Work Text:
1
Clint Barton is an Avenger first, an agent second, and a scaredy cat fucking last. So when he's the first one to reach the lab where they're holding Steve and finds him hooked up to a naso-gastric tube besides all the IVs, he grits his teeth and starts pulling things free.
Right hand, right elbow, left hand. Steve's eyes are open, but they're only half focusing. Clint pulls the catheter free, as quick and as gentle as he can, and then yanks open the restraints. Steve's heavy and uncoordinated as Clint rolls him onto his side, and Clint can feel him gagging as Clint tries to get the naso-gastric tube out, body curling tighter and tighter. When it's all the way clear, Steve retches and coughs, but Clint keeps his hand on Steve's back, and finally Steve can breathe, and swallow, and doesn't throw up.
Clint's grip is harder than it needs to be getting Steve clothes, and his heartrate doesn't slow until they hit the middle of the firefight on the way out.
Steve's quiet "Thank you," is worth it.
2
Natasha discusses it, debriefing, like any weakness to be compensated for. She says he's lucky he got the New Mexico assignment instead of the Stark assignment, because of Tony's drinking habits while dying. Clint says fuck you, I'd be an awesome sexy PA. Natasha grins.
Clint doesn't know if it would have messed him up, watching Tony like that. He would have been a mission, not the guy who builds Clint 'lottery arrows' without telling him what they'll do, and then laughs his moronic goatee off when Clint uses them to do $2000 worth of damages to Tony's own building.
Clint's glad he wasn't the one watching Tony's downward spiral, but that hasn't really got anything to do with whether there'd have been puke involved.
3
What he doesn't tell Natasha is how weird it was not having a phobia. Because it wasn't there, when Loki glowsticked him in the chest. Being mind-controlled into a dime-store minion apparently came with free zen, which was in handy when your new overlord had blown all his reserves and couldn't make it to the evil base without getting carsick. It made Clint's skin crawl now, but it hadn't then, even when the black gunk Loki brought up looked unbelievably wrong.
Weird to be reassured by getting grossed out.
4
There are antiseptic wipes, individually wrapped, in one pocket of his work gear. It's the one concession he allows himself, because they're handy for tending scrapes and low-level injuries, not just trying to get germs and alien guts and building dust off his hands before eating shawarma.
No one gives him shit for using them, Steve even asks if he can have one. Natasha just holds out a hand. In the end Clint passes his little handful around to everyone, and they're all a little cleaner, a little less bloody by the time the food is ready.
5
Clint tried to focus on Coulson's grip on his arm, on his left hand at the back of Phil's skull. On the wall. Anything to ignore the slick heat of Phil's mouth around his right hand, the way Phil's throat closed off against his fingers every time they moved.
"Keep them there." Phil had said. "I'm not dealing with Stark while under the influence of a truth serum. He'd be worse than Hydra." But his eyes were smiling, and Clint knew he didn't mean it.
He meant it about the serum, though, and after the helicarrier Clint is going to do whatever the fuck Phil needs him to. So Clint pushed three fingers to the back of Phil's throat, and twisted until the gagging turn into retching, and truth serum (and coffee, and pieces of doughnut) splattered into the cracked sink.
It's slimy, against his fingers, and he eats left-handed for a couple days. But he's kinda proud.