Chapter Text
October 5th
“If you don’t wipe the smile off your face, I’m going to smack it off you.”
Bucky Barnes blinked, schooled his features immediately before he looked back over at Clint Barton.
“I wasn’t smiling,” Bucky denied. He was pretty sure he wasn’t smiling.
Maybe he was.
“You were.” Sam Wilson sat in his seat of the cabin with his eyes closed and some goo from the mutant lizard things smeared on his face.
“Your eyes are closed,” Bucky pointed out to him.
“Which means the smile is fucking loud,” Clint complained. Bucky thought about throwing something at him, he was pretty sure it was one of the few times when he’d be able to get him.
Clint got bit hard by one of the damn mutants, it tore his leg up good. There was a lot of blood, probably needed at least half a dozen stitches. It was nasty, it wasn’t gonna be a big deal or anything though.
That was the whole point of having a medic for the team.
And… if Bucky happened to know that Bruce was still on a trip with Natasha, leaving them with just one medic available… well, Bucky wasn’t too unhappy that Steve had to call him in.
If Clint didn’t like it, he shouldn’t have gotten bitten.
Dumbass.
The jet hit a patch of turbulence and Bucky grimaced when he saw Clint blanch at the movement. Even if it was his fault, it didn’t look fun.
“I miss Bruce,” Clint complained as he tried to readjust his leg. “You know what I’d have right now if Nat hadn’t stolen him away? Morphine.”
Bucky looked at the rip in Clint’s pants and the blood-soaked dressing he had slapped on it in the field. It really wasn’t that bad, Clint’s ego was hurt worse than his leg probably.
“Bruce would tell you to quit whining,” Scott chimed in. When Clint tried to throw an arrow at him, Scott shrunk down to ant size.
Sometimes it was real tempting to step on him when he was that small.
Sam shifted his boot on the floor and Scott started bitching in ‘teensy tiny’.
“Don’t you dare!” he yelled. “STEEEEEEEVE!”
Steve was passed out in his seat, drooling and snoring. Probably dreaming about Tony and the weird as hell ‘will they/won’t they’ thing they had going on.
Team Leader of the year, folks.
“Someone squish him while Steve’s asleep,” Bucky said, regretting it when Scott grew back to normal size and stumbled on Bucky’s lap.
“Christ.” Bucky shoved him, knocked him into Clint, then had to listen to Clint whine the rest of the flight home.
For a buncha ‘heroes’, they were all pains in the asses.
It wasn’t a bad gig though, Bucky bitched more than anyone sometimes. The guys could get on his nerves, Bucky probably got on their nerves too. Then they’d get home, unwind, and it was kinda great again.
Bucky worked better on a team. It made him think of when he’d been in the army, sharing the good and bad times with other guys who got it.
It was familiar, felt a lot like home.
Even the stupid shit.
Bucky shifted in his seat so he could watch the Tower come into view. Bucky still remembered the first week Tony had handed him a room key and told him to ‘stop sleeping in motels like an impoverished orphan’. The Tower seemed so damn huge when Bucky first moved in, too big and too fancy, but it sorta shrunk down after a while.
When Sam moved in, when Scott moved in. There were… it shrunk until it fit just right.
It became the place filled with idiots and takeout and Bucky never knowing what to expect when he walked out in the living room.
And… when the jet landed and the ramp opened up… Bucky grinned to see his favorite medic waiting for them.
Because the Tower also became the place where Bucky first met Harry Potter.
Harry was leaning against the portable bed with a tray already made up for Clint. He pushed his glasses up when he saw Bucky and smiled a little bit at him. Harry was dressed up a little in a navy sweater over a white polo. His hair was messy though, the short style sticking up like he’d been running his hands through it. He always managed to look like he was headed to class instead of the medbay, but it kinda just made him harder to ignore.
It - damn.
Just like the rest of the team moving into the Tower made it feel comfortably smaller, every room Harry stood in made it feel smaller.
Harry was just capable, smart, funny, easy on the eyes. And, yeah, it made Bucky’s stomach flip when he smiled. It was dumb, but so was Bucky so he didn’t mind much.
Like there just wasn’t anything worth seeing except for him.
As soon as Harry saw Clint being carried off the jet by a yawning Steve, he pushed himself off the bed so Clint could be lowered on it.
“Hey, Doc,” Steve said easily. “Thanks for coming in.”
Harry nodded, already focusing on Clint’s leg entirely. His fingers were careful as he pulled off the quick field wrap. Clint laid back flat and sighed when Harry tried to shift his pants around to see the injury better.
“Stitches,” Harry said. His glasses slipped and he pushed them back up absently. “Probably several.”
Clint blew out an annoyed breath and immediately lifted his hips to pull off his pants. Harry’s cheeks reddened when Clint was down to his briefs, but he nodded again at the necessity.
“You can check me out if you want, Doc,” Clint said, just spouting off dumb shit while Harry began carefully cleaning the bite.
Harry’s hands stayed steady and he grinned in a brief moment of amusement at Clint’s nonsense.
“I think the oversized gecko did that,” Harry quipped brightly. “You know you’re not supposed to let them bite you, right?”
It was hard to remember when Harry said shit that sarcastically with that much of a bright tone that he wasn’t technically Tony’s kid.
Bucky thought he was the first few times he met him. Tony acted like Harry was as much his as Peter was, so it wasn’t all that much of a leap for Bucky to think Harry had been adopted too.
The first time Tony called Harry to patch up one of them after a mission had been when Bucky realized Harry’s last name was Potter. Steve had asked Harry to write and submit a brief report to add to the case file for the mission and Bucky read it afterward.
Then he realized Harry wasn’t a Stark and he was smart as hell.
Steve explained him to Bucky when he mentioned the last name thing. Apparently Harry had been Peter’s best friend and roommate through his first four years of college. Tony kinda adopted him in spirit, then hired him on as an on-call medic as soon as Bruce asked to take a step back from the team.
Harry was a real improvement, in Bucky’s opinion.
If nothing else, he was prettier to look at than Bruce.
Bucky watched him shamelessly as he began stitching Clint’s leg. Harry was careful, thorough. Every time his glasses slipped on his nose or he stuck his tongue between his teeth in concentration… it made him that much more magnetic.
Or maybe Bucky just had an inconvenient crush.
Harry was just… he was funny, brilliant in a way that wasn’t annoying, and the big green eyes behind his glasses didn’t help Bucky much in the ‘quit pissing your teammates off by grinning when you know it’ll be Harry who’s gonna patch up their injuries’ department.
“And done,” Harry said, wiping his row of neat sutures down with a cream. “If I say ‘stay off this leg’ would you listen?”
“Not for a second,” Clint said. “I would trade a few hours of complying with medical advice for a pain killer.”
Harry blinked at him, didn’t say anything until Clint sighed like a drama queen.
“Worst doctor ever,” he said loudly.
“Wah.” Harry said cheerfully. “Stay away from lizards and anything that’s going to disrupt healing.”
“Anything that’s going to disrupt healing?” Sam smirked at Clint after he finished restocking the jet. “So don’t be Clint?”
“Exactly,” Harry agreed. “If his stitches burst, I’m using Tony’s air nailer to close them back up.”
Everyone in the room winced when they pictured that.
“Sadist,” Clint accused him.
“I prefer to call it a lesson so profound that your brain will have no choice but to store it long-term and refer to it in all instances of stupidity.” Harry pushed his glasses up again, grinned. “But sadist works just as well, I suppose.”
Bucky chuckled quietly, ‘cause he was pretty sure if there was anyone who wouldn’t be a sadist, it was Harry. He was friendly, warm, a little weird at times, but the last person Bucky imagined getting pleasure from hurting someone else.
Steve strolled back in after Scott pushed Clint out in a wheelchair to get to his room. Tony was with him and looked over his shoulder through the door for a second before lifting an eyebrow at Harry.
“Why’s Clint limping?” Tony asked Harry.
It was Harry who huffed then, like he couldn’t have guessed that Clint would only listen until Harry was in a different room.
“Because he’s an idiot,” Harry said with an irritated wave of his hand.
“Ah.” Tony nodded knowingly. “I did see that diagnosis on his chart.”
“Still though…” Steve sort of gestured to the suture kit Harry carefully sterilized, restocked, and packed away. “Good work. I appreciate you coming out.”
Harry glanced up, a momentary shift, then shrugged as he finished his task up more slowly than he had been.
“That’s what I was hired for,” Harry said, brushing the praise off humbly.
“You ever think about taking it further?” Steve asked him. “You were premed, right?”
Was he?
Bucky knew he was smart and that he went to NYU with Peter. Bucky didn’t know that Harry planned to become a doctor.
Kinda like the ‘being Tony’s kid’ thing… Bucky just assumed Harry had been an EMT or something and Tony hired him based on good old fashioned nepotism.
“I was, yeah,” Harry said, watching his hands clean the equipment, pack it.
Clean, pack.
It was the same kinda soothing repetition that any one of ‘em on the team had when treating their weapons.
“John Hopkins would probably still make an exception if you changed your miiiind,” Tony sang quietly, grinning at Harry like a proud parent. “They offered him a full ride,” he told Steve. “There was even talk about Harry joining their neuroscience department as an intern.”
“Damn.” Bucky whistled and winked when Harry lifted his head. “Imagine being so damn smart that a place wants to pay you to add their name to your resume.”
It was impressive. Hell, most things Harry did were impressive.
Harry’s mouth twitched and he was blushing again when he ducked his head back down.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” he muttered, all flustered over it. “Pete got the same offer from MIT.”
“Because he’s a genius and he knows it,” Tony said without missing a beat. “Which is why he did the smart thing and accepted it.”
“You change your degree?” Bucky asked Harry, just curious.
“I did not,” Harry answered without looking at him. “I changed my mind. Plus,” he was quick to grin at Tony, “backup medic for the Avengers? Come on, that’s every bloke’s dream.”
“Not everyone’s.” Steve made a face, he never could stand blood or injuries. “You staying for dinner?” he asked Harry, about as subtly as a bomb.
Harry pulled his phone from his pocket, looked at it for a few seconds, then shook his head.
“Next time,” he said. “Nolan will be home soon.”
Which was the real inconvenient part of Bucky’s little crush: Harry’s boyfriend.
It wasn’t even like it was a casual thing that Bucky could maybe ignore. They were steady-steady, like living together and already past an anniversary. Bucky never met the guy, but he saw him in a picture on the news with Harry, Tony, Steve, and Peter at some charity thing.
He looked like a dick, in Bucky’s opinion.
Tony sighed like Harry leaving was a personal offense. “But I ordered Thai?”
Harry grinned, but didn’t cave. “And I’ll never be back again to have Thai with you, I’m sure,” he joked. “Er… any chance I could get a ride?” he asked Tony. “My bike had an unfortunate accident with a tree.”
Bucky perked up. “I can give you a ride,” he offered. “I got my bike in the garage.”
Harry looked at him and Bucky didn’t need his smirk or Tony’s quiet laughter to realize that maybe he and Harry were talking about two different things.
“A bicycle,” Harry explained. “Just as many wheels, much less ‘if you wreck then you’ll die’.”
“Right.” Bucky laughed, shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, that makes sense. I - I wouldn’t wreck though, if you want a ride home.”
“Or Happy can drive him,” Tony interrupted, his phone already in hand. “He’s down in the garage, kid.”
“Cheers,” Harry said, giving one last and quick grin to Bucky. “Tell Clint if he rips his stitches I will come back with an air nailer.”
“Will do,” Bucky said, wincing again. He didn’t have anything to say so Harry would stay longer, he just watched him go and felt the room growing once he was gone.
It grew big enough that Bucky saw a little grin on Steve’s face. It wasn’t smug, because Steve didn’t really do ‘smug’. But it was close enough to smug to make Bucky think Steve was spending too much time with Tony.
“Shut up,” Bucky told him.
Steve’s mouth twitched and the grin grew. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You - you’re thinking,” Bucky told him. “You’re not good at it.”
Steve laughed - definitely spending too much time around Tony.
“Maybe someone will get hurt again,” Steve said cheerfully.
“If we’re extra lucky, it’ll be you,” Tony told Bucky. “And then you can try to make my kid fall in love with you over a romantic round of stitches.”
“You are an idiot,” Bucky pointed at Steve. “And you - should stop encouraging him,” he pointed at Tony. “I’m gonna go… threaten Clint.”
Bucky shook his head in mocking-disappointment on his way toward the door. It wasn’t like Bucky didn’t spend a lotta time laughing when he picked up on Steve’s little crush. Steve wasn’t subtle neither, it was a lot of long looks and rearranging his entire sleep schedule to spend time in the lab with Tony.
So fair was fair, whatever.
The difference was that Tony had been single so Steve had a chance.
Bucky just had a damned inconvenient crush.