Chapter Text
They take Tony’s jet to Afghanistan. There’s a scramble at first, when they’re all rushing around Tony’s house, pulling on body armor and grabbing weapons. Jason throws food into a backpack, and Bucky fills a duffle bag with medical supplies, and they’re loading up the jet when Tony comes trotting up, already in his suit.
“I’m coming with you,” he tells them. The eyes of his suit glow, and his tone is terse. He looks ready to trash both of them, if they object.
“Sure are,” Bucky says, pressing a quick kiss to his faceplate as he passes him.
Jason opens his mouth for a second and then shuts it. He started playing Robin at twelve. What the hell right does he have to tell a grown man he can’t suit up if he wants to? And, anyway, despite what every Bat might claim, Jason knows a lost cause when he sees one. And the older he gets, the less they feel like dares.
“You all reloaded?” Jason asks instead, swallowing back the objections that won’t do any good. “Bullet holes patched? What kinda downtime does that thing need between missions?”
Tony hesitates. His head swivels toward Bucky and then back to Jason.
Jason just shrugs and then exchanges a quick look with Bucky, who stares steadily back at him. They’re suited up, outfitted in the optimal mashup of Stark and SHIELD tech, and Bucky’s tucking his favorite knives into their sheathes while Jason’s sliding a gun he gave Tony once, years ago, into a side-holster, for luck.
“They’re your team, too,” Jason says, after a moment. “You want in, you’re in.”
Tony’s faceplate flips up, and he grins at them, eyes lit up with a kind of unholy glee that pulls Jason in like a magnet, makes him wrap his gloved hands around the cold metal of the suit and kiss him, properly, like this is the kind of mission that can wait a while.
“Alright,” Bucky says, hooking a hand in Jason’s shoulder holsters and hauling him toward the jet. “It’s a three-hour flight. Plenty of time for that on the way.”
“C’mon,” Jason says, tightening his hand around the suit, right up near Tony’s elbow. He tugs, and there’s resistance. For a second, Tony doesn’t shift at all. It’s fucking thrilling, the realization that he couldn’t move Tony. Not in that suit, not unless Tony wanted him to. “Let’s go be heroes.”
“Hell yes,” Tony says, as he moves to follow.
They call Nat when they’re in the air. “You know,” Jason says, “you didn’t have to orchestrate this whole thing just so we’d feel needed. We know damn well you guys can’t get shit done without us.”
“Just trying to be supportive,” Natasha says. There’s gunfire in the background, muted and stuttering, and then one quick reply from close-up, a single shot, followed by a soft, humming exhale that Jason’s heard from Nat often enough to translate to kill shot. “Mind putting a bit of a rush on things? This was supposed to be a twenty-four hour op. I’ve got dinner plans.”
“In Afghanistan?” Jason tries to remember if they know anyone who’s stationed out there right now. “With who?”
“We’re on our way,” Bucky says, because he seems to believe, erroneously, that Natasha is old enough to pick out her own dinner partners without their input. “Status report?”
There’s more gunfire and then a shuffling noise, silence on the line until Natasha breathes out hard. “Alright,” she says. “Sorry, had to get to better cover.”
“Oh, don’t let us interrupt,” Jason says, like his fingers aren’t itching towards his palms at the idea that Nat’s out there, drawing fire, without any of her team.
“Guess someone’s pissed we took out Stane,” Natasha says. “We’re hunting up his military contacts. Figure someone panicked, tipped off Ten Rings, and they grabbed Coulson right off the base.”
“They took Coulson,” Jason says, alarmed, “on purpose? This was targeted?”
“Unclear.” Natasha sounds as frustrated by that as Jason feels. “It’s possible they just wanted to grab someone who’d make an impact. And, you know, Coulson.”
“Looks important, acts important, doesn’t look like trouble,” Jason says. “Yeah.”
“Wouldn’t’ve been quiet,” Bucky says, because they don’t get to see Phil fight often, but, when they do, it’s always worth watching. “Should we pick up a medic on the way?”
“No need,” Nat says. “You know those nice PJ boys we palled around with last time we were in the area? A couple of them were happy to come to our rescue.”
“Hey, Tony,” Jason says, tipping his head toward where Tony’s sitting, faceplate up, messing with the display in front of him, “buy those guys something nice, okay?”
“Oh, you’re bringing Tony,” Natasha says. She sounds breathless for a second and then there’s the echoing crack of a nearby explosion. “How nice.”
“You’re not gonna believe what he’s wearing.” Jason grins at Tony, who rolls his eyes without looking up, blushes a little as he keeps working. “It’s the sexiest fucking thing. You’re gonna be so jealous.”
“Well,” Natasha says, “I’m not going to make wild accusations about a certain deathbot that was spotted in Gulmira yesterday, but I bet he’d make something just as sexy for me, if I asked.”
“Sure, Nat,” Tony says, finally looking up. “You want it in black and red?”
“How’d they get Hawkeye?” Bucky determinedly redirects the conversation to the matter at hand. The closer they get to a war zone, the more the Winter Soldier comes out in him. Jason hates to see the Winter Soldier in peacetime, still hasn’t completely forgiven Bucky for retreating into him when Tony got taken, but he loves to see him when they go to battle.
Jason’s starting to realize that taking both Bucky and Tony into the field is going to be one hell of a distraction.
“Oh,” Nat laughs, a little high, a little despairing. “Hawkeye heard they grabbed Coulson, and he dropped out of his nest, let them get a two-for-one deal.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jason says, rubbing at his face. “No backup?”
“Nope,” Nat says. “None. I told him to get his ass back to cover, but he could see Coulson, so.”
“Right.” Jason sighs. Once, back before he started working for SHIELD, he thought that if Coulson was very, very lucky, Clint would only catch one or two bullets for him over the course of their careers. So far, Coulson’s managed to keep that bullet count to zero, but Jason’s got some doubts about the present sanctity of his record.
“I’d appreciate it,” Nat says, “if you boys would hurry. Coulson and Hawkeye aren’t Tony Stark. There’s no reason to keep them alive. We’re keeping them a little too busy to set up a nice filmed execution, but people make time for the things they love.”
“Right,” Jason says. He doesn’t look at Tony, but he hears the suit whir quietly, like he’s tensed up or curled his hands into fists.
“Jet can take Mach 5,” Tony says. “I’ve been upgrading it.”
“Got it,” Bucky says. “Widow, we’re a couple hours out.”
“Alright,” she says, breathing hard again, “we’ll distract them ‘til then.”
“Appreciate it,” Bucky says. “Call us with any updates.”
“Naturally,” she drawls. There’s a quick intake of breath followed immediately by a sick crunching sound and a wet, rasping rattle. “God,” she says, and, just for a second, she sounds absolutely feral, “snipers even die quiet.”
“Goodness me,” Jason says, and disconnects the call quickly. He shoots a glance at Tony, who’s looking a little wide-eyed around the edges but otherwise relatively calm.
“So,” Tony says, slowly. “So, she’s pretty pissed, huh?”
Jason snorts. He gets a series of still-image flashbacks of the time Bucky and Clint got grabbed in Somalia, of Coulson setting him and Nat loose, letting them raise whatever hell they wanted, so long as they got his team back. The blood had been stuck under Jason’s fingernails for days afterward. Natasha had ended up with red smeared across her face.
He thinks about the only other time they’d lost Coulson, when a local intelligence agent sold them out, handed Coulson to a cartel who dosed him with a drug cocktail they must’ve based off Scarecrow’s recipes. He thinks about the mess they made, the four of them, about the way Natasha had smiled afterwards, grim and pleased and righteous, while she cleaned the blood off her knives.
“Yeah,” Jason says, slowly, mouth hooking up even though he manages to keep his tone relatively flat, “she doesn’t like it when people fuck with things that belong to her.”
They’re forty-five minutes out when Batman hacks into their comm lines. “Red Hood,” he says, and Jason groans audibly, just on reflex. “Why is Robin flying to Afghanistan?”
Jason chokes. He looks at Tony, whose whole face lights up like it’s Christmas, and then Bucky, who looks amused and tolerant, almost indulgent. “No fucking clue,” Jason says, after a beat.
Bruce makes a noise like, somehow, he doesn’t fully believe him. “Why are you flying to Afghanistan?”
“The crisp desert air,” Jason offers. “The scenic vistas.”
“Red Hood,” Bruce says, “what happened? Is C-”
“Whoops,” Jason says, and draws a line over his throat, makes desperate, hopeful eyes toward Tony. “Sorry, you’re breaking up. Man, reception is terrible.”
Jason makes a series of screechy, half-assed static noises until Tony obligingly fills the channel with feedback and then cuts it.
Silence reigns for a few seconds and then Jason sighs, wistful for a time when his life wasn’t so complicated. “You know,” he says, begrudgingly, “I’m really starting to root for those two.”
“Think Robin’ll meet us there?” Tony tips his head to the side. “Should we try to contact him?”
“Good Christ, absolutely not,” Jason says, horrified. “Don’t encourage him. How the hell do you think he knew to come to Afghanistan? He hacked us, or he planted something on Barton. Either way, if you let him party with us once, he’s gonna think he’s invited every time.”
“Friendly fire,” Bucky says, probably less casually than he means to, “still gets people killed.”
“No one’s gonna accidentally kill Robin,” Jason says. “He’s a fucking professional.”
There’s another patch of quiet. Bucky and Tony exchange a look that Jason really doesn’t appreciate.
He huffs, rolling his eyes and going back to checking his guns. “And don’t ever, ever tell the little jerk I said that.”
They’re nearly to the location when Tony hums thoughtfully, blinks like something just occurred to him. “Wait,” he says. “Wait. How do we have these coordinates?”
Jason grimaces. “Tracker,” he says, only a little evasively. “Coulson has one.”
“The hell he does,” Tony says. He looks incredulous, almost insulted. “I would’ve noticed.”
Of course he would have. Tony steals information, but he doesn’t share it. He’s been interrupting their ops for years now, offering up advice and intel, when SHIELD misses it. No one knows how much of SHIELD he’s hacked. Even Jason hasn’t asked, so he’ll have plausible deniability if Fury ever opts to get shitty about it. But, however happy Tony is to take data from anyone in the world, he locks his own shit down like it’s a point of pride, like he’d have to murder himself in shame if anyone other than the tech-inclined Bats got into his files.
Coulson has been in Tony’s house. If he had an active GPS tracker, Tony would’ve known.
“Wasn’t active until about three hours ago,” Jason says. He taps the screen in front of him, pulls up the data, lets Tony get a look at it.
“Stress triggered?” Tony asks, after a second. He looks considering, verging on calculating, and Jason needs to put a stop to that line of thinking before he gets too far down the path of it.
“Absolutely not,” Jason says. “Trust me. SHIELD’s worked on that. You set a heart rate as a trigger, and, suddenly, every agent on leave is getting their bedroom doors kicked open. Doesn’t fucking work.”
Tony looks unimpressed, the way he always looks before he outthinks everyone, including himself, and starts causing trouble. “But what if--”
“It’s manually triggered,” Bucky says. “Implanted in the pinky finger. Breaking the finger activates the tracker.”
“Like a glow stick,” Jason says. He wraps his right hand around his left pinky finger and mimes a quick snap. “That’s how you know it’s time to party.”
“Barbaric,” Tony says. He doesn’t seem impressed by the glow stick metaphor, which is too bad. Jason’s pretty sure Coulson had secretly loved it. “Why didn’t they just ask for my help?”
“Barton tripped his, too,” Bucky says.
Tony looks horrified. “He broke his finger? He’s an archer.”
“Not his finger,” Jason says. They’re not idiots. “He’s got his in one of his toes.”
Tony sighs heavily and shakes his head. He looks acutely disappointed in all of them. “You people,” he says, “need me on this team.”
And, hell, maybe they do. Maybe they always have. Jason grins at him. “You gonna build us new toys, Stark?”
Tony rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m sure as hell not going to make anyone break their own bones to get a little emergency assistance. I mean, honestly--”
“Location report,” Natasha says. Her voice breaks over the line without warning. She must be in some kind of hurry. “You boys in the area yet? My air support needs air support.”
“Closing in, Widow,” Bucky says, immediately.
“I thought we were your air support,” Jason says, right after. “Widow, are you cheating on us?”
“Not yet,” Natasha says. Jason can practically hear the wolfish grin in her voice. Below that, there’s a glimmer of concern.
She’s transmitting visual, suddenly, and it lights up the screen. When she speaks again, there’s a shifting of her tone, a slight fading in volume, and Jason thinks maybe she’s talking into some other mic. “Speaking of wearing something sexy,” she says, “you angels wanna give them a peek?”
There’s a few seconds of nothing and then a quicksilver shine of something bright, moving fast. Tony leans forward, messes with the display until the screen settles on a still-image of a man, holding steady in midair, held aloft by gumental gray wings.
“Oh, shit,” Tony says, approvingly, “that is sexy.”
A second later, there’s the flash of gunfire, and the screen goes dark as Natasha gets back to work, drops the visual feed.
“That light armor won’t hold up against an RPG,” Natasha says. “Incidentally, I’m watching them load a few now.”
“Well,” Tony says, “looks like I’m up.”
He disengages the safety harness and climbs to his feet. The faceplate flips down, and Jason forces himself to remain in his seat. Let him fight, he tells himself, shoving aside the shrill, panicky part of him that wants to object. Don’t be Bruce. Don’t smother him and pretend it’s for his protection.
Behind them, the ramp starts opening. Jason cranes his neck to stare at Tony, but he doesn’t leave his seat.
“Be careful,” Bucky calls.
“Kick ass,” Jason yells.
Tony doesn’t respond. As soon as the ramp’s opened enough to grant clearance, he jumps, goes horizontal, and rockets toward the fight.
They’re silent for a few seconds on the jet, and then Jason clears his throat. “Goddamn,” he says, with feeling. “Think this whole thing will hold for fifteen minutes? I need to get my hands on him.”
“I think we don’t have a socket wrench,” Bucky says, “and that suit doesn’t come off easy.”
Jason heaves a regretful sigh. “Yeah,” he says, “you’re probably right.”
They gather on the ground about twenty minutes later. Natasha materializes next to the jet, sweat-soaked and a little pale, but not bleeding from anywhere important. She takes the water Jason hands her and downs the whole bottle in neat, mechanical swigs while she watches the sky.
“How’d you recruit these guys?” Jason asks, passing her another bottle and pulling open Bucky’s bag of medical supplies so he can start patching the cuts she’s acquired.
“Oh, you know,” Natasha shrugs, one-shouldered, holding herself still while Jason gets to work, “at knifepoint.”
“Proud of you,” Jason says.
As if cued by the shit-talk, one of them drops fast, swooping in, wings beating to slow his descent. He takes the landing harder than he’s probably trained for, rolls into it to shake the worst of the hit, and pops up, hand pressed to his comm, looking worried.
“Riley,” he says, loud and insistent. “Riley, what the hell, man, where are--”
“Got him,” Tony’s voice echoes in Jason’s ears. There’s a strained, mumbly focus in his voice that Jason recognizes as him multitasking. In the distance, there’s the muffled boom of a small explosion. “Cupid recovered.”
“It’s alright, Wilson,” Natasha says. She has two comm units, one in each ear, and Tony’s probably going to roll his eyes and bitch about unnecessarily duplication of tech in the field, but, for right now, she’s the only one who can hear everyone.
“He isn’t answering,” the flyer says, eyes settling on Nat with a sick, swooping kind of stoic distress. “He’s--”
“Status report on the fallen angel,” Natasha says, smoothly. Wilson blinks, shoulders pulling back a little, and there’s a second where it looks like maybe he’s going to be pissed, but then he seems soothed, instead.
Jason recognizes him as the PJ that jumped out of the helicopter with them, the one who’d been there, kneeling in the sand, helping to pull pieces of metal off of Tony. It’s not good to see him, exactly, but Jason resolves to look after him. This guy’s taken care of his team twice now. He owes him.
“Status report is incoming,” Tony says. A second later, he appears at the skyline. A handful of seconds after that, he resolves into the shape of two men.
There’s Tony, in his metal armor, and then another man wrapped around his back, legs locked around the waist of the suit, arms propped over his shoulders, dual-wielding submachine guns. It’s a hell of an entrance, and Jason’s too busy admiring the suit to get jealous that Tony took someone else flying before him.
“Wilson!” The man grins when they touch down, sliding off Tony’s back with a grace that reminds Jason a little of Nat, a little of Grayson. “Can we hang with these guys all the time? They’ve got a really badass robot.”
“Yeah, thanks, cherub,” Tony says. “Thanks, also, for kicking me in the balls about six times.”
“Holy shit,” the man says. He falters for a second and then that grin comes back even brighter. “You’re a real boy in there, aren’t you?”
“Well,” Tony says, “I was.”
Wilson grabs the other flyer by the harness of his pack and drags him into a hug that Jason recognizes as the traditional you should be dead, you fucking dumbass embrace. He clears his throat, casts a glance towards Natasha, who’s tracking the two of them with an intensity that makes Jason roll his eyes.
“C’mon, Widow,” he says. “This is a rescue mission.”
“Yeah,” she says, drawling it out, eyebrows pulling together like she genuinely doesn’t understand the objection. “And they’re pararescuemen.”
Wilson pulls back, straightens himself out. He’s vulnerable for a half second longer, and then all that worry disappears, and he’s just exasperated. “You guys gotta get in trouble every time you come to the desert? This is my day off.”
“We just like the attention,” Natasha says, with a flash of teeth.
“You’d get lots of attention somewhere tropical,” Wilson tells her. “Have you considered Hawaii? Fiji? Beaches have a lot of sand, too.”
“Hell,” Riley says, as he starts adjusting his harness, flipping open safety locks and loosening straps, “I’m glad you guys showed up. Someone taught those Ten Rings bastards how to aim, and, gotta say, it is ruining my whole afternoon. They fucked up my wings, Sam.”
“Yeah,” Wilson says, jaw tight, “I know.”
Riley shrugs all of that concern aside and slaps Tony on the shoulder, makes the suit ring a little. “Thanks for the ride,” he says. “You got a comment card I could fill out? I’ll give you five stars.”
“Maybe afterwards,” Tony says.
“Yeah,” Natasha says. She’s as patched as she’s going to get unless she starts ditching body armor, and she steps away from Jason, shrugs like she’s resettling a weight on her shoulders. “Been kind of a long day. Why don’t we finish this up?”
“Sounds good to me,” Riley says, as he drops his pack to the ground. His tone is a little high, a little breathy, like his body’s still processing a hell of an adrenaline dump, but his hands are steady as he checks over his guns. “Can I leave my wings here? Whose jet is this? It’s beautiful. Damn, can we steal it?”
“I like him,” Tony says. “What is he, Air Force? Can we fix that?”
“I saw them first,” Natasha says, a little singsong. She tips her head to the west. “Let’s go grab our boss and see if getting rescued makes him feel like writing a transfer request.”
“Damn, that’s sweet,” Riley says, eyes flicking between Nat and Tony. “Wilson, that’s sweet, right? Feels like getting picked first for kickball.”
“Okay,” Jason says, because he’s done all his weapons checks, and Nat and Bucky have finished theirs, and both of the new kids seem to have sorted themselves out. “Huddle up, kids. Let’s make a plan.”
The plan is a little bit bullshit, but Coulson’s not around to tell them not to take risks, and Clint’s not around to remind them why they care about the potential consequences. Bucky and Jason go in first, with Tony right after them, because, as loathe as Jason is to admit it, Tony is the least bothered by bullets now that he’s armored up. Nat’s after them, with her two fledglings, and Nat is pissed, because she’s fast and light, wants to play scout, but they don’t need one.
“We’re not hiding,” Jason says. “We’re not being subtle. We’re not doing recon on this. We’re gonna murder everyone who’s not a hostage.”
“Huh,” Riley says, “so, you guys, you’re not really worried about how that’s gonna sound, reporting it to your CO?”
“Our CO,” Jason says, “is in that fucking cave.”
Riley blinks. “Fair enough,” he says, with a helpless little shrug and a quick glance at Wilson’s face.
Wilson’s been messing with his harness, but he looks up the second Riley’s eyes fall on him, like they’ve got some kind of sense for each other. He’s still for a moment, getting a read on Riley’s face, and then he nods, steady and serious, and Riley grins back.
“They know where the wings are weak,” Wilson says. “Sounds like a liability.”
He’s good at that, Jason thinks. Smart enough not to lie outright. Redirection’s always easier, because it’s just a secondary version of the truth. But Jason hears it anyway. Wilson says They know where the wings are weak, and Jason hears They tried to kill you.
“You know what they say,” Natasha says, breezy and relaxed. “Dead men sell no military secrets.” The flyers turn to blink at her, and she shrugs. “Hard to talk,” she tries, “when your lungs are on the outside of your chest cavity.”
It’s cute, Jason thinks. It’s fucking adorable, the way Natasha flirts, when she’s trying to impress someone.
“Is she always like this during a fight?” Wilson asks, after a beat. He is, ostensibly, talking to Bucky, or Jason, or maybe Tony, but his eyes are locked on Natasha. He sounds halfway between impressed and intimidated, which is exactly the kind of tone Jason likes to hear from men who are circling Natasha.
“God,” Riley says, flashing another puppyish grin. He sounds charmed, maybe a little adoring, and Jason, after a moment of reflection, decides that passes, as well. “God, I hope so.”
There’s a moment before they go in, when Tony’s gone so still and silent that Jason almost thinks he’s disappeared, is off somewhere else, piloting the suit remotely. “Hey,” Jason says, soft enough that none of the others should be able to hear. “If you don’t wanna go in, you don’t have to. No one’s gonna blame you for not wanting to go into a place like that. You’ve already done enough.”
The suit whirs, clicks and hums, sounds like it’s powering up to blow the whole fucking area to hell and back. “I’m going,” Tony says, flat and robotic.
If Jason were better, softer and sweeter, raised by gentle people in a nice neighborhood, maybe he’d tell Tony to sit this one out. Maybe he wouldn’t understand. Maybe he’d think that the way to deal with fear is to avoid it, to let your knuckles heal before you start throwing punches again.
But Jason grew up in Crime Alley, and so, instead, he knows that sometimes the best way to clean a cut is to reopen it, let it bleed until all that blood’s washed away any chance of infection.
“Alright,” he says. “Let’s get our team back.”
It’s ugly, when they get inside. They’re ugly. Jason knows, the second they find Clint kneeling on the ground, dripping blood down his face, wearing that particular kind of I’m not here right now, leave a message grin he wears when someone’s tripped him right out of his head, that things are going to get out of control.
He’s not sorry about it. He’s not sorry about any of it. He wishes, a little, that this weren’t the first mission Tony chose for a ridealong, but he’s learned, over time, the importance of being honest.
And, as much as he’s braced for it, as much as he can’t stop himself from expecting it, Tony’s never shied away from the worst parts of him. Tony’s got this weird, bizarre, miraculous ability to look at the worst parts of him like they’re worth just as much as the rest. Like there’s no clause waiting at the end of the declaration, like I love you doesn’t make any Goddamn sense mashed up against but not this part of you.
Even here, Tony doesn’t flinch from much. He’s fast with kill shots, and Jason can’t work out if it’s mercy or efficiency or both. He doesn’t mind, really. Jason’s not here to take his time. He’s here to get his team back.
Everything is so fast, with Tony there. It’s beautiful. In that first rush of fighting, before the men in the cave realize that every single one of them is fucked, Jason, Bucky, and Tony work as a unit.
There are missteps, stumbles, failed handoffs; they’ll need to train together. They’re not perfect. Not yet.
But there’s a series of perfect moments, caught in the middle of all the death. There’s Bucky, taking fire on his metal arm, and then Tony stepping in front of him, Bucky resting his rifle on the shoulder of the suit and taking out six guys in a row before the rest break and run. There’s Jason, dodging a knife, grabbing the man wielding it, and throwing him, and then Tony’s repulsor beam catching the man in mid-air, slamming him hard into the cave wall, leaving him crumpled in the dirt. And then there’s Tony and Bucky and Nat, disappearing into the dark of the side-tunnels, lit by the blue light of Tony’s arc reactor, while Jason stays behind.
Jason wants to go with them. He’s got business with Ten Rings. He wants to teach them, with his hands, and his knives, and maybe his guns, if he starts to feel merciful, why it’s a bad idea to fuck with anyone on his team.
But Barton’s on his knees, bloodied up, and someone needs to look after him.
Jason gets the flyers to Barton, who stares dopily up at them for a moment and then spits lock picks into Sam’s open hand. “Oh, good,” he says, blinking his way back to awareness. There’s blood in his mouth, dark along his gum line. Keeping those lock picks in his mouth must’ve been hell. “Hospitality is shit around here. The continental breakfast is my own teeth. This is bullshit.”
“Hey,” Riley says, hands sliding gently over Clint’s face, dropping to check his throat, his arms, his ribs. “You’re fun. Are you single?”
“Nope,” Clint says, proudly.
“Of course you aren’t,” Riley says, like he’s proud, too. “What about that redhead? You know her? Body like a Maxim cover, kick like a Goddamn Clydesdale?”
“Oh,” Clint says, sighing happily, “that’s Nat. Is she here?”
“Sure,” Jason says, with a nod. “Can’t you hear the screams?”
And then, right on cue, there’s a shriek that gurgles into nothing, and it could’ve been Bucky, could’ve been Nat, could’ve been Tony, but Clint’s whole face eases up, like all his problems are solved. “That’s my girl,” he says, with a sweet, nightmare smile.
“Where’s Coulson?” Jason asks, and Clint blinks for a second, grimaces, and then lifts a hand and points up the tunnel behind them.
“Twenty yards up,” he says, “door to the right. He’s probably out of the cuffs by now. He’s gonna be so pissed.”
Jason nods and nudges Wilson, tips his head up the tunnel. “C’mon,” he says. “He probably needs a medic.” It doesn’t feel right, leaving Clint, but anyone trying to get to Clint will have to get past Bucky, Tony, and Nat, and Jason can’t imagine anyone in the world who could manage that, not after Natasha got a solid look at the mess they made out of Clint.
Wilson drops a glance at Riley, who draws one of his holstered submachine guns and pulls Clint against the wall, settles in front of him like it’s nothing, and then Wilson nods and follows right after Jason, who moves quick, so he can get back fast, just in case.
When they find Coulson, he’s standing inside the door, holding a fist-sized rocks in his hand, looking like some lost geologist, waiting for his research assistant. “Oh, hello,” he says, to Jason, like he’s been expecting him for a while. There’s dark bruising around the blade of his jaw, the outline of fingers on his throat, a hell of a shiner forming over one eye and stretching across his nose. His white button-down is stained with blood, but, when holds his hand out expectantly, Jason passes him a gun. “How’s Hawkeye?”
“Oh, you know,” Jason says, with a shrug. “Straining the limits of SHIELD’s dental policy.”
“Of course,” Coulson says. He studies the gun for a second and then looks up. There’s something in his eyes, in that moment, that reminds Jason of Natasha on a bad one, and Grayson, when that temper of his overwhelms his better nature. Something dangerous, something hungry. “Well,” he says, “let’s clean up this mess.”
The doctors on base run a blood test and then sedate Clint as soon as it comes back clean, which is standard practice for dealing with Clint when he’s getting treated anywhere that isn’t SHIELD Medical. He’s a runner, has a hell of a flight instinct when it comes to medical care, and he’s much more complaint, once he’s too out of it to coordinate an escape attempt.
Natasha settles at his bedside and starts cleaning her knives. Jason brings her coffee. A few minutes later, Wilson and Riley show up with dinner. Tony and Bucky station themselves in a back corner, out of the way, and everyone behaves admirably, really, except Phil Coulson.
Coulson shows up to the exam room nearly ten minutes later than everyone else, makes no apologies for disappearing, and then doesn’t so much refuse medical care as completely ignore it. He allows the doctors to treat him, lets them remove his shirt and undershirt, clean off the blood, and sew him up, but only while he’s standing beside Clint’s bed, reading Clint’s chart, interrogating Clint’s doctors, and checking in with various military personnel about the cleanup operation currently taking place at the Ten Rings’ cave.
As soon as the doctors have verified that Clint’s going to recover, should be field-ready in two or three weeks, and won’t even lose any teeth if he’s careful, Coulson pulls his undershirt back on, dodges neatly away from the doctor still bandaging a few cuts on his arms, and tapes the gauze down himself as he makes his way out of the room. Jason stares after him, shocked and affronted, because he’s spent hours of his life listening to Coulson bitch about the rest of them bailing out of Medical before they’re cleared, and he cannot believe Coulson is pulling this shit right now.
“Coulson,” Jason says, as he follows him into the hallway, with Bucky and Tony falling in at his heels. “Phil, what the hell?”
“I’ve got to report in,” Coulson says, calmly. “Fury will need an update. Stay here.” And then he walks outside, deliberately distances himself from anyone or anything likely to listen in, and pulls what looks suspiciously like a burner phone out of his pocket.
“Holy shit,” Jason says, nudging Bucky. He points at the figure of Coulson, barely visible through the window. “Are you seeing this?”
“Probably calling off a STRIKE team,” Bucky says, because he’s got no imagination. Or maybe because he respects Coulson’s privacy.
“Hey, Tony,” Jason says, “please tell me you can track that call.”
Tony’s still in the suit, either because he can’t actually get out of it without his robots, or because he’s got the good sense not to show his face on a military base. “Well…” He shrugs, seems caught between his endless curiosity and his sense of basic decency, in a way that Bruce Wayne never is. “I could. Maybe. Probably, yeah, I could---”
“No,” Jason says, regretfully. “Never mind.” Beside him, he feels Bucky relax, but he doesn’t look at the approving smile Bucky shoots his way, because he doesn’t need a pat on the head for abiding by basic laws of civility. “Forget it. Coulson can have a secret friend if he wants one.”
“Secret friend?” Tony laughs, and it sounds odd, filtered through the suit’s speakers, but not unpleasant. “C’mon. Coulson just left medical after a near-death experience to call someone on a flip phone. Whoever he’s talking to, he’s definitely fucking.”
“Woah,” Jason says, legitimately, honest-to-God scandalized. “Coulson’s not fucking anyone.”
Tony turns to stare at him. The suit’s eyes glow, and he laughs that rattling laugh again.
“He isn’t,” Jason insists, because it’s a horrifying thought. “Coulson is our maiden aunt, and he’s not fucking anyone.”
“Sure,” Bucky says, patting Jason on the shoulder reassuringly. “It’s all very chaste. Poetry and flowers. They do the Sunday crossword together. In separate beds.”
“Hand-holding at sunset,” Tony says, and Jason can’t see his face, but he’d bet every gun he has that there’s a shit-eating grin under that faceplate. “When they’re feeling bold.”
“Fuck both of you,” Jason says, rolling his eyes.
“When we get home,” Tony says.
When we get home, Jason thinks, and something clicks and settles in his chest, spreads warmth. He’s always loved the homecomings, when he and Bucky make their way back to Tony, when Bucky makes his way back to them, but he’s always hated waiting, hated being apart, hated the weeks and sometimes months of distance, of talking in coded words through phones or computers.
He doesn’t know how Tony’s dealing with what they did today. With the violence, the blood, the lives he took in a cave so fucking similar to the one he’d been held in. He doesn’t know if Tony’s ever going to want to do this again.
He knows that he should hope that he doesn’t. He knows it’s better for Tony, safer and saner and simpler, if he stays home.
But he thinks about the way they fought together, the hours of buildup to the mission and the sweet, sharp boiling over of the fight, and he wants it, again and again, as many times as he can get.
He looks at Tony, at the suit’s steadily glowing eyes, the bright blue of the arc reactor in his chest. He looks at Bucky, right beside him, still dirty from the fight, shoulders squared like he’s ready for the next one.
He thinks, lost and giddy and a little awed, that they could topple empires, if they had to. The three of them, they could save the whole Goddamn world.
“Hey,” a voice says, sounding hushed, almost strangled. “Hey.”
It’s Riley, with Sam Wilson right behind him. They both look a little shell-shocked. Jason thinks, for a second, that something’s gone wrong with Clint, but they’re only a few yards from the door to the examn room, and Natasha would yell for them, if she needed them.
“Do you guys know Robin?” Riley asks, pointing over his shoulder, eyes wide with disbelief. “Is your sniper dating Robin? Because he just dropped from the ceiling, and I swear to God, he’s sitting at his bedside. I swear to you, in full Robin getup. They are holding hands. There’s some romantic shit going on in there.”
“Is this a security breach?” Wilson looks justifiably alarmed. “Are we supposed to do something about this?”
“No need,” Bucky says.
“He’s a friend,” Tony adds, a second after that.
“Yeah,” Jason says, a half-second later. “It’s a security breach. Go ahead, hit the alarm. I wanna see what he does about it.”
Wilson hesitates. He looks toward Riley, who frowns for a second, glances between Jason and Bucky, and then, slowly, starts to grin. “You guys,” he says, “are a Goddamn party.” The way he says it makes them sound like a revelation, and Jason grins back, because, hell, he’s not wrong.
“Alright,” Coulson says, as he walks up, burner phone hidden and regular, SHIELD-issued cell in his hand. “Fury wants us back as soon as Clint’s cleared for travel.” He looks at Tony, in his suit, and his expression is difficult to read, but Jason’s seen pride and exasperation on his face often enough to recognize them. “He wants you at the debriefing, if you’ll go.”
Because Tony’s not SHIELD. He’s been clear about that. Tony’s not SHIELD, and he’s not military, and he’s not going to let anyone use his weapons for anything he doesn’t approve, not anymore.
“Sure,” Tony says. “But I’m charging a consultation fee.”
Coulson sighs. He looks exhausted but oddly at peace, even though, by Coulson’s standards, he’s half-naked in public. Usually, when Coulson’s lost his suit jacket and button-down by the end of an op, everything has gone to hell, and Jason’s weighed down with it, thinking desperately about days in bed, possibly hooked up to a saline or whiskey drip.
But Coulson’s standing there, bruised but bandaged, and Clint’s off in medical, attended by Nat and Drake, and Bucky and Tony are waiting, ready and resolute, on either side of him. And Jason’s never felt a victory like this. Never really been able to go home after a fight without feeling like he had to hide it away, quarantine parts of himself until they’re needed again.
The three of them, they’re not fully recovered. Not yet. Maybe they won’t ever be. Maybe they don’t have to be. Maybe, if they’re together, that’ll be enough.
“Hey,” Jason says, not even bothering to bite back his eager grin. He hooks his thumbs toward either side of them, thumps Bucky in the chest, hits Tony right above the arc reactor. “Coulson,” he says, “you take the kids home, huh? We’re gonna head back early.”
Coulson blinks, but only because he’s too well-mannered to roll his eyes while the two Air Force boys are watching this whole thing play out like the world’s most interesting, deadliest daily soap. “Right,” he says, long-suffering, practically martyred. “Be at SHIELD in ten hours,” he says. “And be ready to explain how you ended up here, as exactly none of you are cleared to be in the field right now.”
His eye slide to the flyers, who shuffle automatically into parade rest. Coulson’s eyebrows lift, and his mouth flattens, and Jason can’t blame him for being charmed, because, honestly, they got Natasha, too. “Gentlemen,” he says, politely, “your assistance is appreciated.”
“Oh,” Riley says, with a smile. “We just got lost.”
“Did you?” Coulson doesn’t bother to sound convinced.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “That redhead gives really terrible directions.”
Jason grins and shakes his head, hooks one hand in Bucky’s shirt and the other around Tony’s elbow. He tugs them forward, toward the door, toward their jet. They have ten hours. It’ll take less than five to get to DC.
“C’mon,” he says, hauling them along. “I bet we can find a socket wrench in that jet somewhere.”
They have, he knows, so much shit to work out. So many things they’ll need to figure out, so much to debate and argue over and fuck up. There’s always a crash, after every fight. Things never stay good forever.
But it’s alright. It’ll be alright. They’re together. They’ll figure it out.