Okay, so after I watched The Hurt Locker, I found myself with the deep need to see Will James and Clint Barton linked. This is the result.

Clint Barton is an assassin. He makes his living shooting people who never even saw it coming. Maybe as a result, Clint is not much one for small talk. That's probably why Tony was a little scared when Clint started talking to him.

Of course, the subject Clint liked talking about could have also had something to do with that.

"Hey Stark, what can you tell me about bombs?"

William James is a bomb tech. He spends his days rolling the dice to see whether he's smart enough, good enough, lucky enough to survive the next lunatic's attempt at blowing someone sky high. Maybe because of that, it's incredibly rare to see him fire more than warning shots from his gun, and even rarer to not see him break down after. That would explain why his team was so shocked to see him shooting targets one night.

Of course, what he was shooting with may have factored into that shock.

"Where the hell did James find a bow and arrow?"

None of this made sense to anyone until one day Steve walked into the living room of the communal floor of the newly re-christened Avengers Tower to find Clint embracing a dark haired version of himself wearing army fatigues.

"Steve! This is my big brother!"

Later, he would find them on the shooting range, firing arrows as quickly as they could, with Clint wearing a blind fold to even the odds a bit.

Tony would find them in R&D later that week, with JARVIS showing them how some of the SI weaponry that had slipped through the cracks could be dismantled safely. Will's admiration for the quality of the bombs, as well as the promise to alert Tony whenever he stumbled across any, made up for the fact that they'd lacked access codes to R&D to begin with.

Alright, so to explain: I kinda decided that William James was Barney Barton. I see them both as a little bit f**ked up, so maybe Barney realized his wrongdoing and testified against Trickshot and got witness protection and later reached out to Clint. And, because Clint is also messed up, he's willing to reconnect to someone who abandoned him like that. But, they have a hard time being all emotional with each other, so their relationship is now built on their careers. So, they shoot arrows together, and talk bombs, and spar. *shrugs*