Warnings: Clint and Tony having a competition to see who can be the most foul-mouthed, some angst.

Thanks to my hella-awesome beta, irite, for providing hella-awesome feedback on all aspects of this story, including the title…

I do not own The Avengers.

The residential areas of Stark Tower had a list of rules governing appropriate behavior, initiated and strictly enforced by the building's eccentric owner, Mr. Tony Stark, himself.

He'd looked sheepish distributing copies of the list to his new tenants, like even he couldn't quite believe he was being this ridiculous, but he'd handed them out anyway.

"'Cause, um, if we're going to be in the same building, some shit just cannot happen."

Rule number seven was "Absolutely, under no circumstances, are pets allowed."

Unlike rules one through six, rule seven didn't meet a lot of resistance. For example, rule three was "All weapons must be stored in the weapons range" (which hadn't even been built at the time, but it was finished a week later), and Natasha hadn't been overly impressed with that.

"I sleep with a gun under my pillow," she deadpanned.

And Tony was smart enough that he knew when to make an exception to his rules.

But rule seven was pretty much okay with everyone. Those Avengers who had chosen to call the Tower their home (everyone except Thor, for the moment) weren't exactly animal lovers. Bruce had made a sound argument for a fish tank ("They're relaxing," he said, and who would argue with him on that?), but that was the extent of efforts to introduce non-human animal life into the non-R&D floors of the Tower.

Clint, in particular, didn't give a shit about Tony's no pet policy. This had nothing to do with his feelings about animals. Clint loved animals, or at least, liked them a lot. Growing up in the circus, he'd never really had a pet, but he'd spent a lot of time with the show animals. Preferred them to people most of the time. They didn't talk, for one. Unfortunately, his life had always been so fucked up, so disorganized and chaotic, that having a pet ever hadn't really been a possibility. But it wasn't that he was opposed to the idea.

No, the real issue was, at the present time (three weeks and four days after the Battle of Manhattan), Clint didn't really give a shit about a whole lot. In fact, he'd kind of taken to letting a lot of things slide. Like, sleeping. Eating. Working.

The others noticed, of course (because Clint didn't even bother with trying to conceal how he was falling apart), but the archer was so closed off that no one, not even Natasha, had managed to get more than a few words out of him in almost a month. So they watched from a distance, gave him space, and hoped that he'd hit the bottom of his spiral sooner rather than later so he could start the climb back up.

And Clint was making admirable progress towards the bottom of his spiral. He had been on leave from SHIELD for a while (three weeks and four days, officially, though his 'vacation' had thus far actually been three weeks and six days) and he had no immediate plans of returning. He pointedly ignored calls to his cell, pointedly ignored calls to the Tower, pointedly ignored Fury himself when the director of SHIELD had shown up outside Clint's bedroom.

Instead of sleeping, eating, or working (because how could any of that matter anymore, really?), Clint had mostly taken to filling his time by wandering the streets, up and down the darkest, most shady alleys he could find, through the seediest dive bars. He meandered from point A to point B, and he didn't even care where he went, as long as point A sucked and point B sucked worse.

It seemed like the perfect metaphor for his life.

Clint knew he was looking for...something. Some kind of absolution, or forgiveness, fuck, even some kind of cosmic meaning to the shit that had happened. Mostly, after these "missions," he returned to the Tower as empty and searching as he was when he'd left.

Tonight, though, he found exactly what he was looking for.

He'd made his way to his favorite dive bar (it was the dirtiest, the grungiest, and it was chock full of colorful clientele) for the express purpose of slaughtering his brain cells en masse. It had been last call, and if he'd been thinking, he would have ordered three or four more shots of the cheap whiskey he'd come to favor of late (it tasted like shit and burned his throat and made his stomach turn, and that was all appealing to him) but he hadn't been thinking, so he'd only ordered one.

Which he knocked back with his usual grimace before standing up from his place at the bar.

And stumbling into the woman who was standing behind him.

He turned to apologize, but he'd found himself face-to-face with possibly the ugliest woman he'd ever seen. In fact, she kind of looked like Banner—maybe more like green Banner, except with boobs (unimpressive ones, too) and as soon as that mental image hit his whiskey-soaked brain, Clint had been done.

Instead of apologizing to the woman, he laughed. Hysterically. In her face.

Clint's mirth was only been momentarily disrupted when the woman's meathead boyfriend took a swing at him, his fist connecting solidly with Clint's jaw. "What's your fuckin' problem, asshole?"

Taken off guard, Clint stumbled backwards. Regaining his balance, his grin flattened into a frown and he massaged his jaw. He quickly surveyed Meathead and ascertained that the other man was at least 6 inches taller than him, and probably outweighed him by at least thirty or forty pounds.

And suddenly, Clint was inspired.

"My fuckin' problem? I don't got a fuckin' problem. You've got a fuckin' problem, though, your woman's a beast, dude. You into that kind of shit?" And he laughed again.

Most of what happened next, he did not remember. Except that it hurt, and it seemed to go on for a very long time.

He must have passed out, because he woke up in the alley behind the bar with no recollection of how he got there.

Gingerly, he lifted a hand to his face, feeling the swelling around his eyes and nose. His back was killing him, especially around his kidneys, and from the way it looked, at least one of his fingers was broken.

Fuck. But then, Wasn't this kind of the goal?

Clint was so busy cataloguing his injuries that he failed utterly to notice that he was not alone.

Luckily, his lapse in vigilance was not of the life-and-death variety, and the presence that had been observing him for the last twenty minutes undetected now decided to make itself known.

Clint nearly jumped out of his skin when something damp and furry brushed against his hand. His first thought was 'rat,' because he was in a fucking alley in fucking New York and they had rats big enough to conquer small nations.

When he jumped, he startled his visitor, who arched its back with a vehement hiss before swatting at Clint's hand with outstretched claws and darting away.

So, not a rat. A cat. A mean fucking cat, too. "Jesus, hit a man while he's down, why don't you?" Clint grumbled, his drunk (and perhaps concussed) brain rationalizing that in this situation, it was okay to talk to a cat. "What'd I ever do to you, huh?"

The cat's only reply was a low growl.

"Really? You think you're so scary? You're what, ten pounds max. I could totally take you."

The cat growled again. Clint rolled his eyes. Bracing himself against the wall behind him, he pulled himself up. "Whatever. I'm out of here." He wiped a hand across his face, making a concerted effort not to notice the smear of blood that doing so left behind.

In response, the cat slunk out from under the pile of garbage it had been using as cover. There was a streetlight nearby, and in its light Clint could see the cat more clearly. It was black, or at least dark enough that it looked black, and it was scrawny. Maybe eight pounds at the most, and probably more like six.

As he watched it, Clint noticed that it seemed to be favoring one of its front legs. Almost as if it was aware that it had Clint's attention, the cat's limp became suddenly more pronounced. It mewed pathetically, looking up at Clint with huge yellow eyes.

"What? You can't be all 'I'm going to claw you' and then be all 'save me, I'm pathetic,' cat, it doesn't work that way," Clint told it. The cat mewed again, sounding (if possible) more pathetic. It approached Clint and, limping heavily, wove around the archer's legs. It started to purr.

"Jesus Christ. Manipulative little bastard, aren't you?"

It did not dignify that with a response.

Clint looked at the cat for a moment before massaging his head. Clint knew he was a mess, covered in blood, had at least one broken bone, possibly more, maybe internal bleeding, maybe a concussion. He'd taken a hell of a beating. He knew he should probably take himself to the hospital, but instead he was standing in a puke-drenched alley behind the most disgusting bar in New York City, conversing with a cat.

A manipulative cat, he thought as it resumed its limping, purring path around his feet.

Clint leaned back against the wall with a sigh. Somehow, this seemed like the perfect fucking end to the evening.

He sighed again before slipping his jacket off. Slowly, he reached down to wrap the cat in it. In response, it immediately stiffened and hissed before striking out with its claws again.

"I'm trying to help you, shit for brains!" Clint yelled at it, not entirely sure why he had decided to do this at all. Oh, he was drunk and concussed. That was why. And really, he wasn't cruel (not even on his worst days...and this might have been one of them), so just leaving the pathetic, mangy, injured thing here felt wrong. After all, I'm a 'superhero' now, I save cats and shit.

The cat cowered down, frightened by Clint's yelling, and the archer managed to wrap it in his jacket.

He headed back towards the Tower.

Clint didn't even manage to make it off the elevator before running into Stark.

Which didn't seem fair—it was after 3:00 AM at this point, and it was a big fucking building, and what were the odds of running into another person right here, right now, really? Let alone Stark.

Clint wasn't good with statistics, but it seemed unlikely.

Tony had gotten on the elevator on the twenty-seventh floor (Clint didn't even know what that floor was for), and he'd been conversing pretty intensely with JARVIS, their back and forth too much for Clint to follow, even on a good day (which, Clint had already established, this was not), so it took the billionaire twenty-seven more floors to notice that Clint was dripping blood onto the carpet.

Clint, of course, had not said a word, opting instead to try his usual strategy of fading from view through non-movement.

It didn't work. "Good lord, Barton, what happened to you? You're bleeding." Tony peered into Clint's face. "Profusely, I might add." His concern—now that he'd noticed—was evident.

With a shrug, Clint replied, "Nothing happened. I'm fine." A lie that was almost immediately betrayed when Clint leaned over suddenly and vomited, gagging on whiskey and stomach acid and not much else. Dazed, he straightened and admitted, "I might have a concussion, actually. Or I'm still drunk."

"No shit," Tony said, stepping pointedly to the far side of the elevator. "Why the hell didn't you go to the hospital?"

And, not really seeing another option, Clint carefully unbundled his jacket (which he'd been holding tightly to his chest) and showed Tony his new companion. "Manipulative fucking cat. It's pathetic and limpy. Couldn't leave it behind."

The elevator doors opened on the floor that housed Clint's rooms. He stepped off. Tony followed. "Um. That's nice. Really, it is." Clearly, the billionaire was trying to focus on the larger picture, despite his abhorrence of animals. "But you're still bleeding. And puking in my elevator. Which is gross and unfortunate. So maybe you should, I don't know, go to the hospital."

Clint shrugged. "I'll be fine."

Tony looked at him, disbelieving. "Fuck that. What happened, anyway?"

Clint started heading towards his door. "I made a new friend, that's all." The accusatory note in Tony's voice rubbed him the wrong way, inspired Clint towards reticence.

Tony shook his head, following. "Yeah, 'friend.' Christ. Okay, don't tell me what kind of fucked up shit you've been doing, whatever. But will you at least let Bruce take a look at you? He can probably make sure you're not going to die. It'll make me feel better if you do. Insurance will be a bitch if you die on my watch."

Clint managed to get his door open. He stepped into his rooms before turning to face Tony. "Sure, whatever." He couldn't figure out where the billionaire's sudden interest was coming from.

Uninvited, Tony followed him in. Because this was the most conversation that anyone had had with the archer in over three weeks, and Tony wasn't going to let him go so easily. Especially not in his current condition.

"JARVIS, could you send Bruce up here?" Tony asked, following Clint as the archer made his way back towards his bathroom.

"Certainly, sir."

In the bathroom, Clint shut the door before dumping his jacket, cat and all, unceremoniously into the bathtub. The animal huddled underneath the garment for a moment before slinking out and peering up at them. Looking at Clint, it began to purr again.

"Don't let it fool you," Clint told Tony conspiratorially. "It's an act. It's a mean little fucker." He held out his hand, showing off the scratches. "Did this to me when I was too weak to defend myself."

Tony cast a concerned look at Clint. "Are you feeling okay?" He didn't know the archer well enough to know if this was normal behavior or not.

As a matter of fact, it was. This was the most normal Clint had felt in almost a month, except for the whole beaten-to-a-pulp thing. It was like the fog he'd been in had lifted, if only for a moment, and he could see something other than his own misery.

Distracted by the cat, Clint replied, "Huh? Sure." And he went back to watching the cat as it crept around the bathroom, exploring the corners, looking for a place to hide.

A few moments later, there was a knock at the door. Bruce opened it and popped his head in. "JARVIS said you needed me?" His eyes traced around the room, pausing on the cat. "Oh, hey, where did that—"

"It's Barton's new friend," Tony interrupted. "At least one of them. He made another friend tonight, apparently, if the fist-shaped imprints on his face are anything to go by."

"What? Oh. Oh." And, seeing the state of Clint's face, he stepped into the room, all business. "Any other injuries than what I can see?"

Clint nodded stiffly, suddenly uncomfortable.

"Okay. Um. Tony. Could you...?"

"Leave?"

"Yeah."

"No problem, doc. I'll just be outside if you need me." And he left, stunning everyone present with his easy compliance.

"Take your shirt off?" Bruce asked, heading to the sink to wash his hands.

Clint obliged, dropping the garment on the floor by the tub. The cat promptly walked over and sniffed it, before curling up in the warmth and setting to grooming its dull, matted fur.

"Ha, cute," Bruce said, stepping over the animal. "Lift your arms?"

Clint did. "Yeah, cute. No, Banner, it's vicious."

Bruce prodded gently at the bruising on Clint's back. "Does that hurt?"

It did, but Clint just shrugged. "Not really."

Bruce worked for another moment, poking and investigating, before he asked, "So what happened, exactly?"

Unlike Tony, his question came across as neutral. Clinical. Maybe even safe. Clint said, "Um. I got drunk. I insulted some guy's woman. She kinda looked like you, actually. Like...green you."

Clint had been unsure if bringing up the Other Guy would be awkward or not, but he was drunk, so fuck it. However, Bruce just snorted a small laugh. "That poor woman."

"That was kinda my take on it, too."

The rest of the exam was uneventful. Bruce finished by taping Clint's broken finger. "Try not to move that, all right? And get some rest." Judging from the circles under Clint's eyes, that directive would probably be ignored entirely, but Bruce thought it was worth trying. He added, "You might have a mild concussion, so I'll have JARVIS monitor you tonight."

"Sure. Thanks, doc."

"No problem. Really." Because Bruce, as much as the others, had been concerned about the archer—and this encounter certainly hadn't put any of those worries to rest. Everyone knew that Clint wasn't coping with what had happened, hadn't even started to work through the guilt that plagued him, but now Bruce had a whole new list of concerns to work through—Clint was losing weight, clearly not sleeping, drinking too much, and instigating fights. None of that boded well for the archer's mental state.

But at least he trusts us enough for this, Bruce thought, washing his hands again. He dried them and opened the bathroom door.

The cat, which had been dozing on Clint's shirt for the last fifteen minutes, perked up. Which reminded Clint, "Um, hey. I don't know anything about cats. Should I...get food, or something?"

"Got you covered, Barton," Tony said from the next room, sounding entirely put out. Clint followed Bruce, and found Tony and Pepper standing in his bedroom.

"Hello, Agent Barton," Pepper greeted him, as if it wasn't weird to be standing in his (fairly messy...okay, really messy) bedroom at 4:00 AM. She had a large plastic bag at her feet.

"Ms. Potts," he replied, trying to sound less drunk than he was. "What's in the bag?"

"Tony said that you were in direct violation of rule seven, and he wanted me to tell you that the cat has to go. So I went to the nearest store and picked up cat food and litter. And a litter box, of course."

Tony sulked, "I thought I paid you to be on my side, Pep."

"Oh, Tony. You pay me to take care of you. There's a difference." She gave Tony an unmistakably warm, motherly look before adding, "Do you need anything else, Agent Barton?"

"...No. But I don't know much about cats..."

"Cats are easy," Pepper told him. "They just need food, water, and their litter box, and they mostly take care of themselves. Make sure the dishes stay full, clean the box out once a day, and you should be fine."

Clint was just a little overwhelmed—he was still half-drunk and in pain—but he thought he had a handle on this. "Okay. I think I can manage that."

"Great!" Tony said. "Then we'll just, uh, leave you to it." He headed towards the door, Pepper close behind. Clint could hear him complaining, "Pep, I hate fucking cats, you know that..."

Bruce lingered a moment. "Um, JARVIS is going to be watching you tonight. If you need anything...just ask."

Clint nodded, feeling about as awkward about accepting the offer as Bruce had felt making it.

After Bruce had left, Clint made his way back to the bathroom. The cat had not moved. Clint fetched the bag that Pepper had left and surveyed all of the supplies within. There were dishes, and food, and a plastic tub, and litter, and a scoop. Clint shook his head. "Look at this shit. First you manipulate me into taking you home, and now I'm going to be scooping your shit with a mini shovel. What the hell?"

Grumbling, he set up the litter box, then took the food and dishes to the kitchen. He put some food and water out, and headed back towards the bathroom.

The cat was sitting on his bed. "I hope you don't have fleas or something, cat." Clint made a note to take the damn thing to a vet in the morning, both for a checkup and to see what was up with its foot. Although Clint suspected that the limp was entirely fabricated for sympathy—it had seemed fine for the last half an hour. Fucking cat.

"I'm going to take a shower," he told the cat, "And then I'm going to bed. You're on your own."

When he got out of the shower, the cat was nowhere to be found. Clint shrugged to himself and got into bed, feeling, for the first time in weeks, like he might actually be able to sleep.

He'd almost dozed off when he felt something land on the bed next to him with a soft whump. The cat started purring and nudged Clint's hand, becoming more insistent with each passing second. Clint gave an irritated huff but obliged it, petting the stupid thing softly and mumbling half-coherent insults at it.

Within minutes, they were both asleep.

Forgive me my trespasses as far as cheesiness goes; I'm taking a small break from my usual doom and gloom to bring you something a little more cheery. Not sure yet how long this is going to be, but there's at least one more chapter coming. As usual, please review!

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