talking about them? Not exactly his forte, unless it took the form of a joke or a self-effacing remark. Still, if this was what it took to never have to clean up the aftermath of Klaus' version of help, then he'd do his best. "Yeah, okay. I can do that."

He pulled Klaus against him again, wrapping him up in a full-body hug, and kissed the top of his cheek. "Cuddling for a bit would be perfect."