Chapter Text
They get the civilians out before the mouth of the tunnel is blocked off, an explosion below the subway car twisting the metal outwards and definitively cutting off their exit.
“Well, fuck,” Bucky says and that about sums it up. He stomps back down the aisle, away from the wreckage, until he finds a bank of seats that are still more chair than detritus. Clint sighs and radios the team.
“Ok, so, good news and bad news,” Clint tells him a few moments later, slumping down in the seat next to him. “Good news is that our friends and colleagues are prepared to rescue us, which my almost-definitely-broken ribs really appreciate.”
“And the bad news?” Bucky asks resignedly.
Clint slides further down in his seat and kicks his feet up onto the seat opposite. “They’re pretty insistent that they want to finish fighting the giant robots first, so our instructions are to wait here until they’re done.”
“Godammit,” Bucky mutters. He twitches slightly next to Clint, vibrating with barely-contained adrenaline and anger.
“Hey, it’s ok. I mean, it shouldn’t be too long,” Clint says. He scoots himself back up in the seat and turns to Bucky. “They’re a good team. They’ll be ok without us.”
“I know,” Bucky concedes. “I’m just… all worked up for a fight, that’s all. Doesn’t sit right to just hang around here and wait.”
Clint only means to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder, maybe encourage him to relax a little before his muscles lock up forever. But when Bucky leans into his touch, mouth slightly parted, and the tension in his body melts away beneath his fingers, it seems only natural to tip forwards too and meet him in the middle.
Bucky makes a noise as their lips meet, a desperate growling sort of noise, and grabs wildly at Clint. It’s the most unexpected thing that has happened all day, and that includes the giant robot attack. Clint quickly runs ‘making out with Bucky’ past his internal good idea/bad idea checklist, can’t come up with a decent reason not to, and lets himself be grabbed.
Kissing someone in the wreckage of a subway car shouldn’t be sexy, Clint thinks distantly, but Bucky’s mouth is unbearably hot, and he kisses with a possessive confidence that has Clint opening up for him as easy as breathing. Bucky kisses insatiably, covetously, as though Clint is a finite resource and he might not get his fair share if he doesn’t stake his claim. Clint finds himself gasping as Bucky pulls him into his lap, the better to get his hands in Clint’s hair and hold him where he wants him.
When Bucky licks his way into Clint’s mouth, he can’t help the soft moan that escapes his lips. Bucky seems to like it though; he breaks away from Clint’s mouth and stares at him with wild eyes before using the hand in his hair to tip Clint’s head back and nip at his neck. He kisses his way down towards his collarbone, growling in frustration when his path is blocked by Clint’s uniform.
“Hey, hey, it’s ok,” Clint gasps breathlessly. He cups Bucky’s face, tilts it back up to kiss his mouth again, a fierce, passionate press of lips that nonetheless seems to calm Bucky. Ignoring the voice in the back of his head that’s starting to ask him if he really did his due diligence checking if this was a good idea, Clint rolls his hips, grinding down as he slides his tongue over Bucky’s. A firm hand lands on his hip; Clint groans as metal fingers dig in and encourage the smooth roll of his body against Bucky.
“God, Bucky, that’s so fucking hot,” Clint murmurs in his ear before nipping at the lobe. He’s rewarded by Bucky snaking his other hand around his waist, pushing at the small of his back until they’re pressed up against each other. They’re so close it feels like they share a single pair of lungs, a single heart beating overtime in their shared chest.
Clint swipes a thumb over Bucky’s lip, and it’s Bucky’s turn to groan at that. It sounds almost tortured, like shearing metal. It gets louder and Clint turns to see a sheet of metal shearing off the wrecked end of the train car, which is probably the thing that’s making the shearing-metal noise rather than Bucky.
“What the fuck,” Clint mutters. He leaps off Bucky and adopts a fighting stance, trying not to think about the fact that he cannot possibly fight a giant robot. Luckily, as Clint watches, the whole back end of the car is ripped away, peeled back like the top of a tuna can, to reveal Hulk. He waves some of the metal around like a kid with a foam finger before tossing it aside, clearly having a great time.
Clint lowers his fists in relief. He turns to ask Bucky something - he hasn’t worked out what yet, there are too many questions pinging around his brain vying for first place, but he would probably have picked one by the time his mouth opened - and frowns. Bucky is very pointedly avoiding Clint, striding off towards their newly-opened escape route without a glance back.
With a very different sort of groan than he’d been making two minutes ago, Clint jogs after him, scooping up his bow and quiver enroute. He parkours his way out of the bashed-up train, only lightly injuring himself, and decides to skip the team debrief. He figures having missed 98% of the fight is a good enough excuse to head straight home.
Clint treats himself to a cab home - he has no idea if any part of the subway is even running, but he’s had enough trains for the day - and spends the ride thinking about kissing Bucky, the heat of his body, the surprising softness of his lips. The way the touch of his fingers on Clint’s skin had felt like fire.
The way he couldn’t get away fast enough when they were rescued.
Clint gets it. He does. He has eyes and a mirror, even if it is cracked and could probably use some window cleaner, and he also has copies of his last three or four psych evaluations (probably, somewhere; he’s not the best at keeping track of paperwork). The point is, he’s exactly hot enough that someone might want to make out with him when the adrenaline is flowing and they just need an outlet for that, and he’s enough of a mess that they wouldn’t necessarily want to hang around for long after that. It makes sense. It’s not a big deal.
Hell, Clint has kissed people for similar reasons before, battle-high and thrumming with energy. Half the time it had ended up as post-battle sex, and the other half of the time they’d both laughed it off. It’s normal, it happens. Clint knows that, so he can’t figure out why it doesn’t feel great that Bucky walked away like that. There’s no reason he can find that it should feel different this time.