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Chapter Text

Clint is too old for this shit.

He’s not old, okay?

But maybe he is too old to be lusting after his definitely younger doctor. Who is patching him up. After falling down from two sets of stairs.

Even if he wasn’t too old for both the situation and the doctor, it wouldn’t go well. Hell, his whole face is a mess of purple and swelled flesh. It’s disgusting – even more than usual. Definitely not attractive enough to lure a twenty-something guy to get it on with him. Even less when the guy has read his medical history.

It’s not like the guy is young. He is young, but not young in cursive, you know? He is the kind of young that is too young for Clint but not too young to be a doctor. Calling him a twenty-something-year-old is definitely an exaggeration. Thirty, maybe. Thirty-three at most. Clint is forty-two. Which is definitely too old for this shit. He knows young doctors don’t go for the bruise-man that is at least ten years their older.

Well, maybe if those ten-year-older guys weren’t Clint, someone would go for them. But Clint is very much Clint. Which shows by the way he is purple, swelled up, and sitting on a hospital bed.

“The paramedic said you didn’t want to be taken to the hospital. You do realize that it was a bad fall, right sir?” the man says. Doctor Barnes. Doctor Barnes says.

“I’m fine,” Clint insists, twitching uncomfortably in his bed.

“You have pretty bad trauma in your ribs, a broken ankle and a twisted wrist. And—” at Clint’s grimace, the man stops speaking. “What?” he asks, and it’s almost like Natasha, when she knows he’s done something wrong before he actually tells her he’s done something wrong.

“The wrist wasn’t from the stairs,” he admits, and he feels small, embarrassed, dumb.

He shouldn’t feel small, he’s ten years his senior. He should feel weird about someone so young treating him. How many years of experience did he have anyways? Couldn’t be much, with him being so young. But instead of feeling that, Clint felt like an idiot – which wasn’t much when talking about him, because he always felt a bit like an idiot.

The man stares at him and sighs. “Mr. Barton, how is your situation at home?” he asks, softly.

Clint is left there to look at him dumbfounded. “I don’t… What?” he asks. Because this man can’t be honestly asking Clint if he’s being abused. What? Where does that idea even come from? Just because of a twisted wrist and falling down some stairs?

“I’m just trying to help, Mr. Barton. If your partner or someone from your life is hurting you, we can help you. There are programs and—”

“Hey, hey, hey, no, nobody is beating me. Or hurting me. What?”

Doctor Barnes doesn’t seem to believe him. “Look, you’ve been to the ER three times on the last four months, which is a lot more than what’s usual for a man your age, and you’ve proven that hospitals are not your first option. Whoever is doing this—”

Clint interrupts again. “No!” then, he blushes, but it’s probably not too noticeable behind all that purple. He hopes that, if it is noticeable, it gets mistaken for anger instead of the embarrassment that it is. “I live alone,” he says. “No partner. No friends that hurt me. I just… I’m clumsy,” he ends up shrugging helplessly.

Barnes purses his lips. “Okay,” he says, but it doesn’t sound like he believes him. “Okay, but I’m going to give you my number, and if you change your opinion or you need help, call.” The man looks pointedly at him, holding a card with his name, a phone number, and the address of the hospital.

“Okay,” Clint says.

By the time they are done with him, he has a new almost-crush, a card in his pocket that he will not use, and a few bandages. When Natasha gets him from the hospital, she gives him a look and stays in his house for two weeks until he gets so caged up that he kicks her out and goes to the park. Going back home is torture, but he manages.

The next time he makes it to the ER, he’s not even conscious. When he wakes up, he sees Mrs. Robinson chewing on her nails and the obvious set-up of a hospital room, before a headache makes him close his eyes. He only opens them when the door is opened, and it’s to see Doctor Barnes looking at some papers.

“I had hoped to not see you again so soon, Mr. Barton,” the man says, not looking up from the papers. Clint keeps his eyes focused on the doctor, but he feels Mrs. Robinson getting out of the room. “A pipe hit your head,” the doctor explains, finally setting the papers in the bed, next to Clint’s legs, “you fell unconscious.”

“That would explain the headache,” Clint mutters, earning a chuckle from the doctor.

“We’ve run some tests, and everything seems alright, but I’d feel better if you stayed here a day or two. Just to see if there’s anything that we’ve missed.”

By the penetrating look the doctor is giving him, Clint knows that he’s expecting him to say no, that there’s a horrible person waiting him home to beat the fuck out of him, so Clint just nods. Because he lives alone. And nobody is hitting him. And the damn doctor seems too focused on that idea. It’s grating Clint’s nerves.

“I’ll have to call to work,” he thinks out loud. And Natasha. He should call Nat too. She worries when she doesn’t know what’s going on with his life.

“She your wife?” Barnes asks, getting Clint out of his head. When he looks up, Barnes is watching him with a small smile.

“What?” he asks confused.

“That woman, Natasha,” Barnes does a weird gesture with his hand, “is she your wife, girlfriend?”

He’s thinking out loud again. Great. As long as he doesn’t tell the doctor that he finds him hot, everything will be fine.

Clint chuckles, pushing that thought out of his mind, “no,” he answers, “she’s not. She’s a friend that worries a lot,” he explains.

The doctor hums, before scribbling something in his papers. He looks up at Clint. “That Natasha of yours is your emergency contact, right?” Clint nodded. “I’ll call her and tell her you’re here.”

“Good. Great. She’ll call work,” Clint nodded to himself. “Then she’ll come here to shout at me.” Barnes snorts, which makes him smile. “She always does that,” he explains, “she worries for as long as she has to, makes sure I’m fine, then she shouts at me and gives me silent treatment.”

The doctor gives him a look. “Three nurses know you by name, Mr. Barton. I think she’s got a reason to worry.”

“Oh yeah, she definitely does. I’m not denying it. It’s just that the silent treatment is not great,” Clint says, and he’s not whining, he really isn’t. He doesn’t whine. “It’s even worse because she’s like, my only friend,” he mumbles.

Doctor Barnes huffs a laugh. “You know how it is. Those who love us the most are those who hurts us the most,” he says, shrugging. Clint takes a good look at him, the man is young – he noticed that the first time he saw him – and attractive – again, noticed at first sight – but he also has deep eyes and if Clint believed in that shit, he would say that his eyes show that his mental age is a lot more mature than what his age says.

There’s a loud beep in the room before Clint can say anything and the doctor takes his pager out of his pocket. After reading whatever it says, he gets up and smiles at Clint. “I’ll see you tomorrow before you have to leave, Mr. Barton.” And with that, he’s out of the room.

Clint is left alone and looking at the door of his room. Welp. Now he can only wait till he’s allowed to get the fuck out of the hospital.

It’s not very long before nighttime comes, and with it comes a tired-looking Dr. Barnes that probably shouldn’t be there, the nurse did tell Clint to get some sleep or else she’d strap him to the bed and drug him. So he just looks expectantly at the doctor that is going to get him into some (kinky) trouble.

“I knew you’d be awake,” Barnes says, as if he actually knows Clint – he doesn’t, but the truth is that his mind wouldn’t change if he actually knew him, it would actually be confirmed. “You should rest, Mr. Barton, head injuries specially need it.”

“Would it put me in a bad light if I said this is not the worst I’ve had?” he asks jokingly, probably still under the effects of having a metal pipe fall on his head.

Barnes smiles, though, which has to mean that he isn’t as sure of his abuse theory as he’d been a few days ago. “It would, probably,” he answers, “but I also find it really easy to believe.”

Yeah it would, but Clint doesn’t care about it. He doesn’t care if this doctor thinks he’s a human disaster because he’s old enough to be confident in his worth. Also, who cares what an stranger thinks about them? Nobody. He doesn’t care.

But, as the doctor’s blue eyes fix on his, and his friendly smile settles after a laugh, Clint knows he’s doomed, because he does care. It’s not like he can’t deal with him embarrassing himself in front of this new crush of him – he knows that’s most likely to happen, taking into account everything about him and his previous records – but he doesn’t necessarily want to.

“You really should sleep, Mr. Barton,” the doctor says, a little smile in his lips, as if knowing he’s not actually going to do it.

“Clint.”

“What?”

He cringes. “I think we’ll be seeing a lot of each other if you’re going to be around so… Just call me Clint, please.” He tries to smile but he knows it comes off more like a grimace. Everyone he had met more than twice in the hospital calls him Clint, he doesn’t like to be ‘Mr. Barton’, call it the Peter Pan syndrome if you’d like; the truth is that he doesn’t like to be reminded of his age, even less by Dr. Barnes. He doesn’t want the guy to call him Mr. nothing.

“Okay,” he gets up. “Go to sleep, Clint.”

And, following his orders, Clint does.

Chapter Text

They do really keep him there just for one night, they check for a couple of things before giving him permission to leave, but before lunch, he finds himself dressed back in his clothes which Dr. Barnes giving him a talk. Well, he’s fully scolding him, which makes Clint feel small and stupid again.

“You need to be more careful, Mr. Barton,” he really does sound like a doctor now, patronizing and looking disappointed.

That makes Clint disappointed. He hates patronizing people, and his experience with doctors is that most of them kind of are, even if Barnes hadn’t seemed like it the other times they’d talked.

“Yeah, I know,” he answers.

The other man sighs. Putting down the chart, he sits down. “Working in the ER you don’t usually see the same patients as repeatedly as we’re seeing you unless there’s something wrong with them, so I want to tell you again, Clint. I’m here to help you out if you need it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He can tell that the doctor is getting frustrated, but honestly, he just wants to get out of there and go back to work.

“Have a good weekend,” Barnes says as he’s finally getting out of the room. Clint nods, smiles, and says the same. He plans to stay out of the ER for a while.

The next time he hurts himself, he doesn’t go to the hospital – really, he doesn’t have enough money to go there four times a week, and that’s about how much he hurts himself – but it’s also just a little cut in his chin, so it’ll surely be alright.

Well, maybe it would have needed to be stitched, it was not like it was big but it was bleeding a lot, and it hurt to move his face. He had kind of fallen asleep, standing up… It had been a long week, and Nat wasn’t speaking to him so he had tried to fill his time with extra shifts at the range and the bar and when he had gotten home after a long day of working, he had been too worked up to sleep. The result had been, well, an almost broken face.

He had patched himself up, disinfectant and a frog band aid. Why a frog band aid, you might ask. Well, his answer to that, is – and will always be – that frogs are cool.

Now he’s sitting in the sofa, eating consolation ice cream and watching some weird soap opera on the TV. In the back of his mind, he’s reeling and wondering if he should call the doctor. He had given him his number, after all, but he really doesn’t need it, he’d be using it as an excuse and not only is that kind of creepy and just not good, but it’s also something that will leave him at a worse place because he doesn’t doubt for a second that Barnes would press on the matter about him getting abused.

The truth is that he refuses to be one of those people who feel entitled to someone who is just doing their job. He hates it when he sees it at the bar, guys flirting with the waitresses and taking their niceness (which is required by the job, and not necessarily a sign that they are nice themselves) as a sign to wait for their shift to end or even outright stalking them. Clint really isn’t like that. The doctor gave him his number in case of an emergency, and even though Clint didn’t end up throwing it away, he’s not going to use it.

So he just sighs and watches TV, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his chin. Eating ice cream both helps and makes it worse, so he keeps doing that. He ends up texting Nat, not sure if she’ll answer.

Trying to focus on the TV show, he jumps when his phone buzzes in his leg. It’s Nat, which is both surprising and not surprising at all. She’s asking him what he’s done so he tells her and he can hear her sigh even if they’re just texting. It’s not like his looking to bother her, but his chin hurts and he misses her and he was the one getting hurt so he should be punished more. The text lets him know she’s coming over, and he feels himself relaxing. He smiles but instantly yelps at the bright feeling of hurt that blooms from the cut.

When Natasha finds him – still wearing the white shirt he had stained with his blood – she just sighs and pets him in the cheek twice.

“You should go to the doctor.” Clint doesn’t even tense up, but she still knows there’s something there, so she probes. “You don’t want to. Of course you never want to go to the doctor but there’s something else.”

 Clint doesn’t whine, but he comes close to it. Natasha knows him too well, and she’s too damn observant, so that ends up with her basically reading his mind. It’s creepy. And Clint is mad that he doesn’t have that kind of superpower. Yeah, he knows her well, and he kind of knows how to read her – she’s too secretive for her own good, but Clint thinks he’s the one that reads her better than anyone else – but it’s nothing close to what she does.

“Tell me,” she demands, as he doesn’t answer.

He sighs. There’s no point in fighting it, he knows he’s going to end up telling her sooner or later, so he might as well just tell her. And that’s what he does. And when he’s done, she just stares at him for a couple of seconds before letting the air out of her nose and shaking her head.

“So you’ve met a cute doctor.” He nods. “Who thinks someone is abusing you?” He nods again. She hums. Then says nothing.

“You’re not going to…” Clint hesitates, “tease me?”

“You’re old enough, Clint,” she says, to what he groans. Her face brightens and there it is, that teasing smile that is actually more of a smirk. “He’s younger?”

“Yeah.”

“How much younger?”

He groans again and gets up from the sofa to pace in front of it. “I don’t know Nat, I didn’t as for a birth certificate while he was patching me up or anything.” He stops talking and paces a little more. “And also, who cares. So what, there’s a cute doctor. There has to be, it’s like a quota that hospitals have to fill, right? There’s always a cute doctor in TV shows.”

“There is always a cute doctor,” Nat agrees.

“And it’s just that, he’s cute. It’s not like anything’s going to happen. I think about a third of the people I pass by are cute and that doesn’t mean that anything is going to happen.”

She nods again, but he suspects it’s more for his sake than because she really thinks what he’s saying is right.

“And why don’t you ask him out.” It comes out more like a deadpan sentence than a question.

“We don’t ask out people just because they’re nice to us in their workplace,” Clint recites. Nat nods approvingly. She wasn’t the one to teach him this – he has some human decency – but she’d always liked that he lived by his principals, and that was one of them.

“So. If you don’t ask him out, and you say there’s no way he’d ask you out, what’s the problem?”

“That he’s cute, Nat!”

Which, to her, probably makes no sense. And… fair.

They spend the afternoon together and she even lets him have some more ice cream to calm his wounded feelings – and chin – but she refuses to let him pick the film they’re going to watch and just puts Velvet Buzzsaw, which has Jake Gyllenhaal in it so Clint doesn’t complain too much.

She ends up spending the night there, as she often does when they meet like this, taking the empty space in his bed and burrowing one of his shirts. It is in moments like that that Clint is truly happy to have her in his life. He truly can’t imagine what it would be like if she wasn’t there, but he’s sure it’d be lonely as hell. Natasha is the best friend that Clint has ever had, and, sure, he hasn’t had many of them, but even if he had ten thousand friends, he doubts any of them would be like what Nat is.

He sighs as they lie in the bed, and just lets himself have this. Have her.

Chapter Text

Clint had had feelings for Natasha when they had first met. Well, he hadn’t had feelings for her, but he’d surely been attracted. Which doesn’t mean much, considering it has been stated how many people he thinks are attractive.

The thing is, as soon as she said she wasn’t interested, he didn’t try to get it on with her anymore. He is decent, you see? So, really, it’s not that bad that he has a crush on the doctor, it’ll go away eventually, like the thing with Nat had. He just had to wait. And repeat himself that he does not need to deal with this shit.

But, of course, destiny has other plans for him.

He finds himself at the ER again, he’s not the patient this time, though. No, it’s Kate. Katie-Kate. She works with him at the archery range and she’d been walking the last of their kids through class when she’d tripped and basically bashed her head against a table. It was weird to be on this side of things, Clint noticed. It was normally him who was moaning about the pain in his skull and another person (let’s be real, he only ever let Nat, and exceptionally, Kate to see him like that) with the task to listen to him.

“It’s okay, kid, they’ll give you some painkillers and do some tests, but you’ll see how it’s nothing to worry about,” he mutters. He knows this, he’s seen enough concussions to know that Kate doesn’t have one, but she is still bleeding, and there’s a bad feeling in the middle of his chest that is making it very uncomfortable to breathe. So, yeah, he’s worried about her.

They’re ushered to a room and after a few minutes, the nurse comes inside and asks a lot of questions that they’re just going to have to repeat to the doctor when they come after. That’s exactly what happens. Except. Of course. Because Clint is lucky like that. The doctor is Doctor James Barnes.

He doesn’t notice Clint in the beginning, he just looks at whatever paper he has in his hands and starts to say hi to Miss Bishop. Then he raises his eyes and frowns.

“Clint?”

“Uh. Yeah, hi. I’m not the harmed one this time,” he tries to joke. The truth is that the nurse’s reassurances haven’t been enough to calm him down, he’s still kind of worried, and he suspects that he’ll still be when Katie is allowed to get out of the hospital.

“You know each other?” Kate asks in a groan, breaking the kind of uncomfortable silence that has settled. Clint is about to answer when she huffs. “I don’t know why I’m surprised, you’re here once a week.”

“Hey, I’m not.”

She raises her eyebrows then winces at the pain, which makes Clint focus.

“What’s the problem here?” Barnes interrupts, sitting in a chair next to where Kate is sitting.

It’s a stupid question, considering the wound Kate is sporting in her forehead and the blood dripping from it, but Clint retells him the story with as much detail as he can. “She doesn’t seem to have a concussion and she didn’t want to come here but she was bleeding a lot and I’m obviously not an expert and you guys kind of are so. Yeah.” He’s rambling, and he knows he’s rambling, but he’s nervous and there’s no one stopping him.

“You did well, Clint,” Barnes reassured him. “I’m with you, I don’t think she’s concussed, but it’s better that we check everything is alright. Just in case.”

The man is looking exceptionally pretty today. Clint shouldn’t be noticing this, because he’s a doctor and he’s doing his job, but he does notice. He notices how the man has his long-ish hair in a bun that is kind of messy. It looks like it’s the I’m-in-the-end-of-a-long-shift kind of messy and not the I-did-this-on-purpose one. It reveals the sharp jawline and, at the same time, gives him a soft vibe that really should be illegal. And he’s wearing scrubs, dark blue scrubs that bring out his eyes and make him look great. So yeah, Clint is noticing how amazing the man looks. But the truth is that he’s also very aware of the blood dripping from his friend’s forehead, so his mind is not getting very distracted, really.

He stays with them for some time, patching Kate up and talking with them. He’s making it difficult for Clint to ignore his possible feelings-in-the-making, being so nice and all.

“So… Doctor’s hot,” Kate says when they’re out of the hospital. He’s walking her home because there’s still that feeling of uneasiness in his chest, he’s still worried. She punches him lightly on the arm when he doesn’t answer. “You going to say anything?”

“He’s a doctor, they’re all hot,” Clint says, trying to keep his face straight. Kate can’t read him as well as Nat, but he’s still very obvious about his crushes, and he really doesn’t want to deal with that- They (that being Nat, Kate and sometimes even Wanda) tease him so much.

“That’s stereotypical. And false,” is her answer. “That guy is the kind of doctor that you see in medical dramas.” There’s a pause that Clint is thankful for, thinking that she’s done talking. She’s not. “Do you think he did modeling in the past?” He huffs. “Or the present.”

“Dude.”

“I knew it!” she exclaims, then winces at the pain, but doesn’t drop the subject. “You’re totally crushing, Clint. You like the hot, young doctor!”

He groans. “Please do not call him that. It’s creepy.”

“But you’re crushing, right?” She’s smirking now, and all he can think is how he shouldn’t have introduced her to Nat. She’s taking a lot after her, and it’s ending up to be a disadvantage for Clint.

He sighs. “Yeah.”

Thankfully she doesn’t really take it further than this, she doesn’t stop talking about it, and she’s definitely teasing him as much as she can, but she’s not really trying to… psychoanalyze Clint or anything. So at least there’s that.

 He spends a full day at her home, doing what he calls taking care of her but that she considers more like bothering her and Kate ends up kicking him out and calling Natasha so she can keep him busy.

“She has a head injury!” he protests. How can Nat expect him to just leave and leave her alone when she’s not really at the top of her game? What if she falls down again?

“Hardly,” Nat tells him over the phone.

“Nat…”

“Look, Barton, this is what we’re going to do. You’re going to leave the poor Kate alone so she can get better without you mother-henning her to hell and you and I are going to go out.”

There’s a silence. And then a chuckle. Yes, sure, Clint thinks. “We’re not going out,” he says, convinced of himself. He should know better, nobody can change Nat’s mind once she has set on to do something.

“We are,” she says simply. “I’ll meet you at eight at your apartment and we’ll go together. It’s going to be Kelson’s.”

Okay. So she wants to get him laid. She wants him to get himself laid. She has definitely had a conversation with Kate that wasn’t just about head injuries. It had, for sure, included young doctors.

By the time he has come up with an answer, he realizes that she has hung up. Great. She probably thinks he’s a creepy old man that needs to get something out of his system and then he won’t be lusting after his innocent doctor who has never done something apart from his job to get Clint to crush after him.

Clint really is too old for all this.

There’s nothing to get out of his system, because the truth is that Doctor Barnes is a catch, he’s hot and he seems smart and he’s shown that he really does care about his patients. He wouldn’t have stuck around for Kate if he didn’t; he wouldn’t have pushed the abuse thing with Clint if he didn’t.

It would be weirder if he wasn’t crushing on him than it is to have him make heart eyes at the Doctor, that’s the truth Clint’s going with.

And still… A distraction wouldn’t be bad. Not necessarily someone to have sex with – which, after all the time he’s been sexless, would be awesome – but he just wants to get his mind out of things. Things like Kate, his protégé, hitting her head in his range.

He shakes his head and rushes home, the idea of going out growing on him as he realizes that he could really do with the distraction. And it’s been long since he’s gone out with his friend. There’s a reason for that, of course: he feels old there. He’s forty years old and he has no business in a place like Kelson’s, he should have a family already, kids, or a steady partner at least. At least, that’s how people think, and he can feel his stares when he walks in.

He sighs and shakes his head. He’s not going to think about that, he’s just going to get ready to have a night out with his friend.

Chapter Text

The truth is that Clint might not be as up to it as he’d try to hype himself to be. His solution is not calling Nat and telling her that he doesn’t want to go, because he knows that’s not going to work. Instead, he calls backup. Said backup is Wanda, who, because why not, brings her brother along.

Clint acts annoyed when he sees him, but he knows that bantering with Pietro might be the thing to keep his mind away from the looks he knows he’s going to get. It might be contradictory, but, the reality is that they’ve started to like each other more and more with time.

In the beginning, Clint had been genuinely annoyed whenever Wanda brought her brother along, because the kid was an asshole. He assholest guy he had ever met. They’d bonded after some trouble that Pietro had had, and now they only act annoyed, but in reality, they are kind of friends. Well, they are friends.

When Nat arrives and sees they aren’t alone, she arches a brow at Clint, but doesn’t comment on it and she even gives Wanda a hug. She’s an adorable kid, so even Nat likes her. The judge seems to still be on with Pietro, but he treats her a lot better than he treats Clint, so he will probably end up on her okay-list.

“So… When do we leave?” Clint asks, standing awkwardly in his kitchen.

Nat sighs again, and looks at Wanda, who giggles. “Now,” she says, with a tone of finality in her voice that has him looking down.

He really doesn’t think he needs to go out, but he never really does. In the end, most of the times that his best friend drags him outside, even if it’s to go to a club, he ends up having fun, so he never makes much of a fuss – just the exact amount needed. He still doesn’t necessarily want to go.

They get an uber and when they get to the club, they don’t even have to wait in the line because Nat seems to know every bouncer in New York – one of the reasons why Clint never makes that much of a fuss when he’s forced to go out is because at least he doesn’t have to wait in the cold to get it. He smiles awkwardly at the man and doesn’t get any answer, so he rushes after his friend.

“One day you’ll tell me your secret,” he mumbles in her ear. Even though she doesn’t answer, he can feel her amusement.

“Let’s have some shots!” Pietro exclaims, too loud even for a club environment, and Clint agrees with the sentiment and looks at the girls. They shake their head, which isn’t weird, even if Nat usually drinks even more than Pietro on these outings, so he heads with the kid towards the bar.

He can already feel people giving him looks, and he knows it’s not because of his looks, but he tries to tune them out and focuses on Pietro. “What do you want?” he asks the kid, who shrugs. Pietro will drink whatever you give him, and that’s going to cause him problems at some point, Clint thinks. He orders two of the first thing he saw in the shot menu and turns to Pietro, who just smirks at him. Damn kid.

“What” he says, it isn’t even a question.

“I didn’t say anything,” he kid says in a sing-song voice that drives him crazy.

“You didn’t need to. What is it.” When Clint says that they’re slowly becoming friends, he means it in the we-might-hate-each-other-but-we-are-civil kind of way. No, he doesn’t. Not really. But it is in moments like this when he knows that in other circumstances, he could really hate the kid. “Spit it out,” he insists, “what’s going on?”

Pietro’s smirk widens. “Someone’s looking at you.”

Clint cringes, that’s not what he was expecting. “Yeah, the whole place, I feel like.” He’s a forty-something year-old and he looks like it, he knows it, and he knows this is not really his scene but why does everyone else feel the need to look intensely at him so that he knows that they know it too? He’s not sure, but it’s what happens every time.

“No, dumbass,” Pietro says, and while Clint is far from offended, he’s surprised at the easy insult. “He’s looking at you.” He wiggles his eyebrows while he says it and Clint can’t do more than frown. This kid.

Then he realizes what he’s said.

Before turning, he has a mental battle that lasts about a second and a half. On one hand, he’s sure it’ll be a young guy (or gal, some gals come to these places looking for guys, too), probably too young for him. On the other hand, he’s here to get laid. In the end, he’s a bit ashamed to admit that the second argument wins – he can always back away if they’re too young.

He turns and looks at the direction where Pietro has pointed.

There is someone watching! And while they’re young, they’re not shy from eighteen, so it’s safe by his book – actually, it looks like he’s kind of an older guy, like Clint. Not old – still younger than him – but on the older side of the spectrum considering this place is filled with such young people. And he’s hot.

It only takes him a moment to realize who it is. Of course it’s Dr. James Barnes.

It’s only his luck that he’d run into the person he’s crushing on and trying to scape from. He’s about to turn away and act like nothing happened when the man smiles and waves his hand at Clint. He hears Pietro snicker behind him and feels himself be pushed. He’d turn and yell at Pietro for being a stupid immature asshole but then Dr. Barnes is also walking towards him, so he can’t just stop.

“Hi,” he mutters, way too softly for a club. The other man smiles as if he’d heard him and nods. “What are you doing here?” he asks. He feels stupid as soon as he says it.

Dr. Barnes smiles at him and shrugs. “Doctors go out too,” he says, and Clint feels even more stupid. He’s about to apologize when the other man talks again. “I’ve got my weekend free so my friend and I decided to come here,” he points at someone at one of the tables, where he’d been sitting before, to a beefy blond that makes Clint’s heart stutter. Wow. Friend? If that’s Barnes’ friend, what will his boyfriend look like?

Boyfriend. Maybe Clint is kind of assuming, Kelson’s is a lgbtq bar, but look at Pietro, straight and still loves to come here. So maybe he’s wrong to assume that the doctor is into guys at all. Still, the point stands. So, really, Clint has come out here just to be shown how little possibilities he has.

“Seems fun,” he says, trying to mask his disappointment, because he’s not an asshole.

“And you, what are you doing here?” he asks, then points at Pietro, who’s unashamedly looking right at them. “Babysitting?” Clint is so surprised he’s stunned for a second. Barnes’ face looses the smile, and he can see the move in his throat when he clears his throat. “That was rude, sorry I—”

Then, Clint started laughing.

“Oh my god, doc. You’re an asshole.”

Barnes seems surprised for a second, then smiles. “Yeah, that’s something medical dramas get right, doctors are assholes.” He does really have a pretty smile. And he’s funny. And it’s very obvious that he’s had a couple of drinks because he’s never been this loose with Clint before. “Also, please call me Bucky.”

And Clint doesn’t know if that’s professional, but they’re out of the hospital and he’s going to take advantage of it for as long as he can.

“Cool. Bucky. Where does that come from?” he asks confused.

Barnes, Bucky, smiles and shrugs. “Childhood nickname that stuck. Now it’s weird when anyone calls me my name instead of that.”

It’s weird, but that’s okay. Clint can’t help but think that he wants to know all these things about Bucky, even if that sounds on the verge of creepy, or stalker-ish.

He breathes in deeply and decides to just go for it. “Hey, so… I was thinking that maybe you’d like to grab lunch with me someday? Or something?” He breathes again and feels the pit of his stomach open, ready to swallow him. He looks at his hands. He can’t do this. Except he’s already done it and now it’s too late to go back. “It’s totally okay if you don’t, though. I won’t bother you anymore. You can even get your tower of a friend and scare me away. I promise I won’t turn into a stalker or whatever.”

Barnes is smiling when he looks up at his face again. “I could be able to scare you off if I wanted,” he tells him. “But I don’t think it’ll be necessary. Here, I’ll give you my number.”

“Wait.” The other man looks up surprised. “Okay, so, you’ve had a couple of drinks and I really don’t want that to have any influence in your decision, so how about I give you my number and, if you still want to, you can call me tomorrow? Then, if you change your opinion, you won’t have to worry about me having your number.”

Bucky frowns, but then smiles. “Okay, let’s do it your way.” He’s smiling in a way that he hasn’t smiled like in the ER – that only makes Clint be even more sure that he’ll regret it on the morning. “Hey, I need to go back to Steve or he’ll bitch about it for weeks, I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

Clint smiles, even if he really doesn’t feel like doing it, and nods. “Go have fun.”

“You too!” the other man says as he’s walking away.

So Clint goes back to Pietro, who raises his eyebrows but hands him his shot. He takes it in one go and then grabs the one his friend is holding. “Let’s get drunk,” he says, before Pietro can say anything.

And he does.