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Bucky’s hand tightens on the gun, and he has to take a couple of deep breaths before he can loosen up again. He puts the weapon down on the shelf in front of him and flexes his fingers, breathing in slow, holding it, breathing out again, picturing a paintbrush tracing slow figure-8s. Some days he thinks he’s got more out of gifs on the internet than the hack therapist the army’s paying for him, but he’s probably just being unkind.
He reaches up to resettle his ear defenders, tuck his hair more firmly behind his ears, because that’s a better excuse for the delay in shooting than the way anxiety keeps speeding up his heart. He came early on a Wednesday morning precisely so he wouldn’t have anyone here to judge him; there’s some asshole at the end of the row but at least the dull thud of his steady shooting is something for Bucky to time his breathing to.
The intention had been to be the first one in to the range today; Bucky has already spent too long on too many different days in the waiting room chairs in the foyer, their scratchy fabric somehow bad enough to be felt right through his shirt. He’s on nodding terms with the guy at the counter but he’s still never quite managed to make it inside, and he’s moved close enough to humiliation about it that he’d decided that if he couldn’t do it this time this would be his last trip. The prospect of having to find another range is pretty good motivation, but when he’d seen someone already at the counter when he peered through the glass doors he’d had to take another lap around the block, breathing in time with his boots hitting the sidewalk, before he’d made his way in. He’d given a tight smile and his ID to the guy on the counter, curled his hand around the unfamiliar gun, and taken the unoccupied space as far from the other guy as he possibly could.
He’s got this. He can do this. He just needs another second.
Bucky’s phone buzzes against his hip, and that’s another reason he’s come out early in the week; he’s never questioned that Sam and Steve were meant for each other ‘cos the pair of them don’t know what relaxation is. Steve will be safely out of the way running the length of Central Park, sending a guilt-tripping selfie of them in their running gear, so he won’t have the opportunity to tell Bucky how bad of an idea this is.
He’s well aware that it’s a bad idea.
He never needed Steve or his therapist to tell him that. Sam, too, although at least he tends not to tell Bucky what to do – maybe it’s worse, though, the way he asks questions that have a superficial answer and then eat at him later when he’s trying to get some sleep. What does he want to get out of this? He wants to keep his eye in, work on his balance, make sure of his aim. (He wants to still be good for something. He wants to be back to who he was.)
Bucky lets out a long breath and stares up at the ceiling for a second, subconsciously counting along with the distant shooting, reassured by the pause to reload that comes exactly when he’s expecting it.
All gun ranges are the damned same. Institutional colours, exposed pipe, white-painted concrete with distance markers. He might as well be back in the goddamn army, only they wouldn’t take him anymore.
He takes another deep breath and shakes it off, his empty sleeve batting gently at his side, grabs up the gun again and lets his focus narrow. The thud of distant, muffled shooting helps him slow his breathing and centre himself, an anchor that tethers him here and now against the tugging currents of anxiety always running under the surface. It’s an easy distance, an easy target, and he squeezes off six shots in quick succession and slams the gun down again, leaning forward and bracing his arm on the waist-high shelf. It’s a start. What does it matter that he doesn’t want to look?
After a little while just breathing he turns around, rests back against the barrier, slowly clenching and releasing his hand. The shooting at the other end of the range has stopped, and even though it’s against all the posted rules Bucky tugs off his ear defenders and runs his hand through his hair. The other guy must be wearing rubber-soled sneakers, ‘cos there’s no echo as he walks down the range towards Bucky.
He’s tall and built and he’s got a beautiful, somehow familiar face and a haystack of blond hair. He turns his head to grin at Bucky as he’s passing, just a quick glance of acknowledgement that still manages to steal a little of Bucky’s breath. Then he looks past and his eyebrows raise a little before he gives an impressed nod, opens his mouth a little, then changes his mind and gives him a thumbs up before walking away.
It’s dumb to feel that little sting of disappointment – Jesus, Bucky wouldn’t have anything to offer a fuckin’ soulmate even if one got served up on a silver platter – but he can’t help watching the guy walk away, a slight frown on his face as he struggles to work out where he’s seen him before. It’s not until he turns his head and Bucky sees him in profile that it hits him like a punch to the gut, genuinely taking his breath away for a second despite all the goddamn lessons he’s apparently needed on how to fuckin’ breathe.
He pulls out his phone, ignoring Steve’s selfie – they all look the damned same, he always has to get his black-traced soul words in the frame – and carefully taps out a text.
Just saw the guy from the fucking POSTER.
It’s kind of rewarding, how fast the emojis pour back.
He almost forgets to check back on the six perfect hits, centre-mass.
*
It had taken a while before Bucky had actually got to see one of the posters intact. Seemed like half of New York wanted them taken down because of indecency, and half wanted to keep them as a souvenir – and honestly, Bucky couldn’t blame them.
It was a masterstroke of advertising, no one could argue that. Carson’s Circus was a two-bit tourist attraction up from Iowa, and any other poster would’ve ensured that it stayed that way. Sure, Bucky would have still been tempted to drag Steve along – with his therapist on speed dial, maybe, what with the noise and the crowds – but it wouldn’t have drawn the public eye. That poster, though –
The conclusion had been reached, after a hell of a lot of headlines, that it wasn’t actually illegal. Unmatched soul words were supposed to be private, and it was certainly a taboo, but there was nothing that could be done about how the circus had chosen to advertise. And paint getting thrown at the posters, people posting videos on Twitter of ranting Christians tearing them down, it all just seemed to contribute to the Sold Out banners that were pasted over the few posters that were left. No respectable publication would post the advert whole, but teasing half-ripped glimpses seemed to be just about everywhere you looked.
Bucky had finally found an untouched one in Bed-Stuy.
He’d been working on walking further, expanding the areas he felt safe to be, the places he could trust that every rustling plastic bag wasn’t hiding an IED. It had been the kind of warm gray day that fall slips into summer sometimes, preparing you for what’s to come, and Bucky had been cursing the long-sleeved shirt he’d chosen and the way he couldn’t roll back the sleeve. It was the formless kind of angry frustration that his therapist called transference, the kind that prickled all over his skin and made him want to punch something with the hand he no longer had. He’d forgotten all about the discomfort of it, though, as soon as he’d seen the poster.
The guy pictured was in profile, most of his back to the viewer, and he was braced with a bow in his hands, the bowstring pulled back to his far ear. The sleeveless shirt he was wearing was an eye-searing purple, and the musculature it revealed was enough to catch the eye, but it was the red words that curled along his forearm that had caused all the outrage. It was absurd that they’d have been nothing special if only they’d been black and already matched.
World’s Greatest Marksman, huh? they said, and underneath in white the poster blared YOU DECIDE, with a list of dates that were all sold out.
Bucky had pulled his phone out without really thinking about it, cradling it carefully as he unlocked it with his thumbprint and held it up to take a picture. He told himself it was so he could lord it over Steve that he’d actually seen the poster, but that didn’t really explain how often he unlocked his phone to look at it, set it down so he could zoom in on the guy’s face: the smug curve of the grin he wore, the mischief in his bright eyes, the tousled hair that curled over the bright purple hearing aid that was tucked behind his ear.
*
Steve almost makes Bucky jump out of his skin when he barges through the door, and Bucky locks his phone guiltily and shoves it under his hip. Sam’s a little more sedate in entering, although he does grab the juice from the fridge and drink straight from the carton, so he’s still on Bucky’s shit list.
“You saw the guy from the poster?” Steve says, but at least half of the thrilled excitement is because Bucky left the house.
“I went to the range,” Bucky says, with a casual shrug that is fooling precisely no one. He can almost feel Sam’s sharp-eyed glance from the kitchen, and Steve’s got that frown line between his eyebrows that Bucky’s fairly sure belongs only to him. “Actually made it inside, this time.”
“Good going, man,” Sam says quietly, and he shrugs when Steve sends him a betrayed glare.
“Turns out I could still outshoot the both of you, even with one arm,” Bucky says, and stretches himself out in the armchair, smugly tucking his hand behind his head.
The armchair had been the first piece of furniture that they’d actually bought for their place, an estate sale find for thirty bucks. It’s mustard yellow and a little threadbare in places, and Sam has been wanting to get rid of it for the last three years. It had been the place that a lot of Bucky’s recovery had happened, curled up by the window and learning how to be a human again; it’s going in the dumpster over Bucky’s dead body, and he’s pretty sure that Steve’s right there with him.
“So you’re the World’s Greatest Marksman, huh?” Steve says, and Bucky can feel the betraying flush of colour in his cheeks.
“Apparently not,” he says, “although I got a good look at him.”
“Did you say hey?” Sam says.
“Did you think about saying his words?” Steve asks, almost overlapping.
“How many times do you reckon he’s heard ‘em?” Bucky asks, with a lopsided shrug. “I figured I’d give the poor guy a break.” He decides it’s easiest not to mention that he was barely talking himself down from a panic attack at the time. He doesn’t want to undermine his victory like that.
“I’m not sure I could’ve resisted,” Steve says thoughtfully. “Even though I know I’ve matched.”
“You’d better not be saying anyone else’s words, Rogers,” Sam says, laughter in his voice, and an edge of heat in there too that makes Steve prick up his ears like a golden retriever. Bucky groans, pulls a throw pillow out from behind him and shoves it over his face. Steve drops Bucky’s headphones in his lap as he passes, because he is the worst roommate ever, and Bucky rolls his eyes and pulls up Spotify on his phone.
He would have been lost without Steve after he got discharged from the army. Steve had scraped up the pieces of him that had been left after the surgery, flown them back to New York with him and got the pair of them an apartment that he’d immediately started modifying, no matter how much Bucky had sworn and fought and bucked against the changes that his arm meant they’d needed to make. Steve has been relentlessly cheerful and gently bullying ever since, and he’s forced Bucky out of bed every morning, and he’s held him through the middle of the night crying jags every time, even if it meant he fell asleep at work the next day. And all of that means that Bucky couldn’t ever resent that Steve has found his soulmate and is now obnoxiously in love, no matter how much that impinges on his day.
He sighs and scrolls through Instagram as music blares in his ears, idly liking a photo of a half-ripped poster before thoughtfully setting an early Wednesday morning alarm.
*
On Wednesday Bucky regrets everything, pulling his blankets over his head and trying to ignore the blaring of his phone. He snoozes it twice, finally rolling out of bed the third time it beeps at him, hissing as his bare feet hit the freezing hardwood floor. Outside the windows the sky is still black, and Bucky switches on the coffee maker before doing anything else, shoving his mug where the pot usually sits. By the time he gets out of the shower coffee’s overflowed onto the counter, and he grabs Sam’s discarded sweater and mops up the dregs. His mug of coffee he leaves to cool on the side, shuffling back into his bedroom to grab a pair of sweats and a shirt, pulling a chunky cardigan out of his closet to drag over the top.
He’d never thought zippers would be the thing he’d most miss.
He takes a second in the dimness of his room to drag a thumb over the word that crests his hip on his right side, tracing gently over the m and the e. When they’d told him – in Germany, with the doctors, perfect English in an unfamiliar accent – when they’d broken it to him that he’d lost his arm, the jolt of sharp-edged fear that had run through him had seemed to centre on the part of him that was missing, terror curling cold along words that weren’t there any more. He hadn’t even known they were that important to him until he’d thought for thirty frozen seconds that they were gone. It’d taken Steve hauling him out of bed, half-dragging his fumbling feet to the bathroom and the square-edged mirror there before Bucky had been able to stop yelling, tracing shaking fingers over newly red-stained skin.
No way you’re gonna beat me, they say, they’d always said, curled across the small of his back now and holding him straight and steady, no matter what the world tried to take away.
The coffee’s still too hot when he gets back out into the kitchen, but the blend Sam brings over is worth the pain. Not worth the pain in the ass, maybe – Bucky groans and leans back against the counter when he turns to see Sam standing in the kitchen doorway, still blinking his way out of sleep.
“You going to the range?” he asks, because whatever insults you can heap on him the guy isn’t stupid.
Bucky sips his coffee and shrugs.
“You thought about what you’re putting yourself out there for?” Sam asks, and Bucky scowls at him.
“I’m just going to shoot a damned gun,” he says. Sam’s sigh feels like a failure, and Bucky glares at him for that too.
“Well we’re here when you need us,” Sam says, low and gentle, his most obnoxious therapist expression set firmly on his face, and Bucky sets his empty mug in the sink and shoves his feet into his sneakers, grinning when Sam’s outraged bellow about his coffee-soaked sweater follows him out of the front door.
The walk to the range is quiet, this early, the occasional shush of cars hurrying past outlining the silence instead of breaking it. Bucky takes it slow, enjoying the peace of it all, delaying the moment of disappointment that’s inevitable when the guy isn’t there. He doesn’t know how he got this invested, or why it feels like there’s somehow more weight to it than just a celebrity encounter, but he can’t deny the exhilaration that’s fizzing in his stomach and across the small of his back. Maybe it’s because he was all tied up in Bucky’s first successful trip to the range, that reclamation of part of himself, and –
Fuck, now he’s starting to sound like his therapist.
Bucky lets out a soft breath of laughter, most of it at himself, and scrubs a hand over his face. He only becomes aware that he’s reached his destination when a soft bark snaps him out of his wandering thoughts.
Tied to a railing by the side of the gun range’s door is a dog that’s grinning up at him, a mutt that favours golden retriever in its colouring and the fringing on its tail, but that has clearly fallen off the family tree sometime if its gangly legs are any indication. It barks softly again, almost like deference to the quiet of the morning, and Bucky can’t resist kneeling down by its side so he can balance properly while he scratches it right behind its ear and down under its chin.
“Lucky, huh?” he says softly, tracing over etched metal that’s cold in the morning air. “Yeah, you and me both, bud.” With one last scruff of the dog’s ears he pushes back up to his feet, one last lick that he fails to duck away from, and his breathing doesn’t even hitch as he pushes open the door.
The guy behind the counter is yawning into a coffee when Bucky walks in, and he barely glances at Bucky’s ID. Only a couple of words are needed to get him a gun and some ammo; the ear defenders he picks out are bright red. He feels so much more relaxed, this time, even smiles a little when he walks through to the range and hears the steady muffled shooting coming from the closest booth. It’s somehow not a surprise when he sees the same guy standing there with a truly shitty stance, the line of his shoulders drying out Bucky’s mouth.
Rather than say anything he walks forward, hesitating a moment before taking the booth immediately next to the one that’s occupied. He gets a quick sideways glance, and he thinks there’s recognition in the smile. There’s sure as hell appreciation in the look that goes with it, and Bucky can feel the corner of his mouth curling up to match. He glances at the guy’s target and uses the controls to shift his back so they’re even, putting down the gun and shaking out his shoulders before he squares up – textbook perfect – and takes his first shot.
It feels fucking good when it hits, dead centre, and Bucky turns and raises an eyebrow in challenge.
It’s been so long since Bucky has felt even a spark of interest in someone; it makes no sense that this guy is burning him up.
After a second the guy turns back to his target and shoots, hitting dead centre, exactly the same as Bucky had. He turns back to face Bucky and cocks his head a little, and Bucky scowls and squares up to the target again, picking the second ring of the target, directly above where he’d shot before. The holes line up perfectly, neat as anything, and he can’t suppress the little grin of victory when he turns back.
There’s the muffled clank of metal as the guy puts his gun down on the shelf in front of him, and Bucky nearly swallows his tongue when he pushes his sleeves up to his elbows. His forearms are corded with muscle, lightly dusted with golden hair that catches sparks from the fluorescent lights overhead. It’s the words, though, that catch and hold his attention. No effort to cover them, no attempt to twist his arm away; it’s like a taunt, or an invitation, and Bucky can’t help slicking his tongue over his lower lip before he looks up to meet dark blue eyes.
The guy’s grin this time is slow and full of meaning, and Bucky is embarrassed to say he doesn’t even watch the shot he takes, too busy tracing the lines of his muscles, the lettering on his arm. It’s not until the guy jerks his head towards the target that he looks over, noting the precise placement of the bullet hole, one inch above, a precise echo of his.
“Fuck it,” Bucky says, to the air and to no one. He takes longer lining this shot up, evening out his breathing, suppressing the butterflies that have taken over his stomach. With the ear defenders on he could just as well be alone here, but there’s something about the other man’s presence that feels almost tangible, calming him and amping him up all at once.
The crash of the gun reaches him through his ear defenders almost before he’s consciously decided to make the shot. And it’s perfect, he can feel that it’s perfect, he can trust it like he hasn’t trusted his body in years. The target barely flutters as the bullet passes almost perfectly through the hole he’d made with his first shot, dead centre, right on target. Bucky has to put the gun down so he can rub his hand over his mouth, try and take a little of the smug out of his grin.
When Bucky turns again the guy’s staring at him, pupils blown wide, and he looks kinda like the ground’s been taken out from underneath him. He’s biting his lip like the start of a fricative curse but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t move his head, doesn’t make any effort to look at the target before he raises the gun and fires again, staring right into Bucky’s eyes the whole time.
The bullet passes through the target. The paper doesn’t even move.
Bucky’s opened his mouth, lips pursing into the perfect shape for a kiss or a first word, when they’re both startled out of their stare-down when the lights above them flicker. The guy looks over at the door without removing his ear defenders, and how he understands what the clerk’s saying Bucky doesn’t know – it’s just an emphatic muffled jumble of blurred noise from where he stands. But the guy nods his head and quickly unloads his gun, jogging out of the door behind the clerk before Bucky can even move.
By the time he manages to get himself sorted, cursing the clumsiness of his fingers on every breath, the guy is long gone.
*
It’s a curse of a week. A long slow grinding frustration of nightmares and phantom pain. Bucky counts down the days until Wednesday without even trying to lie about it to himself, and he can see Sam biting back words every time they cross paths. Steve seems oblivious, but maybe he’s just being kind.
Wednesday doesn’t bother dawning, slip-sliding in on the remains of Tuesday’s rain. The alarm tears through the dreams Bucky’s managed, and he curses the world and his idiot brain as he struggles to pull on his clothes. Sam’s awake again, but he doesn’t say anything, just hands Bucky an umbrella as he walks out the door, and Bucky focuses on the way orange reflections shatter around his boots rather than think about what he’s gonna do if the range is empty.
(The range is empty.)
He doesn’t bother shooting. He doesn’t think he could get the breathing right. Instead he returns the gun right away to the clerk, piles the ear-defenders onto the counter, and almost misses it when the guy calls for him to wait.
He’s fumbling under the counter, pushing aside stray bullets and creased paperwork, and it takes him a minute before he lays hands on a rectangle of cardboard that he pushes into Bucky’s hand. It’s a moment before he can focus past the clashing jumble of colours, the mismatched sizes and fonts, and work out that it’s a ticket to Carson’s Circus this coming Saturday. Written on the back in scratchy penmanship, surrounded by scored-in scribbles where the pen was reluctant, are the words See you there?
Bucky figures he can’t be blamed for his slow-growing idiot grin.
*
The performance he has a ticket for doesn’t even start until 2pm, so there’s no excuse for Bucky to be at the circus just as soon as it opens, but there’s no one around to shame him for it. Steve and Sam had tried to insist on coming with him, and he’d had to work hard to shut that down.
He takes a second just past the ticket booths, standing to one side of the long metal pathways that are grinding the grass underneath them into mud. His heart is pounding hard in his chest but it feels like excitement, not the electric fear that he’s used to associating with the deep, heavy beat. It’s syncopating with the circus music and the cries of hawkers, and it’s easy to match his footsteps to it, to walk further into the unfamiliar space without the breathlessness of fear. Bucky finds himself grinning back when people meet his eyes, tucking his hair behind his ears because he doesn’t need to hide.
The booths and the sideshows provide a circuitous path but it all feels like it’s leading somewhere, as though he somehow already knows the way. It’s nothing close to a surprise when he tumbles out from between two tents to find a line of shooting galleries, a ring toss, a couple of basketball hoops.
Bucky doesn’t need to work to find him – and not just ‘cos he’s the only person around who has a heap of cheap cuddly toys piled on the ground by his side. The woman running the booth isn’t even bothering to intervene, just leaning back against the side of the booth and pointing two raised middle fingers at the guy who just grins and lines up another shot. Bucky takes a second to admire the lines of him, the ease in his posture as another tin target falls backwards with a gentle tink. Then he walks up to stand by his side, close enough to feel his body heat, just about close enough to breathe him in.
He’s got his sleeves rolled up again. Bucky has to clear his throat before he can speak.
“World’s Greatest Marksman, huh?” he says.
It’s nothing he’s ever seen before. Nothing the endless movies and soap operas have managed to quite get right. The words on the guy’s arm flush darker with colour in an instant, fading through red to burgundy to black, and Bucky lets out a long shaky breath that’s all full of hope and fear and disbelief, all tangled up and tied around with relief.
“No way you’re gonna beat me,” the guy says, and he’s grinning, Bucky can hear him grinning, and he can feel it somewhere deep in his chest. Across the small of his back, too, a flush of heat and certainty, and Bucky grabs the air rifle out of his callused hands and dumps it on the splintered wooden counter before grabbing one of the guy’s hands, tugging him forward to place his hand on Bucky’s hip. Bucky yanks his shirt out of the way so the guy’s rough skin can brush against the words there, trace wonderingly over skin that’s newly dyed black.
“Jesus,” the guy says, and his voice is softer now, echoing Bucky’s disbelief.
“You can call me Bucky,” Bucky says, and the guy’s laugh echoes through all the empty spaces in him, shoves a helpless smile onto his face.
“Clint,” he says. The hand that hasn’t curled against Bucky’s skin rubs the back of his own neck, a little awkward, a little sheepish to go with the duck of his head. “I – er, I won you some –“ he gestures vaguely at the pile of toys on the ground, almost high enough to reach his knee.
Bucky reaches up to curve his hand around the back of Clint’s neck, staring up into his face.
“There’s something you need to know about me,” he says, low and serious, his expression focused and intent, “and that is that there is no fuckin’ way I’m taking any of these toys home with me today.”
“Aaw,” Clint says, reaching down to grab something, and his grin is bashful and slow; Bucky’s pretty sure that smile is going to persuade him into a lot of shit over the whole rest of their lives. He can’t wait to find out if he’s right. “Not even Lucky’s mini-me?”
The dog is limp and yellow and ugly, with one scratched up eye, and Bucky regards it hopelessly for a second before swearing, low and resigned.
Clint doesn’t know the first thing about him, but apparently he knows enough to know when he’s won. His lips are pulled up into a smug curve when he leans down to brush them against Bucky’s, a gentle question that Bucky’s always known the answer to. He pushes up into the kiss, opening to Clint’s tongue, winding his fingers into tousled hair as Clint’s hand curls more firmly around his hip. It’s a perfection of movement that shudders through Bucky and has him gasping against Clint’s mouth, pulling in air that’s never come so easy before.