Chapter Text
“Is it always like this?” Clint asks, hushed, his voice a little shaky.
Bucky noses at the back of his neck, inhales the scent of him and wants to bury himself in it. Scents don’t translate, not really. There’s no human vocabulary for it. Clint smells like home, and mate, and family. Like wide-open spaces and freedom, like joy, except that joy has a scent and it’s not exactly the same. It’s not an emotion, it’s just who Clint is. Or maybe it’s how he makes Bucky feel.
“What?” Bucky asks, and licks the knob at the top of his spine, tastes that same sense of rightness that Clint has always smelled like.
“Getting the bite,” Clint says, and he smells like lust, like arousal - he kind of always does, Bucky’s found - and a little bit like anxiety. Not the sick-sour smell of fear, just a bitter hint of nerves.
Which is fair, because Bucky’s gonna get his teeth in him. It’s been almost two years - their courtship was all backwards and too fast, but there are niceties to be observed, even if Clint pretty much lives in Bucky’s house and parents his kids and they mostly use Clint’s old place for privacy - and Clint’s been waiting. He’s been respectful. Steve wouldn’t have said two words about it if Bucky had bitten Clint the day Natasha showed up on his doorstep, but Bucky had wanted to do it right.
And anyway, his Ma would have had something to say about it, and Mrs. Byrne has had plenty to say about it over the last two years. She’s the oldest of the Pack elders, and she’s two-hundred and fifty if she’s a day, though she’ll swear to anyone who’ll listen she’s not a day over a hundred and fifty. Which is ridiculous, because Bucky’s a hundred and seven, and she still treats him like a pup.
Even Natasha had made it her business to give Bucky a surprisingly terrifying shovel talk, though she does still turn up for holidays and the occasional surprise weekend visit.
“Wouldn’t know,” Bucky breathes into his skin, “I was born, not bitten.” He drags his mouth along Clint’s shoulder, across muscle and sinew and warm, unmarred skin. He wants it so bad his gums itch with it, wants to mark and claim and declare to the whole pack, the whole world, what Clint is to him.
He scrapes his teeth along the place where Clint’s neck and shoulder meet.
Clint sucks in a shuddering breath. “You bit Steve,” he points out.
And yeah, Bucky did do that, but-
“I bit Steve on a hope and prayer while he was dying of pneumonia,” Bucky says with an eye roll, “and then he grew a jawline and a set of shoulders and finally made just about enough room for all the trouble in his soul.”
Clint snorts out a laugh, and the anxiety smell fades into gentle humor still overlaid with the smell of want.
And it’s funny now, Bucky thinks. In retrospect - with seventy years of time in between - it’s fucking hilarious. He wouldn’t change a single damn thing about it but it’s still kind of funny to remember wheezy, asthmatic Steve punching Gilmore Hodges - the Alpha’s son - in the face for bullying a younger wolf, and Bucky stepping in to take the retaliatory hit.
But then he’d watched Steve gasp for air and smelled the death on him and defied every convention and the express orders of Alpha Hodges (who’d always been a petty piece of shit, really) and bit him anyway, because he couldn’t watch his best friend die. He’d gotten a goddamn war for his trouble, not just the one in Europe that Steve and Bucky volunteered for, but also the one he’d started at home. The rift in the Pack had been insurmountable until he and Steve shipped out, and then when they came back Steve had been full of righteous indignation and Bucky had been down an arm and full of bitter fury, and between the two of them they’d rumbled the Pack hierarchy hard enough that Steve came out on top and some people still give Bucky a wide berth.
People were grateful, he thinks, when Steve settled down with Peggy and Bucky got himself a litter of pups. They caused a lot less trouble after that. Peggy with her red-painted smiles and casual manipulations, Bucky busy with three crying, howling babies.
There were far less bar fights, anyway.
Of course, Bucky sure as shit shook things up when Clint rolled into town, so maybe he was always destined for trouble.
“It wasn’t anything like this,” Bucky says quietly.
Because Steve was dying, and Clint is very much not. Clint is naked in their bed, they’re both naked, and Bucky is nosing at his neck with intent. There’s intimacy to this, not desperation.
“Am I gonna get a kickin’ set of shoulders and a brand new face out of the deal?” Clint asks, still warmly amused.
“Sweetheart, you’ve already got a kickin’ set of shoulders,” Bucky says, and runs his fingers down Clint’s arms. “And I like your face just fine.”
Clint huffs something that’s almost a laugh, but it’s also a little uneasy. His scent changes again, anxiety leaking through anew, and he says “Is it gonna fix my ears?”
“Dunno,” Bucky tells him. “It fixed Steve’s ticker and his bum left ear, but that was from rheumatic fever not…” he trails off, doesn’t wanna drag bad memories into their bed. Their den.
“Not because his dad beat the hell out of him before he was smart enough to duck,” Clint finishes for him, bitter as hell.
Bucky whines. He can’t help it, the pained noise he makes, the grief that anyone, anywhere, has ever hurt Clint. His mate. That he wasn’t there to step in.
“Shh,” Clint soothes - which is ridiculous, Clint shouldn’t be soothing Bucky, Bucky’s not the one who got hurt. He reaches back and tangles his fingers in Bucky’s hair, petting at him. “It’s fine, it’s water under the bridge. I just wondered if it would.”
“Guess we’ll see,” Bucky tells him, forcing it to sound casual. When Clint is turned he won’t be able to hide these things anymore, once Clint gets a handle on his nose. He won’t be able to fake casual, or disaffected, or anything else. Clint will know the way that Bucky knows.
It should be terrifying but it’s not. Bucky wants that. He wants things to be equal between them, wants Clint to have the advantages - the experiences - that Bucky knows he’s missing. He never wants Clint to wonder how he feels, wants him to feel secure in Bucky’s attraction and affection. Because Clint-
Clint seems to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Bucky to get tired of him, to shoo him out of his life. And if Clint could just smell the way Bucky feels about him, he’d never worry about that again. He’d just know. He could smell these same truths - the smell of love and affection and trust. Of mate. Home. Family.
They’re things Clint wants. They’re what he deserves. They’re what he already has, he just doesn’t trust it. Bucky’s ready, he’s been ready. Frankly, so has Clint. He wasn’t, in the beginning. Too new, too much information to process. But Bucky’s watched him, seen him settle into it, gain confidence in their relationship, make friends with people around town. He watches Clint get on the floor with his kids - human or furry - and build them dens and play silly games and let them gnaw on his hoodies when their teeth are bothering them, and Bucky knows with a bone-deep certainty that Clint is going to be an amazing wolf.
If that’s what he wants.
“Are you sure?” Bucky asks, pulling Clint against him, feeling the heat of him pressed against his chest. They’re kneeling on the bed, back to chest, with Clint’s quilt piled in with the nest of blankets, still smelling of long-lost people and memories. Bucky hopes Clint can catch the scent of his mom on the blanket, once he sorts his nose out. He thinks Clint will like that.
“Yeah,” Clint says on an unsteady inhalation. “I’m sure.” There’s no hint of a lie in his scent.
“I love you,” Bucky says.
And then he sinks sharper-than-usual teeth into the meaty area of Clint’s neck, just above where his shirt collar will lie. It’ll be a visible mark, traditional in all the ways Bucky grew up with, and the wolf part of him likes that. There are other places he could bite - hell, any place would do, he bit Steve’s forearm - but Bucky’s a possessive bastard, as it turns out, when he finally decides he wants something. And he wants people to see and know, and Clint’s already said it’s okay. It’s not just a turning bite, it’s a mating mark, and it’s gonna scar, and Bucky wants everyone to see it.
“Jesus,” Clint gasps out, arching, but he doesn’t smell like pain, he smells like full-blown lust, smells the same way he does when Bucky is buried inside of him and he’s hitching his hips up and on the verge of coming.
Bucky growls into it, a low, rumbling sound he can’t hold back, the taste of copper in his mouth and magic in his veins.
Because it is, as far as he knows. Magic, or some variation thereof.
There’s a doctor, Banner or something, in another pack halfway across the country, who’s made a study of it, mapped out the genetics and the bloodwork, likened it to a virus that you can infect others with, but Bucky prefers to think of it as magic. As a gift.
“Oh my god,” Clint says, and his fingers are tangled in Bucky’s hair and pulling, keeping him close, keeping Bucky exactly where he is.
He’s hard now, pressed up against Clint’s body, can’t help the reaction to Clint’s smell and his body and the way he sounds.
When Clint sags against him, panting, Bucky releases the flesh between his teeth and licks over it, more copper on his tongue. When he looks, the bite is already healing, blood no longer beading up from the wound. It’s scarring over in front of his eyes, and some part of him - the wolf part of him - is deeply satisfied. It wouldn’t heal so fast if it wasn’t gonna take.
“Christ,” Clint pants, and then turns his head so he can get at Bucky’s mouth. It’s not a gentle thing, the kiss. It’s rough and demanding, and Clint is licking into Bucky’s mouth like he’s desperate to taste.
They’re still kissing when it starts to happen.
It took a long time for Steve to turn. Damn near three days. But he’d been sick, been dying, and Bucky hasn’t got any experience with turning anyone else. He’d been taught how, been told the stories of what to expect but-
It can take anywhere from hours to days, as far as he knows, and there was no way to tell which way it would go with Clint.
Apparently, it’s gonna be pretty well immediate, because one second they’re kissing and Clint is turning in his arms to let his hands roam over Bucky’s bare skin, and the next he’s growling into the kiss himself, something deep and rumbling that makes Bucky want to know what he looks like in fur.
“Oh shit,” Clint says, breaking away to tuck his nose right under Bucky’s ear. “Oh my god, have you always smelled like this?”
Bucky huffs out a laugh that’s strangled by arousal and joy. “What do I smell like?” he asks, low and hoarse.
“I don’t-” Clint starts, and then he drags his tongue from Bucky’s collarbone to his jaw. “Christ. I don’t know- are there words for this?” he asks, and then he’s shoving Bucky down onto the mattress so he can get even closer. “You smell so good,” Clint mutters into Bucky’s shoulder, rubbing his face against Bucky’s skin. “Like- like the best thing I’ve ever smelled. You smell better than coffee.”
Bucky tilts his head back, exposing his throat, and Clint growls again, something low and possessive that cuts off in the middle as he jerks his head back. “What the fuck?” he asks, surprised at his own reaction.
“Instincts,” Bucky manages, gripping at Clint’s hips. “It’s- shit,” Clint grinds down against him like he can’t help it. “It’s- it’s just instincts.” And maybe they should have talked this through, beforehand, but Bucky doesn’t think he could have explained it right anyway.
Clint pushes his thumb on the underside of Bucky’s jaw, pressing his head back even further, and Bucky whimpers into it, his eyes sliding closed.
“Fuck,” Clint says, and presses his teeth into Bucky’s throat - dull, human teeth, but the spark of it still sends a zing up Bucky’s spine. “I want-” he stops again.
“What do you want?” Bucky asks, hitching his hips up against Clint’s. “Tell me.”
“I want to bite you,” Clint says, sounding confused. “Not to hurt- just. I want. I just wanna get my teeth in you.”
“So do it,” Bucky tells him, breathing heavily as he struggles to open his eyes and meet Clint’s gaze. “I want it too.” He wants Clint’s teeth in him so bad he can taste it. Can smell it on himself.
Clint hesitates, wide-eyed and uncertain.
“You’re supposed to,” Bucky tells him, pulling Clint down so that his face is tucked into his neck, “It’s a mating bite, c’mon, I want it.”
Clint is nosing tentatively along the edge of his shoulder. “I don’t wanna hurt you,” he mumbles into Bucky’s skin.
“You won’t,” Bucky tells him. “You can’t. Don’t you feel it? You can’t hurt me, sweetheart. You couldn't ever.”
“On the neck?” Clint asks, probably because Bucky’d asked him.
“Yeah,” Bucky forces the words out around the arousal choking him. “Want people to see.”
Clint growls again, and then he’s sinking sharp teeth into Bucky’s skin and Bucky gasps and arches into it. It hurts, a little, but it’s the kind of pain you want more of, the kind that’s bright and sharp and only adds to the fire in his belly.
“Christ,” Clint breathes out when he finally lets go. “You even taste good.” He digs his nose deeper into the arch of Bucky’s throat. “You smell better - how do you smell better?”
Bucky smells better because he smells satisfied.
Bites aren’t magic - or at least they’re not any more magic than being a werewolf is. There’s no mystical link, no compulsion. It’s like the werewolf equivalent of a wedding ring, but more. Bucky’s been marked, he’s been claimed, and it satisfies some deep, primordial thing in him. He’ll always smell a little like Clint. Clint will always smell a little like Bucky. Any werewolf with a working nose will know they’re mates.
May Parker still smells a little like Ben, even after all these years.
Clint works his way down Bucky’s chest, huffing deep gulps of air as he goes. “You smell spicy,” he tells Bucky.
Bucky chokes out a laugh. “That’s arousal,” he explains, and thinks vaguely that he might need Steve or Peggy to give Clint a rundown of scents.
”God,” Clint mutters, and shoves his nose into Bucky’s armpit.
He’s trembling, a little bit, and breathing too fast, and Bucky realizes suddenly that he’s overwhelmed.
Steve had just bulldozed his way right through the learning curve, but Clint isn’t Steve, and his hands are shaking and his heart’s beating too fast.
“Hey,” Bucky says, gently. “Hey, you’re alright. C’mere.” He tugs Clint back up, pulls him down into a kiss that he deliberately keeps slow and deep. “You’re fine.”
“I want-“ Clint starts, then shakes his head. “Fuck.”
“You can have anything you want,” Bucky tells him. “Just breathe with me.”
Clint does, matching his breaths to Bucky’s, even as he buries his face in Bucky’s shoulder again.
“I want you so bad,” Clint moans, and Bucky knows. He can smell it.
“You can have me,” Bucky tells him. “You can have me any way you want me.”
Clint whines, short and cut-off. “You can’t say that,” Clint tells him. “God.”
“I can say it because I mean it. I want it too,” Bucky says, and then Clint’s nipping at the already-healed mark on his throat.
“I want to be in you,” Clint growls, “I want you to smell like me. I want you to smell like me so much you can’t go to Walmart because people will know.”
“I’ll go to Walmart right now and let everyone and their brother take a whiff,” Bucky tells him, amused and fond and so in love he can’t stand it.
“After,” Clint says, and starts working his way down Bucky’s chest. “You can go to Walmart after.”
Anything Bucky might have said in response is lost to the way he cries out when Clint’s mouth wraps, hot and wet, around his cock. All he can do is moan and tangle his fingers in the strands of Clint’s hair.
Clint slurps his way back off and buries his face in the crease of Bucky’s thigh, dragging in deep gulps of air. “Oh my fucking god,” he says, and then he’s shifting again, hitching Bucky’s thighs over his shoulders so he can get lower. “You smell so fucking good,” he manages and then his mouth is on Bucky’s hole, like he’s trying to taste him as intimately as possible.
Bucky can feel the way he clenches up and then relaxes under the onslaught, the way his body opens up, soft and easy, for Clint’s mouth, for the slide of his tongue and the gentle scrape of teeth against sensitive skin. “Fuck,” he huffs, fingers still gripping Clint’s hair. “Oh god,” he says, tugging Clint even closer, “I’m gonna-” but he can’t get the words out.
Clint wraps a large, warm palm around his cock and jerks him slowly, a complete counterpoint to the way his mouth is working at him feverishly. “You’re gonna come?” Clint asks, growls, the vibration of it making Bucky cry out. “I want you to. Come all over yourself, I know you can go again.”
And he can but-
“So can you,” Bucky gasps out, around the impossible sensation. “You can - ohmygod - you can go again too.” He somehow manages to force the words out between his teeth, jaw clenched against the pleasure.
Bucky is bent almost in half, propped up on Clint’s shoulders and scrabbling at the blankets around them, looking for something to hold on to.
Clint tangles their fingers together, gives Bucky something to grasp, even if it’s just with his prosthetic fingers. He can’t feel the heat of Clint’s grip, but he can tell how carefully he’s holding on, how much he wants to anchor Bucky. He can smell tenderness and care under the spice of the arousal, feels surrounded by Clint’s smell and emotions and his fucking mouth.
Bucky breaks like the tide - inevitable, inexorable, like a force of nature. He comes all over his own stomach and chest, his fingers clenched in Clint’s hair, his thighs taut with pleasure.
He’s still shivering with aftershocks when Clint eases him flat onto the mattress and then starts cleaning him up with his tongue.
“New kink unlocked,” Clint mutters into the skin of his stomach.
It surprises a laugh out of him, even though he’s over sensitive under the gentle drag of Clint’s mouth.
He’s still hard, though, and with the ecstasy of a new mating bite he knows that’s not going away anytime soon.
“Gonna fuck me now?” he slurs.
“Gonna let me?” Clint asks, even as he’s pushing lube-slick fingers into Bucky.
“Told you,” Bucky pants as he arches into it. “Any way you want me.”
He finds himself rolled gently onto his stomach, knows some of that is instinctual, with how many times he’s put Clint on his belly and fucked him silly. He manages to get his knees under him, arches his spine.
“Fuck,” Clint mutters, and slides another finger in beside the first two, stretching Bucky wide and full.
“That’s the idea,” he agrees, breathless.
Clint drapes himself over Bucky’s back and fucks his way inside in short, sharp thrusts. “Mine,” he growls, mouthing at the mark on Bucky’s throat.
“Yours,” Bucky tells him, sinking into the sensation. “Just yours.”
Clint fucks him gently, obviously holding back, until Bucky tangles his fingers in Clint’s hair and pulls hard enough to get his attention.
“Harder,” he demands, and then Clint is fucking him like he means it, shoving as deep as he can get and growling with every thrust.
“Mine,” Clint snarls, and then Bucky is coming for a second time, spilling onto the bedding below without so much as a touch on his cock.
Clint rides it out, grinding deep until he’s shuddering above Bucky, panting into his throat.
They end up flat against the mattress, Bucky lying content in the mess while Clint breathes harshly above him.
“Christ,” Clint says, when he finally summons the strength to move, pulling Bucky with him until they’re tucked up together with Clint’s arm draped over his waist.
“How long is Steve keeping the kids?” he asks, after long enough that Bucky is starting to drift off.
“Coupla days,” Bucky mumbles.
“Thank god,” Clint says, and rolls them again until Bucky’s on top.
***
“We don’t have to go,” Bucky tells Clint, because he can smell the nerves on him.
“It’ll be weird, if we don’t,” Clint argues, chewing on his bottom lip. “We went last year.”
“It won’t be weird,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes, and then gives Clint a look that, if he can’t interpret, he can certainly smell. He’s figured out scents a lot faster than Bucky would have thought, all things considered. Steve hadn’t been able to parse anything for weeks after the change. But Clint has already figured out arousal, obviously, but also contentment, and joy, and satisfaction - scents which are surprisingly similar and hard to differentiate. Bucky doesn’t imagine he’ll have any trouble with the rest. “People’ll be more surprised if we do turn up than if we don’t.”
Clint takes in a surprised breath, and then laughs. “You feeling randy, Mr. Barnes?” He sidles closer, hooks his fingers through Bucky’s belt loops. “Thought we’d have got that out of your system by now.”
They’re never gonna get it out of their systems, Bucky doesn’t think. Even now, he could tumble Clint down onto the lawn and have his way with him, despite the crisp air and the scent of impending snow. They’ve barely left the bed these past two days, except for the bare essentials and to carb-load like marathon runners. Clint had a hefty appetite before, but he’s even surprised himself with how hungry he feels. Bucky’s assured him it’s the change, it’s the way his body is acclimating, but his wide-eyed surprise at finishing off an entire pan of lasagna was still pretty funny.
“You said I’m gonna be wobbly,” Clint reminds him, and he smells spicy, too, to Bucky’s nose, but it’s mostly overwhelmed by the anxiety. “I don’t wanna embarrass you.”
“You’re not gonna embarrass me,” Bucky sighs. “You’re just new. It happens to everyone. And anyway, half the town’ll be drunk enough not to notice by sundown.” Clint sniffs again, scenting for the lie. He’s got that one down too, from when Bucky told him he was too tired for another round because he was trying to be responsible and let them get some sleep.
Clint still gives him a shifty look, still smells like nerves.
Maybe it’s not about Bucky at all, then. Clint has done his hardest to fit in around town. He’s not the only human - not even the only human mate - but he wants to be liked and accepted, mostly, Bucky thinks, because he assumes that’ll make it easier on Bucky. Like Bucky hadn’t fought half the damn pack, back in the day, for reasons far less important than Clint’s place in his life.
“You wanna practice first?” Bucky offers. “Just me and you, here? You can’t be any more awkward than me, I’ve only got three legs.”
Clint’s face scrunches up and he wafts grief in Bucky’s general direction. “Don’t say that,” he tells Bucky gently. “You know I think you’re beautiful.”
Bucky just shrugs, but his wolf preens, just under his skin. He’s the only white wolf in the pack, though he’d had a grandad who’d had the same coloring, and it had been a point of pride before he lost his arm somewhere in the Alps. He ducks his head, feels color flushing his cheeks.
“Can’t hide from me,” Clint tells him fondly, leaning in to scruff his cheek against Bucky’s. “I can smell you’re pleased with yourself. You like it when I tell you you’re pretty.”
Bucky blushes harder. “Shut up,” he grumbles, but he pulls Clint in closer, so they’re pressed together. Clint leans into him, his nose tucked into Bucky’s hair, and breathes deeply for a long few moments.
“Okay,” he says, after a bit. The nervous smell has receded, and he’s starting to smell excited. “Let’s practice,” he decides. “My skin feels like I wanna claw it off anyway. And it’s cold out here.”
“You’ll be warm enough in fur,” Bucky assures him, and steps back to start stripping off his clothes.
“Casual nudity, I approve,” Clint says, watching him with bright eyes.
“You don’t approve when it’s the kids,” Bucky points out.
“They’re kids!” Clint says, aghast. “They- it’s weird.”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “You’ll get used to it. You gotta get naked to get into your fur, otherwise you just get tangled up and shred your clothes.”
“It’s still weird,” Clint grumbles, but he follows Bucky’s lead, shivering a little as the breeze kicks up.
There’s no noticeable change to his body - and Bucky’s been up close and personal enough for the last couple days to be sure of that - but it’s already clear he’s hardier than he was before. He’s got some goosebumps and his nipples are pebbled up, but he’s still warm and rosy, in temperatures that a normal human would be hunched up and pale against.
“Ready?” Bucky asks, setting his prosthesis aside.
“I guess,” Clint says doubtfully. “How do I do it?”
“You just do,” Bucky tells him. “You- you feel the wolf, right?”
“Sure,” Clint says easily, taps the center of his chest. “Right here.”
“You just… let it out,” Bucky says, because he doesn’t have a better explanation. It’s not the first time this weekend that he’s wished he’d had Steve give Clint a rundown before the bite, and it probably won’t be the last, unfortunately. Bucky had thought he could coach Clint through it on his own, because he got Steve through it way back when, but, well. Even if it was a good idea to have someone bitten involved, Bucky hadn’t wanted to. Possessive again. Clint is his mate, and Bucky’s supposed to be helping him.
Clint cocks his head, already adopting instinctual mannerisms, looking at Bucky, and then shrugs. “Sounds easy enough,” he agrees, and then his gaze kinda focuses inward. He reaches for his hearing aids sort of absently, tossing them in Bucky’s general direction as he closes his eyes.
Bucky snatches them out of the air and puts them with his prosthesis, holding his breath. If Clint can’t find his way forward he’ll have to call Steve and-
And then there’s a shimmer, like heat wafting off hot asphalt, and an inaudible pop, and then there’s a wolf on his lawn.
Bucky should have predicted, really, that Clint would be gorgeous as a wolf because he’s gorgeous as a person, but he’s entirely unprepared for how fucking amazing he looks. He’s enormous, maybe bigger than Steve, with powerful shoulders and haunches, and he’s a tawny golden-brown, almost red-gold along his back and lighter in the ruff.
God, the whole fucking town is gonna have a conniption. There are bets, Bucky knows, on what Clint’s gonna look like in fur. He’s pretty sure none of them are even close.
Clint’s looking immensely pleased with himself, tongue lolling out and tail wagging.
“I think I might be mad about how pretty you are,” Bucky says thoughtfully. “You were already being courted by half the town, Clint, did you have to look this good in fur too?” He’s joking, mostly, and he knows Clint can smell it on him even more now.
Clint’s tail wags harder, and he yips his agreement, which means that as a wolf, at least, he can hear. He takes a couple of cautious steps forward, and Bucky expects him to get tangled up in having four legs, but he never makes a misstep, like he was born to be on paws. He gives a little hop, at the end, joyful, and then licks Bucky’s bare hip.
He sits back, looking expectant. Like he’s just waiting for Bucky to join him.
So Bucky does.
Shifting feels like a good stretch after sitting too still for too long. It’s harder for him now, without the paw, but he’s lived longer without it than he did with it, so he adjusts. He nudges Clint with his nose, takes a deep sniff.
Things are simpler, as a wolf. He smells home and mine and mate, and that’s all he really needs. He can think higher thought processes, he just doesn’t need to.
So he mouths gently at Clint’s throat, bumps his head against his shoulder, and then leaps away. Playful. Happy.
Clint chases after him, mindful of his missing paw, and they roll around in the grass and the dirt and the remnants of last week’s snow, scrubbing their scents on each other with good-natured growls and gentle presses of sharp teeth. Clint snarls and Bucky hears joy. Bucky shoulders him into the dirt and smells adoration when Clint rolls to his feet.
They play in the yard like pups until they both collapse onto the ground panting. Clint curls up around Bucky with his head over Bucky’s shoulders, a warm weight of fur and affection. Pack.
After a while, Bucky gets tired of lying on the ground and he shuffles his way to his feet and then up the steps to the back porch. Clint lopes after him, and follows Bucky’s lead when he shifts back to skin.
“That,” Clint says with satisfaction, “is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me.”
Bucky laughs. “You’re a natural,” he agrees, and privately wonders if he hasn’t just corrected some great cosmic oversight. Like Clint was born to be a werewolf and the universe had had an oops.
Clint blushes and beams at the same time, somehow.
“C’mon,” Bucky says, gathering up his prosthesis and his clothes. He hands Clint his hearing aids, and they both pause when the plastic devices fall into his waiting palm.
“Oh shit,” Clint breathes, staring at them.
“You can hear,” Bucky says, wide-eyed.
They’d figured, when Clint’s hearing didn’t come back with his new strength and sense of smell, that it wasn’t gonna. Clint had tried to hide his disappointment, and Bucky had carefully not mentioned it but-
“What the fuck?” Clint says, but he sounds and smells ecstatic, so Bucky smiles up at him, brushes his thumb under the lobe of his left ear.
“Sometimes you gotta shift to heal stuff,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe it’s like that.”
Clint grins at him, wide and unburdened, somehow, and crowds Bucky against the cold wood of the back door and kisses him wildly. Bucky drops everything in his hand to grip Clint’s shoulder, growling into it, and Clint lifts him under the thighs, pressing them even closer together.
***
So they’re late to the festival.
Several people give them smug, knowing looks that Bucky ignores.
Sam rolls his eyes at Bucky, and Bucky flips him off. He’d flat out refused to shower, and now that they’re here, turning heads, he can smell that Clint’s going from smug to embarrassed pretty quickly.
Bucky elbows him. “Hey,” he says, and Clint turns to look at him.
He pulls Clint down into the kind of kiss that makes it onto the big screen, when the hero has rescued the girl, or saved the world, or whatever the fuck earns you a grand romantic gesture. He takes his time about it too, deep and unhurried, until Clint stops smelling like embarrassment and starts smelling like want.
“It’s a fertility festival,” Bucky reminds him with a wry smile. “Kind of, anyway. Relax.”
Clint gives him a wobbly smile back, but he’s more relaxed, so Bucky’ll take it as a win.
And it’s not really a fertility festival. Well, it probably was, a few centuries ago, but now it’s mostly an excuse for a bonfire and frisky behavior, and typically it’s the unofficial beginning of Courting season, although there’s no real rules against Courting anytime you want.
Half the couples here are gonna end up smelling the way Clint and Bucky do before the night’s out.
“Daddy! Clint!” comes the shrill, familiar sound of Ivy, and then all three of his kids are bearing down on them at top speed. Ivy reaches them first, because she’s just come out of a growth spurt, all gangly limbs and a couple inches taller than her brothers, and skids to a halt just before she hits Clint full force. “Well?” she demands, breathless, and then Arren and Jasper are there too, looking expectant. “Are you like us now?”
Bucky heaves an exasperated sigh. “Rude,” he chastises gently. “Also, maybe use your nose instead of asking invasive questions.”
“You know,” Clint says slowly, “I’m not sure that just smelling out the answers is less rude than asking. Although politely would have been better.”
The kids are nine, nearing ten, and starting to expand their senses a little bit better, and Bucky’s been working on encouraging that, but Clint has a point. Unfortunately.
“Fair enough,” he says, leaning into Clint’s side, but Ivy’s already crowding in, demanding affection and not-at-all surreptitiously sniffing at Clint.
“You smell like Dad,” she says, eyes narrowed, and tilts her head to assess him.
“I don’t care if you’re a ‘wolf or not,” Jasper says, with that stubborn edge he’s starting to show more and more. Jasper has always been the quietest of the three of them, shy and reserved, but he’s more attached to Clint than the other two, or maybe more obvious about it, following him around like a shadow, and emulating everything he does. Bucky’s been trying to find him a gymnastics class nearby, so he can do his tumbling in a gym instead of the house. “I just wanna know if you’re gonna stay.”
“Hey,” Clint says, and he crouches down so they’re eye level. “I was never gonna leave.”
Jasper flings himself at Clint with the kind of ferocity that would have knocked Clint on his ass just three days ago, but Clint is steady as a rock, even on the balls of his feet. Arren climbs on his back as Ivy whoops with joy and Bucky feels like his heart is going to explode with the force of how much love is in it.
Clint stands up with Arren hanging like a limpet from his neck and Jasper on his hip and says, “Who wants to go for a run?”
He still makes the kids turn their backs when he strips his clothes off, but less than a minute later he’s shaking out his fur and licking Bucky’s palm before bounding ahead of them, like he’s daring them to chase him. They take off after him, though Arren still has a sock stuck on his foot that he has to stop and pull off with his teeth, and Bucky watches them disappear into the trees.
He rolls his eyes again when he glances around and sees several people exchanging cash.
Steve ambles over with beers in hand and passes one to Bucky. “Congratulations,” he says, and taps their bottles together gently. “But I’m never keeping your kids three days in a row ever again,” he adds with a laugh.
“You owe me a helluva lot more than three days of babysitting, Rogers,” Bucky tells him, but they’re both smiling. “How much money did you collect today, anyway?”
Steve laughs again. “Oh I lost all my money last year, because I figured that’d be when you did it. But May Parker is raking in cash.”
That startles Bucky, and he looks around until he can spot her. She’s got a coupla new kids this year, her oldest bunch out and away at college now, and they’re huddled close to her, watching everything with wide eyes. Wanda and Pietro have already disappeared into the woods, but Bucky knows they’ll probably turn up at his house in a day or two, looking for Clint. He somehow managed to slot himself into older brother/parental figure territory for the two of them and they’re at the house more often than they’re not.
People keep ambling up and handing May cash while she smirks at them in response, occasionally running soothing fingertips through strands of dark, curly hair, or squeezing the back of the little blonde boy’s neck. They look just about the right age to be in one of Clint’s classes. Pete is down on the ground with Lucky, still trying unsuccessfully to teach him tricks.
“What’d she wager on?” Bucky asks, after the fifth or sixth person begrudgingly forks over a wad of bills.
“She nailed your Mating date down to the day, and Clint’s coloring too,” Steve says, still amused. “She always was good at that.”
Bucky remembers that, suddenly. That May can look at new pups and predict their markings, how often she’s right. She got Arren and Jasper backwards, but she’d called Ivy exactly right. He huffs a laugh.
In the distance there’s a howl, and Bucky feels a responding pull in his chest.
That’s his mate out there, and he’s missing it.
“I’ll see you later Stevie,” Bucky says distractedly, passing the beer back.
“Have fun,” Steve says, but Bucky’s already shifting, already shaking his fur out before the words are all the way out of his mouth.
He howls back, and lopes off into the woods to join his family.