Archive of Our Own ^beta

There have been plenty of days in Clint's life he would love to relive over and over. The day he and Kate took a bunch of untested trick arrows to a condemned warehouse and had the time of their lives fucking the place up. The day he randomly wandered into an animal shelter right after it opened in the morning and they let him hang around playing with the dogs straight through to closing time. The day someone accidentally double-tapped a key on his order and he got a delivery of eleven pizzas for the price of one.

Given a choice in the matter, he would not have gone with the day he spent five hours tied back-to-back to Bucky Barnes without his hearing aids in.

That isn't the only reason it's not a great day. It's pretty craptastic top to bottom, actually. It starts off with the realization that despite chanting "coffee coffee coffee coffee" for the entire subway ride home yesterday to remind himself to pick up more coffee on the walk back from the station, he failed to do so, and there is no coffee in his apartment. Then, while he's standing blearily in the kitchen trying to decide whether to walk to a coffee shop in his pajama pants or attempt the process of dressing himself uncaffeinated, Mr. Robbins from the third floor knocks on his door with a plumbing emergency he is not nearly a competent enough landlord to handle even with coffee in his system. Then he realizes he didn't charge his phone last night and it's at three percent battery.

By the time he gets the call to go Avenge with the gang, his caffeine headache is throbbing and he's ready to write the whole day off as a loss. Rejected, unacceptable performance, this day has not met the minimum qualifications for being a day and will have to try again some other time. But it seems the bad guys have not received that memo, so off he goes to save the world. Or rather to save a combination KFC/Taco Bell at a grubby highway rest stop. It's not a world-saving-caliber day.

"I will give oral sex to anyone who brings coffee to the debrief," he announces on the way back into the city, after they've fended off the morning's infestation of disturbingly large bionic rat creatures and Wanda has closed up the interdimensional portal they came through. "Anyone. Even Hulk, I don't know what's under those scraggly capri jorts but I'm prepared to find out."

"There was coffee back at the KFC," says Steve, like a dad saying everybody should have used the bathroom before they got in the car.

Clint groans. "Now you tell me?" He didn't know KFC served coffee. It's got to be vile, but he's not in a position to be picky. His head is in agony.

No one brings coffee to the debrief. Clint has no true allies on this mortal coil.

They're just about done wrapping up the bionic rat situation and Clint is so close to being free to go caffeinate, so close, when Steve gets a call and his face goes stony.

"Guys, we've got an active HYDRA base," he says. "Looks like they're holding prisoners. I need a couple of you to head out on recon."

Bucky snaps into Winter Soldier mode. "I'm going."

"Just recon, Buck," Steve warns. "We'll get them soon, I promise. Who's going with him? Someone quiet. Natasha?"

"Can't," she says. "Rat bit my leg."

"What?"

"Possibly something that should have come up at some point during the rat debrief," Sam remarks.

"Clint, go with Bucky. Natasha, medical, now." Steve herds her out of the room like a border collie with a surly cat.

Clint sighs. "Can we stop for coffee on the way?" he asks, already knowing the answer.

The Winter Soldier shoots him a venomous glare.

"Nope, mission first, message received. Quiet sidekick reporting for duty, Mr. Terrifying Murder Assassin, sir. Lead the way."

"'Murder assassin' is redundant," Tony comments.

"I feel like it adds a vibe, though," says Clint. "Like, an assassin could be totally emotionally disengaged from the work, but the word murder's got a lil heat, you know? Whoop, guess we're out, bye guys!" He scrambles to follow Bucky out of the room.

The base is somewhere along the Oregon coastline, right where the woods hit the Pacific. Bucky spends the flight examining satellite images of the area and checking his weapons, coldly silent like he always is before a mission. Clint spends it in the cockpit, supervising the autopilot while he plays Candy Crush until his phone dies, swearing up and down to himself that this time he will remember to stow an emergency caffeine stash in his gear for future moments like these.

When they arrive, something's happening at the dock set into the building. There are a lot of people moving around, some striding confidently and some huddled and shivering. They park the quinjet up the beach and start moving in.

Prisoners, Steve said. It looks like they're being loaded onto a boat. Clint makes eye contact with Bucky, and without a word they agree: fuck recon, they're getting these folks out. Clint gestures to the section of trees that looks best for shooting from; Bucky nods and waits behind a rock, still and silent, until he's in position.

Clint kicks off the action by taking down four of them with arrows two at a time, then Bucky goes tearing across the sand with a gun in each hand, angling for the guys closer to the building while Clint picks off the ones further out. Between the two of them, it only takes a minute to take out all the black uniforms. So far, so good.

Bucky leaps onto the dock. "Can any of you drive this thing?" Clint hears him asking over the comms.

"Yeah, it's my fucking boat," says one of the huddled-up figures. "Motherfuckers stole it."

Bucky whips out two knives and neatly slices through the ropes restraining the woman who spoke. "Get it ready to go as soon as we've got everybody on board."

"More bad guys comin' out," Clint warns, shooting two of them at once.

Bucky drops one knife to fire at them while freeing a second prisoner with the other knife, then thrusts it into her hands. "Get everyone in the boat," he commands, and whirls around to face the HYDRA goons. Clint helps as much as he can from a distance, but Bucky is hugely outnumbered, and after he goes down it's impossible to get a clear sightline on the ones closest to him. Clint curses and races in to help.

The woman with Bucky's knife slashes the last of the ropes binding the prisoners and snatches up the dropped knife, raising them both like she's ready to take on thirty guys alone. "Go!" Clint screams at her as he runs. "Get out of here!" He can hear Bucky yelling the same thing, and the woman gives in and leaps into the boat.

There's too many. Clint knows that, already knew it when he started running. He takes down a good number of them on the beach, and Bucky's wreaking some solid murder-assassin havoc out on the dock, but they're inevitably overwhelmed.

As Clint's vision is obscured by a pile of black uniforms, he catches a glimpse of the boat disappearing around a peninsula. So at least the rescue part worked out okay.

The HYDRA guys do a surprisingly cursory and unprofessional patdown, only relieving them of a few of their most obvious weapons. Then they're taken to a bare room and tied back-to-back on the floor, ropes tight around their torsos, pinning their arms to their sides. They tie Clint's ankles together, too. One of them finds his aids and says, "What is this? Comms?"

"They're my hearing aids," says Clint. The guy rips one out, and he groans. "Come on, dude. That's not a cool sexy badass villain move, that's just being a dick."

The guy takes the other aid and leaves the two of them alone. Clint sighs. "Probably won't hear anything you say," he tells Bucky. "Unless you really scream, but then they'll hear too. Hope your super-soldier strength can handle this rope." Bucky starts to push his arms out to the sides, presumably aiming to break the rope, and Clint makes a hnnngh noise as all the air exits his lungs. "Nope," he chokes out, and Bucky lets up. "Yeah, so let's call crushing my ribs plan B?"

He can feel from the vibrations that Bucky is saying something. God, he hates it when he tells people he can't hear them and they talk anyway. He wishes it were Nat he was stuck here with, or Steve, or basically anyone other than scary no-fun assassin dude.

Well, not Bruce. Bruce definitely comes bottom on the list of people Clint would like to be tied to in a stressful situation. Bruce, then Bucky, then literally anyone else on the team.

He tries a few squirms to see if he can wriggle his way out, but they're too tightly bound. Bucky is moving too, probably trying to find a way to get a grip on the ropes that won't destroy Clint's delicate non-superhuman body. Clint twists his head as far as he can and sees that Bucky has already snapped his own ankles apart. If it was just him alone, he'd be out of the ropes entirely by now.

Clint scowls. He hates dragging the others down by being all mortal and shit. He turns his focus to the rest of the room, trying to figure out what they'd do if they did manage to get free. There are no windows and the vents aren't big enough to get through, so it's gotta be the door.

"They didn't find my lockpicks," he whispers, knowing he might talk too loudly if he tries to vocalize. With Bucky's enhanced hearing, whispering should be fine. "If you get rid of the ropes, I can handle the door."

He feels Bucky's nod against the back of his head, then renewed shifting. Clint waits. And waits. And sighs, and waits some more. Eventually, Bucky gives up, and the two of them just sit there.

"I spy with my little eye something gross-ass hospital green," mutters Clint.

Bucky taps their heads together, then again, then again. Clint wrinkles his forehead in confusion for a few seconds, then realizes it's Morse code. WALL, Bucky taps out, and then after a pause: GREY.

Clint snorts a laugh. "That would be the floor. Okay, I have a nasty headache so that actually really hurts, but use it if you have any bright ideas about getting out of here." His head does hurt worse now, but it's good to know they have a way to communicate if they need to. And hey, the Winter Soldier isn't all work and no play after all. That's kind of reassuring.

After several geologic ages of sitting, Bucky tenses up and taps out RESCUE, which means he's hearing the sounds of the rest of the team kicking some HYDRA ass. Not too long after that, the cavalry arrives in the form of Steve punching in the door.

Clint feels the vibrations of Bucky talking as Steve makes short work of the ropes, and the two of them stride out together like they're off to the gym while Clint stumbles along behind them on the feeble pillars of pins and needles he used to call his legs. Fuck, his buttcheeks feel like two giant bruises squashed together after all that time sitting in one position. And his head is killing him.

It's dark outside the base. Steve stops on the beach, and Clint realizes Bucky's not with them. "What'd I miss? Face the light so I can see your lips."

"We've cleared the base," Steve reports. "Found your weapons, stowed 'em on the plane for you. The folks on the boat made it out safe, they're mostly locals. Sounds like they weren't targeted, these guys were just grabbing anyone who got too close. We don't know where they were being taken."

Bucky jogs out of the base and drops Clint's aids into his hands. "Thanks," Clint says, putting them in. "Did you guys bring any coffee?"

Steve frowns. "It's eight PM. Little late for caffeine."

Clint whimpers piteously and stumbles toward the quinjet.

It's after ten by the time they're done debriefing. Clint heads directly for the nearest open Starbucks, where he buys a cup of black coffee and a bag of their French roast. He pounds back the cup and takes the subway home, clutching the bag protectively in his lap.

Lucky is sitting next to a puddle of piss in the kitchen, looking apologetic. Fuck, Clint should have called Dorothy and asked her to take him out as soon as he got rescued. "Totally not your fault, buddy," Clint reassures him, feeling like the world's shittiest dad. They go out for a walk, then Clint serves him a dish of kibble and cleans up the mess before digging into some cold leftover Chinese food. Shit, has he eaten anything else today? There's a slight chance that he has not.

Before he goes to bed, he makes sure the French roast is propped up next to his coffee machine, ready for tomorrow. Can't be worse than today, right?

Clint's vibrating alarm goes off at eight, which it shouldn't, because he turned it off after staring at the ceiling half the night because of that way-too-late coffee. Surprisingly, he does actually feel like he got enough sleep, so he gets up anyway.

The coffee is gone.

"No," Clint whispers, staring at the counter where he left it. "What the... is it... coffee burglar?" His eyes dart around the apartment. Nothing else looks out of place. "Lucky, did you eat my coffee?" he asks. Lucky looks at him like he's insane.

He's tearing the kitchen apart searching for his missing coffee in a daze when there's a knock on his door. It's Mr. Robbins. "Sink's not working."

"Aw, no, again?" Clint thought he'd managed to fix it in the end, with the aid of several YouTube tutorials.

"Again?" says Mr. Robbins. "Is someone else's sink broken too?"

They stare at each other, equally perplexed, then Clint says, "I'll come check it out."

At least the problem is easier to fix now that he's done it once. He heads back up to his apartment, googling actual plumbers who might be able to make a repair stick for a few days, and he's just found a number to call when his phone dies.

"Man," Clint mutters. He plugged it in, he knows he plugged it in because he remembers getting tangled up in the cord and knocking it on the floor when he reached out in the dark to turn off his alarm at four in the morning. He plugs it back in, checking to see if it's actually working or if the connection is fucked up, but it looks like it's charging fine.

He leaves it there while he goes out to pick up a cup of coffee and a muffin. When he gets back, he discovers that he's missed an Avengers call. He listens to the message, blessed caffeine coursing through his veins, and slowly the truth begins to dawn on him. He checks the date.

"Aw, time loop, no."

Clint's first wildly optimistic guess is that it's about the coffee. Everything went horribly the first time around because he didn't have his coffee, and now that he's properly caffeinated, he will kick this shitty day's ass and it will all be over. Just a little glitch in the cosmic continuum, or whatever the science people say.

He does do a better job with the weird bionic rat things this time, since he's already fought them once. The first time he wasted ten minutes trying to shoot them before realizing they had metal plates underneath their fur; this time he just goes straight to the method that ended up working, which was hurling them back through the portal one by one. He tries to stick with Natasha and keep her from getting bitten, but staying close to her just means he sees the bite happening. She sees him seeing it, and glares at him in the quinjet afterwards. He rolls his eyes and doesn't tattle, since she'll have to 'fess up when Steve tries to send her on the mission anyway.

They debrief, and Steve gets the call about the base, and Natasha 'fesses up, and Clint gets the assignment. "Quiet sidekick reporting for duty, Mr. Terrifying Murder Assassin, sir," he says, and Bucky's glare feels even more hostile.

"'Murder assassin' is redundant," says Tony.

It occurs to Clint that if he and Bucky are about to spend another five hours tied together, maybe it's not the greatest plan to antagonize the guy. So he doesn't respond to Tony this time, just scurries after Bucky and spends the flight worming a razor blade into the lining of his pants where he should be able to reach it tied up. Hopefully the half-assed patdown won't catch it.

He was thinking that being caffeinated and fed might help him shoot better, but as far as he can tell the fight goes exactly the same way: Bucky attacks while Clint backs him up from the woods, the HYDRA guys swarm, and the captives get away on the boat as Bucky goes down.

Clint hesitates. If he doesn't rush to the rescue, Bucky will be able to get out of the ropes alone. If Steve could punch in the door from the outside, Bucky can punch it out from the inside. Bucky would be better off in there without Clint.

Someone grabs him from behind, and everything goes dark.

"What is this? Comms?"

"Nah, those detect whether you've ever screwed a farm animal," says Clint. "Go ahead, touch one, see if it turns red." The guy grabs one of the aids, and the lights turn red as the connection breaks. "Ooh, pigfucker, pigfucker! Hey everybody, check it out, your buddy fucks pigs! Try the other one, that's for horses."

Right before the guy furiously rips out the other aid, Clint hears Bucky mutter, "Well, that's fuckin' new."

Clint freezes.

Since Mr. Robbins didn't remember the sink, and no one else has been acting like anything weird is going on, he thought this was just him. But that sounded like maybe it's not. Maybe he and Bucky are in this together.

After they're alone, he whispers, "Hang on one sec, be still," and works the blade out of his pants. Carefully, he saws through a rope and shakes off the rest of the coil, turning to face Bucky. "You can talk now, I'll lipread."

"Where the fuck did that come from?" Bucky asks. He reaches down and snaps the rope off his ankles like it's a rubber band.

"Hid it because I didn't want to spend another five hours marinating in your back sweat. You remember doing this already, right?" Clint starts sawing through his own ankle ropes with the razor.

Bucky nods. "I thought it was just me." He gestures Clint's blade out of the way and kneels to snap the ankle ropes for him.

"Sorry, I tried to stay clear and let you bust out on your own this time, but they still caught me so now you're stuck with me." Clint slips his lockpicks out of a pocket flap on his tac pants. "I know you can break the door, but if we make less noise we have the element of surprise, so let me." He turns to get started.

Bucky waves frantically to get his attention. "Hold on. We got the prisoners out and we know the others are on their way. We should keep our heads down and wait."

"For five hours?" Clint says incredulously. "Jeez, never thought the Winter Soldier would be the type to sit around waiting to be rescued."

"Don't call me that," Bucky snaps. Clint raises his eyebrows. "I wouldn't wait around if I didn't know for sure the rescue would work. We've already done this, it turned out fine, why take a risk?"

"It turned out fine except for the whole, y'know, time loop thing," Clint points out, deftly picking the lock without looking at it. "Maybe that happened because we're supposed to do it differently."

"Don't—"

Clint turns away, effectively cutting him off by not looking at his lips. "You coming?" he asks, and heads out into the hall.

Clint is woken up by Lucky jumping on the bed, agitated. Groggily, he checks his phone. It's 6:35 in the morning and he has three missed calls, all from Bucky.

He slips his aids in and finds out why the dog is so antsy: someone's having a fistfight with his door. Clint hurries to open it before it breaks down, and there's Bucky, barefoot in frayed sweatpants and no shirt. When he sees Clint, he lets out a breath like he's been holding it all night.

"You fucking died," he says, and throws his arms around Clint.

"Oh," says Clint, stumbling a little from the force of the hug. The metal arm is kind of squishing him. "Oops."

"Oops?" Bucky releases him, shoving him in the chest. He steps forward and kicks the door closed behind him. "Oops? I just spent fourteen fucking hours not knowing if the day would start over again or if you were gone for good. We mourned your dumb ass. God, if you could have seen Natasha's face. You fucking asshole."

Well, now Clint feels like shit. At least Nat won't remember that, or he sure hopes she won't. Fuck, if he never came home, was Lucky just alone and starving until the loop reset? "Sorry."

Bucky's eyes are wild and his hair is a mess. After several spine-chilling seconds of glaring, he says, "Today we're gonna figure out a plan," and sits down.

"Coffee," Clint pleads. Bucky doesn't even respond to that, just points at the other end of the couch. Clint sadly curls up in the indicated spot and stares into space, fantasizing about the cinnamon lattes at the place across the street.

"First thing: if we end up back there in that room, we are waiting the five hours for rescue. You are not pulling that shit again." Bucky waits for Clint's meek nod. "But we should try to avoid getting to that point. Let's brief the team and take more backup this time. Get there earlier, be prepared."

It's like cinnamon and something else too, horchata maybe? The flavor is strongest at the bottom, Clint loves those last couple gulps the best. He wants to order two and drink them both down to that part and then pour them together so he can get a nice big hit of that extra-cinnamony goodness right at the end.

"It's weird that they didn't seem to recognize me by my arm. They weren't trained like HYDRA agents, either—they could fight, and they sure knew what they were doing with that rope, but the patdown was a joke. Most of the ones on the dock didn't have guns. And why would they be using a stolen boat to transport prisoners? I figure they must be low on resources."

They do this raspberry white chocolate thing that's really good too. It doesn't have much actual coffee in it, but Clint usually asks for it with a couple extra shots of espresso.

Mmm. Espresso. Maybe he'll just get, like, eight shots of espresso. Sometimes pure and simple is the way to go.

"Are you listening to me?"

Clint jerks upright. "Dude," he says. "I know I'm on your shitlist right now, I get that, but seriously. If you want me to process any of this, I'm gonna need caffeine."

Bucky glares at him again, then gets up and stomps out the door. Clint has almost fallen asleep against the back of the couch when he stomps back in with a half-full plastic jug of cold brew and throws it into his lap.

Clint snatches it up and takes a long swig, then looks down at it, bewildered. "Where did you get this?"

"Lady downstairs."

Clint groans, picturing poor Dorothy opening the door to this half-naked maniac demanding coffee before seven in the morning. "I could have gone out to buy some. You didn't have to terrorize the neighbors."

"Focus." Bucky claps in front of his face, startling him so badly he drops the open jug. Bucky neatly catches it by the neck and shoves it back at his chest. "Let's start by briefing the team. It's not the first time we've dealt with bizarre magical shit, they can handle it. I'll call a meeting, you go get dressed."

Clint brings the jug of cold brew into the shower with him and fumbles through his morning routine, getting gradually smoother as the caffeine starts to kick in. He takes Lucky outside, and offers to loan Bucky some clothes, and tries very hard not to bust his gut laughing at the sight of the Winter Soldier in lavender Chuck Taylors. Within half an hour they're on their way to the tower on Bucky's motorcycle, Clint once again pressed against Bucky's back, now wrapped in a nice soft blue sweater of Clint's. It's a lot more comfortable this way around, and without the ropes.

Now that he's actually awake, Clint is starting to wonder why Bucky reacted so strongly to him dying. They don't know each other all that well, and they don't particularly like each other. He tries to imagine how he would have responded if it had been the other way around. Fourteen hours of Bucky dead, not knowing if it was permanent. He wouldn't have been happy, but he wouldn't have gone beating down any doors about it. Would he?

As they're getting off the motorcycle at the tower, Clint says, "Don't tell them. That I died, I mean. They don't need to know that, right?"

Bucky looks at him, face unreadable.

"And, uh. I mean, I'll do my best not to let it happen again, but if it does, can you please make sure someone takes care of my dog?"

"Jesus," Bucky mutters. "We took care of the dog, Clint. Come on."

Clint follows him into the tower, relieved that Lucky was okay. He tries to remember if Bucky has ever used his first name before. It's usually Hawkeye or Barton, he thinks. He's not entirely sure.

The other Avengers file into the meeting room, half-awake, grabbing bagels from the side table on their way in. Bucky stands up and gives a little speech bringing them up to speed and summarizing the day in front of them. Clint is not asked to contribute.

When Bucky's done explaining the time loop, there's a beat of silence before Tony asks, "Did you check the lottery numbers?"

Sam snorts. "Right, because what you need is more money. Hey, you two better not spoil the Mets score."

"Tell all future versions of me you encounter that we're in a competition to see who can avoid getting bitten by the rat," says Natasha.

Clint wonders if maybe the team has gotten a little too blasé about bizarre magical shit.

"Can you draw me a map of the—" Steve starts, and cuts himself off when Bucky sits down next to him, spreading out a folded piece of paper on the table. Clint peers over curiously; it's a pencil sketch of the HYDRA base and surrounding area. He must have drawn that up before he came over.

Clint chews on a bagel, bored, waiting for them to finish strategizing. It's eight AM now, when his alarm would normally be going off. At least Bucky's freakout gave him a head start on the day. Otherwise right now he'd be stumbling into the kitchen, trying to figure out where the hell his coffee went. And then... "Oh, shit. Mr. Robbins."

Bucky looks up from his tactical tête-a-tête. "What?"

"One of my tenants needs me to fix his pipes," Clint says. "In like..." He's not sure exactly what time Mr. Robbins knocks on his door. "Less than ten minutes, I think. Sorry, I gotta go."

Bucky frowns. "I think you and I should stick together. Whatever this is, it's about the two of us."

"Then you can come with me." Clint's not about to abandon a family to a lack of running water for a whole day just because they probably won't remember it. He's a shitty enough landlord when he does make an effort.

"All right," says Steve. "You two do that, we'll start working up a plan for the HYDRA base."

"And the rats," says Natasha. She has that look she gets when she's about to inflict vicious revenge upon someone who has wronged her.

Steve nods, game face in full force. "Natasha's taking point on the rats."

Bucky takes Clint home on his motorcycle, watches him struggle with the pipes for a while, and then intervenes to fix the problem with one pinch of his metal fingers. Clint makes him wait another few minutes while he takes Lucky out again to decrease the chances of another puddle later, then they ride back to the tower.

Steve has developed a six-point plan for taking out the base. Natasha has developed an eleven-point plan for taking out the rats. Both of them immediately descend on Bucky and Clint with a barrage of questions. Clint decides to let Bucky handle the HYDRA stuff and focuses on providing as much inside info on the rats as he can.

He's still a little thrown by what Bucky said earlier, about Natasha's face when she thought he'd died. He knows she cares about him, obviously, but... she's Natasha. People die, she doesn't go around making faces about it. Maybe Bucky just misinterpreted her "that motherfucker owed me sixty bucks" expression.

The plan, they conclude, is for Bucky and Clint to do their recon trip several hours early while the rest of the team handle the rats, then skip the rat debrief and head straight to Oregon so they'll be ready to hit the base when the prisoners are brought out to the dock at a specific time Bucky has apparently managed to retain from the previous days. The rat squad departs, and Bucky disappears to change into his combat gear, reemerging holding Clint's sweater, T-shirt, socks, and shoes in a neat little pile. Clint stows them in a locker, where they'll probably disappear at the end of the day, and the two of them take off.

The base is quiet this time, the boat and dock empty. They circle around the perimeter, noting details they didn't have time to pay attention to before, and then they settle in to keep an eye on patrol patterns. Recon, like they were supposed to do in the first place. Boring.

An hour later, Tony's voice comes onto the comms. "Hey guys. I got bad news, worse news, and even worse news. Whaddya want first?"

"Even worse news," says Clint.

He's not looking at Bucky, but he can feel the murder glare. "Just report in whatever order makes sense."

"Okay, so," Tony starts. "Bad news, Natasha still got bitten by a rat. Worse news, it looks like you two made the difference in this fight, because it took longer without you."

"How do you know it took longer?" Clint doesn't even know himself how long it took the first two days.

"That would be the even worse news. Pretty sure it took longer because you two proooobably would have mentioned if your rat fight had culminated in a thirty-foot-tall ratzilla bursting through the portal and obliterating the entire building like the Hulk with one of Bruce's shirts."

"See, Bucky," Clint says sagely. "Always start with the worst news on offer, otherwise he buries the lede for dramatic effect."

"What happened?" Bucky demands. "Is it gone?"

"Yup, all rodents of unusual size are back in their home sweet home dimension. We're gonna drop Natasha off with medical and head your way."

"Cool, see you soon," says Clint. Tomorrow they should bring a helicopter or something for Natasha.

You might think that living the same day over and over would teach a person not to keep making the same mistakes over and over, but nope, not Clint Barton, because that's when someone grabs him from behind again.

"What is this? Comms?"

"Explosives," says Clint. "If anyone besides me touches them, we all die."

The HYDRA agent eyes him suspiciously. For a second Clint thinks it might actually work, but then the guy concludes that he's bluffing and grabs the aids.

Fortunately, Clint still stowed the razor blade. He cuts them free and turns to face Bucky. "I won't try to leave," he promises immediately.

Bucky looks relieved. "Damn right you won't. Those people are still here this time, you could get them and yourself killed."

"Why do you care?" Clint asks. He leans against the wall, trying to get comfortable, since they're gonna be here a while. "Not about them, I mean... why did you come pounding on my door at ass o'clock in the morning to find out if I un-died? I thought you didn't like me."

Bucky frowns at him. "Why did you think that?"

Clint shrugs. "Before this all happened, you never talked to me much. Lot of murder glares."

"Fuck's sake." Bucky sighs. "Can you please stop with the murder thing? Just... take two seconds and think about why that might be a sore spot for me?"

It hadn't occurred to Clint that his murder assassin bullshit might have any actual emotional impact. Bucky doesn't really seem like the kind of guy who would give a shit what anyone says about him. "Sorry, man. Just fuckin' around, I didn't mean any of it."

"I know you didn't." Bucky stares moodily at the door for a minute, then side-eyes Clint. "You had to make it heavy in the first two minutes, huh? Now shit's gonna be awkward for the next five hours."

"Hey, we don't know it'll be five hours. Maybe we'll get rescued faster this time."

"Sure," Bucky says, tipping his head back against the wall. "Three hours of awkward, sounds great."

Bucky didn't actually answer the question about why he cared so much that Clint died, but Clint figures it's better not to push it. He knocks his knee against Bucky's. "Hey, I appreciate it. That you came to check on me."

Bucky nods stiffly.

Clint doesn't know exactly how long it takes, but it doesn't feel like five hours before Steve punches in the door. Clint springs to his feet, ready to get the hell out of dodge, but Bucky doesn't move. "Steve? What's wrong?"

Clint can't see anything through Cap's mask to indicate that there's a problem, but apparently Bucky really knows the lower half of the guy's face, because Steve says, "They panicked when we attacked. Killed all the prisoners."

Clint's jaw drops. "Oh, fuck."

Bucky is still motionless on the floor. He says something Clint doesn't look at him fast enough to catch.

"How do you know?" Steve asks. "Maybe if you die, that doesn't reset."

"It does," says Bucky.

Steve fixes him with a Captain America no-nonsense stare. "Buck. What happened?"

Clint can tell Bucky is going to spill the beans whether he likes it or not, so he butts in just to get it over with. "I died, okay? I did something stupid and got myself killed yesterday, please don't tell Nat."

Steve takes a long, deep breath and then shakes his head, like he's trying to shake something off. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

Back in New York, Bucky and Clint swing by the apartment to take Lucky out and then reluctantly head back to the tower for the debrief. It's grim. Most of it is prep for trying again, working up plans that Clint and Bucky can remember and relay in the morning. Natasha tries to talk rat, but all Clint can think about is the fierce courage of that woman on the dock, ready to face down a whole platoon with a pair of knives.

The meeting ends with Steve saying, "If it doesn't reset and we're all still here tomorrow... meet at nine and we'll do a real wrap-up."

If it doesn't reset. If all those people stay dead.

Clint starts to head toward the subway, and feels a hand on his shoulder. It's Bucky. "Do you think, um..."

"Stick together?" Clint guesses. Bucky nods, and he shrugs. "Sure. I gotta be home for Lucky, but you can come with if you want." He likes the motorcycle better than the subway, anyhow.

He takes Lucky out for a walk right away, and Bucky tags along without saying much. Clint shares his magically replenished Chinese leftovers, then sets him up on the couch with some blankets that have been piled on the hall floor for months. He tries to inconspicuously sniff them, and makes a face. Bucky catches him at it and grins. "Trust me, won't be worse than what I had to sleep under during the war."

"Oh, great, exactly the housekeeping standard I was aiming for." Clint spreads the blankets out over the couch, trying to shake some of the smell out. "I don't know how long you'll be here, anyway. Like, at some point you get whisked off to wherever you were when you woke up, right?" He remembers the caffeine keeping him up late that first night. The reset must have happened sometime after he turned off his alarm.

"It resets at five AM," Bucky says quietly. "Or it did last time, anyway. I didn't sleep, when you..." He doesn't finish the sentence.

"So, um." Clint shifts uncomfortably. "Should we meet at the tower? My alarm goes off at eight."

"Mine goes off at six-fifteen. I could call you if you want to get up earlier? But you didn't pick up today."

"I sleep without my aids in, my alarm vibrates. It'll vibrate if there's an Avengers call, too, so you could just wake up Steve and have him send one out. Or if you knock long enough, Lucky'll come get me."

Bucky nods. "I'll do that."

"Okay. 'Night."

"Goodnight."

Clint tries to sleep, but he can't. He's too scared that it won't reset and they'll have lost all those people for real. When his alarm clock reads three minutes to five, he tiptoes out to the living room and finds Bucky sitting up on the couch, illuminated by the glow of his phone.

"Hey," Clint whispers.

"Hey," says Bucky. "I take back what I said about the war, those blankets are fuckin' rank."

He must have banished them into some dark corner, because Clint doesn't see them. "Sorry." He sits down next to Bucky and peeks over at his phone to check the time. 4:58. "My phone's dead, I keep forgetting to charge it. I've been waking up every morning at three percent battery." He peeks again. Still 4:58.

"It'll reset," Bucky says softly. "It'll be okay."

Clint nods, and watches the clock, and waits. 4:59... 4:59...

Lucky jumps up on the bed next to him, waking him up, and Clint tries to let out a breath he's not holding anymore. Thank fuck.

He opens the door and hugs Bucky without a word. Bucky hugs back, not quite as rib-threateningly as he did when Clint died, but Clint can feel in the rough pressure of it that he was afraid too.

It says a lot about Clint's emotional state that he doesn't notice until after he steps back that Bucky is holding a drink tray with two coffee cups in it. It's a good thing Clint's sleep debt seems to reset along with the day, or even caffeine wouldn't get him back to functional after a night like that. He grabs one of the coffees, takes a gulp, and then says, "Wait, are these different? Which one is supposed to be mine?"

Bucky steps in and closes the door behind him, grinning. "They're the same, but I did already drink out of that one."

He's fully dressed today, in jeans and a gray henley with a motorcycle jacket over it. The henley looks soft. Clint rubs Bucky's chest absently, then realizes what he's doing and jerks away. "Sorry! Shit, there's a reason I don't usually socialize before coffee. Sorry."

Bucky is openly laughing at him. "Lack of caffeine makes you grope people? Is that like the Twinkie defense?"

Clint flees, burning red, to shower and change. He also grabs the nasty blankets off the hall floor and throws them in the washing machine, then reemerges with dignity.

Bucky is not in the apartment, and neither is Lucky. Clint grabs his phone in a panic and discovers a text from Bucky saying he's taking the dog out to piss. They're back a few minutes later. "Stopped by your tenant's place to fix the pipes," Bucky says as he unclips the leash and hangs it back on the doorknob.

Clint blinks. "Thank you."

"Sure. Ready to go?"

Clint tosses back the rest of his coffee like a shot and follows him downstairs. He'll concede the thick jacket Bucky is wearing today is probably better for riding a motorcycle than Clint's old sweater, but as he climbs on the back and wraps his arms around Bucky's waist, he can't help missing the soft fabric. He liked pressing against Bucky's back through it.

Hm. These are thoughts he should perhaps engage with or examine in some way, at some point.

As they walk into the meeting room full of yawning Avengers, Bucky elbows Clint and says, "Charge your phone."

"Oh, shit, thanks." Clint plugs it into a charger, grabs a bagel, and takes a seat to watch Bucky lay down the infodump. It's pretty impressive this time, now that he's more prepared. Clint sort of feels like he understands the whole deal with the base better now, why the way they operate makes Bucky think they must be disconnected from HYDRA's resources.

At the end of his spiel, Bucky says, "Clint? Did I miss anything?"

"Uh." Clint scrabbles around his cluttered brain for something useful. "They've caught us by sneaking up behind us in the woods twice, so make sure to cover each other's sixes if you're on the ground."

Steve nods, game face on. "Can one of you draw up a map of the area around the base?"

Bucky sits down next to him and pulls up a screen to sketch on.

"You didn't do that on paper today?" Clint asks.

"Nope," Bucky says as he draws. "No time, I was taking the dog out and fixing the pipes."

"Oh," says Clint. "I thought you did it before you came over yesterday."

Bucky's hand stops moving. He leans around the screen to look at Clint. "You thought I took ten minutes to draw up a map of the base before I jumped on my motorcycle barefoot with no shirt on?"

Steve is glancing back and forth between them. "You two have lived this day how many times now?"

"This is number four," says Bucky, and smiles a little like he can tell what Steve is thinking. "You kind of get to know each other fast, situation like this."

"So it would seem." Steve turns his attention back to the developing map.

Natasha's revenge face slowly eclipses Clint's field of vision. "Rats," she says. "Intel. Now."

They decide to all stick together today. They know now not to attack the base before the prisoners are brought out to the dock, and they already have Bucky and Clint's recon observations from yesterday. Plus, apparently Clint and Bucky are all that's preventing Ratzilla from showing up.

Slight snag in the plan: turns out Clint and Bucky are not all that's preventing Ratzilla from showing up.

"How do we get a fifteen-foot-wide animal through a four-foot-wide portal?" Sam yells over the comms, forty minutes into today's rat showdown.

"I don't know, I wasn't here for this!" Clint yells back. He jabs one of the smaller rats with an electro-arrow to stun it and heaves it through the portal, then scrambles out of the way as the giant rat knocks the Hulk directly onto the spot where he was standing, leaving a slight crater in the asphalt.

Hulk sits up in the middle of the crater, scowling. Yet another Labrador-sized rat starts to crawl out of the portal next to him, and Hulk grumpily flicks it back in with a giant finger. "NO MORE RAAAAT," he complains.

"Yeah, I'll sign that petition," Clint mutters. His arms and back are aching.

"There is no way yesterday-me didn't give you a full rundown to help us handle this," Natasha says. She sounds calm, but Clint can tell she's pissed.

"Yesterday was really fuckin' rough on the HYDRA side of things, okay? All I know about this part is it ended up with the rats back in their own dimension, so we're just gonna have to figure out how to fit the big monster through the little hole."

"Or," says Wanda, and the portal suddenly expands to encompass the entire site where the KFC/Taco Bell formerly stood.

"We need to get the sun in its eyes, get it off-balance and knock it through," Natasha shouts. "Tony, Sam, fly east, distract it. Steve, grab the other end of this tripwire. Let's move!"

Five minutes later they're all panting in the middle of a pile of rubble, and Natasha is shooting Clint the evil eye.

"In my defense," says Clint, "I think yesterday-Tony should have given us a much more comprehensive incident report."

"This is why we do debriefs," Steve says in his dad voice. "So we know what to expect next time."

Bucky sheathes his knives. "Natasha, are you coming to Oregon or did you get bitten again?"

"I got bitten," she grumbles. "Listen, Clint, I don't care what happens with the base this time, if you make it back alive you will sit down with me and memorize everything I want you to tell tomorrow-me about these fuckers."

"Yup, yes, absolutely," Clint nods, and she glowers her way into the helicopter.

For the first time, the HYDRA mission goes off without a hitch. They show up at the right time, take down the bad guys, save the prisoners, nobody takes Clint's hearing aids, and nobody gets tied up. He does not admit, to himself or to anyone else, that he was sort of looking forward to getting tied to Bucky today.

Bucky and Clint head to the apartment to take Lucky out, then to the tower. The HYDRA debrief goes a lot faster today, since the "lessons to be learned for next time" part is pretty much just "do all that again exactly the same way," but Natasha makes good on her promise about the rat debrief. Clint does his absolute best to pay attention.

"So," she says, leaning back in her chair after an hour and a half of drilling him on anti-rodent warfare. "At five AM I'm gonna just stop existing, huh?"

Clint hadn't really thought of it that way. "More like rewinding? It's just today you won't remember."

"Still. This version of me, the one that lived this day, I'll be gone. Dead, sort of." She links her hands behind her head. "Guess I'll skip my Duolingo lesson tonight. Maybe have some fun, do something stupid." She grins. "But not too stupid. We don't know which day's gonna stick."

"Not too stupid," Clint echoes. Fuck, if Nat got herself killed and he had to sit around for hours waiting to find out whether he'd get her back... he can't even imagine it.

He staggers out of the room clutching four pages of rat notes he's sworn to study, feeling like he got stomped on by Ratzilla. Bucky is waiting for him, and catches his arm as he starts to topple to one side. "Dinner?" he asks.

Clint perks up marginally. "Pizza?"

"Sure."

Clint meant picking up takeout pizza and eating it on the couch while snuggling his dog, but Bucky takes him to an actual Italian restaurant with cloth napkins, close enough to Clint's that they can walk back after. It occurs to Clint two slices and a glass of wine in that there's a chance he may not have noticed being asked out on (and accepting, and embarking upon) a date. Whoops.

"So," Bucky says. "What do you think we gotta do to get out of this mess?"

Clint shrugs. "What did Bill Murray have to do? Become a better person or something?" He frowns, trying to remember. "Also learn to carve ice sculptures, I think."

"Better get on that," Bucky says gravely.

Clint deliberately does not bring up the Andie MacDowell part.

They get back to his place around ten, take Lucky out for a walk, and then sprawl out on the couch to review Natasha's notes and laugh at nothing because there was a lot of wine along with the pizza. Around eleven-thirty, Bucky says, "Where are your disgusting blankets?"

"Oh, shit," Clint says, smacking his forehead. "I put 'em in the washer this morning, I was gonna move the load over when we came back to take Lucky out but I forgot. Aw man. Take my bed, I'll stay up 'til they're done drying and sleep on the couch." Fuck, his sheets probably aren't too fresh either.

Bucky gets up and heads to the bedroom. Clint is a little surprised not to have to fend off any polite protesting, but then Bucky comes back out and says, "You've got a queen, that's plenty big enough for both of us. C'mon."

Clint eyes him for a moment, trying to figure out whether this is a thing, but he's too tipsy and Bucky's face is too impassive to reach any conclusions.

"You should move over the blankets anyway, though," Bucky adds. "Don't want 'em to get moldy."

"They'll be on the floor again in the morning," Clint points out.

"Unless something happens to break the loop," Bucky says, and disappears into the bedroom.

Clint moves the blankets over to the dryer, and brushes his teeth, and stands there in the bathroom staring at the mirror for a while. Then he clenches his jaw and marches into the bedroom.

"You're talking about the Andie MacDowell part, right?" he demands. "You're saying you think we can get out of this by hooking up?"

"I don't think it's about the hookup, exactly," Bucky says thoughtfully, unfazed. "I think it's about how he changes as a person. He becomes someone who deserves the hookup, and that's what gets him out of the loop. Kind of a questionable message there about women being trophies for good behavior. But yeah." He smiles. "I was thinking hooking up might be worth a shot."

Clint has been very intentionally avoiding processing these feelings, bouncing off every semi-related thought like a tender muscle knot. Now, with Bucky digging a sharp knuckle right into the center of the knot like that, it takes about three seconds for him to come to a definite conclusion.

"No," he says. "I'm gonna go wait for the dryer to finish."

He collapses back on the couch with Lucky, facing away from the bedroom. God, he's so fucking tired. Tired in the sense of physically and mentally exhausted, and tired in the sense of being completely fucking over this shit. He wants to be done. He wants to find out what happens tomorrow.

There's always been this intensity to Bucky, this quiet focus, that Clint used to find terrifying. He wasn't totally joking about the murder glare—it was a lot to be on the receiving end of, when he had no idea what Bucky thought of him. It was intimidating. And sure, he's always found Bucky hot, but hot like Charlize Theron, or Darth Vader. The kind of hot you look at, not the kind of hot you touch.

But ever since Bucky stayed up all night and pounded down his door to make sure he was alive... that intensity hits different. And Clint can't tell if Bucky is just being intense about this thing they're experiencing together, or if it's actually about him.

The shadows in the room sharpen as he hears the bedroom door open. From behind him, Bucky says, "Sorry."

Clint carefully plasters an "I'm totally okay" expression onto his face and turns around. "It's fine."

"It's not fine, I shouldn't have said that. I thought you... I should just go home. I apologize for making you uncomfortable." He's got his arms wrapped around himself like he's cold, even though it's not really. "Do you still want me to come wake you up? I can leave after. Or I can brief the team alone and let you sleep until your alarm. Or have Steve send out an Avengers call to wake you up. Whatever you want."

"No, I want you here." Clint rubs his face with his hands, and leaves them there because it's easier not to look at Bucky when he says, "That's the problem. I want you here. I don't want to hook up just to see if it fixes the damn time loop. I want to be allowed to grope your stupid fucking henley before my brain turns on." God, he's not even making sense. "Please leave and never make me talk about this again."

He jumps when Bucky sits down next to him. His knee bumps against Clint's and stays there, and he says, "You're allowed to grope my stupid fucking henley whenever the hell you want."

Clint hesitates, then cautiously peeks through his fingers.

"I don't think it's about the hookup, exactly," Bucky says. "I think it's something to do with how we change as people."

"Bucky," Clint says into his hands, "I'm tired, and I'm still a little bit drunk, and to be totally honest with you I think at the best of times I would still have no goddamn clue what you're trying to say about the fucking movie. Can we rewind to the groping part?"

Bucky laughs. "Full access groping pass," he says. "Open season on groping. Grope to your heart's content."

Clint releases his face with one hand to paw clumsily at Bucky's pec. Bucky leans into the touch, and Clint drops his other hand from his face. "It's not just to get out of the time loop?" he asks warily.

Bucky shakes his head and says softly, "If this is the day I get to kiss you, I'd be okay with reliving it forever."

Clint throws open the door and growls, "You had to fucking jinx it. Okay with reliving it forever, jesus fucking christ."

Bucky shoves the coffee tray at him and raises his hands defensively. "I thought I was just being romantic! I was so sure that would be it!"

Clint cracks the lid off his cup, because that wimpy little sippy hole is not gonna cut it today. "Well, this curse or whatever it is better not be waiting for us to go around solving everyone's little problems all day like Bill Murray, because right now I'm in the mood to create some fucking problems." He flomps down on the couch and gulps down his entire coffee without taking a breath, then starts in on Bucky's.

After a minute, he looks up and realizes Bucky is standing with his arms wrapped around himself again. Clint groans. "I'm not pissed at you, I'm pissed at the stupid time loop. C'mere." He firmly tugs Bucky down onto the couch, then more tentatively leans in close. Bucky breathes out a sigh of relief and kisses him.

Clint kisses back before dropping his forehead to Bucky's shoulder. "Why couldn't it have been a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell?" he moans. "Why do I have to go smell beans and fried chicken again?" He rests his hand on Bucky's chest, fingertips rubbing across the worn fabric of his T-shirt. "I drank all your coffee, please don't be mad."

"My fault for giving you both cups." Bucky lays his hand on top of Clint's on his chest and pats it. "Come on, go shower and get dressed while I deal with the dog and the pipes."

"No." Clint shakes his head stubbornly. "Let's play hooky. No explaining everything to the team all over again, no beans and chicken, no HYDRA. Let's just stay here and make out all day. It won't fucking matter anyway."

Bucky tips Clint's chin up to kiss him softly. Then he stands up, grabs Clint under the arms, and bodily heaves him to his feet. "Let's go, Barton," he says, and whacks Clint hard on the ass.

Clint bolts to the bedroom like Bucky just fired him from a bow, then sticks his head back out to say, "Um, that was really fucking hot."

Bucky looks up from clipping Lucky's leash onto his collar. "Maybe the curse is just waiting for you to undergo a kinky sexual reawakening and start begging me to whoop your ass."

"Oh my god," Clint says faintly. "Please whoop my ass. Please."

"If I put Lucky's leash on him and then took it right back off to go beat you up instead, I think he might eat me," Bucky says, and disappears out the door.

There's a weird moment during the briefing when Clint points out a mistake on the map of the base and Bucky kind of freaks out. "Sorry! Sorry, yeah, Clint's right, these hallways didn't connect," he says, frantically fixing the drawing. "Sorry. Thanks, Clint."

"Whoa there," Clint says. "We shouldn't even need to go through there if it works out like yesterday. Chill out, Mr. Perfectionist."

Bucky rolls his eyes. "Better than Mr. Terrifying Murder Assassin."

"'Murder assassin' is redundant," says Tony.

"It adds a vibe," Bucky informs him dryly, and Clint bursts into giggles even though he still feels bad about that.

Steve shakes his head. "Real glad you two are finally getting along," he says, turning back to the map.

Clint leaves the HYDRA stuff to the two of them while he dutifully regurgitates at least three and a half of Natasha's four pages of rat notes. He can't quite remember the sixth bullet point on her list of ways to catch Ratzilla's attention and get it to turn. Maybe he shouldn't have had so much wine.

"Wow," Natasha says. "Yesterday-me really put the fear of God into you with this rat homework, huh?"

"Yesterday-you may have had a point that I should have asked a few followup questions about how exactly the thirty-foot rat situation got resolved," Clint admits. "But yeah, she could have been nicer about it."

"The giant rat bite probably didn't do a whole lot for her mood." She flips through the notes they've been trying to reconstruct. "I gotta say, I'm not loving my odds on the bite. I've been actively trying to watch out for it and it's still happened every single day so far?"

"You told me to tell all future yous that you're in a competition with yourself to see which you can avoid it. So far, no you has won."

"Hm." Natasha taps the sheaf of notes against the table pensively. "Tony. You got an extra suit lying around?"

"Huh," Clint says, watching the two of them disappear together. "Well, that's fuckin' new."

Natasha does still get bitten by one of the rats, but instead of her calf, the bite lands on the leg of Tony's spare Iron Man suit. When Ratzilla (which has now begun shooting laser beams from its eyes) has finally been wrestled back into its own dimension, along with its mini-mes, the spots where the rat teeth touched the suit are still sizzling with some kind of acid.

"That looks nasty," Natasha comments, examining the mark. "How bad was the injury?"

"Uh," says Clint. "You were walking on it."

"Obviously I was walking on it. I mean how much did it hurt? What did medical say about it?"

Clint tries to remember. "I don't think you ever told me."

"Of course I didn't tell you." She extends a hand sarcastically. "Hi, I'm Natasha Romanoff, apparently we've never fucking met? If I could get away with it, I wouldn't have told you the bite even happened."

"You did," Clint says, thinking back to that first day. "I mean, you were getting away with not telling us, and then Steve wanted you to go to the HYDRA base on recon, and you said you couldn't because of the bite."

Natasha looks at him like he's a complete idiot. "I turned down a mission? Clint, that means I was in the worst agony of my life. You've been letting this happen to me every single day?"

"I didn't..." Clint looks around at the others helplessly. "I didn't realize. Fuck. You came to the debriefs, I thought you were okay."

"Sounds like I came to the debriefs to get you to help me stop it from happening again. And apparently this was the first time you actually listened and passed on the information I needed." She shakes her head and walks away.

Clint feels like absolute shit. Natasha is his best friend, he should have been paying attention. Everything she's saying seems obvious now. He knows her, he knows what she's like. He should have been talking to her about this, and he's been too preoccupied with the time loop and HYDRA and Bucky.

The whole team flies to Oregon together, complete with Natasha for the first time. She won't look at Clint. He sits on the floor as far away from her as he can get, feeling awful. Halfway there, Bucky comes to sit next to him and offers him a hand. Clint takes it and kisses him gratefully, then leans on his shoulder.

"Uh, fellas?" says Steve. "Did you, uh... leave something out of that briefing this morning?"

Clint glances up. The entire team is staring at them.

"Y'know," says Bucky, "we probably should have had a conversation at some point before now about whether or not we were gonna tell the team."

"Welp," says Clint. "Decision made for today, I guess."

Natasha looks away again, and he feels even worse.

They take out the HYDRA base just like yesterday, with bonus Natasha, and she emerges from her post-battle prowl of the scene with a big plastic bag full of paper and a perturbed expression. "Looks like they transmitted and then deleted a ton of data right after we showed up," she says. She holds up the bag. "I got some stuff they shredded physically, but the digital files are gone. Tony never caught this?"

"Tony is a high-octane hacker who thrives on high stakes and high pressure," says Tony through the comms. "Post-mission poking through the trash is not Tony's strong suit."

Nat doesn't clap back, which means she's really worried. During debriefing, she dumps the bag out onto the table and starts piecing together the shreds. Clint joins in, and she doesn't stop him, though she's still not looking at him.

Half an hour later, she slides a mostly-assembled page of handwritten notes across the table and says, "Bruce, take a look at this."

Bruce scans the page and says, "Fuck."

Everyone snaps to attention. Bruce doesn't throw around profanity; when he says fuck, something is fucked.

"Did we take down any information on those prisoners before they left?" he asks. "Names, addresses?"

Steve crinkles his forehead. "No. Should we have? I thought they were just locals who got too close."

"See if you can find a police blotter in the area."

Tony pulls one up. "Looks like a lot of violent attacks around there in the last few hours. What is it? Were they trying to make more Steves again?"

"No," Bruce says, his voice tight. "They were trying to make more mes."

There's a horrified pause as they all digest the prospect of twelve Hulks running amok around the West Coast.

Steve stands up. "We have to go back. We've got until five AM, right? Treat the situation like it's permanent just in case, and find out as much as we can for tomorrow."

"Clint and I will keep our eyes open," says Bucky, standing up too.

Clint shakes his head. "I'm gonna stay here. Help Nat finish these jigsaws and brush up on the rat plan."

"This is really bad," Bucky protests. "If they actually—"

"I know," Clint interrupts. "It's important. You should get going."

Bucky is wide-eyed now, panicked. "Clint, please."

The rest of the team is heading out, and Clint isn't moving. There's no actual reason for the two of them to be together every minute of the day, and he does have a reason to stay here. Eventually Bucky has no choice but to let Steve herd him out, leaving Clint and Natasha alone with the pile of shreds.

Clint stays silent and gives her space, because he does fucking know his best friend when he's actually paying attention. After a while she thaws enough to start talking about what medical had to say about their analysis of the acid and the bite mark on the suit leg. Apparently interdimensional rats have a lot more teeth than regular rats. Clint files it all away for tomorrow.

After they've finished going over the rat stuff, Clint says, "Nat. I'm sorry."

She doesn't respond to that.

"I know I should give you more time to cool off, but we don't have time. In the morning you won't remember any of this. I just want to try to make things right before I can't anymore."

"I'll still be me in the morning," she says. "Tell me what happened, I'll forgive you then."

He doesn't want forgiveness from a rewound Natasha, he wants forgiveness from this one. But it's not his call.

"I'm sorry about the thing with Bucky, too," he says. "I didn't want you guys to find out like that, I wasn't even thinking. It's like actions don't have consequences to me anymore, because it all gets wiped away at the end of the day. I just... don't consider what might happen."

She stops assembling shreds and looks at him, finally. "Don't you dare get yourself killed."

He doesn't want to tell her, but not saying it right now would feel like lying. "I did," he admits. "On the second loop."

Her breath catches, and he knows he wouldn't have heard it if she hadn't chosen to let him. After a long pause, she says, "Tell me that tomorrow."

He squeezes his eyes shut briefly. "Do I have to?"

"Yes. Before any of the rat crap. Do not keep that from me."

"Okay," he says quietly.

"Don't do it again, Clint." She stares him down. "Don't die. You don't know which day is gonna stick."

She said that in another loop. She can't remember, but she really is the same Natasha. He tries to hold onto that, knowing this version of her will be gone soon. Dead, sort of, she said, and he thinks maybe he gets that now.

He calls Dorothy to ask her to take Lucky out for him, then they order delivery and stay up late covering the whole table with reconstructed documents. There's not much about the experiments, just that one page of scrawled notes; the rest is mostly printed dossiers on the agents at the base. Clint finds the asshole who took his aids and pins his ID picture on the wall to flick thumbtacks at while Natasha quizzes him on rat strategy.

They get a call from Steve around three in the morning. "We've found four of them," he says. "All unpredictably violent. No Hulk-level destruction, though. Bruce is studying their blood and trying to give Buck a crash course in biochemistry so he can pass on the results tomorrow. The rest of us are heading back out to look for more of them. We'll push through to five AM, and if it doesn't reset we'll reassess then."

"I think I'm about as ready as I'm gonna get on the rat front," says Clint. He looks at Natasha, and she nods. "I'll hop on comms with you, pick up what I can from here."

Clint opens the door, grabs a coffee, takes a long drink from it, and then kisses Bucky hello.

"I'm just gonna have to accept that the coffee will always get a good-morning kiss before I do, huh?" Bucky teases, stepping inside.

"You think you're kidding, but I've been dumped twice for that exact reason," Clint says. He's glad Bucky doesn't seem angry about last night. It would really suck to have Bucky mad at him for focusing too much on the rat thing at the same time as Nat is mad at him for not focusing on it enough.

"Don't worry, I know your priorities. I'm shooting for the number five slot, after coffee, Lucky, Natasha, and pizza." Bucky kisses him on the cheek and grabs the leash.

Clint heads off to shower, turning around briefly to watch the door close behind Lucky's tail. He's having feelings he doesn't want to touch again, but this time it's not because he's afraid they'll hurt, it's because he's afraid they'll be too good and he'll fall in.

After the morning briefing has devolved into Bucky cringing under Bruce's frighteningly multisyllabic interrogation about his previous self's progress on the blood testing, Clint pulls Natasha aside and says, "So. On day two of this clusterfuck I pulled some stupid shit and got myself killed."

"Sounds about right," she says placidly.

"I told you that yesterday and you said I had to tell you today."

She kicks his shin. "You have to tell me that every day, dumbass."

Ugh. He was afraid she'd say that. "Also, there's this thing with you and the rats," he says, and catches her up on that. When he gets to the part where she got pissed at him yesterday, she unexpectedly starts cracking up. He frowns. "What? Why is that funny?"

"I repeatedly hid the worst pain of my life from you, and then I got mad at you for withholding information?" She hoots. "I'm such an asshole!"

Well, that's unexpected. Clint smiles weakly. "You said last night that you'd forgive me today."

She pulls herself together and nods very seriously. "I forgive you. Now do you forgive me for being the world's most colossal jerk?"

Clint affectionately kicks her shin back, which is just about the closest the two of them are ever going to get to a tearful embrace. Then he remembers: "Oh, and I think you were also mad at me because you found out me and Bucky are together when I kissed him in front of the whole team."

Nat raises her eyebrows. "You what now?"

"We're together. Dating." Clint gestures to himself and Bucky. "Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, except she's in the time loop too and kissing didn't fix it."

"Kissing didn't fix it for them, either. They kiss like halfway through, right before the montage where she slaps him a lot. Best part of the movie." Natasha drums her fingernails on the table. "Okay, here's your order of operations for tomorrow. The you-and-Bucky update comes first. Then the thing about dying. Then whatever bullshit rat drama needs to get resolved. Got it?"

"Yeah," Clint sighs, then: "Huh. We haven't had sex yet. Was that what did it for Bill and Andie?"

"James Buchanan Barnes!" Natasha shouts across the room. "You fell in love in a time loop and you still haven't tapped that ass to get out of it? I expect that kind of density from this moron, but you?"

Silence descends over the group.

"Fucking liar," Clint mutters out of the corner of his mouth. "You absolutely have not forgiven me."

"I have now," she says sweetly. "Moving on. Bionic rats? Tell me more."

They're in the middle of fighting the thirty-foot rat, which is now spitting some kind of explosive pellets at them in addition to the laser eyes, when Natasha says, "Ohhhh."

"Oh?" says Tony. "That sounded like a pretty substantial 'oh'. If you've got any insights on this motherfucker, do share with the class." The pellets have been a real pain; Hulk got one in the eye and stomped off to the other end of the rest stop area, where he's now sullenly refusing to fight.

"Forget what I said about getting the sun in its eyes," Nat says. "We need a different approach."

Aw, she's gonna be pissed with Clint again for not being clear enough about this in the briefing. "Nat, that's the only way we've ever managed to get this thing back where it came from."

"Shut up, Clint, I got this. Tony, Sam, follow my lead. Wanda, can you do something eye-catching over there?"

The flying suits bob around the giant rat, dodging its attacks, while Wanda spins up some pretty sparks to lure it. Gradually, they get the thing turned around to face the portal, with its back to the sun.

Suddenly, it freezes, then leaps through of its own accord, immediately followed by all of its less gargantuan minions. The portal seals itself, leaving them all poised to fight against nothing.

"They're not rats." Natasha flips open the facemask of her borrowed suit, revealing a serene Mona Lisa smile. "They have too many teeth."

"What the fuck," says Clint.

"What the heck," says Steve.

"Ohhhh," says Bucky. "Oh, for fuck's sake. Seriously?"

Clint gets to enjoy about ten seconds of all-encompassing relief that he will never have to relive this fucking day again before he realizes: this means they've only got one more shot at the HYDRA base.

There's a ship on hand to pick up the escapees, with Bruce aboard it ready to run more tests, but Clint and Bucky can't agree on the rest of the plan. They need to access the files before they get deleted and find out what's going on with the Hulk experiment. Clint thinks sending in Natasha alone now is their best shot; Bucky, once again, wants to wait.

"When we make a move while the prisoners are still inside, these bastards just kill everyone," he says. "We have to hold off until they bring them out to the dock."

"But that's what we did yesterday. When they see us attacking, they delete the files."

"No, that's what they do when the whole team shows up and they know they're about to be wiped off the map," Bucky counters. "On day three they didn't kill the prisoners when they caught us on recon, they waited until the rest of the team got here. I bet they don't delete the files for just us either."

"I'd rather bet on Natasha's stealth than bet on these dumbfucks not doing the same thing they've done every single chance they've had so far," Clint argues.

"If we lose my bet, we lose some files we're not even sure would actually help us. If we lose your bet, twelve people die. Permanently this time."

The rest of the team are passively watching the two of them like a tennis match, even Steve. There was a lot to cover in the briefing this morning—it's not clear how fully any of them are grasping what's going on right now.

"Fine," Clint says. "But you should go in alone."

"What? Why?"

"One guy is less of a threat, so they're less likely to go nuclear on the files. And if you're not tied to me, you can just break the ropes. I'm not much help in there anyway without my bow. You're better off without me."

Bucky grabs Clint's shoulders like he wants to shake him. "I am not better off without you," he growls. "Don't say that shit."

Clint is startled silent by that.

"Listen," says Bucky. "We know this works. We know that between the two of us we can get the prisoners out of there, we know they won't find half our weapons, we know we can get free with your razor blade. We know the floor plan of this place cold. I was listening to the guard changes the whole time the first day, so we know when the hall will be clear."

"You what?" Clint demands, outraged. "You could have told me that instead of letting me die!"

"I tried!" Bucky screams in Clint's face. He moves his hands up from Clint's shoulders to the sides of his neck, burying his fingertips in Clint's hair. The flimsy layer of anger melts away from his surface, and Clint can see the solid mass of fear behind it as Bucky presses his forehead to Clint's. "I tried. That's what I was saying when you walked out and got shot dead right in front of me. I was trying to tell you—don't open the door right now, wait, there's a guy in the hall." He takes an unsteady breath. "I spent fourteen hours beating up on myself for not saying it fast enough, okay? Please don't beat up on me any more. Please."

Clint can't speak. He reaches up to Bucky's chest, fisting the thick material of his combat gear in both hands.

"We've got this," Bucky whispers. "If we do it together, we've got this."

Clint captures his mouth in a fierce kiss, hoping it will convey the things he doesn't know how to say in words. Bucky kisses back, hot and intense and real. Nothing else has felt real to Clint in almost a week now, all of it temporary, all of it always on the brink of being erased; but this, his body and Bucky's drawn together, this feels like it's not going anywhere.

"So!" Sam says loudly. "Sounds like somewhere in there you two managed to settle on an infiltration strategy?"

Clint can't stop spinning out hypothetical scenarios in his head, now that it's their last chance. What if HYDRA detects the ship waiting offshore and everyone gets killed again? What if there's no way to reverse the effects of the experiments, and by saving these people they're releasing a dozen uncontrollable monsters into the world? What if this time Bucky is the one who dies? The woman on the dock picks up the second knife, and Clint wonders: could she take on thirty guys? If they let her help instead of shouting at her to escape, could they win? But this is their last shot at this, and they've got a plan. He has to stick to it.

Except for the guy trying to take his aids away. Clint's making the most of his last ever interaction with this douchebag.

"What is this? Comms?"

"Those stop me from reading people's minds," says Clint. "Go on, take 'em. See what happens."

The guy rolls his eyes and takes out one of the aids.

"What's your name?" says Clint. "Ryan Clarkson, so nice to meet you. Ryan Thomas Clarkson, excuse me. Where you from, Ryan? Think the name of your hometown for me. Oh, Jacksonville? I've been through there, it's a real shithole. Go ahead, take off the other one, see what I can get from you with my full power. Wonder what kind of porn you watch."

Wide-eyed, the guy stuffs the aid back into Clint's ear, scrambling to get out of the room. Clint grins victoriously and starts working the razor out of his pants as soon as the door clicks shut.

"How'd you know that stuff?" Bucky asks.

"It was in the shredded documents," Clint says in a whisper, just in case there's some kind of surveillance in here. He's pretty sure there isn't, since they didn't get busted for escaping the ropes in the earlier loops, but best not to take risks now. He shakes off the coil and reaches up to adjust his dislodged aid. "What's our timing on this next part again?"

Bucky leans to snap Clint's ankle ropes for him. "About another hour and a half, I think." He's whispering too, probably thinking the same thing about surveillance. Clint wonders if he was whispering or just mouthing words the other times, when Clint didn't have his aids. "There's a guard change, then there's a window when the new guy leaves for a few minutes. Bathroom or something."

Clint nods and leans against the wall next to Bucky, taking his hand. He remembers thinking he'd rather be in here with anyone else on the team instead of Bucky. That feels like a long time ago.

"Y'know," he says, "when I was mouthing off about you being a murder assassin and shit, I didn't think you were even listening to me. I wasn't trying to be a dick, I really just... didn't think the things I said mattered. I didn't think I mattered."

Bucky squeezes his hand. "You matter."

"I'm sorry," Clint says. "For being a dick, and also for getting myself killed. I don't think it ever occurred to me that anyone would care all that much if I died."

Bucky turns to stare at him, stricken. "You don't mean that."

Clint shrugs. "The shit we do is dangerous. I've fought next to a lot of people who didn't make it. It sucks, but you go to the memorial, you give your condolences to the families, you move on. What else can you do, right?"

"Clint." Bucky's got his hand in a death grip now. "We wouldn't just go to the memorial and move on. We're the ones they'd be giving condolences to."

Clint swallows the lump in his throat and nods. "I think I'm starting to get that."

Bucky's head snaps up. "Shit," he says, rolling into a fighting stance. Clint automatically follows suit. "They're coming to investigate your mindreading powers," Bucky hisses.

"Oh," Clint says. "Oops."

Bucky flattens himself against the wall by the door and shoots Clint a look he would have characterized as a murder glare if he was still being a dick. "You take these two, I'll grab the one in the hall. Try to keep it quiet."

Clint yanks a wire garrotte from the hem of his shirt with one hand and a three-inch jackknife from his boot with the other, flipping the blade open. He's still got the razor he used on the rope too, now stowed in a pocket for easier access. Bucky doesn't produce any weapons, which Clint knows doesn't mean he doesn't have any, just that he's fast enough to deploy them as needed.

The door opens. Bucky grabs a neck in each hand and throws both guys into the far corner before ducking out. By the time he's back with the other one, Clint has dealt with the first two and liberated a collapsible baton from one of them. Bucky tosses the unconscious guard on top of the pile and motions out to the hall. Clint stows his wire in a pocket to free up a hand for the baton and follows.

They know exactly where they're going by now. Clint knows where they're keeping his bow too, and his fingers are itching for it, but that's not the mission. They creep through the halls, relying on Bucky's enhanced hearing to avoid passing HYDRA agents. Just before they turn the corner to the hall with the door where they're headed, Bucky stops.

He turns to Clint, holding out a pair of throwing stars, and signals two hostiles at the other end of the hall. Clint obediently pops around the corner and puts a star neatly in each neck. Bucky grabs the bodies while Clint picks the lock and throws open the door, knife and baton at the ready.

It's empty. That might mean the HYDRA guys haven't started panicking and burning their data to the ground, or it might mean they're all done. Bucky hauls the bodies into the room and closes the door, staying by it on high alert while Clint goes over to the computer. He taps one of his aids to turn on the integrated comm system, glad they didn't have to take a detour to get the aids back.

"We're here," he says. "Screen wants a login. Talk to me, Nat."

She guides him through the process of hacking in and confirming that the data she wants is still there, then he removes the hard drive and stows it in a pocket. "Now sit tight," she tells him, and the explosions begin.

Clint wanders over to nuzzle at his boyfriend, since they don't have anything else to do right now. "You're bossy in a fight," he says fondly. Usually Clint is off firing from a distance, responding to requests from the thick of it but mostly making his own calls. He hasn't done much hand-to-hand stuff with Bucky.

"Because there's no time to debate," Bucky says. "Gotta trust each other. You should stay away from the door, protect the data."

"Bossy," Clint repeats, kissing Bucky on the cheek, but he retreats.

Bucky holds up a finger, listening. Someone tries the doorknob, then knocks.

"Grab whoever that is," Clint whispers. "Alive."

Bucky shakes his head. "We don't—"

"No time to fuckin' debate."

Bucky looks deeply unhappy, but he opens the door and yanks in a startled young guy in khakis and a button-up. His eyes go wide at the two bodies on the floor and he immediately holds up his hands, or tries to until Bucky twists his arms behind his back.

"What the fuck," Bucky snaps at Clint.

Clint gestures at the guy. "Look at him. He's wearing khakis. He knocked. That's not a HYDRA agent, that's a nerd. Probably not the head honcho nerd, but I bet he can tell us something useful. Can someone get me Bruce?" he adds into his comm, then addresses their captive. "Hey kid, how do we undo the science?"

The guy looks like he's about to piss his pants. "Un... undo the science?"

Bruce's voice comes into Clint's ear. "I'm here, what's up?"

"Yeah, hey, buddy, what do you need to know about the experiments? Ask me like I know science, but say the big words real slow. Nope, slower than that."

He repeats Bruce's unintelligible science questions as best he can, and tries to relay the kid's equally unintelligible science answers. The HYDRA agents start trying to get in before they're done; Bucky lets Clint take custody of the kid, who obviously isn't a physical threat, so he can set his back against the door and hold them off.

"I hear Steve," he says a minute later, and the noises from the hall get briefly much louder before falling silent.

"All clear," Steve calls, echoing in Clint's ear. Bucky opens the door.

"Hold on just one sec, Bruce," Clint says. He frogmarches the kid past Steve and out of the base, flagging down the nearest person who can fly. "Hey Tony! I got Bruce a science present, can you go drop it down his chimney?"

"Null hypothesis, null hypothesis, null hypothesis," says Tony as he swoops off dangling the terrified nerd. Bruce laughs so hard he sounds like he's about to rupture a lung. Clint does not even ask.

Nat disappears into the quinjet with the hard drive, which means Clint's duties for this mission are blissfully complete. He retrieves his bow and arrows from inside the base and sits down on a driftwood log on the beach, checking over his equipment and basking in the glow of having nothing to do.

"I missed a priority on that list," Bucky says from behind him. "Coffee, Lucky, Natasha, pizza, and your bow. I'm angling for number six now."

Clint turns to grin at him. "Depends on what you mean by my bow. If it's any bow owned by me, then yeah, but in a burning building scenario between you and this specific bow, I think you'd come out on top."

"I'm honored." Bucky steps over the log and sits down next to him, leaning over for a kiss. "Still think I would've been better off without you in there?"

Clint sticks his tongue out. "You didn't need me to throw your damn stars for you."

"No, but I might not have aimed well enough to shut them up like that. Explosive projectiles are my specialty, anything under five hundred miles an hour is more your thing. And if you hadn't picked the lock, I'd have made too much noise breaking down the door. And that scientist wouldn't—"

"Okay, okay." Clint bumps their shoulders together. "We make a good team."

"We do," Bucky agrees with satisfaction.

Nat wanders across the sand toward them, feet bare and pants rolled up to her mid-calves. "Everything's fine," she says when she gets close enough. "Turns out that scrawny kid actually was the head scientist, they couldn't afford an adult. You were right about the splinter cell, Barnes. These guys didn't have the resources to make more Hulks, that page of notes was just him daydreaming. The prisoners were on some kind of experimental steroid, Bruce says they'll be fine in a few days."

"Oh, good," says Clint. That was the last stressful thing on his mind, now he can relax. He sets down his bow and leans into Bucky, resting a hand on his thigh.

Natasha frowns at the hand. "You can't have sex tonight."

"Excuse me?" says Bucky.

She's unmoved by his tone. "If you have sex, we'll never know what really ended the loop."

Clint snorts. "Nat. The giant evil groundhog saw its shadow and went back into its hole. We know what ended the loop."

"Not for sure, if you have sex." She shoots them a murder glare of her own. "I went through hell multiple times to get us out of this, I am not sharing the credit with your dicks."

"You don't remember it, though," Clint points out. "You said once that it was like dying every day. The versions of you that got bitten don't even exist."

Natasha's head snaps to look not at him but at Bucky. She says something sharp in Russian.

"It's okay," Bucky says, sounding tired. "He's not even thinking about... it's fine."

Clint doesn't understand what's going on, but it sounds like he fucked up and he doesn't like it. He likes it even less when Natasha says, "Clint, you're my best friend and I love you a lot," which is the kind of shit she never, ever says without a hell of a but to follow it up.

This time, she just turns around and pads back to the jet, leaving the sentence hanging. Clint glances at Bucky.

"It's not like dying," Bucky says. "It's like... having mutual friends with a person you used to know really well, but they've done a bunch of stuff since you last saw them, and they're not the same person anymore, so now other people know them better than you do. Except the person is you." He looks at Clint's bemused face and sighs. "You know they wiped my memory."

Oh. Yeah. There's the but. Holy shit, Clint is a dumbass.

Bucky sees him get it. "Yeah. Briefing everyone every day, giving them mission parameters, telling them things they didn't remember about themselves... it was like I was one of them." He casts a sidelong glance at the remains of the HYDRA base. "I kept thinking—I could lie to the team about what happened on the other days and they'd believe me. They had to, they didn't have anything else to go on. Their whole reality was just what they were told. All I had to do was lie and I'd be my own worst fucking nightmare."

"Fuck," Clint whispers. "I'm so sorry. How did I not realize this?"

"I'm glad you didn't, though. I would have hated to see you thinking about it in the morning briefing every day." Bucky takes his hand. "If it had been just me, I would have gone completely fucking insane. With you there, I knew I couldn't actually turn into my worst nightmare, because if I started lying you'd call me out on it."

"That's why you got weird when I corrected your map," Clint realizes.

"Yeah. And that's why I wanted us to stay together the whole time. To make sure we had the same memories, that we could back each other up."

Clint stares out at the sunset over the ocean. He knew it was silly, but he was kind of wondering if Bucky didn't actually have a reason to stay with him all the time. If maybe he just... wanted to.

"Why do you think it was only the two of us in the loop?" he asks. "Do you think some of it might have been about us, too? Who we are as people?"

"I think it's because no one else touched those rat things with their bare hands," says Bucky. "Groundhog things, whatever. The rest of the team wears gloves."

"Oh." Clint feels like an idiot.

Bucky raises their clasped hands and kisses Clint's fingers. "For me, it's about who we are as people," he says.

Clint leans against his shoulder and watches the sun set.

They head back to the tower to debrief these two godforsaken missions for the last time, then Clint and Bucky head out to Bucky's motorcycle, same as they've been doing. Clint's not sure if it's just because the loop hasn't technically ended yet, or if Bucky wants to keep staying over, but he's not questioning it.

They take Lucky out and eat the leftover Chinese food for the last time, and then wind up in bed making out. Clint votes they fuck just to screw with Nat, but after all his grumbling about her dictating their sex life, Bucky ends up agreeing with her. "I want to know for sure what it was," he says.

Clint groans. "Bucky. The giant interdimensional groundhog could not possibly have been a coincidence."

"Let's stay up until five AM and fuck then," Bucky offers.

They stay up until five AM, confirm that the time loop is over, begin making out with intent, and both immediately fall asleep.

Lucky jumps up on the bed, and Clint groans mournfully. "Noooo. Done. No more." He's lived this day too many times, he refuses to do it again.

Someone rolls over next to him. Clint's eyes snap open. Bucky is there, in his bed, in the morning. It's a new goddamn day. He might cry.

Bucky makes sure Clint can see his lips and says, "I'll take the dog out."

Clint watches him get dressed, and start to reach for his motorcycle jacket. "No," Clint intervenes. "Sweater." He points at the blue sweater he once loaned Bucky, tossed on a chair.

Bucky picks it up, raising his eyebrows. "You want me to wear this? Why?"

"'Cause my brain's not on yet and I'm allowed," Clint mumbles sleepily.

Bucky pulls on the sweater and comes to give Clint a kiss. Clint gropes his pecs through the soft fabric, smiling happily, his eyes drooping shut.

He wakes up again to the smell of coffee. Someone sits down on the edge of the bed next to him, and he paws the nightstand for his aids. "Coffee?" His hand bumps into the coffee and he raises his head, confused. "Mug?" He fits the aids into his ears, fumbling a little.

"Mmhm," says Bucky. "I picked up some ground coffee and used your machine."

Clint commandeers the mug and brings it to his face, then stops again. "Foam?"

"Yeah, made you a latte. Have you ever used the milk frother on that thing before?"

Clint blinks up at him, then back down at the mug. "Ngyuh?"

"Okay, I don't speak whatever language that was." Bucky nudges the mug closer to Clint's mouth. "Coffee first, then talking."

Clint takes a sip, then a longer gulp, then downs half of it and comes up gasping for air. "You made this?"

"Yup." Bucky strips down to his boxers and climbs back into bed. "You like it?"

Clint is already holding the mug upside down over his mouth, trying to shake out the last drops. "I'm dating you, right?" he says around his extended tongue. "That's still happening? I'm dating a person who makes me lattes and brings them to me in bed?"

Bucky kisses his temple. "Far as I'm concerned, yes, dating is still happening."

"And I get sex too? Sex now?" Clint puts the empty mug down on the nightstand and rolls on top of Bucky eagerly.

Bucky laughs. "That's your opener? Sex now? Who are you, the Hulk?"

"Please whoop my ass?" Clint tries, with a cheeky grin.

"Sshh," Bucky says, and rolls on top. Somehow it's fifty times sexier when he does it. He looms over Clint, pale eyes intense, and Clint abruptly loses the urge to be silly.

"Fuck me," he breathes out. "Please."

Bucky is bossy in bed like he's bossy in a fight, biting out concise orders to keep the action moving. Clint finds that he's all too happy to go with it, though he's no quiet sidekick. He's the landlord here, after all, so there's no one for the neighbors to complain to when he moans and begs at top volume. He rides Bucky until he comes, and then Bucky rolls them over and fucks him into the mattress, and Clint wails, ankles locked tight behind Bucky's lower back. Bucky comes inside him with a long rumbling growl, and Clint wants to hear that noise again every fucking day for the rest of his life.

"Fuuuuuuck," Clint groans as Bucky collapses next to him. "If that's what I get for sex now, I can't wait to find out what happens when I buy you dinner."

"I'll eat your ass for dessert," Bucky promises.

Clint chokes on his own spit. "Nnghk. Yes. Good." He coughs and musters up his best Hulk voice. "SEX GOOD."

Bucky smacks him, laughing, and then Lucky whines at the bedroom door and Clint can't help getting up to let him come cuddle with them, and as he's curling up in bed again he realizes something.

"Hey," he says. "You know who else on the team doesn't wear gloves?"

On their next mission, the Hulk emerges from Bruce's shredded clothes with a rare expression of unbridled delight and bellows, "NO! MORE! RAAAAAT!"

"I hear you, buddy," says Nat, reaching out to bump his gigantic fist with hers. "I hear you."