Guns are for Wussies

codenamemockingbird

❛  Yeah, guess it has to happen at SOME point.  ❜  HE TUCKS HIS hand over hers & pulls her fingers to his palm, gentle as a harpist’s tunings. His thumb bumbles over her knuckles & he looks up at her, lip corners pinched to a stubbly smile.  ❛  Can you even imagine us RETIRED? I think I’d open a dojo                                    always wanted a dojo.  ❜

venomblasting

❛  STRETCHING,  ❜  HE SAYS AGAIN, as if humming an idle rhyme, the lull of it bumbling off his lips ; as if it’s slipped between them ONCE or TWICE before.  ❛  Relax, it’s BOILERPLATE: break and enter, grab a couple incriminating docs, get the hell out. Easy !  ❜

codenamemockingbird

❛  Okay. But does it make me look OLD ?   ❜  HE TAPS HIS thumb to the shallow cleft beneath his lip. He feels it in his BONES: the bruises of age, 40 years in RUST ; now in the EARTHWORK of his chin, his cheek, the mirror’s streaked reflection. When did the ticks & tocks of his life become so tiger stark, so STRIKING ?  ❛  I FEEL old.  ❜

❛  I’m not BREAKING the law, just . . . ❜  HE LOOKS AT her as though invoking a CURSE or some blessing, concentration strumming nicks between his brows in his rustle for the right word. & when he finds it, it POPS off his tongue, firecracker snap.  ❛  ———–STRETCHING it. Like we  A L L  do.  ❜  ———– @venomblasting

                              ❛  Hey, Birdie. You think I should SHAVE ?   ❜  HIS THUMB TRACKS down his chin & the feathery turnings of his untrimmed beard poke its tip like spindles. Locks of gray, grown from ash & age, crowd most around his lip & then pepper out, darken down his cheek & along his throat’s rivulet. His mouth corkscrews to a moue & his glance trots to her. He watches her from the tenterhooks, expectant ; as if she holds all the galaxy’s secrets behind those pink lips.  ———– @codenamemockingbird

[ codenamemockingbird ]

          He's staring out the window, watching the globs of wet snow, melted by the evening sun's steady warmth, drip off tree branches. He admires the snowscape with one hand tucked in his pocket and the other gripping a warm cup of coffee.

“Think I'm getting old, Birdie. Never feels   like it, but then you turn around and it's   tomorrow... and yesterday was the good   ol' days."

          The pain comes over him like flame creeping through tinder. Over the years, the periwinkle shading of his eyes had faded gradually to the color of shadow on snow. Now the blues and purples of a fresh bruise color his face from forehead to nose. 

“----anybody hurt? Widow?”

          Bright camera flashes strike like sheet lightning, and the thunder of shouts and howls rumbles as loud as the strongest storm's. There was once a time when Clint sought the spotlight, reveled in the attention that was companion to being an Avenger. The slanted smile that crosses his face-- even when the paparazzi is far behind them-- promises that part of him still does.

“Damn, kiddo---- press is on you   like black on a bowling ball.   ...Geez, wish I was the man of the   hour! You get any bigger, they'll   make you an honorary Spice Girl.”

          There's a burst of knocks as his curled fingers rap against her door. A paper bag is tucked loose against the crook of his arm, and it rustles like dry leaves on the sidewalk when he knocks again---- no reply. He looks underfoot and sees a long stretch of light slipping out from under the door. He leans close.

“Kate? Kate, it's me. Your creepy   neighbor with the really fat cat said   he saw you go in here, so I know   you're there. Plus your lights are   on.”