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The first time the Winter Soldier meets Clint Barton, it doesn’t go well.
“Who the futz…” Barton looks at Captain Rogers — Please, Buck, call me Steve. “Look, Cap, I said I’d rent the place to you, not…whoever this is.” Barton’s whole face twists, scrunches up distastefully. The Winter Soldier thinks that might be regret. “Sorry, can’t do it. Offer’s not open to strangers.”
Rogers doesn’t like that. He shuffles in place, shifts his weight from foot to foot. “He’s not a stranger,” Rogers says, oddly insistent for all his tension. As wound tight as he is now, the Winter Soldier suspects a show of force is coming, though he allows Rogers has been reluctant to follow through. “Besides, you would be renting it to me.”
“You two living together?” Barton sounds suspicious. The Winter Soldier reassesses Barton as a threat.
Rogers makes a sound that isn’t laughter. The Winter Soldier couldn’t say what it is. “Something like that, yeah. What do you call it now? Life partners?”
Barton chokes. On nothing. The Winter Soldier makes note. “I don’t think you mean—”
Rogers just looks at him. “I know what I mean.” Then, “Bucky and I need a place to stay, maybe lay low for a while. We’d like to do that in Brooklyn. Natasha said we should try here.”
The Winter Soldier doesn’t understand any of what goes on between the two of them then, not the steady way Barton stares at them or the way Rogers grips his hand, but he knows he doesn’t like it.
After too much silence, Barton says, “So you’re vouching for him.”
“Buck’s the closest thing to a brother I’m ever going to have.”
The sadness that sparks is overwhelming, almost too thick to breathe through, and it doesn’t stop until Rogers takes him out of the building.
So no, he doesn’t like Barton in the beginning.
.
It doesn’t get any better when Barton makes them move units.
“You’re kicking us out,” Rogers says carefully.
Barton makes a face. “I’m moving you upstairs. Simone and the kids are coming back next week and I promised them one of the good units when they get here.” Barton looks shifty. The Winter Soldier maintains vigilant silence. “You know, one of the ones without bullet holes.”
Barton’s discomfort is palpable.
“Bullet— Hawkeye, why are there bullet holes in your building?” Rogers starts, but Barton looks away and Rogers lets it drop even before Barton waves the questions away. Something else not to talk about, the Winter Soldier decides, and he’s not at all sure Barton’s secrets will be any different than his own.
“You’ll be fine. It’s a two-bedroom, right down the hall from me in case you need anything. There’s some minor surface damage, mostly wear-and-tear—“
“And bullet holes, apparently,” Rogers adds, and Barton nods agreeably, just keeps talking.
“And those, right. But, you know, once we get in there with a bit of what’s that stuff called, that hole filler stuff? Once we get in there with that, the place’ll be fine.”
And maybe once they get upstairs and the Winter Soldier has a look around, he doesn’t mind the new unit so much, but he isn’t sure what to do with the way the sight of those stray bullet holes make him feel any more than he knows how to handle the strange sounds coming from down the hall.
.
Rogers is exceptionally patient with him. Talks like he’s Bucky, tries his best to hide how much it bothers him to be called Rogers, tells him stories of a childhood he can only barely imagine and does his best to behave as though nothing much has changed.
“I’m with you to the end of the line, kid,” he says sometimes, and his smile’s always so sad when he does, and the Winter Soldier knows something’s changing by the way he doesn’t always see that as a weakness to be exploited.
Sometimes, though, Rogers pushes too far, finds and exploits a weakness in the Winter Soldier’s resolve, and he can’t help how he reacts.
The way he pushes Rogers away, the flat, absolute denial he uses more and more simply because he knows it’s the best way to make Rogers hurt enough to back off. He needs his space sometimes, needs the relative security of just being the him in his own head, and while he thinks Rogers means well, Rogers sometimes makes that hard.
He regrets that sometimes when Rogers has to leave.
Rogers never goes away for long, not really, but it always leaves the Winter Soldier time enough to think.
.
There is thumping at the door. Banging. Hard. And voices. One voice. A stranger. Alone and pounding against the door.
The Winter Soldier’s alone, too. Rogers is out — “Stay right here, Buck, I just need to pick us up some cereal, okay?” — and he is unlikely to return soon and the Winter Soldier has promised not to open the door, ever.
“Simone, girl, you back? It’s Aimee,” the stranger says, interspersed with thumping, and the Winter Soldier stands two feet from the door, stares hard at it and tries to will Aimee quiet.
He wonders if Simone is the one who put the bullet holes in the cabinets. If this Aimee helped.
“You in there?” the thumping slows, then stops. “Guess not. Huh. Could’ve sworn I heard—“
The Winter Soldier doesn’t hear the rest. Doesn’t think he needs to. If the woman on the other side of that door is potentially responsible for the previous gunfire in his current quarters, the least he can do is assess the threat she presents, both to himself and to Rogers.
He will admit he is less concerned for his own sake than he is for Rogers.
He opens the door. “I am not Simone,” he says. His voice sounds rough to his own ears, unfamiliar and stiff.
She spins around, bright pink hair and enough decorative metal through her features to be distracting. “Who the fuck are you?”
She takes his face in. Drops her gaze to his arm.
That’s when the yelling starts.
.
“No, Cap, I’m saying you can’t just leave him in there alone while you’re off futzing around the city,” Barton says when Rogers is back with his cereal. Barton is not happy.
“He was fine,” Rogers counters. Rogers is not happy, either, but he seems more unsettled than upset. “If she hadn’t panicked at the sight of a little prosthetic like that, there wouldn’t have been a problem.”
Barton’s whole face turns hard. “This is not okay,” he says, tight. “This is the exact opposite of fine. Your…The Terminator over there scared one of my people, and I know you don’t get this because you weren’t here but that cannot happen again. Ever.”
“Barton, be reasonable about this.”
Barton makes that tight non-laugh sound. “You’d be out already but Aimee pointed out the potential benefits of having a futzing cyborg on our side if we need one.”
“That is not going to happen,” Rogers says, completely serious, and for the first time since that face-off on the helicarrier, the Winter Soldier’s reminded why Rogers started off as a target. “Bucky isn’t some human weapon you can point at will.”
Privately, the Winter Soldier disagrees. Rogers has such faith in him, this Bucky that seems to mean so much to him, but Rogers is the only one who does. The Winter Soldier still can’t even use the name yet, still can’t make it feel like it fits.
“If that’s true, you should probably get out now,” Barton says, all the fight draining out of him. “Everybody in the damned building is all in, Cap. That’s why they’re here.”
Something about the way Barton says that makes the Winter Soldier feel like Rogers does sometimes, like maybe Barton’s been stretched too thin, too, in his own way.
He thinks about the woman he’s met, how scared she’d been at the sight of him and how she’d argued on his behalf anyway, how she’s clearly trying to keep him around.
The Winter Soldier can’t say he’s all in yet, whatever that means to these people, but he thinks he’s not opposed to finding out.
.
There’s a new arrangement with Barton the next time Rogers needs to leave the apartment for something; he finds that out when it comes into effect.
“It’s just for a little while,” Rogers says, practically pleading for the Winter Soldier to go along. “Barton just wants someone to stay with you so you don’t get into any trouble.”
Rogers seems conflicted. The Winter Soldier couldn’t say why, not before, but now he thinks maybe he can. “No trouble,” he says, because he understands now, he’s seen what happens when he interacts with the people in Barton’s building and he doesn’t want to go through all that again. He knows what’s expected of him.
Rogers comes as close to frowning as the Winter Soldier’s seen him in a while. “I know you aren’t, Buck. We both know you aren’t going to hurt anyone. I promise, we’ll get out of here just as soon as I find somewhere else.” Then Rogers looks up at him, all laughing eyes and slight, crooked smile, and it’s so familiar, his place in the timeline fogs. “Kinda hard to lay low for long when I’m an action figure and you’re shinier than a Buick.”
Despite himself, the man who’s been the Winter Soldier smiles back.
Feels a little less like the Winter Soldier than he has.
.
Barton comes to the door in baggy pants and a shirt that smells like every meal he’s had all week; he’s got the heel of his palm dug into one eye and an unsteadiness to his movements that makes him seem half asleep.
Dangerous, being this vulnerable around potential threats. The man who’s been the Winter Soldier has to rethink his assessment of Barton’s potential.
“Wha?” Barton manages, kicking the door open and pulling back. “Aw, Cap, no. You got any idea what time it is?”
“You said we should come over when I was ready to head out,” Rogers says, sounds almost stung, defensive in ways he isn’t usually.
“Didn’t know you meant dawn,” Barton mutters, and he’s turning his back on both of them, heading for the messy kitchen counter as though he’s on a mission.
Rogers glances over, grins at the man who’s been the Winter Soldier in that way that makes him want to feel like Bucky someday. “You two have fun, okay? Behave yourselves.” He’s kidding and the man who might once have been Bucky knows it, but knows, too, the concern Rogers isn’t entirely hiding. You going to be okay?
And maybe he really has been Bucky Barnes in another life but he’s not sure about it, not like he’s sure he’s been someone who could slaughter his way through the building if he felt the urge, so yes, he feels sure he is going to be just fine.
.
He’s not sure what he expects once Rogers leaves them alone but a few minutes standing awkwardly by the door while Barton fights some sort of pushback from the coffeemaker isn’t it. Things don’t improve until Barton’s put a serious dent in his coffee pot — pot, not mug, and the man who’s been the Winter Soldier isn’t sure why he knows that’s not normal, but it isn’t.
Barton gulps his way through a pair of painted markings on the side of the pot, making wordless, contented noises while he surveys the man who’s been the Winter Soldier.
“You know anything about drywall?” Barton asks him out of nowhere. He doesn’t move, isn’t sure what that means. “You used to be an assassin, right? So probably you can use a nail gun and a hammer.”
Then Barton’s nodding to himself as though that’s asked and answered, and the part that really sticks is the way he’s talked about the Winter Soldier’s life as though it’s just something that happens to people sometimes, nothing to get worked up about until it threatens his people.
It’s been a long time since he’s had that, he thinks; even Rogers treats him like the Winter Soldier’s a part of himself he’ll have to get rid of if he ever wants to be anything else.
And when it turns out he’s still a bit too much Winter Soldier to deal well with using the nail gun, Barton just takes it off him and sets it aside.
Pretends that black eye and split lip were always there, like putting Barton through his own half-finished drywall project is no big deal, either.
.
“Hey, Cap, if you guys aren’t doing anything special tomorrow, mind if I borrow the Terminator for a while? I wanna get started on the stairs.”
Rogers blinks at him. Looks at the former Winter Soldier, who’s still not Bucky enough to take the name but who’s not too lost in his own identity that he can’t understand how he’s come by the new nickname. “You know, I get that reference,” Rogers says unpleasantly, too tight to be anything but annoyed. “Don’t call him that again.”
Barton’s been his own kind of mulish all day. No surprise at all he’s still at it. “Pretty sure he likes it.”
“Well, I don’t.”
Barton draws a deep breath. “So what do I call him, then? Because I am not calling him Winter Soldier.”
“Bucky,” Rogers says, in a voice that makes the man who’s been Winter Soldier think Steve, and even Barton shifts uncomfortably at the emotion Rogers isn’t really hiding. “That’s James Buchanan Barnes, I have known him all my life and I have called him Bucky since the day we met, so I am not about to stop now; I don’t care who had him or what they made him do, that is Bucky. If you really can’t respect that, don’t call him anything at all.”
Maybe it’s just that he’s not sure himself how he wants to be addressed; maybe it’s just that in the wake of Steve Rogers’ pronouncement, there’s all this heavy silence made for doubts to start creeping in. Whatever the reason, he swears he can feel the unasked questions between them: Who is he if he doesn’t feel like any of the names he’s heard from his past?
More importantly, what happens if he never feels like Bucky?
.
“Hey,” Barton says to the pretty mother ushering two kids up the stairs. “Guys, this is Mandroid. He’s going to be helping us out around the building. Fixing shi—fixing stuff.”
“Mandroid?” the lady parrots. “Really?”
He’s starting to expect this sort of skepticism from the tenants.
“Parents were hippies,” Barton lies. “You know how it is.” Barton flashes her a grin. “Seriously though, he’s good people. Moved into your old place a while ago, helped me get your new place in order.”
Which makes this Simone. He has more than enough information about her to cross reference efficiently; the people around here love her, her opinion is important to Barton, that’s all he needs to know.
.
There’s. A stranger. Strange voice. With Barton. In Barton’s place. Talking, behind closed doors. He doesn’t know it, can’t place it or cross reference potential identities with the information he’s picked up from listening to Barton talk about his life.
That’s not Natasha, not Simone or a small boy, definitely not Aimee.
So he doesn’t knock like he’s planned so they can get started on the stairs like Barton said they would last night. Instead, he pauses, hand just shy off the doorknob, ears perked for a conversation Barton probably thinks is private.
“Can’t today, Katie-Kate,” Barton says, easier than he’s ever said anything to Rogers. “I’m babysitting.”
“Wait, someone lets you near impressionable minds? This, I have to see.” Then, “It’s not Simone, is it,” but that’s not really a question.
“Nope,” Barton says, pops the end of the word. “That would be Captain America.”
Barton sounds like even he can’t believe that. Whoever he’s with scoffs at him, sounds more affectionate than her words suggest. “Dummy.”
The man who has been the Winter Soldier wants to go back and ask Rogers about this Katie-Kate. He doesn’t think he needs to ask about the babysitting, though he’s not sure that’s accurate.
He’s only just pulled away from the door, though, when the muffled woof comes, close enough to have him still instinctively to get his bearings. The whines and scrapes that follow fill in the details.
The strange noises from next door are a dog. An old yellow one, apparently; he can see it lurking when Barton opens the door.
“Hey, there you are,” Barton says, and he doesn’t sound mad to have been spied on. “Just on time, too. Hawkeye here’s just on her way out. Unless you want to help us fix the stairs?”
Barton sounds oddly hopeful. Katie-Kate — Hawkeye, but isn’t Barton Hawkeye? maybe everyone now has too many names — Katie-Kate looks dubious.
“Do I look like your contractor, Clint?”
He’s thought Rogers goes so easy on him when he’s difficult because he doesn’t do it much, because Rogers is weak about it and scared he’s going to leave. Barton doesn’t seem as determined to keep Katie-Kate around but he’s not cracking down on her for mouthing off, either; it’s perplexing. It’s nothing someone used to Hydra’s forced resets is equipped to understand.
“At least you’re going to stay, right, Lucky? There’ll be pizza…” Barton wheedles. Negotiates. With the dog.
It’s enough to make him miss the predictability of Rogers.
.
“How ‘bout Robocop?” Barton asks.
He thinks about it while he spackles. Looks Barton in the eye when he answers so Barton can read his lips. “I like it better than Terminator.”
“Great,” Barton says, so quiet maybe he thinks no one can hear. “Robocop. S’just perfect.”
And when the newly dubbed Robocop sneaks a look at him, Barton’s smiling.
.
Rogers hates Robocop, too. He just doesn’t say so until they both think he’s asleep.
“You have to stop this, Clint,” Rogers says, sounds all wounded Steve even through the common wall between their apartments. “You can’t keep giving him nicknames, you’re going to confuse him.”
Barton snorts. “I doubt that. He don’t confuse so easily.”
“Please. He barely knows who he is now, let alone who he was. We’re here so he can get his life back.”
He doesn’t need to see Steve’s face to know what he’s not saying; that if Barton doesn’t lay off and let that happen, there’s no point in staying.
He doesn’t like that.
“He doesn’t know who he is now,” Barton blurts, the kind of frustrated-annoyed-pissed he hasn’t heard since the yelling with Aimee. “He’s been trying to figure that out since he got here and you won’t stop trying to make him who you want him to be.”
He’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know what happens in the silence. Bad enough to hear how disheartened Steve sounds.
“I’m just trying to help him out. When it was me, I wanted answers. I needed to know what happened, what I missed, so I could keep going, but I’ll be honest, what I really wanted was chance to remind myself of who I really was behind the shield.”
It’s the first he’s ever heard of Rogers — Steve — going through an identity crisis of his own but judging by Barton’s complete non-reaction, he assumes it’s only news to him.
“You had a personality and a press kit,” Barton agrees. “He’s got a big ol’ blank slate. I know it’s going to be rough, Cap, but you gotta futzing let him fill it himself.”
.
He’s not entirely sure why that works, but it does.
.
He’s gotten used to people staring but it’s different with the kids. Maybe because he knows they’re not a threat; maybe he’s just getting used to them. He hears them whispering while his back’s turned to reload his paint brush, nearly drips on the floor trying to overhear them.
He hears cartoons and Clint’s place and doesn’t really get the rest.
“Hello?” He’s so careful when he turns. Doesn’t want to upset them, unsettle them, doesn’t want to do anything any of them are going to regret.
They’re both crowded close, big eyes in small faces he’s afraid to be near.
Barton never should have left him alone. They’d get hurt so easily. He shouldn’t—Where is their mother?
“Do you watch cartoons?” the bigger one asks, with clearly mustered courage. “Winter Friends and Sunshine Sam and that, you wanna watch them with us?”
Robocop blinks at them. “What.”
“Clint lets us watch ‘em sometimes at his place, if our mom has to go out.” The kid’s chin comes up a little. Robocop thinks it’s braver than it should have to be, and blames himself. “Andre likes watching ‘em with Lucky.” Then, like it’s just occurred to him though it clearly hasn’t, “You could watch with us, if you want.”
He’s not sure what to say. He should be painting. That is his mission. But he likes the bigger one’s courage and he wants to know if Sunshine Sam is the medic Rogers had check him over and there is a part of him that wants to put a dime on a picture with his best friend.
Then Barton sticks his head out his front door. “Hey, guys, you coming? Your mom said she sent you up ten minutes ago. I know it doesn’t take that long to come up two flights of stairs.”
“Sorry, Clint,” the bigger one says, automatically, but he doesn’t really look it. “Just saying hi to Robocop.” The kid beams at him and everything. Robocop tries to smile back, but he’s not sure if it works. A moment later, Barton pokes his head in the stairwell. “Can he come watch, too?”
Barton looks a bit like he feels, one step off certainty. “You want to come watch Sunshine Sam?” Robocop’s head jerks. Twice. Barton blows out a breath. “Well okay then.”
.
Sunshine Sam is okay but he prefers the one after that, the one with the llama.
“How can they have a summer special? They are Winter Friends,” Barton complains, and Andre shushes him, and even Lucky makes an unhappy noise until Barton’s quiet.
A few minutes later:
“Aw, Steve the dog, no,” Barton says, lifts a hand at the screen and stalks back to his kitchen to clutch his coffee pot again.
Andre and his brother pretend to ignore him, so Robocop does, too. He likes that, though, the little smiles the kids give him, the way Barton trusts him enough to just turn his back.
.
“So Steve the powerless dog saved the day again, huh?” Rogers says, and he sounds almost joking, and Barton makes a few useless noises. “Not exactly subtle, Hawkeye.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Barton sounds just as frazzled as he did earlier, even though it’s been hours. One of the things he’s found he likes best about their nightly secret meetings is the chance it allows him to spy on them the way he’s sure they both spy on him. They’re different now when they’re alone and he’s tracking the intel, trying to cross reference to figure out why. He’s learned enough to know that Barton’s going to blow that breath out now, harder than normal, and that whatever he says next will be something he thinks he should have done better. “Just, they are the Winter Friends,” he repeats, every bit as baffled as the last time he says it, and then, “How the futz do the Winter Friends get a summer special? That shouldn’t even be possible, right?”
Rogers starts laughing. He’s not laughing alone for long.
.
So his life gets a pattern. Early mornings with Rogers — “Really, Buck, call me Steve” — having cereal and hearing stories, listening to music he just barely remembers and working hard on the memory he’s not sure he wants back. They stop when it’s too much, when he’s got bad memories flooding in or he feels like he’s drowning in call-me-Steve’s best intentions, when he just…needs to be Robocop, he heads to the hall, and Barton’s got some never-ending list of things he can do to get his mind off the worst of it.
Barton jokes he’s getting Robocop a pair of coveralls and calling him maintenance, which Rogers doesn’t really like — but doesn’t object to — and which Robocop doesn’t think he understands.
And at some point in the afternoon, when the kids are both back from their summer camp program, there’s cartoons at Clint’s place with Lucky and the boys.
.
“I like your arm,” Andre says while they’re waiting for the next episode to load, and it’s nowhere near as shy as he’s expecting, given all the silent staring that’s come before it.
It’s the first time he’s heard that from anyone. He’s not sure how to respond.
Then he is. Just like that, he is.
James Buchanan Barnes, he thinks, and he still doesn’t feel like Bucky but it occurs to him now that that’s not his only choice. “James,” he blurts. “I’m James.”
And when Andre just takes that like it makes sense, James glances up to find Clint lurking by his stairway, just watching him and nodding. Hears Clint say quietly, “Well okay then.”
.
Steve doesn’t take it well.
.
“I knew he wasn’t going to — I knew it probably wasn’t going to happen, you know, not when it was taking all this time, but I thought I was ready for it.” Steve never sounds as small as he does from Clint’s apartment at night, when they’re at the regular meet-up neither one of them ever mentions. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for him. I really am. I’m just…”
“Not so happy for yourself?” Clint suggests, and Steve says,
“That’s it. That’s it exactly. It just feels like I’m losing something.”
“Because you are.” Clint sounds distinctly uncomfortable the way he gets when he’s alone with Kate. Like he’s about to be too honest about something he would rather leave alone. “Look, I’m the last person to be giving out advice on healthy emotional responses to things, anyone who’s met me knows it, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out you got a raw deal. Both of you did. You’re pissed because they stole those years from you, someone took your best friend a whole lot of years ago and what you got back wasn’t what went missing, which sucks. I get it. I just also get that it’s not special, not really. Lots of people have lost people, you know? People who meant just as much to them as Bucky means to you. The only real difference is, the rest of us know right up front they’re never coming back.”
“You’re saying I should just suck it up because other people have it worse,” Steve says, dry the way James expects of Cap in a mood.
“I’m saying you’ve got a guy in there who’s been trying really hard for a while now to be exactly what you wanted, so maybe you could cut yourselves both some slack and appreciate what you’ve got instead of fixating on what you don’t.”
There is a lot of silence. There is so much silence, he thinks maybe someone’s fallen asleep.
Then he hears, “Dammit, Barton, how am I supposed to enjoy my self-pity now?” in a tone that makes him think someone’s smiling.
.
After that, it gets a little easier in the mornings, takes a little longer before he’s heading out of the apartment. Steve stops pushing enough that James feels okay actually calling him Steve, like maybe that won’t be the slippery slope that leads to losing everything he knows about himself to this ideal of Bucky.
Things get better.
.
Mrs. Talman from down on the third floor finds him coveralls from he-doesn’t-know-where and they even mostly fit him, which is nice, and he wants to keep wearing them even when he’s finished painting.
Has, in fact, been careful not to get anything on them, even after Barton tells him that’s the point of coveralls, that they’re pretty much indestructible.
Aimee smiles when she sees him now, every single time, metal flashing through her features as she talks. Deke’s stopped side-eyeing him whenever their paths cross, Deke’s almost getting friendly, and even Simone sometimes stops to thank him for looking out for her boys.
It’s a feeling it takes Katie-Kate to explain.
.
“That’s the Steve Rogers inferiority complex,” she says with authority.
James isn’t sure.
“No, believe me, that’s what it is. You do good guy things for good guy reasons and because you’re not Captain America but you’re around him all the time, it isn’t registering. Clint is the same.” Her eyes narrow, as sharp as her name. “There’s more than one way to be a good guy in this world. You just need to believe it when you hear it from a credible source.”
James doesn’t argue, but he’s not sure he believes it. Painting things and watching cartoons isn’t exactly heroic, even if he strongly suspects Steve would argue that it is.
.
“God, Clint, have you seen him?” Steve says from nowhere, from the room next door James has no business hearing, another secret meeting he knows damned well is not for him. “I didn’t even think it was possible but I think he has friends.”
James is pretty sure that shouldn’t make Steve so emotional. He doesn’t like how that makes him feel.
“And why not?” Clint counters. “He’s a good guy. All right, when he’s not — .” Clint makes a harsh sound. There’s the awkward pause James has come to consider the inevitable result of Hawkeye trying to be helpful, then Clint clears his throat. “I mean, he’s all right. Given the circumstances, everybody here is going to appreciate that, you know? And, I mean, if this superheroing thing doesn’t work out for him, I think he’s got a decent future in building maintenance to fall back on.”
“What?” Steve laughs, kind of incredulous.
“No, seriously, have you seen those stairs?”
Something about Steve’s laugh changes, eases and warms, and it soothes the knots of discomfort James still isn’t sure how to handle.
.
He’s been trained to stay observant and he is, he still is, but it’s not a building that registers high on his constant mental threat assessment, not for long, and eventually, he lets himself ease back a little. He gets comfortable. Gets complacent.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t notice when it changes.
.
Later, he can trace it to the first of the barbecues, that night Aimee drags everybody in the building up to the roof to have what she calls a memorial grilling. Nobody argues. Everyone stays. He meets a little old man who peers up at him through thick bifocals and tells him he’s a good boy as he offers up a hot dog, and even though James really isn’t hungry, he’s already had a few, he eats it anyway and remembers to say thank you.
He’s uncommonly proud of himself. Wants to tell Clint, who’ll tell him who the old man is and where he’s been hiding in the building, only Clint’s tucked himself in a corner with Aimee and Simone, all three of them broadcasting loud and clear that everyone who isn’t them needs to stay the fuck away.
Even Steve’s keeping his distance.
James doesn’t like it.
Likes even less the way it’s starting to look like for the first time in weeks, this night’s going to end without a secret meeting.
.
Steve hovers by the door. Says Clint’s name almost gently at the sound of movement in the hall. James hears the click of the door when it shuts, knows he should probably give them both space, nothing they say tonight is going to be about him, probably, but he can’t quite help himself.
Steve’s not the only worrier. Clint’s his friend, too.
“Hey, you wanna talk about it?” Steve says, almost gently, and James wishes he had eyes on the room to see what Clint does in that silence.
“Nothing much to say,” he says finally. “Today sucks. Probably always gonna. Nothing anyone can do but shoulder on, wait it out.”
“Come on, Hawkeye. You’re a better liar than that.” Steve sounds like a challenge. James thinks that might work. “If you’re gonna blow smoke at me, might as well make it believable.”
Clint’s silence is infectious. There’s too much of it. Clint sounds bitter when he finally speaks. “I guess Natasha didn’t tell you how exactly we had those vacancies to rent, huh?”
Which is when James hears why exactly the sight of him scared Aimee so badly.
By the time Clint’s done talking about the Battle of Bed-Stuy and what it cost him, James can’t even blame them for not wanting strangers around.
.
That night, it’s Clint’s turn to get emotional, Steve’s turn to make him laugh. The visit lasts so long, James falls asleep.
After that, he goes out of his way to avoid listening in.
.
Sometimes, James watches them too much, hears things he thinks he shouldn’t.
The first time that happens, it’s the Hawkeyes in the morning.
“Are you kidding me?” Katie-Kate blurts and James jerks his head up, stares at the wall in the general direction he assumes them to be. He’s not sure why yet, but he sites her like a target, even when he can’t physically see her. Thinks maybe it’s because she’s not one of his regular people yet. “What are you thinking? Didn’t you just finish making this mess with Jessica?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Clint counters, faster than he should be. “Kate, I don’t know. I just. It just happened.” Then, miserably, “S’not like I planned it.”
“Clint Barton, you are the actual worst at this.” She sounds frustrated. “Okay. We are going to fix this. You are going to fix this. And then you are going to swear off so much as making eye contact with anyone until you’ve got your act together.” Then, “Honestly,” she tsks. “Where’s your impulse control?”
Clint doesn’t argue.
.
That’s the first night in actual weeks they go without a midnight visit. James doesn’t know how to handle the way Steve’s face falls, so he pretends not to notice. Whenever Clint’s done with his mission with Katie-Kate, he can take care of it.
James suspects it’s sort of Clint’s fault, anyway.
.
It’s four more days before Clint Barton is back long enough to have anyone over, and James half-expects the knock on their door to be the long overdue midnight meeting starting early.
Instead, it’s Clint holding Lucky, waiting for them both. He’s got pizza, he’s got Netflix — “I think. Pretty sure Stark said Netflix, anyway” — he’s got space on his couch.
He’s got everything but actual, believable enthusiasm. James takes mental note, then takes him up on it.
Steve’s reluctant, too.
“You guys care what I put on it?” Clint asks as he hovers by the phone. “You guys’ll eat anything, right? I just need to order lots? ‘Cause there’s a place two blocks over that does like a festival of sausage I’ve been kinda craving and —.” James misses the rest, preoccupied by Clint’s faint blush, then the way Steve stills beside him. Clint trails off. “You don’t really care, do you?”
James much, much prefers not saying anything because so much of what he says seems to throw people off, but with Clint and Steve weird, Lucky pretty non-verbal, it looks like it falls to him. “I don’t really know what I like on my pizza.”
“Anything but anchovies,” Steve says distantly, then sort of winces, and James has to say
“I don’t really know what I like on my pizza now,” to make himself clear.
For a long moment, it’s a holding pattern of awkwardness. For once, he doesn’t think it’s his fault.
Then Clint declares that a futzing shame for a native New Yorker of any era and the next thing James knows, Clint’s working that like a mission, ordering like they’ll never have pizza again.
As it turns out, he likes hot sausage and sweet peppers and he’s ambivalent on anchovies, though he still has issues with the general concept of expressing personal preferences. He’s gotten better at thinking it since Steve got him away from Hydra, but it’s something else entirely to start saying it aloud.
“See, and now you’ll know for next time,” Clint says, snapping and pointing at him from the far side of the couch. James wanted his left side free because he still doesn’t like people making contact with his cyborg arm and in the aftermath of the awkward standoff that followed that announcement, Clint and Steve have been locked in a bizarre game of constant repositioning.
Clint’s called it musical chairs.
James thinks it looks more like evasive maneuvers, but when he shares the joke, no one laughs. At least Steve gets Clint back up off the floor when he offers to give up the right arm they’d both gone for immediately, though James wouldn’t say either of them look particularly relaxed.
“Thank you for this,” Steve says, oh so quiet.
“Yeah, my pleasure.” Then they’re both being weird again.
Since they’re done with the movie Clint put on, James thinks maybe they could show Steve a few cartoons, too, no one can stay that tense watching Sunshine Sam, but he doesn’t want to interrupt them and their weirdness to bring it up.
Maybe this is how it’s gone at those midnight meetings he didn’t listen to, just awkward staring and enough tension to choke someone, both of them getting weirder by the moment.
Oh god, they’re going to make him talk.
Then Steve says, “I guess you’ll be bringing the leftovers up to the pot luck tonight, huh?”
Clint shakes his head. “Nah. You guys take yours home, me an’ Lucky’ll be living off whatever’s left for the rest of the week, probably. Won’t we, boy?”
Lucky obliges with a look up at his name and a short, happy sound.
Steve looks less obliging. “You’re feeding pizza to the dog?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Is pizza good for dogs?” Steve doesn’t seem convinced. James shrugs.
“Dog likes pizza.”
“Won’t that make him sick?”
Clint shrugs. Slumps low on his side of the couch and folds a double slice. “Hasn’t so far.”
Steve’s still frowning. James wishes he’d just let it go. “That can’t be worth the risk,” he counters, slowly and patiently charging up for a fight.
Clint pins him with a look. “A couple years back, the demon pizza mutt went through the kinda hell demon pizza mutts don’t walk away from. Vet wasn’t sure he’d make it, but he did. Dog’s spent who knows how long living with people who couldn’t appreciate a good thing when they brought it home, then he almost died defending my sorry ass from the Tracksuits. So the way I figure it, Cap— ” Clint pops the p obnoxiously. “Lucky wants a slice or two of pizza every now and then, who am I to say he can’t?”
Some things, James hears, are worth the risk. Seems an awful lot like a challenge.
So maybe that’s why there’s that weird stretch of prolonged staring afterward, hot and intense and fierce, enough to make James feel like he and Lucky ought to be on the other side of the wall.
.
It takes Aimee’s new lady coming out to one pot luck before James figures it out, which is only a failure he’s willing to acknowledge because apparently neither one of them’s noticed.
They’re still just staring and looking away too soon, getting all wound up in things they aren’t saying and keeping that distance nobody wants.
Aimee’s new lady shows up at the pot luck and there is kissing and hugging and handholding and introductions, and somewhere in there, James finds himself thinking, right, that’s something they do now, sometimes girls can like girls, and a little while after that, sometimes boys can like boys, and from there a whole lot about Steve starts making sense.
Pulling together out of nowhere, things he’s heard and things he’s seen, turning into something he’s not sure Bucky knew about his best friend.
And once he’s got Steve’s big secret worked out, it’s only a matter of time before he has the rest.
Everything just sinks in, knits together like a mystery solved without even trying. As clear and straightforward as a mission objective, but a good one, the kind of thing he thinks he won’t mind remembering.
Clint makes Steve laugh and Steve makes Clint focus and both of them make the other better, themselves without the bullshit. They’ve been meeting secretly for months, making time for each other no matter what else comes up, and he thinks that’s important.
And the staring, futz, the staring, why did they not just wear signs, it would have been less obvious. The only reason he hadn’t thrown his hands up and called them on the blatant eyefucking is that they’ve been doing it around the only person in the building guaranteed not to recognize it. After all, it’s been several decades.
James thinks back, all those stories of things they’ve done he still can’t anchor anywhere, Steve’s face getting soft when he talks about best girls and dancing partners, nights out on the town cut short, the life Steve’s described so much he thinks he should feel like he’s lived it.
From there, it’s obvious how he should proceed.
.
“Dancing,” he says, too sharp, and Clint startles. “He likes dancing.” Clint looks cagey, hunted in the pot luck crowd, like he’s petrified to react. James knits his brow, feels both more and less like Bucky than he ever has in all of Steve’s lessons. “So you should take him.”
“Look, James, I don’t know what you think you mean but it is not like that with me and Cap, okay. That is not happening.” Clint’s eyes look a little wild. “You two are the, what did he call it, life partners? And I am not messing that up for you. You, you know, deserve each other.”
Katie-Kate’s right, Clint is a dummy. And maybe he can’t really be Bucky, maybe he never will, but he figures he can fake it all right just this once. “I’m telling you, it’s not like that with us,” he says, as close to the accent Steve sometimes uses as he thinks he can get. “Never has been, never gonna be.” He wants to leave it there, knows most people would get it, but there is that dummy thing to consider. “Even if I did, he doesn’t want that with me.” Nope, still too vague, maybe. “He wants it with you.” James draws a breath in, only figures out why after he’s done it. Of course he’d pick up some of Clint’s mannerisms, of futzing course he would. “And what kinda best friend would I be if I didn’t do my best to see that he gets it?”
He…James has never seen Clint like this, stripped down to raw nerves and the rough edges of his insecurities, but he suspects maybe Steve has, maybe this is how they find themselves in their current positions.
“I. Gotta thing,” Clint says vaguely, awkwardly, and he waves a free hand, and then he’s gone across the roof before James can hike an eyebrow.
In front of Steve before James can summon Lucky with a snap.
James looks away to give them whatever privacy they might find on the roof mid-pot luck, hopes at least one of them has the sense to drag the other back to Clint’s place. Friends or not, he is kicking them both out if he finds them back at his.
“Is that your doing?” Aimee asks, tipping her pink head at the last place James saw his guys.
He nods at her a little. Refuses to look over to see if it’s worked. “Don’t suppose they’ve gotten out of here already?”
“Give them a minute. Hawkguy looks a little whammo still, you know?”
And no, no he doesn’t, but he thinks he can guess.