Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

To be honest, Clint isn’t entirely sure if he’s supposed to hate Bucky Barnes or fall head over heels in love with him.

The government still hates him, that’s for sure. He can’t tell if the press loves or hates him, just that every time Bucky steps foot out of the tower he has to be escorted, undercover, or leaving in the dead of night, lest he get swarmed by microphones and cameras. Clint has offered to escort him once or twice, but every time he’s been flat-out rejected.

He tried not to take it personally, even though over the months Bucky had expanded his escort list from strictly Steve and Natasha to a very nervous Bruce, an excessively enthusiastic Thor, and a stony-faced Mariah Hill. He had even, in one particularly urgent situation (a book he had on hold at the library became available and no one else was around), walked out the door with a smug looking Tony. And yet, every time Clint was even in the room during a discussion of escorting, Bucky would either change his mind about needing to leave or latch onto the closest person and practically dash out the door, as if there was a chance someone would force him to go with Clint anyway.

So, yeah. He took it personally. Sue him.

The particular afternoon, late in the summer and high in the forecasted temperature, he had taken refuge from the heat in the appropriately coolest part of the tower (minus the walk-in refrigerator on the seventh floor, or any room Natasha was in when she was mad): the vents.

Specifically, the reasonably large intersecting area between a few of them, where he had built a bit of a nest (Tony’s words, not his) featuring blankets, stolen couch cushions, a purple beanbag chair (gift from Nat), and enough snacks to last him a year in case of an apocalypse or other world-destroying incident- he had to be prepared, they seemed pretty common these days. No one bothered him there. Also, it was the only place- other than his apartment back in Bed Stuy- where he didn’t have to worry about seeing Bucky Barnes.

He did, however, spend a lot of time there thinking about Bucky. He spent a lot of time in general thinking about Bucky. But like, no more than the average person. Definitely.

Steve loves Bucky, that’s for sure. Nat and Bucky have their own weird codependent murder-exes-who-act-like-they’re-married sort of deal. Must be a Russian thing.

Tony loves Bucky’s arm. He tolerates Bucky. In turn, Bucky tolerates him. Clint privately thinks Bucky has the harder task. Tony is by far the most intolerable of the two on the best of days. Full offence.

Speaking of Tony. From his vantage point in the vent intersection nest, Clint can also often pick up voices from one end or another, carried by the funnelled air and fantastic acoustics (it’s great for karaoke, he’s tried), and right now he can hear the frenzied and whiny tones trademarked by the man in question. Literally- someone had made a joke about how distinctively annoying Tony’s voice was and he had gotten it trademarked. The event was number seven on the Avenger’s collective ‘Top 10 Most Pretentious Rich Person Things Tony Has Done.’

“…works fifty… at best…” Tony’s voice said faintly. “…send back… 18th century… careful… stays in the lab… now.”

Clint, who has considerable experience with filling in the gaps of what people are saying, interprets this as something along the lines of ‘ it works fifty percent of the time at best- it could send you back to the 18th century if you’re not careful, so it stays in the lab for now .’ Either that or Tony’s talking about his dick again. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. But he’s like eighty percent sure it’s the first one.

He’s not at all surprised that Tony has invented time travel, really. Last week he accidentally re-discovered a cure for tuberculosis during his thirty-seventh hour awake after he’d decided he was going to cure AIDs. He’d passed the much cheaper and more effective formula off to some family run local pharmaceutical company, who had gotten rich overnight, and promptly passed out. As far as Clint could tell (which was as much as he heard secondhand, since he knew jack all about science and didn’t understand 95% of what Tony said past hour twenty five awake), he was still working on the AIDs thing.

Maybe he’d decided to go back in time and stop it from ever being, like, a thing. Clint wouldn’t put it past him. It probably wouldn’t even make the ‘Top 5 Times Tony Broke Reality’ list.

Anyway, most things that Tony did didn’t really interest him (again- science. no.), but time travel? Objectively sick as fuck. Pocketing a bag of skittles, he set off down the Tony’s-lab vent, which was just to the left of the tenth floor full sized cinema vent (he’d labelled all of them, it made for an easy way of getting around). It was a short stoop-slash-crawl, and he stopped short right before the actual vent part, peeking through the slats to make sure Tony wasn’t, like, naked, or something. He’d done that once to Bruce by accident. There was still a hulk-fist-sized dent in that vent tunnel.

Thank Thor’s assorted family members, he wasn’t. He was talking animatedly to (speak of the devil) Bruce, who was nodding along and thankfully fully clothed. He pointed to something on the device and Tony said something sciency. Clint prepared to make his entrance with a cool spontaneous one liner as Bruce touched the thing and Tony adjusted a screw and-

A flash of bright yellow light whited out Clint’s vision.

Ah, futz , was the first thing Clint thought to himself when he woke up. The second thing being, I’m gonna kill Tony .

He groaned, rubbing his head and blinking rapidly in an attempt to bat away the purple spots blocking the majority of his vision. His ears rang, which was a pretty common occurrence and didn’t bother him quite as much. After a moment, it faded, and with relief he realised his hearing aids were at least still partially working because he could hear the general indistinguishable buzz of people talking in the background. In the distance, a car horn sounded and an engine roared. Clint squeezed his eyes shut again and leaned back against the brick wall behind him.

Then he sat bolt upright again and scrambled instinctively to his feet, because there was a brick wall behind him and there were people talking who were definitely not Tony or Bruce and there were car horns and engines , which made zero sense unless someone had started watching a movie in the past five seconds because the tower was soundproof to the outside and also he was fifteen flights up anyways.

Double futz.

It took the barest glance at his surroundings to figure out that he wasn’t in the vents anymore, but in a dingy alley. He had been sitting right next to a trash can, which explained the smell that was just now washing over him. The walls were plastered with black and white, peeling posters advertising local nightclubs and shops- none of which, upon his first glance through, he recognized. One of them, which advertised a place called Samuel's, declared a MIDNIGHT SHOW- Every Saturday- 25 cents a ticket .

25 cents. A ticket .

Triple futz.

It didn’t take Tony Stark to figure out where Clint was. Or, actually, when he was. Which was definitely not any time in the past thirty years at least . Twenty five cents. Jesus christ.

Clint slumped against the wall, raking his hands through his hair. “Aww, time travel, no,” he muttered, entirely to himself. He had been having such a good day too. Completely incident free. Except that he had accidentally knocked over Bucky’s coffee this morning in the communal kitchen and fled instantly. But he wasn’t ready to deal with the mortifying ordeal of thinking about that yet.

He didn’t get the time to deal with the mortifying ordeal of thinking about anything, as it turned out, because as he was attempting to wrap his head around any part of this, two other people stumbled into the alleyway, arguing loud enough that Clint could differentiate it from the other assorted background noise from outside the dead-end alley. And because he was just as much of an actual bird as Tony made fun of him for being, his first instinct was up .

Silently thanking Nat for teaching him how to and his genetics for being light on his feet, he kicked off the wall and straight up to grab onto the edge of a fire escape, then carefully and almost soundlessly (he assumed) pulling himself up onto it entirely, where he crouched as still and far back into the shadows as he could.

Luckily, he wasn’t even sure if the other two would have heard him if he’d pulled the entire fire alarm down, because they were too busy threatening each other. The bigger one, really, was doing more of the threatening, and had dragged the smaller one in by his jacket collar. The smaller one was really, really small- Clint could practically see his ribs through his shirt and the jacket he wore swallowed his shoulders. He was, however, yelling back just as fiercely. Something about- something about the movies?

“-some god damn respect,” the smaller one was yelling, his voice deeper than Clint would have expected from someone his size but also cracking halfway through and getting higher and higher as he ranted. “If you think some cartoon is more important than the men out there laying down their lives-”

“Oh, shut up, will ya,” the bigger one snaps, practically tossing the smaller one against the back wall. “Pain in the neck to listen to ya flapping your mouth about all that patriotism bull while we’re tryin’ to watch a film. Army ain’t gonna take you anyway, knucklehead.”

Apparently, this is a sore subject for the smaller one, because he stops talking and starts punching. Badly, unfortunately for him. He has some vague semblance of form, which Clint only knows because Natasha drilled it into him with up close demonstrations, but he looks like he’s ninety pounds soaking wet and is thrown off balance to crash to the floor far too easily. It actually might be better that his punches don’t connect, because Clint is afraid his wrists might snap on impact and do more damage to him than the other guy.

He feels bad, just sitting here on the fire escape and watching this blue eyed twink with anger issues get absolutely beat the shit out of, but he doesn’t know the rules on interfering in history (he vaguely remembers half-listening to Tony rant about something about the butterfly effect, which is half-more than he usually listens, so he could be worse off in the info category), and also he doesn’t know what time period he’s in or how they would react to some guy in weird clothes falling out of the sky no matter what time period it was.

They had been talking about the army, and patriotism, and men laying down their lives, which meant there was probably a war going on. And they were definitely in New York- half the signs had addresses on them, mostly in Brooklyn. He ran through his knowledge of wars America had been in.

Wow. That did not narrow the time period down at all, actually. As he watched the twink stand up again despite what was clearly going to be a bruised, if not broken, jaw, Clint silently cursed America for… like, everything.

Angry Twink was facing up on Larger Guy with a determined expression that Clint could have sworn he’d seen somewhere before. Larger Guy looks amused. “You just don’t know when to quit, do ya?” he taunts.

“I could do this all day,” Angry Twink quips, and Clint nearly falls off the fire escape.

Oh.

Ohhhhhhhhh .

Yeah, that made a lot of sense, actually.

As Larger Guy reared back to take another hit, Clint jumped off the fire escape and landed with no particular grace on his back. They both went tumbling to the ground, but luckily for Clint’s rather uncoordinated conscious brain, his Natasha-trained unconscious brain pulled his knees to his chest and tucked him into a roll, where he yanked a knife out of his boot and stood, whirling to put himself between Angry Twink (Tiny Steve?) and Larger Guy.

So much for the butterfly effect. Fucking protective instincts. Never know when to quit.

LG pushes himself marginally less gracefully to his feet, cradling his left arm, which Clint assumes he has just broken or at least sprained, to his chest. He looks furious, which is fair, and also upon actually seeing Clint as more than a dark purple and blond blur looks very confused, which is also fair. Given what he recalls from Steve’s SHIELD file (the only time actually reading a file before a mission has done him good, score), it’s the early 1940s. He doesn’t know a lot about the 1940s, but it’s probably safe to assume that people there weren’t wearing a lot of sweatpants, Doc Martens with purple laces, or knockoff Black Widow merch (he had thought it was hilarious and had told JARVIS to order two of everything).

Ah, well. If Black Widow becomes an American icon seventy years ahead of schedule, that’s not his problem. He flips his knife casually from one hand to the other and throws a peace sign at LG, which probably sends mixed signals. “Hey, man,” he adds, to clear things up just in case. “Fuck off.”

Did they say fuck in the 40s? He wonders belatedly. Judging by Larger Guy’s scandalised expression, they did. Yay.

Eyeing Clint’s pocketknife, LG doesn’t seem eager to re-engage with Freak #2 of the night, but there’s also the matter of pride, and Clint can’t imagine that he’d seem very intimidating if he hadn’t just dropped out of the sky and was holding a knife. “Who the hell are you?” LG snarls.

Clint very heroically suppresses the urge to say ‘Luke, I am your father’ on the off chance this guy lives to see that movie come out. “I’m Hawkeye,” he replies automatically instead, which isn’t exactly much better. Name-dropping only gets him out of like fifty percent of his fights back in the present (future?), and in the forties it probably just sounds like his parents really, really hated him. LG looks at him even more weirdly. Even Tiny Steve looks at him weirdly. He rolls his eyes. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter who I am, okay. Just get lost before I personally acquaint your eyeballs with this knife.” He raises it threateningly. “In 1940 money I can probably get like ten bucks for those on the black market.”

Note to idiot self: when time travelling, you should probably avoid saying things like ‘in 1940 money.’

Thanks to Clint’s real superpower of making any social scenario extremely awkward, including a back alley smackdown, LG looks sufficiently weirded out and steps back. “You’re sauced crazy,” he mutters, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s just a cartoon, I don’t care that much.”

Clint waits patiently until he’s completely around the corner to turn to Tiny Steve, assessing him quickly. He’s not favouring either leg, nothing seems to be majorly injured, even if he will have a few bruises and scrapes. There’s one cut above his left eye that looks bad enough that Clint would normally suggest he clean it before debrief (like a hypocrite, as Steve- his Steve- would inevitably point out). As it was, he didn’t exactly know this Steve like that, so he awkwardly shoves the knife back in his belt and waves. Is that an appropriate greeting? Futz. Stupid unintentional time travel leaving him with no time to do background research. Not that he normally did anyway. But who knows, maybe he would have.

“Hi,” he tries, because that seems universal enough.

“Hello,” says Tiny Steve, staring at him. Which doesn’t really give Clint much to go off of.

“I’m… sorry?” He adds. Apologising is normally the right call. Or at least not the wrong one.

Tiny Steve squints at him for another moment before apparently making the decision to forgive his appearance and move on with the conversation. “It’s fine,” he replies, shrugging and then wincing at the movement. “You weren’t the one beating me up.” He scowls in the general direction where LG had skedaddled. “…I had him on the ropes, though.”

Clint is fairly sure Big Steve has said the same thing and it has been equally untrue, albeit about much larger and more murder-y threats than some cartoon-loving asshat in an alley. He nods amiably anyway. “Yeah. For sure.” He says supportively. He considers patting Tiny Steve on the head or back, but decides that would be going a bit too far. Instead, he jerks his thumb behind him towards the alley entrance awkwardly. “Anyway, I should probably- probably go. I have… things.”

“Things other than lurking on a fire escape in a cinema back alley?” Cuts in a voice behind him. Clint jumps and whips around, fists already raised defensively. Then he freezes.

“Or is that a pressing pastime for you?” Bucky Barnes asks smoothly, a hint of a smirk on his face. Bucky Barnes- but notably sans the long, greasy hair, bruised eyebags, and the hostility that normally radiated from every inch of him. He took one hand out of his pocket to clasp Steve on the shoulder and Clint noticed that he was also sporting two regular human arms for a change- and clothes with sleeves. Normally, that would be disappointing, but he was wearing what Clint assumed was an army uniform that was very… nice. Cool. Other heterosexual words.

Tiny Steve shoved Bucky’s hand off with a lighthearted sort of exasperation and Bucky mussed up his hair without even looking. Which meant that he was still looking at Clint. Whose brain was bluescreening.

“I- um. No?” He replies eloquently, immediately forgetting what you’re supposed to do with your arms when you’re standing. He shoves them in his pockets to avoid doing something absolutely irredeemable, like finger gunning, or something. “Were you, like- like watching that, or?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, unbothered behind a slightly amused look at Clint’s dedication to being the most awkward person alive. “I was gonna step in if he got one more hit on Stevie-” Steve makes a noise of protest that both of them ignore- “but I wanted to see if you were gonna do something about it first.”

“I didn’t need help,” Steve complains, trying in vain to fix his hair. “From either of ya.”

“Right, of course,” Bucky agrees in the same amicable way that Clint had. He suppresses a smile. “Anyway, what didy’a say your name was? Hawk- something?”

Clint cringes and send his once daily prayer for whatever god is out there to strike him down on the spot. Following the usual lack of response, he sighs and shakes his head. “No, it’s- that’s a different thing. I’m-”

Shit. Names. Futz. Timeline. Shit.

“-Uh, Romanoff. Clint Romanoff.”

Good one, Barton. Combine the name of your teammate and your actual name, both people he’s going to meet in the future. Stellar play in the Competent Spy Olympics.

Bucky holds out his hand and Clint, after a moment of hesitation because who shakes hands anymore except it’s the 40s so everyone does, actually, takes it. “James Barnes, my friends call me Bucky,” he introduces himself. “And that’s Steve. Because I know he’s not gonna say it, thanks for helpin’ him out. His mouth runs a lot more than his body can.”

I know , Clint thinks. He nods politely. “Sure, it’s no problem.”

He pauses, hovering between leaving and staying, unsure which is the polite option. Also, which is the safe option, because he’s already met and given his name to two people he’s going to meet again in the future which can’t possibly be good for the timeline. Futz. Tony’s going to be pissed. It makes Clint’s brain hurt just thinking about it.

Meanwhile, Steve is more interested in Bucky’s uniform than Clint did, which is saying something. He’s poking at it suspiciously and staring at it with thinly veiled envy. “You got your assignment?” He demands. Clint glances over curiously.

“107th,” Bucky recites, adjusting his hat (making it even more crooked, of course) and lifting his chin in the same way Clint’s Bucky does when he’s in a room full of SHIELD agents in black suits who are asking him prodding questions. The confidence projecting look. He feels a frown tug at his lips. “Sergeant Barnes, shipping out for London tomorrow morning.”

That was also the division that Steve would eventually join. He knew that one from the museum, not the file- it was an Avengers field trip day favourite, mostly because they got to make fun of Cap while simultaneously stroking his ego, which was exactly the kind of psychological fuckery that they did to stay sane. Remind each other that they were doing good and people genuinely appreciated them, but also that they looked stupid in spandex.

Tiny Steve looks down and Clint suddenly feels like he was intruding on a private moment. He starts to inch away, but stops when Tiny Steve looks back up at him and tries for an apologetic grin. “How about you? You in the army? I mean, nearly every guy around here is.”

Aww, army, no.

“Ah- no, I’m not,” Clint replies, because that would lead to questions but saying yes would lead to more questions that were harder to answer. He scrambled for his limited knowledge of the army. There was a draft, right? Steve… Steve had wanted to be in the army, but he hadn’t been allowed, because… because…

“Ineligible,” he declares after a moment, internally first pumping at his on-the-spot knowledge of Captain America’s Backstory TM. Again, thank the museum. He gestured to his ears. “I mean, I’m ineligible. Deaf in my left ear, limited hearing in my right. I think that disqualifies me.”

Please agree that it disqualifies me, he prays. He remembers Steve being ineligible because of his asthma and also various other chronic diseases (Jesus, how was this man even alive?), but he didn’t remember if deafness was on the list. Probably. The army wasn’t exactly a champion of disability accommodations, then or in his time.

“Yeah, that’ll about do it,” Steve agrees, and Clint sighs with relief. “Same here. Asthma.”

“Among other things,” Bucky adds dryly. He tilts his head at Clint. “Hows come you still know what we’re saying? You what, read my lips?”

Clint is very tempted to say yes, because it gives him a plausible excuse to stare at Bucky’s lips the whole time. Also, he’s not sure if they had hearing aids in the 40s. But he gets the feeling that lying isn’t going to get him anywhere good, especially with no way home and these two semi-strangers as his only anchors to his own world. “Nah,” he replies. He carefully unclips the small black device from his ear and holds it up briefly. “Hearing aids. They take the noise and process it into frequencies I can hear, or something like that. I’m not really a science guy, I don’t know exactly how it works.”

Steve looks intrigued. “Yeah, I’ve heard of guys in the army using them when they lose hearing from all the explosions,” he says. “My ma used one too, when she was sick. I thought they were bigger.”

“Yeah, that’s some real futuristic stuff,” Bucky adds, sounding impressed. Clint winces at his phrasing but smiles tightly as he hooks it back up again. “Who’d you have to kill to get one of those?”

Clint is pretty sure that’s a joke, but he can feel the weight of the knife in his belt and the other one in his other boot uncomfortably. He runs a hand through his hair before shoving it back in his pocket. “No one, fortunately. It’s, ah, Stark Tech.” One thing he knows is that Steve works with Howard during the war, which means Stark Industries is definitely up and running and pumping out “futuristic” 40s tech.

Sure enough, the excuse gets him the same ‘yeah that checks out’ nods as it does during his normal timeline. Bucky also pulls a rolled up newspaper out of his back pocket and passes it to Steve. “Oh, yeah, almost forgot.” Clint reads the words STARK EXPO sideways across the front page. “We’re goin’ tonight, Stevie. It’s my sendoff celebration.”

Steve’s eyes go wide. “Stark has a flying car?” He reads. Bucky glances at it over his shoulder and whistles. Clint internally adds ‘flying car’ to the list of cool fancy toys that Tony hasn’t given him to be offended about later.

After a moment, Tiny Steve looks up. His eyes are too big for his face, but he has the same nerd-driven excitement look as Clint’s Steve did when they watched Star Wars. “You going, Romanoff?” He asks. It takes Clint a moment to remember that’s him and Natasha isn’t lurking over his shoulder, ready to hit him for every stupid decision he’s made in the last ten minutes.

He opens his mouth to say no, except- well, there aren’t really cell phones in the 40s, so he can’t exactly shoot Steve or Bucky a text and ask ‘hey, wanna meet up so I can fuck up the timeline more because I have no clue what else to do in the 40s?’ So. “Sure, yeah,” he says instead. “I was, uh, planning on it. I love… science.”

It doesn’t exactly pull off believable, but Steve and Bucky laugh like he’s making a joke. “Well, come swing around and see us if you aren’t too busy,” Bucky offers with the charming smile that makes Clint’s heart genuinely skip two beats. “We’ll be there at eight, by the flying car."

“At eight. By the flying car,” Clint repeats. “Sure. See you then."

Chapter Text

And to his surprise, he does. Clint spends the afternoon lurking on the fire escape and frantically scribbling down everything he knows about the 40s, Steve Rogers, Bucky, Howard Stark, and any other relevant information he can think of off the top of his head- all while half-hoping that at any moment a flash of yellow light will send him back to the modernity of air conditioning vents so he can slap the shit out of Tony. But it doesn’t. So, until then, he has other plans.

‘Adapt. Fit in. Don’t fuck up,’ he writes, double underlined in the notebook he buys from a shop down the block. He manages to do all of this pretty well, if he does say so himself, all afternoon. And then the Stark Expo happens.

At 7:55, he walks into the Expo, skirting around the massive hollow globe that looks pretty much the same as it did in his time and brushing past most of the exhibits to scan the crowd for one of two familiar faces. Luckily, he finds them- standing with a pair of girls with outrageously good hair (Clint would know, he spends a lot of time doing Nat’s hair and this is high quality) and uncomfortable looking dresses next to two big stone statues. Tiny Steve notices him first, probably because Bucky is busy entertaining both girls, who are hanging off his arms and giggling.

Right. Heterosexuality. He probably should have remembered that one.

Squaring his shoulders, he waves and strides over, forcing himself to relax and move loosely. He belongs here (he definitely doesn’t).

“Hey, Romanoff,” Steve greets him. This time, Clint is prepared.

“Hey yourself,” he replies, tipping his hat- one of those flat, newsboy caps that he could hide his longer-than-was-currently-in-style hair in- to the four of them. “Barnes. Ladies.” He flashes a well-practised grin and they look him over approvingly. Not quite like they looked at Bucky, not that he was interested, but well enough that he figures he’s passing for a regular city boy and not a dumpster fire of a time traveller.

“Glad you could make it,” Bucky says, extracting himself from the vice grips of the two girls to cuff him on the shoulder. Faintly, Clint notices that his hat is still on crooked. He resists the urge to reach up and fix it, because both this Bucky and his Bucky would probably sock him for it. “Gotta say, you clean up nice.”

Clint rubs his neck sheepishly and adjusts the stiff collar of his new shirt. “Well, only the best for the Expo, right?”

Earlier, after he had finished having a mild panic attack over, y’know, being stuck in the 40s, he’d decided that the first order of fitting in was probably new clothes. Luckily, old stores were pretty straightforward, so he only had to walk half a block (in the shadows with his head down) before he found one that advertised ‘men’s clothes, outerwear, shoes, and essentials’ to slip into. The sales clerk had been an older lady who was half blind even with thick glasses and therefore luckily hadn’t passed comment on his questionable fashion choices, just helped direct him to better ones.

Unluckily, everything in the 40s was made of stiff cotton or itchy synthetics, and quite a bit of it lacked practicality. Money wasn’t going to be an issue- his wallet had been in the pocket of his sweatpants, containing a little under two hundred dollars in cash (more than the average person, but in his line of work you had to be prepared, and he wasn’t exactly worried about being mugged) and a credit card that wouldn’t work. By his best estimate, one dollar in his time was probably fifteen or twenty dollars now- which meant the old lady had nearly fainted when he paid her with in two twenties for a few bare bones essentials and insisted she keep it.

He left the shop with a a pair of slacks (which were apparently called trousers- he felt British even thinking about it), two button down shirts (one in grey and one in slightly darker grey), a watch, and a pinstriped sports coat, which the lady assured him was casual dress. He didn’t feel very casual, but his mood had been lifted when he found a smaller, shabbier shop that sold honest-to-god blue jeans and converse. He got one pair of each, shoving the jeans and one of the shirts in a weird satchel bag thing he’d picked up from the first place. He’d stashed those on the fire escape along with his other clothes for lack of a better option (he’d find a real place to stay later), had another mini panic attack, and come here.

“This happen often?” He asks Tiny Steve as they pick their way through the exhibits, gesturing to the threesome walking in front of them. They’d both settled a few steps behind, leaving Bucky to the girls.

Tiny Steve shrugs, staring more intently than necessary at the models of commercial planes on display as they walk through the ‘Modern Wonders’ building. There’s a full sized one hanging from the ceiling that Clint keeps eyeing warily. He doesn’t trust big hanging things. With his luck, they’ll fall.

“It’s fine,” Steve replies unconvincingly. “Bucky- he tends to only tell dames the good stuff about me. It’s real nice of him, but when they show they tend not to like what they find.”

Stupid heteronormativity. Taking a perfectly good twink and making him think he’s undateable. They make their way past the planes and hover by a large glass case containing a human-like figure entirely in shiny red- it sort of reminds Clint of a crude version of Tony’s suit, without the gold or fancy tech. It’s labelled ‘The Synthetic Man.’ The people around them look enamoured and heft their kids up on their shoulders to see.

“Well, they’re missing out,” he says matter of factly. Steve lets out a disbelieving huff, but he looks at least a little pleased.

“Thanks, Romanoff.” They finally make their way around the circle and step back out into the crisper night air (Clint sighs with relief, out of reach of the dangling aeroplanes). “But between me and Buck? I don’t honestly think they are.”

Hearing his name, Bucky looks back briefly and flashes both of them a grin- and as much as Clint likes Steve, it becomes very hard to disagree with him.

There’s a roar from the crowd gathering in front of them- “it’s starting!” one of the girls squeals excitedly, Bucky allowing himself to be dragged forward with an amused look- and Clint looks up to see the main stage illuminated in bright lights, a group of women in frankly impractical looking pinstripe suits and top hats holding court as music blared from off-stage speakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the speakers announced, “Mr. Howard Stark!”

Mr. Howard Stark looks a lot like Tony (which makes sense), though he lacks a little healthy wear and tear, sports worse facial hair, and is missing the big blue circle in the centre of his chest. As he walks up on the stage- waving to the audience, kissing one of the women, and taking the microphone as the crowd goes wild- Clint scowls. Howard is all the parts of Tony that annoy him with none of the slightly more endearing though still definitely annoying other parts: he walks like he doesn’t have a care in the world and talks as if it was built for him, but where Tony puts on a good act, Howard really believes it. He’s so busy glaring daggers at the man that he almost misses Steve offering him popcorn.

“Thanks,” he mutters. One of the girls turns around and shushes him and he shoots her an apologetic look before lapsing comfortably back into his scowl. Tiny Steve glances at him curiously.

“You don’t seem all that impressed,” he whispers. Clint pulls a face.

“I wouldn’t call myself Stark’s biggest fan,” he replies, pulling his cap further down over his eyes to block out the overbearing light show of the stage. “The Expo’s nice and all,” he adds quickly, “but I’ve never been a showbiz sort of guy.” That was a lie, but Tiny Steve didn’t need to know that.

“Aren’t your-” Steve gestures at his ears- “noise things, aren’t they Stark tech? I figured you gotta be in with Stark in some way to get that kind of thing.”

Right. Keep track of the lies, Barton. “My friend works with him,” he half-truths. “R&D, fancy stuff. Hey, how ‘bout we take a walk while they watch the show?” Steve doesn’t seem overly interested either, and he keeps casting glances behind them at a building too far away for Clint to read the name of.

“Sure.” They back carefully out of the audience and duck off into the general mingling crowd. With no particular direction, Clint trails half a step behind Steve, who is drifting towards that far off building. “Who’s your friend? One of those ladies up there?”

Clint snorts. “That’d be a riot,” he says dryly, fidgeting with his sleeves. “Nah, he’s…” he hesitates. “Anthony. His name is Anthony. We’ve- we’ve been friends for years. Practically live at his house by now, you know?”

“I get it. It’s the same with me and Bucky,” Steve tells him. They separate to pass around a family of five, all dressed up in their Sunday best and hovering over a map, then keep walking side by side. “My parents passed when I was younger. They left me a place, but my ma had too many medical bills and they took it when she died to pay them. Bucky’s parents offered me a place to stay. We moved in together.”

“Sounds like you two are close,” Clint comments, looking away to avoid thinking about his Steve’s face when he’d realised Bucky was alive.

“He’s my best guy,” Steve says, glancing back the way they’d come. “He’s an idiot sometimes, but he’s all right. And now he’s goin’ off to war, and…” he trails off and shakes his head. “Well, he’ll be the best sergeant in the army.” Clint has to close his eyes for a moment at the earnestness of it all. Stupid time travel. Stupid spoilers. Stupid Bucky. “How about Anthony? He enlisted?”

Briefly, Clint pictures Tony in a uniform like Bucky’s and suppresses a disbelieving laugh. He would hate it. He’d spend the whole time complaining about the mud and the food and demanding his Armani suits and silk pyjamas back. “Yeah,” he replies. “He’s not really a follower, but he’s a fighter, that’s for sure. Air force, 16th Airborne Command and Control. Lieutenant,” he lists- Rhodey’s squadron and rank, which Rhodey is fond of bragging about having existed since World War 2. Thank god for boring war stories at Stark Tower dinner parties.

“He’s an officer,” Steve translates. “I mean, they must have known he had the brains, coming from Stark R&D.”

Clint nods. “Yeah, he’s plenty smart. He’s got the heart for it, too,” he adds, because Tony will never know he said it (Clint would never live it down if he found out).

Speaking of the army- he’s followed Steve over to the building by now, and they stop just outside. It’s a smaller building, less grandiose than the other save for the dozen or so American flags waving from the roof. He squints at the name in the semi-darkness: United States Armed Services Recruitment. Glancing at Steve, who is eyeing the entrance determinedly, his heart drops to his stomach. “Steve-” he starts. His companion is already inside, slipping between people with ease. “God damn it, Steve,” he mutters.

He knew that Steve was eventually going to join the army, because that was where he became Captain America and all that. But right now was really not the best time, especially because once Bucky left he would be the only anchor Clint had in this time. Futz. Shit. On par with his luck, but couldn’t he get a break just this once?

“Hey,” he tries again, finding Steve standing in front of some propaganda poster that he barely spares a second glance. Steve turns to look at him and Clint groans internally, catching the look in Steve’s eyes- the one that his Steve had when he was about to do something and no one was going to be able to stop him.

“I’m going to give it a shot,” Steve declares, straightening to all five foot four or whatever height he is in this time.

“Aww, army, no,” Clint complains, at the same time as a voice behind him says “you’re kind of missing the point of a double date.” They both turn around to see Bucky, woman-less for the first time that night (although Clint suspects they’re waiting right outside). “We’re taking the girls dancing, remember?” He adds.

Steve looks away, looking unenthused by the idea. Clint is trying to figure out if dancing is a 40s metaphor for sex or if they’re actually going dancing, which would mean Bucky knows how to dance, both options of which would mean it’s all new kinds of over for Clint, the homosexual disaster.

“You both go ahead. I’ll catch up with you,” Steve says, saving Clint from blurting out something extremely embarrassing and highly inappropriate. Bucky frowns.

“You’re really gonna do this again?” He asks flatly.

“Well, it’s a fair,” Steve says. “Figured I’d try my luck.”

Oh, yeah. Clint vaguely remembers Steve talking about trying to enlist in the army multiple times when he got rejected. His spirits lift slightly. If Steve’s luck was anything like Clint's, this would probably just end up being another one of those failed attempts. Probably.

“As who, Steve from Ohio?” Bucky accuses. As a Midwesterner by birth, Clint feels slightly offended by his tone, although he suspects it’s more aimed towards Steve than Ohio. “They’ll catch you- or worse, they’ll actually take you.”

The sentiment is clearly genuine, fear born out of care, but Steve stiffens and the ‘don’t tell me what to do’ look on his face hardens to a point of no return. “Look, I know you don’t think I can do this, but-”

“This isn’t a back alley, Steve,” Bucky cuts in. “This is war, okay? It’s just not the right place for you- I mean, look, Romanoff tried to apply once, got rejected, and he’s not about to lie on his enlistment form and try again.”

Clint shifts uncomfortably at being brought into the personal argument, especially as both of them look at him expectantly, like he’s supposed to take their side. He swallows nervously. On one hand, he agrees with Bucky: Tiny Steve looks like he’ll blow over in a strong wind and triggers some instinctual urge in Clint to protect him just by standing there in his too-big coat with his too-big eyes. But on the other hand, he knows Steve, and he knows that the amount of fight, justice, and honest to god patriotism in him is more than enough for a man three times his size. Also, if he discourages Steve now, and it works, who knows what could happen? Maybe he’ll never try again and then Clint will have basically killed Captain America. He really, really does NOT want to be the one who kills Captain America. Nat will beat the shit out of him. His Bucky will probably shoot him, then have Tony revive him somehow, then shoot him again.

“I think,” he says tentatively, avoiding their eyes and staring at the floor, “maybe, um. Well.” He swallows. “I mean, if it means that much to you, I, uh, I guess you should, like, follow your dreams?”

Jesus christ, Barton. 

He risks a glance up. Bucky suddenly looks a lot more like the one Clint remembers, scowling at him in the same ‘I’m calculating if killing you on the spot is worth Steve being angry at me’ face. Steve is looking at him like he hung the sun, because he’s probably the only one crazy enough to tell this five foot four asthmatic disaster that yes, he should try to enlist in the army. Oh, well.

“Romanoff-” Bucky starts. Clint flinches.

“Bucky.” Steve steps between the two of them and puts his hand on Bucky’s arm. “Look, Buck, there are men laying down their lives out there. I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. It’s not about me.”

After a few tense seconds, Bucky steps back. Clint watches his face intently, but he’s closed off his expression and only looks back blankly. “Right,” he says, clearly disbelieving. “Cause you’ve got nothing to prove.”

Steve doesn’t reply. Neither does Clint. The silence wavers before it’s broken by one of the girls, poking her head into the hallway and impatiently calling out to Bucky. The man in question turns away, striding towards the entrance with a forced sort of ease (Clint is well familiar with it) and doesn’t look back.

“Aren’t you gonna go with him?” He hears Steve ask as he’s still staring at the spot where Bucky disappeared.

Is he?

For a moment, he considers it. But there’s really only one clear path from here, especially if this is going to go the way Clint expects it will, given his luck. Fragmented stories his Steve has told the group over breakfast and movie nights whisper in his ears. He shakes his head.

“Like you said,” he replies, mustering a quick smile, “I’ve got no right to do any less than those men out there.”

Of all the things he had planned to do today when he woke up in the 21st century, joining the army to fight World War two wasn’t in the top hundred.

Expect the unexpected , Natasha muses in his head.

Shut up , he tells her. Then he walks up to the desk and joins the army.

--------------------------------------------------

They make him wait in a small, curtained off room, sitting on an uncomfortable wood chair, for long enough that he begins to regret every decision he’s ever made that got him to this point. Even worse, they’d made him take off his hearing aids once he’d explained what they were to several different confused-looking inspectors with stiff white clothes and tired looking faces, so he couldn’t hear what was going on outside. He wondered if Steve was waiting in a room like this, or if they’d accepted him already, or if he’d been soundly rejected. They’d been separated too early on in the process to tell, although at least they’d gotten to sit in the waiting room next to each other- Rogers, Steven Grant and Romanoff, Clinton Francis.

(“Your middle name is Francis?” Steve had asked, amused.

Clint had rolled his eyes and shoved him. “Shove off,” he’d replied. Steve had cackled. So apparently making fun of his middle name transcended time periods.)

Just as he’s beginning to wonder if he should make his escape, the curtain opens and a man with wispy greying hair and glasses steps through it. Clint sits up straight and wonders if he’s supposed to salute, or something (he doesn’t, because the man looks more like a doctor than a general).

“Before we start,” he says, his voice mostly inaudible to his own ears. “I need my hearing aids back. If you don’t have them, I can read your lips, but you have to speak clearly.”

The doctor nods and holds out a tray, where Clint’s hearing aids sit. They look untampered with (which is lucky, because he wouldn’t have known how to fix them if they had been), and when he puts them back on the low hum of background noise fades back in. He sighs with relief. “Great, thanks,” he says. “I’m Clint.”

“I know,” the doctor replies. “I read your form.” Clint tries to place his accent, and he realises after a moment that it’s German, his ‘a’s shaped like ‘r’s. The doctor sets said form down on the table against the wall and looks back at him. “You are aware,” he says, “that the deaf are not allowed to enlist.”

Clint presses his lips tightly together to avoid scowling. It’s not the doctor’s fault. He didn’t make the rule, he reminds himself. “Yes,” he says stiffly.

“And you have applied anyway. From the Expo, no less. The very home of freaks harnessed by technology.”

If you punch him, you’ll probably never see Steve again. Or Bucky . He forces his fists to unclench. “Yes,” he repeats.

The doctor folds his hands neatly. “Your friend advocated very passionately for me to give you a chance as well.”

At the mention of Steve, Clint forgets about being angry and looks up quickly. “Steve Rogers?” He asks. “They let him in?”

“I did,” the doctor corrects him. “But yes.”

The confirmation makes Clint feel both queasy and proud. He tries to focus on the proud part. “That’s… well, thank you,” he says, even though he’s fairly sure Steve has already thanked the man a dozen times. “It means a lot to him.”

“I could tell,” the doctor replies with a barely noticeable note of approval in his voice. “And what about you?”

“Me?”

“Yes.” The doctor tilts his head, studying Clint, who drums his fingers on the sides of his legs nervously. It feels as if all his lies are being laid bare- even though, he forces himself to remember, they’re not. The doctor definitely seemed smart, but even he couldn’t possibly jump straight to ‘this mess of a man is clearly a time traveler from the future with no fucking clue about anything remotely having to do with the US army.’ “What does it mean to you?” He asks. “Do you want to go kill Nazis?”

“I don’t like killing,” Clint snaps institutionally before his brain can catch up to his mouth.

When it does, he pauses, and the doctor doesn’t interrupt. He takes a deep breath. “Sorry. I just-” was brainwashed once and killed everyone I was ordered to and then took the initiative of killing more people and take responsibility for the hundreds of other deaths I’ve directly or indirectly caused in the past five years “-don’t want to join up so I can kill people,” he finishes more calmly. He closes his eyes. “I want to save people. That’s always why I’ve done- wanted to do this. Because people back home aren’t going to care how many people on the other side their son killed if he doesn’t come home.” He knows that the doctor will have read the DECEASED next to the fake parents he put on the form, as well as a man with a different last name under his next of kin. In fact, he’s counting on it.

The doctor stares at him impassively. “You might not be in the right place to save people,” he informs Clint neutrally. “The army needs soldiers. It does not need heroes.”

The word ‘hero’ weighs heavily across Clint’s shoulders. In his time, it had found him a family, but it had also lost him so much. He pictures Natasha, sitting on the edge of the bed in a medbay very, very far from this one, and telling him that those deaths weren’t his fault, that he didn’t have a choice, that he was still a good person- a hero, unspoken assurance, because Natasha did not like that word either- and meets the doctor’s eyes.

“Maybe it does,” he says.

The silence stretches long enough for doubt to curl into his head like thorny tendrils. Then the doctor nods shortly and hands him back the form. “I suppose we will see.”

ILLNESS(ES): DEAF still glares at him in ugly typewriter-stamped letters on the page. But under it is a signature, printed on a line labelled ‘ EXEMPTION .’ Below it, the name is printed: Dr. Abraham Erskine.

In the corner, the page is stamped with a bolded A1 . Clint can take a wild guess at what that means. He feels a little bit proud, and also a lot bit like he’s going to throw up. He’s in the army.

The team is going to have a field day with this story.

Chapter Text

Clint had assumed that when he joined the army, it would be nothing like old war movies or documentaries that he’s watched and laughed at with Nat- like most things were, different in real life than on television.

Nope. It was exactly the same. Except it smelled. But he had sort of expected that too.

The clothes were even stiffer and itchier and generally worse than the ones he had bought on his first day, the bunks were made of wood and had no ventilation systems (which sucked for everyone, but especially for Clint, who missed his nest refuge more than certain members of his own team). He didn’t mind the hard beds- he’d developed the ability to sleep nearly anywhere and wake himself up on command within a ten minute range- nor did he mind the cold showers or the food. Sure, he missed the luxury of the Tower or even his apartment and DoorDash pizza, but he’d been in much worse conditions on assignments for SHIELD (that’s what he’d been pretending this was: just another assignment. He’s undercover. He can do undercover).

It’s really the people that bother him. Unlike a mission, where he would spend most of his time alone or with Nat, there were so. many. people. All of the time. All men, too, which isn’t nearly as fun as Clint had optimistically thought it might be. They’re all gross, heterosexual, and chock full of clearly toxic masculinity. They all look the same- tall, white, vaguely muscular, crew cuts, east coast accents- so anyone who looked or acted slightly different was immediately ostracised. AND they sweat. A lot.

Thank gods above who wore tight pants and garish capes that Steve and him had been assigned the same squadron. His old-slash-new friend was one of the unfortunate targets of the ostracising, and was singled out even more than the other skinny white guy (who wore glasses for the first two days before they were stolen, splashed with mud, and cracked so many times he gave up) and the one partly non-white guy in the camp. This was mostly because Steve refused to take it lying down or give any ground.

He reminded Clint more and more of his Steve every day. He was getting the feeling that Steve would have always been Captain America, serum or not. The serum just made it so he could punch things more effectively.

Their third day, when everyone was mostly settled in, they were called out to the section of dead grass and dirt closest to their bunk and told to line up.

That was the day the Clint met Peggy Carter.

Called to attention by a distinctly female voice- the first one Clint had heard in days- they stood ramrod straight as the future founder of SHIELD introduced herself as “Agent Carter, overseer of this division.“ Clint stifled a grin. She was exactly how Steve described her, and exactly the kind of woman he imagined someone who created the place that gave him his first real home would be.

She was also British. One of the men- dumbass white guy number five or whatever- takes issue with that.

“Step forward, soldier,” Peggy commands as Clint ran through a list of easily accessible plants that would force this guy into the bathroom or the woods for the rest of the day to puke his guts out.

Asshole number 5 does. Then she hits him so hard that he’s sent sprawling backwards again and lands on his ass with a shocked expression on his face.

Clint and Steve, alphabetically grouped together in every line, exchange an impressed and jubilant look. If you think this is impressive, you’re going to love Natasha, he wants to tell Steve.

Fortunately for the space-time continuum, an older man that Peggy addresses as Colonel Phillips shows up and starts lecturing them about how wars are won with men and other army-ish things. Clint can practically hear patriotic music playing in the background. He can also practically hear it come crashing to a stop when the colonel spots Steve- in all his bony, noticeably shorter glory- and Clint- sporting his hearing aids and too-long hair. He lifts his chin and prepares to protect Steve if need be.

Luckily, the colonel only turns away and continues speech-ing. Clint’s heartbeat thuds too loudly in his ears for him to hear, but he has a vague feeling they’ve passed some sort of first inspection- even if it’s just barely.

He also learns, partially from the parts of the speech he catches and partially later from Steve, that they’re not just in any branch of the army, but the Strategic Scientific Reserve, which doesn’t spell anything cool like SHIELD or STRIKE but is apparently still important.

(Clint makes a joke over dinner about renaming it the United Strategic Scientific Reserve- the USSR- to confuse the Russians. Steve laughs so hard he snorts powdered milk up his nose and has a coughing fit, which he assures Clint was worth it.)

“We’re here for a week, training with all the regular soldiers,” Steve explains to him patiently later that night. They’re sitting together outside the bunks while everyone gets changed and drinks smuggled liquor- it’s too loud and confusing for Clint and too crowded for Steve, who is sketching in the margins of one of his books as he talks. “But we’re not like them. At the end of the week, they’re going to choose one of us.”

“For what?” Clint asks (he already knows what: to be Captain America).

Steve shrugs. “Something about the fight starting with one man. I don’t know. Maybe they’ll promote him, or something.” His pencil moves smoothly across the page in well-practised strokes. Clint’s Steve doesn’t do art much anymore, but he’s been doing more ever since Bucky got back. Sometimes, he gets the feeling that his Steve spent so long playing Captain America that he lost the Steve Rogers that Clint is sitting with right now, and is trying to find him all over again. Or- will try. Whatever the proper tense is.

“Who do you think it’ll be?” He asks as casually as he can.

“Ugh. Probably Hodge, or someone like that,” Steve mutters, glaring at the dirt. The guy who had gotten the shit beat out of him by Peggy earlier, Clint remembers. He frowns.

“Nah,” he says. “He’s an asshole.”

“He’s a soldier,” Steve points out. He’s gotten used to Clint casually throwing around what was extreme profanity in the 40s and also the odd way he speaks in general. Clint still avoids saying ‘motherfucker,’ though. He had once, and Steve had looked like he was going to faint before he hastily clarified that it was a figure of speech.

“Still an asshole,” Clint repeats stubbornly. “Whoever makes the decision had better have half a mind and choose someone who deserves it.” He looks over at Steve. “Like you.”

Steve rolls his eyes and shoulder checks him gently. “Quit ragging me, Romanoff,” he scoffs.

“I’m not, I’m not,” Clint replies (hopefully he isn’t. he’s going off of context clues to figure out what ‘ragging’ means- he’s still trying to figure out 40s slang). “You’ve got the brains, got the heart-” he pauses. The words are familiar. “…You remind me of Tony- Anthony, y’know?”

“The lieutenant?” Steve recalls. Clint nods.

“Yeah, you’re the same breed,” he says. “You’d, uh, you’d like him. And I think he’d agree with me.”

Still looking unconvinced but nonetheless grateful, Steve sighs. “You think he’d come promote me?” He jokes.

“Sure would,” Clint replies truthfully. An image pops into his head of Tony holding up Tiny Steve by the collar in a room full of government officials. “He’d be all ‘gentlemen, make this man a captain. And then make me a sandwich. And cancel all my meetings for this afternoon, I decided I’m too busy doing genius things.’”

Steve laughs aloud, nearly dropping his pencil in a fit of amusement. “Captain is above Lieutenant, knucklehead,” he corrects once he catches his breath. Clint tilts his head from side to side and waves it off like, ‘technicalities.’

“Yeah, well, he sort of excels at promoting dubiously qualified people and forgetting to ask for permission.” He recalls Tony promoting Pepper to CEO on a whim, making a 14 year old mutant an Avenger, and appointing Rhodey the only other person allowed to wear his suits in the middle of a firefight, among numerous other examples- as well as his inclination to hire anyone who could hack his tech. It was all very exhausting and annoyingly endearing. “Like I said, not much of a follower.”

“Who are you calling ‘dubiously qualified’?” Steve objects, pretending to be scandalised. “I’d be an ace Captain, thanks.”

Clint raises his hands in surrender. “I have no doubts,” he says truthfully.

------------------------------

Unfortunately, nearly everyone else around them seems to disagree.

The week of training is hellish from the start. By the end of the second day, Steve had already been beaten black and blue for punching a guy who had tried to take one of his books. Clint, who had been out doing drills at the time, had come back and immediately demanded to know who did it. Steve had stubbornly refused to tell him, insisting that he was fine and it didn’t hurt that much, even though he winces when Clint steals him ice from the medbay (which he refuses to go to) and presses it on his face. Begrudgingly, Clint backs off and doesn’t force him into taking better care of himself, but he does keep a careful eye out.

He knows who it was, anyway, because people talked. And they especially talked when they found out your file listed you as ‘deaf’ without mentioning that you had perfectly functioning hearing aids that let you hear almost every word they said.

Which was a very specific ‘if,’ but one that applied to Clint.

“I heard they only let him in because his dad got gassed in the first war and they felt bad,” one of the man says over breakfast on the fourth day, which is served at 6 in the god damn morning. Perhaps the greatest culture shock of all has been to Clint’s nonexistent sleep schedule, which has been drilled back into him by force. For some reason, sleeping six hours from eleven to five is exponentially more exhausting than sleeping the same amount of time from three to nine. It’s terrible. The only reason he shows up for breakfast is because he refuses to let Steve go anywhere alone.

Steve, his nose buried in yet another book while he picks at his breakfast, sits by himself against the wall. He’d insisted Clint sit with the others, even though they all ignored him anyway. There was no hiding that he was friends with Steve. And it wasn’t like they liked him much better anyway.

“I heard he lied on his enlistment form five times before he got in,” another one says.

“Rogers? Nah, he don’t have the guts,” Hodge grunts from the other side of the table. Clint resists the frequent and overpowering urge to punch him and feels a surge of kinship for Peggy Carter.

“Hey, maybe the freak knows,” one of them chimes in. Ah, yes. That would be him. Not so creative, as far as nicknames go. Wasn’t there something about nicknames in the army? Well, his was freak, and Steve’s was cripple. Fun stuff. Very heartwarming.

He tenses as one of the guys reaches over and cuffs his shoulder to get his attention, and looks up as if he hasn’t heard a word they’ve been saying. Several of them laugh.

“Hey, Romanoff,” Hodge says, far too loudly and obnoxiously slowly. Jesus christ. Fucking 40s. “Your buddy, Rogers-” he gestures unnecessarily to Steve, who is ignoring all of them in the corner- “did he LIE on his EN-LIST-MENT form?”

Just when Clint had thought it wasn’t possible for him to sound any less intelligent. Cussing them all out with expletives that would make Tiny Steve faint dead away in his head, he blinks slowly. “Sorry,” he says flatly. “I can’t hear you.”

The table roars with laughter, as if they’re one of Tony’s dinner guests and Rhodey has just told a story ending with ‘boom, you lookin’ for this?’ The memory briefly comforts him before another one of them speaks up again.

“Hey, don’t deafs have some sorta hand language they use to talk to people?”

“How the hell should I know?” Hodge cackles. “Someone shove him and ask.” Clint braces himself, but still almost falls off his chair when the guy next to him does, overenthusiastically. “You do the hand language thing, Romanoff?” He holds out his hands in demonstration and crudely mimes something probably sexual, by the way that the other trip over themselves laughing at.

When briefly praying to Thor to fry all of them on the spot doesn’t work, as usual, Clint reluctantly sets down his fork. Staring blankly in the spaced-out way he puts on as an act, he signs [fuck off][you][piece of shit]. The men jostle each other and watch like he’s a carnival act. Having been a carnival act before, Clint takes it into stride.

[i][hope][you][shot][by][n-a-z-i]. He doesn’t know the sign for Nazi, but finger spelling works the same. It’s not like they know what he’s saying anyways, evident from the lack of beating Clint is currently receiving. Instead, Hodge nods exaggeratedly and give him two patronizing thumbs up, to which Clint fakes a faint smile and with a very sincere expression signs [you][deserve][death][piss off][cunt]. Silently, he thanks Natasha for suggesting they entertain themselves during a stakeout by learning every curse word there was in sign language.

The applause is so uproarious that they almost miss the order to report outside for their morning run. Clint hangs back and falls in step with Steve, who shoots him a bemused expression.

“All I caught was ‘fuck off’ and ‘Nazi,’” he says (Clint has been teaching him sign language at night before they go to bed and during rare breaks in the afternoons). “But I’m sure it was all very polite.”

“’Fuck off you piece of shit,’” Clint translates under his breath, with a perfectly pleasant expression painted on his face. “Super polite. ’I hope you get shot by a Nazi. None of you lot deserve to live. Piss off and die, cunt.’”

Steve laughs so loudly that several heads turn before he turns it into a cough while Clint stares back in the unfocused way that creeps them out until they turn back away.

The run is hell, which it always is, but Clint consoles himself in that it’s definitely worse for Steve. Also, he refuses to run in formation with the others and instead lags behind with his friend, who he knows would never ask him to but is quietly grateful for it all the same. He could run faster, hypothetically. Probably faster than any of them. But if they’re all going to assume that he can’t, like hell is he not gonna take advantage of that assumption. Half-assing for the win.

(It helps that he, unlike everyone else, isn’t trying to prove or win anything. He already knows Steve will be picked. And he doesn’t want to be picked anyway. He’s just here to make sure Steve doesn’t get killed in the process and wait for Tony’s genius brain to bring him back to the present.)

The highlights of his days are when he and Steve celebrate their small victories- which mostly come in the form of outwitting everyone else. Clint’s epic performance of a breakfast is followed by Steve winning a challenge that involves a flag and a ride home. He holds out his hand for a high five instinctually, and rolls his eyes when Steve just stares at it with confusion.

“I’ll show you later,” he whispers, before shoving him off to the jeep to go take a break with Peggy Carter. As he watches him go, he catches said woman’s eye and freezes. She’s watching him with a faintly curious expression that looks duly unfooled by the poor unfortunate soul act he’s adapted into. He’s fairly certain she just saw him talking to Steve, and probably has high enough clearance to have been briefed on his hearing aids. Clint shoots her a small, informal salute before jogging off to go catch up (mostly) with the group.

He explains the high five to Steve later, passing it off as “just an Iowa thing, I guess,” and briefly wonders if teaching someone to high five before high fiving was invented will break the timeline or something. Then he decides that sounds like more of a Doctor Strange or Nick Fury type of problem that is above his pay grade for worrying about, and he and a very enthusiastic Steve spend the rest of the evening finding every possible reason to high five each other.

(The others stare at them like they’re insane, which a) they sort of are and b) isn’t all that different from the stares they normally get, so it doesn’t exactly stop them.)

---------------------------

The sixth night, the second to last one he knows Steve will be here, is the first night he can’t sleep. Somewhere around two in the morning, he slips outside and takes himself for a midnight wander around the camp. That’s when the silence gets him.

He’s been trying to live through all of this minute by minute, refusing to think too hard about it because there’s no point: if he’s getting home, it’ll be from the other end- the tech for time travel certainly doesn’t exist in the time he’s in. It barely existed in the time he came from, and that was only because of one Tony Stark, who currently didn’t exist because his father was too busy kissing random women on stages and building flying cars that didn’t work. And Howard is no Tony, anyway.

Still. It’s hard not to panic when it’s just now sinking in that he’s in the army. He’s in a war. Sure, his profession was always dangerous, but at least he had his friends and he knew they would have his back. He wouldn’t trust any of these men, save for Steve, to watch his back. Ever.

And Steve is about to leave and become Captain America.

He's not worried that he’ll forget about Clint, Steve is too good of a friend to leave him to rot. But Captain America, he knows from being around his Steve, is a demanding job that tends to push personal priorities to the end of the list. Who knew how long he could be here, entirely dependent on Tony or Steve to pull him out?

Despite spending so much of his life in it, silence was not kind to Clint. He tries to focus on his breathing- the way Bruce taught him, in and out with intention, taking his best guess at at how long to hold it at each point when trying to count the seconds leaves him with a jumble of numbers in his head. Breathe and walk. Breathe and walk. He reminds himself that he can, actually, leave whenever he wants. The army, at least. He doesn't give a single fuck if deserting is still illegal, he knows how survive on his own if he needs to. He can wait this out. He’s been in worse situations. He can’t particularly think of one right now, but at least he’s not immediately in life-threatening danger.

Silence might actually be worse.

So when Clint hears muffled voices from somewhere to his left, he stumbles towards it. There's a tent- with a light on, flickering like a candle, which it probably is. He makes his way over and gets enough out of his own head to quiet his breathing and footsteps. Ah, creeping through the night. He can practically feel Natasha rolling a joke off her tongue that will undoubtedly nearly blow their cover when he struggles not to laugh. Of course, there is no Natasha. Not this time.

“…can’t seriously be thinking about Rogers,” a gruff voice that Clint has come to recognize as Colonel Phillips is saying. “I mean, please. Washington is having enough of a hard time taking this project seriously.”

“You do not seem to understand the purpose of the serum,” argues the distinctly German-accented English of Dr. Erskine. Clint can envision him adjusting his glasses with a barely contained temper under his calm words. “It will amplify everything. If you give it to a good man, he will become better. If you give it to a bully, he will become a bigger bully.”

“Please, this isn’t grade school, doctor,” the colonel scoffs. “If it will take a weak man and make him strong, then it will make a strong man stronger. Hodge is a loyal soldier- he won’t do anything we don’t want him to. Who cares if he’s a little mean?”

“Those are the words of a bully, Colonel.”

“Those are the words of reality. What we’re doing here isn’t nice, but it needs to get done.”

“If I may,” interrupts a third voice that makes Clint start and lean in even closer. “I think we have a third option that may be a fair compromise,” says Peggy Carter. She pauses, and neither man interjects. There is a sound of a file being dropped on a hard surface- a table, probably- with a soft slap.

Colonel Phillips is the first to speak. “Romanoff? Are you out of your mind, Carter?”

Focused on staying as still as possible and straining to piece together the muffled words, it takes Clint a moment to comprehend that that’s him. Peggy just suggested him. To be Captain America. Which was bad, because Steve is supposed to be Captain America. That’s like, the number one thing he’s supposed to not fuck up.

Shit.

“No, she has a point,” Dr Erskine is saying when he tunes back in. “I see in him many of the positive qualities I see in Steven. Physically, however, Clint is stronger. But his condition has kept him humble.”

“He’s still not as strong as the rest of my boys,” Colonel Phillips disagrees. For once, Clint thanks whoever’s out there for the prejudice that permeated the army.

But of course, his luck can’t possibly hold. “That’s what he wants you to think,” Peggy replies. “I’ve seen him. When he’s on his own, he’s faster than all of them. He’s quieter on his feet than some of our specialists. And on Wednesday- do you remember the target in the lineup that had all but two bullets fired directly through the centre?”

“That was his?” Phillips asks, sounding unconvinced. Clint winces. He’d gotten carried away after so long without his bow or any other assorted projectile weapon in his hands and had only just remembered to shoot those last two purposely off target at the last minute before dropping the gun and fleeing back to the relative safety of the bunk, staring at his hands until they stopped shaking.

“I checked,” Peggy confirms. “He only lags behind on the runs to watch over Steve. Overall, his skills show up on our charts as passable but I have reason to believe they’re much more than that. He could have told the others he can hear them and avoided- as the doctor calls it- all the bullying. But he didn’t. Which I believe, Doctor Erskine, fulfils your requirement as well.”

For a count of five, Clint hears only silence from the tent. Then Phillips speaks up again.

“If we give him the serum, will he be able to hear?” He asks bluntly.

Clint’s heart all but stops.

Papers rustle. “I can not be sure,” the doctor replies slowly. “But it is designed to heal all ailments and create an idealised body- I can only assume that the body will have not only standard but enhanced senses. It may even be more sure than the healing of Steven’s asthma, because he was not born deaf.”

More silence. “I still think…” he hears Phillips start before he’s slipping away, practically breaking into a run to get away from the tent. He flies across dirt and grass, trying to block out words that have already infiltrated his head.

Sure, he knew hypothetically that the serum healed everything. But he hadn’t considered that it would let him hear again. From the complete silence to struggling to learn sign language to Tony handing him what he thought were earbuds and telling him to try them to hearing again to talking in sign anyway to re-learning how to talk to everything else, it had simply become a part of him. He’d stopped thinking of being deaf as a wound or a problem to be fixed, partly because his line of work presented him with bigger and more pressing problems but also because he had just adjusted gradually. There were even benefits to being able to turn his ears off sometimes. It wasn’t like he’d recommend blowing your ears out to his friends in a five-star Yelp review, but it had gone from a hindrance to a fact of life.

So he’d never thought about what he’d do if he was offered a chance to get it back.

Maybe if he was Captain America, Steve and Bucky would end up living normal lives together. They wouldn’t have to go through all of the… well, everything. If anyone deserved a happy life, they did.

Clint wrenches himself violently out of that train of thought. Absolutely not, no, he would NOT consider it. He’s Hawkeye, not Captain America. At any given moment, he could be sucked back to the future, and then where would that leave everyone here?

(Maybe better off, a small part of him whispers. The world seems to like the idea of Captain America a lot better than the man himself. Maybe that’s all they really needed.)

On autopilot, he’s brought himself back to the bunk- and speak of the devil, Steve is standing out side, arms wrapped tightly around himself and leaning against the wall, staring intently in the other direction. “Hi,” Clint croaks, his throat still ragged from running straight through a bit of a panic attack.

Steve whips around, looking briefly jump scared and then relieved. “Clint,” he whispers. “I woke up and you were gone. I was looking for you. Afraid you deserted or somethin’.”

Clint shakes his head, trying to look much more casual than he felt. “Sorry, I went for a walk,” he replies, leaning up against the wall next to Steve to catch his breath. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” Steve confesses quietly. He’s shivering in the cold air. “I keep wondering where Bucky is. I’ve written him twice, but it takes months for letters to go from one camp to another. Even longer than it would if I was at home. I don’t think he even knows I’ve joined up.”

Sliding off his coat, Clint offers it to him. “Here, take this- no I mean it, take it. I’m overheating in it anyway. Long walk.” Eventually, Steve does, and it hangs just as loose on him as everything else does. No wonder his Steve always wears shirts that are too small for him- if everything fit Clint this way for twenty three years, he’d never buy something oversized again. “Anyway, I’m sorry about that. I know the feeling.”

Steve glances sideways at him. “Anthony ever write to you?”

Laughing slightly bitterly, Clint shakes his head. He’s relying on Tony for a lot more than letters. “Not yet,” he replies. “Then again, he might not know I’ve joined up either. I’m sure he’s… trying.” He shrugs. “It’s all right. I’ll see him again when I- when we both get back.”

They both ignore the unspoken, unless one of us dies. Or both of us. Unless we never make it back.

“Yeah, and then you’ll take me to meet him,” Steve adds.

“Obviously.” They both go quiet. The conversation he’d overheard is still playing on loop in Clint’s head, glaringly impossible to ignore. He shakes his head and crosses his arms. “Hey, I need some advice,” he says suddenly. Steve gives him a ‘go ahead’ gesture. “Say you got offered something that would mean a lot to you,” he starts. “Like, something so crazy that you hadn’t even bothered hoping for it because you figured it was set in stone. And then suddenly- bam, there it is, right there.”

“Okay.”

“But the thing is,” Clint says, staring out at the darkened horizon, obscured by trees and ramshackle tents. “The thing is that if you take it, it might hurt someone who you really care about. And they’re really great, always been there for you, the typa guy who you’d die for like that ‘cause he gave you something to live for.” He closes his eyes. “You don’t know for sure, though. It could end up bad for you, or good for him, but you gotta take it or leave it.” When he opens them, Steve is staring at him intently. “What choice do you make?”

He half doesn’t expect a response, or expects one like ‘do you need to go talk to someone, Romanoff?’ Instead, Steve buries his hands deeper into the pockets of Clint’s coat and sighs. “You want a real answer?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a choice I already made,” Steve tells him. “On that night with Bucky, at the Expo. When I joined.”

And then Clint feels incredibly stupid, because he’d all but described what Steve had done in enlisting against all odds and against what Bucky basically begged him to do- stay home, stay safe. He rubs his eyes, trying to push away the too many thoughts pounding in his head. “Ah, futz, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think-”

“It’s fine, Romanoff,” Steve interrupts. “Listen, whatever choice you have to make, I can’t make for you. But the best choice is always gonna be the one that does the most good, not the one that someone else tells you is ‘right’ or ‘safe’ or ‘normal’ or anything like that.”

“I- thanks,” Clint replies. “Really. Thank-” he cuts himself off with a yawn- “thank you.”

“Sure. Anytime.” The yawn is contagious. “Come on, let’s go to bed. We have breakfast in three hours.”

Clint groans.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t get to sleep. But on the bright side, by the morning he’s decided that he’s not going to be Captain America.

There were just too many downsides- from the fact that Steve is genuinely a better person for the job, despite what Phillips or Peggy might think, to Clint’s inability to pull off spandex. Especially in all-American blue. He’s more of a purple and black kind of guy. The more he had thought about it, the more fundamentally wrong it had felt. He wasn’t Cap. And he didn’t want to be.

Besides, he wouldn’t be able to shut Tony out as effectively if his ears worked the way they were supposed to. That would be the true tragedy.

So when everyone leaves for breakfast, Clint heads off in a different direction with a speech of one sleep deprived hour in the making. He hovers a moment, trying to figure out how to knock on a mostly open aired canvas tent before settling on clearing his throat loudly and stepping into Colonel Phillip’s makeshift office.

The colonel looks up from his own slightly larger but similarly flavour-lacking breakfast and scowls at him (although that tends to just be his default expression, so Clint doesn’t take it personally). “Shouldn’t you be at breakfast, Romanoff?” He asks.

What happened to ‘hello, Clint, how did you sleep, nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?’ Clint thinks bitterly, tossing off a salute which he’s supposed to do every time he speaks with the Colonel but only remembers to fifty percent of the time. Which is probably why he was never in the army in his time. “Already finished,” he lies. “I wanted to come talk to you about something.”

Phillips gives him a look. Clint resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I wanted to talk to you about something, sir ,” he corrects himself.

“Fine. Out with it then, I’m busy.” Phillips gestures to his breakfast.

“You can’t choose me for the serum, sir,” Clint declares bluntly. Phillips drops his fork.

“How did you-”

“I couldn’t sleep. Overheard the meeting last night. I didn’t mean to, obviously,” he adds hastily. “I just- I heard my name, and Steve’s, and I-” he cuts himself off, struggling to find a way to finish the sentence that isn’t ‘I was trained as a spy for an international espionage organization that doesn’t exist yet so now I make every conversation in earshot my business by nature.’

Phillips sighs. “No need for excuses, I know why,” he says. Clint chokes on air before he continues: “i’ll admit it’s admirable, how protective you are of Rogers.”

Crisis averted. “Thank you, sir. It’s what anyone would do for a friend.”

“Not everyone,” Phillips replies with a sigh. He waves his fork as he speaks. “Listen, Romanoff, I don’t want you to be our test subject any more than you do, but Agent Carter brought up a few unfortunately not entirely refutable points. You are a solid man for the job.” He glances over Clint’s shoulder, which Clint has come to recognize as people taking a glance at his hearing aids. “Well, you will be.”

Futz. Where was the bigoted oppression when you actually needed it? Clint forces a tight nod of acknowledgement. “Right, yeah, I just- you don’t understand, I can’t be Ca- the one who takes the serum. I have- other things. I’m really not the right person, trust me on this one.”

For a moment, he thinks he’s succeeded. Phillips is looking at him thoughtfully. “You know, our first president didn’t want the job either,” he says instead. “And look what he created.”

Yeah, a disaster country constantly at war that spends more money on guns than healthcare. Clint neglects to say that out loud, because he’s currently on an army base in the 40s and not in the Tower with the likes of several anarchists, socialists, and people who just have good critical thinking skills. “It’s not just that I don’t want- listen, I am telling you that I can’t do it. Pick someone else.” He tries not to let desperation leak into his voice, because then he’d have to explain why exactly he’s so against being America’s first super soldier in order to help kick Nazi ass and Clint DOES want to kick Nazi ass but not as Captain America. As himself is just fine. Please. “Sir,” he adds belatedly.

Phillips takes off his hat and stands, apparently deciding this conversation warranted his undivided attention, undistracted by breakfast. Clint almost feels honoured. “If this is about keeping an eye on Rogers,” he says. “I’m sure we can arrange something. If it’s about him dying, we can send him home-”

“No,” Clint denies in a rush. “No, don’t do that.”

“Alright, we can keep him. Stash him in some reserve squadron or something. Make him feel useful, no one will touch him,” Phillips offers, still completely misunderstanding (although he couldn’t possibly understand). “Look, son, I spent most of last night losing an argument with Agent Carter and the doctor over why you shouldn’t be the one we choose. They made solid points. All you’re giving me is excuses.”

Clint fumbles for an answer, staring at the wall with his mouth halfway open. All his mind offers is the truth, which is not an option. Think, Barton, think. If you screw this up for Steve, Bucky will kill you incredibly painfully. Followed by everyone else. If there’s anything left after Bucky-

Aww, futz. Well, here goes another dumpster fire of a Barton Plan.

“If you can’t give me at least one real good reason why you’re so sure you’re not the right person for the job-”

“I’m gay,” Clint declares.

The statement is followed by several seconds of heavy silence. The colonel sits back down. Clint is already regretting everything.

“I’m gay,” he repeats. “I’m gay and I’ll tell every single person that gets close to me as long as I’m alive if you pick me- and if you think your friends in Washington aren’t so fond of this plan now-” he pauses, closing his eyes. “I can’t imagine they’ll ever take this serum seriously if you give it to me.”

Phillips says nothing. He won’t even look at him.

Three cheers for 20th century homophobia, Clint thinks bitterly even as he lifts his chin and clasps his hands behind his back to keep them from shaking. “Just… just don’t, colonel,” he mutters flatly, staring at the floor. “Just don’t.”

They face each other for several more long seconds before Phillips speaks. “You’re dismissed,” he says, his voice betraying equally little emotion.

Clint nods wordlessly and all but flees from arguably the second worst coming out experience of his entire life. He skips right over the breakfast hall and wrenches open the door to the bunks, which are with incredible luck still empty.

Then he kneels on the hard, wood floor next to his bed and cries silently for what feels like an eternity.

-----------------------------

He spends most of their last day together avoiding Steve. Mumbling a halfhearted excuse about being sick gets him out of explaining why he wasn’t at breakfast and keeps everyone else away from him, too. After lunch, Steve pesters him into coming out to one of their last drill sessions. Clint stands in the back row with him, hovering anxiously and flinching at the smallest sound, before flat out running away when he spots Colonel Phillips walking up to them with the doctor. He’s too much of a mess to even feel bad about leaving Steve to do all those push ups on his own.

“You missed it,” Steve tells him when he comes back. Clint doesn’t even look up from where he’s sitting, up against the outside of the bunk’s back wall (he also doesn’t ask how Steve found him- they’ve been sitting here together all week. And now, out of the blue, Clint is pushing him away. It makes him feel even worse). “I jumped on a grenade.”

A smile makes an attempt at reaching Clint’s face, because he remembers his Steve telling that story and the death glare it got him from Bucky for the rest of the night as well as the constant ribbing during their subsequent missions.

(“Don’t drop the grenades anywhere near Cap,” Tony had joked as they infiltrated yet another Hydra base, this one in an appropriately miserably cold spot up in Norway. “He might try and jump on them.”

The roar of laughter that sounded over the comms made the whole mission worth it.)

Then he remembers how far away everyone is and how much different it is here and how afterwards in the Quinjet he had nearly crashed them because Nat had made a joke about his dick freezing off and Bucky, completely out of the blue and close enough that only Clint could hear it, had muttered “that’s okay, he doesn’t use it anyway.” And then Clint had laughed so hard he fell off the seat. And none of that could happen here because the past was awful and everything sucked and he was WALLOWING in his MISERY and jesus christ, STEVE, can’t a guy WALLOW in PEACE.

“…dumbass,” he replies eventually and very quietly. Steve snorts.

“There he is,” Steve replies, sitting down next to him. He offers something in his hand to Clint. “Here. You haven’t eaten all day.”

Clint wrinkles his nose at the packaged rations, which are like the normal rations but slightly staler and squishier, but his stomach rebels and he reluctantly takes it. “How did you know that,” he grumbles.

Steve rolls his eyes. “We all eat in the same dining hall, Clint. It’s not rocket science.”

“Fuck off,” Clint replies, just to hear the brief scandalized noise that Steve still hadn’t managed to get rid of when he cursed.

“No, thank you,” his friend replies, his face slightly pink but determinedly ignoring it. “Aren’t you going to ask how I survived jumping on the grenade?”

Closing his eyes and screwing up his face as he chews the rations to try and avoid the taste, Clint smirks. “Dummy grenade?”

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.” Clint cracks one eye open and laughs at the fake pout on Steve’s face at his spoiled surprise. It makes him look even more like a kicked dog than when Steve’s Clint does it. “Listen, Steve, if they choose one of us tomorrow morning-”

“They won’t,” Steve insists. “You’re still on this? We’re gonna be fine. They’ll take Hodge, we’ll celebrate him being gone and our lives getting marginally better because of it, and then we’ll come right back here and go about our normal lives here.”

Clint sighs. He knows there’s no use trying to convince Steve that it’ll be him. He’s tried countless times over the past few days, with varying methods but the same lack of success. Steve is just too humble. Spending his life surrounded by people who told him he wasn’t good enough also probably hadn’t helped matters. “Yeah, sure, just humour me, okay?” He must be not so bad at the kicked puppy face himself, because Steve gives him an exasperated look but doesn’t openly object. “If they choose one of us tomorrow morning-” when they choose you, he really means- “just promise me that you won’t spend too much time thinking about me, okay?”

Steve frowns at him. “Now you’re being the idiot,” he replies. “Of course I’d think about you. Hell, I’d have them take you with me if I could. You and me, we’ve got each others backs.”

Ugh. He’s so earnest and kind and shit that it physically pains Clint sometimes. “Steve, I’m serious,” he tries again. “You’re the type of guy who has a real big destiny, and I- I just don’t want to get in the way, okay? I couldn’t forgive myself if I was the one who stopped you from doing all the good things you’re going to do.”

“You’re talking nonsense, Romanoff,” Steve objects, sounding more upset than Clint wants him to be. “It’s- you’re probably just feeling weird because you haven’t eaten enough.”

“That’s not it,” Clint snaps. He doesn’t mean for it to come off so harshly, but it does anyway and he winces. “Sorry. I don’t- I didn’t mean to upset you, okay? I just need you to know before you- if you were to leave, I don’t want to be something holding you back. I’m not worth that.”

Looking not only unconvinced but angry, Steve stands. “You’re still not feeling well,” he says firmly. “I’ll leave you alone.”

“Steve-”

“I’ll see you later, Romanoff.”

He turns the corner and walks out of sight and Clint feels so incredibly stupid. What had he been thinking, talking to Steve like that? Saying vague things about destiny and trying to convince a man who saw him as a friend and an equal that he wasn’t worth ‘thinking about.’ Steve was too good for that, too smart to be swayed by an ego-boosting speech to someone that wasn’t him. Because Clint hadn’t been talking to him. He’d been talking to his Cap- the one who had already done all those great things and filled shoes Clint could never fill and was a better person than Clint could ever be. Not a fellow soldier. A Captain.

Clint feels his stomach sink and realises that he, just like everyone else eventually would do, had been talking to Captain America and forgetting about Steve Rogers. He lets his head thump back against the wall and stares at the slowly setting sun with a sigh.

Welcome to the rest of your life, Cap , he thinks bitterly. I just gave you a preemptive introduction.

He probably would have sat there, wallowing some more, for the rest of the night, but he isn’t afforded that luxury. A soldier he doesn’t recognize pops his head around the corner about a half an hour later and looks relieved to find him. Clint, who had heard him and jerked up, expecting Steve, was less thrilled to find out otherwise.

“What,” he snaps (which is unfair to the poor guy). He takes a deep breath and stands, brushing dirt off his pants. “Sorry. I mean, do you need something?”

“You’re wanted in the colonel’s office,” the man says, jerking a thumb behind him. He gives Clint a dubious once over, which means he’s definitely not from their unit, who have long since moved on from questioning Clint’s appearance to making fun of it. Clint tenses and crosses his arms.

“Thanks,” he replies tersely. The man turns and tries to follow him and Clint shoots him a glare over his shoulder. “I know where it is.”

In retrospect, he probably should have asked why the colonel had requested him, but by the time he realises this the man is gone. He walks quickly towards the office, trying not to think about the similar trek he had made that morning, and scenarios run through his head. Most of them involve memories of scenes from dime-a-dozen Hallmark equivalent of war movies, where he and Nat did shots every time someone said “(dis)honourable discharge,” “i did what i had to do,” or “the war” (vague and nonspecific enough that the movie couldn’t be considered politically incorrect). “Dishonourable discharge” in particular plays on loop. As does the fact that homosexuality was criminalised for… well, he doesn’t know the exact date, but he knows for sure it wasn’t the sort of thing you shrugged off in the 40s. Especially after what had happened that morning.

By the time he reaches the office, he’s sweating and his hands are shaking so badly he’s had to stuff them in his pockets and stare at the ground so he doesn't trip over something. When he walks in, there are no government agents here to arrest him. It’s worse.

There’s Steve.

Sitting behind his desk is Colonel Phillips, flanked by Doctor Erskine and Peggy Carter. Arguably the scariest trio known to mankind, right up there with Nick Fury, Maria Hill, and Natasha Romanoff. Clint is getting a sense of deja vu, actually. He’s pretty sure he walked into this exact situation after stealing Cap’s shield and accidentally causing a national emergency on a twenty-dollar bet with Tony. Those were good times. Unlike this one.

Because Clint has a cap of 75% of any given room he’s in being mad at him, when he sidles up to stand next to Steve, he nudges his friend and murmurs an apology. “Sorry I was being an idiot,” he says under his breath.

Steve doesn’t look at him, but he does nudge him right back. “Sorry I stormed out while you were being an idiot,” he replies. Clint snorts. Then Phillips clears his throat and they both snap to attention.

It’s Peggy who does the talking. “Both of you are being reassigned,” she tells them up front in her no-nonsense way, holding what Clint assumes are their files under her arm.

His heart sinks. They’re not even going to get until the morning. It’s happening now.

Futz.

Next to him, Steve’s eyes are huge. The look on his face flickers between disbelief, fear, excitement, and quite a few other emotions even Clint can’t decode. “You mean-” he says, his voice almost wavering- “you mean that we’re the chosen ones?”

In a herculean feat of self control, Clint refrains from solemnly quoting Harry Potter. He avoids looking at Phillips entirely and stares at the wall over all three of their heads, tense. He closes his eyes and his heartbeat thuds in his ears. There can’t be two Captain Americas- can there?

It turns out there can’t be. Or at least, there won’t be. “You have been chosen, Rogers,” Peggy corrects him gently (or at least, in a marginally less scary strict-mom voice than she normally uses). “Romanoff is being reassigned as a specialist for a different unit.”

Slowly, Clint cracks open his eyes. “A specialist?” he blurts out before realising that he should probably know what that is. Screw him for not doing the assigned reading. What were they, haters of dyslexic people?

Well. Yeah, that’s exactly what the general population of the 20th century were. But still.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Steve whispers to him. Huh. Okay. Peggy hands over their files. Steve’s is a bunch of medical jargon and red tape, along with a long lists of tiny words that Clint recognizes more by general look than by content as some form of NDA-slash-terms-and-conditions sheet (it doesn’t worry him too much, he knows Steve will read the whole thing. He’d read all of the Accords, for gods sake, and that was a couple hundred pages. As it turned out, a good habit to have, he thinks, grimacing at the memory of even Tony’s face paling at the inhumanities that Steve had pointed out to the group and the press during their unanimous rejection).

Clint’s file is more straightforward. It’s three pages: the first the form that he’d filled out at the Expo, along with Erskine’s modifications; the second a page of notes handwritten in a cursive font he can’t read no matter how much he squints at it but is what looks like a letter of recommendation of sorts from Peggy; and the third is a new record sheet listing him as reassigned and promoted. He skims it quickly and lingers at the bottom, where the page is signed by Colonel Phillips himself, authorising Clint’s promotion.

There’s a pang of something in his chest that makes him tear his eyes away from the signature as quickly as he can. Phillips still won’t meet his eyes when he looks up at him, but the sentiment is still there. Clint feels a wave of relief wash over him and he opens his mouth to say something stupid, probably a thank you that he won’t be able to explain- but luckily, he’s interrupted by Steve, who is still skimming Clint’s file.

“You’re in the 107th,” Steve points out, sounding shocked. Clint glances down to confirm that yes, he is, in fact, in the 107th.

He hesitates. The number sounds familiar, but he can’t quite place why. “Yeah, why?”

Steve looks up at him, his eyes brimming with something like hope and almost reverence. “That’s Bucky’s squadron,” he says. “You’re going to be working with him.”

Clint stares at the tiny typewriter printed number as if it’ll disappear if he looks away. The 107th. Newest member: Specialist Clinton Francis Romanoff. Sniper and espionage. On recommendation from: the Strategic Scientific Reserve.

To serve under: Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.

Chapter Text

It takes several hours and about five trillion promises to give Bucky all the letters, stories, updates, and secondhand punches that Steve wants to give him for Steve to allow himself to be detached from Clint and taken back to a separate bunk for his last night at the camp. The whole time, Clint barely gets a word in edgewise, which he uses to wish Steve good luck and makes him promise not to do anything stupid, to which Steve replies “how can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you” in a slightly choked sort of voice.

Clint laughs, but he’s heard his Steve and his Bucky exchange them more than enough times before missions back in his time to know the words are meant more for Bucky than for him. He adds it to the extensive list of things to pass on (Steve is nothing if not an opportunist). Once he’s done unabashedly using Clint as a go between messenger, he reluctantly allows Doctor Erskine to drag him off for “a chat” and to prepare to leave the next day. Steve’s face pales slightly when the doctor uses the word “operation,” but he shoots Clint a wobbly salute and hurries away with his chin held high.

And he deserves it, Clint thinks. He really does.

Peggy is the one in charge of briefing him on the details of his reassignment. Come morning after a second restless night of sleep, she’s waiting outside of the bunks, looking as pristine as ever down to her lipstick when Clint (who is comparatively even more of a mess than usual) walks out with his half-full bag of possessions. Although Peggy doesn’t bat an eye, she does raise an eyebrow slightly.

“You have everything you need?” She asks, businesslike.

In the bag is Clint’s one other set of clothes, a first aid kit patched together and pilfered from various different parts of the camp, his stash of 21st century cash, and a still unopened bag of skittles.

The rest of the stuff is Steve’s, for Bucky, and around the top he’s looped in his purple shoelaces (that he’d kept after replacing them with standard issue ones on his boots, making them look just enough like everyone else’s) as a makeshift extra security system to keep everything inside safe. He’d spent eight years living with pickpockets- good old paranoia of his things getting stolen never went away.

He slips the bag over his shoulder. “Yep,” he says. “I pack light.”

“I see,” Peggy replies offhandedly, her eyes constantly darting around, assessing movement and threats. It’s familiar- Natasha does the same thing. “Well, come along.”

She explains that he’ll hitch a ride with another squadron being moved into the same area and stop off a few minutes before, and that the 107th have been made aware of his assignment. He almost asks 'and what did they say?' and then remembers that communication is pretty one-way without, like, cell service, so whatever they had to say would be said to his face.

He wonders if she knows what he told Phillips. He wonders if she cares. He wants to believe she doesn’t, because she’s Peggy freaking Carter, but even that doesn’t guarantee anything.

The sun rises slowly as they wait at the edge of the camp for the truck to come pick him up, the flatbed full of other soldiers, and Clint keeps glancing over his shoulder, as if Steve will appear and insist on coming with him (which he won’t. And even if he did, Clint would send him right back because he has to go be Captain America, god damn it). He handles the silence for about three minutes before it’s too stifling to keep up.

“Ms- Agent, Carter, that is,” he corrects himself hastily. “Do you know why I’m being reassigned?”

Peggy turns to look at him, her emotions tucked away behind the mask of authority that she constantly has on (again- it’s like staring at Natasha’s sister. An older sister, not the scary blond one). “I know why your file says you’re being reassigned.”

“Which is?”

“The hundred and seventh is one of our strongest, but it lacks a specialist with the talents necessary for some of their upcoming missions.”

Clint feels his stomach flip at the thought. Training camp is one thing, actual war is entirely another. It’s not like he hasn’t been in life-threatening situations before, but still. Nazis. Yikes. Then he frowns, distracted by the edge to Peggy’s tone.

“And why am I actually being reassigned?” He presses.

“I’ve told you the official information.”

“Yeah, but not the real reason,” Clint points out before he can shut himself up. But the expression on Peggy’s face can almost, if not quite, be described as a smile at his persistence. She stares at the treeline, not at him, but he doesn’t mind. He’s in a constant state of freaking out enough as it is.

“You don’t look at me like all the other boys here do,” Peggy muses finally. “And I do mean all of them. Even your friend, Steve- he’s more polite about it, but he still looks at me for the same reason.”

“Because you’re a woman,” Clint supplies. Yeah, she knows. At least she hasn’t openly denounced him as a freak yet.

“Yes, exactly that.” She straightens her already perfectly done up uniform and clasps her hands behind her back. Clint takes a moment to be impressed by how put together she constantly is, even though it’s clearly a part of the don’t-fuck-with-me mask that it’s shitty she has to put on every day just to get respect around here. It’s an exhausting one to wear. Clint would know. “I suppose it’s like that everywhere, but it is worse here. There are no other women, obviously.”

“It’s lonely,” Clint offers. “Being the only one.”

Peggy casts him a shrewd glance. “Well, yes, I suppose it is,” she replies. A few hundred yards away, what Clint assumes is the truck he’ll get in roars out of the woods. They both stare at it slowly approaching. “Isolating, even. I didn’t know it was possible for a soldier to look at me as an agent, foremost, above a woman. But you do.” She sounds almost amused. “You are also terrified of me.”

“Guilty,” Clint admits. He adjusts his bag and shields his eyes against the sun to stare at the truck. “I have a friend. She taught me a healthy fear of women. Also, y’know. It helps that I don’t… yeah.”

“She sounds delightful,” Peggy says. “Don’t worry, soldier. No one else knows of the… other nature of your reassignment. And they will not hear it from me.”

Clint feels a weight lift from his chest. It’s one of many, but he still feels lighter. The truck pulls to a stop a few yards in front of them and he squares his shoulders. “Thank you, Agent Carter,” he replies, attempting his best salute, which is still not very good (he doesn’t know where to stop or where to put his fingers).

With a nod, Peggy turns away. “Safe travels, Specialist Romanoff.”

He wishes he could stay, rooted to the spot, and watch her go (the team is going to flip their lids. He met THE Peggy Carter. And she was the coolest fucking person on the planet). Instead, he shoves his hat on and down over his hearing aids, clutches his bag tightly, and hops on the back of the truck.

-----------------------

The ride is frankly terrible. Clint’s ass hasn’t been in this much pain since… well, ever. Or at least since Budapest. He shivers at the thought.

It’s bumpy, and overcrowded, and the whole time Clint is picturing the scenes in war movies where the guys lay out a trap and shoot the other guys on the road from the trees and no one even sees them coming. So the entire time he’s convinced he’s going to be shot any second now. Also, everything smells, especially the truck itself, which is probably burning chemicals into the environment that Clint doesn’t even want to think about. It does briefly cheer him up, though, to think about how his Steve would rant for days about the destructive power of fossil fuels and how there are simple solutions that big corporations keep pushing away in favor of money, etc, etc. They have a bet going for how long they can get Steve to rant without stopping- the current winner gets first dibs on the coffee maker on Mondays.

At least no one tries to talk to him. There’s a smattering of chatter every once in a while, but the whole we’re-off-to-actually-fight-Nazis thing seems to sober a lot of them up. At least for now. Clint curls himself into a ball with his back against the back of the truck, his arms folded across his knees and his head down on his arms. He drifts in and out of sleep out of sheer exhaustion, but amends his statement about being able to sleep anywhere. Apparently, even he has a limit, and that limit is 1940s army trucks on unpaved forest trails.

His ass REALLY hurts by the time they get there.

The truck stops briefly and he jumps off the back wordlessly. Only when it continues along out of sight (and thankfully out of reach of his poor ass) does he start to wonder if maybe he should have said some words, because it sort of looks like they’ve just dropped him in a slightly different wooded area. Waiting for the sound of the truck to fade, which takes much longer, he glances around him and listens for signs of humanity from one side or another. Eventually, it gets quiet enough that he can hear the faint, uniformed popping sound of drill rifles from his right.

Yay. Time to walk towards the rifle noises.

The forest floor does not agree with him and must apparently have some kind of sentient hatred of his boots because they almost fall off or are tugged off by branches and roots three times by the time he reaches the clearing. But he makes it. Eventually.

This camp is slightly smaller and a lot rougher around the edges than his last one, probably because it’s built to be more temporary than a training camp much further and safer behind friendly lines. Almost nothing is made of wood, it’s mostly dirt and canvas tents and sticks- which he supposes are wood, or whatever. But the point still stands, and the same goes for the soldiers here. They’re slightly tenser, he can tell just from watching the way they collectively move, most staring at the scuffed up ground as they work.

They also look half made of dirt. He supposes showers aren’t really a priority.

Yeah, he’ll fit in just fine.

As long as no one knows anything about him beyond the way he looks. And also from neck down, because his hair is still too long and his aids still too… present and necessary. Whatever.

He picks his way slowly towards the camp, relying on his uniform to avoid being shot by some very jumpy-looking recruits who are flanking the most well-beaten path into camp. Clint nods at them and flashes the new specialist patch on his arm when one of them opens his mouth, because he really doesn’t feel like talking to anyone more than he has to right now. They both let him pass.

From there, he hesitates. At SHIELD, getting back from a mission or entering a new base meant heading straight to the head of command and letting them know he was there. But that was also when he was Hawkeye. He didn’t know if ‘new specialist’ was a high enough rank to be bothering whoever was in charge here. If he could find whoever was in charge here.

“Lookin’ lost there,” says a voice from behind him. Clint inhales sharply, but freezes to keep himself from jumping out of his skin. You would think so much time with Nat would make him immune to people creeping up behind him, but no. He gathers himself enough to turn around calmly, and is greeted by two men indistinguishable from the rest of the dirt covered soldiers except that one of them is slightly bigger than the other one, and has the same stupid moustache as Howard Stark. “You the new guy they promised us?” Asks the bigger one.

Clint swallows. Performance time. “Sure am,” he replies, holding out his hand. “Specialist Romanoff. You can call me Clint.”

The bigger guy shakes it enthusiastically, so he assumes it was the right move. “James,” he replies. His hat is crooked. Or maybe it’s supposed to look like that. “You can call me James. And this is Dum Dum Dugan.”

“Umm.” The other man doesn’t look the least bit insulted, so Clint assumes it’s probably an army nickname thing. He shrugs. “Sure. Okay. Nice to meet you.”

“If we met differently, I would say the same,” James replies dryly. He gestures behind him, further into the camp. “Sarge and the Major are in the operations tent out back, they’ll probably want to see you. Me and Dum Dum can show ya.”

“Oh, cool, thanks,” Clint replies automatically, which gets him a funny look. He shoves his cap further down on his head. Nice. You’re already the new guy who talks weird. Good one, Barton.

“Where ya from, Clint?” Dugan asks as they walk.

“New York,” Clint replies.

“City?” James chimes in.

“Yep. Bed-Stuy.”

“Ain’t Sarge from the city too?” Dugan asks. James nods.

“Yeah, Brooklyn, right?”

They chat, much livelier than Clint had assumed from his first impression of the base. He supposes it makes sense: there’s only so much angst one person can take, and most of it happens out in the actual warzones, so everyone has to stay sane the best they can otherwise. That’s how his team always works, anyway. Any time they’re not fighting, Bruce is making increasingly shadier “health benefiting” vegan concoctions in varying shades of green, Nat is pulling pranks, Thor is watching Disney movies, Steve and Tony are doing… Steve and Tony things- stuff like that. Human stuff. He likes it. He listens.

They reach the tent soon enough, and he ducks inside. It’s not quite as claustrophobic as he expected- the back is open, which makes sense, since it’s an office, and the corners are lit with bulky camping-light looking devices. There are only two people in it, and Clint identified the Major immediately: the severe, grey haired man sitting behind the desk with his fingers steepled in front of him and his brow furrowed. He’s definitely old and definitely too scary for anyone to pass comment on it. Like most of Clint’s assumptions about the army, he looks exactly how Clint pictured him in his head.

It’s the other man who really makes him pause.

Sarge. Like Sergeant. From Brooklyn.

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes looks up at the sound of the tent opening and his eyes immediately land on Clint, whose thoughts all but dissolve into a loop of shit. Fuck. Shit. He’s hot.

James (the one next to him, not Bucky), oblivious to the gay panic radiating from Clint, salutes and claps him on the back. “I’ve got a delivery for the 107th,” he declares. “Hailin’ all the way from New York City.”

“Expensive package,” Bucky drawls smoothly with his Brooklyn vowels. It’s like he’s doing this intentionally. He walks around the desk to stand in front of Clint and grins at him. “Didn’t think I’d run into you again, Romanoff,” he says.

Clint reigns himself in enough not to make a complete fool of himself (for now). “Only so many back alleys you can lurk in before you have to go pick the big fight,” he replies with a cocksure tilt of his head. Bucky grins.

“S’pose you make a fair point,” he agrees. “Can’t believe they let you join up. And a specialist, no less- that’s some fair prize.”

Clint shrugs. “What can I say? I’m good at carnival games.”

“A man of many talents. Lurking in alleyways, carnival games- what else you got in that skillset of yours?”

You have no idea, Clint thinks but definitely does NOT say out loud. “They didn’t make me a specialist for nothing,” he points out instead.

Behind Bucky, the Major clears his throat and they snap out of their re-introductory dance. Right. For a moment Clint had forgotten why he was actually here. He salutes to the Major and takes off his hat, because that’s an old fashioned politeness thing, right? “I take it you two have met,” the Major comments gruffly.

“Once or twice, sir,” Bucky supplies.

The Major studies Clint wordlessly and slowly nods. “Good. You’ll be able to acclimate yourself with the team more easily, I suppose. You have your file?” Clint hands it to him. “Good. Dugan, Morrison, dismissed.”

The other two men grumble out “yes, sir”s and step out, but not before jostling Bucky and making him promise to come out to the pit afterwards and introduce everyone else to “the new guy” over cigarettes. Bucky shoves them off and rolls his eyes, but he does so in the way Clint’s Bucky rolls his eyes at an overenthusiastic Tony and Bruce when they get the chance to play with his arm- jokingly exasperated and familiar.

As they leave, the Major skims Clint’s file from back to front- nodding in silent approval at Colonel Phillip’s signature, looking Peggy’s note over thoughtfully, and finally flipping over to the first page. He looks at that one the longest.

“You are deaf,” he says first, predictably.

“Yeah,” Clint replies, even though it hadn’t been a question. He considers adding, ‘I noticed,’ but that would probably be considered insubordination or something, so he sticks to his one-word response.

The Major looks up at him, then back at his file. “The disabled are normally kept out of the army altogether,” he continues matter-of-factly. “For a reason. I can not imagine we are not the first unit to have a specialist who can not hear. Although-” he holds up his hand when Clint opens his mouth- “Although I know that you can artificially hear, with the help of your technology, I have been in the army long enough to trust the skills of men over technology of any kind.”

Silently, Clint promises never to complain about Tony shoving tech at him again, just so he doesn’t have to even remotely compare himself to this fucking guy.

“My skills should be listed on the file, sir,” he mutters through gritted teeth. The Major closes it anyway.

“I am aware,” he says calmly. “I would like to hear them from you.”

Ugh. Self promotion. Clint’s always been more of a self deprecating sort of guy himself. “I’m a sniper,” he answers shortly.

“And that means?”

“I’m a good shot.” Jesus christ, it’s pretty self explanatory.

“How good?”

“I can hit a man directly in his eye socket from four hundred yards in a moving vehicle,” Clint snaps, fed up. “I can set off a button detonator from a plane. I can take down a dozen without so much as a raised alarm in sixty seconds if you give me a bow.” And I can definitely put an arrow through the gap in your teeth, he thinks.

For a moment, The Major doesn’t reply. Bucky, however, does.

“A bow?” He gapes. Clint had almost forgotten he was there. “As in, and arrow? Like Robin Hood?”

“Steal from the rich, give to the poor,” Clint quips, because he can never resist it. “It’s silent. Works with me. How’s that for low tech skills?”

Luckily for his running mouth, The Major doesn’t seem angry. Instead, he hands back the file and makes a note on his own neat stack of paper. “We will see,” he replies, already resuming whatever he had been working on before. “Sergeant Barnes will tell you what you need to know. I will officially file you. And I will see what I can do regarding your unconventional weaponry requests.”

With that, they’re apparently dismissed. Bucky mutters a quick, “thank you, sir,” which is great, because Clint isn’t sure he could handle it at the moment. He lets Bucky shepherd him out of the tent and back into the open air of the camp, where the general background noise resumes and hums along around him. Bucky looks- not angry, exactly, more resigned, like he’s dealt with this a thousand times. He glances at Clint and sighs. “Great, now there’s two of you.” He’s clearly referring to Steve and his own disregard for authority telling him no. Clint takes it as a compliment.

Speaking of Steve. “Hey, you got any of Steve’s letters yet?”

Bucky snorts. “Sure did. Just about flipped my lid when I read it, hearin’ about the SSR actually taking you two. Never thought you’d end up here, though, of all places.” For a moment, he looks hopeful. “Steve isn’t-”

“No, he’s going somewhere else,” Clint answers preemptively and apologetically. Bucky shrugs it off, but looks a little crestfallen. “I’ve got about a books worth of letters from him for you in my bag, though,” he continues. “And I’m s’posed to tell you to keep yourself alive, wash your damn uniform, come home as soon as possible, take a long walk off a short cliff- I’m sure he didn’t mean that one- and don’t do anything stupid.”

“How can I?” Bucky answers on autopilot, like Clint had thought he would. “He’s-”

“Taking all the stupid with him?” Clint offers. “Yeah, he told me to say that to you too.”

Shaking his head, Bucky leads him down the path and to the right, where a clump of guys is gathered around a makeshift fire pit, sitting in a wobbly circle on logs or just the plain grass. “What a punk,” he mutters. Clint grins. Having spent a week with Steve and his unapologetic rejection of everything that told him ‘no,’ he could empathise with the sentiment.

“Hey, look, Barnes brought the new guy!” Someone shouts from the group. Clint looks up and recognizes the guy waving as James. Next to him sits Dugan, and everyone else is a sea of unfamiliar faces. Bucky sits down on the other side of James, and Clint follows suit with a tentative glance around the circle. No one looks threatening- yet. They’re not holding weapons, unless cigarettes count. Dugan passes one to Bucky (who looks unfairly hot smoking), and tries to give one to Clint too, but he waves it off. He smoked a lot as a teenager, because it was the easiest thing to get in the circus, but it was more for the tortured aesthetic. He never actually liked it.

“A specialist, huh?” asks the guy on his other side, who has a thick Southern drawl. “Whatcha specialize in, exactly?”

Tired out of explaining himself for the day, Clint holds out his hand. “Anyone got a coin?” He asks. There’s pocket fumbling, and then someone hands someone else a penny, which is then handed to him. He nods to the right, where there’s a line of tents, and a radio sitting on a log next to the entrance of one. His eyes dart around for a moment before he holds up his hand. “Radio,” he declares.

He snaps, penny between his fingers, and it shoots out to bounce off a tent pole, a tree stump, and a rifle leaning against a tent before hitting the radio inaudibly. A beat later, the radio flickered to life, playing what sounded to Clint’s ears like unintelligible white noise. Everyone listened silently for a moment with varying looks of disbelief. Then they clapped uproariously. Clint grinned. It did feel a lot better than when Hodge and his group of assholes had done it.

“So what, d’you never miss?” Dugen asks over the applause.

Bucky scoffs good naturedly. “Don’t be a knucklehead, no one never misses.”

Clint coughs. “Not to brag,” he says, completely to brag, “but I never miss.” He smirks at Bucky. “It’s kind of my thing.”

“Buddy, that ain’t just a thing,” calls another guy from the other side of the circle. “That’s a skill. And a right useful one.”

Abandoning modesty, Clint shrugs. “Some people have called me the World’s Greatest Marksman.”

“Some people are outta their minds,” Bucky challenges from his right. Clint cocks his head, like, are you sure about that?

“What, you think it was a lucky shot?”

“Nah,” Bucky decides. “I think you’re good. But I damn well don’t believe anyone’s that good.”

“Maybe I show you sometime,” Clint replies coyly.

He almost forgets where they are, staring at Bucky’s attractively amused expression, until someone whistles and the group bursts out laughing again. Clint looks away immediately, hiding his red face under an exasperated ‘real mature, guys,’ sort of expression. Bucky stands up altogether, says something that Clint misses in all the chaos about the guy’s mother, and walks away with his hands in his pockets.

Futz. He tries to ignore it, because everyone is already pulling him back into the conversation. They want to know the longest shot he’s hit, the hardest one, how many Nazi’s he’s killed, how to do the coin trick- the list goes on, and he has to turn all his attention back to half-truthing a finessing his way out of it. For most of the next few hours, he forgets about Bucky storming off and feels a little more at home.

Chapter Text

Clint wakes up the next morning to the sounds of shouting and boots thudding- which is weird, because he’s been setting his internal alarm for five thirty every morning, so no one in their right damn mind would be awake before him. He stays completely still as he slowly wakes up, clutching the knife under his pillow. Then someone grabs his shoulder.

In a flash, Clint is up, grabbing the wrist that had touched his arm and brandishing the knife in his other hand, relying more on instincts and his well-trained subconscious than his actual brain, which is still trying to register things. Then it registers that the guy he’s holding is James, and he’s eyeing the knife fearfully while simultaneously yelling something Clint can’t make out.

God damn it. He’s been sleeping with his hearing aids in because he still doesn’t trust his surroundings enough to leave himself vulnerable overnight, but it means that for a few hours in the morning his ears are all clogged and earwax filled and gross, and he can’t even hear distinctive words for shit anyway. He tries to focus as best he can on James’ mouth and makes out a few words.

“Go… backup… city… numbers… hurry, hurry!” He didn’t even need to fill in the rest of the gaps to comprehend that. He’d passed out in his uniform last night, so all he has to do is grab the gun lying next to his mat and shove it in his pocket along with several extra rounds of ammunition, slide into his shoes, and take off, following James and two other guys out of camp.

It doesn’t get less frantic when they reach the city, which is- despite Clint’s original impression that the camp was miles away from civilization- only a few minutes away on foot. Eventually, everyone around him seems to find and fall in with their own squadrons, including James. He automatically searches for Bucky, but everyone looks too similar and in too much of a hurry to tell, so he sticks close on James’ heels until they hit the first buildings.

Then Clint realizes, with a sinking feeling of terror, that he has absolutely no fucking clue what to do.

Everyone around him is separating into smaller groups or combining into bigger ones, pointing and shouting things that Clint can’t hear and wouldn’t understand anyway. Some of them could be yelling in different languages, for all he knows. He grabs James by the shoulder. “What do I do?” He shouts over the cacophony of fighting.

Luckily, James is very short and direct about his answer. “Shoot the krauts,” he yells back. “Don’t shoot us.”

Unluckily, Clint is both woefully under-prepared and under-equipped. James darts off to the right to join a group of guys huddled under a torn-up awning of what was probably once a shop, leaving Clint to scramble out of the way of another wave of soldiers charging up the street behind him. There’s noise and dust everywhere. Shots ring out from behind him, a reminder to get moving or get shot, and he skedaddles down the street and ducks into an alley.

Leaning up against the brick wall, he closes his eyes and tries to calm his racing heart. When he opens them again, he’s staring at a fire escape that climbs the other side of the alley and up to the roof of the building on his left.

Ah, fire escapes. Clint’s only reliable friend in times of need. If only Bucky was here to pass a comment about it , he thinks deliriously.

With shaking hands, he unclips his hearing aids and shoves them in one of the pockets he can close with a button flap. It leaves him in silence, but the silence is better than the panicked unintelligible screaming and gunfire playing in the background. Right. Just like a SHIELD mission. On his own, then.

Time to get involved in a firefight.

He pushes off the wall to grab the fire escape, which wobbles in a way that would worry him if he wasn’t already maxed out on worrying for the moment. He scrambles up the steps and successfully makes it to the roof without dying, which is a plus. There’s a low brick wall surrounding the edges, which serves Clint just fine. So now he’s prepared. Just under-equipped.

Grimacing, he pulls the revolver he had shoved in his pocket out and stares at it. A guy he didn’t know had passed it to him the night before, as a temporary measure “just in case” until he got his proper sniper tech. It’s a gun, at least, so he can operate it easily enough, but it’s no modern marvel and it’s definitely not his high-tech Tony Stark assembled bow with just enough switches and dials to leave its original purpose intact while also doing all kinds of fancy tricks that he likes. 

Now he has bullets, not trick arrows, and a gun that’s meant for close quarters.

Oh, well. He’s faced worse odds with less useful tools. Time to put the whole “World’s Greatest Marksman” thing to the test.

From his spot, he can pick out a squadron of soldiers in uniforms he doesn’t recognize scrambling down the street a few blocks down. He waits a little longer than usual to take the shot, just in case, and then he does.

Ten bullets come out of the gun. Ten soldiers drop to the ground, dead or at least incapacitated. Not too bad.

He does the same thing over and over, losing track of time as he does, in near complete silence. The bit of noise that his right ear still picks up naturally is punctuated by the popping sounds of gunfire and the occasional crash that’s probably parts of buildings collapsing. He would wonder who used to live in those buildings, or where they’d gone, or what would happen to this town once they left, but the noises are faint and as easy to block out as the possible answers to those questions.

About halfway through, he pauses, ducking behind the wall to count the bullets he has left, like he counts his arrows. Two packs of twenty. He’s almost shocked. Maybe there is something to be said for this whole gun thing. Normally, he’s scrounging for arrows right about now. At this rate, he’ll make it through with ammo to spare.

Then he stands back up and shoots more people who are wearing different clothes than him.

It’s easier when he can see them heading towards soldiers from his camp, because then it feels protective, to gun them down before they even get the chance to take a shot at strangers that he still feels protective of (it’s the whole army camaraderie thing- it’s getting to him). But it’s not hard when he just spots them clumped behind a wall or moving towards the side of the city he’d come from. It’s even less movement than the bow: he aims. Pulls the trigger. Boom. Dead Nazis. Krauts. Whatever.

He used to feel bad about his lack of moral aversion to killing (it’s always been the hindsight guilt that gets him, not the act of pulling the trigger). Then he’d watched Steve Rogers (his Steve Rogers), Captain America, put a man trying to release a bioweapon on New York through three subsequent walls with his shield- and then shoot him for good measure.

Then he stopped feeling bad. 

It helped that he could easily convince himself that these were the bad guys. That was probably a belief deeply ingrained by the US public school system that was worth checking out at a later date, but he ignores it for now.

Eventually, they stop coming. Clint stands, completely still and scanning his surroundings, for a few minutes. There’s no movement. He’s about to head back down when something flashes in the corner of his eye and he whirls around and lifts the gun and-

Lowers it again, because it’s three soldiers wearing the same mossy brown shades as him. One of them takes his helmet off and waves it, his mouth opening and closing silently.

Pause. Not silently. Clint digs into his pocket and shoves his hearing aids back in and braces himself for the roar of gunfire and screaming to slam into him- but it doesn’t. From here, at least, it’s completely quiet, minus the men yelling at him from the street.

“Romanoff!” The one waving his hat yells. “We got ‘em! Couple of units chasin’ what’s left of the krauts out of the city right now.”

Clint raises a weak thumbs up, adrenaline draining out of him now that he’s not hyperfocused on shooting. His shoulder aches from the constant rebound, his hands are cramping, and his general body feels weak and shaky from holding the position tensely the whole time. “That’s great,” he croaks. Speaking makes him inhale dust and he collapses into a coughing fit. “Be right there,” he adds when he has the breath.

Stumbling across the roof and down the fire escape, he keeps the revolver gripped tightly in his hand and uses the other to steady himself against the railings and then the buildings once he gets down to the street. He turns out of the alleyway and is swarmed by the three others, slapping him on the back and offering to help him stand, all looking equally if not more beat up than Clint. Dugan has dark liquid that Clint is 99% sure is blood splashed across his pants, and James has the same on his arm. The third guy, who James introduces as George and is the guy who had complimented Clint’s skills the night before, looks the worst off- he has a gash down the side of his face that’s still dripping down his chin and his left wrist hangs at an awkward angle that Clint knows from experience means it’s probably sprained, if not broken. Still, all three of them insist that they’re fine, and it’s “good to see him alive.”

“How many did ya get?” George asks as the motley crew makes their way slowly back towards the outskirts of town, where James says they’ll regroup with everyone else in the 107th.

“How many what?”

The others laugh. “Krauts,” Dugan clarifies.

“Oh.” Clint blinks. He pulls the ammo packages out of his pocket- two of them are empty, one full, and one about half empty. He does some quick maths (not normally one of his strong suits). “Forty five,” he guesstimates.

They stare at him. Dugan whoops. James cuffs his shoulder (which makes him stumble) with an “atta boy.” George glances at the packages and does his own maths with wide eyes.

“You really never miss, do you?” He notes, impressed. “An’ with a 1911 too. You’re something special, Romanoff.”

Clint gives them a tired grin. “I’m a specialist,” he says in a way of explanation. “It’s what I do.”

----------------------

The rest of the 107th, in similar states of disrepair but with equally high spirits, are just as impressed when Dugan announces the number and even more so when George shows them the revolver he did it with. He gets so many pats on the back that he’s gonna be sore for days. With so many voices talking at him, it’s hard to keep up, but everyone seems to be talking louder than usual in the wake of the gunfire and explosions so no one gives him a second glance when he asks them to repeat things. 

As they slowly make their way back to the camp, James explains that they’ll be packing up and moving into the town for the time being, which explains why everything there is so portable. Clint sort of knew that the front lines would always be moving, but just how quickly was still a shock. He hadn’t even unpacked his one bag yet.

It isn’t until he’s halfway through the walk back to town that he finds Bucky. And really, it’s Bucky who finds him.

“Heard you went forty five for forty five,” is the first thing Bucky says, accompanied by a greeting nod. His uniform has a few holes in one of the arms and he’s without his hat, but otherwise he looks no less worse for wear. Then Clint realises that his immediate response to Bucky’s appearance had been to scrutinise him worriedly for injuries and looks away quickly. “With a pistol.”

“I work with what I’ve got,” Clint replies with a shrug. “But if I’m telling the truth, it was forty seven for forty five.” He’d counted more thoroughly during the walk back to camp. “Don’t tell anyone, though. I’ve got a reputation.”

Bucky barks a laugh. “Never misses, he claims. I knew it.” Clint shrugs. He knows what he did is still ridiculously impressive, so he gives Bucky the minor win. He had sort of been worried Bucky would be mad at him still for the night before, so it was just a relief that he wasn’t.

“Give me a real gun, then we’ll see,” he replies confidently.

“Or a bow and arrow,” Bucky adds, shaking his head. “Jesus and Mary, where’d you get trained that they gave you one of those?”

Clint grins. “The circus,” he says truthfully, which gets him another laugh. Despite being in the middle of a war, this Bucky seems a lot happier than Clint’s Bucky. He knows why, obviously, and that makes it somehow worse. His heart pangs and he’s distracted for a moment, mourning for something that hasn’t even happened yet. He’s seen brief glimpses of this Bucky in his time, mostly when Steve does something stupid or when he finds out something like birthday cake ice cream or 3-D interactive holograms exist (albeit only in Tony’s lab for the latter), but it isn’t his default state like it is for this Bucky. 

Clint likes them both. He just wishes that they could both be happier.

He shakes himself out of that train of thought, because it won’t do him any good, and forces a cheery tone. “I’m serious,” he insists. “I was a trapeze artist, you know. Then they found out I could shoot.”

“Why not give you a gun?” Bucky asks half-jokingly, clearly under the impression that he’s playing along with a tall tale.

“Not flashy enough for an act,” Clint replies. “The people want exotic. Plus, I think giving a twelve year old kid a gun would have been a little dangerous, even for them.”

“You joined the circus,” Bucky repeats, eyebrows raised. “When you were twelve ?”

“When I was eight, actually. They didn’t give me an act until I was twelve, though.” He holds his hands out, miming his name in lights. “The Amazing-”

“Hawkeye,” Bucky finishes for him. Clint’s hands freeze in midair. When had he told him that? He cast Bucky a curious glance and the man looked away. “It was what you said to that guy in the alley. With Steve. You said ‘I’m Hawkeye.’”

Oh yeah. “I forgot about that,” Clint groans. “That’s embarrassing. I really don’t normally go around introducing myself that way. I panicked.”

“I thought you were delusional,” Bucky recalls with a smirk. “With those clothes, talkin’ all janky and swearing like that- my mama would have kicked me out if she heard me saying all that.”

Clint rubs the back of his neck. His muscles are still sore. At least the town is coming into sight, so he can sit down for hopefully at least an hour or two. “Guess I didn’t really have to worry about that,” he replies. He should have thought of this sooner. Growing up in the circus is actually a great reason for the clearly different way he talks and acts. Great. The one good thing it’s ever done for him. “My ma passed when I was real young.”

“What of?”

“Doctor’s didn’t tell me,” Clint shrugs. At least Bucky didn’t launch into the ‘I’m so sorry, that must be so hard, you poor thing ,’ deal, which he’s always hated. It’s been something like twenty years now. He’s pretty much over it. Then again, dead parents are probably a lot more common in the 40s. “But she was sick a lot. Don’t really remember much.”

Bucky nods shortly. “Steve’s ma was sick too,” he says quietly. “TB. She died when we were sixteen, seventeen. Both of our dads gone too. First war.”

“You’re lucky,” Clint finds himself saying. He knows it probably sounds rude and cold, but he means it sincerely. “I’m sure they were good people. I’d rather mine have gone that way.”

“Yours die too?” Bucky didn’t seem offended, or off-put by Clint basically trauma dumping on him. He supposes that if there was ever a time for it, it’s probably in the middle of a war. It doesn’t really get more traumatising than that.

“Sometimes I wish he had,” he replies bitterly. “Alcoholic. Spent money we didn’t have. Just about killed my brother and I before we ran away.” He tugs at his bag, shifting it on his back as the trees thin and the buildings start. “No idea where he is. Probably dead in a ditch back in Iowa.”

“Damn bad luck you got,” Bucky agrees soberly, taking a right down one of the streets. Clint follows half a step behind. “Your brother?”

“No clue. He was still with the circus when I left. We weren’t, uhh. We weren’t close.” That’s a mild way of putting the fact that Barney had left him to bleed out at the demand of their so-called circus “family” and hadn’t reached back out since. “Not sure I want to know. It wasn’t exactly the best place to grow up.”

Bucky raises a hand at the clump of guys, probably the 107th, lingering outside what was probably once a rundown motel, and makes his way towards them. “You’re a right tragic case, Romanoff,” he says. “But you’re a damn good shot, so we’ll keep you around, alright?”

The tugging in his chest is back. Clint ignores it and waves at George and the squadron. “Sir, yes, sir,” he replies glibly. Bucky shoves him and he laughs.

------------------------

Thank abandoned towns with shitty motels, he gets to sit down on an honest to god armchair when they make their way inside, claiming various parts of the dimly lit two-story building. There was apparently one working shower in one of the rooms, which Clint was about seventeenth in line for. He doesn’t really care as much about showering as he does about sitting down, but then again, he hasn’t been out on the front lines for nearly as long as the rest of them have. Maybe he’ll feel differently in a week or two.

A week or two. God, he’s been here for a lot longer than he thought he would be. He stares at the unlit fireplace, trying (again) and failing (again) not to think about going home. Come on, Tony , he thinks silently. Where are those annoyingly genius solutions when you need one?

He’s saved from going down that rabbit hole when Bucky, James, and two other guys walk back into the room. They’d stepped outside to smoke, which Clint had again declined, and bring an ashy smell back in with them when they return. Bucky claims the couch, the other guy sits on a rickety coffee table, and the third seems happy enough just to sit on the rug.

“Jennings, Banks,” Bucky mutters in lazy introduction with a wave of his hand, laying flat on his back and rubbing his eyes. “Romanoff.”

Clint nods. “Hey. Call me Clint.”

The one on the floor- Banks- glances at the insignia patch on his sleeve. “You’re the forty-fiver, ain’t you?” He asks. Clint nods. “Glad to have you.”

“Yeah, just what we need,” grumbles the other one- Jennings- looking less impressed. “Another big wheel who can shoot good. We already got Barnes, don’t we?”

Banks punched him in the leg. From the couch, Bucky holds up a backwards peace sign (his palm facing himself), which Clint had learned from Steve back at the SSR was basically like flipping him the bird. “Don’t mind him,” Banks dismisses. “He’s from the West Coast. Thinks orders are beneath him.”

Picturing Tony in his Malibu McMansion, Clint grins. “Californians,” he agrees empathetically.

“Shove off,” Jennings grumbles, but Clint gets the feeling it’s not personal. Everyone might look the same here, but they all deal with the war in different ways. It’s familiar. Different, obviously. But not that much so.

“Besides,” Banks adds, “it’s a stretch, callin’ Barnes a ‘good shot.’” He turns to Clint. “Once, he-”

“Jesus and Mary, Banks, you gotta tell it to everyone we run across, don’tcha?” Bucky interrupts, half exasperated and half amused. Banks ignores him.

“-He’s leading us into this kraut camp, yeah, and we ask him ‘you sure you got that guy, Barnes? Long shot in the dark, no one saw if he went down or not.’ And Sergeant Sniper over here, he’s all ‘don’t worry, I got him. You know me, boys, I’m a damn good shot .’” His impression of Bucky is crude at best, but it’s passable enough that Clint can picture the cocky tilt of Bucky’s head saying it, with a rifle strapped to his back. “An’ you can guess what happens next. We walk in, guy takes a shot from behind a tree about two inches from Mr Good-Shot’s head. One of the other guys took him out, but you should have seen the look on his face.”

Bucky groans and buries his head in the not-very sanitary couch cushions as Clint stares at him with a shit eating grin. “How far was the shot?”

“...Two hundred yards,” Bucky reluctantly replies. Before Clint can reply, he adds “and in the dark, mind. And it was ONE time. I am a good shot, I’ll have you know.” He sits up just enough to glare at the gleeful look on Clint’s face, rolls his eyes, and lays back down.

“Sure, sure,” Clint says in his best impression of Steve’s earnest tone. “As long as the guy presents himself to you on a silver platter.”

Jennings and Banks laugh. Bucky sighs. “I didn’t sign up for this,” he complains. “I’d say I wish I was back home, but I’m sure you’d find me there too.”

“In Brooklyn? Count on it,” Clint agrees easily. “Know it like the back of my hand.”

“You two from the same city?” Banks asks. They nod. “Huh. Thought everyone from Brooklyn butchered their vowels like Sarge does.”

“They do. I’m from Iowa, originally. I live in Bed-Stuy now.”

Bucky hauls himself up into a slightly more engaged sitting position. “Bed-Stuy,” he echoes, frowning. “Ain’t that the black part of Brooklyn?”

Right. 1940s. “’S a free country,” Clint replies, imitating casualty. “Cheap apartments.”

That seems a good enough explanation for Bucky, who shrugs and lights another cigarette. He doesn’t bother getting up this time, but luckily the building has a ventilation system in the form of a broken window and a chunk of stone wall taken out three feet from the door. The hole is seared and blackened along the edges. Clint watches him as subtly as he can, because yeah smoking is bad etcetera etcetera but also damn does Bucky look hot doing it.

They make small talk for a while, mostly about people waiting for them back home and various impressive and-slash-or embarrassing stories that Clint has been absent from. Banks (and eventually Jennings too) takes to calling Clint “Fiver,” which makes him feel surprisingly pleased, despite the forty five people he killed to earn the nickname. 

It’s the sentiment that counts.

The rest of the afternoon passes quickly, and the 107th is dropping like flies in the actual beds and furniture the motel provides by sunset. Which is fair enough, given they’d been up and fighting and subsequently moving and scouting since four in the morning. This became an issue when Clint realised he hadn’t staked out his space to sleep in one of the rooms- another army thing he’d yet to catch up on in time. He’s debating just slipping outside and finding somewhere else to sleep when Bucky walks back into the front room they had been sitting in earlier, yawning. He spots Clint and nods at him distractedly.

“Hey, Romanoff. You sleeping down here too?”

Clint blinks. “I- Yeah, I was planning on it. You too?”

“Can’t sleep anywhere but the first floor,” Bucky replies, dropping his bag by the couch and kneeling beside it. “Feels like I’m trapped. And I always feel like I gotta be the closest to the door, just in case someone comes through it tryin’ to get to the guys.” He gestures to the front room like, therefore this.

Although he understands the sentiment, Clint is sort of the opposite. He likes to be up high, out of reach, and somewhere where he can see everything just in case something goes down. 

But barring dirt-road-driving army trucks, he’s flexible, so he sets his own bag on the fireplace and flops down on the armchair. Bucky looks up.

“Did you want the couch?” He asks. Clint waves him off.

“Nah, take it. I sleep better curled up.” There’s a joke in there that he doesn’t make but does tuck away for later because Sam will laugh at it, and Tony will use it as an opportunity to loudly begin comparing both of them to birds again.

He doesn’t realise that he’s lost in thought until Bucky starts talking and he snaps back to reality. “Sorry?”

“I said, you make that face a lot,” Bucky repeats, flipping his bag closed and setting a pistol on the coffee table. Clint sleeps with a knife under his pillow, so he can’t really judge. “All sentimental and far away. I thought you were thinkin’ about your family, but… well. After what you told me, ain’t much left to think about. You got a dame back home?”

“Me? That’s funny,” Clint replies dryly. Then he internally smacks himself. “I mean, no. Just… just a couple of real good friends I gotta get back to.” He ducks his head and stares at his bag avoidantly. “You know how it is,” he adds, thinking of Steve. Then he snaps. “Oh, I have letters to give you.” He unties the bag with fumbling hands and tosses them on the table. They’re slightly wrinkled, most of them just on folded and hastily scrawled pieces of paper with no envelope (he was pretty sure Steve stayed up all night writing all of it), but still hopefully readable. Bucky’s face softens as he picks them up and settles on the couch to read.

There’s a long silence, in which Clint unpacks, organises, folds, and re-packs his bag. Then he reads a letter of his own- the recommendation penned by Peggy. It doesn’t exactly tell him anything new, just lists a bunch of army jargon and notes his more outstanding performances during the camp. It’s the last paragraph that gets him, though.

‘ It is my strong and well-informed belief that Romanoff’s condition does not serve as a hindrance to his abilities as a soldier or as a man. He has a remarkable potential for leadership as the technical knowledge of a soldier well beyond his years. He is a uniquely qualified man, whom I have the utmost confidence will serve well. I strongly advise against underestimating or making less than full use of his talents.

Yours, Agent Carter .’

Clint stares at the letter, trying to commit it to memory as if it could disappear any second. Because this has kind of been one of the worst days of his life, but it’s also contained one of the best things that has ever happened to him. He tucks it away, closing his eyes. Remarkable . Huh. How ‘bout that.

When he opens them again, Bucky is scanning the last page of Steve’s very long letter. Clint quietly stows his away inside his bag, safely tucked in one of his jackets, as Bucky touches the bottom of the page- where Steve had scrawled a barely legible signature in his haste to transcribe probably just about everything that had happened since he and Bucky had last seen each other along with everything else he could possibly say- gently. He’s smiling- not the confident, rugged sort of grin he likes to flash but a smaller, more private one. Clint’s face burns and he looks away. God damn bastard being god damn pretty when he smiles.

From the couch, Bucky clears his throat. “Thank you,” he says quietly, setting down the pages right next to the pistol. Clint glances back up.

“It’s no problem,” he mutters. “Least I could do for Steve.”

Bucky’s gaze remains steadily on him, and he can feel it like a physical weight. “From what he wrote, it sounds like you did a hell of a lot more,” he points out.

“Anyone would have done it.”

“Not anyone.” 

Why do people keep saying that? He supposes it’s true, but it’s depressing to think that it is. Clint is by no means an optimist about human nature or the world, but he privately likes to think that most people are at least capable of doing the right thing, whether or not they choose to. He just happens to choose to, sometimes. It doesn’t make him better than anyone else. He’s done plenty of wrong things.

“Still,” Clint insists. “He helped me plenty too. No one else really talked to me with the whole…” he gestures to his hearing aids. “I probably would have started swinging if he hadn’t been there.”

“He said you hit the biggest guy there for him.”

Oh, yeah. There had been the time when Hodge had kicked the pole out from under a barbed wire course and sent it crashing down on Steve’s head. It was the last day, and they had made it all the way until then, and Clint was far past exasperated with Hodge and his crew’s crude bullying and sabotage. He had seen red, because he’d been stuck by barbed wire before plenty of times and not only did it hurt like a bitch, there was genuine danger in getting stuck in it- it could tear right through your skin into your muscles if you made a wrong move. Steve had gotten out with only some minor scraping, which Clint hadn’t seen because he was too busy kicking Hodge in the gut and slamming his head into his knee when he doubled over, then grabbing him by the collar and giving him a bloody nose and a black eye with his fist.

Ahh, fond memories. “I did do that,” he admits. “But he deserved it. He was just an asshole.”

It’s hard to judge Bucky’s expression in the dim lighting. “I’ve killed a lot of men for this war,” he says finally. “But all of that combined didn’t do nearly as much good as what you did there. That’s real moxie, Romanoff.”

Clint hopes it’s just as hard to see his face, because he’s probably pink up to the tips of his ears. “Just doing what I could,” he repeats.

“Then how come they didn’t pick you?” Bucky asks. Clint freezes. “For that thing Steve was talking about, that project he’s goin’ out for?”

Shit.

“I have a specific skill set that’s more useful here,” he mumbles, and even to him it sounds unconvincing, because he’s parroting the official reason that he knows isn’t true. He clears his throat and tries again. “I just- wasn’t the right fit the way Steve was. He really deserves it, you know-”

“Yeah, I do know. He’s my best friend, of course I think he deserves it,” Bucky cuts him off, leaning forward. “But I read the way he talks about you. You deserve it too.”

“I’m deaf.”

“He says that stuff- whatever it is that they’re gonna put in him- he says it would fix that.” Damn it, Steve. Stupid thoroughness. Bucky raises his hands placatingly. “Listen, he’s the one who asked, really, in the letter. He might’a sent you with things to tell me, but he sent me things to ask you, too.”

Internally, Clint takes back every nice thing he’s ever said about Steve. He curls up on the armchair, pressed firmly against the back, and fidgets with his sleeves. “Look,” he says finally. “I really appreciate it, but I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Well, there’s a reason they didn’t choose you,” Bucky presses, staring at him with more intensity than before. He sighs. “Look. I know you probably aren’t used to sharing this kinda stuff. But we’re all relying on each other out here, and if there’s something about you that’s gonna put my men in danger, I need to know it.” He doesn’t sound hostile, not yet, more apologetic but firm. Still, Clint’s breath hitches and he has to close his eyes and count to five (thanks, Bruce) before he can reply.

“It’s not a big deal, okay?” He deflects. “The biggest problem with me is that I’m deaf and I got dead parents, but you already know that, alright? It’s not something that’s gonna do any harm, trust me.”

“If it can’t do any harm, why can’t you tell me?”

“Fine!” Clint snaps. “How about I tell you as soon as you explain what pissed you off so much last night that you had to storm off like that.” He glares right back at Bucky. “If we’re just telling each other every goddamn secret now.”

Abruptly, Bucky stands, and Clint knows he’s hit a nerve which means he’s probably right. “What the hell are you getting at?” He asks angrily.

“Please. I’ve watched you take insults like a champ all day,” Clint continues sharply. “So clearly you don’t have that kind of temper unless it hits close enough to the truth to scare you.”

In a flash, Bucky grabs him by his collar, looking downright murderous. Clint doesn’t stop him, but tenses and raises his hands slightly just in case. “What are you, implying that I’m a fucking queer?” Bucky spits. Clint lifts his chin and doesn’t flinch.

“For fuck’s sake, Bucky,” he hisses. “It’s not like I would- I am one, okay? That’s why they didn’t choose me, and they shipped me off down here instead. Because I told them I’m gay.”

He barely has time to see Bucky’s eyes widen before he drops him and Clint falls awkwardly back into the armchair. Bucky stumbles back towards the couch, tripping over it in his haste to back away. Good one, Clint. You’ve probably come out to more people in the 40s than in your regular life. Really nice survival instinct you got there, buddy.

They sit in silence for a few moments and Clint braces himself.

“Why the hell would you- why would you tell them that, Romanoff?” Bucky practically yelps, staring at him like he’s sprouted horns. “Are you tryin’ to get kicked back to the States the hard way? Or- or killed? They could have killed you.”

Clint stares at his knees. “They were going to choose me,” he mumbles. “But they were supposed to- I didn’t want to be picked.” He shrugs listlessly. “It was the only thing I could say.”

“There must have been-”

“There wasn’t,” Clint interrupts flatly. “You weren’t there. And besides-” he squares his shoulders and, with no little effort, sets his jaw and looks up at Bucky. “I don’t care.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bucky scoffs disbelievingly, but there’s an edge to his voice, something else in his tone. “What if they had put it on your record? What if they kicked you out? Or told everyone?”

“I don’t care,” Clint repeats. He’s tired of dancing around the subject. Being gay in the 40s is fucking exhausting- and Clint gets angry when he’s tired. “They already call me all sorts of things for being deaf. What’s a few more on the list?”

“Don’t be naive. It’s not just name calling.”

“I know that,” he snaps, before realising how loud he’s gotten and lowering his voice. “I know that,” he says again, quieter. “You don’t know what I’ve fucking lived through, okay? Trust me. Whatever they throw at me, I can take it.”

More silence. This time, it’s Bucky who looks away as Clint glares at him, daring him to disagree. His hands have curled into fists and he can’t seem to get them unstuck, his nails biting into his palms. Just when he’s about to turn away and give up on the whole thing, fall asleep and pretend none of it happened, Bucky speaks up.

“I might know a little bit,” he says, his voice wavering. Clint’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t reply. He waits. “Listen, I’m no flit, okay, I like dames, you’ve seen me. Everyone has,” he continues, rushed and with an edge of panic in his voice. “I just…” he trails off, struggling for the words.

“You like guys the same way?” Clint guesses. Bucky flinches.

“It’s wrong,” he says firmly, staring at the floor. “I’ve done just fine ignoring it, and I ain’t gonna start now.”

“Yeah, cause that’s healthy,” Clint mutters dryly. He’d tried for a while to do the same thing. Obviously, as all of his friends back in the 21st century made sure he knew, that was a stupid move.

“It’s healthier than gettin’ my teeth kicked in,” Bucky replies bitterly. He fumbles at his pocket. “Fuck, I need a smoke, I-”

Clint sighs. “No, you don’t, it’s fine- listen, it’s okay, Barnes. Look, who would I be to tell anyone, huh?”

“You told ‘em about you,” Bucky objects, but he stops searching for a cigarette, which Clint takes as a partial win.

“I did it because I had to. And that’s my secret to tell. Not my place to say anything about you, all right?”

Bucky leans back on the couch with a sigh and stares at the ceiling. “Steve trusted you,” he says. Clint interprets that as, ‘I trust you. ’ Or a similar sentiment.

“What can I say?” He mutters. “He’s a good judge of character.”

“He also said you were crazy.”

He smiles weakly, even though Bucky can’t see him. “Point stands, don’t it?”

Bucky laughs. It’s shaky, but it’s a laugh.

Chapter Text

Clint sort of expects them to never talk about it again. Not that he hopes that will be the case, because knowing Bucky like men is… a whole new level of crushing kickstarting in Clint’s brain, and one that he’s trying very hard to shut down. But Bucky is lukewarm at best and behind all the jokes he allows the boys to make at his expense, he doesn’t talk much about his life back home beyond his several dozen references to Steve per day. Outside of that, Clint is pretty sure he’s the only one who knows about Bucky’s family, or his plans for when he gets home, or how much of a nerd he is- and that’s all from proximity to his Bucky in the future.

And he’s definitely the only one who knows that Bucky is gay. Well, probably bisexual. He doesn’t get hung up on the technicalities- and regardless, he Bucky had been cagey enough the first time around that Clint doesn’t expect him to bring it up. Ever.

He underestimated the power of being the only other accessible queer person in a world of homophobes has probably been for Bucky. Hell, he remembers the feeling, all the way up until he turned 18 (although his ID read older) and started going to gay bars and clubs. Mostly for crime. But occasionally to take advantage of their intended purpose.

Bucky brings it up again two days later, the next time they’re alone.

They’ve been sent out on a city perimeter patrol, which Clint knows Bucky doesn’t have to take part in if he doesn’t want to (being a Sergeant), so when they meet up he already has a vague idea of what’s coming. Sure enough, once they’re out of earshot from the general occupying population, Bucky clears his throat. “So, the other night,” he says, staring straight ahead. Clint doesn’t mind. “You’re really… I mean, you weren’t fucking with me, right?”

Clint rolls his eyes, but he can’t muster up any anger behind it. “If I was, I can think of a solid few guys who would be very confused right about now.”

Bucky winces. “Shit, Romanoff, you can’t just- jesus christ.”

“I’ll say what I want, Barnes, we’ve established this.”

“Right, yeah. Forgot you’re a crazy sonofa bitch.” Bucky shoves his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched and stride lacking the confidence he normally infuses into it around the guys. “But you’ve- y’know-”

His awkwardness, especially compared to the way he normally talks about his own exploits with the others, is almost funny. Clint bites back a laugh, because Bucky is barely able to talk about this as it is and would probably sock him in the face and run away if he did. “I’ve kissed guys before, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he replies casually. “Sucked dick.” He glances over at Bucky, who is still staring straight ahead but flushes more than the manageably cool fall weather can excuse at his declaration. It’s cute. “I’m really good at it, too,” he adds, just for shits and giggles. “Positive reviews across the board. Five stars.”

Bucky makes a small noise that might be embarrassment or shock, but he’s getting better at handling it. At least he doesn’t invoke Jesus again. “I’m assuming girls weren’t really… an option.”

“Nope. Kind of figured it out real young.” He shrugs. “My dad was the first person to try and beat it out of me. ‘S why we ran away.”

“Oh.” A pause. “And joined the circus.” Clint gives him points for being able to say it with a straight face. Tony still makes cracks about it every time he brings it up. Which is fair enough. Joking about it makes it better, sometimes. Not that he would ever tell Tony that.

“Yep. Place full of freaks, no one exactly bats an eye when you’re kissing another boy in the back as long as you do your job when you’re up.” He runs a hand through his hair. “It’s full of men running around in spandex and grease paint and women who’ll kill you with fire or some exotic animal if you come near ‘em, so. The easier choice is pretty clear.”

“You wore spandex and grease paint?” There’s a tentative note of amusement in Bucky’s voice that Clint latches onto.

“I’ll have you know that not only did I wear it, I looked amazing in it,” Clint declares. His eyes light up mischievously. “There was glitter involved.”

“Wow.”

“So much glitter. Lots of sparkles. Mostly purple. My hair would be all slicked back so it didn’t get in my way when I was shooting.”

“How old were you?”

Clint thinks. “Started when I was thirteen, fourteen. Most of my teenage years. I think some guys who I hooked up with afterwards couldn’t even tell if I was a boy or a girl.”

Bucky finally glances over at him. He looks much less nervous than before (Clint has always sort of excelled at making such a spectacle of himself that other people feel normal by comparison. It’s sort of a talent). “Any of it ever mean anything to you?” He asks.

Oh.

Ouch.

He hesitates for a second too long to convincingly lie and shrug it off, so he nods. “Yeah. Couple of times, I thought they’d stick around,” he confesses. “No one did. It was always just another part of my act for them. The exotic circus,” he adds bitterly. They turn a sharp corner and keep walking, footsteps echoing in the otherwise empty town outskirts.

“That’s shitty. You gotta know that.”

“It’s fine.” He attempts a ‘ whatever, it doesn’t bother me ,’ sort of grin that generally only his teammates can see through. “Shouldn’t have really expected anything more, things being the way they are for people like me.” The real shitty part is that it’s just as true in the future as it is here, but he shoves that away. “For people like us,” he tries.

Bucky’s eyes automatically dart around for a moment, making sure they’re alone, but he doesn’t otherwise shy away. “Yeah. For people like us.”

Another win.

-------------------------------

The third time they talk about it is Clint’s fault.

It’s their fourth day in the town, and he’s bored. He didn’t know it was possible to be bored during a war- and it’s not like he’d rather be in the middle of a firefight or running for his life, but he would definitely rather be able to reach into his pocket and pull out his phone, or go out to eat, or turn on Dog Cops reruns. He’d even trade standing around and not smoking cigarettes for Family Game Night at the Tower. And that’s saying something, because Clint has never managed to walk away from a family game night emotionally, financially, or physically unscathed. Something about billionaires and monopoly makes a terrifying combination. The only reason they haven’t banned it yet like they banned Mario Kart is because a ban requires a unanimous vote. Guess who the constant veto is.

Even so, he’d rather be getting bankrupt in Monopoly than go on another walk around the city. Every time he sits down, he’s jittery with a combination of built up nerves and boredom. So that evening, when Bucky makes his way down the stairs and says he’s going to scout East of the town- which is where they’ll eventually be called- Clint offers eagerly to go with him.

The other guys look at him like he’s crazy. “You couldn’t pay me to go out there at this time of night,” Dugan shudders.

“Especially not with Sarge,” Banks adds. “Forget the krauts, he’d shoot me first if I so much as stepped on a branch.”

Clint waves them off and stands, tucking his pistol in his belt. They’ve found him a proper long range rifle, which still doesn’t feel as right in his hands as his bow but he took reluctantly as a temporary measure. They probably don’t get a lot of custom orders out here. Selfishly, he hopes he never has to use it (he hates guns- they’re more of Nat’s style). And anyway, he’s not strapping that bulky thing to his back just for a walk. “I’d almost rather be shot,” he tells them rather melodramatically, “than sit here for another five minutes.”

The squadron unanimously boos his decision, but he just tips his hat to them and follows Bucky, who looks amused, out the door.

“Romanoff,” Bucky greets him as they start walking.

“Barnes,” he replies. “What’s a man like you doing in a place like this?”

Bucky shoulder checks him in response, light enough that Clint knows he doesn’t really mean it. It’s honestly impressive that Bucky’s still tolerating his blatant and terrible lines, which he’s been dropping since their conversation the other day every time he knows it won’t freak Bucky out. That included innocently insisting Bucky would have been impressed by the second part of his old act when he tells the squadron the abbreviated version of his history at the circus (while the rest of the boys assumed it was another crack at Bucky’s sniper abilities and howled with laughter, Bucky had shot Clint a red-faced look). Also, not-so innocently suggesting that they “go a few rounds” quietly enough that only Bucky had heard after he really had made a crack at Bucky’s sniper abilities. Among other things.

“Wishing he was alone, mostly,” Bucky replies.

“Well, ain’t that a tragedy.” They make their way down the crumbling block, stepping over chunks of granite and wood that had once been part of buildings. “I was hoping you’d be a nice fella and buy me a drink.”

“You’re a knucklehead, you know that?”

“Yes, sir, it’s what I do best,” Clint winks. “Now, how about that drink?”

Bucky rolls his eyes, but he plays along. “If I buy you a drink,” he says, “you owe me a dance.”

“A dance?”

“Yeah. You ever gone dancing with a girl before?” Bucky asks, breaking character. Clint pulls a face. “I mean literally, y’know, my ma would smack you for the places your mind goes.”

There have been a few times. With Natasha, a few times, although she doesn’t like to dance unless it’s the clubbing kind that’s really just jumping up and down enthusiastically (“ballet related trauma” is almost as hard to say with a straight face as “ran away and joined the circus”). Wanda dragged him to a goth concert once, which included a lot of very intensive dancing that Clint hadn’t understood at all, although it had been fun to fail miserably at trying to learn. He used to do acrobatics at the circus, which he supposed was a kind of dancing, but not really.

Then he thinks about going to queer clubs- later, when he was legally allowed to be there and stuck around for longer than a few minutes and actually had fun. He thinks about the night Steve taught everyone how to do some weird fast paced 40s dance and the time Tony declared they all needed to take salsa lessons as a group bonding exercise, because apparently he not only knew how but hosted an annual salsa-themed fundraiser of the sort- sort of like his galas, except with less distinguished mingling and more salsa.

“Not really,” he says eventually. “I’ve danced with guys, though. A few times.”

Bucky looks at him curiously. “Where do you do that sort of thing?”

“There are places where you can, I guess, if you know where to find them.” He knows gay bars have existed since the 40s because he took Steve to one once in Brooklyn and Steve had enthusiastically commented on how great it was that they could actually advertise the place as what it was now. “Like, for queer people.”

“There are?”

“Well, they don’t really announce it on the street, but yeah.”

They walk in silence for a few moments. “All right,” Bucky says eventually as they duck under a crumbling bridge. “When we get back, then. I owe you a drink. You owe me a dance.”

Clint is about to agree.

Then he remembers that Bucky isn’t going to make it back from the war, and the bubble pops.

His heart sinks. He hadn’t thought he’d be here for long enough to worry about that, but now he’s gone and fallen in love with this version of Bucky all over again. And this version of Bucky has a few months, at most, to live. 

For something that he knew, in the back of his mind, was going to happen, it hurt to actually think about. 

A lot.

“Why not now?” Clint asks suddenly, his boredom-induced antsiness, waiting for time to pass, ramping directly up to a desperate need to seize the time he has. Bucky, blissfully unaware of any of this, stares at him.

“Trust me, if there was anywhere I could get a drink out here, we would be there right now,” he says.

“How about a dance, then?” Clint scans their surroundings and nods towards one of the larger, more solidly built buildings in town that had survived almost completely intact. It was flat and stone and no lights were on, which meant no one had chosen it to settle in. “Over there.”

Bucky frowns, unconvinced. “We don’t have music,” he points out. “Among everything else crazy about that idea.”

Stubbornly, Clint grabs his arm and veers off into the empty street, towards the building. He shouldn’t have been able to drag Bucky along with him, he’s not pulling quite hard enough for that, but Bucky lets him (like he’d let those girls pull him to see the presentation back at the Expo. Clint suddenly understands exactly how they felt). “I don’t care,” he declares. “You know how to dance?”

“Of course.”

“Great.” He pushes open the door, dropping Bucky’s arm, and backs into the building with an inviting hand outstretched. “I’m good at following directions in silence.”

Hovering in the doorway, Bucky watches him with a bemused expression. “Anyone ever told ya you got a few screws loose, Romanoff?”

“Mostly you,” Clint replies easily. “Come on. We’re alone, and it’s quiet, and no one’s trying to kill us at the moment- we gotta at least take advantage of that while it lasts.”

And although Bucky repeats something about him being out of his mind under his breath, he reluctantly steps forward and takes Clint’s hand, the other settling on his waist. For a moment, Clint can’t breathe.

“Umm,” he eventually says, very eloquently. “Where do I-”

“Jesus and Mary, you’re hopeless,” Bucky mumbles, gently bringing Clint’s other hand up to loop over his shoulder. “Just follow my lead. And don’t you dare step on my feet.”

Almost immediately, Clint steps on his feet. “Shit, sorry,” he winces. Bucky seems more amused than hurt- luckily, because he does it again a few moments later and chews his lip in frustration. He just keeps stepping left when Bucky steps right and trying to move backwards when he’s not supposed to.

“Hey.” A warm hand brushes across his face, gently tugging at his lip until he stops biting it and looks up slightly to meet Bucky’s eyes. His dance partner looks unbothered by his lack of experience, and the hand around his waist just tightens instead of pulling away. “You’re fine. You’ve got the easy part, alright? All you have to do is trust me.”

Ever since he was old enough to understand that people could and would hurt him, Clint had never been a trusting person. He tended to keep people at arm’s length until he had thoroughly vetted them (or, if they were Natasha or Tony, until they shoved their way in). 

But trusting Bucky? He was right, that was the easy job. He closes his eyes and composes himself briefly. “I can do that.”

“Great.” Half a second later, he’s being spun around and dipped so fast and low that his heart momentarily stops. Clint yelps in a very undignified sort of way and Bucky is laughing when he pulls him back up.

“You dick,” Clint accuses when he’s upright again and probably very flushed. “You are such a- screw you, Barnes.”

“You should have seen your face,” Bucky replies unapologetically as he leads them through some much tamer steps. At some point, when he had drawn Clint back in from the dip, they had gotten a lot closer. In response, Clint narrows his eyes and shoots him a mockingly annoyed glare, which he laughs off. “Come on, doll, don’t be so upset. You’re all right, ain’t you?”

‘Doll’ has Clint choking on his words for a few seconds, trying and failing at stopping his face from turning red. “I hate you,” he mutters. And then- “I can’t believe you’re doing lines on me. How many girls have you done that to?”

“A couple. Sort of wanted to see if it’d work on a fella too.”

“You’re a terrible person.”

“I know. Is it working?”

Clint buries his face in Bucky’s shoulder to avoid looking him in the eye, blindly allowing Bucky to guide him through the steps that dance them in circles around the empty, dusty hall. “No,” he lies.

“That’s believable,” Bucky replies sarcastically. “Come on, doll, give me a smile.” Clint looks up just to give him a pronounced scowl. “Not that one, then, point taken.”

“Every girl I know would smack you for saying something like that to her,” Clint tells him.

“Are you gonna smack me?”

Reluctantly, Clint mumbles out a “no” as Bucky tugs him suddenly to the left with a fancy step that Clint definitely couldn’t follow on his own but stumbles his way through with his dance partner’s careful guidance. Bucky is unfairly good at dancing, creating a rhythm even without music. It’s actually kind of a crime, actually. “But that’s because I’m an idiot,” he adds. “If I had half a brain I’d storm away dramatically.”

“Call me a lucky man that you don’t, then.” Bucky lifts his arm and guides Clint through stepping out, then back in again. When he does, the hand that’s been on his shoulder is tilting his head up gently instead, and Clint almost falls over just at that. His eyes flicker involuntarily at Bucky’s lips.

“Let me try one more thing?” Bucky asks quietly, so close that his breath ghosts across Clint’s face. They’ve stopped moving, which takes away the pretence of dancing for their closeness. Now, they’re just two people holding each other, standing in an abandoned and unlit building, the sun long gone from the sky.

“Maybe just one,” Clint breathes.

Bucky kissing him is immediately filed under ‘absolutely works,’ although Clint isn’t exactly sure when he’ll get the chance to tell him that, because once they start kissing they can’t seem to stop. Instead, he responds with wordless enthusiasm, pulling Bucky closer even as they’re pressed flush against each other because if he lets go for even a second it might turn out that none of this is real and he really needs it to be real because wow. His hand automatically reaches up to bury itself in Bucky’s hair before he remembers that this Bucky has his cut short- so instead Bucky tangles his own hand in Clint’s. He strokes it gently at first as they kiss, responding with equal urgency, before pulling at it slightly to tilt Clint’s head up further. Clint shivers and groans and feels Bucky latch on a firmer hold in response.

He hadn’t realised they’d been slowly drifting until his back hits the wall and he leans his weight against it, tugging Bucky up against him by the collar of his uniform. He hooks his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and Bucky slides his hands under his shirt and the stone walls are cold but his hands are warm, shockingly warm as they slide up his hips and trace his ribs and-

Abruptly, Bucky stumbles backwards and Clint nearly falls over. He steadies himself against the wall, breathing hard, and touches his lips gently.

“Shit,” he whispers.

“Shit,” Bucky curses, louder. His eyes are wide, his hands twisting anxiously. “Romanoff- Clint, I-” he cuts himself off with more muffled cursing. He says something else, quietly, that Clint can’t make out and can’t supplement with lip reading. 

Still, his heart sinks with the snippets he catches.

“You have to talk clearly,” he says stiffly. “I can’t read your lips in the dark.”

Bucky’s head jerks up. “Fuck, sorry. It’s nothing, forget it. I just-”

“Forgot I wasn’t a dame?” Clint finishes for him, crossing his arms tightly over his chest where Bucky’s hands had ghosted over before being snatched away moments before. “Forgot I wasn’t really just another one of those girls who hang off your arms and throw themselves at you and you let them because it’s simple? It’s easier?” Clint had sort of just finished doing both of those things, but the overall point still stands. Bucky flinches.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he protests, looking anywhere but Clint. “I didn’t do it because I thought you were someone else, okay? But I still- I still don’t even know how I feel about- I mean, I don’t care that you do it, I don’t know if I’m ready to-” his words jumble and cut each other off in panicked haste. Clint almost feels bad. Until he continues. “I just got caught up in the whole-” he waves his hands vaguely- “performance of it.”

As soon as he says it, he seems to know just as much as Clint does that it’s the wrong thing. With a guilty expression visible even in the dark, he reaches out towards Clint- who steps back defensively.

“Of course,” he says, his voice cold and brittle, like a thin but freezing layer of ice has frosted over his normal voice. “All just a part of the performance, all just a part of the act, that’s nice. I haven’t heard that one before.”

“Clint-”

“Don’t,” he snaps. “Just don’t, Barnes. You took your shot. Maybe if you had kept your mouth shut for a little longer, I would have let you fuck me and leave too.” Clint sets his jaw. Another one of his many talents- shutting off the urge to cry when he’s angry. Instead, like he does in most moods, he tends to talk- a lot. “Glad this was a good experiment in being queer or whatever for you. Now at least you can move onto your regularly scheduled life, right?”

He turns his back and storms out the door, refusing to stop or slow even when he hears Bucky’s footsteps hurriedly following him. He only pauses when he’s a safe distance away, back towards the direction they’d come. Bucky is still standing in the doorway, looking lost. Good.

“Have a good walk, Barnes,” Clint scoffs over his shoulder as he walks away. “I hope the krauts have a shot at you, I really do. Maybe you can dance with one of them.”

He doesn’t look back.

Chapter Text

Fortunately, when Clint wakes up the next morning, Bucky isn’t on the couch.

Unfortunately, not only are they ordered to move out later that day, but Clint is also informed by a very not-morning-person Jennings that Bucky did, in fact, make it back alive the night before. So apparently he’s just avoiding Clint, then.

Well, two can play that game. With a mostly already packed bag and a very strong motivation not to have to sit in a truck with the 107th for the ride East, Clint is one of the first soldiers to the rendez-vous point. He takes advantage of this by speaking briefly with the Major (which he’s never thought he’d do again, but a stubborn Clint Barton is an unflinching one) and proceeding to take a seat on top of the bigger of the two tanks they have parked at the front of the procession. With his sniper’s rifle across his lap and his specialist insignia on his arm, he glares at anyone who so much as looks at him funny, daring them to pass comment. No one does. Not even Banks.

Honestly, the top of a tank is arguably more comfortable than the truck. More separation from the bumps, probably. A few minutes into the ride, he makes the executive decision to take his hearing aids out, for what he excuses in his head as “better focus.”

That’s how Clint ends up riding a tank in complete silence, Britney Spears playing on loop in his head (blame Tony), a gun in his lap, off to go shoot Nazis to blow off steam about a botched date(ish). What a life. He should write a book, or something.

At the end of the day, though, there’s nothing really worth reminiscing in a memoir about the battle he ends up in. When he fights with the Avengers, there’s at least an illusion of levity in Tony’s sarcastic comments, Steve’s exasperated replies, Thor’s overdramatic Asgardian antics, and Sam’s terrible bird jokes (that Clint enthusiastically reciprocates). It’s hard to take yourself too seriously when there’s a teenage boy referencing Star Wars battle scenes as "from that really old movie" while you shoot at robots with tech the world hasn’t even heard of with a bow and arrow. And it’s hard to feel terrified when you’re protected by a massive green rage monster and a multi billionaire with tech even the aliens haven’t heard of.

Here, he has none of those things. He’s just another guy in the same dirty, tattered uniform as everyone else, carrying a gun to a gun fight- which is actually worse than carrying a knife to a gunfight, in his opinion. At least if you have a knife, you’re either a) suicidally overconfident, and therefore feel no fear, b) so screwed that there’s no point in feeling fear, or c) so skilled with said knife that you’re the right amount of confident and also feel no fear. Having a gun at a gun fight just puts you on the same level as everyone else, which is terrifying.

It’s the feeling of understanding the inconsequence of your own death, while simultaneously being terrified of it.

Luckily, Clint is really good at ignoring feelings of paralysing terror and politely informing panic attacks that he can’t do today, would rescheduling next week around midnight work for them?

Still, it’s worse than last time. They’re taking another town, this one still populated by civilians, and Clint has to fight his way to a vantage point to do his sniping from. It’s dirty, gut wrenching work. He has no qualms about killing as he does it, even though he knows it’ll come back to haunt him later, probably in the form of dreams of terrified eyes and blank ones, and running through blood-soaked streets, which will probably be what kick-starts said rescheduled panic attacks. Gunfire rings in his head, explosions rattle his eardrums. If he wasn’t already deaf, he probably would be by the end of this.

And then there’s the civilians. Some of them, he can shield.

The less said about the ones he can’t, the better.

The word ‘hero’ roars in his head louder than the gunfire, usually in a mocking voice that sounds too much like a certain trickster god for Clint’s comfort. He’ll unpack that in therapy (Natasha’s room) later. For now, he tells it to shut the fuck up and shoots two Krauts (he’s starting to understand why everyone calls them that- it’s dehumanizing. In his experience, killing something non human is a lot easier than killing something that is. He’d probably get canceled for that in a sci-fi novel, but there’s nothing scientific or fictional about this) who are locked in a firefight with George and Banks. He doesn’t stay to hear their thanks.

When he makes his way up to the rooftops, he can’t stay in one place for long. Either someone had told these particular Nazis about what had happened to the rest of them back in the last town or he was just getting really bad at concealing his position (it’s the gun. He hates the gun almost as much as the Krauts), because shots start returning to him alarmingly quick. There’s even a tank pointed at him at one point, which feels a little excessive and sort of flattering under normal circumstances- Tony would have made a comment about it.

The biggest tragedy is probably his realisation that he misses Tony. That’s a sign of severe moral failing on his part. If anything, he should talk to his therapist about that.

Hey, Mary, he imagines himself saying with a deranged sense of amusement that would even impress Bruce, who has become infamous for his own straight faced, out of pocket, and often darkly self-deprecating humour. Let’s talk about my recent journey to world war two, which, if I remember correctly, gave basically an entire generation PTSD, and also gave me in particular an ill-advised crush on the guy I already had a crush on, but this one is the asshole 40s version, which is also bringing up a lot of my pre-existing sexual trauma. But more importantly, let’s talk about how I briefly might have missed Tony Stark. That was the real sign that something was wrong with me. Anyway, my weekend was great, how was yours?

It’s a wonder she still agrees to see him at all. He should buy her flowers, or something. The next time he sees her. Which is currently indefinitely on hold.

A particularly large explosion rocks Clint out of his thoughts, shaking the building he’s perched on from its foundations, and he has to grab onto a pillar to avoid falling four stories down (he’s fallen farther, but Nat isn’t here to catch him this time). Once the aftershock fades, he can hear the screaming redouble in the distance. Smoke rises a few blocks away.

For a brief moment, he hesitates. Then the save-people instinct kicks in, easily and probably worryingly quickly overcoming the self preservation one. Clint takes off like a shot.

He scrambles across rooftops towards the explosion, battering his shoulders and back but keeping his ankles intact by landing in a roll on the longer jumps between them, his gun digging uncomfortably into his back. Clint grits his teeth, resolving to refuse to use a gun again after this battle.

The loudest voices come from in front of him, but he’s distracted by movement to his right and stumbles to a halt, drawing his rifle fluidly and pointing it at the same general area just in case. What he finds is… not good.

A crowd of soldiers in German-grey uniforms are surrounding someone in one of a more familiar colour, guns raised. For a moment, he’s confused why they’re not shooting him. Then the soldier they’re surrounding yells something and raises his arm and Clint’s enhanced eyesight catches something in his hand: a grenade. The general gist of it seems to be, ‘ the second someone shoots, everyone dies .’

The theatrics. Clint fights the urge to raise his rifle and pick them off from the rooftop right then- because unlike his bow, the rifle makes fucking noise, and the moment the krauts down there hear it, they’ll open fire. It’s not looking good for this guy.

Another boom sounds from his left and he hesitates. There are probably more lives at stake near the centre of town, and realistically there isn’t a lot he can do for this guy. It’s a shitty choice to make, but maybe-

Then the guy shouts again and all thoughts of turning his back vanish from Clint’s head, because even if he can’t make out what it’s saying, he recognizes that voice.

What other idiot would trap himself between death and death? Before his brain can even comprehend what’s going on, his body is already in motion, throwing himself towards the scene. There’s one more roof to jump to, a lower building, then from there- well, he’s survived higher falls than three stories. Clint grimaces and preemptively apologises to his ankles. Then he jumps.

He lands in front of Bucky (because of course it would be Bucky), and doesn’t bother trying to stick the landing- he knows it’ll shatter several bones in both his legs if he tries. Better to land in an unimpressive heap than straight on and then immediately pass out in pain. Not that it’s much better anyway. He grits his teeth, because the element of surprise will only give him an extra moment or two to recover, and stands, pistol drawn in one hand and the other extended slightly to his side, as if he can shield Bucky with just that.

“ Bewegen ,” one of the krauts spits at him. Move .

“Not likely,” Clint mutters. It’s been a minute since he spoke German, but he doesn’t really mind butchering the pronunciation. “ Zurücktreten ,” he replies in the same language. Stand down .

Although they look a little uneasy about the man who just dropped out of the sky and started speaking back at them in their own language, the soldiers don’t move. One of them, he can’t tell which, replies with something that he roughly translates to “you can’t shoot all of us,” which the rest of them seem to agree with.

Great. Time to stall. Clint grips his pistol tightly and does the Natasha thing where he shuts down everything but his two objectives: protect Bucky. Get out. There’s no room for emotion in objectives, he hears Nat whispering in his ear.

“ Zurücktreten, ” he repeats, channelling Nat into his voice. “ Sonst werde ich euch alle töten. Schrecklich .” Or else I will kill you all . Then a word that roughly translates to terribly, awfully, painfully, dreadfully- real fun adverbs like that.

He glares at the one closest to him, staring him down unflinchingly. Frighten one, the rest will follow. He makes direct eye contact. “ Niemand berührt ihn .” Nobody touches him. That phrase comes easily, because he’s heard Natasha utter it in at least fifteen different languages, normally standing in front of him the way he’s standing in front of Bucky.

If this doesn’t work, Nat is SO going to find him in whatever afterlife there is and slap him. Although she’ll probably have to get in line.

Silence, for a moment. Then another one of them pipes up. “ Wodurch ?” How ?

Slowly, Clint raises the pistol, and points it right in between two of the soldiers. They tense, but no one moves. “ Sehen .” Watch .

He takes the shot. Before they can react, a four-story wall creaks once, then crashes on top of them with the force of- well, quite a few buckets of bricks. Clint turns and grabs Bucky roughly as it does, pulling him under the flimsy cloth awning behind them and shielding him as best he can with his own body. He squeezes his eyes shut, waiting until the rumbling and crashing completely subsides to open them again. He doesn’t even get a moment to be relieved that he’s alive, because when he does, he’s staring directly into Bucky’s, barely a few inches from his face.

They sit there for a moment, Bucky shoved awkwardly up against a wall (the still-standing one) and Clint kneeling between his legs, his arms braced on either side of Bucky’s shoulders in a protective cage- staring at each other.

“You speak German,” is the first thing Bucky says once the dust settles, out of breath. He doesn’t move.

“You,” Clint replies, equally winded and equally reluctant to move, “are so fucking stupid.”

Both objectives complete, his belated nerves and sheer terror are rushing back into his brain and limbs. He’s pretty sure he’s shaking. “What the hell were you thinking?” He hisses. “Drop the grenade, you die. Get shot, you die. There were literally no-”

His rant is cut off when Bucky grabs him by his tattered uniform shirt and kisses him. Right there. Surrounded by recently deceased Nazis crushed under rubble and bloodstained streets, with a backdrop of popping gunfire and explosions. And the worst part is that, for a moment, Clint doesn’t care. Maybe that’s selfish, sue him. The world could burn and he wouldn’t give a shit as long as he could sit here and kiss Bucky back with the same frantic need until the fire reached them.

Bucky kisses him and he melts .

Of course, it’s a temporary spell. This time it’s Clint who pulls away first, his breath coming out in pants and his eyes wide. Bucky looks unfairly wrecked staring up at him, although he suspects he doesn’t look much better. But there’s still a very present and very angry voice in his head that’s yelling at him to shoot Bucky himself and leave him to rot. Or at least punch him and walk away. Clint does neither. He doesn’t think he can physically move much further.

“No. No.” He breathes haltingly. “No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to-” his voice breaks and he stops.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers. Clint can read it clear as day on his lips. His face is scraped and his collar is hopelessly crooked. “You saved my life.”

“Guess so.”

“You shot a building down.”

Clint glances behind him. “The foundation was cracking anyway.”

Weakly, Bucky shakes his head. “That was a one in a million shot.”

If Clint had a dollar for every time someone had said that to him, he’d be able to afford to build his own time machine to go forward and stop himself from ever going anywhere near Tony’s lab. “I never miss,” he replies, like he always does.

They sit there for another minute, catching their breath inches from each other's faces without closing the gap. At one point, Bucky reaches up to touch his face. Still high on nerves, Clint instinctually blocks his hand, then feels that awful tug in his chest return when Bucky’s face noticeably falls. He’s not sure if, had he not been running on adrenaline, he would have let him. But he might have. Clint is sort of known for his bad choices.

“I thought you were the one hoping they would shoot me,” Bucky says tentatively, making no move to pull his wrist out of Clint’s grasp. “I thought you hated me.” Clint sighs.

“I did. I do,” he replies, mostly to (unsuccessfully) try and convince himself. “But that doesn’t fucking mean you’re allowed to die.” He glares at Bucky with all the anger he can muster. It isn’t much. He sort of spent it all on the krauts. “Then- then everyone else will be all depressed and pissy, and- well, you don’t get to up and make me deal with them. They’re annoying. Almost as annoying as you.”

Bucky closes his eyes. “Sir, yes, sir,” he mutters. Clint huffs, half in exasperation and half in amusement.

“Great, you’re lucid enough to make jokes.” It takes effort in every muscle of his body, but he stands up and shoves his rifle back in his belt. “Stand up. I have other people to save too, you know.”

Leaning heavily on the wall, Bucky stands. There’s a gash in his leg that Clint had completely missed, and he almost makes Bucky sit back down until he can find something to clean and wrap it right there- but he manages to tear his eyes away. Bucky makes a noise that might be a laugh of a yelp of pain. Probably a bit of both. “Right. You’re a regular hero, you are.”

I always seem to end up playing one, at least , Clint thinks. He takes a deep breath.

“That’s me,” he replies. Together, they take off down the street. Life-threatening scenarios and nausea-inducing terror waited for no man.

------------------------

Clint doesn’t remember a lot of what happens after that, and when the air goes eventually still and the gunshots fade he’s glad that he doesn’t. He hasn’t had this much adrenaline pumping through his veins since New York, or possibly even since his first mission with Natasha (which was the one where his target initially was Natasha). It feels like someone has injected circus-calibre coffee, cocaine, hour thirty seven of Tony’s manic episodes in liquid form, and pure terror into his veins: he’s tense to the point of shaking, alert to the point of overstimulation; it feels like when he drinks too much coffee and stares at his hands with an oh, shit feeling because he can’t stop them from shaking. Only amplified by ten thousand.

When Bucky puts a hand on his shoulder, Clint almost breaks his arm and points his pistol directly between his eyes before he realises who it is. Even then, Bucky has to slowly and gently push the pistol down, saying quiet things that reach Clint’s ears but fade to static in his brain before he can comprehend them. It takes a solid few minutes before he can actually catch a few of the words.

“It’s over,” Bucky is repeating over and over, calming in a detached way that makes Clint later, when he looks back on it, feel like it probably isn’t over for Bucky in his head at all. At the moment, he can only focus on the words. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.

The spell only really breaks when Tony’s voice, in his head, inappropriately pipes up to say shawarma? Clint exhales slowly. “Shawarma,” he mumbles absentmindedly.

Bucky’s eyebrows furrow. “Sorry?” He says, and Clint realises he probably sounds like he’s finally snapped. He shakes his head slightly.

“Never mind,” he mutters. “Just… something from back home.” As his senses slowly return, he feels himself leaning heavily on Bucky, who is steadfastly supporting and almost cradling him in his arms, despite looking just as dead eyed and exhausted. He has blood running down the side of his face, and it’s dripping from his chin. Without thinking, Clint reaches up and wipes it away with his thumb like it’s a tear. Bucky blinks when he does, but doesn’t otherwise react or pull away. His eyes look a little less far away.

Then Clint breaks the moment by coughing violently and almost doubling over before Bucky pulls him back up with a firm arm wrapped around his waist, and Clint is dizzyingly wondering how last night had been last night. It feels like a million years ago.

“Are you okay?” Clint wheezes the moment he has half the breath for it.

“Am I okay?” Bucky echoes, sounding faintly incredulous although lacking the energy to convey it fully. “Clint, you’re half dead. I lost you barely a couple a’ minutes after you saved me back there, I- I thought you were full dead for a moment there. I’m just glad you’re alive, okay?”

“Of course I’m alive,” Clint manages. He turns away again to cough, choking on the effort of speaking, but that doesn’t stop him from doing it again. “Who else is gonna remind you what a terrible shot you are?”

It’s a poor attempt at levity, but not poor enough for the way Bucky’s face crumples. So when it does, he knows something’s wrong and his heart drops out of his chest. “What?” He demands immediately. Bucky won’t meet his eyes.

“Nothin’.”

“Bullshit,” Clint wheezes. “What?”

Bucky’s face shuts down again, looking stony and devoid of emotion and just as far away as it had been before. “It’s nothing, all right? You just- just sound like Banks.”

It’s an even worse attempt at humour than Clint’s. His voice cracks on Banks’ name. Bucky’s tone is like an ice bucket poured right over his head, and it’s Clint’s turn to shut down and stare at him flatly.

“Bucky,” he says, in the toneless interrogation tone that scares even him sometimes. It just comes out. It’s come easier since Loki. “Where’s Banks?”

They’re both holding each other, trying desperately to stay upright as Bucky squeezes his eyes shut. “Dead,” he rasps. Clint can tell from his expression that it’s replaying in the darkness behind his eyelids. “Jennings. George. Building blew. Dragged Morrison out. Couldn’t save them all.”

This is the part where Clint should say something comforting, not that he can even begin to imagine what that would be. Except his brain automatically tries to imagine, picturing the scene, with visuals of bodies and flames and he doesn’t even have to imagine the devastated look on Bucky’s face.

The emotionless mask breaks. Clint keels over and throws up all over the pavement. And Bucky’s shoes.

When his head stops spinning, he’s left staring at the already dirty but now dirtier pavement, feeling a hand rub circles gently on his back. He’d like to imagine, for a brief moment, that he’s just in the middle of a raging hangover, and all of this was a drug-induced hallucination. But it’s not. His eyes are wet, but he’s too out of it to know if he’s crying or not.

When he looks up, Bucky’s eyes are red too, his jaw stiff. Clint feels guilty wring at what’s left of the contents of his stomach. Bucky watched them die, and here he is comforting Clint, who only heard it secondhand, had known them for less time, and had forced him to bring it up again with his stupid inability to leave anything alone.

Get up, Barton. Suck it up and get the fuck up. Feeling sorry for yourself is useless. Don’t be useless.

He’s not a big fan of all the voices in his head today. Shut up, Barney , he tells this one.

Then he gets the fuck up anyway, forcing himself not to lean as heavily on Bucky for it as he would have liked, his only anchor in his spiraling surroundings. It’s not fair to Bucky for Clint to need him. It’s not fair.

“It’s not fair,” he finds himself repeating aloud. Immediately, he feels like a child, petulant and pouting in the face of something real. But Bucky only nods shakily.

“War isn’t fair,” he says. He counterbalances Clint trying to pull away by tightening his grip on his waist, and it takes Clint barely a glance to realise that they’re both leaning on each other. It’s not him who’s being unfair. It’s not Bucky who’s being unfair. They’re two people who deserve a fair shot, dropped somewhere where they don’t get one.

“None of it is fair,” Clint chokes out. The war, sure. But what’s happened to them- all of it. And everything that he knows will happen. How he’s seen the future, where that dead eyed look becomes fixed permanently on Bucky’s face in place of all the good things. People, dying. People, hating each other. People, keeping them apart. “None of it,” he repeats, as if insisting it to the universe will somehow make it go away.

“I know,” Bucky sighs. He looks so lost and haunted with what will become survivors guilt (Clint knows from experience) that Clint wants to cry, or maybe throw up all over again. Mostly, he wants that look off of Bucky’s face. He’s seen it enough on the Bucky from his time, especially when he was the Winter Soldier full-time, to hate it with a burning passion.

Clint has never claimed to be the most rational person in the world. His thought process goes like this:

Bucky is gone.

Bring him back.

So, with the ferocity of unthinking action, Clint grabs his face and kisses him.

It takes a moment, but much more tentatively Bucky kisses him back, slowly less stiff against Clint’s lips, more alive. More here.

More seems to be the gist of both of their thoughts as they stand there, kissing, already short on breath and getting shorter by the second until their heads spin but that was okay because their thoughts faded to background hums, and Clint needs that as much as Bucky does and they need each other, desperately.

There’s a faint note of reality in which it’s disgusting, because Clint just threw up and neither of them are exactly clean or anything more than exhausted, covered in dirt, and bleeding from several places. They can’t even tell which ones yet, because about half of the blood soaking through their uniforms isn’t theirs. As they kiss, Clint can taste the metallic tang of blood in Bucky’s mouth.

Also, neither of them are exactly in their right minds. But when are they ever.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers when they break apart- although not by much, still wrapped together and shaking. His voice is heavy with grief and even heavier with guilt. It makes Clint feel like the worst person alive (despite being in the 40s, in which several very obviously worse people come to the rational mind immediately, except when you’re Clint, who is currently too far in his head for rationality).

“It’s not your fault,” Clint replies, forcing as much strength into the words as he has left. He holds Bucky tightly by his collar, forcing him not to look away.

“I forgive you,” he says, softer.

I’m sorry, too , he wants to add, because he is. Sorry for throwing an angry, unstable wrench into Bucky’s normally scheduled life. Sorry for every necessary lie. Sorry for falling in love with him. But he doesn’t. It’s a doomed exercise in just how crossed stars can get before they go supernova, and Clint has never excelled in pushing his luck (despite how much he tends to do it).

That night, they sleep on the floor of a recently-vacated living room under a grainy photo of a family they couldn’t save. 

It’s wet. And cold. They both come to a mutually unspoken and dully painful conclusion that they deserve it, and nothing more. 

Bucky’s gun sits on the fireplace. Clint clutches a knife tightly in the hand he’s not holding Bucky with.

And they lay there, wrapped in each other's arms, as if they were too broken down to exist independently and were instead trying to form one cold, misery-filled being to get through the night.

Chapter Text

To be honest, Clint isn’t sure if he’s supposed to hate Bucky Barnes or fall head over heels in love with him. Again.

He’s fallen into a pattern frighteningly similar to the one he and Natasha spent the better part of a decade in with Bucky: each making the unspoken decision to watch the others back in the face of any and every external threat and the equally unspoken choice to dance around anything beyond that.

Clint painfully recalls the first five years with Natasha, in which he’d run into the middle of a firefight unarmed for her- and she for him- but they’d both pretend not to hear the other person sneaking out at night to cry. He would take a knife for Natasha, but wouldn’t expect her to ask about the way his arms were bandaged even when they weren’t recovering from a mission (although it wasn’t really as if they ever recovered from things. They took the pain to the face and- without so much as blinking- locked it away in a box, turned around, and asked what was next).

Now they sleep in each other’s rooms and laugh at each other when they cry watching Pixar movies and would both still take a knife for each other, and things are good enough that Clint retrospectively knows just how awful it used to be. Which means he knows exactly how much damage the pattern he’s developed with Bucky is going to be for both of them eventually. He has a sneaking suspicion that Bucky does too.

The problem is, he only broke his pattern with Natasha when Natasha marched up to him and demanded they force themselves to talk about their feelings until it came naturally. He’s too much of a coward to do that to Bucky, and Bucky is too deeply entrenched in 1940s masculinity rules to do so either.

Every day that goes by is one more time he’s going to slug Tony in his stupid genius face. So far, Tony’s jawline is going to be seventeen punches less perfect if Clint gets his way.

But anyway. His relationship with Bucky falls into a pattern just as much as it gets more unpredictable by the day. He can predict, to an extent, how a given day is going to go depending on how close he is to Bucky when they wake up. They always sleep in the same room, or the same tent, or within throwing distance whenever they spend the night out in the open. But sometimes, they wake up across said room from each other (as Clint calls it, a heterosexual distance apart). Those are the sort of days he opens his eyes and knows they won’t talk to each other.

He’s walking through the city one of those days, on a delivery assignment that’s mostly an excuse to shake off his antsiness. The man who approaches him has red hair, and is missing three fingers on his left hand.

“Have you seen Barnes?” The man asks him.

Of course he has. Bucky is in the Major’s tent, debriefing for their next push East. They’ll be joined by reinforcements, a British infantry division.

“I’m not his keeper,” Clint snaps irritably instead. He brushes right past the man without slowing.

----------------------------------

On their way to the rendez-vous with the British infantry, they’re suddenly surrounded by grey uniforms and the densely wooded area fills with screams in seconds. Clint is basically shoved off the truck in the rush for cover, and he rolls to the side directly in front of the one behind them, which hasn’t yet stopped. He catches a glimpse of the driver, slumped forward on the windshield with blood smeared across his face and a hole in his forehead, and braces himself.

A hand yanks him up by the collar and he topples off the road into mud and thick brush beneath Bucky, who glares down at him furiously.

“You could do me a favour and stay on your god damn feet, Romanoff,” Bucky hisses.

The first thing to recover from Clint’s near death experience number six hundred and five (just kidding. he lost count years ago) is his asshole-ishness. Obviously.

“You’re the one who swept me off of them, Barnes,” Clint spits with as much venom as he can manage through gritted teeth. Without another word, he raises one hand and takes a shot over Bucky’s shoulder, who startles as the gun goes off next to his ear and rolls off of Clint.

Two hundred yards away, a bundle of grey and a sniper rifle fall out of a tree with a thump that goes unheard over the din.

-----------------------------

When it’s Clint’s turn to save his life, Bucky turns his back to the recently-deceased paratrooper that had landed practically on top of him, only to be immediately shot down, and glares in his general direction. Clint pops his head up above the stone railing of the staircase he’s been sniping from (the grand building has seen better days) only to be hit with a sneer.

“I don’t need saving,” Bucky tells him, stony faced with his knuckles turning white on the gun clenched in his fist. “I don’t need you.”

Clint spits blood out of his mouth. Angry red against the formerly white marble steps. “Fine. I’ll let the next one kill you,” he calls back.

He won’t. No way in hell.

-----------------------------

“I can’t keep lying to them,” Bucky tells him one night when they’re sufficiently tucked away in an alley behind the building where half the regiment is sleeping- or at least trying to, with more success than Clint and Bucky, who abandoned the venture two restless hours past sunset. He stares at the ground, the horizon, his lit cigarette, anywhere but Clint (who doesn't entirely mind, he knows the feeling). “I keep telling them it’ll get better, or that we’ll win. Like I know. We could be the last boys left alive from the States, I wouldn’t have a clue.”

He inhales deeply and smoke filters from his mouth thick enough to haze the air in front of them. Clint is used to the stale, acidic smell of smoke by now. It’s everywhere. At least it masks the duller, worse smell that settles in the aftermath of cannons and bombs and death. He stares at his boots, crossing and uncrossing his legs periodically even though cramps are the least of his long list of aches and injuries to worry about. Still. The little things.

“What the fuck are we even dying for?” Bucky is muttering as he does. "It’s us against the bad guys, that’s all they tell us. And the worst damn part is that it’s true, I guess. Awful shit, we’re supposed to be stopping it. I just-“ He cuts himself off and shakes his head.

Clint picks up the train of thought he can’t finish. “Wish it didn’t have to be us,” he supplies. “There are people out there who deserve better and shit, but so do you. They’re terrified of dying, and the solution is supposed to be throwing more people into the death pot.”

I want to save people , Wanda once told him- a similar night, minus the smoke and dirt- I want people to be happy. But I keep thinking, why does it have to be us? Why do people have to be hurt at all?

“Feels selfish,” Bucky says, scuffing the ground with his boot.

“It’s not selfish,” Clint replies. “It’s human.” He’s parroting his Steve, but from his mouth the words feel hollower and lacking the earnest belief that they’d been said to him with- because Clint isn’t Steve. And he isn’t sure he entirely believes it himself. Which is where the lacking in the earnestness department comes from. Bucky finally looks over at him in a lingering, slightly disbelieving but mostly unreadable way.

“Well, I don’t feel very human,” he responds quietly. “Haven’t for a while.”

When he turns away to take another hit from his cigarette, he might as well be the Bucky Clint knows in the future- the dead, far away look in his eyes is back, and it hollows out his face into the sunken, blank mask that made Clint want to tear apart HYDRA one by one. He inhales the smoke like it’s air instead of toxic gas- desensitised, desensitised, desensitised. One horror after another overloads the system, returns it to factory settings.

“Hey.” Clint uncrosses his legs again and slides closer until his shoulder touches Bucky’s, reaching up to gently tilt his head to the side with one hand. Bucky lets him, although he goes entirely still- even holding his breath, as if moving an inch will bring all the sleeping men running to the scene. So Clint does the moving for him. They hover, inches apart, and he tilts his head in until their lips just barely brush. “Open your mouth,” he murmurs. “Breathe.”

He’s not sure if shotgunning was a thing in the 40s, but evidently Bucky is willing to comply either way because he exhales as Clint sucks smoke into his own lungs secondhand (as if somehow by inhaling the physical toxin from Bucky’s body he could somehow take on some infinitesimal amount of the pain and fear twisting through his veins and strangling the life out of him from the inside out).

The smoke itself doesn’t usually bother him, he used to smoke as much as the soldiers around him do when he was younger and generally had more energy to be angsty and aesthetically bitter. Nowadays, though, the only poisons of choice he has time for are the ones that serve a double function- coffee, for example, and quite a few other things that he definitely should not be putting in his body. This all culminates in Clint breathing in the smoke, holding Bucky’s face gently and hovering close enough to properly kiss for a solid few seconds before his lungs stutter and he has to turn away to cough violently.

When he looks back, though, the dead look is gone, replaced by a slightly red and very alive Bucky, who sports a half-flustered, half-amused expression.

“Jesus and Mary, Romanoff,” he swears. “I know you don’t smoke much, but-”

“Shut up,” Clint groans when he’s done hacking up a lung. “I’m out of practice. Three years ago, that move would have ended with my tongue in your mouth.”

Bucky makes a quiet noise that could be interpreted several different ways, although Clint has a solid bet on which one is right. He allows himself a self satisfied grin and chalks it up as a partial success.

“You’re a right awful guy, Romanoff,” Bucky informs him, failing at keeping a straight face. Clint, who isn’t about to take that sort of slander lying down, braces himself on one knee and swings the other leg over Bucky to straddle his hips.

“I know,” he says. “Is it working?”

-------------------------------------

Another night, Clint falls asleep on his own ragged 40s version of a sleeping bag. He wakes up the next morning on Bucky’s. The unfamiliar feeling of someone pressed against his back makes him tense for a moment, but he relaxes when Bucky squeezes his hand briefly. He rolls over and stares at Bucky through half-lidded eyes, and must look pretty damn confused because he sees a grin creep onto Bucky’s face.

“ You were having a nightmare, I think ,” Clint reads on his lips. He’s finally been taking off his hearing aids at night (now that he’s been regularly sleeping near Bucky, although he steers himself away from that train of thought as soon as it pops up), but Bucky has learned to enunciate and either tap Clint or throw something at him- hence the sleeping within throwing distance- first thing in the morning. The others haven’t yet, but sometimes Clint catches Bucky reminding them quietly or asking something just casually enough that he’s definitely repeating something someone else had said and Clint had missed.

“ Sorry ,” he says, inaudibly. He pretends not to notice the half-pained, half-appraising look Bucky gives him.

“ Don’t be ,” is his reply.

-----------------------

That’s how the best days begin. The worst ones begin the night before, with Bucky falling asleep next to him- then kick in like a gunshot wound when Clint wakes up alone and he’s retreated across the room.

That’s how the day that they attempt to break a German blockade goes. There’s a city behind it, full of civilians and cut off from supplies, according to the Major in the rapid debrief they get before they’re thrown in headfirst. Clint is leading a subset of four other men, all carrying longer range guns, to quietly take one of the ideal vantage points- a tall building with the windows kicked out on the outskirts of the town- for themselves.

He doesn’t learn any of their names. After Jennings, Banks, and George, he’s done his best to block them all out. Nameless deaths, his therapist has told him, are easier for the brain to process than named ones. Of course, ‘easier’ doesn’t mean easy, and Clint spends more time than he’s willing to show anyone else fiercely shoving down panic attacks, sick to his stomach, and-slash-or having nightmares.

It doesn't help that the other four are very quickly annoying the sympathy out of him.

He knows it’s a coping mechanism to chatter. But seriously. When they start talking about “gals back home” and the gross commentary that comes with that topic, Clint can feel a headache coming on.

“And listen,” Shitface #1 is saying, “all I’m sayin’ is that what she don’t know don’t hurt her. It’s a long way ‘tween here an’ Dakota.”

Shitface #2 claps him on the back of his helmet, which makes a thudding noise in the quiet late night that Clint winces at. “Yeah? And where exactly are you gonna find me a woman out here?”

“Town full of ‘em right here,” Shitface #1 replies. There is a general cacophony of laughter from Shitfaces 1 through 4 and Clint’s blood pressure rises to levels above those generally recommended by nine out of ten doctors. And he doesn’t even eat that much red meat. The women- all the people- in that town are being basically held hostage at the moment, deprived of their basic needs for this stupid war. The heroic US army. Yeah, right.

Then one of them cuffs Clint in the arm and tries to bring him into their conversation. “How ‘bout you, Fiver? Got a girl?” Clint’s mouth fills with bile every time someone calls him by the nickname Banks coined. He resists the urge to turn to his side and spit it in the guy's face.

“No,” he says tightly. Unfortunately, they take his stiffness for embarrassment, because they latch onto the topic like leeches. Bullies. Steve was right about them.

“Can’t see a dame lookin’ twice at him with hair like that,” Shitface #3 snickers. Clint scowls and refrains from touching his hair, an unfortunately common urge that he’s had to stamp down recently. Teasing and brushing it behind his ear subconsciously hasn’t been taken kindly to by his surrounding macho buzz-cut sporters. The micro-culture shocks get annoying quickly. “Looking at him thinkin’ he’s either a working dame ‘imself or a flit.”

Hypermasculine 40s men have a better gaydar than half the gay people Clint knows back in the 21st century. They trudge up a particularly steep hill and the burning in Clint’s thighs unfortunately does not distract him from the running commentary.

“Bet we could get him a gal if he stuck around Barnes for a while,” suggests Number Four. Followed by several macho affirmative noises.

He can’t help himself. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Clint asks, both curiously and testily.

Number One laughs and attempts to sling an arm around his shoulder, which he pointedly ducks out of reach of. “Barnes? Woulda thought he’d’a brought up his exploits to you by now, amount of time you two spend together.”

“Exploits,” Clint repeats flatly.

“Sarge? Yeah, damn doll dizzy, ‘e is,” Number Three jumps in. “Likes to brag about havin’ a girl on each arm back home.”

The night of the Stark Expo flashes in Clint’s head even as he frowns to himself, because that doesn't sound like his Bucky. The one back home or the one that has somehow become “his Bucky” here, too, because it’s clearly not the one that he shows other people. There’s a dangerous tint of pride or something like possessiveness in the thought and Clint swallows. Not a good sign.

Sometimes he forgets how incredibly stupid frankly everything he’s doing here is.

“Likes to brag a little too much,” says Number Two. “Now he don’t got a gal either, ‘cause every one in Brooklyn knows he’ll have a dance with anything that moves.”

“Good for the night, ain’t a gentleman enough to bring to the folks, what I heard,” is how Number Four puts it- who speaks in the New York drawl that’s become familiar to Clint by now.

The top of the hill brings a thought that worms its way into Clint’s head and immediately spreads like a parasite.

Good for the night.

Part of the act.

Did any of it ever mean anything to you?

Bucky.

“That’s enough,” Clint snaps. Luckily, they’re close enough to the blockade perimeter that he can justify the command for silence. He closes his eyes briefly and gulps down chilled night air to flush the shakiness the parasite has leeched into his system. Putting a hand on his gun offers little comfort, although he could always just shoot the four of them. There were quite a few very convenient Nazis a couple hundred yards ahead. They just didn’t make it. Unfortunate, I know. Tragic. Anyway.

Reluctantly, he gestures forward and they move in.

-------------------------------------

The attempt to break the blockade goes terribly. They’re vastly outnumbered, Clint can tell more than anyone from the roof as he shoots down krauts until he realises he’s fifteen shots away from being out of bullets. The familiar grim acceptance of running out of long range amo sets in- more grim than usual, given that none of his bullets can be reused, unlike maybe 75% of his arrows. On a good day.

He makes his exit when he spots a tank rolling down the street towards the building, jumping out a lower window in the back to slip away, unseen, as it implodes behind him. Tony would be scandalised at the lack of respect for public infrastructure (not that he causes any less damage to it, he just usually buys the buildings first or immediately afterwards, which makes them technically private infrastructure). He also tries not to think about how un-jokingly dead his four former companions may or may not be. He’d lost track of them early on.

Fighting from the ground sucks .

Riveting discovery, chorus Nat, Steve, and every other non-flying Avenger in his head. Which is probably a trauma response. But it does suck. A lot. There’s really nothing poetic or worth describing about it. He shoots people. Watches people get shot. Explosions leave his ears ringing even longer than they do for everyone else, which is not super convenient.

When he looks back, it’s with half frustration and half despair that Clint finds that they’ve pushed the blockade back by barely a few blocks. He can still easily see the road they came from. Too many bodies lay unmoving on sidewalks. In the midst of a collapsed wall, a middle aged man is slumped against an overturned cart, blood trickling from his nose. He’s not wearing a uniform.

Clint shoots more Nazis. Less and less people around him are doing the same.

Had he not been out of bullets when James Morrison shouted in his ear, the world would have been minus one James Morrison. As it is, he leans against the side of a building, clutching his side with a useless gun at his side. “WHAT?” He yells over the sound of explosions.

A shadow flits over them. Great. Airplanes with swastikas on them. He’d been hoping not to see those in his lifetime.

“BACK!” Is all he catches, and his heart sinks. He risks a glance back out at the street. There are barely any non-grey uniforms left. Most other people must have either gotten the memo before him, or… well. The obvious second option.

One person his sweep of their surroundings doesn’t find is Bucky. Clint looks back at James urgently. “BARNES?” He shouts. As in, where is my partner of complicated relationship?

James, unfortunately, takes it instead as, did Barnes order the retreat? “MAJOR. EVERYONE GO. HURRY!” He adds. He looks terrified, which is situationally appropriate but still an odd look on him.

Reluctantly, Clint follows him, bent low and moving with his back to a wall whenever possible. He holds a knife in his hand, but he can only kill one person with it if someone starts shooting and he’s forced to throw it. James seems to have amo left, which would probably be more effective in Clint’s hands, but he isn’t about to ask a guy for his gun while they’re in the middle of a firefight. One that they’re losing, at that.

Clint’s eyes catch on the dead man without a uniform as they pass by and he briefly slows. There are people in the city they’re running from, he remembers with a gut-wrenching stab of reality. Or maybe that’s the bullet wound in his side. People with no food, or supplies, who can’t move. James catches his eye.

“Suicide,” he warns- a short answer, even though they’re far enough that the explosions have quieted to a level that allowed for full sentences. Clint opens his mouth, then remembers that his therapist said ‘ i’m suicidal ’ isn’t a good punchline, apparently (he privately disagrees), and closes it again. He speeds up.

When they eventually get back, Clint is immediately fighting off medics, pacing the street that marks the entry to their makeshift abandoned-city camp. One of them, a woman in pants, an oversized shirt, and a dress torn down the middle to transform it into a coat, has a look in her eye like she won’t take no for an answer.

“It’s clean,” he promises her, although he refuses to uncover the gash in his side with his hands. “I already checked, the thing went in and out the other side.”

“You could bleed to death,” she snaps at him.

“If I was going to, I would have already,” Clint counters. He slumps against a fence that is no longer fencing anything in but a bunch of rubble, setting his jaw. “Listen,” he says quietly. “I’m sure you know more than I do. I’ll come find you. I just-” he grimaces- “I’m waiting for someone to come back.”

She purses her lips, but doesn’t reply for several long seconds. With her black hair pulled halfway back in a more intricate braid than Clint could pull off on a battlefield, she reminds him briefly of Kate. He looks at the floor instead. When he looks back up, she’s gone. A silent approval. Clint sags with relief, and also because standing upright hurts.

And he waits.

Clint is well versed in the art of the anxious post-fight wait. But it doesn’t get easier- the tenth time, the hundredth time, the world still seems to slow to a crawl as he scans every dirt-caked, haunted face. He recognizes a few, which releases an infinitely small amount of tension in his lungs each time it’s connected to a functioning body. Most men are leaning on one another or on one of the endlessly determined doctors, who drag them into one of the more well-preserved buildings with strength Clint himself couldn’t muster at the moment. More often than he’s like, he’s passed by a body laying still on a stretcher. He swallows with difficulty, but searches those faces briefly too, just in case.

After what feels like hours, the crowd begins to thin and Clint presses the torn strip of fabric he’s been using to staunch his bleeding bullet wound harder against his side to stop his hands from shaking. An ill-advised solution: the sudden pressure makes him flinch so hard that he nearly misses a familiar face limping into view from around the corner.

Almost.

“ Barnes ,” Clint half-calls, half-winces. He hauls himself up to stand unaided by the wall and immediately almost falls over, because of course. Luckily, Bucky must hear him, because his head jerks to the side and Clint watches his face immediately collapse into relief.

“Romanoff.” Bucky hurries across the street, ducking around an exhausted-looking group that have stumbled in, to be met with devoutly un-frazzled nurses and the mostly un-injured men they’ve enlisted to help. He grips Clint by the shoulders, as if to check and make sure he’s real, which is actually a very helpful gesture because Clint is struggling to stand unaided at the moment.

Closing his eyes briefly, Clint lets out a sigh, releasing most of the anxiety that has been gnawing at him. “You’re late,” is all he manages. Bucky’s face twitches, caught between amusement and exhaustion (and probably a little bit of exasperation).

“I was looking for you,” he explains, his voice hoarse. “The building- the one you were scouting- I went to find you when we had to pull out, and-”

“Collapsed,” Clint guesses. Bucky nods. “Yeah, I saw the tank pull up and didn’t stay much longer.”

“So you do have some common sense.”

Clint laughs at the unexpected jab, to which his ribs complain loudly and cut him off into a groan of pain. Bucky shifts automatically, leaning his own weight against a wall so he can pull Clint closer and support him. They’ve both done it for each other enough times at this point that the pang of guilt that leaning on someone (physically or otherwise) normally sets off in Clint’s head has faded to nearly nothing and he accepts the support without hesitance.

“The others?” Bucky asks quietly.

Staring at the stone-cobbled road, Clint shakes his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen them.”

I wasn’t looking , he wants to add. I was looking for you .

But the sentiment isn’t one that Bucky would appreciate, he knows. Because Bucky is the sort of person who learns names and faces even though there’s a more than realistic chance the faces will end up six feet under and the names on a never ending list of casualties. If he’d been here first, he would have been searching every face just to see the face, not waiting for another one, an equal amount of tension unravelling with each soldier who came back alive- even the ones he didn’t recognize.

Clint’s not sure if it’s just because he’s been losing people for longer than Bucky has that he isn’t that way, or if Bucky is just a better person than he is. Or maybe both.

“I wasn’t sure you were coming back,” he mutters instead.

Bucky leans his head of Clint’s shoulder, even though they’re in public, because everything is permissible when you’ve just been through hell and come back still breathing. “Don’t worry so much,” he chides with the determined undertone that never leaves his voice. “I’ll always come back.”

Clint says nothing, because he doesn't make promises he can’t keep.

Chapter Text

The next time, Bucky doesn’t come back.

At some point between the constant fighting, the near-equal perils of navigating his… whatever it was with Bucky, the increase in losses as they pushed further east, and being forced onto the sidelines of the most recent push by a stupid bullet wound, Clint runs out of panic to bring to this fucking disco.

This happens sometimes: on some of his longer, more dangerous missions. Back when he lived with the circus, when he had to perform some particularly terrifying stunt with probably illegally few safety measures. He reaches some maximum threshold for stress and fear and panic and the ‘fuck it, it literally could not get any worse’ switch in his subconscious flips. Something else has to move in and fill the emotional void.

That’s when Clint gets really fucking angry.

The first person put in the unfortunate crosshairs (metaphorically- for now) of this is the Major. He’s not sure if the man actually has a name, and if so, he’s never heard it and can’t bring himself to particularly care at the moment. The Major’s office sits near the back of the camp- a tent, at the moment, since they’ve staked out in a loose semi-perimeter around the west end of a Nazi-infested city. Without a door to knock on, not that he would have bothered, Clint storms into the tent unannounced.

“Where are they?” He demands, sans a greeting or the usual pleasantries. This is the direct result of him not feeling very fucking pleasant.

The Major looks up much slower than Clint preferred. Didn’t he know that people were missing? His men? Too few had come back for everyone MIA to be a casualty, those who had reported a mass prisoner-of-war situation having gone down in the city. Clearly not, because he didn’t seem nearly as concerned as he should be.

“There’s been-” Clint starts, before the Major cuts him off.

“I know the circumstances,” he interrupts.

Clint stares at him. “So?” He prompts, waiting for the ‘and they’ve already been found and will be back safe very soon,’ which is the only reply that warranted how calm and matter-of-fact he was.

Folding his hands, the Major sighs. “I am aware, Specialist Romanoff, that you are a newer recruit,” he says in an infuriatingly patronizing voice. Although everything is sort of infuriating to Clint right now. But like, especially infuriating. “But losing men is a terrible fact of war. I, for one, find solace that they are at least alive, and that perhaps after the war-”

“After the war?” Clint demands, snarling. He steps forward, flattening his palms on the Major’s desk. “With all due respect-” which is none, he thinks bitterly- “that’s not for another- it might not be for another year. Or more. You’ve got to know what sort of conditions they hold people in out there. There’s- they could die before the war is over.”

“Could. They could die,” the Major repeats, leaning aware from Clint with a disapproving twitch of his mouth. “Whereas if we send more men in, it is almost sure that they will die. I will not have needless death on my hands.”

Needless death, there’s a joke. Everyone here has needless death on their hands, Clint wants to snap. You and I most likely the most of all.

Instead, he stands up straight and narrows his eyes. “So your plan is to let them rot there?”

“My plan, soldier, is to win this war,” the Major replies, frustration finally leaking into his voice. Good. Good! He should be angry. Clint glares at him and tries, by sheer force of will, to impart a fraction of his own anger into the fucking asshole.

“Fine,” he spits, his hands curling into fists at his side. “You do that.”

“Going after them alone will be suicide,” the Major tells him, reading his mind. “I will not allow it.”

“First of all, you don’t allow shit, bitch,” Clint’s mouth says before his brain can catch up. Ah, well. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. To his credit, the Major keeps most of the scandalized surprise out of his expression, although he does raise poised eyebrows in mild disbelief. Well, go big or go home, right? “Second,” he continues, undaunted. “You don’t know what I can do.” He tries to sound more confident in himself than he actually is. Luckily, he has a lot of practice.

Unluckily, the Major still sees through the act. “You’re a good shot, Romanoff, one of the best I’ve seen. But even you have no hope of coming back alive from that base.”

“So they’re at a base, got it.” Clint files the information away breezily. “Anything else I should know?”

He can tell the Major’s patience is wearing thin. He tends to have that effect. Seeing no use in continuing the conversation, he turns sharply to make his exit. The the Major clears his throat.

“You should know,” he says (annoyingly. fuck this guy), “that Howard Stark arrives later this week.”

Against his will, Clint stops, because fuck Howard, obviously, but whenever the name Stark gets thrown into a situation, Clint’s chances of survival do technically maybe increase by a little bit. Or something. God, he could never tell Tony that, his head might explode. “And I should care because…” he replies reluctantly without turning around.

“You should care,” the Major echos, “because he brings the prototype for the weaponry you requested.”

Aww, inconvenient timing of very convenient resources, no.

Clint chews his lip for a moment, debating internally. On one hand, his entire body is screaming at him to go save Bucky right now. On the other hand, there’s a 99% chance he’ll die if he tries. With a bow- a Stark-made one, even if it’s the 40s version- his chances of death go down to like, 75%. Which is pretty much on par with his usual odds.

On a third hand, he’ll have to talk to and probably briefly work with Howard Stark. Which. Ew.

But on the fourth hand, Bucky is worth it. One hundred percent.

Ugh. Fine. He repeats this sentiment out loud to the Major, ugh included. “When does he get here?” He adds.

“Four Days from tomorrow morning,” the Major replies, like a smug asshole. He looks back down at his desk. “You should know that officially, I can not endorse this venture, and even if you come back, you may face charges of desertion and unapproved action.”

That, at least, Clint has to do exactly zero debating about.

“Fuck if I care,” he declares. In one last act of Barton-esque insolence, he dismisses himself out of the tent.

------------------------

Luckily for everyone in Clint’s vicinity, including Clint himself, who is about three hours from fuck it we balling into the heavily armed HYDRA base when the man actually shows, Howard Stark arrives early in the morning the expected four days later.

In the few brief times Clint has shown his face since Bucky didn’t come back- which included storming into the Major’s office periodically for updates and circling the camp in a slightly frightening and feverish sort of pacing- Clint has spotted the construction of a new structure that dominated the center clearing of the camp. It takes him two or three stop-motion glimpses to realize what it is.

A stage. Bucky is fucking missing and they’re building a fucking stage. Every time he sees it, it fuels him a little bit longer. Clint misses energy drinks, but just rage does fine in a pinch. He’s starting to understand where Banner got the motivation for all those PhDs from.

Also, he can’t imagine what it’s for. Are they bringing a fucking Broadway show to re-moralize the troops? He hopes not, actually. He hasn’t been a Broadway person ever since Rogers: The Musical, which he had watched drunk off his ass with Sam and Bucky, all three of them gleefully taking shots in the balcony box seats Sam had been offered every time they cringed or whenever Bucky pulled a face like a mother whose child had just walked in covered in mud. Steve himself had refused to see it, but publicly thanked the academy or whatever, donated money to some theater charity, and gone out for dinner with the cast and crew (the press praised him for his “humility” and “support of the arts” while the Avengers ragged on him for his “cowardice” [Nat] and “boringness” [Tony]).

In any case, they were probably not gearing up for Rogers the musical. There was a very low likelihood Clint was going to have to see some guy dressed as Captain America spouting cheesy lines about patriotism and stuff.

Anyway. No matter how early it was for normal people, the camp had been up and running since dawn- so when Howard’s plane pulled in (with a deafening, impossible to ignore sort of noise), dozens of soldiers peered at it and dropped what they were doing to hurry over and check out the newcomer. Clint, who had been up and running for just about four and a half days now, lingered where he’d set up post in the tallest of many trees encircling the camp area in wait of Howard futzing Stark.

The man the myth the bitch stepped out of the plane with pilot’s goggles strapped to his face- because of course he flew the plane- and waved cheerfully to his beaten-down, dirt-covered admirers. The contrast between them and him, in his sports coat and khakis, was striking. From his perch, Clint hunkered down closer to the patch of leaves concealing him and scowled. Rich people. Being friends (ish) with a few of them had done nothing to diminish his hatred.

Howard descended the stairs and was immediately met with handshakes and cheers, because obviously. Clint, on the other hand, was more concerned with the second person who slipped out of the plane, under the cover of Stark’s incredible and unintentional distracting abilities.

Aww, Peggy Carter, YES.

Possibly one of three people in the 40s who could lift Clint’s mood skirted the crowd and vanished into the Major’s tent as he silently celebrates her arrival. If she was here… well, maybe working with Howard for the day wouldn’t be so terrible after all.

Speaking of work, it was time to get to it. Clint’s adrenaline, which he thought had flatlined at maximum throughout the past few days, spiked somehow higher as he clambered down the tree and made his way back into camp. By the time he reached the tent on the opposite side, Peggy was exiting, now accompanied by a thankfully un-swarmed Howard. Neither looked very pleased, but when Peggy spotted Clint her expression softened slightly (in a way that only those close to her and also Clint, who had been friends with I-don’t-smile Natasha for years, would notice).

“Specialist Romanoff,” she greets him. They shook hands. In her heels, she’s as tall as Clint and certainly taller than Howard, who must have been the benefactor of Tony’s height genes. She very kindly declines to comment on Clint’s definitely more like shit than usual appearance, which included dark purple eye bags (at least they matched his aesthetic) and hair tangled with leaves and various tree-parts (inevitable when you spend as much time in trees as Clint does).

“Agent Carter,” he replies. “It’s good to see you.”

“And you,” Peggy replies, which makes Clint feel like the winner of the entire universe. “Please, just Peggy is fine.”

Never mind. Now Clint feels like the winner of the entire universe. “Then just Clint is fine, too,” he replies with as close to a grin as he’s come in four and a half days. Then he looks slightly to the left and his expression sours. “Howard,” he adds tonelessly.

Peggy might not smile much, but at least she doesn’t smile falsely the way that Howard does. “Clint, was it?” He replies, his eyes betraying a blatant I don’t actually care, I’m better than you, etc. “Most people call me Mr. Stark- or Sir, but that’s just my employees.” Which is everyone, is the implication in his short and equally fake-sounding laugh.

Thank God for Tony nearly dying and subsequently learning morals- and more importantly, thank God for Pepper Potts- because this was not something Clint would be able to work with on a daily basis without shooting someone or throwing himself off a roof. Or some combination of both.

“Good for them,” Clint tells him with the same bland-as-army-oatmeal cheerfulness. “You have something for me.”

Howard looks him up and down, like, what the hell is wrong with this one? It’s a very easily recognizable look for Clint, who considers it an accomplishment if he gets it more than six times in a week. Howard’s specifically reminds him of the way Tony looks at stubbornly malfunctioning machines, analyzing what chip he needs to replace, what wire he needs to tweak in order for it to boot up the way he wants it. The difference is, Tony never looks at people that way.

(Slowly, but with appropriately superhuman determination, he’s been learning the difference between people and machines. He claims it’s a personal project, but Clint quietly agrees with Natasha and Steve that it was definitely Bucky’s arrival that kick-started the change.)

“Not yet,” Howard says stiffly. “I have a prototype. I usually workshop custom products with those on the receiving end. Make a few changes to better suit it to their needs, and then I’ll have something for you.”

Clint very badly wants to argue, but he presses his lips together and swallows his words back down his throat: if Tony and Bruce are any indication, inventors don’t take kindly to being told to change their scientific process. And Clint needs that bow, like, yesterday, so he doesn’t have time to argue and doesn’t want to disappoint Peggy by stealing the damn thing and dissapearing. So he sets his jaw and nods. “Right. How long will it take?”

It’s worth it when Peggy casts him a subtly approving look and a small nod. Even when Howard’s voice regains its obnoxious that’s right, listen to me swagger. “Well, I’m officially cleared to be here for five days,” he begins, glancing off to their right at the equally obnoxious stage being built. “The plan is to take today off, get started tomorrow- it should only take a day or two, but-”

“I need it by tonight,” Clint interrupts bluntly.

Howard’s left eye twitches. Tony’s does the same thing when he’s annoyed, usually at the press or someone telling him no. Luckily, Peggy steps in- literally, shifting between the pissed off inventor and the even more pissed off and also adrenaline filled to the point of nearly shaking and also kind of hungry archer. “I don’t see the harm in that,” she cuts in smoothly. “We can work first, play later, Howard. For the war effort.”

There’s a beat of tense silence. Then, with a long-suffering sigh, Howard shrugs. “Well, I suppose I can make it work. If the misses says so.”

“She does,” Peggy replies primly, ignoring his hostility. Clint shoves his hands in his pockets so he doesn’t punch something (Howard’s face).

“Great,” he says instead. “Take the lead, Howard. Shall we?”

Howard is in no mood to respond (probably for the best), so Peggy does it for him. “We shall,” she replies, with a hint of a smile tinting her incredibly well painted lips.

--------------------------

They follow the worse Mr. Stark to a hastily erected tent behind the stage, which is unfortunately right next to another temporary covering that is even more unfortunately filled with a few dozen women, their hair as intricately done as Peggy’s (although not quite as neat). As the motley trio walked by, Clint caught more than a few of them staring warily at their surroundings- too warily to be doctors or agents like Peggy.

“Showgirls,” Peggy explains quietly as they pass by. Howard is given a few considerably less wary looks and looks annoyingly pleased with himself and his stupid facial hair.

Well, that makes sense. Given, like, the stage. Still, Clint crosses his arms as they walk. “Why?” He mutters irritably- then backtracks, because even angry he’s not an asshole. To people who don’t deserve someone being an asshole to them (cough not Howard cough). “I mean, it’s not like I mind them, like, individually. They probably also don’t want to be here.” Same, Clint thinks sympathetically. “But… why?”

Peggy looks ever so slightly displeased, which means that she’s probably internally just as angry as Clint, if not angrier. “Morale, apparently,” she replies as they finally duck into the tent. A few bags and boxes sit on wobbly wooden tables; Howard walks over to one of them and unravels it into a long line of tools that Clint doesn’t recognize. He’s pretty sure there’s a screwdriver in the middle somewhere. Otherwise, he pretty much has nothing. Unfortunately, one does not learn tech-y stuff by osmosis just through proximity to Tony.

Howard tugs a box out from under the rickety table, long and flat, and Clint momentarily forgets about the showgirls and screwdrivers and annoyance because holy FUCK, he missed having a bow. As many jokes as he made about being saddled with a prehistoric weapon, he’s grown a strong enough affinity for them deep enough that he feels a part of himself shift and pang at the thought of holding one again. Then Howard tosses him something sleek, black, and curved, and that part clicks back into place.

It’s definitely not the caliber of his bow back home, but it’s no renaissance fair prop either (he would know). It’s light and easy to grip, and there are joints above and below his hand where it probably collapses into something easier to carry on the move. Clint looks back up at Howard, who is doing his infuriatingly smug look again, and suppresses the urge to roll his eyes.

“So?” Howard prompts. Clint grits his teeth and swallows his annoyance, because it’s going to help him save Bucky.

“It’ll work,” he says. “Thanks.” Well. Polite enough. He glances back at the table. “Did you bring arrows, too, or am I just supposed to hit people with this?”

Almost begrudgingly, Howard gestures to a bag on the end of the table. Clint marches over to it and tugs on the tassel until it falls open, revealing arrows of similar material and quality. All with normal tips, but he’s faced his share of challenges without fancy trick arrows. The real fancy trick is the friends we made along the way, Tony is fond of joking whenever he runs out halfway through a fight. To which Clint usually replies by hitting an impossible shot or generally showing off with a regular arrow, as if to say, the real fancy trick is me, motherfucker.

“And will those work as well?” Howard’s voice cuts through his reverie drily and Clint decides it’s time to pull a the real fancy trick is me, motherfucker.

In the span of perhaps five mississippi seconds, there are five arrows sticking out of the wall, forming a circle inches from the circumference of Howard’s head. Then Clint pivots and shoots the handkerchief out of Peggy’s uniform pocket, then turns on the US army emblem emblazoned on the tent flap and shoots a hole directly through the center of the star. From outside, someone yelps with surprise, and Clint subsequently decides for both the structural integrity of the tent and the general safety of the camp to stop shooting things (for now).

Howard looks terrified. Peggy looks impressed. So he’s accomplished his intended goal.

Still, Clint’s hands itch to pull another arrow out of the bag- he hasn’t even taken any long distance shots yet, or hit a moving target. But there will be time for that- particularly the latter- later.

“They’re good,” he admits. Howard recovers from his shock enough to turn up his nose at the confirmation.

“I do not work in good, Specialist Romanoff. I work in perfection,” he snaps. He strides across the tent and beckons for the bow, which Clint very reluctantly hands over. “I don’t expect you to know what sort of modifications-”

“The arrow by your nose is too heavily weighted on the tip,” Clint interrupts, counting off a list on his fingers. “Compare it against that one-” he gestures to the arrow now impaling Peggy’s handkerchief to the wall- “and the others, too. If you can’t take weight off, add more on- but evenly distribute it. The heavier ones can be useful sometimes. As for the bow,” he adds, “more tension on the string.”

“I ran the calculations,” Howard objects, eyes narrowing. “An increase in tension any further could snap the body.”

Clint frowns. His bow back home has more, and it hasn’t snapped. Then again, his bow back home is made of vibranium, and this one (although high quality) clearly isn’t. “Fine. I’ll make it work. But it’s three quarters of an inch longer on the top than on the bottom. Fix that.” He pauses, then begrudgingly adds, “please.”

There’s a brief pause in which Howard looks like he’s considering snapping the bow himself and storming off in rich person dramatic fervor, but eventually he sets it down on the table and turns to his tools. “By tonight,” he replies, a dismissal. Peggy and Clint take the hint and exit the tent through the front flap.

The tent had been insulated; when they walk outside the full force of fall-turning-into-winter hits them and Clint crosses his arms tightly over his chest. His uniform has done little to keep the cold out, but it’s better than being stuck in Russia in a t-shirt (long story). He has thick boots, better made than most of the other soldiers, and the pants he’d shown up in fit well under the itchy brownish ones he’d been given. Peggy slips gloves out of her pocket.

“How did you know that?” She asks as she slides them on. “About the three-quarter inches.”

“It comes with being able to judge distances, I guess. Three quarters of an inch is still technically a distance.” Clint shrugs. He can faintly see his breath in the air, but it doesn’t cloud up in front of him in full winter fashion. “How did you get stuck babysitting the millionaire?” He asks in return.

“Convenient timing,” Peggy replies tightly, as if she really means inconvenient timing. “I had to stop by to check on the state of affairs here, and to escort the show.”

“Why do they have you escorting the show?” Clint frowns, shooting another annoyed glance at the gaudy stage.

“Sexism, mostly.” Peggy’s either really good at sounding unbothered or really experienced with it to the point that she no longer is bothered. Clint hates the feeling he gets that it’s probably both, but says nothing because Peggy moves on quickly. “But I also volunteered. I thought the girls might feel more comfortable if their accompanying superior was… well. You understand.”

And he does. Even he feels a little safer around Peggy, as if no one would dare mess with him by extent. He feels calmer, too, walking around and performing the menial tasks she’s been sub-assigned alongside the past-slash-future founder of SHIELD. Time passes faster than it has the last four and a half painstaking days. A few times, he even feels something vaguely like calm and nearly confident that things are going to turn out okay.

There are a vast multitude of things that realistically do not look like they will turn out okay, but Clint has always been good at ignoring his issues.

Peggy talks a bit about her life at home, and mostly her duties during the war. Clint talks a little bit about the war, and mostly about his life back home. He has to catch himself a time or two referencing something that doesn’t exist yet (Hulk, Star Wars, Tony’s strange obsession with making them watch Disney channel movies on movie night, most things generally related to Tony, cotton candy flavored ice cream, and the like). They work and walk in silence for long chunks of time, but it’s a comforting one.

Then, as he and Peggy eat dinner in a separate tent far from the noise and chaos of the main camp (perks), Howard walks in with a re-wrapped package and Clint snaps back into complete the objective mode. Abandoning his tray where it sits, he accepts the modified weapon with open arms.

“Is it done?” He asks.

“Of course,” Howard tells him, with a jaunty and more than a little cocky wave of his hand. He adjusts his suit, which has significantly more spots of dust than this morning, and nods at Peggy. “Simple fixes. If you’d just like to try it out- preferably away from my head this time, if you please-”

“No time,” Clint cuts him off, slinging the quiver across his shoulders and pressing the joints experimentally. Sure enough, it folds down into a cylinder small enough to tuck into the sleeve on the outside of said quiver, or into his pocket if he needs to. “Listen, I appreciate it, but I have-” a friend (boyfriend? partner? fucking idiot?) to go save “-things to go do.”

Peggy and Howard exchange a glance he can’t read. “You’re not going to stay for the show?” Peggy asks carefully.

Clint stares. “The show we just spent the entire day implying was fucking stupid?”

He gets furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips in response. “He doesn’t know,” Howard says, unhelpfully.

“Yes, I gathered that,” Peggy replies, like an icon. She turns to Clint, who is wondering what exactly the hell he missed. “Clint, there’s something you should know about what happened to your friend.”

She could only be referencing one person, and Clint is pretty sure he knows exactly what happened. “Steve? What does Steve have to do with the-” He cuts himself off as the poster proudly framed in the corner of Tony’s office and less proudly regarded by Steve, who tries his damnedest to steal it at least once a week, bubbles up in his head. “Oh. Oh, shit.”

“Yes,” Peggy agrees. “Oh, shit.”

Chapter Text

Clint’s first thought when the curtains close on the official Worst Captain America Based Media Since Rogers: The Musical show is along the lines of what the fuck, America.

Followed near immediately by: what the fuck, Steve.

His Steve is still terrible at press conferences and addressing the general public (contrary to popular belief), but at least he knows how to read a room. Although Clint does wince with sympathy, he also turns his hearing aids off in an attempt to cut off the tidal wave of secondhand embarrassment.

Still, that doesn’t stop him from immediately splitting from the crowd as Steve is replaced by a line of women in similar but infinitely more impractical outfits. Although Steve’s current Cap outfit doesn’t look like it could exactly face battle either. And, as Tony would say, it does nothing for his ass.

He finds Steve with Peggy and an open sketchbook just as it starts to rain. They look like they’re having a private moment of sorts, speaking in low, urgent voices. Well, Peggy’s is urgent. Steve’s sounds more hopeless. A hopeless Steve is anything but a fun Steve, and he isn’t eager to interrupt whatever heterosexuality might be brewing in there, but the rain is getting rough. Despite Tony’s claims that his hearing aids are “waterproof,” he isn’t quite willing to test the limits of currently irreplaceable technology so Steve can have a self pity session.

“I finally got everything I wanted,” he hears Steve saying. “And I’m wearing tights.”

Wow. Barring the aforementioned lack of ass, Clint will not stand for tights slander. He’s done some of his best performances in tights.

“Can’t be any less comfortable than these torture devices they have us wearing,” he says by way of greeting, ducking under the awning. The uniforms haven’t gotten any less awful to wear. Not that this is his biggest problem, but the chafing is insane. “On the bright side, you look great.” He pauses. “Well, you look better than the last time I saw you.”

Steve’s head shoots up from his mournful ground staring to confirm the reappearance of his partner in misfit-ness and although he doesn’t quite smile, some of the tension disappears from his face. “Clint?” He says, almost tentatively.

“At your service, Captain,” Clint confirms, scuffing at the ground with his boots. This feels like a reunion hug moment, but a) Clint has never been good at initiating physical contact and b) he can’t even keep track of 21st century social norms, much less those of his current time period. He settles for a little wave and a nod at Peggy. “What, Peggy didn’t mention I was here?”

Peggy shakes her head in friendly exasperation. “The Captain only just finished his performance, Clint. I’ve been with him barely a minute longer than you.”

Clint makes a face of mock disappointment. “You buried the lede, then,” he replies. “Good to see you, Rogers. You look…” more familiar “…bigger.”

“And you look just about the same,” Steve replies as Clint leans against the back of the stage, wringing rainwater out of the ends of his hair.

“I know. You would think I’d’ve had a haircut by now, but there’s a shocking lack of barbers out here.” That gets another almost smile. Big Steve already looks much more weighted down (pun intended) than Tiny Steve did- radiating weight-of-the-world energy- although they both ooze the same intensity just by proximity. Clint already feels like standing up straighter and watching his language (well. maybe). “I’ve got a few new bullet holes, though.”

Steve does the adorably concerned once over face at that, his eyebrows furrowed, and Clint heads him off before he can even speak. “I’m fine, by the way. You should see the other guy.”

“Men,” Peggy sighs.

“Idiot,” Steve agrees. “You and Buck, always-” he stops suddenly and stands so quickly that Clint tries to take a step back and hits his head on a crate. Ow. As if he wasn’t close enough to a concussion. But he has more pressing problems: namely, Steve, who is looking at him with a terribly hopeful face. “I can’t believe I forgot. Clint, where’s Bucky?”

Clint’s heart plummets, and it clearly shows on his face because Steve’s hopeful expression crumbles into something sickeningly anxious. More than anxious- more like terrified. “He isn’t-” He chokes on the last word. “Clint, tell me he’s not-”

“He’s not dead,” Clint says hurriedly; then feels almost guilty at the relief that crashes across Steve’s face. He chews his already bitten-raw lip and reminds himself that it’s not his place to be upset. Steve has known him longer, Steve is the one who must be feeling even worse than Clint has for the past four days. This is neither the time nor place for Clint to need comforting. He releases a slow breath. “But he’s not here, either.”

Steve looks up with a hollow look already haunting the corners of his eyes, like he already knows the answer to the question he asks. “Where is he?”

Luckily for Clint, who finds himself opening and closing his mouth wordlessly, Peggy steps in. “Two hundred men from the 107th were sent into a city directly to the East earlier this week,” she tells him, only the barest hint of grief allowed into the edges of her voice. “Barely fifty came back.”

“I’ve been checking the casualty sheet every day,” Clint manages to add around the catch in his throat. “Sergeant Barnes isn’t on it. But he isn’t here either.”

“Prisoners,” Steve correctly deduces. He glances back and forth at the other two. “And no one has attempted a rescue yet?” Taking their silence as a no, anger creeps into the fear-filled expression. “Have they even planned one?”

“Steve,” Peggy tries, too calmly. “They’re twenty miles behind enemy lines. Whether or not I agree with the decision-”

“I have,” Clint volunteers quietly. They both turn sharply on him and he lifts his chin. “I’m leaving to find him. Tonight.” He casts an apologetic glance at Peggy. “That’s why I needed that bow.”

“A bow?” Steve interrupts.

“I’ll catch you up later,” Clint tells him. Assuming he doesn’t die, then assuming he can find his way back without dying, then assuming he won’t be immediately discharged and then killed in hostile 40s war territory on his own. That was a lot of assumptions, so he kept them to himself. He grips the strap holding the quiver across his back. “I would have left earlier,” he explains, “but I needed this to have a shot at surviving.”

“A slim one,” Peggy replies, tilting her head.

“A bigger one if I go,” Steve says.

Clint chews his lip some more and tastes metal on his tongue. On one hand, the plan was to go alone, and the shield Steve is holding isn’t exactly the vibranium asset that he’s grown to appreciate. On the other hand, Steve is making another Classic Steve Face- the one he makes when he has his mind on something that it’s going to be impossible to talk him out of. This Classic Steve Face has been featured in “discussions” such as The Narrowly Avoided Accords Fiasco, The What Do We Do With Bucky Question (nothing- he does what he wants), and The Great Is Stacking +2s and/or +4s Legal In Uno Debate (arguably the most high stakes of the bunch). Just to name a few.

Anyway, the point is that he knows that face, and he knows what will come out of disagreeing with it. Plus, shield and muscles or not, Steve is always better to have on your team (including in Uno). “Then we go together,” he proposes after a tense moment.

Although he looks similarly torn at agreeing, Steve nods shortly and decisively for probably similar reasons. Plus, the goal of ‘save Bucky’ is a unifying one that comes before any other argument for both him and Steve.

Peggy, on the other hand, looks less willing to jump on board with their probably suicidal plan. She crosses her arms in a way that demands to be addressed and, after a moment of silent ‘you do it’ ‘no, you do it’ between Steve and Clint, Steve speaks up.

“Are you going to stop us?” he asks quietly.

A beat of silence passes. Please say no, he prays internally, because he really doesn’t want to disappoint The Peggy Carter when they inevitably go anyway. He can handle Nazis, but it might actually kill him if Peggy was disappointed in him.

“Unofficially,” Peggy finally says, glancing at her watch. “Unofficially, I have a plane and a pilot. Which is- that is to say, would be- a good way to get to Austria quickly. If I were to support your decision to go completely rogue and possibly undermine any rescue plan that the Major and the Colonel may or may not be in the process of creating.” She pauses to raise her eyebrows, as if to say, there isn’t one. “Which, officially, I do not endorse, and both unofficially and officially would tell you is completely suicidal, extremely stupid-” she gives them both a long, calculating look- “and also very brave.”

Clint coughs down a laugh. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.

“Of course, Agent Carter,” Steve echoes, clearly fighting to stifle a glowing look. Peggy waves both of them off.

“Peggy will do,” she tells them, turning smartly around. Even as the rain continues to pound, Clint and Steve hurry to follow her out of the tent. “This is no longer army business.”

Good, Clint thinks. He could use a little non-army business.

---------------------------

On the bright side, not walking to Austria is pretty nice.

On the not-so-bright side, Howard Stark.

It takes Steve about five minutes and a comment that goes right over Clint’s head about fondue for his newly jacked bestie to be in complete agreement with him about the assholeness of their pilot.

“This is your transponder,” Peggy tells them, handing the device that seems far more breakable than Clint would prefer to Steve. “Activate it when you’re ready and it will lead us straight to you.”

Clint gets the feeling they’re not going to be able to rely on a quick, quiet exit. Steve tucks it in his pocket, although he looks equally dubious. “Are you sure this thing works?” He asks.

“It’s been tested more than you, pal,” Howard calls from the front seat.

Tiny Steve’s beat up face from the alleyway flashes through Clint’s head as he takes a look at the shiny, undamaged piece of tech. “I doubt it,” he mutters. Steve, who is close enough to hear him, looks just a little bit pleased with himself.

Then people start shooting at them.

For once, Clint finds himself thinking as they scramble into motion (and are subsequently tossed right back into their seats by Howard’s supposedly smooth piloting skills), it would be great to have a nice moment that doesn’t end in incredible violence.

Alas, the universe has other plans for him. He follows Steve in a shaky dash towards the back door, which Steve wrenches open. The sharp sounds of the engine and the gunfire outside reach decibels previously thought impossible. Clint winces and fumbles with the dial on his hearing aids. By the time he adjusts it to reasonable levels, Steve is crouching in front of the door, apparently about to jump out of the plane. Peggy looks unhappy with this development, which is a valid response and also one that Steve is definitely going to ignore.

“You don’t get to give me orders,” Peggy is shouting when Clint manages to make his way over close enough to hear (even then, he’s inferring a quarter of the words. yay, context clues!)

“[something] hell [something] Captain,” Steve yells back. He’s facing away from Clint, who is therefore lacking in the supplemental lip reading department. Clint resists the urge to knock on his plastic helmet and instead grabs him by the shoulder.

“What about a parachute?” he calls over the roar of the engines.

“Don’t need one,” Steve yells back, loud and clear.

Then he jumps out of the fucking plane. Without a parachute.

Yeah, that’s Clint’s Steve all right. Right down to the reckless abandon. He casts a slightly concerned looking Peggy what he hopes is a reassuring look, fastening his own parachute across his back.

“Don’t worry,” he shouts. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

Even Howard takes a moment to look away from the controls to hit Clint with a disbelieving expression. Accurate? Maybe. But so much for faith in him. He rolls his eyes, checks the straps on his bow, and jumps out of the plane after Steve.

Fun times, all around. Really.

Another fun fact about Clint, speaking of fun, is that he gets exponentially more bitchy when he’s in life threatening situations. It’s not a trait favored by natural selection, but luckily it’s balanced out by Clint’s uncanny ability to make very scary friends. And also the whole shooting thing. That too.

A prime example:

When he eventually hits the ground- much softer than Steve probably did- and unhooks the parachute, he looks down at his very fortunately indestructible friend and kicks him in his muscly shoulder.

“You,” he says, “are incredibly stupid.”

Steve rolls on his side, away from the offending foot. “I’m fine,” he groans, sounding very not fine. “Civilian planes-” he cuts himself off by apparently attempting to hack up a lung. “Ow. They only- only come with one parachute.”

Ah. So they’re already lacking in the forethought part of this expedition. Clint winces in sympathy pain, and also because there are dozens of miscellaneous parachutes lying around back at camp. He just hadn’t thought to bring one. He blames future planes and their stupid safety regulations that require every passenger to have an available parachute. Fuck you, Delta Airlines.

“A self sacrificing idiot,” Clint amends. He drops the parachute (sorry, environmentalists who don’t exist yet) behind him and helps Steve to his feet. Which is a lot harder now that he’s normal Steve size.

“A thank you would be alright, too,” Steve mutters.

“Thanks,” Clint says, already picking his way through the underbrush towards blue lights glinting a few hundred meters away. “If you pull something like that again, we’re both going to get shot by Nazis.” It’s a little surreal being the one doing the lecturing on self sacrifice for one. Normally, he’s on the other side. At least he can count on Steve to shake things up. Yay.

He can practically feel Steve rolling his eyes, but he follows. It’s too dark and foggy to see too far in any direction, but the lights illuminate an opening in the fence that closes off the base as they get closer. At one point, Steve suddenly ducks, and a moment later Clint’s hearing aids catch why: the rumbling sound of trucks moving towards them.

Steve taps him on the shoulder. “[H-I-D-E][I-N],” he fingerspells slowly. Clint shoves down the mushy feeling of aww, he cared enough to remember (another nice moment cut off by life threatening danger, not that he’s keeping track) (he is). He nods.

When the trucks roll by, he follows Steve in darting out of the bushes. Steve jumps in the back as he climbs quietly up the side, crouching low on the roof. There are brief, muffled sounds of scuffling, and then two less muffled thumps as two newly unconscious Nazis are ejected from the back. From the same opening, Clint carefully lowers himself inside.

Unharmed and sitting on the floor, Steve is examining a small device so mangled Clint doesn’t even recognize it for a moment. Then he spots the antennae- one of which is irreversibly bent- and stifles a sigh. It must have broken in the fall. No communication for them, then.

The light seeping through the back flap of the truck gets brighter as they enter the camp. Clint can hear bootsteps outside and takes a deep breath. Nothing to worry about. Just Nazis. At the end of the day, they're really just very stupid, bad humans. He's fought very intelligent and much scarier things. A lot of them have been not-human. This is fine, he tells himself.

If lying is a sin, Clint is going to, like, quadruple hell.

Steve smacks a guy in the face- which, ouch- and they creep out of the truck unnoticed. Totally Mission: Impossible style. Clint fights the urge to hum the song under his breath and remembers why he became an Avenger, not a spy. If Tony was here, they’d be playing AC/DC full blast and still winning, he thinks wistfully. Which is the first and last time he’s ever thought about AC/DC wistfully.

They do some sneaking. Also some running across the yard in plain sight. No one bothers to stop them. It’s almost boring.

“Do you think these guys are blind behind those goggles, or what?” He whispers to Steve as they edge around a tank.

“Shhh,” Steve shushes, looking far too worried.

“It’s okay, I can say that, I have a blind friend,” Clint informs him, in case that’s what he’s so scandalized about. Steve gestures, he nods, and they climb up the side of a tank silently to hop over onto the roof. Ahh, roofs. One of his favorite places. “I asked and he told me not to be a liberal pussy.” Ahh, Murdock. One of his favorite people.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve mutters, which for him is probably hardcore. “You have no situational awareness.”

Yay, that’s more like the Steve he knows. “I would say ‘I’m aware,’” Clint replies as Steve opens a door then slams it shut on a guy’s head. He drags the body into the hallway and wipes his hands. “But apparently, I’m not.”

Steve definitely chokes down a laugh at that one. Unfortunately, the Big Evil Room that they enter is quieter and more heavily guarded than the area outside, so he has to briefly shut up while they do more hardcore sneaking. Steve briefly hovers over a table and steals a tiny blue thing that Clint doesn’t recognize. But he’s pretty sure Steve doesn’t actually know what it is either, so he shrugs and grabs his own mysterious little blue thing, shoving it in one of his pockets.

The room that they enter next is the quietest one yet, and it hits Clint with the sobering power of three cups of straight black coffee. This was it. Bucky could be in this room right now. Alive, he reminds himself. Definitely alive. You know he’s alive because you are from the future and he is living there and so is Steve so you know that everything is going to be fine.

It’s not as comforting as he wants it to be. Stupid anxiety.

They shuffle along the platform, casting glances below at the raggedy lumps that are probably people, cast in shadow below them. A guard rounds the corner- and before he or Steve can blink, Clint has an arrow notched in his bow. He lets it fly, and the guard goes down instantly. Steve moves toward him warily, but Clint doesn’t bother. Neck shot, through a break in the armor between the body and helmet. He’s made it with countless bullets in the past few weeks, but it’s infinitely more familiar with a bow in hand.

Ignoring Steve’s slightly grossed out look, he yanks the arrow out of the dead guard’s neck, inspects the tip, and shoves it back in his quiver. Below him, rustling noises increase and he looks directly down into a cell fashioned more like a human sized cage, full of presumably soldiers.

“That was disgusting,” one of them informs him, as if he didn’t just kill the person keeping them in that crowded, definitely infinitely more disgusting cage. Clint sighs and adds arrows to the list of things that people make fun of regardless of time period (another notable item being his middle name, as mentioned much earlier).

“You’re welcome,” he calls back. “Arrows don’t grow on futzing trees, you know.”

“Language,” Steve mutters disapprovingly as he rummages through the dead guard’s pockets for the keys.

Below them, murmurs continue. “And who are you two supposed to be?” Another one of them asks.

Steve finds the keys. “Captain America,” he replies, as if he’s trying it out for size. It sounds right to Clint, but maybe he’s just been hearing it for years.

Some of the prisoners apparently disagree. “I beg your pardon?” Asks one of them. His accent sets off alarm bells of recognition in Clint’s head.

“Hey, I know you.” He points at the man who had just spoken- British, stupid mustache, even uglier hat. “Falseworth, right? From the 3rd Brigade, you guys joined up with us last week.”

Steve looks at him. The prisoners look at Falseworth, who tilts his head to see Clint through the bars. “Specialist Romanoff?” He guesses. “The American who claims he never misses, yes?”

Now is not the time to be offended. “Yeah, that’s me,” Clint replies quickly. “Listen, we’re gonna get you all out of here, but I’m looking for Bucky- Sergeant Barnes. Short brown hair, wears his hat crooked, never shaves correctly?” Stunningly attractive, he refrains from adding.

Falseworth considers for a long second. “Yes, he was just to our left until yesterday.” He points at another cell, in which more soldiers are slowly looking up from their huddled silence, whispering and pointing at Steve and Clint on the ceiling. If they start making too much noise, more guards will come before they’re ready.

“What happened yesterday?” Clint asks urgently. “Where is he?”

Falseworth shrugs, but one of the soldiers in the cage to the left pipes up. “There’s an is’lation ward in the fact’ry,” he calls. “Down the hall, we don’ know ‘zactly where. No one ever come back from it.”

Clint glances back up at Steve. “I-”

“Go,” Steve confirms before he can even finish asking. He grips the keys tightly. “I’ll get everyone out. We’ll meet halfway back.”

“Assuming we both survive?” Clint can’t help himself this time. He hesitates. “Listen, Steve, are you sure? He’s your friend before mine, I don’t mind if you want to go find him.”

Steve stares down the hallway. Then he makes The Face and shakes his head. “No. No, go get him,” he says. “I trust you.”

Wow. Now is not the time, Clint’s Big Emotions. Please hold until further due notice. Clint gathers himself and stands. “On the other side, then, Cap.”

--------------------------------------

The hunt for Bucky is a short one.

First of all, Clint kills everyone he sees without a backward glance. Second, he’s found that generally, HYDRA labs tend to be on one of the middle floors of their secret lair buildings- above the normal corporate waiting rooms but below the evil secret meeting rooms. He hazards a guess on the third floor of this six-story facility and is met with a promising empty hallway with rows creepy, open doors.

It’s also empty, probably due to the general chaos that had been providing some very violent background noise since a few minutes ago (shoutout Steve, who was probably at fault), which is convenient. As he picks his way down the hall, he can hear footsteps retreating faintly at the edge of his earshot. He ignores them. If Bucky has been up here for a day or two already, Clint doubts that he’s hurrying away so quickly or steadily on his feet. He listens.

There- behind door number five, like a really fucked up game show. Quiet, but definitely human. Pain-induced. Heavy breathing. Unsteady mumbling, as he gets closer.

“…Three, two, five-five. Seven-oh, three. Eight. Three-”

“Fuck,” Clint mutters. He rushes into the room with less caution than he probably should, considering his location. Nobody shoots at him anyway. The room is empty, sans Bucky, strapped to a table. “Fuck,” Clint repeats. “Shit. Futz. Bucky,” he adds eventually, when he can force the panic back in its box and shove it down the pipe of deal-with-it-much-much-later. “Bucky,” he says again, just to say it.

Bucky’s eyes are unfocused as Clint fumbles with the straps- something he doesn’t even seem to register. “Fuck,” Clint says again, because his mouth can’t seem to move past that. Deep breaths. Okay. This is fine.

“Barnes. Bucky. Hey. Hey, can you hear me?” There’s no more mumbling, but he isn’t responding either. Clint tears the last strap off and puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “Hey, idiot. I told you not to fucking die.”

Gradually, the cloudy distance in Bucky’s eyes starts to fade. He shifts, ever so slightly. “…Good thing I’m alive,” he croaks eventually, his voice rough around the edges. Still, Clint feels at least one of several crippling weights lift off of his shoulders. He helps Bucky sit up, slowly. Vaguely, he knows they’re supposed to be in a rush, only he doesn’t really care at the moment. He’s sort of forgetting what he was even supposed to do after this.

The objective, Barton, his voice of reason (Natasha) snaps in his head. Right. That.

“Do you know who I am?” He asks, scanning Bucky for obvious injuries. The problem is, there's too many to count and catalogue. Most of his uniform is gone, leaving parts of his arms and legs and chest exposed- which Clint can’t even feel excited about, because it’s not a pretty sight. Fresh scars criss-cross old ones, bruises from poorly done needle injections discolor most of his arms.

For a terrifying moment, Bucky is silent. Then-

“Of course I do,” he replies, leaning heavily on Clint’s shoulder. “Krauts couldn't make me forget my fella.”

Aww, big feelings at inappropriate times, no.

“That’s… umm, that’s good,” Clint mumbles, trying to remember where the clinical examination was supposed to go next. Oh, well. Screw it. “Bucky,” he repeats one last time absentmindedly, reaching up to fix at least a little bit of the mess that had become of Bucky’s hair. “You promised you’d come back,” he whispers before his brain catches up to his mouth.

“Sorry, doll,” Bucky mumbles, letting Clint guide him into standing. “Won’t happen again.”

Clint opens his mouth to say something about making promises and then breaking them again, then decides against it. “Better not,” he replies instead. Then, just because he’s an impulsive, sentimental idiot, he leans over to kiss Bucky on the forehead. “Come on. I promised Steve we’d meet up with him once we got real far from this place.”

Chapter Text

Bucky gets gradually more awake and coherent as they walk. After a minute or two, he’s walking under his own power. Objectively his accelerated recovery is a good thing, but it bothers Clint more than it comforts him because a) he doesn’t want to let go of his sort of maybe boyfriend ever again and b) it further confirms a worried suspicion that has been bouncing around in his head. A suspicion that this is the place where Bucky got Super-Soldiered- partially. He isn’t on his full Winter Soldier steroids, but Clint remembers Bucky from the future referencing the experimental doses- explaining how he’d survived The Fall.

Then he stops thinking about all of that because thinking about The Fall is a one way ticket to a Panic Attack Station or Depressive Episode Central, neither of which he can afford at the moment.

Regardless of Clint’s mental spiral, Bucky forges forward, making decisive lefts and rights where Clint falters. “Everyone else-” he starts.

“-is with Steve,” Clint finishes for him. “They’ll be fine. He sent me to bust your ass out myself.”

They stumble conjointly down the hall and towards the set of stairs at the end. “You talk funny, y’know?” Bucky says after a moment. He’s walking with much more confidence, but his words still slur slightly and sound spaced-out. So there was clearly some sort of 40s “medicine” in that lab and furthermore ingested by him.

Because everything about Clint’s life is already weird enough, he takes it in stride. “I talk funny?' He echoes. ”You say shit like ‘knucklehead’ and ‘fella,’ man. That’s weird.“

Bucky makes a vague noise of protest. “Definitely isn’t,” he protests. “’S how people talk.” He takes them out a door, where they face a set of steps. “Must be the circus, huh?”

“Yeah, probably,” Clint agrees, relieved at the easy out. For a former spy slash assassin, he’s terrible at lying on his feet. That was always Nat’s job.

They hurry up the winding stairs to reach a platform, suspended over the now semi-imploding Big Evil Room below. “So,” Bucky says in a deceptively casual voice. “What would you say in the circus, then? If not fella, or somethin’.” Both of them ignore the concerningly close explosions, because facing your problems is for losers.

“Probably boyfriend,” Clint replies. Saying it aloud sets off alarm bells of you, Barton, are SO screwed in his head, which he also ignores. “Umm, sometimes just partner also works. Y’know. Keep it vague. Just in case.”

“Huh,” is all Bucky says in reply. Which could be for a variety of reasons, most likely because they’re picking up the pace and he’s probably on so many drugs that this may all feel like a dream. A moment of explosion filled silence (which is an oxymoron) passes. Then: “Nazis. Three o’clock.”

Without missing a beat, Clint pivots to put himself between Bucky and three o’clock, and in the same motion fires at the two dark blurs in his peripheral vision. This works just fine. The three things that happen next are less fine.

Thing #1: Dark Blur Nazi Number One grabs his arrow out of the air, which is a thing that only three people and one god are supposed to be able to do. And none of them are Nazis (not even the god, although Clint hates him almost as much).

Thing #2: Dark Blur Nazi Number One says “you’re not Captain America.” Which. Duh.

Thing #3: Dark Blur Nazi Number One gets slightly less blurred and Clint is forced to deal with the unfortunate sight of a man’s skin literally half melting off of his face. Beneath it, what at first looks like very red, incredibly-stoned level eyebags turns out to be Nazi Number One’s entire face.

Unsure of what else to do, Clint responds. “No I am not,” he declares. “Your face is melting.”

Behind him, Bucky makes a noise like he’s going to throw up. Clint silently agrees with the sentiment.

“Fools,” Nazi Number One scoffs. “I am more than human! Your Captain would understand the power we have been given, to-”

“I’ll tell him you said hi,” Clint tells him. Changing target, he nails the lever that Nazi Number Two has been inching towards. Luckily, Number Two has slower reflexes and it connects, dragging the platform connecting them to Clint and Bucky backwards over the burning Big Evil Room. Without a backward glance, he turns tail and books it back in the direction they had been heading. A second later, he hears Bucky’s boots follow.

Soon enough, they come across the only remaining connection between them and the exit, across the burning chasm: a narrow beam of rusting metal. He glances at Bucky, assessing- he looks lucid enough at this point to be able to cross, no longer swaying slightly on his feet.

“Alright. Let’s go,” Clint decides. “You first.”

Bucky looks like he wants to argue, but Clint does his best Steve Rogers Don’t-Try-Me face and he nods instead, slightly shakily. As he edges across, Clint clutches the railing like he’s the one performing the balancing act, anxiety setting his nerves on fire. After what feels like an eternity, he makes it- but not without a flying leap, while the beam creaks and comes crashing down behind him, disappearing into the flames below.

“Shit,” Clint mutters.

“Shit,” Bucky yells, which is the exact moment that Clint decides, whether romantic or not, they’re soulmates. But he digresses. “We gotta find- a rope, or something-”

Oh yeah. Clint glances up, then across the chasm, then takes three measured steps back. Alright. Okay. He takes a deep breath. From the other side, Bucky yells something inspirational and supportive like “you can’t jump that far, you fucking idiot.”

But jumping isn’t the plan. Clint leans slightly to the left, shuts out the noise- breathe in, hold, breath out-

His makeshift grappling hook arrow (a heavy-tipped one with a rope from camp tied securely to the end) impales the wall a few feet from Bucky’s head and Clint quickly secures the other end to the railing. Another deep breath. Bucky stares.

“Are you insane?” He shouts, because Clint always gets to work with the most optimistic and unconditionally supportive people.

“Probably,” Clint calls back. Then he sets his jaw, centers himself, and Hawkeyes (verb). Not the badass arrow shooting quipping Avenger one. The glitter and tights wearing stunt performing original one. And just like that, he’s on the other side, untying the rope and shoving the arrow back in his quiver. He shoots Bucky a grin to distract himself from how fast and hard his heart is beating. “But I also excel at tightrope walking,” he adds.

“Yeah,” Bucky replies after a moment of stunned silence. “Yeah, I noticed.”

And as the building implodes behind them, the slightly odd and incredibly unlikely duo fucking skedaddle.

--------------------------------

On an average week, Clint considers himself exponentially more likely to end up at a bar than at a Nazi base. So it’s under the rather unusual circumstances of this specific week that he ends up at both.

Everything has been a whirlwind since Bucky returned- along with most of the 107th and one Captain America. The Steve-and-Bucky reunion had been just about as sweet and emotional as a manly 1940s friendship could be, plus a little more. But people could be persuaded to turn a blind eye to emotional vulnerability and healthy human connection when Captain Freaking America, now the recipient of a medal of valor and several thousand manly shoulder slaps, was involved.

Speaking of receiving the medal of valor: fast forward a few hectic days that Clint tries to stay on the sidelines of for the sake of the timeline, and that’s where Steve is supposed to be right now. Clint doesn’t know shit about the military, despite unwittingly having been enlisted in it for several weeks, but they’re probably important because he knows Tony has at least one and Rhodey and Cap combined have enough to fill an entire box. He knows this because he vividly remembers using said box as a counterbalance for one of Tony’s projects that he had been unwillingly recruited into. AKA as a glorified paperweight.

Steve seems to have the same attitude towards the medal, because he is not, in fact, on stage with the president or whatever being presented with it in front of a decorated crowd of officers and a swarm of press cameras. He is at a bar. Clint knows this because he, too, is at this bar. At the moment, he is eyeing a pitcher of clouded liquor and wondering if the FDA is a thing yet. Because. Yikes.

The rest of his table has no such reservations. He’s lost count on how many rounds of watered-down alcohol have been passed around the table- although maybe he should have expected as much. If shawarma is the Avengers after-fight go-to, various intoxicating substances from behind Tony’s well stocked bar is their after-after-fight go-to. But at least that stuff is safer (hypothetically. if one were to make good decisions with it).

But anyway. Steve pitches his plan a few rounds in, which is probably a good choice.

“I’m always down for fightin’,” Dugan is the first to reply. Coming from a stranger, that sort of answer would be concerning, but Clint has fought with him before. Also, Dugan is the type of guy it’s hard to be afraid of.

“It sounds like fun, actually,” adds Falseworth, the British guy he vaguely recognized back in the prison. Clint definitely trusts him less- not enough to object, but enough to keep an eye on him. Something about British people in general hasn’t sat right with him since Loki (even though yes, he knows that Loki isn’t technically British, but only someone who was truly British at heart would pick that accent out of all the accents on Earth, or Midgard, or whatever).

The rest are quick to agree. There’s Jim Morito, who is from Fresno. Clint likes him. He’s not sure where Fresno is, but he feels like he remembers it being somewhere near San Francisco. He likes San Francisco. It’s the only place in California that doesn’t feel like it was dreamt up by a coked-out billionaire. Then there's Gabe Jones, who is unfamiliar to Clint but is easy to get along with, and sort of reminds him of a very toned down version of Thor. He also translates for the diversity hire, Jacques Dernier, who is French.

“And what of Specialist Romanoff?” Clint blinks and finds the whole table looking at him. “Will he be joining us?” Falseworth continues, eyeing him over a glass of some drink he insists is British, which explains why it looks even worse than the rest of theirs.

“I was hoping he would,” Steve says, setting down his own drink. The table is circular, but somehow he still seems like he’s sitting at its head, leading. “I haven’t asked. He’s no more obligated than the rest of you, but he would be useful to have on the team.”

“Too true,” Dugan replies, raising his glass in Clint’s direction before finishing it off (again). “If Barnes is our only sniper, we’re in for it.”

“Seems an easy enough choice, innit?” Falseworth adds. “Everyone knows Romanoff goes wherever Barnes goes.”

Clint decides he’d rather risk food (drink?) poisoning than show off how red his face turns, so he hides his reaction behind a glass and downs his first drink of the night. Besides, he’s already made his decision. It’s not like Falseworth is wrong: he does go everywhere Bucky goes. For a variety of reasons- most of which anyone at this table, least of all him, are anywhere near drunk enough to hear about.

“’Course I’m in,” he replies. The drink leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth and he slides it away, resolving not to drink anymore lest he throws up, with or without food poisoning. “I’m the best sniper this side of the war, aren’t I?” He nods at Steve, whose grin preemptively makes up for whatever disaster will undoubtedly come. “Someone has to keep you all alive.”

There are uproarious and clearly drunken cheers as Steve steps aside to grab everyone yet another round of drinks, which Clint also takes as his cue to leave. He’s sort of been waiting for the appropriate time to go meet Bucky over by the bar where he’d been sitting, dubbing the rest of the group “idiots” and “unbearable to be around in a place like this,” affectionately.

After being briefly sidetracked by a group of soldiers playing darts (one of them recognizes him and drags him over for a demonstration), a very drunken duo of Frenchmen who briefly mistake him for a woman (his hair really is getting out of control), and the overall crowd of chaos, he finds Bucky, now joined by Steve, talking quietly by the bar. Steve seems him first and waves him over.

“Hey, Clint,” he says. Even half a foot taller and a few dozen pounds heavier, he smiles the same way. It makes him a little less intimidating.

“Hey yourself,” Clint replies, sidestepping a waiter carrying frankly far too many drinks to lean up against the bar next to him. “Barnes.”

“Romanoff.” Bucky stares at his drink. The dim light throws dramatic shadows across his face, which is unfairly attractive as always and also creased with a scowl. “Stevie told me you joined up with his team of idiots.”

Clint shrugs. “Teams of idiots are sort of my crowd,” he replies. “What’s up with the brooding?”

Steve coughs over a laugh. Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’m not brooding.”

“You are. You’re making your brooding face and everything.”

Bucky scoffs. “I do not have a brooding face.”

“Steve?”

“Sorry, Buck, but you do,” Steve agrees guiltily, then leans away easily from the halfhearted punch that Bucky sends his way. He turns to Clint. “Agent Carter came by. He just found out what it’s like to be me.”

“Peggy? What’s she got to…” Clint trails off as he remembers the Expo, then considers the context clues (setting: bar. Steve: recently hit with the steroid glowup to end all glowups. Peggy: objectively stunning woman. Bucky: at least partially heterosexual). He raises his eyebrows at Bucky, who is pretending that both of them don’t exist. "Yeah, that’s rough, buddy.“

Bucky, raises his hand for another drink, looking like he would rather be anywhere else. “I hate this team already,” he says sullenly.

Clint grins. “Except me, right?”

“Especially you.”

------------------------------------

By the time Steve finally herds everyone back to the new barracks they’ve apparently been assigned- nothing says team building like sleeping in the same rickety temporary structure that already smells like rotting wood and sweat- it’s well past sundown. Like most nights since he’s been Tony Stark-ed into the past, though, Clint can’t fucking sleep.

After a very boring, snore filled hour or so (he’d stopped taking his aids out to sleep since Bucky went missing and hasn’t gotten back into the habit of doing so just yet) he finally gives up on sleep and quietly makes his way outside, he finds Bucky sitting on the slab of wood vaguely reminiscent of a front porch in front of their building. He’s hunched, cigarette between his lips, his body language so tense that Clint almost doesn’t want to disturb him. But the wood creaks under his foot before he can double back, and when Bucky whirls around he looks relieved, not hostile.

“Jesus and Mary, Romanoff,” he sighs. “Thought you were Steve.”

Taking the lack of outright dismissal as an invitation, Clint takes a seat next to him. “Sorry, just me.”

“Nah. Better that it’s you.”

It’s been weeks, and Clint’s heart still pangs at every scrap of casual affection Bucky displays. And he still isn’t sure what to do with it when it’s there: his first instinct still to brush it off or downplay it. It feels good, it just doesn’t feel right (he’s pretty sure there’s something wrong with him).

“Why, does he get on you about the cigarettes?” He asks. Case in point.

Looking vaguely amused, Bucky shakes his head. “He’d be a hypocrite if he did. Hell, kid smokes more than me. Doctors prescribed it. For his asthma.” Then the faint grin fades from his face and he exhales, smoke curling from his mouth. “At least, he used to. Dunno if he does anymore, I guess he don’t really need it. Serum and all.”

Leaving his knowledge of modern medicine aside (along with the concern for formerly asthmatic Steve’s lungs, because they’re fixed now anyway), Clint listens silently. “Yeah,” he says eventually, because what else are you supposed to say to someone who knew everything about a person and then so suddenly almost nothing at all?

They sit in silence, for a while. Clint shivers and decides to change the topic. “So,” he tries. “What’s a guy like you doing awake at a time like this?”

The line never fails to make Bucky look a little less melancholy, at least. “I could ask you the same.” Which is the most blatantly deflective response someone can give.

“And I asked you first,” Clint rebukes gently. Bucky shoves him gently, which jokes on him Clint on uses to lean back in closer, putting them directly shoulder to shoulder.

“’S nothing to fuss over,” Bucky mumbles. “Which is what Steve would’a done. Just haven’t been able to sleep real well, is all.” He stares fixedly at the horizon. Clint, meanwhile, glances down at his hands. The one holding the cigarette aloft is slightly but very clearly shaking. “Since… since that place. At first, I thought it was just adrenaline an’ all that. But it won’t go away. Feels like I’m up on Benzedrine all the time- ‘cept I haven’t taken any in weeks.” Taking a drag, he seems to notice his own shaking hand and stares at it. Clint has down the same thing enough times to know he’s trying to stabilize it by sheer force of will. He’s also done it enough times to know it won’t work. Eventually, Bucky gives up and drops both hands to his lap, snuffing out the cigarette in the grass. “Like I said, it’s nothing. I probably sound like I’m talkin’ crazy.”

“You don’t,” says Clint, who lived the first twenty-three years of his life with unmedicated ADHD. But the source of the restlessness is probably different for Bucky- the crappy dose of serum HYDRA gave him at the prison, if he were to hazard a guess. Not that Bucky knows that. Or anyone else in this time period. Not that ADHD is anything like the serum (although Clint can dream), real or knockoff, the excess energy they have in common. Steve’s is probably controlled, naturally distributed throughout his body. Theirs is different.

Sidenote, he’s like 90% sure that Benzedrine is illegal or at least prescription only back in his time for being an amphetamine stimulant drug, but people here treat asthma with cigarettes so that’s not really his biggest problem.

Second sidenote, ADHD is totally not a thing yet here, so he probably shouldn’t bring that one up either.

“I mean, I know the feeling,” he adds. He might not be smoking, but he can see his breath as clearly as front of him as Bucky as it clouds the freezing air. “I kinda didn’t sleep much while you were gone.”

Bucky glances sideways at him and for a moment he looks like he’s going to say something reasonable like ‘go to sleep’ or ‘Clint you stupid bitch’ or something else Natasha-ish. Instead, he shoves his hands in his pockets and huffs, half amused and half abashed.

“Get a load of us,” he snorts. “Couple of queers goin’ god damn nuts trying to be soldiers, huh?”

Clint isn’t inclined to disagree. “We’re pretty fucked,” he shrugs. He crosses his arms, wishing Bucky hadn’t put out his cigarette. “But we’re not dead. So. That’s gotta count for something.”

“Unless you freeze yourself solid,” Bucky replies. “Go inside, Romanoff. It’s warmer.”

By, like, two degrees, Clint thinks. He can quite literally feel the lack of top-of-the line space heaters in his bones. He’d at least settle for the groaning old radiator that keeps his apartment livable this late in the year. Regardless, he shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says stubbornly, by which he means, i’ve been colder, and I want to stay here with you. “You can’t get rid of me anymore. Moment I leave you alone you’ll up and disappear on me again.”

Bucky scoffs, and his overconfidence (or at least his performance of it) would be so annoying if it wasn't so incredibly attractive. “Told ya I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

“I know,” Clint mutters, staring at the ground. “People lie.”

Before he can backtrack because Jesus Christ, Clint way to bring up the trauma at an inappropriate moment, Bucky makes a small, punched out noise. He moves to put an arm around Clint’s shoulders, but freezes (yes, ha ha) halfway.

So Clint does the rest himself. He tucks himself against Bucky’s chest, honestly halfway into his lap, because hooray for shared body heat. It’s not exactly comfortable at first- they’re just about the same height and Clint is honestly a little taller, so he has to hunch slightly and isn’t really sure where to put his legs; and Bucky doesn’t really seem to know how to deal with someone who isn’t (to be blatant) a girl. Or Steve, who is (was) also really fucking small.

But they make it work. Because Clint would rather be cramped than cold, and also because it’s Bucky so it doesn’t matter.

“That was a stupid thing to say,” he mutters eventually. “I know it’s not just like you chose to leave. War, and shit. Whatever.”

Silence follows, but not a tense one. He just gets this feeling that Bucky understands, even if that understanding is unspoken. There’s something very messy and cautious and shaped a little bit like mutual understanding that ties them together.

“I hate it,” Bucky says quietly. He keeps moving his hands, keeps shifting slightly, which is fine by Clint, who hasn’t sat in the same position for longer than five minutes in the past ever. “I had this idea- I had this thought that if I was Steve, y’know, if they gave me that serum… I’d take both of us home. Or at least I’d sock Hitler across his mug- the real one- and then everyone could go back to bein’ normal and- and not waitin’ up every night to hear if someone they know’s croaked or not.”

He shakes his head, closing his eyes briefly. “I figured it out while I was in there, you know. When they had us all crammed together in those things, men from places I never heard of before. ”All this, I’ve never been doin’ it for my country, or for my president, or any of that patriotic bull. I ain’t even doing it for my father- he fought back in the first war, the one they said was gonna end all of ‘em. I’m just doing it so everyone can go home.“

Home.

Something that’s not only thousands of miles but decades and decades away for Clint. The only things he has of it here are Steve and Bucky, who aren’t even his Steve and Bucky no matter how much Steve might look like it now or how much he wished his Bucky was like this one, they weren’t.

If he wasn’t sitting here, curled up on the freezing ground with Bucky, he’d say that he’d never felt so alone. And that was saying something.

He doesn’t realize he’s been lost in his thoughts until Bucky coughs. Luckily, he doesn’t seem offended by the silence. “Haven’t got a damn clue why I tell you all this,” Bucky says. “Think I’d get my socks knocked off if I acted like this ‘round anyone else. Except Steve. He’d just look at me all disappointed or somethin’.” He sighs. “I can’t wrap my head ‘round how everyone’s been looking at him since I got back. I look at him and I just see that dumb reckless kid from Brooklyn. And I’d follow that kid anywhere, but it feels like everyone’s seeing something I can’t see now. ‘S like there’s a part of him that I just don’t get anymore.”

There are probably wise, comforting words someone could hypothetically say here. Instead, a less-than-wise Clint says; “like how girls look at him first?”

Bucky scoffs, but at least he doesn’t push Clint away or hit him for being a terrible listener. “Fuck off,” he says instead, unconvincingly. He pauses. “Speaking of,” he adds, at least sounding a little less upset than he had before, “what’s with you and Agent Carter?”

It feels a little out of left field, and Clint tenses instinctively. “What’s with you and Agent Carter?” He parrots.

“I think it’s my turn to say I asked you first.”

To be fair, he did kind of walk right into that one. “What about us?”

“You called her Peggy, back there at the bar,” Bucky elaborates. “I heard of guys who do that stuck on red eye patrols for weeks on end.”

“Oh.” Clint extricates himself slightly from Bucky’s arms so they can talk face to face. “We’re friends. I guess. Sort of.” That’s probably the most accurate word for it.

“Like ‘boyfriend’?” There’s something cautious in Bucky’s voice that he can’t quite place.

“Bucky,” Clint says as seriously as he can manage. “I am so, incredibly, one hundred percent gay. Actually, that’s sort of how we started talking. Her being the only woman for a few hundred miles a lot. Me being the only person who doesn’t see her in, y’know, that way.”

Also, I love you, he wants to add, not that this is the time or place. Bucky looks slightly less brood-y, so he decides it’s okay to be a little bit nagging. “Your turn.”

“I-” Bucky hesitates, rubbing his eyes. “She’s real nice-looking, I’d have’ta be blind not to see that. An’ I just assumed- well, things would be the way they always were.” He shakes his head. “I was bein’ an idiot. It’s ain’t much, but it’s something I’ve always been good at. It doesn’t matter,” he adds- forcefully, but the tension in the undertone of his voice is still there, wavering. “She’s just seein’ what I always wanted the gals I took on dates with Steve to see, y’know? That’s all.”

Clint studies him, feeling a familiarity buzzing in the back of his head. "I think she does,“ he says eventually. ”She’s been traveling with that show, you know, the one he was doing before. Not just for him, but she’s been there. Back at camp, too, even before the whole-“ he gestures vaguely, like, instant dreamboat steroid serum glowup thing. Bucky smiles faintly, then leans over and grabs his hands gently. He doesn’t actually do anything with them, just holds them, and Clint holds his right back. Both of their hands are shaking, his from the cold and Bucky’s from the excess energy, but it lessens with contact.

“Women are complicated,” Bucky mutters.

“You know,” Clint says thoughtfully. “They’re really not. Most people I know who say that just don’t actually talk to a lot of women.”

“Pardon,” Bucky interrupts, his eyebrows knitted in mock offense. “I thought we established that I talk to a lot of women, actually. In fact, I’ve spent many nights just like these talking to women.”

Clint laughs in a quiet, slightly wheezing sort of way. “Right,” he replies. “And now on nights like these, you talk to me.”

For a moment, Bucky only looks at him, in a way that Clint has only caught him doing out of the corner of his eye or half asleep before. “Yes,” he says. “Yes I do.”

Chapter Text

Unfortunately, the US Army is not the most convenient place to fall in love. It is, however, a very convenient place to avoid thinking about falling in love, because there are lots of very fun and frequent places to worry about almost dying instead.

Having finally fallen asleep around 3, Clint stubbornly stays in bed as long as possible, even as everyone else (bar Bucky, who is also dead asleep on the cot next to him) grumbles and stomps their way through reporting downstairs for probably like, army things. He’s hazarding a guess that this will be the first and last time in weeks that he’ll be able to sleep past dawn, especially now that goes-for-runs-at-fuck-off-o’clock Steve Rogers is leading their team, so he’s taking full advantage of it.

By the time someone pounds on the door and orders them downstairs, the sun is high in the sky and Clint begrudgingly doesn’t pull the “sorry, I’m deaf, I didn’t hear anyone knock” card and instead steals a few minutes getting ready for the day in comfortable silence alongside Bucky.

When they make their way downstairs, they find Steve stabbing moodily at a plate of… eggs? Are those supposed to be eggs? It’s either concerningly brown eggs or weirdly yellow oatmeal. Meanwhile, the rest of the newly-formed squadron huddles over a faded map, the corners of which are weighted down by shoes and empty bowls.

“Mornin’,” Bucky yawns. Steve, already decked out in his Captain America gear like the god awful morning person he is, looks up.

“Agent Carter shot me,” he says indignantly in lieu of greeting.

Gabe Jones passes the two late risers bowls of egg-oatmeal with a much friendlier nod. Eyeing the contents dubiously, Clint decides he’s been hungrier and sets it gently aside. “Well,” he replies, raising his eyebrows, “did you deserve it?”

Steve deflates. “Probably,” he mutters.

Bucky, who has no such qualms, digs into his egg-oatmeal enthusiastically. He at least has the sense to pull a face at the texture, but downs it anyway. “Jesus and Mary, Steve, what’d you pull this early in the god damn morning to get shot before noon?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Steve protests.

“Broad came onto him while he was over gettin’ orders at Stark’s,” Dugan chimes in from across the table, because this is apparently going to be just like the Avengers, in which no one has ever had a private conversation ever. “Agent Carter found ‘em.”

Bucky snickers. Steve groans. “It’s not- that’s not exactly-” he gives up and starts stabbing at his egg-oatmeal again. “Shut up. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir, Captain,” Dugan replies with a mock-salute.

“Pulling rank already?” Bucky asks dryly, pulling up a chair at the map-covered table. Clint hovers over his shoulder, because he’s still not really awake enough to sit down without passing out.

“For the good of the war effort,” Steve manages to say with a completely sincere, straight face. Bucky cuffs him on the shoulder. Clint grins.

It’s by no means the Avengers, but it’s quite the team just the same.

“So what are we looking at?” He gestures to the map, which is marked by maybe a dozen flag-shaped pins, scattered throughout the blobby, beige shape of Europe.

“Well, we think that those locations are based similar to the one we broke into last week,” Steve begins. The general side chatter quiets as he points to the only red pin on the map- the location in western Austria, where they had rescued Bucky & co from. The rest of the pins are blue.

“The key word is think,” James adds, adjusting his hat. “This is all based on a map that Captain Rogers spotted on the way out.”

“And generally confirmed by our spies,” Steve points out. “Our squadron is in charge of finding these locations, freeing any prisoners of war, taking useful information we find, and destroying them.”

A hush falls over the table. Clint can’t imagine, if he had to guess, that these men are all too eager to charge back into the sort of place they’d spent those miserable five days (or more) stuck in. But it’s also a little late to back out now. Even Dugan looks a little less gung-ho than usual. Then Bucky shrugs.

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” he decides, breaking the tense silence with a trademark cocky tilt of his head. “Get in, shoot Krauts, get out. They’ve even gathered ‘em all in one place for us.”

“Les hommes d’Etats Unis,” Jacques mutters. “Toujours trop confiant.”

“Etats Unis is right,” Bucky replies, undaunted. “Come on. With the walking American flag with us, how could we lose?” He waves his spoon at Steve. “You’re looking at the man who’s punched Hitler in the face over two hundred times.”

Despite Jacques’ protests, Clint watches the others slowly relax, even laugh, and he wants to kiss Bucky right here at the table. He won’t. But he wants to. With the Avengers, the overconfident pep talks normally come from Tony. He’s started to expect them out of Kate, too, who (sidenote) he can absolutely never let talk to Tony for longer than five minutes, lest he leave Pepper and himself with a cataclysm of terrible decisions to deal with.

In this time and Clint’s time, Steve always plays the realist. But he’s balanced out by the sheer fuck-it-we-ball pep talks that anyone with a job that regularly puts their lives on the line for the sake of something bigger- soldiers, Avengers (at the end of the day it’s the same)- needs to hear.

Even if, in the part of his thoughts that he’s ignoring, Clint knows that Bucky doesn’t really believe everything he’s saying. He doesn’t have too, though: as long as it’s there, hope can come from it.

“If everyone’s in, then,” Jones ventures (he pauses, but no one objects), “where are we off too first, Captain?”

Steve looks part relieved, part proud, as he pulls a blue pin out of the map- a few inches from the red one. “We’re headed north,” he says. “Bring your winter boots.”

-----------------------------------------

As Clint had predicted, Steve rouses them all at the ungodly hour of six a-fucking-m one morning to inform them that Allied spies have reported infighting between a sector of soldiers and an unidentified schism group (which Clint assumes is HYDRA) a few kilometers north, behind enemy lines- exactly where Steve had predicted the base would be.

Although more accurately, Steve rouses everyone else, then Bucky wakes up an unwilling Clint by reaching over and shoving him a little harder than was necessarily called for and pressing his processors into his hands. Slipping them in amidst general groaning and unhappy noises, Clint turns away flops on his opposite side. “Hey, Rogers,” he calls groggily. “There’s a protocol for things like this.”

“There is?” Asks a very confused and not yet used to his position of authority Steve behind him.

“Yeah. It’s called not my fucking problem.”

Bucky snorts. Steve is less amused.

“New protocol, Romanoff. It’s called you get to leave early to scout ahead.”

Clint throws a pillow in his general direction.

(The next shipment of supplies from the states comes bearing the gifts of coffee and cigarettes. Clint makes a beeline for the former.

Army coffee is shit, but so was circus coffee, so it’s one of the only things Clint has been able to reliably consume without throwing up wince his arrival. He particularly enjoys drinking it in front of Jacques, who looks personally and very French-ly offended every time he does.)

Anyway, with much grumbling and thinking of creative ways to get back at Tony, who he sincerely blames for all of this, Clint stumbles outside and loads onto the back of a very worn out and unstable looking truck. It looks a lot like the one that had first brought him to the 107th’s camp, which does not bode well for his general pain level. Clint puts his body through a lot, but he specially apologizes to himself in advance for this.

At least they have no plane to get shot down on the way in this time, which saves Steve from getting yelled at by Bucky (again) about jumping out of a plane sans a parachute.

He might fall asleep once or twice on Bucky’s shoulder on the way there. Whatever. Sue him. Eventually, though, they get close enough that the collective anxiety level in his proximity keeps him from dozing off, and Clint reluctantly accepts his fate. He blinks sleep out of his eyes and tries to focus (oh, ADHD medication that he only remembers to take half the time, how he misses you).

“Once we get through that gate, heavy machinery is off the table,” James is explaining very seriously. They crouch, crowded around a dimly lit map, and try not to fall into each other as the truck they’re in bounces and rumbles across half-paved roads. “Their street lamps are still gaslit, one gets knocked over or shattered and half the city could go up in flames.”

“That’s not very gaslight gatekeep girlboss of them,” Clint mutters to himself automatically. Bucky shoots him a strange look and he resolves to stop spending time with Kate for the rest of ever.

Bucky taps the marked part of the map. “Once we’re in the building, we can blow it all to hell, but until then, we’re relying heavily on short range, Cap, and Romanoff.”

Steve straps his shield to his back and salutes. With slightly less inspiring patriotic energy, Clint slings his quiver across his shoulders and winces as his back cracks.

“Europe,” Morito scowls. Jacques whispers something to Jones, who laughs, which helps to relieve some of the tension gripping them tightly by the shoulders.

“He says ‘I can’t reach Jim, someone hit him for me,’” he translates. Dugan, who sits directly to his right, does so with uncalled for enthusiasm and despite Morito’s attempts to escape around Steve.

They’re all assholes, Clint realizes as Morito and Jacques curse each other back and forth in their respective languages. That’s what makes times like these feel almost like home.

Steve scouts ahead on his motorcycle, which is so unfair because why doesn’t Clint get a motorcycle god damn it. Besides the roar of his motor and the truck’s rumbling, the town has the same eerie quiet that slowly populates with muffled boots and machinery, unnaturally mechanical and measured. It sends a shiver down his spine. Clint might be biased, but sometimes he thinks that society would have been better as a whole if they just stopped inventing so many things all the time. Specifically weapons. They really, really did not need to keep making newer, deadlier weapons. Maybe they could invent new ice cream flavours instead. Just a suggestion.

The first black-uniform clad patrol they come across, armed to the teeth with sleek weapons and faces concealed behind reflective helmets, clash startlingly with the clearly old fashioned (even for the 40s) cityscape. It is, as James had described, all cobblestone, wood buildings, and gaslit lamps. More than half of them are dark, probably because the town is deserted- bar HYDRA. Clint sticks to Steve as they lead the way in and tries his best not to think about what happened to the people who lived here.

The patrol spots them. Steve knocks two of them out with his shield as the others scramble for their weapons and duck behind an abandoned cart or around the corner.

Only by the time they have their short range guns in hand, they look up to see said HYDRA agents sprawled out on the pathway, unmoving- having been taken out without a sound.

Jim Morito, who has before now yet to have the pleasure of charging into battle alongside Clint, stares at the dead soldiers and then around his otherwise unassuming surroundings.

“God?” He asks no one in particular, which is a fair guess.

From a window maybe fifteen yards to their left, Clint leans forward on his perch so they can see him. “Close,” he calls back, lifting his bow in greeting. He slips out the window, drops onto an awning, and carefully picks his way down to the street. “But just me.”6

One of the HYDRA soldiers tries to get back up and Steve fires a pistol point blank into his chest. The shot echoes hollowly. No one else moves.

The others pick their way around the bodies, hands hovering over their guns. Jacques kicks one of them on the way past with a scowl. “Ce n’etait pas-”

“Don’t,” Jones and Clint cut him off at the same time. Both Jones and Jacques stare at him and Clint shakes his head. “I don’t need to know French to know a ‘that was easy’ when I hear one.” He casts a sweeping glance around and tightens his grip on his bow. “Trust me: the easiest way to get ambushed and killed is to say something like that.”

Jones nods empathetically. Jacques shrugs and makes a lip-locking gesture.

“Not to interrupt the superstition sharing,” James cuts in. “But we’re officially engaged and on the clock.”

“He’s right,” Steve says. “Romanoff, with me. Buck, on our six. Everyone else, keep your eyes and ears open. But don’t shoot.”

“Unless you have to,” Bucky adds.

“Right.” Steve tightens the straps on his shield. The steely look in his eyes that marks the moment before shit tends to hit the fan apparently transcends centuries. “In which case we improvise.”

For the first time in the history of all things Hawkeye, the mission itself goes pretty smoothly. Clint and Steve take down anyone who gets too close. No fires are lit. Being around Steve when he’s in control of a situation sort of has that effect. It’s quiet and efficient.

Then they reach the clearly out of place base: the roads forced flat, gas lamps ripped out of the ground, tarnished steel surfaces sticking out like a sore thumb in the world of building materials. Walls are hastily erected to block off the alleys and streets in a ragged circle surrounding the place.

Then all hell is free to break loose.

Jacques, who is apparently an expert in explosives, gleefully rolls a few grenades under some tanks- and just like that, they’re in. Dugan, who is apparently an expert in screaming and shooting things, does so with gusto and side by side with Morito and Jones.

James, who was apparently a paratrooper, joins Clint on the high angle, shooting downwards at Nazis whose situation Clint can best compare to that of ants in a very large, heavily armed bowl. The buildings are clustered close enough together to be strong tactical points, the walls, which have failed to keep Steve and the squadron out, now serve the unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on perspective) purpose of keeping them in.

Steve and Bucky are a force of their own- Steve, who has always had a disproportionate amount of rage brewing at any point in time for someone his size, is now also armed with his shield and fifty extra pounds of muscle. Bucky, even without the full serum infusion that Clint is used to watching him fight with, cuts swathes into crumbling ranks and has the uncanny ability to not die in situations where he probably should have died. Needless to say, none of the above bodes well for the Nazis.

“Fifty points for one-shotting the ones with the helmets,” Clint yells to James over the chaos. Which is normally the sort of game he plays with Natasha.

“You’re not right in the head,” James informs him. Then, barely a minute or two later:

“A hundred points for the snipers in those windows.”

“Bet.”

He takes out three in a row before any of them notice him, at which point he takes a running leap from one roof to its neighbor. His landing is rough: it’s a solid few yards lower, and on his descent his hair falls in his face, leaving him scrambling for a solid landing. Clint crouches, rolls, and comes up spitting strands of blond out of his mouth.

Next to him, James raises his eyebrows. He says something that Clint doesn’t quite catch, but it has the tone of fix it. Then he raises his rifle, peers down the barrel, and takes two quick shots in rapid succession at a HYDRA soldier who had climbed to the roof to try and reach them- which effectively conveys, I’ll watch your back.

Clint drops his bow and crouches, scrambling for his pockets and despairingly missing his primarily female twenty-first century friends, who- as any woman could tell you- are more likely than not wearing at least two hair ties on their wrists at any given time.

His left hand catches something thin in his back pocket and he triumphantly pulls out a purple shoelace.

Alright, then. It wouldn't really be a Hawkeye mission without at least a little bit of improvising. He ties his hair up in the same smooth motions he does to Natasha’s- normally when both of her hands are occupied with guns, or knives, or hacking government secrets, or something similarly badass.

Not to brag, but Clint wins by an unquestionable margin of two hundred and twenty points.

--------------------------------

In the aftermath, he realizes that he has really got to cut his hair. Given the lack of convenient barber shops in the middle of a warzone, Clint enlists the help of the fucking exhausted but in high spirits Commandos over dinner.

All eyes turn first to Jones, who they’ve learned not only speaks French but also knows how to mend clothes, light three cigarettes at a time, and reliably identify the vast majority of songs on the radio within the first three notes. A man of many talents.

“Don’t look at me,” however, is Jones response. He raises his hands and gestures to his up-to-code buzz cut. “Do I look like I know how to cut this white boy’s hair?”

Fair enough.

“We could always shave it all off,” Bucky proposes, amusement dripping from his voice.

“Very funny,” Clint, who happens to be the only one at the table who knows just how much Bucky likes his hair, replies dryly. “And absolutely not.”

“You could always just start hacking,” Morito tries, offering up the jagged woodcutting knife he keeps in his pocket. Clint eyes it uneasily. Last time he tried that particular trick (because it works in the movies, doesn’t it?) had not gone well, to say the least. Jokes and celebrity comparisons were made. Many of them.

“Don’ be ridiculous,” Dugan jumps in. “I got a pair of scissors in my sack.”

“You do?” James asks incredulously.

“’Course I do. How’d you think I keep this beard from takin’ over my face?”

James opens his mouth, probably to say something about how Dugan’s beard has, in fact, already taken over his face, so that battle is clearly lost. Then, deciding otherwise, he closes it again and busies himself lighting a cigarette.

“Scissors are fine, thanks,” Clint decides before a worse idea can come along.

Years of being his own hair and makeup department in the circus are put to the test, but he manages to end up with a passable, if not completely even, and most importantly shorter mess of blond by the next afternoon. He even showers, which mostly consists of trying not to  be grossed out be the sheer amount of dirt and other unidentifiable substances all over his body and wondering what in 40s shampoo makes it smell like bleach (he has a few guesses). But by the time he’s done, he stares at himself in the one (cracked, dirty) mirror in the building and feels like someone’s given him a factory reset.

Also, it’s freezing, so he doesn’t idle for too long. Feeling too clean to pull his uniform back on, he opts for his old-slash-future Black Widow shirt and the jeans he’d bought what feels like forever ago back in Brooklyn. Both of which have spent his time in the army sitting crumpled at the bottom of his bag, but have miraculously never been lost or torn to shreds for bandages (a fate his more easily ripped fabric of the awful, itchy sports coat has long since succumbed to). Throwing his army-issued coat on over the shirt disguises the vaguely futuristic fabric, and pocketing Dugan’s scissors, Clint ambles out of the bathroom and down the quiet hallway.

Ahh, ambling. What a relieving verb after several days of back to back missions. Even Steve had slept until at least seven this morning, when they had finally been given the day off- bar a surprise Nazi attack, because technically there were no mandatory “off” days during war.

The squad, which is Clint’s favorite way to shorthand ‘Howling Commando Squadron,’ would be outside if it weren’t so damn cold. Instead, they’re gathered in what Clint affectionately refers to as the living room: the only ten square feet of space not papered in maps and plans or storing various weapons. Instead, it contains a crudely constructed fireplace- which explains the lack of rather valuable and rather flammable maps surrounding it- and a few chairs that are first come first serve.

Being the last to come, Clint does not get a chair. He does, however, get a raucous ovation, presumably for his no longer unreasonably long hair. Dugan whoops. Jones moves over to make room for him on the floor. Bucky, who is presiding over the group in the least rickety and most in demand chair, meets his eyes for a few long moments before busying himself with the battered notebook in his lap. Clint recognizes the look on his face well enough to know, even in the dim lighting, that Bucky’s face has probably turned red.

---------------------------------

When the few hours of story swapping and entertaining banter wind down, Clint and Bucky linger last downstairs. They talk, quietly, until the air goes still and they can hear the weak calls of particularly winter-resistant bugs outside. By now, no one comes looking for them: the two well-known chronic insomniacs of the crew. Trading sleep for time together, at least to Clint, feels like a bargain.

“You’ve been quieter than usual,” he notes, running his hands for probably the thousandth time through hair, which ends startlingly quickly at his neck. His hands keep tugging at what’s not there. “You like it that much?”

Bucky slips down from his chair, folding easily into the two-piece puzzle he and Clint form. “Your hair?” He reaches over and replaces Clint’s hands with his own, carding through it gently (the soft parts of this Bucky are still painstakingly present, haven’t yet been torn from him, if only coaxed carefully out by dark corners and stolen time). A smile curves quietly across his face. “Nah. It’s completely butchered. Wouldn’t let you within five feet of me with a pair of scissors. And it’s still hardly up to regulation.”

Clint scoffs and bats his hands away. “Listen, asshole-” He turns to respond and is caught by a kiss instead. Which is just as well, because for the first time he feels the terrible, completely contextually inappropriate urge to say I love you.

Oh, no. Oh, that’s not good. Very not good.

Naturally, Clint panics. Bucky is kissing him, and it’s warm, and it feels safe, and stupid Clint doesn’t know how to deal with safe so it sets off alarm bells in his head instead and, and, and, the spiral. He freezes, then pulls away altogether, only to immediately regret it: Bucky is looking at him with the kind of guilt his Bucky normally reserves for Winter Soldier-related subjects. The kind that looks like it’s crushing him from the inside out.

“Sorry,” Clint says immediately, mostly a reflex but still true.

“Fuck,” Bucky says at the same time. He leans away, dropping his gaze to the floor. “No, I’m sorry. I din’t mean to- I shouldn’t have, I just thought-” He seems to curl inward on himself. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Clint. I was trying to- and I couldn’t-” He gestures helplessly, and Clint feels awful because what kind of asshole makes the guy from the 1940s the one worrying he’s overstepped in a queer relationship? Him, apparently.

“It’s okay,” he manages. “Trust me, hey, Bucky, it’s okay,” he says, more firmly. “I’m fine. You didn’t- it’s fine. I just freaked out, because I’m an idiot, and I’m awful at this. I’m always awful at… this.”

Bucky takes a break from Guilt Central to cast him a disbelieving look. “You?” He shakes his head. “If you think you’re bad, I don’t even want to know where that leaves me.” Clint opens his mouth, but Bucky cuts him off before he can start. “Don’t. I heard everything the guys back in the 107th said about me, and I know you hear more than they think you do. You know God damn well who I am, Romanoff, and that’s exactly the kind of person that’s hurt you. I can kiss you, and touch you, and if you wanted me to I could damn well go all the way with you, but I can’t… I’ve never…” he tears a hand through his hair, much harsher than he had touched Clint’s before. “I’ve never been with a dame as long as we’ve been… doing this. Never even tried.”

They both fall silent. Clint chews his lip, wishing very, very deeply that he was even a little bit better at this.

“Well,” he starts eventually, “short term solution. But. You could… tell me something you like about me.”

Reasonably enough, Bucky stares at him as if he’s lost his mind. “Pardon?”

Beating back his own awkward insecurity, Clint shrugs. “It’s, umm, a trust exercise? We say things we like about each other to, like, get more comfortable with emotional intimacy.” He steers clear of the word vulnerability (not that intimacy is much better) because Bucky is great and he trusts him with his life but it’s also the 40s and asking a guy to be vulnerable would probably be the equivalent of socking him in the face and calling him a slur. Which Clint has also considered doing.

Bucky is still staring wearily, so he clears his throat and keeps talking. He’s very good at rambling on longer than he should. “I could go first?” He volunteers. Bucky doesn’t openly object, which is a partial win. So Clint drums his fingers on the floor and thinks. “I like…” so much. He settles on a relatively safe option. “I like that you look out for all your men, even when you don’t have to.”

A pause. A small smile plays across Bucky’s lips, which Clint takes as encouragement. “Your turn.”

“I-” Bucky’s eyebrows furrow. “I like that you’re not as uptight as someone with your skills could be?” It comes out hesitantly, almost as a question as he glances at Clint, like, am I doing this right? Clint nods quickly.

“Yeah, good- and, y’know, thanks,” he adds, running a hand through his hair (which desperately needs to be washed). “I like… your eyes.”

Bucky blinks and turns pink, like he always does, but recovers quickly. “I like your stupid non-regulation hair.”

“Well, I like your stupid up-to-regulation hair,” Clint replies.

“Doesn’t count,” Bucky informs him. “Pick something original.” Well, at least he got the hang of it quickly. Clint rolls his eyes good-naturedly.

“Fine.” He considers. “I like that you can dance.”

“I like that you don’t give a shit what idiots think about you.”

“I like that you always sleep somewhere you could protect people from.”

“I like that you sleep with the knife. It’s smart. No one else gets it.”

“I like that you sleep with me,” Clint teases. Bucky reaches over to hit him and he leans back out of his reach with a shit eating grin. With a sigh, Bucky settles back and tilts his head.

“I like how much you care about saving people.”

It’s Clint’s turn to double take and go quiet momentarily, because that’s a far cry from lighthearted compliments and jokes. That’s something real. And the way Bucky says it leaves no doubt that, at least to him, it’s the honest to God truth. He looks away briefly, suddenly choked by an ache deep in his chest. It leaves a beat of silence where his reply is supposed to be, so Bucky fills in.

“I like that you cared enough to save me,” he adds.

I love you. I love you. I love you. Over and over and over and over and it’s the one thing that he shouldn’t, won’t, can’t say.

Don’t cry, Clint. Don’t you dare cry. This is not the place and time for crying. This was your idea, idiot.

“I like that you care about saving people, too,” Clint finally says to the ground, even though it’s technically against the rules. He doesn’t trust himself to look up. But it’s true. “I like that you think I’m worth saving.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Bucky tells him gently. He feels a hand grip his carefully- harder than it should be, but easier than it sounds. “But you are.”

So maybe they’re both not so awful at this thing after all.

Chapter Text

They’re trapped. Because of course they are.

After bombing, shooting, strategizing, and improvising their way through half a dozen HYDRA bases, their most recent venture had left the Commandoes huddled in the basement of a shoddily built bunker. The base taken but their escape blocked, Jones (the only one who hadn’t yet broken his radio in one way or another) had passed their location back to camp. The squadron that would move in and occupy the area were, by Clint’s rough estimation, an hour away. So all they really had to do was wait.

Unfortunately, waiting has always been one of his least favorite activities. It’s been maybe five minutes in the dusty, dimly lit bunker, and he’s already starting to go insane. He’s currently occupying himself by scolding Bucky for almost dying (again) via stray grenade about a half an hour prior.

Clint is pretty sure your boyfriend isn’t supposed to give you regular heart attacks. Then again, if he weren’t unfortunately inclined towards following reckless do-gooders around, he wouldn’t have fallen in love with Bucky.

“I thought you were supposed to be the reasonable one,” he complains.

Bucky snorts. “Everyone always thinks that, cause I pale in comparison to Steve.”

Steve, hearing his name, looks up from his murmuring session with James and shoots them a grin. He seemed perfectly comfortable with the concept of waiting an hour for their rescue. Clint rolls his eyes in response. Neurotypicals.

Bucky is similarly amiable, which makes anger a short term outlet for Clint’s energy that fizzles and dies quickly. He slumps against the most intact of the walls and fiddles with his bow, absentmindedly tightening and loosening the string’s tension. Bucky sits next to him while the others crouch nearby- Morita and Dugan are engaged in swapping stories from back home.

“We were lucky,” Morita is recalling. “Pa already owned a big place, people would rent out rooms by the night. Well, then everyone started losin’ everything and we rented ‘em out by the month. Dirt cheap. He didn’t want to, but I think my ma beat him into it. Not that me and my brother stuck around much for all that- we were working right outside-a town. Factory. Almost rather be here than back there, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Nah, y’er lucky to have work at all,” Dugan chimes in. Like Clint, he’s fiddling with his gear, re-loading his pistol and clicking parts in and out of place as he talks. “Me and my boys, they turned us away every city we set foot in.”

“That’s because you and your lot were train hoppers,” Bucky points out. “Ain’t that illegal?”

It’s hard to tell, but Dugan is definitely grinning under his unruly facial hair. “Only if the coppers catch ya, Barnes. You city boys got some big heads on y’er shoulders, but you ain’t got country common sense.”

Bucky scoffs, but he looks more amused than offended. “Sure. I’ll visit you in the city slammer, and then we’ll see what country sense gets your ass.”

“How ‘bout you, Romanoff?” Morita asks as Dugan reaches out to cuff Bucky on the shoulder. “You’re a Brooklyn boy too, ain’t ya?”

Clint nods and Dugan looks surprised. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for one,” he says. “Don’t talk funny like Barnes. I would’ve said Midwest. Chicago, maybe, if you were the city type.”

“You’re not wrong,” Clint shrugs. “I’m Iowa born and raised, technically. But I’ve lived all over. Brooklyn’s just the most recent stop. Bed-stuy.”

Breaking off from his conversation with Jaqcues, Jones glances over curiously. “You live in Bed-stuy, Romanoff?” Clint nods and he raises his eyebrows. “Alone?”

Clint thinks about the constantly rotating cast of people who let themselves into his apartment (he regrets giving Stark a key, which he had then 3D printed and distributed to their friends. Tony and boundaries don’t often see eye to eye). Kate, sometimes with Yelena or some kid Clint doesn’t recognize- something about young avengers? Natasha, the only person who still manages to sneak up on him unintentionally. Tony himself, when he feels like slumming it with the working class. Thor, once, who came in through his window. Sam and-slash-or Bucky, on occasion, who usually come with Nat and have not yet broken his window (although Sam has come close).

“With friends,” he says.

“Family?” Morita asks.

“None that I’d let in my house,” Clint replies. “I got a brother. He showed up once. By the time he left I was deaf and out a few bags of cash.”

There’s a general “been there” mutter across the group. “How’d you- you know-” Dugan points at his ear. Which is honestly more tact than most people have.

“General occupational hazard. Also, I got shot point blank in the head by a clown.”

Silence. As if these people have never known a guy who’s been brutalized by a circus performer slash assassin before. Honestly. Eventually Bucky jumps in. “Romanoff grew up in a circus,” he explains.

Actually, Clint was shot by a clown years after he’d left said circus, but he doesn’t correct Bucky because eh, close enough. The others nod slowly.

“That explains a lot,” Dugan says.

A silence falls, because it’s hard to follow being shot in the head by a clown. Clint rolls a question around in his mind and decides fuck it, why not.

“Speaking of home,” he says tentatively. “And I’m not saying I’m thinking about it. But. Have you ever known anyone who… went back?”

“Deserted?” Dugan asks. Clint nods.

“I have,” Jones volunteers. “Two of my boys, must’a been a few months ago by now- they were brothers. Drafted, both of ‘em.” He rests his elbows on his knees and stares over their heads at the wall distantly. “Younger one never finished college, older one would always talk about their ma. She was sick, I think, couldn’t take care of herself.”

“Their father drafted too?” Bucky asks.

“Died in the first war.”

Bucky looks away. With everyone else’s eyes trained on Jones, Clint reaches over and covers Bucky’s hand with his own.

“They disappeared one night when we were passing near Paris,” Jones continues. “Any further east and deserting either gets you killed by the Krauts or the weather. Safety in numbers, see, even if those numbers are gettin’ shot at.” He shrugs. “No idea where they are now. Hope they made it home.”

Clint tilts his head, thinking. “You don’t think they’re cowards? For deserting?” Back at the SSR camp, trainees had talked about deserters like they were the scum of society.

“Do you think so?”

“No. No, of course not.” He looks around. No one disagrees. Mostly, they just look tired. A little melancholy.

“Stayin’ or leavin’- one of ‘em ain’t braver than the other,” Dugan says. The absence of amusement that usually brightens his face leaves dark lines deeply etched in the parts visible behind his hair. “It’s about why you do it, innit? You come ‘cause you have to. You leave if you’ve gotta. You judge deserters, you ain’t been out here long enough.”

Fair enough. It isn’t like Clint has never purposely ignored Steve’s calls, or avoided the tower for a week or two, or shut a door in someone’s (Kate’s) face. Which begs another question. “So why haven’t you? Like, any of you,” He backtracks. “Not you, specifically.”

Dugan shrugs. “S’pose everyone’s got their reason,” he says. “I ain’t got nothin’ to go back to.”

“No one likes me so much back in Fresno right about now,” Morita adds.

Jones is engaged in muttering with Jacques, but he flashes double V’s.

“I mean, someone’s gotta keep you lot alive,” Bucky says. To Clint, it’s clear from the pre-loaded humour he shoves into his voice that he’s reflecting, but Bucky opens his mouth again and he stays quiet. “It’s like Dum Dum said, right: everyone’s got a reason, an’ as long as you got at least one of ‘em, leaving feels…” he pauses, searching. “Well, it ain’t impossible, but it still ain’t an option. Everybody wants to come home, but most won’t. Course I’d rather be in Brooklyn, but long as I’m here I’m stayin’.”

More silence follows. It stretches, and even Clint feels the itch for a cigarette flare up, just to have something to do. Bucky’s other hand- the one that he’s not holding- keeps moving towards his pocket and then away again: Steve had ordered no smoking in the mostly-enclosed space, to general dissapointment.

Finally, Jone’s radio pipes up. Clint is so relieved he internally thanks several gods that most definitely had nothing to do with the situation. Steve, in all his American flag glory, stands, and the rest of the squad stretches cramped limbs and slowly follows.

“I’d bet,” Jones says as the sounds of boots and the rumble of trucks grows louder outside, “that if one of us deserted, Cap’d send a letter to our mothers personally dishonoring us,” Jones says.

“That is because the Captain is in this war to fight for his country,” Jacques adds dryly, the tone carrying even through the heavy accent in his voice.

Bucky snorts as he hauls Clint to his feet. “And what are you in it for, then?”

Jacques grins. “Les balistiques.”

By the time they get back, they’re so exhausted that almost everyone heads in early. Something about sitting around for long periods of time is sometimes more tiring than exercising. One time Clint took the five hour flight out to see Kate and immediately passed out on her couch for ten hours afterwards, before waking up to relentless teasing.

This time, however, he stays downstairs. Steve is out doing America things, everyone else is in bed, and that means he and Bucky have as close as they ever get to privacy.

He likes having a close knit team like the Commandos, he really does. But unlike back in the 107th, when faces were constantly coming and going and scattered to the wind and camps were huge and constantly shifting, being on one means they get less privacy or time to themselves than before unless everyone is asleep. It’s to the point that Clint has already exhausted the “we have to stop meeting like this” joke and accepted that this is their corner of the universe, on hard wood and alleyways hours past sundown. It’s better than spending that time alone.

Bucky is standing over some worn-out looking sheets of paper and a map with red marks all over the top right corner. They had been here when the squad returned earlier that afternoon- something about orders for their next mission. Steve had explained it, but it was too late: Clint’s ears had already registered the words “next mission” and promptly tuned him out, too tired from this one to even think about thinking about the next one.

Clint spends about a minute attempting to read the unevenly inked words over Bucky’s shoulder before he gives up and nudges his boyfriend. “What does it say?”

Bucky picks up the paper, frowning. “Something about a shipment interception. I don’t know why it falls on us. We’re soldiers, not bandits.”

Speak for yourself, Clint thinks. Bucky glances sideways at him. “You didn’t read it earlier when it came in with the supplies?”

“I’m bad at reading,” Clint shrugs. “I’m also bad at hearing. It’s a cruel world.”

With a disgustingly fond grin, Bucky sets the paper aside in favor of looping an arm around Clint’s waist and kissing him.

For the record, if there’s one feeling Clint is one hundred percent positive he’ll never get enough of, it’s this one: whether they’re exhausted and covered in grime or shivering and holding each other close enough to keep the chilled night air out or frantically taking advantage of spare moments, there’s something in him that clicks into place as they do, limbs tangling (clumsily in his case, gracefully in Bucky’s). Something out of place, scratching at the knotted parts of him so constantly that he forgets it’s there- something that reeks of insecurity and sounds like a kicked dog, the sour taste waking up alone has left in his mouth since he was a greasy teenager with even greasier hair- finally fades.

Also, Bucky is like, really hot. And he’s kissing Clint. Who has his moments, but is more scrappy than he is sexy and more haunted than he is handsome.

“Wow,” he says, a little breathlessly, when they break apart. “Does my general incompetency turn you on or something?” Bucky rolls his eyes even as he presses kisses down Clint’s jaw. Clint, for his part, is pretty sure his heart rate is skyrocketing above doctor recommended levels, which unfortunately does not stop him from rambling. “Not that I mind. Actually, that would probably be a bonus. Because it happens a lot. I’m terrible at a lot of things.”

Detaching himself from Clint’s neck briefly, Bucky shoots him a fondly amused look. “You turn me on, moron. Incompetency and all.”

Clint has to stop himself from saying wow again or possibly spontaneously combusting. “Thanks,” he manages. “I’m going to suck your dick now.”

Bucky makes a noise that sounds half like a moan and half like he’s choking. “Jesus, Clint, the mouth on you sometimes,” he mutters.

“Hold that thought for a few minutes.”

What starts gentle gets more urgent and Clint finds himself pushed up onto the table, which he eagerly uses as leverage to pull Bucky closer. He’s leaning back to the point that he has to loop his arms around Bucky’s neck so he doesn’t fall flat on his back (maybe later), and only removes them when hands start tugging at the hem of his shirt. Only then do they briefly detach from each other so Clint can tug it off over his head.

One perk of his mostly perkless job is that avenging keeps you in fantastic shape by necessity. Like, Clint has always eaten like shit and generally been a terrible host to his poor body, but he can also run like ten miles at the drop of a hat and outlast most competitors on even ridiculously staged reality TV shows. The team has a game called Can You Beat That Olympian. It’s mostly a Steve and Tony activity, but Clint currently has fifteen hypothetical medals in Olympic archery. He also has over a dozen in various events in both mens and women's gymnastics, which is less than Nat but still, like, a lot. Hypothetically.

Anyway, all of this to say that he’s rough around the edges but you can’t see his ribs anymore and Bucky, despite having seen him shirtless before, is staring. While Clint is thinking about reality TV shows and gymnastics because fucking ADHD. He pulls himself back into the present and offers Bucky a crooked, knowing grin.

“All right, Barnes?”

“Clint,” Bucky breathes, in a way that makes his body feel like it’s on fire. He presses another kiss against Clint’s neck and Jesus Christ, Clint is so fucked. “I-” he starts, then just as abruptly stops, seemingly lost for the words.

“Me too,” Clint says anyway. He fumbles for Bucky’s belt with one hand and uses to other to gently tilt Bucky’s chin up to meet his eyes. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Bucky murmurs against his mouth. “More than okay. Please.”

And Clint is already halfway through dropping to his knees when another voice sounds:

“Bucky? Hey, we need to talk about-”

Steve Rogers walks into the room and stops short and Clint has never been less happy to see those shades of red white and blue than he is right now. He and Bucky scramble away from one another in a belated attempt to stand a heterosexual distance apart as Steve stands, frozen, in the doorway. For a moment, no one speaks. Then everyone speaks at once.

“What-”

“This isn’t what- Stevie, I wasn’t-”

“What the-”

“Listen, Cap, I can explain-”

“What the fuck,” Steve finally manages, which successfully shuts both of them up. Clint has heard Steve drop a hard F-bomb exactly twice before: the day that they found out Bucky was alive and the time that they watched Star Wars and he found out that Darth Vader was Luke’s father (spoilers). He’s gratuitously PG 13. One time he broke both of his arms and the most extreme he was willing to go was a ‘god damn it.’ Now, Steve seems primed and willing to drop another one, based on the look on his face. “You two are-”

Bucky’s face is red up to his ears. “It’s not what it looks like,” he protests. Clint feels like turning into a pile of dust. Steve looks unconvinced. And also angry. If this is what it’s like to be on the other side of Steve’s anger, he is never hoarding the last of the coffee again.

“Really?” Steve says, his eyes darting back and forth. “Because it looks like you and Romanoff are-” he waves his hands in sharp, flapping motions that would be funny in any other context- “fondue-ing.”

40s slang confuses Clint at the most inappropriate times. Although from the look he gets from Bucky, this may just be a Steve thing. “Fondue-ing?” He repeats, and then is hit with instant regret when Steve rounds on him with his Captain-America-is-displeased-with-you glare.

“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing,” he scowls, taking a few very terrifying steps forward. Clint stumbles backwards a few inches, because yikes. “But if you did something to Bucky, I swear to God I’m going to-”

“Steve,” Bucky interrupts, which takes more courage than Clint has. He even reaches out and places a hand on Steve’s shoulder, moving between him and Clint. “He didn’t do anything to me. It’s- I lied. It’s exactly what it looks like. Him and I. We’re-” he falters. “We’re… us.”

Silence. Steve’s face is blank, but Clint can practically see the cogs turning in his head. He steps back, and Bucky’s hand falls, but he doesn’t move. Eventually, Steve looks back at Clint.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. We’re going to talk about this. Romanoff, put your fucking shirt on.” Clint does, because when Captain America curses at you, under no circumstances are you in the position to argue.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Bucky insists as he does so. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?” Steve repeats incredulously. “Buck- you- for one thing, you like gals!”

“Yeah, I do,” Bucky agrees. He crosses his arms. “Gals. And Clint.”

About eighty years from now, Clint knows, Steve Rogers is a flaming bisexual. Unfortunately, it is not eighty years in the future, and this Steve looks ready to burn some bisexuals at the stake (okay, he’s exaggerating. Mostly he just looks confused. Angry, but mostly confused).

“Since when?” he demands.

“Since he showed up.” Bucky pauses. He sighs. “…And before that, too. Stevie, I-” He stops. His shoulders look so tense that Clint feels his own body ache in sympathy. He steps forward.

“I’m gay,” Clint says, lifting his chin to look Steve in the eye. “Or queer, or whatever. Men. And I’ve known for years.”

To his left, Bucky relaxes, an infinitesimal amount. “Me too,” he says quietly. “Come on, Stevie, you remember those places back in Brooklyn, with the backrooms.”

“Of course I do,” Steve says, shifting back and forth like he’s itching to pace but doesn’t want to take his eyes off Clint and Bucky. “But we never- we never went. Those places are for flits, Buck, you- I mean, come on. You go dancing with gals every other night back home.” He looks up. “Listen, if that’s the problem, I’m sure I could get us all some time off, find us somewhere to go. You don’t have to step out with some fella-”

Clint grits his teeth. It’s internalized homophobia, it’s not personal, it’s not personal, he repeats in his head. Do not punch Captain America. He is your friend. It’s not personal.

Most times, it’s a net positive that Bucky is as unlikely to back down from a fight with the likes of Captain America as Captain America is unlikely to back down from one with literally anyone. This is not one of those times. Clint glances around the room, just in case there’s anything breakable that he should keep his eye on.

“For the last time,” Bucky interrupts, sounding exasperated. “I am not stepping out with some fella. I’m stepping out with Clint. You’re making it sound like I’m seeing some stranger I met at a bar just to piss you off or somethin’.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say,” Steve argues. He crosses his arms, forming an indignant wall of muscle: the immovable object to the unstoppable force of Bucky’s attempts to shut down the conversation. “Listen, I don’t get it, but it’s your choice. I just- I wish you trusted me enough to tell me things like this.”

Bucky narrows his eyes. “Well, sometimes I wish you would realize everything’s not about you.”

Sometimes I wish I was sitting in my apartment eighty years in the future, Clint thinks to himself. Eating pizza and watching Dog Cops and ignoring my feelings.

Steve’s eyes go wide, but Bucky preemptively cuts off the indignant objection. “I know you think it’s your fucking job to make everyone’s fight your fight, but sometimes, Steve- sometimes it’s a fight I already know I can’t win, and it’s god damn stressful enough having to watch my own back without having to watch yours too,” he snaps. “Because no matter how big and strong you are now, you can’t punch away what would happen to us if people knew.”

“Bucky-”

“I’m not done,” Bucky says. “It’s easy for you to tell me about all your fucking problems because you’ve always been the one who’s got it worse. And I’m sorry about that, Stevie, I really am, and I’ll listen to you all day because it’s you. But I’m not you. I’m supposed to be the one who’s got nothin’ to worry about except covering your ass- except now you can do that yourself and now I’m the one who’s got problems and I’m not you. I can’t fight battles I know I’m gonna lose and I don’t have a damn clue what to do otherwise and now I’ve got a fella and I love him.”

Oh.

As Clint snaps out of his Dog-Cops-centric daydream, Bucky looks over at him and his expression softens. He almost looks a little guilty. “I love you, by the way,” he adds, quieter.

Although his thoughts are dissolving into complete chaos, Clint somehow finds himself saying “I love you too.” Bucky looks both relieved and nervous to accept the confirmation, but he manages a small, bittersweet smile. Then he rounds on Steve and snatches the orders from the table.

“Now, if you’re done, we’ve got real god damn battles to get ready for,” Bucky tells a stunned-silent Steve, shoving the papers at his chest. “Tell Morita to go to fucking bed, I’m taking first watch tonight, Captain.” With one last, much less angry backwards glance at Clint, he storms out of the room.

Unfortunately leaving Clint and Steve in a very awkward silence. Steve looks so distressed and confused that he almost wants to say something comforting. But also, he’s not exactly much happier with Steve at the moment. So Clint moves to follow Bucky out of the room.

He feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns, and Steve is studying him with an unreadable expression. “Listen, Romanoff,” he says quietly. Something sincere in his tone stops Clint from walking away. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about all this. And… I’m glad. If it was any guy, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Thanks, I think,” Clint replies.

“But,” he continues seriously. “You’re still with my best guy. And I’d ask you if you were a gal, too,” he adds. “Why?”

Why? That, at least, Clint has an answer for- too many answers, actually. He could stand there all day and recount every moment that’s led up to the realization that he loved one Bucky Barnes, future and past. Instead, he voices the simplest one.

“Because it’s Bucky,” he says, and Steve finally smiles.

“Tell Morita to go to bed for me, Romanoff,” he says, squaring his shoulders. “I’m gonna go talk to Buck. We’ll figure this out.”

Which means it’s Clint’s turn to narrow his eyes and temporarily block Steve from leaving. “You do that,” he replies. “But I get to shovel-talk you too, Rogers, because that’s my fucking boyfriend.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, straightens, and leans back slightly to give Steve the full effect- which he’s learned from Nat is actually more intimidating than getting up in someone’s face. And he channels his inner Nat when he says: ”So you better leave all that Captain shit in here and go be his best friend, or I swear on every Robin Hood joke that has ever been made about me that I will shoot you through your scientifically modified forehead. Got it?“

Steve nods.

“Great. In the morning then, Cap. There better be coffee.”

Chapter Text

The problem with Steve knowing, Clint soon realizes, isn’t that Steve is an asshole about it. The problem with Steve knowing is that once he does, he won’t leave Clint and Bucky alone for longer than five consecutive seconds. It’s like they’re a heterosexual couple at a Christian camp or something: constantly being shadowed by an overly cheerful chaperone who is convinced that he’s responsible for them. Except they aren’t kids. And Clint stopped believing in god the moment he left his dad’s house so many years ago.

It gets old quickly.

“Steve, I swear if you leave and come back one more time,” he threatens when Steve pokes his head into their sleeping quarters for the umpteenth time- Bucky and Clint being the latest risers and the last to come down for breakfast- “I’m going to pin your uniform to a tree, stuff it with poison ivy, and blow it up with a grenade.”

At least Steve has the decency to look slightly ashamed. “I’m just- making sure that you’re both… still on track.”

Clint shoots him an exasperated look. “Shockingly, I have not tried to stick Barnes’ dick anywhere since the last time you checked on us thirty fucking seconds ago,” he says. Behind him, Bucky makes a punched out sound and starts coughing while Steve’s face turns bright red. Apparently rendered speechless, he nods weakly and hurries back out the door.

He tugs on his shirt and when he turns around finds Bucky staring at him, bemused. “What?” He asks, even though he knows exactly what.

“I love you,” Bucky says.

And this time, there’s nothing bittersweet or distracted or guilty about it. There’s just Bucky, and the way he looks at Clint like he’s hung the moon or invented doordashed pizza even though he didn’t and he won’t and he barely functions much less does things worthy of that look. And yet.

“I love you, too,” Clint replies, and the way he looks at Bucky definitely isn’t any less sickeningly sweet and he doesn’t even care.

Something so unconditional should really scare him more. It's like standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, ready to jump as if he's hit Avenger Sam Falcon Wilson (who has wings) instead of I-need-to-pay-rent Avenger (ish) Clint Hawkeye Barton (who notably, despite his name, does not have wings).

If your Bucky jumped off a train, would you? he thinks, somewhat deliriously.

It's sobering how quickly he realizes the answer is yes.

"Hey." Clint feels hands gently grasp his- warmer. Alive. He's drifting again, but Bucky anchors him gently back into this right-wrong time period. "You know that Steve knowing won't change anything about us."

With a skeptical look, Clint fishes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and throws it across the room. It hits the door with an audible thump, which is followed by hurried retreating footsteps creaking down the stairs. Bucky rolls his eyes.

"You know it's nothin' against you," he says. "Stevie's always been too protective for his own good."

"You say as if it isn't mutual."

"Shove off, Barton." Bucky pulls a lighter out of his own pocket as he retrieves Clint's cigarettes and lights one, tosses the rest back to him. Clint considers passing a comment, but they both know that he very obviously only keeps them on hand for Bucky anyway. "Ain't what I was talking about anyway. I mean us. Me an' you."

"Bucky-"

"Nothing's gonna change that." Cigarette in one hand, Bucky curls his other arm around Clint's shoulders and ruffles his hair fondly. "Nothing."

Clint opens his mouth again, but can't think of anything to say that doesn't sum up to what about when you fall off that train and die. What about when you don't really die. What about in eighty years when we meet again and you pretend like I don't exist. What about when they make you forget everything. Did you forget me?

He may be socially incompetent, but he's not that socially incompetent. So he shakes himself out of his own head, shrugs on his jacket, and presses a small kiss against Bucky’s lips, tugging him towards the door. “Come on," he says instead. "If we stay here any longer Steve will think we’re fondue-ing.”

Bucky reluctantly follows, but before they reach it he pulls Clint back in for a longer, slower kiss. “When we go home,” he murmurs, tracing Clint’s jaw gently, “we will be.”

And Clint’s stomach flip flops for entirely different reasons. He looks away. “Yeah,” he tries, stepping away under the guise of opening the door. “When we go home.”

Clint is no stranger to the feeling of loss before it even happens. He actually considers himself a bit of a miserable, unwilling expert. It goes like this:

First, there are the signs.

When Clint was seven, he stopped feeling disappointed when he came home to a father that was already far past blackout drunk. He only felt resigned, indifferent, and it seeped into his bones like lead.

When he was nineteen, he stopped seeing faces. Everyone faded into a crowd or hid behind a mask. He looked at his brother and saw a blur. He looked in a mirror and saw grease and contour and a well practiced sculpture before he saw his own skin.

In the five seconds that stretched for hours before the bullet clipped his head, Clint could hear nothing but his own heartbeat.

Clint zones out during the debrief Steve gives them when they join the circle downstairs. Bucky pokes him, used to his inattentiveness- as he’s done many times before. And yet, Clint nearly jumps out of his skin, as if he’s been brushed by a ghost. When Bucky gives him a concerned look, he only stares at his boyfriends face, trying to memorize every detail of it before it starts to shift out of focus.

He knows it will. He knows it’s coming. He may not have heard everything Steve said, but he’s caught on to this:

There will be a train.

Bucky will die falling from that train.

Only he won’t die. What happens to him, what has happened to him in Clint’s time, is worse.

That’s what happens next. The realization.

Like that night it was finally too much and he gathered up his things and slipped out the window, dripping a trail of blood from cuts in the shape of jagged glass that stung of alcohol.

Like that day on the road when he saw Barney with that gun. He saw. Like that day he realized his brother was going to kill him and he stayed anyway because he looked into the future and couldn’t see past three months.

Like when he woke up in the hospital and watched a woman in a white coat’s lips move without sound.

There will be a train.

There will be no going home.

Bucky is here. But he’s already gone.

And so Clint does what he does best- self destructing.

With five days until Bucky dies, Clint trashes half the camp looking for alcohol. At nine in the morning. By the time James finds him it's nearly three, and all the squadron does is laugh it off and joke about finding a bar somewhere out in buttfuck nowhere, Europe. Worse, they actually do call in favors and divert a shipment of it to the camp because they're the Howling Fucking Commandos and America unanimously agrees they deserve some good fucking whiskey (at least, according to Dugan). Clint drinks like a pro, shoots empty bottles off tree stumps for raucous applause despite being unable to see straight, and ignores his boyfriend entirely.

He passes out outside and wakes up with in the snow with a headache that hurts like a motherfucker but still doesn't drive the image of Bucky falling, Bucky screaming, Bucky bleeding, out of his head. At least he has an excuse for the way they find him: puking his guts out where he'd slept.

He tries to get back into chain smoking- he'd been a pro once, when he was younger- but the cheap cigarettes they get are all the same and the smell they give off he's come to irreversibly associate with Bucky because of course he has. Because he couldn't even pull together half an attempt at common sense and caution and what did he think was going to happen? He and Bucky would live happily ever after, him in the wrong time and Bucky with the wrong life, all wrapped up in this fake domestic bliss, just waiting to get killed or jailed when someone found out?

None of it was ever real. What's worse is that it was never even possible to begin with.

It's not an intervention, according to Steve. But Clint has been to enough interventions to know one when he sees it. His ears haven't stopped ringing for the past few hours, all their words reduced to concerned-sounding mush that tries to envelop him, tie him down, but he won't. They don't know what's about to happen. He's the only one acting logically.

"We think you should stay behind from the supply run," is what finally reaches his ears. Steve places a concerned hand on his shoulder and he jerks away.

"I don't need your fucking pity," Clint snaps. "I'm fine."

Steve scowls. "Okay then, not out of pity. For the good of the team. Your erratic behavior is a cause for concern for their safety."

"No. Fuck you, I'm going," he nearly shouts in Steve's face. Actually, the thought of being on that train makes him want to throw up, but like hell is he going to not go because Steve doesn't-know-the-future Rogers said so.

"No, you're not," Steve snaps pointedly. Steve doesn't-know-the-future-but-is-also-technically-his-commanding-officer Rogers. Clint grits his teeth. The rest of the room looks on passively.

"Seriously? Any of you all want to chime in here and help me out?"

He's met with averted eyes and grimaces. "Right. Okay. Yeah, fuck you all too." He steps back, retreating further towards the long shadows on the walls, one move away from disappearing into them- he's always felt safer out of sight. "Just follow orders, right? Don't question shit. I'm telling you I'm just fine- you know, at least I'm being straight with you."

"You're out of line, Romanoff," James warns. Clint scoffs.

"Good." He narrows his eyes and meets Bucky's. "The real danger to a team is people who are too scared of stepping out of line to tell the truth. At least I'm not a fucking coward."

Bucky looks away.

"We're all soldiers here, Clint," Jones breaks in, gesturing with his coffee mug. "No one comes out of this war the same, and we see worse than most. There's no shame in needing some time."

"Whatever the fuck you think you know, you don't," Clint snarls at him. "Soldiers, my ass. You think you've got it so bad? You think you've seen shit that I haven't?"

Unlike Steve, Jones doesn't flinch, or yell. He calmly sets down his drink and fixes Clint with a steady look. "I do," he says.

Clint falters.

He's always been able to absorb the anger that gets thrown back at him and keep going- he's a Barton. It's what they do. But civil is a tone he's never quite had the temperament for, no matter how hard he's tried. That's how Bruce, and Natasha, and Sam can always stop him dead in his tracks, while god forbid anyone send Tony or Steve after him when he's set on something.

And all at once all that energy collapses. He draws back, turns his gaze back on Bucky- who is either holding Steve back or being held back by Steve, he can't really tell. That's just how well they fit together, the right time and the right match even in this awful place and even eighty years later, right place at the wrong time and it doesn't even matter for them.

And then there's Clint, wrongness drilled into his bones, aching in his teeth every time he speaks. Never quite right, no matter how hard he tries. Always recovering, always moving on, always fine, never quite healthy or enough or happy just where he is. Never entirely there. Always on the edge between reality and the deep, spiraling, fear-driven world in his head.

Who is definitely not fine.

He says nothing, because there's nothing he can say.

That's when Bucky clears his throat. Everyone turns, bar Clint, who is staring a hole into the floor.

"I'm a homosexual," he says tonelessly. "As long as we're wasting our time throwing self pity parties about who's got it the worst."

The silence returns following his declaration, this time charged less with anger and more with apprehension, caution, unsteady and uneasy. Clint's stomach flips. Regret plunges deep into his chest and sinks into even his hands. He watches them shake, feels the world grow further and further away, his ears ring even though it's not possible for his ears to ring, it's silent and Clint can barely hear noise that is there much less noise that isn't.

You're a fucking coward, he tells himself. You, Clint Barton, are the worst person I've ever met.

Without so much as looking at Bucky, he turns around and walks upstairs, slamming the door behind him.

Naturally, the first liaison they send up is Bucky, and Clint gets what he decides is an unpleasant feeling in his stomach that he knows who it is before he walks in the room.

They make eye contact. Pointedly, Clint reaches up and unhooks his hearing aids before looking away again. It's an immature move, he's more than aware, but he doesn't think he can stand to hear the sound of Bucky's voice. Just watching him walk silently across the room out of the corner of his eye is hard enough. Bucky's mouth moves pointlessly, only reaching Clint's ears in broken and indistinguishable sounds. He doesn't bother trying to lip read.

Bucky hovers over him for a few long moments, probably saying something that he can't hear while Clint wonders why he's like this. Storming out of the meeting, holding up in his room, refusing to listen to reason- or at least to his boyfriend- yeah, nice work, Barton. Really mature and well adjusted of you.

Well, the tiny, petulant voice in the back of his head says, it's not like anyone ever taught me how to be either of those things. It's not my fault.

Grimacing, Clint reluctantly picks his aids back up and shoves them unceremoniously back on his ears. "I'm fucking insufferable," he scowls before Bucky can get a word in edgewise.

There's a soft, now audible thump as Bucky leans against the wall and sits down next to him.

"Floor's dirty," Clint says halfheartedly. "You don't want to be down here." Down here with me, your miserable failure of a sort-of boyfriend.

"Shut up," Bucky says matter of factly. "If you think I haven't been anywhere rougher than the fucking floor, your head ain't screwed on right." He pauses. "Besides, it's not so bad. Not with you."

Clint changes his mind. It's Bucky who's insufferable.

"You don't mean that," he mutters, staring at the floor. "You're better than this shit, Barnes. You're better than running after a disaster."

Bucky scoffs. "I don't know what the hell's been on with you recently," he starts, angrier (good. Clint deserves angrier). "But you sure seem to be spending a lot of time feelin' sorry for yourself while we're supposed to be fighting a war out here."

"Well, I'm tired of it. I don't want to." He cringes internally at just how childish and selfish and fucking annoying the words rolling bitterly off from his mouth are, but they force their way out anyway. Classic, Barton. Scare everyone off as soon as it gets hard and blame it on them when you make it harder. What a catch.

"And you don't think I feel the same way? Thought we established that I'd sooner turn around and head back to Brooklyn with you than fight another kraut if Steve wasn't here to keep me in line."

Clint turns sharply. "If you really mean that, don't go."

"Don't go..."

"On the shipment run. Don't go, Buck."

Bucky stares at him. "Is that what all this is about? Clint, we're gonna be fine. I won't let anything happen to you, God knows I got you and Steve watching my ass every moment whenever we go on a run. What're you, scared of heights or somethin'?"

"Or something," Clint replies bitterly.

He buries his head in his knees, tucked tight to his chest- a miserable ball of awfulness that won't go away- and hears Bucky sigh. "Listen, not to pull this card on ya, but there's a group of six guys downstairs who know I'm a flit, which is six more guys than I'd prefer to know. And after that stunt you pulled, I fucking-" his voice breaks off and Clint peeks out of his ball the tiniest bit; watches Bucky drag a rough hand across his face. A moment later, any trace of tears is gone. Bucky shuts his face down and it's the worst thing in the world, actually. "I deserve more than 'or something,' Romanoff. I've told you about all my shit, you know, and I don't- feels like I don't know a damn thing about yours."

Not everyone just gets to talk about

Clint's resistance crumbles. “Alright. Alright, I- fuck." He takes a deep breath. “Okay. Before I came here, I was in love with this guy. I know-” he adds at the look on Bucky’s face- “how that sounds, but that’s not- it’s not going where you think. But I did love him. And I never said anything to him, because I thought he hated me. And on top of that, I didn’t even know he liked guys. So my plan was to just lock all those feelings up and work or drink them away, because that’s what I would do whenever I fell in love back at the circus.”

He studies Bucky’s face, squeezing his hands gently to stop his own from shaking. “But it was so fucking hard. Because sometimes I could convince myself that I hated him, and then he would do something brave or say something stupid or smile and I would remember that I’m an idiot who was always in love with him, no matter what he did.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Should I be jealous?” He asks, which is so stupid and awful and he has no idea and Clint almost laughs. But the ability to joke his way out of things has, for once, abandoned him, so he just shakes his head.

“Don't be stupid,” he says. "The point is that I never told him. And all that shit that could have been something never did, because I'm- I don't know how to do something like that."

"Like what?"

He shrugs. "Just- I don't know. Not everyone gets to be well adjusted and talk about all their fucking problems, y'know?"

"I know."

And that's why I love you, Clint thinks. He squeezes his eyes shut. "I never grew up being told that talking about your issues was a fucking option. Or your feelings. Or admit that something scares you," Clint forces through the knot in his throat. "And this thing that we have scares the hell out of me. All the shit I say- it's all for show. I can't talk about real things. All I do is fucking shut down and run away. It's like I'd rather die than tell someone I depend on them, or I care about them- something they could hurt me with so easily."

"You told me," Bucky points out.

"I know." Clint closes his eyes trying his best to relax his muscles one at a time, until he's melted into an inconsequential blob on the floor. "Doesn't feel like I did. It just sort of... happened."

He tries to think of the moment, the exact confession, the action that served as a tipping point or a realization or a-saying-it-without-saying-it, but it's blurry. It wasn't quite telling Bucky he was queer, no matter how big of a secret it was from everyone else. It wasn't kissing, in the abandoned warehouse, for all the raw feelings it gouged out of them. Physicality wasn't love. Hell, if Clint fell in love with everyone he kissed, he'd be fractured into too many pieces to function. He suspects Bucky feels the same.

Saving Bucky from the lot of krauts, that was a definite contender, but it still didn't feel right. For someone who lived like Clint, the highest stakes weren't buried in the times where he risked his life. The moments that really mattered, the ones that felt as vulnerable as being put back on that groaning, tilting platform under blinding circus lights and told to jump, weren't really moments at all.

They were days. They were nights, sleeping on floors. Allowing himself the comfort of silence because of the person sleeping next to him. They were hours worth of painful, tense rides, shoulder to shoulder in roaring machines marching them towards death. They were mornings, too paralyzed to leave bed until Bucky came to drag him out, or vice versa. They were evenings, in alleyways, smoking and trying not to feel themselves slowly disappear from the world where people lived and died without them.

The scariest thing was that they never told each other anything like that at all. But in between all the trying not to die there was the trying to live with these secrets that had come out with no particular hurry or fanfare or notice at all.

"Yeah," Bucky says. "Yeah, I guess it did."

And so when the morning comes, Clint hauls his ass out of bed, grits his teeth, lowers his head, and packs his bag. He avoids the rest of the team, because he's one neutral-to-negative look away from curling up into a ball and refusing to emerge again from bed until the 21st century, and so he spends the journey to the rendez-vous point tucked in between boxes of ammunition that rumble along behind the truck that he's supposed to be sitting in. He also contemplates throwing himself off a cliff upwards of six or seven times, but that's standard operating procedure type of stuff.

They get there and god, it’s so cold it feels like his ass is frozen to the truck but whatever. He’s long past hit a point of fuck it we ball. “We ball” as in “we probably die painfully very soon.”

The group is facing away from him when he approaches, except Steve, who is in full Cap mode, handing out orders in his suit and unaffected by the cold. This is the standard for blond men. How is Clint supposed to compete.

“James, you’ll work from the back, I’ll work from the front,” he’s saying. “Buck, you’re with me-”

“Umm,” Clint interrupts, raising his hand. “No.”

Steve stares at him. The rest of them probably also stare at him, but he has enough going on without worrying about being perceived. “No?”

“No,” Clint repeats. “He’s with me.”

Which gets him a full blast of the patented Steve Rogers listen, son voice (as if Clint isn’t older than him). “He’s my backup, Romanoff. You weren’t even supposed to be here.”

“Actually, he’s mine,” Clint, who is entirely not above taking advantage of Steve’s knowledge of The Relationship, informs him. Steve’s expression shifts slightly and Clint knows that he catches the underlying tone. “Trust me, you’ll live,” he adds, completely truthfully.

“Have you considered that Barnes can make his own choice?” Jones suggests, fiddling with a boxy, snow streaked radio.

“No,” Clint and Steve reply in near unison.

Bucky, for his part, stifles a laugh as he fixes his collar, fully buttoned up his neck to keep the snow and freezing mountain air out. “Don’t worry, boys, you can both come with me,” he interrupts, successfully silencing the debate. He steps forward, strapping his rifle over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Reluctantly (the most so on Clint’s end), they step outside of their relative shelter into the full blast of icy wind, whistling in their ears. No matter what direction they walk in, it feels like they’re trying to move against it. Steve says something, his words snatched away before they reach Clint’s ears, and points to their left. Right next to a harsh cliff drop is what looks like the worst zip line of all time.

Despairingly, Clint realizes that this is going to ruin zip lines for him for the rest of his life.

“Is this payback for the time I made you ride the cyclone?” Bucky calls over the background noise, dubiously eyeing the precariously swinging line that seemed to stretch off into nothingness. Clint only hears him because he’s pressed firmly to Bucky’s side, and Bucky to his, attempting to keep the cold (and fear) from sleeping into their respective bones through contact.

“And I threw up?”

“Yeah.”

Despite everything, Steve grins. “Now why would I do that?”

“He didn’t speak to me for three days,” Bucky says to Clint wistfully. “It was so quiet.”

Clint can’t quite find it in himself to laugh, but he still feels the corners of his mouth start to twitch upwards. Then Steve takes off down the cable and that wisp of amusement dissipates into the freezing air. Jones yells something that flies quite literally over Clint’s head with the wind, but his blurry words sound urgent. It’s a tight window, and barely a moment later Bucky lets go of his shoulder and takes off himself.

His brain would like to turn around and go home, please. Unfortunately, every bone in his body screams follow. So off he goes.

As far as aerial experiences go, Clint has had some pretty bad ones. He once broke both his arms falling from a failed trapeze catch (they still haven’t healed correctly- he can quite literally lick his elbow). Getting shot out of the sky in a helicopter doesn’t even breach the top ten. Getting into a jet that Tony is piloting, something he does on a weekly basis, is strongly discouraged by five in five health professionals.

The Zipline Of Death immediately skyrockets to number one.

Clint lands on the train out of sheer luck, doesn’t lose his footing in a display of pure instinct, and clambers into the train car that Steve has broken open without a single coherent thought. When he does start thinking in real words that aren’t ‘fuck’ or ‘cold’ again, the first thing that comes to mind is I’m going to die.

So maybe he’s better off not thinking. For the moment.

Most of what happens next is lost in a haze of panic, noise, and sheer terror. His memory seems to tune in and out in brief flashes:

Steve, gesturing forward. The insistent shuddering of the train. Steve, making his way into the next car. Clint, following.

The door slamming shut. Being yanked backwards a millisecond before he would have been sliced in half. Instinctively ducking, gunfire rattling over his head. Fumbling with his bow, the quarters are too tight to draw it and he’s a fucking idiot who decided to come last minute and forgot to pack his gun. Shooting a helpless look at Bucky as he tosses aside his rifle, draws his pistol. He steps a little too far into the corridor. Angles. Calculations.

On fluid snapshot: A gunshot. A movement. A scream- from who, he can’t be sure.

Silence.

And not, someone just died silence. Not, the gunshots have stopped kind of silence. Cold, all encompassing silence. The kind that has been preceded by a gunshot once before.

His hand, coated in blood and splintered purple metal.

Bucky stops shooting, Clint looks up. Bucky, scared. His lips, moving, making no sound. It looks almost like a prayer, whispered under his breath, only he could be shouting for all Clint would know. Time skips and Steve is there, and in a moment there is one more dead man on the train.

Steve and Bucky, turning sharply with surprise Clint can’t feel, doesn’t know where it’s coming from- Bucky. With the shield.

Blue light ricocheting. Cold air blasting. The metal walls, smashed like plastic and flying away. Clint’s mouth moving, shouting nothing. Moving without thinking.

On hand grasping Bucky’s, and it’s still flesh and bone but already it feels like the freezing metal his other hand grips and that is when Clint knows

it’s over.

Metal bar or metal hand, there’s no difference anymore but one has to give.

Steve, helpless, he tries to force an apology through brief eye contact and

snow and wind, blinding him, almost immaterial light flashing behind his eyes and

something gives and

he’s falling.

Chapter Text

Clint is fairly certain that he’s dead.

It’s the only logical explanation for the flash of yellow light as he fell, hand gripping Bucky’s as tightly as his beaten down body could manage. There’s no other reason he could be lying here, feeling detached from his own body. It’s silent, but that means nothing. Everything is black around him, devoid of definition.

Upon further observation, Clint realizes that everything is black because his eyes are closed. He feels in no particular hurry to open them. Actually, he doesn’t feel much of anything at all. Everything is incredibly inconsequential in this nothingness.

Then something taps his shoulder and Clint is suddenly reminded of the terribly painful experience of having limbs.

Some sort of instinct beyond the conscious parts of his brain shifts and his eyes snap open. The same instinct tries to lift his arm- which it does successfully, before immediately being overrun with a very conscious stream of OUCH. FUCK. PAIN. And similar sentiments.

Oh, the joys of being alive.

Begrudgingly, Clint actually registers his surroundings. The whole world- or at least the open sky above him- seems to be displayed in 360p. Unfortunately, that’s the least of his concerns, because he’s pre-occupied with the blinding pain in what seems to be every part of his body. The thing taps his shoulder again and the slight shift sends jarring, bone-rattling ripples of pain through his body. Clint tries to roll away. When that fails, he tries for a vague semblance of “stop.” He has no idea if it comes out clear enough to comprehend, but for the moment no one touches him. Which is… a step up. At least.

After god knows how long, the sky starts to look less blurry and his ability to form conscious thought gradually returns, along with his ability to shove as much pain as far as he can into the back of his head and lock it away, leaving room for basic motor functions.

Sitting up is an ordeal in itself, but once the spots fade from his eyes, Clint finds himself surrounded by a gaggle of what seem to be children. They’re all dressed the same and whispering to each other, the sound lost to the ringing in Clint’s ears. When they see him open his eyes again, they gradually all turn to stare. After what seems to be a brief debate over who gets to talk to the strange half-dead man on the floor, a girl with red hair braided down her shoulders steps forward. Her mouth moves.

Clint shakes his head ever so slightly. “I’m sorry, I’m deaf,” he says. That, at least, he’s said enough times to know that it came out understandable enough, if a little slurred. The council of children glance amongst one another and converse. Clint, in no particular hurry or state to move, waits.

Eventually, two make their way to the front of the group: nearly identical, both with big, dark eyes and curly hair exploding from their heads, untamed. One of them lifts their hands and turns to the other, who makes what Clint is pretty sure is the letter H with his mouth. The other makes the same letter with his hands, and slowly, painstakingly, the two spell out H-E-L-L-O.

His hands tremble when he lifts them, but Clint keeps moving anyway. Almost as slowly, he spells back H-I. The finger-spelling kid on the left repeats the letters to the one on the right, who says something out loud, and the council of children cheers.

And so goes one of the slowest and most painful conversations Clint has ever had. [W-H-O] [Y-O-U] spells the kid.

[C-L-I-N-T], Clint spells out. [I] [A-M] [G-O-O-D], he adds, which is incredibly untrue but he’s willing to lie to children for their own sake. Luckily, most of them look more curious than worried.

[H-U-R-T]

[S-M-A-L-L] [B-U-T] [Y-E-S]. From what he can figure out, the one on the right knows some form of sign language, and the one on the left has at least a rudimentary grasp of English. He spells out a word, the one on the right says the letters out loud, the one on the left translates it into whatever language the rest of them speak, and then the process reverses.

[U-S] [H-E-L-P]

[N-O], Clint signs firmly.

The signing kid doesn’t even bother to translate his response. [H-E-L-P] they repeat.

Clint considers arguing more, then decides against it. Kids tend to be the most stubborn people in the world when they set their minds on something. [H-E-R-E] [W-H-E-R-E], he signs. The world is slowly fading back into clear enough quality that he can make out more than blobs and blurs, but he doesn’t recognize the buildings around him. It’s definitely not New York- too green, the buildings too short and disproportionately cream with red tile roofs- two things Manhattan, and by extension Bed-Stuy, tend to lack.

The children translate, then translate back again. According to them, Clint is in [L-I-N-Z], [A-U-S-T-R-I-A]. He closes his eyes. That makes… sense, actually. Given that the last thing he remembers is falling from the train alongside Bucky, he technically hasn’t moved much geographically. As the distance renders and sharpens, he watches a train- much more sleek and sophisticated than the last one he was on- wind smoothly across a mountain face and disappear in between two peaks.

Same place. He hesitates, then spells out [D-A-T-E]?

[J-A-N-U-A-R-Y] is the reply. The kid’s appointed interpreter holds up a two. And then a zero. And so on, completing the year that Clint is supposed to be in- although New Years has passed since he’s been away. He lost track of time back in 1944, but he’s pretty sure it was mid January by the time he fell- time must have gone on without him while he was gone.

And suddenly Clint is struck with a kick to the stomach worth of new worries. Natasha has probably been tearing up the US and several adjourning countries trying to figure out where he’d disappeared to. He’s probably disrupted Avengers business as usual for at least two or three months. Lucky… well, Lucky was probably fine. Kate could practically take care of him on her own with how often she stops by, ignores Clint, and makes a beeline straight for him. Shit, Kate. She’s probably trying to find him just to slap him for missing the outdoor movie night she convinced him to join her at before he was inconveniently zapped out of his time frame by Tony Stark.

Oh, and Tony Stark. Clint owes him a few dozen punches in the jaw. Although right now, he doubts he could manage even one. He tries again to stand and this time succeeds, with no little wobbling, leaning on the wall he’d sat against, and biting his tongue to refrain from cursing in front of children.

He also refrains from thinking about Bucky. Emotional breakdowns can come later. First things first: getting from Linz, Austria to New York, USA. Clint takes inventory.

He’s wearing the clothes he fell- from the train in, which consist of his uniform pants that are now technically like eighty years old, an equally thick and restricting and gross jacket over the shirt he’d been zapped back in, and his boots- which look honestly little worse for wear, only on account that they’d reached critical beat-up capacity years ago. Like, actual years. Not weird time travel year difference years. Anyway, it’s warmer here than it was back then, so he can take off the jacket carefully and give himself a little room to fucking breathe and move his arms without the rough fabric of his army jacket irritating the cuts and bruises up his arms. At some point, he’d torn open one of the deeper wounds he’d suffered and now it’s bleeding. Grasping one of the many shredded prices barely hanging off the bottom of his jacket, Clint rips through the rest of the threads, wincing at the pain in like all of his muscles, and presses it against the bleeding.

That’s that problem solved. On the minus side, he doesn’t have his backpack, which has what’s left of his money, and he’d dropped his bow back on the train rushing to save Bucky. The arrows must have slipped off his shoulder around the same time. He can feel the pistol still strapped to his thigh, hidden by his pants, but that does him honestly more harm than good. He doesn’t want to explain to customs why he has a pistol registered to the US army from World War Two and literally nothing else on his person. Objectively, Clint has to admit that he may be a tiny bit under equipped for this situation.

Then he feels a tap on his elbow and looks back down at the children, who are pointing at him with renewed curious excitement. They’re still speaking in German, which he barely knows and definitely can’t lipread, but two words catch his eye (if not his ear): Black Widow.

Clint looks down. Oh, yeah. Thank God for scam websites and their seemingly indestructible knockoff merch. He points at the symbol on his shirt. “Black Widow?” He repeats as best he can. The children nod excitedly and say more things in German until their two elected leaders calm down enough to formulate sign.

[W-I-D-O-W], their signer spells excitedly. The English speaker spells something out loud and Clint watches as they repeat the letters. [F-R-I-E-N-D]. [G-O-O-D]. [H-E-R-E].

Clint’s heart jumps. [H-E-R-E]? He repeats with one hand, the other occupied staunching his bleeding shoulder. The signer nods.

His first good luck since Peggy Carter. Fucking overdue, if you ask him. [M-Y] [F-R-I-E-N-D] [T-O-O], he says. [W-H-E-R-E]?

The kid hesitates, glancing at their translator, who frowns when they repeat the question. Right. Directions are a little harder than the two-or-three word question-response they’ve been doing. Clint feels his pockets on the off chance he’s got a piece of paper or a pen. Instead, he finds a very faded, probably expired, but arguably intact bag of Skittles.

Stroke of luck number two. He offers it to the translator, who takes it reverently. Candy to kids is like monetary bribes to adult politicians: it never fails. [S-H-O-W] [M-E]? He signs, then mimes walking because sometimes crude communication is faster.

The signer repeats it and the translator nods eagerly, shouting something to the rest of the group, who all seem to be equally on board with taking this strange, dirty, half-dead man who gave them candy to go see their friend Black Widow.

The group takes off down the road and Clint follows, limping to the best of his ability. It takes a moment for the children to realize that he can’t scamper along as fast as them, but once they do, they slow down. Clint gets some strange looks as they walk down the street, but not that many. Maybe Linz kids adopt a lot of half-dead foreigners. Did you see that blond guy the kids found today, in the outdated clothes with that awful haircut? Yeah, he looked like he just dug his way out of his own grave. Typical Tuesday, am I right?

Or something like that. Frankly, he’s glad. He’s become so accustomed to his aids that walking around in a busy town without them makes his nerves skyrocket. Every passing glance feels unreadable. It doesn’t help that every step sends pain shooting up his legs and his head hurts like a bitch. He feels ready to collapse all over again by the time the kids stop at comfortingly yellow building- it looks harmless, like a cottage or a bed and breakfast, but Clint knows there’s probably some strategic reason Nat picked it if she’s staying here.

Signing thank you to the kids one more time, he raises a slightly shaking hand and knocks on the door.

It opens almost immediately. Nat looks different, objectively, from the last time he saw her: she’s gone blond again, but red still tinges the bottom of her bob. There’s a flower crown on her head, too, and a few brightly threaded bracelets on both of her wrists, which Clint hazards a guess is the result of her friendship with the kids of Linz. But overall, she still looks like Nat- at least to him. And although she doesn’t look altogether surprised to see him, she does look relieved in the brief glance Clint gets at her face before she leans in and hugs him tightly.

Maybe a little too tightly. Clint mutters an instinctive “ow” and she begrudgingly pulls away. She starts to say something, then glances just over Clint’s shoulder and signs along as she speaks. Both are fast and slightly furious, although there’s no anger on her face- so fast that Clint struggles to keep up. He’s out of practice, and his brain feels filled with spiky cotton. Like the wall insulation that totally looks like cotton candy but does NOT feel like it. Or taste like it. Overall, the gist seems to be fuck you. i’m so glad you’re safe. you idiot. you look like shit. I missed you. don’t you dare do that again.

Mixed messages, but that’s how it is with Nat. He doesn’t mind. For the first time in too long, he smiles. It hurts the muscles in his face. [I missed you too], he signs.

The kids are sad to see Black Widow and their new friend zombie man leave, but Nat promises to visit and wear their bracelets and they begrudgingly let her take Clint to the train station, where they buy tickets to Vienna- the closest airport with non-stop flights to New York. They leave as soon as they can, so it’s on the train ride that Nat works her magic and stitches him up, pouring antiseptic on his hopefully not infected cuts and scars and passing him enough Tylenol to tranquilize several horses. He refrains from taking it all, but only just. They talk a little, but Nat’s hands are mostly occupied with bandages and supplies and typing out rapid fire updates to presumably the team back home to chat much, and Clint’s arms are too tired and sore to care. He doesn’t ask,

how did you know I would show up here?

He doesn’t ask,

what the fuck happened?

He doesn’t ask,

has Bucky said anything about me?

Those are questions for later. Mostly, he sleeps, and enjoys not having to worry about waking up to gunfire.

When they get off the train, Nat hands him an ID that isn’t his and a ticket. Clint ditches the gun in a trash can, horrifying historians everywhere, and they buy him new clothes at the airport. He changes, but refuses to part with his shirt. Nat rolls her eyes affectionately and lets him.

Conveniently, they’re suddenly booked on the next flight direct to New York. No one gives Clint odd looks in the airport, because there are four caffeine-addicted businessmen  who look exactly like him rushing to make various connections within the same building. No one gives you weird looks at an airport.

The plane ride brings more sleep but less pain, which is a win. A few hours in, Clint makes Nat go to sleep and spends a few hours watching a silent movie with German subtitles over someone’s shoulder while trying not to think about what will happen when they land. He uses Nat’s phone to check up on Kate, and conveniently also Lucky, but he doesn’t contact anyone else. Nat never names her contacts on burner phones, but he can tell who each contact is just by the messages. Steve is relieved. Tony says about damn time. Wanda just sends back a heart to Nat’s text confirming his re-appearance in their time period, but above that are what looks like a dozen texts per day asking for updates as far as he scrolls. Nat has replied to every single one of them.

Kate, as expected, is upset about movie night. Clint promises to reschedule. She says you’d better and he grins again.

They alternate sleeping until the plane lands, under silent agreement not to talk about what either of them have gone through in the past few months for the time being. It’s still too raw. Despite having slept for most of the past fourteen hours, Clint has never been more exhausted. He doesn’t dream. Only once does he wake up and immediately look for Bucky before realising that he isn’t there.

Aeroplane food is terrible. But it’s the best shit Clint has eaten in several months and he devours it.

They don’t actually step foot (well, car) into Manhattan until the morning after the day Clint gets home. Clint complains about being awake at 6:30 in the morning even though their sleep schedules are pretty fucked to the point where time is hardly a factor, just because he can. They stop for pizza at the first open shop they find because Clint has priorities. Nat declines, saying something something “pizza at breakfast time is inhumane and unnatural” and other unreasonable excuses like that.

It’s not until they reach the tower when it really catches up with him- the fact that he’s home. And he’s going to see everyone again. And he’s going to see Steve- to see Bucky again. Clint stops short at the door. Of course, Nat notices.

“We don’t have to go,” she reminds him. The noise and traffic clamors behind him- they’d stopped by his apartment for his spare aids and he’d immediately both regretted and rejoiced at putting them in, exposing himself to a New York eighty years after the one he’d left. It’s disorienting to be shoved back into the world of flashing billboards and obnoxious motorcyclists and blaring speakers (he can only imagine how Steve felt). At least he knew what he was getting into- although walking back into the tower feels infinitely more terrifying than any of what was going on outside of it.

At the same time, there’s a concerningly large part of him that is dying the longer he spends without seeing Bucky again. He didn’t live the eighty years, but he can feel it under his skin the longer he stands here, afraid. And afraid of what? What could possibly happen that would be worse than what he’s just gone through? Surely even Clint eventually hits rock bottom and can start to climb his way back up.

“No, I’m- I’ll be fine.” His throat feels hoarse. It probably is, at the very least, given that he basically just died barely twenty-four hours previously. “Let’s go. Before I talk myself out of it.”

A hand rests, briefly but comfortingly, on his shoulder, and Nat opens the door. Clint feels yet another surge of gratitude for his best friend. If they hadn’t promised years ago to never consider themselves in one another’s debt, he’d be in deep.

The Tower looks the same as it had when he’d left, other than a new coffee table in the lobby, which is a fairly common occurrence anyway. They break a lot of coffee tables. It feels a little bit wrong, that so little has changed for everyone else. He looks down and clears his throat. “Who’s here?”

Nat purses her lips and taps something on her wrist. “Stark. Rogers. Barnes. Wanda and Bruce just got back from a mission earlier today, they’ll be asleep. But I’m sure they’d want me to wake them.” She glances at him. “Unless you’d rather I didn’t.”

To be honest, Clint sort of stopped listening at Barnes. “Yeah, sure. I’m gonna-” he points behind him at the elevator. “I’ve gotta go do something. I’ll be- tell them I’ll be down soon.”

It’s a testament to their friendship that Nat doesn’t do more than briefly raise her eyebrows- which is good, because Clint is already moving towards the elevator. “Right. Good luck,” is all she says.

“Thanks.”

Still operating under ‘do it before I regret it’ rules, Clint types in the passcode that Tony thankfully hasn’t changed since he left and jabs the number for Bucky’s floor. Technically, he could be anywhere in the building, but Bucky tends to keep to his own space when they’re not specifically meeting up somewhere else in the Tower. As much as he’s adjusted, his social battery seems to drain quickly, and Clint often catches him retreating silently halfway through a dinner or party. Which, yeah. Same.

The doors open. On autopilot, Clint walks out of the elevator and is faced with the terrifying reality that he has no fucking clue what to do next.

He’s hovering nervously in the sparsely decorated but still unmistakably Bucky-looking lounge when he catches sight of himself in the tinted windows, framed by heavy curtains that today are thrown open wide, and winces at the sight.

At some point during his time traveling, cross-country vacation, he’d definitely crossed the line between his usual scruffy, banged up exhaustion-on-legs look into a torn-to-pieces, slightly deranged disaster. He looks like the personification of a dirt covered cat you’d find in a box on the side of a road: cute in a very pathetic way, would probably bite you. His hair is even more uneven and choppy than he’d previously thought.

The nagging, self conscious anxiety in the back of his head grows louder. Maybe he should shower, at least, before he goes straight to Bucky. Sure, it’s been like a day for Clint since the last time they kissed, but for Bucky it’s been what, eighty years? Who knew if he even liked Clint like that any more? Who knew if he even remembered?

Clint’s heart drops. In the rush of everything, he hadn’t even considered that Bucky may not even remember him. Them. Doing all those things that meant I love you, and then actually saying it. He’d forgotten that this Bucky even barely tolerated him.

Idiot. Clint tears his eyes away from the window and turns back towards the elevator. Not here. Not now. Maybe never. And then-

“Barton?”

As usual, Clint can’t place his tone, but he knows that it’s Bucky. Slowly, delaying the inevitable, he turns around.

Modern-day Bucky looks, like the tower and just about everything else, startlingly similar to the way he had the morning before Clint had left: dressed in all black, one sleeve torn off his shirt to expose the dark metal that made up his arm, a perpetually slightly tired look on his face that Clint knows snaps away immediately when things start to get tense. He’s holding a mug of something (probably coffee, given the time), his hair is unbrushed but partially contained in the halfhearted attempt he’s made at pulling it back.

It’s technically been eighty years since Clint saw him, and it shows. But at the same time, he sort of looks exactly the same.

Clint opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. Because obviously. Three cheers for gay panic.

Bucky cocks his head to the side slightly. “Umm. Can I help you?” He asks in the slightly guarded tone that Clint had all but forgotten he used with people he didn’t quite trust or know how to act around. “Does someone need me?”

“Yeah,” Clint says before he can think twice (or even quite frankly once). “Me.”

He’s met with an unreadable look. “Okay?” Bucky sets his mug down on the counter and takes a step forward. Clint feels rooted to the ground. “If it’s with you hair, there’s really nothing I can do to fix that.”

An awkward silence stretches. Clint automatically reaches up to try and flatten his hair and his face heats up with embarrassment. Bucky winces and looks away, his expression flashing with something before he blocks it out and turns his face mask-like, the sort of look he gives the press. Belatedly, Clint realizes that he had been trying to make a joke. And Clint had just stared at him silently. And now Bucky was equally embarrassed. And not just embarrassed- nervous.

Actually. If he remembers correctly, current-day Bucky got that look on his face a lot when he was around Clint. Only before, Clint hadn’t spent enough time with him to realize what it was.

Oh.

That explained the way he fled whatever room Clint was in. Neither this Bucky or the one he’d just left behind liked feeling nervous. And if Clint made him nervous… well, that explained a lot.

“It’s not about that,” he finds himself saying. He takes a deep breath. When in doubt: jokes. “But it is pretty bad, isn’t it? I don’t think ‘haystack styled by a tornado’ has ever really been in style. Maybe back in the 40s.”

Again, something cuts through Bucky’s closed-off expression briefly. He still won’t look at Clint directly. “Not really,” he says. It doesn’t leave Clint much to go off of, but oh well. Here went nothing.

He tries for a sheepish sort of grin. “I guess haircuts aren’t really in my skill set,” he tries. “Maybe I should stick to carnival games and lurking in alleyways.”

Bucky freezes.

Clint’s heart rate skyrockets.

Then, ever so slowly, even as Clint feels like he’ll explode if he stays still for one more second, Bucky looks up at him. There’s a tentative hope that he can’t quite keep off of his face, the same one that Clint can feel branching traitorously out from his heart. Bucky looks him up and down.

And then, very quietly,

“…Romanoff?”

A short laugh comes out of his mouth before he can stop it. “Pretty stupid cover name looking back, wasn’t it?”

Anything that would have come out after that is smothered before he can blink, and Clint is very suddenly wrapped in two differently textured but familiar arms. He exhales tension out of every muscle in his body and leans into them, wrapping his own around Bucky determinedly and tightly enough that it feels like he’ll never have to let go again. “Bucky,” is all he can manage.

“Clint,” Bucky agrees empathetically.

They eventually separate just far enough that Clint can look Bucky in the eyes and breathe in fully without collapsing his lungs (again). Too many feelings to name or count are swirling in his chest, and he can feel tears of equally complicated origin forming, hot in the corners of his eyes. “I was worried that you forgot,” he whispers.

Bucky doesn’t quite smile, but it comes out in his voice. “Already told ya a long time ago, didn’t I?” He replies. “No one coulda made me forget about my fella.”

Clint is going to die. He’s going to die here and he’s going to die happy. “Fuck you,” he says. Then he frees one hand to cup Bucky’s face and kisses him.

In the same way as Bucky himself it’s the same and it’s different. Bucky’s hands fall to his hips in the same way, Clint’s hands tangle in his hair. There’s a new scar that splits Bucky’s bottom lip, he can feel it, jagged against his mouth. But the real difference is how the urgency fades away in a way that it didn’t before. There was always something a little bit frantic, back then. Here, there isn’t.

Clint thinks he could get used to here.

“I love you,” Bucky murmurs when he finally pulls away. It’s kind of insanely unfair how he gets hotter every time he says it. Clint revisits the whole dying happy thing.

”I- yeah,“ he attempts when he regains the ability to speak. Then he pulls it together before Bucky can make fun of him for his lack of eloquence (he’s already making the telltale amused face like he’s about to). ”I love you too.“

Bucky opens his mouth again, but before he can respond the whining sound of a loudspeaker crackles loudly directly over their heads and Clint nearly jumps out of his skin. For the record, JARVIS’s sound system can turn on and off completely silently, Tony just adds the sound effect because he’s a dick.

Speaking of Tony, it’s his voice that comes out of the speaker.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” Far-too-loud-Tony shouts through his own industrial level surround sound. “I OWE ROGERS LIKE FORTY BUCKS NOW, YOU FREAKS.”

Clint groans and buries his face in Bucky’s chest (because of Tony and also just because it’s an objectively nice place to be).

“THIS IS A LEVEL FIVE ALERT,” Loudspeaker Tony continues. “INAPPROPRIATE CONDUCT ON THE THIRTY-FIFTH FLOUR. I REPEAT, BARTON AND BARNES ARE NOT LEAVING ROOM FOR JESUS ON THE THIRTY-FIFTH FLOOR.”

So much for alone time. Unfortunately, Clint knows the team well enough to be well aware that faces are going to start poking around the corner in maybe forty-five seconds. Max.

“I hate him so much,” Bucky mutters, his chin resting comfortably on Clint’s head. “Sometimes I think about pretending I’m brainwashed again just so I can kill him with plausible deniability.”

“Sometimes I fantasize about putting an arrow through his glowy blue thing,” Clint agrees solemnly.

Bucky sighs wistfully. “It would almost be worth Steve being mad at me.”

They don’t end up killing Tony, something Clint deeply regrets as they’re herded downstairs into one of the many labs in the tower by Nat, who looks amused, and Bruce, who mainly looks relieved. On the bright side, Wanda tackles him with a hug of her own once they get there. On the less bright side, once that’s over, Tony demands he sit on a lab table and stay as still as possible while various robots and sensors scan him all over for gods knew what.

Actually, scratch that. There was no way Thor knew anything about what these things were doing. One of them holds up a fire extinguisher almost hopefully and Tony gives it a stern look until it sets it back down again.

Nat flanks him on one side while Bucky hovers next to the table like a very concerned shadow, squinting at the lasers pointedly. It’s very adorable. It almost makes up for all of this.

“So,” Tony says, tapping away at thin air. “When did you end up?”

Of course he already knew exactly what his stupid machines did. Go figure. Clint rubs his head. “The forties,” he says, grimacing. “So what was it, random chance?”

He knows it’s the wrong question to ask by the way Tony’s eyes immediately light up. “Well, that’s what we thought at first,” he starts, in the tone that sets INCOMING LECTURE, ABORT LINE OF QUESTIONING!! alarm bells off in Clint’s head. “But we’ve been working with Wanda- kudos to you, sweetheart-” (Wanda waves at Clint from her spot perched on a lab table, levitating a plate of snacks that she’s sharing with Bruce) “-and we think there was some kind of interaction between the magnetic and neurotransmittive fields that influenced your movement through the timestream.”

“Whatever you were thinking about decided where you ended up,” Wanda interrupts helpfully. She wiggles her fingers with a grin. “Magic.”

Tony makes a noise of protest. “Science, but we’ve agreed to disagree on that front.”

Okay. That makes… a little bit of sense, at least. His brain doesn’t feel broken yet. “So where did you end up?” Clint asks.

“1905,” says Bruce, looking slightly embarrassed. Clint stares at him blankly. “The year when, ah, Einstein proposed the theory of relativity.”

Which makes sense.

“1983,” says Tony, comparatively unabashed. He hands Clint some pills and water, which he swallows gratefully. Modern medicine, the savior you are. “In Vegas.”

Which makes even more sense.

(Later, Natasha tells him that 1983 was not only a big year for druggies and AC/DC fans but also the year where the AIDS virus was first identified and began to spread. And Clint’s silent admiration for Tony Stark only grows.)

He glances at Bucky, then Steve. “So both of you… have you known this whole time?”

Bucky shrugs. Steve nods sheepishly.

“I sort of thought it was just a coincidence the first few months,” he says. “I reasoned it out in my head that maybe you and Nat were related, and maybe you were your own grandkids, or something.”

Off to the side, Tony shakes his head, muttering something about blonds. Steve rolls his eyes affectionately. “Anyway, eventually I figured out that Romanoff wasn’t Nat’s last name and I just didn’t know what to think. Trust me, I went through a lot of theories- SHIELD implanted memories to acclimate me to the team, I’d hallucinated you myself, there was some weird archer cloning cult I didn’t know about- everything short of asking you straight up. But you didn’t seem to recognize me, and you never referenced it, so I didn’t want to be the crazy one and bring it up.” He glances at Bucky. “Then Buck showed back up. You weren’t in town for the first few weeks, but the first time your name came up in conversation he basically bolted.”

“Stevie crossed a couple state lines before he found me again,” Bucky adds. “Back then… well, I was still figuring out what was real and what HYDRA programmed into me, so hearing your name and then finding your file…” he grimaces. “Well, if it made Steve wonder if someone had altered his memories, you can guess what it did to me.”

Clint frowns and Bucky nudges his shoulder comfortingly. “Don’t make that face, ‘s not your fault. He found me, we talked it out, figured if the both of us remembered it there was probably something else going on other than a hallucination. Steve was pulling for us to ask you straight up when you came back. But me-” he pauses and sighs. “-I guess I was scared, or something. Didn’t want to find out it was all fake, or that I really did lose it all and leave you behind when I fell from that train. I told him not to ask. Natalia, too.”

“Nat?” Clint swivels to Natasha, who looks unsurprised. “You knew?”

Leaning on the table, she shrugs unapologetically. “Why do you think I didn’t kill you on sight the first time we met?”

“My irresistible personality?” Clint guesses.

Nat laughs and ruffles his hair affectionately. She smells like non-bleach scented conditioner and mimosas and Clint has never been so happy to smell the aftereffects of morning drinking. Anything but more dirt and sweat and testosterone. “Back when we were- you know-”

“Murderous assassin spouses?”

“Sure. That,” Nat agrees, amused. “He always called me Romanova. Never Romanoff. It was one of the things they could never get him to budge on. Not even when I told him to myself. He said it felt wrong, but he couldn’t explain why. They left it alone. Better that than risk triggering memories.”

Which makes Clint want to melt into a puddle of awwwwww. “I knew who he used to be,” Nat continues. “The only two triggers that didn’t fit in with their files on his life were that and his aversion to good old fashioned bow and arrows.”

“Luckily, HYRDA never exactly considered that top priority enough to beat out of me,” Bucky adds. “And luckily for you, Natalia cares more about people than she likes to admit.”

Nat swats him. Clint grins. Yet another win for the Robin Hood shtick.

“I can’t believe none of you told me,” he complains. Steve has the audacity to laugh.

“Would you have believed us if we did?”

“Probably,” Clint says defensively. To be fair, if someone told him that he’d launched a nuke that morning he’d probably just accept it and think he forgot about it. Especially if Tony’s tech was involved. “But I guess I would have been sort of freaked out,” he admits. He still is, a little bit. Admittedly, it’s a lot to process. But he’ll process it. As long as Bucky’s here- as long as everyone’s here, really, even Tony fucking Stark- he’ll figure it out.

God, he should call his therapist. She’ll have a field day with this stuff.

“For the record, I thought you hated me,” he tells Bucky, who in response laces his fingers through Clint’s and, with only a little hesitation, kisses him on the cheek. In front of people. One of whom happens to be Nat, who shakes her head, and another who happens to be Tony, who whistles. Clint ignores him. Bucky flips him off with the metal arm he’s pretty sure Tony manufactured. But what really matters is that he smiles.

“Never,” he promises. “You’re stuck here with me, Barton.”

And to be honest, Clint could never hate Bucky Barnes. Only fall head over heels in love with him.

“I’d better be,” he says, definitely looking stupidly lovestruck. “We’re home now, you know. I think you owe me a drink.”

Bucky rests his head on Clint’s shoulder and Clint can feel it as he laughs, and it kind of feels like maybe things are going to be just fine for at least the next eight decades after this. Maybe forever. “And you owe me a dance.”