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rose_in_winter2020-02-15 05:29 pm
lassarina) wrote in rose_in_winter2020-02-15 05:29 pm
[Marvel] Even Caged Birds Need Wings, Chapter Two
Characters: Bucky/Clint, with appearances from Steve, Sam, Natasha, and Bobbi (past Bobbi/Clint)
Rating: Mature
Contains: References to offscreen violence, abuse, and darker aspects of modern gymnastics competition
Wordcount: 2483 this chapter
Notes: This was supposed to be 500 words of fluff about that Sebastian Stan Men's Health photoshoot and then, because I'm me, this happened.
Betas: n/a
Summary: Clint Barton gave up on gymnasts years ago, but when he meets Bucky Barnes at the Olympic tryouts, he's drawn to him. But Bucky has problems of his own, and the path to gold isn't easy.
He goes back the next day, of course, and he ignores Bobbi's knowing smile from several rows behind him as he takes his seat to watch. It's much like the day before: at the end of it, Bucky and Rogers have made the team by a mile, along with Sam Wilson, who really showed his skills on the vault and the parallel bars. Clint watches the entire competition, even though it's obvious who's going to be on the team, because he forgot how much he enjoyed this. He does pause to text Natasha, I know what you did, and ignores her response of Barton, you have no idea what I've done because it's alarmingly true.
His phone buzzes again as he's getting ready to leave, and this time it's from Bucky. Coffee?
Hell yeah, he texts back, because Clint lives on coffee.
I'll meet you at the west exit in 20, Bucky texts, and Clint almost punches the air in victory before he remembers Bobbi would see it. Acting like a dumbass in front of random strangers is one thing; doing it in front of an ex-girlfriend who can and will tell his roommate is another thing altogether.
He makes himself stay put, scrolling through shit on his phone, for fifteen minutes because it beats standing around, then waves to Bobbi as he leaves. She's moved up to a closer seat as they change the equipment for the women's competition, a notebook in her hand and her eyebrows furrowed in a frown. She waves absently, but she's focused in work mode. He makes his way through the arena to the west entrance. He arrives just a minute before Bucky does, and tries to tell himself he's not disappointed that Rogers is with him.
"Hey," Bucky greets him. "This is Steve. We've been friends forever. Steve, this is Clint."
"Nice to meet you." Steve Rogers smiles easily and shakes his hand. "Enjoy coffee." He turns and walks briskly toward the subway, and Clint tries not to look glad.
"Did you have a place in mind?" he asks. The article mentioned Bucky's from New York.
"If you don't mind a walk, yeah," Bucky says.
"I'm good with a walk," Clint says. Bucky leads the way.
For a summer day in New York, it's actually pretty nice. It's not too humid, and the temperature is in the low eighties, so the ten-block walk is pleasant. People give Bucky's arm some weird looks, which annoys Clint--his own hearing aids go mostly unremarked and that degree of invisibility is something he hates taking for granted.
The coffee shop is simply called "Neighborhood," and it's surprisingly spacious, with warm light and big, sink-into-them chairs grouped around comfortably-sized tables. It's well populated for a Sunday afternoon, but there are still chairs free.
Bucky tips his head back to read the menu, and there's a hint of longing on his face when he looks at the glass case of pastries, but he quietly orders a small coffee, black, and an apple. Clint orders his own large black coffee and skips a snack. The coffee is served in a mug almost as big as Clint's head, of which he approves. When they get their cups and turn around, there's a man behind them, middle-aged and saved head, and something in Bucky's shoulders tenses as they brush past him, but the guy doesn't react. Clint follows Bucky back to a table tucked in the back, as far away from the guy as they can get and shielded from him by a table of Deaf students who are arguing with flying hands about a presentation for their American Lit class. Clint doesn't remember The Great Gatsby well enough to have an opinion about which of them is right, but he is really amused that the Black girl who seems to be winning is of the opinion that their teacher's insistence on the symbolism of the color green is bullshit and she refuses to include it.
Bucky relaxes a little when he's out of view and takes a slow sip of his coffee, his eyelids fluttering shut. Those eyelashes are fundamentally not fair. Clint looks down at his coffee to keep from staring and takes his own sip. It's rich and bitter, exactly what he hoped for.
Bucky breathes out slowly, not quite a sigh, and Clint looks up. "That good?" He means it to be light, teasing, and somehow there's a deeper note in it. Shit.
Bucky's eyes snap open. "I don't get coffee very often." It's flat, defensive, and Clint could kick himself.
"Then I'm honored." That one comes out the way he intended, playful and easy, and one corner of Bucky's mouth kicks up. "I live on coffee," he admits.
"My coach does not approve of it." Bucky takes another sip, slowly, savoring. Clint forcibly drags his thought processes away from other kinds of savoring, with difficulty. "But I just made the national team for the Olympics, and this degree of rebellion is expected." There's a certain flatness to his tone, like the one Natasha's voice takes when she's definitely not talking about whatever her life was before she joined the National Ballet, and like he would when Natasha is like that, Clint checks out of the corner of his eye for the guy with the shaved head, who's sitting on the other side of the coffee shop. He's trying not to obviously look through the Deaf girls' conversation, but one of them has pushed her chair back and is really arguing her point, her entire body engaged in the ferocity of her dislike for Gatsby, with which Clint can't really disagree. It makes it hard for him to see the guy too, but since that works both ways, he'll take it.
"You're amazing," Clint says honestly. "I mean, I'm sure you hear that all the time, but--wow."
The tips of Bucky's ears turn pink, and Clint grins. "Were you a gymnast before you went into archery?" Bucky asks. "Bobbi was remarkably close-lipped about you, which is unusual for her."
Clint reminds himself to thank her later; she could have chosen to be much more difficult. "No," he says, "but I've spent some time watching." Jesus, Barton, way to be a creep. "From hanging around with Bobbi, and others." Is that better? He's going to stop digging. "I've always been an archer." That's safer ground.
Bucky's eyes fall to his hands, then travel up his arms. Clint watches him catalog the calluses on his hands, the tan lines where his guard shields his left arm from the sun, and the muscles from wielding his bow. It's surprisingly intimate, but no more so than him reading that article, he supposes. He tries not to think about the photos. It feels intrusive. And he doesn't like the advantage it gives him. "My roommate gave me the magazine article about you," he says.
Bucky sighs and looks down at his coffee. "Seems like everybody's seen that." He twists the stem off of the apple and takes a bite, muscles in his jaw working, and keeps his eyes fixed on the table.
"Well," Clint says, "you look really good in the photos." He waits a moment while Bucky looks up at him, surprise clear in his eyes, before he adds, "But better in real life."
Bucky clears his throat and looks back down at the coffee. "USA Gymnastics wanted me to do the article." There's a defiance in that. "Drum up more interest for the qualifiers, and make them look better after everything."
Everything covers a lot of ground; if it were Clint, he'd feel no need to polish their image, but then again, it's not his dream at stake, so he nods. "Was it interesting?" When Bucky arches an eyebrow, he shrugs. "They don't interview archers. We don't defy death with every jump."
Bucky scoffs a little, and bites into the apple again, thinking it over while he chews. Clint looks away to let him think, checking the rest of the coffeehouse.
"He used my words, but it's not my story," Bucky says at last. "He was really interested in talking about how USAG was giving me the opportunity to 'overcome.'" The scorn that drops off the word is tangible.
"They aren't giving you shit." Clint's own vehemence startles him, and startles Bucky too, but damn it, that's just insulting. "And fuck the entire idea of overcoming." He has to ratchet it down; that hits close to home, in a way he's only ever admitted to Natasha and Bobbi, and he makes himself stop, and take a deep breath. "Sorry," he says, calmer, through a slow and careful breath. "I really hate people who make inspiration porn out of other people's stories, and I don't usually go for that much intensity on a first date." He cracks a smile, hopes it comes off as light as he wants it to. "I really wanted to ask you out again."
Bucky's answering smile is cautious, but it looks real. He pauses a moment before he answers. "You don't have to put that in past tense," he says, and Clint has to strain to hear him, but he's used to lip reading, and it makes his heart beat hard and fast, and a smile takes over his face without his permission.
"So, uh, now that I've been embarrassingly intense about way too many things," he says, "what do you want to talk about?"
"We could aggressively interrogate each other's taste in movies," Bucky suggests. "That's something people do on a first date, right?" His lips curl up when he says "first date," and it makes a little spark of warmth curl somewhere in Clint's chest. This feels weirdly intense for a first date, and he probably should aggressively interrogate that, but he doesn't want to, so he doesn't. He shoves it aside.
"Right, so you can agree on where to go for the second," Clint says. He leans forward, makes his face as serious as he can. "I can do anything but rom-coms."
Bucky's face is serious too, but humor lurks in the corners of his eyes. "Even foreign-language art films that are only subtitles and shadowed shots of Paris at night?"
"Even that." Clint grins. "My roommate might murder me if we go to the new one about the Paris ballet though. She claimed dibs."
Bucky laughs a little. "All right." He sips his coffee, and a smile clings to his lips like the taste it leaves behind. Clint wants to taste both. And that's probably the dumbest thing he's thought today. "No ballet, then."
"Anything else is fair game, though, after the qualifiers." Clint picks up his coffee to keep more words from coming out. It's not that he can't talk through coffee, but it lowers the odds.
"You live up here?" Bucky asks him.
"No, in DC," Clint says. "I'm here for the archery trials, but I came up early to watch the gymnastics competition."
Something flickers behind Bucky's eyes. He looks down at his coffee and half-eaten apple, then looks back up, and the openness, the smile is gone. Clint wonders what he said wrong. "That article, huh?"
Choosing his words carefully is so far from Clint's strong suit it might as well be overseas, but he gives it a try. "I won't deny it made me curious, and I also won't deny that when I ran into Bobbi--whom I've known a long time--I jumped when she offered to introduce us, because I'll be honest, you're really good looking, and I wanted a chance to get to know you. I wasn't expecting this, but so far it's been pretty great." He pauses and takes a deep breath. "If that's a problem, if it's not okay, then I'll back off. I'm not gonna chase someone who doesn't want my company." Fuck, expressing himself in words is hard.
Bucky's expression eases a little, though the smile doesn't come back. He sits back in his chair, his prosthetic arm making a faint sound when it meets wood, and nods. It seems to take him a long moment to find his own words. "I realize that sounded like an accusation," he says slowly. "I've had problems before with people who approach me either with one of several fetishes or because..." He trails off, and his gaze cuts sideways, toward the guy with the shaved head. So he does think that guy is watching them. He thinks about it for a moment. "My coach does not approve of extracurricular activities," he says at last, "and with the Olympics coming up, it is not a good time to try his patience."
Clint swallows the disappointment. "I get it."
If the regret on Bucky's face is an act, he's got a hell of a second career waiting in Hollywood. "I won't ask you to wait til after the Games," he says.
Clint nods. "I understand," he says. Not being asked is fine; it's not like anyone's beating down his door anyway. He thinks about it. "How does your coach feel about sexy texts?"
Surprise lights up those gray eyes, a moment before a smile that Bucky dampens too fast. "He doesn't have access to my phone."
"How do you feel about sexy texts?"
"That depends entirely on who's sending them." That smile is back. "Don't send pictures."
"Words only. Got it." It would have to be the way he's worst at expressing himself, but Clint can work with that. He finishes his coffee as Bucky finishes his apple. "Anything I can do before I leave to make this work better for you with your coach?"
"Look annoyed when you go." Bucky puts on a bored, distant expression that stings more than Clint expects. "That way he will think I have brushed you off."
That's not hard. Clint understands being focused on your sport and the Games, but even Natasha's coaches at the ballet have realistic expectations of their dancers that include "there is life outside this building" despite their speeches to the contrary. He shoves his chair back from the table hard enough to make a noise and sees Bucky's flesh hand clench, even though he has to be expecting it. The mental note that causes makes Clint's angry expression not even an act as he stomps past their observer and out of Neighborhood. He's not so annoyed he doesn't see the guy sending a text as he goes past, and that just makes him angrier.
On the subway on his way back to the hotel, he reminds himself that one date is not enough to go looking up Bucky's coach, even if he's starting to get a really bad feeling about this.
Rating: Mature
Contains: References to offscreen violence, abuse, and darker aspects of modern gymnastics competition
Wordcount: 2483 this chapter
Notes: This was supposed to be 500 words of fluff about that Sebastian Stan Men's Health photoshoot and then, because I'm me, this happened.
Betas: n/a
Summary: Clint Barton gave up on gymnasts years ago, but when he meets Bucky Barnes at the Olympic tryouts, he's drawn to him. But Bucky has problems of his own, and the path to gold isn't easy.
He goes back the next day, of course, and he ignores Bobbi's knowing smile from several rows behind him as he takes his seat to watch. It's much like the day before: at the end of it, Bucky and Rogers have made the team by a mile, along with Sam Wilson, who really showed his skills on the vault and the parallel bars. Clint watches the entire competition, even though it's obvious who's going to be on the team, because he forgot how much he enjoyed this. He does pause to text Natasha, I know what you did, and ignores her response of Barton, you have no idea what I've done because it's alarmingly true.
His phone buzzes again as he's getting ready to leave, and this time it's from Bucky. Coffee?
Hell yeah, he texts back, because Clint lives on coffee.
I'll meet you at the west exit in 20, Bucky texts, and Clint almost punches the air in victory before he remembers Bobbi would see it. Acting like a dumbass in front of random strangers is one thing; doing it in front of an ex-girlfriend who can and will tell his roommate is another thing altogether.
He makes himself stay put, scrolling through shit on his phone, for fifteen minutes because it beats standing around, then waves to Bobbi as he leaves. She's moved up to a closer seat as they change the equipment for the women's competition, a notebook in her hand and her eyebrows furrowed in a frown. She waves absently, but she's focused in work mode. He makes his way through the arena to the west entrance. He arrives just a minute before Bucky does, and tries to tell himself he's not disappointed that Rogers is with him.
"Hey," Bucky greets him. "This is Steve. We've been friends forever. Steve, this is Clint."
"Nice to meet you." Steve Rogers smiles easily and shakes his hand. "Enjoy coffee." He turns and walks briskly toward the subway, and Clint tries not to look glad.
"Did you have a place in mind?" he asks. The article mentioned Bucky's from New York.
"If you don't mind a walk, yeah," Bucky says.
"I'm good with a walk," Clint says. Bucky leads the way.
For a summer day in New York, it's actually pretty nice. It's not too humid, and the temperature is in the low eighties, so the ten-block walk is pleasant. People give Bucky's arm some weird looks, which annoys Clint--his own hearing aids go mostly unremarked and that degree of invisibility is something he hates taking for granted.
The coffee shop is simply called "Neighborhood," and it's surprisingly spacious, with warm light and big, sink-into-them chairs grouped around comfortably-sized tables. It's well populated for a Sunday afternoon, but there are still chairs free.
Bucky tips his head back to read the menu, and there's a hint of longing on his face when he looks at the glass case of pastries, but he quietly orders a small coffee, black, and an apple. Clint orders his own large black coffee and skips a snack. The coffee is served in a mug almost as big as Clint's head, of which he approves. When they get their cups and turn around, there's a man behind them, middle-aged and saved head, and something in Bucky's shoulders tenses as they brush past him, but the guy doesn't react. Clint follows Bucky back to a table tucked in the back, as far away from the guy as they can get and shielded from him by a table of Deaf students who are arguing with flying hands about a presentation for their American Lit class. Clint doesn't remember The Great Gatsby well enough to have an opinion about which of them is right, but he is really amused that the Black girl who seems to be winning is of the opinion that their teacher's insistence on the symbolism of the color green is bullshit and she refuses to include it.
Bucky relaxes a little when he's out of view and takes a slow sip of his coffee, his eyelids fluttering shut. Those eyelashes are fundamentally not fair. Clint looks down at his coffee to keep from staring and takes his own sip. It's rich and bitter, exactly what he hoped for.
Bucky breathes out slowly, not quite a sigh, and Clint looks up. "That good?" He means it to be light, teasing, and somehow there's a deeper note in it. Shit.
Bucky's eyes snap open. "I don't get coffee very often." It's flat, defensive, and Clint could kick himself.
"Then I'm honored." That one comes out the way he intended, playful and easy, and one corner of Bucky's mouth kicks up. "I live on coffee," he admits.
"My coach does not approve of it." Bucky takes another sip, slowly, savoring. Clint forcibly drags his thought processes away from other kinds of savoring, with difficulty. "But I just made the national team for the Olympics, and this degree of rebellion is expected." There's a certain flatness to his tone, like the one Natasha's voice takes when she's definitely not talking about whatever her life was before she joined the National Ballet, and like he would when Natasha is like that, Clint checks out of the corner of his eye for the guy with the shaved head, who's sitting on the other side of the coffee shop. He's trying not to obviously look through the Deaf girls' conversation, but one of them has pushed her chair back and is really arguing her point, her entire body engaged in the ferocity of her dislike for Gatsby, with which Clint can't really disagree. It makes it hard for him to see the guy too, but since that works both ways, he'll take it.
"You're amazing," Clint says honestly. "I mean, I'm sure you hear that all the time, but--wow."
The tips of Bucky's ears turn pink, and Clint grins. "Were you a gymnast before you went into archery?" Bucky asks. "Bobbi was remarkably close-lipped about you, which is unusual for her."
Clint reminds himself to thank her later; she could have chosen to be much more difficult. "No," he says, "but I've spent some time watching." Jesus, Barton, way to be a creep. "From hanging around with Bobbi, and others." Is that better? He's going to stop digging. "I've always been an archer." That's safer ground.
Bucky's eyes fall to his hands, then travel up his arms. Clint watches him catalog the calluses on his hands, the tan lines where his guard shields his left arm from the sun, and the muscles from wielding his bow. It's surprisingly intimate, but no more so than him reading that article, he supposes. He tries not to think about the photos. It feels intrusive. And he doesn't like the advantage it gives him. "My roommate gave me the magazine article about you," he says.
Bucky sighs and looks down at his coffee. "Seems like everybody's seen that." He twists the stem off of the apple and takes a bite, muscles in his jaw working, and keeps his eyes fixed on the table.
"Well," Clint says, "you look really good in the photos." He waits a moment while Bucky looks up at him, surprise clear in his eyes, before he adds, "But better in real life."
Bucky clears his throat and looks back down at the coffee. "USA Gymnastics wanted me to do the article." There's a defiance in that. "Drum up more interest for the qualifiers, and make them look better after everything."
Everything covers a lot of ground; if it were Clint, he'd feel no need to polish their image, but then again, it's not his dream at stake, so he nods. "Was it interesting?" When Bucky arches an eyebrow, he shrugs. "They don't interview archers. We don't defy death with every jump."
Bucky scoffs a little, and bites into the apple again, thinking it over while he chews. Clint looks away to let him think, checking the rest of the coffeehouse.
"He used my words, but it's not my story," Bucky says at last. "He was really interested in talking about how USAG was giving me the opportunity to 'overcome.'" The scorn that drops off the word is tangible.
"They aren't giving you shit." Clint's own vehemence startles him, and startles Bucky too, but damn it, that's just insulting. "And fuck the entire idea of overcoming." He has to ratchet it down; that hits close to home, in a way he's only ever admitted to Natasha and Bobbi, and he makes himself stop, and take a deep breath. "Sorry," he says, calmer, through a slow and careful breath. "I really hate people who make inspiration porn out of other people's stories, and I don't usually go for that much intensity on a first date." He cracks a smile, hopes it comes off as light as he wants it to. "I really wanted to ask you out again."
Bucky's answering smile is cautious, but it looks real. He pauses a moment before he answers. "You don't have to put that in past tense," he says, and Clint has to strain to hear him, but he's used to lip reading, and it makes his heart beat hard and fast, and a smile takes over his face without his permission.
"So, uh, now that I've been embarrassingly intense about way too many things," he says, "what do you want to talk about?"
"We could aggressively interrogate each other's taste in movies," Bucky suggests. "That's something people do on a first date, right?" His lips curl up when he says "first date," and it makes a little spark of warmth curl somewhere in Clint's chest. This feels weirdly intense for a first date, and he probably should aggressively interrogate that, but he doesn't want to, so he doesn't. He shoves it aside.
"Right, so you can agree on where to go for the second," Clint says. He leans forward, makes his face as serious as he can. "I can do anything but rom-coms."
Bucky's face is serious too, but humor lurks in the corners of his eyes. "Even foreign-language art films that are only subtitles and shadowed shots of Paris at night?"
"Even that." Clint grins. "My roommate might murder me if we go to the new one about the Paris ballet though. She claimed dibs."
Bucky laughs a little. "All right." He sips his coffee, and a smile clings to his lips like the taste it leaves behind. Clint wants to taste both. And that's probably the dumbest thing he's thought today. "No ballet, then."
"Anything else is fair game, though, after the qualifiers." Clint picks up his coffee to keep more words from coming out. It's not that he can't talk through coffee, but it lowers the odds.
"You live up here?" Bucky asks him.
"No, in DC," Clint says. "I'm here for the archery trials, but I came up early to watch the gymnastics competition."
Something flickers behind Bucky's eyes. He looks down at his coffee and half-eaten apple, then looks back up, and the openness, the smile is gone. Clint wonders what he said wrong. "That article, huh?"
Choosing his words carefully is so far from Clint's strong suit it might as well be overseas, but he gives it a try. "I won't deny it made me curious, and I also won't deny that when I ran into Bobbi--whom I've known a long time--I jumped when she offered to introduce us, because I'll be honest, you're really good looking, and I wanted a chance to get to know you. I wasn't expecting this, but so far it's been pretty great." He pauses and takes a deep breath. "If that's a problem, if it's not okay, then I'll back off. I'm not gonna chase someone who doesn't want my company." Fuck, expressing himself in words is hard.
Bucky's expression eases a little, though the smile doesn't come back. He sits back in his chair, his prosthetic arm making a faint sound when it meets wood, and nods. It seems to take him a long moment to find his own words. "I realize that sounded like an accusation," he says slowly. "I've had problems before with people who approach me either with one of several fetishes or because..." He trails off, and his gaze cuts sideways, toward the guy with the shaved head. So he does think that guy is watching them. He thinks about it for a moment. "My coach does not approve of extracurricular activities," he says at last, "and with the Olympics coming up, it is not a good time to try his patience."
Clint swallows the disappointment. "I get it."
If the regret on Bucky's face is an act, he's got a hell of a second career waiting in Hollywood. "I won't ask you to wait til after the Games," he says.
Clint nods. "I understand," he says. Not being asked is fine; it's not like anyone's beating down his door anyway. He thinks about it. "How does your coach feel about sexy texts?"
Surprise lights up those gray eyes, a moment before a smile that Bucky dampens too fast. "He doesn't have access to my phone."
"How do you feel about sexy texts?"
"That depends entirely on who's sending them." That smile is back. "Don't send pictures."
"Words only. Got it." It would have to be the way he's worst at expressing himself, but Clint can work with that. He finishes his coffee as Bucky finishes his apple. "Anything I can do before I leave to make this work better for you with your coach?"
"Look annoyed when you go." Bucky puts on a bored, distant expression that stings more than Clint expects. "That way he will think I have brushed you off."
That's not hard. Clint understands being focused on your sport and the Games, but even Natasha's coaches at the ballet have realistic expectations of their dancers that include "there is life outside this building" despite their speeches to the contrary. He shoves his chair back from the table hard enough to make a noise and sees Bucky's flesh hand clench, even though he has to be expecting it. The mental note that causes makes Clint's angry expression not even an act as he stomps past their observer and out of Neighborhood. He's not so annoyed he doesn't see the guy sending a text as he goes past, and that just makes him angrier.
On the subway on his way back to the hotel, he reminds himself that one date is not enough to go looking up Bucky's coach, even if he's starting to get a really bad feeling about this.