Archive of Our Own

No, it's more due to the super soldier walking next to him, wearing a hoodie even though it's plenty warm for Spring because otherwise his cybernetic arm would kind of be a dead giveaway as to who they are, his hair pulled back in a messy fishtail braid. And to be more specific, the surrealism mostly comes into play because they're walking side-by-side, too close for general comfort, his left hand just barely brushing the fingers of James's right as they step in time seeing as, although they'd like to be holding hands, they both agree that the tactical disadvantages far outweigh the giddy butterflies they get low in their bellies out of it (or, well, at least Clint gets the butterflies; he's guessing James gets them too because he tends to smile down at their hands all dopey-like when they've got their fingers laced).

Even more, Clint's pretty sure they're, like, official now. Not that they've labelled anything yet, and it's not like he can go creep on James's status updates to see where he's leaning on the whole thing 'cause they haven't even touched on a social media intro yet. But still, Clint's a good 80-85% sure he could bat his eyes and smile all hopeful-like to get James to agree to letting him tweet a selfie of them kissing or something. Mainly because James says Clint looks so achingly pathetic when he pulls that face that saying no would be like putting a soaked kitten outside in the middle of winter, but whatever. He knows how to pick his battles and work with what he's got.

So yeah, Clint Barton, your life is practically a teen novel these days. What are the chances?

A hard knock to his shoulder jolts Clint back to the present as James steps even closer so that they're practically plastered to each other's sides as they amble down the sidewalk. "Hey, stop going off where I can't follow."

Snorting, Clint bumps his hip against James's and teases, "Would it make you feel better if I said you were right there with me?"

"Sap." And James may roll his eyes at Clint, he may huff in exasperation, but he still snakes his pinkie around Clint's to keep him close, so who's the real sap here, huh?

Trick question. It's both of them, Clint thinks with a dopey grin spreading his cheeks out wide.

James stutter-steps, and it's just enough to barely put him ahead of Clint, a position where it's easiest to simply follow in James's wake through the throngs of gaping tourists and disgruntled locals. Clint squeezes the finger wrapped with his own and lets his focus wander to up above them while James covers their immediate surroundings. It's surprisingly comfortable, to trust him to keep on eye on where they're going while Clint catalogs any possible threats they might be passing. His eyes flick from supposedly hidden security cameras, to vulnerabilities along the rooftops, to the occasional pigeon flapping past.

He doesn't bother looking down again until James tugs on his pinkie before slipping away to dodge around another couple too tied up in gazing longingly into one another's eyes to realize where they're walking. Instead of stepping back up to Clint's side, though, James skirts around the edge of a huddled group of tourists and makes a beeline for a little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop. Well, as hole-in-the-wall as any crowded coffee shop in NYC gets, i.e. it's not a Starbucks. James has opinions about Starbucks coffee, and Clint's generally inclined to agree.

An extra skip in his step now that a caffeine pit stop is imminent, Clint eagerly trails James inside, shuffling into the winding line as he glances up at the brightly colored menu board up top.

"You in the mood for anything in particular?" Clint asks absently while skimming over the options. "I'm debating iced versus hot, 'cause in this weather, you really can't go wrong with either. So it really comes down to: do I wanna savor it for awhile? In which case, I need it hot so I'll just sip at it. Or do I need all my espresso now? Which, you know, means iced so I can chug it."

Ahead of him, James hums noncommittally. His gaze wanders over the menu board lazily, and his hands are lax where he's now got them curled in the pocket of his hoodie. Grinning, Clint props his chin on James's shoulder and whispers huskily, "You mocha me crazy!"

James's face contorts half a second later like he's trying to cringe but can't help but smile at the same time. Clint's pretty damn good at getting that kind of reaction out of people, if he does say so himself. "That was…awful."

Clint rocks back on his heels with a happy hum. "I think you mean inspired."

"Inspired by every other awful pun that comes outta that mouth, maybe," James grumbles.

Clint beams back at him brightly and moves forward as the line jostles into motion. At the edge of his peripheral, which is pretty stellar by human standards if he does say so himself, he catches the sudden movement of a customer over in the corner where the restroom sign hangs.

It's always been automatic for his attention to shift quickly, first born from the instincts of a childhood spent trying to dodge drunken blows, then the ever-growing paranoia of a kid in well over his head after getting caught up in the seedy underbelly of circus life, and later as the honed reflex of a trained agent who's just doing his due diligence. These days, a lot of it is rooted in his deep-seated protective tendencies, the ones he's spent a lifetime trying to downplay because people have always been quick to take advantage of them. Being basically a superhero these days, though, it serves him pretty well to let his latent impulses run their course.

And so his head swivels around to see what might be the cause of the commotion--spider on the wall? An unfortunately placed coffee spill?--but the rest of his body isn't too worried about it, no tenser than normal when he's surrounded by a room full of strangers.

Except then the lady in the corner, who'd just shot up out her chair, making it screech hard and shrill against the tile floor, flips her table over, laptop and coffee going right along with it, and ducks back behind it.

Clint doesn't let himself stop to process what's happening behind him. He doesn't try and search out the threat since going by her reaction, it's too late to stop it. He just grabs the sleeve of James's hoodie, yanks him down in front of Clint, shouts to the room at large to "Get down!" and dives forward to the ground himself, dragging as many civilians ahead of them in line down with him as he can reach.

Clint more feels than hears the windows lining the storefront implode, a high-pitched frequency accompanying the attack that screws with even his ridiculously high-tech hearing aids. A hot rush of air washes over his back, knocking him flat with the force of a car running a red light. He's left breathless, sprawled over top James, who's squirming around in an attempt to get out from under him. He's vaguely aware of sporadic stinging pains arching up his back--glass? It's probably glass. Maybe even some hefty wood splinters if the windows decided to drag the tables along with them. He tries to cough, to force his lungs to expand just that little bit to get him breathing again--

And that's when a concussion grenade rolls past and explodes.

Clint's whole world whites out, or maybe that's just his ears, it's hard to tell. The grenade's blast packs enough punch to throw him off James, and then he's flying through the air 'til something catches him. It's none too gentle about it, and his head cracks back against something too solid to budge. It's a fair while before he can comprehend much of anything else.

Next thing he's really aware of, there's dust and debris floating down around his face. The acrid smell of smoke intermingling with the cloying stench of burnt flesh is thick in the air. The world's not dulled down to that muffled state he's used to when he takes out his aids or switches them off. Instead it's like he's stuck inside the heart of a cast iron bell, everything eerily silent and ear-splintering loud at the same time, his body high-tuned to even the most minute vibrations around him.

Raising a shaky hand, Clint reaches up to check if his aids are even still there, but the second he makes contact, he has to jerk his hand away 'cause a spike of debilitating pain shoots straight through his skull. His vision blurs for a second, and he's just staring down at his hand dumbfounded for at least three beats too many, trying to figure out why the blob that's his hand looks more red than tan.

The fuck is going on--?

James!

Clint lurches forward and a sickening wave of vertigo hits, but he powers through it, has to, because James was under him a minute ago, was moving and breathing and safe, but now he's gone, and Clint has to find him.

He manages to get turned over so he can at least get his knees under him, crawling unsteadily over what's left of the counter, the mangled bits of tile, and--shit--prone bodies. He fumbles back to his pocket for his phone, and thank fucking miracles that it's still in one piece. He holds his thumb over the embedded A on the back, waiting for it to vibrate in his hand indicating a live connection to JARVIS.

Clint starts talking as soon as it does, and the disconnect between knowing he's speaking out loud but not being able to hear himself is all the worse with the pain in his head, the noticeable scratchiness of his throat, and the fact that he can't even feel his own words rumbling in his chest like usual. He's not even really sure what he's saying, 'cause half his brain's trying to remember all the salient details of where they are--did they take a right at 16th? No, no, left. They went left--but the panicked, much more prevalent half has him screaming out for James every other breath, so who knows if JARVIS can even make sense of it all.

The dust in the air is slowly thinning out, letting Clint get a bead on things slightly further ahead, but he's only got a few yards of visibility in any one direction. There's still plenty in the air to get stuck in his throat while he's screaming, though, and he's cut off from calling out for James again by a hacking cough. He wipes at his eyes to try and brush away the tears gathering in the corners, but all he really manages is to spread more dirt across his face.

Squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment to ward off the worst of the stinging, he opens them again and catches spastic movements through the haze in the air. He scrambles forward, dropping down onto his forearms to keep his upper body supported because the floor is riddled with glass shards that are already cutting deep into the meat of his palms, and he doesn't want to leave his phone and lose his one connection to reinforcements, even it's essentially a one-way line.

A few feet further and he's close enough to make out what's happening up ahead--it's James, still on the ground, but fighting to get up, at least--

He's struggling against something, his arms pinned while his legs are kicking out wildly, but there's nobody else near him that Clint can see, and definitely no one near enough to be keeping him down. He tries to call out for him again, but James doesn't even look towards him, he's too busy snarling at something, still fighting, and Clint can see his lips moving furiously, but the air's still too cloudy for even his impeccable eyesight to pick out the finer details.

Abruptly, all James's movements cease. And not like they petered off 'cause he got too tired to keep it up. No, one second his limbs are flailing, and the next he just goes limp.

Clint's heartbeat stutters and skips, then picks back up with a painfully frantic beat as he desperately scuttles forward. He needs to get to James, needs to check him over for--what? Was he shot? Clint didn't see his body jerk against a bullet, but what else could've cut him down so quickly?

Except--James moves again. It's slow and deliberate, the way he bends up from the waist until he's sitting in the middle of the ruined coffee shop, placidly staring ahead.

Confused, Clint glances in the direction James is looking and sees another figure advancing on James. It's just a silhouette at first, distorted by all the debris in the air, but Clint can tell that the person is holding a weapon, aiming a gun at James and moving in on him while he just sits there.

Clint frantically looks around him, his free hand dropping to the floor and sweeping out looking for anything he can use as a reliable projectile to take down the assailant or at least get the gun out of that person's hand. His right hand catches on a large shard of glass, slicing it open. Clint hisses, can feel the breath quickly squeezing past his lips as he winces, and the pain is just enough to smack his common sense back into him.

He's armed. He's always armed.

No bow 'cause it's too obvious when he's not on a mission. No gun since Bucky was packing plenty. But he's got knives stashed all over--sleek throwing knives, perfect for disarming and even killing from a certain distance.

His right hand's too slick with blood to throw accurately, so Clint moves his phone over, grasping it with just his slippery fingers, and reaches back with his left. He slides one of his spear-pointed knives from the make-shift sheath in his boot and palms it expertly.

Instinct takes over then, driving out the protocols that have been trained into him to disarm first and gather intel, and he starts to draw his arm back, aim adjusting towards the assailant's neck, but he's pulled up short by a sudden and sharp pain in his shoulder. Gritting his teeth, Clint pushes himself up to his knees for better leverage and throws the knife, relying on the momentum coming from the bend of his elbow and the flick of his wrist, awkward as it feels. It flips cleanly through the air and embeds in the giving flesh of the person's neck, severing their carotid artery more smoothly than cutting butter.

The body slumps to the ground, and Clint inches forward on his knees with a weary eye trained on it, looking for the tell-tale twitches of a person's dying breaths. The spill of long hair is the first true detail he can make out, then the lithe but small frame. It takes a moment for the image to really register in Clint's sluggish mind, but he recognizes her, the woman who'd ducked before the attack started--was she a plant? Who the hell was attacking them so out in the open like this?

Finally close enough to touch, Clint reaches forward with a grimace and finds no pulse. Before he can breath a sigh of relief, though, he's startled when his phone is shot out of his blood-slick grip, wheeling him around and away with the jerk of it.

Things crystallize then in a way he's well used to. It all lines up in Clint's head automatically: the projected angle of the bullet embedded in the reinforced casing of his Starkphone that's now cracked and blinking despondently from the slab of concrete next to him, the general velocity behind it required to get through that casing, how far away the shooter then has to be given that it's a 9mm bullet and therefore came from a handgun. Clint turns, his left hand already at his back pulling a hidden throwing knife from the sheath sewn in to the waistband of his jeans. He moves too fast, his vision blurs again, the floor slips out from under him, and a sudden queasiness hits his stomach. But there's a lifetime of experience guiding him now, muscle memory overriding all the sensory overload, and the knife flies out of his hand with a deft snap of his wrist before he can even get his eyes to cooperate and focus on his target.

His knife knocks the shooter's gun away by the expedient method of slicing across the exposed knuckles on the grip. Unfortunately, it turns out James was the one shooting at him.

Shit.

"James, what're you--"

Except James unearths a knife of his own, flips it in his cybernetic hand, and executes a textbook throw aimed right for Clint's center mass. Clint barely dodges, openly gaping at James, and that's when it hits him--he's not facing James right now. That's the Winter Soldier giving him the thousand-yard stare, stalking across the rubble littering the floor as the plates in his arm rotate and resettle menacingly.

And yeah, so Clint's a little slow on the uptake, but his eardrums were just blown--again--and he's probably got a concussion on top of a whole mess of other concussions, so sue him.

"James," Clint entreats, trying to push every ounce of emotion he can wring from his bones into the words and praying that his tone conveys that, that he's not just rasping out into the void. "You gotta snap out of it! It's me, it's Clint. You're only gonna send yourself on a massive guilt trip if you hurt me, trust me on th--"

He chokes off as the Soldier wraps his metal fingers snug around Clint's neck and starts to squeeze, lifting Clint up onto the tips of his toes as he slowly pulls Clint off the ground, leaving him to dangle so his own weight does just as much harm as the hand clasped around his neck. Clint scrambles for a hold on the metal plates, but his hands keep sliding off, caked in so much blood and sweat.

"James!" Clint tries to push the words out, but his airway is closing, and the ringing in his ears has reached a shattering crescendo. There's no flicker of his James behind those dead-set eyes; they're grey, still pools reflecting Clint's own frightened eyes right back at him. His vision is tunneling down, his lungs seizing up, his feet scrabbling for purchase fruitlessly--

The Soldier's about to put him down for the count, and James'll never forgive himself for that, so Clint has to keep trying, has to force some measure of sound past his lips until he's got no more breath to plead with. "James, please! Stop! James, ba--bay--"

James fades out of his sight slowly, bleaching away like watercolors on too wet paper, and Clint's last thought is how close the water streaming down the page resembles tears.