winterhawkkisses:

Clint grunts softly over comms, barely audible, and Bucky takes off running. 

“Bucky?” Steve yells; his shield flies back to him and he lets the momentum spin him, staring after Bucky like a lost kid. Bucky ignores him. Natasha’s nearby, Tony’s on high, no one’s gonna die without him. 

No. Someone. Someone might die without him. 

Clint requested anaesthetic, once, when Bruce was using a needle to get at a splinter. Clint whined for hours one time about stubbing his little toe. Clint decided he couldn’t do anything except sprawl across Bucky and watch cartoons that time he had a bruise the size of a dime on the inside of his thigh.

Once things’re safe, once he’s satisfied he doesn’t have to go save anyone’s ass, Clint will bitch and moan and exaggerate a limp – and the second one of the team is in danger he will fight his way off a damn hospital bed to get them safe. 

“Buck?” Clint says, and his voice is a little strained but not so you’d notice. “Fight’s that-a-way.” 

Bucky doesn’t have the breath to reply, crashing through the door of the building and running for the stairs, pushing every muscle until he’s burning all over. 

“Good shot,” Tony says dryly. 

Steve’s crisp voice, “Hawkeye, are you -” is cut off by Natasha, sharp, scared. 

“Clint?”

Bucky shoves through the roof access and pounds across the rooftop, and Clint’s giving it his best fucking shot – because every shot’s his best fucking shot, that’s Clint, that’s who he is – but he can barely stay upright any more, his grip on his bow failing and his side slick with blood. 

“Hey,” he says, when Bucky reaches him, and he crashes down onto his knees, placing his bow carefully on the floor with shaking hands. “Sorry.” 

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, and presses the quickest possible off-center kiss to his wryly upturned lips, heaves him upright and over his shoulder and across the rooftop and down the stairs almost without breathing. (Clint’s still breathing. Clint’s biting back groans with every step, and Bucky hates every tiny almost-hidden noise.)

Bruce is in the ‘jet and does what he can with the supplies they have. Clint’s terrifyingly pale and still, and Bucky should return to the fight but it sounds like it’s wrapping up and he can’t move. 

“I’m, um,” Bruce says, pushing his glasses up and leaving a bloody fingerprint on the lens, “he’ll be fine, I’m fairly sure. The response time was excellent, so he’ll -”

He’s interrupted by the team pouring in from outside, and in the chaos Clint’s eyes open, fuzzy for a moment or two but then visibly flickering round in an efficient visual check of their status. Then he catches Bucky’s eye and his mouth tip-tilts up into the tiniest of grins. 

“Fuckin’ ow,” he says.