Chapter Text
Clint wakes up tied to a chair. Which, honestly, is better than he expected. He didn’t expect to wake up at all.
Wherever he is, it’s warm. He can’t see past whatever’s been tied over his eyes, but he feels warm.
He’s barefoot, though. Which isn’t how he left himself. He rubs the bottoms of his feet against the woodgrain of the floor, trying for small, subtle movements that won’t alert whoever has him.
He can smell what he thinks is woodsmoke, although it’s been a long time since he was anywhere near a fire that wasn’t burning down a warehouse or melting a van with inconvenient evidence inside. And he can hear, faintly, the crackle and pop of a banked fire.
They took his shoes and blindfolded him, but they didn’t take his hearing aids. Interesting.
Before he can puzzle out the implications of this arrangement, a sharp, sudden creak from the floorboards alerts him to the fact that someone is in the room with him. He goes still, barely breathing. He waits.
The approaching footsteps are slow and deliberate, heavy enough that Clint can feel the impact of them. They stop directly next to him, and he can feel the warmth of a body all along his right side.
He was supposed to die in the snow, where Trickshot left him. So whatever this is, whatever happens to him now, it’s a gift. It’s a bonus round. He’s grateful; he is. He just wishes he knew what the rules were.
He doesn’t flinch when the fingers come to rest on his neck. He holds still, stays quiet. Tries to pretend he’s still asleep.
But his heart is moving rabbit-quick in his chest. He’s learned to control everything surface-level, but he’s never had any kind of grip on his heart.
“Yeah, thought you were awake.” That’s a man’s voice. Clint figured it would be when he felt the calloused fingers brush across the skin of his neck.
It’s too bad, really. Clint’s particular brand of haplessness plays well with women. Sometimes, it makes them want to look after him.
“Yeah, hey,” Clint says. He clears his throat. “Hi. Good…morning? Afternoon?”
“Hm,” the man says, not sounding the slightest bit interested in humoring his fishing attempt. “Did someone send you to find me?”
It’s just Clint’s luck. He survives an attempted murder, survives getting dumped in the woods in the middle of a particularly inhospitable patch of Russia, and then he gets found by some criminal or dissident hiding in the forest.
Who knows who’ll find him bleeding out in the woods when this guy is done? Probably whatever got those hikers from the Dyatlov Pass incident.
“What’s that accent?” Clint asks, instead of anything likely to ingratiate himself or improve his situation at all. “I’m still in Russia, right? You don’t sound Russian.”
“You have an American driver’s license,” the man says. Which is true, but it’s not like it’s actually Clint’s name or face on that ID. “I thought this would be easier.”
“You went through my pockets?” Clint doesn’t even remember what was in his pockets, but it’s discomforting to know that, whatever he had, he doesn’t have it anymore.
“I thought you’d been sent to collect me,” the man says. “And then I noticed you were bleeding.”
He had been bleeding. Pretty badly, from a series of cuts on his forearms and back. Defensive wounds, mostly. Even when he’d turned on Trickshot, he hadn’t had the stomach to really hurt him. Trickshot hadn’t shared that weakness. Or maybe he was just never very attached to Clint. Maybe it’s not a betrayal if there was never any loyalty at all.
He tries to lift his hands to gauge how bad his cuts are, but his wrists press up against the rope, and he gets nowhere.
He could untie the knots, probably, if he could find them. And he’d be able to find them, if the man wasn’t standing right there.
“Don’t,” the man says, and his hand lands on Clint’s shoulder.
Clint flinches this time. Well, he wasn’t expecting it.
The hand disappears immediately.
Clint swallows, tries to get his thoughts in order. He needs to find some way out of this, but a way to where? Where can he go? Where’s left for him?
He’s an orphan and an international criminal, who was just dumped bleeding and alone in the frozen woods by the only people who cared about him. Who were supposed to care about him, anyway.
There’s nobody in the world who’d take him in. Except the wardens of all the prisons he’s supposed to be in right now.
“Hey,” the voice says. But he sounds tinny and unfocused, like he’s speaking through a tube from the other side of the room.
Clint tugs on the ropes, kicks his feet against the floor. He’s supposed to be dead. Nobody’s coming for him. If Trickshot knew where he was right now, his only regret would be that this guy isn’t killing Clint fast enough.
“Shit.” There’s a flurry of movement around Clint’s face, and he jerks away, tips his chin down, tries to calculate how to take a hit when he can’t see it coming.
“I’m going to take this off.” There’s more movement, hands on his face, and it makes no sense that he can breathe easier once the blindfold is gone. It’s not like there was ever anything over his mouth or nose.
But he can. He can breathe easier.
The man in the room is beautiful. That’s the first thing Clint notices, because he’s never had a single ounce of self-preservation.
He’s blue-eyed and dark-haired and beautiful. Looks uneasy, a little anxious, like Clint’s less of a hostage and more of an unexpected and unwelcome houseguest. He looks Clint directly in the eyes for all of a second before he looks at the floor, moves back.
He’s missing an arm. He could still probably throw Clint across the room.
“Look,” the man says. He swallows, glances up again to catch Clint’s gaze. “I’m not here to hurt you if you’re not here to hurt me.”
It’s strange phrasing, has an odd sort of fatalism to it. Like what they mean to each other is decided by outside parties. But Clint doesn’t know any outside parties still interested in anything he’s doing.
When he looks down, he sees someone wrapped bandages around his arms, put him in a flannel shirt that isn’t his. He’s been tied to a chair that’s been moved from its table, relocated next to the fire, where it’s warm.
“Yeah,” he says, looking up, catching that brief, bright bit of blue before the man’s eyes dart away again. “I’m definitely not here to hurt you.”