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Trust In Me

"Alight, Clint," Steve said as soon as he got back from dropping off the little group of X-Men back in Westchester. "You and me - no one else has to be in on this."

Clint was back in his room and looked like he was expecting that reaction. In fact, he looked almost resigned to it. "Good. That's good."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Steve asked.

"It honestly didn't come up," Clint said with a shrug, obviously trying to play it up and visibly uncomfortable with the attention. "I didn't know lifetime medical records were a requirement for this outfit, but if you're worried, I swear, it's only partial - and I can lip read and manage just fine, really."

"No, that's not it," Steve said, shaking his head. "What if I told you we could have used that to our advantage in some situations?"

Clint gave Steve a dry look. "Yeah, sure."

"No, really. If I'm in your sight line and know you can read my lips, I don't have to speak out loud to get the message to you, right?"

"Hey, if you know sign, even better," Clint said. "My brother and I learned it growing up. Probably rougher than anything you've seen, but hey." Clint shrugged. "It works."

"Hawkeye, I want to know these things because I trust you, and that would be a real sign of trust to share that kind of thing with your team. I'll stand by what I said before - you don't have to tell the others. But if you did, I'm sure Stark would come up with something better than what you had. And either way, that was a great thing that you did for Scott. I'm sure he'll remember it for a long time."

"I told you - I don't use 'em anymore," Clint said. "I haven't for years. I just keep 'em for emergencies."

Steve raised his eyebrows at that. "How long have you had them?"

"Elementary school," Clint said. "In between Kindergarten and first grade. Had the summer to get used to 'em..."

"So ... I'm guessing it wasn't a fluke thing."

"Yeah, no, unless you count a table and my ear and a beer bottle a fluke thing, no, you'd be right," Clint said dryly.

Steve looked more grim at that. "I'm sorry to hear that."

Clint shrugged. "Like I said. I don't need the aids, and no one even noticed all this time. So it's not going to affect my work on the team."

"Never thought it would," Steve said.

"Sure you did."

Steve smirked. "If Logan was here, he could vouch for me on that. You're an asset to the team since you joined on. That doesn't change over something like this."

"Yeah, Logan and his nose," Clint said. "You know there's easier ways to spot a lie, right?"

"Oh yeah, but it's more fun to play good cop bad cop with him doing the stoic routine."

"I can't imagine you being bad cop, Cap," Clint smirked.

"Oh, I'm not," Steve said.

"That's what I thought." Clint shrugged. "Anyway. Don't tell Stark. If I wanted better tech, I mean, if I needed it, I'd ask Pym. But not Stark."

"Alright, but like I told you, I'm not telling anyone," Steve promised. "It's not my story to tell."

"Alright then." Clint leaned back against the wall. "I wasn't trying to lie to you. For the record."

"I know," Steve said, flashing him a smile. "No one likes to talk about stuff like that from when they were kids."

"Yeah, not all of us came out of an experiment or got superpowers to walk it off."