Chapter Text
Clint stifled a chuckle. His phone buzzed again and he tried to cover his laugh with a cough. Steve glared at him while he was still talking.
Bucky’s phone buzzed and he stealthily looked at it and grinned a little, typing something back quickly.
Clint started wheezing after his phone buzzed. Steve stopped talking and crossed his arms.
“Clint, you’ve got to be joking.” He said, looking supremely disappointed. “Guys, you can go ahead and leave. Not you, either, Bucky.” The rest of the team picked up their briefing materials and shuffled out, with only a short “Oooh,” from Tony.
To Bucky’s credit, he looked a little ashamed. Clint just kept silently shaking and trying to keep in his laughter.
“Listen, guys. I’m glad the two of you are happy and all, don’t get me wrong,” Steve started. Clint’s eyes watered and his whole face was beet red. “What even was so funny?” Clint couldn’t keep it in anymore. He burst into hysterical laughter, gripping his side (which had been stitched three days ago. He could feel them popping.) and slapping his knee.
“It wasn’t even that funny,” Bucky said, chuckling at his boyfriend’s reaction.
“Yes, yes, it was,” Clint wailed. After a few seconds of him calming down, he wiped his eyes and shook his head. “It wasn’t even so much the joke as much as the fact that you memed.”
Steve had a face that said if he were on The Office, he’d be looking into the camera with a long-suffering stare.
“Alright. You done?” Steve said, frown on his face. Clint nodded and leant back in his chair.
“Yeah, all good, Cap,” Clint said jovially.
“Great. You’re off the mission.” Steve said dismissively, tapping papers on the table to align them.
“What!?” Clint blurted, putting his feet back on the ground and spreading his hands.
“Steve, come on,” Bucky said, standing. “We were just screwing around!” Steve rounds on Bucky.
“Just screwing around?” He said, voice raising. “Buck, these are people’s lives here!” He smacks the papers he holds in one hand against his other hand. “This mission means life or death for people around the Hydra base, and you want to screw around.”
“Steve, that’s not what I meant and you know it.” Bucky spat. Clint stood, smacking his phone down on the table.
“Enough!” He said, over top of Steve’s next retort. “Fuck.” He seethed. “Steve, this is bullshit. There’s other people on the team that behave more like bastards than cracking up one time in a briefing, and nobody’s got suspended before.” Clint was dangerously quiet, something that made Bucky’s hair stand up on the back of his neck. “Either you got a problem with me and Bucky, or you got your own shit going on, but you can’t just take me off a mission without justification.”
“My justification is that the two of you need to get out of each other’s orbit for a little while,” Steve said, a vein prominent on his forehead. He was otherwise calm because he knew he’d block Clint out of the conversation, and that’s the exact opposite of what he wanted to do here.
“What does that even mean?” Bucky asked, aghast.
“That means you’ve taken the past six missions together as a pair,” Steve said, rifling through his papers.
“So what? All of them were resounding successes.” Clint replied, beginning to list them. “Lithuania took four hours, no civilian casualties, in and out. The one farther north, wherever that was, we got the hostages out, no civilian casualties--”
“In Lithuania, you broke your collarbone, in Novgorod, Bucky ended up stabbed, in Minsk you threw yourself off a fucking cliff, ” Steve said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You two end up getting hurt trying to stop the other one from getting hurt. You’re a dream team, you really are, but you’ll end up killing yourselves trying to save each other. You have to work apart for awhile.” Steve said, dropping his hands. “Clint, you definitely ripped your stitches laughing.” He said, defeated.
“No, I didn’t,” Clint protested, but Bucky pulled his shirt out from his side.
“Babe,” He said. A growing red stain was creeping along the dark green fabric. Clint swore and tore the shirt off and carried it out of the room.
“The word’s final!” Steve called after them. “You’re hurt anyway!”
Clint dunked the shirt in cold water in a nearby bathroom. Bucky jutted his hip against the doorframe and watched Clint. His face was slightly flushed from either the shouting or the blood loss, his lips pulled back from his teeth. He was muttering slightly like he usually does when he’s livid. His hair was still snarled from sleep, even though it was four in the evening. The jeans he’s had since he left the circus were slung low, ripped on both knees, and worn from what he guessed used to be a deep blue that were now almost grey in most places, and bluer near the seams.
“You get it out?” Bucky asked. Clint looked over at him and hummed a question. “You get it out? Want me to get the soda water?” Clint shook his head and began to work up some spit in his mouth, and before Bucky could stop him, he laid a fat one right on the stain. Clint scrubbed that into the shirt and started dunking it again in the cold water.
“Why would you get soda water?” Clint asked innocently, after repeating the process three more times.
“That was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Bucky said, in shock. Clint blinked at him owlishly.
“Well, how do you get the stains out?” Bucky processed that for a moment, and had a gripping flashback to the time that his new beau offered to get the blood stains out of the shirt he wore on New Year’s Day to that one mission with the cult.
“Burn that shirt.” Bucky demanded, grabbing for it.
“No! Damn it, now,” Clint swore, snagging it back. He sloshed water onto the floor and Bucky slid a little in his socks.
“Gross, Clint!” Clint threw the decorative hand towel on the floor and mopped up most of the spill. Bucky whipped his socks off and held them out from his body. Clint sat back on his heels and looked at Bucky’s face. It was a lovely mixture of ‘Really done with your shit, Clint,’ and ‘Really, Clint?’ Clint snorted at him, and Bucky broke into a smile. “Seriously, you’re filthy.” He said, chuckling.
“Want me to take your socks to the hamper?” Clint asked, standing and collecting the towel and his shirt. Bucky held them out and Clint snagged them, kissing Bucky’s shoulder on the way past.
“Bring me new ones, please.” He requested. Clint raised a hand in recognition. As he rounded the bed, Bucky thought of something else. “Hey!” He shouted, cupping a hand to his mouth. “Don’t wash the towel with the shirt! Pepper will strangle you with it!”
“Right!” Clint yelled back. Bucky rolled his eyes and went into the kitchen to grab some fruit and a bottle of water. Tony was hovering near the coffee pot.
“Very cute. Very domestic.” He said when he saw Bucky. Bucky’s cheeks coloured. “Appreciate you thinking about the towel. Clint’s a brute with the laundry.”
“What, he turn your Egyptian silk briefs pink or something?” Bucky snarked as he washed his apple off.
“Egyptian cotton , heathen, and no. He shrunk all of my sweaters once. It was a travesty.” Tony said flippantly as he grabbed the milk out of the fridge. He put only enough in the mug to cool the coffee just past the blistering point before he took two large slugs of it. “I heard that you two are getting separated in the field.” Ah, Tony. Never one to mince words.
“That happened three minutes ago.” Bucky said flatly.
“I heard two minutes ago.” Tony replied in the same tone of voice. “Well?”
“I dunno. I guess it’ll be alright,” Bucky said, shrugging and leaning on the counter. He bit into his apple as Tony watched him closely. “Good to diversify.” He said finally, with his mouth full.
“God, and you say I’m gross.” Clint said as he handed Bucky his socks. Bucky handed the apple out in trade, so he could have both hands for the socks. Clint stole a bite, then spied the coffee and perked up. “Can I--”
“No.” Tony replied with a smirk. Clint glared at him and defiantly got a mug from the cupboard after giving Bucky back his apple. Tony rolled his eyes, but chuckled as he headed back to the lab.
Once they were alone again, Clint looked at Bucky over his mug.
“We’re gonna be cool, right?” He asked Bucky. Bucky nodded slowly.
“Yeah. We’ll be alright.”