Work Text:
Bucky Barnes had nothing against fall. He had nothing against Clint’s farm. He had nothing against spending fall with his boyfriends on said farm. He even had nothing against the leaves that were blanketing the farmhouse’s yard.
It was just time for the leaves to go.
Sure, they’d looked pretty as they changed color and slowly fell from the maples and birches. They’d even been fun to stomp on, to hear crackling under the soles of his boots, despite the disadvantage they gave anyone trying to move about silently to sneak up on Tony and drop an ice cube down his back before he could soup up Clint’s old tractor with an arc reactor and a thousand impractical ideas.
(Which for the record had been Clint, not Bucky himself. Clint liked his tractor how it was.)
Now, though, they were half-decomposed, soggy and limp, and a dead brown in color. They were ugly, and Bucky wanted them gone. That was why he was outside on a reasonably-nice late fall day, raking soggy leaves into giant piles while his boyfriends were inside cuddling on the couch.
It wasn’t a small job. The front yard was large and dotted with a few dozen trees, and the back yard was edged by a forest. Even with Hydra’s serum granting him extra endurance, Bucky was still sure he’d be feeling the hours of work in the muscles of his shoulders the next day. Still, he felt massively edified by the sight of all the leaves in neat piles seven hours after he’d started. Smiling to himself, he headed for their shed to grab the leaf bags he’d picked up last time they were in town.
By the time he exited the shed two minutes later, one pile was fully destroyed and Clint was about to dance his way through a second.
“Clinton Francis Barton!” Bucky yelled, storming across the yard. “You always do this! I put in all the hard work and right before I can finish you come along and mess it all up! The damn leaves are slimy and gross; why are you even touching them?”
Clint sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “Aw, come on, Buck. It’s just a little fun.”
“Just a little fun, huh? So you think the seven hours this took me was also, ‘just a little fun’? You think the forty-five minutes that pile specifically took to gather was ‘just a little fun’? How about you rake the entire front and back yard next time, huh?”
“I don’t see why the leaves have to be raked anyway,” grumbled his boyfriend. “It’s not like we’ve got neighbors who care.”
“Because I’m also the only one who cleans the damn house,” Bucky complained, “and once the leaves hit this point your dog tracks tiny bits of them everywhere. Seriously, Clint, you and Tony had better start helping more around here or I’m going to go insane and strangle the next one of you who makes a mess.”
“Help has arrived!” Tony announced, stepping out of the barn carrying something that looked like the unholy love child of a leaf blower and a proton pack. “I call it the Leaf Bagger 40k. It’ll revolutionize autumn lawn care.”
Bucky and Clint stared at him for a very long moment. “What’s the 40k for?” Clint finally asked.
“Some kids did an experiment and determined that that’s about how many leaves fit in a leaf bag,” Tony replied, donning the proton pack part of his contraption. “I figured I’d acknowledge the scientific drive it takes to be patient enough to count that high.”
Bucky remained unconvinced. “How exactly is it supposed to work?”
“It’s a vacuum for leaves, but better,” Tony announced as though this were something to be proud of. “Pick up mode is this button, and it sucks them all up and into the attached leaf tank. Once the tank is full, the light on the hose turns red.” He sucked up most of the leaves Clint had already disturbed for his demonstration. “Red light! Someone hold a leaf bag for me for this next bit.” Bucky rolled his eyes but opened a leaf bag and held it as directed. With a manic grin, Tony hit the reverse button, lined up the hose with the bag’s mouth, and flipped his contraption back on.
It took precisely .3 seconds for the force of the Leaf Bagger 40k to blow out the bottom of the bag. Clint, as the unlucky sucker standing in the way, found himself suddenly coated in approximately forty-thousand half-rotted leaves. From the sudden flailing and screeching, Bucky was pretty sure several had also gotten in his mouth and eyes.
Bucky looked back and forth between his partners before throwing down the newly-bottomless bag and stomping towards their back porch. “I give up. I’ve put enough hours into this. When you’re done being idiots, you can both finish bagging the leaves I spent all afternoon raking.” He turned back over his shoulder when he reached the porch steps to give them one final glare. “If either of you come in before they’re all bagged or track so much as a single leaf fleck inside, I am replacing both of your coffee grounds with something disgusting – and I’ll do it sometime in the nebulous future when you’ve forgotten to expect it.” With that final threat, he stomped up the stares and into the house, slamming the door behind him.
Out in the yard, Clint and Tony shared wide-eyed looks.
“You hold the bags and I’ll handle the rake?” Clint suggested.
“Right,” Tony agreed, taking off his contraption and tossing it aside. “I’ll just work on this later. For next year.”
— — —
Clint tracked three leaves into the house. Two months later, he and Tony were horrified to find their coffee grounds replaced with some of Lucky’s dog food which had been pulverized in their food processor. Bucky sipped his tea placidly to the sound of their gagging. Justice had never tasted so sweet.
— — —
The Leaf Bagger 40k remains unfinished in the back corner of the shed to this day. Tony could never look at it again without breaking out into a cold sweat.