Avatar
CLINT HAS ONLY THREE THINGS TO SAY;   unlike the man saddled around his gut, he knows when to shut the fuck up – most times – and keeps his antagonistic rebuttals to a bare minimum. and, with only a few dabs to the driest corners of his bruised lips to spare, they are as follows:
         ‘  you can’t.  
—- in regards to the idea that there might be anybody out there dumber than he to take on tony stark to begin with,    muttered between mashed between teeth and the salt of his own arid blood smearing on the corner of joint mouths, which, in that precise context, could imp- ly that tony can do better.    the  second  thing,  spoken clear-cut like a risky slice at the minimal air shared between them,  ‘  your money ain’t SHIT —- ’  with the pad of his thumb praised to stark’s jawline. despite everything he’s ever poked fun at ( and just plain poked  at, straight up  dragged  his  finger  from the bottom-most  flap of skin to the first ),  there  is DEFINITE  BONE  THERE.          moving,  sawing;      beneath the tip of his finger works the near-perfect corner of a busy mouth.   and  it’s  never  not  busy, whether it be occupied by words or food or bullshit or, or – well, clint now supposes, his own mouth.
which leads him to his third and final point:
image
                ‘  dinner’s cancelled, idiot you got all NIGHT. 
&&  it wraps back up to his first case, does a complete one-eighty and staggers face-first into the statement that he’s the only jackass dumb enough to rub elbows ( and other parts ) with the guy who just not-so-sensually blinked at him. the guy he’s barely pulling his head away  from,   sucking the force of inappropriately-timed laughter right out of him like some sort of socially-decent VAMPIRE; yet all the pressure’s on him and his sore thighs and the even  sorer  spot  between  them,       swelling quick under the crashing weight of a young billionaire’s hips.       seriously, get this: the prodigal heir of stark industries getting his mouth scraped out by a  homeless  carnie  with a bad rap sheet.   relentlessly, even; tensing tendons  so  suddenly  and  with  such  vigor  that he has to scoot them both back on  the mattress just until he feels the back of his head hit that wall for some extra balance. 

       AND IF CLINT’S only got those three        words to dish out in lieu of the moment, 

  tony has one.

Avatar
image

      ❝ five. five thirty.

    and put me down for two guests so i’ll look more impressive when three show up.     gotta keep ‘em on their toes.  well.  now that i say it out loud?  make that none. no     guests. i’d like to preemptively dodge the empty seat bullet in which---... hang on.     no,  stay on the line. some buffoon just scuffed my testonis & he doesn’t seem to     be blubbering fat tears about it.

          EXCUSE ME, BUFFOON?

    RUDE TO SNAPso rude to snap. accompanied with the heightened speaking voice     due to being on a hands-free call he’s just about packed in a one-man vulgarity show.     still:   there’s an air of familiarity within buffoon-in-question’s presence & it unwittingly     brings out some softer curiosity, dark eyes hemming the line of the man’s cuffs all      the way back to his face. all is forgiven, but so much does not get said.     not even mumbled.     ( hinted at best by the twitch of his lips. )

            then the shades drop.

            ❝ tell me, you make a habit outta marking your territory on thirty-thousand dollar             shoes, or are you just feeling particularly sassy this morning? this is why i hate             walking. too much nature. too much room for error. ❞

Avatar
IT IS DISGUSTING,  clint considers,  the way that two deep holes in the human body can strike him down to his deepest nothing and wither him right to his core in a single stare. they’re focused, unblinking; and all of his secrets fly out the same window he’d threatened to toss the other out a couple of one-’er-nine times. and the weight on his leg, and the wetness of his cheek —— don’t even get him STARTED. 
except it’s too late. and he’s ignited, alive, awake with both the uncomfortable scare climbing up his spine and the pure hatred he has for all the words that just came out of tony’s mouth, in that order.
image

        ‘  that’s fucked up.

&& that’s all he has to say about that.
still,  heavy arms move like mountains  –  wrists coil and lock around the waist of his best friend   ( Nothin’ Wrong With It  © Tony Stark ),   and they work together to slide him in the more suitable spot of clint’s lap,  where his palms rest just fine flat against the space between tony’s hips and his thighs.         and the funniest thing about him – tony  stark,   the  prodigy  straddling  his  waistline – is  that  he  thinks  he  can  work MIRACLES. and if one of those miracles is the feeling clint gets in the pit of his stom- ach when tony’s legs are folded at the knees on either side of him, then by god,  this kid’s the SECOND COMING.
and it’s all tension now, locked up in  the shrinking space between their faces;   tips of noses hardly ghost when the brillo pad that is clint’s five o’ clock ( of last thursday ) shadow scrapes across tony’s chin.  they’re nearly connected,  right at the say-all, profiles lining so perfectly that all he has to do is part his lips, take a breath ——–
——– and SPEAK against the heat of tony’s mouth.
         ‘  tell me more about this hideous                  crush   you   have   on   me.  

IT SETS IN HIS TUMMY as some eerily concise game of gay chicken -- but it’s still a game nonetheless, and each teensy belly flipflop that follows the stretch and grind of his jawline to boot ain’t caving. not for cash, not for participation ribbons, not for an honorable mention. eyes on the prize. slim lazy himself leaning in for the kill when the pointed tip of his nose bumps against that stiff ( broken? ) ( definitely busted & bruised many times in the past ) aggressor not even granting it half an inch of space.

slim weighty, yeah, that’s what clint’d call him --- he’d have to remember that one, it’s funny, if not entirely too self-deprecating (stark brand© humor) -- but pressing matters strike first.  physically pressing matters. his lower stomach, the pads of his hands coming down firm on his upper chest ----- all of which zone into a more generous lean than he’d originally planned. maybe too generous. maybe broad enough to nearly knock them both down a literal peg had he not dug his knees into the mattress just a slice more, pinching them together to give clint’s thighs a run for their money.

image

his sentimental sonnet begins with ❝i can do better,❞ followed by a terribly concealed grin under the guise of arrogance & an intentionally cliché wink. it’s not as smooth as he’d like, the wink, not like the ones you see in movies --  in fact, his other eye flies en route to closing right after and the entire ordeal is a hop and a step shy of some odd, struggling blink. ❝i got money, you know? what you got goin’ on besides a mop of hair and permanent morning breath?❞ don’t matter none ‘cause then he’s laughing; can’t pin the church of chortles back any longer since it’s all too weird. weird because it’s not weird at all.

SO, BASICALLY: ---- piss off, barton. kiss me properly if you’re trying to get in my pants, alright? i can’t handle you trying to be suave. doesn’t suit you. c’mon.❞ (aced it.) ❝i don’t have all day.❞ (HE HAS ALL WEEK.) ❝i’m a busy guy.❞ and there it is -- that sloppy, audible smush of their lips between the G, U and Y when tony’s sealing the deal, smacking a fat one dead && center, almost immediately regretting that quick tinge of dried blood he’s positive clint’s been carrying around like some sorta disease on his mouth for weeks. this guy, where does he go at night?

Avatar
it wasn’t rainy. in fact, it was god damn smoldering that day.
and it wasn’t thursday. and clint barton’s never ran in anything more expensive than a beat-up pair of black converse he’d shot off a  TELEPHONE  WIRE  in his life.  and the cowlick? … ok, true. and a given. yet he could compliment that tale further – you had a dorky sweatervest,  i slept in my jacket, we had chicken parm and i watched the blood dry under your nose the whole time, mostly because eye contact would’ve killed me – but because he knows tony’s obsession for both exaggerating and being right, he lets it go.  i mean,  it’s  painstaking and the rare opportunity to one-up the rich kid is a hard one to pass by, but for the sake of those so-called bedroom eyes? yeah, just this once.
BUT HE COULD STILL REAP HIS VENGEANCE     in the very quaint action of sliding himself  out  of  bucks-a-plenty’s  grasp with even the subtle  sass  of shaking his wrist out, back turning to him so that clint can promptly pop a squat down on the bed in ques- tion; his bed, and indeed in question, forever QUESTIONABLE, in fact, with all the filth that’s already been tossed around in it ( blood stains, mud stains, the occasional tissue ).
               ‘  right, ‘cuz, yeah, the dinner we eat together the other six days of the week just don’t hold a god damn CANDLE to it. ’    hear-ye hear-ye to the audible crick in his knees when his feet drag back, followed by the matching cracks of his elbows plopping onto them.      like,  i get that you’re obsessed with me or whatever,  but  honestly?  it’s getting kinda weird.  people’re gonna start talkin’,  ya  know –  ’     fingers  splayed;  that slight, beckoning twitch of a dangling index could’ve been anybody.         ‘   – and i ain’t gonna know what to tell ‘em.   
or, more so, i’m gonna run out of things to tell ‘em.

IT’S DISGUSTING, tony considers, how bravely clint’s ass can find comfort(?) against the nest of  dirty sheets and blankets  and how he  similarly calls such a hurricane HOME. endearing? in another life, after another shower. the kid’s bold enough to go so far as to actually,  physically roost right next to him, bony knee overlapping the circus boy’s with a thigh not too far off in its stead. 

image

they’re connected in the worst kind of way, he considers, also;  tony hates the word, despises it as naturally as manual hatred comes -- and yet here he is, brainstorming the fuck out of the oddly smooth transitions of their back-and-forths and the obscurity of his comfort. you know, the kind of comfort that sticks one arm around a disheveled blond and the kind that easily gussies up a fat kiss on a skinny cheek.

IT’S KIND OF ROMANTIC.

❝treacherous, just -------- horrific. come on. how is this weird?❞ delivered too-close, delivered with the darkest,   brownest eyes looming intentionally deep into one clint barton’s very being.    ❝this is the epitome of normal, and also a good time. a normal good time.   wholesome family fun in the form of LOVIN’ ON YA BEST FRIEND.❞ it’s around this time his eyes run even darker,    brows knit and scrunched in between to really play up the sincerity of his next round of questionable bullshit.      ❝you are my best friend, and i love you. with all my heart, clinton. let them come. let them talk. the only thing that matters in this world, in this life ---- you, me, and some leftover chili’s. no------------  don’t look away. eyes on me. only me. leftover chili’s. you can kiss me  about it later.❞

Avatar
image
HE’S TOO TIRED FOR THIS SHIT.      perpetually,  even;   dark circles caught in the deep corners of this god-awful time loop wherein he don’t sleep at night. maybe too OLD for it,  too,  the way his muscles ache like an eighty-somethin’- year-old man down on his luck – either  way, he takes the hit like a wall, about as literally as possible  in the  sense that he doesn’t budge at the baby tap but also has to give it a second or two to register before he drags sore eyes down to the extra SKIN suddenly there on his shoulder.
&&    he gives it another few fond moments to think it over,   let it lie there,   be king of its own hill for a hit.    y’know – cuz the best he’s got is somethin’ rather amiable,  tony’s wrist  ( nearly his whole fist, even ) having been swallowed by the  looming  shadow  and  final  CLASP  of  his own hand coming down on it. kinda nice, really, being so worn out all the time. you can blame all these weird, sluggish, and vaguely FUZZY movements on the fact that you catch the most z’s behind him in a classroom you don’t belong in, droolin’ up a storm on the sleeve of your favorite jacket

        ‘  hey.            ‘member the day we first met, 

                                                       —– couple months back?                         when i clocked you square in the maw ‘cuz                         you   wouldn’t   SHUT   THE   FUCK   UP ?
he reenacts the hit now with as much integrity as he’s been shown; where his knuckles merely rest against the corner of tony’s mouth,    that sweet spot that started it all,   not even hard enough to really press into the soft of the flesh ly- ing there.
         ‘  an’ you were gushin’ all this RED down your face                 and trying not to cry like the  little  pansy  you  are,                 like – honestly?  pretty  great  day.  we should do                 it again sometime, just you n’ me.
( you n’ me, he decides, is a really weird spot to be in. )
image

FOR A SIMPERING HOT SECOND THERE’S success in his veins; he has won. surges of victory line each eye wrinkle of his smile. clint is still, silent, looming ---- & tony trumps, again.   top of the hill, maybe, but in his mind each knuckle’s got its own crown, too. it’s bright, jeweled, it’s probably the most brilliant thing conceived in the confines of his imagination beyond his second best friend. right behind his portable and mildly flame resistant maxi-sized cup holder.

       ❝nope. not ringing any bells.        got a different story, the way        i remember it so fondly.❞

and then he’s clearing his throat, lowering his voice,  putting on a show;  he’s tony stark, he’s always got a story. ❝it was rainy. it was a thursday. i wore blue, you wore -- something. you looked at me with adoration.   everything from the cowlick to your broken air jordan’s read ‘save me, i’m horrible’;  ...  so much has not changed.❞ he makes waves in posture to hint at gesturing towards the stray but his musical theater gets its curtain pulled prematurely on account of the light thud against the edge of his mouth. so close to his lips, even, if he wants to turn on the pseudo romance or make this a pound more dramatic than the situation calls for. 

maybe next time. maybe in another lifetime. maybe after slugging down one too many, who knows. it’s college, these are the things you read about. 

❝... you n’ me.❞ the sentiment of repetition would probably have been more endearing had he not upped the ante and intentionally mocked clint’s stupid drawl ------ his ninth favorite thing, tony decides simultaneously -- but there’s saving grace in the crawling grin that follows, sparkly (expensive) whites (clearly the aftermath of braces) shining with no room to quit. playing copycat is suddenly a passionate hobby & with that he’s got his own hand clambering  up to latch  and tug on the  invasive one on  his mouth, granting it a push, then a tug, then a squeeze. ❝fuck off.❞ mixed signals. ❝piss on our dinner plans, then, i presume? considering i reek & you’re giving me bedroom eyes? your call. i can sling my filth around your bed if you so desire.❞

Avatar
          ❛  we’ve been through this. ❜  his fingertips dance through disheveled locks, unseating another cowlick near his temple.  he shades the fine fibers of irritation behind a genial flat of his grimace.  back straight, shoulder blades pulling through the lines of his posture like the prow of a boat through water.  his hands clap, one over the other, atop his cane.  the first TICK of sternness threads through the backs of his teeth.  ❛   i don’t care what you’ve been working on, tony.  you put a virus in the water supply.  ❜   
image

❝...refresh my memory?

                we’re on decent enough terms for me to make special requests, right? encore, encore.❞ as if the bladed-tip tone of his voice wasn’t enough to offer some weak balance of bitterness and pride he takes it over the top with a very physical round of applause, halted only to spare his half-eaten treat bag from another whap. ❝----you do care. that’s where i’ll always get you. you do care, and you know as well as i do that i’m helpless, murdock. i’m weak. never in a million years will i be able to resist the alluring siren calls of a potential masterpiece.❞

image

                only then does his line of sight flick from circular lenses to the crumpled plastic between two fingers. ❝---- raspberries. frozen. can you smell ‘em? how’s that dog nose? overwhelming? i’d offer you one, but.❞ but a mouthful, that’s what; that’s the punctuation.

Avatar

supervivientc.

image
         “ Every little thing I dooo,                neverseemsenough for youu,                you don’t wanna looose it a-gain                but I’m not like them.                Baby, when you finall-yyyyyyy                get to love some-bod-y,                gueess whaat—                it’s gonna be me!
image

❝...do you have a record deal?

            -- does anybody know if this woman has a record deal?             somebody get me my checkbook & a complimentary jacket.❞

Avatar

streetspeakin.

       ‘   mmmmmmmnope,
                  can’t say that’s a thing that i ever said, no.
though, in the heat of the challenge, he does occasionally flick his gaze up–or down,  rather–at the simmering figure in question.  the shirt he’d been fumbling for ( one of four,  maybe  five ? ) suddenly doesn’t hold a candle to the DAGGERS being borne into his chest. so, y’know, he’s gotta fight for his life, right? gotta duke it out for his rights ‘cuz the pipsqueak who saved it to begin with’s just gotta have words.
&& it’s a quick action; a long stride of one, three steps taken to casu- ally pluck himself in front of the instigator and stick an intrusive digit just into the space between tony’s chin and his neck, where it wig- gles freely amongst the secondary folds.
         ‘   —- ‘ju say somethin’? thought i just heard this literal              toddler tossin’ some HARSH VIBES around here,              but i mean, if you wanna go, we’ll go.
image

❝you sure?

          positive?

                i heard a little dig, there, i heard a little squeal from all four of your                 nipples.  they were beckoning me, barton. dropping to their knees                 and lining the pews of this crazytown church for --- OI, hey, HEY.                 you get that rank little twerp AWAY from my chin stash, thank you                 very much.❞

&& he’s backing away on those same tippies because he’s a pansy and also he routinely  forgets how big his idiot pal is  when he puts some elbow grease into straightening  up that atrocious posture. but, you know --  alongside the backwards squeaks he’s also throwing those fists up,    thumbs tucked across the front under the guise that he’s (done this before?)  (got a brief idea how to rumble?) ------ seen it on fight club   (which he dozed off through the first time) (and the second). 

         ❝m’ready. you and me.❞

                the first punch thrown is soft.  lands smack-dab and hells                 of gentle on clint’s shoulder accompanied by a verbal teh

Avatar

streetspeakin.

image
        ‘   AND I DIDN’T GET PICKED OFF THE STREET                 to not whack off in your shower, so what the fuck?                 kind of a conflict of interest – dunno if this whole                 ROOMIE thing is gonna work out afterall.  gonna                  hafta toss the calling of the chins torch onto your                 buddy there, that’s a given; it’s like, the one thing                  we agree on. 
                — but really, rain check on that shower, yeah?                 i’ve already harnessed the power of the fuckin’ sun                 today and i don’t got the room to share.
image

          ❝UH HUH, i’ll be taking rain check by force, yeah, and i’m not happy           about it. that’s what this stern look means. that’s what these 2 middle           fingers on their way up  & literally into your backdoor mean. get over           here seriously. -- i’ll stick botha these up your ass, that’s what you’re           asking for? that whatcha after, clinton?❞

-- i mean, he’s already been hassled into getting redressed, he’s already had the majority of his day ruined, might as well perk up on all ten of his toes & chase that sunna’bitch down the hall until the taller calls uncle. 

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.