Worm...caterpillar
A few weeks ago - Bucky can't remember the exact time - a question was floating around in Clint's head, which was absurd even by his standards. “Would you still love me if I were a worm?” It was the middle of the night. He was dead tired and dismissed Clint's question as something pointless. Sometimes strange things run through Clint's head that don't really matter. “Of course,” he replied and then fell asleep. Clint never brought it up again and Bucky put it out of his brain.
Until now.
“Please tell me you just found a worm on the street and want to show it to me.” He hates how amused Natasha is. "Clint touched something he shouldn't have touched," she explains, handing him the glass. “Of course,” Bucky sighs and looks into the container in which a small white worm is crawling around. He imagined Clint differently as a worm. “I hope the really smart people are already working on it?” He looks back at Nat, who nods in confirmation.
“Bruce and Reed Richards are looking for a cure and until then, someone has to keep the caterpillar alive.” “Caterpillar?” Bucky asks confused. “According to Bruce, a silkworm caterpillar. You can google it-“ Natasha replies and makes her way to the door. “If he decides to become a butterfly, you have to let Bruce know.”
With these words she leaves the apartment and leaves him alone with Clint. Bucky looks into the glass again and watches the caterpillar. Sighing, he sits down on the couch and places the glass next to him. “You idiot,” he says to the caterpillar, but it simply crawls under a leaf.
The silkworm caterpillar has poisonous tactile hairs.
It's something he should have learned before putting Clint on his hand. His hand itches and has formed a rash. “You did that on purpose,” he grumbles as he applies cream to his hand. Clint nibbles on a mulberry tree leaf that Tony had to fly in specially. Silkworm caterpillars only eat one type of leaf. Spoiled bastards.
He also learned that they only have a month until the caterpillar is ready to pupate. So time is running against them. Every day he waits for a call from Bruce, but every evening he goes to bed with one last look at the small goldfish bowl that he bought for Clint and in which he happily runs around eating one leaf after the next. He misses his Clint and he hates that there's nothing he can do except make sure the caterpillar doesn't die.
It's day twelve when he notices that the goldfish bowl is empty and that the piece of cardboard he used as a lid isn't properly placed on it.
“Clint!” he calls in panic and starts searching the bedroom. Fear floods his entire body and many scenarios form in his head, which end with Clint's death. “Clint come here,” he demands, knowing full well that it won’t help. The caterpillar brain is not developed enough to understand what Bucky wants. When he can't find what he's looking for in the bedroom, he systematically searches the other rooms.
He empties the laundry basket. Moves furniture. Ransacks the kitchen. Opens drawers. Has a subtle mental breakdown. Empty the bookcase. Opens the sink drain pipe.
Exhausted, he sits down on the windowsill. The apartment is a complete mess and he admits defeat. He'll have to inform Natasha that he lost Clint. Clint will probably turn into a butterfly and just fly away and that's still the best case scenario. In another, he will starve and die.
“I killed him,” Bucky mutters, blinking away the tears gathering in his eyes. “I’m a terrible boyfriend,” he says, unable to hold back the tears any longer. They fall and fall and fall. He doesn't know how long he's been sitting on the windowsill, but as he calms down he notices an inconspicuous movement out of the corner of his eye.
Clint is crawling on the TV.
“Oh, you idiot,” Bucky says, upset and so incredibly relieved. He pushes his way through the chaos and takes Clint in his hand. He ignores the poisonous tactile hairs. “Don’t ever do that again. Do you understand? I had a heart attack. “Oh, Clint.” Tears escape again, but this time from joy.
It's day nineteen and he thinks Clint will remain a caterpillar forever.
“I wish you had never gone on the mission. When was an AIM secret base in the Chinese mountains ever a good thing?”
It's the middle of the night and day twenty-five is just beginning when he wakes up to a loud noise. He automatically reaches for the weapon that is in the bedside drawer and leaves the bed. “Stay here,” he tells Clint, who is crawling somewhere in the fishbowl, and walks quietly across the room, stopping when a familiar silhouette climbs the stairs. “Clint,” Bucky says, unable to believe his own eyes. “Hey James. Sorry for disturbing you at nigh-."
Bucky throws himself into Clint's arms and clings to him, afraid that Clint would disappear again in the next moment. “I thought I’d never see you again,” Bucky murmurs, and he can’t stop the tears. “Oh,” Clint says, who just tightens the hug and gently strokes Bucky’s hair. He missed that gesture. "I'm sorry-" Clint murmurs in a soothing tone. "I know I should have called you, but at one point we were in the middle of the Norwegian Forest and due to an EMP bomb, our technical equipment was no longer usable and-"
“Wait what?” Bucky interrupts, confused, moving away a little. "It's actually quite funny, apart from the fact that we thought we were going to die in the cold, but-" "You were in a Chinese mountain-" "Geographically speaking, we were in Mongolia." "You should be turn off an AIM base, you were a caterpillar. A silkworm caterpillar. Now what are you saying about a Norwegian forest?”
Clint looks at him confused.
“Are you okay?” Clint asks worriedly. It's too dark to make out any expression, but Bucky can imagine the worry reflected in Clint's eyes. He's seen it often enough to know what it looks like in the dark.
“You were a caterpillar,” Bucky whispers, confused and slightly doubtful. “I wasn’t,” Clint contradicts, still in that calm tone. "But Nat said...and she gave me a caterpillar and I-" he stops himself, not knowing exactly what he's even trying to say. “I think Nat was messing with you,” Clint says, hugging Bucky to him again. “After we cleared the AIM base, Phil came and asked if I wanted to help him with something. I wanted to tell you, but we didn't have a radio network in the Mongolian Mountains, so Nat said she would tell you," Clint explains and Bucky sighs.
“I looked after a caterpillar for twenty-four days because I thought it was you,” Bucky says, and he can imagine Nat, smug with herself, drinking a coffee somewhere in Europe or wherever she happens to be, laughing her ass off. "So you didn't lie when I asked you if you would still love me if I were a worm." "I would never lie," Bucky murmurs, kissing Clint on the cheek and then pulling him up to the bedroom.
“I’ll have to get revenge on Natasha.”
“Okay, good luck with that. Oh can I see the caterpillar”