So thanks to Tales of Suspense, more peeps than ever are getting curious about Winterhawk – FINALLY GUYS, GOD HAVE YOU BEEN MISSING OUT. Following are some very obvious recs for the average newbie to this incredible ship.
(Any author who has been mentioned here who may be uncomfortable with it – lemme know and I’ll take your stuff off this list)
leave the gun on the table by Traincat
Bucky Barnes wakes up in the future, joins the Avengers, reunites with Steve, makes some new friends and some old enemies, gets called Robocop and tries to figure out the future, himself, and Clint Barton’s middle name – all while being haunted by his past, the things he can’t remember and the creeping suspicion that Black Widow knows something he doesn’t.
Clint Barton’s Super Secret Snipers’ Club by sara_holmes
Clint Barton’s Super Secret Snipers’ Club. (Invitation and pending mental health evaluation required.)
“When Steve brings Bucky back to the tower for the first time, Clint’s first thought is that Tony Stark’s pride and joy is quickly becoming a less of a very tall and expensive ‘fuck you’ in the faces of investors who don’t believe in self-sustaining energy, and more of a superhero rehabilitation center.”
Boyfriends, compromises and learning to like oneself.
Silhouette by mariana-oconnor
After a mission in Mexico goes wrong, SHIELD Agents Barnes and Rogers are given the job of hunting down the notorious Hawkeye and the Black Widow, the only problem being: no one even knows what they look like.
On the other side of the law, Clint’s enjoying messing with their new SHIELD shadows, especially seeing how close he can get to Agent Barnes without him realising, but he makes the mistake of getting attached, and that makes everything more complicated.
I’ll Keep You Safe Here With Me by sara_holmes
Yes, Clint is avoiding the other Avengers. No, he does not want to go back to New York. But then again, he didn’t exactly want to be kidnapped by the Winter Soldier either. Really, he just wants to go back to bed.
Trainwreck Through A Rear Window by flawedamythyst
Through Clint’s big main window, you could see straight across the street and into the apartment opposite, where a man was standing, staring at Clint as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. When he caught Clint’s eye, he just shook his head slowly.
The guy in the apartment opposite spends way too much time watching Clint make a fool of himself, which wouldn’t matter as much if he weren’t also smoking hot.
I Don’t Remember How by Ava_Kelly
“How the hell did they wash you,” he mutters as he raises from the chair.
“Hosed the blood down,” comes from behind as the Soldier follows him toward the bathroom.
Clint almost screams right then and there.
What do you Mean we Left Clint on Mars by sara_holmes
“What do you mean we left Clint on Mars?”
Cap’s incredulous voice cuts through the stunned silence of the cockpit, loud and shocked. He’s standing there with his cowl in hand, gaping at the holo-screen at the front of the jet. Next to him, Tony is standing with his hands on his head, mouth hanging open in a similar fashion. Over on the other side of the cockpit is Jane, who has both palms clapped across her mouth like she’s trying to hold back hysterical giggles.
For his part, Bucky is just staring at the screen like he can’t quite believe what’s going on.
under the mountain by flawedamythyst
Clint let out a long sigh. “So, to recap: we can’t get ourselves out, we can’t talk to the others, we may run out of air, my shoulder is dislocated and Doom is an asshole.”
Clint and Bucky get trapped in a cave.
Sing Me That Old Song Again by mariana_oconnor
After breaking free from Hydra’s control, James Barnes is keeping his head down. Captain America and his team are miles away, and he’s better off alone. He’s not expecting to be found by an Avenger. An Avenger who proves hard to get rid of.
Somehow, in spite of himself, Hawkeye ends up growing on him, and he realises that maybe alone isn’t the best way to be.
But as Bucky’s working out his own past, Hawkeye’s coming face to face with his. They never should have gone to Budapest.
The Chains that You Refuse by OddityBoddity
That time Bucky and Clint broke into Asgard.
Aaaand to round things up, visit the awesome blog of @winterhawkkisses if you’re ever in the mood of beautifully written drabble-y winterhawk goodness. I could really go on and on with recs, but I’ll stop myself for now (until further demand? 😉 ) I realise now we have a sore deficiency of comics Winterhawk, but hopefully that’ll change soon with how the winds are currently blowing ❤
Tag winterhawk fic
77.
“Bucky!” Steve yelled, poking at the eggs to see if it was time to toast. “Hey, Buck!”
“Shh!” Bucky hissed, closing his bedroom door careful and quiet behind him. “Can you keep your damn voice down?”
Bucky was not a stranger to crazy bed-hair, but this morning’s was particularly spectacular, and there were a couple of bruises along the line of his neck. Steve grinned, genuinely happy and a lot amused, didn’t even have to say anything to have Bucky scowling.
“You got someone in there?”
“Shove it, nosy,” Bucky said, but there was a little curl to the corner of his mouth that he couldn’t bite down on.
“Special someone?” Steve asked, tried not to sound too obviously hopeful. He was for anything that brought the smile back to Bucky’s face.
“Maybe,” Bucky said, and the little tease of a grin settled in and made a home for itself. Steve couldn’t help grinning widely in response, and Bucky folded his arms. “Don’t, Stevie, okay? We’re takin’ it slow.”
“Uh-huh,” Steve said, and Bucky batted away the spatula Steve poked at his neck. “Looks like it.”
“This’s been coming a while,” Bucky said, and his smile turned soft and kind of tender, and it wasn’t a smile Steve knew so well. “I don’t wanna mess this up.”
“Hey,” Steve said, abandoned the eggs for a second and hauled him into a hug. “She’d be crazy to turn you down.”
Bucky turned his face against Steve’s neck, took a deep breath, let it out slow.
“He,” he said.
“Huh?”
“He’d be crazy,” Bucky said, and pulled away to eye Steve’s expression. Steve tried to convey support through eyebrows, and Bucky laughed and punched him in the arm.
“He gonna be wanting breakfast?” Steve asked, all casual.
“I dunno,” Bucky said, and looked for a second unaccountably nervous. “Guess I’ll go ask.”
He snagged the coffee pot on his way into his room – the whole thing, didn’t bother stopping for mugs.
Steve gaped.
“Holy – it’s Clint?”
373.
The Soldier moved large and purposeful, predatory, wide open movement ‘cos no one was gonna get in his way.
Bucky’s different. Bucky holds himself close. Bucky moves like he’s afraid of brushing against broken glass – except that’s not quite right. He’s afraid he’s made of broken glass, maybe. Like he’ll hurt anyone he touches, and anyone he touches will hurt him right back, and no one will mean it but that won’t stop him bleeding out.
Bucky doesn’t touch people, and it’s pretty clear that it’s killing him.
And maybe Clint knows Steve better, maybe he likes him better, maybe he has this useless case of hero worship that lights up a little every time Steve gives him a smile or a positive word, but the little sad faces every time Bucky slides past without touching – those, Steve can shove right up his ass.
Clint’s working on proximity. He’s not sure why, exactly. It’s probably – he’s gonna go with self preservation, okay? With the fact that Bucky can’t be tensing up the moment someone’s near him in a fight. That’s most probably what it is, he figures, he tells himself, he’s almost convinced.
So he doesn’t tease physically like he does with the rest of the team, like he needs to keep himself sane. Doesn’t slap him on the back like he does to Steve, or jab his fingers into his side like Tony hates him for; doesn’t coast gentle fingers like he does down Nat’s spine, or sling his arm around his shoulders like Sam’s. Instead he eases in just a little. Passes him in the hallways and hovers his hand just next to his arm as they cross paths. Holds onto the things he’s handing over just a little too long so he can quirk a little smile when Bucky, confused, catches his eye. He takes the seat next to him in briefings and meetings, so he can lean in just a little and lower his voice into something that’s intimate in every way but the physical, make Bucky snort out a laugh and feel like he’s won the freaking lottery.
It’s nothing to how he feels when Bucky starts leaning back.
It’s gradual, so goddamn slow, inches taken where Clint wants freaking miles. But Bucky lets him rest a foot on the edge of his chair, doesn’t duck away when Clint leans past him to get something out of the cupboard, laughs right in his face when they’re fighting over a basketball and almost makes Clint swallow his tongue with how beautiful he is, right then.
And when there’s the barest, lightest, most careful brush of Bucky’s fingers against the small of Clint’s back while he’s making them coffee he has to swallow hard, three times, before he can make his voice come out right.
“Sugar?”
“Yes, honey?” Bucky says low, teasing, right in his ear, and he sounds like he’s laughing and holy shit Clint didn’t mean to but this, right here, this feels like love.
103.
“What would you do if you were here?”
Clint’s soft groan shivered into Bucky’s ear. He’d been gone for a month now, somewhere in Europe, somewhere with mountains and bad guys and spotty cell reception, and Bucky had been going slowly mad.
He wouldn’t have said relationship, before Clint had gone. There’d’ve been words like ‘convenient’, like ‘buddy’, like the gentle fricative of ‘fuck’ stretched out over a bitten lip. Perspective changed a little when you hadn’t slept right in a month.
“Which answer d’you want?” Clint said, and Bucky tilted his head, ‘cos this wasn’t how things usually went.
“Which answers can I choose?”
“Phone sex, honest, us,” Clint rattled off like he was counting off on his fingers.
“Us isn’t honest?” There was a little more meaning in that than he’d meant.
“In a different way. That’s what you’re going for?”
“Yeah.”
Bucky could almost feel the long breath Clint let out against the skin of his neck, and the fraction of an inch between almost and could was hell.
“Well I’d kiss you first,” Clint said, and his tone said a lot about the colour of his cheeks. “Just a little, ‘cos I’ve been travelling, and my face is like sandpaper, but enough to remind myself what I’ve been missing. What’s been missing from me.” And hey if those words weren’t a punch in the gut. “Then I’d wrap myself around you for a bit, probably. Shove my face in your neck and fuck the stubble rash. Squeeze you a little too tight, make you kinda uncomfortable, if I’m reading this wrong.”
“You’re not,” Bucky said. Had no idea what Clint would hear in his voice.
“Okay.” Relief. That was relief. “Then I’d haul you into the shower,” Clint continued, “make a fucking poor effort at getting you off, hands or mouth, whichever was easiest, drag you to bed and then pass out on you half way through a shitty hand job.”
“Sounds perfect,” Bucky said, no word of a lie.
“I’d make you breakfast in the morning,” Clint said, “maybe tell you I love you, I dunno, I haven’t figured that bit out yet.”
“Pretty sure I love you too,” Bucky said, and let out a shaky laugh. “Fuck, Barton, the hell was the honest answer?”
“Honestly?” Clint said, his words bending a little around a grin, “I’m outside your front door.”
551.
“He won’t mind,” Natasha said, taking a drink from her beer, her mouth tilted up a little at the corners. “Clint is the worst clothes thief I’ve ever met. You’ll probably find a couple of your own sweaters in there.”
Bucky considered this for a second. Clint was due back any minute, sure, but with Clint that could mean anywhere up to three hours, and the busted window that Clint hadn’t got around to doing more than taping cardboard over meant the apartment was Arctic. Natasha was fine – she’d got here first, was wrapped up in a fuzzy purple blanket and had Lucky sprawled across her to to boot. Bucky had been curled around a cup of coffee since he arrived, but it just wasn’t cutting it.
“Okay,” he said finally, “but when he asks this was your idea.”
Clint’s bedroom was up a flight of rickety metal stairs, and was exactly the bomb site that Bucky had been expecting. There were clothes – mostly unidentifiably stained – on every surface, and the bed was a tangle of bedding and blankets and an adorable plush Cap that Bucky was never gonna let Clint forget.
On second look, in amongst all the mess, it was kinda cute how much Avengers merch there was in Clint’s bedroom. He even had a cardboard box that appeared to be full of branded boxers, which Bucky supposed saved on the laundry. He had an arc reactor-shaped nightlight plugged into an outlet by the bathroom; there was a black hooded sweater with a big red hourglass on the back hanging on the bedroom door; one drawer in the dresser wouldn’t close ‘cos of the oversized Hulk hand that was hanging out of it.
Naturally there was also a riot of purple, but a lot more of the selection featured Kate than Clint. Bucky had wandered over to take a closer look at a photo of the two of them, all squished up together, pulling faces, looking cute, when he noticed the little figurines.
Apparently kids wanted their action figures now. Apparently that was a fad. And the first one Bucky saw was Stevie, posed head up and hands on hips, and he’d be a little worried that Clint had a crush – for Clint’s sake, ‘cos Steve was makin’ time with Stark, and not for any other reason – if Clint hadn’t posed a little Spider-Man hiding behind a coffee mug, looking like he was just about to shoot webbing at the back of Steve’s head. Next to that a tiny Hulk was apparently punching through a crushed Coke can – jeez, this was adorable – and Bucky actually snorted out loud when he saw tiny Natasha dangling tiny Tony off the edge of a shelf by his boot.
At first he didn’t see himself which, y’know, it figured. He wasn’t exactly hero material, he’d been surprised they’d even made –
But turned out he was there, after all. On a little wooden crate that was serving as a night stand, posed so he was sitting with his legs dangling over the edge, his tiny plastic arm wrapped around a tiny plastic Clint, both of them leaning so they were holding each other up. And wasn’t that just exactly right?
When Clint eventually arrived, steaming pizza in hand, Bucky was sprawled on the couch wrapped up warm in a purple hoodie, and the grin that settled on Clint’s face when he saw the both of them there, settled into his space –
Bucky spread his arm along the back cushion.
“C’mon,” he said, when Clint looked a little hesitant, “get over here and warm me up.”
Row 7 kiss 3 for the kids gif prompts???
629.
Clint stirs when his weight shifts the mattress. He’s not got his ears in, ‘cos Bucky is home and –
Shit.
Home.
– and sometimes Clint deserves a damned night off.
“She up?” Clint mumbles, without quite opening his eyes, and Bucky can still smell baby powder and faintly sour milk, can still feel her helpless, trusting weight against his chest and he never, he never thought he’d have this, Jesus.
“No,” he says, like he’s not dying of it, like he’s not living for the first fucking time. How the hell do people – how can they feel this much and not –
“Mmkay,” Clint says, already drifting off, and Bucky rocks forward to kiss him on the cheek, trying to keep his breath steady against Clint’s cheek.
Row 10 kiss 3 <3
418.
Bucky was laughing helplessly, collapsed in the back of the van, his arms wrapped across his stomach and a strand of hair caught in the corner of his mouth. Clint glowered at him, stalking past with another box helpfully labelled ‘ARROWS!’ in Kate’s perky print.
Bucky had taken precisely one minute and seventeen seconds to get his shit in the van. Two boxes and a duffel bag, and the fact that he had that much was mostly due to Steve’s insistence on giving him stuff for his birthdays, these days.
Clint, on the other hand, had been up and down the stairs maybe fifteen times already, and he refused to let Bucky help, and – oh, shit, now he was walking past with a box with a heavily blacked out sharpie rectangle, ‘BOOKS’ scrawled above it in Clint’s spider scratch.
“Oh, no,” Bucky said, wiping tears away from the corner of his eye with the heel of his hand, “no, sweetheart, you shoulda gone with action figures or somethin’, there’s no way you’ve got enough books for -”
“It’s arrows, fuck you,” Clint said, and Bucky collapsed into giggles again. He reached out as Clint marched past on his way back into the apartment, snagging a belt loop and tugging. Clint dragged his feet like a toddler but didn’t do anything to really resist, so Bucky pulled him up square in front of him, hands on Clint’s hips.
“Hey,” he said, gentle and warm and still curling around the bubbles of laughter in his chest, “hey, baby, I love you, I can’t wait to move in with you you fuckin’ disaster,” and Clint softened and leaned down to kiss him like no one else had ever kissed him, hands cupped around his face.
From @auskitty: “
Oh hell yes…… last row, center kiss and Clint on Bucky’s chest… I will love you forever!”
626.
Clint slept better these days.
Bucky wouldn’t like to say he was the sole reason for this – he was sure the steady gig with the Avengers, the counselling sessions Sam had insisted Clint attend, the honest exhaustion from a hard day’s work had an impact. But he was gonna take some of the credit for the sleep, for the idiot smile on his face even when he was snorin’.
Clint slept best all hauled up close, resting on his chest so he could feel Bucky’s breathing. So he could know when Bucky was talking to him even if he’d taken out his aids. Maybe he didn’t know exactly what Bucky was saying, yet – maybe Bucky wasn’t quite ready to tell him – but Bucky was pretty sure he got the spirit of it.
Clint breathed in that graceless deep breath that signalled his waking, turning instantly and automatically to press a kiss to Bucky’s chest.
“Jesus, I love you,” Bucky said, helpless, and leaned down to press a kiss to Clint’s forehead. Clint patted at him sleepily, smiling and falling halfway back into sleep, and Bucky brushed his fingers through tousled golden hair and tried on a smile of his own.
“Hey,” Clint said later, when he’d found and put in his aids, “you say something?”
“Yeah.” Bucky took a deep breath, let it out slow. “Yeah, I did.”
A look at the inside of Clint’s head, and how Bucky helps him deal with it. The characterisation in this is so incredibly good, and it’s so incredible to look at what they’ve built together. I love it.
614.
“It’s fine, Buck. We’ll figure it out.”
Bucky rolls his eyes. His time on the Avengers has been peppered with ridiculously weird shit, there’s no question about it; aliens and monsters and sentient furniture ain’t even the half of it. But this broad, with her wild dark hair and her pendants and her herbs, this ain’t exactly scary.
“What was it she said to you, exactly,” Tony asked, arms folded across his metal chest. “And not ‘vague gist’ exactly, Barnes, gimme at least a decent paraphrase, here.”
“She said I’d forget what was most important to me,” he said, and shrugged, then made an expansive gesture in Steve’s direction. “He’s right here.”
“Aaw,” Steve said, and clutched at his heart, his smile genuine and warm even if he was bein’ a punk. “Aaw, Buck, I love you too.” Bucky considers, for a moment, putting him in a headlock, but he gets distracted when Barton ducks under the police tape and runs over to him, looking weirdly concerned for how vertical and uninjured Bucky obviously is.
“Barnes,” he says, moving in all close, “you okay?”
Bucky kind of startles, ‘cos on the other side of Bucky from Steve and the others, Barton’s grabbed hold of his shirt, got it all rucked up by his hip.
“Woah,” he says, backing off, knocking Barton’s hand away. “Getting a little friendly there, Barton?”
The archer sends a quick look at Steve and the others, then back at Bucky, his face going through all kinds of expressions before he finally settles on confused.
“Sorry,” he says, “sorry. Just wanted to make sure the team was all fine.”
“Sure,” Bucky said, dismissive – it wasn’t like he even knew the guy that well. “Nothing happened.”
my hand slipped. xD
It was all Clint could do to get back to his room in one piece, despite his entire world falling apart around him.
Sure, they’d been on the down-low, feeling out this relationship of theirs, seeing if it was a thing, before making it a thing-thing. It had made sense, yesterday.
Today? Today, it was gone.
Clint felt the air in his lungs rush out, in staggered, gasping breaths, unable to stop them. He shouldn’t be surprised; how could he expect to hold onto a relationship when he couldn’t even manage to breathe properly?
Getting a little friendly there, Barton?
The word, they were the worst kind of hurt. No, Clint corrected, they were the second worst kind of hurt; the honour of top spot rested solely with the look in Bucky’s eyes. That look, devoid of any expression beyond what the hell, that look that said Bucky had no wish to be that close to Clint, that hurt deeper than the words. Hurt deeper than the knife last week, or the bullet last year.
Bucky looked at Clint like he had way back when, when he didn’t know anyone, didn’t want to know anyone.
Clint didn’t want to admit it, but he had worked hard to get past that look, to think of himself as worth something again. To show Bucky that he was worth something. That together, they made something that was worth everything.
But now Clint was on his knees in his room, the bed still unmade from this morning, when he’d woken up in Bucky’s arms. He blinked at the sheets, before getting to his feet. He stormed to the bed, and pulled everything off of it. the pillows, the sheets, all of them fell to the floor. He then picked them up, ripping them apart, all the time screaming a wordless scream, from the depths of his soul.
He didn’t know what had happened to Bucky, but he wouldn’t stop until he found out.
Eeeehehehehe thank you you made it hurt worse 💜💜💜
Goooooorgeous!
OK so I’ve never written either of these characters before so this may be very OOC but I wanted to continue this so I tried anyway
* * *
“What happened.”
Bucky jolted, a little. It wasn’t often he got startled, but the Black Widow somehow always managed sneak up on him. She was perched on the counter, and Bucky had no idea how he’d missed her. He gave her a look, one that said, don’t do that and I don’t know what you’re talking about.
“Something’s changed,” she said, disapproving in that subtle way of hers. “The past few days, you and Clint… what happened?”
Bucky scowled. “Nothing,” he said.
“It started when you came back from your last mission,” she said, insistent.
Bucky thought back. “When that fake witch pretended to curse me?” he said at last.
If he wasn’t looking for it, he would have missed the shift in her expression. “What did the witch say?” Black Widow asked, the room suddenly charged with a dangerous energy.
“I… That I’d forget what’s most important to me,” Bucky said, and she grimaced.
“So that’s it.”
“But I didn’t, I still remember-“
“You think you didn’t,” Nat said, cutting him off, “because you did, and you don’t know any better.”
Bucky scowled at her again. “What’d I forget,” he said, not so much mad at her as with the realization that someone had been in his brain again, been deleting pieces of him and he hadn’t even known it this time.
“You forgot your boyfriend,” Nat said, scathing. “He’s heartbroken.”
That made Bucky take pause. Boyfriend. Someone actually… he had a boyfriend? “Who…” he started. Then, “Shit. Barton?”
Nat nodded. “Clint,” she told him.
I LOVE THAT THIS IS NOW A CROWDSOURCED FIC
and I adore the idea that Tasha knew, because of COURSE she knew, even if Clint never told her.
(He’s just been sitting silently by her, the past few nights, resting his head on her shoulder and doing pretty terribly at pretending everything is fine)
Thank you thank you for continuing this! 💜
Now that Bucky knew something – someone – was missing, it seemed obvious. There was a Clint Barton shaped hole in his life. His sheets felt cold, and his nights were too quiet. There was an empty space in his dresser and a book he didn’t recognize on the second night table. The final straw was when he spotted a lone purple sock hiding under his bed.
It was strange knowing that only a few days ago Barton, Clint, was the most important person in his life. Now Bucky felt like he barely knew the man. It seemed so unlikely that they’d have anything in common, a brainwashed supersoldier and a human who thought sticks and string made a decent weapon. Yet the more Bucky pushed, the more it felt like his mind was going to unravel.
He swore, curling in on himself, no longer in the mood for completing his morning pushups. No wonder they had seemed more difficult than usual. His morning routine was probably different now that he shared it with someone else.
When did they get together? How?
And Clint. Fuck. Bucky hadn’t seen him in days.
Rolling to his feet, Buck considered searching the tower, finding Clint and explaining everything to him. Or maybe that would make it worse. What if Clint didn’t return his feelings? Though running and hiding made it seem like they had both been on the same page.
Then Bucky had brushed him off and ignored him.
“Fuck.” He tugged at his hair. “Hey, J?”
“How can I help, Sargent Barnes?” the disembodied voice asked.
“Can you give me Barton, Clint’s, location?”
Jarvis was silent for a moment, then said, “It would appear Agent Barton has left the premises.”
Immediately, Bucky was tugging on a shirt and reaching for his tac vest. Hell, he may not have memories of the guy, but his brain was already switching to high alert, like this was a common reaction.
“Where is he?” Bucky grabbed the pistol out of his bedside drawer, then hesitated when he couldn’t locate his rifle beneath the couch.
“J, where’s my rifle?”
“Agent Barton suggested the gun locker in the closet would be a more suitable place for storing a weapon,” Jarvis said.
Bucky froze. The amount of trust he must have placed in Barton was unbelievable. He didn’t even move his guns for Steve.
Once he had his weapons in place (he’d snagged the unfamiliar set of throwing knives out of the gun locker, guessing they were probably Barton’s), Bucky took the stairs to the roof.
He sighed when his palm print was denied, then flicked on the communications. “Stark, I’m gonna need your access codes for the quinjet.”
“Woah Robocop. Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“Barton’s missing. And my gut is telling me he went after the witch.” Bucky blinked. Right. He had no idea where that came from, but it did seem like the kind of thing Clint would do.
His head throbbed as the fake memories warred with the real ones. He almost missed the harsh curse, followed by Natasha saying, “Stay there. I’m coming with you.”
This is the most amazing thing, I love you guys so much, I am SO EXCITED BY THIS
Hunting the witch down had been easy compared with getting her to undo whatever she’d done to Bucky.
She just laughed as Clint held an arrow steadily pointed at her. “You think you can threaten me?”
“I think I’m the last guy anyone wants as an enemy,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Look, lady, you’ve had your fun. Just give it up now and I’ll let you go.”
The memory of the way Bucky’s eyes had passed over him at breakfast was engraved in his mind, casual and uninterested, as if Clint were little more than the toaster or the coffee pot. Before, he used to linger on his face, sending him a quick wink if the others weren’t looking and sometimes pressing a sneaky foot against Clint’s, under the table.
The witch tipped her head to one side with interest. “And what if I want more from you than that? What will you bargain with?”
Anything. Everything. Clint hadn’t realised just how much this thing with Bucky meant to him until it was abruptly gone. “What do you want?” he asked, and her smile bloomed into a grin.
“If he gets the most important thing to him back, then you should lose the most important thing to you.”
“What would be the point if I just forget him instead?”
She shook her head. “Oh no, not that. I want your foundation. The thing you’ve built your identity on, World’s Greatest Marksman. The man who never misses. And I want you to remember what you’ve lost, every single time you miss a target.”
Clint hesitated, and then was distracted as a quinjet descended from the clouds, coming in to land near them. His heart leapt in his chest, because if Bucky had realised he was missing and come after him, then it wasn’t too late. They could get what they’d had back, if there was the slightest kernel still there.
It was Natasha that jumped out of the quinjet before it was fully landed though, shouting Clint’s name in fury.
Clint swallowed back his disappointment, and looked at the witch. He only had a split-second to make this decision before Natasha got close enough to stop him.
He lowered his bow. “Do it.”
OH MY LORD NO WHY THIS IS AMAZING I MAY DIE
“What did you do?”
“Didn’t do anything,” Clint said. He clutched his bow with numb fingers, staring at the arrow he had dropped the moment the witch vanished. “She got away.”
“Clint.” Natasha’s voice held a soft pleading note, and for a moment Clint wondered if there was something wrong with his aids. She placed a hand on his chin, tried to force him to meet her gaze. “We came to stop you from doing something stupid. Please tell me you didn’t do anything stupid.”
“We?” Clint tore his eyes away from the ground to look over Natasha’s shoulder. A knot twisted in his stomach when he saw Bucky emerge from the cockpit. “You had Barnes fly you?”
“It was his idea to come after you,” Natasha said, and God, did that hurt. It hurt like knife to the gut, like a snapped bowstring whipping him across the cheek. Clint didn’t move as Bucky closed the distance between them. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, and then Bucky’s hands were on him –
“You fucking idiot,” Bucky whispered, pulling Clint against him and kissing him roughly. “What were you thinking going after the witch by yourself?”
“Was thinking I’d do anything to have this again,” Clint replied, and laughed as Bucky began to kiss along his neck. “You remember?”
“Knew something was missing,” Bucky mumbled, and Clint shuddered because it hurt. It hurt like falling, like his back slamming into concrete after a building crumbled beneath his feet. “I knew something was missing and I had to find you. And just now, the moment I saw you, it all came rushing back. I’m so sorry, Clint.”
“Clint, what did you do to make Bucky remember?” Natasha’s voice broke through the moment, and Bucky took a step back to examine Clint’s expression.
“Please tell me the only stupid thing you did was go after the witch,” Bucky said.
“I didn’t do anything stupid,” he said, fighting to swallow the bile clawing its way up his throat. He rolled his eyes when Bucky raised a skeptical brow. “Well, I didn’t do anything else that was stupid. Cross my heart.”
Bucky’s face broke into a wide grin. He bent over to retrieve the arrow, twirled it between his metal fingers.
“Last thing I remember is promising you a blow job if you could beat my latest record on the range.” He handed the arrow to Clint, who accepted it without a word.
“Lets go home so you can show me how it’s done, Hawkeye.”
This just keeps getting more devastating, and yet better and better as more of my favorite writers add onto it!
*helpless happy noises*
Clint couldn’t sleep. He stood in the range shooting arrow after arrow. Each shot was off by millimeters, probably not enough for the average person to notice, but enough for Clint.
So he had lost the title of Worlds Greatest Marksman. He told himself it was worth it for the look in Bucky’s eyes, the way he had held him tight, his place back in Bucky’s bed. And it wasn’t like he was worthless to the team now, he was still hitting close to the bullseye. What was a few millimeters when you were aiming for the heart anyway?
He still couldn’t convince himself to go back to bed.
It was almost a relief when the call to assemble came. Maybe he could work out some of his frustrations without Bucky knowing anything was wrong. And Clint could prove to himself once and for all that he was still useful. That he hasn’t lost his most important skill.
The Avengers arrived at the scene of Doom trying to take over yet again. Didn’t this guy learn anything? At least taking out his Doombots had become routine by this point.
Clint chose his perch and had Iron Man drop him off after a quick squeeze from Bucky’s hand. He drew back and aimed at the first Doombot, and missed by millimeters.
Uh-oh.
He drew back again, barely missing another.
Clint shot arrow after arrow, he couldn’t hear the noise from his teammates through the panic flowing through him. Every single shot missed.
This looked bad
https://whispering-sumire755.tumblr.com/post/179672126245/614
throwing in the addition by @whispering-sumire755
this is legit the greatest thing
(@winterhawkkisses @enby-phoenix @loonyloopylisa @aw-hawkeye-no @flawedamythyst @jenjo93 @whispering-sumire755 can we put it on AO3?)
theproblemwithstardust 