For JenJo.

2. A story about rising to a challenge.

I meant to upload this on Saturday, but my family got a new puppy so I've been playing with her all weekend. Really, can you blame me?

Jenjo93 got me in a wedding mood so here I am, writing my fourth or fifth marriage proposal in my whole life and I ain't even old enough to get married yet. But hey me writing a Winterhawk proposal was long coming

This ties in with my longass fic "A Wonderful Fling to Be Flung." You don't gotta read the whole thing to understand this but it would help to know the scene with Peter that Clint references to

Also a marriage proposal counts as a challenge imo fight me

"So have you thought about what you're gonna do?"

Clint glanced back to Kate. "Do for what?" he asked, pausing the episode of Dog Cops. Lucky whined from where he sat in front of the couch, and Clint scratched his ears apologetically. Tony was working on an upgrade for his hearing aids, so he was wearing his backup pair. They worked fine, but if there was background noise it made it hard to focus on a conversation.

Kate didn't look up from her phone, but she still raised an eyebrow in his direction. "You know the dumb act doesn't work on me. Come on, spill the beans."

"Is this about the upcoming mission to Texas? Or that Red Cross gala they're making the team attend next month?"

"No, although I would like to hear about the gala." Kate finally pocketed her phone and looked up at him. "No, this is about the box that has been sitting in your sock drawer for three weeks."

If Clint hadn't been paying attention before, he certainly was now. He sat up straight on the couch. "Why are you rooting through my stuff?"

"I haven't, that was just a lucky guess. By the way, put it somewhere where Bucky isn't as likely to find it-unless that's part of your plan."

Clint groaned. He knew that the sock drawer was a bad place to hide it, but he had been panicking and hiding it all over the apartment for the past few weeks. When Bucky got called out on a mission over the weekend, he had given up and just let it sit with his socks until he could come up with a better hiding spot. "That would be a really dumb plan."

"Then tell me your actual plan."

"Uh..."

"Of course you don't have one." Kate sighed. "That ring can't stay hidden forever, y'know-especially if what Peter said is making him think about it too."

"How the fuck did you find out about-" Clint stopped himself. "Tasha?"

"Yup."

Clint groaned and ran a hand down his face. The other week, Steve and Tony's adopted son Peter had asked when he and Bucky were getting married. Clint hadn't known what to say to Peter at the time. Obviously, he had been thinking of proposing to Bucky before Peter had asked him. He loved Bucky, and he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life without him.

Trouble was, Clint didn't have the best track record with marriages. He and Bobbi had tied the knot fairly fast, and barely a year into it everything unraveled. They were good friends now, and both could admit that they had been young and foolish and weren't ready for it. Now Clint had Bucky, and Bobbi was happy with Sharon. But he was still uneasy about trying again, since it could blow up in his face so easily.

Kate seemed to have read his mind, because she leaned over to rest a hand on Clint's arm. "Hey, this isn't gonna be like what happened with you and Bobbi. You've been with Bucky for a few years and your relationship is pretty stable. And you've changed since then. You're more-Well, I was gonna say you've become more responsible, but you still feed pizza to your dog."

Clint shoved her hand off his arm. "Hey! I've seen you sneaking him bits of pizza under the table."

"Because if I don't he gives me puppy eyes! You've spoiled him, Barton." Lucky barked like he knew they were talking about him, and Kate laughed before becoming serious again. "Back to the subject at hand...You should do it, Clint. You two are good for each other and when you're in the same room it's sickeningly sweet to see how in love you guys are."

"Yeah, yeah." Clint waved at her. "We're the Avengers power couple and you wish you could be like us, I get it."

"Hey now, Natasha and Pepper are totally the power couple."

"...That's true."

Kate snorted, and the conversation spiraled away from talks about weddings and proposals. But the ring stayed at the back of Clint's mind-a constant reminder of the commitment he wanted to make with Bucky. It never left his mind, and he spent nights awake thinking about it. It only got worse when Bucky came home, because he couldn't exactly tell him about it.

It took several days, but finally he snapped in the middle of the Tower's kitchen.

"How do I propose to Bucky?"

Steve turned away from his StarkPad to stare at Clint. "I'm sorry?"

Clint sighed, dragging a hand down his face. "You've known him the longest. Didn't you guys ever talk about getting married, or was that not a thing back in the day?"

"Well, we didn't really talk about it." Steve powered off the StarkPad and spun around in his chair to give Clint his full attention. "Our only options were girls back then, and with my poor health I didn't know if I would live long enough to even get a girl interested in me. Bucky talked about it more when we were younger, but the older we got the less it came up. So if you're looking for how to propose to him, I don't know if I can really help."

"Oh." Well, that squashed part of Clint's plan.

Steve pointed at him. "And don't try to do what Tony and I did. That was already stressful for everyone involved."

Clint winced as he thought back to how Steve had proposed-Tony had been hit by a rocket that knocked him to the ground with severe injuries. Steve had been so upset that he yelled at Tony about how he couldn't die before Steve got to marry him. Fortunately, Tony had survived, along with everyone else. But that wasn't something Clint was planning on doing. "No worries, I'm not planning on doing that. We don't need another repeat of that."

"Repeat of what?"

Neither men was startled by Natasha's sudden appearance, due to years of living with her. She casually sipped her coffee. "Good morning, Clint, Steve."

Steve nodded. "Good morning, Natasha."

"'Morning, Tasha." Clint raised an eyebrow as he took in her appearance. "I see you've stolen Pepper's favorite blue sweater."

"And you've stolen Bucky's favorite sweats. No wonder he was wearing yours."

"Shit, did he come with you?" Clint leaned to look behind Natasha, as though she was somehow hiding Bucky behind her, despite being smaller than he was.

"No, he said he was going to spar with Sam." Natasha took the seat across from Steve. "Did Steve give you any ideas for how you're going to propose to Bucky?"

Steve shook his head. "All I could say was not to do what I did. We didn't talk much about it back then, and if I start asking him now he might get suspicious."

Natasha hummed, tapping her fingers against her chin. "What did you do with Bobbi, Clint?"

"We were watching TV on the couch and I said 'Hey, let's get married.'" Steve and Natasha gave him blank stares. "Don't look at me like that! It worked!"

"And then you guys got divorced."

Clint scowled. "It's not like I had the time or money to do something expensive. I was just a SHIELD agent."

"I know, Clint. But maybe this time you should." Clint opened his mouth to protest, but Natasha cut him off. "Not overly fancy, but try to do a classic proposal. Go out somewhere nice on the next date night, maybe after going to see a movie or a play, and then do it there. You know how much of a sap Bucky is-he'll love it."

Steve nodded. "Yeah, you two are pretty sappy. I can't tell you how many times I've come over to find you two dancing to Frank Sinatra on the radio."

Clint sighed. "Yeah, I guess I was overthinking this a bit. I just wanted it to be special, y'know?"

Natasha snorted. "It'd be special even if you proposed in a potato sack."

"That doesn't sound like a bad idea."

"Clint, no."

After a week of planning and consulting Kate, Natasha, and Steve, Clint finally had a plan. He had bought tickets for him and Bucky to see Phantom of the Opera, and then they would go out to dinner at Meson Sevilla, an Italian restauraunt close to where their show was, for Thursday evening. Bucky hadn't seemed suspicious when Clint brought up the idea of going out to him-Phantom was one of Bucky's favorite musicals, and they usually went out to see it when it was in town. So far, everything was going good.

Of course, that was when it all went to shit.

The Avengers alarm went off while Clint was going over his plan for the evening. In his hurry he had accidentally taken the ring box with him and didn't notice until he was nearly in the briefing room. It was too late to turn back around, so he stuffed it in a pocket on his uniform and prayed that it wouldn't get lost.

The Wrecking Crew had returned to New York City to make a mess of everything. Fortunately, since there was only the four of them, along with a small team of ten other people, they would be relatively easy to take out. Unfortunately, they seemed to have a real bone to pick with the Theater district.

Clint winced as the Belasco Theater crumbled down the street. He was positioned on a nearby office building so he could work to take out the Wrecking Crew from above. Sam, Thor, and Tony soared above him in the skies, while Steve, Natasha, Pietro, Wanda, and the Hulk led the fight on the ground. Bucky was on another building across the street, also working as a sniper. "Hey, Buck, d'you think we'll still get to go out tonight?" Clint asked as he aimed an explosive arrow at two grunts that had managed to break away from the main fight and were hurrying down the street away from them.

"Depends on how bad the damage is," Bucky replied, his voice crackly over the comms. A gunshot sounded from his end. "Maybe we can still go to dinner."

"Break it up, lovebirds," Tony cut in. "Your conversation is going to get either mushy or dirty, and I don't feel like vomiting in my helmet."

"Okay, Mr. 'Steve-I-Love-Fucking-Ya-Shit-I-Mean-Fucking-Love-Ya," Bucky retorted, and Clint snickered.

"Oh mygod, that was ayear ago! And it was just a Freudian slip!"

"Whatever you say, Stark."

"You and Steve really aren't much better than them, Tony," Sam added, zooming past Clint to divebomb Bulldozer. "Can one of you get those guys near 8th Avenue?"

"I got it." Clint shot another explosive arrow at the grunts Sam had pointed out. "I'm gonna need more explosive arrows, by the way."

"I've got you covered, Legolas," Tony replied. "Just wait 'til we're back at the Tower."

"If you're done chatting, we could use some aerial support down here," Natasha said. Tony flew down to meet her.

The fight wrapped up quickly after that. The Wrecking Crew and their grunts were cuffed and loaded into several waiting SHIELD vans and driven off, leaving the Avengers and other agents to assess the damage caused. Clint grappled down the building to meet Natasha at the bottom. "Glad you're in one shape, Barton," she greeted.

"I know, it's a new record for me." He looked around before leaning in to whisper to her. "We're still on for tonight, right?"

Natasha pursed her lips together, which was never a good sign. "The Majestic is still standing, but it's surrounded by rubble and suffered structural damage. It's going to take weeks to clean up and repair."

"Oh." Clint felt like a rock had settled in the pit of his stomach. "And Belasco?"

"Collapsed." Natasha put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Clint. Looks like you're gonna have to make new plans."

Clint groaned and let his head fall. A perfect night with Bucky had been ruined, thanks to the Wrecking Crew. He was ready to head straight to SHIELD so he could punch all of them in the face and then chew them all out.

"Don't even think about trying to go fight them," Natasha warned, tightening her grasp. "Coulson will have your head-you know that."

"God, I know, it's just...I really wanted to do this. I had such a good plan, and now I can't go through with it."

Natasha's eyes softened. "You still have a chance, though. Maybe you can come up with something even better."

"Yeah, yeah." Clint lifted his head up to see Bucky, Sam, and Steve talking across the street. Bucky looked over at him and lifted his arm into the air, which held an arrow that must have landed near him in the fight. Clint shrugged at Bucky, who rolled his eyes and put his arm down. Clint suddenly remembered the box and frantically started patting around for it.

Natasha frowned. "Did you lose something?" When Clint triumphantly pulled out the box and opened it to reveal the ring was still there, she sighed. "Really, Clint? You brought it with you?"

"Hey, I was in a hurry, and there wasn't time to put it back in my room." Clint eyed the ring, then the arrow Bucky was still holding, and then looked back at the ring. "Do you have a pen and paper?"

"Why?" Clint pulled out one of his normal arrows from his quiver. He unscrewed the arrowhead and carefully slid the ring onto it before screwing it back on. "Clinton Francis Barton, what the hell are you planning to do?"

"Hey, I know what I'm doing. Trust me."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Natasha handed him a pen and notepad anyways. Clint tore off a sheet and scribbled down a few words on it, before wrapping it around the arrow shaft. He then grabbed a spare bow string from the side of his quiver and tied it around the paper. "Just so you know, this is the weirdest proposal I have ever seen, and I don't know why we didn't think of it before."

"'Cause I'm only a genius in emergencies." He nocked the arrow and drew the string back, aiming between Bucky and Sam. He released the string, and the arrow flew straight into the wall next to them. All three men jumped back from it. Steve was the first to recover, and he glanced at the arrow before turning around to flip Clint off.

"I hope you had a good reason for scaring the shit out of us!" he yelled.

"Love you too, Cap!" Clint shouted back, returning the gesture. Bucky shook his head and laughed before turning to retrieve the arrow from the wall. Clint's heart pounded as he watched Bucky stop to stare at the arrow and carefully untie the string around the paper and unrolled it. He stared at it for a few moments before turning and running across the street, straight towards Clint.

"Oh my god, he's gonna kill me," Clint whispered.

Bucky skidded to a stop in front of Clint. "Is this why you've been acting weird the past few weeks?" he demanded, shaking the piece of paper in his hand. On it, scrawled undeniably in Clint's handwriting, were the words "Marry me?"

"Uh..." Clint scratched the back of his neck. "It may have been?"

"Oh my god, you idiot." Bucky wrapped his hands around Clint's face and pulled him down into a kiss. Clint grunted in surprise but slid his arms around Bucky, deepening the kiss.

They pulled apart a few moments later, breathing heavily. "So, is that a yes?" Clint asked.

Bucky scowled. "Ya could've just asked me, y'know, without going to so much trouble. There's no way I would've said no to ya."

"Yeah, but...I wanted it to be special, not something out of the blue."

Bucky's eyes softened. "Oh, c'mere, ya big sap." He kissed Clint again, this time more slowly and with more passion.

They didn't break apart until Steve cleared his throat behind them. "Does this belong to you?" he asked, holding out the arrow with the ring still attached to it.

Sam stood next to him, one eyebrow raised. "I've gotta tell ya, this is the weirdest proposal I've ever seen, Clint."

"Whoops," Bucky muttered.

Clint took the arrow from Steve. "I've got it." He unscrewed the arrowhead and slid the ring off before turning back to Bucky. "May I?" Bucky held out his hand, and Clint carefully slid the ring onto it. Once he let go, Bucky drew him in for a quick kiss.

"How'd you even plan this out?" Bucky asked.

"I was actually going to propose tonight." Clint gestured to the rubble around them. "This kinda threw a wrench in my plans though."

Bucky snorted. "It threw a pretty fucking big wrench. But I think I like your way of doing it better."

"Ew, they're being sappy. I'm out," Sam announced, turning around and walking away from them.

"Thanks for ruining the moment," Bucky called.

"My pleasure!"

"Tony's gonna be all over this, you know," Steve commented.

Bucky groaned and buried his face in Clint's chest. "Can I just enjoy being engaged before Stark gets involved?"

"Bed-Stuy is about twenty minutes away by foot," Natasha said. "We'll keep Tony and the others off your backs for a few days."

"Did I ever tell you that you're the best friend ever?" Clint asked.

"Only every day. Now go, have fun without breaking the mattress." Natasha shooed them away.

"I call best man, Bucky," Steve added.

"Like there was anyone else I'd choose." Bucky pulled Steve into a quick hug before taking Clint's hand. "Let's go home, Clint."

"Right behind you."

The two of them started jogging down the streets, away from the rest of the team. They didn't pause until they finally got back to their apartment. Kate was out for the day with Lucky, leaving the apartment empty save for them. Once the door was locked, Clint took a moment to take in how Bucky looked. His gray eyes were bright and his lips were swollen from the earlier kissing, his cheeks dusted with pink as he drew in breaths. Clint couldn't remember seeing anything more beautiful.

Bucky smirked when he noticed Clint's staring. "See something ya like?"

"I still can't believe you said yes. I never thought I'd get this lucky."

"You better get used to it, you're stuck with me now." Bucky cupped Clint's cheek in his hand. "And I'm the lucky one to have you in my life, Clint."

"I am pretty great."

"Sure, sure." Bucky leaned in to kiss Clint, who hummed and smiled against his fiance's lips.

Asking Bucky to marry him had been a real challenge, but Clint was willing to overcome any hurdle to keep Bucky in his life.

Thank you for reading! If you want to read more check out the first fic in the "A Wonderful Fling to Be Flung" series and the other Winterhawk stories up on my profile! You can also find this story up on my AO3 at Gamzee_Makaroni.

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