Chapter Text
It’s in the upper 40’s, windy and misty, and there are holes in both of Clint’s sweaters, which is why he’s layered them. But he put the green one on top, so he doesn’t know why Natasha’s complaining.
“Besides,” he says, as they toss the van’s floormat on top of the barbed wire fence and take turns hopping over. “I don’t know why you’ve nominated yourself costume police. All you have is a nametag.”
She raises her eyebrows. He can’t see, because it’s too dark for that kind of intricate body language, but he knows how to read her silences. “You think this hair happened by accident, Barton?”
“It’s your hair,” he says. “Your normal hair.”
She huffs out a breath. “‘Flaming locks of auburn,’ Barton. You think that includes frizz? I had to blow-dry it.”
“Sure, ‘Jolene,’” he says, “that sounds real fucking onerous. Which of us is in tights?”
“Nobody told you to put on tights,” she says. “You decided. I invited you to be Dolly Parton. But you said--”
“I’m not wearing that wig for two years in a row,” Clint says. “Last year, it got caught in a ceiling fan and--”
“Guys,” Steve says. He shoves his firefighter’s helmet back out of his eyes. “Could you possibly keep it down? We’re trespassing.”
“Yeah, Clint,” Natasha says. “Shut up.”
Clint huffs out a breath and tugs at his tights, which have ridden up again. The tunic won’t stay in place, either. But he’ll be warmer later, when they’re crowded around the firepit, sharing a smuggled flask. Once he’s warm enough to get rid of these sweaters, he’s gonna look so cool.
“How the hell are you staying warm?” he whispers to Thor, sidling closer.
Thor blinks at him. His viking costume is amazing, but, aside from the straps of leather holding the axe to his back, he’s stripped to the waist. Clint’s pretty sure his nipples could cut glass, but, if Thor feels cold, he’s not showing it. “I’m from Norway,” Thor says, very gently.
“Also,” Tony says, “we had some whiskey about it on the ride over.”
Steve whips around like someone slapped his ass. “You said that was apple juice,” he says.
Tony rolls his eyes. “Trick or treat, Rogers,” he says, holding up the juice box he carried from the van. “I played a trick and had a treat.”
“I thought you were the trick,” Natasha says.
Tony tips her a winks and then sucks noisily at his juice box straw. “Damn,” he says. “All out.”
Steve puts his hands on his hips, and Tony copies him, but he puts way more hip action into it.
He’s been copying Steve all night, probably because they both showed up dressed as firefighters. Except Steve looks like he found an actual uniform somewhere, and no firefighter alive would wear what Tony’s wearing unless he was trying to earn some extra cash on the side.
“How’d you get the whiskey in the juice box?” Clint asks, hoping to forestall an argument. Their arguments are fun to watch, but it’s cold, and they have a mystery to solve, and, after that, they can have booze and smores and all the candy they can eat.
“A syringe, a siphon, and good, honest American ingenuity,” Tony says.
“I pledge allegiance,” Clint says.
“Glad to have you,” Tony replies, and winks again. His winks have really gained some potency since he poured himself into that catsuit.
There’s a noise, suddenly. Faint, but audible. It’s a weird, stuttering cracking sound, like a wooden plank splitting.
Which is, Clint thinks, a uniquely disquieting sound in a graveyard.
“Oh shit,” he says, and instinctively huddles into Thor, who obligingly wraps an arm around his shoulders. “There’s the ghost.”
“There’s the phenomena,” Tony corrects. He gets very serious about science, especially when Bruce isn’t around to proselytize on the virtues of the scientific method.
But Bruce is back with the van, because he’s absolutely, no-shit, for-real-this-time not allowed to get brought home by the cops even once more this semester. And breaking into a private cemetery is exactly the kind of shit that’s likely to get Bruce grabbed by the cops.
He just doesn’t have the right instincts, Clint thinks. He always runs in the wrong direction, and he’s also the slowest out of all of them. Which means, when the cops grab someone, they usually grab him.
“Phenomen-go fuck yourself,” Clint says. “Didn’t I say no ghosts? When we started this whole thing? What’d I say?”
“No ghosts,” Steve, Tony, Nat, and Thor all chorus together.
“We know, Barton,” Steve says. He rolls his eyes so hard that he nearly knocks off his helmet.
“You know,” Tony says, as he hops over a gravestone. His helmet doesn’t wobble at all, but his costume maybe overcommitted to elastic. “Sometimes I think you’ve got more respect for the dead than the living.”
“That’s because I do,” Clint says, carefully picking his way around graves. “Dead people have nothing to lose, okay?”
“It’s gonna be fine,” Nat says, dropping back to stand on Clint’s other side. He’s sandwiched between her and Thor, which makes him the safest person in this cemetery and possibly the entire state. “It’s never actually a ghost.”
“Probably insurance scam,” Thor says. He laughs, and Clint gets lost, a little, staring at that facepaint cutting across his cheekbones. It really brings out his eyes. “Always. Always it’s insurance.”
“Rent evasion,” Steve offers.
“Super misguided attempt to get back with an ex,” Tony says, with a grimace.
“Ugh,” Clint says, remembering that case. “So gross.”
“Super gross,” Nat confirms. “But it’s never actually anything supernatural, Clint.”
Clint wraps an arm around her waist and tugs her closer and hopes that, once again, they’ll just find some weirdo in body paint, trying to swindle his landlord or State Farm out of a couple grand.
When they started solving mysteries two summers ago, it had been a desperate play to keep Tony too busy to nosedive into anything too self-destructive. But now their reputation has grown to the point that people are calling them about emergency late-night mysterious happenings in cemeteries, and they have to load up and head out on Halloween night without even pausing to grab a bag or two of candy.
“Hey,” Clint says, “maybe we should start doing emergency beer tasting instead. You know?”
“Oh, sure,” Tony says. “There’s lots of demand for that.”
“Guys,” Steve says, “come on. I’m trying to hear the ghost.”
And it says something, really, about the innate power and charisma of Steve Rogers, that he can stand there in a firefighter’s uniform, with a giant helmet on his head, and declaratively say things like I’m trying to hear the ghost and everybody just immediately falls silent to let him.
Clint kind of wants that type of power, but he also knows he’d have no idea what to do with it. So it’s probably best that it stays with Steve.
Except, honestly, sometimes it seems like Steve doesn’t really know what to do with it, either.
Like right now, at this moment, when a hand pushes up from the ground and wraps around Steve’s ankle.
“Holy shit,” Clint says, and goes for his bow.
“Ugh,” Tony says, scrambling for his tazer, “oh my God.”
“That’s unusual,” Natasha says, brow furrowing.
Thor says something in Norwegian that sounds like it belongs on a metal album, and then he grabs the axe off his back, steps forward like he’s preparing to play an especially gruesome game of Whack-a-mole.
“Are you okay?” Steve asks the hand sticking out from the ground. “Hey, be careful, let me help you.”
“We’re gonna die,” Clint says. “Steve’s gonna get bitten by a zombie, because his mom taught him about manners, and nobody’s gonna kill him, cuz look at that face, look at those abs, and we’re all gonna eat each other’s brains, and I fucking hate this. I hate this. I said--”
“No ghosts,” Tony, Nat, and Thor recite. Steve misses his cue, since he’s currently crouched on grave dirt, digging around with his hands.
“That’s clearly a zombie,” Tony says, tony implying that that’s somehow supposed to be comforting. “If it were a ghost, it’d just phase through the soil.”
“Guys,” Steve says, going full disappointed hall monitor. “What are you doing over there? There’s a person.”
“Well,” Tony says.
“Steve.” Natasha grimaces, shakes her head.
“Dead person,” Thor says, and he waves his axe very empathetically.
Steve’s stares up at them like they just simultaneously belched out the tune of the national anthem. “It’s not a damn zombie,” he says, all offended. And then he points at the still-grasping hand. “Warm hands,” he says. “I made sure.”
“Oh, thank God,” Clint says, and then realization strikes. “Oh my God, somebody buried a fucking person.”
“Insurance,” Thor says, grimly.
“Yeah,” Natasha says. “Gotta be somebody’s insured mother-in-law or something.”
“Theories later,” Steve says, and claps his hands together exactly like the track coach, trying to get them to run another lap. “Digging now.”
When they’re done digging, they have a whole person, breathing and alive. He’s around their age, dressed in a suit. He can’t seem to let go of Tony’s hands.
“Dick?” he says, staring up at him.
“I mean,” Tony says. He’s wide-eyed, a little pale. “It’s been said.”
The not-a-zombie coughs, and there’s dirt in his mouth. Clint wishes they’d saved some of Tony’s juice box for him.
“Sorry,” he says. He looks at his own hands and then very carefully lets go of Tony’s. “I don’t know you,” he says.
Tony reaches for him, like he can’t quite help himself. “I’m Tony,” he says. “We’re the Avengers. We solve mysteries.”
“Who put you in the coffin?” Steve asks.
“You want us to call 911?” Clint says, because he doesn’t really think this is a mystery that needs to be solved so much as it’s a crime that needs to be reported.
Jesus Christ, somebody put a person in the dirt.
“No,” he says. He shakes his head. His hands are shaking. They’re also bleeding. “I just—can somebody call my dad? He’s Bruce Wayne. He’s in Gotham. Just—please? Could you call him?”
They exchange looks, all four of them. But Nat’s the one who asks. “Where’s Gotham?”
He stares at her. “Are you—it’s the third largest city on the east coast. It’s up near Bludhaven.”
His look takes on a frantic edge as they all slowly shake their heads.
“Wayne Enterprises?” he says. “Do you—where am I?”
“New York,” Steve says. “You’re in New York.”
The boy nods, slowly. His eyes go from face to face. He doesn’t for a single moment look like he’s about to cry, and that’s the weirdest part of this whole thing, really. “Okay,” he says. He stands up, and he doesn’t waver, but Clint scuttles to his side anyway, just in case. “I think I need to go to a hospital.”
“Yeah,” Steve says. “We’ll take you.”
“Don’t worry,” Clint says, shifting his bow so he can wrap a careful arm about this kid’s waist. “We’re gonna figure this out. That’s what we do. We solve mysteries.”
“Okay,” he says. He holds on, but he doesn’t lean any of his weight onto him. Like he’s not sure yet that Clint’s real.
“We’re gonna help you,” Clint says.
“And,” Natasha says, with a smile that could make the entire football team instinctively cover their weak points, “we’re gonna find out who put you down there.”
“Thanks,” he says. He squints, looks at the nametag on her shirt. “Jolene?”
“Oh,” she says. “It’s a costume. Dolly Parton?”
He smiles, a flash of awareness crossing his face. “Dolly Parton,” he says, sounding disproportionately relieved. “Thank God.”
“I’m Robin Hood,” Clint says. Just in case. He’s been called Peter Pan twice already.
The boy’s face falls and then, suddenly, at that moment, it seems like maybe he’s going to cry after all.
“But I’ll be Peter Pan,” Clint says, fervent, desperate. “I’ll be anything you want.”
The boy looks away, locks his jaw. “I’m Jason,” he says.
“Okay, Jason,” Clint says, as they make their way back to the van, back to Bruce, back toward a place where things make sense and boys don’t crawl out of graves. “We’re gonna help you get home, I promise.”