Chapter Text
•°☆°•…•°☆°•…•°☆°•
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Clint tipped his head back against the thigh he’d been using as a pillow while he worked, shifting away from the soothing brush Steve’s fingers in his hair long enough to glance up at him.
“What, you whoring yourself out for money on Valentine’s day?” There was no bite to Steve’s words, only a- a loving sort of teasing, matched by his smile. He dragged his fingers through Clint’s hair one last time, hand stilling against his cheek. “It’s tradition, right? And when do we ever get holidays off?”
“Yeah, and it’s charity, so…” The annual Hawkeye Hearts-Day Charity Auction had been on his calender before he and Steve had really become official, and Clint was looking forward to it. He didn’t do all that many public events, so they were still generally fun. Plus, it offered an excuse to dust off parts of his old uniform and ham it up with Kate for a day; it was PR that he could actually enjoy, and he got to be openly armed the whole time. Win-win. “Sparkle Cupid returns, just without being twinky, I guess?”
“Twunky?”
“Hmm.” Clint picked his crochet back up, turning the chain with a little shrug. “That works.”
They lapsed back into silence, Clint slowly working back along the beginning of the afghan he’d just started while his boyfriend read. Lucky was sprawled under the newly-repaired coffee table, which apparently was not as load-bearing as IKEA had claimed, but which still made a decent place to rest a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice, and a pair of socked feet. Only feet. Clint chuckled to himself, getting lost in the soothing repetition of his work, listening to Steve’s soft, curse-laden muttering as he read through the news.
It was a good fifteen minutes before either of them said anything else, Steve peeking around the edge of his tablet to look back down at him “Are you really going to wear those shorts out in public, though? Because I vaguely remember a conversation about weaponized asses, and that might be more… public exposure than the world can handle.”
“It’s cute when you try to be low-key about that.” Steve’s possessive streak came through as petulance more than anything, and he was so awkward about it all that Clint couldn’t help finding it endearing. Plus, there were some things it was nice to know only Steve was ever going to see, again. Between mission misshaps and forgetting to close the blinds, anyone with an internet connection could find pictures of him naked, so that was hardly the point. Some things were just… special. Or traumatizing, in the case of other Hawkeye. “But, no; Kate is wearing them. Over black leggings, since she ‘can’t let those touch skin.’”
“Ah.” Steve chuckled. “She’s that scarred?”
“Apparently.” It wasn’t like Clint hadn’t washed them. Kate was just easily squicked out, or – as she put it – private. But she was a great Hawkeye, and he was glad they’d get to take a full day just to pal around, again. She’d finally settled into her new place, and, even if they weren’t both single this year, they could continue their other Valentine tradition of coffee and carbs before they spent the rest of the day on display like store-front mannequins. Although that, plus the auction and then the raffle winner’s reception would eat up pretty much everything except the last few hours of the day. Even if Steve had said, many times, that he was fine with it, Clint still felt guilty over not planning something for their first Valentine’s day as a couple. “You’re sure you’re not going to miss having a cutesy-gross date and shelling out for over-priced reservations?”
“Rigolleto’s doesn’t have a waiting list.” His boyfriend pulled a move from Clint’s own playbook and lightly booped the end of his nose. “And I don’t need a holiday to tell you I love you, sweetheart.”
“When did you get so smooth?”
Steve’s cheeks went just the tiniest bit rosy, but he only shrugged, looking back at the tablet in his hand.
Clint absently dropped his chain and hook onto the floor, freed hands reaching upwards, tugging Steve’s shirt and circling the back of his neck. “Bend down?”
“I’m not as flexible as you are.” Leaning forward, and undermining his own words, Steve set his tablet on the coffee table.
“Think we should test that theory?” He couldn’t have stopped the smirk pulling at his face if he’d wanted to, especially not from this angle, with its perfect view of Steve’s equally perfect, kissable face. “We’ve got four hours before I need to be out that door.”
“Probably not on the couch.” Steve was almost bent double, fingers tracing Clint’s jaw as he spoke. “I don’t know how much more it can take.”
“Good thing it won’t be doing the taking then.” Clint tugged him that last bit closer, burying his fingers in Steve’s hair as their lips met.
•°☆°•…•°☆°•…•°☆°•
This ranked among the weirder missions Clint had ever taken on. Phil had told them it would be a few days, and that he and Rodriguez would be leading teams in sweeps of what SHIELD believed to be empty Hydra nests, facilities so small that they hadn’t seemed like more than glorified storage areas, or maybe fortified bunkers. Clint and Yo-yo would be hitting three they had found scattered across the continent; ‘Tasha’s team would be doing the same sweep across four sites in South America. They’d been briefed together, but hadn’t been given nearly enough information, as far as he was concerned. Being told to report things that look weird was not helpful at all, especially not with evil organizations. Not even with their lives in general, but whatever.
This bunker had been tiny on the surface, but the basement was two stories, nearly the size of a standard family home, and completely trashed. “So is there anything in particular we’re looking for here?” Besides enough broken glass to fill a swimming pool?
Phil’s voice buzzed into his ear a moment later. “Anything that looks like medical equipment. At this point, anything that doesn’t seem standard, but you’ll probably know when you find it.”
“Gotcha.” That did nothing to help. Most of this first floor was too messed up to yield anything recognizable as equipment, anyway. The building appeared deserted, at least, and the security system had been deactivated when they got here. Who or whatever had been in this place, it probably wasn’t here, or coming back any time soon.
Clint made his way down to the second level, followed by Rodriguez, the other two members of the team – both too green by half, as far as he was concerned – would stay at the entrance. Now this? This might be what Phil had been talking about. Clint had never seen anything like it before. Thank fuck because, even with all he’d seen, this was disturbing.
“I see what you mean about knowing…” Clint stepped around what was left of pieces of a body, more interested in the thing on the other side of the room “So, what is this?”
“Is it functional?”
“I don’t know what it was supposed to do, but I don’t think it's going to be doing that anymore, if that’s your question.” Clint plucked an arrow from his quiver, using it to lever open the human-sized pod on legs, peering inside. There was something that looked like a headrest in there, along with what might have once been manacles. There was also something that resembled a place to – well, as sick as it was to think about – strap somebody’s face down, based on the position of the hooks on either side of that neck-rest thing. The view window in the barely-on-its-hinges door was at about face height, and the whole thing looked like it might have tipped back, at least before it got busted all to shit-pieces.
“Description?”
Clint had no fucking clue what it might have been used for, but he went with the best guess he had, at least based on things he’d seen before. “I’m looking at something that might be some kind of a decompression chamber that you could – I dunno – lock somebody up in? Whatever it was, it’s been smashed up like nobody’s business. The internal components are busted all to hell, lots of snapped wires. It’s knocked off its hinges, and…” Clint grimaced, backing away as something blue-white and tacky dribbled out of the door. “And it’s leaking something… Smells kinda like engine coolant for the quinjet, only worse.”
“Anything else?”
“Found this freaky metal recliner?” Rodriguez spoke up behind him, and Clint joined her, staring down at something that looked like Satan’s Barcalounger fucked a dental chair. Like the pod he’d spotted, it was smashed, pieces ripped out willy-nilly, but still recognizable as some sort of seat. Probably. Clint shrugged back at the other agent, who kept talking. “Somebody might really hate the dentist? Of course, if this is the chair they’re using, I can see why.”
“Right. We’ll have a retrieval team go through and sweep.” Phil sighed down the line, voice slipping into the semi-monotone he hit when things were going as poorly as he’d expected. “There are coordinates waiting for the two of you back at the quinjet for the next one. Hate to do this to you in January, but it’s in North Dakota.”
Yo-yo sighed beside him, shaking her head as they trudged back up the stairs, passing the two rookie agents that were going to be left to watch the site until the retrieval team got there. “I can see how we might have missed these facilities; they’re tiny.”
“Coulson? Are they all going to be like this?”
“We have reason to believe they might. Black Widow reported similar findings in Guayaquil about an hour ago. May’s team found one in Atbarah. Our first tip-off was from an explosion in an abandoned industrial park outside Perth.”
Clint slumped into the cockpit chair, strapping in as Rodriguez did the same beside him, engaging the engines, but opening up the main com-line. “Phil, can you just tell us what we’re dealing with?
“For now, let’s hope it’s a ghost, and Hydra’s problem, instead of ours?”
•°☆°•…•°☆°•…•°☆°•
Steve had been drifting, only half asleep for the last two hours since Clint got back from his assignment. The little kiss his boyfriend had planted on his forehead had woken him, but Steve hadn’t wanted him feeling guilty over it, so he’d laid there, listening as Clint stowed his gear and showered. Pulled in by those arms when Clint finally crawled into bed behind him, Steve had made a genuine effort to go back to sleep, but had settled for just laying still to let his boyfriend rest. The January morning was dark enough that he could at least doze until five, when he could safely extricate himself without worry of waking his bed mate.
Steve was not going to complain about spending the wee hours of the morning being the slightly bigger little spoon. With Clint breathing muffled snores against his hair, his leg hitched up over his hip, Steve’s only complaint might have been that they were reasonably clothed; Clint was even sleeping in a shirt. It would have been the perfect morning to start off with delays, especially with Clint tired enough to let Steve spoil him.
Well, it was almost perfect. Except, of course, for the presence of whoever it was stalking outside their window.
At first, Steve hadn’t been sure that it wasn’t just a strange waking dream. Then, he’d wondered if – maybe – it was someone who was supposed to be there, one of the regulars that knew the Bed-Stuy rooftop for a safe place to sit, take a breather, or patch up a work-related injury with the med supplies Clint kept stashed under the air handler. It couldn’t have been any normal prowler; they would have set off the alarms along the fire escape if they didn’t know where they were, and it wasn’t an easy climb. Steve had assumed it might have been Kate, who – despite literally citing them as her reason for moving out of the building – kept coming back to the apartment to Hawkeye it up with Clint, borrow the dog, and snag butterfly bandages out of the rooftop medical stash.
But, then, Kate didn’t smoke.
The person had lingered, moved from being barely visible at the edge of the bedroom window, and repositioned themselves to look in from the solar… Where there was no fire escape, which meant they were literally hanging on to the side of the building five stories up. They had been there for fifteen minutes, unmoving, outlined in the pale pink light from the chicken and waffle joint across the way.
Steve flicked his eyes to where his shield sat beside the bed. After it had rolled in front of the door enough times that both he and Clint had nearly turned their ankles – because the floor in a hundred year old building was never going to be level – Steve had taken to keeping the spare shield propped up in the bedroom. One of the tenants on the second floor had left a guitar stand when she moved out, and it worked reasonably well for the task. He was grateful, now, that it was within arm’s reach; their prowler was moving again, and quickly.
There was a light tap against the window, metal on glass, and Steve had just a moment to recognize an arm drawing back. He rolled, snatching the shield with one hand, wrenching Clint over him in the direction of the door. Steve loosed the shield just as a shining fist crashed through the solar window.
•°☆°•…•°☆°•…•°☆°•
Clint had already been sore from spending five days effectively sleeping in the cockpit of the quinjet; being literally thrown out of bed and down the stairs had not done anything to help that. His eyes traced the path of ricochet destruction as Clint sighed out his nose. The shield had gone out through the south-facing window, glanced off something that made it change direction, pinged the corner of the adjacent building, and then come back in through the westward solar window. The only way the path made sense was if the something had been in the air, sixty feet off the ground beside their window. That hardly explained how nearly all of that glass had wound up inside their apartment; Steve’s story of someone busting the glass in was all that could account for that.
He readjusted the bag of frozen peas against the left side of his face, seeing Steve droop even further beside him from the corner of his eye. The right one.The one that wasn’t swollen mostly shut. Clint sighed. It wasn’t the worst injury he’d ever gotten – either at home or by accident – but it seemed his boyfriend was taking it hard. Much harder than he was, anyway. Clint tried to blink, again. He only managed to strain the two small cuts on his cheek; they pulled with every word he spoke, but he needed to talk through this, to at least try to figure out what had happened. “So, it has to be someone that can punch through reinforced glass and climb walls? That’s a short list, and most of them are in the Kitchen.”
Beside him, Steve nodded, eyes glued to the carpet, shifting so he was seated as close to Clint as he could without touching.
“It wasn’t Double D; he’d have given me a heads up if he was going to head out this way.” Clint didn’t think Matt could have done it, but he’d never paired ninjas with zombies, either, so he’d had to ask. “Rand texted back from his vacation in Aruba, Jess was literally sending a drunk selfie as I hit the landing, and Luke is not a fan of heights at all, so… Peter?”
“No, not unless Peter bulked up and started smoking?”
Clint couldn’t imagine Peter Parker getting anywhere near a cigarette without going off on a diatribe about how unhealthy it was, so that ruled him out. “And they punched through the window? You’re sure?”
“No, Clint; I have no idea, and just broke all that glass on a whim.”
“Hey! I know you’re pissed, too, but you’re not the one who found out we had this prowler after waking up halfway down the stairs!” He turned to glare at Steve, only to make himself dizzy and set his cheek smarting. Clint sighed, starting to drop his head into his hand to look at the man beside him, only to realize that would mean leaning on the bruised up side of his face. He settled on resting the bag of peas on his hand, and settling his cheek on that.
Steve leaned further over his knees, voice cracking a bit as he spoke, “I… I didn’t mean to…” looking up at Clint through unshed tears. “I’m so sorry, Clint. I just wanted to get you clear of the windows… but I fucked up, and I hurt you…”
“Look, Steve, I’m pretty sturdy, and-”
Steve uncrossed his arms, head shaking as he cut Clint off. “I know that, but that doesn’t mean I want to be the one hurting you.” He looked back down at the floor, even as his hand settled beside Clint’s leg, fingers barely touching the fabric of his sleep pants. “Not ever.”
Clint reached for his hand, holding it in place as he scooted closer, leaving Steve’s arm behind his back. He pressed in against his boyfriend with a huff. Clint turned the bag of peas over, readjusting it to a cooler spot, and putting it back on his swollen cheek, slowly leaning into Steve’s side. “I know you didn’t mean to, babe. I do, really, but… Why you didn’t just wake me up?”
“I was trying to get you behind me, away from the windows…”
“Because I was a liability?”
“Because I care about you and didn’t want to see you get hurt.” Steve finally looked back at him, lifting his hand, gently stroking fingers along the unbruised side of Clint’s face. “I-I just wanted to keep you safe, sweetheart.”
Clint sighed, dropping his cheek onto Steve’s collar bone, eyes searching for that interesting spot his boyfriend had found earlier on the floor. “We fight people for a living, Steve; safe isn’t really a reasonable expectation.”
Steve didn’t say anything, opting to slip his arm up around Clint’s shoulders.
“That whole care thing works both ways, you know.” Tipping his head back, Clint did his best to look disappointed while holding a bag of frozen vegetables against his face. “Unless you thought I would like the idea of you going into a fight with some super-powered prowler alone?”
“I-…” Biting his lower lip, Steve sighed. “No, I know you wouldn’t, but-”
“I wouldn’t, I don’t, and it pisses me off that you didn’t think about that.” Clint didn’t want to completely bust his chops, but Steve needed to understand that he wasn’t going to put up with being babied. Yes, he might not have super strength, but he didn’t need Steve to protect him. They were in this together, after all. “Team effort, Steve.”
“Yeah. I… I’d be pissed, too.”
“Yeah, you would. And I’m probably going to stay pissed, at least a little, until the bruising goes down…” He knocked his elbow very gently into Steve’s ribs, purposely leaning closer as he spoke, “Hug might make me feel better, though?”
Steve wrapped his other arm around him, gently pulling Clint in, lifting him until he was effectively sitting in Steve’s lap. His boyfriend’s head came to rest against chest, Steve’s hands settling low on his back as he held him. “I’m so sorry, Clint. I am, I-”
“Hey. No more of that.” Clint shushed him, chin resting on Steve’s head. “I’m fine, you’re fine; it’s alright, Steve.”
He felt his boyfriend nod against his shirt, and felt a very slight, but growing, dampness there a moment later. Clint closed his eyes, hugging around Steve’s shoulders with his free hand. They needed time to calm down, anyway. This morning had been insane from the minute Clint woke up, and he’d been exhausted long before that.
The peas were starting to get soft by the time he pulled away, looking down at Steve’s blotchy, damp face. “I’m okay, Steve. I promise.”
“Yeah, but-”
“No buts.” It hurt to smile all the way, so Clint settled on a lopsided smirk. “Or did you forget the time I knifed you in my sleep?”
“That’s not-”
“Or the time I kicked you into the wall when you surprised me?”
“Clint, be reasonab-”
Steve seemed determined to keep arguing, just so that he could prove that he was at fault. Clint bit back the urge to groan; this was going to be the water heater discussion all over, again, if he didn’t put a stop to it, now. “And that’s not bringing up breaking the headboard.”
His boyfriend froze, eyes going wide a moment before they cut away from Clint’s. “That’s not the same at all. That was an accident, Clint.”
“Yeah, an accident that was still mostly my fault, and involved your skull.” And the most awkward medical check Clint had ever been to where he wasn’t the one getting a look-over. Even if the woman treating Steve had reassured them both that it wasn’t nearly so traumatizing for her, neither of them liked to bring it up. He wasn’t sure what else she could have seen that was worse, but Clint knew for certain that Claire Temple had earned herself a lifetime of favours for that trip. Just like he knew that – really – something like this was bound to happen, eventually, just by virtue of he and Steve being together. “That was an accident, Steve, and so was this.”
He shrugged, fingers rubbing small circles in the small of Clint’s back. “This wasn’t fun, though.”
“You had fun getting concussed?”
“The part before that.” Steve rolled his eyes with a snort, and Clint knew things were going to be alright. “And it was worth it, mostly.”
“Yeah, well, we’re both alive with nothing worse than some bruises and busted glass. That’s a win in my book.” He flicked the end of Steve’s nose, bending down to lean their heads together, at least on the one side he could. “But we are going to have to explain this to the team, and, ‘I fell down some stairs’ is the oldest excuse out there. Trust me, I’d know.”
“Clint…” The disappointment was real, though mostly self directed, judging by Steve’s expression. “That’s not funny.”
“Maybe a little? I am clumsy pre-caffeine.”
“You do trip a lot.”
“Yeah, just not this time, though.” Clint scootched his way off of Steve’s leg, staying cuddled up under his arm as he turned his gaze back to the destruction in the other room.
As bad as it might look, they’d been pretty lucky, all told. Firstly because Lucky hadn’t been home and asleep in there. Kate had been complaining about being lonely, so they’d agreed to let her hold onto the dog until she got some steady company. Although, given her… standards, it might be a while. Steve had finished his last oil piece a week before Clint had left, and it was downstairs waiting to go to the auction along with the others; they were only going to have to patch the walls, not completely repaint them. Steve’s shield had chipped a little piece of brick off the building across the street, but no one was likely to notice, and it hadn’t broken anyone else’s windows. And, most importantly, both of them were alive following an encounter where someone busted through glass that was supposed to be highly Steve-resistant.
Resistant being the operative word. The building was too old to take glass that was actually dense enough to be Steve-proof, at least not without crushing the wall or turning the south side apartments into habitable greenhouses. Still, it would have taken some serious power to get through that glass, someone enhanced at a minimum, if not an actual explosive. It didn’t make sense, really; there were easier ways in, the front door being the obvious choice, and – according to what Steve remembered – their attacker had been out there for a while. That was actually what worried Clint the most. “Is there anyone – I mean, anyone specific – that you can think of that would be stalking either of us? That would be capable of doing that?”
“Stalking?” His boyfriend sounded as confused as he felt.
“Yeah; stalking. You said they were out there a while, and that doesn’t make sense, otherwise.” Sometimes, Clint found it easier to think through things when he was moving, even if it was just fiddling with an arrow, but he didn’t have one within reach. He gently extricated himself from Steve’s embrace, pushing up to standing. Clint tossed the mostly thawed peas back and forth between his hands, eyes flicking over the mess in the solar as he paced a line at the foot of the bed. “Anybody that wanted us dead would have had an easier time of it just hitting the building at a distance, and it wouldn’t have taken all that time to recognize we were both in the apartment. If this prowler wants us dead, they want something out of us first. And assuming it was a fist they put through the window-”
“It was shiny, but it was definitely a fist.” Steve nodded emphatically.
“Then they’re either enhanced, or not human. After this place got hit the first time, I made some upgrades.” Clint crossed to one of the still intact windows in the bedroom, gently rapping it with his knuckles. “You could break it with a punch, but otherwise, someone would have needed some pretty heavy ordinance.”
“So possibly a fist-shaped grenade? Wonderful.”
Clint snorted, looking back over his shoulder. “Well, on the bright side, at least we’re not due to get snow for a few days, so there’ll be time for repairs.”
As if he’d summoned the cold by speaking about it, a gust of wind whipped in through the open door to the solar, bringing a few of the previous day’s flurries drifting in with it, further chilling the bedroom. Clint curled his bare toes against the carpet, fighting a shiver.
“Still a bit of a draft.” With that, Steve got up and shut the door, blocking off their view of the minor disaster in the solar. He pulled the crocheted block-blanket from their bed, draping it around Clint’s shoulders, leaning in to hug him from behind.
Clint snuggled back into him with a contented sigh. “Glad one of us runs warm.
“Do you need a new bag of peas?”
“I’m thinking of upgrading; maybe to something classy, like the bell pep-”
There was a swift series of double knocks on the door, followed by a familiar, slightly muffled voice echoing up to them. “Guys, I’ve got that key, but I’m not as brave as Bishop, so could one of you let me know something? I sent a few texts on the way, but… Ya know, there’s that Wally Waffle place across the street. I can just…”
Steve made it down the stairs faster, Clint taking his time. By the time he had shuffled to flop onto the couch, his boyfriend had already yanked Sam inside.
“Sorry, Sam, we got busy.”
“Um…” Wilson looked over at him, brows raised as he took a step back toward the door. “How busy?”
“Somebody climbed the wall and punched through our window.” Better Steve said it than him; he’d actually been awake to see it happen.
Clint, on the other hand, was beginning to get a no-caffeine headache on top of his punched in the face by stairs headache, and not really in the mood for any more talking. Or even much more thinking, really. Still, if Sam was here, that offered a few options. Clint turned, leaning over the arm of the sofa as he spoke. “Yeah. We haven’t been outside, yet. I thought about calling you and Nat to help with a sweep, but since you two- Wait, is she still bringing things up?”
“I actually thought she might be here.” Sam shook his head with a frown. “It’s been radio silence since we hung up before her flight back last night.”
“Huh…” Clint had used his phone to take pictures of the wreckage and send off a few messages, but he hadn’t really looked at it since. He fished it out of his pocket, unlocking it with a single swipe. Natasha had sent him a message that overrode the lock. Not an emergency, but one step down.
Widow
[411 000 669 669 000 641]
“Sam? Something’s up.” He was already dialing as Steve and Sam joined him, Steve settling next to him, Sam balancing on the arm, all three of them leaning over the phone.
Natasha’s face popped up on the screen after the first ring. She looked tired, unsurprising, since she’d been doing the same sort of missions Clint had for most of the week. Her hair was flat on one side, and frizzy on the other, which usually only happened if she fell asleep over a table, and her focus was off just enough for him to know that – while he had slept only a little during the past week – ‘Tasha probably hadn’t slept at all in far too long. Again. She blinked, angling the phone, so that just the edge of Phil Coulson’s face could share the screen. “Hawkeye-” Natasha stopped short, brows slamming down, nose lifting in a grimace. “What. Happened?”
“Steve threw me down the stairs.”
“… I’ll be right there.”
“It was for a good reason!” The last thing he needed was his tiny partner trying to kill Steve, too. “We’re mostly fine. I can see Coulson; what’s wrong?
Phil leaned further into the frame. “Would you believe me if I said it was a ghost?”
“According to Steve, a man climbed our building, watched us sleep, and then punched through the window… So, sure; why not?”
“Damn.” Natasha looked vaguely ill. She slid out of frame, having handed the phone off to Phil.
He offered a smile, the wan, sickly one that only ever meant something terrible was happening, and that they needed to be involved. “It… might be better if you all came in so we could discuss this.”
•°☆°•…•°☆°•…•°☆°•