Archive of Our Own ^beta

A sleek black car with dark tinted windows slows to a stop on Clint's street corner near the airport and the passenger side window rolls down.

Clint walks the few steps over with a gait that puts the length of his legs on show and leans down to casually rest his elbows on the door frame, wrists hanging loosely and showing off his forearms too.

Bucky kind of hates him.

"Haven't seen you around here before, handsome," Clint says, making a hot flush creep up the back of Bucky's neck at the very public performance. "Need a local to show you the sights?"

"Get in, Barton." Bucky forces down the embarrassment and rolls his eyes. He pops the lock on Clint's side of the car. "And I've been here longer than you. I don't think there's many sights to see." He gestures around at all of the leftover soviet bloc architecture.

"You never know," Clint says, grabbing his bag and sliding into the car with the same easy movements, drawing one long leg up into the footwell and sprawling out in a way that shouldn't be allowed in a colleague's car.

Even if it is stolen. 

Bucky flicks a glance at Clint to find him slouched with one thumb tucked into his belt loop like he's advertising the goods. As usual, it makes Bucky grit his teeth. "Will you quit that?"

"Quit what?" Clint looks at Bucky. More accurately, Clint looks Bucky over, and Bucky should be used to this with all the missions they've been on so far, but he can feel the tips of his ears heating up. And he's dead certain that's exactly what Clint wants.

"You know what you're doing." That seems safe enough to say, because he's fucking seen Barton sit and look professional. Not like this. Not like he's offering another kind of professional service. And neither of them is under deep cover for this mission.

"I'm just sitting, Buck," Clint says, resting his other hand on his thigh, absently sliding it back and forth over worn denim and the frayed hole half way down where Bucky can see the golden tan Clint picked up on their last mission to Greece.

The mission Bucky spent covered from the neck down, black makeup smudged all over his eye sockets, creeping around at night on the intel Clint picked up during the day.

Clint had told him he looked like Hamburglar and laughed and laughed.

Bucky looked it up when he got home and then had a meeting with Steve, Tony, and Clint.

He was paired with Clint again on the next mission anyway. Which brings him to this car, on this road, in this place, with the same unfairly attractive idiot in the passenger seat acting like a rent boy.

"You do this on purpose," Bucky says.

"Sit?" Clint shifts in his seat, stretching his torso with a particularly sinuous twist.

"Jesus." Bucky shoots Clint a glare when they roll to a stop at the light. "Why are you like this? And don't say 'like what?'."

Clint's smirk suggests that's exactly what he was planning to say. "Just natural charisma, I guess. You should try it some time."

Bucky, who has the natural charisma of a sea slug, resists the urge to self-consciously shove the loose strands of his hair back off his face. It's already an oil slick every night by the time he takes a shower; the last thing he needs is to get his finger oils all over it too."

"Too soon?"

Bucky just raises a metal finger in Clint's direction and navigates the twists in the road ahead more like an F1 driver and less like the driver of a relatively conservative, if expensive, European sedan.

And if that makes Clint clutch at the Oh Shit handle with a surprised squawk and his legs go from lazy sprawl to bracing himself against inertia, well, the plan worked. "You are such an asshole, you know that? It's okay to let go of past trauma, Bucky. Look to the future."

"The future's gonna involve driving off that cliff if you don't shut up," Bucky says, instead of 'fuck you.' He likes to shake it up once in a while.

And Bucky feels like another 'fuck you' in such a short period of time would be excessive. And he's already used up the finger and the aggressive driving. So he's okay allowing room for a little threat to life and limb for flavor.

"Threatening me isn't going to help you deal with your past trauma, Bucky," Clint says, with far more confidence that Bucky's bluffing than he should have, because Bucky doesn't bluff. The cliff is looking good right now.

Good, but inconvenient, even for him, and he's recovered from being literally shot in the head.

The point is, Clint's got no call to be talking about Bucky's past trauma, and Bucky's not about to ask Clint which, out of the incredibly long catalog of Bucky's past trauma he's referring to. Bucky settles for asking: "How about I give you some current trauma, and we can compare?"

It's not his best work, but it'll do.

"I find being tied up and edged until I cry very traumatic," Clint says, whipping out that bedroom voice even while he's bracing himself in his seat with all four limbs and his not-negligible core strength. He looks like a giant blond spider.

"Fuck you," Bucky says, giving up on his principles of keeping the insults varied. It's just getting really fuckin' old being the mature one in the face of Clint's near-constant mockery.

That, and Bucky hates himself a little more every time Clint lands a hit and Bucky feels a spark of something he's sure as hell not going to get more of.

He'd sooner spend another year in Cryo than let on that Clint's gotten to him even once.

Bucky jerks the wheel harder than necessary one last time before the road straightens out and heads inland from the top of the bluff. "You done?"

"I'm not done until the cigarettes come out, baby," Clint says, relaxing back into that lazy sprawl which Bucky is not looking at.

"Now you're just trying too hard," Bucky says, feeling like he's back on the familiar ground of criticizing Clint's life choices. "Leave some mystique."

Clint huffs, folding his arms and ruining his inviting posture entirely. "You try doing better than that while trying to keep down business class tuna casserole and a double of Russian vodka."

"Really doubt they're serving tuna casserole over Eastern Europe." Bucky navigates through the narrow streets like he was born here. It's a perk of 70 years as a Soviet meatpuppet assassin for global evil incorporated.

"Whatever." Clint snorts. "I'm from the midwest, buddy. It looked like tuna casserole, tasted like tuna casserole, and I'm gonna call it tuna casserole for the sake of my mental health and digestive system."

"Is tuna casserole some kinda delicacy where you come from or something?"

"Ugh. God. No. I almost vomited all over the car twice on the way here. And at least I know what goes into tuna casserole. I hope this safe house is stocked with Pepto."

"Why would a supersoldier need Pepto Bismal?" Bucky glances at Clint, absolutely not taking any pleasure in his misery.

"We could stop on the way there?"

Bucky snorts. "Look around us, Clint. Everything closed at 6."

"We could break in somewhere on the way?" Clint tries.

"We're supposed to be laying low," Bucky says. "Getting caught breaking into the local chemist for stomach medicine isn't low profile."

Clint gasps, theatrically clutching his chest. "Did you just presume that I would get caught?"

"Yeah," Bucky says, swinging the wheel at the next intersection instead of stopping at the sign. "What're you gonna do about it?"

"Possibly throw up in your car."

"'S not my car. I stole it in Moldova."

"Didn't you say we're supposed to be keeping a low profile?"

"Which one of us was a ghost story for over 40 years?" Bucky smirks, only slowing down as they pull onto the narrower roads on the approach to his safe house. "And anyway, I stole it years ago. So don't puke in it. I don't wanna have to steal another one."

"What? Puke can be cleaned."

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "Puke is forever on a hot day."

To his credit, Clint looks like he's thinking that over, a distant look on his face before he gags.

"I'm serious, Barton. Puke in the car and I'm kicking you out to walk next time."

"It's not that," Clint says. "I just remembered the family car on hot days."

"If you were a sickly child, you've overcome it admirably," Bucky says.

Clint rolls his eyes. "No. Me and Barney were fine. But dad was an alcoholic."

"So you're saying you know how to clean up puke."

"From so many surfaces," Clint says, swallowing hard and leaning his head back against the headrest with closed eyes. "I don't want to do it again either. Seriously, Bucky."

Bucky's so tempted to turn right instead of left and take Clint on a tour of the city. But he genuinely doesn't want to deal with Clint revisiting whatever that fish thing was while he's in Bucky's car. Bucky turns left. "Just down here."

"Oh, thank god," Clint says. "I am so ready to be standing still. Or sitting still. Laying down still sounds even better."

"Lucky for you there're two bedrooms."

"Fancy," Clint says.

Bucky shrugs. "Bought it in the 90s when Eastern European real estate was a steal." He pauses in front of a garage door and clicks a fob in his pocket. There's no squeak or grind whatsoever.

The garage door moves like butter. Bucky pulls to a stop and frowns. Why would it be like butter? Butter would make a terrible garage door.

"Are we getting out?" Clint asks, eyeing the scant clearance between the car and the wall.

"If you can," Bucky says, slipping out on his side easily. Sometimes, it's good not to be a giant.

Clint makes a sound of irritation and contorts himself like a circus performer until he's standing next to the car.

He looks over the complete lack of space between the front bumper and the garage wall before simply sliding across the hood of the car, making it look unfairly graceful and cool.

Bucky's mood immediately falls a couple of notches. "You coming in or what?" He enters the door code and leans in for the biometric scanner, then stands in the open doorway to the safe house's kitchen, pointedly leaving Clint's duffle to Clint on the floor next to the back wheel of the car.

This isn't some host and guest situation.

It's a safe house and, he reminds himself again, they are professionals, in spite of the impression Clint tends to give when he's not actively being a competent badass. The competence on mission, Bucky tells himself firmly, is the only reason Bucky puts up with him.

"Mission dossier's on the kitchen table," Bucky says. And then, after a moment's hesitation, staring at the couch, he narrows his eyes. It was centered before he left. And now it's a hand span to the right. "Coffee and french press in the cabinet above the stove," he says absently, eyes skimming over the rest of the room for any discrepancies.

Bucky doesn't see anything else out of place, and he doesn't smell any unfamiliar visitors, but that doesn't mean there haven't been.

There are ways.

"You know how to use a french press?" Bucky asks Clint, shuffling his suspicions to the back of his mind. He's only offering up the coffee because Clint's marginally more tolerable when he's caffeinated.

Clint raises his eyebrows. "Bucky, I can make coffee in almost anything."

"Then make it in the press. I'll be downstairs." He pauses, making one more visual sweep of the room, not entirely sure if the end table is at the precise angle he'd left it either. "Kettle''s on the stove if you can't find it."

"I rescind all of today's accusations of assholery," Clint says after wrestling his over-stuffed duffle across the living room and into the open door to the small bedroom. Bucky's mildly surprised not to hear a complaint about Bucky's kettle comment. It's possible Clint is just that uncaffeinated. Decaf Clint is just too exhausted to put up a fight anymore.

Bucky reviews the day so far and sighs. "Only today's?" he asks, in an effort to not think about it.

"If you want all of them rescinded, we're not looking at just evening coffee after a long flight."

"No?" Bucky asks before he can register that he probably shouldn't have given Clint the opening. Whatever. It's done now.

"Nope," Clint agrees, already at the sink and filling the kettle, duffle dropped haphazardly in the middle of what passes for a utility room, taking up almost all of the walking space. "You want that many 'asshole's retracted, I expect coffee in bed in the morning after a night of marathon sex."

Bucky snorts, thinking about the neighborhood that borders on a retirement community. He doesn't mind at all. But he guesses Clint might if he's hoping for Eastern European Grindr. "Yeah, good luck with that."

"Hey, Buck?"

Bucky turns, ready to object to the repeated over-familiarity but stops when he finds Clint legitimately frowning into the cupboard above the stove. "What? Local roast's not good enough for you?"

"Huh? Nah, I'll consume literally anything with the word coffee in it." Clint swings the cabinet all the way open. "But even I can't drink coffee that's not there." For the first time, he seems irritated. "Cute joke. Very revenge. Now where's the coffee?"

Bucky frowns, walking back into the kitchen to look directly in the cupboard as if that will manifest the bag of coffee he knows was there beside the french press that morning. "Dunno. I left in a hurry. Just…look for it. The kitchen's not all that big."

"I rescind my rescinding," Clint says with a grouchy edge to his voice that Bucky can't help smiling at.

But he's still got an itch between his shoulder blades like he's being watched. Or like someone's broken into one of his safe houses, and he takes that personally.

"No, come on, where'd you hide the coffee?" Clint asks, drawing himself up to loom over Bucky. But Bucky's been loomed over by better and bigger men than Clint, and he's perfectly capable of putting Clint down on the ground in a world of pain or ignoring it.

He ignores it.

"Come on. Spill the beans, Barnes. Where'd you hide it?"

"I didn't hide shit."

"Well, what am I supposed to do for coffee?"

"Fucked if I know." Bucky turns his back on Clint and presses his flesh palm against the ugly little picture of a horse and a wagon of apples. It beeps, and he pulls open the door to the basement with a little wave. "Like I said, look for it or something."

"Because Bucky Barnes can't remember where he put the coffee in the nearly empty kitchen of the safe house he's been living in for a week. You're getting old, Buck," Clint calls down after him. "First the memory starts going, and then—"

Bucky only just stops himself from slamming the door at the top of the stairs and then does slam the door at the bottom of the stairs and locks it behind himself. If Clint wasn't so effective in the field, he'd be sending him back to the States in pieces and demanding a replacement.

Manufacturing defect.

When he can't find his headphones, there is, he's almost willing to admit, a moment where he worries that Hydra's chair really did fuck with his memory. He tosses the drawers and cabinets around the computer desk until he finds them under a go-bag that could really stand to be unpacked and washed.

It's been there…..a while.

Not for the first time, Bucky seriously considers just tossing the whole bag and starting fresh. Literally. 

(Bucky's seen and smelled a lot in his long life, but even he's uneasy about the olfactory experience waiting for him in there.) Which is how he knows down to his bones that he didn't put the headphones under it. They go near his face, for fucks sake. 

The fuck.

He does not unpack and wash the go bag, just kicks it further out of the way where he doesn't have to look at it. Again.

Bucky frowns, visually measuring the distance between the corner of the computer desk and the area behind a small filing cabinet that he's come to think of as the home of the dubious go bag. 

The bag was too close to the computer.   
  
On the other hand, because the bag was too close to the computer, for whatever reason it was, the headphone cord just got caught in Bucky's clothes at some point and flung the headphones off the desk. Then they landed. Under. The bag. 

That's all.

Bucky narrows his eyes as if that will prevent him from examining the physical unlikelihood if the scenario and focuses on being grateful that the unexplained movement of the go bag hadn't involved the zipper. 

He shakes off the edgy feeling and settles down at the computer to watch his security footage at half speed from the moment he closed the garage door behind him on the way to the airport until the moment he and Clint walked into the kitchen.

Somewhere around the two hour mark, while then-Bucky was out of the house fetching Clint, there's a glitch in the recording, and when it clears up, the living room looks exactly the same as it does now.

With everything just askew.

Bucky scowls. He rubs between his eyebrows, slowing down the security footage to watch frame by blurry frame on a each individual cam that should all be as high def as it gets, but each time, there's that glitch like a VHS bootleg that's been copied into oblivion. 

One camera facing the kitchen shows a dark blur flying between the cabinet above the stove towards an open corner of the kitchen and Bucky makes a mental note to buy a fly swatter.   
  
He watches those frames again. 

Fly swatter or a tennis racket. 

Bucky shakes his head, backing everything up to the timestamp immediately after the bug and before the glitch. 

On every single camera. And he's got power backup, so he can't blame it on one of the frequent power outages around here. He overlays an earlier frame with a later frame, and the couch has definitely been moved four inches to the left and rotated about ten degrees after the glitch. But nobody was there to move it.

If this is Tony playing one of his little pranks in the great Avengers team effort to make Bucky 'lighten up,' Bucky's going to take scissors to the man's entire collection of stupid bespoke vests.

He looks like a goddamn lounge lizard in them anyway.

Once Bucky's willing to accept that nobody's been in the safe house since he left, and that maybe there'd been a small earthquake that made the camera feed glitch out while shifting the furniture, he can smell coffee brewing in the kitchen. Bucky leaves the security footage behind and stomps back up the stairs.

Clint better have left a cup for him.

When Bucky gets to the kitchen, though, there's no press, no mug waiting for him, and, crucially, no coffee. "Selfish bastard." Bucky turns and walks straight to the extra bedroom, flinging open the door to find a shirtless and pantsless Clint standing in the middle of the room in boxer briefs and sagging white socks. "Change your mind, handsome?" Clint asks. But even he can't make drooping white athletic socks look sexy.

"Why didn't you leave me a cup of coffee?"

Clint's eyebrows fly up. "That would require me having found and made the coffee. A thing that did not happen, I would like to point out."

Bucky turns his head into the hallway and takes a deep breath. He still smells coffee. But no coffee in Clint's room. "Never mind," he says. He's been awake three days nonstop. And even if he technically doesn't need sleep, it helps keep the murders urges at bay. 
  
But he is calm. He is fine. He is not a murderbot, no matter what Tony says when he thinks Bucky isn't listening.   
  
So he's going to write the whole thing off as a bizarrely mundane hallucination or a natural occurrence with a perfectly reasonable explanation. 

"Get up early," he tells Clint, as that's why he came to Clint's room in the first place. Certainly not for the coffee, which was obviously an afterthought. "4:30. Read the mission brief, memorize the maps, and be ready to go by five. Maybe shower."

The truth is, Clint smells fine. But if Bucky's expending the effort to hold off all of those murderous urges, he's willing to give in to petty urges. Good stress outlet. 

"And what will you be doing, Sergeant, while I'm doing all of that?" Clint asks, unfazed.

"Sleeping," Bucky says. "And don't call me Sergeant." He only just resists the urge to slam Clint's door on the way out. The pettiness is still in effect, but he doesn't feel like replacing drywall before flying home this time.

He settles for stomping off down the hall to get some fucking sleep before he decides murder's looking pretty good after all.

"Okay," Clint says, looking like he's the one who hasn't slept in days by the time they drag themselves back to the safehouse the next evening, after the kind of stakeout that's notable only for the excruciating boredom that never seems to end. "That sucked. Are you sure we're not operating on bad intel?" 

"I gathered that intel." Bucky has his own doubts about the intel now and is tempted to go out and double check while Clint is asleep that night. He stares Clint down, daring him to make some kind of put-down. 

Surprisingly, Clint does not take Bucky's unspoken dare. "Okay, yeah, okay." Clint puts his head down on his folded arms on the kitchen table and closes his eyes. "So, intel good. Target currently playing mole man."

Bucky looks Clint over and leans back against the counter, folding his arms. The slumped display in front of him seems excessive compared to the indefatigable flirtatious dumpster fire he's come to expect over the years, at the end of an especially frustrating day staking out a target together.

"What's wrong with you?"

Clint huffs. "So much. So, so much," he mumbles against the wood.
Bucky does not disagree, but he's not hypocrite enough to not-disagree out loud. 

"How about this time? Narrow focus." Bucky holds a metal thumb and forefinger almost touching, to get his point across. 

"No coffee," Clint answers, face mashed into the table. "You try operating on no coffee." 

"Fuck off. I didn't have coffee for over 50 years," Bucky says, even though he'd personally kill for a good cup of coffee right now too.

"Yeah, yeah, play the Hydra card again," Clint's voice is muffled against the wood. And Jesus Christ, Barton is an asshole.   

"You're such an asshole," Bucky informs him.

"I'm the asshole?" Clint lifts his head just enough to stare at Bucky, as if lifting it all the way is simply beyond his capabilities right now. "Seriously? Who was it who spent all last night watching weird Eastern European porn?"

Bucky rears back, feeling his cheeks heat with an unwilling flush of heat. "I dunno. The neighbors? It sure as fuck wasn't me."

"The neighbors," Clint says. "In the burned out unit next door."   
  
It shouldn't surprise Bucky that Clint did a quick recon at some point.   

"It was not me," Bucky says. There are things he'll back down on. His alleged taste in porn is not one of them.   

"Ok. Sure. It was the ghost," Clint says.

That makes an unpleasant sensation trickle down his spine. "The ghost," Bucky echoes.

"Yeah," Clint says, once again talking to the wood of the table. "Obviously, there's a ghost living here with a taste for pornography. I have seen the magazines, Bucky, and if they're not yours, they have to be somebody's. And may I add, those magazines were seriously weird, and I'm impressed that you paid for the cable package that includes the XXX channels if you weren't going to watch them."

"Presumptuous of you to assume I paid for a fucking thing," Bucky says instead of encouraging Clint on the ghost idea. Or following up on Clint investigating the in-house pornography options.

The point is, the ghost. Or whatever.

It's not that Bucky doesn't exactly not believe in ghosts, but the last thing he needs right now is more paranoia. "And anyway, I didn't hear anything last night."

"Seriously, Bucky? I'm deaf and I heard it. Do you have any idea how loud the television has to be for me to hear it with my hearing aids out? I have lived in Brooklyn for ten years, and you know how many times noise woke me up? None. Exactly none."

Seemingly worn out by all the words, Clint drops his head, face first, back to the surface of the table. 

Bucky feels the need to reiterate: "I didn't hear shit." 

"Liar," Clint mumbles. 

Except Bucky isn't lying. "Not this time, pal." Bucky searches the upper cabinets for coffee, because sure, there's a possibility he put it in the wrong one. It's not in any of them, and he stares at that bottom corner cabinet before grimacing and ducking down to open it and look. The coffee's sitting right there. 

Hair raises on Bucky's arms and he opts to leave the coffee where it is and go without. 

Bucky frowns and darts a glance at the old CRT television. It's sitting exactly where it always does. Four inches off center from the couch Bucky still hasn't moved back into its perfectly centered position.

He goes to pick up the remote and clicks the on button. The television boots up to Bucky's usual local news station.

"You chase your porn with the news?" Clint asks, clearly and shamelessly judging Bucky.

Bucky grits his teeth. "There was no porn.

"Sure, I imagined the whole thing." Clint shakes his head. "Including the daddy kink and 'oh, no, stepbrother' porn. Which, incidentally, is not the direction my tastes run. And that would be a shame, because what kind of future does a relationship have if the participants can't even watch nasty porn together?" He looks Bucky over from lank hair to steel-toed boots. "Tell me it isn't so. I'll be absolutely crushed if our romance for the ages isn't to be."

It takes a moment for everything Clint said to filter through Bucky's brain and make sense. Once it does, he scowls. "There is no romance. For the ages or otherwise. And there is no porn," he says with emphasis. 

"That's okay, Bucky," Clint says comfortably. "I can wait for you to come around to the idea and get comfortable sharing your kinks with me. It's a whole new century." He drags himself out of his chair as if he's a hundred years old and then throws himself onto the couch like a teenager, letting out a moan that's more pornographic than anything happening on the news channel. "Being horizontal feels amazing, by the way. You should try it." Clint drops one leg to the floor and adjusts the throw pillow under his head.

"You're going to wake up with a stiff neck," Bucky says.

"Nah," Clint says. "You'd be amazed how many places and positions I can sleep in and still function when I wake up."

That's something Bucky can do, too ever since Azzano. It makes life pretty fucking dull when you spend years being sent around the world in shipping containers and left to wait for days or weeks overlooking the target's most frequently visited location. But it comes in handy not needing to sleep when every REM cycle brings screaming horrors.

He doesn't know where Clint learned to subsist on cat naps too short for dreams. He's barely a baby assassin compared to Bucky. "Suit yourself," Bucky says, instead of asking.

Clint sticks an arm up over the back of the couch with his thumb pointing up. "Hey, Bucky?"

"Yeah. What?"

"Can I get a blanket?"

"Sure. They're in the hall cabinet."

There's a beat of silence and then Clint says, "I was actually asking if you could get me a blanket."

Bucky tilts his head, staring holes into the back of the couch. "You can't walk fifteen feet?"

"Right now, I'll count myself lucky if I can walk twenty feet to the bathroom." Clint yawns until Bucky hears his jaw pop. "Until then, I'm gonna be asleep. Deeply asleep. As long as someone doesn't get the urge for kinky Eastern European porn again."

"I told you, I was not watching—"

"Hey, I'm not the guy who's gonna kink shame," Clint says. "You do you. Just, y'know, when I'm not trying to sleep in the same room. And anyway, if you wanted to get off, all you had to do was ask. I mean, I'm not gonna turn down all of that." Clint's visible hand makes a gesture indicating all of Bucky.

Bucky growls under his breath, giving up and dragging Clint upright. "You know what? No. Living rooms are for living in and bedrooms are for sleeping in," Bucky says, apparently channeling his mother.   
  
"Then why aren't they called sleeping rooms?" Clint asks on another tonsil-baring yawn instead of protesting the man handling. He slumps against Bucky

"Go sleep in your bed, you neanderthal." Bucky gets a firm arm around Clint's waist and gets them turned in the right direction. He also ignores all of the half muttered complaints about neanderthals and beds. "One foot in front of the other. God, you'd think you haven't slept in months." 

Clint muffles a yawn. "I sure as shit didn't sleep last night. If the "neighbors" are watching the bad porn at the top volume again tonight, you have my full permission to shoot them all." Clint even makes the air quotes. 

"I don't do that kind of thing anymore." Some day, Bucky won't have to keep reminding everyone he comes into contact with. But that day is not yet. 

"Yeah, yeah, I know you're reformed, but I'm sure as hell not planning to turn you in. It'll be our secret."

"Will this be a sanctioned murder or a hit? Because I'm pretty sure you can't afford my rates." 

"Strictly recreational," Clint says, letting Bucky lead him down the hall, eyes closed. "I am offering you this once in a lifetime opportunity out of the goodness of my heart." He bounces gently off the door frame and stumbles across the carpet. "Anyway,  you might be surprised," he tacks on to the end and falls face first onto the mattress without even pulling the tangled covers up from the bottom of the bed. "You're not the only one here with luxury prices for services offered."

"I'll think about it," Bucky says, taking the two steps necessary into the small room to pull the covers up over the queen bed that takes up most of the floor space just like the man takes up most of the mattress space. "We'll see how tomorrow goes." 

"Y'r a gem," Clint says, burrowing into the pillow and sprawling out under the blankets. 

Bucky vaguely considers pulling off Clint's boots for him but decides against it with a shrug. "Maybe I just don't feel like cleaning drool off the couch cushions. That's fucking unsanitary." 

Clint makes a vaguely offended sound into the pillow and raises a middle finger. 

"Oh yeah," Bucky says, "I am not committing recreational murder for you if you're just gonna act like that about it." He flips the light off before Clint can reply. "Just go to sleep," Bucky says.

Clint huffs and starfishes on the bed, going completely limp. Without so much as a nonsensical mumbled quip.

As if he hasn't slept in a couple of days. 

Bucky pauses before shutting the door, listening closely for any signs of impending neighborly racket. But there's nothing.   
  
He vaguely thinks about tackling that go bag again. But Clint's right about the appeal of being horizontal for a few hours. Maybe Bucky'll even stay asleep for the whole night, which sounds indulgent and incredibly tempting.

But Bucky'll be damned before he admits it while Clint is awake to hear it.

The bed in Bucky's room is waiting for him with one corner neatly turned down, as if he's in a hotel, or has a fancy maid service, neither of which are true.

For once, though, Bucky's too damn tired to be paranoid. He unzips and toes off his boots and falls face-first into bed.

There's too much on his mind to get the full night's sleep he penciled in, but he does get in some reconnaissance before dawn to confirm that the house next door is still a burnt out husk.   
  
It is.

Huh. 

There are times when Bucky almost longs for his Winter Soldier days. Not everything about them. Fucking obviously. But he'd kill for the peace and quiet he used to have in his head while he waited for his target. 

Also in the peace and quiet his ear. Say what you like about Hydra (please), but they knew how to trust their brainwashed assets to finish the mission without a minder. 

Usually. 

"You know, Buck-"   
  
Bucky sighs. Past experience suggests, strongly, that Clint will keep on until someone answers. As it's only the two of them, the unlucky someone is him. "Yeah?" 

"Back in the circus we used to kill time with ghost stories." 

"Uh huh." Bucky pinches his nose and gets back into a comfortable position looking through the scope. 

"Get it? Kill time? Ghosts?" 

"Clint." 

"Tough audience," Clint says, as if they aren't staking out some crime boss's house waiting for him to head out for a jog. Apparently, even crime bosses need to get in their cardio. "Wanna hear a ghost story?" 

"Do I have a choice?" Bucky finds himself asking in spite of the fact he knows it'll just encourage Clint. Not at all because it's nice to have company. He doesn't want company. Especially not Clint as company. 

"Well, technically. I don't believe in nonconsensual storytelling." 

Bucky resists the urge to close his eyes and pray for silence. "Alright then. Go on." 

"Okay, so, back when I was in the circus, Barney and me got put into an empty trailer. Why they had an empty trailer, we didn't actually know, and we didn't care. I mean, it was a roof, right?" 

Bucky, who's been without a roof a time or five, makes a vaguely affirmative noise. 

"So the first night, we eat with the rest of the cast and crew who didn't head into town. I didn't ask anyone anything, because as long as they fed me and kept the rain off, I was fine. I was eleven. My tastes were simple." 

Bucky snorts. 

"So Barney asks what's the catch with the empty trailer and everyone just goes dead quiet. It was probably awkward, but again, I was a growing kid, and nobody noticed when I snuck an extra helping of stew." 

Privately, Bucky thinks they let the scrawny kid have another helping, but it's Clint's childhood memory, and it's not down to Bucky to sully it. "Stew," Bucky echoes, to prove he's listening. 

"Anyway, Barn always had a bad temper, and he didn't take it so well and left dinner early right after that." 

"He left his eleven year old brother with a crowd of strangers?" Bucky asks before he can remember he doesn't actually care. 

"Eh, it was better than our last foster home. And when he left, I got to finish his stew." 

Bucky, who remembers what it was like to be a growing teenager during the Great Depression knows he would've stayed in worse situations for a full belly. "Good deal." 

"I know, right?" Clint spares a quiet laugh. "So, like I said, Barn had a temper, and I knew better than to close myself in with a- anyone pissed enough to be maybe looking for somebody to take it out on." 

Bucky frowns, making a mental note that there's a more important story behind that throwaway bit. He doesn't ask. "Sounds smart." 

"You're smart or you're dead, right?" 

Bucky could disagree, say that eleven year olds shouldn't think that way, but a stakeout isn't the place to therapize your partner. "I can relate." As an adult. 

"I fall asleep by the fire, and all the circus guys just leave me there. It was fine. It was summer. The fire was out, and it was a full moon. And nobody was bothering me, right?" 

"Is there a point to this?" 

"Rude." There's shuffling on Clint's end, and Bucky recognizes the sound of a sniper with a rock digging into the wrong spot. "I woke up to Barn screaming bloody murder and running out of the trailer."   
  
"I thought you said you stayed with the circus till you were eighteen." 

"I did." 

Bucky, who'd been under the impression that Clint's older brother was going to grab him and run off, foolishly gives in to the urge to ask a question. "So he didn't take you with him?"   
  
"Take me where?" 
  
At this point, Bucky doesn't even know. "He didn't leave?"   
  
"Nah. He banged on every door in the caravan to let him in and that there was a ghost in his trailer." Clint snorts a laugh. 

"Anybody let him in?" 

"Nah, they were all drunk, slept right through it, except the lion tamer, who threw a bottle at him." Clint's silent for a moment long enough that Bucky's ready to ask if that was the whole ghost story. 

"Sounds anticlimactic." 

"I don't hear *you* trying to tell a ghost story to keep us entertained." 

"Is that what you're doing?" 

Clint lets out a long sigh. "Fine. Long story short, everybody in the circus'd been assigned to that trailer when they were new, and everybody in the circus'd seen the ghost." 

"What'd the ghost do?" 

"Just sat there and looked sad, as far as I can tell." 

"Sad man who wasn't there sits in chair, news at ten." 

"Bucky, you're a cynic."   

"I've been told." Keeping one eye on the crosshairs, Bucky checks his watch with the other, surprised by how much time has passed. "Did anything happen, or does it end there?" 

Clint scoffs. "Of course it doesn't end there. The next night, I actually decide to sleep by the fire, because I don't really want Barney screaming in my ear while I'm trying to sleep, and yep, he does the same thing again, running out screaming and pounding on doors."   

"Anything happen?" 

"This time the fire eater threw a bottle at him too." 

"Was it lit?" 

Clint pauses. "Did you just ask if the fire eater threw a molotov cocktail at my fourteen year old brother?"   
  
"I'm about ready to throw a molotov cocktail at your fourteen year old brother." 

"Nah. The fire eater was great with kids." Clint says, apparently in spite of the guy throwing a bottle at his brother's head. 

"Okay, so two nights, same ghost?"   
  
"Three, actually,' Clint says, leaving Bucky glad he asked instead of sitting through another repetition.  "On the fourth night, the guys make a toast to the newbies, which is me and Barn, because Barn made it three nights in the trailer with the half yarder."   
  
"The who?" 

"Old guy. The ghost." 

"He win a prize?" 

"Well, we got to keep the trailer as long as we were working for the circus." 

"And the ghost went away?"   
  
"No." Clint lets out a long sigh. "He stuck around, but we got used to him. Mostly. He did make it kinda awkward for a teenager with some alone time and privacy, if you know what I mean." 

"Was this entire story about a ghost watching you rub one out during your tender formative years?" 

"Well, it wasn't going to be." 

"Got the picture." Bucky, in fact, is trying not to get the picture. Thankfully, with a much older Clint. "Did the ghost do anything interesting? Ever?"   
  
"He moved one of the logs around the fire." 

"Uh huh. It didn't roll, I'm sure." 

"Those logs took four big guys to load and unload from the truck. They didn't roll anywhere." 

"Huh. What'd the carnies do about it?" 

"Drank a toast to him too." Clint's amusement is clear in his voice. 

"So what you're saying is they liked to drink."   
  
"Pretty much. They'd toast to anything." Clint's silent for a moment. "Barney loved it." 

The down note strikes Bucky more than he's willing to admit and he scrounges for something to say. "How'd the ghost feel about having two teenage boys living with him?" 

"I dunno. He never said anything about it." 

"Not even when the trailer filled up with dirty laundry and eau de unwashed teenager?" 

"Hey, buddy. I'll have you know, I kept that trailer spic and span," Clint says. It's utterly unconvincing, but the note in his voice when he mentioned his brother's drinking is gone. 

"Sure. Just like you do with your apartment." Bucky's taking a wild guess, but it's a hit. 

"My apartment is *fine*." Clint sounds mildly aggrieved. "Do not listen to Natasha." 

"Bet it smells like old pizza and dirty socks," Bucky says, winds him up enough to forget about his brother and the most fucking boring ghost story known to man. 

"Excuse you," Clint says immediately. "Pizza doesn't have a chance to get old when I'm around. And I bet your apartment smells like gun oil and sadness." 

Bucky snorts, most of his concentration on the open office window through the trees several houses away, which is his only excuse for saying: "You think gun oil is sexy." He ignores the sadness. What the fuck does sadness smell like anyway?   
  
There's a longer pause this time, and Bucky would worry Clint's offended, if he was paying attention or thought Clint was capable of taking offense. 

Apparently, Clint's only lining up a shot. Bucky hears the crack of a bullet behind him and whips his head around in time to see a guy all but entirely concealed behind two electrical boxes behind him, collapse with a clatter of his gun on the roof concrete. 

"Hell yeah I think gun oil is sexy," Clint says once the would-be assassin assassin is down. "And so do you." 

"Maybe," Bucky allows. Admitting things is still new to him. And that seems safer than admitting that competence and adrenaline get him significantly hotter than the smell of gun oil. Because now isn't the time. 

"Gun oil's better than dirty socks," Clint says. "And my apartment does not smell like dirty socks." 

It seems that Bucky's touched a nerve.  

"Are you telling me your place smells like gun oil and sadness? Are we projecting, Barton?" 

The pause is shorter this time and has a smirk in it. "It could smell like gun oil." Which is kind of the assassin equivalent of smoothly lighting some incense to set the mood. "I guess you'll have to come over and find out." There's a short pause while they both watch a car pass the house. "Did you know your ears still turn red when you're blushing under that mask?"   
  
Bucky scowls. "Stop watching me through your scope and pay attention to the target."   
  
Clint snickers over the comms. "So is that a no?"   
  
It's Bucky's turn to go silent on the comms. He can just see the corner of the back door opening through a gap in the tree branches. 

When the door closes and Bucky can make out a balding head, he takes the shot. 

He hears, and ignores, a low whistle over the comms. 

A much (much) younger Bucky might've winced at the spray of blood and brain. This Bucky starts packing away his gun once said spray's confirmed and resumes the conversation. "That's a get the hell out of here and meet back up at the rendezvous point." 

"Got it," Clint says, all business. "And Bucky?" 

"Yeah?" 

"I'd do you even if your place does smell like dirty socks." 

Bucky lifts his head to glare in Clint's direction. "It does not smell like dirty socks."   

"Just saying," Clint says, over the sounds of disassembling his rifle. 

"Hey, Bucky?" Clint asks, once they're safely back in the safehouse, jaw shuddering with the effort of holding back a yawn. His entire torso and arms are sprawled flat on top of the table. 

"Yeah? What?" Bucky's cleaning blood out from under his fingernails. The second hit got up close and personal. It's not exactly predictable, but it happens. And it was worth it to get both done in one day. 

"Let's not call it in until tomorrow. Take a couple days off. Special treat." 

"Too late." Bucky snorts. "We've got our orders, Barton. Decamp within twelve hours after the hit and before his pals check in on him for going dark."

"We could miss our flight," Clint suggests. 

"We are making that flight if I have to knock you out and bridal carry you onto the plane myself." Bucky's ready to be gone, and it has nothing at all with listening to Clint's casual ghost story only to come home to a house that feels distinctly as if someone's been in it.   
  
And when he went looking for a file to get the blood out from under his nails, there was water on the shower floor that should've dried hours ago. 

"Fine," Clint says, stretching his entire long body towards the ceiling, fingertips brushing the cheap plaster. "Then I'm going to bed and spending a solid eight of those twelve hours deeply asleep." 

"What about the neighbors?" Bucky asks. The neighbors who don't exist to watch the porn Bucky doesn't own. He blows out a breath, banishing the uncomfortable feeling between his shoulder blades. 

"Kill 'em all," Clint mutters under his breath and keeps walking until the bedroom door shuts behind him in the hallway. 

"Oh, yeah, because we need more ghosts in here," Bucky mutters under his breath. He makes sure Clint's door is closed before slipping downstairs to review the security footage again. 

This time, there are no glitches or abnormalities. And he firmly puts the water in the shower down to a leak in the old Soviet-made plumbing. 

On more stable footing after a quick check on his physical security measures too, Bucky makes himself at home on the couch with his gear and some Ukrainian game show on the old box TV, because the Winter Soldier is officially the scariest thing in any house he's in, and any ghost can go fuck itself. 

The game show hour segues into a soap opera so overwrought and dull that as soon as Bucky puts away the last spare detonator in his utility belt, he goes and grabs Clint's bag (and everything spilling out of it and scattered around the room from it). Might as well go over that, too, because there's no way Clint is going to wake up early enough to do it himself. 

Clint can take care of the bow and arrows; Bucky's only doing this because he's bored as hell and likely to sleep no more than two hours as it is. Three, if he's feeling ambitious. And he suspects, now that there's no ghost to keep things interesting, there isn't anything else in the safehouse as likely to leave him physically and mentally exhausted as dealing with the results of Clint's 'shove crap into a bag and zip it' method of packing.

While Bucky's own folding is half-hearted at best, it's better than no folding at all. His care with Clint's belongings has nothing at all to do with the shots that took out the guy on the roof. Or the unscheduled bodyguards on Bucky's carefully planned route of infiltration at the second location.

That memory alone is doing a lot more for Bucky than the show Clint put on for him in the car ride from the airport.  

Anyway, the duffle is one hundred percent as irritating to clean and organize as Bucky expected, and by the time it's ready to zip (with room to spare, thank you), closing his eyes for a full three hours sounds like a fantastic plan. 

On his way to what passed for a master bedroom in Soviet Europe back in the day, Bucky stops by the kitchen to ensure both his replacement coffee and the press and kettle are where they're supposed to be. He feels like this might be something he needs to reassure himself on before closing his eyes for a while, heavily secured safehouse or not.

They're all accounted for and in the correct place, with a sugar canister sitting innocently and appropriately next to them. Except there wasn't a sugar canister in sight when Bucky put the fresh bag of coffee in the proper cabinet. 

For a moment, Bucky wants nothing more than to leave the sugar canister where it is, but 70 years of listening to his suspicions is what's kept Bucky alive all this time. 

He pulls the canister down like it's a bomb and sets it on the counter, looking at it. It looks like a sugar canister. 

It even says "Sugar" helpfully on the side, and Bucky is one hundred percent certain he wouldn't buy a sugar canister with fucking "Sugar" written on the side. 

Grimacing, Bucky flexes his left hand. If it is a bomb, he's not likely to lose any fingers Tony can't replace. 

He might lose the bits attached to his arm, which isn't a comforting thought, but the arm will live on. 

Like a head in a jar. 

Bucky takes a deep fortifying breath and yanks the top off of the canister. 

Nothing happens, and Bucky leans over to look inside. He rears back. Then leans in again with a frown, picking up one of the contents. 

What the fuck is Clint's ammo doing in the sugar container? That's extra paranoid for Clint, but American Midwestern origin would explain a lot about the cheerfully labeled jar. 

Bucky can feel a knotted thread of tension let go across his shoulders. No bomb. No big deal. Just bullets where the sugar should be, which is just about as selfish as Bucky would expect of Clint. 

He knows Bucky's the only one who takes his coffee sweet. Bucky didn't have a sugar canister because there didn't seem to be much of a point to keep sugar if he was the only one around to drink sweet coffee. 

And now Clint's brought the canister without the sugar, clearly to taunt him with what he can't have. Bucky re-evaluates the day and comes to the unpleasant conclusion that it's more likely Clint was toying with him than flirting. 

The thought leaves him inexplicably grouchy for all that he's never (sometimes) wasted genuine interest on Clint either. 

Feeling vaguely disgruntled by the mundanity of Clint's inconsiderate and unsolicited use of what appears to be his own perfectly good sugar canister, which he's carried with him all the way to Eastern Europe. Bucky decides it's past time for bed. Maybe he'll sleep the full three hours anyway as a treat for putting up with Clint's duffle and fucking hollow points in the fucking sugar container instead of sugar, which Bucky forgot to buy along with the coffee because it's not like he's used to drinking his coffee around other people. And it's only fucking decent to have fucking milk and sugar if you're drinking fucking coffee with other civilized people. 

It rankles, knowing he would have had a place to put the sugar he didn't buy if Clint hadn't filled the damn canister with bullets. 

It's a shit way to store ammo and he should know better. 

Bucky resigns himself to getting up early again and veers away from the bedroom door and into the bathroom instead. He turns on the ancient shower first thing so there might be lukewarm water by the time he's ready to step in. Hydra may have just hosed him off after missions that got bloody, but Bucky has standards these days. 

He strips for the shower while waiting for the ancient water heater to kick in and stares at himself in the mirror. 

A wet cat stares back. 

Bucky scowls at himself. It doesn't improve the view. 

He turns and yanks the hot water up as far as it'll go, purely out of spite at the water heater he's never bothered to replace in this safehouse. 

With any luck, the mirrors will be fogged by the time he steps out again if he's fast enough. 

As it happens, even after Bucky rushes through a quick shampoo and condition once he's finished washing and before the water goes ice cold again, the mirror is still not fogged when he emerges from the most mediocre shower he's had in years. 

He looks into the mirror again while he's brushing his teeth. The view hasn't improved, and he's actually got dark circles under his eyes, which is completely unfair. Steve doesn't get dark fucking circles. 

Of course he doesn't. 

Bucky spits the toothpaste into the sink. He's clean. Expecting more from him than that is just unfounded hope.

Leaving the towel around his hips on his way to the bedroom, Bucky pauses by Clint's door, listening for any noise from the neighbors, just in case it's weird acoustics from a house down the row.

There's nothing. So Bucky continues down the hall with the single-minded purpose of falling into bed and sleeping for three luxurious hours. 

He opens the door and stares, gripping the door frame with his metal hand as if the room's going to suck him in unless he holds on. The towel falls to the floor with a sad, small plop. 
  
There's apparently been some construction  happening while Bucky's been in the shower.  

Everything. Every fucking thing that was in the room down, to the goddamn television and reading chair, is stacked neatly in the middle of his mattress. Listing to the side, but notably not fallen over.

Even the art prints from the walls are stacked into the pile. And lounge pants that don't belong to Bucky are sticking out of the mid-bottom. They look soft and tempting, but pulling them out is going to be a game of Jenga that Bucky suspects he'll lose. 

So he does what any sensible person would do: represses the hell out of the chill running down his spine, stalks back to the couch, steals a pair of basketball shorts that pass the sniff test out of Clint's duffle bag, and marches directly into Clint's room. 

"Move over." Bucky reaches down and shoves Clint bodily across the mattress to make room for himself. One of Clint's arms flops off the side of the bed, and Bucky makes sure the pillow he's about to use doesn't have any of Clint's drool on it. 

It'll do. Everything else is now officially Tomorrow-Bucky's problem. 

Even when he lies down and Clint makes a sleepy noise, rolling over and wrapping long bare arms and legs around Bucky like the OG Buckybear, that's Tomorrow-Bucky's problem too. 

Tonight-Bucky is Going. To. Sleep.

Today-Bucky has an unanticipated problem. Not Clint wrapped around him the way he was when Bucky fell asleep, so much as Bucky himself wrapped around Clint, which wasn't a development he anticipated. And isn't one he has much experience in escaping.   
  
The Winter Soldier wasn't exactly known for honeypot missions.   
  
The second problem Today-Bucky has yet to address is the awareness that Clint's wide awake and is, therefore, choosing to snuggle with the Winter Soldier. Who is snuggling back. This is all part of the same problem, in Bucky's mind. 

And possibly a third, separate, problem is referring to himself in the third person, but fuck it, it's his internal monologue, and he can do what he wants with it. 

"Mm. This is sudden," Clint says, stroking a hand down Bucky's back when Bucky twitches in his hold. 

The petting is unexpected. And nice. Bucky makes a vague sound and leave it to Clint to give it meaning. 

"Not that I'm complaining, because you are exactly the right size for sleepy morning cuddles," Clint says into Bucky's hair, like a man with a death wish. "But what're you doing in my bed?" 

Bucky doesn't have an answer for that yet, and it's frankly rude of Clint to ask. He settles on a vague grumpy noise this time and snuggling closer like a pigeon. 

Wait. 

Bucky lifts his head, whether at the pigeon thought or the snuggling, and waits for his brain to fully boot.   
  
"Nine out of ten for the OG Bucky Bear," Clint is saying, still in that sleepy muddled voice.    
  
In an effort to avoid confronting the Bucky Bear comparison, the cuddles, or the pigeon, Bucky chooses the least objectionable route: "Only nine?"   
  
"Lose the shorts, and I'll give you a solid ten." Clint's eyes are still closed, but Bucky's up close enough to see the dimple that appears whenever Clint tries not to smile.   

Bucky hates himself a little bit for the way his cheeks flame without his permission. He makes a dismissive sound and, with the kind of willpower that can move mountains (or Steve), rolls out of bed, standing and pointedly hitching up his borrowed purple basketball shorts. 

Unfortunately, rolling out of bed gives him an unobstructed view of Clint's bare ass sticking out of covers that're barely hanging onto the mattress with a hope and a prayer. He turns his back to look out the nonexistent window at a view that wouldn't be much to write home about anyway, waiting for the heat of his blush to recede. 

Clint offers up a sleepy wolf whistle. 

That helpfully banishes the last of the blush enough that Bucky can turn around again and roll his eyes at Clint. He allows himself a moment of pride for mustering a suitably grouchy "Will you fucking cut it out?" 

The frown on Clint's face turns vaguely grumpy. "You're the one who crawled into my bed, you know." He blinks. "Wait. Why did you crawl into my bed?" Clint looks around as if to confirm this is, in fact, his bed.   

Bucky folds his arms and waits him out. 

"Not that I'm complaining, hot stuff," Clint says, sitting up and apparently regaining some of the upper hand. Bucky does not allow himself to look away now that the sheets have gone from barely protecting Clints' modesty to protecting exactly fuck all. "Even you have to admit this is sudden," Clint says, gesturing between the two of them and then rests his chin on his palm and his elbow on a drawn up knee, as if finding himself bare-ass naked in front of his colleagues happens to him every day. 

Bucky thinks back on Clint's mission reports. ...Maybe it does after all. He goes with his first answer that doesn't implicate him: "Not everything's about you, Barton." 

Clint slides into a cross-legged sitting position and leans both elbows on his knees this time. "I feel like my bed should be at least a little bit about me."   
  
Trying very hard not to look directly at Clint anywhere below the shoulders, Bucky grasps for his grouchy voice. "Well, it's not."   
  
"Okay," Clint says, leaning back on his hands and cocking his head to the side. And thankfully not reminding Bucky again that he's the one who joined Clint there. "So, what is it about?"   
  
Bucky finds he's not entirely sure how to phrase the entire Jenga situation he left behind the previous night, and he's not willing to address his own decision making process for choosing Clint over the sofa, so he just heads for the door. "Well?" he asks, hesitating at the threshold, "are you coming or not?"   
  
The rustling of sheets that had been tangled around Clint's calves when they were asleep is enough confirmation for Bucky that Clint's right behind him. He feels his bedroom will speak for itself and throws open the door.   
  
...He was not expecting it to speak this loudly. 

The tower of things is still balanced improbably on his mattress. Only now, the entire tower is precariously inverted. 

"Was it like that last night?" Clint asks, after a prolonged bout of staring. He's got goosebumps. 

All over. 

"More or less," Bucky says rather than contemplate Clint's goosebumps. 

"Was it like that when we left in the morning yesterday?"   
  
"Nope."   
  
"Uh....huh." Clint swallows and his throat makes a clicking sound. "And you really haven't been watching loud weird Slavic porn while I've been trying to sleep?"   
  
"Nope," Bucky says, not even taking the opening presented by Clint's roundabout admission he understands enough of the local language to follow what passed for plot while mostly asleep. 

"And the building next door really is vacant?"   
  
"Might be some mice," Bucky allows. But mice don't watch porn all night. 

They stand together in silence staring into Bucky's room. Notably, neither of them opts to actually walk in. 

Eventually, Clint breaks the silence. "You know, I'm starting to think there's something wrong with this place." 

Bucky looks away from the tower of things to stare at the side of Clint's head. "You think?" 

"Oh, so now I'm supposed to expect every little weird thing is a ghost?" Clint asks. 

A rush of chill air down the hallway blows Bucky's hair all around his face.   
  
"I didn't leave the window open," Clint says. 

"Your room doesn't have a window." 

"Does yours?"   
  
Bucky gestures at the room through the open door. There are no windows.

"Still want that weekend off?" Bucky asks, turning back to look at his duffle in the middle of the pile and mentally going through the contents for anything he can't replace. 

Considering the weapons are all locked up downstairs, he's surprisingly good to let go of whatever's in there that he might be forgetting about. A novel or two, maybe. His third favorite pair of boots. 

Clint keeps staring at the physics-defying tower. "No. You know, I've had time to think. Decamping twelve hours after the hit before the guy's associates realize he's gone is sounding pretty good right now." He pats his bare hip as if a phone will materialize there in an invisible pocket. "Um." 

Bucky chokes back a completely inappropriate laugh and looks at the ancient analog clock on the wall. "If we leave in the next twenty minutes, we can make our original flight." 

Clint leans forward, grabs the doorknob, and shuts the door. Once that's done, he turns to Bucky and draws in a deep breath. "I can do it in fifteen." 

They reconvene in ten. It would have been seven if they hadn't returned to the living room to find the contents of Clint's neatly packed duffle bag flung everywhere. 

Bucky, on the other hand, made time when he discovered his old go-bag in the safe room completely washed, folded, and neatly put away. Even his weapons were tucked into their travel case.  
  
It's only because something decided to be extra generous to Bucky in the night that Bucky has time to swing into the kitchen while Clint's still shoving his possessions back into the duffle hard enough to make the muscles in his back and shoulders strain and shift under his thin tee. 

Not that Bucky's watching. 

In fact, when Clint turns to look at Bucky, Bucky just happens to look up at the coffee cupboard with supersoldier speed. Not staring at all. "Hey," Bucky says, pulling down the lying sugar container. "don't forget your ammo." 

Clint sits back on his heels, still for the first time before they rushed off to dress and pack. "My what?" 

Bucky waggles the sugar at Clint. 

"I have legitimately no idea what you're talking about. I don't even have a gun." Clint gestures around himself, particularly at the unmistakable shape of his collapsible bow case. "You have the guns. And what kind of idiot would store ammo in a sugar canister?" 

"Don't look at me," Bucky says, too offended to give the chill down his spine a second thought while he unscrews the lid. "I sure as hell didn't put them in-" He gives the canister lid a hard twist when it proves to be stuck, and a cloud of sugar explodes in the kitchen. "What the fuck."   
  
Clint stares. "Okay. I have absolutely no idea what that was about. But can we go?"   
  
"Yeah. How about right now?" Bucky leaves the sugar open on the counter and makes a grab for the sealed bag of coffee they never did get a chance to use. He tosses it to Clint. "Souvenir. Now let's go." 

Bucky leads the way into the garage, and Clint slides over the hood of the car as usual, because he's still incapable of not showing off like he's on television. Bucky drums the fingers of his flesh hand against his thigh, waiting, while his metal hand dents the car door handle and Clint fiddles around getting his bag and bow case settled in the trunk. "Are we done?" 

"Yep," Clint agrees, throwing himself into the passenger seat. 

Bucky doesn't bother taking the time to throw his go bag in the trunk and just slings it into the back seat. He barely takes the time to wait for the garage door to open, scraping the shit out of the roof of the car and not giving a damn. 

He rates his chances of voluntarily coming back here between zero and 'cold day in hell.'

The drive back to the airport is marginally more hair raising than Bucky's deliberately provocative drive out, if Clint's increased use of the Oh Shit handle is anything to judge by. Or it could just be Clint's significantly lessened urge to put on the seduction act considering Bucky's looking increasingly like a sure thing. 

Or Bucky's reckless driving might have something do to with his preoccupation with the safehouse. He's a problem solver, is the thing. And his solutions are frequently permanent. 

But ghosts? How the fuck do you kill what's already dead? 

It's also hard to ignore the distinct possibility that Bucky made this guy a ghost in the first place.    
  
He's really trying not to think that second thought while he whips them around steep curves against the oceanside cliffs. 

By the time they reach the airport, all paths of Bucky's thoughts have led him to the same place: Bucky's best solution to the problem of the safe house is fire, and that casts the burnt out next door unit in a whole new light. 

Fortunately, Bucky knows at least three guys he can hire for the arson job without leaving the comfort of Tony's tower. 

Leave the past in the past, his therapist always says. 

They even leave the car at the curb once they've grabbed their luggage and booked it into the airport with the skycap still yelling at them from the sidewalk. 

By the time they land and collect their luggage, Bucky would like to be able to say he'd convinced himself it was all an elaborate joke, a hallucination, or lingering Soviet fuckery with his memory. (Although why he'd make a Jenga tower out of his own shit just to crawl into bed with Clint, of all people...)

Sadly, Bucky's never been a convincing liar, even to himself, and he's forced to accept the embarrassing fact that a fucking spectral entity chased two fully trained agents all the way back to America. 

At least it had the decency to wait for them to finish the job first. 

Bucky doesn't know whether to thank it or ask what it had against their target. As he'd have to go back for that, the answer will forever remain a mystery. 

He's also forced to accept that he'd have done stranger and more improbable things than a Jenga tower of junk for an excuse to crawl into bed with Clint after that shot on the roof. Fortunately, he is not forced to admit it out loud, so he ignores it.

Clint also seems on board with ignoring everything that happened in Europe. 

Almost everything, Bucky amends when Clint keeps leaning over to give Bucky's shoulder an affectionate bump accompanied by a smile. 

It's kind of weird. 

Maybe good weird. 

Jury's out. 

But if he had to choose between one or the other, Bucky picks Clint. "So, the debrief," he says.  

"Emphasis on brief," Clint says. 

Bucky wouldn't have phrased it that way, but: "Yeah. Let's do that." 

One of Tony's town cars pulls up to the arrivals area with a little oh-so-subtle arc reactor sticker on the corner of the passenger window. Bucky rolls his eyes. At least it's not the helmet. 

All of Tony's drivers know better than to get out and help Bucky with any of his luggage, so he tosses all of it in the trunk that pops open for him and then slides into the back seat next to Clint. 

"Stark Tower?" the driver asks over the intercom, privacy glass in place, which also makes Bucky roll his eyes. He doesn't know what Tony's expecting from them, but he's not gonna get it. 

"If we gotta, we gotta," Bucky says. 

"You gotta," the driver confirms. 

Bucky sighs. Clint slouches down in the seat. 

Bucky and Clint exchange glances, but don't comment when the driver follows them into the tower.

The elevator doors open, and Clint starts to greet Tony, who marches straight past him when the other elevator dings and lets their driver into the penthouse. Tony gets a double handful of hoodie, and yanks the driver down into a kiss. 

"Whoa," Clint says, "what was that for?" 

"Holiday bonus?" Roy grins, tossing the chauffeur hat onto a coffee table further into the common room. He gives Clint a little wave. "Hey, Second Best." 
  
Bucky ducks his head, muffling a snort. 

Clint looks indignant, but all a pissing match between the second and third best shots in the world is going to do is make the briefing take longer.

Tony seems to be on the same page, wisely hauling a grinning Roy into the room by an elbow. "I just love a man in uniform." 

Bucky gets a handful of the back of Clint's shirt, just in case, and follows after. "I don't think you can call it a uniform when Harper's only wearing the hat, Tony." 

Jason sighs, resting his arm along the back of the couch so he can turn and see them. "He's got a thing for hats."   
  
"Tony?" Bucky asks. 

While Clint asks: "Roy?"   
  
Jason looks pained. "Yes." But he doesn't bat Roy away when he leans over the back of the couch, freed from Tony's grasp, to place a smacking kiss on Jason's cheek. 

"Don't act like you don't know he's got a thing for helmets too," Roy says. 

Jason clears his throat, and suddenly, Bucky wants nothing to do with his own mental images. "You want a debrief or not?" 

"Want is a strong word," Tony says, taking a seat next to Jason. "But seeing as Cap's in Hong Kong, and I'm the only other guy on the team in a position to do it, we're doing it." 
  
"Let's do it," Bucky agrees. 

"JARVIS? Stream it. Record and log because he's got a stick up his ass about that kind of thing."

"Should I include the stick up the ass comment, sir?"   

"Uh. Edit that out."

"Already done." 

"Okay," Tony says, leaning back and waving a hand at Clint and Bucky. "Debrief." 

"Where anyone can hear us." Bucky folds his arms. He shoots for unimpressed, but honestly, he's not going to push for this debrief to be treated like a state secret.   
  
Tony looks up at the glass-walled enclosure and shrugs. "The couches are more comfortable." 

"Isn't this supposed to be Avengers business only?" Bucky makes one more token objection to cover his own ass. He gestures to Roy and Jason sprawled over Tony's couch. 

"If you don't tell, I won't tell," Tony says.

For their parts, the other two members of Tony's situationship exchange glances and shrug. "We won't tell," Roy says. 

Jason points at himself. "Kind of famous for keeping secrets." 

"May I remind you, sirs, that I am streaming all sound and video directly to Captain Rogers' devices?" 

"Oh. Whoops. Guess the cat's out of that bag," Tony says with no contrition whatsoever. "They might as well stay."   
  
Tony's phone rings, and he puts it on silent. 

With a glance at each other, Bucky and Clint put their phones on silent too. It only counts if Steve actually yells at someone. 

"Let's get it over with before he calls Pepper," Tony suggests. "JARVIS, lockdown on the elevator. Private meeting." 

JARVIS sounds very much as if he lets out a long sigh before replying. "Of course, sir." 

"Fast private meeting," Tony says, which Bucky interprets to mean Pepper has the override codes. 

"Okay," Clint says, "fast. We relieved two bad guys from the burden of living, confirmed they were the right dead guys, and then we came home." 

It's Bucky's turn to muffle a laugh. Sometimes, Clint's legendary hatred of long mission reports comes in handy. 

"You confirmed first, right?" Tony checks. 

Clint lets out a frustrated little growl. "It was one time, Tony!" 

Tony holds up his hands. "I've gotta ask. Nothing else?"    

"Absolutely nothing," Bucky confirms. "Not one single solitary thing." 

"No evidence?" Tony asks and waves off Bucky's glare. "Take it up with Steve. That's another one of his mandatory questions." 

Bucky makes a mental note to smack Steve upside the head when he gets back. "I don't leave evidence." 

"JARVIS, note that and highlight it for future use. Winter Soldier does not leave evidence." 

Bucky sits up straight. "Does that mean Steve'll stop asking me about it?" 

"In theory," Tony confirms. 

"That's decent of you."   
  
"I'm the cool parent," Tony says. 

"Steve can hear you, sir. And I'm obligated to inform you that he has reached Miss Potts on the phone."   
  
Tony rolls his wrist. "Okay, let's wrap it up." 

"We killed two guys, they were the right guys, we didn't leave evidence, and nobody caught us," Bucky sums up. 

"I killed an extra guy," Clint adds. 

"What?"   
  
"The one on the roof?"   
  
"Shit. I forgot about him." 

Tony groans and runs a hand down his face. "That means paperwork, you know."   
  
"Does it still mean paperwork if he was going to shoot Bucky?" 

Bucky holds up a hand to forestall further commentary. "Who's responsible for the paperwork?"   
  
Tony grimaces. "Probably me." 

"Alright," Bucky says, standing up. "Meeting's over. You know where to reach us." 

"I do you a favor, and you bring me paperwork," Tony complains. "I thought we were friends!" 

"Friends bring friends souvenirs," Bucky says, feeling a lightness spread through his bones now that the mission is officially and completely over. Bucky leans over and rummages through his duffle, pulling out the unopened bag of coffee and setting it on the table. "There you go. Souvenir to get you through the souvenir paperwork." 

Tony drops his head into his hands and makes a disconsolate noise. Bucky catches Jason combing a soothing hand through Tony's hair out of the corner of his eye and judges it a safe time to take their leave. 

Clint jerks his head at the elevator with an inquiring look. 

Bucky loves it when they're on the same page. 

"That was kinda mean," Clint observes, once they reach the elevator, as if it doesn't matter to him one way or another. It probably doesn't.   
  
"Ah, he'll be fine." Bucky listens to each of the elevators and presses the button for the one on the left. "He's got his whatever-it-is with the vigilante duo to make it all better." 

The elevator doors open, and Bucky pulls Clint in after him, pressing the button for the garage at the same time. He can hear the other elevator's doors whoosh open just when theirs close. 

"Nice," Clint comments. 

Bucky chances a grin. It's not an expression he wears often these days, but he's pretty sure he remembers how. "Perk of the serum." 

"Perk away," Clint says, looking like he's about to waggle his eyebrows. 

Bucky's glad he doesn't. "So, we got through it." 

"We got through it," Clint agrees, looking up at the numbers in the elevator car, inexplicably nervous. "Debrief's over, and now we get to go home." 

The nerves are out of character enough that Bucky's genuinely tempted to ask if Clint's alright. Then again, he doesn't generally see Clint once the mission's over. Maybe this is his adrenaline crash. He waits it out. 

A dozen floors down, Clint starts up again: "Okay. So, uh. I'm bad at this part."   
  
Bucky's tempted to ask what part. But waiting's been working for him so far, and he has to expend enough energy on not finding awkward post-mission Clint endearing. 

"So. Hi," Clint says, and cringes, which Bucky tries and fails to find unrelatable. Between the nerves and the awkwardness, Clint's the exact opposite of the smooth operator putting the moves on Bucky in that car in Eastern Europe. 

"Hi," Bucky echoes. He's using up an entire year's worth of smiles today alone. 

Clint rakes a hand through his hair, facial expression going through a series of baffling permutations before settling on resigned but determined. It's a good look on him. "How do you feel about dogs and pizza?" 

Neither of those questions were on the list of things Bucky expected to come out of Clint's mouth. He's surprised enough to answer honestly: "I never say no." 

"To dogs or pizza?" 

"Both," Bucky says. And then, because this conversation is more his speed than the baffling, if unfairly tempting, maneuvers Clint was performing during the mission, he adds: "I like beer too." 

"There could be beer," Clint agrees without hesitation. "Want to go out for a 'survived another mission because we are badasses' beer?" 

That sounds like an unnecessarily complicated beer, but Bucky does actually enjoy sharing a pitcher. And god help him, he thinks he might enjoy sharing that pitcher with Clint in particular. 

"Are you buying?" Not that Bucky can't afford his own beer. He's just of the old fashioned opinion that a fella should buy another fella a beer before putting the kinds of moves on him that Clint's been trying since his plane landed. 

"Of course I'm buying it." Clint looks almost offended. "I invited you and a gentleman keeps his word." 

And since Clint's apparently following through with that beer, and hasn't called him greasy, grumpy, little, or emo in a couple of days, and it was nicer than Bucky'll admit out loud to wake up with Clint wrapped around him in the safehouse, he shakes his hair out of his face and tries his luck: "What if I'm not exactly looking for a gentleman?" 

A slow smile, not that different from the smiles Clint directed his way in the car, only more genuine, spreads across Clint's face. "No?" 

"The opposite, really," Bucky says. Allegedly, at one point in the distant past, Bucky was something that passed for smooth. These days, he's aiming a lot lower instead of making a fool out of himself. 

It seems he's succeeding, because Clint's laugh is relieved, and he doesn't have that narrow-eyed challenging look Bucky's used to from previous missions. "Oh, thank god." Clint's eyes crinkle at the corners. "'Cause I've got a really limited gentleman repertoire." 

"Oh, repertoire, aren't we fancy." Bucky chooses to comment on that rather than the gentleman thing. They've already established it's not what Bucky's looking for. And apparently it's not what Clint gives. 

"A guy picks things up," Clint says with a shrug and then laughs. "Just don't ask me to spell it." 

"Wouldn't dream of it," Bucky says, taking in the sheepish half smile that makes him look like he's fresh out of the corn fields of Iowa. It's a good look. And it's been a while since Bucky last took a chance on someone. He guesses he wouldn't mind trying again. "Is this a date?"   
  
"It could be-" Clint cuts himself off at Bucky's look at him under raised eyebrows. "It's a date," Clint corrects himself, with conviction. 

"Super., Next question: How do you feel about putting out on the first date?" Bucky asks, just to see the look on Clint's face. It's worth it. 

"Huh," Clint says, once he's collected himself a bit. "Not what I expected from you, but I like it. Yes, I have been known to go home with a first date and have the second date over breakfast. How about you?"
  
Bucky rolls his eyes. "Pal, I put out in the alleyway behind the bar."   
  
The elevator doors open, and Bucky smiles to himself, hearing Clint's dry swallow before he scrambles out through the closing elevator doors to catch up with Bucky. "I could be into that." 

The next morning, after a short hunt for their missing third, Jason and Roy track Tony to the kitchen, where he's standing sadly in front of the empty coffee maker. 

Roy leans his elbows on the counter next to Tony so he can see his face. "My illusions are shattered, Tony. I was convinced you could make coffee in your sleep." 

"Huh?" Tony blinks, and it looks like it hurts. Roy wonders how long he's been standing there. 

Jason, significantly more action-oriented than either of them, takes the opportunity to grab the carafe and fill it with water for the reservoir. 

"I can't make coffee if there's no coffee," Tony says eventually, once his eyes are less gritty. 

"What do you mean there's no coffee?" Saying there's no coffee in Tony's kitchen is like saying there's no pasta in Italy. 

Jason lets go of the cabinet door. "There's no coffee."   
  
"What?"   
  
Tony rests his elbows on the counter and his head on his arms. "I told you there was no coffee." 

Roy frowns, circling around Tony to see into the cabinet better, as if Jason might have missed a bag or tin in the back. "There's no coffee."   
  
"Thank you for joining the meeting, Roy." Jason's voice is dry in the way that makes the eternal teenager who lives in Roy's brain want to shove him over. His inner teenager makes terrible decisions. 

"What happened to the coffee?"   
  
Tony waves an aggrieved hand in the air, says something incomprehensible into his arms, and lets the hand drop. 

Jason and Roy exchange a long look and shrug. "It's got to be in here somewhere," Jason says. "Maybe it's Steve's revenge for locking Pepper out of the debrief." 

Roy gives that some thought. "It's plausible. But I doubt she'd hide all of the coffee in the building. The staff would storm the executive suite with pitchforks and torches." 

"And where are they going to get these pitchforks and torches?" 

"Fine, Mr. Semantics. Sharp scissors and soldering irons."   
  
"That's better," Jason says, looking through cabinet after cabinet, all the way to the back. "Continue. And while you do, get off your ass and help me look." 

"Your words are cruel, Jay," Roy says offhand, crouching to look in the lower cabinets, starting under the coffee maker and working his way around the kitchen. "My point is, if we can't find it, it's no big deal. I'll just run down to the lab and steal a couple of bags." 

"The executive suite has better coffee."   
  
Roy balances on the balls of his feet and looks up at Jason with his head cocked to the side. "Yeah, but they *like* me in the lab." He doesn't bother saying how they feel about him in the executive suite. "If you want executive suite coffee, you can go charm the PAs or something." 

"And you're going to take over cooking breakfast? No thanks." Jason pulls out ingredients once he's gone through all of the upper cabinets. "Twice a month is my absolute limit for cereal breakfasts."   
  
"I made toast once." Roy feels the need to defend himself. "Hey! Found the coffee." He reaches into the back of the corner cupboard and pulls out the bag Bucky and Clint brought back from Europe. He squints at the Cyrillic and tosses the package of Chernaya Karta to Jason. "It says fine grind. Think it'll work for drip?"   
  
"I'll put in an extra filter." Jason pours in the grounds and hits the button. 

Either the sound of the first drips of coffee or the smell revive Tony and he lifts his head, staring into the carafe like it's a miracle. 

Not for the first time, Roy's tempted to ask Tony if he's considered Adderall. 

Mission accomplished, Roy stands and leans back against the counter, folding his arms to watch Jason cook and Tony pray for coffee. 

As soon as there's enough in the pot for a mug, Tony grabs one down and pours in all of the coffee that's brewed, ignoring the sizzle of coffee landing directly on the hot plate until he puts the carafe back. Once he has, he turns to find the mug gone. 

"Hey!"   
  
"Jesus, you can wait thirty seconds, Tony." Jason has the coffee in one hand and cream in the other, setting both down on the other side of the stove so Tony can't make a lunge for it before Jason has a chance to react. "It's Russian coffee. You drink it with cream and sugar." 

Privately, Roy suspects Tony's consumed his coffee dry and with a spoon more than once. But where Jason goes, a little bit of Alfred goes with him. "I can drink it black," Tony says, looking from the mug to the slowly refilling coffee pot with a considering expression. 

"Thirty seconds." Jason rolls his eyes and pulls the sugar out of the pantry, keeping a sharp eye on Tony while he opens the canister. "It'll be worth it, I promi...." Jason's speech winds down and he makes an offended face. 

"What's up?" Roy cranes his neck to get a look into the sugar. 

"Who the fuck stored their ammo in the sugar jar?"  

Clint slumps onto the couch next to Bucky, crowding him into the arm with the weight of his stupidly tall, warm, and unexpectedly cuddly body. He inhales the steam from his coffee cup with a look of bliss on his face. "Coffee, my love." 

Bucky gently pushes Clint upright so the coffee doesn't spill. "How's it feel to be back to American coffee?" 

"Bucky, back to American coffee presumes I ever had any other kind of coffee. I never had a chance to drink the coffee in the safehouse." Clint takes a sip so hot, it makes Bucky wince, but Clint only makes a happy sound. 

"Coffee's coffee, right?" Bucky's coffee tastes developed in the army. He's not exactly a connoisseur. 

"Philistine," Clint says, taking another slurp. "Think Tony'll be willing to share?" 

Bucky shrugs a shoulder. "Can't hurt to ask, I guess."