Chapter Text
In the days of old, it was said there were beings – humans – who could call forth dragons to do their bidding. A rare trait, they would only come up from a handful of families every few generations. It is said that all those who controlled dragons had two things in common, though: wisdom and purity in power – not purity in the sense of true good, but in doing what must be done for the least negative impact on the world.
At least, they would have those in common if they weren’t mere legend. This is modern day, the year 2015, in the good ol’ United States of America. Tony Stark is one of the richest men in the world, the Middle East is in turmoil, and dragons don’t exist outside of CGI and folklore.
It’s a late-June morning in Nashville, Tennessee and Clint Barton is cursing the day he decided to do outdoor archery camps for kids in the middle of summer. The news channel on the television had just stated that the day would have an expected high of 92 degrees. Grabbing more ice out of the freezer to put in the cooler for drinks, he made sure there was extra sunscreen packed (goodness knows parents always forget to send sunscreen on the first day of camp) before grabbing his keys and heading out the door, locking it behind him. Clint carefully tottered down the path towards the camp office, with cooler and bag in hand, then left the two items outside the entrance to the office before opening the door and walking into the wonderfully air conditioned room.
James “Bucky” Barnes looked up from his stack of papers as the archery instructor walked into their shared office. “Dude, it’s only seven-thirty and I’m already starting to sweat. Whose idea was it to move to this damn armpit, anyways?” Clint complained as he collapsed into his desk chair, head falling onto the tabletop. Bucky, in turn, flipped him off with a shiny metal hand, as it was in fact Clint’s idea to move to Nashville after leaving the circus.
“It’s such a beautiful area!” Clint had said as they sat in a grungy diner, deciding where to settle. “And it’s metropolitan, big, but also feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere without having to go too far.”
Bucky grunted in response, mouth full of cheeseburger, while he pulled up information on the climate in central Tennessee, “It says here that the climate is fairly temperature, though humid. There’s a few weeks a year where it’s more extreme temperatures, but not bad.”
“Well, the prices aren’t bad, and I’m sure we can deal with the weather,” Clint decided, “let’s do it.” Bucky sighed and nodded his head, knowing that Clint was going to complain the first time it got too hot or cold.
Clint Barton had indeed complained the first time, and every time after that.
It was interesting, though, sharing the property they co-owned between their two careers, but it worked. As long as Clint kept his students’ arrows within the archery ranges, Bucky worked to keep his animals away from the archery ranges. Rehabilitation would be set back by getting attacked by arrows, after all.
It was also interesting to see Bucky work with the rehabilitation animals. He was a tall, imposing man with a bionic arm and wild, shoulder-length hair; he’s even scared a few of Clint’s younger archery students when they first started. But when he would get a new animal in, wild or domesticated, scared and broken, his appearance didn’t seem to matter. If he were another man of similar stature, the animals would be frightened and uncooperative; with Bucky, it was almost like he spoke their language, or they were in a trance. It was an amazing event to watch unfold.
Clint had once decided to watch Bucky work with a rescued bait-dog from a dog-fighting ring. It had been picked up by a no-kill shelter that believed in the dog for some reason, but it had gone through six trainers already with no good results. As soon as the dog, a small pit bull, came out of the truck, shivering and whining, Bucky led her into a fenced enclosure a quarter-acre in size and let her loose. The person from the shelter dropping the dog off gave him a crazy look as they questioned his methods, letting an unpredictable dog off leash and without a muzzle. They were quickly shushed, however, as Bucky squatted inside the enclosure, a few feet from the gate, and let her sniff around. He did not pressure her into doing anything, but left his stance relaxed and quiet for ten minutes before crawling over to the gate and slowly exiting.
“What are you doing?” The shelter worker hissed, appalled at his tactics. “We aren’t paying you to just leave her alone in a dog run!” Deep breath. “The shelter needs to see progress within two weeks, or we take her to someone else and we make sure others know you don’t live up to your reputation.” The worker turned around and left before Bucky could get a response in edgewise, getting into the driver’s seat of the truck and starting it up before roaring out down the driveway, obviously ignoring the property’s requested five miles-per-hour speed limit.
When the shelter worker returned in two weeks to check on the dog (Bucky was honestly surprised there weren’t more frequent visits if they cherished their dogs so much), she was almost a completely new dog. Being dubbed Mila, as Bucky couldn’t continue working with a nameless dog, she now let herself be leashed and pet on the shoulder, as well as coming to the general location of Bucky when her name was called. Pleased with the outcome, the worker left with a promise to be back in two more weeks. At the end of those two weeks, Bucky let the shelter keep half of his pay (“I pretty much adopted her after those first two weeks, Clint”), and ended up adopting Mila. His reputation was intact (and boosted), and Clint was more than impressed with the talent of his friend.
Olympic Archer Clint Barton stumbled into the kitchen after a long day of teaching children how to not stab their eyes out with arrows, and to maybe send those same arrows kind of towards a designated target. It was literally easier when he was still living with the travelling circus. The circus was also much less deadly, apparently, as long as you weren’t a member of the Barnes family. He threw himself into a chair at the kitchen table, knocking over an empty glass left there this morning and barely managing to keep it from rolling off the table onto the ground.
A small hiss sounded at the clatter of the glass, but Clint originally paid it no mind. It wasn’t the first time that Bucky had brought a snake or lizard into the house. “Please tell me you’re making food for both of us.” It was muffled by the fact his face was pressed into the tabletop, but Bucky had had enough experience to decipher his housemate.
“Sorry, man. I only got out enough beef for the two of us.”
“But it is just the two of us-“ Clint’s head lifted as he protested, but he was cut off as he saw what was draped over Bucky’s shoulder. He rubbed his eyes rapidly, wondering if he was experiencing extreme heat exhaustion and, thus, hallucinations. Because dragons weren’t real, so why was there a dragon sitting on his housemate’s shoulder, huffing a small puff of fire in indignation. “What the FUCK is that and why is it on your shoulder?!”
The human-turned-dragon perch turned around, eyes wide. “I can explain.”