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Bucky always gets up early. I mean really early; not because of nightmares but because of his routine. Bucky gets up around 6 am and by 7 am he’s ready for his morning run. Not today though. Today, he woke up to an empty fridge - Clint was supposed to get the groceries yesterday. Typical. Bucky goes through the rest of his routine.
He needed to get Clint up otherwise he’d stay in bed all day. When they got into a relationship, both had decided that they would have one day a week when they could just stay in bed all day, the only exception being if one of them became ill. Bucky runs into the bedroom where Clint is asleep and dives onto the bed.
“Morning!”
Bucky wanted to get Clint up and slightly annoy him by shouting. He tried to cuddle a sleepy Clint who just wanted to sleep. Clint started to wriggle to try to get Bucky off him, but eventually fails.
“Mmmmm….sleepy” is all Bucky gets as a response. Clint opened his eyes to see a big grin on Bucky’s face.
“What time is it?”
“7:00am”
An annoyed groan escaped Clint’s lips; he never gets up this early unless it was for a mission or a debrief (and even then he misses most of them if he can).
“Why do you hate me?!”
“It’s your fault you didn’t get the groceries yesterday. We have no food,” Bucky quickly adds “and no we’re not having leftover pizza again.” before Clint decides on pizza for breakfast. Bucky has scolded him about how much pizza he eats and he’s not having it for breakfast - he finds it disgusting but he’s never had the heart to tell Clint.
“I thought you were supposed to get them.”
“No, I got them last week.” Clint sighs in defeat and Bucky finally gets off him so he can sit up. He knows that Bucky should be on his morning run by now, but Bucky knows that Clint will just go back to bed once he’s left, so he’s not leaving the apartment until Clint is walking downstairs with him.
“Fine, I’ll get ready… only if you make me coffee first.”
Clint leans forward to wrap his arms around Bucky’s neck, bringing their foreheads close enough to touch. Bucky gives a little chuckle before he brings Clint closer to kiss him. Clint uses this to his advantage, lowering Bucky onto him before Bucky breaks the kiss and laughs.
“Nice try you little shit. I’ll make you some coffee while you get changed. If you don’t, then we can’t pick up where we left off.”
Bucky is pretty much out the room and heading towards the kitchen when he hears Clint stumble and fall. He can’t help but chuckle to himself for making Clint fall over. After making coffee for Clint, he makes his way back to the bedroom; he pauses in the door way looking at Clint topless and showing the many scars he’d collected over the years working for shield.
“You going to stand there all day, or are you going to give me my damn coffee?”
Hearing the sarcastic tone of Clint’s voice brought him back to what was happening.
“Maybe, but you’re not fully dressed yet.”
“Can’t believe you’re making me work for my coffee,” Clint mumbled, “Nat was never that cruel!”
“Well, I’m not Natalia.” Bucky drawled. Clint wanted to punch that shit eating grin off of Bucky’s face. He also wanted his coffee.
After Clint had drunk his coffee, he was ready to go out and get the groceries, but he still had to be forced out of the door by Bucky. They both made their way down the stairs, Bucky mainly telling Clint what they needed and not to bring back loads of frozen pizzas like the last time. They parted ways at the entrance of the building. Bucky would be at least an hour on his run, if not more, so there was no rush for him to get back.
Clint felt happy to go home after a long, slow, boring walk around the supermarket - which he didn’t even want to do in the first place. He only did it to make Bucky happy and so that Bucky could make him food every night. Bucky would never let him in the kitchen after the first time Clint had tried to make a meal for their first date. Clint would rather forget about that and let Bucky do all of the cooking.
He probably only brought enough food for a couple of nights, after that it’s Bucky’s turn to buy food. When walking towards their apartment, Clint thought he heard something scratching down the side alley next to their building. Being an assassin, he is always on high alert just in case someone has found out where they live. He walked down the alley to see if he could find anything that made the scratching and after about five minutes he comes up with no explanation of what made the noise, so carries on with his journey home.
When Clint gets back to his building he was already starting to feel the coffee wearing off.
“Is that you Clint? I was wondering if you could help me out.”
Mrs Johnston, one of Clint’s elderly neighbours, lived alone with no relatives and always asked Clint if he could help out when he’s not busy.
“Yeah, sure.”
Clint dropped the shopping inside the door and went to help his neighbour. He knew this wouldn’t take long. Clint thought Bucky would have been back by now, but Bucky must have taken a longer route since Clint distracted him before he went out. Bucky was always better at fixing and putting stuff together than Clint.
Once Clint had finished constructing a coffee table, which he was pretty sure that she already had but decided not to question her, he headed back to his apartment. His shopping was still by the door which meant that Bucky still hadn’t finished his jog. He figured that if he didn’t put all the groceries away Bucky would moan at him until he did it, so he may as well do it now and then he could go back to sleep. That’s all he wanted to do & it didn’t take him long to do that task. He flopped down on the sofa to catch up with dog cops since Bucky was out. Clint felt himself drifting off but he let himself since his boyfriend got him up early & made him get groceries.
Bucky walked into the apartment, not even out of breath because of the serum he had when he was the winter soldier, and found a sleepy Clint who was mumbling that nothing good was on the TV. Clint must have known Bucky was back even though he made hardly any noise because Clint wasn’t shocked when Bucky came to the back of the sofa and put his arms around his shoulders.
“How was your run?” Or at least, Bucky assumed that Clint had said that since all he heard was mumbling.
“Took a longer route this time, since someone distracted me this morning.”
Clint turned to look at Bucky with a questioning look.
“Well, why do you have to get up so early? If you didn’t then you wouldn’t have had to go on a longer route.”
“Yeah, yeah” Bucky smiled and kissed Clint’s head. He stood to go into the kitchen, hearing Clint moan when he lost contact.
“Buck, can you get me some popcorn? It’s the least you could do for getting me up early.”
Clint knew that saying that, paired with his best puppy dog eyes, would get Bucky to do whatever he wanted. Bucky never could say no to his boyfriend and his puppy dog eyes.
“Fine, I’ll get you some popcorn. Do you want anything else?”
“No, popcorn will be fine.”
As Bucky went into the kitchen, Clint carried on flicking through the TV channels looking for something to watch until he heard some banging. He ignored it since Bucky was a little clumsy in the kitchen anyway, so banging was nothing new. It was only strange when the banging carried on and Bucky shouted,
“Clint!”
Clint thought it may have something to do with putting the shopping in the wrong cupboards. He was pretty sure he put them in the right cupboards, so he decided to ignore Bucky just to annoy him further. It was only when Bucky shouted his full name that he knew he was in trouble.
“Clinton Francis Barton!” Clint hurried off the sofa and over to the kitchen.
“If this is about me putting the stuff in the wrong cupboards, I will say in my defence that I…”
Clint didn’t even finish that sentence as what he was seeing was both funny and confusing. Bucky was covered in flour and had a very angry facial expression. He was surrounded by loads of cooking utensils that were lying on the floor with pots and pans, flour and other foods scattered and splashed all over the lower cupboards and drawers. Clint had no idea how the mess happened until he saw a golden blur run straight in between his legs.
“Why didn’t you catch him?!”
Now Bucky was really pissed off. Clint tried so hard not to laugh at him covered in flour and God knows what else. He looked behind him to see a puppy running towards their bedroom.
“He’s heading towards the bedroom.”
“Then what are you waiting for?!”
“Bucky, use your inside voice and stop shouting at me.”
Now Clint was starting to get frustrated. Clint hadn’t noticed the puppy in the apartment, even when he was awake, and he was so obviously not living up to the name Hawkeye. Bucky would most likely comment about that later.
They sneaked their way towards the bedroom and looked around to see the puppy sitting in the middle of their bed. Bucky closed the bedroom door and thought of a plan that could work if they worked together and tried not to shout at each other.
“Ok, the dog is on the bed. If you take the one side of the bed and I take the other, the dog won’t have anywhere to go. Are you ok with that plan?”
Bucky smirked as he asked Clint, knowing Clint picked up on the fact that he called it a dog and not a puppy. He had always known Clint loved dogs and puppies but they could never get one because of Avengers business and missions. No one would be there to look after it.
“Yes, the plan is fine and I want him off the bed before he decides to use it as a bathroom.”
Bucky couldn’t help but laugh at that, although he did think about where the puppy may have gone if it needed the bathroom. He didn’t really want to know, especially if it was in the bedroom. They opened the door quietly, trying not to startle the pup. Clint automatically went to his side of the bed and Bucky did the same. By the look on Clint’s face he’d found out where the puppy had gone to the bathroom.
“Awww, puppy no.”
“Do I want to know what the puppy did or shall I guess?” Bucky chuckled. Clint looked to him with a mixture of sadness and disgust on his face and then looked at the puppy who was staring back at him, looking all innocent.
“You really don’t want to know. Looks like I’m sharing your side of the bed.”
“Clint it wasn’t actually on the bed, so you can climb on to the bed from the bottom.”
Clint glared at the puppy; the glare didn’t last long though as the puppy barked and scared them both.
“Can we just catch the puppy and then deal with whatever mess he’s made?”
Bucky could tell that Clint was getting fed up with this and just wanted it to be over so they could go watch some crap TV show and make out on the sofa.
“Ok, we jump on three. One…Two…Three!”
To both of them, it seemed like it went in slow motion. As they jumped they didn’t take into account that if the puppy moved off the bed, they would be jumping towards each other. They bashed heads and the puppy just sat on the floor looking at them wagging his tail. When trying to think of what else they could do, they both tried to climb off the bed but found they couldn’t. Both Clint and Bucky found themselves tangled in the bed sheets.
“How did this happen?!” Bucky was the first to ask. Clint was too busy trying to find his way out of the covers but had no such luck.
“I don’t know. You were the one that came up with the plan!”
The fact that Clint slightly raised his voice made Bucky more agitated and wanting to get out of this mess. Meanwhile, the puppy had made itself comfy by lying on the floor. It still had Clint & Bucky in its sight so it could mock them. It took them 10 minutes to find a way out of those sheets. Considering they were two master assassins, they probably could have got out of it quicker. It was pretty much 5 minutes of them shouting at each other. When they were sent on missions together they were fine and could get the job done no problem; working together at home, however, was a completely different story.
When they did get out, they both just sat on the floor on Bucky’s side of the bed and waited for everything to calm down before trying to catch the puppy again. Clint laid his head on Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky put his hand on top of Clint’s. Just then, Clint saw something out of the corner of his eye; the puppy came closer to him and nudged his hand. Clint started stroking the pup and scratching behind it’s ears. Bucky looked down at the pup and smiled.
“This dog has been a pain in the ass. It’s wrecked the whole apartment.”
Clint didn’t take his eyes of the pup and smiled.
“Yeah, but he is cute.”
A thought that came to Bucky: he didn’t even know how the puppy got in the building yet alone their apartment.
“Clint, do you have any idea how the puppy got in?”
Clint took his eyes off the puppy and stared straight ahead with a puzzled look on his face, and then a sudden realisation came.
“Erm…you know how I went to get the groceries? Well, when I came back up Mrs Johnston wanted help with putting a coffee table together so I helped her out but left the apartment door open. He must have gotten in when I was at Mrs Johnston’s. I knew I heard something down the alley!”
Bucky looked shocked but laughed; the thought of a puppy outsmarting Hawkeye was unbelievable. Bucky put his arm around his boyfriend’s shoulder and brought him closer to cuddle but that’s when Clint pulled away and started fussing the puppy more. Clint started making high pitched noises and babbling; Bucky had never seen this side of Clint, sure he saw him petting other people’s dogs and was happy, but he never made the noises he was making right now. His thoughts were interrupted by Clint pleading.
“Bucky, can we keep him? I’ll look after him!” Bucky couldn’t help but notice that Clint was acting like a five year old.
“What about when we get called for missions or the Avengers need us?” Clint looked down towards the puppy; all of the happiness had gone from his face.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Clint didn’t take his eyes off of the pup, even when Bucky got up and walked out of the room. Bucky couldn’t put up with Clint’s sadness, so he walked out of their apartment and went to see Mrs Johnston.
“Hey Mrs Johnston, I have a favour to ask. Clint and I have had a puppy in our apartment all day. Clint wants to keep him, but you know with our line of work it’ll be difficult. So I was wondering, when we do go away for days at a time, would you be willing to look after him for us? We’ll pay for all the food and whatever else you’ll need.”
Mrs Johnston just stood there in the doorway considering what has just been said.
“Yes that sounds nice. It’ll be good for you boys to have someone else to look after.”
She smiled at Bucky; he returned the smile and thanked her. He had to go and tell Clint before Clint was too sad to care about anything else. When Bucky ran back into their apartment, Clint was still sitting on the floor. The puppy, however, had moved to lie across Clint’s lap. Bucky stood in the doorway looking at both of them. Clint was the first one to break the silence.
“I know, Buck. We have to take him to a shelter. They’ll find a proper home for him.”
The way Clint had said that broke Bucky’s heart; Clint sounded so full of sadness. Bucky bent down and put his hand on Clint’s shoulder - he couldn’t wait any longer.
“Clint, sweetheart, we can keep the puppy.”
Clint’s face lit up and he grabbed Bucky to pull him into a hug.
“Really?! We can keep him?” Bucky nodded.
“Yep. I spoke to Mrs Johnston and she said she’d look after him while we’re out on missions.”
Bucky had to smile when he explained to Clint about the arrangement - Clint was on the verge of tears. The puppy lifted its head to look at Bucky and then it got up and jumped at Bucky. Clint laughed when it licked him. Bucky couldn’t help but laugh too and had to ask,
“What shall we call him?”
Clint looked at the puppy for a minute and then looked up at his boyfriend with a big grin on his face.
“We’ll call him Lucky.”