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The slow shake of his head at what follows she thinks is automatic, rote — he's complained about this before, in that bitching-but-not-really-complaining unserious way he rants sometimes, about how freaky it is they can ESP like that at each other. Have those whole conversations without either one of them saying a damn word, and sure, maybe him and Clint can do that a little themselves, but it's never tap three times if you're gonna go take a shower because it's the best experience you've ever had levels of specific. Fucking spies, man.

Normally, all that would be coming out of his mouth, but the words don't feel real tonight. The rant doesn't feel genuine. He feels like he's one frayed thread away from spinning out, and the only thing keeping him under control is that Nat just transitioned responsibility back over to him again. Pulling himself together's a little bit like throwing a lasso around a hurricane and trying to break it in without a saddle, but he grits his teeth and manages something. Something. That's not nothing.

"So what, you people get new eyes the way the rest of us get haircuts now?" Comes his hoarse, somewhat terse return. Voice a little too thick, pitch a little too low. Lumping Clint in with the rest of his team only when it conveniently suits whatever Frank's bitching about, as usual.

His fingers curl around that beer. He wants to hurl it against the wall. He takes a slow, masochistically controlled drink of it instead, and denies himself the pinprick of catharsis he'd feel from it. Once that door cracks open, it'll take a hell of a lot to shut it again.

They're all just trying to hold on as best they can. In all the small ways. Nat needs a moment, and Frank needs to clutch tight to his control, and Clint needs to fill the space with noise before it's too fucking quiet in too big a place. He can see Frank just fine from here. Sees how every move is deliberate and calculated.

He can see how if Frank lets go, it won't be pretty, and a chunk of the building might end up demolished before a Hulk or a Thor holds him to the ground and keeps him there.

"Man, I don't know, it's usually just fancy contacts with recording abilities, or mesh masks with shapeshifting disguises." Which is still stuff Frank doesn't have access to unless he breaks into some very secure places.

His fingers pick at little things, unable to find comfort in stillness. Bit of dirt here. Loose thread there. Some scuffed skin to peel. "If you need to go another round, I probably got it in me." An offer. For the violence thrumming under Frank's skin.

He can see the offer coming before it hits — it's in the way Clint is picking. Dirt, skin, any excuse to be twitchy with his fingers, to pluck at something when he doesn't have a bowstring instead. And it's not that he doesn't want to that has his head shaking back and forth. It's that he wants to too much.

"Wouldn't go down the same," he says instantly, a little too steely, a little too cold. "It would be different."

Because he wouldn't be able to hold back. There wouldn't be that same presence of mind that got them out of Clint's house without breaking any of his furniture. Once he lets go, he's gonna get carried away and it's gonna get brutal, and he's not gonna stop.

Rather, he'd stop for Clint, but it might be about two minutes after he should've. Only thing that'll do is rile him up more out of shame or remorse, and make him want to swing at something else even harder.

"Maybe we could ask Steve."

But it's better if they all manage to keep a lid on Frank. At least for now. Keep him cool, keep him collected. Maybe in a day or two...?

It feels like this day will never end. If he sleeps, he'll wake up and maybe he'll be at home, and maybe it'll happen all over again. Is that a paranoid thought? Or is that exhaustion starting to bleed in?

"Gym's all kinds of reinforced." For obvious reasons. And for future reference.

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