Chapter Text
When Clint Barton first meets Bucky Barnes, there’s a flash of recognition in Clint’s eyes, but none in Bucky’s. The introduction is kept short and Steve does most of the in between talking. There’s none of Clint’s normal jokes and casualness, and Bucky’s not very talkative these days anyway. After explaining that Bucky would be staying in the tower along with the rest of them, Steve leaves Clint and Bucky to get to know each other.
Except Clint doesn’t say anything, and if he’s not prompted, then Bucky doesn’t feel the need to say anything either. Clint mutters an awkward, “I’m just gonna—” and shuffles out of the room.
The first time Clint Barton and the Winter Soldier meet, they’re on a rooftop of a building in a small province in Belarus. Clint’s arrow is drawn and aimed through the seventh storey window of the building opposite; the Winter Soldier’s handheld automatic is trained to the slight left of Clint’s sternum.
“Leave,” he orders, his voice husky and muffled through the mask he wears covering the lower half of his face. There’s a touch of some sort of European accent to the word, but like it’s been influenced, not inherited.
Clint draws his arrow back and drops both it and his bow to ground, holding his hands up, palms up, in surrender. His eyes flick to his mark in the other building who’s still sitting at his desk, just waiting for Clint to complete his kill order mission.
“You working for that guy?” Clint asks, nodding at his target over the Soldier’s shoulder. The Winter Soldier doesn’t blink or break his gaze at all, far too trained – or insensitive – to fall for that trick which played on the weakness of human curiosity.
“Step away,” he says, in the same emotionless, commanding voice. For a second, his focus shifts, eyes darting to the right, but unseeing, as if listening to something Clint couldn’t hear, and it’s only when the Soldier raises his hand to fix his earpiece that Clint realises he’s taking orders from someone.
“Move. Now,” the Soldier says, taking a step forward which brings his gun that much closer to Clint’s chest.
There’s commotion in the other building that Clint can see over the Soldier’s shoulder, and knows that his game is probably up anyway. Dammit. He needed that money.
But he’s acted too slowly for the Winter Soldier who’s already received his kill order. There’s a split second when Clint notices the tensing in the wrist of the Soldier’s right arm holding the gun, and knows what’s happening. The range is too short, and Clint’s human reflexes are too slow. Two shots fire and the bullets hit one after the other, embedding themselves deep into Clint’s chest.
Clint’s knocked backwards by the impact, blood already seeping in steady streams through the open wounds and he’s drifting into unconsciousness by the time he hits the ground.
The bullets miss his heart. Barely. The Soldier’s disappeared by the time Clint’s backup arrives.
Clint was a smudge on the Winter Soldier’s near perfect kill count. If the Winter Soldier had orders to have you dead, you died. But not Clint. He’d escaped – granted, with major damage to his respiratory system and muscles tissue, but he’d lived even when the Winter Soldier had been ordered to not let it be so.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” The question’s been bugging Clint ever since he’d found out the Winter Soldier existed. That he turned out to be Captain America’s best friend and Clint’s childhood hero was indicative of the fucked up world he lived in that he had long since gotten used to.
Bucky’s sitting on his couch in front of his TV watching a repeat of the News he’s already seen that morning.
“What?”
“You had possible the easiest kill shot in the wold, and yet you didn’t take it. It wasn’t a mistake that I survived.”
Bucky’s memory is still blotchy at best, but he knows what Clint’s talking about. It was a memory that had come back to him after a few weeks of being in the tower, a few weeks after Steve had introduced Clint to him.
“I’d been four weeks out of cryo tracking you down at that point,” he says, his voice stable like he’s telling a story he’d maybe practiced before in his head. He stands and walks around the back of the couch to Clint, and crosses his arms – clad in long sleeves – over his chest. “That’s usually how long I go – how long I got to go before they put me back in.” Where in was, he didn’t have to say. Everyone knew his story by now. “The longer I spent out of it, the more will I get to defy my – their orders.”
“So you made the choice not to kill me?”
“Essentially.”
“Huh.” Clint chews at his bottom lip, and then shrugs. “And I thought it was because you took one look at me and realised you couldn’t kill a man this attractive.”
Bucky’s eyes narrow in on Clint, taking in the bandages taped over his nose, and eyebrow, and the messy scruff of his hair that looks like it’s seen a comb never.
“…It’s not a good day for me, today,” Clint adds, seeing the look Bucky’s giving him.
“Is any day a good day for you?”
“Point.”
“I ordered pizza.”
“To watch the News?”
“Yeah.”
“…count me in.”