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Clint’s having a good kind of a day. The sun is up; the sky is blue; he saw a dog: many good things. And as he heads into the cafeteria, he can see the glint of light off the metal of a very familiar prosthetic hand, which means he’s made it in time. He hasn’t missed Bucky. Awesome. Everything today is going his way! He grins like a lunatic, making one girl leaving the cafeteria edge around him like his manic happiness was somehow infectious. Clint gives her a little wave.
Steve and Natasha are also there, on the other side, and they look like they’re involved in a serious sort of discussion. Tasha’s got her serious face on, the one she wears when she’s telling someone to do something. Steve looks earnest. Oh man, looks like Bucky’s getting an earful.
The best thing about their table is that there’s a space next to Bucky. It doesn’t have a chair, sure, but Clint can fix that.
He grabs one from another student who’s just standing up, and settles it up next to Bucky’s, just far enough away not to be creepy, then he sits on it backwards, because honestly, who has time to turn chairs around?
He leans over to grab a fry from Bucky’s plate and the chair tilts a little manically, rocking back onto all fours with a wobble and he waves as everyone turns to look at him.
He always arrives to lunch late, it’s his 12 o’clock lecture that fucks him over, so everyone else has already served themselves. It works out pretty well, though, because he comes to steal their food first, which means he doesn’t have to buy as much of his own, which means his rapidly dwindling meal plan is still alive and kicking.
“What’s up?” he asks around a mouthful of Bucky’s fries. Natasha breaks off half her sandwich and pushes it over to him.
“Bucky was asking for advice with his love life,” she says. Clint feels his heart do a strange double beat before sinking right down to his shoes. Great. Bucky’s love life. Which has nothing to do with Clint, more’s the pity.
“Oh? Really?”
“I was telling him he should talk to you,” she says. Clint blinks. This has to be some sort of punishment, but he didn’t realise he’d pissed Tasha off that much recently. He tries to convey to her, silently and with much eye contact, that she is being unreasonably mean, she smiles serenely back even though he knows she knows what he’s thinking. She always knows what he’s thinking.
“Natasha!” Bucky hisses. Across the table, a cheeseburger is paused halfway to Steve’s mouth as he watches.
“Yeah, I’m great at advice!” Clint says, which is not at all true. Clint’s relationships have mostly revolved around sex and apologies, not that either of those two things is bad on its own, but when they come together it apparently causes problems.
And then there’s the whole Bucky thing. Which is A Thing. Capital letters are important here. Because Clint has always been maybe not quite straight, and he’d known it in that hazy ‘perhaps’ way where it didn’t really matter. But then Bucky came along, and all of a sudden his brain was letting him know, with much assistance from his body, that he is very definitely bisexual, and that Bucky Barnes has some sort of telekinetic connection to his dick.
It’s awkward, because he’s also a great guy as well as being pretty as fuck, and he’s funny and charming and awkward sometimes, and he once gave Clint piggybacks between every bar they went to one evening and it was somehow the most erotic thing in Clint’s short, miserable life. It turns out that Bucky Barnes has a weird telekinetic connection to Clint’s heart as well. Now he’s asking for relationship advice and Clint sort of wants to cry into the half of Natasha’s sandwich he is shovelling down his throat.
“It’s not important,” Bucky says, pushing his pudding cup towards Clint, because he is a god among men and way too nice for Clint.
“He is having trouble conveying his intentions to the person he likes,” Natasha says.
“Yeah,” Steve adds, and he’s got this gleam in his eye, like now he’s unpaused himself, he’s playing the best practical joke. Did Tasha tell him about Clint’s… Bucky Thing? “Apparently he’s been trying to show this guy he likes him, but the guy doesn’t notice.”
“Aw, that sucks,” Clint says. He means it too, in so many ways. Because Bucky likes someone. Someone who isn’t Clint. And now those weird sort of half formed ‘could I, should I, would I’ thoughts that tumble through Clint’s mind at the most inappropriate moments are going to have to stop. He knows his shoulders slump a bit, but he tries to keep his disappointment from showing on his face. He knew his day was going too well.
He’s unable to stop himself from wrapping an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, soaking in the warmth of him through his shirt. He loses himself for a second in the feel of Bucky’s muscles under his arm and the hard metal on the other side where his prosthetic meets his shoulder. The feel of him is super distracting, in the best way. And when Clint comes back to himself, Tasha and Steve are watching him with amusement, while Bucky’s all tense and miserable.
No. That’s not allowed. Bucky shouldn’t be miserable, even if it’s going to destroy all Clint’s hopes and dreams – it’s not like hopes and dreams have ever done much for him.
“How obvious have you been?” he asks. Bucky’s face twists. He clearly does not want to talk about it.
“He’s done everything short of giving him a lap dance,” Tasha says. Clint’s mind fizzles a bit at the mental image, because honestly, that… that’s pretty… uh. He pulls away from Bucky a little and tries to will his body under control. He will not get hard at the lunch table again.
“Merph”, he says, which is an entirely appropriate response to the mental image of Bucky half naked and… gyrating. But probably not an appropriate response to his friend being miserable.
“I ain’t…” Bucky bites out, then cuts himself off. His eyes slide to Clint, like he’s trying to hide something, and Clint pulls back a little more. Right. Personal space. Bucky’s big on personal space.
He tugs his arm back and dedicates his attention to the apple that Steve has placed in front of him.
“Have you asked him out?” he asks the apple, twisting the stem round and round until it snaps off. Once, twice, three times. It takes ten to get it off completely. Bucky laughs, bitter and hard.
“Yeah. I’ve tried.”
“The guy is very oblivious,” Tasha adds. Clint stabs the apple stalk into the flesh, feeling a vicious satisfaction as it pierces the skin on the second try.
“I asked him out for coffee, but he thought I was asking someone else,” Bucky says slowly. Clint considers this.
“Maybe you need to be clearer?”
“I asked him to dinner,” Bucky says, looking him right in the eye now. “He told me that I should take Steve, because he’d appreciate it more.” Clint blinks, because he’s getting the feeling that there is something he’s missing here. And he doesn’t miss, so something must be wrong.
“Perhaps he was letting you down gently?” he suggests slowly, looking around at Steve and Natasha, who are staring at him intently. Even though it’s Bucky they’re talking about, everyone seems very interested in Clint. He shifts uncomfortably under all the attention. Maybe he’s been eating their food too much.
“He wasn’t,” Tasha says with utter certainty. “He really wasn’t.”
“I bought him dinner and told him he was beautiful,” Bucky says. He seems less miserable now, at least. Like all that’s melted away and all that’s left is the hard determined steel at the heart of him. Clint loves him like that, has occasionally thought about having that determination focused on him like a laser sight. The idea makes his mouth dry up and he has to try three times to swallow his bite of apple.
“You bought him pizza,” Steve says. “I’m not sure that pizza delivery constitutes a date.”
“Pizza delivery is the best date,” Clint corrects immediately. “Was it from the same place you got the pizza from last weekend? Because that was the best pizza I’ve ever had. You should definitely get him pizza from that place.”
Natasha’s head drops into her hands and Steve makes a choking noise into his lunch. Bucky takes a deep breath.
“I’m rethinking the lap dance,” Bucky says. Clint’s mind skips like a record.
“That… would work,” Clint agrees, because what else is he going to say? ‘ No, give me a lap dance instead’ ?
“For fuck’s sake, James,” Tasha says. “Just fucking tell him.”
“Yeah, no lap dances in the cafeteria,” Steve says, making a face. “I really don’t need to see that again.”
Clint would not object to seeing Bucky give a lap dance, but honestly, if it’s for someone else then his stupid heart might actually break into a billion tragic pieces and he’s not sure he could cope with that. Bucky just gives Steve the finger. Then he’s moving with all the inevitablility of a steamroller, reaching out to grab Clint’s arm and standing up. He pulls Clint up with him and Clint goes willingly, if confusedly. He has just enough time to grab Bucky’s pudding pot before he’s swept away, but he forgets to grab the spoon.
“I can talk to Tasha if you want,” he offers, as they’re hurrying out of the room. He didn’t think Bucky would be that upset, but maybe they’d been going on for ages before Clint even arrived. “She means well, but she has this thing where she interferes…”
“Shut up,” Bucky says, heading towards the study rooms that are available. Clint’s a little bewildered now as Bucky pushes open door after door, trying to find one that’s empty.
Finally they find one and Bucky tugs Clint in and then he’s right there, in Clint’s face, his own face dead set in a way that might be anger. Clint tries to guess what he'd said to make Bucky pissed at him. It was Tasha and Steve who were doing most of the talking, wasn’t it?
“Uh,” he says, the words not coming to him.
“Clint Barton,” Bucky says, his words are clear, carefully enunciated. They don’t sound angry, but they’re a bit growly.
“That’s me,” Clint agrees, looking around the room for some sort of escape. His brain is very confused. First there was all that talk of lap dances and now Bucky is right there, it’s sending mixed signals to his already mixed up brain. Bucky’s so close that he’s practically touching Clint from knee to chest and Clint doesn’t know whether his instinct right now is fight, flight , or fuck. But Clint’s survival instincts have always been a little fucked up.
The noise he makes sounds like a dying bird.
“There’s no one else in here,” Bucky says, face still intense and still, eyes sharp. Clint gulps. That’s sounds like a good set up for murder. No witnesses.
“Please don’t kill me.”
“It’s really fucking tempting right now,” Bucky admits. “I have never met…” He draws in a deep breath and releases it, holding Clint’s gaze. Then his shoulders droop a bit and he softens his glare. “I don’t want to kill you. I want you to listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” Clint says. His hearing aids are fully charged, his eyes are stuck on Bucky’s lips. One of the greatest and worst things about his shitty hearing, having an excuse to stare at Bucky Barnes’ mouth.
“Good. Because I’m about to say something,” Bucky continues. “And you’re going to listen and pay attention and let me finish.” Clint nods. “Clint Barton.”
“We did that bit.”
“Shut up,” Bucky snaps. “Clint Barton. I’m in love with you. I’ve been trying to ask you out for weeks, but you haven’t noticed. Natasha knows. Steve knows. The barista at your favourite coffee shop knows. The barista at your least favourite coffee shop knows. Hell, the pizza delivery guy knows.” He shoves a hand through his hair and Clint wishes he could watch it, but his eyes are glued to Bucky’s lips. He doesn’t want to miss any of this, doesn’t want any doubt. “You know the professor in that one lab class we have together?” Clint nods. “ She knows. She’s taken to writing me encouraging and sympathetic notes on my papers when she hands them back.”
“You’re not in love with me,” Clint blurts out. “You can’t be.” Because sure this was a good day. But there’s no such thing as a day this good, not in his life. Every good thing is balanced out, that’s just how life works. His heart is hammering in his chest, he thinks maybe he can feel it in his earlobes.
“Clint, last week when you tripped over your shoelaces because you were running to pet a dog on the other side of the street, instead of laughing at you, I sighed and thought how fucking perfect you were,” Bucky says. Clint remembers that dog. It was a good dog, 110% worth tripping over to pet, even if his phone had broken a bit. “I am in love with you.” He says it with utter conviction and Clint wants to memories the way Bucky’s lips shape those words, but he also wants to memorise the look in Bucky’s eyes as he’s saying them, firm and a bit exasperated.
“Oh,” Clint says, because he can’t think of other words, and suddenly his fight instinct is dying down and his body is thrumming with something that might be adrenaline and might just be straight up lust. “So… you asked me out for coffee?” Clint asks, because he’s sure he would remember that.
“A hundred times.” Oh… On second thoughts, he does remember that. Clint just thought–
“I thought you fancied the barista.”
“I fancied the dumbass sitting next to me, pouring too much sugar into his coffee,” Bucky corrects. Clint looks at his eyes again and the exasperation is still present, but there is a fond, sappy sort of look, too, that makes Clint tingle right down to his toes.
“You asked me to dinner?”
“I said we should try the menu at that new Thai place?”
“I thought you just liked Thai food – Steve does like Thai food!”
“Yeah, and he’s the one who recommended it to me as a place to take you ,” Bucky says. “If you don’t like me like that, I get it. I’m not…” Clint’s body catches up with Bucky’s words before he does, and his lips are already colliding with Bucky’s before he even knows he’s doing it.
His body turns out to have excellent ideas, because Bucky’s mouth is somehow a fucking explosion in Clint’s head and his heart and it’s like he wakes up all of a sudden, right in the middle of a dream, except it’s not a dream – Bucky’s really right there. Those are really Bucky’s lips that he’s touching. With his lips.
And then Bucky wakes up too and everything gets even better, because it stops being a press of lips on lips and it starts to be everything.
Bucky’s making this needy, desperate sort of noise and then he’s pushing Clint back into the wall, wrapping a hand around Clint’s bicep, his fingers clinging and massaging, even as Clint’s running his own hands down Bucky’s back. He never even knew that back muscles did it for him, but feeling them move under his hands as he’s pulling Bucky close against him is the hottest thing he’s ever felt. His brain is going to that hazy white noise place as his hands drop down to Bucky’s ass. Oh god, Bucky’s ass. He’s touching Bucky’s ass. If Clint believed in god, he’d be singing hallelujah. Only not, because his mouth is otherwise occupied as Bucky curls his tongue inside it, hot and wet and Clint’s knees are giving way, but Bucky’s pinning him against the wall.
Gradually, it goes from frantic to soft, Bucky pulling back a bit, kissing at the corner of Clint’s mouth and drawing even further away. That sort of distance is unacceptable right now, so Clint leans forward, unable to resist the pull of him, wanting to touch his skin as much as he possibly can. Their foreheads rest against each other and Clint’s eyes are stuck on the wet mess he’s made of Bucky’s lips, red and swollen, parted as he heaves in breaths. He tries to taste them again, but Bucky pulls back, just slightly, his mouth curving in a gentle smile.
“You wanna use your words, Barton?” he says, his voice ragged and just as raw as Clint feels. “I don’t want any more misunderstandings.”
Clint’s mind is mostly just reminding itself at the moment that his hands are on Bucky’s ass, and just how great Bucky’s ass feels, and how much he’d like to feel it without all this denim getting in the way, so he just blinks for a few seconds and tries to reboot.
“I think your eyes are pretty, too,” he says, finally. “I think all of you is pretty. Tasha tells me things she doesn’t want me to hear when you’re around because she knows I’ll be too busy staring at you to listen.”
“Huh, that explains so much,” Bucky says, but he kisses Clint’s cheek like an apology.
“Fuck, I love you,” Clint says, the words piling out of his mouth automatically at that look on Bucky’s face as he pulls back again, and then Bucky’s staring at him like Clint’s somehow the answer to everything and Clint realises what he just said.
He panics for approximately 3.5 seconds, before he feels the way Bucky’s flesh fingers are stroking over the hairs at the nape of his neck, and the way his prosthetic hand is cupping Clint’s jaw, like it’s precious. Like he's precious. He lets his eyes fall shut, savouring the sensation for a long moment. When his eyes flicker open, he can see a soft look in Bucky’s eyes, and his mind replays the way that Bucky literally just told him that he loves him. So there’s no reason not to say it. It’s not too soon, it’s not unwelcome, it’s not a problem.
“I love you,” Clint says again. “And I want that lap dance,” he adds. Bucky’s smile grows wicked.
“Only if you return the favour.”