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This place, he thinks, is either an empty casket or a full tomb. It's hollow and enormous, it feels like all the people who are missing from it are standing just over their shoulders, staring down accusingly. It feels like turning around to face them makes them disappear, leaving a howling vacancy in their wake.

He feels the spirits of people who've never even set foot in the place, too.

The last thing he wants to do is go sit in his own sterile room by himself, blocked off by walls and locks, wondering if there's been some kind of delayed reaction and the two people in this building he actually gives a shit about maybe turned into dust overnight while he's pretending to sleep.

All the same, he nods once at Steve — more to telegraph appreciation than with any real intent to claim one just yet.

He's not much of a drinker, doesn't tend to turn to alcohol to solve his problems, doesn't like the loss of control over his faculties and his paranoia, resents the fogginess, but... if there was ever a time for it...

"There anything to drink around here? I could use a beer."

It's levelled at Natasha, and there's a subtler question underneath — if he doesn't wanna come, do you got him? She nods. Murmurs, "C'mon, kitchen's on the way. Should still be something stocked."

This is the story of how Frank Castle stole free booze from the Avengers.

Clint isn't in the mood to not want to come. He thinks he should be. He thinks, distantly, that what he should want is to be alone in the room designated for him. Sit in the shower with it too scalding hot until it gets cold and then lay in bed and hate life and feel miserable.

But he follows along to the kitchen anyway. "Could all probably use something," is his useless and unnecessary commentary. He knows where the drinks are. The hard stuff's high up and out of sight, for Tony's recovering alcoholic sake. Or. That's the reason it was initially. And then everything kinda happened and now he doesn't know if it's still there?

He has to climb up onto the counter like a gremlin or a child to reach the cabinets over the fridge, and he sits on it solidly when he retrieves a bottle of scotch. Some of it's been drunk, but not a whole lot.

Natasha takes it easily out of his hands, while he lets out a little "aww" about it. Won't fight it, because he gets that if he starts, well, shit, he'll probably keep going, and nobody needs what happens after that on their hands.

Thor then reaches over and takes it out of her hand, pops the top like it's a soda, and downs half the bottle in one go. "Thank you," he says, with seemingly no self-awareness to be had right now, "for retrieving your Midgardian might to share." He hands it back, mumbling something about proper Asgardian ales, and Bruce just pats his arm and tries to point out that he knows Midgardian ale isn't on par and maybe he should go take a shower?

Nat wrinkles her nose, not for any kind of stink, just for trying not to laugh, and trying not to judge, and having to take a moment to figure out what the hell to do after that. She sighs, has Clint take down a couple glasses while he's up there. Pours out a portion, then tells him to put the bottle back.

It's kind of nice to at least follow the most basic orders. He won't be greedy. Just take what he's given.

She holds up her glass like she's going to toast, but doesn't say anything. He gets it. They can all clink their glasses or aluminum cans or whatever. They can drink. They can commiserate.

These people are a trip. He doesn't know if he's amused or annoyed by them. Always had kind of a vendetta — mild, tiny, annoying little thing about how they aren't doing enough to look out for his brother. Guy's running around in his shirtsleeves with gods and hulks and whatever the hell else, they can't do him a little better than they have been?

But at the same time, the camaraderie reminds him of what it used to be like back overseas with his guys. With Clint. When all of them would get back from some mission that nearly wiped them the fuck out, and hot on the heels of a near-death experience and the loss of a handful of your buddies, all there is... is this strange limbo middle-ground nowhere feeling. This absurd, abstract, impossible to describe sense that reality is at once a fucking joke and not even remotely worth laughing over, which sometimes only serves to make it funnier.

He doesn't really feel like laughing now, but he understands the wrinkle in Natasha's nose. Understands the humor, distantly, at the rapport between Bruce and Thor. It feels comfortable.

He toasts his glass against theirs, and then brings it to his lips to slam the whole thing at once. The burn earns an exhale — been a long while since he bothered drinking. Usually sticks to one beer at a time, but damn if it doesn't feel like the right time to get a little drunk just to cope with it all.

Laura and the kids. Laura and the kids. Maria and the kids. Maria and his kids.

He wants to burn this building to the ground and fight every single person inside it until the flames take him. He wants to hollow himself out and feel nothing at all. He wants to keep his shit together for Clint, but Clint's safe and in good company now, with Natasha taking up about half of his good excuses to remain sober and functional.

Shame she put the bottle back.

To keep himself from going after it, pulling it back down again, he grabs a beer instead and heads over to the table. Drags out a seat and settle wearily into it.

It's a classic case of it all catching up to him once he stops moving. Never should've stopped moving. Too late now.

He never thought he'd have to feel this again.

Frank looks like he's being crushed by the weight of gravity when he practically melts in that chair.

Natasha and Clint have a silent conversation.

Partly it's some perfected bullshit spycraft thing, the ability to talk without talking, with subtle glances and barely there movements. But it's also just the familiarity one gets with someone who feels like another part of their soul. And it is a conversation, whole and complete and impossible for Frank to make out the details of. The way Nat tips her head, the way Clint taps a finger on his glass. Hands ghosting calmly--Clint casts a haunted glance at Frank for just a moment, just a moment, then resumes whatever the not-talk is.

It's a few moments longer before Nat touches his face gently, cupping his cheek warmly, then pulls away, gives space. She passes by Frank and gives his shoulder a brief squeeze. And then she's gone.

Clint stares down into his glass. Fighting the temptation to go dig out the bottle again now that it's just them. He polishes off the last dregs and sets his glass down beside him on the counter next to the others.

"She thinks a shower's the second best idea she's had all day." The fact that he can say something like that without actually exchanging words with her might indicate he's 'paraphrasing' as it were, but who knows, actually. "You know how bad those outfits can start chaffing if you don't peel yourself out of 'em on the reg? And they've been in 'em for a whole epoch-defining fight and hours and hours and hours of flight. 'm not exactly envious."

Maybe he's talking stupid shit to fill the space. But it's his little version of explaining--they're alone right now because Frank is trusted to watch out for Clint, and Nat would like maybe five or ten minutes to cry alone in the shower as she gets all the leftover blood and sweat and dirt off her.

Paraphrasing.

"Y'know, I've never seen Cap with a beard before?" Clint keeps going. On a roll. Fill the space. His voice is hoarse and tired and only lubricated with a drink so far. "Weird. But he's making it look good. It's working for him. And Thor got his hair cut. Less Fabio, harlequin novel guy. I dig it. And I think he's got a new eye? Is that weird? I promise both his eyes used to be blue. Kinda wanna ask, but that might be rude."

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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