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winterhawk-olympic-bang · 3 years

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How To Edit Your Writing

Guest Poster: Chronicwhimsy

Here is our final Writer Workshop post, written by Chronicwhimsy. Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to share your own ideas too.

Editing: a drive-by guide

Hi, my name is Claire, and I’m an editor.

(Hi Claire)

I’ve been asked to give a quick guide on tips for editing your stories, as I’ve been a beta/editor for various fanfic writers over the years. I’m a professional editor, working for a publishing house in the UK, and I offer independent freelance editing too, via my website. I’ll be on the Discord server answering questions this evening, but I’m also happy to chat to people either through my website or even if you wanted to drop me a line on tumblr.

The key thing to remember about editing is that the end goal is to make your story the best it can be, and make sure your initial idea comes across as clearly and purely as you first imagined it. It’s about ensuring that the lines of communication between you and your reader are 100% open.

To do that, you need to have finished your story, because you can’t fix something that doesn’t exist.

Then you edit.

What now?

So, you’ve finished your Winterhawk Olympic Bang Fic, and you’re wondering what to do next?

The very first, and most important thing you should do? Celebrate. I mean congratulate the hell out of yourself, pat yourself on the back, and have some cake. Finishing stories is hard. Getting through a first draft is one of the trickiest parts of writing, so you should be proud of yourself, and proud of your story.

Because in a short while, editing is going to make you hate both.

I mean that in the nicest possible way of course, but you absolutely are going to be thoroughly sick of this whole thing by the time you’re done, and you’re going to question everything you’ve ever written. You’re going to get a close-up view of all your narrative bad habits which will make you think you’ve never had any skill at all, and you’re going to re-read your work so many times that it’ll feel trite, old, uninspired. This is normal and it is your brain lying to you. If you remember nothing else, remember that!

“The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.” Jonathan Safran Foer

Don’t lose faith! Editors and editing exist for a reason, no first draft is perfect. You’ve done something amazing in finishing, and now you’re going to make it incredible.

Before You Start - Take a Break

You know the phrase “can’t see the wood for the trees”? It could just as easily be “can’t see the story for the words.” It’s never recommended to go straight into editing as soon as you finish writing, and part of the reason for that is because you’re too deep in the story to be able to assess it objectively, or to catch things that are missed out because you know they’re there, but the reader wouldn’t.

“Once it's done, put it away until you can read it with new eyes. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before.” Neil Gaiman

Most writers and editors advocate putting a story away for a month or so before returning to edit, so you’re looking at it with fresh eyes. Obviously, with a Big Bang (or other fic event) this sort of time is usually at a premium! Try and make as much space as you can while still leaving yourself time to edit.

If you really don’t have any time, one trick that can help is changing your location. If you write in your room, can you relocate to your kitchen? Or a café (if you can safely)? Could you print it out? (Printing Top Tip: if you do print it, try and do it double-spaced - this makes it easier on the eyes, and gives you room to make notes. Also, serif fonts can often be easier to read than sans serif fonts, as it gives stronger distinctions between different letters.)

The Filter System

I like to think of the editing process as a series of different filters which, when used one after the other, produce a finely-sieved finished product. Each filter stage has slightly smaller holes than the one before it, as you look increasingly closely at your work.

Filter 1: Structural editing

Does the story make sense? Is the pace okay? Do all the scenes work where they are, or would they be better elsewhere? Do some scenes need to be there at all? Is the characterisation consistent? Does anyone change names halfway through? Did you forget what time of year it was set halfway through?

Filter 2: Line editing

Is this phrase as tight as it could be? Have you repeated yourself anywhere? Does this sentence add anything or does it throw the pace off? Have you gone overboard with adjectives and similes? Have you been too sparse with them?

Filter 3: Copy editing

Is your style consistent? Did you start writing in present tense and switch to past tense? Could this scene transition be snappier? Are there any bits that you want to tidy up? Have you left any half-finished sentences because you got distracted before you could end it?

Filter 4: Proofreading

Is everything spelled correctly? Have you caught all the strange grammar mistakes?

Some of these things might be picked up by your beta reader if you have one. Different beta readers have different styles, and also they will work based on their relationship with you and what you prefer. Some may stick to proofreading and consistency-checking, others may be more confident to dive right in and look at structure, pacing and characterisation. Some may work through the process with you as you write, others may only look at the story when it’s complete so they can get a full overview. There is no right or wrong answer, and having a conversation with your beta about your respective styles at the start can help you work better together!

Filter 1 - Structural Editing

For this stage, you want to read your whole story through from start to finish, and resist the urge to tweak anything to begin with! You will want a way of making notes as you go through because as you do, you’ll make yourself a cheat-sheet to help you with your line edit. Things to keep track of:

Character name spellings

Character ages

Character relationships (drawing a relationship web can be very helpful to visualise this!)

The time span of the story - the date it starts, the date it ends.

As a subset of this, I find it can be very helpful to set up a spreadsheet with a timeline of what happens in the story, and who is involved. Doing this both chronologically for the characters and in order of how it happens in the story can help you keep track of what characters know when, and also when the readers find out certain information. You might have one of these from when you were planning your story (as detailed in Sara Holmes’ workshop). If you’ve kept it up to date with changes to the plot and structure as you’ve written, this will be super helpful.

At this stage, you’re looking to see if everything works as a consistent story. You want to check to see if it feels like it’s the right pace, or if there are bits where it drags or rushes through the action. Why is this? Are there scenes which aren’t adding anything to the progress? Could they just be referred to in passing, or removed entirely without impacting the story? Are there other scenes which need to be added to provide more detail and growth? Is there anything that you as a writer know that is essential to the story, but you forgot to actually put in the text?

“Crafty writers...don't allow Exposition to form Lumps. They break up the information, grind it fine, and make it into bricks to build the story with.” Ursula K. Le Guin

You’re also looking to see if the characters feel true to themselves all the way through. Do the relationships spark? Do they sound like themselves? Can you hear them in your head?

Some people recommend doing several structural edits, with a different focus each time. One pass to look at the pacing, one pass to look at the characters, one to look at the story arc. You’ll work out what floats your boat, but you will be re-reading this story a lot of times before you’re done editing - which is why it’s very important to write what you love and want to read! You’ll go through many stages of hating this story before you let it go, and that will be even harder if it wasn’t something you enjoyed in the first place.

Filter 2 - Line Editing

So you remember I told you to make all those notes during your structural edit? Here’s where you’re going to use them. Now’s the time to go through your story line by line and check that the details in your cheat sheet are correct all the way through the story. I’ve written a novel that I initially set in November, but by the time I finished it, I’d decided it was taking place in early May. I had to go back and fix all the dates and weather descriptions to make sure the action hadn’t actually been yeeted forward six months spontaneously in the middle of a conversation.

Arguably, the line edit will be the most painful part of editing. At this stage, you will be taking a fine-tooth comb to everything you have written, examining it to within an inch of its life, and casting judgement. You’re going to find every stylistic tic you have (for me, everyone is constantly quirking their eyebrows and smirking like they’ve got cramp in their facial muscles), and you’re going to get rid of them (a person only has so many eyebrows, and they can only quirk so far). Now is the time to kill your darlings - don’t hang on to anything unless you feel it’s really doing a job to further the story and the characters.

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.” Stephen King

If you have ever worried about the unbearable sensation of being Known, the line edit is where you will experience that with every word, and you’ll be doing it to yourself. This is when the doubts will really start to creep in and you will maybe feel like everything you write is unoriginal, derivative trash and unfit for human eyes.

Here I’ll reiterate what I said above:

This is a normal feeling, everyone experiences it when editing. E V E R Y O N E.

It’s a lie. No-one else will ever read your story in this state, no-one else will ever read your story this closely. Of course it feels obvious and uninspired to you - you wrote it. It’s your idea, and you’ve read it several times, it holds no surprises for you. (I may be projecting my feelings from every time I’ve edited something here, but…)

You’ll also be catching any ELEPHANTS or whatever your mammal of choice for placeholder text is that you’ve stationed throughout the story as a flag for you to come back and add in a name, or a food, or a song title later. You know, the things you decided were a problem for Future!You. I have bad news, the future is now.

Top Tip: if you have changed someone’s name halfway through, DON’T for the love of Mike, just do a straight find and replace to correct it. Because that’s when you suddenly find out how many other words actually contain names (Mark became Bill? That’s great, until your characters are going to the superBillet to buy groceries). Some word processing programmes have a “whole word” option which is your friend, otherwise ensure to put spaces either side of the word when you search. If you don’t, you’ve just made another horrible job for yourself...

Filter 3 - Copy Editing

Once you’ve made it out the other side of the Line Edit (and given yourself a nice treat to congratulate yourself because that stage is HARD), we get onto copy editing. This is basically the set-dressing stage. You’ve built the house, you’ve decorated the room, and now you’re just making sure every bit of furniture is in the right place for optimal feng shui.

Here’s where you go through and go, do I really need a dash here, or could I just use a comma? Could I use fewer commas? Could I go in and move all of @kangofu_cb’s commas around because I’m the sort of person who will come into your house and change how you hang your toilet paper or where you keep your ketchup.

Now is the time to be as picky as possible, like you’re an interior designer for the most demanding client in the world and the ornament must be exactly equidistant from both ends of the mantlepiece and facing precisely south-west. Things that may have just survived your line edit will be measured again, and if they’re found wanting, then they get binned.

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Mark Twain

Another thing you might like to do here is check that all your features and things are correct. Did you make a wild claim about the lifecycle of salamanders, or the average price of corn and then never go back to verify this? Take a second to just do that now. It may be that you decide it’s not a problem (I received one copy edit note saying that an idiom used in a book wasn’t recorded until 200 years later, and I made the editorial decision that no-one would care), but for bigger things you may want to make sure you’re accurate.

If you google it (as I just did, to make sure I was definitely giving you the right information), copy editing is often conflated with line editing, and that’s because in reality a lot of the elements of copy editing actually wouldn’t usually be done by the author, and are probably irrelevant to fanfic. The copy editor is responsible for ensuring the book has a consistent grammatical style in line with the preferences of the publisher (em-dash or en-dash, curly quote marks or straight ones, how you deal with acronyms, what needs to be italicised, etc. etc.), which isn’t necessarily required for fanfic. In reality, for fanfic I’d use this stage as a second, lighter line-edit to see where things can be tightened up in phrasing, as well as perhaps a preliminary proofread where you start to mark up any spelling errors.

Filter 4 - Proofreading

By this stage, you’ll be exhausted, and sick to death of the blasted thing. But the end is in sight! Now you’re onto the proofread. This is another close read, where you go through and check for spelling errors, typos, missing full stops, strange formatting stuff (which probably will be less of an issue as AO3 basically makes everything uniform anyway).

Before you even start this, change your font.

We’ve all been there, thought we’d caught every spelling error, every weird typo, only to spot six immediately after posting. That’s because after a certain point our brain becomes used to the font we’ve written in, and will automatically correct things that aren’t right. AO3 has its own unique formatting - colour, spacing, font - and the minute your fic appears on there in this new format you brain wakes up and is like “oh shit, yeah, that’s not how it should be.”

By changing the font before you proofread, you preempt this step.

Another thing to remember: it’s unlikely you will ever catch every mistake. Published books regularly go out with a smattering of typographical errors throughout the text - how many first editions of books are valuable because of misspellings that slipped through the net? You’re only human.

“Connie's other job was proof-editing which she did very badly. Transferring the author's corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly inserted material all wrong... she put angry authors' letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of her chair to deal with later.” Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

Often, spelling errors and things you would look for in a proofread are things that a beta reader will pick up as they go, as they’re the easiest things to spot, but it’s also worth looking over yourself for anything your beta might have missed.

Whether you decide to follow any or all of these steps, always do the proofread last.There is no point carefully spellchecking a chapter you are then going to delete, or proofreading the whole thing, but adding loads of new paragraphs later that either don’t get looked at or mean you end up having to proofread twice. That’s the only hard and fast rule when it comes to editing, and it will save you a lot of unnecessary work!

FREEDOM

And then, finally, unbelievably - you’re done. Your literary child is ready to leave the nest. Resist the urge to keep re-reading and tweaking. Instead, click “publish” and give yourself a nice little treat. You’ve earned it.

Miscellany and Disclaimers

These editing stages are ones that would be applied to a published novel. An author would probably do this several times - once on their own to get it ready for submission, then perhaps again with their agent, but the really heavy work would be done with their editor. The structural edit would be done under the advice of an agent or editor where the author looks at their comments, rejigs things accordingly, and lather, rinse, repeat until everyone’s happy. The editor would undertake the line edit, and the author would decide what they wanted to keep or change. The copy edit and proofread would be done in-house or sent to freelancers, with queries and changes wafted past the author for clarification or approval.

Self-published authors will often hire freelancers to help at various stages to get feedback and advice.

Very rarely would an author go from draft to final published piece by doing all their editing alone. Because it’s hard fucking work, and because your brain will get exhausted.

In light of that, you need to remember:

You’ve written a fanfic

The editorial standards of fanfic are significantly less stringent than published books

Editing by yourself is really hard work that many people are often paid to do for published books

No-one is paying you for your fanfic

Fanfic is supposed to be fun

Some published authors will edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite again and again. At a panel I attended, Joanne Harris said that if she didn’t rewrite her work at least five times she was being too easy on herself, while Joe Hill said he usually aimed for three rewrites - Joe edited as he went along, going over the previous day’s pages before continuing, where Joanne completed her manuscripts before editing. Elizabeth May has talked about her stages of drafting, starting with her Trash Draft, then her Clean Draft, and then rewriting and editing after that.

These are people who are writing professionally, getting paid for their work, and so the time they put in has monetary results. If you want to write original fiction, their advice is extremely valuable.

For fanfiction, it’s a large time investment for something you’re doing as a hobby for free. If I’m strictly honest, I’m fairly lax with my fanfiction editing. I do structural discussions and tweaks with my beta reader as I write, and then a spell check. I’m also aware that my fanfics aren’t narratively complex, nor do they seem as polished, rich and deep as some of the other works out there. That’s fine by me. You simply need to find the level you’re happy at, where you can still feel proud of your work but you’re enjoying the experience.

In the end - it’s all for fun!

Resources:

Online

Curtis Brown Creative: An Editor’s Guide to Editing Your Novel

Joanne Harris: Ten Tweets About Editing

Joanne Harris: Writing Resources

NerdsLikeMe: Beta Reading vs Proofreading vs Editing

Books

Stephen King - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Ursula K. Le Guin - Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew

#winterhawk #winterhawk olympic bang #whob #writer workshops #writer workshop: editing #guest post #chronicwhimsy

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areiton · 3 years

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AreiReadsTooMuch - April 18

So if you aren’t aware, I’ve been posting my recent SteveTony reads on @stevetonyweekly. So if you’d like some Stony content, check it out! But @verdantbogmoth thought I should share everything else I read over here, so we’re bringing back arei reads too much!

only if it’s chaste by akira_of_the_twilight (Stuckony/7k)

Tony ravaged his repertoire for a witty comeback, but the two kisses had shut his brain down. So instead he whirled, pretended to organize his tools and threw his head back haughtily. “Seriously? Are you two five-year-olds or something?”

“Says the man who is compared to a five-year-old on a weekly basis,” Bucky retorted.

“That is because I am young and full of vitality, unlike you ninety-year olds.”

Steve and Bucky chuckled.

Bucky walked up behind Tony and gave him one last peck on the cheek. “Whenever you’re in the mood for a little spring-winter romance let us know. We’ll be happy to indulge.”

Tony thought his brain had malfunctioned before, but that statement alone infected his brain like a deadly computer virus. So caught up in his disbelief and shock he missed Bucky and Steve’s departure. By the time he rebooted his brain, the two were gone and he was alone in the workshop.

“FRIDAY, what just happened?”

“I believe Sergeant Barnes, and by extension Captain Rogers, propositioned you, boss.”

Pirates heart by NotEvenCloseToStraight (Stuckony)

The 1700s, the Golden Age of Piracy, and Captain Steve Rogers has all he wants: a ship, a loyal crew, Bucky at his side, and the horizon offering a new adventure everyday.

But an impulsive kiss gone wrong leads to a marriage between Steve and Tony Stark, and now Steve doesn't know what to do about ANYTHING.

Steve loves Bucky, but something about Tony draws him in. Tony is too innocent for this life, but he picks up a sword anyway. Bucky is Steve's, but when he offers his hand to Tony and now the three of them are something new.

When the truth about Steve's mission to ruin the Stark name comes out, Tony runs away, leaving Steve and Bucky behind in search of answers to the secrets hidden from him his whole life-- about his company, about Uncle Obie, about his parents death.

Steve and Bucky cant abandon their mission against Stane and Tony cant deal with the answers he finds in New York.

Is this the end? Is Tony gone forever? Or will he leave his old life and return to the sea and the Pirates that hold his heart?

master of my fate (captain of my soul) by half_submergedinPurgatory (Stuckony/14k)

Soulmarks aren't always a good thing. People say they stand for a grand destiny, but Tony is a fan of evidence over folklore. And evidence states that your 'grand destiny' could simply be your ending. Death or something worse.

Tony thinks his soulmark just represents his death. It certainly doesn't mean that Bucky and Steve are his soulmates.

Nailed it by Kangofu_CB, Lissadiane, Villainny (Nny) (Winterhawk / 24k)

“From GrrlTragic: Suddenly all the actual sex toys in the world disappear, what do you use in their place?”

Bucky is grateful he’s locked his arm, because otherwise the camera would’ve tumbled straight out of his grip and onto the floor. He’s staring at Clint in shock but Clint doesn’t seem to notice, just laughing and setting the card aside as he continues to talk.

What’s a little Wank Off Wednesday between friends?

Stop the world (i want to get off) by 27dragons, tisfan (Winteriron/46K)

Five times Tony and Bucky used their safewords, and one time they didn’t have to.

or, Clint can’t believe that Bucky Barnes is so damned vanilla when he’s dating Tony Stark…

or, how Bucky learns to hurt people in the fun way.

a couple rebel top gun pilots (flying with nowhere to be) by notcaycepollard (Sambucky/19k)

That seems to be the thing that breaks the ice between them; Bucky's never really hung out with Sam before, past being jammed into a too-small car for six hours and then two uncomfortable months in a safehouse trying not to get on each other’s last nerve. Now they’re getting lunch or coffee every few days. Sam falls asleep on Bucky’s couch three more times. Bucky joins him and Steve a couple of times on their morning run.

He doesn’t notice, is the thing; doesn’t notice how ever since Sam slept on his couch that night he’s been letting Bucky closer bit by bit, that as Bucky’s been wondering about the boundaries and structures of friendship, Sam’s been drawing in.

kiss and tell by ali_aliska (Winteriron/25k)

Loki is a menace who doesn't take time off for the holidays and there is now an enchanted mistletoe popping up above Tony every time someone gets too close, keeping them stuck until they share a kiss.

Thankfully, the Avengers are an affectionate bunch and any kiss will do, so Tony isn't stressing out about it, really.

Well, except for the part where the one person he really wants to kiss has been avoiding him like the plague, even before the whole mistletoe business. Clearly Tony has ruined his friendship with Bucky somehow and he should just give up on his dumb crush and this is just the worst Christmas ever.

~*~*~

Bucky Barnes would really just like for the rest of the Avengers to stop kissing the man of his dreams, the man he realized he's in love with, all the time, all over the Tower, while looking Bucky straight in the eye.

#arei reads too much #fic recs #winteriron #stuckony #sambucky #fic rec list #stony

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hopelessly-me · 2 years

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Okay okay. So. Thursday @harishe-art gave a server a challenge that someone needs to draw something, and someone else needed to write 1k words in three hours and they would release some kinda photo drop. My ass was on an airplane heading out to Boston to see several Winterhawk friends (I got so many hugs. SO MANY GOOD AMAZING HUGS!), and I said "I can do this" Well- I couldn't do it because Hope's mind was on vacation mode which meant stress about traveling by herself to a new place, and making it on time to all my tours, and seeing all of the freedom trail (I missed ONE stop. ONE.) Anyway- I am several days late but! I did write 1k words on vacation. So I'm dedicating this little snippet to you, Hari. Thanks for the challenge I completely failed. But better late than never, eh? Relationship: Clint/Bucky/Nat Rated: Teen Words: 1,023

Bucky couldn’t help it- his leg was bouncing long before they got to the airport, and he was pretty certain if he chewed on his fingernails one more time Natasha was going to make good on her threat. So far she only casted him a mildly amused, yet annoyed, look in his jitters. Since when did you have jitters? It was a fair question, one she had already known the answer to. Sometimes Bucky wondered if she did that just to prolong his torture, poke and prod until he was ready to snap.

“You realize he basically already knows you, right?” Natasha asked.

“Knowing me through a camera lens isn’t the same as knowing me in person,” Bucky argued, his hand coming up and playing with his lip. “In person he might decide there’s no chemistry. Or he might… y’know,” Bucky said, wiggling the fingers in his prosthetic hand just to drive in the point.

“He’s Deaf.”

“Deaf doesn’t exactly equate to missing an arm,” Bucky replied. Natasha huffed out an exasperated sigh and crossed her legs. “Just… let me be nervous?”

Natasha nodded and leaned over, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s cheek. “Be nervous. But it’s my job to make sure you’re okay.” Bucky opened his mouth to protest the notion that his reactions were her job to tend to but Natasha pressed a light kiss to the corner of his lips, something he could turn into and enjoy. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. That’s all.”

“I’m okay,” Bucky assured her. “How… long have you two been dating?” he asked.

“Roughly three years,” Natasha answered.

“And he’s okay with this?” Bucky asked.

“Would I have included you in anything if he wasn’t?” Natasha asked. She smiled and cuddled up next to him, her foot knocking into his. “It’s okay if you want to bail. No hard feelings. This kinda relationship isn’t for everyone.” Her fingers brushed Bucky’s hair back before she twirled the ends between her fingers. But I’ve been in a polyamerous relationship before and Clint is… well, he’s Clint, so…” And while to many that didn’t seem like a straight answer, Clint being Clint was certainly a definitive answer- sometimes you just had to know the person to get it.

Bucky nodded and tried to tell himself to calm down. Clint had told them months ago he was fine with them dating- open relationships were kind of his thing anyway. But it was one thing to say that over the internet, and it was an entirely different thing to say it in person. And while Bucky was content if he was only dating Natasha, there was something appealing about Clint every time they all talked over FaceTime or discord. It started as something small- finding him funny, and sincere, and it turned into lighting up when he got home and Natasha was already on the phone; and it was looking forward to seeing that smile, or waiting for him to laugh to the point his whole face scrunched up and Bucky felt like a little piece of him had been stolen away.

But all that was a crush on Bucky’s end. It was a small online fling- casual flirting. It wasn’t anything big- or it didn’t have to be. And the only way he was going to find out was when he met Clint face to face. And maybe that was the most worrisome part of any relationship, right? The potential was there, but that didn’t actually mean anything until something triggered it either way. And the waiting around for weeks had all led to this moment- the first time they were going to meet, face to face.

“His plane must be late,” Natasha commented. “Either that or he stopped for coffee. I swear if he comes with coffee-'' she mumbled. Bucky looked down at her, watching as her eyes scanned the crowd.

“Now someone is getting nervous,” Bucky teased lightly. “Maybe he bailed.” Natasha shot him a look and tugged his hair lightly. “Maybe we should-“

“Nat!”

Bucky had never felt Natasha move so fast. He barely had time to look over before the two people collided in a tight embrace, Natasha’s feet off the floor as Clint held her up. And that laugh- the same one that had made him fall just a little bit in love over the last several weeks was even brighter in person, making Bucky’s heart clench and his lips pull up without any thought.

Clint set Natasha on her feet and held her face, his forehead against hers for a moment, whispering something before they traded a short and sweet kiss. At one point Bucky had been worried that he would be jealous, but instead he felt light and settled. Maybe this was a great idea, worth all the worrying and the doubt.

And the moment Clint looked over at Bucky, a dozen little moments came flashing back to him. The first time he saw Clint over a video call- tired eyes but smiling so brightly. Or the passionate debate between the two of them in which was better- dogs or cats. Or Clint so desperately declaring himself a Gryffindor when clearly he had Hufflepuff energy and only backing down when Natasha pointed out that Hufflepuffs gave off golden retriever energy. Or the time Bucky had accidentally called him in the middle of the night for hun, thinking he had called someone else and Clint talking him through waking up from a nightmare.

There were dozens more flying in his head- little moments that built to a trust that Bucky didn’t think was possible. But standing there, such a small space between them- it felt like he has always known Clint. It didn’t feel like the first time meeting. It felt like the first time knowing what home was.

Clint let go of Natasha and walked the small space between them before he pulled Bucky into a tight embrace. And while Bucky was generally opposed to physical contact with people he barely knew, everything just felt… right. And all those echoes and seeds of doubt vanished at the first touch.

#Hope overshares #Hope writes fics!#winterwidowhawk #I could write a whole ass backstory to this #but I wanted to keep it short and sweet and sappy

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thepartyresponsible · 5 years

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happy whumptober! here’s a short winterhawk fic about struggling to survive in the zombie apocalypse.

warnings for general misery and apocalypse perils. also for an shocking lack of actual zombies.

The canned food ran out two days ago. Ever since, they’ve been working through what Natasha calls the perpetual stew, an ever-simmering pot of whatever-the-hell. Mushrooms and rabbit, the carrots they weren’t supposed to pull up until spring.

The pot’s never meant to go empty. That’s what makes it perpetual. Natasha explained it in the fall, back when they were still pulling what felt like an endless array of vegetables out of the dirt. But she took the pot off the fire last night, made the kids wait until it was cool before she let them run their fingers over the metal, scrape out the very last of whatever food they could find.

The canned food is gone. The old stuff from before the world ended, and the new stuff they made themselves. The stew pot’s empty.

It’s midwinter, so everything smart is hibernating or hidden. Clint goes out every morning, but the most he’s come back with is a couple of winter-weight rabbits. It’s not enough.

Thor and Sam left a week ago, headed for the skeletal, picked-over remains of any town they could find. Clint doesn’t expect they’ll be back. And if they make it back, he doesn’t have much hope of them bringing anything with them.

He dreams about grocery stores. Deli counters and free samples and endless aisles of potato chips and Oreo’s. All kinds of things he’ll never have again.

He wakes up later and later. When you can’t eat, you sleep. The body only runs on credit for so long.

The morning after the stew runs out, he digs the tiny bag of instant coffee out of the back of his backpack. He was saving it for spring. He doesn’t see much reason to save anything now.

Natasha catches him at it, drinking hot coffee in the weak daylight, face lifted toward the sun, eyes closed. She’s always known him better than he ever knew himself. She leans into him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and she doesn’t ask, but he shares the coffee with her anyway.

“You should stay,” she tells him. Her cheekbones are sharp like they used to be, back when she was barely nineteen and it seemed like the whole world was taking turns taking bites out of her. She softened over the years, but she’s re-honed now. She picked up her old edges like any high quality blade will, when needed.

She’s the one who insisted on rations. She’s the only one who knew this was coming, could see this even back in September, when it seemed like they’d have food forever. It wasn’t enough. She let them take too much, and now there’s nothing.

He doesn’t blame her for that. He hopes she doesn’t blame herself.

“Saw some tracks yesterday,” he tells her. “Elk, I think.”

And God knows what the hell he’d do with an elk if he got one. He couldn’t lift a Golden Retriever right now. Hell, a Corgi might be a struggle. He hasn’t been this skinny since the circus. He hasn’t been this hungry since he lived with his parents. And maybe not even then.

Maybe this, right here, is the worst he’s ever felt.

But Natasha tips her head against his shoulder, presses the coffee back into his hands. He breathes in. It sounds stupid, but he missed the smell. A whole world to miss, the whole Goddamn functioning society they lost when the dead started eating the living, and he misses coffee.

Well, he misses central heating, too. And pizza. He misses indoor plumbing and late night TV and firefighters and cops and paramedics. He misses having someone, anyone, to call for help. He misses cities and streetlights and a guaranteed future.

He takes another long sip of coffee. He breathes in the smell. It’s not so bad, really. Could be worse. He has Natasha, and Tony, and Pepper, and Morgan, and Harley, and Peter. And Sam and Thor, if they ever make it back. He has some kind of family. Took the whole world ending, but he found a family anyway.

He’s not going to lose them. And if he does, it won’t be his fault.

He hands the coffee back to Natasha. There’s a sip and a half left. He wants her to have it. He’d give her any wonderful thing he had. He’d give all of them anything he had.

“I’ll be back,” he tells her. “With dinner.”

He doesn’t believe it, but he says it anyway.

Natasha curls her hands around the coffee mug. Her eyes aren’t sad when they look at him, but he can’t really describe what he sees in them. The smile she gives him could break his heart, but the whole inside of him is frozen up. There’s nothing beating warm enough to break.

“Just come back,” she says.

He nods. He doesn’t say anything. When he leaves, he allows himself the small mercy of not looking back.

There aren’t many people left. Clint wouldn’t hazard a guess as to how many survived. The sickness was viciously viral, airborne and mean. The walking dead got all the fanfare, but the pandemic itself killed something like a third of the people it infected, and only about a quarter of those reanimated later. If you lived through the sickness, you couldn’t get it again. Even a bite wouldn’t kill you.

But if you got bit first, you always died. And you always came back.

The last Clint heard, the worldwide death toll was estimated at something like 500 million. He can’t even hold that number in his head. And that was before the news stopped, before the governments fell, before the cities turned to slaughterhouses.

He has no idea what the final death toll was. Mostly, he’s been trying not to add to it.

That first year, everything was a mess. Everyone who lived was desperate. The winter killed a lot of them, and those that survived learned to be wary of strangers. Clint hasn’t seen anyone outside of his small adopted family for something like six months.

They haven’t seen any zombies in that time frame either. Bodies decay. There’s probably a few left in more temperate climes, but, up in the mountains, they’ve been safe enough.

Clint’s not even looking for people. That’s his mistake.

He’s tracking elk, dragging himself toward the north slope, hoping to find them bedded down against the chill. It’s a sunless day, overcast and cold. They have more sense than he does. Well, they’re a lot less desperate, too.

It takes him hours to find them. And when he does, he has to sneak up close. They’re smart, and they’re fast, and he only has one chance.

He doesn’t think about it. About what the hell he’s going to do if he manages it. About how he barely dragged himself here. About how he doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting this meat back to the others.

He presses on anyway. There’s no other option. It doesn’t matter that he can’t. He has to.

But when he goes to take the shot, his hands are shaking. He’s cold, and he’s weak, and he can’t shoot his fucking bow.

He closes his eyes. He takes a breath. He thinks, as hard as he can, about how small Morgan is, about how she cried last night because she was hungry. He thinks about Nat, so skinny he can count the individual vertebrae of her spine through her shirt. He thinks about Tony, who stopped eating days ago, keeps sneaking his food to Harley and Morgan and Peter.

He can’t, but he has to. He got all the way here.

His hands are shaking. His fingertips are numb. He should’ve worn more layers; he should’ve brought better gloves. But he wasn’t sure he was going to make it back, and he didn’t want to take too much when he didn’t know if he’d be able to return it.

He’s too cold, and he’s too hungry. He kept skipping meals to keep them all fed, and now he can’t feed them at all.

They need him. He has to.

He breathes out. He clenches his jaw so tight his teeth creak. He thinks of summer days and beaches and bonfires. He pulls the string back, and his fingers fumble, too numb to grip. The bow string twaps loud and empty against nothing, and the elk snort, leaping to their feet.

No, he thinks. Frantic, and panicked. He scrambles for the arrow, lurches to his feet. The elk are faster. Warmer, and better fed. He tries to pull the arrow back, but the shaking has spread to his arms now. He can’t do a Goddamn thing.

There’s the echoing crack of a gunshot, and one of the elk groans, low and pained, and tips over into the snow, legs kicking. The rest of the herd bolt down the slope.

Clint stares at the dying elk and can’t even comprehend what’s happening until a man emerges from the trees. The elk’s barely moving, too close to death to fight, and the man cuts its throat while Clint watches.

The stranger moves with an easy efficiency, kneeling in the snow while he pulls tools out of his bag. He’s dark-haired and scruffy, looks feral in a way that Clint can’t quite articulate. He doesn’t know why it makes him so nervous. Nobody looks particularly civilized these days.

Maybe it’s just that he hasn’t seen a strange face in so long.

It’s too bad, really, that the first stranger he meets is stealing a kill Clint couldn’t take himself but also can’t afford to lose. He puts his bow away and draws his knife. He’ll have to get close to use it, but it feels steadier in his hands than the bow.

By the time he leaves cover, the man’s already staking out the elk, tying its legs to tent spikes he jams into the frozen ground. If Clint waits long enough, maybe he’ll field dress the whole damn thing.

“You gonna help?” the man asks, when Clint gets maybe fifteen yards away. He looks up suddenly, looks right at him. His eyes fall on the knife, but he doesn’t look concerned so much as he looks irritated. “You gonna help?” he asks, again. “Or are you gonna cause problems?”

Clint hesitates. His hands are still shaking. It feels like every part of him is trembling. He had the coffee this morning and a quarter of a can of peaches two days back, and that’s been it. He hasn’t been full since Christmas.

When the man stands up, he’s too Goddamn big for the end of the world. He’s muscular like Thor was muscular back in the fall, when they had the food to feed all that bulk. But the look in his eyes is meaner than Thor, who’s always been so sweet-natured and friendly. The look in his eyes is cold and assessing, not friendly at all.

“I need that,” Clint says. He points at the elk. “I’ve got people to feed.”

The man’s eyebrows pull together. It’s a weird thing to notice, but it catches Clint’s attention. Under the sweep of all that dark hair, under the threat of that scowl, he has beautiful eyes. Bright and sky-blue. Intelligent.

There’s a weird moment, stretching out between them. The man shifts his weight. He runs his tongue over his teeth. It’s an anxious tell, more uncertain than angry.

“I know you need it,” the man says, finally. “Followed you for two miles. Figured there’s no way in hell you’d be out here if you didn’t have to be.”

Clint’s five miles out from their small grouping of cabins, but two miles is still too Goddamn close to the others. He’s lost the knack for hiding. There hasn’t been anything to hide from. He’s sure he left tracks leading straight home.

He’s tired. He’s so damn tired. It’s overwhelming, suddenly. He wants to lay down and sleep until none of this is his problem anymore. Until he doesn’t have problems anymore.

But last night, Morgan cried. She’s just a kid. She deserves better.

“There’s kids,” Clint says. He doesn’t know that it’ll do any good. Sometimes you have to bank on mercy. Anyway, if this guy wants to hurt them, he’ll have to get past Natasha. And Natasha, even at bantamweight, is a wolverine in human skin. “There’s kids, and they’re hungry. I have to get this back to them.”

The man just stares at him. He has a knife in his hand, bloodied up from the elk, and a look on his face like he can’t figure out what the hell Clint is saying to him. Finally, he clears his throat.

“I’m trying to help you, asshole,” he says.

Oh, Clint thinks. It jars in his head so hard that all the other thoughts run right into the back of it, like a trainwreck in his mind. He doesn’t think anything for what has to be almost a full minute.

“Listen,” the man says. He reaches up, hooks his long hair back out of his face. It leaves a streak of red across the pale skin of his cheek. He shrugs his backpack off, tosses it so it lands halfway between them. “You look really shaky. Maybe you should eat something.”

Clint stares at him, waiting for the trap. But the man just shrugs, seems to grow uncomfortable under the scrutiny. He turns his back on Clint and goes back to the elk.

There’s blood on the snow. Clint can smell it from here. Some ancient part of him, something brainstem-level and bent on survival, kicks awake at that smell, and his stomach twists up, so fierce and insistent that it aches like it’s going to leave bruises on his heart.

He crouches down, keeps the knife in one hand, and carefully opens the backpack.

There’s a treasure trove in there. Packaged food from pre-collapse, and plastic bags of what looks like jerky. Bottles of what’s probably water. Campbell’s chicken soup in a pull-top can.

Clint thinks, ludicrously, that he’s going to cry.

He takes the soup, instead. Drops the knife in the snow. He rips off the top and drinks it, knocking back the broth. The salt makes his brain hum, lights up all the taste buds on his tongue. He slumps, eyes closed.

“Jesus,” the man says.

When Clint opens his eyes, those blue eyes are narrowed. His frown is serious, and troubled. Disgusted, maybe.

Clint had honestly forgotten what embarrassment feels like. He wants to rub at his mouth, but he licks the soup off his lips and chin instead. In that moment, there isn’t enough shame in the world to make him waste good broth on manners.

“Maybe slow down,” the man advises.

“Sorry,” Clint says. He isn’t. He isn’t anything except relieved. He feels like he’s floating, like his toes and feet are miles away from his head.

His hands are still shaking, but the tremors feel less pressing now.

“Hey,” the man says. He kneels up in the snow. The concern on his face soften his features. He’s beautiful, Clint thinks, although the more reasonable part of him knows he’d fall in love with anybody who fed him right now. “You said there’s more of you? Kids?”

Cint nods. He should be careful. He shouldn’t give up any more information. But there’s a half-empty can of soup in his hands, and he can’t for the life of him doubt the intentions of anyone saintly enough to share food in the winter after the end of the world.

“Yeah,” he says. “Ran out of food yesterday. We’re all—there’s nothing left.”

The man looks like something out of the wild, like he was born and plans to die in the mountains, alone and unbothered by other people. But there’s worry on his face, in the intensity of his stare and the gentle downturn of his mouth. Clint shouldn’t trust him. Doesn’t trust him, maybe. But.

There’s a can of soup in Clint’s hands, and a rifle across this man’s back. If he planned to killed Clint, he could’ve done it already, before wasting supplies on a dead man walking. And if he plans to follow Clint back and hurt the people at home, he’s going to find out that feeding Clint first was a hell of a mistake.

“Okay,” the man says. “Look. My friend and I, we can help you. With the meat, I mean. Getting it back. You don’t have to—if you want, we’ll just bring it halfway, and then you can go get the others.”

Clint tips the can back up against his mouth, chews through a mouthful of noodles. He forgot what chicken tasted like. He forgot about all of it.

“Your friend,” he repeats, tracking the threat, focusing on the idea of there being more people like him. Well-fed and well-muscled. Armed.

“Yeah,” the man says. “Steve. And I’m Bucky.”

“Clint,” he says, mumbling it through more food. The bag’s still open at his side, and Bucky hasn’t said a damn thing about it, so Clint carefully swipes a bit of jerky, just to see what happens.

“Okay,” Bucky says. His eyes drop to the jerky in Clint’s hand, but he doesn’t say anything. He just nods, like it’s fine. Like sharing doesn’t cost him anything. Like he wants Clint to have it. “Nice to meet you,” he says.

Clint laughs. He couldn’t say why, really. The giddiness of relief, probably. The unsteadiness of a brain flooded with dopamine after weeks of worry and hunger and weakness.

“Nice to meet you, too,” he says. There’s salt on his tongue, and food in his hands, and a weight slowly lifting off his shoulders. When he looks down, the can holds steady. His hands aren’t shaking anymore.

#whumptober2019 #no.1 #winterhawk #writing #fic

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shatteredhourglass · 5 years

Note

WINTERHAWK 5 AND 7 PLS AND THANK

(Also requested by @justanotherhawkeyefan)

The Asset tries to shoot his target at a dinner party.

He misses. It’s not a difficult shot. The target isn’t milling with the crowds but leaning against a secluded balcony’s railing, gaze faraway and tie crooked. The Asset’s fingers itch to fix it and he doesn’t know why. Frustrated, he lines up the shot again, looks at the scruff of blond hair before he squeezes the trigger.

He misses again.

It doesn’t make sense, and his handlers say as much when he simply says “Mission failed.” The Asset doesn’t elaborate, because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how or why he missed, and it plagues him right up until they sit him back in the chair and make it go away.

Hawkeye tries to shoot the Winter Soldier at the beach.

Natasha is standing on the beach with an official behind her, trying to protect him from the ghost in black and silver stalking towards them. The Soldier seems to be alone and for some reason Hawkeye feels an echo of sadness even as he reaches for an arrow. Natasha throws out her hands and Hawkeye pulls back, aims, releases.

He misses.

That… isn’t possible.

Hawkeye watches, frozen, as the Winter Soldier shoots through Natasha and kills the official, because he doesn’t miss.

Bucky Barnes tries to shoot Clint Barton in a farmer’s market.

He doesn’t know it’s Clint Barton. It’s been months since the Triskelion fell and Bucky’s been chased mostly by either Hydra or the Red Room, so when he sees black leather and the shine of a weapon he’s pointing and unloading his handgun without thinking.

There’s seventeen rounds in his Glock.

Barton isn’t wearing a vest or anything - Bucky sees a coffee-stained henley, a black hoodie and a tired expression that he wants to smooth out with his fingertips. He’s human, unpowered. There’s no way he wouldn’t have reacted if any of the bullets had hit him, which means…

Which means Bucky missed every single one.

Clint Barton tries to shoot Bucky Barnes in a bakery.

Someone screams in the background but Clint’s eyes are glued to the skittish look on Bucky’s face, the metal hand on his gun. Bucky doesn’t move to shoot him this time, though, and it’s the first time in fifteen years that he hasn’t. Clint takes a step closer, bow in hand.

It’s impossible. They’re two of the best shots in the world.

It’s impossible. Bucky Barnes is a hundred and ten years old and Clint hasn’t even hit forty.

It’s impossible. He’s the Winter Soldier.

“Humour me for a second,” Clint says and it comes out as more of a croak as he draws the bow back a scant inch from Bucky’s chest, covered in a soft red sweater.

Bucky stares at him and Clint stares at the arrow instead, sharp as it can be and right over where Bucky’s heart is. He feels sick, feels helpless and scared and sees it reflected in Bucky’s eyes, doesn’t know what else to feel until he releases the arrow.

He misses.

Well, that answers that. They try to shoot each other together in Clint’s dumpy apartment, front of Captain America.

“You know that rumour about how soulmates can’t hurt each other?”

Steve looks up from his newspaper - and where the fuck had he gotten a newspaper anyway? He looks stupid. Bucky knows that people don’t actually read newspapers anymore, which means Steve is probably doing it to fuck with people.

“I guess? I’m pretty sure that’s just a fairytale, though,” Steve says. “Why are you asking?”

“Barton,” Bucky says, feels Clint shift on the couch next to him.

They pull out the handguns at the same time, and it’s taken a long time but Bucky leans into it comfortably when he feels the cold metal against his skull. Clint does the same thing and Steve knocks over the coffee table in his haste to stop them, but they’ve already squeezed the triggers in sync.

“What the fuck?”

“Language, Cap,” Clint says cheerfully as he drops the gun.

The gunshot is still echoing in his ears. Bucky gives into the urge to touch him properly then, ignores Steve’s panicked yelling as he thanks the gods that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t kill Clint Barton.

#soulmate au #enemies to lovers #soulmate au where you can't hurt your soulmate #something different from marks #shg writes winterhawk #shg writing snippets #justanotherhawkeyefan #spacey-acey-artemis #shg answers #5+1

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ialwayscomewhenyoucall · 4 years

Text

Bullseye

winterhawk

~400 words

Clint’s on the range when he feels eyes on him. Body still, bowstring pulled back and ready to fire, he turns to look and sees Bucky leaning against the wall, arms across his chest, completely relaxed. Eyes still on Bucky he looses the arrow; he doesn’t have to look to know it hit exactly where he was aiming.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, just looks. His eyes are hooded. Hungry. Finally Clint says, “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer.”

Confusion flickers across Bucky’s features, but only for a moment. Then he says, “I’ve got a pretty good memory, I think just looking will work fine.”

Clint groans. Walking toward Bucky he says, “Sometimes I forget what an old man you are. I guess that line’s a bit...after your time. Or maybe it’s actually before your time? I get confused about how to refer to the giant chunks of missing time you and Steve have.”

“It doesn’t mat--wait, that was a line?”

Grinning, Clint says, “I saw you looking me up and down. Your eyes said you wanted to eat me for dinner.”

Bucky grabs Clints waist and pulls him in so their chests are pressed together. “Maybe I do. Have you seen you? All biceps and pecs, you are. And besides, there’s just something about a man with a bow.” He makes a satisfied humming noise to go along with his almost smile.

Their lips are just a breath apart when Clint says, “You’re not so bad yourself, sweetheart.” Bucky pulls him the rest of the way in, and for a moment Clint is lost in Bucky’s lips, in the feel of their hearts beating together in their chests, in Bucky’s fingers digging into the flesh at his waist. And then he can breathe again and those clear blue eyes are sparking at him with something that pierces deeper than an arrow.

Love, he thinks. No wonder Cupid has a bow.

“Go,” Bucky says, snapping Clint out of his thoughts. He pushes Clint away and smacks his ass as he turns. “You’ve got more shooting to do. I came to watch my man with his bow, remember?”

Sighing theatrically, Clint nocks another arrow, draws it back. “I get it now. That’s all I am, just something pretty for you to look at.” He looses the arrow.

Bucky actually snorts. “Bullseye.”

. + . + . + .

@pherryt ..see. I told you. Fluff and nonsense. 😜

#lirael writes #winterhawk #winterhawk drabble #fluff #just fluff!#clint barton #james bucky barnes #there's just something about a man with a bow #(or a woman honestly!)

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westgateoh · 5 years

Text

Any Other Day.... (winterhawk)

@concertigrossi asked for “At a press conference, someone asks Clint and Bucky who’s the better sniper?” --

I hope you enjoy!

It might have been an innocent question if it were any other day. Maybe. Today, though, it was not an innocent question, and the poor journalist who asked it didn’t attend another Avengers press conference for months.

“Which one of you is the better sniper, do you think?” he asked, probably falling for the media circus that caught the team being friends, hanging out at museums or restaurants together, laughing after a fight. And Clint and Bucky are friends. The journalist wouldn’t be wrong. . . on any other day.

On any other day, Clint probably would have given his easy grin and a quick shrug of his shoulders and said, “Depends on the weapon, really.”

And Bucky would’ve pushed his sweaty hair out of his eyes and said, “Yeah. We haven’t really tested it, and I know I can’t use a bow, so. We’re better than anyone else, that’s for sure, right Clint?”

And Clint would throw a thumbs-up and the conversation would be over.

On any other day.

Earlier this morning:

“Oh my god, you call that a legal move, Barton?” Bucky growls as he picks himself up off the mat and shakes out his metal arm. “That was dirty.”

Clint hops to his feet and bounces on his toes and waggles his eyebrows at Bucky. “Who you callin’ dirty?”

Bucky can’t help the snicker. Clint’s so fucking gorgeous when he’s fighting and then he gets goofy and Bucky’s emotions whiplash a little. “You’re a meatball,” he mutters, and gets back into his stance.

Before he can blink, Clint’s in his space, and some stupid circus move gets him over and behind Bucky and sweeping his legs, and he grabs for Bucky’s metal arm with both hands as they go down to the mat. Clint’s leaning over him, sweat dripping down his cheek and his eyes focused on Bucky’s lips. When he runs his tongue over his own lips, Bucky’s mouth goes dry.

They’ve been dancing around this for a month. More than a month. Months, plural. Sparring and getting close. Ending up sprawled practically on top of each other on movie nights. Brushing elbows at dinner. Slinging arms around each other’s shoulders when they stumble a little drunk out of a dive bar. Literally dancing once, when Nat got way too bored and decided that the whole team needed to know at least four different “classy” dances.

But he can’t. He’s not ‘couple’ material, and Barton seems more like a one night stand guy anyway, and just, no. He has to work with him, for one thing, and the other is, well, they’re friends. Bucky’s not about to screw that up when he never thought he’d really have friends again when he pulled himself out of HYDRA’s conditioning and made his way back to Steve. Hell, he didn’t figure Steve would want him around, much less these jokers, no matter how fuckin’ pretty they are. So no.

Bucky rolls away and pulls himself to his feet.

Clint stands, too, and stares. And steps close. “Bucky,” he says, and Bucky may be old, and formerly brainwashed, and not exactly sure how the hell YouTube works, but he can see intent in Clint’s eyes, and his own body flushes, warm and buzzing with arousal.

Bucky steps back because goddammit, he can’t do this. He blinks and shakes his head. There’s no way Clint wants what he seems to want. Why the hell would he want Bucky?

Clint gets a sad look on his face now, and he steps back. “Okay. Whatever.” He turns and picks up his towel and water bottle with a wave. “See you ‘round, Barnes. Good thing your aim is true with a gun. Sure as hell is off mark with everything else.”

Clint leaves.

Bucky is alone on the mat and all he can think about is the way his body felt warm when Clint stepped close, the way his gut felt fluttery when Clint smiled at him, the way he feels lost as Clint storms out of the room and slams the door to the locker room behind him. “Fuck,” he mutters, and goes to clean up.

While he’s in the shower, the Avengers alarm goes off.

Now:

Clint leans toward the microphone and Bucky’s stomach drops.

“Barnes is good,” Clint says, and he grins at the journalist, that easy, circus performer grin he pulls out for the press. “But I’m better. I’m . . . “ he starts, and looks over at Bucky, “I’m more direct. My shots are simple. Easy. I don’t do anything fancy. I guess back in the old days they had to work a little harder at their shots. You know. Equipment wasn’t as good. He’ll catch up, though. If he wants to.”

Bucky blinks. The reporter looks to Bucky like he should respond, and fuck Steve for leaving him and Clint alone for this press conference. “Hawkeye’s wrong,” he says, and he’s not exactly sure what his brain is doing, but it’s gonna do it regardless, so. “He’s direct, but the old days weren’t about working harder. They were about working smarter. You know,” he said, and he looked over at Clint, “Not getting ahead of things. Waiting for the right time.”

Clint folds his arms across his chest. He glares at Bucky. “In our line of work there is no right time. You have to take the shot when you have it. Yeah, we’ve got a good team. But we’re dealing with aliens and mad scientists and people with weapons we’ve never seen before. Waiting around for the perfect shot can mean you never get a shot at all. That’s the difference between us. I’m gonna take the shot. No matter what.”

Bucky swallows and the poor journalist sputters. “Well, I’m sure you’re both excellent at what you do,” he says.

Bucky stares Clint down. “Patience is a virtue,” he says, and what the hell, Barnes. Are you your mother? he thinks, and he closes his eyes for a moment. He’s all tied up in knots.

“Yeah,” Clint says, and now he sounds resigned, which is not what Bucky wants from Clint at all. “I’ve never been good at patience.”

The journalist looks between the two of them, and Bucky almost feels bad for the guy. Almost.

There’s an awkward silence, and the press coordinator thankfully steps in. “It’s been a long day, and perhaps we can get some more Avengers to participate next time,” she says, and ushers Clint and Bucky off the platform hastily, and Bucky watches as Clint storms off.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

Back at the Tower, he showers and cleans up, and then his feet take him to Clint’s apartment without really consulting Bucky. With a sigh, he knocks on Clint’s door.

When Clint pulls it open, it’s like the sparring session, the fight against the blue, spitting aliens, and the press conference all gang up on Bucky and push him forward. Clint’s standing there in purple sleep pants and a grey t-shirt, his hair damp from a shower. Bucky licks his lips, feels his body light up at the sight of Clint standing in the doorway, and that’s it. He’s done. He steps close. “I was crap at patience before HYDRA,” he says, and he leans in.

Clint smiles, his kaleidoscope eyes sparkling like fireworks, and he leans to meet Bucky.

Bucky kisses Clint, pressing their bodies close and running his tongue across Clint’s lips, those lips that have been teasing Bucky for months, drawing him in and making him throw caution to the wind. His body flushes with warmth, and Clint’s lips taste like peppermint and coffee.

When they pull back from the kiss, Clint presses his forehead to Bucky’s. “I don’t really know who the better sniper is. I just know that you’re my mark right now, and I never miss. Okay?”

Bucky isn’t sure he’s ever felt this warm, this right. “You got me, ace. You hit your mark.” He wraps his arms around Clint’s waist and presses another kiss to his lips.

Later, they agree to send that journalist a fruit basket.

#winterhawk #clint barton #bucky barnes #westgate fanfic

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