Requested by SilentCookie:
Anyway, I know most of the fics in this series of yours are Peter-centric, but I wanted to ask if maybe you would be up to something Clint-centric?
I would love to read something about Deaf!Clint. Something along the lines that his deafness wasn't really common knowledge (for the public, the Avengers know about this), because he has special combi comm/hearing aids he's wearing outside on missions or something, but somehow it got out and there are just some (not everyone, but people like that are always the loudest) really nasty reporters/interviewers/journalists/people who are ableists and talking bullsh*t about how someone like him can't be a real superhero and he wouldn't deserve being an Avenger, that as a "damaged" human with a bow he wouldn't deserve to stand beside enhanced humans (like Steve, Bucky, Peter and kind of Bruce and Natasha) and geniuses, people in armour stronger than a tank etc. And most of the time Clint is good about ignoring this kind of things but he had a bad day or something... Anyway, the point is: insecure!Clint (about his deafness), protective!Avengers (roasting the assholes who said that) and comforting!Avengers (towards Clint, lots of fluff)!
"Getting advice from your friends?" The villain's tone was mocking as he reached for Clint's communicators. "Well that just won't do. You 'superheroes'-"
The man threw the devices to the floor and crushed them with the heal of his boot. Clint resisted the urge to sigh - Tony was definitely going to give him shit about losing two pairs in one week. He shimmed to release some of the pressure the restraints had on his wrists, but it wasn't an escape attempt. He'd already noticed the flash of red hair behind the villain - now it was just time to wait.
At least he didn't have to listen to another monologue. They were always so whiny. And so pathetic.Why were so many people obsessed with Tony? It really killed Clint's whole superhero action vibe when some dumbass won't shut up about some minor snub Tony made like twenty years ago. Even if the mask wasn't covering the villain's mouth, Clint wouldn't have tried to read his lips.
He bit back a smile as he saw Natasha saunter up behind the man and swiftly knock him unconscious. She efficiently cut off the metal cuffs, allowing him to sign with her.
"You're really going to make me save your ass again?" She smirked at him, humor in her eyes.
He shrugged, "didn't want to break my nails picking the lock."
She rolled her eyes and they both headed out of the warehouse toward the pick-up spot.
Tony joked about how nice it was to reunite with old friends and Steve filled out an initial assessment on his tablet with a serious look on his face. Clint rifled through the bins for his spare pair of hearing aids. Damn, it was three pairs this week - he really was in for it.
When he glanced up, Tony was looking expectantly his way. Steve tore his eyes away from his paperwork and immediately saw the issue. He informed Tony that Clint didn't have his communicators and Tony repeated his question. This time making sure Clint was able to read his lips. He also signaled to Jarvis to show Clint a written transcript of anything his teammates said in the jet if he wanted. Natasha and Bucky, who was still unfit for missions, were the only ones who were fluent in sign language. Steve knew some dated ASL due to his hearing impairment in the forties, and he was rapidly picking up on the differences. Bruce and Tony were more likely to use other methods of communication, some, especially Tony's, got creative.
"We're going outside to clean up all that green shit his bots spewed everywhere. Joining us?"
Clint followed with a spring in his step. Bruce had allowed him to borrow the chemistry lab for a few days and he had engineered soap bombs that would blow all the garbage right off the sidewalk. Natasha noticed, and once again, rolled her eyes with a smile. He winked and grabbed a bag from the back of the jet.
Unfortunately, the noise alerted a lot of people of the Avenger's location. Reporters swarmed to find Captain America doubled over in laughter at the sight of Ironman and Hawkeye, hair stuck upright and covered in suds.
Steve started fielding questions about safety and Natasha disappeared, unwilling to get involved in the media circus. Tony had just enough time to blast Clint with an emergency hose in revenge, before the other two men got sucked into the madness.
"Captain! Do you think the government will help subside the reconstruction of nearby infrastructure?" "Well, I believe..."
"Should special precautions be taken in containing a man of this intellect? In your opinion, Mr. Stark, would a normal jail be an appropriate place for him?" "This man is not...
"Hawkeye, can you give listeners the details of what happened in the warehouse? Did the villain reveal his motives?" "It wasn't much of a..."
Clint couldn't hear all the conversations going on around him, but he could focus on one reporter at a time. He could sense the buzz in the atmosphere surrounding him.
He could also sense when something was wrong. The reporter's lips had stopped moving and she had her head tilted in confusion. Surveying his surroundings, Clint realized she wasn't the only one staring. Directly behind him, there was a child who was probably no older than five.
Clint got Steve's attention. Steve was able to sign the jist of what had occurred. The child had slipped under their makeshift stanchion barrier, screaming out for Hawkeye. Clint had been mid-way through answering a question and hadn't noticed until after quite a bit of yelling.
"Well if I wasn't deaf already, it seems like you could've sealed the deal little man." Clint ruffled the kid's hair and then offered his hand for a high five. The kid was ecstatic, screaming in joy over seeing his hero. He had a smile big enough to split his face when he returned to his mom with a signature on his toy bow.
Tony was chuckling at the whole encounter while Steve fondly watched over the scene. Clint almost forgot that this was the first time he'd ever revealed his hearing impairment to anyone outside of friends and family.
That was, until the kid's mother, ushering him away from the crowd, said "Why isn't your favorite Captain America? Or Iron Man? Or the Hulk? Hawkeye is...?" She had turned her head to glance at Clint as she spoke to her child. Maybe she thought she wouldn't be noticed in the huge crowd. Maybe she forgot he could read lips. Either way, Clint could see the disdain in her expression and it stung. Steve, with his superhuman hearing, must've overheard and noticed the twitch in Clint's smile because he wrapped up the interview quickly, nipping all accusatory questions in the bud.
When they got home, Clint good mood had been killed, but he wasn't overall feeling bad either. He was used to stupid comments - mainly about his status as a regular human being. He just wanted to take a hot shower and curl up on the couch with a sandwich.
By the time he plopped down on the couch, Sam had already joined him. JARVIS automatically switched the TV to subtitles. Clint waved the remote control and mimicked changing the channel.
"As long as it's not the Bachelor."
Clint jokingly pointed to his ear and pretended like he couldn't understand the man sitting next to him.
"Barton, I swear.."
Clint chuckled, but he dutifully clicked past the channel. Natasha constantly warned him that trashy reality TV would rot his brain, but it was his guilty pleasure so he didn't really care if she caught him watching Say Yes to the Dress again.
As he was flipping through the channels, going fast enough that Sam was complaining that there was 'no way' he could actually see what was on, he saw himself and stopped.
There, taking up the full screen, was a video of one of the worst moments of his life. It was during a fight with alien life forms. Tony and Thor had taken the skies while Steve, Clint and Natasha kept them corralled on the ground. A bomb had exploded, killing quite a few of them, but also wrecking Clint's aids. He hadn't heard Natasha call for backup from a nearby rooftop, and she was flung from the fourth story from the aliens who had overwhelmed her. Luckily, Steve was able to sprint from his location and catch her, but she still she fractured her spine in the fall. There were several hours where Bruce couldn't tell them if her unconscious form would wake up to full mobility again. Everyone on the team, including Natasha, insisted that it wasn't his fault, but guilt was inevitable and it swallowed him whole. Tony had fixed his hearing aids to be more durable after that.
Clint felt a lump in his throat as he watched the TV. The video had now minimized and a reporter was talking over it. "This is just another instance Hawkeye's disability getting in the way of his work. Is the Avengers the right place for him?"
Sam changed the channel, but Clint snatched the remote back when he saw the feed from earlier today. "What if that had been someone calling for help? For a man who calls himself a hero, Hawkeye wouldn't have been able to give something as simple as the Heimlich if he couldn't hear the warning signs."
"If someone needed the Heimlich, they'd be choking," Sam snorted at the screen. "I don't know if anyone would be able to hear that through a crowd."
Clint tried to huff a small laugh, but he couldn't even manage that. The feed switched to a montage of bystander footage of mistakes he'd made in battle. Most of them were insignificant. Most of them weren't even in situations where his hearing had been affected.
It hurt. He curled himself protectively around the remote, knowing Sam would try to change the channel, knowing he should change the channel himself. He couldn't bring himself to do it though. JARVIS made the call in the end, switching to Kitchen Nightmares instead. It didn't help.
Sam offered his support as a friend and trash talked the media for jumping on a story with such a strong bias and almost no facts, but, as much as he wanted to feel better at the speech, Clint just couldn't. He crawled into bed that night wishing that it would all go away by the morning.
He woke up to a buzzing on his nightstand. When he checked his phone, he had thousands of notifications on his social media sites and from news tags of himself. He saw a flood of support, but the criticisms actually stuck. #NotMyHero was trending on twitter, and a small group of very vocal people were loud about their distaste for a disabled hero. Behind those who were outright hating on him were those who "just think it's only logical that the team I rely on to save the world should only the best of the best. It's just common sense that disability means you can't be the best" or who "think Clint is brave for doing his best out there, but if I had to pick an Avenger to be my bodyguard - he'd be my last choice."
A side-by-side of Steve, posing with his hands on his hips, and Clint, who had just been knocked in the gut, with writing over it "comparing" the two based on physical strength, reflexes, and senses was almost viral.
Against his better judgment, he clicked on the most recent link on his newsreel. Four people were sitting around a table. A news ticker crawled along the bottom of the page that read "Should Hawkeye be an Avenger? We Discuss the Superhero Standard". The first woman opened the conversation by explaining that she personally would not feel safe letting her live rest in the hands of a deaf man. She continued by stating that he was too dependent on his hearing aids and if they failed, everyone would be in danger. A man chimed in at this point and theorized that Hawkeye must have recently become deaf because there was no way all his past heroic actions were done by a deaf man. He said it was "admirable" that the man kept saving the world, but it was only logical that the rest of the Avengers team had shifted to become less reliant on him. The third person agreed, adding in that Hawkeye "was probably kept up as a publicity stunt" to show off "diversity" for the liberals. Together, they theorized that Hawkeye must've botched the last mission because he didn't have his aids in.
The last woman, who had been silently frowning for most of the "conversation" occasionally chimed in to point out that when bombs went off, a lot of the Avengers had to work deaf for a few minutes or hours and finish their battles. She reminded them that Tony Stark was also reliant on technology for his power, but both Hawkeye and Ironman were smart men who could handle it. Despite her arguments, she was always spoken over or ignored, and she remained fairly isolated from the group.
Clint felt shitty. Memories of his father telling him he'd never amount to anything blended with the horror of violently losing his hearing. He didn't doubt that he had valuable skills, but was he really fit to be an Avenger? He wasn't really better than other agents in SHIELD, and he definitely didn't measure up to the super soldiers and geniuses he lived and worked with. Even on that last mission, he had been bait while Natasha, Steve, and Tony cleaned up. He hadn't done much besides getting strapped to a chair.
After torturing himself with comments and videos, he made his way downstairs for some food. He walked past Bucky and Steve watching the news - the video of him and the child again - and fiddled with his hands. As soon as Bucky heard him, he turned around and he was glaring. His expression softened as he took in Clint's appearance. "They don't know anything about you."
Steve nodded. "They really have no right to speak about anyone like that. You've saved so many lives and helped a lot of people."
Clint swallowed hard and tried to smile but on the inside he was thinking "not as many as you."
Steve and Bucky noticed. They saw right through the fake smile. They saw the sag in his shoulders and the heaviness in his step. They saw the self-doubt in his eyes.
Natasha was two steps ahead of them. She came out from wherever she'd been hidden. "So what are we going to do?"
"I think it's time for a team meeting." Steve pulled out his phone to text Sam, Bruce, and Tony.
—————
Clint flopped backwards onto his bed and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply through his nose and rubbed the sides of his head. The day had been uneventful, but the effort to get through it had seemed tremendous. Without clicking anything, his TV switched on. "JARVIS, what the -"
His question got interrupted as he saw Steve on the screen in full Captain America garb. Clint checked his phone for any notifications of a mission, but there was nothing.
"Hawkeye didn't need hearing to take down the Chitauri and save New York City. He didn't need hearing when he single handedly took down the robot army that invaded LA last week because the rest of the team had fallen into a trap in Poland. He didn't need his hearing to help design the improvements to our jet and he didn't need his hearing to build a containment unit for that dangerous bioweapon that terrorists tried to unleash in the subways. He does not need his hearing to keep up with the rest of our team. He has not needed his hearing for any of the accomplishments he's made." Steve took a moment to sternly look every single reporter in the eyes before continuing. "Hawkeye has been loyal to our country and it's people since the beginning. He's prevented countless disasters and saved just as many lives. He's a hero and I trust him with my life. Hawkeye has my back. He has his teammates' backs. He has this city's back. That's much more than could be said about any of you standing before me."
Steve let them stew for an uncomfortable amount of time before speaking again. "I have never seen a group of people so ungrateful before in my life. I will not be taking any questions."
JARVIS flipped the channel. Tony was casually lounging on a talk show couch while Bucky sat attentive at the other end. The host tried to ask a question about how Tony felt about relying on a 'disabled man' to keep him safe, but was immediately cut off with a death stare from Bucky and Tony unbuttoning his shirt.
"Mr. Stark..."
"Until about a year ago, I had something like a pacemaker in my chest. New technology has allowed me to take it out, but for years, I had major cardiovascular problems. I was extremely prone to heart attacks. Was I 'damaged goods'? Should I have not been allowed on the team?" Tony's shirt was now open to reveal the extent of his chest scars. They were raised and red, wrapping all the way across his front and torso. "If I remember correctly, I saved your daughter from an arson attempt several years ago? How was I able to do that with my problems?"
"That's not-"
"-the same? Yeah, it isn't. People can live without their hearing. They can't live without their hearts. And what about Winter here? He's a war vet with a prosthetic. He's taken down more Nazi's than all of us combined. Is he 'too reliant on technology'?"
Bucky rolled up his sleeve to show off the metal arm. He didn't enjoy press, but he was fine with sitting back and letting Tony do the talking.
Tony pointed between himself and Bucky. "Can you explain why when we need technology to keep our hearts going or substitute our limbs or give us our hero abilities it's an improvement, but when Hawkeye uses some hearing aids, he's weak?"
The host opened his mouth to speak again. "Well..."
"No. No you can't. That's because it's some ableist bullshit double standard. Every time one of you tells your children that Hawkeye isn't good enough to be an Avenger because he's deaf, you're spreading harmful lies. You're putting the rest of us on pedestals that are unreachable. We're all human. Most of us are disabled in one way or another. Don't be an asshole - it shouldn't be that hard."
Bucky punctuated his sentence with a curt nod and then they both left.
The screen went dark for a moment and then a video came on the screen. There was a time stamp dated earlier this morning.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Sam's voice was clear as the video focused on a kid, probably in kindergarten. The kid shook his head and shyly hid his hands.
"HE WANTS TO BE LIKE HAWKEYE" Another kid screeched and ran in front of the camera. "I WANT TO BE LIKE HAWKEYE TOO BUT I DON'T HAVE HEARING AIDS LIKE DANNY."
The first kid, presumably named Danny blushed and smiled. He seemed more confident with his friend and held up a drawing of a purple man with a boy. "He's going to see this?"
"Scout's honor. I'll make sure Hawkeye sees it. He's going to love it."
"Really?"
"Absolutely!"
There was a quick pause and then a cut to another group of children. Almost all of them were signing to each other or had hearing aids in.
"Who's your favorite superhero, besides the Falcon of course?"
The kid looked offended. "Hawkeye is better than the Falcon. He's the best."
"But the Falcon can fly."
"So can Hawkeye. He flies the plane."
"Okay, then what about Captain America."
"He can't use a bow. Hawkeye can use a boy and shoot as guys from really really far away. I'm gonna be Hawkeye for Halloween and I already have my bow picked out."
Another kid bathed into the screen. "If you're really friends with Hawkeye, can you ask him to come instead of you next time?"
"Hawkeye!" Children cheered from the background.
Clint wouldn't admit to it, but by the end of all the videos of children, his eyes were watery. Seeing the stack of drawings of him, mostly wearing his hearing aids, set him over the edge. He felt so warm and fuzzy seeing his teammates stand up for him. For the first time since the mission, he genuinely smiled.
After rewatching the clips a few more times, and writing notes to all the kids that he planned on hand-delivering, along with some free, signed Avengers merch of course, he finally had the appetite to stomach something and headed toward the kitchen for some food. Before he made it all the way, he was stopped by the sounds of laughter from the living room and the smell of pizza.
He was met with the sight of his whole team in pajamas with a giant stack of pizza boxes on the living room table. Natasha was fondly recounting a mission she had with Steve. "So, I finally explain to him what a flash drive is, and we grab both from the base and run. I guess Steve didn't see me take the others and only thought there was one." She took a second to get the giggles out of her system. "He's standing in front of Fury and a million other SHIELD agents, ready to share the most important schematics we've every received from a HYDRA base. He clicks on the file. And then porn starts playing!" Natasha cackled. "And it's this really kinky video and Steve is blushing like mad and trying to avert his eyes but he can't turn it off."
Everyone was laughing, even Steve, although he did still seem embarrassed about the whole thing. Clint snickered at the scene.
"Look it's Legolas. Grab a slice. We're catching Buck up on modern Steve. Got anything to contribute?"
"Did you hear about the time he tried to go undercover at some billionaire's party? Natasha was supposed to distract the man while Steve extracted the serums, but it turned out that Steve was the better distraction. But his flirting-it was bad." Clint animatedly started his story, everyone already smiling in anticipation.
Steve tried to defend himself but no one really listened as Tony dug up the old comm feed to hear the travesty first hand. Steve was still grinning though.
They stayed up late telling stories. Bucky got his chance to tell stories about their fearless leader when he was a punk from the twenties. Bruce and Tony swapped science failures they'd witnessed the other do, usually due to not following safety protocols. Natasha knew things about everyone, and was able to push the line without crossing it. Bruce had even made double chocolate cookies that the team gobbled down while they were fresh and warm. Clint's eyelids were drooping as he settled his head on a pillow. He was not far behind everyone who had already knocked out on the couch - everyone but Natasha who was curling up against his side.
She tapped his side and he looked over at her. She gazed at him, respect evident in her features. She signed,
"We're glad you're on the team. I'm glad you're on the team. You're part of our family and there's no backing out now."