sheeplikeme

[sheeplikeme]

prompt fill! i got two requests for clint barton and the prompt "i did good, right?" but one of them asked for clint and frank, so here's a short fic about frank castle and clint barton meeting in a war zone.

warnings for some references to torture, but nothing too graphic.

---

Frank doesn’t work with SHIELD often, but their paths cross occasionally. Often enough, anyway, that Frank learns SHIELD controls access to the best sniper alive.

Sometimes, when they’re lucky, Cerberus gets to secure that sniper’s nests. They don’t get as many chances as Frank would like, but his team knows their hunting grounds better than anyone else, so they get exactly four opportunities to watch the sniper work.

Frank’s on three missions with the guy before he ever sees his face, and it’s a shock, finally, when he matches those beautiful shots to the friendly blonde mess of him, all those lanky limbs and scattershot freckles and lingering Midwestern vowels.

“Your fucking aim,” Frank tells him, because Russo’s been charming him for fifteen minutes, but all Frank can think about are the angles, and the drop, and the unholy gift of this guy’s brain, the precise calculations he runs, his unbelievable capacity for multitracking variables. 

“You should see me with a bow,” the guy says, cheerful and goofy-grinning, and Frank thinks, sure, he’d like to.

But the next time Frank sees him, he’s a body dropping onto the metal floor of a quinjet. A bloody sack of bruised meat half out of uniform, white t-shirt soaked in blood and dragged through dirt, skin ripped beneath it. One eye swollen shut, throat ringed in lapping lines of red and purple.

It’s a waste. Best mind of a generation, best aim of the century.

Frank’s processing the loss of it, grieving all those pristine killshots, and then the sniper breathes in hard and chokes on it, and Frank realizes Jesus, that body’s still alive.

“Rumlow,” the suit says, rolling his eyes, “for fuck’s sake.”

“You fucking carry him,” Rumlow snaps back, wiping his stained hands on his shirt. “He’s been an asshole the whole way.”

The suit crouches down and checks vitals. Pulse and pupils, airway. “Barton,” he says, thumbing open the sniper’s good eye. “Barton,” he says, louder, “you with us? Hey. Barton!”

“Fucking,” Barton says, and then, “Sitwell. Hi.”

“Hey,” he says, “you here?”

Barton licks his busted lips. His eye is open but unfocused, rolling. “Yeah,” he says. “Here.”

“He’s high as shit,” Rumlow reports. “I didn’t see anything broken. Got some bruises.”

“They had him for seventeen hours,” Sitwell says. “Of course there are bruises. What else? We need to document anything Coulson’s going to be sensitive about.”

“He’s fine,” Rumlow says. Sounds petulant. “Didn’t lose any fingers. He’s still got his eyes.”

Beside him, Billy’s completely still. If he thinks they shouldn’t interrupt, he’s probably right. But Frank’s struggling with the fact that the asset reclamation mission he was briefed on was actually a rescue.

“Can we go?” Rumlow asks. “We lost a whole day to this shit.”

Sitwell rises to his feet. He’s in charge here, apparently. Frank’s not impressed with his leadership. “If you’d kept a better eye on him---”

Rumlow throws his hands up. “Not my fucking job. I did my job. He got grabbed. That’s his shit.”

“I’m sure Coulson will be very reassured to hear that,” Sitwell says. “And very willing, naturally, to lend his agent out in the future.”

“So get us our own sniper, and we won’t have to deal with this shit again.”

This shit is still semi-conscious on the floor. He flinches when Sitwell steps past him, whacks his head against a metal post.

“Jesus,” Rumlow says, “this guy.”

He reaches down, fists his hand in what’s left of the sniper’s shirt, and drags him to the center aisle. Frank studies the smear of blood on metal, thinks, if this were his team, he’d throw Rumlow to the ground instead. Or maybe out of the back of the plane.

“He should be secured,” Frank says.

“Yeah, that was kinda the whole fucking problem,” Rumlow replies. “He never fucking stays where you put him.”

There were never any issues on the missions Frank ran. But there usually aren’t.

“For takeoff,” Frank clarifies. “So you don’t concuss the guy we just raided a compound for.”

Rumlow shrugs. “He’s already concussed.”

Billy breathes in. He shifts, just a little, leans his shoulder into Frank. It’s a warning, probably, but Frank doesn’t listen.

“You know anything about second impact syndrome?” he asks.

Rumlow rolls his eyes. “Christ.”

“You want a demonstration?” Frank says.

“Who the fuck are you?” Rumlow asks. “Some loaner boots we picked up? Look, asshole---”

“Secure your fucking sniper,” Frank says.

“Or fucking what?”

“Gentlemen,” Sitwell says, leaning back from the cockpit to glare at them.

“Who is this fucking guy?” Rumlow asks, gesturing toward Frank in a way that makes Frank want to break every single one of his fingers. And then possibly his neck.

Sitwell looks at Frank, looks at Billy, and then looks back to Rumlow. “Looks like the guy who’s about to give you two weeks of medical leave, Rumlow. I don’t know who they are. Coulson requisitioned them personally, though, so you can put those puzzle pieces together yourself.”

Frank doesn’t know who Coulson is, but he’s the only name that seems to give Rumlow any kind of pause. When he looks back toward Frank, that name weighs on him enough that he opts not to engage further.

“This shithead missed evac,” Rumlow says, “and ruined my whole Goddamn weekend. So if you wanna fuss over him, feel free. But I’m done babysitting.”

He turns his back, and Frank thinks about punching in him the head. But Rumlow has more men on this plane than he does, and Frank’s not here to fix SHIELD’s fuckups for them.

“C’mon,” he says, instead, as he crouches down next to the sniper, “let’s get you up.”

Seventeen hours, Frank thinks, and this guy’s wearing every single one of those hours on his skin. Someone beat the absolute shit out of him.

“Oh, hey,” the sniper says, squinting up at him and Billy with his good eye. “The hot Marines are here. Nice.”

Frank glances up at Billy, who just shrugs, like, Fuck off, Frank, you know who we are.

“Yeah,” Frank says, because he might as well. “Let’s get you ready for takeoff, huh?”

The sniper hums. “Hell yeah, this place sucks.”

It takes some careful maneuvering, and some help from Billy, but they get him upright and slumped between them, buckled enough to hold.

He wheezes when he breathes. He shakes a little, sometimes, from the cold or the comedown or both. He gets less and less vertical until his head is fully on Frank’s shoulder, both eyes closed, swaying.

Twenty minutes into the flight, his fingers twitch and then tighten against Frank’s hip, and he says, quiet enough that probably nobody but Billy hears, “That fucking sucked.”

“Yeah,” Frank says, and then, “sure.”

Because yeah, sure. Looks like it really, really did.

“I did okay though, right?” he asks, murmuring it into Frank’s neck, frayed out and bloodied and still dazed by whatever they gave him. “I did good?”

“Sure,” Frank says, and he thinks maybe he’s going to fight Rumlow after all. Maybe, after they land, after they get this sniper to someone who knows enough to care about him, Frank’s gonna drag Rumlow from one side of the runway to the other until his arms get tired. “You did, yeah.”

[sheeplikeme]

ít's finally done! this is a redraw of this 2022 piece. i can't believe it's been 3,5 years since then!

[sheeplikeme]

Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

[sheeplikeme]

god or whatever the fuck watching Joe and Nicky fully about to murder each other for the first time during The Crusades

[sheeplikeme]

[sheeplikeme]

so I have a really unusual first name /last name combo and I don't think anyone else has it, so I'm curious what it's like for other people

Please reblog to reach more people!

PSA: do NOT share your full legal name on this post, please stay safe

[sheeplikeme]

[sheeplikeme]

[sheeplikeme]

I did not realise how many of the blogs I follow were from the OG Robron days because my dash has been wild these past 24 hours. I love that we've all been off, vibing in other fandoms and then boom, collective losing it.

[sheeplikeme]

Pokemon trainer Eddie! 💜🦇👻

[sheeplikeme]

Art by Aaron Hong

[sheeplikeme]

[sheeplikeme]

"the magnus archives sounds cool! what are the content warnings?"

[sheeplikeme]

odyssey medic crew

[sheeplikeme]

happy last same year as it was yesterday 2024 tuesday

todays the only/last day you can reblog this lol

[sheeplikeme]

I think you may be on to something about the domination. Because Max to date only pulls that domination act twice with Tristan: episode 1 and then episode 7 after the threesome when he keeps using Tristan's job title of Nurse to shut him down.

I personally read that as Max exerting control within their professional relationship as a way to counteract the very much lack of control he was feeling within their personal relationship.

Tristan going to immediately sunbathe on the pool deck to get male attention after Max's rejection also says something. He could have also easily gone to either Avery or Vivian if he wanted attention too but he made a deliberate choice to seek out attention from men.

do y'all think max has realized he was flirting with tristan HARD in the first episode or nah? Because I think, arguably, that tristan is the one that's the most blind about their whole throuple situation, with avery clearly being the one most aware since she's doing everything to make it happen (hell yeah, get it), but max is also clearly not fully aware of his attraction to men.

But his and tristan's discussion in his room in the first episode screamed "please let me fuck you, pretty please, you're so pretty omg" which is.... definitely not very heterosexual of him

(although to me tristan is very aware of his possible bisexuality, he's just blind about max specifically, partly because he has an avery filter on and partly because of the whole max is their superior thing)

[sheeplikeme]

The Fall (2006)