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The first time Frank meets Clint Barton, they damn near get into a stupid, shitty brawl in the hallway.
It’s not the last time he almost fights Barton, although it is, objectively, the time he would’ve won by the widest margin. Barton’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants when he answers the door, looks barely nineteen, has soft hair and a soft mouth and soft, thoughtful eyes. Frank’s two tours into a career of them, and whatever softness he used to have got desiccated out of him years ago.
The reek of weed’s so strong that Frank could smell it as soon as they stepped off the elevator, and he’s not real clear what the rules are in this strange, liminal “training exercise” they’ve been roped into, but he doesn’t want to deal with the blowback from his neighbor stinking up an entire floor of these creepy apartments.
He hates it here. Hates the cameras he can see, hates the ones that he can’t. Hates the feeling that he’s being tested just as much on his breakfast choices as he is on his marksmanship.
It’s nearly midnight, and Frank’s keyed up from the frustration of the endless testing with no accompanying feedback. Forty-eight hours in, and it’s still not entirely clear what the hell he’s doing here. Assessment, he was told. Joint exercise. He and Russo have been picking out attendees, swapping raised eyebrows and rolled eyes. Delta Force is here, as are the Rangers, and the SEALs, and Russo swears up and down he ran into a batch of SOG guys at the bar on his first night in.
They’ve been back to that same bar tonight, and Frank spent the last hour talking to a couple of PJs who seemed fundamentally unbothered by the inconvenience of being hauled back from Afghanistan to attend what Frank thinks more or less amounts to a Goddamn dog show.
“Showers are nice,” one of them said, bland as unsalted oatmeal, sipping at a fucking light beer. When he smiled, there was a gap between his front teeth and a warm, uncomplicated light in his eyes.
“Hell yes,” the other one agreed, nudging into the first, practically bouncing in his seat. “And I love showing off. Swear to God, Castle, one of your generals almost slipped a twenty in my pants this afternoon.”
Fucking pararescue, Frank thought, like they’d never saved his ass. Like he didn’t admire them, kind of, in that backwards way you admire someone who does the same shit you do in the entirely opposite direction.
That others may live, he thought, the whole walk home. And sure. Maybe that’s a goal they share. But in the end, Frank’s not rescuing anybody.
So he’s in a sour mood when he gets back to the apartments they’re being housed in, a place that makes him feel like they’re civilians on vacation. He’s pissed that his time is being wasted, pissed that he doesn’t know what’s going on, pissed that no one else is pissed, and then the whole place stinks like pot, and Frank’s pounding on the door before he pauses long enough to talk himself out of it.
There’s silence for about ten seconds and then the locks click back and the door rattles open, and there’s a blonde-haired guy just standing there, loose and calm, blinking like he got lost on his way back to the frat house.
“What,” Frank says, as clearly as he can, “the fuck?”
The blonde sizes him up, in no particular rush as his eyes work from Frank’s face down to his boots and then back up. “Hey, man,” he says, “you knocked on my door.”
Russo cackles behind him, that hyena-giggle he gets when he smells blood in the water. Frank ignores him.
“You ever heard of opening a Goddamn window?” Frank says. “I could smell that shit from the elevator.”
“Huh.” The blonde steps forward, damn near bumping his chest right into Frank, and cranes his neck to stare toward the elevator. “Well.” He looks back toward Frank, smiles slow and beatific. “You’re welcome.”
“Motherfucker,” Frank says, because it’s shocked right out of him, “it’s not something I appreciate. You can’t smoke that shit in here.”
“Oh, sorry,” the idiot says, grinning dopily up at him, “should I’ve offered to share first, Officer?”
“Clint?” And that’s a woman’s voice. A girl’s voice. Soft and sleepy and vaguely accented. Frank looks over the blonde’s shoulder and sees a redhead shifting up to stare over the back of the couch.
She’s fucking beautiful. That’s Frank’s first thought. Beautiful in the way that dolls are beautiful, like someone spent a long time making her that way. Beautiful like something with a painted on smile.
His second thought is that she’s young. And Frank’s surrounded by young. Young people fight wars, that’s how it’s always worked. But he’d card this girl for cigarettes, and this asshole’s in here, getting her stoned out of her Goddamn mind.
She blinks at him, eyes vacant and sluggish, and then her mouth pushes into a flat, bloodless line.
“Clint?” she repeats, a little sharper this time. Frank watches her small, delicate fingers curling around the back of the couch.
“It’s fine, Nat,” Clint says. He steps into Frank again, and Frank realizes suddenly how subtle it’s been, the way this asshole keeps herding him away from the door. “Just talking to the neighbors.”
“Pizza?” she says, sounding clearer every second.
A complicated look crosses Clint’s face, something fond and almost fierce. “Yeah,” he says, “sure, in a minute, Nat. I’ll order it.”
She sighs and rests her chin on the couch cushion, watching them. Frank can feel Russo, tugged in like a magnet the second he heard a woman’s voice, stepping up behind him.
“Weed and women,” Russo says, tone all mixed up like he can’t decide between disapproval and envy. “You’re a hell of a rule breaker, huh, kid?”
“It helps her relax,” Clint says, still looking back over his shoulder at her. “Helps her calm down.”
Russo laughs again, and Frank gets that slow-motion falling feeling of gearing up for a mission. “I can help her relax,” Russo offers, offhand.
“What’s she need to calm down about?” Frank asks.
Because he doesn’t know the rules, doesn’t know this place, doesn’t know why the fuck he’s here. But like hell is he going to shuffle back to his heavily-monitored apartment while the spooks who run this show ignore some asshole with a stoned-stupid underage girl alone in his room at midnight.
The blonde is staring hard at Russo. Frank’s not sure if he’s offended that this guy is so clearly prioritizing Russo’s threat level above his own, or if he’s just impressed by the kid’s instincts.
Either way, there’s nothing about his face or posture now that matches the lazy, bumbling college boy who answered the door. Frank’s starting to appreciate that he’s got no clue who he’s dealing with.
Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, and CIA all accounted for, but who the hell is this?
He’s smaller than Frank, shorter and leaner, and he has no weapons on him. He answered the door empty-handed without question. He’s got no military bearing, shit posture, and apparently fuck-all for discipline, but there’s something in the way he stands that suggests it’d be an undertaking, trying to knock him off his feet.
“I think,” Clint says, still staring at Russo, “that you guys should call it a night.”
“I think that girl’s mom should come pick her up,” Frank counters.
Clint blinks, eyes moving his way, and then he smiles at him, like Frank’s a dog who’s done something cute and vaguely impressive, like he rolled over or offered to shake. “You worried about her?” He sounds - obnoxiously enough - genuinely charmed by that.
It’s not Frank’s job to worry about people. That others may live is not his fucking motto. He wishes the PJs had stumbled into this one instead. He thinks they would’ve handled it fast and easy and bloodless, and Frank could’ve just gone straight to bed, left better things to better people.
He’s no good with delicate things. When he gets his hands on something, it’s usually to break it apart.
“Let me talk to her,” Frank says, because he feels like that’s what he’s supposed to do.
“Yeah,” Russo adds, “bring her over.”
Clint looks like he’s considering it right up until Russo opens his mouth. And then he steps farther out into the hallway and pulls the door shut behind him. “Guys,” he says, “you should really get to bed.”
“That where the two of you are headed?” Russo asks. “Sorry, are we interrupting?” He steps away, stops crowding Frank, moves back and a little to the side. He’s flanking Clint, and Frank’s not sure he’s wrong to do it.
What’s going to happen to them, if they get kicked out? What are they even here for? Frank wants to get back to his squad. He doesn’t want to spend another day of his life showing off for people he’s not convinced actually matter.
“Sure,” Clint says. He’s got his empty hands by his sides. He’s barefoot. Frank could smash the fragile bones of his toes with a single stomp of his boot. “It’s late. We’re gonna head to bed soon. So should the two of you.”
“How old is that kid?” Frank asks, jerking his chin back toward the door. He keeps thinking about the hazy look in the girl’s eyes, the frown on her face, like she was worried about something. He keeps replaying the way Clint’s been so careful to keep himself between her and them, between her and the way out.
Clint looks at him. His mouth twists up. “Hey,” he says, “it’s really not what you’re thinking.”
“Oh,” Russo says, and now he’s flipped. He’s not laughing anymore, and Frank can hear the teeth he’s flashing in the hungry, hateful rumble of his tone. “You gonna tell us that’s your sister?”
Clint’s hands flatten out against his sides. In the brighter light, dead-center of the hallway, Frank realizes two things simultaneously: that Clint’s managed to herd them back closer to their door than his own, and that his knuckles are scarred up like someone who’s been fighting for years.
“The hell is this?” Frank says. “Who the hell are you?”
“We’re partners,” Clint says. He seems to like Frank more than Russo. He answers him with an earnestness he hasn’t once turned on Russo. “Nat’s my partner. She gets nightmares in places like this. Smoking helps her sleep. If you’ve got a problem with it, take it up with our handler.”
Handler, Frank thinks. Partner. He doesn’t know what the hell kind of agency would employ a fluffy-haired, slump-shouldered blonde kid who can’t be twenty and an underfed redhead who looks like she should be home polishing her Miss Teen USA crown.
Frank’s still thinking about that when the apartment door opens, and the girl in question steps out into the hallway.
She’s straight-backed and clear-eyed, and there’s a pretty, polished-up knife in her hand that catches the light. “Gentlemen,” she says, “it’s very late.”
“Nat,” Clint says and then immediately steps back, blocks her in.
“It’s late,” she repeats. She smiles, sweet and friendly, and her eyes are on the clean, uncovered stretch of Russo’s throat.
Jesus, Frank thinks. He feels the way he feels when the big cats pace in the zoo, that brainstem-level wariness that hits when something that wants its teeth in you is tracing out the fastest way to make that happen.
Five minutes ago, this girl was half-conscious on a couch, looking young and vulnerable, asking for pizza. Right now, she looks like she might settle for snacking on Russo’s heart.
The elevator dings. All four of them glance that direction, and a man in a neat white button-down walks out, suit jacket under one arm and a pizza box under the other. He smiles at them as he gets close.
Frank feels his shoulders straightening before he can figure out why.
“Dinner,” the man says, and he passes the pizza box to the girl, who’s suddenly just a girl again, surprised and pleased by this midnight gift of carbs and cheese. She disappears back into the apartment, knife gone so fast that Frank didn’t even get a chance to track where she hid it.
“Coulson,” Clint says, looking caught between guilt and relief, “you didn’t need to---”
“Dinner,” Coulson repeats. He puts a hand on Clint’s shoulder and turns him, sends him back into the apartment. “Save me some this time. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Clint glances back once, makes a weirdly intense bit of eye-contact with Frank, and then he’s gone too, and Frank and Russo are just standing there in the hallway with no Goddamn reason to be there.
Frank’s eyes keep dropping to this guy’s shoulders and chest. He is, he realizes, looking for signs of rank.
He has an unsettling feeling that he’s looking at someone far enough out of his paygrade to genuinely and easily fuck up Frank’s life.
“Sir,” Russo says, testing the waters.
Coulson smiles at them. It’s bland and professional and doesn’t make it past the twitch of his mouth. “If you find your neighbors objectionable, I am happy to have you moved.”
“Pretty young,” Frank says, as conversationally as he can manage. “To be here.”
Coulson looks at him, and there’s nothing to read on his face, not a single Goddamn thing. A second later, he arches a single eyebrow, and it occurs to Frank, for the first time in a while, that he’s only twenty-three years old. And, for some people, maybe twenty-three is still some kind of young.
“They’ve earned their place,” Coulson says. And then, a second later, “Goodnight.”
It rankles, being dismissed by someone whose authority is implied instead of proven. Frank has no idea who this is or where he’s from or how he ranks, in comparison to the two of them. But Coulson’s staring back at them so evenly that Frank thinks maybe it’s not a good idea to call a bluff unless he knows damn well it is a bluff.
“Still young,” Frank says, but he steps back toward his door. Russo follows, a half-second later.
“Noted,” Coulson says. For a second, when he turns toward the door, he looks tired. Frank watches, a little fascinated, as his expression goes blank and clean as soon as his hand touches the doorknob.
- - -
Three days later, he and Russo get cut loose. They’re headed back overseas, and they’re not going to talk about this, and, if anyone asks, they’re supposed to report who asked and what they asked and how much they seemed to know.
“Spooky,” Russo says, after the rushed meeting in the borrowed office. Everything about this place seems temporary. Frank wonders if they’re gonna bury the whole complex afterward or just convert it into something else.
“Castle,” Coulson says, stepping out of a side room, appearing like a Goddamn ghoul. “Do you have a moment?”
Frank doesn’t flinch, and Russo doesn’t either, but Frank’s not used to people with that much authority moving that Goddamn quiet. No aides, no stars, no insignia, no boots. Just a nice, understated suit and a businessman’s shoes and a look in his eyes like maybe this whole dog show is for him.
“Sure,” Frank says, because he does. They aren’t leaving until morning.
“Good,” Coulson says. He smiles at him. This time, it almost reaches his eyes. “I wanted to show you something.”
He shows him a sniper. They’re watching a video feed, and Frank can’t tell if it’s live or not. He hopes it isn’t. He hopes it’s doctored in some way, because the way this guy moves is insane. The accuracy, the speed, the improbable things he does with his body to get the shot.
He’s heard rumors. All Goddamn week. He’s heard rumors about some sniper who never misses and a close combat specialist that takes down bigger, stronger people with the ease of someone dumping tackling dummies.
He watches ten minutes of the sniper and then Coulson changes the feed. And now he’s watching the close combat specialist. And she, Frank realizes, is a Goddamn nightmare.
It’s a jarring feeling, the realization that the redheaded girl he’d been so worried about could’ve filleted him open in seconds. Maybe he and Russo together could’ve taken her, if they’d been warned. If he’d known what he was up against. But the element of surprise she has just by virtue of being what she is, looking like she does, is damn near insurmountable.
If she’d looked upset, Frank would’ve let her get within killing range without once thinking of her as a threat. She could’ve made doe eyes at him and then opened up his fucking throat, and he’d’ve been dead before he realized the last thing she needed was rescuing.
And if she’s the close combat specialist, that means the sniper, in all likelihood, is Clint.
“I’m recruiting,” Coulson tells him. He flips the screen back to the sniper, who’s facing the camera now, head ducked as he cleans his weapons. And it’s Clint, it’s that blonde kid Frank’s been sidestepping in the hallway, that guy he thought belonged on a college campus, doing kegstands. “It’s a very young team.”
It sure as hell is. Frank was eighteen when he signed up for war, but he thinks about the years it must’ve taken to get these two where they are now, and it’s sickening. No one moves like that girl without ten years of training. No one had any right to take a child, and make her into that.
Frank was eighteen, and, looking back now, even eighteen seems too Goddamn young.
“You do this to them?” And it’s the wrong question. It’s an accusation. He should know better, and he should watch his mouth, but, if this is what his government is doing, he’s not sure he wants a part in it anymore.
“No,” Coulson says. “We found them that way.”
Frank nods. Found them that way. Jesus. “You take care of the people who did? The ones who did this to them?”
Because Frank’s a weapon, and he’s good at that. But he chose the hands that direct him. He chose to be what they needed him to be. He doesn’t know how the hell you choose anything like that, when you’re ten Goddamn years old.
“We’re working on it,” Coulson says. “That’s why I’m recruiting.”
And that’s when Frank figures it out. Russo would’ve clocked it in seconds. But Russo’s always been better at reading what people want from him. Probably because he had to be.
He frowns down at the screens, watches Clint work. “I was told I was cut. Going back.”
Coulson lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “There have been some very strong indications that that’s what you’d prefer. I’m not interested in someone who doesn’t want to work for me.”
“Who are you?” Frank asks. “What the hell is this?”
“Have you heard of SHIELD?” Coulson asks.
Of course he has. Not much, because they run a tighter ship than almost anyone else, but he’s heard of them. He knows what they do. He knows how they operate. He knows they poach the best from everyone they can, and he knows that no one really has the authority to stop them, however much they might bitch about it.
Frank thinks about his squad. He thinks about Russo and Hoyle. He thinks about all the careful decisions he’s made, how hard he’s worked, and how much he doesn’t want to get caught up in games he never asked to play in the first place.
“There’s no need to scowl at me,” Coulson tells him. “I wanted you to know what your options were.”
Someone, Frank thinks, needs to keep those kids out of trouble. But someone needs to keep his people out of trouble, too, and he’s already made promises to them, even if he knows better now than to ever speak them out loud.
“I appreciate it,” Frank says, “but I’ve already got a job.”
Coulson nods. He smiles again and hands him a business card, of all the fucking things in the world. “If you change your mind,” he says, “call me.”
“Sure,” Frank says. He hovers for a second, waiting to be dismissed, and then he remembers that SHIELD’s not military, Coulson has no authority over him, and he’s pissed, anyway, at all the time he’s wasted. “See you around,” he says, and hopes, very distinctly, that he does not.
- - -
Years later, after Hoyle loses a Goddamn foot because of Frank’s bullshit, after they all get a bit more reckless, there’s one really bad day where everything’s noise and blood and heat and threat, and Frank thinks maybe they’re all gonna fucking die, finally, just let go out and leave all this and never have to wake up and keep fighting ever again, and then the sniper that’s had them pinned down for half an hour stops firing.
A minute later, the sniper starts firing again, but he’s picking off the wrong targets, shooting his own fucking people in the back, and Frank watches them drop with a precision and a speed that the sniper – who’d been effective enough to kill two of his guys, two men he’s gonna have to write about, two more letters to parents he’s never met – hadn’t shown before. And so that’s how Frank realizes it’s not the same sniper, and that’s how Frank realizes the reinforcements they’d been begging for have finally shown up.
There’s a blur after that, the way there’s always a blur in the comedown after his body burns through every bit of adrenaline he’s got, and he comes back into himself sitting on the ground, washing blood off his hands, staring at the gore caked into the tread of his boots.
“Hey, Frank,” Clint says. “You back?”
“He’s back,” the girl says. Natasha. She’s not wearing any body armor. Frank itches to put his own on her, but he can’t make his hands do anything other than spill water into his palms and work at the mess clotted into his skin.
“Coulson,” Natasha says, “he’s back.”
And then Phil Coulson’s crouched in front of him, staring at him from about five feet out, and Frank thinks that’s smart, thinks that’s good, because he’d probably punch him in the face if he got any closer.
“Hey, Castle,” Coulson says, conversationally, “heard you got the Navy Cross. Congratulations.”
Frank stares at him for a long moment and then his eyes move, slowly, to Clint’s face, and they get caught there. There’s a stillness in Clint’s eyes that he can’t look away from. A vigilance. A quiet, focused awareness. He’s on watch, he thinks, and it’s like ice water on a burn, the way it cuts through pain, the way it settles all his screaming nerves. He’s on watch, stand down.
He swallows. He resettles. He knows where he is and what happened.
“Shit,” he says, shoving to his feet, wiping his hands on his shirt. He’s got work to do.
- - -
Coulson and his team hang around the base for a bit, and it’s interesting to see them in that environment. Coulson and Natasha stick out, get side-eyed everywhere they go, but Clint looks like he could belong to any unit, if he wasn’t so egregiously and deliberately out of uniform.
“Just don’t want anybody to give me orders,” Clint says, when he catches Frank staring at his t-shirt that has an honest-to-God purple target painted right over his heart. “People get confused about that shit.”
“Doesn’t Coulson give you orders?” They’re eating, and Frank’s never once seen Natasha or Coulson ingest anything that isn’t coffee, but Clint’s attacking the food like it said something objectionable about his family.
“Sure,” Clint says, with a wave of his fork. “Coulson, yeah.”
It’s on the tip of Frank’s tongue to ask if Clint thinks he’s better than this, better than them, better than all the guys still around Frank and the ones who fell behind or fell into graves. But he doesn’t ask, because there are two holes in his squad, and he’s feeling sensitive about it, maybe. Right now.
“One time,” Clint says, eyes narrowed, kinda pensive. “One time, Coulson left me alone on an Army base for a couple hours, came back to find my cleaning toilets.”
Frank stares at him.
Clint shrugs and chews and shrugs again. “Someone yells at me enough,” he says, “and I just kinda do what they say. It’s easier than arguing about it. But Coulson can take it kinda personal, people requisitioning his assets, and so I figure it’s best if everyone just knows where we’re at.”
The first time Frank met Clint, he was gearing up to fight two Marines in a hallway for asking too many questions about Natasha.
The second time, Clint was saving his life.
And now he’s sitting here, blonde head bowed, cheekbones turning an interesting shade of rosy pink, admitting that he has a problem with getting too compliant when people yell at him.
Soft, Frank thinks. And then, nonsensically, I hope he stays that way.
“Goddamn, Barton,” he says, “you’ve really gotta toughen up.”
Like Barton didn’t just drop out of the fucking sky to murder a sniper and immediately take his place. Like Barton wasn’t ready, at midnight, in his pajamas, to bareknuckle box with him and Russo over Natasha, who can damn sure take care of herself.
Clint grins at him. He laughs and rubs his chest, and the edge of his hand presses right into that bullseye, right over his heart.
Frank wants him to take that stupid shirt off. And that’s not surprising, because it’s a target over center mass, and it’s stupid, and it’s way past flirting with bad luck and right on to practically shoving your hand down bad luck’s pants, but it’s a little surprising that Frank’s maybe interested in what he might see underneath that target, too.
“Yeah,” Clint says, with an apologetic twist of his mouth, “don’t I fucking know it.”
- - -
He and Barton share a weird morning together, toward the end of his team’s insistently unexplained visit to the base. Russo wanders up, rolls his eyes, says, “Barton wants to know if you can come out to play.” And then there’s Barton, standing there with a rifle in his hands, looking hopeful, and so that’s how he and Clint end up showing off for each other for a solid three hours.
It’s been a long damn time since Frank was so easily and so completely outclassed.
“Whatever, Barton,” Frank says, because he’s never been a graceful loser. “I could still kick your ass.”
Barton smirks, looks pleased. “Not from two thousand meters, you can’t.”
Frank rolls his eyes. “Get fucked.”
“Oh, you guys finally come around on that?” Clint asks, all wide-eyed innocence. “I thought you Marines got bashful about that kind of thing.”
Frank has never in his life heard anyone describe a Marine as bashful. But he also can’t remember any man propositioning him on a base in the middle of a war zone, although he’s absolutely certain it’s happened to Russo more than once.
He gives Clint an assessing look, and Clint, apparently feeling brave or maybe just still playful from victory, winks at him.
“You go ask Russo about bashful,” Frank advises. “He’ll burn your fucking ears off with the shit he does.”
Clint snorts and makes a face. “Yeah, I’m really not interested in Russo.”
And that’s an interesting thing to say, because it implies, on some level, that Clint’s interested in him.
- - -
He doesn’t mean to hook up with Clint Barton. He really doesn’t. It’s a stupid thing to do, even if it’s perfectly safe, back in New York, to fuck whoever the hell can be convinced to go to bed with him. And Frank’s no blushing virgin, no delicate flower, doesn’t get twisted around about things the way some other guys do, but he hasn’t acted on any impulse like this since high school.
It’s just that he’s on leave, he’s in New York, and Clint said, as he was leaving Afghanistan, that Frank should call him next time he’s in town, and Frank’s got fuck all else to do except watch Russo chase anyone who holds still long enough, so he calls Clint Barton.
Clint seems genuinely thrilled to hear from him, and he takes him around Bed-Stuy like Frank’s some kind of tourist. He takes him to one place for dinner and another place for pie and then they spend an hour pissing each other off by playing darts in a dive bar. Frank’s good, better than anyone else in this place except for Clint, and he decides, as he usually does, to equalize things by playing dirty. He hip-checks Clint, flicks him in the ribs as he goes to shoot, throws napkins and coasters to knock Clint’s darts off-target.
“You’re an absolute piece of shit, Castle,” Clint tells him, grinning wide and fond and happy, and there’s nothing really special about his smile, except that Frank can’t stop looking at it.
He wonders if he’d still smile like that if he’d gone to SHIELD when Coulson recruited him. Back before he got Hoyle hurt, before he stopped flinching at shooting women with bombs strapped to themselves, back before all that ugliness that lived in him started spreading, necrotizing the rest of him.
And he doesn’t want to get maudlin, isn’t in town for anything but a good time, so he coaxes the bartender into a tray full of tequila shots and makes Clint take them, one by one, every time he lands a bullseye even with Frank doing everything can do to disrupt him.
“You asshole,” Clint says, laughing, when the tequila’s gone and Frank’s sent his dart spinning damn near into the pool table by throwing his jacket in the middle of the line of fire. “Throw your shirt next time.”
Frank raises his eyebrows. He’s pleasantly buzzed. Feels disarmed, like someone took the weapon part of him and locked it safely away behind thick metal doors. “You telling me to flash my tits, Barton?”
Barton groans, low and showy, like it almost hurts to think about. “Please,” he says. “Please do that.”
So Frank does, because he might as well, and Clint doesn’t so much miss the target as he forget to throw entirely. The dart drops to his feet, and he legitimately licks his lips, and Frank thinks they’re going to get kicked out, after all this, after all the shit they’ve pulled, but Clint’s got his hand around Frank’s wrist and is pulling him to the door before they can get tossed out of it.
“Are you holding my fucking hand, Barton?” Frank asks, incredulous, as they make their way up the block.
“No,” Clint says. He looks down, stares at where his fingers are wrapped around Frank’s wrist, and then he shifts his grip, slides his hand down, interlaces their fingers. “Yes,” he amends.
“Jesus Christ,” Franks says, marveling.
They aren’t drunk.
Well, they are. They absolutely are.
But they aren’t bad-decisions drunk. They aren’t won’t-remember-in-the-morning drunk. They aren’t plausible deniability drunk, which is why Frank pulls back about three minutes into making out with Clint against his kitchen counter, Clint’s legs wrapped around Frank’s waist, his mouth over every part of his neck that he can reach.
“Oh no,” Clint says, face falling, mouth settling into something that Frank’s horrified to see is a pout. “You realize you don’t do this?”
It’s not that Frank doesn’t do this. It’s that he hasn’t wanted to. It’s different, with women. He likes pretty, long-limbed, dark-haired women who look him in the eye and boss him around a little and don’t realize for a second how quickly he could break their necks. He likes peacetime women, peaceful women. He’s known women that are dangerous, but he’s never wanted to touch one, because he’s never been sure what he’d do, if he fell into bed with someone he thought could be a threat.
And he can’t look at men these days without assessing how much of a threat they are. If they’re nothing, he’s not interested. If they’re dangerous, he knows better.
Clint’s different, somehow. He doesn’t feel dangerous even though Frank knows, objectively, that he is.
He feels like a wall, like a brick. Like something Frank could knock into and throw around without damaging it. He feels sturdy. Safe. Feels like he’s got no edges sharp enough for either one of them to cut themselves on.
Frank looks down at where his hands are wrapped around Clint’s hips, thumbs tucked up under his shirt, flashing a solid stretch of skin and muscle.
“It’s okay,” Clint tells him. He’s so fucking earnest. Frank has no idea how he made it this far with so much of that still left in him. “We can do something else. You like Dog Cops? No shit, there’s a dog that reminds me of you.”
And maybe he is drunk, because that, right there, is the sweetest thing anyone’s else said to him. There’s a dog that reminds me of you.
Like Frank’s got enough faithfulness and goodness inside him to ever remind anyone of a dog.
“Haven’t done this in awhile,” Frank says. There are some parts of this that he hasn’t done at all, but he can’t think of a single Goddamn reason to mention that right now.
Clint lights up like Christmas, like a Molotov. He grins that big, bright, dumb, happy grin right into Frank’s face and then he kisses him, teeth catching just hard enough on Frank’s lower lip to make him groan and lean forward, pull Clint against him.
“C’mon, Frank,” Clint says, right into his mouth, “I’ll show you.”
And then, even though he maybe shouldn’t, even though that’s not why he’s here, Frank just nods and presses his mouth against Clint’s neck, lets him show him any damn thing he wants.
- - -
In the morning, he’s hungover and braced for awkwardness. But Barton just snuffles sleepily around on his pillow for a moment and then gropes Frank with lazy, half-formed intent. “I’ll blow you,” he mumbles, “if you make me coffee.”
Frank stares up at the ceiling and thinks about how there’s no one in the world who cares about where he is right now. He’s got a long, blank stretch of time where the only person who’s gonna think to check up on him is Russo, who’s probably enjoying his own morning after right about now.
“Deal,” he says and climbs out of bed before the pull of Clint’s stupid smile can trap him.
- - -
Cerberus gives him the creeps from the very beginning, but what the hell’s he going to do about it? His nerves are shot by then, and everything seems to make him some kind of uneasy. He’s in too deep for an easy way out, and he’s still got Phil Coulson’s card, but it’s been five years since Coulson handed him that thing, and there’s nothing definite between him and Clint, but he’s pretty sure it would kill whatever they are if they suddenly became teammates. And Frank, for a reason he’s not particularly interested in investigating, really doesn’t want to ruin things.
So he and Russo go to Cerberus, and it’s fine. The work they do, it’s not any worse than other shit Frank’s heard about, even if it’s the worst shit he’s ever done.
He buries bodies. That’s not new. The shame involved, though. That eerie, silent, pervasive feeling of guilt. That’s new.
He can’t talk to Clint about it, and he tries not to bring any of that shit back with him, but it digs deeper than any of the rest ever has. Maybe he’s just at threshold. Maybe he’s done enough.
“I can’t fucking talk about it,” Frank says, when Clint asks, again, in that roundabout way he does. “You know I can’t fucking talk about it. Why the hell do you keep asking?”
Clint gives him a shitty look over the breakfast table, and they have fights, sometimes, but Clint’s still got that problem with men with raised voices, and he’ll give in, every time, if Frank gets loud with him. Which is why Frank tries, usually, not to get loud.
He’s getting worse and worse about that.
Jesus, sometimes, all he wants in the whole world is to go back to Force. But going back would leave Russo all alone.
Clint doesn’t settle this time, doesn’t give in or compromise or go quiet. He looks at Frank, right in the eyes, and Frank gets a flash of their first meeting, the way he’d looked at him then. Clint gives ground when there’s ground left to give, but Frank forgot what it looked like, when Clint decided he had his back against a wall.
Maybe he’s not a wall or an anchor or a safe place anymore. Maybe he’s dangerous after all.
Frank doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to do if there’s nowhere safe left. For a while, Clint’s been it. Clint’s been all he has. But he used to be alone, and he survived it. He can survive it again, if he has to.
“I’m asking you,” Clint says, careful and quiet, hands still and flat against the table, “because you can tell me. Because my clearance level is higher than yours. And I’m asking you because, if you don’t tell me, Coulson might come asking next.”
And that’s it. That’s the line. That’s the thing Frank’s been trying so hard not to think about.
Because he has his orders, and he follows them, but some watchful part of him has been silently tracking how things don’t seem to add up. There’s something wrong with Cerberus. There’s something wrong with his work.
Frank’s put too many bodies in the ground for the sake of this mission to question it now.
He shoves himself back from the table. “Coulson wants to talk to me,” he says, “then he can fucking talk to me. But he sure as hell doesn’t get to do it through you.”
- - -
Coulson never talks to him, but, three months later, he makes his play. Russo gets pulled, packs and leaves in silence, and, four hours after that, Barton shows up in a uniform he didn’t earn and sets his stuff down on Russo’s cot. He gets introduced as Lieutenant Carter, and Frank’s so fucking pissed that he can barely keep a straight face while he pretends to accept this bullshit cover.
“Damn, Frank,” Henderson says, later. “I thought you were gonna kill the new guy with your hands.”
And Frank might kill him, honestly, if he could ever get a moment alone with him. But Clint’s smart, sidesteps him for two full days, and then they’re going to Kandahar, and Frank knows it’s a deathtrap.
“I want Russo,” he says, in the briefing. “I need Russo on this.” Because it’s not Clint’s team, and he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing here, and he can’t take Clint into an ambush. He can’t take that whole team into an ambush with a fucking SHIELD sniper who doesn’t know how to lead.
“Lieutenant Carter is just as qualified,” Schoonover says.
“We don’t have time to get your buddy back for you,” Rawlins says.
Clint, standing next to them, staring at the plans, doesn’t say a Goddamn thing.
“You get those men killed,” Frank says, in that single second he has where no one else is within listening distance, “for some fucking internal investigation, and--”
“Shut up, Castle,” Clint says. His hands are steady. Every part of him is steady. Frank wants to lean into that, but he’s shouldering this whole mission on his own, without Russo, without a Marine, without anybody else who can help him with the burden.
“They’re good men,” Frank tells him. And then, for no reason, he says, “You’re a good man.”
Clint looks up at him. He smiles, small and razor-thin, and that stillness is back in his eyes, that endless vigilance that drew Frank back to the surface after that firefight years ago. “It’s a suicide mission, Frank,” he says, like a challenge, like a dare. “You know how many people have tried to kill me? Let’s go disappoint the higher-ups.”
- - -
Kandahar is a butcher’s playhouse. It’s a nightmare. It’s hell.
It’s an ambush and a suicide mission and a deathtrap.
Frank misses Russo until Clint, in the middle of reloading, hurls a piece of broken mortar with his off-hand and knocks the teeth out of a man who damn near shot Henderson in the stomach. A second after that, Clint finishes it with two bullets to center mass, and Russo’s deadly, but Clint’s a killer.
Clint’s sweet and affable and handsome. Sleeps with his mouth open, drools on every pillow he touches. And, when he needs to be, he’s a fucking killer.
“Some of these guys needed to be evac’d yesterday, Frank,” Clint tells him. He’s so fucking steady. Frank feels like a mad dog frothing at the mouth, straining against the leash, and Clint, who yells at the TV, who faceplants in despair when the coffee isn’t ready, who laughs like a kid who’s never suffered so much as a fat lip, is perfectly, eerily calm.
Frank needs to clear the compound.
He needs to clear the compound, or someone’s gonna come along and kill Clint. Put bullets in him until that accuracy fails, until that smile disappears for good, until all the bright and blinding things inside him go dark and still and dead.
“I’ll be back,” Frank says. And then, a second later, “Cover me.”
Clint does, without question, and Frank goes into the compound, and he doesn’t think. He doesn’t think, and he doesn’t think, and he fills his head up with white noise that doesn’t break until he’s sitting next to Clint on a cot, feeling dried blood itching at his skin, and Rawlins, that fucking piece of shit, that Goddamn useless team-killing fuck-up, looks at the ground-up mess of his team, and says, “Did you get him? Did you kill the target?”
“What did you say?” Frank’s on his feet. It doesn’t feel real. “What did you say, you fucking piece of shit?”
He’s on Rawlins a second later, and he doesn’t get to hit him enough before Clint’s pulling him back, arms strong around Frank’s chest, feet planted, holding him, weathering all the rage Frank can throw against him.
Rawlins is yelling, and his eye is fucked, and Frank’s distantly aware that he just did something he’ll be made to regret later, but then Phil Coulson is standing in the room.
“William,” he says, staring at Rawlins, and Frank’s hyped-up, overwrought, too sensitive. Every hair on the back of his neck stands up at the tone of Coulson’s voice, and Frank doesn’t know why, hasn’t ever seen Phil Coulson be any real kind of dangerous, but the whole room goes silent like something venomous just rattled its tail.
“Coulson?” Rawlins says, hand cupped to his eye. “What the fuck are you doing here? You’re not—this isn’t SHIELD business.”
Coulson looks at Clint, just for a second, and the anger on his face. There’s the danger, Frank thinks, stunned by the discrepancy, startled into stillness by the rage on Coulson’s face compared to the absolute indifference that was on Rawlins’ three minutes ago.
“It’s SHIELD business now,” Coulson says.
- - -
“Next time,” Coulson says, hours later, when Frank and Clint are sitting in an empty room in a SHIELD facility, and Phil’s pacing in front of them, “next time someone sends you on a suicide mission, Barton, don’t go.”
Clint’s heavy and tired, leaning into Frank. They finally showered about half an hour ago, and Frank can tell, just from the slow way he’s breathing, that Clint needed to be asleep maybe six hours back. “Sorry, Phil,” he says. “If I hadn’t gone, he’d’ve gone without me.”
Frank tenses up at the realization that he’s the he in question. He would have, sure. He would’ve. Because those were his orders.
Phil Coulson gives Frank a look like he’s a problem that won’t hurry up and solve itself. “Castle,” he says, “I’d appreciate your cooperation on this. We have Henderson, and Clint, obviously, but it’d be easier with--”
“Henderson?” Frank asks, blinking.
Phil stares at him. “Do you have any idea,” he says, as slow and careful as someone testing a wound, “what you’ve been doing?”
Frank swallows. He thinks about all the things he’s done. He thinks about how terrible it would be, if he’d done them for the wrong reasons. He thinks about how soldier and murderer are two separate things, until they aren’t. Until things get blurred. Until he does things without questioning them and then realizes, later, after it’s too late to fix any of it, that maybe he never should’ve done those things at all.
“I told you, Phil,” Clint says. He sounds miserable. Brokenhearted. “I told you, if he knew, he never would’ve done it.”
Frank hopes to God that’s true.
But the truth is, even now, he doesn’t know what he’s done.
- - -
He doesn’t cry about it or anything. Honestly, he wouldn’t know how. He thinks those kind of things have been cauterized out of him.
It’s just that he thought he was saving innocent lives and, instead, he was butchering them. They told him he was hunting wolves and then sent him out to kill the shepherds, and he did it. He did it without question.
He sees a lot of faces when he closes his eyes, but the one that stabs the deepest is Zubair. They hung him by his wrists and tortured him, and he said, to Frank, “I’m a good man,” and then Frank shot him to death.
I’m not a terrorist. I have a family, children. I’m a good man.
Turned out, that whole Goddamn room was full of terrorists, and the only good man there was Zubair. And they killed him. Frank killed him.
Frank reads the files. He writes his reports. Then he and Henderson get completely fucking obliterated on the whiskey Clint smuggles into them, and, when it’s all gone, Coulson and Natasha show up to haul them back to their quarters. Frank feels like he probably shouldn’t put so much weight on someone who’s nearly a full ten inches shorter than he is, but Natasha bears him easily, like she has a lot of practice.
“Listen,” she tells him, fierce and sharp, as she dumps him onto the floor of the bathroom. “Get it out,” she says. “Throw it up. And be done with it, Castle. You didn’t know.”
“I killed good people,” Frank says. It’s the thing he always told himself. The line he held. You’re a bad man taking worse men out of the world. It’s enough. It counts. You’re doing good work.
“The first time I killed a good man,” Natasha says, crouching in front of him, tipping his chin up, forcing him to look at her, “I was fourteen years old. He was a good cop, just like Zubair was. He was trying to help girls like me. I went to him, and I told him I needed saving, and, as soon as he showed me his back, I stabbed him in it.”
“Jesus,” Frank says. The whiskey sloshes dangerously in his stomach. “Fucking Christ, Romanoff.”
“You can’t bring anybody back from the dead, no matter how much you want to.” She’s soft, for just a second. She knocks her knuckles against his shoulder, in a gesture he recognizes from Clint.
“Be miserable,” she says, sharpening again. Her eyes are pretty and cold and focused. “Be whatever you have to be. And then be useful. There’s plenty of other good men who need saving from people like us.”
I’m not a terrorist, Frank thinks. I’m a good man.
And then he throws up, like a kid on prom night, like a dumb, bullshit boot before his first deployment. He gets incredibly, spectacularly sick, heaving over the toilet, and he doesn’t notice Natasha leaving, but he feels it when Clint settles behind him, legs bracketing Frank’s, one arm wrapped around Frank’s chest, murmuring something nonsensical and comforting into the sweat on the back of Frank’s neck.
“It’s okay,” Clint says. “It’s alright. You’re gonna get better. You’re gonna be alright.”
Frank thinks, in that moment, when he’s sweating through his shirt, has the taste of puke and whiskey in his mouth, feels like he’s smeared and dripping with other people’s blood, that he hasn’t done a single Goddamn thing in his life to warrant Clint’s faith in him.
Be whatever you have to be, Romanoff said. And then be useful.
He can’t fix what he was. But there’s time, maybe, to be something else.
- - -
Frank’s been out of the Marines for six months when Coulson arranges a meeting at his office, gives Frank a cup of overpriced coffee, and then hands him a small file and says, “It’s not justice.”
And it isn’t. It was all handled internally, because everything was deemed too classified and too potentially inflammatory to release to the public. Rawlins is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, and Frank isn’t asking any questions about that, because Clint slipped out of bed the morning before Rawlins’ death and didn’t come back until three days after.
Schoonover got a promotion, but he’s back in the States, working a desk. So at least there’s that.
Two dozen others were dealt with as SHIELD deemed necessary, and Frank imagines the CIA and the Marines and the Army are pleased as hell to have SHIELD finally out of their business, happy to give up whoever SHIELD asked for in order to pretend it never happened at all.
Frank reads the whole file in Coulson’s office and then slides the folder back across the desk. “Thanks,” he says. He doesn’t have the clearance for anything Coulson just showed him. He is, after all, just another civilian these days.
Coulson considers him. They see each other fairly regularly, because Clint’s tied to his team, is irrevocably intermeshed in their lives, and Frank was over at Coulson’s house two weekends ago, barbequing in the back yard and shit-talking the Red Sox over beers.
“You doing alright, Frank?” Coulson asks. It’s a genuine question. Frank’s starting to figure out that Coulson is one of those people that just cares. He’s watched this guy get up and leave a perfectly decent lunch because he caught sight of a man with a flat tire across the street.
Frank’s learning, slowly and with a lot of coaching from Clint, to acknowledge that gentleness is not a manifestation of weakness. It takes an iron will to stay gentle in the face of a whole world that wants you mean and hateful and uninterested.
“I’m good,” Frank says. He is. As close as he’s ever been, anyway.
He hasn’t been to his own apartment in two weeks. He’s going to let the lease run out and then not renew. He’s got a toothbrush and a half a closet worth of clothes at Clint’s place, and he’s memorized Clint’s order at seven of the nearby takeout places.
He knows Clint will cover him if he needs to raid a compound. He knows Clint will answer the door on those days when Frank can’t. He knows that Clint’s a wall, a cornerstone, an anchor, and, however dangerous he is, he’s still probably the sweetest person Frank’s ever met.
But Frank knows, also, that he isn’t really all that sweet himself. And whatever remnants of a better nature that Clint can summon out of him, he’s not gentle enough for a civilian life. Not yet.
He reaches into his wallet for that card he’s carried for years, and he passes it, worn and folded and creased, across the desk to Coulson, who studies his own business card with a kind of distant, benevolent politeness.
“I want to go back to work,” he says.
Because he’s a weapon. And he’s been used poorly, put to bad ends. He’s hurt good people. Murdered good people.
But Natasha told him, a few months back, that Coulson specializes in things like that. “You owe debts,” she told him. And it wasn’t a condemnation, coming from her. It was an understanding, a declaration of shared burdens. “Coulson’s the best there is at helping you even things out.”
Coulson looks at the card for a long moment and then he looks up at Frank. “You’ve been welcome on my team for years, Frank,” he says.
It hurts like fingers coming back from frostbite, the idea that he could’ve been doing good work for years. All the shit he’s torn apart, all the people he’s hurt, and he could’ve been building something, defending something instead.
“Okay,” Frank says, because late is better than never at all, and working back to the surface is better than diving deeper. “Then I want in.”
- - -
Clint takes him to another terrible dive bar to celebrate and lets him win two whole rounds of darts as a special gift.
“Wow,” Natasha says, with a sideways, slanted smile. “He’s absolutely gone on you.”
Frank shakes his head, grins into his beer. Clint’s ordering another round, leaning hard against the bar, sweet-talking a scowling woman named Josie who looks like she’s fifty-fifty between pouring his beer and spitting in it.
“That’s good,” he says, after he swallows the last of his beer. He can’t keep the stupid grin off his face; he thinks he picked it up from Clint. “It’s good that it’s mutual.”
Natasha smiles at him, small and subtle but genuine, affectionate. “You’re a sweetheart, Castle,” she tells him.
He isn’t. He never has been.
But maybe he’s learning.