All that? The suspicion and the uncertainty? God, it all just melts away. He hadn't gone into details about any of that. Why? Why bother? What would have been the point? It was all done and over, and he didn't particularly want to share that loss with anyone else. How could he have explained it to anyone? How could they have understood? They couldn't have, so he kept it private, kept it close, kept it his. He keeps his pain inside anyway, at least until it explodes, until it finds a weak spot and bursts out of him.

When he mentions Kenzi, the walls in his eyes come down; at Natasha he cracks further. It isn't until he mentions Phil -- the way he says and us and to Bruce, he means all three, the three of them together and the messy thing they'd settled into -- that's when he loses it. He wavers forward for a second, shock written all over his face.

"Clint?" Because this can't be real. He can't have Clint here; he'd had no one.

But Clint remembers.

Bruce grabs Clint and pulls him in, his eyes still wide and disbelieving, but god, it's so good to hold him again, so familiar, and his eyes close finally as he lets himself accept the comfort he finds in Clint's arms. His Clint's arms.

"Tell me something else. So I can know you're real. Tell me... Tell me what happened that night, with the truth or dare game, do you remember? What did you have that was mine?"