Chapter Text
It’s not a regular thing, him and Jason. It’s not a thing at all, and Clint keeps reminding himself not to think about it like that. It’s just that, every now and then, when he picks up a job in Gotham, he’ll check in with Jason, just to see him. And Jason never tells him to fuck off, so Clint keeps coming back. Because he never learns. Because, no matter how many times he’s taught, he still hears You can stay as Yes, please stay.
In the beginning, he haunts rooftops, wanders the skyline at night, puts himself where Red Hood is likely to find him.
“Hey,” Jason says, the first time Clint sees him after the night they met. He pulls his mask off, and his hair falls across his forehead, black and curling, sweat-drenched at the roots. The grin he gives him could break hearts at fifty paces, and here’s Clint, like an idiot, standing at point blank range.
God, he’s doomed.
“Looking for me?” Jason prompts, when Clint doesn’t say anything.
“Maybe,” Clint says, trying for cool. “Yeah,” he says, immediately afterward, because he’s not cool. He’s never been cool. Not in his whole damn life. He points at Jason’s helmet. “But, if you’re busy, I can--”
“Not busy anymore,” Jason says. It’s nice, that edge of interest in his voice. He sounds like he’s happy to see him. “Patrol’s over.” Jason gestures down at the alley, at a motorcycle waiting below. “Wanna get a beer?”
“Yeah,” Clint says, shoulders relaxing. “Sounds good.”
The next time he’s in town, Clint tracks down the bike and then waits for Jason to come back to it. The morning after that, when Jason wakes him up by working a line of kisses and bites from his collarbone to the edge of his jaw, he gets Jason’s phone number.
“Just call me, alright?” Jason says, when Clint stares down at the number, written out in bold sharp-edged handwriting on the back of a crumpled takeout receipt. “You’re too pretty to stand on street corners waiting for me. Someone’s gonna steal you.”
Clint rubs at his face to hide his blush and wishes he didn’t blush at all. He hasn’t seen Jason blush, not once, and the things Jason says should make anyone blush. They can make Clint blush for days afterward. The things Jason says can send Clint’s blood running several different directions at once, and he tries not to think about them when he’s working. Or in public.
“Don’t be an asshole,” Clint says, but he folds the paper up carefully and slips it into his wallet.
Jason stares at him for a second with that pinched, skeptical look he gets whenever he hears something he doesn’t like. “I’m not being an asshole,” he says. “You’re fucking gorgeous. Don’t stand on street corners in Gotham after dark. That’s a good way to get less pretty real fast.”
“I’m gonna take a shower,” Clint says.
Jason sighs like Clint’s the one being weird and difficult, but he climbs in the shower about two minutes after Clint, so maybe he doesn’t mind all that much after all.
Clint calls a few weeks later, and Jason answers on the second ring, with a short, unfriendly, “What?”
“Huh,” Clint says. “That’s how you answer the phone?”
“Clint?” Jason’s tone changes, drops to neutral. Or what Clint had thought was his neutral, until he heard the way Jason greets other people. “Sorry. Didn’t know the number. Thought you were someone else. You in town?”
“For a couple days,” Clint says. “Gotta work tonight, but then I’ll be around.”
“Okay,” Jason says. “You gonna stop by after? I can leave the door unlocked if it’ll be late.”
“In Gotham?” Clint says. “You’re gonna leave the door unlocked in Gotham?”
“Sweetheart,” Jason says, with a laugh in his voice, “anyone ballsy enough to come after me in this town isn’t gonna be stopped by a fucking deadbolt.”
He doesn’t mean anything by it. Clint remembers Jason called someone sweetheart in the bar, on that first night, and then he’d smashed that guy’s face into a pool table, so clearly it’s not an actual term of endearment. It’s not a pet name. It doesn’t mean anything.
“I’ll be by,” he says. He hadn’t planned on it. But he doesn’t care what his plans were. “Lock your door, though. I’ll pick it when I get there.”
“Look at you,” Jason says, sounding amused and maybe pleased. “Guess I’ll see you later then.”
“Sure,” Clint says, and hangs up before he says something stupid like Looking forward to it or It’ll be good to see you again.
After that, Clint always calls, and they plan to meet at Jason’s apartment, or at some bar, or in a series of 24-hour diners. Jason’s only late once, and Clint isn’t worried, because it’s not his place to worry about him, but he goes looking anyway, just to pass the time.
He finds Jason in an alley, fighting three men. All three of them have knives, but Jason’s fighting with his fists, and his body armor is good enough that there isn’t much blood. But there is blood, and it bothers Clint, seeing it.
Clint drops all three of them, arrows punched right into their hearts. He waits on the rooftop, catching his breath, while Jason collects the arrows and then climbs the fire escape to meet him.
“Hey,” Clint says, when Jason steps onto the roof, arrows in one hand and helmet in the other. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your work. But the bars close in an hour, you know? Kinda want to get a beer.”
“Fuck the bars,” Jason says. He walks right up to him, pins him against the nearest gargoyle, and Clint can feel the warmth of him, through all the leather and body armor he wears. “I’ve got beer at home,” he says, mouth right against his throat.
“Shit,” Clint says, tipping his head back to give him more room. “Okay, sure. We can go wherever you want.”
So it’s not a thing, but it’s a recognizable pattern. Every time he calls, Jason lets him in. They never say goodbye, because Clint always leaves when Jason isn’t looking, sneaks out while he’s in the shower or disappears after Jason goes out on patrol. And that’s shitty, probably, just leaving like that, but Jason never calls him on it, so maybe he doesn’t mind.
It’s not a thing. It’s nothing.
It’s still the closest thing to an actual relationship that Clint’s had since he left the circus. Unless he counts Agent Coulson, who’s been dogging him for the past two years. Which Clint sure as hell does not, because he’s running low on scraps of dignity but isn’t completely out yet.
Whatever they have, it doesn’t explain why Clint’s here, standing outside of Jason’s apartment at a truly unholy hour of the morning, pounding his bloody fist against the door.
“Fuck,” he says, quietly, to himself, and tries not to sway in place.
“Yeah?” Jason yells from the other side of the door, and Clint’s so damn relieved he almost falls into it.
He stops knocking and brings his hand to his side, under his jacket. “Jay?”
He hears the locks rattling back, and then the door swings open, and Jason’s standing there, in jeans and no shirt, looking pissed.
“I’m sorry,” Clint says, on reflex. He shouldn’t be here. “Jason, I’m sorry.”
Jason grabs him, hauling him inside and kicking the door shut behind him. Clint doesn’t fight him, even when Jason pushes him against the wall, shoves the blade of his forearm into Clint’s throat, and grabs his wrist, pulling it up, slamming it against the wall and then visibly double-taking.
Oh, Clint thinks. He thought I was reaching for a gun.
Clint flexes his hand. Some of the blood rolls down from his palm, catches against Jason’s grip.
“What the fuck?” Jason breathes out, staring at Clint’s empty hand, and the blood coating it.
Clint wheezes a little, breathless from being dragged around, but he holds still, doesn’t fight. Jason could kick Clint’s ass on his best day, and this is a spectacularly bad one. “Hey,” Clint says, “can we not? Don’t mind getting a little rough, but not tonight, okay?”
Jason drops his forearm away from Clint’s throat and tugs his jacket back. Clint keeps his eyes pinned on the opposite wall while Jason looks at the bloody, meaty mess of Clint’s side.
“What the fuck?” Jason repeats.
“Sorry,” Clint says, again. He closes his eyes, tries to catch his breath. He’s panting and feels dizzy. He’s been lightheaded for the past three blocks. “I just thought—hey, can I stay here? For a little bit? Sleep it off? Won’t get your sheets dirty. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
Jason drags the jacket off of him, throws it on the ground, and then peels his shirt up. It sticks to the smaller cuts, the ones that have started clotting over. Clint bites back a pained noise, thunks his head into the wall to center himself.
“Shit,” Jason says, softly. “Shit, Clint, what the hell?”
“I know.” Clint takes a breath. It comes out wet, sounds like he’s about to cry, and he clears his throat. He wants to tell Jason – I’m not gonna cry, I’m just swallowing blood – but it’s probably better to just pretend it never happened at all. “It’s pretty bad, right? I didn’t have time to look.”
Which is a lie, that last part. He damn sure had time to look. He looked plenty.
Jason stares at him for a second and then ducks his head, shoves Clint’s shirt up higher so he can see everything Clint’s done to himself.
He’s stupid. He’s so fucking stupid. What the hell did he expect was going to happen?
“Who did this?” Jason looks back up at him. There’s an expression on his face that Clint’s never seen before. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up, makes him feel like some small thing, trapped and vulnerable. “Who the fuck did this to you?”
Clint shakes his head. He may be stupid, but he’s not a damn idiot. This happened in Jason’s town. He’s going to feel some kind of responsible. And Clint doesn’t want him going after the tracksuits just because Clint’s incapable of noticing when he’s being drawn into a trap.
And anyway, the immediate problem’s taken care of. The immediate problem is just another batch of dead bodies cooling on concrete.
“No,” he says, head tipped back, closing his eyes again and hoping that’ll hide the lie. “Nah, don’t worry. I got ‘em. I took care of it.”
Jason makes a faint, disbelieving noise. “Then why the hell were you running, Clint? You took care of it, but you ran all the way here? Didn’t stop at an ER? What the fuck is this?”
“Setup,” Clint says, because at least that part’s true. “I took a job. It was a trap. Had to get kinda creative about the exit, and then this guy, this fucking agent—he’s been following me. Almost grabbed me. So I just-- I came here.”
He takes a hard breath in, keeps his eyes shut tight. “Shit. I probably fucking led him here. I’m sorry. I know better. I do, but--”
“Shut up,” Jason says, harsh, loud. Clint shuts his mouth so fast his teeth click. “Shut the fuck up, Clint. Stop being sorry. For fuck’s sake.”
Clint blinks his eyes open, tries to get a read on the look on Jason’s face. It’s closed-off, empty in a way that Jason doesn’t usually get. Not with him.
Clint’s seen that expression a couple of times, though. When Jason’s ducking into hallways, phone to his ear. Or once, when Clint was tracking Red Hood, and he found him yelling at Batman on a rooftop.
Jason’s staring at the wound on Clint’s side. A frown settles over his face, and then deepens. He takes a sharp, surprised breath.
“Goddamn it, Clint,” Jason says, low and angry. Clint wondered how long it would take him to notice. That gash in his side, it’s no bullet wound. It’s not the clean, straight slash of a knife wound either. It’s a puncture wound, and the thing that ripped into him is still there. Stuck, protruding, sticking right out of him. “How deep does this go?”
Jason holds his hand over the metal, like he’s thinking about yanking it out. Clint tenses up, can’t help it, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Oh,” Clint says, on the exhale, trying not to think of how much it had hurt, when he’d tried to wiggle it out earlier, “pretty deep.”
“Shit.” Jason eye’s eyes flash back up to meet Clint’s. “You need a doctor.”
“No,” Clint says, shaking his head. “It’s fine. Right? It’ll be fine. Fuck doctors. Just get me alcohol and some pliers. And maybe, if you could just—if you’ll hold a flashlight---”
Jason scoffs. “The fuck is wrong with you? Clint, it’s okay. I’ll just---”
“Fine,” Clint says. “Just give me a flashlight, and I’ll hold it with my fucking teeth.”
“I know a guy,” Jason says, over the top of him. “I know a guy, and I’ll call him. Okay? He’ll come here, and he’ll look. And then, if he says hospital, I’m taking you.”
Clint swallows. He’s leaning pretty hard into the wall, but he’s still vertical. He hates doctors, but here, in Jason’s apartment, he thinks it wouldn’t bother him so much. At least it’s not a fucking hospital. “A doctor?”
“Yeah,” Jason says. “ER doc. Works the fights, sometimes. He’ll look.”
Clint blinks and wavers a little bit. Jason steadies him with a hand on his shoulder, and Clint almost topples himself all over again, leaning into Jason’s grip. Normally, he tries not to be so desperate, but things are starting to get a little hysterical, in his head.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, yeah.”
Jason nods. His eyes are focused on Clint’s face, eyebrows pulled together. He looks troubled and serious and concerned. “Okay,” he says, “c’mon. Let’s get you sitting down and then--”
There’s a knock at the door. Sudden and loud. An efficient, no-nonsense rap-rap-rap. It screams cop so loud that the silence that follows doesn’t even matter. Clint knows exactly who’s on the other side of that door.
“Oh shit,” Clint says, screwing his eyes shut and thunking his head back against the wall. “Fuck. I brought him here. I’m sorry. I brought him right to you.”
Jason breathes out. His hand is curled around Clint’s shoulder, and he’s staring at his door, an expression on his face that Clint can’t quite puzzle out. His mouth is pressed flat, and there’s a distant kind of focus in his eyes, like he’s pulling variables apart, trying to find a solution where x doesn’t equal you’re fucked.
“I’m sorry,” Clint says, again.
Like Jason doesn’t have enough trouble on his own. Like he isn’t the Goddamn Red Hood, an actual, no-shit hero. Like he needs a federal agent showing up at his door when he has half an arsenal of stolen weapons lying around and a wanted fugitive bleeding out in his living room.
“Shush,” Jason says, voice muted, attention elsewhere.
“Shit,” Clint says. His heart feels pinned against his spine, fluttering like a trapped butterfly. “I’m sorry,” he says. Just one more time. Because he is. And it doesn’t matter, doesn’t change anything, doesn’t do any Goddamn good. But he is. He’s so fucking sorry for this. “I’ll go. I’ll talk to him. I won’t--”
“Stop,” Jason says. His eyes snap back to Clint’s face, and there’s a beat of that hazy distraction and then suddenly he’s focused completely. His eyes spark with something that moves too fast to track and then he softens, all at once.
“Oh, fuck you,” he murmurs, rueful and amused. “I’m not giving you to anybody.”
Clint opens his mouth, but there’s nothing in his head. Just a desperate ache in his chest and a fear so sharp that it feels like it’s going to cut itself out of him.
He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to go to prison. He doesn’t want to hurt Jason. He can’t, for the life of him, rank those in any meaningful order.
“Come here,” Jason says, and then he kisses him. For no reason that Clint can parse. Leans in and presses his lips against Clint’s, sweet and gentle, in a way he’s never kissed him before.
And then Jason picks him up, hands hooked behind Clint’s thighs, and he’s careful, slow and deliberate in his movements, so it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it could. But it still hurts so damn much that things smear together in Clint’s head, and he isn’t fully present again until Jason’s laying him down in the bathtub.
There’s another knock at the door. Louder this time. The door rattles against the frame.
Jason’s putting a gun in his hand.
And, God, Clint hates guns. But he left everything behind. His bow, his bag, his wallet. The key to Jason’s place. Everything, all of it. Every damn thing he owns that he isn’t wearing right now.
“Here,” Jason says, carefully folding Clint’s hand around the gun. “You can use this, right?”
“Point and pull,” Clint says. “Easy.”
“You fucking snob,” Jason says. There’s a smile on his face, but Clint can’t find it in his eyes.
“Jay,” Clint says, “get me up. I gotta deal with this.”
“Sweetheart,” Jason says, hand curling around Clint’s cheek, “you’ve lost too much blood to get it up.”
Clint closes his eyes. “I’ll deal with him. I can.”
Jason hums and checks Clint’s grip on the gun. “If they get past me, just shoot the fuck out of them. If you run out of bullets, there’s another gun under the sink.”
Clint shakes his head. His eyes are still closed. He should fix that. “Let’s go out the window,” he mumbles. “Let’s just run.”
There’s a blur of warmth on his forehead. He feels Jason pushing his hair out of his face. “Oh, sure,” Jason says. “I’d like to see you sprint five fucking feet right now.”
Clint breathes. He feels dizzy. He feels drunk. The spinny, sick kind of drunk. “Then you go. Leave me the guns. Get the hell out. Go out the window, Jay, c’mon. Please.”
Jason laughs. There’s something skeptical in it, but he still sounds inexplicably fond. “Stop pulling this bullshit martyr act, you asshole. You’re much hotter without it.”
Clint reaches for him, blind and clumsy but fast, too fast for Jason to dodge. He gets his bloody hand around Jason’s wrist and pulls him down, pulls him close, until he’s kneeling on the bathroom floor. And then Clint wraps his hand around the back of Jason’s neck and makes himself sit up, gritting his teeth against the lightning strike of nauseating pain that follows.
“Don’t get hurt,” he says. He doesn’t recognize his own voice. Low and gravely, forced through clenched teeth. “Don’t get hurt because I’m an idiot.”
That knock comes again. Rap-rap-rap. The door whacks against the frame. A voice calls out, and Clint knows that voice, knows the man waiting for Jason behind it. The agent. Phil Coulson.
“I’m not gonna get hurt,” Jason tells him. It sounds like a promise. And when he kisses Clint again, it tastes like one, too. Heavy and intense, coppery with blood. “I’ll be right back. Don’t bleed out Put some pressure on that, for fuck’s sake. This isn’t amateur hour.”
Jason pulls back with enough force that Clint has to let him go, and then he’s out of the bathroom and headed for the door, and Clint’s weak and alone, shivery and cold and getting colder.
The gun is heavy in his hand. His eyes won’t stay open.
No, he thinks. He tries to lever himself up. He hooks his elbow against the tub and pulls, but the muscles in his side seize and fail, and he falls back down, whacks his head against the edge. He wavers on the edge of consciousness, but he can’t hold it.
He goes limp and useless, doesn’t put pressure on a Goddamn thing.