Chapter Text
The gods may have favored them with perfectly temperate weather for the midsummer festival, but they take their due starting the next day. Once the rain starts it is unceasing and unpredictable, turning from a dull drizzle to a torrential downpour at a moment’s notice.
“Good for the crops,” Clint says on the third day of it, trying to stay optimistic as he stares out at the rivulets running through the bailey. He finally called a halt to outdoor training after the third dousing and instructed his men at arms to maintain their weapons and armor instead.
“Not if the roots get waterlogged. Or if the heat doesn’t dry the stalks fast enough to keep them from rotting in the field once the weather clears. Or if too much of the topsoil gets washed away —”
Clint interrupts his pessimistic husband with a kiss to his scowling brow.
“There is naught to be done until we know,” he observes. “But I am damp down to my braies and so for now — shall we see if we can both fit into that bathtub?”
To both of their satisfaction, they do.
By the fifth day of continuous rain everyone in the keep seems out-of-sorts. Clint clears half of the main hall so his men at arms can take turns sparring to expend some of their restless energy. He sends off a mechanical raven in the morning, but by midafternoon receives Tony’s assurances that there seems to be no malicious weather-mage at work, just a run of inclement weather.
Bucky reports that everyone in the kitchen is fractious as well, and he ends up taking refuge with a book in Clint’s study, Alpine curled up in his lap and Lucky at his feet, while Clint and Peter sort through messages from the village that the latest patrol had retrieved. Somehow they have managed to get soaked despite the waxed satchel used for transport.
“I think it says Mistress Miller?” Peter speculates, looking at a missive with smeared ink. “It might say Mistress Milner, though, she lives at the other side of the wood.”
“It doesn’t sound urgent, at least.” Clint frowns down at the missive, wondering how Peter even got that much out of what looks like chicken-scratchings to him. “We’ll have to check when we are next in the village, if this rain ever stops.”
A clap of thunder sounds loudly as if to assure him that it will not.
Clint wakes first the next morning, and spends a few moments contentedly watching the way the morning light through the stained glass windows plays across Bucky’s face, lighting his cheeks in pinks and golds.
It makes him hopeful that the sun has emerged at last, but when Bucky stirs and Clint pulls the bed curtain all the way open to look out the windows fully, he finds that it was just a stray beam that had made it through the clouds, and the rain has already started once again. He groans, flopping dramatically down next to Bucky.
“I spent so many years without a warm, safe, place to call my own, I never would have thought the day would come that I would yearn to be outdoors again, and yet…”
Bucky pulls Clint closer, polite enough to smother his laugh against Clint’s neck. “This confinement really is driving you mad, isn’t it?”
Clint hums his agreement. “As valiant as your attempts at distraction have been, I am not suited to inaction, nor to reading the reports of others rather than evaluating the situation for myself.”
Bucky places a soft kiss on Clint’s lips. “I shall make you a pact.”
“Oh?” Clint is already distracted, seeking Bucky’s lips again. Bucky grants him another kiss before starting again.
“I will do my best to distract you once again this morning, but if the rain has not ceased by midday we can accompany the patrol to the village.”
“You would do that? It will be a miserable journey.”
Bucky shrugs. “Neither you nor I will melt in a drizzle of rain. And I also wish to see for myself how the village has fared in this weather.”
It helps to have a plan, and Clint feels some of the tension that has been building up over the past several days start to ease, helped further by the warm hand that Bucky runs down his spine.
“And now all we have to do is while away the hours until midday,” Bucky continues with a grin so wicked that there is nothing Clint can do but to lean down to taste it.
Art once again by the amazing jayjay-thejet-plane posted here.
The rain does not cease, and the journey into the village is, in fact, as miserable as Clint had surmised. The roads are deep in mud in some places, and flooded in others. They have to stop and walk the horses carefully around downed trees and flooded crossroads. By the time they reach the village they are splattered in mud to the top of their thighs, soaked to the skin, and weary beyond what the short journey should have entailed.
The village has always seemed well-situated in the bend of the usually-gentle Cedar River, but now the swollen river is creeping well up the riverbank, the public dock higher on its piles than Clint has ever seen and rattling ominously with the force of the turbulent water.
Bucky and Clint stop to regard it for a long moment, squinting through the latest downpour.
“We should have a levee. Mayhap ask Tony to plan it, and try to get it constructed before the ground freezes,” Clint muses, and Bucky grunts his agreement.
They scrape the mud from their boots as best as they are able and settle into a corner table at Josie’s, and by the time their pidgeon pie has arrived so have Murdock and Nelson. Murdock has been sending regular missives with the patrols, but Clint still welcomes the chance to speak to him in person.
Murdock and Nelson are as informative as usual, their easy back-and-forth banter managing to deliver both the news and enough gossip to help Clint and Bucky understand the full context of village concerns.
Clint and Bucky had planned to head back with the patrol before dark, but Murdock and Nelson ask them to visit the school to discuss a planned expansion. Banner had been visiting the village when the rain started and has been staying at the school as well while the weather remains inclement. He and Mistress Page draw them into a discussion of the new curriculum they have been developing, and before they know it the sun is already low in the sky.
“There are accommodations here for you if you’d like to stay the night,” Mistress Page assures them.
Clint looks at Bucky, who nods his agreement, neither of them apparently eager to tackle the laborious journey home this evening.
“Mistress Josie also keeps a room for travelers,” Clint notes, “and it would be easier to leave early in the morning from there. Let’s have dinner at the tavern, and see if she will make it available to us, and if not we can return here.”
Mistress Josie readily agrees to let them rent her room for the night, and so Clint sends the patrol home without them.
Banner, Page, Murdock, and Nelson all join them for dinner, and it is a jovial affair. Banner seems to have become fast friends with the others in even the short time he has been in the village, and he looks more at ease in their company than Clint has ever seen him.
Nelson and Murdock recount how just as the rain began a sylvan fawn wandered into Josie’s kitchen, breaking dishes and rummaging through her stores. “She finally managed to chase it back out to its family by banging loudly on a pot,” Murdock says.
“And the only reason it took so long was that she could not decide which pot she was willing to potentially damage,” Wanda adds, stopping by the table to refill their tankards and contribute her commentary to the tale.
At the end of the meal Pietro brings out a platter of his newest pastries, plump with summer peaches, to great applause. Clint looks around the table as the platter is passed around and cannot help but marvel at the people of his barony. They survived under Rumlow, but now under Clint’s protection they are thriving. The responsibility for these people, which felt like a noose around Clint’s neck on his journey to Waverly before he ever met them, now seems like an honor and a privilege.
After the meal, Page and Banner head back to their quarters at the school, and Murdock and Nelson head home as well — whether to the same home or separate ones, Clint has never been able to deduce and has never dared to ask. Perhaps Bucky might know, and Clint resolves to ask him when they are in private.
In the meantime, they help Wanda close out the tavern, setting chairs on the tabletops while she sweeps around them. Pietro comes out of the kitchen, wiping his hands with a dishtowel as Wanda dumps the last of the swept-up dirt outside the doorway and then stands for a moment at the open door.
“The rain has finally stopped!” she exclaims. “Shall we walk out a bit?”
“Thank the gods,” Pietro exclaims. “I have been feeling like a rat trapped in a well all these days.”
Clint looks at Bucky, who nods his agreement. “We’ll walk the horses as well,” Clint suggests, “to keep them from getting stiff after their exertions this afternoon.”
It takes only a moment to stop by the tavern’s stables and put both horses on a loose lead. Arrow is well-trained enough to need no more, and Bucky’s grey mare seems quite taken with Arrow, following where he leads.
Despite the muddy ground the air is remarkably pleasant, still breezy enough from the storm to keep the heat from being stifling. Pietro sucks in a deep breath of the fresh air and then starts to run in circles around Bucky, Clint, and Wanda, who walk with the horses at a more reasonable pace along the river, raising their voices to be heard over the rushing water.
“The tavern is so busy these days with travelers,” Wanda tells them. “This winter will be slower, so Josie thinks it is a good time to make the kitchen larger. She thinks we can do it without disrupting business by building the exterior wall first and then removing the wall inside, and if we move the pantry we can have a second hearth-oven. If Pietro gets as good at roasting as he —” Wanda suddenly cries out, falling to her knees.
At first Clint thinks she just stumbled. “Are you —” he starts, reaching down to help her up, but when she looks up at him her eyes are glowing red, making her whole face eerily sepulchral in the moonlight.
“It’s coming,” she says, her voice echoing, bleak and cold as a North wind.
“What’s — Wanda, what is it?” Bucky asks.
“Water. Devastation.” Her eyes blink and then glow a deeper red, like banked coals. “A flood. From upriver. The dam at Fishkill failed, and the new dam at Plainfield cannot stop it.”
It takes a moment for Clint to understand her words, and when he does his heart stutters in his chest.
“Pietro,” Clint forces out through a throat gone tight with despair. “Run. Warn as many as you can.”
Pietro is a blur of motion, and Clint falls to his knees beside Wanda, ignoring the clammy mud seeping into his breeches. “How long do we have?”
She shakes her head, pulling in a ragged breath before forcing the words out. “Not long enough.”
Clint turns to Bucky, reading the same desolation on his face.
“Is there anything you can do to stop it?” Bucky rasps.
Wanda shakes her head again, but then her eyes widen. “Not me,” she says. “But you —” and her eerie scarlet eyes are on Clint now as she reaches a trembling hand towards him. “You have such power within you. I felt it the first time I saw you. And I can help.”
“I don’t —” Clint sputters, dread intertwining with his despair. He looks out at the river, the roiling water already barely contained by the riverbank. “I can’t control —”
“I think you can,” Bucky says, and he’s on his knees now too, hand reaching out to press along the side of Clint’s face, forcing Clint’s eyes away from the turbulent water and back to him. “I have — Tony sent me some books, about fae magic. You should have learned to control it when you were young, and you never got the chance. But you can control it, I have seen you do it.”
“I —” Clint swallows past the lump in his throat. His heart is racing like a rabbit in a snare. “I could kill us all.” He looks at Wanda, her red eyes huge in her pale face. “And you — you hate using your magic.”
“Clint —” Wanda blinks again, and silent tears trail down her face, lit blood-red by the unnatural glow of her eyes. “I love this village more, and all of them are dead if you don’t try. We both have to try.”
“I can knock you out if I must,” Bucky says suddenly. “If you lose control of it. I don’t think that I will need to, but —”
“The curse. It harms you so terribly even when you hurt me accidentally — if you deliberately hurt me it may harm you beyond measure, mayhap even kill you.”
“I won’t need to,” Bucky says. “Clint, I know you can do this.”
Clint allows himself one moment, closing his eyes and letting out a strangled cry of anguish and frustration, and then he rises, pulling free Arrow’s lead and then striking his flank to send him running. Bucky does the same for his grey, and then Clint loops one end of the lead he holds around Bucky’s waist and the other around his own, tying them tight. “If we fail, we cannot let the water separate us,” he grits out, and then he’s falling back to his knees, digging his hands into the dirt.
“There.” Wanda points to the narrowest point of the riverbend. “If we can block it there, the bulk of the surge should pass us.”
Clint reaches for his power but his head is too full, his thoughts overwhelmed by the many ways this could go terribly wrong.
Bucky’s hand presses warm onto the nape of his neck. “I have faith in you, Clint.”
The words, the touch, seem to chase away the edges of the blind panic, settling some of the turmoil in Clint’s mind and body.
He closes his eyes and breathes deep. He has never done this on purpose, but now he lets himself feel the muddy ground, silt and river rocks, but through it all the dense proliferation of roots — cattails and duckweed and sedge, riverbank grape and buttonbush, milkweed and yarrow and wild columbine. The growth has always called to him and now, for the first time ever, he deliberately calls to it in return.
Another breath and he goes even deeper — feels the shallow roots of the cottonwood and willow, then further out the river birch and red maple and elm, stretching to the prairie of bluestem and switchgrass, the fields of wheat and rye and corn planted by his people, orchards and farms and vegetable gardens tended with love and care.
This is his land, the life within it his to protect, and he pushes that certainty into the soil.
The ground rumbles, splitting and cracking and heaving at the riverbend, and then the vines pour up, faster than Clint could have imagined, a surge of green and flowers and woody stems, forming a wall that spreads wide and high, and maybe there is enough time, just maybe —
And then the ground rumbles again but this time in a distant roar, and Clint can feel the water coming, scouring everything in its path, taking apart structures like matchsticks and pulling up trees by the roots.
It’s too close, too fast, but he digs his fingers deeper and wills the wall he is building to grow higher and wider, weaving vines between the woody stems and trunks into the densest of thickets, gleaming wet and writhing in the moonlight.
The roar grows louder, louder than the territorial bellow of a manticore, louder even than the pulsating shriek of a wyvern, and then the flood is upon them, fiercer than any monster Clint has ever faced.
Wanda braces her feet and pushes red light toward the wall, muttering under her breath, and the glow spreads along the greenery, blood-red power twining in between the leaves and branches.
The water shoves and Clint feels the force of it deep in his belly. He shoves back, and the wall is holding but the water is surging higher and higher, and the top of the wall starts to bow, bending under the weight. Clint can only watch in dread. It will give way, the water will crest and the town will be lost —
There’s another earth-shaking roar and a blur of green, and suddenly the Hulk is there, roaring at the water like he aims to smash it into submission. He lurches forward and then turns, pressing his broad feet deep into the mud and then setting his back to the wall, veins protruding in his temple and neck, an immovable object braced sturdily against all that immeasurable force.
And, somehow, it holds — Hulk’s strength, Wanda’s power, and Clint’s fae magic combining with an almost sacred alchemy, stray spouts and gushes escaping here and there but the main surge of the floodwater roaring past the town nestled in the riverbend and continuing downstream.
Clint holds, and holds, and the land is part of him, an extension of his body, and he is spreading through it, deeper and wider, and —
“Clint.” Bucky’s voice sounds, low and rough, in Clint’s ear. “Come back to me, now. It’s done.”
With a jolt Clint realizes that Bucky is wrapped fully around him, pressed against his back, arms holding him tight. He lets himself feel the press of those arms, hard metal and strong muscle, and they ground him. He tries to draw himself back — he is spread too thin, losing himself in the tangle of roots and stalks and leaves, but Bucky’s arms squeeze tighter and Clint focuses on them, following the beacon of Bucky’s touch, letting it guide him back into his body.
“It’s done,” Bucky says again, pressing a kiss to Clint’s neck. “Sweetheart, it’s done.” Clint exhales, harsh and shuddering. His hands feel like they are weighted with iron as he pulls his fingers from the ground and the vines start to retreat.
This time Hulk’s roar is a roar of victory, and Wanda drops to Clint’s side, pulling both him and Bucky into her arms, and Clint is suddenly hollowed out with exhaustion. He lets Bucky take his weight, lets Bucky’s strong arms brace and support him, and it seems like he only blinks for a moment but when he opens his eyes again Murdock and Nelson are there, and then he blinks again and Claire is kneeling next to him, Luke behind her with a contingent of men-at-arms from the keep.
“Wag’ns,” Clint slurs, his head muzzy with exhaustion. “Upriver and down, wi’ supplies for th’other settl’mn’ts tha’ —”
“We have it, sweetheart,” Bucky says. And then the world tilts and whirls and Clint realizes that Bucky has picked him up and is carrying him.
He blinks again and more voices are in the background.
“Tide-Turner” he hears someone whisper, but their voice is reverent, not fearful.
EPILOGUE
Four months later
Not only have the gods blessed the barony of Waverly with a record harvest, but they have extended their grace to grant beautiful weather for the harvest festival as well.
Mistress Parker has been in a flurry for weeks, preparing not just for the villagers and residents of the keep but for the honored guests that are coming from Stark Tower and the kingdom of Gotham.
Even Stark’s wondrous mechanical raven was not able to find Natasha to deliver the invitation but she manifested nonetheless, appearing in Clint’s study one morning several days ago to scare the life out of him and pester him about staying abed later than she deemed fit.
“You only judge because you don’t have the temptation of a honey-sweet husband in your bed encouraging you to dally,” Clint said, gesturing airily with his handful of bread and honey and then squawking with indignation as Natasha made a face and stole his breakfast right from his hand in retaliation.
Jason Todd and Roy Harper arrived shortly afterwards, this time taking the unprecedented step of announcing their arrival at the gate. That seemed to be where their manners ceased, however, with Harper immediately investigating Clint’s bows and declaring that he could improve them all, and Todd making an uninvited visit to the village school, pestering Mistress Page with questions about the orphans’ welfare until she shooed him out to the play area to find out for himself how they were faring.
Clint and Bucky, who had accompanied Harper and Todd into the village and been wondering about Todd’s sudden disappearance from their expedition, stopped by the school to discover Jason practically mobbed with children, leading them in some complicated game of capture-the-flag that would have them all sleeping well tonight.
Jason was unusually quiet on the ride home from the village, but he pulled Clint aside after dinner that night. “You are doing good work here,” he told Clint, the typical wry sarcasm of his tone nowhere to be seen. “I will correspond with Mistress Page, and seek her advice to ensure that the orphans of the Parklands are as well-cared-for as those in your barony.” Clint clapped him on the shoulder and assured him of any help he could provide.
“Men who have been years at war do not always find a purpose in peacetime,” he told Bucky as they readied for bed that evening, “If Jason has found another battle to fight — against neglect and poverty this time — I will encourage him however I can.”
The Stark Tower contingent arrived the day before the festival, the Howlies living up to their name in a raucous dinner that tested the depths of Clint’s cellars but had his sides hurting from laughter by the end of the evening. Bucky seemed to glow with the quiet joy of having all his friends in one place, and he and Steve even took a tour of the keep on their own, confident enough in the breaking of Pierce’s curse to not need Clint’s oversight.
It seems only fitting, then, that the day of the festival dawns bright and crisp and clear. Clint has dispatched the Howlies to the village, both to collect the last-minute supplies and to keep them out of trouble, and so he and Bucky spend the morning setting up the stalls.
Mistress Page’s children arrived an hour before the rest of the guests so they could have first crack at the games, and they are already roaming the grounds, screaming and laughing and crowing in triumph as they show off their prizes to one another.
Clint and Bucky finish setting up the last stall, one from which Pietro will be distributing his pastries, and Clint is immediately mobbed by children tugging at the edges of his tunic.
“I held them off as long as I could,” Mistress Page says with a wry smile, and Clint dramatically staggers, only half pretending to be dragged to the ground by the children.
Clint plops himself on the ground just as a pale-haired girl manages to scramble her way onto his shoulders. “Me first!” she exclaims, and Clint reaches up to grasp her waist and then leans forward, flipping her down off his shoulders and onto the ground in front of him.
“Very well, Mistress Kobik,” he says, smiling his thanks at Bucky as he starts to arrange the rest of the mob into some semblance of a line. “To the victor go the spoils. What would you like today?”
“Bluebells,” she whispers, suddenly shy.
“As you wish, Milady.” His heart still thumps a bit faster than usual, but he is less nervous every time he practices. He presses his fingertip carefully into the dirt and calls the flowers up, winding the stems around each other until they make a circlet and then cutting it free with his boot knife.
“Happy harvest,” he says, placing the flower crown on her head, and she solemnly repeats the greeting.
“Snapdragons, please sir,” the next child says, and Clint gets started on the next flower crown. He’s just cutting it free when he is distracted for a moment by the oohs and aahs of the other children.
He looks up to find that Wanda has seated herself next to him and is conjuring illusions to entertain the children while they wait, garnet-red spectral butterflies and birds swooping and soaring amongst the delighted children.
Clint bumps her shoulder with his in thanks, and turns his attention to the next child.
The festival dinner is as rambunctious as Clint would expect. He breathes in the crisp air, eyes skimming down the long table at the faces lit up by the candles Mistress Parker had cleverly placed within small pumpkins and other gourds.
Tony is at Clint’s right, as befitting his station, but Steve has swapped seats with Roy Harper, who is dipping the point of his eating knife in red wine to draw something out on the tablecloth as Tony provides animated input. Clint fears for the structural integrity of the keep if they actually manage to make a prototype of whatever they are planning.
Further down the table Dum-Dum and Morita are laughing with Cage and Pietro, while Natasha appears to be refereeing an arm-wrestling match between Jessica and Falsworth that Clint is certain she incited. Murdock and Claire are deep in conversation as well, while Josie has pulled Mistress Page to her feet and appears to be demonstrating steps to a new dance, gesturing for Wanda to join the demonstration.
Clint leans his weight into Bucky, who is deep in conversation with Jason Todd — something about the expanded healing garden he and Claire and Bruce have been planning. Bucky leans his weight back into Clint in return, smiling that soft smile of his before returning to his conversation. Clint settles his elbows against the table and closes his eyes, warmth expanding in his chest as he lets the voices and laughter of his friends wash over him.
This time, when Clint rides out on Arrow to set the bonfire aflame, the people of the keep know what to expect, and he is greeted with cheers from the residents of the keep and village as well as a fair number of jeers and good-natured insults shouted by the Howlies.
He strikes the flaming arrow against his boot and sends it arcing into the center of the bonfire, and the crisp autumn evening is soon lit with red and gold flames and the pleasant smell of woodsmoke.
The musicians start the music, a rollicking tune that has people streaming toward the bonfire to dance, and Clint vaults down from Arrow’s back. Castle is waiting to take Clint’s bow and see Arrow to his stable again, but Clint is surprised to find not just Bucky but Steve and Tony and the Parkers waiting with him. Peter has Lucky on a lead and Mistress Parker is holding Alpine in her arms.
“What is this about?” Clint says, concerned for a moment before he sees their mischievous smiles.
“Follow me.” Bucky takes Clint’s hand, leading him away from the bonfire.
“But — you like to dance,” Clint starts, his protest trailing off as Bucky’s sweet smile takes his breath away.
“This is more important,” Bucky says mysteriously. Clint follows him in confusion, back in through the main gate, until they turn the corner of the bailey and find an arbor set up, covered in wheat stalks and autumn flowers.
“What —?” Clint starts, and then stops again, speechless as Banner approaches them, dressed in the robes of a temple priest.
“Bruce?” Clint says. “I thought —”
Bucky nudges him a bit, and Clint rubs the back of his neck, trying to salvage the sentence. “— How glad I am to see that you have found your faith again,” he manages. “Are you going to give a blessing for the harvest?”
Bruce’s eyes twinkle in the lantern-light. “I can do that afterwards, perhaps.”
“After … what?” Clint looks to Bucky who is suddenly serious, holding his right hand out. There is something nestled in his palm, and Clint steps closer, taking it carefully in his own fingers.
It’s a ring, fashioned from a silver metal and very like in style to Clint’s mother’s ring, a filigreed circle of flowers and vines.
“Jessica taught me how to work the metal,” Bucky says shyly, and Clint’s eyes jump to his in surprise.
“You made this? Bucky, it’s beautiful!”
“You deserve a real wedding ring,” Bucky says, the corner of his mouth quirking enough to tell Clint that he remembers those same words being spoken to him two seasons ago. “And — if you want it — a real wedding.”
“A real —” Clint blinks, taking in the arbor and Banner in his priest’s robes and their closest friends, smiling at them. “Oh.”
“When we married, I was afraid, and you were resolved. We chose marriage to avoid a worse fate, and the ringbound curse was laid upon us, and I had no idea then that our wedding day would mark the start of the best days of my life,” Bucky says, his voice hoarse now.
“Bucky, I —”
“And here, seasons later, I know my husband well,” Bucky continues firmly, speaking over whatever Clint was going to say. “I know his kindness, and his generous heart, and his care not just for me but for all of those he encounters. And such a man — he deserves to be chosen, freely and without duress, for who he is. And so — I choose you, Clint Barton, to be my husband, and if you choose me back, then Banner will give us the wedding that we both deserve — one of joy and celebration, not fear and coercion.”
“I — of course I choose you back, Bucky. My honey-sweet husband, kind and clever and —”
Bucky interrupts the rest of the words with a soft kiss, before pulling back with a smile.
“Banner, are those vows enough to please the gods?”
Banner laughs. “I think the gods are pleased indeed, but if you will join hands we can make it official.”
Bucky reaches out, carefully taking the ring with his metal hand before tangling the fingers of his right hand with Clint’s.
“Do you, Clinton Francis Barton, Baron of Waverly, swear to take this man, James Buchanan Barnes, to be your husband, to love and honor and care for him, for all the days of your life?” Bruce asks.
“I do so swear,” Clint says, and nothing has ever felt more true.
“And do you, James Buchanan Barnes, swear to take this man, Clinton Francis Barton, to be your husband, to love and honor and care for him, for all the days of your life?
“I do so swear,” Bucky says, the confident resonance of his voice and his joyous smile so different from the last time he spoke those words.
“Bucky, you already wear a ring that is a symbol of Clint’s commitment,” Bruce says. “Take the ring you forged for Clint in return and place it on his finger. In doing so you will pledge your devotion and be bound in loving matrimony forevermore, and may the gods smile upon you both.”
Clint considers for a moment and then holds out his right hand, the one with which he grips his bow. The ring is delicate enough not to interfere with that, although it might be caught by fletching if he wore it on his drawing hand.
Bucky places the ring on Clint’s finger, and it slides into place, fitting as perfectly as a key into a lock.
There’s a bright flash, and Clint has his dagger in his left hand before he realizes that there is no threat. Bucky is still holding Clint’s right hand, but he’s staring at the ring on his own finger.
“Is —” Clint draws Bucky’s hand up, closer to the light of the lantern. The cursed ring, which has been slowly changing in a way they have both been afraid to fully acknowledge, is now completely transformed — gleaming brightly of silver metal in a pattern of flowers and vines that matches the ring Bucky made Clint.
“What does it mean?” Clint asks, hoping but hesitant to speak the words aloud.
“Fascinating,” Tony murmurs, leaning close to examine the ring. “I can’t imagine that anyone sentenced to a correctional marriage before would have voluntarily chosen to wed their spouse. If that is the way to break the curse, it makes sense that we would not have known of it.”
“Broken,” Clint repeats, his head spinning. “Do you really think so?”
“We should test it!” Tony is practically jittering with excitement. “Bucky, you walk that way —”
“Apologies, Lord Stark,” Bucky says with a laugh. He looks a bit dazed himself, but his tender smile returns as he meets Clint’s eyes. “But the time for experimentation can wait. Right now I have no wish to be parted from my husband for even a moment.”
“Nor I,” Clint returns readily. He lifts Bucky’s fingers to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of his hand. “For now, all I wish is to dance with my husband, and enjoy this evening.”
“But — are you jesting — surely you would want to know —” Tony protests, Steve shushing him even as Clint leads Bucky away, back toward the bonfire.
Clint tilts his head down, dropping his voice low. “Are you really content to wait to discover if the curse is broken?”
Bucky stops walking for a moment, turning to face Clint. “I believe I already know,” he confides. He leans in, pressing a soft clinging kiss to Clint’s lips, and then one deeper and hungrier, ending with an impudent nip of his teeth that sends a jolt of lust straight down Clint’s spine.
Clint makes a soft sound of protest as Bucky draws back, and it takes a moment before he can pull the realization from his head amidst the welter of desire.
“That —” he presses his fingertips to his lip, still stinging from where Bucky nipped him. “Are you —”
Bucky just winks at him, taking his hand to start walking again. “Do you wish to dance with me, husband?”
Clint sweeps Bucky up in an exuberant embrace, spinning him, before setting him back on his feet.
“Always.”
Another gorgeous artwork by the amazing alby_mangroves / artgroves. Please express your appreciation of this lovely art on AO3 or tumblr.