"-morose," Arthur says as he slips up behind Barton at a party for Stark. His presence was a surprise, he wasn't supposed to be back for another week, but word about a Stark party travels far and fast, even reaches certain corners of Antarctica if it needs to. Sure, that technically meant he wasn't invited, but he generally wasn't to these parties. "C'mon, Stark has the best free alcohol."
"-impulsive! I almost had him." Arthur nearly yells, ducking for cover on a roof. So much for his casual business meeting. Still, it was good to have another capable body at his back.
"Four o'clock, about 350 yards, mind the light breeze coming in from the southwest."
"-tempting." Arthur mutters, not taking his eyes off the man stretching in [their] his room. He should be packing, he needed to be in Beijing by morning, but Clint's shirt has ridden up just enough to expose the muscle below, a bruise from the other night peaking from his hip, and Arthur finds himself putting down his briefcase and undoing his tie instead.
"-hard to leave." he whispers into Clint's hair early in the morning. His flight leaves in an hour, and he absolutely cannot miss it this time, but the bed was so warm, and he knew he wouldn't be warm again until he came back a week or so from now.
"But actually," Arthur murmurs as he kisses Clint's sleeping form, "never change."
The words are distant, masked in wispy layers of sleep and dream, and Arthur can only hope they reach the man's subconscious.
He'd been coming out of the dark, slowly, tentatively, like a fawn stretching its legs for the first time on the meadow. Ready to bolt at the first sign of danger, to sink back into the dark that offered protection, safety. These things, this fear, was kept as well as was possible from Arthur, hidden underneath the mask of normalcy and routine. He'd not found it hard to build this mask; Clint had always been a rash man of strong personality; it was truly a simple matter to make things appear like they'd used to be.
Arthur's continued presence helped.
That's what made it hard to lie. That's what made it hard to realize how easy it was to do the lying; even to Arthur's face. The lies only ever really became vocal somewhere along the lines of "yeah, I'm fine" and "laugh laugh laugh" and "smirk smirk smirk", but the lies were still there. And he didn't believe for a moment that Arthur believed them; the man was a genius in comparison to Clint's uneducated, unlearned mind; more than anything, he was probably just being tolerated as a damaged mouse trying to find its foot again all on its own terms.
So, he lived as if things were normal again. Good and okay. He relished every minute he was given with the other man, finding that he'd grown to enjoy his company even more because of the uneven schedule they had. Arthur rarely asked questions, rarely pushed, rarely let the closed lips push him away like Clint might fear. He kept his back, came when called, helped when he was needed, fought when he was asked (and sometimes even when not), kissed when welcome and fucked when they needed it.
He didn't hear Arthur's words in any conventional sense. Sleep had wrangled the archer too deep this time, spurred by a quiet fear he'd not relayed to Arthur that would come up every time he left for his work. Sleep didn't mean comfort, and it didn't mean gentility-- oftentimes, as of late, it meant nightmares, or the sorts of dreams that left you nervous throughout the rest of the day.
The statement bypassed any conscious understanding or acknowledgement, past any personal opinion of those pre-arranged words-- they went straight to the basest part of Clint's mind, settling in without fighting around any of the normally-kept brambles.
Arthur might not have seen it, might not have made note of the very, very subtle relaxation of muscle beneath the skin of Clint's shoulder, but it was there all the same, and sleep was eased into something smoother and more kind.
