Every Breath You Take (Scars Edition) – Reremouse (TheBelfry), rufferto, wyxan

Clint shifts his arm and rubs at his left shoulder. He’s getting old. Don’t get him wrong; he’s still the best at what he does, but. Yeah. He’s feeling it a little more these days.

His whole shoulder has felt stiff and unnatural since Clint bounced off of Bucky on his morning stagger to the coffee machine on the common floor of Avengers Tower, too tired to dodge, and too groggy to notice an entire Bucky in his way. Bucky’d caught him by his bared shoulders and set him upright with a frown between his eyebrows and a question Clint didn’t quite catch.

So Clint had mumbled some vague combination of thanks and excuses and turned back to the coffee machine before Bucky could answer. If Bucky was planning to answer, which, being Bucky, he probably wasn’t. So it was probably safe to leave his hearing aids in his pocket after all. Steve might have answered, but Steve is a good guy who wouldn’t hold not answering against Clint.

Clint saluted Bucky with his full mug of coffee and meandered down to the range, one scalding sip of coffee at a time.

He’d feel better after coffee and a good warmup shooting things.

Nope.

He does not feel better after coffee and shooting things.

So Clint’s still got the stiffness in his shoulder, but the center of the target bristles satisfyingly with arrows. There are neat crosshairs of precisely placed arrows around the center and his quiver is empty again. It’s good. Clint swipes the back of his right arm over his forehead before the sweat can reach his eyes and heads down the lane.

He starts pulling the arrows from his target and swipes his arm across his forehead again, wincing at the pulling almost-pain radiating from his shoulder. He’s mostly sure Bucky didn’t strain anything setting him upright, so what the hell? With an extra layer of confused No, really, what the hell? sitting in the back of his brain.

Clint puts the last arrow back into his quiver, a handful set aside for refletching, and stretches. The urge to rub at his left shoulder again is nearly overwhelming, but Clint is like a cat: he’ll only admit he’s hurt in public some time around arriving at death’s door.

He considers giving in to the visceral pull he feels and making a detour to the common floor for a pre-noon coffee on his way to the shower but decides against it on the off chance it would involve being social before having said coffee, and his head is too full to contemplate actual human interaction just yet. If Clint is honest with himself (and occasionally, he is), he’s increasingly irritated at his body betraying him at the ripe old age of 30-mumble, and he’s likely to take it out on the first unfortunate person to look at him with concern or even curiosity before noon.

He’s not gonna be that guy today.

So he heads straight for his floor, stripping before the door is all the way closed behind him. He leaves the clothes where they fall along the way to the bathroom and absently cranks the hot water on high on the off chance it’ll loosen his muscles. Instead, his left shoulder only feels numb, and in the privacy of his rooms, Clint reaches up to give in and rub it at last.

His fingertips find gnarled skin that ends abruptly above his shoulder joint.

It jolts him from his thoughts and he looks down, staring, at the blossom of scars that radiate out from his left shoulder and which absolutely hadn’t been there when he got dressed in the morning. He covers the scars with his right hand, both pink from the heat, and stares at the wall.

You didn’t see this one coming, Hawkeye, he thinks, digging his fingers into the scar tissue and unsuccessfully trying to rub some feeling back into his skin. Again, there’s that weird extra layer to his what the fuck? going on in the back of his mind, and it sounds a lot like Bucky.

Because unless he unconsciously bumped into two people today with extensive scarring on the left shoulder, it really looks like the actual Winter Soldier is probably wearing one of Clint’s many scars somewhere on his body. That’s just the way soulmates work. And Clint doesn’t know what the hell to do with that just yet. From the feeling of things, neither does Bucky, and Clint isn’t entirely sure which of them is supplying the thread of panic, but he suspects it’s not him.

After attempting to drown himself in his own shower for lack of any better ideas, and a nap that’s more staring at the ceiling than sleeping, Clint wanders up to the common floor at 1:01 in the afternoon, wearing his hearing aids and a slightly wrinkled tank top with jeans that are more hole than fabric, but they meet all requrements for public decency laws, so they’ll do.

It’s only because Clint’s in that post-nap fugue state where he’s trying to separate what’s his panic and what’s Bucky’s panic that he doesn’t notice Steve until a mug shatters, and he stares sadly at the green and white shards. “Aw, mug. Bruce is gonna be sad,” he says (to a Steve who isn’t listening).

“Clint,” Steve finally finds his voice. “Can I look at your shoulder?”

Clint shrugs his left shoulder. “Which shoulder? You mean this shoulder?” Clint moves his left shoulder forward for a better view and glances at the scars peeking out from the purple armhole. Steve looks pale, so Clint decides to whip the bandaid off in one go. “Knock yourself out.” Clint turns on the coffee machine, angling his body so his left shoulder is closest to Steve. He’s not going to ask why Bucky hasn’t already gone running to Steve with his own scars, but it genuinely feels like Bucky is clinging to the mental equivalent of Winter Soldier Face with minimal success. So maybe that answers the question.

“Bucky doesn’t have a soulmate,” Steve says after a silence that passed into awkward three stops back. His hands are hovering over some pretty compelling evidence that Bucky does, actually, have a soulmate. Clint doesn’t look at him because he doesn’t know if he’s in the right headspace for Steve’s hurt and disappointed face even if it’s not directed at him.

Not really, anyway.

Clint isn’t sure what to do with that, so he shrugs and spreads his hands. “Sorry?”

The machine hisses at him, and Clint reaches out with his right arm to snag his cup of coffee, blowing on it while he watches Steve ponder the impossible. “He was never supposed to live this long.” And so his soulmate should have died decades ago, Clint puts together.

“But he did survive this long,” Clint says, going for the easiest answer. It’s a vaguely alarming prospect that maybe Bucky was meant to live this long, go through what he went through, just to meet Clint at the end of it. Talk about the booby prize. “We don’t even know what happens to people like you and Bucky who have extended lifetimes,” Clint points out. “Who knows? Maybe there are multiple potential soulmates as long as you’re alive to meet them. I mean, you did.”

Then again, Steve’s a special case.

Steve looks discomfited at the thought, and finally brings his hand down to brush against the undeniable scarring on Clint’s skin. “It almost doesn’t seem fair.”

Clint jerks, pulling his shoulder away and staring at Steve, betrayed. “Thanks for that!” In the back of his head, cracks form in the Winter Soldieryness.

“That’s not what I meant!” Steve makes an aborted motion to grab Clint’s shoulder, but Clint is already doctoring his coffee with too much cream and sugar, because it’s one of those coffee-for-breakfast-at-noon days and he’ll need the energy. “I just meant that he’s already dealing with so much.”

“You don’t know everything about him,” Clint says. “I could help him deal.” And it occurs to him that he possibly could. His memories are more tinged with blue, but not entirely different from Bucky’s, if Steve’s recounting of the fight over the Potomac is anything to go by.

“He went to shower and nap,” Steve says distantly. “I’m going to check on him.”

“Tell him I’m here for him if he wants to talk,” Clint says, because if he’s unsettled by the surprise soulmate, Clint can only imagine what’s going through Bucky’s head along with the jumble of feelings and guilt. “I mean, if he’s noticed the mark,” he adds for the sake of Steve’s feelings. It’s not like Bucky meant to tell Clint first. It’s not even like he did tell Clint first. It’s more like weird emotional leakage, which Clint is mostly successfully ignoring like a boss. He brings the coffee to his lips and takes a long sip. It burns his tongue, but eh, what else is new?

“Do you have any way of knowing what the mark is?” Steve looks Clint over, eyes lingering on the depressed roughly circular scars on Clint’s shoulders, peeking out of his top.

“No,” Clint says into his coffee, which is just the way he likes it, searing off a few more taste buds with every sip. The steam feels nice on his face. “But those are a good bet,” he adds, not needing to see Steve directly to know where he’s looking.

Nobody is completely sure how the scar that links you to someone else is chosen, what makes that scar special above others, but if it’s anything about life-changing significance, Clint would bet real money that Bucky’s got a pair of arrow scars in his shoulders.

He hasn’t really thought yet about how it’ll feel seeing those scars on someone else. Maybe he won’t. Maybe it’ll be just his luck, and Bucky picked up the scarring behind Clint’s ear where his dad liked to hit him. Or, who the hell knows, maybe it’s the scar running down his calf from learning to ride the tall unicycle. Figure that one out, Bucky Barnes.

“I’ve gotta go,” Steve says, backing away.

Clint raises his coffee at Steve and wanders over to the sofas gathered in front of the big screen TV.

He watches his reflection in the dark screen and drinks his coffee in his tank and scars. Not for the first time, Clint gives serious thought to retiring to the farm, nice and far away from New York City, but it’s only a vague passing thought. It wouldn’t exactly be fair to Bucky, for one thing.

Clint doesn’t question the sudden prominence of Bucky’s wellbeing in his thoughts.

The farm just seems less complicated than embarking on the moral quandary of pursuing a soulbond with someone who’s been puppetted around for 70 years without a chance to make his own choices. Hell, he doesn’t even know what Steve’s telling Bucky, and he isn’t sure if he’s relieved or peeved that Steve is the one to tell Bucky instead of Bucky seeing the scars on Clint for himself, even though he’s got to be aware of the bond by now.

Clint takes another drink of rapidly cooling coffee and keeps his thoughts on an even keel. Mostly by thinking about nothing. Clint’s pretty good at thinking about nothing.

“That’s new,” Tony says, interrupting Clint’s non-thoughts and making a u-turn away from the kitchen for a better look, as if Clint’s just dyed his hair or gotten new sunglasses.

Clint doesn’t cover the scars, because he’s not the one with issues over who his soulmate turned out to be. At least, he thinks he isn’t. Jury’s out until Bucky makes up his mind on that subject.

“This old thing?” Clint deliberately plucks at his shirt with its faded archery range logo on the front.

Tony snorts. “In spite of those big baby blues and the admittedly adorable freckles, the innocent act doesn’t suit you. When did those pop up?” Tony gestures to Clint’s shoulder and bee-lines for the coffee machine again.

“Dunno. How many hours has it been since Steve walked Bucky around to formally introduce him to everyone now that he’s no longer homicidal?” Clint takes another long pull from his coffee. It may be a two latte lunch. “Time flies when your life’s being upended.”

“You could say that,” Tony agrees, rubbing absently at the appendectomy scar for the appendectomy he never had. “Does he know?”

“Probably,” Clint says. Definitely. Though the jury’s out on whether or not Bucky knows who’s riding pillion in his emotions. “Steve ran off to check in with him.”

Tony rolls his eyes and chooses a mug. “He’s a mother hen. Let Barnes discover the scars the old fashioned way: freaking out all by himself in the shower and having a breakdown in the corner.”

“Is that what you really want the Winter Soldier to do in your tower?” Clint asks, not entirely convinced the old fashioned way is to be encouraged in this case, but it’s too late for that, isn’t it? He can feel a flash of irritation that’s not his own and covers a wince by draining his mug.

“What’s the worst he’d do? Throw himself out of a window?”

The nauseous reaction Tony’s words provoke is beyond anything Clint anticipated, and he rubs hard at his suddenly aching shoulder. “Less talking about my soulmate throwing himself to his possible death over this, Tony. Christ, I haven’t even talked to him yet.”

Tony appears to mentally review everything he’s been saying and winces. “Yeah, sorry about that. He could break a mirror? Nice and safe for a guy with a metal arm and super healing.”

Clint scrubs his free hand over his face. “I don’t know how Bucky will react once he knows it’s me. In fact, I don’t know anything about Bucky that wasn’t covered in Steve’s ‘This is Bucky Barnes, and he is no longer the Winter Soldier,’ talk.” Which admittedly isn’t much.

“He gave me the elevator speech version,” Tony says with a shrug, collecting his coffee and drinking it black, strong, and scalding. It’s possible Steve should turn some of that mother henning back to making sure Tony doesn’t hole up in the lab for days at a time. “I trust Steve.”

Clint’s eyes dip to where the appendectomy scar sits under Tony’s expensive jeans. “That’s another thing. Do you trust-trust him, or is it just because you’re soulmates?” Clint wasn’t there for their first meeting, but by all accounts, it went exactly as well as Loki could have hoped it would.

Then again, who knows how much of that was the scepter?

Clint forcibly drags his thoughts away from that day and back into the present, ignoring the vaguely questioning tingle in his mind.

“My trust has passed the Pepper test,” Tony answers. “So if it is the soulbond, it’s better at looking out for my self-interest than I was before meeting Steve.”

“Steve is completely reckless.”

Tony waves the hand not holding his mug. “I don’t know how these things work. Ask Bruce. He’s the guy you want for the squishy human sciences.” He takes a long drink of coffee that Clint knows from personal experience has to be stripping the skin off the roof of his mouth. “Steve’s going to be as reckless as Steve’s going to be. The bond mellowed me out.”

“Did it bother you to ignore it at first?”

Tony watches him over the rim of the coffee cup. “Not at first, I mean, we were kind of busy” he hedges. As the actual enemy combatant they were busy battling at the time, Clint appreciates that. “It’s possible to ignore it and keep going. Theoretically.”

“You didn’t ignore it that long once Thor took Loki back to Asgard.”

“That’s more because, well, have you seen Steve Rogers?” Tony leaves his now empty mug in the sink. “Refill?” He asks and comes to collect Clint’s mug when he immediately holds it out in Tony’s direction. “Anyway. There’s no way I wasn’t going to climb that like a tree at the first opportunity.”

“Great talk, Tony.”

“You want me to blow smoke up your ass?” Tony spreads his hands in a ‘what can you do?’ type gesture while the espresso gurgles its way through the machine’s innards.

“What does that even mean?”

“I didn’t have time at MIT for electives. Ask Pepper. She’s the one you want for anything Liberal Arts.” Tony says, comfortably delegating once again. He collects the espresso and releases the steamed milk into it before stirring in a surprisingly accurate guess at how much sugar Clint takes in his lattes. He hands it off and turns away from the couches, heading for the elevator. Tony stretches and drops his arms. “You know where to find me if you need to talk some more.”

Fortunately for Clint’s mental health, Tony leaves it there and heads back to his lab. Bucky’s feelings are calm, and Clint can feel adrenaline he hadn’t been aware of draining out of him. He takes that first scalding sip of his coffee and sets it aside, leaning his head against the back of the couch and closing his eyes for a nap he didn’t realize he needed until just now.

 

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Clint wakes horizontal on the couch and half covered in a purple throw blanket from his floor. In what could be considered a massive anticlimax, Bucky is puttering in the kitchen with a mug and spoon. The death gurgle of the old fashioned coffee maker nobody uses anymore and the rich smell of coffee lure him out of his half doze.

“Bucky.” Clint croaks a greeting, because if he can’t spare a greeting for his apparent soulmate, he has already failed. He sits up, rubbing his face to wake up, and when he drops his hands, it’s to find Bucky much closer and staring at his shoulder, face completely neutral. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Clint’s mouth says without consulting his brain. Bucky’s emotions are walled over again, and nothing seeps through the cracks.

Bucky sips his coffee, plenty of cream, and slouches into an armchair. “We’re training together,” he says instead of addressing even part of the elephant in the room.

“Okay,” Clint says, because it seems like a safe answer, and his brain is paying attention now. “Wait. Today’s an interview day.” He knows, because he’s got a uniform clean, pressed, hanging from his closet door, and bearing a note from Steve that he’s not even to look at it too long until 5:00PM today.

“Yeah, well, you’re booted from interviews for a while,” Bucky says, propping one booted foot on the edge of the coffee table.

“Why?” Not that Clint minds missing an interview or Q&A too much. Or, you know, at all. And it’s not as if reporters are going to be clamoring for an interview with Bucky just yet after Steve’s Secret Service level of smuggling Bucky into the tower in the first place.

Bucky just shrugs and lets the silence stretch, glaring at Clint’s right shoulder like it offended his mother. Not the left. He makes an abortive movement as if to touch and wraps both hands around his mug instead.

And that answers whether Bucky’d found his scarring. Also the unicycle question. “What do they think I’m going to do? Wax poetic on camera?” Clint slouches down until he’s matching Bucky’s sprawl. He’s not a waxing poetic guy at the best of times.

“You got the urge to wax poetic about me, Hawkeye?” Bucky fixes Clint with a wintery stare.

“I’ve been known to make worse decisions,” Clint admits. Sue him. He’s got a thing for flirting with danger. Arguably, Bucky has spent 70 years as the human personification of danger, so none of this is surprising.

Bucky snorts. “We’re spending the afternoon on the range and then the gym.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Clint says with the laziest salute, risking a quick glance over Bucky, because, well, even if he can’t feel what Bucky’s feeling right now, the soulmate thing probably knows what it’s doing, or it wouldn’t be a thing. Right?

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Don’t call me ‘sir’; I work for a living,” and like that, what passed for flirting dissipates and Bucky is back to the reformed blank slate Steve introduced him to, staring out the window at the surrounding high rises. Somewhere beyond them is Brooklyn.

 

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“It really doesn’t have to mean anything,” Clint says at 4:59 when Bucky pauses to reload. “Some soulmates are just amigos, right? That could be us.”

A pained crease appears between Bucky’s eyebrows. “No.” He snaps the clip in place and unloads into the simulation, taking out all of the enemy combatants with no civilian casualties. He huffs out a breath and lays his gun down on the ledge in front of him. “I don’t know what to do with a soulmate.”

That’s fair. Clint props his bow against the wall and guesses they’re talking about this now. “I don’t actually know what I’m doing beyond pizza for dinner,” he admits.

“I’m not even completely sure who I am these days without your emotions confusing everything up in here,” Bucky says, with a gesture at his head before dropping his hand and hesitating as if to touch his shoulder again before dropping it entirely. Bucky fits another clip into his gun and turns back to the simulation.

Jarvis starts the simulation again as soon as Bucky raises his gun. Clint watches him decimate the field, not exactly sure what he’s supposed to feel about this.

Bucky cracks his neck when he sets his gun down after this round and turns his back on the simulation, leaning against the ledge, legs crossed, arms folded. “I guess I’m not ready for this.” He ducks his head, looking off to one side. “And I’m sorry you got saddled with me.”

“What?” Clint’s caught off balance.

“You didn’t ask to be linked to the Winter Soldier.”

“I don’t exactly mind it either,” Clint says after a moment of hesitance.

Bucky takes a deep breath, holding it until he’s gone completely still before blowing it out, still avoiding Clint’s eyes. “You should.”

Clint shrugs and mirrors Bucky’s pose against the wall. Bucky’s stubbornly looking off into the upper corners of the room instead of at Clint directly across from him. “I might as well apologize that it’s me,” he says eventually. He’s acutely aware of the flare of guilt that isn’t his blooming in the back of his mind.

“What?” It’s Bucky’s turn for confusion. “You’re an Avenger. You guys are the heroes of the story.”

“I’m the Avenger with a criminal record, and I didn’t have torture and brainwashing to blame for it,” Clint points out, reasonably, he thinks.

“That’s not what I’ve heard.” Bucky’s eyes skitter over Clint without pausing.

Clint sighs. Thanks a lot, Steve. “I wasn’t charged with any of what I did under Loki’s mind control. Same as you were cleared for what you did under Hydra.” It’s weird having this conversation where they lay their cards on the table, two near-strangers who know too much about each other, but not enough. “SHIELD had to spring me out of prison to recruit me.” Clint scratches the back of his head. “While everybody else was getting a high school diploma, I was working my way up the crime ladder.”

Bucky doesn’t ask what happened. He just says, “Yeah, I know.” When Clint stares at him, not entirely sure what his face is doing, Bucky shoves his hands in his hoodie pockets. “Hydra has a comprehensive file on you.” Bucky opens his mouth to continue, but no sound comes out. He just taps his head.

“Okay,” Clint says, because what else do you say to that. “So Hydra was thorough.”

Bucky huffs a humorless laugh. “You could say that, yeah.”

“But seriously, I’m not the only hero here. You’re a POW. An original American World War II hero. You’re not what Hydra made you after they captured you.” At least, Clint is mostly sure that’s right.

A muscle tics in Bucky’s jaw, but he doesn’t answer.

Clint blows out a breath and looks at the ceiling, since that seems to be what they’re doing right now. “Okay, so we’re both sorry.” One corner of Clint’s mouth twitches up. “Now what are we going to do about it?”

Bucky shrugs. “Beyond my pay grade.” He shifts against the ledge. “I’m making all of this up on the fly. Maybe just…don’t touch me without warning.” He glares at the ground for a change. “I don’t know what I’ll do to you if you surprise me.” Surprising the Winter Soldier has never gone well, he doesn’t say out loud, but Clint can hear it unspoken in the grimace on Bucky’s face.

“You can touch me whenever you want,” Clint answers with a small shrug. “I’m a pretty tactile guy. Hugs and shoulder pats are my love language. Also pizza and coffee.”

Bucky considers this a moment and gives a short sharp nod finally looking fully at Clint, although his arms are still folded tightly against his chest. “So we tell Steve we’ve sorted it all out.”

In Clint’s opinion, there’s still a lot to sort about how exactly they’re going to do this soulmate thing. Clint sets that thought aside for later. “I’ve got a farm in Iowa. We could always leave Steve a note and retire together to raise goats.”

Bucky snorts. “Goats. Steve’s a marshmallow. He’ll believe anything if he thinks it’ll make me happy.”

“And having a soulmate makes you happy?”

Bucky shrugs. “Time was, I was convinced it was the only thing that’d make me happy.”

He doesn’t say that was a long time ago. He doesn’t need to.

 

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Clint opens his apartment door to a thoroughly unimpressed Natasha.

“You have a soulmate,” she says.

“I do,” Clint agrees, before his brain catches up to remind him that Natasha was on her way back from a mission during that particular development.

“The Winter Soldier is your soulmate,” she says, more pointedly.

“Y-es?” Clint isn’t sure where this is going or if he wants to know where it’s going. For all he knows, it might already have gone there and he missed the memo.

“The Winter Soldier, who is living in Tony’s tower while you wallow in squalor.” She looks around. “And Bed Stuy.”

“It’s not squalor,” Clint protests. He may not be house proud, but he’s not exactly living the life of a rat-infested hoarder house. “I thought some distance would be healthy until Bucky’s got his head together. And I’m not wallowing.”

“Three empty pizza boxes is officially wallowing,” Natasha says, picking them up and marching them to the kitchen. “Do I have to hurt him for you?”

”Please don’t,” Clint says in a rush, folding onto the couch and stretching his legs along the cushions. “Seriously, this is fine. I’m close enough for Avengers call outs but far enough away that he doesn’t have to worry about bumping into me again before he’s ready.”

Natasha purses her lips and sits on the couch, nudging Clint’s feet aside. “I ordered Thai. It’ll be here in ten minutes.”

In Natasha’s case, there’s worry, and then there’s “ordering Thai worry.”

“Seriously,” Clint says. “As soon as Bucky’s ready to deal with the soulmate stuff, I’ll be back at the tower by afternoon.”

”You’d better be,” she says.

There’s a knock on the door, and Natasha hands Clint a collection of bills.

”I’m a romantic,” Clint says, untangling himself from the afghan. “And the best rom coms make you wait for the payoff.”

Natasha makes a dismissive sound that does not at all suggest that she, personally, has ever watched a rom com. “I want all the details, Barton. Every last one.”

 

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The only real downside for Clint about living in his Bed Stuy apartment is the need to keep his mission hearing aids available at all times in case there’s a call-out. He knows Steve benched them from the interview while he’s getting used to all of this, but it’s always possible the Avengers will have an emergency that requires all hands on deck. So he keeps them in sight in case they start flashing during the night and in his ears during the day.

Don’t get him wrong. They’re amazing pieces of technology that keep him looped in to Avengers stuff. It’s just that sometimes, Clint prefers sticking his hearing aids in his pocket and wandering around Bed Stuy deaf to let his ears breathe. Avenging aside, it’s a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. He’ll just take his coffee to go and drink it at the dog park where it’s relatively quiet instead of drinking it in the corner table while people-watching and letting the noise pass him by at a low murmur.

The coffee should be the perfect temperature when he gets to his favorite dog-watching bench. Dog-watching is way better than people-watching any day. It’s even better than that with coffee. He can feel Bucky, alert wherever he is, like a low buzz underlying his thoughts.

Ten minutes later, he’s watching a Border Collie play frisbee, leaping and twisting in the air, when Tony sits next to him with his own coffee. “Fancy running into you here, a complete coincidence which I have not planned at all,” Tony says.

Clint can see one of Tony’s town cars double parked and slouches. “You put trackers in my hearing aids.”

Tony puts a hand to his chest as if shocked. “I am appalled and hurt that you think I wouldn’t. How can I look after our favorite archer if I can’t find him?”

“Most people text. Or call.”

Tony waves him off. “Obsolete in the next three years. Mark my words.”

“Do you track all of us?”

“Umm.”

Clint mentally runs over all of their equipment and what they carry with them at all times and ends up staring at Tony. “You put Bucky’s in his arm, didn’t you?”

”Of course I did,” Tony says without any shame whatsoever. He pulls out his phone and glances at the app he has open. “He’s on the roof of the gray building half a block down, by the way. Your boy’s been tracking you old school.”

It’s probably for the best that Clint’s no longer a spy. He supposes if he’s already used to being tracked by Natasha, adding Tony and Bucky isn’t all that big a deal. “I’m a popular guy,” Clint says, the first coherent sentence that comes to mind. “So what are you doing here?”

”I am here on the orders of Captain America,” Tony says and takes a long sip of coffee.

“Okay, so what does Captain America want with me?”

”The good captain is looking out for your soulmate.” Tony throws his empty cup in the trash can and wraps an arm around Clint’s shoulders. “So tell me, Clint. When’s the last time you upgraded the security in your flophouse?”

“Fuck you,” Clint said in a mild tone of voice. “It may not be the tower, but it’s a great little apartment building, and I like it.”

”I’ll grant that it has character,” Tony says after a diplomatic pause. “And now it’s going to have cutting edge Stark security.”

”But why did Steve send you to upgrade my security?”

“Captain America.” Tony corrects him and ignores Clint rolling his eyes.

“Fine. Captain America.”

Tony nods his approval. “It’s because he can’t keep Bucky contained to the tower while you’re out here unless he can convince Bucky you’re somewhere secure. And New York is not ready for the Winter Soldier on the loose.”

“He’s reformed,” Clint protests.

“Eh, depends who you ask.” Tony stands up.

“I think I’d know.” Clint sends his empty cup sailing past Tony into the trash. Surely some kind of instinct about your soulmate’s intentions is part of the package. Somehow. “And Steve should know better.”

“Steve,” Tony says, leading the way to the dog park gate, “is a great big worrywart when it comes to Bucky Barnes. The sooner we all accept that fact of nature, the better off we’ll all be.”

Clint sighs and resigns himself to a day of Tony crawling through every nook and cranny of his building. A flash of reflected sunlight catches his eye, and he looks up just in time to see a head of long brown hair duck below his sight lines.

Maybe Steve has a point.

(Art by Rufferto)

 

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Safe and secure in his newly upgraded apartment, and definitely not thinking about Bucky, whose presence continues to be hypervigilant and not much else, Clint throws himself onto the sofa with the biggest bowl of popcorn he could produce from his cupboards. (Man, does he need to go shopping.)

It’s a lazy evening, so he decides to torture himself with the Great British Bake Off and all the delicious things he can’t have.

If he’s honest with himself, he’s probably going to end up snoring on the couch with the bowl spilled onto the floor. But what’s the point of living the bachelor life if a guy can’t spill his own popcorn all over the floor without someone berating him over it?

Of course, he’ll still have to clean it in the morning.

He needs a dog.

He could get Tony to make armor for the dog and train it to carry his arrows. That would be epic.

The contestants on the show appear to be trying to figure out what makes a taco a taco, and Clint briefly considers lobbying for an American celebrity Bake Off and a spot on the cast.

Steve would give him time off for that, right? And sure, he can’t cook, but from the looks of things, neither can half the people in the cast of the original.

He wonders if Bucky has ever had a taco and concludes that he probably hasn’t. The thought makes him sad, and then it makes him want to find Bucky and drag him on a tour of the best taco trucks in the area.

A life lived without tacos is inhumane.

A contestant’s voice is drowned out by two gunshots in close succession, and Clint’s popcorn goes sailing through the air and bounces harmlessly off the newly reinforced window.

The shooting seems to be over, though, so Clint feels safe opening the window and sticking his head out to look up and down the fire escape.

Nobody there, so Clint eases himself out onto the escape and looks down into the alley where he can barely make out two bodies in tracksuits, cursing in Russian and rocking back and forth clutching their hands to their chests.

“Hey!” Clint calls in Russian. “You’re a long way from Brighton Beach.”

”Maybe we like it in Brooklyn,” the braver of the two yells back in English. “Maybe we like it a lot.”

”Nah,” Clint says, leaning against the railing. “Brooklyn’s dangerous. You might get mugged. Well, mugged again.”

“Maybe we’ll just come back with more guys.” Brave tracksuit pushes himself to his feet and points his unmangled finger at Clint. “How you feel about that, bro?”

Clint shrugs. “Far be it from me to judge your life choices, but I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”

The guy in the tracksuit spits on the ground. “Your advice is shit, bro.”

“Well, fine, but I’m not the one marinating in dumpster juice.” Clint closes the window and makes a mental note to review all of Tony’s upgrades.

But first. He rewinds the episode. Tragic tacos.

 

—————————————

 

“You know you don’t have to exile yourself from the tower, right?” Sam takes a big bite of his pizza and leans back in the booth.

“I’m trying to give Bucky space to get his head screwed on straight,” Clint says, taking the mushrooms Sam’s left on the side of his plate and piling them on top of his own slice.

“You’ll die of old age first,” Sam says and rolls his eyes.

“I have faith in Bucky, and he’s got Steve to show him how to do the twenty-first century.”

”Man, did you just hear yourself? Steve, the guy with the massive 1940s music collection. Mr. Black and White Movies. King of the grumpy old men every time he visits Brooklyn. He’s going to bring Bucky up to speed?”

Clint gives that more thought. “Okay, maybe my faith is actually in Tony.” He carefully balances his tower of mushrooms before biting into his slice again.

Sam shakes his head. “To be perfectly honest with you, Bucky’s adjusting to the future all by himself. He taught Steve how to use the fancy coffee maker last week.”

”Steve doesn’t drink coffee.” And Bucky doesn’t use the fancy coffee maker, except, apparently now he does.

“No. But Tony drinks it like he’s dying and it’s the elixr of life.” Sam snags his beer and drains the last of it. He reaches for his wallet, but Clint holds up a hand.

“Hang on. It’s my treat, ok?” Clint fishes his wallet out of his pocket and leaves cash for the check on the table with a generous tip. “Anyway, whenever Bucky is ready for me to come back, all he has to do is call.”

“If you say so,” Sam says dubiously, grabbing his jacket and shrugging it on. “It’s your love life.”

Clint sighs. “We haven’t gotten anywhere near that part. What would Bucky’s love language even be?”

“Guns?” Sam guesses.

“Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a semi-automatic.” He pushes open the front door and holds it for Sam. “These soulmate things have a way of working themselves out. I’m not in any hurry.”

”I’m just saying, I think he’d have a better shot at getting into the modern world with his soulmate by his -“

”Down!” Clint tackles Sam and a chunk of concrete explodes off the corner of the building where they’d been standing. “Did you see him?”

Sam is silent long enough for Clint to look up and see an absolute giant of a man pacing down the alley in their direction. “He’s kinda hard to miss,” Sam finally says.

The silhouette raises his gun again just as a disc comes flying down the alley from the restaurant kitchen entry and connects with the back of his head. He whirls around and takes the next steel pizza tray to the face, going down hard, blood streaming from his forehead.

Clint reaches up to turn on the comm in his hearing aid. “Steve? Was that you?”

“Clint! Have you seen Bucky?”

Clint watches Sam cautiously taking their attacker’s pulse, phone held to his ear for emergency services. “I thought he was at the tower.” Wasn’t that the point of all of Tony’s upgrades?

Steve curses under his breath. “It’s probably fine. He’s probably out for a walk in Central Park.” He doesn’t sound convinced.

“Well, call me if you need to send out a search party,” Clint says, though he privately thinks anything lurking in the New York City shadows had better be afraid of Bucky instead of the other way around.

He’s also pretty sure that Bucky isn’t in Central Park.

 

—————————————

 

Clint can’t shake the feeling that he’s being watched on the walk from his car. He’s been a sniper, a criminal, a SHIELD agent, and an Avenger long enough to trust that sixth sense when there are eyes on him.

He gives the surrounding buildings a casual scan for a dark head of long hair or the gleam of sunlight on a metal arm, but either Bucky is too well hidden or it’s not Bucky watching him in spite of the feeling that Bucky’s watching something.

It’s a weird feeling, realizing that he’s already used to being tailed by his Guardian Winter Soldier. On one hand, he’s a strong independent modern man who doesn’t need no guardian angel. On the other hand, it’s starting to bring a warm glow to his chest every time he catches a glimpse of Bucky.

He can handle being stalked if it’s by his twitchy soulmate, if that’s what it takes for Bucky to feel comfortable enough to sit down and figure out what being soulmates means to them.

On the other hand, if it’s not Bucky watching him…

Well, he can take care of himself.

He rounds the corner to the front of his building and hears a sharp whistle in time to duck a punch and kick back, catching a guy in a tracksuit in the center of the chest, sending him flying.

Okay, so it is not Bucky watching him.

Two more guys in tracksuits are headed his way, looking determined to take the place of the first guy, who’s still lying on the ground groaning. This is fine. Two against one is no big deal.

It’d be less of a big deal if he had his bow on him, but you can’t get everything you want in life. “Hey, guys. What’s up?” Clint straightens up to his full height, pleased to see both sets of eyes flick up to look him in the face.

“None of your business, bro. We got words to have with the tenants.” The more fluent guy tilts his head toward the building.

“Great,” Clint says. “Seeing as I am one of the tenants.” Now that he’s able to look over their heads, he can see Simone standing in the middle of her scattered groceries, hands on both hips and glaring at the tracksuit wearing thugs facing her down.

It occurs to Clint he may need to get these two out of his way sooner rather than later. “Lease is being canceled, bro.” The talkative guy is doing a good job of ignoring his buddy who’s trying and failing to use the wall to help him stand up. “You gotta leave by the end of the month.”

“My lease is good through March,” Clint says. At least, he thinks it’s March. It’s been a while since he signed the original paperwork. There wasn’t much of it.

“Yeah, not so much.” The guy finally smiles, revealing a gold front tooth. “You wanna stay longer, rent triple every month after this one.”

And it’s not like Clint couldn’t afford it on an Avenger’s pay, but it’s the principle of the thing. Also, his neighbors sure as shit can’t afford it. And anyway, Tony just went to all that trouble to upgrade his security. “You know what?” Clint says, glancing up to make sure the thugs are only talking to Simone and that the situation over there hasn’t escalated. “I don’t think we’re going to agree to the new terms.”

“You got no choice, bro. We own building.”

“There’s always a choice,” Clint says, and without warning, flips the guy over his shoulder, landing him next to his buddy with the broken rib. “And you’ve got a choice right now,” he says to the remaining tracksuit guy, who breaks into a run, disappearing past Clint and down the street at top speed.

“Good choice,” Clint says, and sticks his hands in his pockets, wandering over to the building steps to affect a casual lean behind the guy threatening Simone. “This guy bothering you?”

“He says he’s gonna triple our rent,” Simone says with a glare at the guy that could strip paint. “The elevator hasn’t worked for a year and a half, and he’s gonna triple our rent?”

“Nah, bro,” the guy says. “We’re gonna kick everybody out and tear it down. You make our guy wait longer? You pay triple.” He holds up three fingers.

Clint’s hand comes down on his shoulder, harder than it needs to, and he digs in his fingers. “Nobody is paying triple, and nobody is tearing down this building.”

Unlike his buddies, this guy doesn’t intimidate, and he jerks his shoulder away from Clint’s grasp with visible effort, putting an extra step between the two of them. “You got no choice, bro. You’re gone by end of month, or you pay triple. Building is coming down either way.”

He shoves past Clint and takes a few paces down the sidewalk before he turns. “You don’t wanna see what happens month after that.”

Clint looks him up and down, clocking a pistol tucked into the back of his track pants, and something sharp strapped to his calf above the Adidas knockoffs. “Or how about this? You tell your boss he’s changing his plan. There’s an abandoned building two blocks that way.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder.

A slow smile spreads under the guy’s impressive mustache. “Nah. I think we keep this one. Good location.” He turns his back on Clint and walks down the street, pausing at the two of his guys sitting against the wall together and nursing their injuries. He kicks at one of their legs, snapping something out in Russian and hustling them to their feet. “One month, bro,” he yells one more time and disappears down the block.

Clint bends down to help Simone get her groceries back into the folding cart. “You okay?”

She looks a little shaken now, but more angry than frightened. “Fine. You think those guys can do it?”

Clint tilts his head, glancing down the street and then up to the roofs opposite. No sign of tracksuits or Bucky. “I think I’m not gonna let them.” He puts the last cantaloupe into her cart and straightens up. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got this.”

“You’re only one guy, Clint.”

Clint shrugs. “Maybe, but I’m a guy with more experience than they’ve got between them. It’ll be fine.”

She looks him up and down. “I’m gonna let everybody else know what’s going on.”

Clint considers it for a moment and then nods. “Yeah. That’s probably not the worst idea ever. Come on. Let’s get inside.” Maybe Tony knew what he was doing after all.

Tony probably did know what he was doing, but even without Bucky’s paranoia infusing Clint’s thoughts, he’s got enough paranoia of his own. That evening is only the first of many that he spends on the roof with an arrow nocked and an eye on the front of the building.

 

—————————————

 

Clint emerges from Pod People with an extra large black coffee in one hand and his other hand tucked into his pocket. His eyes are gritty with the early hour, and from the general silence in the soulbond, Clint concludes that Bucky is not a morning person.

Thank god. Seriously. Thor. Odin. Frigga. Whoever. Loki can still go fuck himself. He probably drinks tea anyway.

He closes his eyes and lets his feet take him back down the familiar street to his apartment. Normally, he’d be leaving with coffee around this time, not arriving with coffee, but his coffee maker shit the bed, so Pod People is getting the pleasure of his rumpled morning presence until he can get around to ordering a new one.

Granted, he shouldn’t be back in the apartment either, at this point, and he’s going to be late, but three sips into his coffee, he remembered his phone on the kitchen counter, so home it is.

And it’s a good thing, because the phone is flashing and threatening to vibrate off the corner when Clint unlocks the door. He makes a dive for it and manages to hit the button just before it goes to voicemail. “Ymrph?” Apparently, in spite of the coffee, it is too early to manage coherent speech on the first try.

“Clint.” It’s Steve. Clint has heard more from Steve in the last week than he’s heard from Steve directly in the last year. He could feel offended by that, but it’s not like he and Steve had much in common before Bucky. Clint takes a long drink from his coffee, confident that Steve will get to the point on his own and that it will be a Bucky-related point.

He’s right.

“Bucky left a note,” Steve says eventually.

“Is he joining the circus?” Clint asks, words apparently back but logic still missing somewhere in action. “Because I can tell you right now what a bad idea that is.”

“What? No. The circus? Seriously?”

Clint drinks his coffee and shrugs even though Steve can’t see him. “Then again, if I was going to join the circus again, I wouldn’t leave a note. Joining the circus is what you do when you want to disappear.”

“Bucky did not join the circus,” Steve says, sounding like a man pinching the bridge of his nose and begging the universe for patience.

“That’s good,” Clint says, locking the door behind himself and jogging down the stairs. “I can’t rock the purple sequin look nearly as well these days.”

“Purple…?” Steve goes silent for a long moment in which Clint drains the last of his coffee and tosses the empty cup neatly into a garbage can. “Look, just forget about the circus.”

“I wish,” Clint mutters under his breath.

“He said he went to find you.”

Okay, then. If Bucky is starting to leave notes with his stalking plans, that might be progress. “I guess he’ll catch up, then. Um, hang on a sec.” Clint turns down a side street and unlocks his car, sliding behind the wheel and trying not to be disappointed that Bucky is a morning person after all.

He’s also getting spooky good at hiding from the soulbond when he wants to, and Clint isn’t sure how he feels about that. Understanding, maybe. Bucky’s emotions have been on ice for a long time, after all, so it’s not exactly surprising that he’d find a way to keep them out of the way when he feels a need to.

Why he needs to right this moment, Clint’s not going to dwell on. “I haven’t seen him,” Clint finally says, realizing he’s been leaving Steve hanging for an awkward period.

Steve curses under his breath in a very un-Captain America-like way. “If you see him, let me know right away. The NYPD don’t know we’ve got him here, and I do not want to find out what happens if anyone short of god tries to arrest him.”

Clint finds he doesn’t like that much. “I thought he wasn’t a captive.”

Steve sighs. “He’s not. It’s complicated right now, okay?”

Clint snorts, braking for a light and considering hitting up the Starbucks drive-thru for a second coffee. He might need it today. “Steve, he’s been a ghost story for 70 years. I think he can evade the NYPD.”

The light changes and Clint pulls out into the intersection, then slams on the brakes just in time to avoid being broadsided by a Trust A Bro moving truck.

“What happened?” Steve demands over the phone in full Steve Rogers Is Worried About Bucky Barnes mode and without a Captain America in sight.

“Some guy not paying attention to basic traffic laws.” Clint shrugs, checks around him, and accelerates out of the intersection. “So, basically, driving in NYC.”

“Clint, there’s a perfectly good subway system.” Steve, the eternal New Yorker, sounds vaguely offended that Clint has chosen to commit crimes against nature via car exhaust today.

Clint’s about to answer when his heart rate picks up. Except it’s not his heart rate. Not exactly. He presses a hand to his breastbone and thinks What the fuck, Bucky?

”Clint?”

Clint catches a flash of green in his peripheral vision and swears, swerving out of the way of another Trust A Bro truck and taking a hard left on squealing tires. “I’m fine,” he says with only a little strain in his voice.

He takes a right and another right, slowing down to watch for the Trust A Bro truck to go by if it hasn’t already. At the intersection, he can see it taking a left two streets down and eases back into traffic on the route to Avengers Tower.

This time, it’s a black SUV that pulls up behind him, and Clint only has a second to duck when he sees a gun extended out the driver’s side before the back window of his car explodes inward, showering the Challenger’s back seat in glass.

His phone has fallen into the footwell, but Clint can hear Steve’s tinny voice calling his name at the edge of his hearing. “I’m fine!” he repeats, a little bit louder to accommodate for distance. But on the bright side, he’s got two hands for the wheel now and can swerve before the black SUV can squeeze off another shot.

The light up ahead of him is red, but Clint’s done this math before and a shooter tailing him trumps a red light every time. He slows down just enough to make sure he’s not going to t-bone anyone and accelerates through in between cars.

“Okay, I’m not fine,” he calls out to his phone. “Heading toward Manhattan from Bed Stuy and taking fire from a black Chevy Tahoe.”

There’s a flurry of talking in the background on the phone and Steve returns, speaking more loudly over the engine noise. “Tony’s on his way.”

Clint’s too busy keeping one eye on the front of the car and one eye on the black Tahoe which is catching up to him again, and it’s only because of that that he sees a familiar figure step into the road behind him, RPG launcher perched casually on a shoulder.

The Tahoe goes up in a ball of flame and flips end over end, but Bucky just steps out of its way, fire reflecting in his black goggles as it rolls by and comes to a stop against the bumper of the Trust A Bro truck following it.

(Art by Wyxan)

 

In the rear view mirror, Clint sees Bucky aim a quick salute in his direction, and the next time he glances, Bucky is gone and two guys in tracksuits are booking it down the road away from the flaming wreck as fast as their sneakers will take them.

Clint pulls into the first loading zone he sees and leans over the steering wheel, breathing hard. The tight racing feeling in his chest is gone, replaced with smug satisfaction, and Clint throws off his seatbelt. He scrambles out of the car, looking up and down the nearest buildings for any sign of Bucky.

He’s still looking when the familiar sounds of the Iron Man armor landing hard on pavement make him turn around.

Tony flips up the faceplate. “You don’t look like you’re in mortal danger,” he says, sounding vaguely disappointed. It’s been a slow Avengers week.

“Um,” Clint says, watching the first fire truck pull up to the burning SUV. “Bucky handled it.”

Tony follows Clint’s gaze and whistles. “Congrats, Clint. Nothing says I love you quite like fiery homicide.”

Clint’s not exactly sure how to answer that, but he’s definitely feeling glad Bucky just, what?, happened to be passing by with an RPG in his full Winter Soldier getup? “I have no idea what just happened,” Clint admits. Apart from the SUV blowing up, of course. It’s the details that escape him.

“Steve said you were in danger,” Tony reminds him.

“Oh, shit. Steve!” Clint dives back into the car for his phone and winces at the volume of Steve’s voice. “Steve – Steve! I found him.”

“Oh, thank god. Where is -“

“And then I lost him again,” Clint adds, so Steve doesn’t get the wrong idea.

“What?”

Clint glances at Tony and shrugs. “I’ll explain in the workshop.”

There’s really not a lot to explain, but he’ll give it the old college try.

 

—————————————

 

Clint has a love-hate relationship with the La-Z-Boy Natasha had delivered to his apartment last Christmas. On one hand, god, so comfortable. On the other hand, he’s nearly positive that if he keeps falling asleep in it, one day it will turn on his back and leave him limping around like an old man.

For one thing, he never remembers a blanket.

Clint wriggles around mostly asleep, slouching down and slinging a leg over the arm of the chair. His head lolls to one side, and there’s a vague thought that his neck isn’t going to thank him later, but that’s Tomorrow Clint’s problem.

He shivers in a breeze. If he remembers in the morning, he’ll buy new window seals, but he’s too honest with himself to have any faith that he’ll be remembering this in the morning.

He’s not even sure if he’s dreaming the breeze or not.

Whatever. It was a long day, and Clint deserves a decent night’s sleep. If that sleep involves a cold breeze seeping in around the living room window, Clint’s slept through worse dreams.

(Art by Rufferto)

This is practically a good dream.

It’s an even better dream when he feels a warm fuzzy body deposited on his lap, turning around twice before snuggling down over his thighs. Dog dreams are awesome.

Clint turns his head the other way and makes a vague happy rumble in his chest when he feels the soft throw blanket from his couch draped over him and the dog, immediately blocking the chill and trapping their warmth together.

Oh yeah. A dog and blanket dream. These are the best.

Clint is a man of simple pleasures.

He can feel the almost dizzy pull of deeper sleep wrapping around him, and his fingers still in the dog’s soft fur. He can still feel the chill breeze on his face, but now it’s a nice contrast to the heat of two bodies trapped by the blanket.

He’s almost there, dream sensations giving way to the dark peacefulness of deep sleep when lights flash behind his eyelids. “Nooooo.” Clint grabs the edge of the blanket and pulls it up over his lower face until only his eyes are visible over the thick purple quilted fabric.

And the lights are still flashing.

With a groan, Clint pushes himself upright in the chair and holds down the button to lower the footrest and bring the chair back upright. The dog hops down and the christmas lights strung around the corners of his ceiling continue to flash. Clint fumbles for his hearing aids, putting in the left one and puts both hands on the arms of the chair, ready to push himself upright.

He scrunches his eyes tightly closed and then opens them as wide as they go. “I’m coming!” He calls out and then jolts fully awake as a cold nose presses against him behind the knee.

One limpid eye gazes adoringly up at him and a fringed tail sweeps back and forth against the floor, casting doubt on Clint’s confidence that he’s awake.

The dog makes a whuffing noise and nudges him again, taking a dancing step toward the door where Clint can now hear a voice faintly calling his name.

Wrapping the blanket around his boxers-clad body for modesty, Clint stumbles over to the door and blinks owlishly at Amy standing on the other side.

Her knuckles are white on the handlebar of her bike and she keeps looking behind her.

“Amy?” Clint’s voice comes out rough, and he gives himself about a 50-50 chance at this point that he’s actually awake. “Whats going on at – “ he squints at the clock. “4:30 in the morning?”

“Sorry, Clint.” She grimaces, but only tightens her hands on her bike with a resolved expression on her face. “These guys followed me all the way back here from my last delivery, and they’re still hanging around outside.”

Clint pinches the bridge of his nose and blinks his eyes rapidly until he’s at least 95% positive he’s awake. “Okay. Alright. Cool. Cool. I’ll take care of it.” He stands there swaying for a few more moments and then shakes his head, bringing him to 100% awake, even if his brain isn’t happy about this turn of events. “I’ve got this. Um. Were they wearing tracksuits?”

Amy blinks at him. “How did you know?”

Clint sighs and shifts the blanket tighter around his shoulders. At least dream breeze stopped, even if his apartment feels more chilly than usual. “Good guess. Go ahead and get upstairs.” Clint muffles a yawn and cracks his neck.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, one hand on the door, the other firmly gripping the blanket. “Go on.”

As soon as the door is closed, Clint turns to hunt down some sweatpants and a shirt and almost trips over dream doggo.

He stares at the dog for half a second. “Huh.”

The dog licks his hand.

Apparently, Clint has a dog. He’ll ask questions later. For now, he takes the stairs two at a time and throws on the first clothes he sees, jamming his bare feet into his boots and throwing a full quiver over his shoulder.

Clint and the dog pause when they get back to the front door. “Stay here, boy. Girl? Boy?” Right, that can wait, too.

He shuts the door firmly behind himself and clatters down the stairs to do his thing. And if he mutters about the unfairness of tracksuit bros being morning people, that’s entirely between Clint and his imaginary friends.

Clint shoulders open the front door with two arrows nocked and ready to go. “Nikolai?” he says. “Dmitri?” The tracksuit thugs are sprawled out on the sidewalk face down, each with a dart sticking out of his neck. Clint lets go of the bow with one hand to feel for pulses, finding them steady, but neither man reacts to being touched.

And the weird just keeps coming with these guys. Clint squints up at the surrounding rooftops while he fishes his phone out of his pocket and dials for paramedics. While the line rings, he closes his eyes and feels for that extra layer of emotions he’s been living with, finding tendrils of determination seeping through cracks in the stubborn blankness Clint feels most of the time when Bucky’s up to something.

He can’t be sure, but he thinks there’s movement on a roof higher than his apartment building, two down and across the street. He tucks his arrows back into the quiver and slings his bow over a shoulder.

There’s no way of telling if it works this way, but Clint tries pushing a sense of gratitude and safety into the bond.

He feels a flash of warmth, and then it’s gone, along with Bucky.

 

—————————————

 

Clint is beginning to resign himself to a life of sleeping in the comfy chair. Not because he’s too lazy to go to bed, not this time, anyway.

It’s entirely due to acts of Dog.

Or, technically, acts of Lucky.

Lucky’s nose and whiskers twitch in his sleep, and his front paws give a little flutter of chasing squirrels in a great doggy dream. His eye is flickering back and forth behind the lid, and Clint is holding absolutely still, because Lucky is a good boy who doesn’t deserve waking up from a good dream.

He carefully lays a hand on Lucky’s shoulder, fingertips barely touching the shiny new tag hanging from a purple leather collar.

Not that he knows exactly where Lucky came from (although he has his suspicions, as weird as they are) but the vet confirmed Lucky had no chip, so now Dog is Lucky, complete with a collar and a brand new microchip.

Also a bed, high quality dog kibble, and more squeaky toys than might be strictly advisable.

That hasn’t worked out exactly like Clint planned, either, though, as Lucky is sleeping on his lap, not in the dog bed, ate the last slice of pizza instead of his kibble while Clint was in the bathroom, and seems to prefer being petted and spoiled to any kind of playtime.

There’s a rumble of thunder outside the window, but Lucky sleeps on, oblivious to acts of nature going on beyond the warm safety of Clint’s apartment. At least he won’t need to find an extra extra large thundershirt, Clint guesses.

He sifts his fingers through Lucky’s fur, leaving them buried there against his shoulder, and leans back to get comfortable and close his eyes, trying to project nothing but warmth and contentment.

He gets back a thread of smug alertness coupled with instinctive awareness of every weapon on his body and a sense of being on edge. Except he knows by now it’s not his body, but Bucky’s, and he’s all but given up trying to guess what the complex emotions he sometimes feels from Bucky’s direction mean he’s actually doing. For all Clint knows, this is how Bucky feels going to the library for the latest Nora Roberts.

A burst of triumph and quick rush of adrenaline that isn’t Clint’s has his heart racing, and he breathes through it, fingers twitching in Lucky’s fur. He just hopes Bucky isn’t out in the rain doing something stupid like watching Clint through the living room window from across the street.

It doesn’t feel like that, but still. Clint worries.

Clint worries, and it’s kind of a new emotion, too. He’s worried before, but not quite like this constant vague sense that his soulmate might be getting into trouble. He’s not sure if it’s part of the soulmate package, or something unique to Bucky Barnes.

Or to the Winter Soldier.

Jury’s out.

The bond is calm but alert again, and Clint stretches, inadvertently waking Lucky. The dog gives him a put upon look and wriggles around until his back is resting along the seam between Clint’s legs and his feet are waving in the air at Clint’s face in a clear demand for belly rubs.

Clint snorts. “How are you already this spoiled?”

Lucky lifts his head as if to give him a ‘get on with it’ look and gently kicks Clint in the chest with one waving paw.

“Fine, okay.” Clint rubs a hand over Lucky’s furry belly, rubbing his fingertips through the fur and smiling at the happy loll of Lucky’s tongue. He is the picture of blissful relaxation, and Clint resigns himself to a long evening of continuing to spoil his dog.

He’s still gently rubbing Lucky’s belly when another burst of smug triumph comes through the bond, tingling in the back of his skull. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, and he hopes it means Bucky is doing something that makes him happy.

The faint on edge feeling doesn’t go away, though, and Clint stares out the window at the rain, pushing down the urge to go hunting for Bucky and back him up in whatever he’s doing.

But Bucky can handle himself, probably better than even Clint can, and if he wanted Clint’s help with whatever he’s doing, he knows he can call. One call, and Clint will come running.

He checks the battery percentage on his phone and calls it good, closing his eyes, and letting himself drift toward sleep, one hand still buried in Lucky’s fur.

 

—————————————

 

Today is one of those days where Clint feels every one of his years as a SHIELD agent. Not in aches and pains, or at least not just in aches and pains, but in that constant paranoia and itchy feeling on the back of his neck like he’s always being watched.

And this time, it’s not Bucky.

Whatever Bucky is doing, he’s relaxed but focused. The eyes Clint’s feeling on him aren’t relaxed at all. Focused, sure, and Clint’s not happy to be the focus of whoever’s tailing him. He shifts his grip on Lucky’s leash, keeping him close to heel through the crowds.

Clint takes a casual peek at the plate glass windows across the street and lets his eyes wander through the crowd on the sidewalk behind him, looking for tracksuits, but the crowd is tracksuit-free, and he can’t see anyone focused on him or on Lucky, whose provenance is still admittedly dubious. (And Clint is already 100% willing to throw down with anyone who tries to take his possibly stolen dog away from him.)

His eyes linger on a guy in a fedora and trench coat a ways back that might as well say “I am a spy,” but no real spy worth the title would be caught dead in that Dick Tracey getup. Still, he makes a mental note of the lock of pale blond hair he can see against the coat collar and turns his eyes ahead, nudging Lucky off the sidewalk onto the path for the park.

There are no helpful windows in the park to give him a good look behind him, but he stops at the first doggy water fountain they come across and holds down the foot pedal for Lucky to drink his fill. While his face is turned toward Lucky, his eyes scan the park. There’s no sign of trenchcoat or tracksuit in the park, but he catches a glimpse of trenchcoat disappearing down the street outside the park.

And by the time Clint and Lucky reach the dog park enclosure, the itchy feeling at the back of Clint’s neck is gone, even if the paranoia sticks around for the afterparty.

Which means it probably was trenchcoat tailing him, and something about that just feels downright unprofessional. “Aw, come on.” He drops onto a bench and unclips Lucky’s leash. “Seriously?” An older woman with faded red hair, enormous yellow framed glasses and a Bichon with muddy paws gives him a strange look.

Lucky, of course, makes a beeline right for the Bichon and starts playing like they’re old pals, dancing around each other across the park.

Clint aims what he hopes is a friendly shrug at the older woman and leans back against the bench, closing his eyes to the sun. Bucky is a watchful presence in the back of his mind, and there’s stilll no feeling this time that he, personally, is the subject of Bucky’s watching.

Don’t ask him how he knows. He just does.

Eventually, Lucky leaves his Bichon buddy sniffing around a pair of wiggly Corgis and returns to Clint, resting his muzzle on a knee. “Ready to go home, boy?” Clint scratches the good spot at the top of Lucky’s head.

Lucky closes his eye and pants, scooting closer without moving his head so that he can sit.

“Okay. We’re taking that as a yes.” Clint clips the leash onto Lucky’s collar and runs his hand one last time over Lucky’s silky head. “Let’s go home.”

The walk back is significantly less creepy crawly than the walk out to the dog park was, and Clint’s feeling so much lighter, he stops at a taco truck for a handful of tacos and a foil full of unseasoned beef for a Lucky treat.

He imagines buying extra tacos to bring home for Bucky, too, while he lets himself and Lucky in through the front door. He’d finally need the little cardboard tray the taco truck always offers that he turns down because his hands are plenty big enough for just him and Lucky. He feels an echo of the warmth blooming in his chest at that thought and doesn’t think too hard about it.

Nobody ever told him having a soulmate would leave him fantasizing about the practicalities of buying extra tacos.

Clint juggles Lucky’s leash and the key to his apartment, kicking it open once it’s unlocked and then kicking it shut behind them. As soon as Lucky’s leash is unclipped, he rears up on his hind legs, waving his front paws at Clint in a clear beg for treats. Clint snorts. “You’re lucky I thought of you before the guy started cooking.”

Lucky’s toenails click in his wake on the way to the kitchen, and he just unfolds the foil and sets the whole thing down on the floor for Lucky to eat out of. If foil is good enough for him to eat out of, it’s good enough for his dog.

It’s a toss up which of them devours the first taco faster.

Clint’s opening his second taco keenly aware of Lucky’s laser eyes watching his every move. “You only get one. You’re like a fifth of my size.” Lucky huffs and plops down onto his side in a patch of sunlight, clearly accustomed to the tone humans use when treats are not forthcoming.

He’s a dog full of surprises.

And Clint is a man full of tacos. He licks grease off his thumb, and then after another thought, goes to the sink to actually wash taco and dog park off his hands. He probably should have done that first.

Eh. Whatever doesn’t kill him only makes him stronger, and he’s 100% certain that he’s survived eating worse. He’s eaten actual roadkill, fur and all, cooked on sticks over a campfire, so.

It was fresh.

But still. It gave new meaning to “street meat.” New York’s food trucks can bring it.

Clint stretches until his back pops and pushes away from the counter. Lucky lifts his head, but otherwise stays in his sun spot while Clint heads for the door. “Be a good boy,” he says, and because he’s not picking up the leash, Lucky lays his head back down with a sigh.

It’s only been days, and Clint already doesn’t know how he lived without a dog before. He locks up, and even though 10% of his brain is on Lucky, and a permanent 10% of his brain is on Bucky, he still thinks to look up and down the block for trenchcoat guy before stepping out onto the stoop.

That warning itch is back, but it’s not like Clint hasn’t been handling himself for decades at this point. He just keeps an eye out and goes about his business.

And it’s because he’s keeping an eye out that he realizes he does recognize someone else on the street. Dog Park Lady and her Bichon are headed his way. “Hey,” he says, looking down with a smile when the dog puts its muddy paws on his shin and pants up at him. “Looks like we’re dog parent buddies.”

She raises an eyebrow and answers in a language Clint doesn’t know.

“Aw.” Clint raises his hands in apology and then reaches down to give the dog a quick scratch. It’s when his attention is entirely on the dog that strong hands grab him around the waist, legs, and upper arms, hauling him into the alleyway.

Another hand slaps itself over his mouth, and Clint can see Dog Park Lady still standing there on the sidewalk as if nothing of interest is happening in the alleyway at all.

He lets himself go momentarily limp in tracksuit-clad arms, hoping at least one of these guys will loosen their grip and then struggles for all he’s worth, feeling more hands and arms piling on and hustling him down the alley until there’s the distinctive click of a gun safety turning off.

Clint forces his head around to see Trenchcoat Guy standing there with a pistol pointed at Clint’s head. Now that Clint can see his face clearly, he can see it’s painted white with a single black teardrop. Clint closes his eyes and forces down a shudder. Even when he was in the circus, clowns creeped him out.

Trenchcoat Guy says something in some Eastern European language, and Clint hears the goddamn Dog Park Lady answer him in the same tongue.

He makes an outraged sound and struggles harder until the gun muzzle presses right up against the center of his forehead.

They may not speak the same language, but right now, Trenchcoat Guy is communicating just fine. He jerks his head at the open doors of a conversion van and Clint finds himself bodily lifted off the ground and thrown unceremoniously into the back.

“Hey!” Clint gets out one syllable before the pistol returns and holds up his hands.

Trenchcoat Guy climbs into the back of the van with two of his tracksuited buddies, one of whom has a brand spanking new roll of gorilla tape. A frission of fear that isn’t his slides down Clint’s spine.

So. This looks bad.

The gun comes down on Clint’s skull behind one ear, and the world goes black.

—————————————

Clint wakes to a situation that’s admittedly better than he was expecting, which is a tragic demonstration of his rock bottom standards.

But seriously, it’s not too bad as kidnappings go, and Clint is a connoisseur. Sure, he’s in your basic windowless storage closet somewhere suitably low rent and high crime that nobody bothers asking questions, but Clint’s not chained to the wall, and at least the floor isn’t damp. The tracksuits and their clown buddy didn’t even remove his hearing aids, which gives him a better than 75% chance at a Steve-and-Tony rescue party in the not too distant future if Steve keeps up his habit of regular Bucky-seeking phone calls and paranoia.

Because the tracksuits did take Clint’s phone. They may be dumb, but they’re not complete idiots.

The double doors that take up the entire front wall do have him a little nervous, he can admit to himself, but he’s been held captive in so many worse places, he can’t bring himself to get worked up about it.

Then again, he also hasn’t been here long enough to find out what happens when he gets hungry or thirsty, or needs to pee, which could definitely knock a star off the accommodations, but he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

For now, he’ll keep rubbing his Gorilla taped wrists against the minute sharp spot he found in the wall’s concrete. It may or may not work to free him, but it’ll give him something to focus on other than trying not to worry Bucky. More. Worry Bucky more, because he is worried. The problem is that it’s like trying not to think about an itch. The more you try, the worse it itches.

And the more Clint tries not to think about worrying Bucky, the more edginess and tamped down fear he gets through the bond. It feels like the emotional equivalent of pacing back and forth, anxious waiting, talking himself down from freaking the fuck out. And how the hell are you supposed to communicate something as complex as ‘Don’t worry, everything is fine, just kidnapped by a killer clown and his cronies’ through feelings?

Badly, it seems, as Clint’s sense of Bucky’s feelings cracks wide open into a wonderland of fear and anger that make Clint choke down an involuntary sound of distress.

Maybe not well enough, as he hears keys in the door lock, and one side of the double doors swings open to reveal Ivan, Dmitri, and Trenchsuit Guy/Killer Clown standing behind it. Dmitri is holding a gun on him, and Clint doubts this gun is armed with knock out darts. So much for professional return courtesy.

Killer Clown says something, and Ivan translates. “Now you awake, you call boyfriend.” He holds out an honest to god flip phone.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Clint says, and it’s technically true. What he has is a soulmate seething with fury, but he feels like that would be a bad idea to mention here. “And even if I did, the only number I’ve got memorized is for my favorite pizza place.”

The clown says something to Dmitri, who backhands Clint in the jaw with the hand holding the gun. And shit, that always smarts. Clown is talking again. “You have Kazi’s dog,” Ivan translates. “Boyfriend took him from us and gave to you.”

Well, that answers some questions. And leaves Clint more determined than ever to keep Lucky with him. He’s a good boy who doesn’t deserve this kind of life. “Maybe he just turned up,” Clint says. His jaw aches, but at least he didn’t bite his tongue. “Finders keepers?”

Dmitri hits him again at the clown’s gesture, and this time, Clint does bite his tongue.

Ow.

“Keep the mutt,” Ivan translates. “We want cheating boyfriend.”

Clint spits out the blood and runs Ivan’s words through his mind, because how is Bucky supposed to cheat if they’re not toge- oh. Oh, okay. “What’d he cheat you out of?” Because information only sometimes hurts, and Bucky’s fury is narrowing down to a pinpoint focus.

The clown’s voice is oddly without inflection when he answers at more length, and Clint’s starting to get a sense of the language. Polish, maybe. “Your apartment building, Barton. You still want deny he is your boyfriend?”

“Maybe he’s just got real estate aspirations,” Clint says. “It’s a sweet little building with great tenants. At least, until some asshole decided to raise the rent.” This time, he’s ready for Dmitri’s blow, letting his body go limp and falling sideways with it, taking away some of the impact. Not his first rodeo, and he’s never been able to fully contain the sass. “How’s he supposed to find me here, anyway?” Clint asks from his position on the hard floor and hopes the frayed tape around his wrists isn’t showing. “You planning to give me an address for him?”

“We leave note in your apartment,” Ivan says, without waiting for the clown this time. Dmitri translates back to Polish. “He find note, come here and bring deed or we kill you.”

That’s succinct, as plans go.

Clint struggles his way back up into a sitting position, not wanting to encourage Dmitri to go for the obvious stomach kick while Clint’s lying on the floor. He hates that shit. “You realize there’s a good chance he’s gonna kill you guys first, right?” Clint decides to give up on the ‘I have no boyfriend’ route, because he has a feeling it’ll only make things worse for him if these guys find out Bucky’s his soulmate, and Bucky is feeling decidedly homicidal.

Clint guesses he got the note.

So now it’s a toss up whether Bucky or Steve and Tony get to him first.

“We lay traps,” Ivan translates for Kazi(??). “He walk in, and boom.” Ivan smacks his hands together like smashing a bug. “We keep him and you locked up until he give up deed or we kill you in front of him.”

“He’s not the only one who’s going to be looking for me,” Clint says, and then, because sometimes it’s a line you’ve gotta use: “You do know who I am, don’t you?”

Ivan leans forward and enunciates. “Hawkeye.”

Alright, so maybe they are idiots. “And you think the Avengers aren’t going to find me first?”

Kazi speaks and Ivan shrugs. “Boyfriend more motivated. Avengers find you before he give up deed, and we kill you anyway.”

The cold-blooded need for violence that’s pulsing through the soulbond makes a lot more sense now. “He’s not going to like that,” Clint says, ignoring the trap thing entirely, because nothing these guys have said indicates they’ve clocked Bucky as the Winter Soldier.

And that is entirely on them.

Their heads whip around to a sound that’s apparently beyond Clint’s range of hearing. Ivan and Dmitri are smiling when they return their attention to Clint and Kazi walks off. “Loverboy not wasting time.” Ivan flicks his eyes in the direction Kazi went. “Is true love, no?”

“Honestly?” Clint asks, straining his ears for any details. “We just hooked up on Grindr last week, but I’ve got some seriously quality dick game.”

Ivan’s smile isn’t exactly friendly. “Then maybe we cut off and give to him as souvenir if he try to keep deed.”

There are times when Clint’s sass is not his best friend. This may be one of them. “We’re not getting out of here in one piece together, are we?”

Ivan’s smile widens. “What tip you off?” He closes the door, and Clint hears two sounds: the click of the lock and then automatic gunfire.

The soulbond radiates violent satisfaction. And Clint gets back to rubbing the Gorilla tape against that sharp spot on the wall more vigorously, because he doesn’t want Bucky to think he’s just been sitting around waiting like some damsel in distress. He has some pride, after all.

The frayed tape gives just as Clint hears a boom above all the gunfire, and the metal doors jolt against the lock.

Clint scoots himself into a back corner of the little room and gets to work on the tape around his legs. At least they didn’t tape his ankles together under his jeans. He doesn’t feel like an impromptu waxing on top of being kidnapped today.

Outside the doors, he can hear trampling feet and shouting in at least three Slavic languages. By the time the tape is off his legs, he hears the same feet and shouting headed in the other direction and folds over his knees, laughing, because some mental pictures are never not funny, no matter how serious the situation might be. From what he’s feeling in the bond, Bucky’s got a dark sense of humor himself.

Everything beyond Clint’s little room goes nearly silent except for a faint metallic tink and rattle that disappears down the corridor and ends in a spectacular boom and crash that leaves Clint’s ears ringing and the soulbond radiating vindictive smugness.

The creak-crunch-clang of the storage room door being wrenched off its hinges is an anticlimax after the explosion.

And Clint’s heart beats double-time at the sight of Bucky standing in the empty doorway, face blank behind his goggles and mask, but emotions running riot through the soulbond.

“This,” Bucky growls, tearing off his mask and stuffing it into one of his many pockets, “would be a lot easier if you stayed in the tower where you belong.”

“You never told me I could come back,” Clint says on autopilot, unable to take his eyes off of the goddamn Winter Soldier stalking into the storage room and holding out a gloved metal hand for him to take.

Bucky yanks him up harder than necessary and Clint slams into his immobile chest with an oof of lost breath. He’s not sure which one of them the overwhelming tide of emotions is coming from, and he forgets to care when Bucky cups the metal hand behind his neck and pulls him in with a frustrated noise for a short, sharp kiss. “You never told me you were going!”

Clint’s knees feel like water and his hand shakes when he lifts it to remove Bucky’s goggles. Behind the smoked lenses, Bucky’s eyes are wild. And this time, it’s Bucky who makes a small incoherent sound when Clint presses their lips together for something longer, and maybe softer, than either of them expected.

Clint swallows and straightens up, looking down into Bucky’s face and feeling the swell of petrified exhilaration radiating from him. “Are you ready for me to come back?”

“Maybe.” Bucky’s eyes flick down to Clint’s lips and back up. “But I think I need you to.”

“Okay,” Clint says, sounding a little breathless, and then sways forward into Bucky again, framing his face with both hands and kissing him deliberately. He’s distantly aware of the sound of the Iron Man armor landing through the hole that goes straight down through the roof and first two floors of the building. It’s followed by sounds of two sets of footsteps approaching.

The whirr of Tony’s faceplate lifting precedes a casual, “Well. I guess they worked everything out, then.”

—————————————

Bucky’s real hand is warm in Clint’s, and while he’s only been able to manage quick stolen glances at Clint’s face with wide eyes, his fingers have been gripping Clint’s hand since they followed Steve and Tony out of the abandoned dance school.

And his emotions.

Bucky’s emotions are almost enough to bring Clint to his knees, so he’s not exactly ungrateful for the outer quiet between them and the reassuring contact of Bucky’s skin against his. Clint’s trying to project calm and reassuring back at Bucky, but he has a feeling his own emotions aren’t exactly hidden underneath his best attempt at keeping his cool.

Clint’s also fully aware that Steve keeps twisting around to look back at them as if he’s not sure they’re following and needs to keep reassuring himself. Clint gets it.

He looks down at their joined fingers again and leans his shoulder into Bucky’s sturdy frame, closing his eyes and giving himself permission to just follow his soulmate wherever they’re headed next.

That next turns out to be a bus bench that looks like it’s been through the Battle of New York twice over. Bucky just stands there, unwilling to sit, but Clint is tired and gratefully folds onto the concrete, keeping his grip on Bucky’s hand.

“I don’t exactly have FAA-approved passenger space for three,” Tony explains after a brief muttered conversation over his comms that Clint wasn’t exactly paying attention to. “But Happy’s going to be here for you in about fifteen minutes.”

“Cool,” Clint says and tips his head back to stare at the orange of New York light pollution coloring the sky above them.

“I can stay,” Steve says, looking between them and Tony.

Bucky shakes his head. “I’ve got it.”

Steve looks him over, visibly reluctant, and Clint doesn’t say a thing about the thread of frustration working its way through Bucky’s feelings. “You sure?”

“Scram, punk.” There’s no heat behind Bucky’s words, and he meets Steve’s eyes. “I think I can get us back to the tower in Stark’s chauffered car.”

Steve ducks his head and glances up with a small smile. “Okay. See you in the morning?”

Clint looks up at that, staring at Steve in disbelief. “What, no debrief?”

Steve shrugs and steps up to Tony’s armor, putting one foot onto the foothold that flips out for him. “I think we can keep this one off the record.”

Clint stares. “Who are you and what have you done with Steve Rogers?”

Tony snorts. “Don’t look a gift Steve in the mouth. Be safe, kids. Use protection.”

“Tony!”

Bucky rubs his metal hand over his face. “Weren’t you going?”

”Yeah. Sure. JARVIS, what time is it in Latveria?” Tony holds still for Steve to fully climb onto the back of the armor. “I’m bored, and it’s been a while since we met up with Doom,” he says, blasting into the sky.

A slightly hysterical giggle bubbles up from Clint’s chest and he can feel a wide grin stretching his face when he turns back to Bucky. “You’re gonna love Doom’s robots,” he says. “Wholesale destruction, no human casualties.”

Bucky’s emotions give a complicated little flip. “I’ve got a lotta human casualties behind me.”

Clint shrugs. “Who doesn’t? But robots mean all the fun without sitting through a week of newscasters and experts psychoanalyzing your tendencies toward violence and whether or not you belong on a team of superheroes.”

Bucky grimaces and looks like he’s reconsidering several recent life choices.

Clint gives his hand a squeeze, distracting him. “Don’t worry. Tony’s got us all beat, and he’s always willing to put a reminder out there whenever things start to get intense on Fox.”

Bucky blinks and turns his stare back on Clint. “I’m the Winter Soldier.”

“And he’s the Merchant of Death.” Clint pushes off the bench and stands when he sees a familiar and very out of place towncar coming down the street. “Heroing is complicated business, but they’re kind of stuck with us, ‘cause we’re the best.” Clint flicks a glance over at Bucky. “If you’re staying with the team now, I mean.”

“Depends. You gonna be there?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve been missing this shit like crazy.”

“Which is why you did the stupid thing and moved all the way out to Bed Stuy without a plan or backup,” Bucky mutters under his breath. The towncar pulls up in front of them. Bucky doesn’t wait for Clint to reply. “Anyway, if you’re staying, I’m staying.” Bucky tugs Clint to the curb and opens the door before Happy can so much as unbuckle his seatbelt.

“Awesome,” Clint says, climbing in after Bucky and resting their joined hands on his thigh. “Steve’s going to like that.”

Bucky’s facing the window with a frown line between his eyebrows but meets Clint’s eyes in the reflection. “I’m not doing it for Steve.”

Clint raises his eyebrows, because there was a hint of misplaced bravado in the bond, and he can’t conceal a little thrill at how simple it’s becoming to recognize those minute shifts in Bucky’s mood.

“Okay,” Bucky says, looking back down at their joined hands with a lopsided quirk of his lips. “Maybe a little bit for Steve.”

Clint settles back more comfortably into the plush seat, ready to be chauffeured in luxury before letting out a groan. “Aw, no. We’ve gotta go back to Bed Stuy and walk the dog.”

“Nah,” Bucky says. “He’s at the tower. Couldn’t leave him behind after your tracksuit buddies broke in to leave that note, could I?”

The broad smile blossoms again on Clint’s lips. “I knew you gave me the dog.” He can feel a hint of pleased embarrassment creep into the bond, and Bucky hides behind his hair.

“He’s a good boy,” Bucky says with a shrug. “He deserves a better home. And a good person.”

“Good people,” Clint corrects, and isn’t going to listen to any argument.

———————————

They’re companionably silent for the rest of the drive, just existing in the clouds of emotion drifting between them clear as day now that they’re touching. It’s only when they get to the tower and Bucky needs to enter his handprint for the elevator that they have to let go.

Rather than immediately pick up Clint’s hand again, Bucky unsnaps a strap on his vest and reaches inside, pulling out a thick envelope and handing it to Clint.

“What’s this?” Clint takes it, sliding out a bundle of folded papers soft around the edges with age.

“Deed,” Bucky says, taking up Clint’s hand again when the elevator doors open in front of them. “For the apartment building. I know you didn’t want to leave everybody else vulnerable by going back to the tower, so…” he trails off with a self-conscious shrug.

Clint stares at the side of Bucky’s head and makes a quietly incoherent noise.

“What?” Bucky turns to face him and is immediately muffled by Clint’s lips covering his, the deed rustling against his hair as Clint cradles Bucky’s skull with his free hand.

“You cheated at poker to win me a dog and my building,” Clint says, not even trying to hide his delight.

“Technically, I just stole the dog,” Bucky admits, a hint of pink creeping onto his cheeks. “But yeah. I cheated like a motherfucker.”

Clint snickers, bumping Bucky’s shoulder with his own. “What would Steve say if he heard you saying that?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows, incredulity clear in both expression and feelings. “Who the hell do you think I learned it from? I was the straight arrow; Steve was the troublemaking little shit I had to drag out of his latest disaster every day of the week and twice on Sundays.” The elevator stops at Clint’s floor and Bucky leads them off, walking casually up to the door and letting go of Clint only long enough to lay his palm against the reader again.

”Since when does my door open for you?” Clint asks. He doesn’t mind at all, but he is kind of curious.

“Tony,” Bucky says, like that’s an answer, and when Clint thinks about it, it is.

”He’s a closet romantic,” Clint says.

“Are you kidding me?” Bucky lets go of Clint when Clint makes a noise of delight at seeing Lucky and promptly drops to his knees to fuss over his dog. “Steve’s bad, but Tony’s the worst out of all of us.”

“I am buying them a fruit basket,” Clint says. “Such a big fruit basket.”

Bucky snorts and closes the door behind them. “Who even buys fruit baskets anymore?”

“Well excuse me, Mr. 1940s.” Clint stands up again, lacing his fingers through Bucky’s and tugging him properly into his arms, resting his hands together in the small of Bucky’s back. “Maybe I like old fashioned things.”

Bucky makes a half-hearted move to pull away from Clint. “Um.”

“What?” Clint gives him a squeeze around the waist, keeping him close while fully aware that if Bucky wanted to pull away, he’d be away and there’s nothing Clint could do about it.

Bucky glances across the room at Lucky settling into his dog bed. “Come on, let go. I stink like explosives and sweat.”

Clint buries his nose in Bucky’s neck, nuzzling and breathing him in. “I like explosives and sweat,” he says. “But if it’ll make you feel better, we can always shower.”

There’s a frisson of surprise in the bond, and Clint smiles against Bucky’s skin, laying a kiss above the collar of his uniform. “You don’t have to,” Bucky says.

“No,” Clint agrees, “but I want to.” He hesitates, lifting his head to look into Bucky’s face. “As long as you want me to.”

Bucky swallows and licks his bottom lip. His eyes flicker back to Clint’s. “Yeah.” Bucky’s voice comes out dry. “Yeah, I want you to.”

Clint beams, sinking into the rightness of the soulbond for a few heartbeats before giving Bucky’s waist a tug. “C’mon.” He tows Bucky to the bathroom and leaves him standing in the doorway to turn on the showerheads, then pulls his shirt over his head and drops it carelessly on the floor. “Well?” He turns around, hands hovering over the button on his jeans.

Bucky’s eyes go straight to the scarring on Clint’s shoulder. “It feels weird,” he says absently, not moving a single step further into the room. “Seeing it on somebody else.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Clint says, meeting Bucky’s eyes and toeing off his shoes and socks so he can drop his jeans and step out of them. “Hoping to change that.”

Bucky slow-blinks at Clint, eyes sliding down to his feet and back up. “Right.” He still hasn’t moved.

“We don’t have to,” Clint reminds him, trying his very hardest not to be the asshole whose feelings give away wanting to see all of Bucky and have all of him pressed against his skin as of yesterday. Not while he’s trying to be a good guy here.

Bucky huffs out a sharp breath through his nose and gets to work removing his weapons, twisting to set them on the dresser outside of the bathroom. “I don’t have to do anything anymore.” He gets to work on the snaps and buckles of his kevlar. A lock of hair is stuck to his cheek with the steam, and Clint’s fingers itch to tuck it behind his ear. “So I must want to.” He removes the vest and folds it carefully, setting it outside the bathroom with his weapons.

When Bucky’s shirt comes off, the first thing Clint sees is that the scarring around his metal shoulder really is identical to what Clint’s been seeing in the mirror all this time. It’s only when Bucky comes closer to lay a palm over Clint’s left shoulder that Clint realizes Bucky does have his arrow scars, standing out on otherwise unmarred pale skin, and he can’t resist gently sliding his thumbs over the divots.

“They don’t hurt?” Clint checks in and feels Bucky’s flesh hand squeeze his shoulder gently.

“Nah.” Bucky tips his head and slides his fingers over the raised ridge of scar tissue, where metal is fused to his own flesh and continues down Clint’s arm, palm gliding over his bicep. “Never got to look at this much in the mirror,” he confesses, closing his fingers around Clint’s elbow.

Clint’s stared at his own scars in the mirror a lot more over the years than is probably mentally healthy. “Does it bother you?”

Bucky shakes his head and runs the metal fingertips of his other hand over the arrow scar in Clint’s right shoulder. “No. You?”

“Surprisingly, no,” Clint says, realizing he’s long past the stage of freaking out in the shower that Tony talked about weeks ago. He steps out of his boxer briefs and leaves them in the messy collection of clothing on the bathroom floor and nods his head toward the shower. “So…?”

“Go on.” Bucky shoos Clint into the shower stall and moments later presses up behind him, all warm skin to warm skin, while Clint still has his head ducked under the water.

Clint rests his palms against the wall and pushes back against Bucky, shamelessly enjoying the complete immobility of Bucky’s body against his. He looks down and watches Bucky’s real hand rubbing the bar of soap over a spot of blood on Clint’s chest until it washes away. It was probably from spitting after he bit his tongue, but Clint didn’t even notice it.

”Better,” Bucky says and turns Clint around, lathering the unscented soap between his palms before setting down the bar and running his hands over Clint’s shoulders and down his arms.

“Wasn’t I supposed to be washing the sweat and gunpowder off of you?” Clint asks, stomach muscles clenching under Bucky’s touch. The emotions in the bond are like a dull roar, too much for Clint to pick out any one from another, and they leave his skin tingling.

“You like sweat and gunpowder,” Bucky says, kneeling to wash Clint’s legs instead of letting Clint reciprocate just yet.

“You never know. I might like clean and soapy you just as much.” Clint lets Bucky lift and wash his feet and closes his eyes to appreciate the feeling of Bucky’s hands sliding up the backs of his legs as Bucky stands.

“We can try that, too,” Bucky says, hands continuing up, curving over his ass and spreading out to cover his back in suds, palms and fingertips pausing to sweep across tight muscles until Clint turns and slumps into him with a groan. Bucky only stops when his fingertips reach Clint’s hair, and he walks Clint backwards under the spray. He takes up the soap again, keeping his eyes on Clint’s face while his hands slide suds between Clint’s cheeks, between his legs, sliding around his hips to wrap his right hand around him, watching Clint’s lips part on a punched out sound with the first slide of Bucky’s grasp. “I like it better when I can have my hands on you.”

Bucky finally looks down, and Clint can’t help but look down with him, feeling dizzy with all the sensations of the heat of the shower, Bucky’s hand stroking him with more confidence than Clint would have expected, and Bucky’s arousal is lighting up the soulbond.

Clint lets out an unsteady breath that might be a quiet moan. His hearing aids are on the ledge above the sink, so he doesn’t know. He almost drops the soap trying to take it out of the holder when Bucky twists his wrist on the upstroke, but keeps hold of the bar. “Let’s see how I like it.” Clint makes himself take a half step out of reach and Bucky reluctantly lets go of him, watching Clint’s hands with unblinking eyes while drops of water run down his face. “If that’s okay with you.”

Bucky spreads his arms and steps out of the direct spray, holding eye contact with Clint. “Yeah. It’s okay.” A small smile curls the corner of Bucky’s lips and he shakes the hair out of his eyes. “I’m pretty much okay with whatever you want to do.” There’s a hint of nerves in the bond when Bucky speaks, but they wash away like the lather at Clint’s first touch to the center of Bucky’s chest, leaving only anticipation and what feels very much like stunned happiness behind.

————————————

The stunned happiness and boneless relaxation following orgasm last through to Clint turning off the taps and turn toward a more calm and patient happiness while Clint wraps Bucky in the biggest, fluffiest towel he’s got. Clint squeezes water from the ends of Bucky’s hair with the dry corners of the towel the way Natasha taught him after her broken wrist while they were laying low in Bogota.

Bucky holds still under Clint’s touch, just watching the expression of concentration on his face. “You don’t have to do that,” he says. “All Hydra did was spray me down in disinfectant and hose me off for seventy years. Shaved my head when the hair was getting in the way. It’s nothing special.” He feels like he’s enjoying the care, though, so Clint continues his ministrations.

Clint finishes squeezing out the excess water and runs his fingers carefully through the tangled ends. “I’m not Hydra,” he points out, unnecessarily, “and I like your hair.”

“I was gonna cut it off -“

“Keep it?” Clint tucks the ends behind Bucky’s ears and licks his lips. “If you don’t mind, I mean.”

“It’s just hair,” Bucky says, embarrassed and agreeable through the bond.

Clint’s aware that his own hair is the usual disaster and shrugs, going on to dry Bucky’s body. “Hydra never did know what was worth appreciating about the world.”

“I’m not sure how I’d have felt about Hydra appreciating those parts of me.” Bucky holds onto Clint’s shoulder with his flesh hand, balancing on one foot while Clint rubs the towel over his lower leg. There’s no way the Winter Soldier has the slightest issue with balance, so Clint just lets himself appreciate the excuse for more touch.

“That might have been weird,” Clint agrees, well aware of the understatement. He stands up once Bucky’s dry, giving himself a cursory wipe down with the damp towel until he’s at least not going to soak the sheets and hangs it up on the bar.

“A little more than weird.” Bucky’s toes scrunch into the plush softness of the bath mat under him, and Clint vows right then to take on the mission of filling his apartment with soft luxurious things for Bucky to touch. They’ll still be purple, because he’s him, but soft. He feels like Bucky needs more softness.

Clint nudges Bucky in the direction of the bedroom, staying close enough to bend and kiss his shoulder before stepping forward to turn down the sheets and blankets. Once they’re settled into bed, Clint turns to Bucky, sliding his fingers between Bucky’s, warm palm to warm palm, and laying them against the sheets between their pillows. With naked bodies pressed together from chests to tangled legs, Clint remembers what Bucky said weeks ago, when all of this seemed new and impossible. “So, does the soulbond make you as happy as you thought it would?”

Bucky’s half closed eyes are slivers of slate blue, and he’s unconsciously nuzzling into the pillows, radiating contentment and a thread of disbelief he’s too tired to fully embrace, already sliding toward much needed sleep. He offers a barely there smile and squeezes Clint’s fingers. His eyes are drifting shut, but the smile remains. He brings Clint’s knuckles up to his lips and brushes a kiss against them, speaking into Clint’s skin. “Yeah, I think maybe it does.”

(Art by Kissitbetter)