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harcourtI feel like I need to explain this fic.
So, since I've been talking about using the MCU as a way to pare down comics canon, here's a fic that I abandoned on my hard drive after realizing that the visuals don't work. As in, I doubt Clint's hairstyle in this would work on the actor, but if you were drawing Clint, or imagining some of the comics visuals, it could.
After realizing that, and deciding to just shelve it because I didn't want anyone to think my sense of design or something is that bad (lol), I kind of wrote from the hip and with a so whatever attitude, so this fic is pretty weird.
I'm marking it MCU here anyway, because I don't know what else to, but this is an example of the kind of canon/imagery clash I mean, and that I try to avoid in things that I put on the AO3.
Also, I realized it's long enough to fill one of my longfic bingo squares.
Marriage of Convenience: [Marvel Cinematic Universe] untitled Thor/Clint fic --5,427 words
One year, Earth-time, after taking over Loki's claim on Clint, Thor is back, Clint is different in ways that are odd and disturbing, and Tony is determined to figure out exactly what's going on between him and Thor, because he's not sure he likes what things are looking like.
This fic includes: Captivity, slavefic themes, D/s undertones, suspicions of non-con, suspicions of abuse, hints of dark stuff happening off screen, hints of off-screen D/s, but in the end everything turns out to be be mostly okay. It's not dark!Thor fic. Really not.
Also, no one is actually married. I may or may not be interpreting those prompt squares with increasing looseness.
----------
They hadn't really expected Thor to bring Clint back with him. Tony kind of expected that it would be considered too awkward, or some kind of breach of good faith protocol, to rub their noses in Asgardian spoils of war notions, and Earth inability to put up argument beyond literal--and ineffectual--arguing, but when Thor steps out of his showy puff of dust and kicked-up sand, there Clint is, just a step behind him and squinting uncomfortably to keep the grit from his eyes. A dark shape, dressed in some Asgardian re-envisioning of his old gear, black armor with dark purple accents, but with a hooded black cloak instead of a bright cape. A shadow to Thor's shining presence, but, Tony's glad to see, clearly himself, even to his grouchy, "Geez. Every damn time," as he spits dramatic entrance out of his mouth, then wipes his face on his shoulder before freezing. "Tony?"
"Hey there, Hawkeye. Lookin' good."
Clint grins, straightening. Time either works differently on Asgard, or they have really amazing shampoo, because there's no way Clint's hair's grown that long in just a year and change. He has little braids in it, like Thor, and loose it would probably hang almost to his shoulders, but he's wearing it in a messy ponytail, shorter bits pulled free to blow about in the remainder of Thor's dust storm.
"Well, yeah," Clint says, breath turning to vapor in the cold desert, "Not looking awful yourself." He hesitates under the arm Tony throws over his shoulders, then relaxes. His musculature's changed, but not in a weird way. He's just leaner, somehow, the bulk in his shoulders replaced by compact efficiency. Like Asgard's managed to pack more speed and power into less space. He feels dense and coiled, like he's made of springs. His bow is the same, a simpler, more elegant version of the one he'd used before. The lines of it graceful, like something old and traditional and like Clint might have lifted it from a museum somewhere. Tony has no doubt it's a superior weapon to anything SHIELD could have cooked up. Maybe to anything he could cook up.
"We weren't sure how you'd--" Tony stops short of intergalactic faux pas and glances at Thor, considering. Finishes with, "do."
Thor looks amused instead of offended. "He did fine," he says, putting a hand to Clint's back, casually urging him out of the epicenter of space-time contradiction, but the touch is also familiar and possessive. And fond. Clint barely seems to notice, glancing over like it's instinct to check in, then takes Tony with him out of the last of the swirling sand. It's leaving patterns behind as it settles. Delicate crop circles of dust that would probably have driven Coulson nuts trying to simultaneously decode and cover-up, once upon a time, before the public verification of alien visitation.
"I like your hairdo," Tony offers as they draw level with Steve, and that makes Clint look uncomfortable. He tugs at it in a brief self-conscious gesture before shrugging one shoulder, mouth pulling into a lopsided half-smile. As if there's some significance to it that Tony's missing, but that Clint doesn't know he's missing. That Clint maybe thinks is obvious.
"If you think I'm making a joke about something other than your pretty purple beads there, I'm not," Tony explains, pointing at where they're holding the ends of the little braids together.
Clint ignores him to accept a thump on the shoulder from Steve, and then to hold his arms open at Nat, who manages to give him a cool you've gotta be kidding look for maybe a second and a half before they're wrapped around each other, hugging and Natasha saying, quickly, "Phil's okay. He's alright. He didn't die," like she's been waiting to be able to tell Clint, even though Clint's nodding against her head, obviously already in the know.
"It's okay. Heimdall saw. It's okay. I probably knew before you."
Natasha makes a fake irritated noise, out-spied from across space, but she says, "Thank god. I thought--I didn't want you to be thinking about that."
While you were being held space-hostage, she means, except that Thor's here on Asgardian business, which means that Clint's probably still a space-hostage. His obvious good shape is doing a lot to soften the hard feelings left by Thor's insistence on Asgardian customs regarding pillaging and the transference of property taken during war, but the fact that Thor obviously cares for him doesn't mean he intends to return him.
As merger deals go, Tony's pretty sure he still doesn't approve.
-----
If it was cold in the desert, the snow and cloud cover makes it a bit better in New York. That and the central heating. It kicks the hell out of the little blowers in the dash of the crapmobile SHIELD had assigned them to stay low profile. Tony kind of thinks the nautilus of linked circles Thor's left is going to be more of a giveaway than letting them have a car with actual heat, but he's willing to let the pros undertake their own fuck-ups.
Clint's armor, like Thor's, doesn't have sleeves, but it does come with long gauntlets that look kind of like opera gloves from a distance. Probably protecting him from the fwap of magic bowstring. Clint might never miss, but things can happen, and Tony's pretty sure that whatever else his new bow might be capable of, getting smacked by its string would probably do a lot more than sting. Especially against mortal Earthling skin.
He looks alien in his Thor mini-me get up, and the agents escorting them keep giving him second and third looks, the sort of sidelong glances people used to give Happy, trying to figure out if he was security or just part of Tony's entourage. Even outsized, Clint looks somehow more threatening than affable Thor, in his dark gear. He's got hard edges, is what Tony's missed. It's not just the leaner muscle. Clint's whole bearing is like a whip, ready to snap, all the potential for speed and deadliness close to the surface, even though he also looks a bit like an eager puppy as they pull up in front of the tower. Home for almost a year before Thor had called in his contracts.
"Long enough to get used to super cable TV and endless hot water," Clint grins, when Tony mentions it.
"I can't imagine Asgard doesn't have hot water." The home entertainment might be horrible, though. Tony remembers Thor relying on storytelling a lot.
"If you like carrying buckets." There's no way, Tony realizes, to tell if Clint's fucking with them or not. Thor doesn't look like he cares enough about Midgardian opinions on Asgardian plumbing to correct assumptions either way. "All the way from the hot springs," Clint adds, deadpan, and Tony gives him a dubious look.
"You could visit," Clint says, willing to prove it, but drops it when it makes Natasha frown. Clint's definitely not being returned, then.
"Sure," Tony tells him, popping the door open, "Next time we're between global crises, I'll catch a crop circle out."
-----
Even if Thor's dressed him like a badass, it's pretty obvious Clint's not here as his bodyguard. It would be pretty questionable, to bring a Midgardian to guard against Midgardians, but especially to bring Clint to guard against them, so it's clear this is meant to be a visit. Either as a favor to Clint or to show that no harm's come to him. That, really, he's better than unharmed. Even the haunted look he'd had after Loki's jaunt through his mind is gone, healed during the same time expansion that had given him the chance to copy Asgardian hairstyles, or maybe cured by some kind of space Viking therapy session.
He looks a hell of a lot better than Phil, who drops by to see for himself, still stiff and moving carefully. "We don't have a Heimdall on this end," he says, smiling his bland agent good guy smile as he takes Clint in. Hiding a lot behind that calmly pleasant expression. "I woke up. They told me Asgard had taken you." His small shrug is as misleading as the smile.
"Probably not in that kind of timeframe," Clint says, and it's nice that he's still an ass.
"Then I had a lot of drugs," Phil says, still even and bland, matching Clint's casual tone. Letting him play it his way. Tony can tell it's not how Phil would prefer to welcome Clint home, but Clint's new hard edges are everywhere at the moment, his eyes dark with something unreadable and solemn.
"Jesus, Clint. I thought--I thought, all that and we didn't even get you back."
Clint smirks crookedly, "You did. I was back for months. You were just dead at the time."
Tony props his chin in one hand, listening to them sync their calendars. Steve could probably relate to Phil's overslept-and-missed-it time issue, but it's still weird when Phil nods at Clint's hair and new get-up and asks, "How long was I really out for?"
"How long was Clint really gone for, you mean," Tony pipes up, "Because it's a year on our end."
"Two," Clint says, "I think two, about." Then adds, "There was a lot of travelling," like that explains the mismatch.
-----
Clint doesn't change back to Earth clothes, but he does stand in his old room and walk around touching things. Fingers trailing over the edge of his dresser and the fletching of his old arrows and even the window frames. He's sleeping in Thor's rooms, and there's been no request for additional furnishing, which Tony tries not to think about too closely, the way he tries not to think too closely about the way that Clint's armor's given way to woven cotton, dark gray, with laces up to the throat, but untied and pulled loose and away from an artful stack of silver. What looks like loose pieces, multiple necklaces, even though there's no rattle when Clint moves. Tony can't help stealing glances, but no matter how carefully he looks, he can't find a join.
"Magic," Clint says, touching them when he catches Tony looking, then grins, somewhere between wry and genuinely amused, "I know how much you love magic."
"Clint--"
Clint shrugs, then pulls open a drawer. Says, "Oh. Hey. Cellphone!" and holds it up before poking at the buttons with his thumbs, "God, I missed Snake so much."
"You're a disgrace to Earth life," Tony tells him, not really smiling. Going along with the evasion. There's something incongruous about Clint, dressed the way he is, playing with things that are rightfully his. Like he both belongs and doesn't. He'd made more sense, Tony realizes, as a dark shadow at Thor's side than reminiscing about primitive cellphone games.
"Hawkeye," he says, for no reason, but Clint nods like he knows what he's getting at. Which is good, because Tony's not sure he has any idea himself. Really, it had just been to say it, because Clint hadn't been there for so long to say it to.
The cellphone goes back in the drawer, and the drawer gets closed with a dull thump, Clint's hands on either end of it, fingers resting in place once it's shut. Weirdly final, considering the meaninglessness of the junk Clint had accumulated in there.
"Not Hawkeye," Clint says, "I haven't even been Clint for awhile."
Tony's not sure how to respond to that. "What should we call you then?" he asks, because it's the only logical question.
"Clint," Clint grins, mostly to himself, and if Tony expected to see those new hard edges surface again, they don't. "Come on. Show me to Bruce. I have so much stuff to tell him about ogres."
-----
Bruce's fascination with the denizens of Asgard and related vicinities is totally weird--like he's not bothered at all by the way that the generally accepted laws of reality seemingly stop working, somewhere out there and when Thor's involved--but Clint's as scattered a storyteller as ever, stopping for jokes, interrupting himself to tell side stories, then having to backtrack to repeat a secondhand explanation, give his opinion on it, then have to backtrack again.
A lot of it is to cover edits and omissions. There's enough fumbles that it's obvious, and even though it's not surprising that there might be aspects to his Asgardian jaunt that Clint might like to keep private, it's somewhat disconcerting that his discomfort seems to be with them, and not with Thor, who's effectively his jailer and apparently also taking him on trips to fight trolls, ogres, and assorted pixie people.
Or possibly to enforce taxation on them. Tony had stopped listening--the workings of Asgardian politics being surprisingly dull, considering--and instead watches Clint's grinning face, Bruce's perplexed frown, and the odd distance Clint keeps between them. Not like he's wary or on guard, but like he doesn't quite fit into the spaces of Bruce's lab anymore. It's hard to reconcile this Clint with the one from a year ago--SHIELD t-shirt and jeans, battered sneakers, hair short enough to stand at angles to itself. Pissed off about Asgard and Thor, and about the lack of options and loopholes in the law that meant Loki's claim on him was passed on and not neutralized.
-----
Thor touches the back of Clint's head as he passes. Just a brief, absent press of his hand, but it's a practiced gesture, automatic. As familiar as the slight duck of Clint's head, a moment before contact, even without looking. Not an evasion, but just like he's expecting it.
-----
"Are you sleeping with him?" Tony asks, "Or rather, is he sleeping with you?"
Clint stops. Says, "Tony," dry enough to give Phil a run for his money, at the same time that Steve says it in an entirely different tone.
Clint scratches at the top of one his long gauntlets. His sleeves are loose, wide cut, and tucked into the top of them. It's a weird to look for him to be wearing just partial pieces of his armor, but whatever he is to Thor, it seems like being shooting-ready is a part of it, even though his bow is nowhere to be seen.
"You don't have to answer that," Steve says, with a glare.
"Hey, if it's your personal life--" Tony lets it trail off. He's pretty sure Clint gets the unvoiced, but if it's a part of your politically legal abduction life, and the implied protective threat. They might not have a way to make good on it, but they can probably find a way to at least make their opinions known. All together, they have a not unimpressive amount of brain power.
"Tony," Clint says again, looking fond and weirdly sad at the same time. Maybe vaguely nostalgic. Like Tony's a window into a once-familiar life. The feeling's kind of mutual. Clint, slipping away into this lean, otherworldly archer, his face and pain-in-the-ass personality familiar, but everything else strange, gives Tony the same sense of something gone and right there, at the same time.
Clint looks up, beyond the ceiling, beyond JARVIS, then back at Tony. The corner of his mouth pulls. "It's not like that, Tony," he says, looking a little defensive. Shoulders hunched, just enough to be noticeable. Then he drops it and makes a here-nor-there gesture with his head, bobbing it left, then right, lifting his hands to emphasize the uncertainty. "I mean, maybe. But--" then settles on a shrug and, with more weight, and some incredulity, like he can't believe them and their nefarious trains of thought, "It's Thor, guys."
"Sure," Tony snips back, right away and on reflex--filter, he thinks, in Pepper's voice, filter--"Thor, who insisted your brain hack makes you his rightful inheritance, or however that worked."
"It wasn't my brain that got hacked," Clint retaliates, off point and pulling the argument off-topic. His hair is tied into a tidy knot at the base of his skull, the braided bits standing out, revealing the intricacy of the pattern. Tony can't imagine even new, strange, Asgardian-remake-Clint bothering to go through that kind of trouble, but his brain has surprisingly little difficulty imagining Thor bothering, fingers as matter of factly careful as when they landed on Clint's shoulder or neck for brief moments. Barely settling before they pull away again in deference of their company. He tries not to look too hard at the metal hooped around Clint's throat, but he knows he's failing when Clint snorts and lifts his chin a bit in something like proud defiance.
-----
"It's Thor," Tony mimics at Bruce later, and smiles without humor before tossing the tool he'd been half-heartedly fiddling with back to the table where it rolls then hits his keyboard with a dull plastic sound. "I can't tell if he's really okay, or if he's pissed at us." Because the thought--Thor, guys. It's Thor--was exactly what they'd thought when they'd let Clint go a year ago, them-time. Two years, if he goes by Clint's count. "Maybe we should have fought harder to keep him."
"We didn't know it would be this long term." Bruce says it slowly, maybe mentally running over the options they'd had at the time. The impending threat of Loki returning and the dormant bug still in Clint's head. It had been better to at least have him near Thor, who had enough magic tricks up his sleeve to foil a recurrence of Loki's original archer-napping scheme.
"We should have gone after him."
"Right. With your interdimensional doorway."
"We could have built one," Tony says, tapping his space bar over and over, restlessly. "Maybe. If we'd tried."
-----
"I want to cut your stupid hair," Natasha says, "so badly. You look like a Lord of the Rings reject."
Clint pffs and releases an arrow. Showing off, in a way that's very Clint-like. Destroying walls, practically, with that bow. Even Steve looks like he's tipping from impressed to a bit scared. "Who'd reject this?" Clint asks, and shoots another for good measure. The impact sounds like a small explosion.
"Mm," Natasha considers, noncommittal.
Phil says, "We have guns that do that."
Clint pulls an arrow. Puts it to the bowstring and squints a bit into the distance. Making a face more than trying to see. "And here," he says, and draws, "I was looking forward to amazing you."
"Your standard for amazing," Natasha starts, and Clint releases. There's a puff of concrete dust at the other end of the lane. The thump of concussion.
The quiet bullshit is driving Tony nuts. He says, "Nice, you lunatic. Try to not bring down my high rise, will you?"
"With arrows," Clint points out, with a look at Phil.
"Fine, fine," Phil says, "Put it down. You've made your point."
Clint grins, then sobers. Looks down at the weapon in his hand, then back at Phil. "Against the Helicarrier," he starts, then looks back at the mess he's made of the wall.
"Oh, please." Tony rolls his eyes, "You're not that dangerous, Barton. Get a grip on your ego, will you?" The suggestion, coming from him, makes Natasha smirk, but she also looks like she's so full of comebacks that she can't settle on any one and stays quiet. Clint looks at the expression on her face and laughs. Phil smiles, but at the ruined wall. Tony can practically hear the calculations clicking away in his head, measuring this Clint against the potential threat of the old one, and maybe coming up with against the Helicarrier himself.
-----
"He's fixed," is Thor's response, glancing out to the balcony where Clint is leaning dangerously over the rail, wearing his dark cloak again. Looking strange next to Bruce, who's dressed in artificial fleece and bright puffy down jacket. Clint's star-trekking's created a new intersection of interest between him and Banner. Tony has no idea if they're talking about fairy monsters or how constellations look from the other side, or the varying taste of snowflakes--he can see Clint trying to catch some on his tongue while Bruce talks--but the murmur of their voices is a little too intent for just small talk and light conversation.
"Safe," Thor corrects himself, but looks like he doesn't think that's a better term than fixed after all. "Or I wouldn't have given him so powerful a weapon. Or any."
Tony doesn't say, then give him back, because it might be a fair argument, considering the reasons they'd agreed to Thor's terms in the first place, but he's not sure at all that Clint belongs back anymore.
Thor reads it on his face. Or reads something. Maybe thinks he sees the echoes of past arguments--He can't be yours. He's not a thing. You can't just take over the lease because your brother's not home--and says, "He's not unhappy, Tony."
He can't quite unpack what Thor's trying to tell him. What suspicion he's trying to lay at rest. It's possible Clint's passed on everything Tony had suggested or implied or asked about, just like it's possible that Thor's got his own ideas about what explanations might be needed, that Tony can't guess at. He might be on some completely alien train of thought.
Which is confirmed when Thor decides he needs to expand on the statement and says, "It was difficult, for a while, but we tried to keep everything as...pleasant as possible."
Tony brain skitters away from that, refusing to process, even though he's sure it'll come up with all kinds of interpretations later and possibly ones that are more twisted than they need to be. He could probably ask for clarification now and just sidestep the whole dark creativity the image-processing part of his brain is bound to get up to the next time he can't sleep, but he can't bring himself to ask anything. Not even with the way he keeps thumping up against indefinite boundary of as possible.
-----
There's no animosity between Clint and Thor, which is a point Natasha makes, and if Tony has to give it to her, he also thinks she could be a bit more concerned, considering she's supposed to be Clint's best buddy of buddies. Clint seems not only perfectly happy to let Thor touch him in proprietary ways, but gravitates to him, orbiting like he's torn between some kind of pull towards Thor and what Tony's starting to think is their Earth propriety.
Human behavior math is harder than the regular kind. He can't figure out what it means that the touching tends to go in one direction, or what the sum of haven't been Clint for awhile is, when combined with the shared quarters, the keeping things pleasant non-explanation, and everything else. Multiply by Bow of Devastation plus-20, divide by according to Asgardian law, subtract I never agreed to Loki, I'm not agreeing to this, carry the obvious message of what he's sure is a collar, divide all by you could visit, which isn't exactly prisoner speak. All to the power of things were difficult.
JARVIS flat out refuses to do the calculation, reciting his schedule for the next day instead.
-----
"You could trust me," Clint snaps, finally, which is a damn weird thing for him to be saying, "No one's inside my head but me. Stop watching me."
"I didn't think--That's not--" He really hadn't been thinking anything like that. Some kind of Stockholm Syndrome seemed more likely than Thor planting a head-bug. Or a heart bug, as the case might be. It might even have been unintentional, well-meaning captive manipulation, given Thor's character.
Clint slams out of the room and then back in. That's very old-Barton. Tony smiles, to defuse the situation, but it's probably not that convincing. Pepper's never placated by that particular method of diplomacy, anyway, so there's no reason it should work on Clint. "I just need to know--" Tony starts, and stops because Clint's glaring--not icicles, but hot indignation and something less sure. There's a flush creeping up his neck, and he reaches to touch the collar, necklace, whatever it is, like he knows exactly where Tony's going. "How fucking bad we should feel," he finishes, and looks away, "And if we've been letting you bunk with--If you'd rather move to your own room."
When he looks up, Clint looks really, really uneasy. But not hidden trauma uneasy, which was what Tony had been fearing and expecting in equal measure. He says, "I--" a few times, then gives up and offers a weird smile. Something between self-deprecating and embarrassed, but with hard stubborn edges.
"What are you when you're not Clint?" Tony asks, because that's been bugging him the most. Clint's reactions aren't the ones he's been expecting. He's acting more like a man caught in an embarrassing tryst with his secretary than one who'd rather not be trysting at all, but somehow Tony's also sure that he's not entirely off-base.
"Who," Clint corrects, then smiles a little. Easier now. Soft. "Tony."
"I'm Tony." It's not funny, but Clint humors him and laughs, then shrugs.
"Jesus, Stark. You weren't supposed to worry about it." How that was supposed to work, he's not sure, but Clint looks totally entertained. Or not entertained so much as like things are falling into place for him in a way that he's kind of enjoying. If he'd thought all the scrutiny was because they were looking for lingering traces of Loki's control or evidence of Thor planting his own, Tony's not surprised that he's taking the discovery of Tony's actual suspicions so well.
Clint gestures at himself, one awkward hand movement that somehow manages to indicate everything from his Merry Men of Nottingham costume to his hippy girl hairstyle. Then he says, "Thor calls me Clint sometimes," and shrugs. The pieces click.
"Are you going to tell us your Asgardian name?" Tony asks, teasing, but that's a failure too, because Clint doesn't answer.
Divide by difficult. Maybe by as pleasant as possible too. Clint hadn't given up his name easily. So no, then. On the other hand, whatever they'd done to him doesn't seem to have stuck, Hawkeye and Clint creeping back unchecked, at least while they're back on Earth.
"Are you going to tell us what the deal is? With you and Space Prince?"
"Thor," Clint insists, looking almost offended. Counting digs taken at Thor as personal affront, which is interesting, but Tony's not sure whether to put that in the troubling or not troubling column. The measuring look Clint follows it with definitely belongs in the troubling column, but possibly is a score against them rather than Thor. Tony wants to counter it with questions about what had been difficult and who exactly might be included in Thor's we tried to keep things, but it's not like Clint's actually said anything to counter.
"You'll be weird about it," Clint says finally.
"Clint."
"You'll think Thor--"
Clint's expression going shuttered and defensive means Tony's not that far off base after all. That his imagination isn't as overactive as he'd like to believe and not everything he'd thought is going to resolve into benign empty suspicions. "If he did something--" Tony starts, and feels the weight spill. "Did we let him--? We shouldn't have given you up. We should have--"
"I was losing my mind," Clint interrupts. "You should have what? I wasn't unmade. I was unraveled like a fucking sock."
Or an ugly sweater, Tony thinks, but doesn't make the joke. Clint losing it after Loki had been obvious, part of why they'd given in to Thor's request--to put it diplomatically--but the desperate tone in Clint's voice a good two there-was-a-lot-of-travelling years later is still unexpected. Clint looks a bit shadowed, suddenly, and now Tony can see old Clint--their Clint--in him. See tired, and antsy and hope I'm not in range when he snaps along with the jeans and the Hawkeye jacket Clint had worn over almost anything, like it was regular clothing.
He'd noticed Clint had looked better, when he'd first stepped out of Thor's dust storm. That he'd lost those particular shadows. There's new ones in their place, though. Less dark, but sharper. Hard little fissures as he considers, then looks away. Eyes tracking the outline of some reflection in the window as he says, "Once the thread's loose," and trails off.
Tony says, "Oh god, have you started talking in metaphor now? Is this all going to be summed up in a fable and followed by a song?"
Clint snorts. Looks back at him, freaky intent for just a second, before he makes an unfamiliar gesture, indicating something coming apart, crumbling or disintegrating. The specifics of it are kind of unclear, but the gist's not too hard to catch.
"Can't unspill the milk." Tony guesses, "Unless you have magic."
Clint nods, still not really looking at him. Says, "Other than to pull the rest of it apart and reuse the thread."
His metaphors have a way to go, but Tony gets the concept of break down and rebuild, like a corroded machine. As pleasantly as possible. It's not all the pieces, not nearly, but it's enough of the pieces. For now. Tony says, "You can darn socks. Or sew them or tie the end off or something."
"Yeah, well. I'm not an expert." Clint says.
-----
"You're going to bring him back, right?" Tony asks, on the roof, when Thor comes to watch him fine tune his launch ramp dressing arms and make sure they'll de-ice properly, walking out over the drop without concern, even though the air is whipping around him, freezing and sending snowflakes stinging into his face. "When you're done?"
"When he's ready," Thor says, in an agreeable tone, but there's something about the phrasing that's evasive, or just not exactly what Tony'd asked.
"Before two years?"
"Before that." Thor sounds certain. Firm.
"But we don't get to keep him," Tony concludes, turning to look at Thor. Standing with his back to the drop, a few feet behind him.
"I am not keeping him." There's a note in it that's almost offense, but mostly Thor sounds like Clint. Amused and sad around the edges. The distance between them nothing having to do with space travel or unmatched time. "He's my friend, Tony," Thor says, and now he does sound affronted. Like he's also just now figuring out the specifics of Tony's concerns.
"And your spoils of war," Tony points out, coming back towards him, shoulders hunched against the cold, and wishing he'd put on a hat, because the cold bites at his ears.
"And that," Thor allows, stepping aside to let Tony pass. "But before that, my friend."
"Why isn't he Clint? On Asgard."
Thor smirks in a way that's very like Clint, when he's being an intentional ass, and for a second Tony thinks that's the only answer he's going to get, or that Thor's preparing some bullshit line, but then the look fades, and Thor pauses. Considers the roof and Tony's hardware and the overcast sky beyond that, before saying, low, "Because Clint was broken," the admission pained, with a note of guilt that's suddenly also familiar, from when Clint was coming apart all over the tower.
Tony takes a breath. Lets it out. Drawing out the exhale to watch his breath turn into a long stream of vapor before dissipating in the cold. Inside, he can see Clint, leaning over the table at Steve, one hand gesturing. Dark cloak hanging around him, sort of ludicrously, if Tony thinks about it. "Okay," Tony allows, "But just so you know, we were kind of attached to Hawkeye mark one."
Thor smiles, at Tony, at Clint, where he and Steve are talking, Steve leaning back in his chair, arms folded. "He's still that," Thor says, then corrects, "Is that again," then, "He's returning to it," and offers, "When he's ready, and if he likes, he can come back and stay."
Tony considers that, and the way whatever story Clint's telling Steve has moved into two-handed gestures territory. Asks, "No chance we can just keep the bow, huh?"
So, since I've been talking about using the MCU as a way to pare down comics canon, here's a fic that I abandoned on my hard drive after realizing that the visuals don't work. As in, I doubt Clint's hairstyle in this would work on the actor, but if you were drawing Clint, or imagining some of the comics visuals, it could.
After realizing that, and deciding to just shelve it because I didn't want anyone to think my sense of design or something is that bad (lol), I kind of wrote from the hip and with a so whatever attitude, so this fic is pretty weird.
I'm marking it MCU here anyway, because I don't know what else to, but this is an example of the kind of canon/imagery clash I mean, and that I try to avoid in things that I put on the AO3.
Also, I realized it's long enough to fill one of my longfic bingo squares.
Marriage of Convenience: [Marvel Cinematic Universe] untitled Thor/Clint fic --5,427 words
One year, Earth-time, after taking over Loki's claim on Clint, Thor is back, Clint is different in ways that are odd and disturbing, and Tony is determined to figure out exactly what's going on between him and Thor, because he's not sure he likes what things are looking like.
This fic includes: Captivity, slavefic themes, D/s undertones, suspicions of non-con, suspicions of abuse, hints of dark stuff happening off screen, hints of off-screen D/s, but in the end everything turns out to be be mostly okay. It's not dark!Thor fic. Really not.
Also, no one is actually married. I may or may not be interpreting those prompt squares with increasing looseness.
----------
They hadn't really expected Thor to bring Clint back with him. Tony kind of expected that it would be considered too awkward, or some kind of breach of good faith protocol, to rub their noses in Asgardian spoils of war notions, and Earth inability to put up argument beyond literal--and ineffectual--arguing, but when Thor steps out of his showy puff of dust and kicked-up sand, there Clint is, just a step behind him and squinting uncomfortably to keep the grit from his eyes. A dark shape, dressed in some Asgardian re-envisioning of his old gear, black armor with dark purple accents, but with a hooded black cloak instead of a bright cape. A shadow to Thor's shining presence, but, Tony's glad to see, clearly himself, even to his grouchy, "Geez. Every damn time," as he spits dramatic entrance out of his mouth, then wipes his face on his shoulder before freezing. "Tony?"
"Hey there, Hawkeye. Lookin' good."
Clint grins, straightening. Time either works differently on Asgard, or they have really amazing shampoo, because there's no way Clint's hair's grown that long in just a year and change. He has little braids in it, like Thor, and loose it would probably hang almost to his shoulders, but he's wearing it in a messy ponytail, shorter bits pulled free to blow about in the remainder of Thor's dust storm.
"Well, yeah," Clint says, breath turning to vapor in the cold desert, "Not looking awful yourself." He hesitates under the arm Tony throws over his shoulders, then relaxes. His musculature's changed, but not in a weird way. He's just leaner, somehow, the bulk in his shoulders replaced by compact efficiency. Like Asgard's managed to pack more speed and power into less space. He feels dense and coiled, like he's made of springs. His bow is the same, a simpler, more elegant version of the one he'd used before. The lines of it graceful, like something old and traditional and like Clint might have lifted it from a museum somewhere. Tony has no doubt it's a superior weapon to anything SHIELD could have cooked up. Maybe to anything he could cook up.
"We weren't sure how you'd--" Tony stops short of intergalactic faux pas and glances at Thor, considering. Finishes with, "do."
Thor looks amused instead of offended. "He did fine," he says, putting a hand to Clint's back, casually urging him out of the epicenter of space-time contradiction, but the touch is also familiar and possessive. And fond. Clint barely seems to notice, glancing over like it's instinct to check in, then takes Tony with him out of the last of the swirling sand. It's leaving patterns behind as it settles. Delicate crop circles of dust that would probably have driven Coulson nuts trying to simultaneously decode and cover-up, once upon a time, before the public verification of alien visitation.
"I like your hairdo," Tony offers as they draw level with Steve, and that makes Clint look uncomfortable. He tugs at it in a brief self-conscious gesture before shrugging one shoulder, mouth pulling into a lopsided half-smile. As if there's some significance to it that Tony's missing, but that Clint doesn't know he's missing. That Clint maybe thinks is obvious.
"If you think I'm making a joke about something other than your pretty purple beads there, I'm not," Tony explains, pointing at where they're holding the ends of the little braids together.
Clint ignores him to accept a thump on the shoulder from Steve, and then to hold his arms open at Nat, who manages to give him a cool you've gotta be kidding look for maybe a second and a half before they're wrapped around each other, hugging and Natasha saying, quickly, "Phil's okay. He's alright. He didn't die," like she's been waiting to be able to tell Clint, even though Clint's nodding against her head, obviously already in the know.
"It's okay. Heimdall saw. It's okay. I probably knew before you."
Natasha makes a fake irritated noise, out-spied from across space, but she says, "Thank god. I thought--I didn't want you to be thinking about that."
While you were being held space-hostage, she means, except that Thor's here on Asgardian business, which means that Clint's probably still a space-hostage. His obvious good shape is doing a lot to soften the hard feelings left by Thor's insistence on Asgardian customs regarding pillaging and the transference of property taken during war, but the fact that Thor obviously cares for him doesn't mean he intends to return him.
As merger deals go, Tony's pretty sure he still doesn't approve.
-----
If it was cold in the desert, the snow and cloud cover makes it a bit better in New York. That and the central heating. It kicks the hell out of the little blowers in the dash of the crapmobile SHIELD had assigned them to stay low profile. Tony kind of thinks the nautilus of linked circles Thor's left is going to be more of a giveaway than letting them have a car with actual heat, but he's willing to let the pros undertake their own fuck-ups.
Clint's armor, like Thor's, doesn't have sleeves, but it does come with long gauntlets that look kind of like opera gloves from a distance. Probably protecting him from the fwap of magic bowstring. Clint might never miss, but things can happen, and Tony's pretty sure that whatever else his new bow might be capable of, getting smacked by its string would probably do a lot more than sting. Especially against mortal Earthling skin.
He looks alien in his Thor mini-me get up, and the agents escorting them keep giving him second and third looks, the sort of sidelong glances people used to give Happy, trying to figure out if he was security or just part of Tony's entourage. Even outsized, Clint looks somehow more threatening than affable Thor, in his dark gear. He's got hard edges, is what Tony's missed. It's not just the leaner muscle. Clint's whole bearing is like a whip, ready to snap, all the potential for speed and deadliness close to the surface, even though he also looks a bit like an eager puppy as they pull up in front of the tower. Home for almost a year before Thor had called in his contracts.
"Long enough to get used to super cable TV and endless hot water," Clint grins, when Tony mentions it.
"I can't imagine Asgard doesn't have hot water." The home entertainment might be horrible, though. Tony remembers Thor relying on storytelling a lot.
"If you like carrying buckets." There's no way, Tony realizes, to tell if Clint's fucking with them or not. Thor doesn't look like he cares enough about Midgardian opinions on Asgardian plumbing to correct assumptions either way. "All the way from the hot springs," Clint adds, deadpan, and Tony gives him a dubious look.
"You could visit," Clint says, willing to prove it, but drops it when it makes Natasha frown. Clint's definitely not being returned, then.
"Sure," Tony tells him, popping the door open, "Next time we're between global crises, I'll catch a crop circle out."
-----
Even if Thor's dressed him like a badass, it's pretty obvious Clint's not here as his bodyguard. It would be pretty questionable, to bring a Midgardian to guard against Midgardians, but especially to bring Clint to guard against them, so it's clear this is meant to be a visit. Either as a favor to Clint or to show that no harm's come to him. That, really, he's better than unharmed. Even the haunted look he'd had after Loki's jaunt through his mind is gone, healed during the same time expansion that had given him the chance to copy Asgardian hairstyles, or maybe cured by some kind of space Viking therapy session.
He looks a hell of a lot better than Phil, who drops by to see for himself, still stiff and moving carefully. "We don't have a Heimdall on this end," he says, smiling his bland agent good guy smile as he takes Clint in. Hiding a lot behind that calmly pleasant expression. "I woke up. They told me Asgard had taken you." His small shrug is as misleading as the smile.
"Probably not in that kind of timeframe," Clint says, and it's nice that he's still an ass.
"Then I had a lot of drugs," Phil says, still even and bland, matching Clint's casual tone. Letting him play it his way. Tony can tell it's not how Phil would prefer to welcome Clint home, but Clint's new hard edges are everywhere at the moment, his eyes dark with something unreadable and solemn.
"Jesus, Clint. I thought--I thought, all that and we didn't even get you back."
Clint smirks crookedly, "You did. I was back for months. You were just dead at the time."
Tony props his chin in one hand, listening to them sync their calendars. Steve could probably relate to Phil's overslept-and-missed-it time issue, but it's still weird when Phil nods at Clint's hair and new get-up and asks, "How long was I really out for?"
"How long was Clint really gone for, you mean," Tony pipes up, "Because it's a year on our end."
"Two," Clint says, "I think two, about." Then adds, "There was a lot of travelling," like that explains the mismatch.
-----
Clint doesn't change back to Earth clothes, but he does stand in his old room and walk around touching things. Fingers trailing over the edge of his dresser and the fletching of his old arrows and even the window frames. He's sleeping in Thor's rooms, and there's been no request for additional furnishing, which Tony tries not to think about too closely, the way he tries not to think too closely about the way that Clint's armor's given way to woven cotton, dark gray, with laces up to the throat, but untied and pulled loose and away from an artful stack of silver. What looks like loose pieces, multiple necklaces, even though there's no rattle when Clint moves. Tony can't help stealing glances, but no matter how carefully he looks, he can't find a join.
"Magic," Clint says, touching them when he catches Tony looking, then grins, somewhere between wry and genuinely amused, "I know how much you love magic."
"Clint--"
Clint shrugs, then pulls open a drawer. Says, "Oh. Hey. Cellphone!" and holds it up before poking at the buttons with his thumbs, "God, I missed Snake so much."
"You're a disgrace to Earth life," Tony tells him, not really smiling. Going along with the evasion. There's something incongruous about Clint, dressed the way he is, playing with things that are rightfully his. Like he both belongs and doesn't. He'd made more sense, Tony realizes, as a dark shadow at Thor's side than reminiscing about primitive cellphone games.
"Hawkeye," he says, for no reason, but Clint nods like he knows what he's getting at. Which is good, because Tony's not sure he has any idea himself. Really, it had just been to say it, because Clint hadn't been there for so long to say it to.
The cellphone goes back in the drawer, and the drawer gets closed with a dull thump, Clint's hands on either end of it, fingers resting in place once it's shut. Weirdly final, considering the meaninglessness of the junk Clint had accumulated in there.
"Not Hawkeye," Clint says, "I haven't even been Clint for awhile."
Tony's not sure how to respond to that. "What should we call you then?" he asks, because it's the only logical question.
"Clint," Clint grins, mostly to himself, and if Tony expected to see those new hard edges surface again, they don't. "Come on. Show me to Bruce. I have so much stuff to tell him about ogres."
-----
Bruce's fascination with the denizens of Asgard and related vicinities is totally weird--like he's not bothered at all by the way that the generally accepted laws of reality seemingly stop working, somewhere out there and when Thor's involved--but Clint's as scattered a storyteller as ever, stopping for jokes, interrupting himself to tell side stories, then having to backtrack to repeat a secondhand explanation, give his opinion on it, then have to backtrack again.
A lot of it is to cover edits and omissions. There's enough fumbles that it's obvious, and even though it's not surprising that there might be aspects to his Asgardian jaunt that Clint might like to keep private, it's somewhat disconcerting that his discomfort seems to be with them, and not with Thor, who's effectively his jailer and apparently also taking him on trips to fight trolls, ogres, and assorted pixie people.
Or possibly to enforce taxation on them. Tony had stopped listening--the workings of Asgardian politics being surprisingly dull, considering--and instead watches Clint's grinning face, Bruce's perplexed frown, and the odd distance Clint keeps between them. Not like he's wary or on guard, but like he doesn't quite fit into the spaces of Bruce's lab anymore. It's hard to reconcile this Clint with the one from a year ago--SHIELD t-shirt and jeans, battered sneakers, hair short enough to stand at angles to itself. Pissed off about Asgard and Thor, and about the lack of options and loopholes in the law that meant Loki's claim on him was passed on and not neutralized.
-----
Thor touches the back of Clint's head as he passes. Just a brief, absent press of his hand, but it's a practiced gesture, automatic. As familiar as the slight duck of Clint's head, a moment before contact, even without looking. Not an evasion, but just like he's expecting it.
-----
"Are you sleeping with him?" Tony asks, "Or rather, is he sleeping with you?"
Clint stops. Says, "Tony," dry enough to give Phil a run for his money, at the same time that Steve says it in an entirely different tone.
Clint scratches at the top of one his long gauntlets. His sleeves are loose, wide cut, and tucked into the top of them. It's a weird to look for him to be wearing just partial pieces of his armor, but whatever he is to Thor, it seems like being shooting-ready is a part of it, even though his bow is nowhere to be seen.
"You don't have to answer that," Steve says, with a glare.
"Hey, if it's your personal life--" Tony lets it trail off. He's pretty sure Clint gets the unvoiced, but if it's a part of your politically legal abduction life, and the implied protective threat. They might not have a way to make good on it, but they can probably find a way to at least make their opinions known. All together, they have a not unimpressive amount of brain power.
"Tony," Clint says again, looking fond and weirdly sad at the same time. Maybe vaguely nostalgic. Like Tony's a window into a once-familiar life. The feeling's kind of mutual. Clint, slipping away into this lean, otherworldly archer, his face and pain-in-the-ass personality familiar, but everything else strange, gives Tony the same sense of something gone and right there, at the same time.
Clint looks up, beyond the ceiling, beyond JARVIS, then back at Tony. The corner of his mouth pulls. "It's not like that, Tony," he says, looking a little defensive. Shoulders hunched, just enough to be noticeable. Then he drops it and makes a here-nor-there gesture with his head, bobbing it left, then right, lifting his hands to emphasize the uncertainty. "I mean, maybe. But--" then settles on a shrug and, with more weight, and some incredulity, like he can't believe them and their nefarious trains of thought, "It's Thor, guys."
"Sure," Tony snips back, right away and on reflex--filter, he thinks, in Pepper's voice, filter--"Thor, who insisted your brain hack makes you his rightful inheritance, or however that worked."
"It wasn't my brain that got hacked," Clint retaliates, off point and pulling the argument off-topic. His hair is tied into a tidy knot at the base of his skull, the braided bits standing out, revealing the intricacy of the pattern. Tony can't imagine even new, strange, Asgardian-remake-Clint bothering to go through that kind of trouble, but his brain has surprisingly little difficulty imagining Thor bothering, fingers as matter of factly careful as when they landed on Clint's shoulder or neck for brief moments. Barely settling before they pull away again in deference of their company. He tries not to look too hard at the metal hooped around Clint's throat, but he knows he's failing when Clint snorts and lifts his chin a bit in something like proud defiance.
-----
"It's Thor," Tony mimics at Bruce later, and smiles without humor before tossing the tool he'd been half-heartedly fiddling with back to the table where it rolls then hits his keyboard with a dull plastic sound. "I can't tell if he's really okay, or if he's pissed at us." Because the thought--Thor, guys. It's Thor--was exactly what they'd thought when they'd let Clint go a year ago, them-time. Two years, if he goes by Clint's count. "Maybe we should have fought harder to keep him."
"We didn't know it would be this long term." Bruce says it slowly, maybe mentally running over the options they'd had at the time. The impending threat of Loki returning and the dormant bug still in Clint's head. It had been better to at least have him near Thor, who had enough magic tricks up his sleeve to foil a recurrence of Loki's original archer-napping scheme.
"We should have gone after him."
"Right. With your interdimensional doorway."
"We could have built one," Tony says, tapping his space bar over and over, restlessly. "Maybe. If we'd tried."
-----
"I want to cut your stupid hair," Natasha says, "so badly. You look like a Lord of the Rings reject."
Clint pffs and releases an arrow. Showing off, in a way that's very Clint-like. Destroying walls, practically, with that bow. Even Steve looks like he's tipping from impressed to a bit scared. "Who'd reject this?" Clint asks, and shoots another for good measure. The impact sounds like a small explosion.
"Mm," Natasha considers, noncommittal.
Phil says, "We have guns that do that."
Clint pulls an arrow. Puts it to the bowstring and squints a bit into the distance. Making a face more than trying to see. "And here," he says, and draws, "I was looking forward to amazing you."
"Your standard for amazing," Natasha starts, and Clint releases. There's a puff of concrete dust at the other end of the lane. The thump of concussion.
The quiet bullshit is driving Tony nuts. He says, "Nice, you lunatic. Try to not bring down my high rise, will you?"
"With arrows," Clint points out, with a look at Phil.
"Fine, fine," Phil says, "Put it down. You've made your point."
Clint grins, then sobers. Looks down at the weapon in his hand, then back at Phil. "Against the Helicarrier," he starts, then looks back at the mess he's made of the wall.
"Oh, please." Tony rolls his eyes, "You're not that dangerous, Barton. Get a grip on your ego, will you?" The suggestion, coming from him, makes Natasha smirk, but she also looks like she's so full of comebacks that she can't settle on any one and stays quiet. Clint looks at the expression on her face and laughs. Phil smiles, but at the ruined wall. Tony can practically hear the calculations clicking away in his head, measuring this Clint against the potential threat of the old one, and maybe coming up with against the Helicarrier himself.
-----
"He's fixed," is Thor's response, glancing out to the balcony where Clint is leaning dangerously over the rail, wearing his dark cloak again. Looking strange next to Bruce, who's dressed in artificial fleece and bright puffy down jacket. Clint's star-trekking's created a new intersection of interest between him and Banner. Tony has no idea if they're talking about fairy monsters or how constellations look from the other side, or the varying taste of snowflakes--he can see Clint trying to catch some on his tongue while Bruce talks--but the murmur of their voices is a little too intent for just small talk and light conversation.
"Safe," Thor corrects himself, but looks like he doesn't think that's a better term than fixed after all. "Or I wouldn't have given him so powerful a weapon. Or any."
Tony doesn't say, then give him back, because it might be a fair argument, considering the reasons they'd agreed to Thor's terms in the first place, but he's not sure at all that Clint belongs back anymore.
Thor reads it on his face. Or reads something. Maybe thinks he sees the echoes of past arguments--He can't be yours. He's not a thing. You can't just take over the lease because your brother's not home--and says, "He's not unhappy, Tony."
He can't quite unpack what Thor's trying to tell him. What suspicion he's trying to lay at rest. It's possible Clint's passed on everything Tony had suggested or implied or asked about, just like it's possible that Thor's got his own ideas about what explanations might be needed, that Tony can't guess at. He might be on some completely alien train of thought.
Which is confirmed when Thor decides he needs to expand on the statement and says, "It was difficult, for a while, but we tried to keep everything as...pleasant as possible."
Tony brain skitters away from that, refusing to process, even though he's sure it'll come up with all kinds of interpretations later and possibly ones that are more twisted than they need to be. He could probably ask for clarification now and just sidestep the whole dark creativity the image-processing part of his brain is bound to get up to the next time he can't sleep, but he can't bring himself to ask anything. Not even with the way he keeps thumping up against indefinite boundary of as possible.
-----
There's no animosity between Clint and Thor, which is a point Natasha makes, and if Tony has to give it to her, he also thinks she could be a bit more concerned, considering she's supposed to be Clint's best buddy of buddies. Clint seems not only perfectly happy to let Thor touch him in proprietary ways, but gravitates to him, orbiting like he's torn between some kind of pull towards Thor and what Tony's starting to think is their Earth propriety.
Human behavior math is harder than the regular kind. He can't figure out what it means that the touching tends to go in one direction, or what the sum of haven't been Clint for awhile is, when combined with the shared quarters, the keeping things pleasant non-explanation, and everything else. Multiply by Bow of Devastation plus-20, divide by according to Asgardian law, subtract I never agreed to Loki, I'm not agreeing to this, carry the obvious message of what he's sure is a collar, divide all by you could visit, which isn't exactly prisoner speak. All to the power of things were difficult.
JARVIS flat out refuses to do the calculation, reciting his schedule for the next day instead.
-----
"You could trust me," Clint snaps, finally, which is a damn weird thing for him to be saying, "No one's inside my head but me. Stop watching me."
"I didn't think--That's not--" He really hadn't been thinking anything like that. Some kind of Stockholm Syndrome seemed more likely than Thor planting a head-bug. Or a heart bug, as the case might be. It might even have been unintentional, well-meaning captive manipulation, given Thor's character.
Clint slams out of the room and then back in. That's very old-Barton. Tony smiles, to defuse the situation, but it's probably not that convincing. Pepper's never placated by that particular method of diplomacy, anyway, so there's no reason it should work on Clint. "I just need to know--" Tony starts, and stops because Clint's glaring--not icicles, but hot indignation and something less sure. There's a flush creeping up his neck, and he reaches to touch the collar, necklace, whatever it is, like he knows exactly where Tony's going. "How fucking bad we should feel," he finishes, and looks away, "And if we've been letting you bunk with--If you'd rather move to your own room."
When he looks up, Clint looks really, really uneasy. But not hidden trauma uneasy, which was what Tony had been fearing and expecting in equal measure. He says, "I--" a few times, then gives up and offers a weird smile. Something between self-deprecating and embarrassed, but with hard stubborn edges.
"What are you when you're not Clint?" Tony asks, because that's been bugging him the most. Clint's reactions aren't the ones he's been expecting. He's acting more like a man caught in an embarrassing tryst with his secretary than one who'd rather not be trysting at all, but somehow Tony's also sure that he's not entirely off-base.
"Who," Clint corrects, then smiles a little. Easier now. Soft. "Tony."
"I'm Tony." It's not funny, but Clint humors him and laughs, then shrugs.
"Jesus, Stark. You weren't supposed to worry about it." How that was supposed to work, he's not sure, but Clint looks totally entertained. Or not entertained so much as like things are falling into place for him in a way that he's kind of enjoying. If he'd thought all the scrutiny was because they were looking for lingering traces of Loki's control or evidence of Thor planting his own, Tony's not surprised that he's taking the discovery of Tony's actual suspicions so well.
Clint gestures at himself, one awkward hand movement that somehow manages to indicate everything from his Merry Men of Nottingham costume to his hippy girl hairstyle. Then he says, "Thor calls me Clint sometimes," and shrugs. The pieces click.
"Are you going to tell us your Asgardian name?" Tony asks, teasing, but that's a failure too, because Clint doesn't answer.
Divide by difficult. Maybe by as pleasant as possible too. Clint hadn't given up his name easily. So no, then. On the other hand, whatever they'd done to him doesn't seem to have stuck, Hawkeye and Clint creeping back unchecked, at least while they're back on Earth.
"Are you going to tell us what the deal is? With you and Space Prince?"
"Thor," Clint insists, looking almost offended. Counting digs taken at Thor as personal affront, which is interesting, but Tony's not sure whether to put that in the troubling or not troubling column. The measuring look Clint follows it with definitely belongs in the troubling column, but possibly is a score against them rather than Thor. Tony wants to counter it with questions about what had been difficult and who exactly might be included in Thor's we tried to keep things, but it's not like Clint's actually said anything to counter.
"You'll be weird about it," Clint says finally.
"Clint."
"You'll think Thor--"
Clint's expression going shuttered and defensive means Tony's not that far off base after all. That his imagination isn't as overactive as he'd like to believe and not everything he'd thought is going to resolve into benign empty suspicions. "If he did something--" Tony starts, and feels the weight spill. "Did we let him--? We shouldn't have given you up. We should have--"
"I was losing my mind," Clint interrupts. "You should have what? I wasn't unmade. I was unraveled like a fucking sock."
Or an ugly sweater, Tony thinks, but doesn't make the joke. Clint losing it after Loki had been obvious, part of why they'd given in to Thor's request--to put it diplomatically--but the desperate tone in Clint's voice a good two there-was-a-lot-of-travelling years later is still unexpected. Clint looks a bit shadowed, suddenly, and now Tony can see old Clint--their Clint--in him. See tired, and antsy and hope I'm not in range when he snaps along with the jeans and the Hawkeye jacket Clint had worn over almost anything, like it was regular clothing.
He'd noticed Clint had looked better, when he'd first stepped out of Thor's dust storm. That he'd lost those particular shadows. There's new ones in their place, though. Less dark, but sharper. Hard little fissures as he considers, then looks away. Eyes tracking the outline of some reflection in the window as he says, "Once the thread's loose," and trails off.
Tony says, "Oh god, have you started talking in metaphor now? Is this all going to be summed up in a fable and followed by a song?"
Clint snorts. Looks back at him, freaky intent for just a second, before he makes an unfamiliar gesture, indicating something coming apart, crumbling or disintegrating. The specifics of it are kind of unclear, but the gist's not too hard to catch.
"Can't unspill the milk." Tony guesses, "Unless you have magic."
Clint nods, still not really looking at him. Says, "Other than to pull the rest of it apart and reuse the thread."
His metaphors have a way to go, but Tony gets the concept of break down and rebuild, like a corroded machine. As pleasantly as possible. It's not all the pieces, not nearly, but it's enough of the pieces. For now. Tony says, "You can darn socks. Or sew them or tie the end off or something."
"Yeah, well. I'm not an expert." Clint says.
-----
"You're going to bring him back, right?" Tony asks, on the roof, when Thor comes to watch him fine tune his launch ramp dressing arms and make sure they'll de-ice properly, walking out over the drop without concern, even though the air is whipping around him, freezing and sending snowflakes stinging into his face. "When you're done?"
"When he's ready," Thor says, in an agreeable tone, but there's something about the phrasing that's evasive, or just not exactly what Tony'd asked.
"Before two years?"
"Before that." Thor sounds certain. Firm.
"But we don't get to keep him," Tony concludes, turning to look at Thor. Standing with his back to the drop, a few feet behind him.
"I am not keeping him." There's a note in it that's almost offense, but mostly Thor sounds like Clint. Amused and sad around the edges. The distance between them nothing having to do with space travel or unmatched time. "He's my friend, Tony," Thor says, and now he does sound affronted. Like he's also just now figuring out the specifics of Tony's concerns.
"And your spoils of war," Tony points out, coming back towards him, shoulders hunched against the cold, and wishing he'd put on a hat, because the cold bites at his ears.
"And that," Thor allows, stepping aside to let Tony pass. "But before that, my friend."
"Why isn't he Clint? On Asgard."
Thor smirks in a way that's very like Clint, when he's being an intentional ass, and for a second Tony thinks that's the only answer he's going to get, or that Thor's preparing some bullshit line, but then the look fades, and Thor pauses. Considers the roof and Tony's hardware and the overcast sky beyond that, before saying, low, "Because Clint was broken," the admission pained, with a note of guilt that's suddenly also familiar, from when Clint was coming apart all over the tower.
Tony takes a breath. Lets it out. Drawing out the exhale to watch his breath turn into a long stream of vapor before dissipating in the cold. Inside, he can see Clint, leaning over the table at Steve, one hand gesturing. Dark cloak hanging around him, sort of ludicrously, if Tony thinks about it. "Okay," Tony allows, "But just so you know, we were kind of attached to Hawkeye mark one."
Thor smiles, at Tony, at Clint, where he and Steve are talking, Steve leaning back in his chair, arms folded. "He's still that," Thor says, then corrects, "Is that again," then, "He's returning to it," and offers, "When he's ready, and if he likes, he can come back and stay."
Tony considers that, and the way whatever story Clint's telling Steve has moved into two-handed gestures territory. Asks, "No chance we can just keep the bow, huh?"
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 03:05 pm (UTC)I really like the hairstyle.
Asmuch as Renner is hawkeye to me, the really pretty art of Clint as Ronin is what I visualise when I think of him. So that hairstyle REALLY works for me.
And this...
seems sadder, to me, I guess, because of the way magic kind of works right? it's magic, it's names, and it's a different system, and Clint's growing in a different direction, from what he might have if he'd stayed.
I almost thought that it wasn't Cint's brain Loki took. but his heart which would have made things even more poignant.
I love this fic.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-16 09:47 am (UTC)I don't remember why I wrote this. Maybe I was working on a fanart or something? And then got distracted? I have sort-of ideas about what kind of Asgardian adventures Clint and Thor might have, fighting pixie people or whatever. Even when Clint's okay again, it's probably hard to return to earth, afterwards. It's kind of a 'you can't go home again' situation, I guess.
But yeah about magic. Thor thinks everything is fixing, and he means that, but it's also changing things.
I'm glad you liked it. I feel like this is one of the weirder things I've written, lol.
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Date: 2015-05-16 11:13 am (UTC)Hahaha I don't care about the ronin suit sp much but his pretty hair. :P
even not including the magic the fact that Clint has been training as a .... whatever to Thor a companion a body... slave and having found a place in as garden society.... that's already different. he'd react different to threats compared to how hr might have back home in earth.
so even if he became completely fixed and COULD go home... i don't think he'd want to.
The sad part I think is the coulson/clint part. where all the missed chances when he and coulson might have been but there's no chance of that now.
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Date: 2015-05-16 01:33 pm (UTC)There might be parts of what's going on with Clint and Thor that Clint and Thor think of as separate things. Like that the spoils of war thing and the friendship and the relationship are all their own contexts and different things. So Clint could be Thor's prisoner, and have objections to all kinds of things, maybe especially magic things, but still sleeping with Thor because he wants to. But it all looks like one thing to Tony, and maybe he's not really wrong either, because those thing do interact, just maybe Clint and Thor don't think of it that way.
Yeah. He and Coulson really did miss each other by in this verse. I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. None of their timing matched up again, after Clint's taken, and now everything's different.
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Date: 2015-05-16 01:59 pm (UTC)Yeah, Clint and Thor see things different from Tony but I don't htink Tony is wrong, per se because of the way it is all linked and stuff.
Poor Coulson. I feel quite bad for him here.
But not bad enough to want to know pixie fighting!
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Date: 2015-05-16 02:11 pm (UTC)I do like the way the Ronin thing was explained later, as Clint not knowing how to be Hawkeye with Steve dead, so the not-Clint-ness sort of makes sense, if he's trying to find another mode or distance himself.
Pixies are probably rotten cheaters! I bet Clint hates fighting them. He'd tell Bruce all stories about how amazingly he kicked their asses, though.
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Date: 2015-05-16 02:14 pm (UTC)that's a huge, Clint/Steve flag if I'd seen one. :P Was it you who pointed out that they had been angling to say Steve was Clint's illegitmate dad but they dropped that storyline? I still think about it a lot, because if the way Steve affected (everyone) wih his death, it seems a lot like either Clitn was related or his lover.
As a slash fan I'm leaning heavily on loverm whaaha.
I can imagine Clint pouting SO MUCH about those cheating pixies!
Does Clint get the ability to transform? with that, reknitting of yarn and so on, he probably gets a bit more flexibility in physical shape maybe.
MAGIC.
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Date: 2015-05-16 03:53 pm (UTC)Now I'm imagining that everytime Clint gets drunk on Asgard (and their space mead probably packs a huge punch, for a human) he starts about pixies. "Thor, your Midgardian is on about the pixies again." After a certain point, Thor just ignores it, because what does Clint expect from pixies anyway?
I don't think he can transform, since I think most Asgardians can't. But he's probably tougher, or wilier, or that kind of subtle thing like Tony noticed, because Thor doesn't really mean to remake him into something different, but put him back the same way. Maybe he'd be able to do a bit of magic, but probably not big, intentional magic.
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Date: 2015-05-16 03:57 pm (UTC)MAGICAL CLINT WHOOOOOO
His pet midgardian who keeps going on and on and ON about the damn pixies because dammit Thor, PIXIES.
Ahahaha yeah, I mean there's the Steve/Bucky/Clint triangle, because Bucky and Clint competing with eac h other for Steve's approval, Steve trying to discipline Clint, Steve tryiing to look out for Bucky, it's just asking for a giant threesome. :D
or two overlappign couples.
Or a dom with two subs mwahaha.
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Date: 2015-05-16 05:47 pm (UTC)The teen sidekick thing throws me a bit in comics, though, if it's Steve/Bucky. I just want to mash up all the things I like with no sense or real order. :P
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Date: 2015-05-16 05:52 pm (UTC)Yeah. I just.... I was very >( about the movie? Because teen sidekicks! then.... then the movie happened and I'm ALL for Steve/Bucky being BFFS and now lovers nad I'm really, really into that triangle because all three of 'em.
Clint KNOWING that he won't be in the running because Steve/Bucky is a done deal. Steve never wanting Bucky to pick up the shield.
Bucky not wanting ANYONE NOT WORTHY to pick up that damn shield.
Bucky kicking Steve's behind to get his head out of his ass to go invite Clint to their threesomes because Bucky has a thing for mouthy blonds, and Steve has a thing for protective idiots.
ANGSTY THREESOMES.
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Date: 2015-05-16 06:22 pm (UTC)Rather than clint-as-is or Clint-as-seen-byPhil or Clint-as-seen-by-Tony, it's Clint-as-seen-by-Thor, like how the same subject when drawn by three different artists have slightly different outcomes no matter how realistic, and that means that Thor sees Clint as this deadly warrior, and rebuilt him that way. if tony had rebuilt Clint, itd have been as this somewhat doofy ceiling clint, and Phil would have rebuilt him with slightly love-softened edges, I bet.
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Date: 2015-05-17 12:09 pm (UTC)Even though it also feels kind of sad, if Clint is turned into a version of himself that isn't really him. (Even though the messed-up-ness of that also appeals to me, lol) Maybe it's just final layer stuff, like--idk. Picking the dials and upholstery in car refurbishment or something, so the underlying is still solidly Clint. Or maybe he'll eventually settle back to Clint-as-is, like if someone's cleaned up your space and you progressively move things back to where you prefer them.
But awww, Phil. ;___;
And haha, doofy ceiling Clint. Tony really would. Even deadly Asgard Clint is a little doofy to him.
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Date: 2015-05-17 03:19 pm (UTC)Ahahaha yes!
Well maybe it's just all in superficial surface behaviour.... PLUS fighting all them pixies, there be no ceilings for ceiling Clint. :D So less doofy-ness for Tony anyway mwahaha.
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Date: 2017-04-10 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-11 08:50 am (UTC)