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Bruce is swallowed by the folds of his blanket. His head is tucked in between two pillows, his arm doing a good job of holding the other pillow down. He swears and forces the sleep out of his eyes, out of his fog drenched mind. He peeks through the small crack the pillows have made and finds that he’s alone.
He strains his ears. There’s no one singing in the bathroom, no one banging their fingers against the sink, no one doing air guitars in the middle of the room.
He’s alone.
Oh.
He struggles to sit, wincing as he does so. He reaches out to grab his watch from the bedside table. Instead, he finds a small piece of paper, folded into a paper airplane.
He smiles as he picks it up. It’s as big as his palm. Carefully, he unfolds it. The plane delivers him a message, Clint’s small and cramped handwriting greeting him good morning in purple ink.
Dear Sweetie Pie, Cuddly Bear, Pooky, Humping Buddy, the letter begins.
Bruce laughs and laughs and chokes. He has to pound his chest and brush tears away from his eyes before he can read the rest of the letter.
I wanted to wake you up for one more round of I’ll Be Gone on a Mission Sex but you looked pretty exhausted. Yeah, last night was pretty good, told you I’d make it worth it.
He rolls his eyes but has to bite his lips from laughing some more.
Miss me. But not too much. I don’t like you moping. Have you ever noticed that Hulk’s shade tends to get a bit lighter when you’re sad?
It’s not true, of course. Bruce is more intimate with Hulk than anyone will be, whatever their grievances might be with each other. He also has the research to back him up but Clint’s effort is valued, nonetheless.
I’ll miss you. No, really I will. I tried to give you a good-bye kiss and do that thing you always do to me, when you tuck my hair behind my ear. But you jerked away and told me not to disturb you unless the mansion was on fire.
Bruce’s smile softens into something almost sad. He does do that, tucks Clint’s hair behind an ear, but only when it’s starting to become too long and shaggy. Clint usually chases his fingers with his mouth, teeth snapping playfully against his digits, nibbling and pecking.
And he also does that, that whole grumpy persona. He’s not a morning person, which people find surprising but there is a reason why he works better at night. He wishes he hadn’t turned Clint away like that but he does remember reluctantly giving in and turning his cheek so Clint could kiss him there.
So, make up for it when I get back! :D I want an expensive all you can eat buffet at a five star hotel. And then a tour around the city in the finest private jet money can buy. And tons of caviar.
Love love love love love
Your sappy boyfriend
(who is the best, I gotta remind you)
PS: I left breakfast in the microwave. Set the timer to two minutes.
This is how Bruce’s day starts when Clint’s away on a mission. He wakes up to a note and spends the rest of the day finding other notes, written with a purple marker and taped all over.
Sometimes it takes him days to gather everything, sometimes it only takes him one. Once, he finds an embarassingly long letter detailing the, ahem, contours of his body, for every Avenger to read. Thank goodness it had only been Steve who was there at that time and was too good-natured to tell him he’d read it, even if his blush gave it away. Most of the notes are tucked in his lab, reminding him to eat, to sleep, to go see that movie Clint had been telling him about last week, to talk to Hank about that thing-er (electrodes in snych) he was telling Clint about.
When Clint returns, they don’t ever talk about the notes. Instead, Clint will ask him if he was missed and Bruce will tell him barely. They’ll have popcorn and sit on their bed, trading stories or they’ll have pizza with the rest of the Avengers or, hell, they’ll even go out and save the day if they have to.
So. They don’t talk about it but Clint doesn’t stop doing it. What he thinks Bruce does with the little tidbits of himself, Bruce doesn’t know. Bruce does, however, keep a box inside his drawer. In that box, Bruce has collected Clint’s little notes, stapled and dated together. When Bruce is alone and has collected everything, all the notes, all the xxx’s and ooo’s that Clint has tucked in his notebooks, in his research, in his lab equipment, he’ll spend an entire day looking through them, reading and tracing each letter.
It keeps him going through the day.