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clintasha22 · 2 years ago

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The Electricity Inside

Clint was almost always moving or making some kind of sound. What Clint called the bane of his existence, the doctors called something else. Tourette's Syndrome.

It wasn't even the tics that bothered him the most. It was the way people treated him after they found out. As if he suddenly had become a freak in a matter of seconds. He wished people would stop treating him so differently after they realized.

Clint didn't get officially diagnosed until he was recruited for S.H.I.E.L.D. He hadn't had anybody who cared enough to take him. Growing up in an orphanage, there were a lot of messed up kids, and Clint's problems were low on the list of priorities. Once he left, he didn't have the money to go to the doctors, nor did he care to.

As Clint got older, his friends and classmates started to notice some of his "quirks." Being the quiet kid he was, Clint became embarrassed. He tried his best to keep that electric buzzing feeling down inside while around other people. Whenever he had the urge to jerk his head to the side or start rolling his eyes, he would find something else to do instead. He made it blend into his "normal" movements so that no one would notice it.

His tics were constantly changing. Every few weeks, one would be replaced with another, some disappearing never to be seen again and others lingering.

The one tic it seems he will never be able to get rid of is his eye-rolling tic. Oh, how adults and teachers loathed this tic. During his childhood, Clint, of course, didn't have a diagnosis which meant that he endured many hours of detention and lines.

When Clint was finally diagnosed, he was practically in tears. He had felt like he was defective his whole life, and now Clint knew he wasn't. After his diagnosis was discussed, the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor started talking about how Fury and Coulson would have to be informed.

No, Clint thought, they can't find out! What if they start treating me weirdly, just like everybody else?

Even though Clint didn't have a diagnosis prior to this, he still experienced kids bullying him and adults' constant punishment. However, as Clint later learned, having Fury and Coulson know about his diagnosis was pretty nice. Every time he whistled during a meeting or rolled his eyes at Fury, he didn't get in trouble or yelled at. Sure, he still got a few odd looks here and there or Coulson leaned over to check on him during a meeting when Clint was ticcing more frequently than usual. But other than that, things were great.

For some reason, though, Clint could not muster up the bravery to tell Natasha. He wasn't quite sure why, either. Maybe it was because he was worried that she wouldn't trust him in the field, or perhaps it was that she might look at him differently.

It had only been a couple months since she had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. He had planned and gotten so close to telling her so many times, but ultimately he never did. Clint opened his mouth, and suddenly, the thoughts of her staring at him weirdly and making comments about his tics flooded his mind.

Of course, Natasha had noticed his "quirks." How could she not? Clint was her partner and her best friend, and she was a highly trained assassin who had been forced to be overly observant from a young age. She just assumed that he was trying to be funny or defiant.

She couldn't help but be annoyed sometimes by his quirks, though. Natasha would never be able to wrap her head around why Clint thought it was okay to roll his eyes at his superiors.

During a debrief about a challenging and stressful mission, Clint was at his breaking point. He sat through the whole meeting, rolling his eyes every few seconds, clicking his tongue over and over, head jerking minutely, even though every movement caused a shockwave throughout his entire body.

At the beginning of the debrief, he tried but couldn't suppress it. There was electricity crawling up his spine, an itch in the back of his throat. He clicked his tongue one, two, three times.

Natasha tried to stay focused on what Fury was saying, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult as Clint continued to quickly shake his head and click his tongue.

She watched as Coulson leaned over and said something to Clint in a hushed voice. Clint nodded slightly, pushed his chair back, and left the room.

Natasha was deep in thought for the rest of the meeting, barely listening to anything being said. She tried to think of the best way to confront him about the long-overdue topic.

The second the debrief was over, Natasha made a beeline to Clint's room. She opens the door without bothering to knock first.

Natasha looked around for a moment, realizing that she didn't see Clint. She walked further into the room and found Clint sitting on his bed, looking tense and deep in thought.

"Clint?" Natasha questioned.

Clint looked up from where he was staring off into the distance and made eye contact with her. It wasn't long before Clint rolled his eyes quickly to the side.

"Nat, I, uh…." Clint paused hesitantly and cleared his throat twice before continuing. "Nat, we need to talk."

He could already feel the urge to tic crawling up his spine. His head jerked quickly to the side, and then he tried to clamp down on the feeling.

Natasha walked over to the chair in the corner of Clint's bedroom and sat down.

Clint took a deep breath and jerked his head to the side a couple times. He grimaced, and then he finally told her.

"I have Tourette's."

Clint glanced up at her and quickly looked down again. He jerked his head to the side again and tried to suppress the urge to click his tongue.

Natasha sat there, not knowing what to say. What was she supposed to say? She didn't know what to expect, but it wasn't this.

"I didn't even know I had it until I joined S.H.I.E.L.D." Clint mentioned. "When Phil recruited me, they, you know, had the whole psych evaluation, and that is when I got diagnosed."

Finally, Natasha spoke up. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

He looked up and saw Natasha's slightly disappointed expression.

Clint put his head in his hands and took a deep breath.

"I don't know," he replied honestly. "I guess I was worried that you would think I was a freak or something.”

"Clint, you know better than that." She got up from the chair and went to sit on the bed next to him. "I will love you no matter what."

Natasha leaned her head into his shoulder. He sighed a sigh of relief.

"When did it start?" She asked inquisitively.

"Uh, Barney always said it was sometime after our parents died," Clint said solemnly as he jerked his head to the side. "I didn't notice it until people started pointing it out to me."

"You can ask me anything about it," he stated. "Really, Natasha, I didn't mean to hide it from you."

"Well," she started hesitantly and thought for a moment, "Is there anything you can take for it? Like meds?"

"Uh, yeah. I tried meds when I first got diagnosed but stopped them because they made me feel drowsy." Clint answered. "I figured that ticcing some more was better than always falling asleep."

She nodded understandingly and then paused like she had just thought of something puzzling.

"Why do you never tic when you are shooting?" She asked.

Clint clicked his tongue a couple times and then answered, "I don't really know. I think it is because I am so focused that I don't really have time to tic."

Natasha leaned into his side some more.

"Clint, I love you," she said softly.

"I love you too, Tasha."

At that moment, Clint knew that he had found his true family, one that would love him, tics and all.

#tourettes #tics #tic disorder #tics mention #actually tourettic #natasha romanov #clint barton #phil coulson #marvel fanfiction #black widow #hawkeye #neurodiverse

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