Chapter Text
[ID: The words "My Heart Will Be Your Home" appear in golden cursive handwriting, surrounded by photos of Garrett Hedlund as Clint Barton, a small white kitten sleeping on a toy, a young girl with blonde curls looking at a stuffed narwhal toy, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, a one-eyed golden retriever dog, and a man performing on aerial silks. In the photo of Clint Barton, his shirt is unbuttoned partway and golden writing is visible on the skin where his shirt collar gapes open.]
MAY 2012
The legs of the kitchen stool scrape along the floorboards as he pulls it out, leaving scratches that Clint is too tired to care about. He shoots a guilty glance at Bobbi, but apparently she’s too tired to complain about them either.
He settles onto the seat, running a hand over his face, several days of stubble prickling his palm. Bobbi sits on the other side of the kitchen island. She’s wearing the same shirt she’s worn for the past three days, stains forming topographic layers at this point. Clint pulls his mug of coffee closer and gulps it while it’s still scaldingly hot, hoping it will jolt him into a higher state of consciousness, but as exhausted as he is it’s probably just going to make him shaky.
The mission file lies on the counter directly between the two of them, and they both stare at it for a long moment.
“How about we flip for it?” Bobbi says.
Clint raises his head from his coffee cup, already starting to grin at the joke. He freezes, the smile falling from his face.
She isn’t kidding. She’s already got a quarter between her fingers, offering it to him.
He loves her, he truly does, but in that moment he realizes, suddenly and irrevocably, just how little she knows him.
“Okay,” he says slowly, his stomach sinking. “Heads or tails?”
“Heads,” she chooses.
He nods. And then Clint, who has been able to make any coin land exactly how he wants it to since he was ten years old, sends the quarter hurtling through the air.
It feels like the longest moment of his life, the coin flashing silver as it arcs up toward the ceiling and then falls. It feels like the beginning of the end.
He hears it land, ringing loud against the countertop, but his eyes never leave Bobbi’s face, and so he sees the flash of delight — of relief — that crosses her face before she schools her expression and looks up.
“Looks like I’m packing my bags,” she says, a lightness to her voice that he hasn’t heard in damn near a year now.
“Looks like,” he agrees.
She pecks him on the cheek, but he can tell that in her mind she is already halfway out the door. “Project Pegasus,” she muses, picking up the file and brushing a finger over the title. “Joint Dark Energy Mission.”
“Sounds fun.”
It comes out hoarser than he means it to and she stops, turning back towards him, her brow furrowed. “You sure this is okay?”
“‘Course it is,” he says, forcing a smile. It probably comes across a little too flashy — the empty showman’s smile that is a remnant of his circus days and slips out whenever he’s trying to hide how he’s feeling — but Bobbi doesn’t seem to notice. “Don’t worry about the two of us. We’ll be fine.”
We’ll be fine, he repeats to himself, trying to believe it, as she turns and walks away.