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He’s at the edge of one of the shorter buildings, as close as he can get to the fight while still having full view of his surroundings, alternating between picking off the robots from the sky and shooting at those that overwhelm his teammates. It’s pouring, the rain pelting the metal of his gun and his arm, and the wind snatches away any noise that doesn’t come from the comm unit in his ear. His location hasn’t been revealed yet, he’s pretty sure; none of the robots have tried to come at him, so the lack of noise is low priority.
Water gets in behind his googles, but he makes no move to wipe the rain away, too busy shooting at the robots who flew in the direction that an arrow was just shot from, instead blinking hard to clear his eyes—“ воскресать“—
The gun wavers as his hands loosen their grip, just for a moment, but he quickly hefts it back into position and keeps firing.
“Whoa there, Trigger Happy, you nearly got me with that round of bullets!” A red blur shoots past him, and he glances up long enough to mark the location before a grenade flies from his hand and explodes. “Fuck! Hey, quick reminder that the robots might be red, but I’m a much cooler red! No trying to blast friendlies out of the sky!”
The machine flies off, out of range, and he turns his attention to the next target. The bullets ricochet off of the red and white shield and narrowly miss the dirty white star on the costume. The man sets off into a zig-zag run, bullets pocking the sidewalk all around him.
“Something’s wrong—“
“—doing, Barnes?”
“--его мнение—“
“Someone get to him and figure out—“
“Bucky!”
The earpiece is a distraction, and he rips it out. All he hears now is the sound of the rain pelting his arm and the disconnected sound of his gun firing—
He jumps away from the rifle in just enough time to avoid the energy beam blasted at him, but he’s immediately back on his feet, flesh hand already loading the pistol and shooting. The machine loops around him, firing off two more blasts that he’s forced to duck from before he manages clip it in the boot, setting it off balance, giving him ample time to aim for the gold faceplate. An arrow embeds itself into the barrel before he can pull the trigger, and a second one scratches the side of his metal forefinger, delving deep enough behind the trigger to prevent him from trying to shoot regardless, and he snaps his head around to assess the new threat.
The target in purple stands ready, bow drawn and aimed, but he can see the hesitation in their stance, in their frown. They shout something that is swallowed by the rain and wind; their visible uneasiness to fight makes him clench his fist, the metal whirring. He attacks, drawing a knife, and the look of surprise on their face is satisfying.
He’s quick, his metal hand slashing out with the same ferocity as his knife. Three arrows shot at once hit his arm, and he breaks them off at the shafts—
The purple is bright against the dismal grey setting, they are too easy of a target—
The bow is gone, thrown over the side of the building. The target retaliates by trying to thrust an arrow into his arm with their hands, but he lands a punch in the middle of their chest before the modified arrowhead comes close to the metal—
Blood spills, red staining purple—
The sickening crunch as he slams his boot down is a familiar, welcome sound. He wants to hear it again—
A blast knocks him to the ground—
“Steve! Don’t let them take him!” His cheek is rubbed raw against the concrete, his wrists are encased in a heavy set of handcuffs, the purple target keeps shouting—
“Bucky! Look at me! No—stop, don’t touch him yet—Buck—no, Clint said not to—Bucky! Bucky!—
“Bucky.”
Breathing heavily through his nose, he opens his eyes and looks out past the metal bars at Sam. The wings aren’t with him, but he’s still suited up, covered in concrete dust with parts of his costume shredded. “Hey, Buck.” Sam attempts to smile, but it’s thin. He’s sporting a black eye, and Bucky spots a patch of gauze on his bicep right above the ripped, blood-stained sleeve. He dimly registers the sound of cracking metal, and he glances down to confirm that he’s gripping too tightly the bar he was handcuffed to. Sam glances at the covered wound.
“That wasn’t you.” The bullet didn’t meet its mark, only grazing skin, and Bucky knows he’s lying. Instead of meeting his gaze, Sam frowns down at his metal hand. “And you’re not an animal, Bucky, you don’t have to—“
“I wouldn’t have stopped.” There’s no hesitation in his voice; it’s useless to fight something so true.
“That’s not true!” This only seems to piss Sam off. Standing at his full height, he crosses his arms and glares. “We would’ve—“
“You wouldn’t have been able to.” He can still hear the sound of cracking ribs, and he shakily drags his flesh hand over his face. Sam doesn’t respond, and the cell goes quiet.
“How long was I out?”
“Only for a couple of hours. Natasha figured it out, of course, and brought you back.” Sam smiles, a real one, and soft raps his knuckles against one of the bars. “You passed out here, and we’ve just been checking on you since.” He unzips one of his pouches to take out a key, and bends down to unlock the handcuffs from the bar. Bucky immediately scrambles to grab the open cuff, but Sam slides it clear of his reach.
“What are you—!”
“Shut up, Barnes. Barton wants to see you.”
-
Natasha joins Sam and Bucky in the elevator, and gets off at the same floor without a word—her hand on his arm is comfort enough.
Bucky, however, is the only one who goes into the room, though he doesn’t go much farther than the threshold. Even from the door, Bucky can see the extent of the damage. Clint has both legs and right arm suspended in casts, with bandages wrapped around his head, neck and arms, mottled with faint tinges of pink in some areas. None of the coverings can distract from the dark, ugly bruises on his chest, the perfect shape of a boot print.
They’ve got him hooked up to so many machines, and he’s so still that for a terrifying second Bucky thinks that he managed to put Clint into a coma, but there’s a noise from the hospital bed and Clint opens his eyes, scrunching his nose and smacking his lips. When he spots Bucky, he feebly grins.
“Hey there, Bucky babe.” He croaks out. His face is an ugly mask of purple bruises, with butterfly sutures lining his left cheekbone and stitches along his right eyebrow. Yet there’s no terror hiding in his features and Bucky doesn’t understand. His throat constricts and his fingers itch for the door handle because he can’t handle this, not when Clint looks so openly happy to see him standing there, already lifting a shaky hand to reach out to him, as if he wasn’t using the same hand to block the Winter Soldier’s knife just hours ago. “What you doin’ all the way over there?”
He refuses to come closer; he shouldn’t even be cleared to be in the same room as Clint. When Bucky doesn’t move, Clint’s grin falters—he’s got to be remembering—and his hand carefully falls back to the bed with a sigh. He doesn’t stop staring at Bucky, eyes sweeping over him in contemplation, and Bucky chooses to look at the wall instead.
“Hey.” Bucky ignores him, though he swallows at how wrecked Clint’s voice sounds, and tries to get the image of his hands around the archer’s neck out of his head. “Hey, come on, I didn’t beg Sam to drag your ass in here for nothing; get over here or I’ll call Nat.”
It takes all of his mental strength to move his foot forward—even more to keep walking. “There you go! Put one foot in front of the other,” Clint sings, obviously delighted, as he pats out the rhythm on his bed with one hand, “and soon you’ll be walking ‘cross the floor!”
“Whoever said you could sing was a dirty liar,” Bucky grumbles, but Clint looks so happy that he reaches out to caress his flesh fingers along the archer’s forearm without thinking. Clint just beams up at him. This close, Bucky can see in better detail the bruise on his chest—the boot print with a spider web of smaller bruises fading away from it—and he refuses to look away from Clint’s face, though he does spot the purple plastic wrapped around his ears. “They kept your aids in?”
“Natasha did.” Bucky raises an eyebrow.
“Is there anyone watching you other than a bunch of superheroes?”
Clint gives a pained wheeze of a chuckle. “Nat’s plenty. And she won’t let anyone else in.” Except for your attacker, Bucky grimly thinks. “Hey, hand over that water.”
Bucky does so, grabbing the cup off the cart with his flesh hand, and guides the straw to Clint’s mouth. As he drinks, Bucky lets out a snort. “A Russian nurse taking care of a blue-eyed soldier. Sounds like the plot to a sleazy romance novel.”
“Hmm,” Clint grins around the straw, and wraps his fingers around Bucky’s wrist. “A guy can dream.”
“Hey, no running off with the hot Russian redhead.” Clint laughs, still too frail for Bucky, but it’s good enough, all things considered. He’s looking at him as if the only medicine he needs is Bucky, and Bucky supposes he can deal with good enough because Clint is laughing and smiling and not dead.
“Aw, Buck—“
“No.”
“But what if—“
“I will tie your legs down to the bed, Barton.”
“Fiiiine,” He drags the word out with a long-suffering sigh, as if it pains him to accept defeat, though given his current state, it actually might. Bucky doesn’t miss the barely-concealed wince when Clint tries to raise one of his eyebrows. “Jeez Barnes, you’re really putting your foot down.”
The cup clatters to the ground, sloshing the remaining water over the floor and Bucky’s boots as the sound of the plastic bouncing against the tile reverberates in the room. Almost instinctively, he draws his metal arm behind him and tries to pull away, but Clint refuses to let go of his arm, his previously languid caresses now a vice grip.
“You—“ Clint’s eyebrow is still raised, but his mouth forms a firm line, silently challenging. Two of his fingers tap urgently against his arm, and Bucky clenches his eyes shut, swallows the rising scream in his throat, until he can force himself to stop shaking. It takes time before he can say, “you shot at me.” He tries to affect a lighter tone, and it must be the right response because the grip loosens marginally on his arm. When he opens his eyes Clint has resettled on the bed, smiling softly. “At my arm.”
Clint squawks, as loud as he’s capable, and immediately swats at Bucky’s arm. “I shot at the gun, not your arm!”
“And not even my flesh arm.” Bucky continues, and okay, he can do this too, this is also good enough, all things considered. “It’s so unoriginal that I’m actually offended right now.”
Clint scoffs and glares, yanking on Bucky’s arm. “Hey jerk, don’t ignore my totally awesome shot! I had to disarm one of my rocket arrows to get it small enough to fit in that space—and I did it!”
“Yeah, but you scratched the paint job, asshole.” He holds up the pointer finger on his metal hand, where faint scratches can be visible when he angles it just right underneath the lights. Clint snorts and grabs the hand, bringing it close to his face and making a show of looking for the damage, tsking as he inspects the metal.
“Nope, you’re a liar. And it’s true because I can’t see anything, and I can see everything.”
Clint doesn’t let go, intertwining his own scrapped-up fingers with the metal ones. Bucky can’t feel anything but the added weight of Clint’s hand over his own, but it still sends a bolt of pure elation through his body, and he smiles, resting his cheek against the metal bar along the bed. “Thought you could only see good from far away, Hawk.”
“Doesn’t take 20-20 to see that you’re getting bad eyes in your old, old age, Barnes!” Clint sings, and Bucky rolls his eyes.
“Coming from the guy who lives up to his codename by smacking into windows.”
“One time!” Clint stage gasps, a small wheeze of a noise, “Rude!” He huffs, but a smile threatens to break out on his face. “Maybe if I sit on you, you’ll grow into a nicer Bucky.”
Bucky snorts. “Sure, go ahead, but it sure as shit won’t be an egg you’re growin’.”
There’s silence, and Bucky looks up to Clint looking completely awed, but then their eyes meet and the archer lets out a roar of laughter, an almost ugly broken noise—“oh my god this hurts!”—but he’s not stopping. In fact, every time the laughter almost dies out, Clint looks over at Bucky again and it just starts back up until he’s shaking, clutching his stomach. It’s contagious, and it’s not long before Bucky starts laughing too.
“You-you dumbass, I can’t believe—!” Clint’s smiling so wide he’s in danger of reopening his split lip, and he reaches over, still chuckling, to rest his hand on Bucky’s head, his fingers pushing the hair away from his eyes. “You gonna be okay, babe?”
Bucky rolls his eyes because of course this asshole is worried about him, even after everything. Humming, he looks up at the ceiling and back down at Clint, as if contemplating, before he leans forward to place a soft kiss on Clint’s mouth, and he shouldn’t, but he feels so exhilarated when Clint turns his head to deepen the kiss.
“I will be now.”