Clint opened his eyes blearily and felt the panic sink into his bones in the second that followed. They were ambushed. The intel was wrong and there were so much more hostiles than they anticipated. It was 30 to 1, and there were only 5 of them. They didn’t stand a chance.
He pushed himself off of the surface he was lying on and felt someone’s hand on his chest, steadying and calming him all at the same time.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s me. It’s Phil. You’re in the med bay now.”
Clint felt himself relax as he listened to Phil. He eased himself back down on the bed and looked at the man beside his cot. Phil gave him a soft nod and gave him a play by play of the events after Clint passed out.
Clint’s team fought admirably and stood their ground long enough for back-up to respond. SHIELD managed to capture most of the hostiles and the ones that weren’t were either dead or too severely injured to have gone far. The four other people in Clint’s team are alive. Beaten, and bloody, some worse than the others, but alive.
Phil rambled on about the procedure for filling out the report for this since it was going to be especially challenging for Clint to write with a broken wrist. Clint listened to him without actually registering anything in his brain, and he smiled to himself.
“...or speech to text but that’s not really reliable— What’s so funny?” Phil asked.
Clint shrugged as far as he could, “Nothing,” he replied with a smile, his eyes slowly slipping shut again. “S’just nice that your voice is the first thing I hear today” His painkiller addled brain supplied.
There was silence for a moment too long and Clint was forced to open his eyes again to see what was wrong. He peeked at Phil, and as soon as their eyes met, Phil looked away and cleared his throat.
“Right. I should check on the others. Your team, I mean. See if they’re awake.” Phil went on as he shuffled his things together and headed for the door.
Clint felt horrible. Did he say something wrong again? Why was Phil in a hurry to leave? Couldn’t Phil just stay a little bit longer?
“I’ll- I’ll come back. Later. I’ll keep you company. But I have to check on the others first.” Phil told him. Guess Clint was speaking his thoughts out loud now. “I promise I won’t be long.”
Clint nodded, feeling himself drift to sleep not a minute later. It’s okay though because he knows that when he wakes up, Phil will be there.