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He knows it’s bad when Natasha shows up at his door unannounced, with a six pack dangling from her fingers and a grim look around her lips.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in Rio?” he asks her, leaning casually in the doorway, one arm up over his head and ankles crossed, his threadbare sweats slipping a little low on one hipbone and his hoodie stretched out, soft and gray from too many washes. He’d spent the day on the couch in his place in Bed-Stuy, catching up on Dog Cops and pretending he’s not just a little relieved to be benched from Avengers duty because of a bruised rib. To be honest, he’d appreciated the break.
But now here’s Nat, looking too serious, back unexpectedly, and carrying enough beer to take the edge off but not seriously incapacitate him.
“Clint,” she says, blunt, and it’s something he’s always appreciated about her. She doesn’t fuck around -- just gets it over with quick and brutal. “It’s Barney.”
“What,” Clint asks, ignoring the way he shifts on his feet, uneasy. “He need bail money or something?”
“He’s dead.”
Quick and brutal. Like a bandaid.
*
The last time Clint saw Barney, he was 24 years old and bleeding out from an arrow to the shoulder in a ditch somewhere in Mississippi. It’s not something Clint likes to think about too much, but he thinks about it now, as he sits next to Natasha in a haze of shock, clutching the beer she pressed into his hand and trying to adjust to a world in which he hasn’t got a piece of shit older brother running around committing petty (and not so petty) crimes.
Barney had always been a piece of work, took after their father in ways Clint hadn’t ever liked to admit, not until Barney’d shot him and left him for dead, “for his own good,” after the circus’s criminal activity had gotten a little less pickpocketing and petty burglary and had moved more into the murder, armed robbery and assault side of things. Clint hadn’t had the stomach for it and Barney had tried to put him down, like a dog that had outlived its usefulness.
It had worked out in the end, Clint thinks now, rolling the cold can against his forehead and breathing. It had led him to his very own criminal career, and then to Coulson, and then to Nat, and then to the Avengers. A better family than the bullshit family he’d left behind in that ditch in Mississippi.
Clint had half thought he’d see Barney again on TV, on trial for his crimes, or hear from him when he needed bail, or maybe run into him in a bar in Iowa one day, one of those bars with the juke boxes and the peanut shells on the floor and the old couples who all somehow know how to fucking two-step.
“Shit,” Clint says, because Barney’s dead and he never realized how much he’d still been tethered to Barney as the only remaining piece of his childhood until Barney was gone. “Shit, Nat, what am I. Who am I -- I’m. What do I do?”
She runs her fingers through his hair, where it’s growing too long in the back, tugging lightly, soothingly. “You drink your beer,” she says. “You cry a little, maybe. You swear a whole bunch. And then you come with me to the Tower, we get on a quinjet, and we go deal with the mess he left behind.”
The mess.
The fucking mess.
Shit.
Clint takes a long swallow of his beer and closes his eyes because Barney hadn’t left him alone -- Clint wasn’t entirely without biological family.
Because Barney had left behind two kids.
“Shit,” Clint says again, faint. He finishes his beer and reaches for another.
*
The Iowa State Social Services office is a shithole, all beige and boring works of art, men and women dressed in similar shades lacking in all personality, and plastic plants. Clint’s concerned about the plastic plants because he’d like to think the people in charge of keeping vulnerable kids alive could also keep a motherfucking spider plant alive, but apparently that’s beyond their skillset.
“They don’t even dust the fucking plants,” he tells Natasha, who tightens her grip on his wrist and looks at him like she’s unimpressed, like she’s not thinking the same thing, like she’s thinking of more important things than the horticultural choices of the Iowa State Social Services.
“Mr. Barton,” a woman in a beige pantsuit says, cool and professional. “This way, please.”
He expects her to take him to wherever the fuck they’ve stashed the children, but instead, she takes him to an office and invites him to sit. Natasha takes up guard by the door and Clint loves her for it.
“Mr. Barton, before I take you to the children, I thought I’d check in with you,” the woman, whose desk plate says is named Nancy, says. “So we can discuss your options.”
“My options?” Clint echoes, because this is the first he’s hearing of options -- at least when it comes to the children. The morning had been filled with options -- closed casket or open. Cremation or burial. Traditional obituary or digital. Public service or private.
“I understand that this situation is incredibly difficult for you,” Nancy says, all professional compassion. “You’ve suffered a shock and, from what we can ascertain, you were not an active part of the children’s life.”
“I didn’t even know --”
“Precisely,” she says, flashing a tight smile and sliding a stack of brochures and documents across her desk towards him. “So we are under no misconceptions when it comes to the future you are envisioning for yourself or the children. Your options are, of course, foster care --”
“What?” Clint blinks at her, holding the documents in numb fingers. His brain has been operating on autopilot for 36 hours, and it seems to have reached its breaking point. Her words aren’t making any sense.
Natasha slides into the chair beside him and takes the papers, looking them over as Nancy keeps talking.
“Iowa state has an extensive network of foster homes, with both short term, emergency care, where they’ve been staying since the, uhm, incident.” She clears her throat. “From there, they’d be moved to something more long term. Now, given their ages -- particularly the older one -- it will be a difficult road to find them adoptive families, but we would, of course, do our best. In the meantime, I’m hoping we may be able to find them long term placements, though it’s looking like there aren’t any suitable homes that would be able to keep them together, which would be the idea situation for sibling groups.”
“You -- you want to split them up?” Clint asks her. Beside him, Natasha keeps skimming the paperwork.
And he can’t breathe. All he can think about -- all he can remember -- is the visceral terror of lying awake in a bed in a home that was not his, staring at the ceiling and trying to breathe and knowing that, in the morning, someone was coming for him, taking him away from Barney, and he might never see his brother again.
Clint knows all about the Iowa State network of foster families.
“There are group homes that would allow them to stay together, of course,” Nancy says, “But Lila isn’t quite in the age bracket that finds success in those sorts of situations, so--”
“What the fuck,” Clint finally bursts, when he’s finally got enough air in his lungs. “What the fuck.”
Nancy folds her hands together on her desk and looks at him, her lips pursed in distaste, and Natasha says quietly, “Avenger Tower isn’t the ideal place for a pair of kids, Clint. Maybe you should consider--”
“No,” he says. “No. I won’t.”
“Mr. Barton,” Nancy says, and her tone makes his skin crawl. “I appreciate the sentimentality you may be feeling, but this is an extremely delicate situation. Those children have experienced an incredibly traumatic event, and haven’t had the most conventional upbringing. They are going to require specialized care and our foster families all have trauma-informed training. These children...They’ve never been to school and we haven’t managed to find any evidence of homeschooling. They’ve never had a permanent home.” She wrinkles her nose. “They spent their formative years travelling the countryside with a circus.”
Clint laughs -- he can’t help it. It’s shaky and hysterical and not a pleasant sound at all, but he still manages it, and then he says, “I don’t think you’re trauma-informed families are going to know the first fucking thing about that kinda upbringing, but I know I do. They’re staying with me. They’re my family and I -- and they’re mine. I’m theirs. It’s -- that’s it. That’s the only option.”
He knows Natasha well enough to read the uncertainty in the corners of her mouth and the way she holds her shoulders, but she slides the papers back onto Nancy’s desk without hesitation and says, “Alright. We’ll make it work.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” Nancy says.
“They’re mine,” Clint tells her, standing up. “That’s as easy as it needs to be. Where are they?”
“You’d need to be approved as a suitable home and --”
“They’re my brother’s kids, they’re my only family, and they’re coming home with me!” Clint says, and his voice cracks with rage.
He knows it’s not his anger that makes Nancy cave -- it’s Natasha, who can look threatening without even trying. Still, he’ll take it as the win it is.
“I suppose we can work something out,” she says, reluctant. “So long as we ensure proper supports are put in place for their mental health, and to help them catch up with their peers in schooling if at all possible. And a home visit would be necessary to ensure--”
“Where are they?” Natasha asks, quiet.
Nancy’s teeth clack together when she slams her mouth shut to swallow, but then she gets up and says, “This way,” and leads them from the office.
*
There are two children, Natasha had told him on the flight out to Iowa. Kate, who’s 14, and Lila, who’s 9. As far as anyone could tell, they’d been living with Barney at the circus since infancy. Clint knows, in theory, what to expect given their ages, but he’s still startled when he walks into the tiny lounge and sees the two kids sitting there, because neither one looks anything at all like Barney.
He tells himself that it’s a relief.
There’s an officer sitting at the table, trying to coax Lila into colouring in a Disney Princess colouring book, but Lila’s just staring down at her clasped hands blankly, completely disassociated.
And Kate seems to be trying to figure out the complicated lock on the window like she intends to escape out of it, despite the fact that they’re on the third storey.
“Kate, Lila,” Nancy says, stopping smartly in the doorway. “This is your uncle, Clint.”
Lila doesn’t move. Kate turns and leans against the window, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring through a curtain of dark hair, her mouth twisted up with fury.
“Didn’t think you’d show,” she spits. “Never have before.”
Clint shoots Natasha a quick, panicked look and has no idea what to say to that.
Nancy continues like Kate hadn’t spoken at all. “He’s come to take you home.”
Kate snorts. “And why the fuck should we go anywhere with him?”
Clint flounders. He wants to tell her that it’s better than here. He wants to tell her that if they don’t come with him, Social Services will split them up. He wants to tell her he’s sorry and he would have come sooner if he’d known.
Instead, he says, after an awkward pause, “I’ve got a dog?”
Lila finally lifts her head, a quick peek through her ratty hair, and Kate hesitates. Finally, with clear reluctance, she straightens up and scowls at her feet and says, “Whatever. Fine.”
It’s as close to an agreement as he’s likely to get and Clint feels absurdly grateful for it.
*
The farm is only an hour away from the social services office and it kinda makes sense to take Kate and Lila there, because they seem skittish and half wild and he doesn’t think any borough in New York is the place for kids who are as fucked up as these two probably are.
Clint’s not naive — he was once a recently liberated circus brat on the streets of New York. He knows exactly the sort of trouble waiting there.
Natasha, of course, doesn’t come with them. She’s got the jet to get back to Tony and whatever the fuck’s happening in Rio to get back to and Clint never expected her to sit around and help him untangle this latest Barton fuck up.
It still sucks, though.
She leaves Lucky, though, and when the dog comes bounding out of the jet, wagging his tail, Lila makes a soft, wordless and greedy sound and falls to her knees, gathering the dog close. Lucky goes still and gentle, the way he never bothers to go with Clint, and licks her ear while she hides her face against his neck and Clint breathes carefully through his nose and wishes Barney were alive so he could kill him again.
He is in so far over his goddamn head here.
Clint pulls himself together and rents a truck and hits the road and no one says a goddamned word all the way to the farm.
And then, when they stop in front of the farmhouse he loves with almost his whole fucking heart, Kate shorts and says, “Seriously? It’s a shack.”
And it’s not. Sure, it needs a new roof and it’s a bit crooked around the gables. The porch is rickety and rotten in places. But the foundation is strong and he just replaced a few of the windows last year and these kids spent their formative years in a motherfucking circus convoy so they should have a little respect.
“Natasha’s having someone order you a bunch of clothes and shit,” Clint says, leading the way to the door and ignoring the way Kate’s kicking at the most rotten boards. “If there’s anything you need, just let me know.”
He looks at Lila as he unlocks the door, hopeful, but she doesn’t seem to hear him, just ducks her head and hides beneath a curtain of ratty hair, twisting one hand in Lucky’s fur and — is she sucking her thumb? Clint’s not an expert but he’s pretty that nine is probably too old for that. Isn’t it?
He makes a tired mental note to bring it up to the mandated therapist social services insists he hire and pushes the door open. Kate just stares at it suspiciously for a long moment before storming inside with a scowl, and Lila wanders after her, still without a word.
“I need a car,” Kate tells him, arms crossed over her chest, surveying the inside of the farm house. “Or a bus ticket to San Francisco.”
“Oh, yeah?” Clint asked closing the door and securing the three deadbolts before palming the security system on. “What’s going on in San Francisco?”
“Got a job lined up,” she lies, and something painful tightens low in his gut and for a moment
“That’s -- I’m pretty sure social services would frown on whatever sort of job you could get at your age, in a city like that, without a legal guardian. So why don’t we give this a try first.”
She scowls at him and Lila wanders away and Clint just… needs a minute.
He shows them the kitchen and the snacks that Natasha had delivered at some point and then he ducks out to the crumbling barn and swears a whole lot while kicking old tractor tires until his feet are throbbing but his chest feels less tight.
The cupboards are pretty much bare when he comes back inside but he can hear people moving around in the living room so at least they didn’t take off.
He finds them building a complicated sort of nest out of couch cushions and what seems to be every spare sheet and towel from his linen closet in the corner of the room, under a window. Lila’s arranging a careful layer of cushions on the floor while Kate tucks the edge of a sheet in the window and drapes it down over Lila’s pillows. There are granola bars and fruit snacks of cartons of apple juice stashed in the farthest corner.
“What are you doing?” Clint asks, because it seems too grim to be some sort of childish game. They’re both quiet and focused and jump when he speaks. Lila looks frightened and Kate looks ready to attack.
“This is our spot,” Kate snaps at him. “You can’t come in here.”
“I’m not going to come in there,” Clint tells her. Lucky, he notices, is already stretched out on Lila’s pillows. “I’m just wondering what you’re doing. It’s cool if you want a blanket fort but I shoulda probably mentioned before that there’s a few rooms upstairs that are empty, you can pick whichever ones you want. They’ve all got beds and shit in them, for when Nat or the others come to stay, and you --”
“Rooms?” Kate echoes, suspicious. “Our own rooms?”
“Well. Yeah. We can even order in some blankets or whatever, paint the walls, get some toys or -- or whatever you. Sorry.” He grimaces. “Whatever sort of things you like. I don’t know--”
Kate scoops up an armful of pillows and sheets and says to Lila, “Bring the food.” She leads the way up the stairs, saying sharply over her shoulder, “You stay here. We don’t fucking need your help or your fucking toys.”
A few moments later, a door slams upstairs, and he can only hope it’s not his bedroom they’ve decided to claim.
“Right,” Clint says quietly to himself.
Fuck Barney.
He grabs his laptop, exhausted and craving a beer but with a To Do list a mile long. There are tutors to arrange and psychologists to hire and home visits to arrange and he can’t help but feel like it would be a little easier if the kids he was trying to keep weren’t such assholes.
*
Clint never minded having a bruised rib before. It’s irritating but not anywhere in league with some of the more painful shit he’s put his body through. But a pained rib, he’s learning, can be a bit of a bitch when he spends the night pacing and tossing and turning and panicking about the strange circumstances he finds himself in and not self-medicating with beer and Netflix.
He’s also sharply aware of the fact that he’s getting older the next morning, as he struggles at an ungodly early hour to remember how to work the motherfucking coffee maker while Kate glares at him from the table and Lila hides underneath it with Lucky.
“There’s a big red button,” Kate finally says, distain dripping from every syllable. “It’s not that hard.”
He mashes the red button with one hand while reaching for the mugs he keeps in the cupboard and it causes him to twist in just the wrong way for his injured rib and he winces.
It wouldn’t be such a big deal if Kate wasn’t watching him with eagle eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” she snaps. “I thought you were some sort of superhero.”
“Superheros get kicked in the ribs sometimes,” he tells her, grabbing two mugs.
“Sure you’re not just super old?”
“That too.”
He leans a hip against the counter and breathes and then says, “So I’m gonna be straight with you guys because I don’t think anything ever gets accomplished by fucking around. The social worker woman says you only get to stay here if I get you therapists and tutors and make this place less of a shithole in time for the home visit that I managed to put off for a week or so. That means we have a week to fill this place up with toys and shit and to make you guys at least pull off pretending to be well-adjusted and happy.” Kate sneers but before she can say anything, Clint rolls his eyes. “I don’t like it any better than you do, trust me. But here’s gotta be better than the streets of San Francisco or even the fucking circus. So maybe we can work together.”
Kate’s looking wary now, which is an improvement, and Clint fixes two mugs of coffee, sliding one in front of her before sitting across from her and carefully dropping a juice box under the table where Lila is curled up with Lucky.
Kate looks skeptically at the mug and says, “I’m only 14. Don’t you know coffee stunts your growth?”
Clint blinks. He’d never thought about it, honestly, but maybe coffee isn’t something kids are supposed to drink. Maybe someone should write a manual on this sort of shit, how is he supposed to know? Suddenly the huge magnitude of what he doesn’t know looms up in front of him and he feels disastrously out of his depth.
But Bartons have been faking it since the beginning of time, so he does his best to muster up a smirk and says, “I’ve been drinking it since I was 11 and I’m 6’2. So.”
She rolls her eyes but cradles the mug between her hands, inhaling the steam, and even takes a cautious sip. Then she says, “We don’t need tutors.”
“Nancy at social services says you’ve gotta go to school,” he tells her, trying to be apologetic. It’s so fucking early. “So.”
“Never needed school before,” she grumbles. “And Dad never needed it either.”
“Dad was a two-bit con artist running with a petty crime circus, so. Maybe a bit of schooling woulda done some good.”
She arches her eyebrow in a move that’s so reminescent of Barney that Clint feels it like a blow to the chest, and then she says coldly, “As opposed to, what, the bullshit Avenger without super powers that fucked up and killed a bunch of SHIELD agents and almost helped end the world? How’d school help you, Hawkeye?”
It’s another blow to the chest and his chest is already sore. “Funny enough,” he manages to say, his voice a bit rougher than he’d like. “School didn’t help at all with that. Therapy did, though.”
He gets up and walks away before she can respond.
*
Barney Barton is cremated on a drizzly Wednesday while Kate and Lila are meeting with a series of therapists and psychologists for whatever assessments social services had decided were necessary.
It had been a long four days since Kate and Lila had come to stay at the farm, and Clint was running on coffee and adrenaline, a suffocating feeling of impending failure, and a certainty that he was fucking up with every passing day.
They pack what’s left of Barney up into a box and Clint hasn’t thought this through at all. He doesn’t know what the hell to do with it.
So he tucks it in the bed of his truck and goes to pick up Kate and Lila and ignores the trembling that doesn’t seem to have left his hands. Good thing he probably won’t have to shoot a bow any time soon, because he doubts he could hit a target.
The children are reticent and angry when he gets back to the clinic, and the lead psychologist in charge of their case takes him aside to tell him that Kate’s got anger issues and Lila seems to be suffering from a complicated case of PTSD and he already fucking knew about that.
There’s a treatment plan put in place and they talk about medication options and Clint’s not opposed to psychiatric medications because fuck knows, he wouldn’t have made it this far without them, but he kinda thinks maybe Kate and Lila need a little time for things to even out, for them to get their footing and adjust, before doctors start talking about medicating them to help.
But then again, who the fuck decided he was in any position to be making these decisions?
He’s got his dead brother in the bed of his truck, for fuck’s sake.
He is radically, desperately unprepared for this.
They get halfway back to the farm when the sullen silence gets too much for him, and Clint says, “Should we have a funeral?”
Kate shoots him a look. “For who?”
He swallows hard. “For Barney. For your dad.”
Lila doesn’t make a sound. She’s sitting in the backseat with Kate, staring vacantly out the window. She’s got it open all the way, her little hand sticking out, wind and rain running through her fingers. And Kate just stares at him like he’s fucking everything up.
“No one would go,” she says finally, harshly. “So what’s the point.”
“Well,” he says. “There’s me. And there’s you. And Lila. And no one else really matters.”
“I don’t miss him,” she snaps. “No one misses him. No one liked him.”
Clint looks away from her, focuses on the road ahead, and says, “I do. I will. Miss him, I mean.”
“You didn’t even come see him,” she reminds him. “Not for my whole life.”
“It was —- Barney was complicated. Barney was —- he —- he was still my brother, though. We learned to shoot together. And pick pockets. And he used to steal me the old popcorn that was being thrown out at the end of the night, after the show, when I was hungry. One year, for my birthday, he stole a cake from a bakery for me.” Clint’s tapping his thumbs anxiously on the steering wheel. “Never had a cake for my birthday before.”
There’s silence again, broken only by the windshield wipers squeaking over the windshield, the rain on the roof.
Finally, Kate says, “I don’t think he’d wanna be buried. Too — too dark. And still.”
Barney never did well with stillness, but it was always Clint who had a problem with the dark.
“We don’t have to do that.” Clint glances back at her in the rearview mirror. He sees Lila again, still staring out at the rain, wind running between her fingers, and says, “Maybe we could spread his ashes somewhere. If you think he’d like that.”
Kate kicks the back of Clint’s seat, but it’s not violent. Feels almost companionable. “He’d like it,” she says finally, quietly. “I’d like it. And Lila too.”
They spread Barney’s ashes on the bank of the slow-moving, wandering creek that runs through Clint’s property. It’s a nice spot, lots of birch trees and a soft embankment, water still lazy and slow despite a few days’ rain. Lila and Kate are wearing the new pajamas Nat had sent for them and Clint’s wearing a black hoodie and sweats and no one says anything at all as the ashes run into the river and disappear.
*
Clint’s not sure what’s going on in the weekly therapy sessions in town but whatever it is, it’s not helping, from what he can see. A few weeks slip by and Kate’s still filled with rage and Lila is still skittish and silent and Clint’s life as an Avenger seems further and further away by the day.
He spends his time fixing up the farm, equipped with a list provided by social services, and doing his best to guess what might make Kate and Lila more comfortable and happy in his care.
They still remind him of the feral cats that seek shelter in the rundown barn out back — wide-eyed and waiting for him to lash out, and warily accepting the food he offers, but only long after he’s left it and backed away.
He’s pretty sure he’s not cut out to be a parent, but he’s trying his best. He’s got Tony flying Peter Parker out once a week or so to tutor them both on whatever the fuck 14 and 9 year olds are supposed to know, with hazy plans to get them into the neighbourhood school system in the fall. He’s bought more clothes than any two girls could ever wear before they outgrow them. He’s bought blankets and pillows in every colour, and every toy that Google suggested for a 9 year old. He’s bought Kate make-up and bras in every size and hair accessories and everything he could think a 14 year old might like.
She tossed it all into the basement without looking at it but one day she might go back for it.
The point is, he’s trying. He’s giving it everything he’s got.
He’s still disastrously out of his depth here. But he’s trying.
And then one day, when he’s curled up around his coffee mug and inhaling the steam and trying to muster up the energy to replace the rotting boards in the porch, Kate appears in the kitchen.
She’s never actually sought Clint out before, so it takes him an embarrassingly long moment to react.
“Did you need something?”
She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him. “A ladder,” she says, clearly reluctant.
“A ladder.” Clint scrubs a hand through his hair and barely resists the urge to start listing off every place she might find a ladder in a desperate attempt to make her like him. Instead, he says, “What do you need a ladder for?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says.
“I’m not gonna tell you where to find one if you don’t tell me why—”
“Fine, whatever, Lila’s on the roof and she can’t get down.”
Clint stands up so quickly, his chair falls over with a sharp clatter and he doesn’t miss the way the sound and his sudden movement makes Kate flinch, like she thought he was lashing out at her. But that’s a problem for another time because Lila is apparently on the fucking roof.
“Why is she on the roof?” he asks, shoving his feet into his shoes. “How did she get on the fucking roof? How long has she —-”
“If you’re just gonna freak out, tell me where the ladder is and I’ll get her myself,” Kate says dryly, and Clint storms out of the house with a wordless sound of frustration.
He finds the ladder in the barn, sending feral kittens scattering out of his path as he drags it over the yard, propping it up against the side of the house.
“Lila!” he calls, and he hears a soft scuffing noise before she pops her head over the edge of the roof. She’s dirty, smudged and all wide eyes and wild hair and Clint needs to try harder to get her into the bath, but she’s so clearly afraid of anyone who isn’t Kate that he hasn’t found the courage to force the issue.
“Fuck,” he says, and her eyes get wider. He consciously tries gentling his voice, even though he’s panicking. Of the two kids, Lila’s the one who doesn’t go out of her way to get under her skin —- not that he wants Kate to fall off the damned roof, but if he had to pick one —-
These are the kinds of thoughts that have social services suggesting he find a therapist of his own.
“Don’t — just don’t move, I’ll get you down,” he says. “Okay? Don’t panic.”
“You’re the one panicking,” Kate points out, ever helpful. “And don’t forget to get Raincloud down too, otherwise Lila’ll just crawl back up there again.”
“Raincloud? Who the fuck—”
“Feral barn cat Lila adopted and sneaked into her room a week ago,” Kate says. “She named it. While we’re talking, maybe you wanna get a litter box. It fucking stinks in there. And you’re nearly out of that cat food you hide in the pantry for the cats in the barn, because Lila’s been stealing it to feed Raincloud. She needs a lot of food, because she’s got seven kittens, and they’re all living under Lila’s bed now, so.”
Clint stares at her for a long moment before cursing quietly. “That’s something you coulda told me a week ago. Just for the record. When I ask you everyday if you need anything, that’s when you bring this shit up.”
She shrugs. “Lila was worried if you knew, you’d put them back outside and they’d die. She’s planning to move the rest of them in too.”
“They’re — they’re barn cats! They live in the barn! They keep the mice population down! They like it that way!”
“Raincloud seems to like sleeping on all those fancy pillows you keep sneaking in Lila’s room when you think she’s not around.”
Lila has disappeared, crawling farther onto the roof, and Clint climbs the first three rungs of the ladder before looking at Kate again.
“Lila named her?”
Kate’s leaning against the porch, arms crossed, trying her best to look nonchalant when she shrugs. “Yeah. So?”
“So she talks to you?”
“Of course she does.”
Clint closes his eyes. Tries to count to ten but only makes it to three before saying, “Your therapists don’t think she talks. To anyone.”
“She talks when she’s got something to say.”
“Okay.” Clint takes a deep breath. “Okay. Then you’ve gotta talk for her. I don’t give a shit what you tell your shrinks, but here, with me, if she needs something — if she’s smuggling disease-ridden feral cats into her bedroom and they need something — if she’s cold or she’s hungry or she’s scared or she developed a sudden need to have dolls or ponies or mac and cheese for dinner, or whatever the fuck else — you’ve gotta tell me. Okay? I’m not — I know I’m shit at this, but I’m trying, and I’m not going to hurt you and I’m not going to hurt her. I promise.”
Kate looks wary now, gnawing on her bottom lip and glaring at him like she still doesn’t trust him, and Clint might not know a thing about raising kids, but he does know a thing or two about being one, and Kate might not be willing to ask for anything for herself. But she’s probably willing to do whatever she can to ensure Lila’s health and happiness.
“Okay,” she says. “If she tells me something and I think you can help, I’ll tell you.”
“Great,” he says, tired. “Thanks.”
He climbs up onto the roof and only then starts to worry about how, exactly, he’s going to get Lila down when she won’t let him near her.
She’s clutching a rough looking orange tabby cat to her chest and Clint doesn’t know why the feral monster isn’t trying to get away or lashing out, and can only assume that Lila has bribed her into complacency with oodles of cat food that Clint keeps stashed in the pantry.
“Let me help you down,” Clint says, and Lila ducks her head and clutches her cat and shies away.
Clint thinks it’s gonna get messy and traumatizing and then Kate appears at the edge of the roof, standing on the ladder, and says gently, “It’s okay, he won’t hurt you. He promised me he wouldn’t.”
Lila looks at him and for a moment, Clint thinks he’s going to somehow have to get Kate up here to get Lila and then somehow get them both down. He’s gonna have to call Iron Man. Or Thor. Why the fuck doesn’t he have flying super powers? Both of these children are going to fall off the roof and die and social services will blame him and it’s all because he doesn’t have any motherfucking super powers.
And then Lila slides across the shingles and wraps one skinny arm around his neck and clings to him like a monkey, cat crushed between them and somehow not tearing Clint’s chest to shreds.
And she says, voice small and soft, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Clint echoes, carefully holding her and worried he’s gonna do something to send her running. “Okay.”
Climbing down from the roof is slow and precarious but Kate’s already scrambled to the ground and holds the ladder steady as Clint makes his way, holding Lila and a squirming barn cat and wondering how his life brought him to this ridiculous point.
And as soon as his feet hit the ground, Lila drops away from him and disappears into the house, still holding that goddamn cat, and Kate hesitates only a moment before she follows.
And Clint swears a whole lot and then goes inside to order a litter box and a cat food and water dish and a dozen toys and a cat bed shaped like an avocado.
He’s an idiot. No one ever said he wasn’t an idiot.
*
Clint loses track of the days. There’s too much paperwork and too many reports that he’s got to fill out to keep these children from going into the system. There’s a tiny part of him, small and bruised, that wonders why he’s gotta work so hard to prove he can take care of them when the same system left him and Barney in a group home where they got beaten and bullied so badly, the circus was their best alternative.
He’s got to be a better option than a group home. He’s trying his best. He’s making all the top foods Google says kids love. He’s ordering all the top toys for their age groups. He’s trying to figure out their favourite colours even though they won’t tell him. He’s even looked up ponies for sale in a sleep-deprived panic because he’s pretty sure all little girls want ponies and maybe that’ll make them like him.
He doesn’t do it. But he considers goats for a few days. He won’t have to mow the lawn if he gets a nice herd of goats.
Social services are worried about their sleep schedule but Clint’s mostly worried at their tendency to steal from his wallet when they think he’s not looking. He doesn’t know how to say, “hey if you need something, I’ll get it for you, just fucking tell me what it is,” in a way he hasn’t said yet.
So instead, he keeps his wallet stocked up with $20s and $5s and leaves handfuls of change lying around and hopes they’re getting what they need somehow and not saving for bus tickets to San Francisco.
And then they steal his truck.
It’s the middle of the night and he’s lying on his back in his bedroom, staring up at the ceiling and praying for death or for sleep, when Lucky starts to bark and headlights bathe the far wall.
Clint’s farm is in the middle of nowhere. There is no traffic to light up the room, there are no visitors, especially at this time of night.
But it’s late and he stares at the pattern of light blankly before realizing that it must be from his own fucking truck. And someone, apparently, is stealing it.
He’s up and cursing a moment later, tripping over the jeans he’s kicked off a few hours before. He makes it to the window just as the truck slams into a tree with a thump and a rush of breaking glass and the moon is just bright enough that he can see Kate at the wheel and Clint doesn’t bother with pants or shoes.
He runs out of the house in his boxers and a ratty t-shirt, and he means to shout their names but instead, all he shouts are a string of vicious curse words.
Lucky is leaping around the truck, barking, and Clint can’t see the damage but the engine is still running, despite a headlight dangling drunkenly. Kate manages to shove the driver’s side door open before he gets there. There’s blood running down her face from a shallow cut in her forehead but she seems fine otherwise.
“What are you doing?” Clint shouts, clutching at his hair and trying to make his way over the broken headlight to get to her, to shake her or check her for damage or hug her until his body stops shaking. “What the fuck are you doing?”
She ignores him, tugging at the back door, unable to open it. The frame is twisted.
“Kate,” Clint says, and he’s so fucking furious and can’t figure out how to hide it the way social services always tells him to, the way her therapists always suggest. “Where the fuck were you going!”
She finally gives up on the door and jumps off the running board and says, “We were going to come back!” She sounds more shaken than he’s ever heard her.
“You were —”
Clint’s always feeling two steps behind these days, so it takes a moment for him to realize two key things — Kate wouldn’t leave without Lila and Lila hasn’t gotten out of the truck.
He’s suddenly so fucking scared. He faced down Loki after all that bullshit without fear like this. He can’t breathe — if something happened to that kid—
He’s not even sure what he’s gonna do. “Lila,” he manages to say, and Kate’s bottom lip trembles before she bites it viciously.
“She’s sick,” Kate days finally, hugging herself tightly. “It isn’t — it’s not a big deal. We’d have been back by morning.”
Clint wrenches the door open and Lila’s wrapped up in a blanket, struggling to get free, movements sluggish and slow. Her face is flushed and her eyes are glassy and they go wide when she sees him.
“Kate,” Clint says, at a loss. His fury has faded away, lost beneath the terror he’d felt worrying that Lila had been hurt in the crash and helplessness now.
“I found a thermometer and she has a fever and the internet said she needed a doctor,” Kate says, sullen and shaky.
“We talked about this,” Clint says. “You said if she needed something, you’d tell me.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment and when she finally speaks, she’s clearly reluctant and fighting tears. “But doctors cost a lot,” she says. “And you probably don’t even make that much as a superhero. And— and what if you didn’t want us to come back if you had to pay? Where would we go? Where—”
Clint needs a minute. Fuck, he needs more than a minute. He’s shaken and he’s cold and he doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong but it clearly gotta be something.
He closes his eyes and reaches out blindly for Kate’s shoulder, his touch cutting off her angry, teary words. “Kate,” he says, voice rougher than he’d like. “Go get my shoes. And my phone. And some fucking pants. And a bandaid. And then, if my truck still works, we’ll go to the hospital. And if it doesn’t, I’ll call an Uber.”
She swallows and rubs her nose with the back of her wrist before running for the house and Clint climbs into the back seat, carefully touching Lila’s forehead. She’s burning hot and clammy, has sunk back into her blankets listlessly, her breath rasping in her chest.
“Okay,” he says to her, but she barely reacts to his words. “You’re okay.”
Is she? How the fuck should he know?
*
The truck works, though it’s only got one headlight and it takes some work to get the door shut. They drive to town in silence, broken only by Kate’s angry sniffles from the back seat where she’s got Lila curled up on her lap.
*
“I can’t do this,” Clint says, doing his best to keep his voice low. The ER is filled with other families, all in various stages of illness and distress and it took three hours of pacing the floor until Lila made it past triage.
Clint had gone in with Lila, sat at her bedside with Kate while the doctor took her vitals and listened to her heart and frowned and asked a whole bunch of questions Clint didn’t have the answer to.
How long had she been sick? When did her fever spike? Does she have any congestion, trouble breathing, nausea, dizziness? Had she gotten hurt? Cut herself? Did she have any allergies? Medical conditions?
The doctor had left to run some tests and probably judge Clint in private and he’d slipped away, leaving Kate at Lila’s beside.
Nat hums on the other end of the line. “You told me you were doing just fine three days ago,” she says.
“I was lying.”
“I know. Where are you? What happened?”
“Hospital,” he says, exhausted, leaning against the wall, closing his eyes.
“Clint,” Natasha says, suddenly a lot more attentive. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
“Fine,” he says. “Tired. Kate stole my truck because Lila’s sick -- has been sick for three fucking days -- and they were worried if I had to pay for a doctor, I wouldn’t want to keep them.”
“Well,” Natasha says, careful. “That’s progress. They actually want to stay.”
“Kate crashed my truck into a fucking tree.”
She sighs. “They are Bartons, aren’t they?” she says.
“I can’t do this. I thought I could do it -- that if I tried hard enough and loved them hard enough and got them everything they needed, they’d start to trust me and be happy here and I could make up for all the shit that happened before. But I can’t. It’s not enough.”
“They’re not farm cats, Clint,” she says, as gentle as she ever gets. “You can’t just feed them and offer them a warm place to live and hope that overcomes all the trauma from before.”
“Yeah,” Clint mumbles. “I’m getting that.” He hesitates. “Maybe I’m not the best option --”
“If you start having second thoughts now, you’ll be proving them right -- that one trip to the hospital’s enough to make you a liar. That they never should have trusted you.”
He winces. “Yeah,” he says. “I know. I won’t -- I just don’t know what to do.”
“Stick it out for one more night,” she says. “I’ll be there tomorrow with back up.”
He’s so tired, his knees go weak with relief. “You don’t have to --”
“See you tomorrow.”
She hangs up and Clint gives himself thirty seconds before forcing himself away from the wall, dragging his feet back to Lila’s room.
*
Lila is released from the hospital sometime in the mid morning, after a few hours of antibiotics and a whole lot of judgement.
Clint takes them through the McDonalds drive-thru because there’s no wound that mcnuggets can’t soothe, and they’re both quiet and sleepy on the way home. Lucky is ecstatic to see them and Kate doesn’t even bitch when Clint scoops a sleeping Lila up and carries her to her room.
Kate climbs in beside her and they’ve both got their own rooms but rarely use them and Clint hasn’t bothered trying to insist on it, no matter how much their therapists think a bit of separation might help Lila get over her reliance on Kate.
Clint and Barney were the same when they were small, and they eventually separated easy peasy, so.
He leaves them sleeping, clutching greasy happy meal toys, and goes downstairs to stare at the pages of information the doctors had given him.
He can’t remember the last time he slept and Clint longingly thinks about resting his head on the table and napping there, but Nat had texted that she was on her way and he’s determined to still be conscious when she gets there.
It takes a few hours. Even the quinjet takes a while to get to the middle of nowhere, Iowa. But soon enough, he hears the landing gear engaging and is up and out of the house, Lucky following along happily.
The hatch slides open and Clint’s scrubbing at his mess of a hair, at the scruff on his face, as he says, “D’you know what they call cat scratch fever, Nat? Do you? It’s Bartonella henselae. Or at least, that’s the bacteria that causes it. Bartonella. Isn’t that fucking ridiculous, do you want to know why, because that’s what Lila has -- a literal Barton disease, and I --”
It’s not Nat who comes wandering down the gangplank and Clint trips over his own feet as he stumbles to a halt, staring. His mouth is hanging open, he’s sure, but the moment of cognitive dissonance is so sharp, he can’t find it in himself to care. He hasn’t slept in days and Bucky Barnes is stepping out of the jet and into his barnyard and Clint doesn’t know what fucked up reality he slipped into.
Bucky’s wearing a washer-soft hoody, gray, hood pulled up over his hair and hands shoved deeply into the pocket. He’s hunched, his jeans are pulling apart at the seam along the thigh, his running shoes are beaten up and probably Steve’s.
And he looks so terribly out of place.
It’s not that Clint doesn’t like Bucky. He doesn’t really know him. It’s been nearly a year since Steve and Sam went on a rogue rescue mission and came back with a newly de-brainwashed Bucky Barnes when everyone else was ready to kill the Winter Soldier on sight. Since then, Bucky had been a quiet, uncertain presence in the tower, keeping to himself or to Steve, and other than finding him curled up like a cat in various sunspots, cradling a book or staring out at the sky, Clint hadn’t had much contact with him. He seemed content to keep to himself and his routines and -- sure, okay, Clint’s got a healthy appreciation for aesthetic appeal and there is something incredibly appealing about the aesthetics of watching Bucky in the gym or in the range and Clint had taken the time to appreciate it. But he’d never actually talked to the guy beyond that healthy and super secret aesthetic appreciation.
Clint’s still staring, though he’s managed to snap his mouth shut, when Lucky bounds over, tail wagging, and Bucky cracks a small, reluctant smile and crouches down to talk softly to him, stroking his head. He’s incredibly gentle with his metal hand.
Natasha follows him off the jet, looking just a little bit too smug. “I said I’d bring backup,,” she says, and Clint’s eyes go wide. He grabs Natasha’s wrist, pulling her back inside the jet and closing the hatch, leaving Bucky with the dog.
“What do you mean?” he asks, still terribly off balance. “You said you’d come help me.”
“I said I’d come with backup,” she says with an easy shrug. “And Barnes didn’t have anything else going on.”
“What good is he going to be?” Clint asks, dropping into the pilot’s seat.
“More than me,” she tells him, sitting beside him. “The last time I was around teenage girls, I was fighting them to the death.” She says it lightly, like it doesn’t bother her.
“Yeah, and from what you said, he was the one training you to do it!”
She shrugs again. “Steve would say that wasn’t him. And he had younger sisters before. He’s got relevant life experience.”
“Listen. Nat. I appreciate you trying to help, but I can’t -- I can’t babysit him and Kate and Lila at the same time.”
“I don’t think you’re giving Barnes enough credit,” she tells him, before pulling a file out of her bag and handing it to him.
“What is this?”
“You had to know I would look into Kate and Lila, make sure this wasn’t just another Barney Barton fuck up. It wasn’t an easy task, either. Neither of them have birth certificates or hospital records, but that’s everything I managed to find. I thought I’d leave it with you to decide what you want to do.”
“I don’t need--”
“Just look through the file,” she says, quiet. “Then make up your mind. No one would judge you for it.”
Clint closes his eyes. “You’re really gonna leave me here with Lila, Kate and Barnes? What do I do if he goes all Winter Soldier? Kate’s already got me afraid for my life most of the time.”
“I wouldn’t leave him here if I didn’t think he could help,” she says, opening the hatch. “And I can stay until lunch and after that, you’re going to have a nap. You look like shit, Barton.”
*
Natasha flies home after she makes Clint throw some sandwiches together and checks in on the sleeping children. After that, Clint does his very best to stay awake and vigilant, determined to ensure that Barnes doesn’t go all Winter Soldier on his farm.
But Bucky just takes a slow, measured look at the rotting floorboards, the window he’d patched up with duct tape, the peeling wallpaper that’s probably been on the walls since before Clint was born and will probably outlast him.
Then he drags his gaze up from the soles of Clint’s ratty shoes to his rattier hair, judgement in every line of his body, like he’s got room to talk here. He looks like a goddamn hobo and there’s no reason for Clint to feel as awkward and underdressed as he does.
He scowls and throws himself onto the couch, and Bucky makes a careful study of the books on Clint’s shelf before selecting one and curling up in the chair by the window, warmed by the sun.
And Clint fully intends to keep watch. But he hasn’t slept in days and he can feel the exhaustion all the way to his bones and it doesn’t take long at all before he slumps sideways and sleeps more deeply than he’s ever slept before.
With the Winter fucking Soldier six feet away. He has no survival instincts anymore.
*
Clint jerks awake, disoriented, and flails so hard, he nearly tumbles off the couch. He catches himself, gasping for breath and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, piecing together the weird places where reality has gotten mixed up with his anxiety-filled dreams, and then he sits up with a vicious curse.
He fell asleep with The Winter Soldier in his home with Kate and Lila and social services would not approve.
Judging by the way the light falls through the window, a few hours have passed at least, and Clint can’t hear any noise at all in the house, which isn’t a good sign --
He realizes a moment later that his hearing aids are sitting carefully on the coffee table, meaning he slept so deeply that someone was able to remove them. Which is a fucking violation, but at least his ears aren’t all sticky and gross from having slept in them, but still.
He shoves them in his ears and turns them on, disgruntled and still off-balance, but now he can hear voices from upstairs, which means at least someone’s still alive.
He follows the sounds and finds Bucky in Lila’s room, looking faintly perplexed as he reads one of the dozens of books Clint had ordered for her, which, as far as he knew, she’d never so much as glanced at.
Fuck, he still isn’t sure if she can read.
But now she’s looking sleepy and feverish and curled up under a blanket with Raincloud and a few kittens. The bravest of the kittens has scaled Bucky’s legs and back and is perched on his shoulder, supervising story time, and the entire image was so incongruent that Clint just hovers in the doorway and stares.
It's a book about unicorns and even as Clint watches, the kitten digs its claws into Bucky’s shoulder and he barely even winces, just reads through the pain.
Hydra torture has got nothing on kitten claws.
Lila falls asleep before the end of the book and Bucky looks relieved as he tosses it aside, peels the kitten from his shoulder and tosses it onto the bed. He does lean close to Lila and for a moment, Clint tenses up, sure the Winter Soldier’s murderous instincts are about to take over -- but Bucky just touches her forehead gently, frowning a little.
“Still feverish,” Bucky reports, voice soft so as not to wake her, and it takes Clint a stupidly long moment to realize Bucky must be talking to him.
“Oh,” he says. “Oh, fuck, her medicine, she needs--”
“I found the notes from the doctor,” Bucky says. “She had her last dose an hour ago, and the morning dose as well. Was a bit late on last night’s dose, but --”
“You weren’t even here last night,” Clint says, still wrong-footed and stupid. “She didn’t even have medication last night. She -- we --”
Bucky turns to him, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck as that one ragged white kitten meows angrily at him before sulkily curling up with its littermates. “You slept for 32 hours,” he says.
Clint opens his mouth to argue but honestly, it would explain how badly he’s got to pee.
*
It turns out that Kate’s still sleeping. Apparently she’d been spending her nights sitting up with Lila and now that they’d been assured that Lila’s condition was awkward, relatively rare, but would most likely resolve on its own, she crashed harder than Clint did.
He checks on her, squinting suspiciously because she’s sprawled on her back with her mouth hanging open and her hair a dark mess around her face and somehow she still manages to look a whole lot sweeter than she ever looks while awake.
He leaves her sleeping and wanders downstairs, putting it off as long as he can because he doesn’t know how to react to Bucky being in his space.
When he finally makes it, he finds Bucky making an obnoxiously large sandwich in the kitchen.
“Make yourself at home,” he says sarcastically, and then Bucky slides the plate in front of him at the kitchen table.
“Figured you were hungry,” he says, quiet, before going to the sink.
Where he’s got a sink full of bubbles and all the dirty dishes Clint let pile up recently.
What the fuck.
He wonders whether the sandwich is poisoned for a moment but then decides he’s too fucking hungry to care and eats it in four bites.
Mouth still full, he says, “I’m not sure what sort of help Nat expects you to be.”
It comes out muffled, with a spray of soggy bread, and there’s no way Bucky’s gonna know what he said, but Bucky just shrugs and says, “I reckon she thinks I’ve got a bit of experience with--”
Clint swallows. “Teenage girls, I know. But d’you really think your Red Room experience is gonna be any help here? They’re already fucked up and traumatized, I’m trying to help them become well-adjusted, normal, functioning members of society, not mindless killing machines.”
At some point, Bucky had turned away from the dishes and leaned back against the counter, bracing both hands on either side of his hips, watching Clint with dark eyes. He blinks slowly now, a sweep of thick lashes hiding whatever his reaction might be, and when he speaks, his voice is incredibly mild.
“I was going to say experience with overcoming psychological trauma and dealing with being surrounded by a buncha people trying to force me into becoming a well-adjusted, normal, functioning member of society instead of a mindless killing machine, actually.”
Clint feels it in his chest, a sudden feeling that might be guilt or shame, but he’s an expert on compartmentalizing both, so he ignores it and says, “How’s that, uh, going, anyway? How worried do I gotta be?”
“Haven’t had an episode in nearly two weeks,” Bucky says, sarcastic and drawn out and slow, a Brooklyn lilt in the consonants that might be amusement. Clint doesn’t know him well enough to tell. He turns back to the sink.
He’s still sluggish and slow from too much sleep, Clint tells himself, when he realizes a moment later that he’s lost the thread of their conversation because he’s staring blearily at Bucky’s ass as he leans over the sink. Clint can see his shoulders moving as he scrubs at some dried out food on one of Clint’s dirty dishes, too, and it’s kinda similar to how he reloads a rifle.
Not that Clint’s noticed.
He blinks and looks away, clearing his throat. “Nat says you’ve got sisters,” he says, because he’s a fucking pro at saying the absolute worst thing without thinking it through, particularly after 30 plus hours of sleep and no goddamn coffee. Really, he can’t be held responsible here.
Bucky goes very still, shoulders tense, and then he says lightly, “Used to.”
Right. Right, because Bucky was born in the Great fucking Depression and everyone he knows is dead and gone except for Captain America.
Clint firmly tells himself to get his shit together, rubbing at the back of his neck and trying to think of something to smooth over the awkwardness.
He’s got nothing.
After a moment, Bucky goes back to scrubbing and just as Clint’s about to slink out of the room for a shower, he says, “Thing about the Red Room is, they kinda taught me specifically what teenaged girls don’t need. So I think I’ll do alright.”
Clint flees, because he’s got nothing to say to that.
*
He sends Nat a dozen texts with far too many capitals and exclamation marks and she doesn’t reply. He gets a text from Sam two minutes later that says, “Nat says to tell you she’s under deep cover and unavailable so stop blowing up her phone.”
She’s a traitor. They’re all traitors.
And the thing about 30 plus hours of sleep is that now, Clint’s wide awake and it’s the middle of the night and he can only hide out in his bedroom for so long before he loses his mind.
He leaves his room, pops into the empty room that Lila and Kate had mostly left abandoned, and tosses a probably-clean pillow and quilt onto the bed tucked into the corner. Downstairs, Bucky’s finished up with the dishes and is curled up on the couch with a beat up paperback, looking far too cozy for Clint to really handle.
His feet are bare. The Winter Soldier’s toes are bare and in Clint’s farmhouse.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
“Made up a guest bedroom for you,” Clint says, maybe more abruptly than he really should. Bucky has been nothing but polite and quiet and helpful since he arrived, but Clint hasn’t felt in control of his own life for weeks now. “Third door on the left.”
Bucky looks up at him and blinks, slow, like a startled racoon, like even that basic level of politeness is something he hadn’t expected of Clint. Clint’s made a life for himself based on letting others have low expectations of him. But it feels uncomfortable and restrictive now.
He waves half heartedly and shoves his feet into his boots and slips out the back door before Bucky can say anything.
He goes to the barn. It’s just coming on dawn now, they sky starting to lighten in shades of amber in the east, and Clint busies himself gathering up scrap metal and wood, piling it up, and putting it together again.
The barn cats are a problem. Sure, they keep the mouse population down, and Clint appreciates that, he does. But they also got his kid sick, so. They’ve gotta be dealt with.
So he builds half a dozen traps, all with slightly different designs, and by the time the sun is high enough to indicate it’s midmorning, he’s got a working prototype that he thinks’ll get the job done.
He’s testing it out one last time when he hears scuffing footsteps behind him and turns around. It’s Kate, looking sullen and sleepy and carrying a plate of pancakes.
“Bucky says you’re probably hungry and should eat this,” she says, scowling at the pancakes. “I said if you were hungry, you could eat at the table like everyone else except for Lila, who’s still sick, but whatever.”
She pushes the plate at him and he takes it instinctively. “Uh, thanks,” he says.
“I guess you couldn’t put up with us so you had to get a babysitter,” she says with an eye roll. “That’s kinda pathetic.”
“He’s not a babysitter,” Clint tells her, holding the plate close and feeling oddly protective of it. The pancakes are shaped like lopsided cats, which he knows Bucky probably did to cheer Lila up, but it’s doing weird things to his chest. “He’s… a friend?”
She huffs, hands on her hips, and looks around at the mess of partially constructed traps. “What are you even doing out here, Bucky says you’ve been out here all night, and all you’ve made is a mess.”
“Cat traps,” he says. He should’ve thought it through, but he’s distracted by the pancakes and the secret sense of satisfaction he’s been in denial about since his sixth attempt produced something useable. He’d kinda wanted to call Tony to tell him about it, because he’s pretty sure it’s a feat of engineering genius. He’s not sure Tony would agree, which is why he hadn’t called, but he’s still proud of it.
Kate’s eyes narrow. “Cat traps?” she echoes. There’s a warning note in her voice that Clint should have caught, but he’s still distracted.
“Cats made Lila sick,” he says, absently. “Gotta be dealt with.”
The rage is instant and loud. “Dealt with?” she shouts. “You’re going to kill them? I won’t ever -- Lila won’t ever forgive you if you kill them, you’re such a piece of shit, I can’t believe you’re going to kill the stupid cats, not even my dad -- not even my dad killed Lila’s cat when he decided she couldn’t keep it, he left it on the side of the highway where at least it had a chance and probably found a nice family to live with, you’re worse than he is and I thought he was the worst, no wonder she hates you. No wonder I hate you!”
Her voice is shredded by the end, and Clint just stares at her, his sluggish brain trying to make sense of the words she’s screaming but Clint’s reaction to that sort of sudden rage is to lash out and he can’t do that. He sees Barney in her suddenly, where he hadn’t seen his brother before. The uncontrollable anger, the flush in her cheeks, the way the corners of her mouth tremble the louder she gets, it’s all a visceral and vicious flashback to his brother’s rages when they were growing up, and Clint can’t react the way he learned to as a kid. He can’t push back or rage back.
So he shuts down, just staring at her as the rage twists itself up into something vicious and violent. She shoves at him, knocking his plate of pancakes to the ground. The plate breaks in half, the pancakes fall in a mess in the dirt, and she storms off while Clint is just standing there, frozen and breathing funny.
After she’s gone, slamming the door shut, he sucks in a deep, sharp breath and closes his eyes.
“Shit,” he says, rubbing at his chest, unable to understand his reaction, how shaken he is.
He’s on his knees, carefully picking up broken shards of the plate, when Bucky appears, still swallowed up in his hoodie and looking wary.
“You good?” Bucky asks.
Clint rolls his eyes and says, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“She’s loud,” Bucky says with a shrug. “And mean.”
“Comes by it honestly,” Clint says. He’s still rattled, which is why he says anything at all. “Barney was always like that.” He ducks his head, carefully picking up the smaller shards, and says, “Thanks for the pancakes though.”
“There’s more inside,” Bucky tells him. Clint can’t help but look up at him, opening his mouth to say thank you again, but he can’t find the words. Bucky shoots him a quick look and his lips go tight and he says, “I can take care of the cats for you, if you want.”
Clint fights back the sudden urge to laugh. He’s pretty sure it’ll sound more hysterical than he means it. “I’m not -- I’m not even killing them,” he says. “Catching them, getting them shots, spayed, neutered, whatever. Then finding them better homes. Where people actually live. Barns that actually need mouse control. Families for the ones that are less vicious. I wouldn’t -- who the fuck treats cats like --”
He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut, and Bucky’s quiet for a moment before saying, “Should probably have led with that part.”
He sounds amused, and Clint thinks he should feel the same. He just can’t quite find the energy for it.
*
Kate has locked herself in Lila’s bedroom when Clint finally gets up the courage to go back inside and deal with the shitstorm.
He stands in front of her doorway for a long moment, exhausted despite sleeping for so long just a few hours previously.
Maybe social services was right. Maybe he’s not equipped for this. He doesn’t know how to deal with rage without raging right back at it. He doesn’t know about traumatized children. He doesn’t know about setting boundaries. He’s got an email in his inbox right now with another social worker concerned about Kate and Lila meeting their educational milestones so they can enrol in school in the fall and he doesn’t know what to do about that. He doesn’t know how to give them what they need. He keeps misstepping and next thing he knows, they’re freaking out or stealing his truck or sick from his goddamn cats.
This locked door seems to symbolize every single way he’s failing, and Clint can’t help but feel like he needs to break it down.
He’s pretty sure you can’t let teenaged children get away with whatever they want or they’ll do whatever they want and get into all sorts of trouble.
Clint never had anybody parenting him, and he got up to the worst shit. He’s lucky he survived.
He probably needs to tear down this door and fight it out with Kate until she comes to his way of thinking -- what is his fucking way of thinking? He’s too tired for thinking.
But he’s the adult. The guardian. He’s supposed to know what to do and he doesn’t.
But the door. That’s the first step.
He’s eyeing up the hinges when Bucky appears in the hallway, leaning casually against the wall and watching him.
“That metal arm of yours can break this door down no problem, right?” Clint asks, because Bucky’s been pretty helpful so far. Might as well use the resources at his disposal.
“I suppose,” Bucky says, but he sounds skeptical, so Clint turns to look at him.
“Nancy the Social Worker says she needs boundaries,” Clint tells him, ignoring the note of defensiveness in his voice.
Bucky’s eyebrows go up, just a little. He looks at the door and says, “Does she? Looks to me like that’s a pretty good boundary.”
“Not like -- I’m pretty sure a locked door isn’t what Nancy meant. She meant, like. Rules and shit. How can Kate learn to trust me if I don’t teach her where the lines are?” He hears Nancy’s voice ringing in his head as he parrots the words she’s told him half a dozen times over the phone since the children moved here.
Bucky wanders over, trying the doorknob and then touching the door itself, like he’s feeling just how sturdy it is. It’s silent in the room beyond, and Clint just knows that he can’t begin to deal with this latest catastrophe until he gets this motherfucking door out of the way.
Bucky finally steps back and says, “Can she hurt herself in there?”
“It’s just Lila’s room,” Clint says. “She could if she tried hard enough, I guess.”
“Think she will?”
Clint’s got piles upon piles of therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist reports and self harm isn’t something anyone’s been concerned about.
“Probably not.”
“Then maybe it’s best to leave it,” Bucky says, stepping even further from the door.
“But --” Clint argues, it’s instinct. Every idea of what a responsible adult should do is crowding into his brain, convincing him that a responsible adult would not let a 14 year old girl lose her shit, say a bunch of cruel things, and then lock herself in a bedroom. Privacy isn’t a right, or whatever. He’s pretty sure it’s not.
He never had privacy as a kid so he’s not sure either way. But he doesn’t think Nancy would approve.
“Girls at the Red Room never had a choice,” Bucky says, soft. “I never had a choice either. Woulda been nice to have a chance tohave choices.”
Clint flinches -- he can’t help it. He wonders what he’d have done if he’d had choices -- the group homes, the circus, the petty crime that came later. Barney. Hell, the only choice Clint can remember ever making is when he decided not to shoot Natasha despite Coulson telling him he had to.
“Yeah,” he says, feeling hollow. “Of course.”
Bucky shrugs a shoulder and turns to head back downstairs, saying, “She won’t stay in there too long. Lila needs her medicine in an hour.”
Clint follows, at a loss to do anything else.
*
Kate comes out, flushed and furious and it looks like she’s been crying. She glares at Clint the whole time he gives Lila her medication, checking her fever and making sure she drinks some gatorade
“I’m not sorry,” she tells him, voice rough, when Lila is sleeping again, curled up withRaincloud. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Clint agrees quietly. “But I’m not going to hurt them, I was never going to do that. It’s a live trap, I should have specified. I’m going to trap them and take them to the vet and then find them homes. Actual homes. Not -- not what Barney did.”
She’s wary, glaring at him over Lila’s bed, arms crossed over her chest. “Even Raincloud and the kittens?”
Clint’s instantly horrified. “Of course not,” he says. “I wouldn’t -- I’m pretty sure you’d have dragged Lila off to hitchhike to San Francisco if it wasn’t for the kittens. I’m going to take them to the vet, make sure they’re healthy, get them their shots, but I wouldn’t never give them away. They’re family, like Lucky.”
She carefully uncrosses her arms, still looking suspicious. “You promise?” He nods, unable to think of any words that would help convince her, and after a long, wary pause, she says, begrudgingly, “Okay. Sorry.”
It feels like it’s worth so much more than a grumbled sorry should be, and Clint wants to beam at her, to promise her whatever it’ll take to get her to be happy and healthy and well-adjusted.
He pulls his shit together, though, and just offers her a relieved smile and says, “I know I’m not good at this, but I’m trying.”
She scowls and says, “I know.” And then, clearly reluctant, she says, “Lila likes it here. That’s why we haven’t run.”
Clint glances at Lila, sleepy and ragged and small, and wants to crush her into a massive hug. He compromises by smoothing her sweaty hair off her forehead and says, “I’m real glad you haven’t run. I like having you guys here.”
“Liar,” Kate says, but it’s quiet, lacking the bite it could have had, and she just looks tired now.
Clint is careful with his next words, not wanting to lie to her. He figures she deserves to trust that he won’t lie to her, just like she deserves to make choices. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says. “So it’s hard. And I’m upset about Barney. And that you and Lila have never been to school. And I wish I knew how to help you both. And maybe that makes me irritated and an asshole sometimes.” He grimaces. “I’m an asshole a lot of the time.”
She smiles -- it’s small and she ducks her head to hide it, but he sees it and something in his chest eases, a secret source of anxiety he’s been carrying since Natasha first told him about Barney and the kids he left behind.
“But I promise that I like having you both here.”
Kate keeps her head ducked and mumbles, “Okay.”
When Clint gets up to go before he says anything stupid that ruins the tentative peace they’ve established, Kate says quickly, “I’ll help you catch the cats, if you want. Later.”
“Yeah,” he says, feeling stupid and choked up. “Okay.”
She nods and doesn’t look up at him, and Clint closes the door softly on his way out.
*
Bucky fixes the rotten floor boards.
Clint doesn’t ask him to. Hell, he doesn’t even know where Bucky found the hammer and the carpenter nails. He just comes downstairs late one morning to find Bucky prying up rotten boards and replacing them.
He also, for the record, hasn’t had any coffee yet and he’s just not prepared for the sight of Bucky on his knees, still wearing those worn jeans that are barely holding together at the thigh, in his living room at this hour of the day.
So he stumbles to a stop and nearly trips over his own feet and stares because his brain is incapable of forming coherent syllables.
“Fuck,” he says finally, rubbing at his jaw and regretting so many of his life choices that led to this moment.
Bucky’s lost the hoodie, at least, which had taken a few days. Clint figures it’s a sign that he’s at least a little comfortable in Clint’s house now, the fact that he’s willing to let anybody see his metal arm.
A metal arm seems to be fucking great at tearing up floor boards.
It takes an embarrassingly long moment to realize that Bucky’s looking up at him like he’s waiting for an answer to a question.
“Oh,” Clint says, dragging his eyes away from the way that t-shirt was clinging to Bucky’s shoulders.
Apparently Bucky took his shirt sizing suggestions from Steve when he stole his running shoes.
“Pardon?”
Bucky smiles a little, uncertain, and says again, “You want me to fix breakfast?”
“Oh. No, that’s fine, you’re, uh, busy. And you don’t have to do that, you know, did I mention that before? Just because I was an asshole when you first got here, you don’t have to like, earn your keep or whatever.”
“I don’t mind,” Bucky says, getting to his feet, rubbing his hands on his thighs.
Clint licks his lips and looks away really quickly, wondering if maybe he ought to head into town, find someone willing to help him work out his clearly misplaced feelings of sexual tension. This is getting ridiculous. Thighs aren’t sexy. Metal hands aren’t sexy. This is just cabin fever, that’s all.
“I like to feel useful,” Bucky’s saying, when Clint remembers to pay attention. He can think of half a dozen ways Bucky can be useful on his knees the way he had been, but he clamps his mouth shut to avoid saying any of them. His imagination is a menace before coffee, and so is his impulse control. “Besides.” And now Bucky’s smiling again, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to. Sweet fucking god, Clint needs to get laid. “I’ve seen what you call cooking. Worse than Steve in the 40’s.”
“Hey,” Clint says, but it’s the only defense he can think of.
He stares as Bucky walks away. There’s a lot to stare at.
“Christ,” he mumbles, before following Bucky to the kitchen. Please, god, let coffee sort his head out.
Or at least make him immune.
*
He doesn’t develop any convenient immunity.
He does, however, order half a dozen cheap t-shirts at least two sizes too big for Bucky and slip them into his laundry in hopes of dealing with that issue.
Days pass and social services send more experts into town to try to come up with a plan for the girls’ lack of schooling. Kate goes along with it, reluctant but clearly making an effort, which Clint appreciates. Lila slowly gets better, which he appreciates even more.
They end up driving into town two or three times a week, which is irritating because it’s an hour away, but nice because Bucky stays behind and Clint uses the break to sternly lecture himself about inappropriate staring.
It’s not all that effective, but he gives himself points for trying.
And then comes the day when he takes his morning coffee and goes out onto the back porch intending to throw Lucky’s ball around and let himself slowly wake up with the bracing mid-morning air.
Only to open the door and find that Bucky has apparently decided to spend the morning chopping wood out by the barn, despite the fact that it’s late spring. Despite the fact that Clint’s wood stove is more decorative because it’s frankly too much work to use. Despite the fact that he ought to have some degree of respect for Clint’s delicate sensibilities.
And he’s wearing the goddamn jeans again. The ones that look like butter against his ass and his thighs and everything else.
Sometimes Clint thinks Bucky must be doing it on purpose. Most times, though, he’s entirely aware of the fact that Bucky seems to be entirely unaware of how easily distracted Clint is by Bucky’s ass. Thighs. Shoulders? Arms. Both arms. Possibly more so the metal one, but Clint doesn’t like playing favourites, not even in his sexual fantasies, or when he’s jerking off thinking about licking both arms.
Basically Bucky’s everything. Except maybe his personality. Clint’s been doing such a fan-fucking-tastic job of avoiding Bucky to keep from staring at him creepily, that he actually doesn’t know that much about his personality.
Really, that’s how Clint likes to keep his relationships.
Not that this is a relationship.
It’s just a bunch of misguided sexual attraction that won’t ever, ever be acted on because Clint cannot handle Captain America’s Disappointed Face and he’s already seen it more than he’d care to. Fucking his best friend while said best friend is a recovering POW brainwash victim who seems to delight in making animal shaped pancakes and reading storybooks to a similarly PTSD-driven nine year old girl, that’s just asking for it.
So Clint snaps, “For fuck’s sake, do you not own any other goddamn pants?”
Which is how, in short, Clint ends up trapped in his truck with two bored, restless girls and one supersoldier who takes up far too much room in the passenger seat and seems just as edgy being caged up this way as the girls do. He’s like the tigers from the circus -- surly and jumpy.
Really, Clint brings this shit on himself.
But at least Bucky’s coming along to buy some jeans that don’t look like they’re gonna give way with a good tug.
With his teeth.
Clint turns up the radio and drives faster.
*
They drop the girls off at their specialist appointment and Nancy asks to speak with Clint before he leaves, so he goes into her office, instantly feeling like a trap’s been sprung when the door swings shut behind him.
She sits at her desk and studies him and Clint feels just as restless and twitchy as Bucky had been in the truck the whole way here.
“I wanted to ask you about Mr. Barnes,” she says.
Clint blinks at her and says, “Bucky?”
“There have been some concerns. We know who he is, of course. Everyone knows who he is.” Her cheeks are flushed and she quickly tidies up an already tidy stack of paper.
Clint knows how she feels.
“When Kate first mentioned that Mr. Barnes had moved in with you, we were, of course, understandably concerned. His reputation doesn’t paint him in the most…” she pauses, searching for a word, before saying delicately, “Domestic light. So I wanted to ask you about him, and how he is with the children. We can’t put their recovery at risk, you understand.”
Clint taps his fingers against the arms of the chair, squirms a little, and says, “He makes them animal-shaped pancakes every morning, except when they want french toast, and then he makes them animal-shaped french toast.”
She waits, like that isn’t enough to convince her that he’s by far more equipped for this entire thing than Clint is, so he adds, “And he makes me coffee. And those floorboards you were worried about that I tried to hide under throw rugs during the home visit, and then kept promising to fix but never actually getting around to it, he fixed them all. So. No one’s gonna fall through the floor. And he keeps talking about replacing the glass in that window I boarded up. And he helped me gather up all those barn cats that made Lila sick and take them to the vet. They’re finding new farm homes for them, except for Raincloud and her babies, who probably aren’t babies anymore. And Bucky lets the kittens climb him all the time, and even lets them make nests in his hair. If he doesn’t lose his shit at kittens in his hair, I think he’s good.”
Nancy’s smiling now, a soft smile that makes him instantly suspicious. Her eyes look a little misty. “From what Kate’s said, he’s been a tremendously steadying influence on the home, and I’m glad for you. Usually we frown on moving to the next level of a domestic partnership so soon after such a large upheaval for children in delicate situations like Kate and Lila, but in your case, it seems to be helping. I do want to suggest, again, that perhaps arranging for therapeutic support for you might be beneficial in helping you adjust to this transition, and in your new domestic relationship with Mr. Barnes. He would, of course, be encouraged to attend, but I know he most likely has an abundance of psychological support from the government.”
Clint cocks his head, sorting through her words and still a little lost. “Domestic partnership?” he echoes.
“I believe, as long as we get the proper educational supports in place to help ready them for school and maintain their relationships with their psychological specialists to help, particularly with Lila’s PTSD, Mr. Barnes’ steadying influence in the dynamics of the household might be just what we need to make this situation permanent. So long as things stay relatively calm. He’s so good for the girls,” she says. “And for you too, of course.”
He’s stunned. Horrified. Apparently dating Bucky Barnes. And apparently that’s what he needs to continue doing in order to keep Kate and Lila from foster care.
“Right,” he says faintly. “Of course. So long as things stay the same. With me and Bucky. In a domestic partnership.”
“But consider what I said about therapy,” she says, standing up, clearly dismissing him. “Couples therapy might be just the thing to ensure a happy, healthy home for Kate and Lila.”
“Uh huh,” he says, still numb, as she ushers him out of the room.
Bucky’s waiting in the lobby, looking too big around the shoulders for the dainty chairs and fake potted plants, and he looks incredibly relieved to see Clint.
Clint just wants to get Bucky out of there before Nancy congratulates him on moving their domestic partnership to the next level, so he says loudly, “We’ll be back to pick Kate and Lila up later, got errands to run, bye!”
Nancy waves from the doorway as Clint grabs Bucky by the wrist and drags him out of the building.
Which is the first time Clint’s ever touched him.
Goddamn it. He needs to get laid.
*
He drops Bucky off at a department store and drives around aimlessly before parking on a sidestreet and calling Natasha. She doesn’t pick up so he turns the radio up and rests his forehead against his steering wheel and curses his brother out under his breath.
The drive home is just as silent and awkward and restless as the drive in, only this time, Clint’s the one who can’t stop shifting in his seat and glancing sideways at Bucky every few seconds, opening his mouth to confess that social services thinks they’re fucking. Dating. Domestic partnering.
And that they got the idea from Kate’s therapy chats.
Clint glares at her in the rear view mirror but she doesn’t notice.
Traitor.
*
One of the kittens -- the ragged, angry white one -- has taken to following Bucky around like a little shadow. It perches on Bucky’s shoulder and glares at Clint judgingly every time Clint tries to confess that he may or may not have allowed Kate and Lila’s social worker to think they were dating. Living together. Sexually. Whatever.
So Clint just… doesn’t confess. And hopes that he manages to pull off appearing to be dating his reluctant housemate convincingly enough during the next home visit without actually doing anything to alert said housemate to the fact that the government seems to think they’re dating.
It’s ridiculous.
And in the meantime, he busies himself fixing up the house so that he doesn’t just lurk around staring creepily and making shit even more awkward than it currently is.
*
“You can’t be doing this accidentally,” Clint says, the day he comes outside to find Bucky chasing Lucky around, trying to pry a slobbery tennis ball from his mouth. Lucky is happy, Bucky is actually laughing, the sun is bright and the air is thick with fluffy bits of pollinated cotton, there’s bird song in the air, and everything smells like sunshine and freshly mowed grass.
It’s hell.
Bucky’s face is bright and beaming.
Absolute hell.
“Doing what?” Bucky asks, cocking his head and blinking up at Clint, who just huffs and storms away to take another cold shower.
He passes Kate on his way to the stairs and she hides a smirk and goes back to pretending to care about the math book in front of her.
Even the children are on to him.
Absolute fucking hell.
*
Cold showers don’t help when Bucky decides to see what he can do about fixing up the truck when it breaks down. Clint goes inside to do a few Google searches to see if he can figure out what’s wrong, and comes back to find Bucky striped to his undershirt, hair tied back in a messy bun, falling down around his face, smudge of engine oil along one cheekbone and across his bicep and all over his hands and Jesus Christ, Clint wants Bucky to run his dirty hands all over him and leave marks behind.
He swallows hard and leans against the porch that’s a hell of a lot sturdier since Bucky fixed it the week before.
“Oh, hey,” Bucky says when he notices Clint, who still hasn’t figured out how to be coherent. He wipes the oil from his hands on his shirt and then uses it to wipe his face and now Clint knows he’s got oil on his abs too and, well.
Not enough cold showers in the world.
“Radiator fan’s busted,” Bucky says, casual, wandering over to the porch.
Has he always walked like that?
Clint closes his eyes.
“Should be able to fix it with some spare parts in that old beater behind the barn.”
“Cool,” Clint says. “Cool, cool, okay, thanks, I’m gonna just go grab a shower -- you should too. I mean, not now. But later. When you’re done. Because you’ve got some oil -- nevermind.”
He flees.
“Sure are taking a lot of showers suddenly,” Kate says, as Clint storms by, cursing under his breath. She and Lila are curled up in the living room, watching the Rocky movies.
“You watch yourself,” he tells her, scowling at her smirk. “Or I’ll bring up how pink your face gets whenever Peter Parker comes over to teach you fractions.”
He takes the stairs two at a time, grinning at her outraged squawk and wanting to do a victory dance when he hears Lila’s muffled giggle.
He restrains himself, though, because he’s a goddamn adult.
*
Parenting, such that it is, still has it’s rough patches. Lila won’t speak, Kate has her moods, the specialists are concerned about academic delays, speech delays, PTSD, and a whole host of other mental health issues that are apparently the product of Barney Barton’s special brand of parenting.
Lila still can’t sleep through the night without Kate around. Kate still gets rages that are so strong, Clint’s worried she’ll destroy everything around her before she calms down enough to realize what she’s doing.
And through it all, Bucky is calm. He ignores Kate’s anger, teases Lila until she clings to his shins like a monkey while he walks around the kitchen preparing whatever recipes he found online that he thinks they might like. He’s working on gradually increasing the foods they’re willing to eat beyond fast food and circus trash, and all the doctors are relieved that they’re finally getting a more balanced and nutritious mixture of foods.
Clint is too, he supposes. He tries to help but his skill set involves taking out bad guys, not navigating teenage hormones and the trauma left behind by shitty parents.
Sometimes he wishes he was back at the Tower, where all he had to care about was PVRing Dog Cops when he was out on missions and whether Tony would order the take out he liked best.
He didn’t have to deal with moody, damaged children, or his incredibly inconvenient attraction for Natasha’s idea of a good babysitter.
Just because Bucky turned out to be really good with fucked up kids doesn’t mean Clint’s ever gonna tell her she was right.
If she ever bothered to answer her fucking phone.
Clint feels like he’s in a holding pattern. Things seem tentatively alright, and in his experience, that only leads to things falling apart, and he’s only just gotten to the point where he’s sleeping again. He can’t handle things falling apart right now.
Social services notifies him of their intent to visit to check on his progress on the non-negotiable checklist they gave him after their last visit, and Clint is faced with a Situation.
He can try to bullshit his way through the visit without informing Bucky that the government has somehow gotten it into their brains that Clint and Bucky are A Thing.
Or he can confess and hope that Bucky is feeling charitable and willing to go along with it because apparently social services doesn’t realize that Clint in a relationship is more of a trainwreck even than Clint out of one.
And Clint is aware, though he is reluctant to admit it, that most of the tentative peace and calm in his home is because Bucky created it. Because somehow, the Winter Soldier seems to thrive on storytime and feral kittens and breakfasts, lunches and dinners that appeal to picky children.
So maybe Clint owes him more than a half-assed pretend relationship.
Mind made up, Clint does what Clint does best and puts his confession off until the last possible moment. The night before the home visit, he finally musters up his courage and goes to track Bucky down, finding him in the kitchen.
Clint has been doing his best to avoid Bucky, mostly because Bucky’s presence seems to make him awkward and clumsy and distracted and prone to hurting himself in increasingly stupid ways. He’d actually tried helping Bucky replace the rotten floorboards but after the fifth time he’d smashed his thumb with a hammer, Bucky had suggested maybe there was a less painful thing he could be doing.
So when he finds Bucky in the kitchen, chopping veggies for dinner, Clint is instantly aware that he’s gotta abandon his plan, which had been to volunteer to help with whatever Bucky was doing while building up enough courage to confess the whole fake relationship thing.
Bucky’s leaning against the counter with one hip, his hair pulled back in that stupid messy bun, pieces falling out and framing his face, and he’s wearing one of the bigger t-shirts Clint got him, but Clint’s plan to get him into something that fits and isn’t straining over his shoulders and biceps has failed. The shirts are too big now, and the neckline has slipped down over one shoulder and somehow that’s worse than clinging, and the entire picture is too much. Clint just knows if he had a knife in his hand, even with the best of intentions, he’d chop off at least one finger before he got a single carrot cut, because he’d be too busy staring at that hint of collarbone.
It’s fucking ridiculous.
So he goes to the fridge instead and grabs two cans of beer and says, “Hey.”
Bucky grunts a little, entirely focused on his carrots, so Clint pops both cans open and slides one over to him. That earns him a wary look, which Clint probably deserves, he thinks with a wince. He hasn’t been the most friendly person since Bucky arrived.
He pulls himself up onto the counter, takes a long drink of his beer, and says, “So. Making dinner. You, uh. Know you don’t have to do that, right? I can cook. I’m not entirely hopeless in the kitchen.”
If he sounds distracted and a little dreamy, it’s because his new vantage point makes it easier to see Bucky’s hands and the knife and he clearly, clearly knows his way around a sharp blade. It does something to Clint, watching the way Bucky so capably handles the chopping of carrots -- he’s incredibly glad that he never went on a mission with Bucky, because Clint probably would’ve gotten himself killed if he’d had to watch those hands at work.
With a quick flick of the blade, Bucky’s got the carrots into a pot on the stove, adding a bit of honey before turning his full attention to Clint.
It makes Clint squirm and his cheeks feel warmer than he’d like and he frantically reminds himself that he’s a goddamn adult and not a kid with a crush.
“I don’t mind,” Bucky says over the rim of his beer can before taking a careful sip. “I’d rather do the cooking than dealing with the government.”
Clint grimaces. “That’s just it. You know you don’t have to help. If you’d rather be somewhere else, I mean. Doing something else. Babysitting and cooking and manual labour can’t be what you hoped for when you left Hydra.”
“I don’t mind,” Bucky says again. There’s a brief, shaky hesitation before he adds, “Why? You want me to stop?”
Yes, Clint thinks. For the good of my sanity, please, please. Instead, though, he says, “‘Course not.”
Bucky nods and turns back to the stove like they’re done and Clint could take the out and retreat, and he wants to so badly.
Instead, he takes two long swallows of his beer and says, “So, about the government.” Bucky just grunts, still doing something with the carrots. “They’re coming by tomorrow to make sure I’ve made progress on all the violations they listed during their last visit.”
“We fixed the porch and the floorboards and the windows are coming in next week,” Bucky says.
“Yeah, no, we’re doing great -- better than expected, ahead on all deadlines, I’m not worried about that.” He takes a deep breath. “The thing is, though. There has kind of been a misunderstanding?”
Bucky turns to look at him again, a reflexive scowl on his face, and he crosses his arms over his chest, almost like he thinks Clint’s gonna tell him he did something wrong.
Clint hurries to reassure him. “It’s not you, it’s just, see, somehow, they got this stupid idea in their heads, and they kind of think that you and I -- that we -- we’re. They think we’re… together.” He winces. “In a domestic partnership? Or whatever?”
For a moment, he doesn’t think Bucky understands and that he’s going to have to try again, but then Bucky’s eyebrows fly up and his scowl softens into something much more amused. There’s a whole lot of Brooklyn in his voice when he says, “The government thinks we’re fucking?”
“Dating!” Clint hurries to correct, his voice a bit squeakier than he’d like. “Not -- I doubt they’ve thought too much about what -- what that might entail. Physically. I mean, why would they? Why would anyone? I certainly don’t think about it -- didn’t think about it.”
“Sure,” Bucky says, slow and doubtful and still fucking amused. Clint’s cheeks are pink now, he can feel it, and he tries a scowl like that will do anything to hide it. “So just tell ‘em they got it wrong.”
“See, I would have. But I didn’t tell them that. Mostly because.” He winces again. “Well. They seem to think that I’m a better option for Kate and Lila if I’m in a stable relationship. Specifically with you. Apparently Kate talks about the impact you’ve had on our home in therapy or whatever and they’ve decided… that I’ve got a stronger case for keeping them because I’m with you. Allegedly with you. Because I’m not actually with you. Obviously.”
Bucky cocks his head, leans against the counter, and Clint just. Wants to climb him like a tree. It’s unfortunate and confusing and Clint doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the fact that his entire body is burning with humiliation and all his brain can focus on is wanting to bite the smirk right off Bucky’s mouth. It’s not helpful, not even a little.
“So, what? You wanna convince them we’re a thing?”
“Well, I mean, they already think we are, so I don’t think we have to do anything differently, I just didn’t want you caught off guard if they say anything.”
Bucky bites his lip like that does anything to hide his grin, hitching up his shoulder where the t-shirt has slipped, and says, “Usually you act like you can’t stand to be in the same room as me. I’d like to think, if we were fucking --”
“Dating,” Clint says, somewhat desperate.
“-- you’d be a little happier to see me.”
“That’s not true,” Clint says, though he can see how Bucky might think it was true. Clint has been avoiding him. A little.
“I kinda thought maybe you didn’t want me here?”
“I -- it’s complicated,” he says, growing a little more desperate and worried that Bucky won’t want to go along with this. “Of course I want you here. We all want you here. Kate, Lila, Lucky -- even those fucking cats want you here. And look, we don’t have to pretend if you don’t want to. I can figure something out -- I can even tell the truth, if you want, I know it’s asking a lot, I just think--”
“Barton,” Bucky says, low and amused. He walks closer slowly, almost lazily, and Clint can’t help the way his mouth goes dry, hand tightening around the nearly empty can of beer. He keeps walking, until Clint’s knees are on either side of his hips, and he studies Clint’s face as he gets closer, like he’s taking in every line of his cheeks, his jaw, every freckle on Clint’s nose, every scrape and bruise, the lines along the corners of his eyes, his gaze wandering down Clint’s throat, to his shoulders, then back up again.
“Pretending to want you ain’t gonna be a problem,” he says, smirking again, and so close, and Clint can’t breathe -- the can crumples in his hand.
And Bucky reaches up over Clint’s shoulder, grabs something from the cupboard behind him, and then walks away like nothing happened at all.
It takes an embarrassingly long time for Clint to catch his breath enough to say, “Great. Great. Thanks.”
And then he flees.
And jerks off twice in the shower.
And wonders if this is something he can blame Natasha for too.
Might as well.
*
Clint goes to bed confident that he and Bucky’ll make it through the next day’s inspection by presenting a warm, united front that may or may not be dating and then things will go back to the way they were, with the government making their own assumptions.
He soon finds out how very, very wrong he is.
Nancy shows up early with a dour man in a suit who she introduces as Gregory, and they proceed to wander around the house with clipboards, pointing out the new floorboards, the spots on the deck Bucky fixed, and the various crayon drawings Lila had made that Clint had warily stuck to the fridge. He’s not sure what the pictures are meant to be, but each one could either be something murderous and violent or sunshine and puppies, it’s difficult to tell. Nancy makes notes about it and he hopes she’s seeing sunshine and puppies but doesn’t ask, just in case.
And then, when the inspection is nearly wrapped up, just as Clint is thinking perhaps telling Bucky about the dating thing wasn’t necessary at all, the back door opens and Bucky comes up behind him.
Nancy had just been asking about the window that’s still boarded up in the living room and Clint is halfway through explaining the delay in shipping when he hears the door, senses Bucky coming near, and before he can quite prepare himself for whatever that’s gonna look like, Bucky slips his hand in Clint’s back pocket.
It’s like a shock of electricity runs up his spine. His back snaps into perfect posture, his cheeks flush, goosebumps run up and down his arms, and before he recovers, Bucky’s standing up on his tiptoes and pressing a sweet kiss to the corner of Clint’s mouth.
“Lila wants peanut butter and jam for dinner, that okay with you, darlin’?” he asks, voice rough and intimate in a way that Clint couldn’t possibly have braced himself for, even if he’d known it was coming.
Clint swallows hard and stares at Bucky, who lifts an amused eyebrow, like Clint’s the one being weird as he struggles to find his tongue and remember how to form words.
Really, Bucky shouldn’t be in a place to judge weirdness here, because his hand is still on Clint’s ass.
“Uhm,” Clint manages, and Bucky shoots a look at the inspectors.
“We’ll toss in a few carrot sticks for nutrients, don’t worry,” he says, all kinds of charm, like he thinks Clint’s tongue tied over having to provide Kate and Lila with a balanced diet and not Bucky’s hand. Or his mouth. Or, fuck, his voice.
Clint did not think this through. Nothing can go back to normal after this. Nothing.
“Oh, I’m sure,” Nancy cooes, and she doesn’t even bother to make notes. This is the most important thing that’s happened on her goddamn visit and she’s too busy fluttering her eyelashes to make fucking notes about it.
And then Gregory asks skeptically, “She told you that? According to her file and her therapists, she doesn’t speak.”
“Maybe they’re not asking the right questions,” Bucky says, light enough not to offend, but with something sharp around the edges of his words.
Gregory seems to have some sense of self-preservation, because he doesn’t press the issue, just frowns and makes a note on his clipboard.
Before too long, Clint’s gotta move, and Bucky’s hand isn’t on his ass anymore. He feels like he’s in a haze, but he doesn’t think excusing himself from answering their questions to go have a cold shower would make a very good impression.
Bucky stays nearby, though, being altogether too helpful and charming for Clint’s peace of mind.
When Clint finally, fucking finally, closes the door behind the inspectors, he whirls around, presses his back up against it, and hisses, “What the fuck was that?”
Bucky starts to smirk, but maybe he reads something dangerous in Clint’s expression, because he quickly bites his lip and tries to hide it.
“Went pretty well, I think,” he tries.
Clint’s eyes narrow. “It went just fine,” he says, a little waspish. He wants to say “Until you sneaked up on me and groped my ass,” but he doesn’t want to so instead he projects his discomfort into snapping, “Why does Lila talk to you and not to me?”
Bucky still looks too amused, but he leans back against the doorway and crosses his arms across his chest with a shrug. “From what I’ve seen, Barton, you’ve barely tried.”
“Every single day I ask her how she is,” he says. “I ask her what she needs. I ask her what she wants for dinner. And I get nothing. But you ask, and now you know she likes PB&J?”
“I didn’t ask what she wanted,” Bucky says, still easy, unaccountably careful with his words. Clint’s not sure how Bucky got the impression that Clint’s fragile when it comes to Lila but he doesn’t like it. “I asked her to pass the purple crayon. She told me purple jam was the best jam and she sure would like it with peanut butter for dinner, and that Alpine likes PB&J but would be willing to eat a carrot or two if it happened to be on the table and would make the government inspectors happy so they wouldn’t take her away from her sister.”
Clint feels like someone’s kicked his knees right out from underneath him, like he’s been hit in the chest, wind knocked out of him. He struggles to breathe and thinks, fuck, maybe he is fragile when it comes to Lila.
Bucky comes closer but doesn’t touch him, just looks concerned and rueful and much less amused, and maybe like he wants to touch him.
“I’ve got a lot of experience being surrounded by people who only want to talk about how I’m doing and what I want,” he says, quiet. “Most times I’d rather talk about anything else. Would be nice if someone wanted to listen to that, and I figured Lila’s the same.”
Clint closes his eyes and says desperately, “She’s nine years old. She’s not like you. She’s not -- she wasn’t broken like you were.”
When he finally opens his eyes again, he finds Bucky watching him carefully, still standing so close, it would be so easy to reach out and touch him. “Broken in a different way, but still broken,” he says, still quiet.
It’s too much all of a sudden -- the closeness, the pretend flirtatiousness, the inspection, the hand on his ass, the realization that Lila’s been talking to everyone but him and her goddamn therapists.
“My jam’s red,” he says, desperate, fumbling for the doorknob. “Gotta -- I’ll be back. Gotta get grape jam for dinner.”
He flees and has no regrets for doing so.
*
Dinner is late because it takes so long for Clint to get back from town with a jar of grape jelly, and Lila is a sleepy, scowly mess when he finally presents her with her sandwich. Bucky had made macaroni and cheese earlier as a compromise, but Lila had apparently refused to have anything except peanut butter and jam and now Clint finds himself at a loss, sitting across from her at the kitchen table. The sun set long ago and Lila should probably be in bed, but together, they sit in silence both of them picking at their sandwiches.
“You’re right,” Clint says, after a moment. “Grape is so much better than strawberry.”
He doesn’t expect Lila to answer, but he lets the silence fall softly between them, not demanding answers to questions she may not want to give.
“When I first met my friend Natasha, she didn’t like to talk much when she didn’t have to either,” he says, “And that was okay.”
He lets the silence unwind between them, gentle and without expectation, and when Lila says, quiet and soft, “I couldn’t have the macaroni when you went all the way to get grape jelly for me,” he doesn’t let her know how much that one sentence, that one tiny bit of trust means to him.
Instead, he takes a giant bite of his sandwich and says, “Worth it.”
She flashes a shy, wide grin and takes a matching giant bite, grape jam smudged on her lips.
*
Things don’t go back to normal.
It’s for the best, in some cases. Clint starts making sure to leave spaces for Lila to talk if she feels like talking, and slowly, she starts filling those silences with strange little observations and questions. Kate hovers like an overprotective mama bear, like she thinks Clint’s going to do something to fuck it up, but he’s trying really hard and doesn’t think he’s doing too badly.
But Bucky. Bucky is trouble.
He’s relaxed into life at the farm in a way he hadn’t before, like he and Clint share some inside joke. He flirts sometimes, lazy and charming like he knows the effect it has on Clint’s blood pressure, but Clint isn’t all that sure he really does. He flirts like it used to be second nature and he’s fumbling his way into learning how to do it again. He flirts like it’s easy, like it doesn’t mean anything, like echoes of the Bucky he used to be, back before the war, are finding their way to the surface and he doesn’t realize that it’s fucking with Clint’s head.
Sometimes Bucky reaches out and almost touches like he thinks that’s a thing he gets to do now, a thing they do now, but he always pulls back before making contact and Clint can’t figure out for the life of him if he wants Bucky’s hands on him or not.
Okay. He can’t figure out if he should want Bucky’s hands on him. Because he does. He really, really does. But he doesn’t want to fuck things up an the last little bit of a decent guy who lives in the very back corner of whatever’s left of his conscience keeps pointing out that Bucky doesn’t mean it. That this is just playing. It’s just pretend. It’s just Bucky finding his footing. It’s not real. It’s… an unfortunate side effect of pretending to be dating. It’s just an echo.
Not something Clint gets to have.
But, fuck. Sometimes he forgets about all the things he doesn’t get to have and he just. Wants. So much.
It stops feeling like one-sided sexual attraction, stops feeling the way it feels when he has just a little bit too much champagne at one of Tony’s fancy parties and his head starts spinning and he can’t quite catch his balance. It starts hurting instead, like the bubbles are burning his throat and he knows he’s about to fall but can’t quite see the floor to find his footing.
But he hasn’t got the sense of self preservation to go back to avoiding Bucky.
*
When Natasha finally fucking calls, Clint is a mess.
“I left you voicemails,” he tells her. “Did you listen to my voicemails?”
“They’re voicemails, Clint,” she says, sounding as cool and calm and collected as ever. “Do you think I’ve got time for voicemails?”
“Everything’s a disaster,” he says. “All of it. And it’s your fault.”
“I’m sure. I’ve got some leads on Kate’s mother.”
It takes a beat for Clint to switch gears enough to follow, and then he remembers the file folder she gave him when she’d dropped Bucky off at the farm. He swallows hard, closing his eyes, and says, “Nat.”
“Have you told her?” Natasha asks.
“That you’re looking for her mother? No!”
“That Lila’s not actually her sister.”
Clint lets out a tight breath, swallowing again, feeling nauseated and like he’d rather be doing anything other than having this conversation. “Can we go back to talking about Bucky now?” he asks, plaintive.
“She deserves to have a choice,” Natasha says. “It’s taking longer to find her mother than I thought. There aren’t any birth records for Kate, which is complicating matters. I’ve got a few leads to follow up on, though. You need to tell her.”
“Sure,” Clint says, sitting down on the edge of his bed. “Sure, Nat. I’ll tell her we tracked down the mother who abandoned her, right after I tell her that she’s not actually related to the only person she gives a fuck about. That’ll help with the rage issues. Her therapists are gonna love it.”
He hears Natasha sigh over the phone and then she says, much more kindly, “She deserves a choice, Clint, and so do you.”
“I’ve already made mine.”
“Then give her the same opportunity. Now tell me what’s happening with Barnes.”
He groans and flops back onto his bed and says, “Everything’s happening with him -- nothing’s happening! I just -- he’s just -- have you seen him? I mean, you’ve seen him, but have you seen him on his knees, pulling up rotten floorboards with his metal hand, Nat? Or all greasy and fixing my truck? Or curled up with feral kittens reading kids’ books? Or--”
“So he’s fitting in, then?” she asks, warm and amused.
“Nat,” he moans. “How can I -- how can you possibly expect me to keep my hands off him?”
“No one ever said you had to,” she says lightly. “As long as he consents, I don’t care what you do. Just don’t make a mess.”
“Nat,” he says, more desperate.
“You’re an adult, Clint. So is he. And he gets to make his own choices too. I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch soon. Be safe.”
“Just answer your phone this time!”
“Can’t make any promises,” she says, laughing. “But keep leaving voicemails, they amuse me.”
She hangs up before he finishes squawking in outrage and he just lays there for a long time, staring at the ceiling and doing his best not to think about anything she said.
His best isn’t quite good enough, though.
*
When he finally goes looking, Clint finds Kate out behind the barn, standing by a hay bale with his beat up old practice bow in her hands. It’s soft in places from his fingers, marked up from years with the circus, and he’d kept it mostly because he’s a sentimental asshole sometimes.
But Kate’s holding it like she knows how to hold it, a strange tension in her shoulders and a bright, fierce look in her eyes that reminds Clint of weeks before, when she was still angry and likely to lash out with sudden rage.
“You know how to string that?” he asks, wary, though she clearly does -- she’s already got it strung, though she hasn’t got any arrows. Clint’s glad of that, he isn’t sure he trusts her not to aim it at him.
She draws back the string, her stance just about perfect, her mouth screwed up and red where she’s been chewing her bottom lip.
“Dad used to say he taught you everything you ever knew,” she tells him. She’s aiming at him like she’d consider shooting him if she’d managed to find an arrow, and Clint goes very still.
“He did,” he says. “Did he teach you too?” He can see Barney’s sloppy shortcut in her stance and itches to correct it. It’s a tiny thing, a slight turn of foot -- most people probably wouldn’t notice even if they knew anything at all about archery.
“World’s Greatest Marksman,” she says, mocking in her voice, and he’s not sure if she’s making fun of him or herself. “He said -- he said one day, I’d be good enough to take his place in the ring. Didn’t need schooling or -- or reading or anything else. Could make a good living in the circus. Good enough for him.” Her eyes and her mouth go tight, like she’s trying not to cry. “But it wasn’t ever good enough for you, I guess.”
“You deserved better too,” he tells her, inching a little closer, keeping his voice soft, trying not to startle her. She looks strung out, about to break, and he wants to crush her to his chest and hold her tight until he figures out what the fuck he did to hurt her.
She’s holding so much tension in her body that when it starts to crumble, her entire body shudders with it. She tries to hold her stance but the string slips free and the bow swings down to her side and she says, still fierce, “If you try to send her away, I’ll kill you.”
“Oh,” Clint says, sucking in a startled, burning breath. “Oh, shit, Kate, no.”
“And I won’t ever forgive you,” she adds, still wild and breaking. “I’ll hate you forever, and--”
“Kate,” he says, “Katie Kate, I would never.”
She rubs at her nose angrily with her forearm and starts crying angry tears. “But Natasha told you she wasn’t -- that she’s not my sister. Why would you keep her if she’s not family.”
“Natasha didn’t have to tell me,” he says, helpless. “Kate. Sweetheart. Your mom’s Korean and Lila sure as hell doesn’t look like Barney. And what the fuck does blood have to do with family?”
Kate crumples, her face screwing up as she starts to sob, and Clint catches her before her knees give out. She drops the bow and he doesn’t care, kicking it aside and collapsing on the hay bale, holding her tightly.
“She never had a dad and her mom was a mess and took too much coke and wouldn’t wake up and Trick Shot said we’d have to leave Lila behind because there was no one to take care of her so I did.”
“It’s fine,” he tells her, feeling awkward and clumsy. “We’ll take care of her. Both of us.Nat says there’s no record of her father, so it could be Barney. No one’s demanding a DNA test. She’s fine. She’s ours. I promise.”
Kate lifts her head, glaring at him. Her face is streaked with tears, her eyes swollen, but she still manages to look like she could hurt him if she wanted to. “Why would you keep her if you didn’t have to?”
“Nat says we all get to make choices,” he says shrugging. “It’s a pretty easy one to make -- keeping both of you. We’re family. That’s… that’s just what family does.”
“You promise?”
“How many times are you gonna make me promise?” he asks gruffly.
“Probably a few more,” she confesses with a weak, teary smile.
“So. So, if Natasha finds your mother -- you know you get a choice, too, right?”
She turns away with a scowl, sniffling noisily, and says, “I’m not leaving Lila.”
And Clint lets it go for now, because he knows better than anyone that family can be complicated.
*
It’s hot and humid as the morning turns into early afternoon, the kind of heat that is layered in expectation, like the ground is just waiting for the tension to break.
It’s going to storm, Clint can feel it, and he can’t wait for it. He feels off balance, raw in places since Kate overhead him talking to Natasha -- since Kate cried. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t know what to do with the twisted up feeling in his chest, so he spends the day working outside, trying anything and everything to tire his body out in hopes that maybe it’ll quiet his mind too.
His thoughts are running in circles, chasing each other, and he’s worked up and anxious and shaking with it.
When the storm finally breaks, it releases a curtain of rain, nearly instantly soaking the barnyard and turning the parched ground into mud.
It’s cold and bracing and pounds down on Clint’s upturned face and his shoulders and helps to ground him the way nothing else had.
He’s soaked to the bone when he finally ducks into the barn to put his tools away.
The clouds are so thick outside that it’s dark inside, shadows where usually blades of sunlight cut through the air and caught on dust motes and trailing pieces of hay. He’s splattered in mud and rain water is running from his hair and his face, so Clint tugs his t-shirt up over his head with one hand and uses it to try to mop up the mess.
The hush of the rain on the barn roof, the rumble of thunder, the thick shadows and the rain in his eyes make it nearly impossible to hear or see, so when Clint turns to head for the door and nearly runs straight into Bucky, he’s so startled, he stumbles back and nearly trips over his own damned feet.
Bucky smiles, slow, and says, “You’re a mess, Barton.”
There’s something warm and fond in his eyes as he lets his gaze wander from Clint’s face, down over his bare shoulders and his mud-splattered, wet chest, before coming back up to his eyes.
Clint licks the rain off his lips and his voice is rough when he says, aiming for sarcastic, “Got caught in the rain.” He’s distracted, though, because Bucky’s wet too, his t-shirt clinging to his shoulders, water running down and pooling in the hollow of his throat. His hair is slicked back out of his face and Clint can’t help wondering despairingly why he spent so long obsessing over Bucky’s thighs and his arms and his chest and everything else when he had just about the prettiest eyes Clint’s ever seen.
He’s in so far over his head. He’s hopeless. He’s a mess, like Bucky said he was, and every day, it just seems to get worse.
Bucky’s gaze is lingering on Clint’s mouth and he’s standing so close and seems to be drifting slowly, carefully closer. He drags his eyes up to meet Clint’s and says, husky, “It’s a good look on you.”
Despite the cold, Clint feels his cheeks flush. It’s a bad idea, he knows it’s a bad idea, he’s been telling himself what a bad idea this is for weeks now.
Only just now, it’s impossible to think of all the reasons why it would be such a bad thing to reach out and touch.
He sees Bucky’s hand curl into a fist, like he wants to reach for Clint but still isn’t letting himself, and Clint can’t help but admire his self-restraint.
He slips by Bucky, heading for the door, because sometimes retreat is the better part of valour, and he knows he’s a split second away from making a terrible decision.
Bucky reaches out and grabs his wrist before he can make his escape, though, and says, a little desperately, “I wasn’t sure why you’d look at me the way you do until I touched you the other day.” He sounds quiet and a little uncertain. “Never saw anyone blush as pretty as you.”
Clint hesitates, staring at the door for a moment, because he should pull away. He should run.
Instead, he takes a careful breath and turns, his wrist still caught in Bucky’s hand. “This is a bad idea,” he says plaintively.
Bucky tugs on his wrist and Clint doesn’t bother to resist, lets himself be pulled a little closer, staring at that spot on Bucky’s throat where the rain water is pooling. He wants to lick it, wants to press his teeth there, and then follow the line of his shoulders, down to his metal fingers, and suck each one into his mouth, and --
Bucky slips his hand into Clint’s, fingers tangled up, and runs his thumb over the back of Clint’s hand.
“Can’t remember the last time someone wanted me for something that wasn’t gonna hurt.”
Clint feels it like a kick to the chest. Something cracks and it feels inevitable -- maybe it was always inevitable, and he can’t think of a single goddamn reason why this is a bad idea.
His gaze flies up from Bucky’s throat to his eyes and Clint swallows hard and gives in.
“It won’t hurt,” he says, his fingertips shaking a little as he reaches up with his free hand, tangling it in the wet collar of Bucky’s shirt. Bucky’s eyes are wide his eyelashes thick and spiky with rain and he closes them half a second before Clint tugs him close and kisses him.
It’s careful, at first. Clint feels like he needs to find his footing, like the world is tipping sideways and he’s scrambling for balance, and the only thing that feels right and strong is the places where he’s touching Bucky -- their mouths, their hands tangled together, his other hand on the back of Bucky’s neck, clinging to his wet shirt.
Bucky kisses him softly, like he’s chasing a memory, like he’s not quite sure or maybe like he wants to savour it, but it doesn’t take too long before the thunder and the heat and the tension prove too much and Bucky’s mouth falls open with a soft sound and Clint’s biting his way inside.
He’s imagined what kissing Bucky might be like a thousand times at least, jerked off to images like this one in the shower, but his imagination didn’t do it justice. He’d never quite managed to imagine what Bucky’s hands would feel like as they run up Clint’s arms to his shoulders -- burning on on one side and cold on the other -- before sliding down his back, fingers digging in just below his shoulder blades. He never managed to dream up the way the plates on Bucky’s metal arm tremble as they recalibrate, chasing the phantom sensation of Clint’s palm as he follows the line of metal up to the place where he can feel twisted scars even through the damp t-shirt Bucky’s wearing.
He cradles Bucky close, because he meant it -- because he’s not going to hurt Bucky and he’s going to make sure that he does his very best to hold him up, to take him apart, to put him back together again in a way that helps him remember that this can be good. That falling apart can be good. That his body is meant for more than hurting.
It’s important and he’s not stupid -- if Bucky trusts him with this, then Clint knows it’s so, so important that he gets it right.
So he cradles him close and drags his teeth over Bucky’s bottom lip, swallowing up the soft sounds Bucky makes when Clint works his fingers over the scar tissue he can feel. Bucky’s panting, breaks the kiss to stare up at Clint with wide, dark eyes, like he wants to pull away, even as he leans into Clint’s touch.
“You don’t have to,” Bucky says, his voice already sounding broken and Clint’s only just gotten started.
“Take off your shirt,” Clint coaxes. “I’m gonna take you apart, I’m gonna -- I’ve wanted to get my mouth on you for so fucking long, Bucky, you have no idea.”
Bucky’s cheeks are pink and flushed when he smiles, slow and wicked when he bites his lip. “Yeah?” he asks, that brief moment of uncertainty fading away as he tugs his t-shirt up over his head, dropping it to the ground.
“Mhmm,” Clint hums, already distracted. He twists his hand in Bucky’s wet hair and tugs it until his head falls back, baring his throat so Clint can finally get his mouth there, licking where the rain has pooled and then nipping with his teeth.
When Bucky moans, Clint feels it vibrate against his lips and chases the sound back up to his mouth, kissing him hard and dirty, all teeth and tongue while all Bucky can do is slide his hands into Clint’s back pockets and hold on for balance.
Clint wants so badly. He wants Bucky panting against his mouth, wants him clinging, wants him falling apart. He wants to get on his knees for Bucky, to struggle to breathe around his dick and swallow him down and taste him. He wants to know what Bucky sounds like when he comes -- he’s been imagining it for so fucking long and it takes every bit of self control he has to try to slow it down, to be careful, to take his time.
Bucky, for his part, does not seem inclined to let Clint take his time.
He stumbles backwards, dragging Clint with him until his back hits the wall of the barn, bracing himself against it as Clint trips over his own feet and falls into him. Bucky catches him, laughing, so Clint kisses the laughter from his lips.
When he’s got Bucky properly breathless again, Clint finally gets his hands on Bucky’s thighs, dragging the palms of both hands from Bucky’s ass down lower and tugging him up, swallowing his surprised yelp as Clint lifts him.
He pins him against the wall, Bucky’s legs falling open and then wrapping around Clint’s hips when he finally gets him where he wants him, perfectly lined up so Clint can feel him, hard through the wet fabric of his jeans. When Clint rubs against him, Bucky breaks the kiss, head falling back and hitting the wall as he sucks in a startled breath.
Clint’s already fucking failing at not hurting him.
He tries to do better, holding Bucky up with one hand on his thigh, the other hand running through Bucky’s hair, cradling the back of his head, so when Clint does it again -- because he can’t fucking help it -- Bucky doesn’t smash his head, though he looks just as dazed and breathless as he had the first time.
Thunder cracks overhead, rattling the walls, and Clint doesn’t care. Bucky’s licking at his lips and holding tightly to his shoulders and Clint’s dick is hard and chafing against the zipper of his jeans and it isn’t graceful but he doesn’t mind. It’s filthy and wet and Bucky keeps making these noises and Clint wants to catch all of them on his tongue
“If you make me come in my pants,” Bucky says, his voice sounding wrecked but still managing to convey the threat.
Clint grins at him, crooked and licking his bottom lip. “Already said how much I wanna get my mouth on you,” he says, and Bucky’s head falls back against the wall again.
“Yeah,” he pants. “Yes, okay.”
It’s a sacrifice, letting go of Bucky so he can fall to his knees, but he’s spent so long imagining being on his knees this way that it’s one he’s willing to make.
He wants to take his time with it. He wants it to be graceful, to show Bucky how good he is with his mouth, to tease him and make him beg for it. But as Bucky undoes his jeans and lets them fall around his hips, Clint thinks maybe he’s the one who should be begging.
But there are better things to be doing with his mouth.
Bucky’s hard and tastes of precome and rain water when Clint licks at the tip of his cock with a rough swipe of his tongue, closing his eyes at the taste and humming a little. Clint curls a hand around him, the other hand braced on his thigh. He looks up at Bucky, finds him watching with dark eyes and a mouth swollen from Clint’s lips and his teeth.
“You can fuck my mouth if you want to,” Clint tells him, his voice already husky. “I like it.”
Bucky reaches for him, like he wants to touch Clint’s hair, run his fingers through it, but he hesitates, just like he’s been doing all week, and Clint doesn’t give him the chance to pull away. He grabs his metal hand, because he figures it’s the best way to make Bucky feel like he’s meant for more than hurting.
“Like it when you pull my hair, too,” he says, as he guides Bucky’s hand to the back of his head. He can feel it when Bucky lets the strands run through his fingers, and even if Bucky doesn’t trust himself to pull, Clint doesn’t mind.
He licks at Bucky again, and then, despite all his best intentions to make it last, to tease him and make him beg, Clint swallows him down as far as he can, until his throat aches with it just the way he likes.
“Jesus,” Bucky breathes, so Clint doesn’t think he minds.
It’s filthy and wet and not at all graceful, and doesn’t take too long at all before Bucky’s fingers are tangled in Clint’s hair and when his hips move, an aborted motion he can’t seem to help, Clint purrs low and encouragingly in the back of his throat until Bucky’s holding him still and pushing deep into his mouth.
He wanted Bucky to beg, but there’s something softer and more intimate about how quiet Bucky gets, how all Clint can hear from him is his heavy breathing, the way it catches when Clint swallows around him or drags his tongue along the underside of his cock. It makes Clint want to beg, for all the things he’d spent so long imagining, and he’d shove his hand down his own pants and make himself come if his hands weren’t so busy, holding so tightly to Bucky’s thighs that he’s probably going to leave bruises.
Bucky’s quiet when he comes, though his head sinks back against the wall and he braces himself with his free hand against the support beam, his other hand still cradling Clint’s head, holding him still while he comes down his throat.
Clint can feel Bucky’s legs shaking under his hands as he swallows around him, licking his lips and resting his forehead against Bucky’s hip, breathing hard.
“Sorry,” Bucky says, stroking his hair. “Sorry, I--”
Clint rolls his head to the side, dragging his teeth playfully against Bucky’s hip before looking up at him. “I’ve got lube in my room,” he says, and his voice sounds exactly the way he’d imagined it would, all those times he jerked off thinking about Bucky fucking his mouth. “And a door with a lock on it to keep the children out.”
Whatever regrets Bucky’d been having, they melt away with a slow grin. “Yeah?” he asks.
“Yes,” Clint says, more graceful than ever as he gets to his feet, tugs Bucky’s jeans up and carefully buttons them, before dragging him out of the barn by his wrist.
Outside, it’s still pouring rain, and they run for the house.
*
Clint has no illusions. He knows he’s not the kind that romantic dreams are made of. He’s had a handful of relationships in his life that lasted longer than an ill-advised hook-up, and the pain was never worth the effort.
And none of those relationships ever lasted longer than three weeks. Whoever he was attempting to date would inevitably realize that Clint’s disaster qualities are a hell of a lot less charming on a long-term basis.
He made peace with that fact a long time ago. He knows what he looks like, he knows what he’s doing with his hands and his mouth and the rest of his body, he can give someone a really, really good time for a night. And when they leave in the morning, it’s with no regrets on either side.
Clint is an expert on lowering his expectations and being pleased with whatever others are willing to give him.
So now, as the sun rises and Bucky sleeps soundly next to him, metal arm thrown over Clint’s chest, rest of him spread out in the steadily growing golden sunlight, Clint knows that he’s lucky -- perhaps the luckiest fucking guy in the world -- that Bucky trusted him enough to actually reach out and touch.
Clint knows better than most the damage having your brain fucked with could leave -- the lingering uncertainties, the night terrors, the fears that if you reach out for someone, they’ll reach back right inside and take and take and take things you were never ready nor willing to give.
So he’s not looking for anything from Bucky other than what he got -- and what he got is gonna be enough to sustain him for quite some time.
He’s not gonna make this weird.
The problem is -- the problem is, he doesn’t know how to sneak out after a one night stand when that one night stand happened in his own goddamn bedroom and the guy he hooked up with lives just down the hall.
So Clint lays still and watches the sun come up and listens to Bucky breathing and weighs his options.
He’s halfway through the pros of playing dead when Bucky stirs and stretches and smiles at him, slow, before rolling on top of him and kissing him sleep-warm and lazy and Clint forgets all about his lists.
Is it still a one night stand if it lasts clear into the morning?
Clint isn’t sure but he’s willing to take what he can get.
*
He gets lazy morning sex, Bucky riding him while their mouths are pressed together to muffle whatever sounds Clint can’t help but make. He likes Bucky’s smile best when he feels it pressed against his own stupid grin, likes his thighs best when he’s got both hands on them, while he’s buried deep inside him, while Bucky’s hips are moving over him and the morning sun is rising through the eastern window.
He gets coffee, after, when he stumbles out of the shower and finds Bucky, damp and dressed in his pajamas, offering a steaming mug made just how Clint likes it.
He gets playful smirks and lingering looks and Bucky’s feet, tucked under his thigh after lunch as the four of them curl up in the living room to watch Dog Cops after lunch.
It’s more than he thought he’d get -- maybe more than he thought he deserved -- and it throws Clint off balance a little.
They’re going to have to talk about it, he decides. They can’t make it weird. Kate and Lila need stability, not the inevitable crash when a friends-with-benefits thing falls to pieces.
So Clint takes Lucky for a long walk to clear his head and steady his resolve, and then when he gets back home, he finds Bucky in the backyard with Kate.
Kate’s holding Clint’s old practice bow, someone’s put a row of bottles on the fence posts nearby, and Bucky is standing behind her, talking her through it while she draws the bowstring back.
Her stance, now, is perfect, that slight inconsistency Clint noticed earlier already gone, like it took twenty minutes with Bucky to correct a lifetime of whatever mistakes Barney left behind.
It’s heavy and it sits strangely on Clint’s shoulders, constricting his chest a little bit as he watches her knock a bottle of the fence post perfectly.
She beams at Bucky and says, “Your turn.”
Bucky shooting an arrow and knocking an old coke bottle clear off a fence post shouldn’t be the hottest thing Clint’s ever seen, but it’s a goddamn beautiful shot. It’s practically poetry.
And Clint’s always had a thing for archers.
So instead of setting out boundaries and going over expectations and convincing Bucky that they’ve gotta stop the flirting, the hooking up, Clint takes the bow out of Bucky’s hand, gives it to Kate, says, “Remember. Safety first.”
And then he twists his hand in Bucky’s sweater and drags him behind the barn where he can shove him up against the wall and kiss him until Bucky’s done laughing at him and can’t help moaning into his mouth instead.
So they keep hooking up.
He can totally keep this casual. It’ll be fine.
Clint never had any self-preservation instincts anyway.
*
The problem with casual, Clint realizes, is that he actually likes Bucky. As a person. He likes his sarcastic sense of humour, his quiet competence and confidence, and how those qualities help Kate and Lila relax around him the way they only ever do around each other.
It’s not that Bucky’s perfect. There are cracks and scars there, mind fields of PTSD and tripwires waiting to be triggered. The more Clint gets to know him, the easier it is to see the fine network of them running underneath everything he does.
It’s fine, though, Clint tells himself. He does not need to concern himself with helping Bucky heal those wounds, because he’s pretty sure Bucky’s got dozens of Stark-funded therapists working on that, and Clint’s never been much good for talking or listening.
He’s good for distracting, he tells himself, every time he uses his hands or his mouth or anything else to distract Bucky whenever he gets overly anxious or vigilant or jumpy or snappy or moody.
And it works, at first.
The night terrors, though, are something that sex can’t seem to fix, Clint realizes, a few weeks later when Bucky wakes him up with an accidental blow to the face that’s probably going to bruise.
He’s thrashing, pale and damp with sweat, lashing out against imagined enemies, and Clint, after he rolls out of bed and grabs his hearing aids and swears a whole bunch over the throbbing in his face, isn’t sure what he should do.
Do you wake people up when they’re having a nightmare? He thinks he remembers hearing that it causes brain damage.
He’s more worried about Bucky waking up and lashing out and causing permanent damage, though, because his brain has honestly recovered from worse wounds than being woken up from a nightmare.
“Bucky,” he says, cautious, when the thrashing gets too violent, the whimpers more desperate. “Hey, hey, you’re fine. You’re safe.”
When his hand touches Bucky’s shoulder, for all that he tries to be gentle, Bucky’s eyes fly open and he sucks in a ragged, startled breath. For a moment, Clint’s sure Bucky’s going to attack -- there’s nothing on his face that hints at any sort of recognition. His eyes are blown, dark and wide, he’s breathing heavily through his mouth.
“Clint,” he says, voice shredded, squeezing his eyes shut, one hand coming to hold tightly to Clint’s wrist, keeping his hand there against his shoulder. “Shit. Fuck. Sorry, I--”
“No, I get it,” Clint says, feeling awkward. Maybe he should go make tea -- someone was always offering to make him tea after Loki, when he woke up screaming.
“I woke you,” Bucky says, opening his eyes again and looking up at Clint. “And I --” He frowns, reaching up, cradling Clint’s face with his free hand, thumb stroking just below the throbbing spot on his temple where Bucky had accidentally hit him. “Fuck, did I do that? Shit, Clint.”
Clint pulls away. “No, no, it’s fine, barely anything, I’m gonna -- I’ll make you tea.”
He leaves and it feels like running away.
When he comes back five minutes later and holds out the mug of tea like that’s actually supposed to help, Bucky’s sitting up in bed, knees pulled up and all the lights on. He blinks at the tea like no one’s ever made him tea before, and takes it with an uncertain, small smile.
“Your eye’s gonna bruise,” he says, wrapping both hands around the warm mug.
“Not the first time.”
Clint hovers, not sure what he should do. He’s not a natural caretaker, not the way Bucky has proven himself to be, and doesn’t know what to do with his hands -- or the rest of his body for that matter.
He finally perches on the bed, looking everywhere but at Bucky until he hears Bucky take a small, tentative sip.
“I put honey in it,” he says, feeling stupid and off-balance.
Bucky takes another sip.
And maybe it’s because Clint isn’t looking at him, or maybe because he’s shaken by the nightmare, or maybe it’s because he feels safe with all the room all light up the way it is and the mug of warm tea in his hands.
Because Bucky starts to talk.
“The worst dreams aren’t the flashbacks,” he says, his voice strained but soft. “Sometimes I dream that it’s starting all over again only this time, it’s Steve holding the red book, saying the words, telling me who to kill and how.”
Clint doesn’t know what to say so he stays quiet.
“And he would never -- I know he wouldn’t do that. It’s not the same, with Steve.” Bucky is quiet for a long minute before confessing quietly, “I promised to follow him into war, back in the 40s, and I did, but I never knew the war would last this long. And I’m tired.”
It’s the sort of thing that Clint hopes Bucky’s telling his therapist -- or hell, telling Steve. But he thinks about what Bucky said before, when they were talking about Lila, and how she wasn’t speaking because no one cared enough to listen to what she actually wanted to say. He wonders if Steve wants to hear this -- that Bucky’s tired. That he’s done fighting. That following Steve into another battle is what haunts Bucky’s nightmares these days, not whatever Hydra did to him.
And he knows Steve. And he knows how hard it is to disappoint Captain America.
Clint lets out the careful breath he’s holding and turns to sit on the bed more fully, leaning back against the headboard so their arms are brushing.
It doesn’t even make him feel trapped or awkward or claustrophobic when he feels Bucky lean into him, just a little.
“Have you told Steve?” Clint asks, quiet.
Bucky closes his eyes, taking another slow sip of tea, and says, “Never wanted to disappoint that asshole.”
Clint leans into him, so they’re propping each other up. “I was there just after Steve found you for the first time,” he says with a small shrug. “I saw how it tore him up, searching the whole damned world for you afterwards. I think the one thing that would disappoint Steve the most is if he knew that he’d done anything to make you think you didn’t have a choice. He just -- pretty sure he just wants you to be happy, Buck. Even if it means he doesn’t get to fight with you at his side.”
For a long moment, he thinks Bucky isn’t going to reply and then Bucky says, soft, “Pretty sure I could be happy here.”
Clint’s breath rattles in his chest and he forgets how to inhale for a moment, all the claustrophobia he should’ve been feeling earlier crashing over him in a wave. He wants to run -- but if he gets up now, no one’ll be holding Bucky up, so he stays very still and squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to notice that it kinda feels like drowning.
*
Clint is not a forever kind of guy, but he’s trying to be, for Kate and Lila. He pours whatever energy he’s got into making sure they’re given all the supports they need, he makes a real, concerted effort to be the responsible guardian neither of them have ever had.
It’s Bucky who helps him realize that movie nights and board games and silly conversations and dance parties and feral cat rescue missions and so much junk food, they get stomach aches are just as important as therapy sessions and tutoring sessions and all the rest.
It’s also crawling into bed with Bucky at the end of the day that gives Clint the strength he needs to get up the next morning and do it all over again, even when he’s ninety percent convinced he has no idea what he’s doing and the government is gonna see that and declare him an unfit guardian.
They don’t, though. They keep slogging through their paperwork and their checklists and their specialists.
And Clint loses track of time.
The first frost catches him off guard. It does beautiful things to the farmland -- it always has, coating ramshackle buildings and old crops and crooked fence posts with a layer of snow that shines like crystal in the cold blue sunlight.
It’s early morning, just past sunrise, and he knows the frost’ll be gone in a matter of an hour at most, but right now, it’s glittering like something precious and it’s so fucking pretty.
He’s half asleep and standing at the living room window, dressed in boxers and a ratty t-shirt that Natasha used to sleep in, staring out the window at the frost when things go sideways.
He’s thinking about Christmastime, about trees and stockings and presents and wrapping and bows and absently wondering if Netflix has the Charlie Brown Christmas special because it used to be his and Barney’s favourite and he wonders if Kate and Lila have seen it. He’s worrying about how the holidays are going to be different this year, because there will be expectations beyond getting drunk alone and watching Die Hard. He’s aware that those expectations are self-imposed, because Kate and Lila probably learned not to expect Christmas miracles a long time ago, and he’s determined to give them one.
He’s distracted, and the whole world is cast in shades of amber and gold, and he feels like the Grinch -- his heart’s growing three sizes and it’s got so much room in it now that it echoes like an empty hallway.
And Bucky comes up behind him and hands him a mug of coffee -- just how he likes it, in his favourite mug -- and Clint says, without thinking, “Fuck, I love you.”
There’s a heartbeat of time in which he doesn’t realize what he’s done. And then he realizes and it feels like an electric shock, a sharp edge of embarrassment and horror all wrapped into a burning ball in his chest.
“I mean,” he says quickly, fumbling and awkward. “I mean, I love the coffee. You make it just how I like it. Thanks, I -- it’s cold today, and -- thanks.”
“Sure, Barton,” Bucky says, drawn out and slow, amused, and when Clint shoots him a quick look, Bucky’s cheeks are pink even as he goes back to the counter, pouring another mug of coffee for himself. He always makes Clint’s first.
And Clint knows he fucked up. He knows that’s not what this is, that it was never meant to be anything more than -- than Bucky figuring himself out since being fucked over by Hydra, and Clint just. Being convenient. And clearly wanting him. And Clint never deserved to want more than that, and he certainly owed Bucky more than just taking more than that, without his consent.
But it’s been so easy. So sweet. So fucking domestic. Clint was delusional. He’d let himself relax into it like it could be more than what he’d always known it was. Like a real relationship could be that easy. Relationships are work and Clint doesn’t have the personality for the amount of work they take, he’s always known it -- his handful of exes have told him, again and again.
It feels like theft somehow, like he honestly thought he could just slip into this thing with Bucky, and take what Bucky was willing to give him, and turn it into something else.
Like Bucky didn’t have a million better options than sticking around in this farmhouse, with Kate and Lila and a herd of feral kittens, and Lucky, and Clint.
Bucky was here as a favour to Natasha.
And he deserved more than whatever sense of obligation was making him stay.
Clint’s hands are shaking when he takes a sip of coffee, and it’s so hot, it burns his lips and his tongue.
He’s desperately trying to figure out when he let his guard down, how he became so fucking stupidly happy without even realizing it. Because Clint learned a long time ago that being happy was just asking for the universe to fuck you over.
*
Natasha calls that evening and when her name pops up on his phone, Clint feels a creeping sense of dread.
But he’s a mature adult these days, so he answers it.
“Hey,” he says.
“I found Kate’s mother.”
Natasha always did like getting the painful stuff over quickly. Clint closes his eyes and sits on the edge of the bed and says, “In Korea?”
“No. That’s why it took so long to track her,” Natasha tells him. “She was married to a Korean, living in California, apparently he was an abusive asshole, and she ran away one summer. Joined the circus. Typical story. Met your brother. Got pregnant. Stuck around long enough to have the kid. Then she went home and her husband took her back to Korea, probably where he’d have more control over her. But she eventually left him. Got a divorce. And came back to America. She’s married to someone else now and living in a suburb outside Farmville, Virginia. She’s got two kids.”
“Okay,” he says, and he can hear Kate shouting, laughing, downstairs, and a series of thumps as someone chases someone else around the kitchen. “D’you have her contact info?”
“Phone number, email, address. Texting you all of it. What are you going to do?”
Clint has no fucking idea.
“Call her,” he says. “Maybe. I don’t know. She -- she came back to the US but didn’t look for Kate. Wouldn’t have been too hard to do, the circus was still around. She didn’t -- when Barney died, they didn’t even know who to look for.”
“I know,” Natasha says. “Everyone deserves a choice, though. Even you.”
“But what about Lila?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s actually an orphan. No family. Her mom was with the circus, no idea who her dad was.” Natasha pauses for a moment and then says, “Though if anybody ever thinks to look, they’re going to find a birth certificate on file that lists Barney as her dad and there’s no one left who can argue it or demand a DNA test.”
“Thank you,” he says, faint and distracted.
“Clint.” She sounds quieter than normal, like she’s choosing her words carefully. “You can ask Kate what she wants to do. Let her know there are options. That’s all you have to do.”
“Yeah,” he says, like it’s that easy.
She sighs. “How’s Barnes?”
And Clint starts to laugh, though it sounds strangled and edged with hysteria. “Fuck, Nat, I’m fucking everything up.”
Now she sounds a little smug when she says, “I thought you might like him.”
“Please, fuck, please tell me that’s not why you brought him here.”
“I brought him there because you needed backup,” she says, and he just knows she’s rolling her eyes. “And I thought he deserved to know he had options too. Everyone should be able to decide what they want their lives to look like, even him. And the only option that he’d been offered is following Steve into more battles. Steve’s got other people watching his back these days, and I thought it might help him to see there could be other places where he might fit.”
“What if -- what if he’s just fitting here because it’s. Easy. Convenient. What if he thinks --”
“Barton,” she says. “Nothing about you is easy or convenient.”
“I just don’t know if he actually ever had much of a choice,” Clint says, squeezing his eyes shut. “Because who would choose this?”
“Clint--”
Something breaks downstairs and suddenly the shouting goes silent and he just knows that Kate and Lila are trying to hide whatever they broke, like they think if he realizes what they’ve done, he’ll get as mad as Barney probably would have. They’re doing so much better but still looking out for anything that they think might convince Clint to send them away. He doesn’t know how to fix that, how to get them to trust him.
“I’ve gotta go,” he says, and Natasha is still arguing when he hangs up.
*
They drive to the city together the next day, the children sleepy in the back, Bucky quiet in the front and Clint tense behind the steering wheel. He’s still feeling off balance and sick with anxiety but Lila’s got a doctor’s appointment though she’s been feeling much better for weeks.
On the way back, both Kate and Lila fall asleep and halfway home, Bucky says, “You okay?”
And Clint knows what he’s got to say. He knows it. He’s been rehearsing the words in his head since that morning.
Still, he opens his mouth and no words come out.
Bucky’s still watching him, careful. “If it’s about the other morning,” he starts to say.
Clint cuts him off and says, “We’re doing so much better, Buck.” Bucky just tilts his head a little bit, still wary. “The doctor says Lila’s all clear from her infection and her therapists even say she’s started talking. And Kate’s doing much better too. The specialists think they might be able to enrol in school in January. And Nancy at social services says they’re just waiting on final approvals to make me their permanent guardian.”
“I know,” Bucky says, eyes still narrow, uncertain.
Clint tightens his hands on the steering wheel and stares straight ahead, swallowing hard. “It’s just,” he says. “We’re doing okay. You can go home if you want to.”
“What.”
Clint breathes. “It’s been… It’s been fun. But we don’t need you anymore.”
He hears all the breath rush out of Bucky’s lungs and it’s probably relief. Bucky doesn’t have to stay out of a sense of obligation anymore. It’s probably a huge weight off his shoulders.
When Clint forces himself to look, to check, Bucky’s glaring out the window and Clint can’t see his face at al.
“I’ll be gone by morning,” Bucky says, and Clint snaps his head around to stare out at the road and doesn’t say anything at all.
He doesn’t think he could find words if he tried.
*
Clint doesn’t sleep that night because it’s cold and empty in his room and he can’t remember the last time Bucky wasn’t sleeping beside him.
But it’s for the best.
Clint keeps repeating that to himself until dawn, and when he finally gets out of bed, Bucky’s already gone.
*
Lila and Kate are sitting at the kitchen table when Clint finally drags himself downstairs. He’s never really a morning person but this particular morning is worse than usual and it’s not just that Bucky’s not there to give him a mug of coffee.
He’s sore straight down to his bones, aching deep in his chest, and he knows the wound is self inflicted, just as he knows it was necessary. He was in too deep and he was too happy and he learned a long time ago that being happy is just asking for trouble.
Besides, it wasn’t fair to Bucky, taking what he was willing and able to give and trying to turn it into something else without his consent. Bucky’s had enough taken from him.
“Bucky said he’s super proud of us.” Kate sounds different -- her voice is thick like she’s been crying, but she’s not angry. He doesn’t know how to deal with her when she’s not angry and it’s too early to deal with talking about Bucky, but Clint just goes very still and closes his eyes. “He said -- he said he’s not gonna come back but if we ever need anything, we can call him or email him and he’ll always answer.”
Clint forces himself to turn around, slow and careful because his chest feels like it’s cracking wide open. He notices for the first time that there’s a massive plate of pancakes in front of them, all carefully shaped like kittens, and Bucky must have made them before he left.
Lila’s face is pale and streaked with tears and her eyes are wide and shining. Her sticky, syrupy hands are clutching a folded-up sheet of paper because Bucky must’ve left them a note.
Clint breathes in steadily and forces himself to look around casually -- not desperate or frantic the way he wants to be -- to see if maybe, maybe, Bucky left something for him too.
He didn’t.
“Clint,” Kate says, after he doesn’t answer because he doesn’t know how. “Why’d Bucky have to go back to New York?”
Clint has so many answers but none of them seem quite right. Bucky had to go because Clint liked him too much. Bucky had to go because it’s better now than later. Bucky had to go because he deserved better than getting tied down to this rotting farm house and children he never asked for. Bucky had to go because Clint was stupid and scared and had learned long ago that everyone leaves eventually and it’s best not to get too attached.
Instead, he says shakily, “Captain America needed him.” It’s a total fucking cop out.
“Fuck Captain America,” Kate snarls, and it’s a welcome change from the devastation in her voice before.
“We needed him more,” Lila says, small and lost and hiccupping in the middle.
“Yeah,” Clint agrees, at a loss, because there’s no arguing with that.
He’s not prepared when Kate finally gets up and throws herself at him, clinging to him hard and hiding her face in his shoulder. Lila’s there a moment later, hugging him just as hard.
“You won’t leave too, will you?” Kate mumbles against his shoulder, and Clint can’t help but feel he doesn’t deserve either of them, just like he hadn’t deserved Bucky.
He holds them tight and says, “Of course not,” and tries his best to keep his voice from breaking.
*
He waits until Lila’s engrossed in an episode of My Little Pony to catch Kate on her own. He finds her out behind the barn where he and Bucky set up an archery range for her, shooting arrow after arrow into a bullseye, tension in her back and shoulders. He sits on a hay bale to watch, and Kate doesn’t look at him until she’s out of arrows.
“We need to change his mind,” she says.
“Kate.” He aims for gentle, but his mind is fucked up today, it’s hard to focus. Being responsible for minors means having to push through his own bullshit to make sure they’re safe and happy and whatever else, though. Nancy at social services had been very clear on that point. “I’m not here to talk about Bucky.”
Her eyes go wide. “Is it Lila? Are you -- you can’t send her away.”
He winces. “I’m not -- I told you before, I wouldn’t. Family is more than blood. Besides, if anybody looks, they’re gonna find Barney’s name on her birth certificate, okay?”
She edges closer, sitting beside him on the hay bale, fiddling with the string on her bow. “What is it, then? Is it official? Are we yours? Do we get to stay? Is that why Bucky left, because you guys don’t have to pretend to be dating anymore to get Nancy to like you?”
Clint shoots her an exasperated look. “I don’t want to know how you know about that,” he says. “And Nancy says it’ll be another few days. But Kate. I want you to know that you’ve got choices. Options. You get to make up your own mind about what you want, so I need you to have all the information. I can’t let you go running off to San Francisco to live on the streets and I won’t let you go to a group home, but. But there is another option.”
She looks wary, tugging at the bow string and letting it roll off her finger. “What option?” Her voice is flat and toneless.
He takes a deep, steadying breath. “Natasha found your mom, Kate.”
She’s up off the hay bale in an instant, backing away and spitting, “No she didn’t. My mom left when I was a baby. She went back to Korea. She probably died and that’s why she never bothered coming back or calling or -- or --”
“She went back to her husband and ended up divorcing him,” Clint tells her, trying for soothing, calming. He doesn’t think it works. “She’s in Virginia now.”
“No,” Kate says, breathing hard. She takes another step back. “Did you tell her about me? Does she want to see me? Are you -- are you sending me away?” Her bottom lip trembles and she bites it hard.
“We haven’t talked to her, she doesn’t know we found her,” he says, reaching out a hand for her. She doesn’t take it. “And I’m not sending you away. I just need to know what you want me to do.” Kate presses both hands to her mouth and stares at him, horrified and on the verge of tears. She doesn’t say anything, so Clint says quietly, “You’ve got two brothers.”
She flinches, silent tears spilling down her cheeks, and when she moves her hands away from her mouth to scrub at them, she asks thickly, “Do I have to go stay with them?”
“No,” he tells her. “You don’t have to do anything. You can meet her if you want to. You can forget she exists if you want to. You can call her. Email. Send her a letter. Whatever you want.”
Kate huffs a little, her hands clenching into fists and falling to her sides as she looks around the farm, trying to control her crying. She glares at the house and the barn and the rolling pasture land, the crooked fence, the trees in the distance.
And then she asks, uncertain, “Can I -- can we go and see her?”
Kate hasn’t asked for much. It’s gotten to the point where Clint stopped asking her what she wanted or what she needed because he knew she’d never tell him.
So he’s entirely aware that he’s gonna do whatever he has to do to give her what she wants.
“Absolutely,” he says. “Just tell me how you want to do this and I’ll make it happen.”
Virginia is what, 11 hours away?
And a road trip is just what he needs to keep himself from curling up into a miserable ball with a bottle of whiskey and drinking until he stops feeling Bucky’s absence like a hole in his chest.
*
What Kate wants, apparently, is to pack up and drive to Virginia with Lucky and Lila to spend a week spying on her mother before making up her mind, and Clint promised her anything, so he packs a bag and they leave the next morning.
He’s worried it’s going to be a long, tense drive, and then, forty minutes in, Kate leans forward, pets Lucky who’s in the passenger seat, and says, “Don’t you miss Bucky at all, Clint?”
Clint flinches and tightens his grip on the steering wheel and realizes that it’s going to be longer than he thought.
“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat with it comes out roughly. “‘Course I do.”
“Did you tell him that? Maybe if you told him that --”
“It doesn’t matter how I feel,” he says. “Bucky gets to make his own choices, same as you.”
She leans back, settling in beside Lila again, frowning, and Clint thinks maybe she’s done. Maybe she’ll pull out her book or her tablet or something and leave him alone.
He’s not that lucky.
“You didn’t get a choice, did you?” she asks, meeting his eyes in the rear view mirror. “When you found out about us?”
“Sure I did,” he says, aware that Lila’s watching now too, her eyes wide and her face pointed and pale. He sounds shaken, tries to pour every inch of sincerity into his answer, because he needs them to believe him and he’s not sure how to convince them. “And I’d choose you two every time.”
Kate looks away, down at her hands, where she’s picking at peeling nail polish. “Just thought Bucky would too,” she says, soft.
Clint breathes through the tightening in his ribcage and keeps driving.
*
He’d given Bucky a choice and Bucky had chosen to leave.
Hadn’t he?
Eleven hours is a long time to think, and Lucky isn’t much for conversation. Kate and Lila had fallen asleep in the back after watching too many episodes of Dog Cops and now it was just Clint and the road in front of him and the odd bit of traffic.
He’s had a few energy drinks and his hands are shaking, his mind shaking too, and he can’t quite work it out.
Had he given Bucky a choice or had he made Bucky’s choice for him?
He’d assumed Bucky wouldn’t want a relationship. Which was a logical assumption. Clint knows what he’s good at and commitment isn’t it.
And he hadn’t wanted Bucky staying out of a sense of obligation. Because he thought they needed him. Because Clint was a walking disaster who got his stupid feelings all over the place without Bucky’s consent.
If Bucky had wanted to be there, he would have stayed.
Clint swallows hard and keeps driving.
*
“She’s pretty,” Kate says, sounding hollow and strange. She’s curled up tightly around Lila, both of their faces pressed to the window, watching Kate’s mother as she tries to rake the leaves in the front yard into a pile while two little boys keep throwing themselves into it and ruining her efforts.
The house behind her is two storeys, a suburban classic, all carefully painted shutters and a veranda twisting around the front with a porch swing. There are two bikes tipped over in the driveway alongside a red SUV, and someone’s already carved a lopsided jack-o-lantern for the front porch.
Her mother is laughing, the boys are laughing, and leaves keep falling around them like confetti. It looks perfect and wholesome and clean the way Clint’s farmhouse isn’t. The way Clint’s life isn’t.
And he won’t blame her if she wants this for herself. If she wants a stable family and two little brothers and a mom who does yard work and drives something sturdy. If she wants school in the suburbs and PTAs and volleyball teams and school dances and whatever the fuck kids who aren’t raised in the circus get to have.
Her mom probably has fresh baked cookies in the kitchen and a fruit bowl on the table and a spare set of towels special for guests.
It’s the perfect childhood Clint never had, a domestic sort of paradise he used to dream about while living in group homes or bunking in the trailer at the circus, and he would not blame her if she left him behind for it.
They’ve been watching her mother for forty minutes and Kate has made no move to get out of the truck.
It’s a nice neighbourhood and Clint’s just waiting for someone to call the cops on the beat up pick up truck parked across the street with a strange man in the driver’s seat and two kids acting suspicious in the back.
Patience has never been his strongest characteristic but he’s making an effort to be better for them, so he doesn’t push.
Finally, softly, Kate says, “Can we just go home?”
It’s getting dark and Clint’s glad she can’t see his face because he’s pretty sure it’s a mess. It’s just, she’s never called the farm home before and he kinda wants to cry.
“Sure we can,” he says, clearing his throat. “If that’s what you want.”
“They aren’t my family,” she tells him. “Family is more than blood. It’s you and Lila and Lucky and the cats.” She pauses for a moment and then says softly, “And Bucky too.”
Clint starts the car and pulls away from the curb and Kate doesn’t look back as they drive away.
*
They stop for the night in an upscale motel in Farmville, eating take-out burgers before turning the beat up TV on to Wheel of Fortune.
Clint pretends not to notice when he hears Kate crying in the shower, but when she comes out and sits beside him on the couch, he wraps an arm around her shoulders and hugs her. She doesn’t push him away, which is a victory as far as he’s concerned.
He makes himself a bed on the couch, sharing with Lucky, and drifts in and out of a restless sleep while the room flickers with blue light from the late night infomercials. He’s already feeling raw and the light reminds him of Loki and he’s pretty sure he won’t sleep at all, but he’s too lazy to turn off the TV. Or maybe he thinks he deserves the nightmares.
He jerks into full wakefulness at 3am, when Lila climbs up over his legs to curl up with Lucky.
It takes him a moment to shake off the hazy dreams, and he croaks, “You okay?”
Lila presses her face to Lucky’s fur. She’s wrapped up in a blanket like a cape, her mess of dark hair all that’s visible, and Clint reaches out to rest a comforting hand on her shoulder.
She doesn’t shrug him off.
It’s a day of fucking miracles.
Lila eventually turns her head, peeking at him through her curtain of hair.
“Maybe Bucky’ll come back if you tell him how much you miss him,” she says.
Clint closes his eyes. “It’s not that simple.”
She sits up, tugging her blanket up over her head like a hood, and says, “Everyone gets choices.” She bites her lip and then shifts, so she’s leaning against him, hiding her face in his shoulder and wrapping him up in a hug. “Bucky’s gonna choose us every time.”
It hurts. It hurts to breathe and it hurts to think and even Lila, warm and wrapping her arms around him like he’s the one who woke up in the night and needs comfort, even that isn’t enough to soothe the ache in his chest.
“Is he?” he asks, faint.
She pokes him in the side. “Maybe you should ask him.”
Fuck. Fuck, maybe Clint should.
*
New York, incidentally, is only nine hours from Farmville, Virginia, and when Clint mentions that over breakfast, aiming for casual but missing by a mile, Kate nearly chokes on her milkshake.
“We’re going to get Bucky?” she asks, wide-eyed. She’s been a bit moody this morning, withdrawn and quiet, and Clint’s grateful that something’s broken through it.
“I thought maybe, if you wanted, we could see if maybe…” he trails off because he doesn’t know what he’s hoping for here, and he’s pretty sure, even if he knew, voicing it out loud would jinx it. “But you said you wanted to go home, and if you’d rather --”
She points an ice creamy, accusing straw at him and says, “Don’t pull that bullshit with me, Barton. Home is you and Bucky. Doesn’t matter where.” She bounces a little and the cracked vinyl booth creaks alarmingly. “I wanna meet Iron Man.”
Clint frowns. “You want to -- why would you -- that’s not -- he is not supposed to be your favourite Avenger.”
“He’s not,” she says easily, finishing her milkshake. “But I already met Black Widow.”
“Rude,” he grumbles as she gathers her things and drags Lila out of her seat, heading for the door and clearly impatient to get on the road.
Clint tosses some bills on the table, grabs the extra burger he ordered for Lucky, and hurries after them.
Part of him wants to run all the way back to Iowa and forget he ever had this idea.
But he’s working on being a better person for Kate and Lila.
And maybe for himself too.
*
“You’ve got us living in a rotten farmhouse in the middle of nowhere when we could be living here?” Kate breathes when the elevator slides open and she sees the common room, all pristine and straight lines and granite and chrome, with views overlooking the city.
“The Tower is no place for raising well-adjusted children,” he tells her, distracted because the room isn’t empty -- he was hoping to find Bucky without having to deal with anybody else.
Especially Steve, who straightens up and crosses his arms over his chest when he sees Clint step out of the elevator. He’s got those judgy, disappointed eyebrows and that clench in his jaw and this was a terrible idea. Natasha’s there too, looking as surprised as she ever looks. He probably should’ve texted but that felt like too much commitment.
Clint should just. Turn and run. There’s no shame in running. He’s never been afraid to run from a battle he knew he couldn’t win.
Kate just says brightly, “You were raised in a circus and you turned out okay, so we’d probably be fine here. Besides, wasn’t Iron Man raised in a place like this? And he’s the most fine, so --”
Was that -- was that innuendo? Kate’s fourteen fucking years old, she did not just call Tony Stark fine. She wouldn’t -- she’s a kid and Tony’s old and -- this is a fucking disaster and they never should’ve come here.
And then he realizes that for all that she’s keeping up the chatter, Kate’s angling herself in front of him like she thinks she stands a chance of protecting him from Steve, who’s looming and looking pretty pissed off.
Thank god he didn’t let her bring her bow.
“Clint,” Steve says all that disapproval clear in his tone. “I don’t know if this is a good time.”
“Of course it is,” Kate says, her smile tight and sharp as she rests her hands on her hips. “Pretty sure Clint lives here, so. You gonna tell him he can’t come home?”
Steve blinks down at her, startled. “Of course not, I just --”
“You,” Natasha says, getting up gracefully off the couch and looking far more interested in Kate than she ever has before. “Do you even know how to throw a punch?”
“I’ll figure it out if I have to,” Kate tells her.
Natasha looks positively delighted.
This was a terrible, terrible mistake.
“Nat--” Clint starts, and Natasha just smiles at him, looking altogether too pleased.
“I’m glad you’re home, lastachka.” She presses a quick kiss to his cheek and says, “Steve, stop being protective, you’re scaring the children.”
“Not scared,” Lila says. She’s climbed up on a barstool, watching the entire scene with bright, fascinated eyes while shoving her mouth full of the popcorn Steve had been making when they walked in.
Natasha’s smile grows even more pleased than before and she says to Lila, “Of course you aren’t, mayska. Now, I’ve got to borrow your sister. She’s going to need to learn to throw a punch and take one if she’s going to spend her time defending Clint’s honour. You can come along, if you like.”
Lila hops off the stool, nodding wildly, cheeks puffed out with popcorn.
“Nat,” Clint tries, but he knows it’s a lost cause.
“Calm down. I’ll show them the gym, the range, your collection of bows -- all child friendly. You go talk to Barnes. He’s only been home a few days and his brooding is getting to me.”
She leaves, taking the children with her, and Clint watches helplessly before turning back to Steve, who looks just as disappointed as before.
“It’s not a good idea,” he says. “I know you probably mean well -- meant well, even, when you --”
“I didn’t,” Clint says and then he winces, running his hand through his hair and rubbing at the back of his neck. “I don’t think I meant well. I mean, I thought I did, at the time, but it’s been pointed out to me that maybe making other people’s decisions for them isn’t really the best option. You know? Maybe -- maybe I should’ve -- I just. I just want to talk to him. To clear some things up. To see if he -- if we --” He shrugs, looking as miserable and as dejected as he feels. “Just. Where is he?”
Steve studies him for a moment, still looking uncertain and reluctant.
“Please,” Clint says, helpless. “I messed up.”
“You really did.” Steve sighs, closing his eyes. “He’s in his room. And if he’s not there, he’s in the armoury. There’s a recon mission leaving tomorrow and he wants to be on it.”
“No he doesn’t,” Clint says, automatic, because it’s one thing he knows -- Bucky is tired of fighting.
“He says he does and I trust him.”
“He says what he thinks you want to hear,” Clint says, shaking his head as he heads for the elevator.
“That’s not fair,” Steve calls after him, but it’s not Clint’s place to explain it to him and he doesn’t want to anyway.
“Take care of Lucky, I’ll be back.”
*
At first, Clint thinks maybe Bucky’s not in his room. He knocks twice and there’s no answer. He’s about to give up and go check the armoury when the latch turns and the door opens slowly.
Bucky looks terrible. If he’d looked rough when he’d first arrived at the farmhouse, hunched in an old hoodie and trying to make himself small, he looks even worse now. He looks like he hasn’t slept, wrapped up in another beat up hoodie that’s too big at the wrist but too tight in the shoulder, his hair shoved into a messy bun, his eyes a little bloodshot.
He stares at Clint with no expression on his face and then says, quiet, “FRIDAY told me it was you but I didn’t believe her.” Then his gaze wanders from Clint’s face and he searches the hallway, frowning a little. “Did something happen with Kate and Lila? Are they?”
“Jesus,” Clint says. “No. They’re fine. They’re with Natasha. She’s showing them my bows or the range or something. Lila’s probably talking her into showing her some guns by now. Or, god, maybe they’re talking about Kate’s apparent crush on Tony, I don’t know, Bucky.”
Bucky’s eyes are back on Clint’s face now, and he looks wary and distant and Clint hates it. “Then what are you doing here?”
When Clint opens his mouth, he still has no idea what he’s going to say. “I made a mistake,” he tries, after a moment. “I never asked you what you wanted.”
Bucky still looks tense and wary, and he doesn’t invite Clint into his room. Clint figures he doesn’t deserve that and he shifts on his feet awkwardly as Bucky leans against the doorway, hands crossed over his chest.
“Would have thought I made that perfectly clear,” Bucky says, when Clint fails to find any other words to help his case.
“You -- you kept telling me how to talk to Lila and Kate and how to listen and I never -- I just didn’t listen, with you. I didn’t think -- I just, I assumed. And that wasn’t fair. To you, I mean.” He grimaces, wrinkling up his nose and closing his eyes and adding tentatively, “And maybe not to me.”
He only relaxes enough to open his eyes when he hears Bucky sigh. “You’re not making any sense,” Bucky tells him, but at least he just sounds tired, not angry about it. He turns and walks into his room, leaving the door open like he expects Clint to follow.
It takes a stupidly long time for Clint to gather up the courage to step in side.
“We went and saw Kate’s mom,” Clint says, when the silence grows awkward and sharp. Bucky’s in the kitchen turning on the kettle. Bucky’s eyebrows raise a little so Clint keeps talking. “She lives in Virginia and Kate wanted to see her before she decided if she wanted to know her or whatever.” He shrugs as he drops down to sit on Bucky’s couch perching awkwardly on the edge of it because he’s still not sure of his welcome.
“Musta been hard,” Bucky says, non-committal.
“The thing is. The thing is, she saw her mom and her half brothers in this perfect suburban life, where she’d have everything she’d ever need. And she still. She picked me, Bucky.” His voice cracks.
Bucky just frowns, pulling two mugs out of the cupboard, and then two tea bags. “‘Course she did,” he says.
Clint turns to face him more fully and confesses, “I just. Never thought anyone would pick me. Not -- not Kate. Not Lila.” He swallows, his voice feeling raw, and says quietly, “Not you.”
Bucky brings the two cups of tea to the table to steep and sits beside him, frowning. “Clint,” he says, but Clint just shakes his head and keeps talking.
“So I didn’t even ask. I thought you only wanted me for sex, because you were figuring out who you were without Hydra and without Steve and the Tower and if that’s all it was, that’s fine, that’s -- it’s not your fault I fucked it up and started thinking it was more than it was supposed to be. But I didn’t ask and I should have asked, but I just thought if I asked, it was just putting myself in this position where you could say no, so instead. Instead, I guess I said no for you.”
Bucky’s watching him carefully as Clint finally runs out of words, still sitting on the other side of the couch, distant in a way that burns in Clint’s chest. “What were you gonna ask?”
Clint opens his hands, holding them out palms towards Bucky, plaintive. “If you’d pick me. If you wanted to be with me. If you -- if we --”
“But you didn’t ask,” Bucky interrupts, frowning. “Because you thought -- what, I was just fucking around with you?”
Clint lets his hands fall to his lap and says, helpless, “I know what I’m good for.”
“I don’t think you fucking do, so why don’t you ask me,” Bucky snaps, so viciously that Clint can’t help jumping a little.
He stammers a bit and then swallows, takes a breath, and says in a rush, “I was wrong when I said we didn’t need you. We do need you. I -- I need you. And I want you. I like you. I -- do you want --” he gestures between them but loses his nerve, biting his lip and feeling stupid, off-balance. This was a bad idea, it’s always been a bad idea. They’ve always been a bad idea. Opening himself up for people to leave -- he thought he learned that lesson already.
“I thought I made it perfectly clear what I wanted,” Bucky says, still furious. “I wanted you. Not just for sex, though fuck knows, I wanted that. But for mornings. And movie nights. And those feral fucking cats of yours -- and those feral children. I wanted -- I wanted a family. I thought I had that.”
Clint flinches. “I didn’t think--”
Whatever anger he’s got seems to drain away and Bucky says quietly, “It wasn’t supposed to hurt.”
Clint can’t take it. He can’t do this. He’s just making it worse and he never should have come here, so he scrambles up off the couch and stumbles towards the door. “I’m sorry,” he says, desperate. Past tense means Bucky doesn’t want it anymore, even if he wanted it before -- Clint fucked it up and missed his chance and that’s just perfect Barton luck, isn’t it? Or maybe Barton stupidity. He brought it on himself. “I thought I was letting you go so you wouldn’t be stuck with us, I didn’t mean to -- I never wanted to hurt you, I just -- I know you don’t want that, with me, anymore, and it’s fine, I just -- I’ll just get Kate and Lila and go and -- and, fuck, they’ll probably want to see you before we go, they fucking miss you so much, but if you don’t want--”
“Clint,” Bucky says, soft, and right behind him. Clint had been fumbling with the door knob but he spins around when Bucky speaks, pushing his back up against the door. Bucky’s standing close, looking exasperated and tired, but there’s something soft in his jaw now, less angry. “You still never gave me a chance to tell you what I want.”
Clint feels like he’s going to fall apart if he doesn’t get out of here, but he stops struggling to open the door and holds himself very still and asks, “What do you want, Bucky?”
Bucky studies him for a moment, eyes dark, and then says, “I wanna help Kate with her homework, and teach Lila curse words when no one’s listening. I wanna go to bed with you each night and wake up before you to make you coffee the way you like it. I want to fix your crooked fence before winter because I kinda promised Lila a pony and it needs somewhere to live. I want to watch Dog Cops with you and Lucky and Alpine and Kate and Lila. I want what I already thought I had.”
Clint licks his lips and asks uncertainly, “With me?”
“You’re an idiot, Barton,” Bucky tells him and then says very clearly, “Yes, with you. I’ve been loving you for weeks now, sweetheart. I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t,” Clint says, barely more than a croak. He’s raw and hurting all over and still not quite ready to let go of the door knob.
“I get that.” Bucky smiles, small and rueful, and says, “Maybe we’ve both gotta do a better job of using our words.”
“Maybe,” Clint says. “I’m just worried that --”
Bucky doesn’t give him a chance to finish, just kisses him slow and sweet like he’s still not certain he gets to have this, until Clint forgets all about whatever it was he was worried about. Bucky cradles Clint’s jaw and holds him like he’s altogether more delicate that Clint thinks he deserves, but fuck, he’s willing to try to earn it.
“Come home with me,” he says, breathless and clinging to Bucky’s shoulders, when Bucky finally lets him breathe.
Bucky studies him carefully for a moment and says, “If you want me.”
“I do,” Clint tells him. “We do. You’re family.”
Bucky smiles, sweet, and Clint’s more determined than ever to keep this.
The end