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."