Summer awoke suddenly and with a sharp jerk the following morning after David had just barely stirred in her arms. The motion woke him up just as abruptly, and as they laid there staring at one another with slightly pounding heart rates, Summer quickly recalled the last day's events and then closed her eyes with a deep sigh and a slight wince at the instant ache in her bruised ribs.
"Sorry," she muttered, hugging the boy to herself. "Time to get up, I guess."
When it came to her traumatic memories, the ones from yesterday did not rank near the top. Unfortunately, David and herself had both been even closer to death before, more than once, but that didn't stop it from still being difficult. At this point, the fact that she was almost getting used to things like this happening was presenting a problem all of its own, and as much as she would like to pretend that it was all no big deal, she simply could not. And she supposed that manifested in the form of her mini-breakdown the night before.
It was hard enough to cry and briefly lose it in front of another person, particularly one you wanted to appear attractive and strong towards at all times. But losing it while also naked and wet while they were washing your hair - she almost wanted to cry all over again just thinking about it. It was entirely unintentional and completely not ideal and ended up leaving her feeling an odd sense of guilt at the way Bucky had comforted her, as if she should have been the one making sure he was okay instead of vice versa.
Instead of dwelling on this, she carefully got up and got herself and David to the bathroom to prepare for the day ahead. There would be a lot to deal with - keeping David balanced with yet another great disruption of his routine and the lack of their belongings, figuring out where they were going to go, presumably, while the tower was getting repaired, and inquiring when she could reasonably expect to work again and get her stuff out of the tower. She didn't even have her phone on her.
In the middle of brushing her teeth with a new toothbrush that she'd fished out of a drawer the night before, her thoughts regarding her phone made her nearly choke on the toothpaste in her mouth when she realized her brother was probably dead from sheer worry and panic across the country. The bombing had to be top news, and she hadn't even thought once of giving Paul a call to tell him that she and David were fine. It was official: she was the worst sister ever. She'd disown herself if she could, just because of this alone.
With a new sense of urgency, she got them out of the bathroom and dug through the sole dresser in the room in an attempt to find something new for them both to wear, but she came up rather short. Half of the dresser held clothes for an average sized man, and the other for an average sized woman, which meant David was stuck in what he'd worn from the tower for now, and that there was little point in changing herself. After the rather emotional shower the night before, Bucky had taken it upon himself to dry her off and then dress her before physically laying her in the bed next to David before kissing her goodnight. The sweatpants and nondescript t-shirt she was in was fine for now, but the fact that her dress from the party had required the lack of a bra was haunting her now. She could really use some upper torso support. It was going to be weird walking around all day like that.
Ignoring this, Summer took David's hand and led the already slightly anxious boy out the door and through the small hallway that led to the kitchen. She instantly heard familiar voices wafting from the room, and it smelled like somebody had already been cooking that morning. When she reached the kitchen, she saw Bucky and Steve seated at the small little four-seater table on the right of the room, and on the left, Natasha and Clint were standing near the stove speaking quietly. Nobody looked very happy, and in fact, Bucky in particular looked like he hadn't slept at all.
He noticed her almost instantly, his face brightening up a bit when he saw her. She walked through the doorway, offering him a small smile before saying, "If anybody's got a phone, I seriously need one to call my brother."
"He knows you're safe," Bucky quickly replied.
She blinked and asked, "He... does?"
"I sent him a message after you fell asleep," Bucky said, and Summer could have sunk to the floor and fainted from the sheer relief of knowing that Paul hadn't been having the world's biggest meltdown while she had been sleeping.
"Oh, thank you," she all but gushed, nearly collapsing with relief into the chair next to his at the table, while she placed David beside herself and Steve. "Seriously, I was panicking because I completely forgot to even think about how what happened would be on the news."
Bucky nodded, his expression making her think that he was very distracted at the moment and not by pleasant things, but he cleared his throat slightly and said, "He said to tell you that he's going to kill you if you keep almost getting killed."
"... Sounds like him," she replied. She then looked around the room, realizing that it had fallen silent since her entrance, and after a moment, she muttered, "So..."
"We're trying to figure out where exactly to go from here," Steve said, while Bucky stared at the table. "We're not as safe as we thought we were, obviously, so the focus right now is figuring out where we can go while the tower's repaired."
Summer nodded, glancing at Natasha and then Clint before asking, "And the, uh... man..." that I heard Natasha torturing, she mentally added but verbally stifled for David's sake.
"Gone," Steve quickly said. When Summer's eyes widened a little bit, his did as well and he quickly added, "FBI."
"Oh," she nodded. Of course. "Okay, so... should I look for an apartment, or..."
"No," Natasha answered, and Summer looked to her as she shook her head slightly. "For right now, we should stick together. That includes you."
Before Summer could think up an answer, Clint muttered, "I'm telling you, there's not that much room."
"There's plenty of room," Natasha argued, giving him a look. "I've been there."
"It's not a hotel. And it's not kid-proof. At all."
"He's a good kid," Nat shrugged, gesturing to David, who was watching everything silently but carefully. "It's not like he'll bounce off the walls and destroy your chicken coops."
Summer furrowed her brows and then glanced at Steve, then Bucky, and then Natasha again in time for Clint to reply, "I'm not worried about him destroying anything. That's not the point."
"It's temporary," Natasha replied. "And it's best for them to leave the city for a little while."
"What's temporary?" Summer asked. "Where are we going?"
"Clint's farm," Natasha replied.
"I didn't even agree yet," Clint muttered.
"Right now, it's our best option," Natasha shrugged to him.
"Oh. A farm," Summer said, having not expected anything even remotely like that. "Okay. Cool." She paused again. "Where?"
"Undisclosed location," Clint replied.
"Pennsylvania," Natasha said.
Clint sighed mildly as if his were pained. "Nat..."
Summer looked around again, again taking note at how generally displeased everybody looked, especially Clint, and she said, "Look, I don't... want to be a burden on anybody, and I can always stay with my brother for awhile if I need to, so..."
Almost all at once, every male in the room began protesting - Clint because he hadn't meant to give her that impression, Steve because he was Steve, and Bucky because the very idea of Summer on an entirely opposite coast was utterly horrific. David snuggled closer to her side at all the noises, and Summer blinked when they stopped and let Clint have the floor.
"You and your kid won't be a burden. What I'm worried about is having a place that I've done a damn good job literally keeping off the map end up on the map anyway."
"I won't tell anybody, if that's what you're worried about," Summer shrugged.
"No friends or family that won't come hunting you down?" Clint asked.
"Well, the only friends I really have are... like... superheroes that you know," she shrugged, "and as for family, all I've got is my brother. And he knows about everything already. I have a weird life."
Clint nodded, seeming to accept that, then glanced at Bucky and then back to her before replying, "One of these days I'm gonna ask exactly how you and your kid ended up in the middle of all this."
She pointed at Bucky with her thumb and said, "I found him bleeding and shot outside my house in Virginia. Then like five months later HYDRA blew up my house and now I'm here." After a pause, she added, "I left a lot out."
Clint sighed, not bothering to ask. "All right. But once the tower's fixed, I'm kicking everybody out."
"Thank you," Summer replied before Steve could launch into a grateful speech of his own. "I'll help with whatever I can while I'm there. Cook, clean, you name it."
"I heard about your food from Thor," Clint said. "'Delectable balls of meat', his exact words."
She grinned widely and almost squeaked, "He said that?"
"He did, but we do have more important things to talk about," Natasha pointed out. "We need to get moving."
"Right," Steve sighed, automatically stepping into leader-mode. "I'll call Stark to have our stuff sent to your place, Clint, if that's okay with you."
"As long as it's someone we can trust doing the sending."
Steve nodded somewhat wearily, as if the very word "trust" made his bones hurt. "Right."
"Is Pepper okay?" Summer asked, hoping she hadn't interrupted, but she had meant to ask after her sooner.
"Yeah, she's doing fine," Steve nodded. "Worst of it's a broken ankle, but it would have been a lot worse if Bucky hadn't have found her."
She glanced at Bucky to find him almost immediately glance down to the table, as if the truth of what he'd done made him uncomfortable to speak of or hear of. She knew why that was, though, and she hoped he'd eventually allow himself to acknowledge his own good deeds rather than just brush it off like he wasn't worthy of recognition even when he saved a life.
"Did anyone not make it?" she asked Steve quietly.
"There's a few in critical condition," Steve replied. "Bad burns. One's in a coma."
She digested that information for a moment, then asked, "Why did it happen? Was it HYDRA? Did they just feel like bombing Iron Man's tower?"
When nobody seemed capable of answering her for a moment, Natasha stepped in and said, "Since it doesn't exist anymore, it can't hurt if you know. We were using a floor of the tower as a base for our own operations. Nobody was supposed to know about it. But somebody did, and they took it out."
"Oh. So... Avengers operations," Summer deduced.
"Right," Natasha confirmed. "It was supposed to be the safest place for us."
But these people, Summer had long ago realized, were never safe, and as long as she was with them, neither was she. But what was safety, anyway? Even if she was back at home in Virginia and none of this had ever happened, she could still get in her car and die the way her parents had. Safety was never a guarantee for anyone, regardless of circumstance.
She glanced at Bucky and saw him frowning deeply now, and she could only hope he wasn't going to get stuck in another guilt-fueled funk again. She'd have to nip this one in the bud, if she even could.
"I'm only going to say this once," Natasha said. "If you ever change your mind about any of this, I can arrange for you and your son to disappear to anywhere you'd like within 24 hours. I don't expect you to ever take up this offer. But it's there, and it's your decision."
Taken slightly aback by that, Summer stared at Nat for a moment before again glancing at Bucky, who still refused to look up at anyone. But when she spoke her next words, she spoke them without a trace of doubt. "Thank you. That actually means a lot to me. But you're right. I probably never will take that offer."
Natasha smiled, just a little, and nodded. "Then I hope you like chickens."
Summer laughed. From a high-tech corporate tower with an electronic butler to a farm owned by Robin Hood. Life was nothing if not very, very interesting.
He might have been in a better mood if he'd managed to sleep at all the night before, but he simply had not. Once he'd gotten Summer to bed, in her own room, the rest of the night had been spent in restless thought that did nothing to ease his nerves or solve a single thing.
Now, in the light of morning, he was listening to the woman he loved verbally disavow the very idea of personal safety and once again accompany him to a weird place following another attack. He would never stop hating being the reason why she wasn't safe. But what could he do? Walk away? Drive her away, for her own good?
He wouldn't do that. He couldn't, not now. He would simply have to do a better job of protecting her, though that seemed hard to do when he was still not allowed on missions or any sort of work that he was actually qualified for.
So, he drank the generic, unpleasant coffee the house supplied and watched the morning pass by, staying quiet and trying to calm his thoughts. He watched Summer do what she could for breakfast with what was in the house, and her general state of calm following her brief breakdown the night before was a balm to his own nerves. He could tell that she wasn't entirely at ease, and surely the thought of adjusting to yet another new place was weighing heavily on her, but he could also tell that she wasn't faking her calm. Perhaps she was getting used to living like this.
If that was the case, it only made him angrier.
In the midst of stewing internally, he suddenly heard her voice and looked up to find her setting down a plate in front of him. He looked at her in slight surprise, and she shrugged and said, "I figured you hadn't eaten yet. It's just eggs. It's all I could find."
He didn't know why he was as surprised. She was as careful to keep him fed as she was with her son. He thanked her and she smiled before getting herself and David's food, and then he realized that the room had emptied for all but the three of them once she had taken her seat next to his once more.
"Thank you, again, for getting a message to my brother," she said as soon as she sat down, and he met her gaze as she looked at him with pure sincerity. "I don't even know how you remembered to think of him in the middle of everything."
He shrugged. "I didn't really sleep last night. Had a lot of time to think, I guess."
"Did you sleep at all?" she asked with a frown, taking a bite of her own food.
He shrugged again. "Not really."
His sleeping had been getting gradually better over the weeks. Where he used to be lucky to get four hours altogether, some nights now he could manage six hours uninterrupted, which was a huge improvement. But it was only some nights, and those nights tended to be the ones where Summer fell asleep with him. It hadn't always been that way, especially during the days that he had greatly feared accidentally hurting her during a nightmare, but now her presence next to him was a peaceful thing that helped the sleep come. But she had someone who needed her more, and he understood that, which was why he hadn't even asked and had simply placed her in her own bed next to David the night before.
"Well, hopefully tonight you can sleep and make up what you missed," she said, and he nodded. He didn't really expect to, though.
Then it was silent for a bit, and when Summer spoke next, she quietly began, "I didn't ask you last night because so much was in my head with everything that had happened... but what happened when the bomb went off? Where were you?"
Bucky only hesitated a moment before launching into the story of how he'd trailed someone he considered suspicious only to ended up drugged and unconscious underneath a collapsed wall that would have meant his death had he not been equipped with an arm capable of destroying it. She nearly choked on her food at several points in the story, eyebrows nearly touching her hairline when he told her the part about being drugged and then disappearing altogether when she listened to how he'd had to punch his way to survival.
"Why didn't you tell me all of that last night?" she half-gasped with wide eyes. "And how did you come out of all of that with like no injuries?"
" I -"
"I mean, yeah, super soldier and everything, but you're still human and..."
"I'm fine," he shrugged.
"Are you sure?" she asked, fully serious and entirely doubtful.
For the first time that day, he let himself smile a little bit. She really had no idea how durable he really was. "Yeah. I'm sure."
She eyed his smile a bit suspiciously, but let it go after that. She also tried to change the subject, clearly sick of talking about injuries and things blowing up, but there was really no ignoring the elephant in the room that day. Soon after they'd eaten, Tony Stark showed up to the house unexpectedly, and was devoid of his usual humor and sass as he got straight to business with his fellow Avengers in the living room. He looked incredibly tired and drained in the five seconds that Bucky had watched him pass by the kitchen.
He expected Tony's departure to signal the departure of everyone else, so he waited idly and intentionally away from the others, wanting to just get it over with and get where they were going. He checked Summer's bruises and helped her with anything he could to kill time, and when he eventually ran out of excuses to stand around and do nothing, he wandered back into the kitchen and ended up getting more than he bargained for.
He'd filled a glass of water from the sink and then turned only to stand very still as he came face to face with Tony, standing near the doorway looking almost as awkward as Bucky instantly felt for a few seconds before shaking his head and muttering, "All right, I'm gonna spare us both the weirdness here and just say what I came to say."
Bucky set the glass in his hand down on the counter behind him and braced himself for whatever would come next. Tony crossed his arms, looking briefly at the floor before taking a few steps closer and saying, "I'm sure this isn't exactly the surprise of the year, but when Steve first asked me if you could stay in my building, I told him to stop smoking whatever he was on and call me when he was back in his right mind. And when I realized that he was serious and not actually on drugs, I laughed in his face and told him to get the hell out of my tower for even suggesting it."
Bucky was neither surprised nor offended by the story, so he continued to stare calmly as Tony went on. "If you're wondering what changed my mind, it wasn't what, but who. And the who was Pepper. She didn't exactly want you living with us, but she did her research on you back when your girlfriend called us to get you and Steve in touch last year. She saw the full picture that I couldn't. I still can't, sometimes, I'm gonna be honest. Maybe I never will. You'll always be the guy that killed my parents, whether it was you or HYDRA that pulled the trigger."
Bucky nodded silently, looking away and deciding that he could accept that. His own perceptions of himself weren't always much better, so he could expect little else from certain others, Tony especially.
"But now you're also the guy that saved Pepper's life. And I have to wonder - out of everyone in that building, why did you save her?"
Bucky's jaw clenched as he paused, taking a moment to gather his thoughts before replying, "I only wanted to get Summer out. I was trying to get to her when I found Pepper, and I couldn't..." he shook his head, "I couldn't."
Tony seemed to understand, nodding after a moment and replying, "See, at first I didn't care about the brainwashing. Especially since you knew my dad back then. I said that brainwashing could only go so far as an excuse. I told Pepper that it wasn't like Loki zapped you with his blue glowstick like he did with Clint - that was different, that was magic and that was excusable. But then she had me read some of your files and I realized that I was wrong. Which doesn't happen often. But it did. And eventually I gave in and let you stay. I still didn't like it and I tracked your every move in and out of the tower. Even read all your therapist's notes and files on you." When Bucky's expression grew slightly alarmed, Tony gave a slight shrug and said, "He doesn't know I did. My point is - I was tolerating you just out of... I don't know. Morbid curiosity maybe. But whatever it was, I never thought a day would come when I would look you in the eye and thank you for something."
Almost instantly, Bucky wanted to squirm as he shook his head and said, "I'm not - you don't have to thank me, or -"
"Except I do," Tony interrupted. "Because Pepper's been the glue that holds me together before I even realized that I needed glue."
Bucky shook his head again. "Doesn't make up for what I did."
"No it doesn't," Tony replied frankly. "Nothing does. Nothing can change what happened. But you changed what could have happened. And even though I'll never be your best friend or particularly want to catch a football game with you, I'll always be grateful that you did what you did. And that makes it a hell of a lot easier to do what I'm doing now, which is say let's just... move on."
Bucky didn't bother to hide his shock at those words. He stared at the other man for a minute before looking up and asking quietly, "Are you sure?"
"As I'll ever be," Tony shrugged. "Might want to hurry up and agree before I change my mind."
Bucky nodded quickly, blinking and still unsure of exactly what was happening. Tony then drew a deep breath, as if relieved that he'd said what he'd needed to and now the moment was over.
"All right. Good. Now that pigs have officially flown, I need to get back to the hospital."
Bucky nodded again, possibly limited to that single gesture in the middle of his lingering shock, and as Tony walked away, he yelled out towards the doorway, "You can stop listening now, Rogers!"
A dull thud against the wall made Bucky nearly laugh, because he should have figured that Steve would have his ear pressed to the nearest wall or door to listen to the most unexpected conversation in recent history.
Alone once more, he stood there and let his mind wander, and to his surprise, he almost felt a bit... lighter, somehow. It wasn't a dramatic difference, but it was there, and it was real, and it felt good. Tony was right about the past, about what he'd done and how nothing could ever really make up for it, especially the worst of it, but maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe the point was changing what he could change, which was the present, and making it mean something.
How he could do that, he wasn't entirely sure. But if it began with saving Pepper's life, then surely that was nothing if not a decent start.
It ended up being Steve who explained to Summer in a whispered rush of words why Bucky had gone from grim to oddly sort of pleasant out of nowhere, just before the group departed for Pennsylvania. The truth of it made her smile, and she began to notice her habit of tying her own mood to her son starting to bleed over to Bucky as well. She wasn't sure if it was exactly a good thing, but for all to be well in her own mind, all had to be well with the two of them.
But only one was well that day, as she expected, and the car ride out of town was as miserable she figured it would have been. It wasn't too terribly long, and she sat in the back with David as Bucky again drove his "borrowed" car, but with nothing to entertain the already-tense child or soothe him, Summer was stuck with trying to tell him some of his favorite stories from memory and singing silly songs just to keep him reasonably calm. He wanted to go home and he wanted his things, but they were probably looking at at least a month out of the tower and a few days before their belongings could be safely retrieved and sent to them. And those few days ran the risk of feeling like an eternity for both Summer and David.
But there was very little she could do, so she did her best with what she had, which wasn't much, and watched as the city roads eventually became less crowded, more country ones as they crossed the state line. Bucky was a calm, quiet driver, but also thoughtful, as he made sure to stop and feed his passengers before they reached their destination. It was all so very domestic and almost normal-feeling, Summer could almost ignore the fact that they were retreating into somewhat of an exile following another attempt on their lives. Or at least some of their lives.
Exile, as it turned out, was called Hawkeye Ranch, and it was everything she'd imagined it to be in her head. Sitting on a green, healthy looking chunk of land in the middle of nothing was the farm, with a tractor sitting out front and everything, and as the cherry on top, a few loose chickens bobbing around the front porch. There was also a cute little red barn behind the house, behind rows of what looked like some nice, tall corn crops. It was, in Summer's view, a rather impressive farm for one of the world's most deadly assassins to call their own.
"Well, this is... definitely farm-y," she said, a grin on her face as Bucky parked the car behind Natasha's in the dirt.
"It's small," Bucky said, looking at the fairly modest building with a slight frown as she unbuckled her seatbelt.
"It's bigger than my house," she shrugged. "Or what was my house."
Once the engine was off, Clint came strolling out of the front door in a baseball hat and blue flannel shirt, apparently coming to greet them as they got out of the car. Summer was holding David's hand and leading him up the small dirt pathway to the door when Clint called out, "No stolen property on my farm."
Summer glanced behind her to Bucky, who was walking a step or two behind her, and watched as he looked at Clint blankly in response. Clint stared back for a moment, and Summer suddenly wondered if the car was actually going to be a problem just before Clint grinned and then chuckled. "No, but really. Get it off within a few days."
Bucky nodded to that, and then as they approached the small number of chickens pecking around the porch steps, David slowed down and swung behind Summer to get away from them. Wanting to avoid the issue entirely, she bent down and picked him up, explaining gently, "They're just chickens. They're not gonna hurt you."
And then, just to prove her wrong, the sole rooster of the bunch - a white and black one with puffed up feathers and particularly suspicious eyes - decided to dive beak-first into her legs rather viciously the minute she put her foot on the first step.
"What the fricking - ahhh!" she exclaimed out of pure surprise rather than actual pain, though the sudden pecking attack did hurt. Swiftly, Clint stepped down and kicked the chicken off of her, and afterwards, the offending fowl refluffed its feathers and cocked its head at Summer with its beady eyes focused on her just before strutting away. She blinked at the oddness of it all, then glanced at Clint before muttering, "... Thanks."
"That one's a jerk," Clint explained. "Doesn't like women. Natasha almost shot it when it did the same thing to her."
He then turned around and headed back into the house, and Summer glanced at Bucky just in time to catch his "what the actual hell are we doing here" expression before he looked at her and changed it into an "oh my God, we're on an actual farm" expression. Or something like that.
Once inside the home, Clint led them on a minimalist but efficient tour of the place, telling them what was what and where was where, what was theirs to use, (books, kitchen appliances, things of that sort) what they'd need to ask about first (DVD collection), and what was off limits at all times (the locked basement, which was apparently where he kept what Bucky would consider the cool stuff, i.e. weapons). There was two bathrooms and only three bedrooms, which Clint thought was fine until Summer reluctantly had to point out that the three of them couldn't share one room and that Bucky needed his own.
Clint turned in the middle of the upper floor hallway and looked at them a bit puzzled and asked, "Really?"
Summer shrugged and said, "Yeah, he has nightmares and... you know, with David," she gestured to the boy still in her arms, "we try to be... extra... cautious."
Clint looked back and forth between them and then said, "Right. Then you," he said to Bucky, "can sleep in my office. I don't use it much and there's room for a bed. Unless you want to bunk with the other lovebirds."
"No," Bucky replied extremely quickly. "Office is fine."
From there, Clint showed them to where Summer and David would be staying, which was less than half the size of the giant room they had back at the tower, but it felt more like an actual room in a real home than that one did. There was one queen size bed on a wood frame and the sheets were a bland off-white and the walls a very neutral beige, but there were old-fashioned light switches and a window that didn't take up an entire wall, and all in all, it was almost a sigh of relief. She hadn't expected feeling that way, but there was something to be said for dwelling in a real home as opposed to a skyscraper.
Clint left them for a moment while Summer took David to go look out the window next to the bed, and she found that they had a charming view of the barn and what looked like a pin of goats that was next to the barn. Everything was so green and unpolluted and... real looking. She felt a sudden pang of homesickness for her home that didn't exist anymore.
"Well, what do you think?" she asked David as his own eyes darted about and took in the scenery. She brushed his dark hair back on his head and said, "I think it's pretty nice. Maybe tomorrow we can go look at all the animals here." David looked up at her in sudden slight alarm, and she smiled and quickly added, "We'll avoid the evil rooster. But we'll find stuff to do... and in a few days we'll have our stuff back, and everything will be all right."
David merely hugged himself to her in response, and she hugged him back, wishing so much of what helped him function wasn't always utterly out of her control. But, maybe this wasn't so bad. Bucky was here, Steve was here, and that meant David's favorite people besides her were still there and still close. And besides, David was as tough as a little soldier. If he could face a building fire with a toy shield on his arm, this was absolutely nothing.
Meanwhile, as Summer took the quiet moment and embraced it for all it was worth, Clint was showing Bucky his "office", and gesturing loosely to the single desk and rather thin and sleek computer system sitting on top of it. "As you can see, it's pretty much a desk and a chair and that's it. Room's small but a twin bed or something could fit over there..."
Bucky shrugged and said, "It's fine."
"I don't have an extra bed, so you might want to grab one in town," Clint suggested. "Or you can just keep your stuff in here and sleep on the couch."
But Bucky only shrugged again. "I'll figure something out."
Clint paused for a minute before asking, "You must not plan on sleeping much."
"Not really," Bucky admitted, glancing at the other man.
"You know what can help the nightmares sometimes?" Clint asked before answering, "Reading. I wasn't always much of a reader, but it helps keep my head clear of the stuff the nightmares come from. I usually don't have them when I fall asleep reading."
Bucky nodded slightly, then asked quietly after a pause, "How many hours do you get?"
"Probably six on average, but it depends," Clint replied. "Took me awhile to get there though. Didn't sleep at all for two months or so."
"I had just gotten to six hours recently, but..." Bucky shrugged. "I have a feeling it'll be back to four."
"Well," Clint replied, "if you can't sleep, feel free to get up and give me a hand with my goats in the mornings. I get up at six every day to take care of everything."
Trying to hide his immediate and irrational horror at the thought of helping tend to a farm, Bucky furrowed his brows and asked, "What do you... do with goats?"
"Milk them."
Bucky stared with slightly wider eyes and said, "You... want me to help... with that?"
"Just offering to give you something to do. That's one of the reasons why I have this place. Staying busy means staying sane."
Bucky was starting to believe that was definitely true. But he was fairly sure he'd be better suited keeping busy with something other than goats. "Connor says that," he observed.
"He's right about that one," Clint said. "And by the way, I'm not telling him you're here in case he tries to do some group therapy crap."
"Good idea," Bucky affirmed.
"Also," Clint said on a departing note, "keep in mind that these walls are about as thin as a piece of paper, so try to keep it down. I told Nat the same thing. My hearing isn't exactly the greatest but I'm not deaf. And I've heard stories."
One half of Bucky wanted to grin in a bragging sort of way and the other wanted to merely roll his eyes and ignore that particular admonition. He settled on replying, "Can't make any promises there."
Clint grimaced a little and then said, "Then I'll pitch a tent in the woods and that can be where you couples can go and yell each other's names as loud as you want."
Then, as the man trudged off grumbling about why he had to play host to not one but two rather sickening couples, Bucky grinned faintly and decided, at least for the time being, that this Clint guy was all right.
Upon settling into her first day at the farm, Summer realized two things; first, that David was getting quite heavy as he neared his sixth birthday, since her arms were about to fall off after letting him hang on her like some kind of monkey all day, and second, that Clint Barton had the single best taste in food of all of the Avengers.
To her shock, her first tentative peek inside his pantry made her jaw drop with how stocked and utterly delicious the contents appeared to be. She was used to buying off-brand stuff and holding her nose and pretending to be all right with the sort of non-organic products she had read entirely too many negative things about, but Clint appeared to eat only the not-cheap organic stuff. And it was good stuff.
His spice cabinet was even better. He even had saffron - the real, imported, ridiculously expensive stuff - and she had to pick up the bottle of it and just hold it for a moment, while David hung at her side playing with her messy side-braid.
"Having fun?" Clint suddenly asked from out of nowhere behind her, making her jump and almost drop the precious bottle.
"No, I mean yeah, sorry!" she half-stuttered, turning around and smiling with the bottle in hand. "I just - wow! Saffron. I've only seen this stuff on cooking shows. The ones hosted by rich old women who live in the Hamptons."
"Barefoot Contessa," Clint nodded, and Summer's jaw dropped even more.
"You watch the Food Network."
"Sometimes. It's good for ideas. Her food's the best."
"Yes," Summer agreed wholeheartedly. "This is amazing. I had no idea you were so... like..."
"... Not a fan of eating garbage when I can help it?" Clint supplied, and she nodded quickly. "Yeah. Takeout gets old."
"Definitely," she smiled. "So, I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of dying to cook in here now."
"Knock yourself out," Clint shrugged, and her smile grew wider.
"Awesome! Any ideas for dinner tonight?"
After a minute of brief deliberation, Clint said, "Not really, but there's chicken in the fridge that needs to be cooked."
"Okay," she nodded, "I can figure something out." Then she paused and asked, "Is it... chicken you bought at the store, or..."
Clint's answer was a rather deadpan, blank expression, and when she grimaced a little bit at that, he started to grin and then finally answered, "I'll never tell."
Then he walked away, leaving her in the small but perfectly sufficient kitchen, trying not to think about the chickens outside and the chicken in his refrigerator, and instead brainstorming ideas for both dinner and how exactly to go about cooking it with a little boy glued to her side.
While contemplating these things, she opened the bottle of saffron and sniffed at it, then sighed and screwed the lid back on before muttering to herself, "One day, I'm gonna have my own bottle of this crap, just like Robin Hood and Barefoot Contessa, and it's gonna be freakin' awesome."
While Summer worked on dinner a bit later, Bucky found himself nearly gaping at Steve as he received his second shock of the day. Much more and his face would permanently freeze in its then-current expression of being simply flabbergasted.
They were standing in the hallway, outside the door of the room that Steve was sharing with Natasha, and for a good minute or so, Bucky had no idea what to say. He just stood there, floundering for a moment before half-croaking, "After last time... you want me to come with you? On another mission?"
"I know what happened last time was bad," Steve replied quietly, "but it'll be different this time. We've got a few leads and none of them involve facilities you might have been kept at. Last time was too much too soon. It won't be this time."
"But... I still don't know if..."
"Look," Steve sighed, "I know this is eating you up, I can tell. I know you don't want to be stuck on the sidelines. I don't want that for you either."
"But if I screw up," Bucky muttered, "or hurt someone, or -"
"And if you don't?" Steve countered, but that only made Bucky frown more. "I mean, look at how good you've been doing - you're sleeping better, you're calmer, you've got a great relationship, you're dancing. I won't push you if you don't think you're ready to try again, but for what it's worth, I think you are."
Bucky's mind was suddenly racing, wondering if Steve was right and if he really could - or should - try again. But his last experience in the field was still fresh in his mind, even these months later, and he couldn't afford a repeat performance. His fragile state that night after facing his past had resulted in Summer losing her home and nearly so much more, and he couldn't risk that again.
"Just think about it," Steve said when Bucky couldn't even begin to come up with an answer, patting his shoulder. "No rush. I'll keep you updated."
Bucky nodded, still nearly unable to believe that Steve actually wanted him on the next mission when it was time for one. He couldn't deny how much he wanted to go, how much a part of him needed to go, to do what he knew how to do and put to rest the voice in his head that liked to remind him that he was doing nothing to stop the people out there who would see those he cared about hurt or killed. But his anxiety after his last rather disastrous outing in the field was a very effective counter to that motivation.
He spent the rest of the night in somewhat of a daze, thinking over Steve's words and wondering what his therapist would say, and what Summer would say. He was a lot more nervous to tell Summer than he was Dr. Connor, however.
She made a simple but satisfying dinner that night, soup in the form of chicken and dumplings, and though he tried to be present with her and, to a far lesser extent, the others crammed around Clint's rather small dinner table, he was a thousand miles away in his head, and he knew that she could tell. She didn't ask what was wrong, though, and he appreciated that she didn't. She knew he would tell her when they got a moment alone, and he knew that she was okay with that.
But that moment didn't come until quite a bit later, after Bucky had tried creating a makeshift bed on Clint's office floor with some spare blankets he'd been lent while Summer got David to bed. Bucky didn't mind sleeping on the floor that much - it was better than sleeping on a bed that was too soft, at least - so he didn't think much of it, even though there was a perfectly good couch in the living room he could have taken instead. In any case, he left the thrown-together mess to go poke around and see if Summer was done yet. Normally she'd just come to his room when she was ready, but he wasn't sure now given the new set-up and how much closer everyone else's rooms were now than they were in the tower.
He ended up finding her back in the kitchen, doing the dishes of all things. There wasn't a dishwasher, so she was having to do it the hard way, and as he approached her from behind, he asked quietly, "Do you really need to do this now?"
"No," she sighed, scrubbing the pot she'd made dinner in. "Everyone offered to do it but I insisted."
"Why?" he asked, reaching her side and turning to lean his back to the counter while she looked up at him briefly and shrugged.
"Because I'm... me," she muttered. "I feel like dead weight sometimes. Living with these super important people who don't need to help me so much but do. So I try to make sure and do what I can, which is pretty much this," she gestured to the sink and kitchen in general.
"You're not dead weight," he replied. "Pretty sure I have that title."
She snorted a little and looked at him in disbelief. "Seriously? You?"
He shrugged and then furrowed his brow a little before glancing down and saying, "Actually, I need to talk to you about something that's sort of... about that."
"You mean the thing that's had you in super deep thought all night?" she smiled, turning off the water and grabbing a towel to dry her hands.
He nodded, then added more quietly, "Yeah, but before that, I wanted to ask you if you could... um..." He trailed off a bit, suddenly unsure how to word his next question. "If you could... stay with me tonight. Not all night. But until I fall asleep."
She blinked in surprise at first, then quickly nodded and said, "Yeah! You know I will."
He nodded. "With David and the changes I wasn't sure if you could."
"He actually fell asleep okay tonight, which was surprising, and he's eating unlike the last time we had to move unexpectedly," she replied. "He might wake up in the middle of the night, though, so I can't stay all night with you."
"I know," he nodded again. "It's just easier to fall asleep with you there."
She smiled softly at that and said, "Yeah, same here. But with you. Not me, obviously."
He grinned at the unnecessary clarification, and then a few moments later they were walking quietly to his "room", which Summer had not seen yet. Once they were in the door, however, she stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the blankets and pillows on the floor as if they were the most offensive thing she'd ever seen in her life.
Then she whipped her head around and asked - or rather demanded - "You don't have a bed?!"
A little wide-eyed at her sudden outrage, he tried to shrug her off and say, "I don't really need one for right now. In a few days I can -"
"Yes you do need a bed!" she argued vehemently. "Can't you at least sleep on the couch until we can go get you a bed?"
He hesitated before replying, "The living room feels too... open. I wouldn't be able to sleep there."
She sighed and then turned her critical eye back on the blankets, appearing to unhappily deliberate for a moment before springing into action and picking up the blankets and re-arranging them into something that was apparently more acceptable to her. "I wish you would have said something. I would have gone out and gotten you a bed. You do need a bed. Especially with your sleep problems. How could you think -"
Gently, he caught her arm, and she dropped one of the blankets as he turned her to face him. "Hey. You don't need to do that."
"Do what?"
He thought a moment, and then replied, "Worry about me. I'm fine. It's just sleeping on the floor."
She frowned, even as his hand left her arm to take hers and entwine their fingers before she shook her head and said, "Well, sorry if I think that you've been through enough in your life that the least you should always have is a decent bed to sleep in every night."
Finding her as humorous as he did utterly wonderful, he gave her a short kiss and then almost forgot what he still wanted to talk to her about until she drew a breath and then turned around, saying, "All right, let me test this and see if it's acceptable..."
He watched as she got down on the floor and slid under the top layer of blankets that she'd fluffed and arranged very meticulously, and he waited for the verdict as she laid her head on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling for a moment.
"Eh. It's not the worst, but still not very good."
"I'll live," he replied dismissively. Then he took his shirt off, and she watched quietly from the floor as he undressed, making no effort to hide her ogling but also playing with the ends of her hair with one hand as she did. It was a nervous habit he'd noticed, the way some people bit their nails or chewed pen cap, and he kept it to himself how much he liked that he still somehow made her nervous.
She turned on her side when he slid next to her, settling down within the blankets and finding the set-up perfectly adequate to sleep on. Then he drew her close with his right arm, careful to be mindful of her bruised ribs as he held her and felt an immediate sense of drowsiness set in behind his eyes. He was truly exhausted after the prior day and night, and having not slept at all, but her voice nudged him back to wakefulness. "So... tell me what's going on."
He opened his eyes and drew breath before telling her everything. She listened intently and watched with her head on his chest as he explained what Steve had offered and why he was conflicted about it, his uncertainty and anxiety, and she waited until he'd gotten it all out to say a single word.
When she did speak, it was simple and to the point, but also gentle. "I think you should do it. I'll be a nervous wreck and worry the whole time, but it's... what you do. Or what you did, anyway. I think you need to do it."
"You do?" he asked quietly, looking down at her.
She nodded. "Yeah. And honestly... with everywhere I go blowing up all the time, I might feel a little safer if I knew that you and Captain America were out there fighting together to stop it from happening again. You're... amazing, and you have gifts that can help protect a whole lot of people. I can't be selfish and let how much I'm gonna worry stop me from telling you to do it. I just want you to do whatever you want to do. And I can tell you want to go. You're just scared."
"Last time I led them back to you and almost killed you both," he muttered, scowling at the memory.
"You didn't mean to," she replied. "And you won't do it again. I have faith in you."
While those words would mean something to anyone, for him, they were especially meaningful and not to be taken the slightest bit lightly. It was a little bit easier to believe that he could do it, and possibly anything, when she told him so with such conviction. And she wasn't one to blindly throw her faith around in people who didn't deserve it or had not earned it. Every bit of faith and trust that she had in him had been earned and tested already in ways he wished it hadn't, but it had, and so when she spoke such words, he felt them in ways he felt little else.
His sleepiness returning a bit, he leaned down and kissed her lips softly, just once. He was tired, and he knew that she was tired, and the warmth of her words and feelings were aiding in his inner call to sleep. But, instead of laying her head back down and closing her eyes, she kissed him again, a little more strongly than he had her. He shifted just a bit so that he was fully facing her on his side, and since his right arm was still holding her, his metal hand slid into her hair and gently angled her head as he deepened the kiss, letting his tongue slide softly but skillfully against hers. That was when she let out a little moan, quiet and airy but enough to make his own breath hitch and his drowsiness suddenly disappear.
He opened his eyes as they drew away by an inch or two, and she looked up at him with "her look" that she was still blissfully unaware of. It was a subtle, somewhat shy sort of look, but he knew what it meant when she looked at him with her eyes slightly darkened and her lips parted just enough to let him know that her breathing was getting heavy. She only looked at him that way for a few seconds that time before she kissed him again, her hand leaving his chest to go to his stubbled jaw and then his hair as she kissed him deeply and full of intentions that he mirrored instantly. She did nothing to hide the effect that he had on her, but sometimes he wondered if he knew how mutual it was, and how quickly she could light him up.
His metal hand had wandered down to brush over her chest through the too-big shirt she had on, but as soon as he'd taken a handful of the warm flesh in his grasp, she suddenly broke away and said breathlessly, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry - I know you're tired and you didn't sleep last night, I'll stop."
Staring at her in sudden confusion and mild horror, he shook his head as vehemently as she had shook hers at his lack of a bed and said, "No, don't stop."
"Really?" she asked, studying him briefly to make sure that he meant it before a small smile spread across her lips and she added, "Hey, I'm usually the one saying that."
He grinned back briefly before taking her lips again, his hold on her tightening briefly before she stiffened a little and he remembered her injury. He pulled his arm away and muttered quickly, "Sorry, I'm sorry. I almost forgot."
"It's okay," she assured him, though she did become a bit pained looking as she added, "I did too. I don't think this can't not hurt a little."
He stared at her for a moment before shaking his head and murmuring, "Turn over, your back to me." She only hesitated a moment before doing as he said, and after he slid his arm around her waist and kept all points of contact away from her bruises, he kissed her neck and pulled her all the way against him, asking quietly, "Better?"
"Mm hmm," she answered a bit faintly as he continued raining kisses along her neck while she reached back and tangled her fingers in his hair. "Sure you wouldn't rather sleep?"
He chuckled a little and ran through a number of potential responses in his head, eventually settling on, "Watching you bite a pillow to stay quiet is better."
Her tortured groan in response made his grin grow all the more. "We really do need to be quiet this time," she said. "These walls are -"
"I know," he murmured against her ear as he undressed her as best as he could in their current position. "I'd worry more about me than you."
She groaned again at those words, and for other reasons, eventually muttering, "I think we're doomed to just always be the worst roommates ever."
He grinned. Really, all things considered, he could live with that.
A/N: Leeeetle bit of a filler here, but a necessary one, and the next couple chapters are some of my favorites :D I had been dying to get everybody on the farm for quite awhile, so getting to this point was rather exciting lol. Despite the fact that I'm sort of utterly ignoring Ultron and that entire plot line here in this story (since I'd end up getting it wrong anyway and don't feel like waiting for May), I did take great inspiration from the teasers about Clint's farm, and hey, if nothing else, it's a good temporary change of scenery. And there's lots of good stuff coming up next. Like I said, some of my favorites so far :D Thank you all, as always, for reading and leaving feedback, and even if you don't, I equally thank you anyway, and I will be back again as usual next week, this time with a very non-filler chapter :D