vintagecaptain | Open RP / PSL Post

"Well, they can fly. I don't think they see a point in going up there," Steve points out logically. Who needed to learn that stuff when they had a magical hammer or a flying suit of armor. "If you want them up there I can insist on a new training routine. Try to balance out the skills of the team."

He chuckles a little and shrugs, though he makes sure he's not drawing when he does. He is concentrating on making some of the lines more solid, bringing out the shape and definition of Clint's whole body from this angle. He's already thinking he'll have to do some standing to get another angle later.

"Most of it I figured out in the field," Steve admits. "No one talks about the times I threw the shield wrong or had to go dig it out of a wall because I threw it too hard. I spent a lot of time being tested by the Army after the serum. I got used to my body then. It's muscle memory now."

Steve is only cool because a lot of effort went into making Captain America look cool. There's no telling what would've happened if he hadn't gone down. He was pretty outspoken about his political views. It's why he didn't have social media. Too many fights to pick with assholes and bigots.

"Honest, I think playing marbles as a kid taught me how to figure out angles and how things ricochet off each other." One corner of his mouth turns up in amusement. "Not that the shield bounces like a good cat's eye but the idea is the same."

As they talk, Clint flexes his muscles briefly from his toes on up. They’re controlled microspasms meant to relieve tension. He doesn’t feel any fatigue yet but that is partially because of what he’s doing.

Does he want Tony up in the wires with him? Hell no. Flex the controllable muscles in his knees.

The thought of Steve burrowing his shield into the sides of buildings causes him to reflect out loud about a m new bodied Steve being somewhat akin to a deer. New strength, new height, new everything to get used to. Flex his fingers one by one.

The only thing that gives Clint pause, and then causes him to break the otherwise stillness, is Steve’s laugh. He turns his head for a moment to take in the figure of the sketching man, bright smile on his own face.

Aww, Steve. The guy should laugh more. It’s such a pleasant, free sound.

He’s careful to return to the pose before, still smiling but now unseen.

“I used to make all of my money as a kid playing marbles,” he says, voice fond though his memories of his childhood rarely are. “Master of the trick shot. That’s me. Hate to do this to you, Steve, but I’m feeling the need to defend my title.”

"We never bet money. None of us had any. We bet the marbles." Steve had a handful of memories from his childhood that are good, genuinely good memories. Some of those marbles games are good ones. "I wasn't a flashy player but I was good. A real shark. Do they still make marble sets? We could try to teach the others and have a little team tournament."

Steve is already anticipating marbles flying all over the place. Thor would take a long time to figure out the right strength to use. Bruce is a dark horse. Steve could see him being good. Natasha will take bets and egg them on but she might not play. Hard to tell with her.

"It's been awhile but I bet I can give you a run for your marbles." He takes a moment to flex his neck and stretch his wrist.

"Also, warn me if you're going to do those small stretches. I don't mind if you need to move, just tell me first." He's not trying to be picky, but he is kind of being picky. Art is one of the few things Steve genuinely loves and puts a great deal of himself into. It matters. "Especially your hands. Hands are a pain in the ass to draw."

As excited as Clint is about the new Avengers marbles tournament (he is already plotting out courses in his head for Stark to build them and wondering if they could have rules for more intense traps than just the usual gravel and sand), he is immediately distracted by Steve’s admonishments.

“You can see them?” Obviously. The guy has super sight. He could probably see the follicles on Clint’s skin, or hear the way his pulse quickens slightly at that thought. And that won’t do. Archery is about breath and pulse control. It’s about stilling one’s self, not getting overly wrapped up in thoughts about the guy drawing you as payment for something to tease one of their friends about later.

Why did he agree to this? It seemed like such a good idea at the start. That was being feelings got themselves dredged up.

“Phil’s the one who taught me not to fidget so much,” Clint continues, smile softening. “He never specified my most pain in the ass body part though. I always got the impression that I was universally a pain in the ass.” He does not chuckle. Chuckling would involve too much movement.

They're going to have to bring it up at the next team meeting because as much as Steve enjoys Mario Kart and Jack Box Games, it's about time he taught the team some of the classics. They're still fun even if the marbles aren't bluetooth and radio controlled.

"I can see some of them," Steve corrects, mostly himself. "In the bigger muscles, around your forearms. Your hands. I'm also paying close attention. Might miss it otherwise."

All of Clint is on display too. He can't hide behind the vest and braces. It's an interesting fact to learn. Steve might have to adjust some of the ways he's been using Clint in the field after this.

"Tony's a bigger pain in the ass," he argues. "You aren't fundamentally against following orders but you will act when you think I'm making a bad call. Tony's used to leading himself, harder to bring into a team."

Not that Tony can't work with a team, he's just not as good at it as Clint is. Natasha's fairly independent in the same way. He's given up on ever fully controlling the Hulk. Thor's a fairly decent team player but Clint's the one Steve can usually rely on.

"You and Coulson worked together a lot?" he asks, carefully. He doesn't want to step in any minefields here but he never got much of a chance to know Coulson, outside of the fact he was someone Steve was proud to inspire.

Clint might be the guy with all the secrets, unwilling to openly share and usually just there to offer a tease or some comic relief or, if people aren’t on their toes, some canon fodder to really spice a mission up, but he’s got a big heart and it’s just as scarred as his body is. You don’t spend years being told to kill people, even bad people, for a living without building impressive calluses.

The archer likes being named dropped as reliable. He likes that Steve thinks of him as a team player. He wants to be thought of as friendly but competent. Someone who doesn’t need to be micromanaged because he can be trusted to take orders well and act on the fly when the situation changes.

He doesn’t take the easy bait about Stark. He loves ripping on Tony but they’re talking about Phil now. Even though Phil saw more in Tony than anyone ever had before (except maybe for Pepper), he doesn’t want to conflate the two.

Phil is a sacred topic.

“He saved my life. Not just in the literal sense but I wasn’t really the great guy you know me to be today back when he found me. He was so much more than just a handler— Shifting my right thigh,” he interrupts himself for many reasons. That train of that is not a good one and he does need to micro flex to keep from being stiff. “It was kind of his thing. He saw potential in a lot of people and brought it out of them. So the stuff you said about relying on me? That was because of Phil.”

Steve takes that moment to listen, really listen, to what Clint is saying about Coulson. He thinks he might have seen it too, the good in Clint, that Coulson saw. He likes to think he would have. It's pretty obvious to see now.

He's read Clint's file. He knows his history and what sort of life he lived before SHIELD. There's nothing wrong with that. People can turn their lives around. Who he was back then is not who he is now. It's not who he made himself with the help of a man who took a chance.

"It sounds like you were friends too. Outside of SHIELD, I mean." Steve has no idea what Clint's life is like outside of work. The Avengers hang out together and do stuff together but when they're apart it's kind of a mystery how everyone keeps themselves busy.

He imagines everyone else is better about having a life that he is. He's pretty terrible at doing more than work and training. "You don't have to tell me all the details. Or tell me anything at all if you don't want to. Talking to subjects wasn't exactly what we were supposed to do in art school but I liked to get to know the model if I could. It makes the art more life like to know them."

“Family,” Clint corrects immediately. Phil wasn’t just his friend. Just like Tasha isn’t just his friend. And, maybe, one day Steve can be brought into that circle too. Clint had already said the guy was family (you don’t do the things the Avengers do together without the moniker) but there are different degrees of it.

There’s not too many people in this world who Clint can genuinely trust in that way. And Phil has left such a big, massive gap in his life.

“Left elbow, I can move it back to exactly where it was,” Clint says before he exhales slowly through his nostrils. “I don’t mind talking. No one ever asks. They speculate. I let them. I get that I’m a subject and a model right now, woo-woo but we are still us. Even if you’re staring at my naked body.”

He can’t help but joke.

“And oh my god I can use the line!” Yay!! “I don’t want to be like one of your French girls.” He can’t help but laugh now, shoulders quaking. “Ah shit sorry for the moving.”

Edited 2023-01-21 18:03 (UTC)

In this line of work, saving the world, the people you worked with did become family. Steve privately thinks of the Avengers as his family like he thought of the Commandos as his family. He's talked about them as friends in public but kept the family thing to himself. It makes him smile to hear Clint say the word.

"If you don't, I'll fix it." Steve pauses after a second of thought. "If you're okay with me touching you like that."

Clint is not a professional artist's model. He might not actually want Steve to put hands on him to direct his poses.

"I've probably seen more nude bodies than most people assume," he says with a casual shrug. "There were all sorts of models at art school. Lots of folks were willing to take their clothes off for a few extra bucks during the Depression."

All sorts of body types too. Not just the classical Greek forms that everyone assumed artists loved. Thick. Short. Tall. Thin. Muscles. Flat chests. Big chests. Steve seen all body types during his time in school.

He rolls his eyes. "I don't get the reference."

Snorting, Clint finds himself blinking at the wall of free weights. Steve’s from a time when consent wasn’t really a thing but he’s picked up on it quickly. “You can move me however you need me,” Clint says, trying not to sound any particular way about it. “I’m not adverse to being touched.”

Maybe he didn’t need to clarify it to that extent actually, but oh well. It was said. He can’t unsay it. Steve probably already thinks he’s weird. He’ll blame the six pack he’d been enjoying while texting Steve an hour before if he has to.

“Bet you were around a lot of naked guys during the war too. Can’t imagine you had private showers in the trenches. Man, that must have been smelly.” He chuckles again and chides himself.

Stop moving, Barton!

“Man, there’s a lot going on the list, Steve. Marbles. High wire. Titanic. You’re gonna love it. It’s actually pretty great. I used to be such a movie guy before I started hanging out on rooftops.”

Weird is relative when he lives with a Norse God, the Hulk, and Tony Stark. To Steve, Clint's one of the more normal operatives he's met. He's certainly more normal than Natasha. Not that he has anything against Natasha.

"We didn't have showers at all in the trenches." Steve rarely, if ever, talks about the war. He's told the occasional story about the Commandos but he tries very hard and very deliberately to not talk about the war itself. It's not... it's not good. "Mostly saw the Commandos naked. Gabe used to joke we were more married than FDR and his wife."

And they had been. They lived out of each other's pockets. It was damn hard sometimes but Steve missed them so much sometimes it was a living ache in him. Like right now, he starts to slow in his sketching as he falls back into those memories.

Then he snaps himself out of it and buries it again.

"The Titanic was recent history for me, you know." He is very deliberately changing the subject. Steve doesn't talk about the war. "I was born only six years after it sank. I take it they made it into a movie sometime while I was under the ice?"

Clint might not have super hearing to detect the change in someone’s voice to the extent that Steve does, and he might not have the type of training Nat does to read voice changes and body language, but he had been a grifter. He’d been an athlete. He’d been an orphan fighting to live in a society that tried to keep him down. And he’d been a brother. That gave him more practice at this than anything.

“They did and we don’t ever have to see it,” Clint says. “And we don’t have to keep veering into conversations about the War either.” Now, he could have changed the subject and glossed over it since that’s what men are supposed to do, but Clint is a modern man, in touch with his feelings, and he sees no shame in spelling out to Steve in words and not just brushed over silence that he’s in a safe space.

They can start with baby steps. That’s how friendships are fought for and won. That, and through bowls of Mac and cheese and lots and lots of patience.

”Nat said you’re a baseball fan. Did they use to sell hotdogs when you used to go? That’s my favorite part. And Cracker Jacks. My brother and I used to sneak in.”

And sneak concessions too. The memory makes him smile.

Steve shrugs like it doesn't bother him. It's part of his life and he won't ever get away from it. The problem is that everyone thinks the war was all exciting missions and kicking Hydra ass. That was a part of it but it was also unspeakable horrors and heartbreaking tragedies. It's war and there's nothing really good about it.

"The war will come up. It always does when I talk about the past. I'll... stop when I don't want to talk about something." Steve can be pretty firm on that. "It's not like you're digging on purpose. Some people don't care and just talk about it like it's an action movie. Not something that happened to real people."

Happened to real people and cost those real people dearly. He hates it when people forget that. Clint's not like that. He knows that. He's working on trusting them all outside the field. If they can watch his back against alien invaders and super villains, he can talk about some of the bad times in his life with them.

Baseball, though, that's a surefire way to get Steve excited. "I love baseball. Bucky and I snuck in once or twice. Mostly we listened on the radio. When he had tickets they were in the nose bleeds. But I loved it. Still mad about the Dodgers."

Seriously, the Dodgers playing in LA felt like a personal betrayal. Steve is so frustrated over that one. "And I'm not going to root for the Yankees. Fuck those rich bastards."

“So go for the Mets,” Clint says, simpering at Steve’s strong choice of words enough to dislodge his footing. He shifts and then tries to shift back into place, still somewhat distracted by patting himself on the back for knowing the names of the teams of his adopted home.

He doesn’t really remember what team they rooted for as kids in Waverly. White Sox? Cubs? They’d moved around so much after their parents died that he honestly didn’t know anymore. And there’s no one left to even ask.

“I love that we were both childhood baseball delinquents,” Clint says, jazzed by the fact that Steve himself is more excited now.

He’s going to have to learn baseball if it means he can get Steve to turn into a ball of sunshine at the mere mention of it.

"Don't pretend the Mets are a fair replacement." Steve has very strong feelings about baseball and baseball teams. He's one of those fans about baseball. If pressured he can still rattle off stats about his favorite players and many of the games he saw in person. "I gotta root for them because they're the only other team in New York but that doesn't mean they're the Dodgers."

He chuckles as he hunches forward to work on a small detail. He doesn't need to move his eyes closer to the page for better vision these days it's a habit he can't break himself of. Steve drew this way for decades. He's not stopping now just because his eyes work.

"I think Bucky and I could afford tickets maybe twice in our lives. We had to sneak in. And I was a pretty well known neighborhood problem just for the amount of fights I got in." They were for the right reasons every single time and sometimes just bigger kids picking on him but Steve was known around the tenements. This pure image he had was from folks who talked him up after he was gone and frozen.

He leans back and studies the drawing, apparently satisfied. "One of these days, folks will get it through their heads I'm not that nice."

“Hey, wow. I’ll let you bad talk the Mets,” because he gives no shits, “but I’m not gonna let you bad talk Steve Rogers. First of all, that guy is a treasure. Have you seen him smile? Treasure. Pure gold. Second of all, he actually listens, which is better than just about everyone else I know. And he doesn’t pre-judge. That’s insane!. That’s rare! Oh, and he’s talented as all fuck. He drew me as Robin Hood! Robin. Fucking. Hood. The genius that takes? Wow. So no, sir. I will not stand here and listen to you bad mouth that guy. Apologize to me right now.”

He shouldn’t be having so much standing naked in the gym with nachos going woefully cold being a smart ass, but here he is. Tasha is never going to believe the night he’s been having and when he tells her, she’s going to have him committed for the sheer lunacy of it.

That thought alone has him even more giddy and he nearly releases the string of the bow. All that does is remind him that the string of his bow is digging into his fingers and rubbing against his cheek uncomfortably though.

Aww, no.

And that starts a chain reaction that makes him think he might have to sneeze. It’s a good thing Steve can’t see the purely ridiculous faces he’s making.

Steve has a moment of just staring at Clint after that whole speech.

"Clint... are you drunk?"

Because yes, Clint can be goofy but he's not what Steve would call wordy. He's usually to the point like an arrow. Clever sometimes and goofy now and then but wordy? No.

Wordy is for Tony and Thor who really like the sound of their own voices. That's probably the most he's heard Clint talk all at once in almost as long as he's known the man.

"I mean, thank you as well. It's very kind of you." Steve's forgotten all about the nachos in his drawing efforts. He's got the line of Clint's back and most of his shoulders but the muscles are so different he's getting lost in the details.

He should've been paying more attention to Clint's state.

Oh no. Lie? He’s good at lying. He can partially lie, seeing as how Steve’s already clocked him for the alcohol, and drinking alone on a Friday night is leaps and bounds better than saying he finds genuine joy in Steve’s company and might be a little nervous.

“Maybe. I’d say tipsy.“

Truthfully though, Clint has always had a running commentary, and not just in his head. It’s just that he is often overlooked. When has Steve spent any time with him alone? Clint sinks into the background. He’s there for a good one liner, usually at Stark’s expense, and otherwise, he’s that dark jacketed man sitting on the edge of the jumpseat in the quinjet sending texts. He watches. He talks to Nat because she’s the only one interested in what he had to say during non-mission critical circumstances.

Clint lets the string go and he straightens up. For a supposed drunk man, he’s kept rather perfect balance. Dropping his bow arm, he turns slightly to look back at Steve, still sat in his chair, sketch book on his knee, looking perfect as always.

“Why? Should I have brought you down a beer?”

"No, I didn't realize is all."

Steve's not naive. They're both up in the middle of the night. Clearly, they've both got trouble sleeping. He doesn't think Clint's using alcohol to help him sleep. He's not that sort of man.

Still, he might have been trying to have fun or something. Probably had his own plans for distracting himself from his inability to sleep. Steve didn't mean to butt in with his request for a live art model.

"I hope I didn't interrupt your evening." They all keep odd hours. Sometimes he's spent time with Nat like this, though usually she tries to frustrate and embarrass him with social media things.

Another person would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that Steve just isn’t interested in spending time with them. Or might overanalyze the look on Steve’s face and take offense. Clint isn’t like that. Sure, he’s off his Dark And Mysterious Assassin game right now but that’s because he doesn’t always want to play it.

He’s not a good man. He’d gotten himself out of childhood trauma and tried to look after his brother in the wrong way. He’d been a thief. He is still a murderer. He’s a weapon, though he usually gets pointed at the right people for the right reasons now. And that’s a relief. Does it keep him up at night? Sometimes. Mostly, though, he just gets lonely. When Tasha is out on a mission, that’s when the loneliness gets the better of him.

Maybe that’s why he started texting Steve nonsense about frozen food and black eyes. He’d been wanting an opportunity to get to know Steve for a long time. The beers just helped him break the ice.

Clint’s eyes are soft. His smile is softer, even with the strong light bathing him more harshly than he might have wanted. It’s hard to hide when you’re naked in the middle of the room anyway.

“You’ve been the best part of my evening, man.”

Steve looks genuinely surprised. He still feels out of place when he's not leading the team. Being Captain America, being the leader, that's the thing he knows best and knows really well. How to be Steve around the Avengers? That's a little harder when he's still figuring out where he fits in the modern world as a person and not just a figure.

"I'm glad," he says once the surprise settles into a pleasant feeling. "I thought you might have just been humoring me. Or something."

He gets up and walks over to Clint. "Here. The fruits of your standing there."

It's a damn good sketch. There's no way to tell it's Clint because the head is just basically a shaded shape. The shoulders, back, and hips are well defined and while the shading's been interrupted by this conversation the few parts that are done are incredibly detailed. Steve's pretty good at working fast.

"When I say you've got a unique muscle structure, I mean it." He seems a little sheepish almost to show Clint some of his real life work instead of silly cartoons.

“I thought you were humoring me!” Clint scoffs, setting the end of the bow by his right foot when he sees Steve shifting to stand. He’s happy to have been someone to make the guy smile like that. He’s got an unending supply of atonement to get through but it feels like Steve knocked out a pretty good chunk with that look alone.

He tilts his head to look at what Steve’s got and feels an unexpected blush creep over him. Do toes and knees blush? Seems so because he’s getting blotchy everywhere and the heat roiling over his skin is intense. Damn. He needs more poker lessons from Tasha if he can’t even contain himself over some pencil on paper!

The boisterous, quick to tease archer has been officially replaced with the guy Steve knows best. If he hadn’t been right there casting a shadow and burning up from within, one might lose track of him standing so very still without breathing.

“God damn,” he finally manages because silence, especially after being presented with a mother fucking piece of godlike art like this, would sour the whole thing. “This sure as hell isn’t part of your Picasso phase.”

Clint’s nose wrinkles slightly.

“It’s cool to be flattered right? Because I kind of feel like…” Jesus Christ, he’s not some infatuated school girl so what the hell is up with the tightness in his chest? “Shit. Gotta tell Tony my ego’s bigger than his now. That’s real talent.”

Edited 2023-01-22 00:59 (UTC)

"I was humoring you about the boxers thing," he admits with a small shrug. That was a really silly and strange conversation. Someone put his face all over boxers that will go over strangers' dicks. He really thinks the future is wild sometimes.

He chuckles softly, ducking his head forward. "Picasso did some really great normal figure drawings before he found his style. You also really have to understand form to twist it up like that. Besides, that's painting."

Which Steve hasn't done since being defrosted. He has the supplies. He has some really nice supplies but he hasn't found the will to paint something. Sketching is all he's done in terms of art.

If Clint's bragging means Tony starts to harass him about being a model and getting a sketch Steve's going to be a little annoyed. Tony would be terrible, not because he's not handsome and well muscled but because he would not sit still the way Steve needs.

"You should take a break though. I could tell you were getting stiff towards the end there." Steve might not finish the drawing ever. He might just leave it in its unfinished state. It's practice.

Oh good. Let’s talk about Picasso and the boxers and not about Clint Barton’s strange new embarrassment that he is never going to deal with and just shove on down into the muck with the rest until he gets drunk with Tash and laments his stupidity for having thought he could be normal for once.

He’s only half listening to the blond, his eyes darting from the sketch to the door and the skylight. It’s perfectly normal to analyze escape routes and leave perfectly good jokes hanging on the vine to shrivel up and die.

After a brief moment trying to figure out if he’s having an aneurism, the tightness in Clint’s chest lets go and his smile returns.

“I don’t have to take a break. I could just sit down and you could draw that. Just put me in a pose where nacho eating isn’t going to be a problem for you.”

"Oh! Your nachos!" Steve absolutely forgot about them while he was sketching. "I should have let you eat before I made you pose. You really are too nice to me. You guys know it's okay to say no to me, right?"

Steve wasn't the leader all the time. The team could tell him to fuck off if they wanted when they were not in the field.

He takes the sketchbook back and carefully folds it closed before he tosses it down to the ground. Clint really shouldn't worry that much. Steve isn't aware Clint's been behaving strangely or that he's embarrassed. What he sees is a tipsy friend who really should eat to absorb some of that alcohol.

"We can both sit and share the nachos. They'll be plenty of time to sketch." He picks up Clint's robe and the plate of nachos. The robe gets offered to Clint first and once that's on, Steve offers him the nachos.

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