Archive of Our Own

Clint, unfortunately, has a lot of experience with regaining consciousness in extremely uncomfortable positions. As his head swims muzzily and he resists opening his eyes, he catalogues instinctively the feeling of heavy metal manacles pulling his arms over his head, the solid, roughness of what is probably cement against his back. His chest aches faintly from the too tight stretch of his arms over his head, and he has definitely lost feeling in his fingers. Even more alarming, however, is the weight of some kind of heavy plastic wrapped around the lower half of his face, something flat and metal clamped between his teeth and pinning his tongue in the bottom of his mouth. As soon as he becomes aware of the intrusion in his mouth he instinctively coughs and gags, only to cut his tongue on the sharp edge of the metal piece and nearly choke.

It takes him several minutes to get some semblance of control back over his body. His eyes are still closed, but he doesn’t need to open them to know that he is in deep shit. He leans back against the concret he’s bound to, letting his throbbing head rest against the cool surface as he gets his breathing back under control and flexes his arms in the manacles holding them aloft, both testing their strength and trying to work a little bit of blood back into his fingers. Once he feels reasonably in control again, he reluctantly forces his eyes open.

It’s a warehouse. A large one, though he can’t gauge how large exactly because it’s piled with stacks and rows of large metal shipping crates that section what he can see of the warehouse off. He ascertains that what he’s bound to is, in fact, a cement column roughly three times as thick as his body. He is also not alone.

In front of him, on the other side of the “room” created by the stacks of shipping containers around them, a man in a tight leather suit appears to be shouting orders at two men in lab coats who are fussing with what looks like the dentist chair from hell. Clint can’t actually hear the man in leather shouting, since his comms which double as his hearing aids in the field have been taken and presumably smashed to prevent them from being tracked, but the tension in the man’s shoulders and the way his neck flexes indicate shouting. Besides, everything from the man’s outfit, to his posture, to the creepy ass lair they’re in screams of super villain and henchmen, so shouting is probably pretty par for the course.

Clint is trying really hard not to focus on how incredibly vulnerable and exposed he’s feeling, both without his ears and bound up so that even breathing takes effort. He’s also trying not to think about the fact that the last thing he saw before waking up here was a gun aimed at the back of Bucky’s head. Or the fact that his entire team had been actively engaged in a fight when he’d been taken. Frankly, he doesn’t want to think about any aspect of the situation he’s found himself in, except for how to get out of it, which is a frustratingly short path to a dead end.

The men around the chair either haven’t noticed that he’s awake, or don’t care, and they’re all facing away from him so he can’t begin to guess what they might be saying. The chair, however, draws Clint’s eye inexorably like a black hole sucking him in. It does look like a dentist chair, except it’s bigger, welded to the floor, has heavy looking metal restraints attached to the armrests, and something attached to the top that looks like it belongs in a science fiction horror film.

Clint can’t look away from the chair until movement catches his eye and draws his attention. A small army of villainous goons is approaching through a gap in the stacks of containers. They’re all wearing tight black leather uniforms with red tentacle badges emblazoned on the shoulder, and carrying assault rifles.

Well, that answers one question at least, and not that Clint would be fine with being captured by anyone, but HYDRA is a whole different league and Clint can’t help but test the manacles around his wrists again. How and why HYDRA managed to grab him while they were in the middle of busting an AIM cell, Clint has no idea, and that does nothing to reassure him. Except then the knot of guards parts slightly and Clint’s stomach plummets as he realizes they probably hadn’t been there to grab him.

Bucky is clearly unsteady on his feet, stumbling even though there’s a guard on either side of him holding onto his arms. His face is bloody and his head hangs low like it would take too much effort to hold it up properly; his shirt and tactical vest are gone, leaving the taut muscles of his chest and shoulders exposed to clearly display the tension there as his chest rises and falls unevenly. Tranq gun, Clint realizes distantly through the mixed haze of relief and horror, it was a tranq gun aimed at Bucky; they’re probably hit Clint with the same thing - or a lesser dose of it - since he hadn’t gotten the chance to notice his attackers before getting knocked out himself.

Clint jerks instinctively against his bonds, trying unsuccessfully to call Bucky’s name through the gag. For the moment all of the HYDRA agents are ignoring him, their attention focused on Bucky, but Clint wants to see Bucky’s face properly, wants to be able to look into his eyes. Bucky doesn’t respond to Clint’s efforts, though that, perhaps, is mostly due to the fact that Bucky’s gaze has landed on the chair that he’s apparently being led to and his entire body freezes up.

In a split second he goes from limp and stumbling to a solid pillar of straining muscle, digging his heels in and defiantly refusing to be moved closer to the monstrous chair. Clint can see enough of Bucky’s profile to recognize the word “No!” on Bucky’s lips. The guards all adjust their grips on their rifles and the two holding Bucky’s arms try to shove him forward. Before Clint can so much as blink Bucky lashes out and the man on his left hits the ground with a broken neck. There is a brief but vicious tussle as several of the guns go off and Bucky moves almost too fast to see, crouched low to the ground and teeth bared like an animal as he tears his way through as many of the guards as he can reach.

Clint in so engrossed in helplessly watching Bucky’s struggle that he doesn’t even notice the original leather suited man - clearly the leader - had moved until he feels the sharp bite of a blade against his neck. The man is close enough that when he shouts Clint can just hear the word “Enough!”

That does catch Bucky’s attention and as quickly as the violence started it stops, Bucky frozen in a ring of downed bodies, while the rest of the guards stand uncomfortably but with rifles at the ready just out of his reach. Bucky’s eyes lock on Clint’s and the terror in Bucky’s eyes makes Clint’s chest seize up and the bottom of his stomach feel like it’s about to hit China. Bucky is breathing hard and his gaze travels from Clint’s eyes down to the knife at Clint’s throat. Clint can see Bucky shaking even across the distance of the room between them, can see the metal plates of Bucky’s arm shifting and tensing.

The HYDRA leader’s arm shifts and Clint feels the slick trickle of blood down his neck; a warning nick. He’s leverage against Bucky, maybe that’s the only reason he’s here, the only reason they’d bothered to take him, to use him, to force Bucky to comply. The guy says something, but with the guards withdrawn and no longer firing their guns, there’s no need to shout and Clint can’t hear him.

Unable to resist, Clint looks away from Bucky and turns his head just enough to look at the guy. He has a thin, severe face and a disturbingly pointy chin; Clint decides to name him Rat Bastard, because it seems like a fitting descriptor. Rat Bastard’s lips are moving and Clint makes out, “get in the chair, or I will slit his throat.” It’s not just a threat but a promise and Bucky knows it as well as Clint does. The only reason this man hasn’t killed Clint yet is because doing so would be to give up his weapon against Bucky.

Clint looks back at Bucky and their gazes meet and hold. The horror and desperation in Bucky’s expression is unlike anything Clint’s ever seen before and Clint would do anything to wipe that expression away, to go back in time and make sure Bucky never has to feel this way at all.

Bucky’s swallows, his whole body trembling. His gaze flicks toward the chair and with a jolt like an electric shock the pieces click into place in Clint’s mind. HYDRA. A chair and Bucky’s reaction to it. He remembers a night, nearly a year ago when they were just beginning to settle into their relationship. He remembers waking up to the sound of Bucky’s cries, so loud and so terrified that he could make out the words even without his hearing aids in. He remembers Bucky shouting “not the chair” over and over until Clint managed to wake him. He remembers Bucky then wrapping himself around Clint, burying his face in Clint’s chest, and sobbing “I don’t want to forget” inconsolably. He remembers sitting up the rest of the night, Bucky wrapped up in his arms, trying to sooth Bucky as he cried. Clint puts together the chair, Bucky’s terror, and the lost, blank shell of a man that Steve had first brought home to the Avengers.

Clint shouts into the gag and he can faintly hear the manacles clanking above his head with the force of his desperation as he struggles against them. He’s heedless of the way the metal of the gag bites into his tongue and the corners of his mouth, how the flesh of his wrists are bruising and tearing against the manacles, and even the dangerous press of the knife against his throat; he has to stop this, he has to do something, nothing else matters.

Because Bucky is going to do it. Bucky is going to give up his life, his mind, his free will for Clint. Clint wants nothing more than to communicate to Bucky not to do that. Clint would rather die than know he was the reason that Bucky is shoved back into his darkest nightmares. Clint would happily slit his own throat right then and there if it meant that Bucky could go home to where Steve and the other Avengers would keep him safe. But even if Bucky can read what Clint’s trying to communicate, he won’t listen to it. There is a very tiny, rational piece in the back of Clint’s mind that wants to point out that if their positions were reversed, he’d do whatever it took to save Bucky’s life too, but that piece of his mind is ruthlessly drowned out by the shrieking rage that fills the rest of him.

Bucky shifts, one skittish step away, then his jaw tightens with grim resolve and he turns toward the chair. Bucky’s body locks up again, and he can’t seem to actually make himself walk over to the chair, but two of the remaining guards step forward - stupid or suicidally loyal to HYDRA - and push Bucky forward. Bucky doesn’t resist, though Clint can see from the tension in every line of Bucky’s body that he wants to. When they finally reach the chair Bucky’s knees give out and he all but collapses into it. The guards shove him back so that he’s fully seated in the chair and force his arms into the restraints.

Bucky’s eyes are wild with panic, his body one coiled line of barely restrained violence, but as they force a rubber bite guard between his teeth and the technicians tentatively step forward from the corner where they’ve been cowering, Bucky locks his gaze onto Clint.

Clint can’t breathe. He’s still tugging uselessly against his restraints, still begging Bucky not to do it even though his words are lost in the gag. He’s aware, but only distantly, that there are tears running down his cheeks and he sees a matching glimmer in Bucky’s eyes. Clint knows that the mechanics of the chair are whirring to life by the way Bucky flinches, his arms twisting helplessly in the restraints that will not let him escape what’s about to be done to him.

Bucky doesn’t break eye contact with Clint until the metal pieces above the chair are lowering toward his face. Bucky blinks, a single tear escaping down his cheek, and Clint watches in numb horror as Bucky’s lips shape the words “I love you” and then Bucky’s head snaps back, his face all but hidden by the metal plates that clamp down against it.

Hearing aids or no, Clint can feel Bucky’s screams reverberating in his chest.

*****
Eighteen hours ago - more or less, Clint can’t be exactly sure how long he was unconscious - Clint had been warm and comfortable in bed.

He’d woken up with a grumble and lain unmoving, eyes closed, for several minutes in the futile hope that being awake at whatever ungodly hour it was would prove to actually be just a dream. When he finally resigned himself, he rolled over with a sigh and reached out blindly until his hand connected with a bare ankle. Luckily, a familiar one, and that’s enough for Clint to forcibly crack his eyes open.

Bucky was sitting up in the bed, his back pressed against the headboard and his knees bent to support the notebook he’s writing in. He had his phone in his metal hand, holding it so that the flashlight feature illuminated the page in front of him. He’s chewing his lip distractedly, but there’s no frown line between his eyebrows and the movements of his pen across the page were sedate and even, which eased Clint’s worry. They have a fully developed sliding scale of Bad Nights, but Bucky looked calm enough that this one probably only ranked at a little rough around the edges.

So Clint curled his fingers loosely around Bucky’s ankle and shifted a little closer to nestle his head next to Bucky’s hip. “You okay?” he asked, just to be sure. The soft words vibrated in his chest and he waited for Bucky’s response to tell him whether he needed to reach for his hearing aids or not. But Bucky just gave him a distracted almost done signal, so Clint settled in, resting his forehead against Bucky’s hip and waiting.

A few minutes later Bucky capped his pen and closed the notebook, carefully setting it on top of the stack of five other notebooks sitting on his nightstand - Clint isn’t sure if he’d filled the other notebooks or if he has them separated by topic, but he didn’t ask. He released Bucky’s ankle so that Bucky could slide back down under the blanket, turning on his side to face Clint. Bucky curled a loose arm around Clint’s waist and pulled him in for a chaste kiss. He’d dropped his phone onto the pillow above their heads, the flashlight still on, so there’s enough light for Clint to read his lips when Bucky mouthed, “sorry to wake you.”

Clint shrugged and nestled closer, nosing along the line of Bucky’s jaw. “You can make it up to me in the form of blowjobs,” he murmured playfully, since, after all, he is awake now. They were pressed close enough that he could feel the rumble of Bucky’s laughter in his chest and he decided even Rough Around the Edges might be an unnecessary classification.

Bucky nudged at Clint’s shoulder and in one smooth move he’d rolled Clint onto his back and settled himself over Clint’s hips. With one hand on either side of Clint’s head, Bucky loomed over him, dark hair dangling to form a tangled curtain around them as he leaned in to press a kiss to Clint’s nose.

“Dork,” Clint grunted, wrinkling his nose, but Bucky just grinned at him, the white glint of his teeth in the semi-darkness seeming almost feral and Clint couldn’t resist pulling Bucky closer to kiss the grin off of his face.

Clint hadn’t gotten his blowjob. They’d been interrupted by an Avengers alert, summoning them to Nevada - It’s too hot and there’s too much sand. I’m just saying, there are a lot of much better places we could be right now and AIM is a bunch of assholes for deciding to set up shop in the ass end of the desert. Bucky had grumbled unhappily. It should have been a simple mission, reportedly the AIM cell was trying to build some kind of doomsday device, but it wasn’t ready yet and the Avengers merely intended to sweep in and wrap up their operation before the radical scientists could get their plans off the ground. And, for once, everything was going according to plan. Bucky and Clint were set up in opposite vantage points covering the back door to the lair while the rest of the team stormed the front, and everything was going fine. Until Clint looked up from the fight and saw the ominous shadow holding a gun behind Bucky’s head, then Clint felt something sharp hit his neck and everything had gone dark.

*****
Clint tries so hard to remember the soft look on Bucky’s face in the glow of his phone’s flashlight, the way the corners of his eyes crinkle when his smiles, the brush of his fingers, so careful, so tender, against Clint’s cheek.

But all Clint can see is the crackle of electricity, all he can hear, feel, think is Bucky’s screams reverberating in his chest, shaking Clint apart from the inside out. Clint has forgotten entirely about the HYDRA goons, about the knife that Rat Bastard had been holding to his throat. He doesn’t even notice that the knife isn’t there any more until he sees Rat Bastard out of the periphery of his vision moving closer to the chair as though mesmerized by the horrific sight.

Clint just wants to be back in their bed with Bucky’s arms around him.

It feels like an eternity before the chair powers down again. Bucky has gone limp, as though the electricity has sucked all of the strength from his muscles, but his chest is still rising and falling in a rapid, uneven pant and Clint can only imagine the harsh sound of Bucky’s breathing forcing it’s way through his scream-torn throat.

Slowly, so slowly, the chair pulls up out of its recline as it powers down. There’s been a maddening ringing that exists only in Clint’s mind since Bucky stopped screaming, but watching the chair rising slowly his brain fabricates the most cliche horror movie creaking sound it can. He’s watching breathlessly, waiting for the metal electrode arms attached to the chair to lift away enough for Clint to see Bucky’s face. Clint knows, he knows what that chair does, that it won’t be Bucky looking back at him any more, but a tiny, treacherous part of him can’t help hoping that somehow, miraculously, it won’t have worked.

The electrode arms lift away and Bucky spits out the rubber mouth guard, but the restraints on the chair don’t withdraw, leaving Bucky still pinned down. Bucky can’t seem to lift his head up off the headrest of the chair at first, his eyes roving blankly, his face slack and vacant. Clint has seen Bucky in pain before, everything from the grumbling outrage of a stubbed toe to bleeding out through a stomach wound he’s trying to keep hidden, to the lingering terror and agony of his worst nightmares. None of that compares to what Clint sees now. It’s so subtle, a slight tightening at the corner of Bucky’s eyes, highlighted by the glimmer of unshed tears, the way his mouth is open and panting but the muscles in his neck are still standing out in sharp relief. Bucky is in pain, probably more pain than Clint has ever imagined, but there isn’t enough of Bucky’s mind left to acknowledge it.

Rat Bastard barks something, a command probably but Clint can only see the edge of his face now. Bucky - no, he isn’t Bucky now, he’s the Winter Soldier - twitches, and his eyes flick toward Rat Bastard. His breathing has calmed, his bare chest now rising and falling at an even, natural rate, and while his expression is still horrifyingly vacant, his eyes are no longer dazed and they rest, sharp and expectant, on Rat Bastard.

For a split second Clint thinks he sees the Soldier’s gaze shift past Rat Bastard to meet Clint’s eyes. Clint’s heart - pounding so hard, for so long, that the ache in his chest has tripled from it - leaps with a shadow of hope. Bucky has broken through the programming for Steve before, even when he was seventy years deep in it. Maybe, just maybe, Bucky isn’t so far gone yet that the sight of Clint will pull him back.

But the Soldier is focused on Rat Bastard, listening to whatever he’s saying with rapt attention, and Clint must have imagined Bucky looking at him at all.

Something Rat Bastard says makes the Soldier shift sharply in his restraints, and every goon in the room - including Rat Bastard himself - takes a step back. Several rifles are lifted, hands tightening around them as they point cautiously in the Soldier’s direction.

Clint is rage and terror and desperation. But he is also a trained operative, a highly trained operative, and Clint sees things. He sees the nervousness in the goons, the taut hunger in Rat Bastard, the way none of them approach the Soldier, the way the technicians have fumbled with the controls on the chair, the impatience with which Rat Bastard has been shouting at them; these people have no idea what they’re doing. Clint realizes it in a rush, and it may not actually help him or Bucky at all, it might even make things worse, but Clint still wants to laugh a little. None of these assholes have ever dealt with the Winter Soldier before. Rat Bastard probably started out as some low level grunt, unimportant enough to be passed over when SHIELD and the Avengers razed HYDRA to the ground over and over again. HYDRA really must be running out of heads by now if this guy got his hands on the knowledge and tech necessary to think he can recreate and use the Winter Soldier. The rest of the goons are probably new recruits; no wonder Bucky had torn through so many of them so easily before the threat against Clint had stopped him. This isn’t so much a HYDRA cell as it is a bunch of noobs thinking they can play in the big leagues. It doesn’t make Clint’s situation less dangerous, and it doesn’t make what they’ve done to Bucky any less unforgivable. But no matter how many times they force him into the chair, no matter how hard they wipe him, Clint knows that the Winter Soldier has lashed out against his handlers before, and these guys are idiots to think that they even have a prayer of controlling the Winter Soldier when Pierce, hell, even Zola had to struggle for it.

Clint is pulled back from his moment of hysteria as he realizes that Rat Bastard is talking again. Clint doesn’t know what he’s saying, but the Soldier’s responses are chilling. Bucky’s never been particularly emotive, not since Clint’s known him, but Clint is particularly good at reading people, and he knows Bucky. He knows every line on Bucky’s face, every muscular twitch, every glint in his eyes. When his lips move, it’s shocking because for a second Clint can’t read him. He’s so used to the little expressions that go with every word Bucky says, the ways the corners of his mouth pull, the creases between his eyebrows and the ways his nostrils flair. There’s a jarring second of disconnect where Clint watches Bucky’s face, waiting for those micro-indicators to help him parse together the words and he finds nothing. No part of the Soldier’s face moves except for his lips, and belatedly Clint can only piece together something that is probably yes, ready, and come try? No, comply, Clint thinks.

The Soldier appears calm, but there’s a tension in him. His eyes shift around the room, just slight, subtle flicks. A sick part of Clint can’t help wondering what it’s like to be seeing everything for the first time, to be lost and unable to even express that concept. But the Soldier’s focus remains on Rat Bastard, like he’s at parade rest from the shoulders up while the rest of him remains restrained. Rat Bastard asks some more questions and the technicians hover a little closer, looking like first year medical students who’ve been told to give a rabid tiger an exam.

Clint gives up on trying to read the Soldier’s answers. He carefully flexes his wrists, both testing the strength of the manacles holding him and checking how badly he’s damaged himself by struggling against them. His wrists are bloody and raw, and he’s lost most of the feeling in his fingers from having them above his head for so long anyway. The manacles are secure, looped through a ring that’s driven deep into the cement of the column he’s leaning against. Even if it was worth dislocating his thumbs to try wiggling his way out of the cuffs, they’re probably too tight for it to work. There are still at least twenty armed goons in the room, not counting the technicians and Rat Bastard, and Clint has no idea how many more of them might be out there beyond his line of sight.

He is well and truly fucked.

He has to fight against the panic that is pushing at the edges of his mind; he can’t afford that. He can’t afford to get stuck on the look on Bucky’s face when he’d first seen that chair, and he can’t afford to get lost in staring at Bucky’s face now, trying, hoping desperately to find some sign of the man he knows. He needs a plan. He needs to gather intel and catalogue potential escape routes. He needs to watch for weaknesses; he needs to be alert, aware, and prepared. The Avengers will come. He and Bucky had been taken in the middle of a mission so their absence has definitely been noticed. The team will come. Steve will be able to break through the programming, get Bucky back. Clint just needs to be ready, he needs to keep himself alive and in the best position he can possibly manage for when the team arrives. He needs to not get hung up on the fact that he is facing down a small army of HYDRA goons with the Winter Soldier on their leash while bound, weaponless, and earless.

*****
They take Bucky away.

Trapped by the manacles and gag, there’s nothing Clint can do but watch as the restraints on the chair retract. The fifteen guns pointed at him go unacknowledged by the Soldier as he stands, still and ramrod straight. He doesn’t even blink as he’s prodded forward and led out of Clint’s sight.

Clint determinedly does not panic. He does yank against the restraints holding him and shout into the gag again, but that’s reflex. Clint has no idea where they’re taking Bucky or what they’re going to do with him, but he’s definitely not panicking about it.

At least HYDRA are polite enough to give him something else to think about. When Rat Bastard and his goons take Bucky away, he leaves three of them behind. One is almost ludicrously short and has the posture of someone who thinks he’s way more important than he is - Clint decides to call him L’il Bastard - and the other two are muscle. It isn’t hard to guess what they’re there for.

They aren’t particularly creative. L’il Bastard does some pacing, posturing, and - attempted - menacing. Clint can only assume they want him to give up Avengers or SHIELD secrets, which he wouldn’t give them anyway, but it is sort of nice not to actually hear what are probably incredibly predictable questions followed by cliche threats. Clint can almost imagine he’s stuck in some old silent slapstick comedy.

The muscle take turns, and interrogation clearly isn’t their speciality because they have no concept of coordinating their punches or focusing their points of contact to overwhelm him. Still, it’s only a matter of time until Clint is choking on the blood trapped in his mouth by the gag and struggling to breathe around a few cracked ribs.

Clint counts his breaths and stares at the ceiling and tries not to imagine what Rat Bastard and the rest of the goons might be doing to Bucky right now. Clint has the distinct impression that he’s a bonus that they scooped up with Bucky so that HYDRA could make a clean getaway without him raising an alarm. Since they have him, they might as well try to get some use out of him; it’s logical, and they’d have to be really stupid to waste the opportunity without at least trying. But what they’re really after is the Winter Soldier, and what they’re going to do with him is what Clint’s really concerned about.

He hasn’t been paying attention, so he doesn’t know how long it’s been when one of the thugs pulls the gag out of his mouth. Fresh air hitting the skin of his lower face which had been trapped behind the thick plastic is refreshing, and Clint is all too happy to relinquish the sharp bit from between his teeth in favor of spitting a mouthful of blood at L’il Bastard’s shoes.

L’il Bastard snarls something threatening - Clint assumes - and then all three of them wait, watching Clint expectantly. Clint just blinks at them. Clint has never broken under torture before - at least partially because SHIELD, by which he means Coulson, had always been pretty good about finding and retrieving him in a semi-timely manner - and it would honestly be really embarrassing if these guys managed it. But since he’d have to read their lips to even begin to figure out what they want, they’re going to have to start trying a whole hell of a lot harder if they want to get anywhere.

The water boarding is only marginally more creative. It takes significantly more focus though; with his lungs half full of water and his ribs really burning from gasping for air he has less brain capacity left to worry about Bucky. So, pros and cons, really.

When they remove the towel and pull him off the table, Clint’s legs won’t hold him, which he’s surprisingly okay with. The two thugs grumble and curse a blue streak - Clint assumes - as they start dragging him off to whatever fun activities are next on their agenda. They are by no means gentle, but it gives Clint the couple of minutes he needs to pull himself at least partially back together; it also inspires them to drop their guard and give Clint an opening.

Clint’s hands are still bound together by the heavy metal manacles, but the second he manages to get his feet under him jams his elbow into the stomach of the thug on his right, then twists to smash his clasped hands, manacles and all, into the other thug’s broad nose. Then he runs.

As far as escape attempts go, it isn’t Clint’s worst, which isn’t saying much. He has no plan, no idea where he’s going, and he can’t actually leave without Bucky, but he can’t resist the opportunity so he might as well make the most of it. His bruised ribs and waterlogged lungs remind him of how incredibly stupid this is with every step he takes, but he stubbornly ignores them and hopes the thugs are as slow as they are stupid.

The building they’re in is, in fact, a giant maze of stacked shipping crates, and Clint can’t do much but pelt headlong down the artificial corridors and take the few turns that present themselves to him. Objectively, he knows, that he has been running for neither very long nor very far, but subjectively his aching body believes that it’s been an eternity and at least a hundred miles. He’s fast, by a mix of natural talent and a lifetime of bad choices, but his vision is going hazy and it’s entirely possible that there actually are at least twenty knives sticking into his chest with every gasp he tries to force into his lung. He knows that his bid for freedom will inevitably come to a painful end in a matter of seconds, but then there’s a literal light at the end of the tunnel. Ahead, through a gap in the crates, he can just make out a larger, open space. Of course, the large open space is full of HYDRA goons, but in the middle of the HYDRA goons is a very familiar head of tousled dark hair and the flash of gray metal.

Had Clint made it, he would have launched himself at Bucky and fervently prayed his sudden presence would break through the conditioning so he and Bucky could fight their way out together; which probably is the stupidest plan he’s ever had. It’s probably actually for the best that a sudden searing pain in his calf causes him to stumble long enough for someone to tackle him to the ground ten feet away from the gap in the crates he’d been aiming for.

The thug landing on top of Clint drives the last vestiges of air from Clint’s lungs and his face slams against the concrete floor hard enough to make the world spin nauseatingly. Everything wavers and his brain feels like jell-o sloshing around inside his skull, so he’s only dimly aware of being hauled to his feet and dragged off. The goons are a lot less gentle this time, and thanks to the bullet hole he now has in his calf his legs really won’t hold him. By the time he’s even begun to regain control over his body he’s back up against the concrete column from earlier with his hands back over his head. Someone ties a makeshift bandage around the wound - presumably because it would ruin their fun if he bleeds out before they can finish torturing him - and Clint can’t resist the urge to try and kick him, though he’s still woozy and seeing double, so it has a negligible effect and does nothing to vent his boiling frustration.

The concrete of the column does feel refreshingly cool against the back of his aching head, at least, and once his chains are secured he gets several minutes of not being hit, during which he regains some function in his lungs and successfully doesn’t throw up on himself.

With the return of oxygen to his brain, he realizes that he’s no longer stuck with just L’il Bastard and his two friends for company. Rat Bastard is back, standing in the taut military posture of the Highly Annoyed, and levelling a truly impressive scowl in Clint’s direction. Clint guesses that his escape attempt has somehow personally offended the guy and messed up his very busy schedule of trying to look like a badass supervillain. Rat Bastard has also brought back a sizeable posse of goons to crowd up the room. But Clint doesn’t pay any attention to them, because three steps behind Rat Bastard and just to his right stands Bucky.

Bucky’s hair is a disheveled mess, and there is definitely some blood in his hairline. There is also blood drying on Bucky’s chin, and bruises spread across his still bare chest, but it’s the very thick layer of blood spanning from Bucky’s knuckles to the elbow of his metal arm that makes Clint’s stomach drop. Bucky’s face is as blank as it had been when the goons had led him away before, his gaze fixed somewhere just past Rat Bastard’s ear. He’s stance is similar to parade rest, except his hands are dangling loose at his sides.

“Bucky,” Clint says. It’s reflex, the word vibrating in his throat and forced out through his lips without thought.

Bucky doesn’t respond, but Rat Bastard twitches and his scowl deepens. He says something, probably scathing and threatening, that Clint can’t make out because he’s still busy staring at Bucky trying to will recognition into those vacant but still beautiful blue eyes.

“Come on, Bucky,” Clint persists, ignoring the assembled nazis. “I know you’re still in there, just-”

Bucky’s metal wrist flexes, and his arm does the thing where each plate shifts and recalibrates in some unfathomable but precise sequence. He isn’t looking at Clint though; his eyes are on the two Bastards. L’il Bastard has sidled up to Rat Bastard, his expression shifting between sucking up to his superior officer and sneering at Clint. Through the sneer Clint catches what are probably the words kill him and useless anyway, which is perfectly in character with the cliche predictability that L’il Bastard continually defines himself by.

Rat Bastard gives L’il Bastard a withering look. Clint actually focuses enough to read Rat Bastard’s response, because exhausted and bruised as his brain is, it suddenly occurs to him where this is going. “We still have one more tool at our disposal,” Rat Bastard says, which sounds like something a villain in a cartoon show from the nineties would say, but Clint’s too busy trying not to shit himself as Rat Bastard turns to Bucky. “Soldier,” Rat Bastard says. Bucky snaps to attention, his whole body going taut like a bloodhound being given a scent. “This man holds information we need. Extract it.”

Bucky’s expression stays blank. The plates of his metal arm shift and recalibrate again. “Yes, Master,” he says, and Clint can only guess that his tone matches his bland expression.

Clint swears. Loudly. Because this is fucked, this is so fucked up. He’d known, he’d read the files and listened to the stilted, blubbered sobs in the middle of the night, but it is an entirely different thing to actually see his beautiful, foul mouthed, stubborn ass of a boyfriend suddenly blank and obedient. Clint’s so horrified and disgusted that for a minute he forgets to be terrified about what the conversation going on in front of him actually means. But then Bucky - the Winter Soldier - is standing in front of him, all dead eyes and vacant expression. Clint’s throat is tight and his chest is aching and he is scared because he might be an idiot who basically gets beat up professionally but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it. And this is worse; this is more important than his fragile body. Bucky still wakes up screaming when he remembers killing actual scumbag shitheads on HYDRA’s orders; Clint doesn’t want to imagine what this will do to him when Bucky comes back to himself. Because Bucky will come back to himself, because Steve and the team will show up, preferably any minute now, and they’ll deprogram Bucky and everything will be fine, except it’s currently looking like Clint might not be there to see it.

“Bucky,” he says, trying to make his voice soft and intimate, reassuring the way he does when Bucky wakes up and doesn’t know where he is right away. Clint has to swallow hard against the constriction in his throat to get the words out; Bucky isn’t meeting Clint’s eyes, he’s scanning Clint’s body, slow and thorough, accessing weak points and noting where Clint is already injured. “Bucky, look at me. It’s going to be okay. I know you don’t remember them right now, but the team is coming, Steve is coming, and they’re going to get you out of here. They’ll make sure you-”

Clint doesn’t get to finish his sentence. There’s a flash of metal glinting in the light and then Clint’s intestines have hit the Earth’s mesosphere. Clint’s eyes don’t so much roll back in his head as they invert themselves while his every inner organ rearranges itself and it’s entirely possible that his kidney is sticking to the cement column he’s bound to. At least, that’s what it feels like.

An indeterminate amount of time passes before Clint’s organs settle back more or less where they’re supposed to be, his lungs start working again, and his brain turns on enough to realize that his chin, shirt, and Bucky’s shoes are covered in vomit made up primarily of stomach acid, torture water, and a little blood. Bucky is still facing Clint, but his attention is clearly on Rat Bastard. Rat Bastard is staring at Clint expectantly; which, frankly, is insulting. This entire experience has been insulting and Clint does his best to be enraged by that rather than feel any of the other things he could be feeling right now.

“Hit him again,” Rat Bastard snarls. Clint gives up on expecting any sort of creativity from these people at all, and has just enough time to see a fist - flesh this time, not metal - coming his way before it connects with his temple and everything goes black.

******

Clint hates regaining consciousness in uncomfortable positions. He really hates being chained up. He definitely hates concussions. And he super, absolutely, completely hates HYDRA.

Clint doesn’t bother opening his eyes at first. His damn traitorous body has brought him back to consciousness naturally, which he can only hope means that the goons have gone off to entertain themselves in some other way, so he takes his time. He breathes carefully, praying that the roiling of his stomach and the way it still feels like his brain is sloshing around inside of his skull will settle down soon. It doesn’t.

He can’t say what makes him open his eyes, but between one second and the next he goes from hoping he’ll pass out again to as alert as it’s possible to be with a concussion and at least three broken ribs. His eyes snap open and blink several times in a futile attempt to banish the fuzzy double images that overlay the scene in front of him.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t been left alone as he’d hoped. Fortunately, the small crowd of HYDRA goons standing around gawking aren’t paying any attention to him. Except when Clint realizes what they are looking at, he’d almost prefer it was him. Because it’s Bucky. And it’s not that Clint has that much of a martyr complex - not any more than is apparently a requisite part of being a superhero anyway - but the sight in front of him is so unsettling, Clint’s brain is having a hard time even accepting it.

Bucky - or rather, the Winter Soldier - is kneeling on the concrete only a few feet in front of Clint, his hands resting on his knees. The posture is submissive, but calm, almost reposed, and Bucky’s face is that same blank mask that he’s worn since they’d wiped him. Except Bucky’s shoulders are tense, hunched forward slightly. There’s a fine sheen of sweat on his chest and a faint pinched line between his eyebrows. The only movement is the occasional flex and release of Bucky’s flesh hand where it rests on his knees, a subtle shifting of muscle and sinew. It’s easier, somehow, for Clint to stare at Bucky’s hand, to watch that irregular twitch and understand it as the only sign of weakness that breaks through the blank casing that is the Winter Soldier than it is for Clint to process the thing that’s causing it. The effort it would take for Clint to lift his gaze from Bucky’s hand, up to the looming figure behind him, up to the heavy chain links the figure is wielding, to watch the dull glint of cheap florescent light on bloodstained metal as the chain is brought down against the bare skin of Bucky’s back, it’s too much. Bucky is just sitting there, unrestrained and yet unresisting, as the chain tears through the unprotected skin of his back again and again, and Clint suddenly finds himself more willing to go another hundred rounds with the water board than to stand there helpless and watch.

Luckily, Clint doesn’t have to watch for long. After three more strikes the beating is apparently done. The man with the chain drops his arm and stands back, Rat Bastard moves forward to snarl something at Bucky that Clint doesn’t quite catch, and then Bucky murmurs what looks like Yes master, which Clint can just barely read through the curtain of Bucky’s hair.

There’s a tense moment. Bucky is half slumped forward, still in his kneeling position but shoulders hunched enough to almost be considered curled up into a ball. Clint can’t see much of Bucky’s back from this angle, but he can see blood, and that’s more than enough. Clint isn’t sure if Rat Bastard or any of the goons has noticed he’s awake or not. He instinctively hopes not, but he’d also sort of rather get their attention away from Bucky.

Luckily, Clint is saved from doing something stupid and self sacrificing by a sweaty looking goon bursting in and attracting Rat Bastard’s attention instead. Clint actually tries to read the guy’s lips, because whatever has him so flustered is just as likely to be very good or very bad for him, but he’s talking too fast for Clint to get much more than what is probably sensors, follow, and smash, which tells him basically nothing. It could be an alarm that means the Avengers are almost here for an about-damn-time rescue, but it could also just as easily mean that they’re ready to move forward on whatever their great evil plan is, because getting their hands on the Winter Soldier can only be a means to an end, not the end itself.

Rat Bastard does some cursing and angry gesturing, and then he storms off with almost all of the goons in tow. But he leaves Bucky behind. Half a dozen guards are left looming around the edges of the room, looking somewhere between bored and uneasy, but their grips on their guns are slack and they seem to be more interested in whatever Rat Bastard went to deal with than actually guarding.

Bucky hasn’t moved. He’s still just sitting there, hunched forward, face half hidden behind the tangle of his hair, his back bleeding sluggishly. It’s horrible, but it’s also probably the best opportunity Clint is going to get.

“Bucky,” he tries. His throat feels like sandpaper scraping against gravel and he’s kind of glad that he can’t hear what his own voice sounds like. “Come on, man, just… just look at me.” Talking hurts, breathing hurts, everything hurts, but seeing Bucky like this, hollowed out and torn away from himself, that hurts more than anything. “Look, even if… if you can’t remember anything right now, just listen to me, because you don’t have to do this, you don’t have to listen to them.” The words keep tumbling out of his mouth, jumbled and he has no idea how coherent he actually sounds, if his words are even intelligible or if they’re as slurred and off kilter as his thoughts feel. But it doesn’t matter, he keeps talking anyway because he can’t waste this chance. “You really don’t have to obey these dickholes. You’re stronger- you’re so much better than them. You don’t have to just sit there and let them hurt you.”

The metal plates of Bucky’s arm shift and recalibrate again, but otherwise Bucky doesn’t respond, doesn’t so much as blink and Clint wants to scream in frustration. He’s so tired, and everything hurts, and he fucking hates the blank, vacant stare of the Winter Soldier. He misses Bucky, his Bucky, all sly smiles and deep blue eyes, the way his whole face crinkles up when he laughs and how his lips stick out when he pouts. And more than anything he hates that Bucky has been sucked back into this shitstorm of a horror show, that even after years of therapy and struggling and just when he’d finally begun to find some balance, some happiness, that these HYDRA asshats can come along and rip it all away from him again.

Clint swallows back the bile that’s rising in his throat, closing his eyes against the burn of frustrated, angry tears and changes tactics. “It’s going to be okay, though, Bucky, it really is. The team- Steve, Steve will come, okay? So… So if you can’t fight them, yeah, that sucks, but it’s still going to be okay. Steve can help you, like he did before. Your memories will come back and we’ll… we’ll make it through this.”

Clint’s jolted out of his monologue by the abrupt sting of a slap slamming his head back against the column. His eyes snap open - he’d almost forgotten he’d closed them - and one of the goons is standing in front of him, looking supremely annoyed. Despite the nauseating spinning in his head, Clint can read the words “shut up” on the guy’s lips and the look in his eyes is practically daring Clint to ask for another blow.

In Clint’s defense, he’s never been one to back down from a dare, and there is so much rage and frustration boiling inside of him that he’s almost relieved for the opportunity. So Clint lashes out, fast and vicious, with all the training Nat’s given him over the years. He kicks his legs up, first slamming a foot into the guy’s knee then wrapping his legs around the guy’s waist, using the momentum to drag him closer. With his hands chained up, his weapons are limited but he’s learned well over the years that there’s a lot more to fighting than just hands and feet, so he snarls and the goon is so surprised by the sudden move and Clint’s legs around his waist that he stumbles forward enough for Clint to reach the soft, fleshy part of his neck above the line of his tactical vest and dig his teeth in.

Unfortunately, Clint is outnumbered, and the other goons catch on fast enough to react before Clint can really sink his teeth in like he wants to. Another punch knocks his head back against the column again and even if Clint wasn’t very experienced with head trauma, he’d still know how very not good that is. Someone else grabs Clint’s thigh over the bullet hole from his previous escape attempt and he has no choice but to release his grip on the first goon’s throat in favor of a short, choked scream of pain.

He drops back against the column, no less furious but temporarily stymied by the renewed surge of pain from both his thigh and his head. The goons grab their friend quickly and drag him out of reach, and if Clint had enough breath in his lungs he’d laugh at how stupid and alarmed they look. Clint has dealt with his fair share of dumb and inexperienced villains before, but these guys are really the bottom of the bargain bin which is in equal parts hilarious and embarrassing.

The first goon recovers himself fairly quickly, clutching his - disappointingly only slightly - bloody neck and nearly hopping with mortified anger. He growls what are probably a lot of insults about Clint’s mother, then turns to Bucky and snaps something along the lines of “you put the damn muzzle on him. I’d like to see him try and bite your hand.”

Bucky, who’s only reaction to the incident had been to glance up enough to watch through his curtain of hair, blinks slowly once, then stands. His movements are still the fluid, almost cat-like grace that Clint is used to seeing on the battlefield and knows is a holdover from his previous Winter Soldier days, but there’s a slight stiffness to them, a sort of caution in how Bucky holds himself that probably has to do with the fact that he’s missing half of the skin on his back. There’s nothing hurried in his movements, but every motion is deliberate, measured and precise. He picks up the gag from where it had been left with some other equipment earlier. He holds it in his metal hand, his gaze sliding over it as though appraising it’s condition. Then he crosses the distance to where Clint is bound.

For a moment, one breathless, hopeful moment, Bucky is standing right in front of Clint, so close that Clint can feel the soft puff of his breath and the tangy scent of Bucky’s blood is almost overwhelming. For a second, not even a full second but at least half of one, Bucky actually meets Clint’s eyes and Clint’s heart pounds with the thought that maybe, maybe Bucky is still in there, that the programming is breaking apart. But then a metal thumb forces it’s way abruptly between Clint’s lips, making room for the metal bit inside the gag and then Clint’s face is encased once again in thick, suffocating plastic and the bit is hard and sharp over his tongue as Bucky secures the straps behind his head.

It’s sick, but the closeness of Bucky’s body for those few moments makes Clint ache. The feeling of Bucky’s fingers wrapping around the back of his skull as he secures the gag, precise and purposeful but not actively hurting him, and the faint brush of Bucky’s hair against Clint’s cheek as Bucky angles forward to see what he’s doing, the scent of Bucky, even distorted by the reek of sweat and blood. For just a few seconds it’s all around Clint, enveloping him, and Clint wants to cling to it, to close his eyes and pretend that they’re home, safe and in full control of themselves in their own bed-

Bucky pulls away, his task complete and his expression as vacant as ever. He turns away from Clint and returns to his previous spot on the floor, dropping to his knees and bowing his head as though he hadn’t moved at all.

Clint lets his head drop back against the column, mainly because it hurts too much to try and hold it up on his own any more. It’s so hard to breathe around the throb of his broken ribs and the uncomfortable pull in his chest from his arms being kept above his head, and now the heavy plastic over his face is sweltering and suffocating and it’s all he can do not to start gagging and hyperventilate. He feels the hope that had flared up so briefly fading away, like a stupid candle snuffed out by the lack of oxygen he’s managing to get into his lungs. Whatever that chair did to Bucky’s brain is holding and Clint isn’t going to be able to get through to him. It’s stupid to feel disappointed, a maybe a little bitter, about that. It’s not Bucky’s fault and there’s nothing more Clint can do except wait and hope to whatever higher powers that still bother paying attention to Clint that Steve and the team show up soon.

Because Clint is out of options, out of ideas, and out of energy to keep fighting. So he lets himself slump against the column, lets himself hang heavy in the manacles, and gives up on trying to suppress the tears that have started leaking down his cheeks. There’s nothing else he can do.

*****
Time passes indeterminately; there are no windows visible from where Clint is trapped and he’s too tired, too miserable to care. He keeps his eyes closed, the lights like bright stabs of pain into his throbbing head and he doesn’t want to see Bucky just sitting there, broken and submissive, anyway. At least the cement of the column is cool and it feels like the only thing keeping his head from just completely cracking opening and falling in pieces to the floor.

Vaguely, in a half hearted attempt to distract himself, Clint tries to decide when he’d had a day worse than this one. Bucharest maybe, although that had really been a continuation of Budapest. There had been one time in Detroit that he really doesn’t remember, but he has a vague sense of being very terrible. In all honesty, he’s had too many bad days to keep track of and this line of thought is only making him depressed.

Clint’s saved from having to come up with something less depressing to think about by an abrupt and distinctly familiar rumble that shakes the entire building. Clint’s eyes snap open. Vaguely, in the distant shadows that gather in the gap between the tops of the shipping crates and the high ceiling of the warehouse, Clint just catches a flash of light. The ground trembles beneath Clint’s feet and he thinks he can almost hear the echo of a roar.

Clint’s eyes burn and his throat is dry and his heart is pounding beneath his broken ribs and it’s relief, because he knows that roar, that rumble, that flash of light distant and hazy seeming as they are. Those are the telltale signs of Thor and the Hulk doing what they do best and finally, finally this hell day can come to an end.

He takes as deep a breath as he can, bracing, reassuring; the team is here. His eyes flick to Bucky, hoping against hope to see some sign of the same relief that Clint is feeling show on that blank face. He’s disappointed, and he tries not to let that diminish his hope. Bucky hasn’t moved, hasn’t so much as twitched, even though Clint knows that if he can hear the faint echoes of Hulk’s roaring then it must be shatteringly loud to everyone else in the room. His theory is confirmed by looking at the guards, who have gone from vaguely bored to terrified and clutching their rifles like teddy bears. But Bucky hasn’t so much as blinked, his hands still loosely resting on his knees, his back still slightly bowed, his head tilted down toward the floor.

Then, between one distant flash of lightning and the next, Bucky does move. It’s subtle at first; if Clint hadn’t been looking, if Clint didn’t know where to look, he wouldn’t have seen it. Bucky’s shoulders flex, the muscles in his thighs tighten, and his head tilts, his hair parting just enough for Clint to see his face and Bucky is… grinning. Instinctively, Clint thinks of a horror movie, the kind where one second a sweet old lady is saying something completely innocuous, and then she gets that look right before her entire head splits open into a demonic hell mouth and starts swallowing people whole. That’s the grin on Bucky’s face and Clint’s battered mind can’t process, can’t comprehend what he’s seeing, but the hapless - stupid - guards whose attentions are entirely focused on the battle that’s no where near them, they don’t even get a warning.

Clint’s been at the end of his rope for hours now. His vision is blurred, head pounding fit to explode, and it takes all he’s got to even keep his eyes open, but even at his best he thinks he probably wouldn’t be able to fully track Bucky’s movements. As it is, his brain stays stuck in horror movie mode and filters Bucky’s movements as though through a strobe effect; it isn’t real, the lights are as bright and steady as any lights in a building that’s incurred Thor’s wrath can be, but Clint’s brain keeps skipping split seconds.

Blink.

Bucky’s on his feet.

Blink.

A goon’s head caves in around the knuckles of the metal fist.

Blink.

The next goon’s body goes to the left while his head goes to the right.

Blink.

The third goon chokes on the barrel of his own gun.

Blink.

A spray of blood.

Blink.

The pink-white flash of bone through skin.

Blink.

There’s a steadily growing puddle of blood on the floor.

Blink.

There are no more goons.

Blink.

Bucky is standing in front of Clint, so close Clint can almost feel the puff of Bucky’s breath against his face. There’s smear of blood running down Bucky’s cheek, and for a wild moment Clint thinks Fuck, I’m dead. It’s not the first time he’s thought that - he has had more near death experiences than he’s had burritos in his lifetime - but this time it’s accompanied by a strange, hysterical surge of pity for those stupid goons who had no idea what kind of fire they were playing with in bringing out the Winter Soldier.

But the second passes. Clint’s heart is still beating. Bucky reaches out with his flesh hand, bloody and shaking, and instead of snapping Clint’s neck he curls his palm around the back of Clint’s skull, fingers fumbling with the clasp on the muzzle.

Heady surprise and relief force Clint’s lungs to expand so suddenly and so sharply that his head spins, but it’s like the whole world has settled back onto the right axis and he can finally see clearly again. Because the man standing in front of him is Bucky, so clearly, sharply, perfectly Bucky that Clint can’t quite reconcile this reality with the hollowed out shell that he’d seen only minutes ago.

Bucky still has his game face on, expression focused and grim, but his eyes are wet and little too wide and so, so Bucky. Those are the eyes Clint fell in love with.

The muzzle falls away and the cool air hits Clint’s cheeks like a slap in the face. Bucky is so close, heat radiating off of his sweat damp skin, and he has to press closer still to reach up and release Clint’s wrists from the manacles. Clint’s dizzy and overwhelmed and it’s entirely possible that he’s actually unconscious - or dead - and this is all just a dream. But Bucky is right there, so close and real and warm. No more weapon, no more blank, hollowed out shell, but just Bucky, his expression as alive and present as Clint has ever seen it.

It isn’t at all surprising that as soon as the chains are no longer holding him up Clint’s legs go completely out from under him. And yet, he finds himself slightly startled to be slumped over against Bucky’s chest, Bucky’s arms tight around his waist to keep him off the floor. He can’t say anything, can’t do more than gape, and he misses how exactly it happens but somehow he ends up sitting with his back pressed against a cement column - the same one, he assumes, but he realizes distantly that he’s now on the other side of it because he can’t see the Chair of Horrors or the bloody pieces that used to be goons any more - and his legs are splayed out in front of him. But that’s fine. Despite the burning-throbbing-stabbing pain that is his entire body and the nauseous slip-slide-slosh that his brain is doing, he is perfectly content to be exactly where he is because Bucky is kneeling in front of him, a cool metal hand cupping his cheek, and Bucky’s mouth is pulled down into an unhappy frown and his eyes are filled with worry. This is fine, this is good. A few minutes ago Clint would have killed to see that much emotion on Bucky’s face again.

“Bucky,” he says, or he thinks he does. He’s too dizzy and exhausted to be sure if any sound actually made it through his vocal chords, but Bucky is good at reading lips, and Clint is pretty sure that Bucky does currently know his own name, so it doesn’t matter whether Clint actually said it or not.

Bucky’s frown deepens. He’s tilting Clint’s head, trying to inspect the places where blood has matted clumps into Clint’s hair, and Clint’s battered brain does not appreciate the motion but he can’t seem to lift his arms to bat Bucky away. Not that Clint would do that if he could move his arms; he’d much rather hug Bucky instead. Cling to him, maybe smack him upside the head a little for taking so long and scaring the shit out of Clint.

Clint will forgive him though. Right now, Clint would forgive Bucky anything. There’s a slow, dopey grin spreading across Clint’s lips that is entirely involuntary but matches the hysterical bubble of relief-desperation-joy that’s swelling in Clint’s chest in the dazed wake of fading adrenaline and terror. “You did it,” he says, stupidly, because obviously; Bucky has probably noticed that he’s not brainwashed any more, but Clint can’t stop his stupid mouth. He’s pretty sure he even actually made sound that time, because Bucky has stopped inspecting his head and is looking at his face again, even though Bucky is still frowning. “Knew you could. Told you. Told you you could shake it off. An’ that Steve would come.” He’s still grinning and his face hurts, a fact of which he is only distantly aware, and the cuts in the corners of his mouth where the gag dug in have split open and started bleeding again.

Clint doesn’t care. He feels drunk and light enough to float even though he can’t move his body and if Bucky wasn’t still holding his face he’d probably just tilt over sideways completely. Some vague part of his brain knows that isn’t actually a good thing; it’s the part of him that remembers all of the unfortunately many times he’s been tortured and rescued before and knows that what he’s feeling is shock and that he’s concussed and probably bleeding internally. But he honestly just… can’t care.

Bucky looks like he’s about to say something, but instead he jerks and lifts the gun that Clint hadn’t realized he was holding in his right hand. Bucky leans around the column that, apparently, they are hiding behind, and fires three rounds before his attention shifts back to Clint. Because they aren’t actually safe yet, and there is still some kind of fight going on in the rest of the warehouse that Clint can’t see or hear, but it’s fine. Bucky’s back to stroking Clint’s cheek almost before Clint can even process the interruption, and whoever had been approaching is clearly neutralized now. So Clint decides not to care, which is just as well because he has better things to do like continue to stare with dopey delight at Bucky’s beautiful face.

Which is exactly what he does, despite his blurry vision, until Bucky abruptly shakes him, rough enough to make Clint instinctively swear and force his eyes to focus as much as they can. “I need you to stay conscious,” Bucky shouts so that Clint can just barely make out the words. His face is so close, close enough that Clint finds enough strength from somewhere to lurch forward and kiss him. He misses Bucky’s lips, catching the stubbly jut of his jaw instead, and Clint’s lips leave behind a bloody smear, but it’s good enough for now and it pulls a tiny, crooked tilt into Bucky’s lips which is way better than the worried scowl.

“You scared the shit outta me,” Clint slurs. He’s either shouting or not making sound at all, he can’t tell, but he’s pretty sure Bucky understands him.

The almost smile disappears before it can even really exist and the all too familiar pull of guilt flashes across Bucky’s face, and oh no, Clint does not have time for that right now. He’s gathering wind to yell at Bucky for it, but Bucky ducks around the column to shoot at - presumably - more HYDRA goons and by the time he’s back Clint has forgotten what he was going to say exactly.

“I’m so proud of you,” Clint ends up saying instead. He’s slipping again, his neck refusing to hold the weight of his head and his body feels very far away, but he’s still with it enough to notice the weird expression that twists Bucky’s face. It looks like uncertainty and confusion, and maybe a little bemusement.

Bucky says something, but at the same time there’s a massive flash of lightning and the entire building shakes. Clint can’t hear even a whisper of what Bucky is saying over the accompanying crashing, and his vision is too blurred to accurately read Bucky’s lips. Clint squints his eyes, struggling, because he has some instinctive sense that this is important. He’s pretty sure he sees the shape of the words pretend, sorry, hurt you, and keep you safe, but he can’t focus, can’t be sure of anything any more.

For a second, Bucky looks as dazed and uncertain as Clint feels, but then his attention is once again focused on the fight happening on the other side of the column, bracing himself on one knee as he fires round after round from the assault rifle he’d acquired… at some point?

Clint’s head lolls limply against his chest. Clint’s hand is only a few inches from Bucky’s leg, and he can just make it move enough to curl loosely around Bucky’s ankle, trying to anchor them together. Just in case this is some crazy hallucination, he thinks irrationally, as long as he’s holding onto Bucky then Bucky will definitely still be there when Clint wakes up.

That’s as far as his thought process gets before his brain decides enough is enough and shuts down entirely. The last thing he sees before he passes out is Bucky in profile, his body a taut, powerful line that extends down the barrel of his gun and his face tight with concentration and Clint falls away into darkness with the faint, familiar thought of there’s the guy I love.

*****

Clint hates waking up in a hospital bed almost as much as he hates waking up in restraints; though, he supposes, both are better than not waking up at all. He’s had more than enough practice to know that it’s best to just let the waking up happen. His brain boots up again surprisingly quickly, considering the pretty serious concussion he definitely had, and he’s probably not actually so much waking up as he is coming out of a coma, but Clint’s not about to complain about it. Especially since the memories that are coming back to him are full of HYDRA and brainwashing chairs from hell. But the thing that comes back first, and the thing that sticks even through the rest of everything terrible that’s filtering back into Clint’s awareness, is the image of Bucky, battered as he was, all lithe power and concentration as he gunned down HYDRA goons.

So Clint doesn’t panic. He stays still and quiet until he’s pretty sure he’ll be able to open his eye without his brain sloshing out through his eyeballs or something. The first blurry look confirms that he is, in fact, in a hospital room. One of the private ones in Avengers Tower, thankfully; although that probably means either his condition was never that serious - unlikely - or that he’s taken a page out of Steve’s book and been out for an uncomfortably long time.

Steve is sitting next to Clint’s bed, sketchbook spread out across his knees and a tablet propped up on the nightstand for reference. He doesn’t look surprised that Clint’s awake, though there is a distinct edge of relief in his smile. He waits until Clint’s focused on him properly to pick up the pair of Clint’s off duty hearing aids from the nightstand and offer them out to him.

Clint’s arms still ache fiercely, and his wrists are heavily bandaged from where he’d torn them struggling against the restraints, so accepting the hearing aids and getting them in is a somewhat unpleasant chore, but signing would be even more work and honestly Clint has had more than enough of not being able to follow what’s going on around him for a while. So he fumbles with the hearing aids until he can get them in and turned on, then slumps back against the pillows in relief.

“Where is he?” Clint asks without preamble, because it isn’t surprising to find Steve sitting at his bedside, but they both know he wouldn’t be Clint’s first choice and there is a glaringly obvious absence in the room. A part of Clint is terrified that what he thinks he remembers is actually just some crazy dream or hallucination that his battered brain made up, that Bucky is actually locked in some holding cell in the basement while they try to deprogram him. But the rational part of Clint’s brain - small though it is sometimes - points out that if that were the case Steve would be there with Bucky, not sitting at Clint’s bedside sketching, or at the very least Steve would look distinctly more stressed out than he does.

Steve grimaces, reaching for a plastic cup with a straw sticking out of it and holding it out to Clint. Clint would have happily ignored how rough and dry his throat is in favor of an answer, but Steve is very instant about poking the straw at his lips so Clint gives in and drinks a little before going back to staring at Steve expectantly.

“He’s… hiding, I think,” Steve says reluctantly once he’s returned the cup to the nightstand. “Brooding, definitely.”

Clint groans and flops back against the pillows, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. “Of course he is,” he grumbles, but he pulls his focus back together quickly. “He’s okay though, right? I mean, he’s not, there’s no way in hell that he’s actually okay, but he’s, you know, himself?”

Steve grimaces but nods. “He wouldn’t tell me much, about what happened. He insisted we check him for any new trigger words, but other than that he’s pretty much just been brooding and avoiding everyone.” Steve doesn’t look at Clint, fidgeting with the metal rings binding his sketchbook. “I think he talked to Natasha some,” he adds after a minute, “and yesterday she got fed up enough to all but carry him to an appointment with his therapist, but-” Steve cuts off. Bitter and worried he looks up, searching Clint’s face for answers, for reassurance. There’s a sort of expectant hangdog expression on his face, and the lines of worry - which, honestly, are a pretty normal feature on Steve’s face, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t justified - are etched particularly deep.

Clint looks down at his own hands instead of meeting Steve’s gaze. He studies the bandages around his wrists, the bruises that run up and down his arms and scrapes on his knuckles, and concludes absently that despite his earlier pessimism he couldn’t have been out for much more than a week. “It… It was pretty bad,” he says after a minute. “But… not as bad as it could have been.” After all, Clint is alive and not vegetative, and Bucky’s still enough of himself to be broody and noncommunicative. So really, they came out of this surprisingly well.

The silence falls between them and Clint knows that Steve is waiting for more, that if Clint stopped determinedly staring at the ceiling he would see Steve’s desperate, hopeful look, waiting for Clint to banish the horrors that Steve’s imagining by replacing them with the horrors that had actually happened. And Clint’s not sure he can do that. Bucky is absolutely being a dumbass, but Clint isn’t sure if Bucky ever really told Steve about the chair, or how much Steve knows about how HYDRA had controlled the Winter Soldier. Before witnessing it Clint had only known in a vague, general sense that there was A Chair; and that mostly he knew only because Bucky occasionally woke up screaming and/or crying uncontrollably about it. If Bucky hasn’t chosen to tell Steve about it, well, it really isn’t Clint’s secret to share, especially not now, not when it’s all so fresh and vulnerable all over again.

Clint can’t give Steve the answers that he’s looking for, not all of them. But Clint can talk about the part of it that Steve probably does know about it, and if he doesn’t already know he definitely should. “At least tell me that someone pinned him down long enough to patch him up?” Clint asks, without a whole lot of optimism.

Steve grimaces again and shrugs. “At first we were all… you were in pretty bad shape, and there was all the cleanup to worry about and intel to collect, then you were in surgery and everything. We should have taken care of him sooner-” Steve bites his lip, his truly impressive capacity for guilt and self-flagellation all over his face. “I did, eventually, make sure he got cleaned up. By then he was mostly healing up on his own, there wasn’t a whole lot to do about it.”

Clint nods, unsurprised. Despite his instinctive surge of anger at the idea of Bucky letting his injuries fester, neglecting medical really isn’t a glass house Clint is in any position to throw stones at. But he still can’t help the memory, and the guilty twist in his stomach that accompanies it, of Bucky kneeling passively on the floor and letting them beat him bloody, letting them rip apart his back like that. By the time Clint had gotten a good look at the wounds they’d been crusted with dirt and dried blood and it had been horrifying. Even though he knows rationally that thanks to the serum it is technically safe to let them heal on their own without worrying about their severity or infection setting in enough to put Bucky’s life at risk, Clint still hates the level of pain that Bucky can and will endure without even trying to do something about it. He hates even more knowing that on some level Bucky might think he deserves to feel that pain; Clint really needs to hunt Bucky down and talk to him.

But Clint can feel himself starting to drift again, the drugs pulling heavily at him. As much as he thanks all the high heavens for the gift that is high strength painkillers, he hates the grogginess and fatigue that goes with them. In an effort to keep himself awake, his drifting mind catches on something Steve had said. “I was in surgery?” he asks. Which is a stupid question, because he had pretty much known since that metal fist slammed into his stomach that internal bleeding was almost definitely happening - probably already had been before that point - and, unfortunately, he’s experienced enough to recognize the vague but deep ache in his gut that makes it through the fog of the painkillers. And, well, Clint still isn’t throwing stones.

Steve doesn’t dignify that with more than a raised eyebrow. “You got lucky,” Steve says, and his voice is dry but there’s the stale aftertaste of worry lingering in his voice, which Clint instinctively feels bad about, even though it’s not actually his fault he got hurt this time. “The doctors said the internal bleeding was relatively minor, and none of your organs ruptured.”

“Whoo,” Clint agrees, trying to inject some actual enthusiasm into his voice and ignore the niggling thought of was it luck? that’s hovering uncertainly in the back of his mind. “So I’m good to go then? Great. I’ve got things to do.” He knows it’s stupid, and he knows it isn’t going to work, but he starts sitting up anyway.

Naturally, Steve catches him before Clint can get much further than lifting his shoulders up from the pillows. Honestly, it’s kind of a relief, because yeah, that hurts, a lot, and he can’t bring himself to actually resist much as Steve pushes him back down. “Don’t,” Steve says heavily. “Just don’t.”

Clint lets himself flop back with a dramatic huff. “Fine,” he relents. “You’re just going to have to go drag my boyfriend’s stupid butt up here then.”

Steve purses his lips. “You’re not going to tell me what happened, are you?” It’s not really a question. He looks worried, frustrated, and a little anxious, but unsurprised.

Clint wants to say something off hand, making some kind of joke about getting their stories straight before he incriminates himself, but his head’s pounding and his ribs ache with every breath and the heavy weight of staring into Bucky’s blank, vacant face is all still too sharp, too fresh. “I need to talk to him,” he tells Steve, meeting his eyes squarely and willing him to accept it, at least for now. “He’s… I’m not sure I understand what actually happened, but it wasn’t good, and you know him. I need to sort things out with him, and then it’s his call what he wants to tell you about it.”

Steve looks distinctly unhappy, and Clint does not at all envy Bucky when Steve eventually decides that they have recovered enough to start trying to weasel and puppy dog eye the story out of him. “Yeah, okay,” Steve sighs after a long minute of frowning. “I’ll go get him.”

“I mean it, Steve. Pick his sorry ass up and carry him here if you have to, or I will go hunt him down myself.” Clint tries to sound threatening, which is hard to do when he’s sprawled out limply in a hospital bed and his eyes don’t seem to want to open fully any more. He’s pretty sure he hears Steve snort a little, which is rude. But Steve promises and Clint watches him leave the room.

*****

Of course, the next thing Clint knows he’s waking up with a head full of bees, a mouth full of cotton, and no idea how long he’s been asleep. Someone had been kind enough to remove his hearing aids for him - Clint suspects Steve hadn’t actually left at all, but doubled back to do it, the considerate bastard - so at least his ears aren’t sore. Despite the drug fueled grogginess, Clint knows immediately why he’s awake and he gropes for his hearing aids before he manages to even fully open his eyes.

By the time Clint gets his hearing aids on and pries his eyes all of the way open, Bucky literally has one foot inside the room and one back out in the hallway and he looks suspiciously like he’s about to make a run for it.

“Don’t you dare,” Clint growls, feeling the words scrape roughly in his throat but it’s enough to stop Bucky short. Clint gets it, he does, but they’re going to have to talk all this out eventually, and honestly Clint would prefer to skip to the part where Bucky stops self-flagellating long enough for the post-surgery cuddles that Clint is man enough to admit he desperately wants.

Bucky’s slow to respond, his shoulders stiff and it takes him nearly a full minute to give up on the idea of running away and turn to face Clint. He’s wearing sweats and an oversized hoodie; comfort clothes, but also conveniently clothes that hide any lingering injuries that Bucky hasn’t let fully heal yet. His outfit, coupled with the slightly damp curl of his hair, indicates that he’s probably been in the gym literally beating himself up. When he does finally look at Clint, he doesn’t meet Clint’s eyes, his face half hidden by his loose hair.

And as annoying as it is, Clint is relieved, because there is so much emotion, so much of Bucky being telegraphed from every tense line of Bucky’s body; not a trace of the eerie hollowed out shell that the Winter Soldier maintained.

“C’mere, asshole,” Clint says when another minute passes without Bucky making a move. Clint lets his voice be soft and welcoming, but also exasperated, lets the weariness and the worry and relief and forgiveness and everything else he possibly can shove into those two words show. For all that Clint knows they need to deal with what happened, it’s not like either of them are particularly good at talking about their feelings, and Clint doesn’t actually want to have this conversation any more than Bucky does. There’s a certain expediency to putting as much emotion into as few words as possible and hoping that’s enough to get the message across, which Clint is currently heavily in favor of.

Bucky twitches slightly, but he comes into the room, approaching the bed with all the wariness of a cat approaching water. Bucky aims for Steve’s vacated chair, but Clint doesn’t have the patience for that; if they have to talk about feelings, he might as get his cuddles at the same time. So he reaches for Bucky’s wrist, not grabbing it but catching and loosely tugging enough for Bucky to get the hint. Bucky hesitates for a fraction of a second, but then something that looks like relief flashes across his face and he toes off his sneakers to carefully climb into the bed with Clint.

There are definitely benefits to having pretty much every aspect of your life bankrolled by Tony Stark; a private hospital stocked with wider than average hospital beds - acquired both because half the team are larger than average people, and because as a group they have enough near death experiences to make hospital bed cuddling practically a hobby - is definitely one of them. Clint has to grunt and hold his breath for a few seconds until the throbbing in his ribs dies back down again after he shifts to make more room for Bucky, but the end result is Clint quite comfortably half lying on Bucky’s flesh arm with Bucky tucked up against the entire length of Clint’s side, and it is completely worth it.

First things first, Clint gets a hand in Bucky’s hair and pulls him in for a solid round of kissing. Initially Clint’s pretty sure Bucky’s going to pull away, but gradually Bucky’s body loosens and he presses into Clint. Bucky doesn’t actually relax, but there is an easing in the tension of this body and he drapes his arm around Clint to pull him closer. Eventually, Clint pulls back from the kiss with great reluctance, but only enough to breathe and rest their foreheads together.

“So,” Clint says. He has one hand fisted in Bucky’s shirt and absolutely no desire to let go thanks to the only semi-irrational fear that Bucky will disappear if he does. They’re pressed close enough that Clint can feel the hitch in Bucky’s chest as he takes a breath and holds it. “Those HYRDA guys were even more dickhole-ish than usual, huh?”

To Clint’s relief, Bucky lets out a little huff that’s almost a laugh and he presses his forehead against Clint’s a little more tightly. “Definitely high on the dickhole scale,” Bucky agrees. His voice is hoarse and rough, but his lips are twitching.

Clint takes a minute to bask in it, in having Bucky warm and solid against him, just a minute of everything at least superficially being okay. But it can’t last, and Clint decides to suck it up and try to get it over with. “If I play the just-had-major-surgery-and-spent-a-few-days-in-a-coma card, will you explain to me what happened without being all broody and angsty about it?” Clint keeps himself pressed up against Bucky, his head tucked into the hollow of Bucky’s neck and shoulder, not looking at him. Clint doesn’t want to watch Bucky’s face close off in response to the question, it’s bad enough feeling Bucky’s body go tight and tense again.

“That’s what you’re going with?” Bucky asks. It’s supposed to be a joke but there isn’t any levity in his voice any more. “Not the recently-tortured-by-both-HYDRA-assholes-and-my-boyfriend card?”

“See, now that is exactly the broody angst I am not in the mood for right now,” Clint complains, poking Bucky hard in the ribs; Bucky barely even reacts. Clint sighs and pulls back enough to prop himself up against the pillows and look at Bucky properly. “Between the being deaf and the whole torture thing, I wasn’t exactly tracking a lot of what was going on back there, but I do know that you went from being creepy as hell to being your usual brand of terrifyingly badass really damn fast. I also have a hazy memory of you trying to tell me something right before I passed out, and I would really like for you to explain that to me now that I’m fully conscious and can hear you.”

Bucky looks uncomfortable, and Clint watches distractedly as the metal plates of Bucky’s hand flex and recalibrate. “I thought I destroyed them all. The chairs,” Bucky says after a long moment. His voice is rough, too rough, like he has to drag every syllable out of some deep, painful place inside of him.

Clint nods. It makes sense. Before Steve had managed to convince Bucky to come to the Tower and let the Avengers help him, Bucky had torn a streak of destruction through every hint of HYDRA that he could find, which, honestly, Clint supports. And it only stands to reason that one of his priorities would be destroying every trace of the thing that was used to wipe away his identity and autonomy.

“I don’t know-… I thought they were all gone, but I… must have missed one, or… or they figured out how to build them-“ Bucky breaks off, his voice cracking. Clint reaches out to hold Bucky’s hand, but it’s the metal one and Bucky yanks it back out of the way; Clint satisfies himself by resting a hand back on Bucky’s chest and patting him reassuringly instead. Bucky huffs out a breath and his metal fingers stop twitching.

“But you’re you now, right?” Clint verifies, more as a reminder to Bucky than out of any real uncertainty. “I mean, it wore off, or you fought it off, right?”

Bucky’s lips turn down in a grimace. “I’m me,” he confirms. He pauses, licking his lower lip and then biting at it before speaking again. “I was always me.”

Clint takes a breath and his hand convulsively tightens in Bucky’s hoodie, crumpling the fabric in his fist. “Oh,” he says, mostly to give his mouth something to do while his bruised up brain tries to process. “Pretending, that’s what you said before I passed out. You were pretending.”

Bucky’s stiff and he looks almost as terrified as he had back at the HYDRA base. “I’m sorry,” he blurts, “I’m so- I hurt you and I-” He cuts himself off, taking a slow but deep breath that makes his entire body expand and flex enough to jostle Clint uncomfortably.

Clint holds on a little tighter to Bucky, both for the security of it and to protect himself from accidentally falling out of the bed. “Yeah, well, you were in the middle of a HYDRA base outnumbered like thirty to one by goons with assault rifles. Meanwhile, I was incapacitated and being held at knife point by a super creep. You pretended to go along with what they wanted so that they’d leave you unrestrained and drop their guard around you. Right, that’s what happened?”

Bucky grinds his teeth and shrugs. “More or less,” he admits, like the words are being forced out of him.

“Wow,” Clint says dryly, lacing as much sarcasm as he possibly could into the words, “yeah, you definitely fucked up. That was a terrible strategy and clearly didn’t work at all.”

Bucky peeks out from behind his hair enough to glower at Clint, which is exactly the reaction Clint was hoping for. “I took it too far,” he says, cracking around the edges. “I nearly perforated your intestines, and your brain-” Bucky reaches out but doesn’t quite touch the bandage around Clint’s head. “There was swelling, you were in a coma.”

“Not the first time and probably won’t be the last,” Clint points out, which isn’t necessarily the most reassuring thing to say, but it is true. “And now I’m healing and not in a coma, so it’s fine.”

“Nothing about this is fine, Clint!” Bucky snaps. He recoils immediately and would have gotten out of the bed if Clint had let him. “It isn’t like before, okay? It’s not. The wipe didn’t work! I knew what I was doing, I had a choice. I stood there and let you get hurt, I participated in hurting you, and I chose that.”

Clint’s fingers knot in Bucky’s hair; it isn’t the caress Clint wants to give him, but Bucky won’t accept a caress right now - he keeps trying to pull away and Clint can’t tolerate that. “Listen to me,” Clint growls, tugging a little, just enough to make Bucky look at him. “Yeah, you had a choice, technically. But what would have happened if you’d chosen differently? I mean it, what would have happened?”

Bucky’s quiet for a long time, his jaw ticking as his teeth clench together. “They would have put me back in the chair,” he says very quietly, his voice like rocks dragging over broken glass. “They would have kept trying until it did work.” Bucky stops trying to pull away and Clint keeps his hand in Bucky’s hair but gentles it, letting his blunt nails stritch lightly at Bucky’s scalp and his hand curl around the back of Bucky’s head.

“Exactly.” Clint has to swallow back against the thick lump in his throat. It had felt like hours, watching Bucky scream helplessly in that chair, but objectively it had only been a few minutes; Clint can’t stand even imagining Bucky being stuck in that chair for actual hours. He takes a breath and very gently lets his thumb rub along the line of Bucky’s cheekbone. “They would have just hurt you more, and they would have hurt me just as much, and by the time the team made it to us it might have been too late.” Bucky knows that, Clint knows he does, but it’s so easy for Bucky to get lost in his guilt that he needs to hear it said out loud, he needs the confirmation.

Bucky makes a wounded sound and presses into Clint’s hand, his eyes closing as he takes a stuttering breath. “I hit you,” he whispers.

“So?” Clint shrugs. “You hit me in sparring all the time.”

“Not like that.”

“No,” Clint agrees. “Usually when you hit me in sparring it’s because I’ve done something dumb and you decide to be a shit about it. This time, it was because you hitting me was way better than the alternative.” Bucky starts to open his mouth so Clint cuts him off. “It was on purpose, wasn’t it, you knocking me out? You did that on purpose, because if I was unconscious I wouldn’t have to feel what they did to me.”

Bucky’s mouth twists. “They weren’t very specific with their orders,” he grumbles, half explanation and half offence at HYDRA’s carelessness. “Left me some wiggle room.”

“But they punished you for it.” Clint has to take a slow, steadying breath of his own. He hadn’t been able to hear the chain connecting with Bucky’s flesh at the time, but his mind helpfully conjures an imitation of the sound now, a wet meaty thunk as metal tore into skin, ripping Bucky open and leaving him bloody. “And you knew they would, didn’t you?” It makes something sick twist in the pit of Clint’s stomach; just because Clint doesn’t agree with Bucky’s guilt doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand it, and he’s probably going to have some guilt issues of his own to work out later. “You wanted to get their attention away from me. Because you are a self sacrificing moron.”

Bucky snorts, seeming in spite of himself. “You are really in the wrong business if that’s a problem for you,” he points out.

“Yeah, we’re a bunch of pots and kettles. I can live with that. The point is,” Clint continues, really ready to be done with this, “you had two options, and both of them were absolutely shit, and you made the right call.” He lets his voice go deep and heavy on the last words, hoping to drill them into Bucky’s stupid, beautiful, self-loathing brain. “I mean it, the whole situation sucked and now we’ve both got yet more material for our personal nightmare libraries, which I’m super not looking forward to. But you made the hard choice and you kept your shit together and you made sure we both got out of there. Do we need to get Steve in here to give you a rousing speech about it? ‘Cause I bet he would be over the moon if we asked.”

“You better fucking not bring Steve into this,” Bucky growls and Clint can taste victory as he feels Bucky’s shoulders loosen. Bucky lets out a sigh that runs through his entire body and he slowly sags against Clint. “You’re really not going to dump me over this?” he mutters, his voice coming out muffled from where his face is burrowing into Clint’s shoulder.

“You really are a moron,” Clint responds, squeezing an arm around Bucky’s waist. Bucky huffs, but the last of the tension drains out of his body and he goes limp and exhausted against Clint, much to Clint’s relief.

Neither of them talk again for a while. They’re both floating in a haze of exhaustion both physical and emotional and Clint’s pretty sure he’s inevitably going to actually falls asleep again soon. Except before he can unravel back into blissful rest, a thought rises up from the back of his mind in a small, giddy bubble and grows until suddenly he’s laughing. Bucky startles, jerking back to squint unhappily at him, having almost been asleep himself.

It hurts, but Clint can’t stop laughing, irrational and a little hysterical. “We’re both morons,” he manages after a minute. “All this drama, and we missed the most important point.”

There’s the deep crease of a scowl between Bucky’s eyebrows, but his lips are tentatively starting to tilt upward. “What point?” he asks.

Clint grins, wide and painful and with way too much teeth. “It didn’t work,” he says. Bucky blinks, still looking bemused, so Clint grabs Bucky’s head in both hands, bruised fingers curling through Bucky’s hair and around his crown. “The machine didn’t fucking work. You beat it.”

Bucky blinks again, and then comprehension dawns over his face. “It didn’t,” he says it on a breath, like a revelation, like that hadn’t actually occurred to him before. “Almost, it-” he swallows, fumbling for a minute but even as his eyes dart around searching for the words his lips are spreading to match Clint’s grin. “At first, everything was all… hazy and mixed up, but it wasn’t gone, and as soon as I looked at you it all settled right back into place again.” Bucky throws back his head and lets out a short bark of laughter. “The machine didn’t fucking work!” he crows.

The giddy relief that Clint is feeling can only be a faint echo of what this means to Bucky and it still feels too big for his body to contain. “They can’t control you any more, not like that.” Clint’s eyes are wide and he can’t stop grinning and maybe it’s the drugs kicking back in again but suddenly the whole mess feels completely worth it. “You beat them.”

“Because of you,” Bucky says insistently. It’s his turn to cup Clint’s face in both hands and force Clint to meet his eyes. “Everything was right again as soon as I looked at you. I mean, the machine didn’t actually wipe my memories, but I was mixed up, vulnerable. Without you there they probably still could have controlled me.” He’s still grinning and his eyes are literally glittering with joy and triumph, but he’s serious again now too and his hands are gentle on the sides of Clint’s throat, his thumbs stroking just next to the battered edges of Clint’s lips.

Clint has to swallow even though his mouth is suddenly too dry. It hadn’t even occurred to him - he’d been so fixated on waiting for the team to get there with a rescue, hanging all his hope on the idea that Steve had made Bucky remember who he was once before and he could do it again. He wants to deny it. He wants to say bullshit. But Bucky is staring at him all soft joy and earnesty, and this moment is too perfect, like some sappy romance movie - except for all the nazis and torture - and this can’t possibly be Clint’s life.

Except it is. Somehow, this is his life.

Bucky is finally calm and relaxed; Clint has no doubt that the guilt will come back, that they’ll go through cycles of guilt and regret and terror and relief for weeks, probably months to come. But right now, in this moment, Bucky is pressed up against Clint, favoring him with soft, gentle touches like they’re the same as taking a breath - necessary and almost unconscious - and Clint can’t bear to break it. So he lets it go. He lets himself bask in the victory and the relief and the safety, at least for now.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s started to doze off until he feels Bucky carefully taking out his hearing aids for him. He blinks his heavy eyes open to watch the stretch of Bucky’s muscles beneath the hoodie as Bucky leans over to deposit the hearing aids on the bedside table. When Bucky settles back down again he’s staring at Clint seriously, his eyes making small movements as though he’s mapping out Clint’s face in a square centimeter sized grid.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky mouths, and even though he can’t hear it Clint knows the words are just a soft whisper and the weight of them reflect the gravity in his eyes. Bucky’s metal fingers - soothingly cool - gently, almost hesitating brush through the hair on Clint’s forehead.

Clint sighs and nestles a little closer until he can nuzzle his face into the hollow of Bucky’s collarbone. “You can make it up to me with blowjobs,” he mumbles, letting the alluring tide of sleep wash over him. “Later though.” He feels the rumble of laughter in Bucky’s chest beneath his face and the light press of Bucky’s lips against his forehead. Bucky’s lips stay there, just lightly brushing Clint’s skin, long enough to shape three words and Clint doesn’t need to hear them, or read them. He knows those words, knows the promise they contain and the weight of their sentiment in his bones, and that’s all he needs. He turns his head enough to press a mirroring kiss to the hollow of Bucky’s throat, but sleep overcomes him before he can say the words back.

That’s alright. There will be time later. Bucky will still be there when he wakes up.