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"Okay, this looks bad," Clint admits. He’s bleeding from a knife wound to the upper thigh and a through-and-through in his right shoulder. He had put a tourniquet on the former and was applying pressure against the latter.
Bucky gives him a look. Nowhere near the scathing level of Natasha’s looks but potent enough all the same. It’s a Red Room thing. “Not for nothin’, Barton, but this is the worst rescue I’ve ever had.”
"Worst, really? Weren’t you a Howling Commando? Weren’t you kidnapped by Red Skull?" Clint asks. There’s a wheeze to his voice Bucky doesn’t like, but Clint won’t thank him for pointing it out.
Instead, Bucky thinks back to that first moment of waking up to find Steve’s familiar blue eyes set in an unfamiliar face and watching Schmidt rip his own skin off and thinking ‘is that my future’ as he fingers the needle marks in his elbow. “Point,” he says, putting his hand on Clint’s and pushing harder against the shoulder wound. “Second worst.”
“Thank you,” Clint says, backhanding Bucky’s metal arm and immediately wincing. He shakes out his hand. “Ow, fuck, I keep forgetting.”
"Remind me to kiss it better later," Bucky says with a little grin that Clint returns, though a shade weaker. "Tell me you’ve got a plan for now."
The face Clint makes is not reassuring. “Depends on what you mean by plan. And what you mean by now.”
"Barton," Bucky warns, eyeing the vibrating metal door between them and the horde of A.I.M agents. They’ve been trying to cut their way through it for the past ten minutes. "I refuse to die in a bank vault older than me. I should at least die in a brand spanking new Stark Industry weapons vault going down in a hail of bullets."
What he really means is he refuses to let Clint die. Bucky has a mental list of people he is determined to keep alive and somehow, Barton’s crept his way to the top, alongside Nat and Steve and Sam. And now Clint’s bleeding out in front of Bucky’s very eyes, after trying to rescue Bucky from A.I.M’s evil clutches.
"Worst rescue," Bucky grumbles, casting his eyes about for something that might provide a big explosion.
Clint opens his mouth, no doubt to provide snark because what the hell else is he going to do, when the room—no, the whole building shudders. A second later Bucky hears a faint but familiar roar and the low whine of repulsor fire. “Cavalry?”
"Cavalry," Clint agrees and promptly passes out.
Nat finds them twenty minutes later; Bucky couched on the floor, gun trained on the door while Clint wheezes and rattles behind him. She holds up her empty hands and stays still even when he lowers the gun. She can probably see the Winter Soldier hiding just under the surface. Bucky shoves that part of him down even further and gestures her forward. “I think he’s trying to die on me,” Bucky says, shifting aside to let Nat get to Clint.
"What an asshole," Nat says. She pulls out her field med pack and starts dressing Clint’s wounds.
"Complete asshole," Bucky echoes. Then he stands up, and steps in front of Nat and Clint, ready to protect his teammate and his stupid, heroic boyfriend.