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The farm isn't what it used to be. Clint looks over the rafters of the house and rubs a hand over his face. There's so much to do and no time to do it in. He misses Laura more every day, her absence like a knife to his stomach. It's been a year and he forgets sometimes, so used to being away, and guilt coils in him every time he remembers. He's old and only getting older, and if he doesn't get things together soon, his kids are going to be left on their own. He doesn't remember being twenty, doesn't remember things ever being easy.
Nate wails and Clint goes to him. He's so small still, barely big enough to fill Clint's arms. Clint rocks him, singing the song that's been stuck inside his head all day softly, and wills him to just sleep for a little longer. He hadn't been there for this stage with Cooper and Lila, busy on missions across the world. He thinks of Laura and apologizes in his head.
"Daddy?" Cooper peeks in, one hand rubbing at his eyes.
"Hey, squirt," Clint says quietly. Nate's stopped crying, but his eyes are still wide open. "You should be in bed."
"The baby's too loud," Cooper says sullenly. Clint laughs because it's better than crying.
"Yeah, I know. Go on, get back in bed. I'll take care of him." He walks Cooper back to his room, Nate still cradled in his arms, and awkwardly tucks him in with one hand. "Go to sleep. School in the morning."
On the other side of the room, Lila is wide awake, watching them with the cool, even stare she got from her mom. Clint kisses her forehead. They're almost old enough to need their own rooms, but there just isn't space. Clint backs out of the room, pressing his mouth to the soft, downy hair that's finally growing in on Nate's head, and wishes this was a problem he could shoot away.
---
Clint's barely gotten himself to sleep, the sun starting to rise just outside his window, when he hears the creak of the floorboards in the front room. He's up before he can think, bow in hand, already moving toward the sound. The doors to the nursery and the kids' room are still shut, but he doesn't give himself time to check in on them.
There's a man in the front room, hunched just inside the door. Clint aims at him without even thinking about it. Blue eyes stare at him from under dirty hair, cold and distant. Clint draws back the string.
"Get out of my house," Clint says. He's got to look stupid as all hell, still in his holey boxers and not a lot else, but he can and has shot a penny out of the air on less sleep than he's currently got. One move and the guy's dead.
Quick as a flash, the guy pulls a gun from the inside of his jacket. Clint fires on him, the arrow catching the guy's hand. It bounces off.
"What the fuck," Clint mutters, firing again. This time, the arrow hits the man's stomach. He doesn't go down, but it's enough of a distraction to let Clint run in and grab the gun. He slams the butt into the man's face, the crunch of his nose breaking so incredibly satisfying,
The guy goes down and Clint whacks him again for good measure. When he's sure the guy's not going to get up again, he works the laces from his boots free and wrenches the guy's arms behind his back, shoving his jacket sleeves up. He pauses when he sees silver.
Aw, hell. The Winter Soldier's in his living room.
---
Bucky wakes up before Steve arrives. Clint's sent the kids off to school and Nate's finally sleeping. His baby monitor is strapped to Clint's belt, the soft sounds of his breathing crackling through the speaker. Bucky snarls and jerks against his restraints, but they're Tony Stark made and approved and they hold.
"Dude," Clint says, "settle down."
"Fuck you," Bucky spits. Clint sighs.
It's an angry half hour before Steve shows up, the sound of his motorcycle tearing up the gravel in the driveway a welcome relief. Bucky's figured out that he's not getting up, but that hasn't made him cool his heels any. He looks up when Steve walks in through the doors of the barn and, somehow, his face goes even paler.
"Buck," Steve says softly. He reaches forward but stops before they actually touch. His face is so raw and broken open that it makes Clint squirm. He's almost glad when a squawk comes through the baby monitor. He makes his escape, but neither one of them seem to notice it.
When he gets down to the living room, a freshly changed Nate on his hip and an empty bottle in his hand, Steve and Bucky are on the couch. Steve's hands are clenched, the telltale sign that something's gone off plan, and Bucky's staring straight ahead, jaw tight. Clint turns the hip with Nate away from them.
"Want to tell me what's going on here?" Clint asks. Steve looks at him, none of Cap in him, and Clint sighs. Technically, Steve's the senior citizen here. It doesn't make Clint feel any less old.
"Hydra's looking for him," Steve says. He smiles a little at Nate, who turns his face into Clint's neck shyly. "He needs a place to stay until I can take care of it."
"Good for him," Clint says. He feels like an asshole for talking about the guy like he's not even there, but it's the Winter Soldier. Clint's seen the shit he's done. He has no sympathy for him, Steve's ex-best friend or not.
"Clint," Steve starts. Clint shakes his head.
"This is where my kids live, man," he says. "There's no way."
"He won't hurt them," Steve says. Bucky still hasn't moved. "He wouldn't, Clint. What they did to his head- that wasn't him, before."
"You can't promise that." Clint hikes Nate up and shakes his head again. It's not happening. He's given up a lot for SHIELD, for the Avengers- his body, his mind, Laura- but this is where he draws the line. "You don't know who that is. Remember when he tried to kill you? Cause I do."
"You tried to kill Natasha," Steve says gently. Clint's body goes tight. Nate squirms against him. He needs to be fed or the crying's going to start all over again.
"That's a low blow." Clint turns away from them, heading into the kitchen. He fixes Nate's bottle, hand shaking as he measures out formula. He doesn't remember much about being under Loki's control, but he remembers flashes of Nat's face, remembers the drive to put an arrow in her head and not look back.
"Please, Clint," Steve says. He looks over his shoulder at Bucky, his face creased with worry. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was safe."
Clint knows that. Steve gets angry fast, doesn't always check his tongue when he thinks something's wrong, but he's smarter than any of them except maybe Tony. Clint holds Nate closer, feels his familiar weight, and breathes out slowly.
"If he so much as looks at my kids funny, I'll take you both down myself," he says. The naked relief on Steve's face doesn't soothe Clint's worry, but he has to trust him.
Clint drags out the spare linens and takes a pillow off his own bed. He tosses them at Steve and tells him to get Bucky set up in the barn. There's not enough room in the house for the people that live in it, and Clint's not going to give him the couch. Bucky doesn't say anything, just nods and follows Steve out.
Clint hasn't been back to the Avengers since Laura was killed, hasn't left for a mission in over a year, but he's still theirs, like it or not.
---
The kids nod at Clint's directions not to go near the barn for the next few weeks, but Clint doesn't believe them. Cooper's more like him than is probably healthy, and Clint's already dreading the teen years. Christ, he'll be fifty when Cooper's fifteen. He'll be lucky to be alive when Nate turns twenty.
"I mean it," Clint says.
"Why?" Lila asks. She picks at her macaroni, separating noodles into neat piles. She's getting picky about what she'll eat, and Clint's talent in the kitchen only goes so far. It's another thing he's going to have to work on.
"Daddy's work," he says. They know he works for the government, know about the Avengers, but he doesn't know if they really grasp the danger of all of it yet. Laura didn't let them watch the news, and Clint's always been glad for it.
They spend an hour going over homework, have the usual nightly fight about baths, and Clint gets them tucked in without much fuss. Nate goes down easily, thank god. Clint tucks the baby monitor into his belt and heats up what's left of the macaroni and cheese. He takes it out to the barn, bow strapped to his back.
Bucky's laying on a bale of hay, hands folded over his stomach. The air's spring warm, wind cutting through the cracks in the loft, but Bucky's still wearing his dirty coat over his clothes. He turns his head, blinking silently as Clint steps closer.
"Dinner," Clint says, holding the bowl out. Bucky swings his legs over the hay, the old floral blanket Laura's parents had bought for them ages ago bunching underneath him. Bucky takes it carefully with his flesh hand. "It's not much, but it's what we've got."
"Thanks," Bucky says. His voice is higher pitched than Clint was expecting, craggy at the edges. He stares down into the bowl, mouth twisted down at the edges under his horrific beard. He needs a razor, a shower, and a haircut in the worst of ways. Clint nods and turns away. He'll keep him fed and safe for Steve, but that's all he has to do.
---
When Clint gets back from dropping the kids off at school, Bucky's on the roof of the barn, a hammer in his right hand and a stack of plywood next to him. Clint gapes up at him, keys in one hand and Nate in the other. Bucky pauses for a moment before going back to fixing one of the holes in the roof.
"You don't have to do that," Clint shouts. Bucky shrugs, which is apparently the end of that. Clint leaves him to it and goes inside to get Nate settled in the playpen. He makes a few sandwiches and drops them off in the barn. He finds the plate on the front step later on in the afternoon.
It goes on like that all week. Bucky never goes into the house as far as Clint can tell, but he picks up projects around the farm. Clint doesn't know if he's doing it out of some sort of misguided gesture of thanks or if he's just that bored, but he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Steve checks in every day from wherever he is, his voice getting tighter the longer he's on the hunt. Bucky talks to him in short, clipped sentences on Clint's phone, lips pressed together when Steve talks. They're no closer to getting to the bottom of the Hydra issue- Clint doesn't think they ever will be- but Steve's stubborn enough to keep trying.
Clint shouldn't be surprised when it all goes to shit.
He's making dinner, Nate burbling happily in his high chair while Clint squints at a cookbook and tries to figure out the hell swiss chard is, when Lila screams. Clint's out the door like a shot, running at full speed, his heart lodged in his throat. He was so stupid to trust that things would work out.
Lila's sobbing in the back yard, Bucky standing near her with his hands up, face scrunched up into something like fear. Clint tackles him, his breath going short when they hit the ground. The metal of Bucky's arm cuts into Clint's chest, but Clint barely feels it, his fist already coming down to slam into Bucky's face.
"Daddy," Lila wails. Her tiny hands curl around his bicep, pulling at it, and Clint has to work hard to reel in the instinct to strike. He's horrified at himself and it's only her red, tearstreaked face that makes him stand up. He scoops her into his arms, holding her against his chest.
"It's okay," he says, stroking her tangled hair. "It's okay. What happened?"
"I fell out of the tree," Lila says through gasping breaths. Clint pulls back, one hand frantically running over her arms and legs to check for damage. There's a cut on her shoulder, bleeding through the pale pink sleeve of her t-shirt. Rage boils over in him, fading into the familiar calmness of sitting in the nest.
"Go inside," Clint says. His voice sounds distant to his own ears, thin and flat. Lila recoils. Clint's chest aches when he realizes she's afraid of him.
"Don't hit him again," Lila says, her face crumpling as fresh tears spring to her eyes. "He caught me."
"What?"
"I wanted to climb higher than Cooper, but the branch broke, and he caught me, and I don't want to be in trouble," Lila says in a rush.
"You're not in trouble," Clint says. He looks down at Bucky, who hasn't moved from his sprawl on the ground. He presses a shaky kiss to Lila's forehead and sets her down on her feet. "Get the first aid kid so we can look at your shoulder, okay?"
"Are you going to hit him again?" Lila asks. She wipes her arm across her nose and Clint grimaces.
"No, baby," he says, soft as he can. "Go inside."
When Lila's gone back into the house, the screen door slamming behind her, Clint turns back to Bucky and offers his hand. Bucky stares warily at it for a moment before taking it. Clint hauls him up, his arm straining with his weight. He knows in that moment that he only put Bucky down because Bucky let him.
"Sorry," Clint says.
"It's alright." Bucky checks his nose, his fingers coming away wet with blood. Clint winces. It doesn't look broken, but it's probably going to smart for a few days. "I didn't mean to hurt her." He gestures to his metal arm, shining bright under the sun. "I heard the branch break and I couldn't let her fall."
"Thank you," Clint says. It feels dragged out, and Clint has to swallow his pride to speak. He looks up into the tree and sees the thick branch near the top that's split in two, the rotten wood inside showing through. If Lila would have hit the ground- Clint takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Come on. You need the first aid kit, too."
Clint's still tense when Bucky enters the house behind him. Lila's at the kitchen table playing with Nate, her face still grimy, but she's smiling at her little brother's cooing. Cooper's next to them, flipping through a comic book. Bucky stays behind him, lingering just outside the kitchen.
The cut on Lila's shoulder isn't deep but it's long. Clint cleans it out, shushing Lila as he swipes an alcohol pad over it. He digs out a few of the Hawkeye bandaids- which is equal parts awesome and weird- and lays them over the wound. Cooper's only pretending to read, too young to really be stealthy about all the glances he's shooting at Bucky.
"Good to go," Clint says. Lila twists to look at her arm and gives a solemn nod of approval at Clint's patch up job. It's something he can do right at least. "Guys, this is Bucky. He's one of Uncle Steve's friends and he's going to be staying here for awhile, okay?"
"Why's he got a metal arm?" Cooper asks. Clint sighs. He's just as tactless as his father. Clint hasn't figured out a way to train it out of himself, let alone start in on the kid. Those teen years, Clint thinks, are going to be one hell of a ride.
"Don't be rude," Lila hisses. She, at least, is her mother's daughter. Bucky gives a tentative wave with his flesh hand. He's kind of terrifying to look at with his scraggly hair and bloody face, but the kids have seen Clint black and blue enough times to not be bothered by it. It's probably another knock to Clint's father of the year award.
"Get cleaned up," Clint says. He looks back over at the mess on the counter and gives it up as a loss. He'll figure out the swiss chard thing later. "We're having pizza." The kids cheer and rush off, Cooper shouting out his topping requests from the stairs. "Come on. Let me look at your face."
"It'll heal on its own," Bucky says, even as he sits in the chair Lila was in before.
"You had the serum too, right?" Clint asks. He reaches forward, telegraphing his movements as best he can, and tilts Bucky's head back. There's still blood, but his nose already looks a bit straighter. "Damn, that's gotta be handy."
"Like you wouldn't believe," Bucky says. He grins and Clint can kind of see the same guy in the exhibit with Steve under all the facial hair. Clint pastes a Hawkeye bandaid over one of the cuts above Bucky's eye anyway.
"You need a shower man," Clint says. He repacks the first aid kit and closes it up. "Come on. You got clothes with you?" Bucky shakes his head.
"Lost 'em somewhere in Nevada," he says. Clint snorts. The guy managed to hold onto a pistol but apparently lost everything else.
"I got stuff that'll fit you." Clint leads the way up the stairs and waves at the bathroom before heading into his bedroom. Bucky's roughly his size, even if the metal arm is going to be hell on the sleeves. He grabs a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that's gotten too big for him. Bucky's down to his shorts when Clint gets to the bathroom, the scars around his left shoulder stark and pink. "Razors in the medicine cabinet. Got any topping requests?"
"That's it?" Bucky asks. He looks over his shoulder, eyebrows drawn together. "We're buddies now?"
"You helped my kid," Clint says. He wouldn't call them buddies, not really, but that goes a long way. "So? Toppings?"
Clint orders three large pepperoni pizzas and nukes some nuggets for Nate. They're dinosaur shaped, which doesn't do it for Lila and Copper, but Nate thinks they're great. It's the small things. The kids bum rush him when the pizzas arrive, nearly knocking him off his feet. Clint swats them away and grabs plates out of the cupboard. It might not be homecooked, but they can at least be sort of decent.
"Hey, it has a face," Clint says when Bucky walks into the kitchen. It's not a bad face, all things considered. Bucky's got his boots on and he doesn't look particularly comfortable sitting down at the kitchen table, but he looks better than he had when he'd first shown up. The bandaid is gone, but so is the cut.
"Are you a superhero too?" Lila asks, cheese hanging out of her mouth. Clint grimaces. God, kids are gross. "Does Uncle Steve let you hold his shield? He only lets me if he's holding it, too."
"Uncle Steve, huh?" Bucky asks, sidestepping the question entirely. He gives Lila a tight smile and it's enough to get her launching into stories about Steve's infrequent visits.
After he's bathed the monsters and put them to bed, Clint drags out the last of the linens and puts them on the couch. It's a hulking, ugly thing that Clint had bought before he'd even gotten accepted into SHIELD, but it's so comfortable he can't even think of getting rid of it.
"It might actually be better in the barn," Clint says as he locks up. "Nate's in a wake up in the middle of the night screaming phase."
"You raising them on your own?" Bucky asks as he toes off his boots. There's a knife strapped to his ankle and Clint goes uneasy at the sight of it. Bucky hadn't made any moves against any of them all night, but that doesn't mean Clint's thrilled with having an armed man around while he sleeps.
"My wife died last year." It's not the first time he's said it, probably won't be the last, but it really doesn't get any easier. Bucky doesn't offer him any words of sympathy and Clint's grateful. Being sorry won't unkill Laura. "I'm gonna sleep while I can. See you in the morning."
---
In the morning, Clint finds Bucky in the kitchen making pancakes. Cooper's circling him, flour in his dark hair and mouth running about the comic he's been reading. His dad's a real life superhero and he's still into Batman. It's insulting.
"We had flour?" Clint asks, because he can't think of anything else to say. Bucky raises his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth kicked up. Clint fights down the urge to flip him off. Bucky holds out his hand and Cooper gives him the bowl of batter.
"I've made more food on less," Bucky says. The pan sizzles as he pours. It's such a weird tableau that Clint doesn't know what to do with it. "Go to the store and get some actual food, and I'll show you."
"I have actual food," Clint says defensively. He made rice the other night. The stir-fry had been kind of mushy and brown, but it had vegetable and everything in it. Bucky doesn't look impressed.
All of them eat breakfast at the table, Nate happily smearing the brown sugar syrup Bucky'd made all over his face and highchair. Steve calls as Cooper's clearing the table and Clint passes his phone over without answering. He has to get the syrup out of Nate's hair before it dries, or there's going to be hell to pay.
"You trust him now?" Steve asks when Clint gets the phone back. He sounds smug, which is just wrong on Captain America.
"Trust is a strong word," Clint says. Steve laughs. Clint needs to start hanging out with better people. "He's not so bad, I guess."
"Yeah," Steve says softly. "I know." Steve gives him an update on the mission, which isn't going great, and doesn't bother making promises about timelines. Clint wishes he were in the field. He misses it, misses having a set of clear, reachable goals. Shooting a target down is so much easier than figuring out how not to mess his kids up. It probably says something about him.
They fall into a routine. Bucky cooks for them in the morning and at night, much to the kids' delight, and during the day they pick up on the shit that needs to be done around the farm. The regular pension pay from SHIELD covers the property taxes and keeps food in the fridge, but three kids are expensive and he's thinking about actually making the farm into something useful again.
"You really don't have to do this," Clint says as he lays out a plan for livestock housing. Cows eat more than even Cooper does, and the first year probably won't get any returns, but if he can sell off a fat one or two every year they'd pay for their own care.
"What else am I going to do?" Bucky asks. He's shirtless, skin gone dark from the sun, but his left arm is wrapped up in the scraps of an old t-shirt to keep it from overheating. He hammers in a corner post and checks the set before looking around for the chicken wire.
It hits Clint then how weird everything is. Two trained assassins, two deadly men still carrying weapons on them wherever they go, building a chicken coop with printed out directions from the Internet. Clint laughs, falling back onto the porch. His stomach aches with it, but he can't stop. Bucky stops working, looking back at him like he's gone nuts. Which, hey, maybe he has.
"You having a breakdown or something?" Bucky asks cautiously. He's got grass in his hair, which has been mercifully tied back into a bun. Jesus Christ, the Winter Soldier has a manbun.
"Maybe," Clint says when he can breathe again."Is this what you imagined when you crashed my house?"
"I didn't know it was your house," Bucky says, mouth pursed. "I would have gone somewhere else if I knew this was Avengers central."
"You like it," Clint accuses. He looks at the carefully laid out wood for the coop and realizes that he's actually right for once. "Holy shit, you like it."
"Not a lot of dead things on a farm," is all Bucky says and Clint has to agree. It's not why he agreed to the farm in the first place, but he's always seen the appeal. They build the coop and it looks good, even if one side is a little more crooked than the other.
---
Things go to shit three months after Bucky showed up. It's been way longer since the couple of weeks that Steve implied, but Clint doesn't really mind. The house has been fixed up into something kind of nice again and the farm itself has a few chickens and a surly pig that Clint's getting too attached to for his own good. He's working his way up to cows.
Bucky's gotten less tense, even if there is always the telltale bulge of a knife handle at his belt. Clint put his foot down on guns in the house, and Bucky had argued but given in. The barn stays locked up. Clint knows his kids. He can give weapon safety talks until he's blue in the face, but he doesn't trust them not to pull triggers if given the chance.
Clint's half asleep on the couch, chin knocking into his chest. Bucky had never seen the Die Hard movies, and Clint is educating him as is his duty. He's tired from a long day of plowing, which doesn't stop sounding funny in his head, and the kids are asleep, and Bucky keeps making commentary on Bruce Willis that makes Clint want to stay awake.
They both startle to full attention when the door crashes open. Clint's behind the couch, scrambling for his bow before anything else registers. He hears Bucky's feet hit the ground and then something else hit it much harder. Clint slings his quiver over his shoulder, nocks an arrow, and aims.
There are six men in dark combat gear, faces covered by masks, heavy guns in their hands. Clint shoots one through the throat, another through the wrist. The men scream, and Clint's heart pounds as he thinks about the kids hearing. God, he thinks as he dodges a body flying at him, he hopes they listened when he told them what to do in emergencies.
He sees Bucky fighting out of the corner of his eye, and it's as vicious and seamless as Clint had expected. He smashes his metal hand into the face of the last of the men, the mask shattering and blood spraying out over the floor. It's going to take forever to get it out.
"Hydra," Bucky says, barely even breathing hard. Clint wipes his arm over his forehead, looking up at the ceiling. He can't hear the kids. He races up the stairs, Bucky on his heels, and slides into his bedroom. He jerks the bed away from the wall and drops to the floor, pulling up the edge of the trapdoor he himself had installed after moving in.
Cooper stares up at him, Nate clutched to his chest, his terrified eyes locked on Clint's bow. Beside him, Lila is quietly crying. Clint helps them all out, yanking them into his arms and holding them close for a moment. They're still sleep warm and safe. God, they're safe.
"Get out," Clint says. Bucky looks up at him, face going blank. Clint rolls his eyes. "For fuck's sake. We've got an emergency plan. Take the kids. Cooper." Clint grabs Cooper's small shoulders, catching his eyes. Cooper's pale and shaking, but he squares up and stands at attention. Christ, Clint thinks desperately, he's turning his kids into soldiers. "Do you remember the plan?" Cooper nods. "Go with Bucky, tell him what to do. He'll keep you safe."
"Daddy-" Lila starts. Clint hugs her again.
"Go on," Clint says. He looks at Bucky, at this stranger that forced himself into their lives, and hopes he hasn't be wrong. Bucky nods, his jaw tense. Cooper and Lila filter out to grab their shoes, Nate still clutched too tightly in Clint's arms. Nate snuffles, oblivious to the world falling apart around him. "Take care of my fucking kids, Barnes."
"You should go with them," Bucky says. Clint shakes his head.
"They're after you. I'm good at being a distraction. I'll get the team here and get shit dealt with." He kisses Nate's soft forehead before handing him over. In Bucky's arms, Nate is so, so small. "Anyway, Steve would tear me up if I let something happen to you."
Bucky stands still for a moment, cradling Nate gently, before turning. Clint takes a deep breath, arms himself, and calls Tony.
---
It's a shitshow of a battle. After the first wave, the Hydra agents caught on and have been taking cover. Clint sets himself on the roof, half hidden behind the chimney, and waits. He can see two trucks parked behind the tree line, heavy and probably armored. Clint takes anyone who comes within ten feet of the front porch out. Tony shows up, armor glaringly obvious out in the field. He's carrying Steve bridal style, which would be hilarious if it weren't for all the trespassers on his damn lawn.
"You got chickens," Tony says as he hands Clint a communicator. Clint snaps it on and shrugs.
"The fossil makes a good omelette," he says. Tony flies off at Steve's command and heads for the trucks.
Clint loses track after that. He aims, he shoots, and when he runs out of arrows he goes for the throwing knives in his rucksack. There's so many soldiers. Clint thinks about Bucky, the guy that argued with him for three hours about tomato plants, and hates them. Bucky Barnes had been the Winter Soldier, but he isn't anymore. They won't get their hands on him.
Steve rounds up the last soldiers standing, tieing them up with wire ripped from the coops. One of the chickens peck at the soldiers' boots before wandering out towards the barn. Steve waves his hand and Clint climbs down the side of the house, shaking out his shoulders when he hits the ground. He's not going to be able to do this much longer.
"The kids?" Steve asks.
"Bucky's got them in the bomb shelter," Clint says. Steve startles. "What? SHIELD bought me this place. Of course it's got a bomb shelter." Clint smashes the butt of his bow into the face of one of the groaning soldiers. "Come on."
Clint leads them around to the back of the field, ducking down to pull the gray rock at the edge of the property up. He punches in the security code and stands back as the door hisses open, dislodging dirt and grass and weeds.
"Nice setup, Barton," Tony says as he clomps down the stairs. Steve sighs and follows him down.
Bucky's in the middle of the bunker, gun raised. He lowers it as soon as Steve appears. Cooper and Lila are curled up together on the cot in the back, Nate safely between them, thankfully sleeping again. Clint goes to them, kneeling down next to the cot. They're uninjured, but he's not looking forward to explaining when they wake up.
"You okay?" Bucky asks. The click of the safety going back on echoes in the bunker. Clint nods and grins.
"Mighty Hawkeye," he says. Bucky snorts. When Clint tears himself away from the kids, Steve's looking between them with a worried furrow between his eyebrows. "So. What's the plan, Cap?"
"I'm going to take the agents into questioning," he says. Tony scoffs. It comes out in that weird mechanical wheeze that makes Clint's skin itch. Steve scowls, but it does about as much good as it always does. "I'll try to figure out how to stop them from coming again. You alright with him staying a little longer?"
"Eh, he's not so bad," Clint says. Bucky grins. "We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. Again."
"Sorry about that," Steve says sheepishly, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. Clint shakes his head. He's so used to it it's not even funny anymore.
"Come on, grab a kid and start marching." Clint carefully scoops up Nate, shushing him when he starts to whine. Bucky lifts Lila onto his hip, his metal arm carefully placed under her pajama pants, and Steve hauls Cooper up.
"It's like a PR shoot," Tony says, head tilting to the side. "The mighty heroes and the tykes. The papers would eat it up." Clint shoves him towards the stairs.
Bucky makes breakfast for all of them while Clint cleans up the blood in the living room as best he can. The bodies of the Hydra agents have been moved to the barn, Natasha already on her way to take the live ones. Tony makes a lot of noise about updating the security of the farm. Clint ignores him for the most part. He and Bucky are already a pretty good system.
When the farm's back down to just the five of them, Clint drags Bucky into the bathroom and pulls out the first aid kit. It feels immediately familiar.
"Thanks," Clint says as Bucky washes out one of the cuts on Clint's wrist. He isn't too much worse for wear, thankfully, but he wasn't joking about the rebuilding. He's going to have to chase the chickens down sooner rather than later.
"I wouldn't let anything happen to them," Bucky says without looking up. His stupid gross hair is tied up with one of Lila's hairbands and he smells like gunfire. Clint's chest feels too small.
"Hey," he says. When Bucky doesn't pay him any mind, Clint wrestles his wrist free. Bucky's eyes are so blue and he stayed to protect the kids instead of saving his own ass, and Clint remembers this budding feeling from years and years and years ago. Carefully, he leans in and presses his mouth to Bucky's.
It's quick and dry, but Clint thinks it puts his intentions across well enough.
"Yeah?" Bucky asks. Clint shrugs.
"You're handy around the house," Clint says, because everything else is still a bit new and raw to voice. Bucky snorts and goes back to bandaging Clint's wrist. When he's done, they get a few more quick, sure kisses in before Lila comes looking for them.
There's still too much to do, still the present and real worry of a repeat attack, but Clint feels secure with Bucky in with him. Two sets of hands are better than one. He doesn't have to be stretched quite as thin. When he goes to bed that night, he leaves Bucky on the couch and thinks of Laura.
She'd be happy, he thinks. She always did say he didn't give himself enough breaks, didn't let himself take the good things in life. He's going to try. God, but he's going to try.