Chapter Text
Both men sit, scarcely breathing as the second-hand ticks closer to the 12 mark, loud only because they're both so keenly zeroed in on it. Tic--- tic--- tic---
At 12 they both scramble, rifle parts clicking and cluttering against the table as the weapons are disassembled in near sync. Trigger guard, stock, rod, spring, bolt. It's only on the reassemble that their sync is lost and one man sets his assembled rifle down while the other struggles a few seconds longer with the last few parts.
“Ugh, okay fine--- two out of three.” Fingers stained with gun-oil and grease pass through an unruly mess of blond hair. Handsome features pinched with tired frustration. Voice pitched and begging.
Frank Castle chuckles low, good humor allowing. “That was already three, you're off your game, Barton.”
Clint's shoulders hunch, his glare hardhearted at best. “The guide pin keeps sticking.”
“That's because you never clean your weapon.” Castle chides, reaching out to take Clint's rifle to slowly disassemble again, reaching to pluck up the nearby discarded rag so he can detail it properly while the blond watches with a wilting scowl.
“I prefer my bow.”
“Somehow gathered that, doesn't mean a bullet won't do in a pinch.” He slides the weapon back over then sinks back in his chair, giving Barton a long once-over, in an effort to pin down the source of the younger man's restlessness. It's difficult to determine why the archer continues to seek him out as a distraction with the option of any of the others on site. They're not friends, or at least not in the way that would make any sort of decent Life-Time movie-- they had a healthy comradery, sure. Neither would let the other die in the field if they could help it, and they were both capable and competitive enough.
But it's not like they talked. So Barton really must have been getting desperate to continue to seek him out like this. Or lonely without his little red-headed shadow around. Christ but shifters were the worst when it came to moping.
Frank speaks again after the silence spans on for too long without an answer, lifting his chin. “Romonoff should be back soon yeah? What's it been, couple of months?” It's not a long time in the grand scheme of things, or at least not for him anyway. But you stop counting the days when you've been around for as long as he has.
“Six months, fourteen days.” Clint folds his arms across the table and slumps down on them, just about as pathetic as a puppy with its tail between its legs. Barton's just lucky that Frank's a dog person or else he'd probably mock the sullen behavior.
“So? What's the mission? Gotta be something big if they got half of Delta benched for this long.” He already knows the mission but asks just the same. Still, it seems strange that it had been so long, Barton and Romanoff were attached at the hip, and for the Director to keep them apart like this? He had to have known how codependent the two were, it was damn near cruel to separate them.
“I'm not benched.” Except he kind of is, or at least he hadn't been sent out to do anything especially useful, just a few missions with their newer human agents that felt more like babysitting than anything productive.
Frank just drops his chin in his palm and waits.
Barton slumps lower, his shoulder blades jutting as his forearms slide across the table. “They sent her back to Russia. Found some new guy they thawed out from cryo in one of Hydra's decommissioned bases. Super-soldier or something.”
“What? Like Rogers?”
“Except more murder-y. Nat thinks he might have been the Winter Soldier.”
Castle sits up, making a series of complicated faces, spreading his fingers across the table before settling on a scowl. Well, that was new information.
“So SHIELD wants to recruit him?”
“Sure I guess. If it's even him. The Winter Soldier hasn't been active since what, The 80's? He was rumored to be dead, right? Wouldn't you know?” Clint sounds a little uncertain as if he's just now questioning exactly what Frank does.
“Just because I'm a reaper doesn't mean I keep a compiled list of dead assholes.”
Barton breathes out a little 'oh' because yeah, sure, that makes sense... keeping track of the dead was probably a lot of paperwork or whatever.
“You worried?”
Clint blinks, inclining his head in a stupidly adorable blue-eyed look that's too much puppy and Frank can only silently curse that stupid canine half that makes it so, so, hard to pick on him.
“That he's more her style. Mysterious, dark, Russian... Murder-y?” Clint's words, not his, but still.
Clint just scoffs, lifting his head and rolling his shoulders back with a satisfying crack of his spine.
“No more than Micro's gonna drop your broody ass for that new hot tech that just joined Alpha.” Ugh okay, Frank gets it, opposites attract or whatever. Even if both their human partners could probably do so much better. He's not past admitting that.
“More like no one else can stand him and he knows it.” He grumbles, scratching at the stubble under his chin, pointedly ignoring Clint's sudden grin.
“You two are so married.”
“And you and Natasha aren't?”
Clint pulls a face and they both say “Work wife,” at the same time in an almost identical serious tone.
Just as Barton's phone nearly buzzes off the table, silent mode causing enough vibration that it makes the scatter of loose bullets dance about with a metallic clatter.
“Speak of the devil,” Frank says as Clint just stares at it with a sort of surprise like he thinks she might be calling because she knows they're talking about her. It gives him enough pause that he hesitates reaching for it long enough that Castle gets it first, swiping his thumb across the screen to answer.
“City pound, how may I direct your call?” Frank levels a smirk at Clint's affronted look, nodding his head slowly as he listens. “No ma'am, but I've got a stray here that you might be interested in.” He hands the phone over. “It's for you.”
Clint snatches it from his fingers, pressing it to his ear. “Hey Nat--”
“щенок.” She's teasing him but the fondness in her voice soothes some deep place in him, he can't even think to seem irritated. “There's been some complications, unexpected Hydra activity here at the Moscow Headquarters. I'm bringing James home early.”
He mouths the word 'hydra' after Natasha says it, then the rest clicks.
Wait. James? Home? That's not how this was supposed to go, Nat was just there to help the Winter Soldier adjust to his new place in the world, to coax him into working with SHIELD and their partnership with their paranormal branch. There hadn't been any talk of bringing him back to New York. Oh god, maybe Castle had been right, maybe they were pushing Natasha off as the Soldier's new handler, maybe they'd stick Clint with some newbie human because he was loyal and complacent and an easy first assignment...
“Uh... today?”
His panic must show on his face along with the following slack-mouthed silence because Frank knocks his ankle with the toe of his boot from under the table and reaches to take the phone back.
“Yeah, me again. You gonna need a pick-up?” He nods slowly, holding a steady dark-eyed gaze with Clint, keeping his posture casual, trying to ooze a sense of calm for all that helps Barton's spiraling thought process.
“No, he's fine, just his usual scatterbrained.” Frank bobs his head in a nod. “Sure sure, we'll be there.” It's another full minute or two of him just listening before he agrees with a “Yeah.” and hangs up, setting Clint's phone back on the table between them.
“James?” Is all Clint can think to say after a moment. Because they're on a first-name basis and--
“Hey.” Frank snaps him out of his thoughts. “It's fine, you're her partner, she needs your help. So let's go pick them up and worry about the rest later, huh?”
Clint nods slowly, reaching to drag his phone back across the table before tucking it into the pouch of his hoodie.
–
It's six hours later when they pull up to the edge of the B terminal tarmac at Laguardia. Strange that Nat hadn't flown back to HQ via jet (it's not like they didn't have the resources), but there hadn't been any official orders, no chatter about Natasha returning that day. Even the rumor mill was silent as they checked out through the lobby, the guards at the security desk waving them past without so much as an upward glance.
Clint isn't stupid. Maybe he's a little slow on the uptake sometimes, at least when he's in a position where he's allowed to feel comfortable, trusting-- like now, off-mission when there's nothing he should be concerned about. SHIELD has been his home for years, so why does he suddenly feel like he's unknowingly slipping beneath their radar?
Frank is drumming his fingers along the staring wheel of his van, big black and unmarked, certainly not something that he'd been issued.
“... what's weird, Frank? Something's weird here.” Clint questions after the silence stretches for a little too long.
“Lot of shit's weird here.” Castle exhales, squinting out the tinted window. “She said Hydra, right? Like as in real life god damn Nazi's Hydra?”
Clint nods slowly. “Yeah? So what? We stumble across Hydra shit all the time. They were elbow deep in the occult, right? And kicking their asses was sort of the whole reason SHIELD was formed?” Among other reasons, he should probably have done more reading and less just looking through the pictures in the archive.
“So you think they're gone?”
“Well... mostly, I mean sometimes you get a few neo-nazi vampire skinheads, or like some wackjob scientists that think they can crockpot up the perfect human specimen. Little fascist cults that don't know better than to keep out of shit they don't understand.”
“They were the first though, yeah? You said it, 'elbow deep in the occult.' collecting and cobbling together beasts and monsters, summoning things no one's got any right to. Ancient shit. Then one day it ain't fashionable to be a Nazi, so where does all that knowledge go?”
Clint shakes his head. “Fuck off Frank, SHIELD isn't---”
“You catch more flies with honey.”
“You're paranoid! Jesus.”
“Yes I am.” He agrees, sounding out each word with a slow drawl. “So's your partner.”
Clint's not about to have a panic attack, he's not. And he's sure as hell not about to question his loyalty because SHIELD's been good to him, a home and a purpose and a handful of other misfit friends. Huh-uh. This is all stupid and sudden, there's no way that they could be bad people because Clint can smell bad people, he's been around them his entire life...
He sits with his face in his hands for a solid minute before Frank speaks again.
“Game face on, Barton. Looks like Widow's coming in hot.”
Or as hot as a 'car chase' consisting of two shuttle carts, a baggage trolley and a handful of armed men in suits.
Clint instinctively reaches for his phone before it even rings, picking up to her gritting out-- “A little help?” Before he can even begin to even formulate where to start Frank has the van in drive and already speeding towards the action.
His bow case is in the back and he scrambles over the arm of the seat, snatching it up as his arm crashes against the inside of the van with a sharp turn, bullets clanking against metal near his head but the vehicle must be reinforced because they're not piercing.
He slides towards the back as they come to a stop, trusting Castle to have put him at a decent line of sight as he throws open the door, flicking open his recurve and tugging an arrow from his propped up quiver. “I changed my mind, bless your paranoia.” He calls back, aiming and letting loose an explosive arrow that stirs up a whirlwind of fire and smoke between the first shuttle and the wave of bullshit behind it.
Through the smoke he can make out Natasha and her shock of bright red hair, whipping in the wind as she pitches herself from the cart and continues on foot towards the van. Falling in-step beside her is the Winter Soldier, built solid under too much dark leather (at least in Clint's opinion), his own long hair tousled in a dramatic fashion and Clint can imagine some movie-esque dramatic scene, especially when they both turn and fire at the last few stragglers in suits that emerge from the billowing smoke.
“Let's go.” Natasha is suddenly at his side, using his shoulder to help haul herself up into the back of the van, the Soldier following suite shortly, but not before he turns his head and he and Clint make eye-contact for a moment that's long enough to feel awkward. Gray to blue, soot smeared and scowly.
Because. Because.
Oh no, he's hot.