613.
Clint watched the beautiful cryptid from the fifth floor pause in front of Clint’s apartment, and he experienced that helpless, awed kinda feeling that sits like champagne on the stomach, like if he’d seen a double rainbow or a baby futzin deer.
“Hey,” he said, low as he could make it, careful, and the cryptid whirled around and scowled at him, shoulders hunched and hands shoved deep into his pockets.
“My heating’s fucked,” he said, harsh and abrupt, and Clint nodded, easing up the last couple steps and toward his front door. The beautiful cryptid edged kinda sideways, eyeing him warily, circling around until he had the escape route of the stairs safely accessible.
“I’ll just grab my tools,” Clint said, jerking his head at his front door, and then winced a little, apologetic. “Gonna have to come into your apartment to fix it, sorry. I can let myself in and get it done when you’re not there, if that works better for you?”
Cryptid scowled at him – remained scowling at him, ‘cos it wasn’t like he’d eased up any since Clint had appeared – but his body language changed. Clint was well aware from the glimpses he’d gotten over the weeks that the guy was jacked, but with his jaw clenched and his shoulders squared he looked like he could hardcore fuck somebody up.
It would be creepy to think ‘yes, please,’ about that, so Clint tried really hard not to.
“You know which apartment I’m in?” He said, and Clint winced again. Like, he’d knocked on the guy’s door before, was he really that unmemorable? Also –
“I’m your landlord,” Clint said, a little bemused, “alongside being resident handyman. You didn’t know that?”
The cryptid rubbed a hand across his face; when he removed it again the flash of – what, defeat? – was entirely gone.
“Sorry,” he said, looking at the floor and shrinking down into himself again. “I don’t always remember so good.”
Huh.
Clint sent a smile his way, mind turning this over curiously.
“I can tell you as many times as you need that I’m Clint, man,” he said.
The cryptid smiled and Clint’s goddamn heart let off confetti. “Bucky,” he said.
Tag winterhawk
609.
Clint floats up from dreaming to the gentle tugging of fingers through his hair and he smiles before he’s even conscious of it, wakes up with it already on his face. He’s draped over Bucky, one of his legs hanging off the couch and the other nestled warmly between Bucky’s thighs, his face resting against the warmth of Bucky’s chest and stubble burn on his forehead.
“Hey, I love you,” he slurs, inelegant because he refuses to moves his head enough to articulate, makes a pathetic protesting noise when Bucky’s fingers still in his hair.
“You still dreaming, sweetheart?” he asks, all soft and low, and Clint turns his head just enough to press a kiss against the soft skin of Bucky’s throat.
“No,” he says, decisive, sure, and he levers himself up just enough to watch the slow dawn of a smile on Bucky’s tired face.
“Maybe I am, then,” he says.
34.
Bucky started sneaking him these small sly sidelong glances, and it took Clint a little while to catch on. Nothing outright, nothing he could point to and prove he wasn’t crazy, just these smiles that settled in his stomach and set his brain to working it out.
He got a look like he was out of his tree when he leaned next to Bucky against the counter in the kitchen, various Avengers scattered around the room in various states of awareness and dress. So okay, this thing had rules, and the first one was like fight club, and no one else was allowed to know.
Clint upped the ante immediately, ‘cos papa had raised a gamblin’ man. He dropped Bucky a wink from behind Steve’s broad back, and the way Bucky immediately choked on his coffee had to mean Clint was winning, right? Straight out of the gate.
The next move was a hint of body heat as Bucky leaned a little closer in the darkness of a movie night. Clint retaliated with an unsubtle brush of fingers as he made sure to lunge for popcorn at the same time. With the solid hand Bucky rested on his thigh as he pushed himself to his feet, Clint was calling that one a draw.
The heat of Bucky’s hand in the small of his back on the way out of a meeting left Clint tied up in knots he couldn’t understand, let alone start to untangle, so Clint followed him down to the canteen. Slouched unapologetically, their knees pressed together safely out of sight, but Bucky’s smile visible for as long as Clint stayed.
Bucky ruffled Clint’s hair in the back of the quinjet; Clint stole gum from Bucky’s pocket and grinned into the back of his shoulder. Bucky warmed Clint’s hands while they waited in anticipation of a fight; Clint, daring, hooked their pinkies together while Fury yelled after it.
It wasn’t until Bucky cornered him in an empty corridor, pushing in close and eyes dropping to Clint’s mouth, that Clint realised that maybe this wasn’t gay chicken. That maybe they were heading for something real.
(And when Bucky kissed him, Clint gave his all to the kiss he gave back, because all of a sudden this had always been true.)
27.
“James Buchanan Barnes you goddamn son of a fuck!”
Steve hunched his shoulders automatically, the last bite of pancake falling off his fork. Bucky, unfazed, unerringly stabbed it and shoved it in his mouth with a sticky grin.
“Of all the assholes I could’ve fallen in love with -” Clint’s voice faded out a little, muffled by distance, then rang out with renewed strength, “ – smarmy good-for-nothing handsome fuck-face rat bastard!”
Clint thumped down the stairs like he bore an individualised and long-held grudge against each and every one of them.
“Conniving,
corkscrew-twisty, thieving dick,” Clint growled as he rounded the bottom of the stairs and came over to where they were sitting. “Morning, Steve.”
“Hey, Clint,” Steve said, hesitant.
“Morning, Clint,” Bucky echoed with an utterly relaxed and sunny grin.
“Fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck.” Clint took a step closer to Bucky, and all sorts of never particularly buried instincts reared up in Steve, had him half out of his chair before he registered the care with which Clint slid his hand into Bucky’s hair, the way Bucky pressed up into the kiss like he was breaking the surface, like this was all he needed to live. Steve focused down on his mug like it held the secrets of the universe, his ears turning pink. He’d seen Bucky in more compromising situations, of course, but this was – well, Steve was pretty sure this was how Bucky looked when he was in love, which felt like an imposition somehow to watch.
Clint pulled away slowly, his thumb running across Bucky’s cheek and a bemused, hopelessly adoring look on his face.
“Morning, asshole,” he said, in the gentlest tone Steve’d ever heard from him. “Don’t steal my fucking coffee.”
26.
Bucky pretends to eat Tiny Princess Thor’s tiny princess fingers to the sound of her shrieking laughter, which is, y’know, totally fine. Clint didn’t actually need his heart, anyway, so it’s not a problem that it’s flopped out of his chest to land with a sad splat at Bucky’s feet. Clint grins for the seven hundredth Super Selfie – $5 a pop, all proceeds to the local children’s hospital – and then heads over to the grill. Apparently there’s a space inside him to fill.
It turns out hotdogs do not, actually, cure all ills, no matter the amount of relish. So Clint finds a spot that’s quickest to lose the light that’s slowly fading out of the sky, tilts his head back against the trunk of a bunting-wrapped tree, and sighs the sigh of the world-weary and love-lorn. It’s a tune that comes easy to his lips.
(Bungee cord is maybe what he needs, ‘cos he always gives his heart away too quickly, and it’s never particularly timely about coming back.)
“Hey,” a low voice says, and Clint hitches a grin into place with a block and tackle.
“Tired of the adoration, Barnes?”
Bucky shrugs, his shoulders loosed from the tension they normally carry.
“Not sure it’s deserved,” he says, taking his share of the tree. Clint elbows him in the side.
“Sure it is,” he says, matter-of-fact enough to build a university on. “You’re a gold-standard genuine hero, Buck, nobody doubts that but you.”
Bucky shifts his weight, turns to the side, rests his shoulder against the tree. Clint figures it’s safer to keep staring up at the stars.
“You’re a goddamn prince, Barton,” he says, “and you don’t get told that nearly enough.”
Clint risks a glance right, regrets it immediately. Mentally kisses his heart goodbye, ‘cos he’s not sure this time he’s getting it back.
19.
“No,” Bucky whispered, horror struck. He stepped back automatically and Steve’s hands came up to hold his shoulders, the support grounding and settling and allowing him to catch his breath.
“Buck?”
Bucky whirled around on his heel, staring up at Steve, who looked worried at the stress that was no doubt clear on his face.
“I am not going in there,” he insisted, keeping his voice steady, trimmed fingernails biting into the palm of his hand. “I am not going in there and you can’t make me.”
“Okay,” Steve said seriously, taking hold of Bucky’s elbows and backing up, “that’s okay, Bucky, we can -” he was looking over Bucky’s shoulder, bemused, like there was absolutely nothing wrong with the scene taking place in the kitchen. Like it was perfectly normal to walk in for breakfast and see the object of his unrequited feelings in heart-covered boxers with tiny golden wings strapped onto his back.
“His abs, Steven,” Bucky groaned, almost all the way under his breath, and the stress faded from Steve’s eyes to be replaced by wicked amusement. But his grip didn’t falter, he kept towing Bucky gently away, and no matter what else happened Steve was always gonna be his best guy.
“Morning, Clint,” Steve said over Bucky, laughter clear in the tone of his voice. “Nice wings.”
“Lost a bet,” Clint said easily. “Happy Valentines Cap, Bucky.”
“Shit,” Bucky hissed. “He saw me?”
Steve choked on a laugh.
“Pretty sure he just blew a kiss to your ass,” he said.
160.
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.
437.
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.”
39. Who leaves little notes in the other one’s lunch? (Bonus: What does it say?)
468.
Clint was unwrapping a sandwich, poking through the wrappings like there was a bomb inside ready to go off. (Sam was hoping there wasn’t a bomb ready to go off, literally or metaphorically, ‘cos Banner was up from the labs today and the guy had a temper.
Eventually he extracted a slip of paper and placed it carefully on the desk as he munched on his sandwich – tuna mayonnaise, cucumber, red onion, that was an effort sandwich, and Clint didn’t look like the effort type.
“Your honey make you lunch?” Sam asked, and Clint choked on a piece of cucumber.
“Um,” he said, “I guess you could call him that?”
“So what’s with the note?” Sam continued, curious beyond belief at the way Clint side-eyed it, wary as all hell.
“He thinks he’s funny,” Clint said. “Read it.”
Sam picked up the note, which was written on the corner of a pizza menu, looked like, in almost-dried-out Sharpie.
“’And I said hey,’” he read out, and Clint joined in dolefully, “‘what’s going on.’“
“The hell?” Sam asked, and Clint made a face.
“Every goddamn day he earworms me.” He grabbed his phone out of his pocket, and carefully picked out a text on the screen that was spiderwebbed with cracks. Upside down, it looked like it said ‘u sick son of a bitch’. “And then he laughs his ass off at me when I come home whistling.”
“Aaw, c’mon,” Sam said, “how the hell hard can it be to resist?”
By end of day every poor bastard in the precinct was singing.
600.
(For @lissadiane)
Clint sneaking out of medical had become enough of a habit that the medical staff tended to just send any prescriptions to his rooms, FAO Mr J. Barnes, as soon as he was mobile.
So the nurse just about jumped out of her skin when he cleared his throat and asked politely for some painkillers, please, while they both tried to ignore the shining tracks down his cheeks.
“But we -” she said, helpless, “we left the door open?” She gaped at him for a moment more, then bustled into action, taking his empty water jug to refill and going to fetch a doctor to issue more pills.
Clint scrubbed the hand that was currently working across his face, wishing the breath he took in wasn’t so goddamn shaky, and then tried to fish out the remote that’d make his bed lay him down again.
The bed started moving before he’d done more than brace himself to reach for the remote, settling into just the perfect angle, and he covered his face again ‘cos everything, everything goddamn hurt.
“Hey,” he croaked, and did his best to pat at the fingers that trailed gently over his cast-wrapped hand.
“Oh sweetheart,” Bucky said, and Clint choked on an idiot sob, curled as best as he could into the arms that Bucky wrapped around him as best as he could. Clint hid his face in Bucky’s hair and hitched in dumb breaths that hurt like hell and smelt like home, and Bucky whispered everything that he needed to hear.
“I’m sorry,” Clint said, “I’m sorry, I just – can we press pause for a bit? I swear, I swear we’re gonna talk about it, and I’ve probably got an apology to – but can I come home?”
Bucky reared back, startled, appalled, and cupped Clint’s face with a hand that was about as unsteady as Clint’s dumb voice.
“You’re a goddamn idiot,” he said, and pressed kisses to his forehead, the side of his face that wasn’t swollen, the stubbled skin just under his chin. “I don’t give a shit what we’re fightin’ about, Clint, I will never in my life not want you there.”
theproblemwithstardust 