Chapter Text
Clint was ready for retirement, whatever that meant for superheros these days. He had thought he had retired after Ultron, but when Cap comes calling for help… you can’t say no to Captain America ok?
But he was tired. He was getting too old for this and the nightmare fuel kept coming the more battles he fought. When the negotiations came for his release, he decided to call in a few favors and pull a few strings and bought an old victorian mansion in Vermont. Was it a whim? Yeah. Would it keep him busy? That was the goal.
And it did. He had to tear up most of the flooring and mildewed flooring and rusted pipes. Clint had never been so glad for his life as a runaway and a circus kid for giving him a weird variety of skills that were finally coming in handy. SHIELD and the Avengers Initiative™ had left him with quite a bit in his bank account so he went about fixing up the place with the finest of materials.
Natasha and the others kept in contact through burner phones and back channels but nobody prepared Clint ending a rainy day of putting buckets under the leaks in the roof with The Winter Soldier standing at his doorstep. Bucky looked like a sad dog that was seeking refuge from the storm and Clint had always had a soft spot for reformed assassins. They pitched a tent in the living room of the half-renovated house to escape the rain and ordered a pizza.
“So.” Clint began after they had eaten a bit. “You stayin’ here for a bit?”
“If that’s alright with you?” Bucky said softly.
Clint was continually struck with how quiet and soft Bucky was. Their limited interactions at the airport and after escaping the Raft were incongruous with the man who had killed so many people and been through so much.
“Of course it is.” Clint grinned a bit and gestured to Bucky’s new vibranium arm. “I won’t have to sledgehammer anything with you around.”
Was that insensitive? Bucky just looked at Clint with a curious expression for a beat before chuckling a bit.
“No, I suppose you won’t.” Bucky sipped on the soda that they had gotten with their pizza. “What’s the end goal here? You gonna live in this big house all alone?”
Clint scratched his neck a bit sheepishly. “I uh. It’s cliche as shit but I thought I’d fulfill the gay American dream of owning a roadside bed and breakfast.”
Bucky’s cocked his head a bit and Clint’s stomach twisted uncomfortably when he rememberd that Bucky wasn’t exactly from a very queer-friendly time period.
“Huh. Back in the day the dream was just livin’ with your fella and not going to jail. Glad that’s changed.” Bucky said thoughtfully. “You uh…” He suddenly looked nervous. “You’re queer?”
“Pan.”
“What?”
Clint sighed, not really wanting to get into this right now. “Yeah, I am.”
He took his aids out, signaling the end of their evening and gathered a lump of blankets to rest his head on. He was vaguely aware of Bucky moving around and getting ready for sleep in his own way before flicking the electric lantern off.
Somehow during the night they shifted closer to each other, probably both haunted enough to seek comfort in the midst of howling winds through the old house. Clint woke up to find his arm slung over Bucky’s broad torso and Bucky curled up like a much smaller man against him.
Clint carefully removed his arm and put his aids back in to hear Bucky’s soft snores. He smiled softly for no reason in his sleep, making Clint’s gut twist a bit. He pushed any sappy feelings about the Winter Soldier finding peace aside and took his meager bathroom supplies to the one working sink to brush his teeth and scrounged together some cereal and bowls and took them back to the tent.
Bucky was sitting up and stretching when Clint walked in. “Mornin. Sun’s out now. We gotta fix up the roof today in case the rain comes back. The sink in the kitchen is the only one that works if you wanna wash up. I gotta gym membership for showers but we can expedite finishing one of the bathrooms.”
Bucky just nodded silently and took a bowl of cereal from Clint. “Mind if I uh. Work on somethin’ ground level? Don’t like heights.”
Clint blinked but recovered in a beat. The Winter Soldier, the man who had set the Army sniping record, was scared of heights. Who knew.
“Uh yeah! There are plenty of projects to go around, take your pick.”
They cleaned up breakfast and looked at the vague outline of tasks to be done. Bucky agreed that they needed to finish a bathroom sooner rather than later and asked Clint for his tool box. Clint sorted through the roofing tiles at the hardware store until he found ones that matched the house and bought another toolkit since there were twice as many hands now. When he got back to the house Bucky was in the main floor’s bathroom with his upper body under the original clawfoot tub.
“Uh. I’m goin’ up to the roof now. Holler if you need me.” Clint said to Bucky’s feet. He got a thumbs up from underneath the tub in response.
Once he was up on the roof, Clint allowed himself to get into a familiar mindset that he would find while waiting out a mark. It felt good being high up and able to see all around him; along with the work that made him hot and sweaty and felt like he was doing something with his life.
➵✪
Bucky could hear Clint clomping around on the roof fixing the holes that had made themselves apparent in the storm. He couldn’t get a read on Barton, and that was supposed to make him uncomfortable. But also he wasn’t supposed to be getting a read on people anymore, especially not people who didn’t really question you when you showed up on their porch with no preamble.
This was supposed to be Clint’s retirement plan, but he didn’t seem to mind Bucky being around. At least they had had pleasant enough conversation the night before. He idly reattached the U-bend under the bathtub and hefted himself out from under the tub. Bucky turned the knob and watched as the faucet sputtered awake and rusty water spilled out for a few moments before running clean. He smiled to himself, feeling the rush of accomplishing a task. He took a picture of the running water and sent it to Steve’s burner phone, just to show him that he was doing something.
Bucky was unpackaging the new showerhead with way too many settings when his stomach growled at him and he realized that it was past lunchtime. Barton was still up on the roof so Bucky went outside to the yard and squinted upwards into the sunlight.
“Clint?” He called hesitantly, still blinking into the sun.
“Oh hey Buck!” Clint’s body was backlit against the sun on the highest level of the roof. “What’s up? How’s the bathroom comin’?”
“It’s comin’. We have a functional bathtub at least.” Bucky ignored how he felt a little happy tug in his gut when he said ‘we’. “You wanna do somethin’ for lunch?”
He was then distracted by Clint climbing down from the roof on a ladder propped up against the house. Clint had at some point during the morning taken his shirt off and had his flannel tied around his bare waist. He was glowing a little with sweat and his biceps were sinfully bulging as he worked down the ladder. How had Bucky not noticed this before? His cheeks heated up a bit when he remembered how Clint’s body had left a warmth in the tent that morning from holding him so closely.
“I might have some stuff for sandwiches inside in the mini-fridge.” Clint said, walking up to Bucky. He untied the flannel from his waist and wiped the sweat off his brow with it, bringing the line of his hipbones into view above his jeans. “Or we can go into town and get somethin if you don’t want sandwiches. We should get groceries anyway.”
Bucky tore his eyes off Clint’s abs and forced his brain to make a sentence. “Uh. Sandwiches are fine.”
“Sounds good.” Clint grinned and walked inside.
Bucky felt like his brain was rebooting. He was well aware that he had always been attracted to men, but never really had the option to pursue anything seriously before the war. HYDRA hadn’t really let him think about things like sex and romance, so he was feeling attraction for the first time in about 70 years. And wasn’t that something.