breaking my own rules

[schmevil]

I don't post unfinished stories unless I've well and truly given up on them. I haven't given up on this one, but I am pretty stymied as to how it's going to play out. I figured, why not go in for some public humiliation? Maybe it'll motivate me to finish it! (Will be archived over at martianhouse when complete).

For scottyquick who wanted Steve talking about his sexuality. I haven't got to that part yet, but I hope you'll be satisfied with some cliche romcom-ness and bromance in the meantime.


Title: Big Gay American Love Story (1/2, WiP!)
Fandom: Avengers
Characters: Clint/Bobbi, Steve/Tony, Rhodey
Word Count: 5144
Summary: Steve is spending a lot of time at Tony's place. Clint thinks there's something going on.


When dinosaurs roamed the earth, Cap showed up in LA to help. That was Tuesday. On Wednesday, some joker with a freeze-ray crashed the set of Tom Cruise's latest. On Thursday the fridge broke down, and while that shouldn't rank with the antics of costumed jackasses, it absolutely did. Friday started out quiet, with him and Bobbi heading to the park for a picnic, but took a sudden turn to awesome, when a hot chick set herself on fire and challenged Bobbi to throw down. The following week there were lizard people, a time traveller, and dimension-hopping mice to deal with.

It was two weeks before Clint found out that Steve had never left LA, and that he'd been sleeping on Tony's couch the whole time.

Tuesday, two weeks after the dinosaur invasion, the time travelling idiot was back, this time with reinforcements. It was an all hands on deck situation: the Avengers, the Defenders and every other Californian superhero showed up for the festivities. Clint had long ago settled in as team leader of the Avengers, but forty plus heroes and wanna heroes, some of whom he'd never even heard of - the Green Skittle? Seriously? - was more than he was used to leading.

That is, until Cap showed up and everything fell into place.

It was easy to quash his momentary jealousy in the face of a stuttering, blushing Steve Rogers. Of course, the quashing came after the fight: after Cap took charge, like he always did, and Clint chafed under his leadership, like he sometimes (not always) did; after the time travellers were sent packing; and after some not so nice words were exchanged. Or rather, after Clint said some dick things and Steve simply frowned at him disapprovingly, in that infuriating way he had.

"I don't need you to check up on me."

"I wasn't checking up on you," Steve said. His nerves were obviously frayed, because it was bitchier than he usually sounded. Almost snide.

They were arguing on the hill where the time travellers had made their last stand. Most of the heroes had already taken off, and the few stragglers were now all but running away. The only one actually moving closer to them, was Iron Man. He landed beside them with a thump, and raised his gauntleted hands.

"This isn't the time, and it definitely isn't the place." Rhodey's voice didn't sound much different than Tony's ever had - it was downright creepy. Clint would have made an incredibly snappy, and probably hilarious comment about it, if he hadn't been busy yelling at Cap.

"I've been leading this team for two years, now. I don't need you showing up and undermining-"

"Check your ego, mister. None of this is about you."

"Guys," Rhodey tried again, only to be drowned out.

"Of course not. Pardon me for thinking that something involving my team, and my town, would involve - guess who? - me."

"When people are in danger, I don't stop to consider if it might be better to stay home and let Hawkeye get all the glory." And that, that right there? That was snide. That was Steve at his pettiest, big brotherly worst.

"I had things under control," Clint blurted out, and Steve should have said, 'No you didn't', but he couldn't, because Rhodey got between them.

"This is done. You," he pointed to Clint and then to Steve, "And you are getting out of here." You didn't argue with an Iron Man armor, not this close up, when you were an ordinary guy with a bow and arrow, or a shield. Clint was Clint, and he did it anyway. Or tried to.

"But-"

"I'll deal with the press," Rhodey said, taking away Clint's last legitimate avenue of protest. Clint scowled at both of them, stashed his bow with the rest of his gear, and was prepared to walk away (not in a huff), when Rhodey stopped Cap with an armored hand on his shoulder. Clint held back too, to eavesdrop. This, he could admit to without guilt.

"Cap? Tony should be home by now."

"Thanks, Iron Man," Steve said. Rhodey nodded to him, then pushed off to wrangle the scrum of reporters that was gathering at the base of the hill.

Rhodey hated dealing with the press. He'd hated it when he worked for Tony, and he hated it even more now that he'd taken his former boss's place as Iron Man. Clint was half convinced that one of these days he was going to send a wave of repulsor blasts into a crowd of 'soul sucking vultures', just on general principle. Rhodey loathed the press, and yet he was herding Clint and Steve away from the area, and volunteering to deal with them himself. That was interesting.

Clint was not a stupid man. If you asked his opinion, he was damn far from stupid, and that should be obvious to anyone (and why were you even asking?). So he put that interesting thing together with some other interesting things, and came up with this:

"You playing house with Tony?" It was a joke of course, and he put some extra snide into it, for his trouble. A joke that was suddenly not funny, and instead baffling, when Steve blushed under the cowl and stuttered out a denial. The denial turned into a mumble, which turned into a comment that he should get going, because he and Tony were supposed to be having dinner.

To which Clint could only respond, "Yeah, ok." All the fight was drained out of him - a shy and embarrassed Steve could do that to a guy - and instead he was just left confused. Steve trundled off to have dinner in Tony's ridiculous robot mansion, and Clint went back to base, to have dinner with his ridiculously hot wife.

"So, Steve's still in town," he said to Bobbi, during dinner.

"Kind of hard not to notice," she said around a mouthful of salad. His was an awesome wife, one full of sarcasm and unconcerned, natural hotness.

"He's staying with Tony."

"Oh," she said, then immediately set to chewing another forkful of salad.

"Yeah." Clint cut off a piece of lasagna, and joined Bobbi in some silent chewing time.

"It's good that they're talking," Bobbi ventured, but she didn't look entirely sure about that. Clint was torn himself.

On the one hand, Steve and Tony had been friends since before Clint had met either of them, but these last two years, they hadn't talked much at all. They weren't fighting exactly, and this couldn't be categorized as making up - not exactly. The thing was, Tony was doing the program, and was hovering around steps eight and nine; tentatively starting to make amends. He hadn't yet tried mending stuff with Clint (if there was in fact stuff in need of mending), and he hoped it would stay that way.

On the other hand, Clint was not about to plumb the depths of his friends various dysfunctions, or get involved in all their numerous dramas. That way lied madness, boredom and general disaffection with them all.

If Tony was ready to play nice again, and Steve was prepared to share his toys, then that was great for them, and Clint wasn't going to get involved. Bobbi was more likely to get involved (Clint swore it was because she was a woman, but not out loud, usually), but she didn't know either of them well enough to do anything about it. Likewise, Simon and Greer weren't about to stage an intervention. And that was good.

Except that Clint had this nagging doubt. This irritating question, hanging out somewhere in his subconscious, next to the whiny voice that wondered why Steve hadn't called him, if he'd been in town all this time. It wasn't any of his business (but then, since when did he respect people's personal boundaries?) but why hadn't Steve called him? Or told him that he was in town? Why hadn't Tony, on their many times a week phone calls? Or during the alien-mice incident, wherein he'd provided a Reed Richarsian last minute solution? And what was so embarrassing about having dinner with one of your oldest friends?

"Rhodey knew about it," he said.

"Well, he's in and out of that house all the time," she pointed out, and that was undeniably true. "And he's Tony's best friend," she added. Then her left eyelid twitched - the same twitch that appeared whenever she realized she'd done something stupid. Bobbi had been one of SHIELD's top agents, before she'd become a superhero. She knew from stupid, but everyone had their bad days.

All of this ran through Clint's head on a parallel track to the much louder protestation that: "I'm Steve's best friend - or at least I thought I was - but he didn't even bother to call me."

"Whoa there, blondie," Bobbi said, holding up her hands. A glob of ricotta cheese dripped from her fork onto the table. "Don't get your panties in a twist."

Clint was indignant. That was probably the best word for it. "I'm not-"

"Yes you are."

"No. I'm not."

Bobbi smiled then, brilliantly. Clint wasn't going to be put off though. "I'm just saying, it's a little strange."

"You're just saying you're jealous of Rhodey's BFFness, is what you're saying."

"Shut up, woman," Clint said. He couldn't stop the smile that no doubt softened his point. "Steve was blushing."

"People do that sometimes. Are you saying Captain America never blushes?"

"Oh for god's sake, you were a spy. You don't see anything strange in Rhodey taking him aside, to tell him that Tony was going to be home for dinner?"

Bobbi's mouth twisted into an adorable moue of concentration. It was his favourite of her thinking-faces. "That is a little strange. You don't think-" Bobbi stopped talking; her hand flew up to cover her mouth.

Clint leaned forward. "What? You don't think what?"

"You don't think they've all been replaced by robots, and 'dinner' is code for something terrible?"

"I hate you."

"Dinner is people!"

"I can't remember why I married you."

"Who do you think they'll try to replace first, Greer or Simon?"

"Thank god you're hot, because otherwise..."

"You did not just say that," Bobbi said, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

"Totally did. You going to do something about it?"

She did, and consequently, Clint didn't think about his friends' latest drama again, until much much later.

When he finally did think about it again, three days later (after foiling a bank robbery and catching a clown-costume-wearing arsonist), he concluded that he should pay Tony a visit. He hadn't actually seen Tony in a month. He'd talked with him on the phone plenty, exchanged texts and emails, and even video-conferenced with him. But he hadn't seen Tony in the flesh in a month, and he hadn't been out to the robot mansion in longer.

He drove out at the next opportunity. Said opportunity coming after a truly sad appearance by the Stilt Man (what he was doing in LA, Clint didn't know), and another one by the Mole Man, who was apparently expanding moley operations westward. Rhodey had confirmed that Steve was at the house again - again, because he'd flown to New York for some east side Avengers business, and then come back. Another quiet day came around, one where Bobbi and Greer had plans, so Clint decided to seize the opportunity that presented itself and drove out.

The robot mansion was right on the ocean - or rather, at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The building itself was attractive enough, as California mansions went, but Clint found all the automation and talking appliances unsettling. He made it past the robot gates, parked in the robot garage (which wished him a good day), and then took the elevator up past two more floors of garage, to the robot hallway.

"Mr. Stark and Mr. Rogers are in the games room," said the mansion's disembodied voice.

"Thanks, house."

"You're welcome, Mr. Barton." Clint didn't even try to suppress the shiver.

Surprisingly, he found them playing pool. Tony hustled a mean game, but he'd never had a pool table in any of his many luxurious robot (but not so robotic as this one) homes. Not so far as Clint knew.

Tony was lining up a shot when Clint walked in. He looked up and smiled, friendly enough. Steve greeted him - friendly but wary.

"Haven't seen you in a while," Tony said.

"Yeah, I figured I'd come up, and make sure the robots hadn't turned on you yet."

"And you heard Steve was in town."

"That too." Rhodey was a traitor. Sure he was Tony's best friend, but the guy code obviously forbade passing on information to the snoopee, about the snooper's activities. Especially when they were so obviously motivated by genuine concern (and not just curiosity). If it wasn't in the guy code, it should be.

Something on Tony beeped - his phone, his watch, there were any number of things that Tony carried on a daily basis that beeped - and then the house chimed in. "Senator Gordon for you, sir."

"I'll take it in my office. Sorry guys." Tony put his cue down on the edge of the table. "Clint, why don't you take over for me?"

"Why don't I turn around this sorry game you've been playing, you mean?"

"Whatever makes you happy, man," Tony said, clapping Clint on the shoulder and disappearing into the robot house's endless corridors. Not before giving Steve this look - a look that he sent right back to Tony, turned up about three more degrees.

"It's your turn," Steve said.

"Yeah, yeah." Clint took up Tony's abandoned cue, and studied the table. The game wasn't actually that bad. Tony did things either very, very well, or incredibly poorly. Blueberry pancakes glued to the kitchen ceiling, poorly. Tony didn't suck at pool. Still, Clint was better. He called his shot, and took it.

"Nice," Steve said, with honest appreciation and a total lack of drama. Clint appreciated that about Steve. He'd grown up in an era when men weren't expected to feel their feelings, much less talk about them in depth. And while he could give stirring speeches, heartfelt pep talks, and comfort you (general you, not Clint, because he wasn't the comfort-needing type), he didn't dwell on stuff. He didn't go in for catharsis or closure, and was usually just as happy to sweep things under the rug, and move on.

He only wanted To Talk, when something major had gone down, and Steve's definition of major was truly big league: mind control, going evil, death of a loved one, serious inability to function in the field, or a general and persistent case of the blues. Those were reasons To Talk. All of that was to say that Steve didn't sweat the small stuff, and Clint really, truly appreciated that about him.

It meant that as long as he didn't push Steve too far, he could get away with stuff that he really shouldn't, by any reasonable measure, be able to get away with. Things like this:

"So, did you rush back to make Tony dinner, or what?"

"What?" Steve asked, rattled enough to not only miss his shot, but to scratch the table. He frowned at the chalky line he'd drawn on the table's surface, and stepped away from it.

"You're spending a lot of time here," Clint said. He started lining up his next shot and only watched Steve from the corner of his eye. He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, and grimaced sheepishly. It wasn't an expression you saw on Steve often.

"I should have let you know I was in town."

"Hey, it's cool. You want to spend all your time playing with Tony's dolls, that's fine by me."

"You mean robots?"

"Robots, dolls. Whatever. Tony's toys." He pointed to a rat-sized robot, that was vacuuming up crumbs near the pool table. "The only person with a bigger fetish for this stuff is Hank."

"Clint," Steve said, his expression going pissy.

Clint held up his hands in surrender. "Anyway. You on vacation?"

Steve sighed, like that was a more complicated question than it was. "Jan insisted that I take some time, and I was in town..."

"So you decided to move in?" Steve looked sheepish again, so Clint pushed on. "It's been weeks. You've never taken that much time off."

"I've been back to New York at least once a week. In fact I've spent more time there, than here."

"You hardly talk to the guy for two years, and now you're crashing on his couch for almost a month?"

"It's a mansion. I'm not sleeping on the couch."

"That doesn't strike you as a little strange?"

"That Tony gave me a room? Not really."

"Now you've really got me curious," Clint said. The crack of the cue ball striking the eight ball was loud - he might have hit it harder than necessary.

"What the hell are you looking for, with this?" Steve said angrily. Clint hadn't set out to push his buttons, but push them he did. "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings by not calling-"

Clint figured, if it was going to be like that, he might as well break out the big guns.

"Oh screw you, Steve. This is about you playing house with Tony," he said. Like last time, the line was a verbal slap in the face, that had Steve blushing. Not stuttering this time, because Clint had managed (he had a gift) to rile him up past his being able to be embarrassed. "You've barely talked to the guy for the whole time we've been out here, and now you're all over him?"

Steve blinked at that - at the unintentionally homoerotic wording, probably, but it was out there now, and Clint was going to stand by it. Then Steve visibly gathered himself, and took the conversation straight out to left field.

"Are you worried about Tony?" That was technically possible, if Clint were say, Pepper Potts or Happy Hogan. Two years sober, and settled into a new life, Tony wasn't someone people worried about - he was resilient, crafty, and tough as nails, when he wasn't self-destructing. And even when he was doing that, he manged to make it almost impossible to be worried about him. Instead you mostly found yourself frustrated, infuriated, or homicidal - like Clint, Tony had a gift.

"Yes, that's it. I'm worried you're going to hurt him," Clint said. Snidely. Definitely snidely. "Please don't bruise him, delicate flower that he is."

Steve blinked at him again, for a couple of seconds, and then laughed. He laughed so hard that he had to put down his cue, and then brace himself against the table with both hands. Clint couldn't help himself at that point - he laughed too.

"Clint," Steve said finally. "This is easily the dumbest argument we've had in years." Clint of course, couldn't let that stand, and they spent the next ten minutes arguing about which of their arguments was, in fact, the dumbest.

By the time Tony came back and asked them if they were interested in some robot-made dinner, they were companionably reminiscing about the good-bad old days. Which was great, as far is it went, but didn't get Clint any closer to his end game. Dinner, though, might be an in, so he excused himself to call Bobbi and tell her he wouldn't be home until late, and joined Steve and Tony in the informal dining room. There were three dining rooms. Ridiculous, Clint sneered to himself.

Originally he'd just been curious, and yes, slightly annoyed at his best friend blowing him off in favour of his other best friend, but the more time he spent thinking on it, the more his curiosity turned into suspicion. And the more suspicious he got, the more he had to know what was going on.

Dinner was a strange affair. The so-called informal dining could seat twelve fully loaded, and was painted black, with obviously expensive hardwood floors, and even more obviously expensive Japanese art. Still, there was a floor to ceiling window over looking the ocean, so it wasn't all cold and creepy. The servers were of course, robots. Dinner itself, was part Steve, part Tony: baked macaroni and cheese, with arugula and artichoke salad. Clint figured his ability to identify all the ingredients in the salad was a sign he'd been in California too long.

Then there was Steve and Tony, who kept throwing each other significant looks. Clint knew significant when he saw it, even if he didn't know what the actual significance was. And there was the touching. They sat clustered around the head of the table, with Tony at the end, Clint on one side of him and Steve on the other. Clint counted no less than eleven accidental touches throughout the course of the meal. Not to mention the strange rustling from under the table that didn't quite sound like Tony's robots.

If he didn't know better...

Later that night, when Bobbi slipped into bed, and curled herself around him, he had a sudden flash of horribly vivid mental pictures. He pushed her away to arms length.

"Clint?" she asked, startled and not a little annoyed. "What's wrong?"

His mouth worked silently for a minute. And then another. He couldn't get it to work, to spit out the words.

"Seriously, you're freaking me out." Bobbi sat up, and leaned over him.

"I think Steve and Tony are gay dating."

"Oh is that all," Bobbi said with a sigh. She flopped onto her back, and scrubbed a hand across her eyes. Then she eyeballed him. It was his second favourite of her thinking-faces: her sexy, super-spy face. He was comforted by the normality and the hotness of it, but not by her utter failure to grasp the point at hand.

"I think they were playing footsie during dinner."

"You're serious."

"Would I joke about something like this?" Bobbi shot him a skeptical look. "Whatever. I'm serious."

"Wow. I mean..." Bobbi trailed off, looking more than a little shell-shocked. "Iron Man and Captain America are gay?"

"Not just gay, gay for each other."

"So, uh. That's new. It's new right?"

"Yes it's new!" Clint had known Steve and Tony for years. Not once had either of them said anything about bisexual tendencies. Either they were having a shared, early mid-life crisis, or they'd both been hiding this. He wasn't sure which was more likely, or frankly which was more unsettling, or even more frankly what the hell the odds were of Cap and Iron Man being gay? Or bicurious, or whatever the cool kids were calling it these days?

"Did they tell you...?"

"No, but it's obvious." Clint laid out the evidence: Steve spending so much time in California; the blushing, touching, and significant glances; the fact that the robots knew and made all of Steve's favourite foods. Although that could have just been Tony being Tony - he wouldn't be surprised if the robots knew all of the Avengers' favourite foods.

When he was done presenting his case, Bobbi just nodded. Like she couldn't fault any of his evidence; like she agreed with him. Clint didn't know if he should be relieved, or even more freaked out.

"Are you... ok with this?"

"What do you mean am I ok with this?"

"Well, it's a new side of Steve," she said carefully.

If she was talking about the gay thing, well, Clint was in the circus. He'd been exposed to alternative lifestyles that haunted him to this day. The less said about Trisha the giant, and her 'parties', the better. And it was hard to be a bigot when Lance and Heinrich the animal trainers were around, being two of the coolest guys Clint had ever met. They taught snakes to jump rope.

So it wasn't the gay thing. In principle.

It wasn't even the gay thing in combination with Steve and Tony. Again, in principle.

It was the fact that he'd known Tony for nearly all of his adult life, and never seen him as anything other than the most heterosexual, red-blooded American male that Clint have ever met. It was also the fact that Steve was Steve and Clint thought he'd known him.

"It's a... surprise."

"Yeah, I guess," Bobbi said simply.

It was strange to think of it now, but Tony was the reason he'd gotten into the superhero thing in the first place, and Steve was the one who'd made him an Avenger. Clint would push for his right to stand beside him, because he'd more than earned it at this point, but-- Not only was Steve too much like the older brother that Clint had never, ever wanted, he was Captain America, and Tony, mad-scientist-womanizing-party-monster Tony, was Iron Man. And that meant something.

Iron Man and Captain America were gay. What were people going to think?

"Clint?"

"Yes, my dearest love?"

"What are you smiling about," Bobbi said nervously.

"This is going to be awesome."

"Oh god." Bobbi turned over and buried her head in the pillow. "Wake me when your nefarious plan has gone horribly awry."

"Awry? My nefarious plans always go exactly as planned."

"Sleeping now," she muttered into her pillow.

"Wait, before I dropped the gay dating bomb - weren't you going to...?"

"Sleeping," she said firmly.

Clint huddled into his own pillow - a poor substitute for Bobbi - and planned.

The next day, near the end of an Avengers/Wrecking Crew throw down, he turned to Iron Man and said, "How long have Steve and Tony been together?"

Rhodey choked inside the armor. The voice modulator turned it into a series of whistles and squeaks. "What?!"

"Relax, "Clint said, casually firing a series of arrows at Piledriver, pining him to a convenient wall, so that Tigra and Mockingbird could tie him up. "I know everything."

"What exactly do you think you know? Dammit-" Rhodey flew away from where Clint was standing.

"Wonder Man!" Iron Man pointed to the Wrecker, who was trying to escape his own bonds. They concentrated their powers on him, to stun him into submission. That was the last of them - four of Thor's own rogue's gallery, taken out by Clint's team, easy as pie. He wasn't going to gloat. Ok, he might gloat later.

After the Wrecking Crew had been turned over to the authorities, the press dealt with (this time they gave that glorious duty to Simon and Greer), and the team debriefed, Rhodey, still in the armor, grabbed Clint's arm and dragged him (but only because Clint let him) into a dark corner of the Avengers base.

Rhodey pushed up the faceplate, so Clint could see his pained expressed. It was vaguely satisfying to see the scared man behind the machine. "Now, what the hell are you talking about?"

"The big gay American romance, you mean?"

"If anything was going on-"

"It is going on, and judging by how much time Steve is spending in that house, it's going on a lot."

"It wouldn't be our business-"

"Steve is my best friend," Clint said. And there he went getting indignant again. "And Tony is yours. If it isn't our business then whose is it?"

"Theirs? If something's going on, they'll tell us when they're ready, and in the meantime-"

"You mean they haven't said anything to you either?" Clint laughed. "Guess you're not as tight with Tony as you thought."

Rhodey frowned at him. It bore a striking resemblance to Steve's Drill Sergeant frown. "Are you trying to piss me off here?"

He wasn't, but it was worth asking. "Are you getting pissed off?"

"I know better than to take you seriously."

Clint opened his mouth to say, 'What's that supposed to mean?' but stopped at Rhodey's smirk. He scowled at him. Were all Iron Men this annoyingly smug?

"In the meantime," Rhodey said again. "It's none of our business. I don't care if they're spending their time crying on each others' shoulders, or braiding each others' hair. I'm not getting involved, and neither are you."

Clint had this problem - this problem with not being able to help himself.

"Look, is Tony even allowed to be in a relationship at this point?" That, it seemed was one of Rhodey's buttons. One of the big ones.

"How are you not getting this?" Rhodey poked his chest with an armored finger. It felt like getting slapped with a sack of bricks. "If I thought he was doing something to jeopardize his recovery, I would be up there in a second. And don't think that because you fought monsters together, that you get to weigh in on his personal life. Tony's not an Avenger anymore. He's a damn national curiosity, and he doesn't need more bull from you."

Oh, though Clint. And also, oh shit.

"Look, I wasn't-"

"Trying to piss me off. Yeah, you're just talented that way. Listen man, sometimes there isn't any harm in not asking or telling. You reading me?"

"Yeah."

"Avengers," Rhodey all but scoffed. "You guys spend too much time living in each others' pockets."

"Too bad you're one of us, now."

"Yeah, too bad. I don't know if you're jealous." And that, apparently was Clint's signal to scoff. "Or feeling left out, or just looking to entertain yourself, but there's a lot at stake here. It doesn't get any more public interest than these two."

"I've been an Avenger for a long time now - you don't have to school me on the evils of reporters."

"Apparently I do, because you seem to think that Tony Stark and Captain freaking America turning out queer is funny, and not a shitstorm waiting to happen."

"Can't it be both?" Rhodey looked downright exasperated, which was exactly where Clint wanted him.

Rhodey was military. Career military, until Tony had given him a better offer. He didn't like smartasses, or costumed people (villainous or heroic), although he was starting to come around. He was a Stark Enterprises veteran, and in Clint's experience, anyone who came out of the military-industrial sector, took years to recover their sense of perspective. Look at Tony. But he was a good guy, for all that he took most everything too seriously, and if he spun it right, Clint figured he could get him to play along.

"Here's the thing..."



TBC