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Everyone is fascinated with Clint’s soulmark when they see it.
The mark isn’t exactly subtle, to say the least. It had been subtle to begin with, apparently, an innocuous sketch on the inside of his left wrist. A lot of soulmates end up with a little extra art added on once they activate, something about a physical reminder of the bond settling itself inside their bodies, and Clint wasn’t any different in that respect. Most soulmarks aren’t big enough to wrap around someone’s wrist, though.
Clint’s soulmark covers the entirety of his left arm.
It’s absolutely gorgeous, which is part of the appeal, but people are shocked when they see the heavy lines of art winding up his skin, curling around his shoulder. It’s too sharp-looking to be a tattoo, too alien to be a simple drawing. Bucky’s got it committed to memory, the way the black-and-grey around Clint’s forearm bursts into explosively vibrant colours the further away from the original soulmark it gets, the red and green and gold almost luminous in the right lighting.
Most people love looking at Clint’s soulmark. Bucky, though? Bucky feels guilty right down to his bones, because the soulmark isn’t his.
And yet he’s still in love with the person it’s on.
“Fuck,” Clint says, rough and breathless against his ear. “You’re fucking vicious, you know that?”
“You deserve it,” Bucky mutters, yanks on the strands of hair in his grip again. He’d be gentler but he’s realized by now that Clint doesn’t like gentle the way he likes rough, and it’s proven by the way Clint hitches him up higher against the wall, bites at his jaw. The angle has him sinking deeper into Bucky and the slick slide is fucking excellent, made even better by the way Clint moans against his skin.
Bucky doesn’t really mind the lack of gentle sex either, if he’s honest with himself.
Clint’s still got his tac vest on and it scrapes against Bucky’s thighs where they’re wrapped around Clint’s waist, deliciously rough. He feels white-hot and overheated, still running on adrenaline from a mission gone sideways, and Clint is just winding it up to one hundred. Bucky’s never going to get used to this, not in a million years, and his breath hitches in his throat.
“Fuck, ’m close,” Clint breathes. “Touch yourself for me, c’mon.”
Bucky uses the left hand, revels in the noise Clint makes when he notices. He’s close, he’s too close and then he’s leaning in for a kiss that feels downright obscene, teeth and tongue and Clint moaning loud against his mouth as he comes.
He whites out a little after that, only resurfaces from the buzz in his veins when he feels Clint shudder through his own orgasm.
“Hell,” Bucky breathes, still somehow knocked sideways and stupid by it. He shouldn’t be, really, because this has been going on long enough that post-mission sex has become a routine with them. After the last week of Doom’s shit, he’s surprised his dick hasn’t chafed.
Clint pitches forward a little, lets them slide down the wall. Bucky feels a pulse of fear at the movement, but even shortly after coming he’s careful, gets them both on the carpet without any harm. Bucky ends up half-balanced on Clint’s thighs, shivers when lips brush his neck. It’s softer than he’s expecting and Bucky’s heart clenches in his chest painfully.
“I think I hurt my back,” Clint says distractedly, and Bucky can’t help the bark of laughter.
“And who’s fault is that? You’re the one that wanted to try and hold me up the whole time,” he retorts.
Clint leans back enough that Bucky can see the helplessly dorky grin on his face. “Didn’t hear you complaining, Barnes.” Bucky’s not complaining. He’d honestly not been expecting that Clint could hold him up and fuck him, but he’s happy to be proven wrong. It’s absurdly hot.
“I think I’m getting old,” Clint says ruefully. “You want to join me in the shower? Hot water’d be real nice on my muscles right about now. And you’ve got a bit of- here.”
He stops here to thumb gently at Bucky’s cheekbone, fingers coming away stained with dried blood and dirt. The expression on his face is soft, full of more emotion than Bucky could ever be prepared for. His heart does that hard clenching thing again. Then he realizes Clint’s touching him with his left hand, Cyrillic curling black around his fingers.
Bucky goes cold, all of a sudden, tries to get his feet under him. “I’ve got to go.” Where the fuck are his pants?
“Okay,” Clint says, all understanding with a hint of quiet resignation, like he’s expecting it by now.
“Hey Buck, where were you? I thought you were coming running with us this morning,” Steve asks.
“Changed my mind,” Bucky mutters into his coffee, doesn’t elaborate beyond that.
“Good. I don’t need another supersoldier making me look like a joke. Please, keep changing your mind, Barnes,” Sam comments as he opens the fridge, pulls out a carton of juice. “Or I’ll be forced to trip you over. Both of you.”
That gets a laugh out of Steve. Bucky just grunts.
He doesn’t like the knowing look on Sam’s face. There’s no way he could know, no way in hell because they've been careful and yet there’s something in his eyes that says he knows exactly where Bucky was in the early hours of the morning. Sam doesn’t say anything, though, and Steve seems cheerfully oblivious to the reasons behind Bucky’s rumpled appearance.
It had been extremely difficult to get out of the supply closet. He’s pretty sure he still has pencil shavings stuck in his hair.
“Morning, Clint,” Steve says. “Kind of early for you, isn’t it?”
Bucky only gets a split second to register a new presence in the room before there’s a warm weight leaning against his shoulder. He turns his head and inhales, smells Clint’s shampoo and whatever deodorant he’s been using. It takes a nightmarish amount of effort not to press his face into Clint’s neck.
“Early, yeah,” Clint says, sounds distracted. He sidles up a little closer and Bucky passes his mug over absently, doesn’t think about it until Clint makes a borderline-obscene noise into the cup. He glances up then and Sam’s got an eyebrow raised, looking between them. The look is probably warranted, given that Bucky’s not one for sharing.
“Bucky-” Steve starts, and Bucky flinches.
“I left some- some stuff in my room I need to check on,” he mutters, gets up quickly and determinedly doesn’t cringe when Clint nearly falls on his ass from the lack of support.
“Tash,” Clint whines, flopping dramatically on the couch.
This is unfortunate because there are already two people on said couch, and Clint, while nonthreatening in his Black Widow pajama pants, is well past six foot and can’t flop on the couch dramatically without landing on them both. Bucky doesn’t look up from his battered copy of Living Dead In Dallas, tries to ignore the solid warmth of Clint’s legs sprawled across his thighs.
Even without looking, though, he knows Clint’s got his head resting in Natasha’s lap, probably with his nose pressed against her stomach. It seems to be his favourite way to get her attention, and Natasha’s hand inevitably ends up carding through his hair. It’d be sweet, if it wasn’t for the memory of his mouth around Bucky’s dick the day before.
Bucky wonders how Clint manages to not feel guilty about this, because he can barely look Natasha in the eye nowadays. Not when Clint got to his knees in front of him yesterday, pupils dark with lust and letting Bucky pull his hair again for the sheer thrill of it.
Clint remains serene, though, and when Bucky glances over he’s got his shirt yanked down, revealing a long stripe of skin that’s only broken up by the glimmer of crimson curling over his collarbone.
It’s still growing, then.
Bucky’s eyes flick to Natasha without meaning to and she’s reaching down to press her fingertips against the new marks. She’s not smiling, exactly - no, that would be too obvious for someone like her - but there’s a soft fondness in her eyes that’s telling. Clint’s preening under the content like a particularly satisfied cat, and Bucky tries to shift his attention back to the book in his hands, can’t no matter how he tries.
He can't even feel slightly bothered by Natasha's quiet happiness, because she deserves it. He doesn't- a lot of his time with the Red Room is blurry, but he knows that this is something precious to her. Clint's precious to her, and doesn't that make him the biggest jerk on the fucking planet.
“I’d pay good money to be Natasha’s soulmate if I got to do that,” Tony comments, sprawls back in his armchair.
Steve gives him a withering look. “That kind of thing is exactly why you aren’t.”
Bucky’s a little preoccupied with trying to inch away from the scene next to him, but while Clint had fallen asleep with his face half-in Natasha’s cleavage, he’s managed to somehow curl around Bucky as well. It had been a mistake, sitting so close to her when Clint was due back from a long mission. He hopes no one can read his expression.
Natasha doesn’t seem to care where Clint’s face is, she’s typing something on her phone with the hand that isn’t weighed down by the exhausted blond mess. He hasn’t even been to medical yet. Christ, how did Clint make it to thirty-five without dying along the way? Bucky’s itching to get the kit and do it himself, but it feels like crossing a line somehow, being the one to patch Clint up.
Sitting here is crossing a line. God, what are Steve and Tony thinking about it? He moves and Clint shifts, tries to grab at him and misses, clumsy with sleep and battle-weary. “Don’t go.”
“I need to go to the bathroom,” he lies, too obvious, he took a piss before this happened, but Clint shuffles up the couch to get off of his thighs, ends up mostly in Natasha’s lap. She doesn’t react at all, other than to rest her phone on top of Clint’s head. He sighs at her a little bit and she rolls her eyes, pulls him in a little closer like it's an inconvenience even though she's willingly doing it.
Bucky flees.
“I made pasta,” Clint says cheerfully when he sees Bucky. “It’s the only thing I can cook properly, but still. You want a taste before Steve eats it all?”
Clint's all soft in the dimmed kitchen lights, missing his tac gear and battle-ready movements. He offers out the spoon and Bucky leans in before he thinks about how intimate it is. He stops a few inches away from the wooden spoon, draws back. They don’t do this. Clint’s wearing a cheesy little Kiss The Cook apron and Bucky’s been watching him from the lounge for the last ten minutes, thinking about how he could kiss the cook, were things different.
Clint hadn’t noticed him because he’s got his hearing aids out, which meant Bucky could linger for longer than he’d normally allow himself. As it turns out, Clint dances when he’s cooking, to some random tune that’s going on in his head. It’s painfully endearing and Bucky had been drawn into the kitchen like there was a string pulling him in.
He takes a step away and Clint tips his head to the side, watches him with something approaching concern.
“Maybe you should ask Natasha,” he says and signs at the same time, tries to keep any emotion out of his voice even though Clint wouldn’t be able to hear it.
“Hey,” Clint greets, bumps their shoulders together. “I’m going down to the bakery on the fifth floor, you want anything?”
“Isn’t that place a nightmare at this time?”
Bucky glances at the clock, confirms it’s two in the afternoon - the time all the Stark Industries employees flock to the bakery - before he turns his gaze onto Clint. Clint seems unbothered, in a shirt that looks older than he is and a hoodie that might’ve once belonged to Bruce Banner. He’s still hovering close, eyes bright and cheerful grin set on his face. Bucky wants to feel it against his own lips, a little bit.
“I know you like the brownies, Barnes,” Clint says, a little teasing. “You could always come with me. We could brave the crowds together.”
Bucky thinks about it, imagines a horribly cheesy situation where he has to hold onto Clint’s hand to keep them together. He wonders what Clint’s fingers feel like when you’re holding them and they’re not just palming your ass or holding your shoulder. Or around your dick.
“Better not,” is what he says, tries not to analyze the way Clint’s smile dims slightly.
“Hello, James,” Natasha greets.
Bucky hadn’t even noticed her in the room, and that’s almost as concerning as the way she’s apparently been sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter in the darkness at three in the morning. It’s like she’s been waiting for something. Someone, even. Judging by the way she’s watching him, Bucky himself is what she’s been waiting for. He bites his lip and tries to ignore her, opens the fridge and starts staring blankly at its contents.
He realizes after a few minutes that ignoring her isn’t actually going to make her leave. Well, there goes his last little shred of hope. Bucky sighs and turns back around, leans up against the cold steel. Natasha’s jeans are cuffed, sliding up her leg enough to reveal delicate ankles and the arrows curled neatly around the left one.
Bucky’s staring.
He doesn't mean to, but. It’s not like Natasha ever shows off her soulmark. A few people have suggested that maybe Clint's is a one-sided mark but Bucky knows better and there it is, in a shade of purple that looks metallic and razor-sharp. Dangerous like her, but with She presses her fingertips against it briefly, looks up at him. “Do you know how we activated, James?”
“No,” he says, even though he shouldn’t engage with this, even with the alarm bells going off in his brain.
“I was trying to kill him,” she continues. “I had orders and he interfered, so I climbed up on the roof where he was and got my gun out. It was a rainy night, the wind screaming loud enough that the people downstairs wouldn't hear shots. I nearly did kill him, and then I slipped and fell off the roof. He caught me with seconds to spare, saved my life even though I’d done nothing but hurt him.”
Well, that explains the ankle mark, Bucky supposes.
“Clint’s not like us,” Natasha says. “He’s soft. Not weak, but he lets things slide when he shouldn’t, because he loves too much and too hard.”
“I... don’t know what you’re trying to tell me here,” Bucky answers. He genuinely doesn’t. What does Clint being soft have to do with anything? It’s not like Bucky didn’t know that already. Clint's a whole different breed from them, something bright inside him that hasn't been snuffed out by the unforgiving darkness of living. It's part of what made Bucky fall f-
“Whatever you’re doing with Clint, you need to stop,” Natasha says and Bucky freezes.
She knows.
Of course she knows, she isn’t stupid. It’s not like Bucky remembers how to be subtle anyway, he’s pretty sure it’s all over his face whenever Clint enters the room. She’d probably known all along, because the feelings had been there even before the random sex.
Fuck. Fuck.
“I can’t do this,” he blurts out, pushes at Clint’s chest.
Clint backs off immediately, doesn’t try to argue even though Bucky can feel how hard he is even through four layers of fabric. He looks concerned. Worried, even, like there’s something wrong with just Bucky and not this whole situation. The nausea crawls under his skin like a physical thing and he has to stop, try and calm himself. It doesn’t work.
“Hey. Deep breaths, talk to me. It’s okay,” Clint says, soft and reassuring. Like he cares.
“It’s not okay,” Bucky answers before he means to, the distress bleeding into his voice. His mouth has got a mind of its own today, apparently. He lets go of Clint and buries his face in his hands instead, inhales shakily from his nose. “It's not okay, Clint. What the fuck are we doing?”
“I mean, I thought we were fucking in a real bed for once,” Clint replies. He sounds a little like he's hurt by Bucky's outburst, but that makes Bucky's stomach twist up in even more knots.
“I can’t,” Bucky says, feels his eyes sting. Goddamnit. “I can’t. This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong. Natasha was right, I need to stop this because clearly you’re not going to. ”
There’s a long, heavy beat of silence, and if Bucky didn’t have super-hearing he’d have thought Clint had left the room. He didn’t mean for it to come out so sharp, so desperate, but it’s not like he can take it back now. God, this is a fucking mess. His head hurts.
“Right,” Clint says, and it’s colder than Bucky’s ever heard him sound. “Okay. You should- you should go.”
Walking away, Bucky realizes it’s the first time that Clint hasn’t tried to get him to stay.
He doesn’t look behind him.
“Buck,” Steve says, somewhere between worry and exasperation. “I know you’re an adult and you can do what you want, but I’m not sure watching the same Scooby-Doo movie on repeat for a week is healthy.”
Bucky hasn’t even realized that’s what he’s been watching. He’s just been sitting there, keeping himself hidden away from the world. Now he isn’t distracting himself with Clint’s mouth, he’s faced with the full extent of his mistakes. And Christ, this is a fuck up of epic proportions. How could he do this to Natasha? How could Clint do this to Natasha and not look even the slightest bit upset about it? He proclaims his love for the woman every day, what does that even mean?
“Bucky? Are you alright?”
“No,” Bucky says flatly.
Steve seems to think that over for a few seconds, and Bucky takes the opportunity to curl in on himself. There’s nothing else, though, and he realizes Steve’s waiting for him to elaborate.
Well, it’s not like he won’t find out.
“I slept with Clint. Multiple times. For weeks,” he confesses to his knees in a hoarse voice, braces himself for the inevitable disappointment. Steve might love Bucky but there’s no way that this is one of those easily forgiven things. Soulmates are sacred, you don’t fuck with that. Natasha is his friend, too, and they’re close.
Maybe it’ll be the final straw and Steve will kick him out for this.
“Okay?”
Steve just sounds puzzled. Does no one care about the gravity of this situation? Bucky feels his eyes sting, shuts them tight to keep the wetness from spreading. Fuck. He can’t breathe. His lungs feel like they’re constricting in his chest, choking him, and he wishes they were just so he wouldn’t have to deal with this situation anymore.
The sob escapes him without express permission and then Steve’s arms are around him, wrapping him up and pulling him close. Bucky’s done, he just twists into Steve’s chest and tries to pretend he doesn’t wish that it was Clint holding him instead. Steve’s hand settles on his spine, rubs up and down gently even though Bucky can tell he’s still confused.
“I’m a horrible fucking person,” Bucky mumbles against Steve’s shirt.
“Bucky, I don’t understand why you think that,” Steve says. “What’s going on?”
Bucky must look like a nightmare, all red-eyed and snotty-nosed, but he still sits up to fix Steve with a look. Steve just keeps glancing at him with concern, passes him a handkerchief. It’s Captain America-themed and Bucky lets out a wet-sounding bark of laughter before he blows his nose. Steve doesn’t let go of him, but he does loosen it so he’s just got one arm over Bucky’s shoulders.
“I’m fucking someone else’s soulmate,” he says tiredly. “Generally that’s kind of looked down on, Steve.”
There’s a pause. “Bucky, they’re not like that.”
“What?”
Bucky looks up at him and Steve’s frowning. It’s not a particularly surprising reaction, although Bucky’s still half-expecting him to get angry. He looks like he’s just realized something important and there’s a long moment of silence as he processes whatever’s going on in his brain. Bucky swallows past the aching lump in his throat and waits.
“Bucky,” Steve starts, using the voice he normally uses for sad little orphan kids he finds in the streets, “Clint and Natasha aren’t dating.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I know. They’re soulmates.”
“No, I mean,” Steve sighs. “You remember how we said that Wanda and her brother were soulmates, but it was never romantic? And - putting aside that they’re siblings for a second - it never would be, because it wasn’t that kind of relationship?”
The gears in Bucky’s brain start moving again. “Wait. They’re not-”
“They’re not,” Steve agrees.
“I need to go,” Bucky says, fully aware he’s in his shitty pajama pants and absolutely horrendous looking post-tears. It doesn’t matter. He should look shitty, because he is shitty, and if he doesn’t go and talk to Clint right now he’ll probably end up running away.
Bucky gets to Clint’s floor and thinks that it’s been abandoned until he realizes there’s a distinctly human-shaped lump on the tiles. It’s under a few blankets, but he crouches down and peels them off with some effort. He manages to find Clint underneath the tangle of cloth after a few seconds, curled into a pathetic-looking ball. Is he- yep, he’s taking a nap on the ground.
There’s a couch no more than a few feet away. Hell, that’s sad.
“Hey,” he says, a little hoarsely, reaches out to touch one muscled shoulder. “Clint.”
Clint’s eyes flutter open, that particular shade of blue that makes Bucky’s breath catch in his throat. “Wow. My hallucinations get more and more detailed every day.”
“I’m sorry,” Bucky says like it’s ripped out of him. “Clint, I’m so sorry, I’m a fuckin’ idiot.”
“Okay,” Clint answers hesitantly. “See, I don’t actually know what you’re apologizing for. Is this for the bagel I stole last week, or is it because you can't stand even looking at me outside of sex?”
“I thought you and Natasha were,” he confesses, doesn’t quite know how to finish. Romantically involved feels trivial, anything else sounds silly. There’s not really a way to encapsulate Natasha and Clint’s relationship even if they’re not dating. In fact, that makes it even harder to explain. Natasha and Clint are something else entirely, even with the soulmate connection.
Bucky goes quiet for long enough that Clint’s eyes light up with understanding, and then mild disgust. “Oh. Oh. That’s gross. She’s not- I’m not- no.”
The confirmation makes him feel a little better, but he still feels kind of nauseous.
“That’s why you were so-” Clint starts, eyes going wide. “You thought you were the side chick. Oh my god, Bucky.”
“I’m,” Bucky says. Stops. He’s not wrong, is the thing, although Clint had never made him feel like second-best or an afterthought. He shifts back a little when Clint sits up and looks at him all wide-eyed and curious. At least they both look like shit right now. It helps, a little bit, Clint's disastrous aura. “I’m sorry.”
“I thought you just didn’t want to publicly admit you were fucking someone so out of your league,” Clint admits with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “That, or you had some serious internalized homophobia going on.”
Bucky feels sick. He knows Clint has the self-esteem of a soggy paper bag, and now he’s realizing just how bad this had been because he’d never taken the time to talk about it. Clint’s been trying, this whole time, gently inviting Bucky closer but never pushing, always trying and getting the cold shoulder from Bucky without fail. And he’d kept trying, but Bucky had just gotten out of there as soon as he’d been able to get his legs under him. Wouldn't ever tell anyone, wouldn't even make a hint towards anything but a vague friendship with Clint.
God, he’d said everything is wrong about this, about them, about their relationship and Clint had thought-
It rises up his throat, unwanted and sudden. For a minute he thinks he's going to vomit but his mouth has a mind of its own. “I’m in love with you.”
“You,” Clint starts. Stops. “What?”
“I,” Bucky says, blinks. He hadn’t meant to say that. “I haven’t slept in a week.”
“Fuck. Me either.” Clint groans, pitches forward a little. He looks cold and tired, and Bucky wonders if this is his fault too. It probably is. Technically, it’s all his fault, but he’s not willing to open that can of worms right now. He’s dumb and exhausted and he’s missed Clint, like he used to miss being warm, after the cryochamber. He should apologize, he should go to Natasha and explain why he's an awful shred of a human being, he should be doing everything he can to make Clint know that he's far too important to be treated the way he was, even if it was because of a misunderstanding.
Clint sways and Bucky catches him with one hand, rights him as he starts talking again. “You want to have a proper conversation about this when we’re not exhausted and feeling like crap? There’s space in the bed for two people, if it was just. If you want.”
Bucky swallows. His gaze drifts down to the flowers curling around Clint’s bicep, half-covered by gleaming steel. For once, they don’t feel like a death sentence, just another part of Clint. “I’d like that.”
Clint’s smile is genuine this time.