I dont know if you are taking requests but I would love to see a fic where clint have Tourette’s too. Maybe taking about growing up with ts and Natasha finding out? some tics he could have Verbal tics: popping clicking sound whistle throat clearing sniffing. Motor tics: Neck jerking, shoulder shrugging blinking hard or Repetitively eye rolling (gets him in trouble. please no Coprolalia because its actually stereotype and rare! Also tics go away when you are focused on stuff like shooting!
Hey! Thanks for the request! That’s a very interesting prompt idea. I went a head and wrote something for it. I hope you enjoy it! Also apologies for any typos... I wrote this at 3 am.
Since the day Natasha met him, the archer had been nearly completely unreadable. Which, in full honestly, had made him more than slightly harder to trust during their first few missions. The man seemed to have his tics like any other, however his never arrived on time. His obsessive need to clear his throat happened on and off the job, in serious and unserious situations alike. While lying and when telling the truth. To be honest she had at one point thought it was a long con to cover up when he lied to or told half truths to fury and maybe even herself... but as time went on she had since concluded it was just an annoying habit. Kinda like how some people drum their fingers others twist their hair. Everyone has an annoying habit.. Clint’s.. Clint’s was clearing his throat. And it was a habit she’d thought more than once of killing him for especially after having to listen to him over coms for hours during missions. Only for it to miraculously stop the second the mission got serious, of which she was usually thankful for. It always seemed at its worst before a mission though.. assuming it was a way of expelling nervous energy during pre mission jitters but he’d pick up the habit right back up after the mission. The othering that he did was blink. Hard. At first she had thought it was some kind of code. Or message. The longer she was around him the more she realized he just did it somewhat randomly, less frequently than the throat clearing, but it was still on an occasion. She would have thought it was due to fatigue.. but he did it enough that it made the spy wonder if her archer was starting to loose the eye site that had made him Hawkeye. Yet still after keeping a keen eye on her partner, he never missed a target.
What was even stranger to her was that it was near impossible to tell when he lied due to it.. you’d think that it would be easy. Most people pick up tics when they lie, some quit all tics all together... but you could never tell with him because he never did either. This, if which, frustrated the Widow to no end.
What frustrated her more was to find out that he had secrets he was keeping from her. Secrets that seemed small.. but was something she would have expected to know after 3 years of working with someone.
Now standing in front of Clint’s desk Natasha dropped a heavy file on the table top it hit with a satisfying thud. A rather displeased look on her face followed as she glared at her partner who despite her presence being made known had barely acknowledged her.
“What?” He asked not caring to look at the file as he slowly leaned back to look at the woman.
“I read your file.” Natasha stated flatly.
“You’ve read my file a hundred times, Tasha. This isn’t news to me.” He snorts. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t have a copy of it in your nightstand at home-”
“Your un-redacted file.” She corrects almost harshly and she watches his eyes narrow before he leaned back in his seat and clears his throat like she’s heard him do a billion and one times.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had Tourette’s?”
“It’s not exactly something I’m proud of Nat.” He utters shifting almost uncomfortably in his seat. “Is that what this is about?”
“Of course, it is. I’m your partner I need to know this stuff..” She sighs finally collapsing into the chair opposite to his desk.
”It doesn’t change anything.”
“It does..” She insists before watching his facial features tighten. “It means I can’t justifiably fantasize about all the ways I’d like to kill you when you’ve cleared your throat 101 times into the com while we’re on missions.” She adds with a faint smile that seems to be contagious as the archer lets out a small chuckle.
“Believe me, you’re not the first to think of that. Growing up with this, I got my ass kicked more than I’d like to admit.. and by kids only slight smaller than you—”
“You’re really going to make short jokes.”
“Absolutely.” He snorts before clearing his throat to finish the story. “Let’s just say it wasn’t my most shining quality growing up but as time went on I grew out of a few of them. Some stuck around, as you can tell, but there are things that help.”
Natasha nods. “Like you told me about your hearing.. if you live with something long enough, you learn how to live with it.”
“Exactly.” He says while bobbing his head.
“So the blinking.. isn’t you losing your Hawk like sight?”
With a chuckle he shakes his head. “No, not at all. Just fatigue. It’s a tic.. but for the most part it’s brought on by fatigue.”
Natasha nodded to the confession. “I hate knowing you got picked on for this and that people made you feel less for it. You’re not less.” She somewhat blurted in a soft manner.
“I know, Nat. It took me years to see that but I know.” He said with a soft smile of which she reciprocated. “Now that that’s out of the way. You wanna grab lunch?” He says switching gears so quickly that it pulled a chuckle from Natasha.
“Where do you wanna eat?”
“Jimmy’s Pizza, obviously.” He says with an eye roll as if Natasha didn’t already know this and grabbed his keys from his desk drawer before getting to his feet.
“Again?” She complains with a smile but stands to follow him out the door.
“They have the best pizza!” Clint exclaims as they both round the corner into the hall and out of sight.