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“Whatever you say, beautiful.”
“Ex-fucking-scuse you, Barton?”
Clint laughed and shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck like he always did whenever he felt a twinge of awkwardness.
“C’mon, don’t make it weird. You’ve seen that tweet.”
“What about me makes you think I have Twitter?”
“Everything, actually, but you know the one. It’s something like ‘I’m not arguing with a dude that has big brown eyes. Whatever you say, beautiful.’ So, I’m not arguing with you and your big brown eyes,” Clint said, propping his feet up on the coffee table and unpausing his movie.
Bucky just stared at him, dumbfounded. Though it wasn’t—for once—because of Clint’s unique style of existence, rather because of Bucky’s reaction to it. The way his heart beat quicker, the heat he felt on his face, how he wanted to hear Clint call him beautiful again and again.
Bucky was fairly sure that wasn’t when his feelings for him started but he felt confident that that was the first time he had become aware of them. There was nothing to do about it either. By the time they had made themselves known to Bucky, he was already too far gone and the only way to go was in deeper.
He felt like an idiot for it. Clint was his friend, his roommate. Granted they were very different people but this hadn’t happened with Steve, so why with him?
He didn’t want to ruin what they had nor did he want to put any unnecessary strain on Clint either. During these last three years of living together, he had finally managed to convince that big oaf that not everyone deserved everything he had to give all of the time. That he could decide when and how much to give people; that it was his right.
But Bucky knew him. And he knew that Clint would break his own back bending over backwards to try and find a way to make them both happy. Bucky would not let that happen.
“For the record, I didn’t even know you liked men so I doubt Clint’s picked up on it. If you really don’t want to see where it might go, then just continue as you are,” Natasha said, eyeing her iced matcha latte before sipping it.
“Worried about poison?” Bucky wondered.
“No, even I’m not that dramatic. Last time I was here there was a clump of matcha that hadn’t been mixed properly. I don’t wanna be that person but if I find another one, someone’s dying.”
Bucky snorted softly and waited for her to take another sip. “Well? Am I helping you hide a body?”
She smacked her lips quietly and hummed in approval. “Not today but good to know you’re willing to help.”
“Always,” Bucky said sincerely. “So what should I do?”
Nat stared at Bucky over the top of her latte. She rested it on the table and tapped her nails on it for a few seconds before she spoke. Bucky already knew he wasn’t about to get an answer he liked but he waited anyway.
“What do you want to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Well then, there’s your answer.”
And that worked for all of four days because Clint was away on a mission with Steve but as soon as he was back, Bucky was right back at square one.
The thing that made it worse perhaps were the things about Clint that attracted him. It was also another glaringly obvious indication to him that he was in way too deep to even think about getting over him quickly because there were obvious things about Clint that he had always noticed—his height, his looks, his voice, and that quick, sarcastic humor—but those weren’t the things that made Bucky’s heart race and his palms sweat.
No, they were nice and it wasn’t like he had an adverse reaction to them but what really made him feel like swooning was when Clint fell asleep on the couch after a meal, the remote in his hand while some show from the 1970s played, and he started to snore.
Or when he came downstairs at 2pm to pour himself a cup of coffee and in his dazed stupor of having just woken up, would pour the milk directly into the coffee pot instead of his mug.
Or when he was on the phone and had already been transferred four times for a simple banking issue and the man told him to spell his name for him for the third time and Clint seemed to have a sudden calm come over him and smiled serenely as he said, “B for bitch, A for asshole, R for rude, T for tacky, O for odd, and N for not spelling that a fourth time.”
All of those times—and others similar—Bucky had found himself watching Clint with equal parts fascination and infatuation. His heart skipped beats, his stomach did somersaults, and when Clint turned to look at him to see if he enjoyed his joke, Bucky was already smiling at him.
That seemed to catch even Clint off guard whose ears burned red as he looked away. Bucky had cleared his throat and then immediately found something to do in the kitchen, cursing himself for being so stupid but how was he supposed to get over Clint Barton when even the things most people would consider a turn off only made him like Clint more ?
“And then what did you say?” Sam asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin to get the sauce off his mustache. “I assume you said something after that. Please tell me you—”
They were at a diner in downtown Manhattan that Bucky had found a couple of weeks ago when he’d first needed a break from the apartment and didn’t want to go somewhere he thought he might risk seeing Clint.
“I panicked, okay?”
Sam put his sandwich down to focus on the conversation. “Okay… so you panicked and then?”
Bucky gestured around them and Sam simply stared. So Bucky gestured between him and Sam and again Sam just stared.
“I panicked and then I came here.”
“Wait, hold up. Pause. You said what you said and then you just left ?” Sam asked, genuinely in disbelief. “You know, I expect this type of asocial behavior from Steve, even Natasha, but you? I thought you were better at it.”
Bucky groaned. “I’m so happy to see you’re enjoying my misery, Sam.”
“Just a teeny tiny bit. No more than that, I promise, but, Buck, you shouldn’t be here. You should be there. You gotta fix this.”
“I know,” he grumbled, slumping in his booth and nearly sinking under the table.
He hadn’t meant to say it. He’d been cornered and fell back on old instincts, the kind he’d used way back in the beginning when he wasn’t sure he wanted to be found and wasn’t sure who to trust. He used tactics that he knew hurt people and pushed them away and worst of all, he had used it on Clint who believed so wholeheartedly in the shit that came out of Bucky’s mouth. He knew Clint did and yet he hadn’t stopped himself.
He covered his face with his hands and sighed into them. On the table, his phone rang and he wasn’t surprised to see Natasha’s picture. Honestly, he would have been shocked if Clint had called but he knew better about that too. Clint wouldn’t bother reaching out or trying to understand what was happening or why Bucky said what he said.
He would just assume that like so many other people, Bucky was giving up on him. That Bucky was tired of him or that Clint had outlived his purpose or entertainment value. All these things that Clint had finally opened up and told Bucky about came flooding into his mind now and made him hurt all over. How the hell could he hurt Clint like that?
Bucky sat up and Sam simply nodded, seeing the determination on his face.
“I gotta make it right.”
“You do.”
“Even if I lose him.”
Sam nodded.
“Fuck.”
Sam nodded again. “Yeah, unfortunately.”
Bucky answered Nat’s call as he left the diner and made his way to the subway, letting her know he was on his way and to please keep Clint there.
She told him that Clint was there in his usual couch corner eating an industrial-sized bag of peanuts for lunch because that was the easiest thing within reach, and watching the weather channel. She said he seemed tuned out and wasn’t really responding to her, which was why she had called.
Bucky didn’t want to explain his mistake over the phone so he simply apologized and said he would be there soon. She seemed to understand anyway and told him it would be alright.
When he made it to their apartment, sure enough Clint was exactly where she said he would be still watching the weather—and it wasn’t even local—and slowly eating a few peanuts at a time as if someone had programmed him to start and not stop.
Lucky was in his bed in the corner and wagged his tail when Bucky looked towards him but otherwise stayed in his bed, his posture sad and tense.
Nat simply stood and said she was a phone call away before leaving them alone in the apartment. Bucky shifted his weight nervously, eyeing Clint who had shown no sign of noting Bucky’s return.
Bucky cleared his throat and Clint’s hand faltered for less than a second before reaching into the bag again and tossing peanuts into his mouth.
“Clint.”
“Yep?” he asked, sounding detached and it broke Bucky’s heart a little and reminded him of their conversations in the beginning or on some of Clint’s worst days.
Bucky knew what questions would set him off and which were safe. Asking Clint to ‘at least look at him’ would not go down well at all. Asking him to talk or tell Bucky what was wrong wouldn’t either. Bucky swallowed and went over to sit on the other end of the couch.
He turned to face Clint, tucking one leg up underneath him and staring at him.
“I’m sorry.”
“What for? You didn’t do anything,” Clint said without looking at him.
And dammit because this was what Bucky feared the most—Clint deciding that what Bucky said and did was well within his rights, Clint shelving all the work they had done the last two years and concluding that he really wasn’t worth anyone’s effort.
“I didn’t mean it.”
“Didn’t mean what?”
Bucky struggled against the urge to argue but he knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere at all with that. “I’m not moving out. I don’t want to live anywhere else. Yes, you annoy me but that’s part of why I love living here.”
Because Clint had caught Bucky texting Sam and Sam had sent obnoxious emojis and stickers with kissy faces and hearts as he usually did whenever Bucky needed to get out how he was feeling about Clint so he could move on with the day.
And Clint had caught sight of it and spent the next few hours badgering Bucky to tell him who they were talking about and who Bucky liked. He seemed genuinely hurt that Bucky hadn’t wanted to confide in him and that only made it harder to ignore him.
Then finally Clint cornered Bucky in the kitchen. Literally in the corner with a hand on either side of him to trap him and then asked him who it was he liked.
And Bucky hadn’t known what to do and his stupid brain hadn’t just come up with a lie, instead it switched into survival mode because of how worried he was and he said, “What the fuck is wrong with you? You don’t need to know every aspect of my life, Barton, Jesus. Now back up before I move out.”
And then he had pushed past Clint and left to meet Sam after texting him SOS and the diner location. It hadn’t been that long. An hour. Two hours tops but Bucky knew even five minutes alone with a venomous thought was enough for it to eat right through Clint and become law.
“Cool.”
“Clint, come on. Look at me and tell me you believe me.”
Clint turned to him which he honestly wasn’t expecting and then his face went from that awful neutral to angry in less than half a second.
“Can’t, ‘cause I don’t.”
“Well, what’s it gonna take?”
“Take for what, Bucky? There’s always some truth in the shit people say when they’re angry. And if you don’t want to move out then the truth is that you don’t want me that deeply in your life, which is fine. Now I know where I fucking stand and—”
“For fuck’s sake, Clint, I was talking to Sam about you.”
Clint’s mouth hung open on his last word, he blinked slowly as if having to manually do it, and his angry, furrowed brows stayed in place but with the wide-eyed look he was giving Bucky he looked like he’d never been more confused in his life.
He closed his mouth, swallowed, digested those words and then settled on, “Oh, so Sam’s giving you grief about living with me? Teasing that you like me?”
“No, he’s giving me grief because I do like you. And when it’s really hard to ignore, I vent to him about it so that I can try to continue life as normal and not fuck up this friendship that I love so much just because I want to kiss you.”
Clint defaulted back to bewildered beyond imagination.
“No, because what?”
“Not sure what the question is there.”
“Is this like a last ditch effort to salvage this? Pretend to—”
“Still don’t believe me? Here. Read my texts with him. Hell, read the ones with Natasha too. She was the first person I went to when I realized. Or you can just ask her yourself.”
Clint stared at the phone sitting unlocked on the couch cushion between them and then tentatively reached for it. Bucky watched him scroll, his eyes growing wider with each flick of his finger.
“What the hell,” he whispered, sounding like he was reading proof that Bucky had been an alien the entire time instead of a confession of feelings.
“Look, nothing has to change, alright? I still want to be your friend more than anything else unless that’s not something you want anymore.”
Clint was still looking through Bucky’s texts it seemed and slowly turned the phone around to show Bucky a picture of Clint asleep on the couch, one arm and one leg dangling off and Lucky sprawled across his chest. The caption said: ‘what the fuck am I supposed to do when I come home to shit like this? Not kiss him?’
“What?” Clint asked, the phone still turned towards Bucky.
It was Bucky’s turn to frown in confusion. “What what?”
Clint turned the phone back to himself and zoomed in on the picture and then back out before turning it back around to Bucky and pointing at the texts directly after that photo was sent.
Sam: yeah probably not kiss him unless you want to blow your poorly disguised cover
Bucky: what if I just told him I loved him? What’s the worst that could happen
Sam: you tell me
Bucky: shit
Sam: yep
“You love me?” Clint asked, the word ‘love’ coming out so soft and quiet that it almost didn’t make it into the sentence. As if Clint was afraid to speak it any louder or harsher than that for fear it would shatter and cease to exist.
Bucky clenched his fists in his lap. He’d forgotten about that conversation. It had been about a week ago but he and Sam talked so much that he didn’t think Clint would get that far.
His heart was pounding so loudly it felt like drums being played beside his head. It had been months. Months and months of falling deeper and deeper for Clint Barton. Of course he loved him.
“What happens if I say yes?” Bucky finally asked after a long drawn out pause.
Clint put the phone down and stood and Bucky felt a wave of sadness and hurt wash over him until Clint sat again but right next to him, cradled his face with one hand and guided him in for a kiss.
Bucky closed his eyes, melting into it immediately. How may times had he imagined kissing Clint? How long had he spent wondering how he might taste or what kind of kisser he was? How often had he imagined Clint holding his face exactly how he was right then?
Bucky let out a sigh that seemed to originate from deep within him and as it went out, the tension and stress and worries he had been holding in fell away. He lifted a hand and rested it on top of Clint’s that was pressed into the cushion between them, his fingers wrapping around it.
Clint smiled into the kiss.