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. 

winterhawkkisses:

Bucky came home to find Clint about a foot from where he’d been when he left that morning, and the apartment in almost exactly the same state, too. He took a couple deep breaths, felt his teeth grinding together, tried to keep his voice accusation-free. 

“Not what I was hoping for, I admit,” he said, and Clint’s shoulders hunched in just a little. 

“Hey,” he said, and he sounded kinda heavy. Tired. 

“Should we just – not?” Bucky asked, and he honestly didn’t mean to sound so pissed, but out of all the many and varied emotions pissed was the easiest to deal with right now. 

At least Clint’s reaction was something. His head shot up, eyes wide, and he scrambled onto his knees. Supplication, that was the word for it, right? 

“Buck, no, please, I swear I want to do this, I just -” 

“You just got attached to this place, and I’m askin’ you to make these huge changes for me, and I get that -”

“Buck.” 

“- it’s too soon, or too much of a commitment, or -”

“Bucky.” 

“- maybe you’re just not that into the whole living together -”

“Buck, please.” 

Clint looked – genuinely distressed. Stupidly miserable. Beaten down by it, and that was enough to deflate all the pissed that Bucky could muster. 

“Aw, fuck, it’s okay, sweetheart,” he said, and sank down to the floor next to Clint, pulled him into an awkward halfway hug. “It’s okay if you wanna wait, I don’t -” 

“I couldn’t find the lid for the fuckin’ tupperware,” Clint said, which cut Bucky off at the knees. 

“…what?” 

Clint eased back from him, sat back on his heels, rubbed his forearm across his eyes like a little kid. 

“I found the box but I couldn’t find the goddamn lid,” he said, “and it just seemed – important, like that was the thing I needed to do most, and then -” he flailed, vaguely, in the direction of the kitchen island, “and then when I was looking for that I figured we needed some kinda bubblewrap for the mugs, right? So I went to the bodega on the corner, but they didn’t have packing tape, and then I knocked over the box with the silverware and – you’d cleaned them, I didn’t wanna start out with filthy fuckin’ forks so – and then they had to dry -” 

Bucky grabbed for Clint’s hands, which were telling a distressed story all their own. 

“And then it was fuckin’ four, somehow,” Clint said, hopeless, “and I knew you were coming back and -”

“It’s okay.” 

“- and I just started thinking about – this is what you’re signing up for. Fuck.” 

“Hey,” Bucky said. He reached out to cradle the back of Clint’s head, threaded his fingers through the hair there and let his thumb soothe back and forth. “Hey, baby -” 

“I’m sorry,” Clint mumbled, once Bucky had tugged him all the way in, forehead resting in the crook of Bucky’s neck where it fit just exactly right. “I’m a mess.” 

“I love you,” Bucky said, easy as breathing. “I love you, and this is nothing, and we’ll get in professional fuckin’ movers, okay? I don’t give a shit, I just wanna be with you.”