au shenanigans for icasm

[brandingproblem]

there should be a name for this at some point
we'll figure it out shh

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In dreams

[icasm]

Loki doesn't do this all the time. For one thing he, himself, barely sleeps in the first place and both parties being asleep is more or less necessary for it to work.

For another he's not trying to drive Clint mad. Not really. And Midgardians need their dreams. So. It's not an all the time event.

But sometimes. Tonight. Tonight Clint's dreams start out however his subconscious chooses except Loki is there. Present in an un-dreamlike way. A subversive sense of reality wedged into the otherwise unreal.

And so Clint has two options: he can continue the dream and deal with Loki in the time between it's end and Clint being entirely awake. You know. During such sensations as body paralysis. Or he can interrupt his own dream. Direct himself at Loki. See what happens.

Waking up, though? Not on the menu yet.

[brandingproblem]

Dreams of Loki are not unusual.

They are much rarer than they used to be, in the immediate aftermath of his brain being played with. The months and years after. Dreams of Loki had been far too common for his liking. But now? They are few and far between, and they don't become nightmares with any regularity anymore. Just a reminder. Just a fear. Background radiation.

Until recently. Recently, now and again, once in a while. A dream with Loki wrapped within it. Not a focus, not a manifestation of fear or anger. He simply seems to exist around it, in spite of it. Clint hasn't always noticed how strange he is, but now he does. That he sticks out, like he's on a different wavelength or frequency than everything else around him.

Lucid dreaming has never been something he put much stock in. A dream is a dream, forgotten before the clouds in the mind have dissipated fully. In this dream, he is on a hunt. In this dream, he doesn't know what he's hunting, but he knows he's on the right track. This forest is dark and deep and full of animals. He doesn't feel afraid. There's a path under his feet, like asphalt. And Loki is there.

Not the focus. Not the forefront. But he is there, and there is something wrong and something real. Real? Real. In a way that all this is not.

He tries to ignore it for several steps, steps he can't count because time and distance and numbers themselves don't pass in any meaningful way in a dream. But Loki is there, pressing in on this reality. It's wrong. It's all wrong. Is it Loki he's hunting? Has it been all along? There aren't any lights at the end of this road. He can't see the end of the road. The ambient sounds of the woods echo around. Loki is there. There is a moment when he feels like he forgets which way is up, like he might fall right into the sky.

He brings his weapon to bear on Loki. The bow is simple, wood, sturdy and reliable. Worn from use. The arrow is notched. He seems so real. Please, don't be real. His feet step off the path, and somehow that feels wrong. Like he's going to be lost for sure. The bow creaks under his hands. He doesn't loose the arrow. It would go, he knows, right between the eyes. He doesn't loose it.

He's not sure what it all means.

[icasm]

Does he know what happens if Clint looses that arrow? Loki won't be able to dodge it. He is not in control here, not really, which is why Clint has to come to him in the first place. He imagines it won't kill him.

Some sort of enchanted sleep seems likely. Or a coma. Not that there's much of a difference.

To say he'd rather not find out firsthand is putting it lightly.

They're in the woods. Loki has no shoes on; the ground cover is cool beneath his feet. His clothes are loose and he's unarmed.

Upsetting. But he's not in charge, is he?

He could run. He could become the thing Clint is hunting. That would be... interesting. Potentially rather sexually charged, when all is said and done. Loki really only understands certain ways of being prey. But interesting nonetheless.

He's clearly considering it. Eyes shifting to behind Clint towards the path he's turned from. But he hasn't decided and suddenly Clint is too close. He swallows. Not fear. Hesitation. The telltale amusement.

Should I run? Asked but not spoken. An understanding, a voice in Clint's head that is familiar and undemanding both.

[brandingproblem]

It's like deer, Clint suddenly thinks. Quiet, slow, don't spook or they'll run. But this is Loki, and he isn't spooked. But he's got that stare like a deer, and his feet are frozen in place. Is this Clint's prey? Will he run if shot at?

His feet stop, and the sounds of the woods go mute. It's the two of them, now, and there's a voice in his head that aren't words said aloud and aren't in his own voice, and then all he hears is his own breathing, heavier and harder than it has any reason to be. He is hunting. (This is just a dream.) He is hunting Loki. (This is not just a dream.) Is the god really there, is he really whispering in his head, all the little nightmares he put behind him coming back to the forefront? Will he open his eyes, see through an unnatural blue, find that he's out hurting the ones he loves?

This could be the easiest kill. He doesn't even have to use a bow. He could close the distance and pull the knife from his boot and slit. Loki might let him. Loki might want him to.

"Wouldn't be worth the effort if you just stand there all pathetic." He says the words, and they seem distant but distinct, in the strange way dreams feel. (And Loki is not distant and strange. He is something that feels real in unreality. His brain is still trying to parse that. An intrusion? Who is in control here?) "Are you worth my time? Might have bigger game to hunt."

[icasm]

His tongue darts out and wets Loki's lips. Well. He understands the taunt enough, he thinks, hands balling into fists and then dropping open, too aware of Clint's own breathing, a loud pulse corresponding in his own brain.

Not that that is particularly unusual. For Loki, anyway; he's somewhat used to it being drowned out by the noise of existence otherwise. Here, in Clint's mind, it's different.

There's not a solid decision between standing there and fleeing. He doesn't remember turning away from Clint. One moment he's still and the next he's in motion, surrounded by trees, trying not to make much noise, trying to push aside the sense of thrill that overtakes his fear near immediately.

Wanting to be caught is one thing. Wanting to be a good hunt is perhaps not an unrelated other thing.

It's impossible to tell how long he runs for. Hours? Minutes? Long enough for the rules of the nonreality to state that he becomes tired. Exhausted. Thirsty. His hair sticks to the side of his face, his neck. He tries to listen for the hunter but can't focus on it for very long, the need to flee becoming too pressing for him to remain motionless.

There have been close calls already.

His magic is there but inaccessible. Like a river beyond a mountain. No less true but also not helpful in the moment.

There's a ruin, or a cabin, that Loki becomes aware of. A trap, perhaps. Safer than trying to find open water, either way. There's no door, just an archway. Either he will go in and find that Clint is already there or he will go in and be followed. Trapped.

He goes inside.

[brandingproblem]

Loki flees, barefoot, into the underbrush, into the trees, and something in Clint sings. This hunter. Lets the god go for the sake of fairness.

But not too fair.

Because Loki is an intruder unwelcome guest prey monster, and Clint Barton Does Not Miss. When he gives hunting chase, he does not fire, because he wants to run his prey down and then drive him out thoroughly, completely. Sometimes his boot rustles leaves a little too much, and Loki darts off again, just out of sight. It's exciting. He's having fun with this.

He thinks, maybe, that Loki is having fun with this, too.

But this is his mind, his dream, and he knows these woods. Or his mind tells him he knows them. When Loki ducks into the only standing building in the area, he knows this, too. Out in the woods he would run off to when he snuck away from the building full of other kids--out where civilization fell away for at least a little while, but the touch of people still remained. Knew better than to go poking around in dilapidated buildings. Did anyway. The door is gone. Most of the windows are still there but dusted, warped. Clint perches in a tree to observe if Loki will come out, or if he will try to rest there.

Or if he's being baited. One of them is. He can't tell if he's baited Loki to this place or the other way around.

The inside is not the place he once knew, and he doesn't even blink at the change. Dreams are changeable, strange, shift around and simply make sense to the dreamer. This is not a dilapidated, run down building. This is a barn. This is his barn. And it simply does not strike him to question how they changed states so quickly.

He raises his weapon again.

"I've done this before," he states out in the open. "Hunted you down. Killed you. Tried to." In dreams. They don't always end so well for him. (They usually don't. But sometimes, sometimes they do.)

"Haven't done this before." Whatever the fuck they're doing now. Loki, real Loki, real Loki here and running and hiding and prey and letting himself be prey.

[icasm]

Have you? A question, but not a demand for an explanation, from nowhere and everywhere. He hadn't expected a modern barn, of all things, but there was water and the chance to catch his breath, attempt at catching his bearings. It's difficult when everything else is so mutable, and when the god is the most solid thing present.

He's in a stall, eyes closed, listening. Clint stands in the center. There are no other animals here. He is the prey in question, after all.

He knows, without opening his eyes, that Clint knows exactly where he is. That the archer has an arrow notched towards him even now. His voice, when Loki uses it, is quiet. Winded. The exhaustion has not left him; neither has his arousal.

It's long past the time when Loki would have judged himself as failing for having that reaction.

"A novel experience for us both."

after the dream

[icasm]

Here is an arrangement of facts:

Loki dies that night. Literally, in the waking world. He remembers dying, in the dream, and then he remembers the excruciating agony of resurrection into a body that held no life for a time. It only takes roughly twenty-four hours, but he has no real sense of that.

He's covered in wounds. Blood. The sheets, somehow, aren't. His throat hurts (unpleasantly), his ass hurts (in quite the opposite fashion), his hands have knife wounds through both palms. There are cuts and bruises and teeth marks all over. He feels sluggish and overwhelmed by the pain; his magic exists in fits in starts and he's too exhausted to sort out how to fix that, or any of it, so he doesn't.

Instead, he sleeps. For seven more days.

On the fifth day, the Barton children become aware something is amiss. Because Loki has missed an appointment with Lila to gossip about her dating life over sugary beverages. He doesn't answer the series of phonecalls that follow, or several text messages. When Cooper actually goes to the apartment on the next day, the door doesn't open, and the only response he receives from "Is anyone in there?" yelled toward the door is Glød's meow.

It's decided between the two of them that it is Lila who will inform their father that something is wrong, but they're still debating how exactly to go about doing that, when Loki wakes up and responds to text messages stating he'd "been asleep" and "wasn't feeling well", along with apologies for worrying them. When threatened with another visit he sent a photo (after he'd had a bath) as proof of life and told them that he couldn't have visitors or take a video call because he'd lost his voice.

But he was certain that he would get it back in a few days. They shouldn't worry overmuch. Everything would be fine.

So that is the context in which Clint gets a text from his daughter, followed by an address, and several unhappy smiley faces.

[brandingproblem]

There are things he remembers, and there are things he does not. Some of it is reduced to sensation and emotion rather than anything physical. Some of it burns painfully bright. He wakes up achingly, ragingly hard, and he doesn't bother Laura with some fun morning sex about it.

And as far as he's concerned, that's the end of it. At least until the next time Loki comes around or bothers him in his sleep.

Until it's Lila that sends him a concerned text.

He knows the kids care. That 'Uncle Loki' worked his figurative magic and warmed them over, even Cooper in the midst of his disaffected teenagerhood. He knows that Loki genuinely cares about them in return and has at least once (that he's aware of) actually helped one of them out of a dangerous situation. In the most Loki way possible. Clint cares, too, of course, something long established even if it's never simple, just the same as everything else between them, but he's tempted to suggest that it sucks to be Loki and leave it be.

That there is an address bothers him. That he did not know this address before but his eldest children did. That it's in state.

Also that Loki is apparently not just not speaking, but unable to speak. This is Loki. He doesn't just get a sore throat and hoarse voice from simple human illnesses. And he loves to talk. Too much.

He tries to drown some of the worry out on the drive with radio, but it's only background noise. It isn't until he's making his way up that he's starting to think the surroundings of the apartment are irrationally familiar. That gets stuffed in the back of his mind when he picks Loki's lock and does not even bother with knocking.

Except the door isn't even locked. He doesn't know for sure if somehow Loki's in bad enough shape that he didn't lock it at all, or if there are enchantments in place that have recognized one connected and intertwined with Loki's soul and allowed him entrance.

There's a cat at his ankles immediately, and he closes the door again in a panic. Not a panic about there being a cat. Panic that he already knew Loki had a cat. That cat. He knew this. This is familiar. It makes his heart tick up in pace.

Opens the door again and has to navigate around a furball who seems determined to trip him up. He doesn't know what to expect out of Loki.

[icasm]

There is music coming from the bedroom area; something quiet, without lyrics. The bed is pristine, made almost perfectly, with small imperfections in the tucks and folds and placements of pillows that might indicate that Loki did the arrangement by hand, instead of by rote magic. There is a plush couch in the immediate space Clint finds himself in, and a small door that likely leads to a bathroom, along with a large scrying mirror on a wall opposite the entryway.

There are books. Many books. Several plants, also, arranged on windowsills. Glød does not meow at Clint, merely continues to weave her way between his ankles as he proceeds past one large bookcase that blocks the view of the kitchen from the doorway.

The kitchen where Loki is sitting, actually, on a bench beneath another window, a book in his lap and blowing on the surface of a hot cup of tea. Which he nearly drops in his startlement once he notices Clint standing there. It's telling, perhaps, that his capturing of the mug is imperfect, that his hands shake a little, that he nearly drops it again and hisses in annoyance at the hot liquid splashing against his skin, refocusing his attention on the offending mug even though no real sound comes out.

He steadies himself then. Takes the sip of tea he'd been intending to have, swallows, only grimaces for a split second. Returns his gaze to the man in his living room. Why are you here? Not "how did he get here" or "who told him about this place" because Loki is a fool in many ways but not in others.

It is telling, also, perhaps, that there is more communicated in the question in Loki's voice in Clint's brain than just the query itself. That there is emotion behind that, emotion that Clint can perhaps sense: a sense of disquiet, exhaustion, and also... something settled. Some manic, still-sharp edge laid smoother within him.

[brandingproblem]

There is so much going on in just a few short seconds.

Loki is either without magic or without specific aspects of his magic. He still can't speak. He can speak inside Clint's head. (He does not remember this detail of the dream.) He was closed off entirely for a day, then came back, and now, now here and close and with feeling, he does not feel the same. Changed, somehow. Not in a negative way, perhaps. His hands tense. Relax again.

Okay. He's going to scoop up the cat and let her hang out on his shoulder. First thing. Maybe a little bit of weight and something to do with his hands will help ground him in this situation.

"Hi, how are you, I'm great, thanks for asking. Would you like to stay for dinner? Can I get you something to drink? Oh no, I'm just passing through." Deadpan. "You're not a great host." And no one can argue that Clint is unwelcome. The door is attuned to him. That's an open invitation.

He pets the cat and doesn't move any closer. It's entirely possible this whole interaction could last less than five minutes. Likely? No. But possible.

Until: Loki's hands. They catch his eyes. There are scars, fresh enough to catch the light. There's a thin line across his throat. The petting hand flies to his side where a knife had been stabbed in, something he did himself, where there is no scarring, had been no wound.

Breathes out hard. Answer the question. Answer the fucking question, Clint. He doesn't. He's frozen in the moment. Red hot burning blood blood blood in his mouth on his teeth on his tongue. He can feel it sliding down his throat.

[icasm]

Loki sighs, a shift in posture more than a sound, and then sets the mug and book aside on the counter. Stands and moves toward the fridge where he then hands Clint a bottle of his favorite beer. Not whatever he drinks at home but whatever he seeks out abroad, when traveling. Something difficult to import, or at least not usually worth the effort.

If he has to take Clint's hand and wrap it around the chilled bottle himself, so be it. Either way, Loki won't be accused of being a bad host again.

He doesn't indicate that he has noticed Clint's realization, or where that hand was, doesn't ask again why he came; only gestures towards the couch. They should probably sit, yes? He'll collect his tea and join him, even if it means putting a hand at the other man's shoulder, turning him around, and then nudging him toward the couch physically.

[brandingproblem]

Why isn't Loki reacting more? To any of it. Why is he so calm? Oh. Shit. Did exactly what he wanted. Gave him some peace, settled something, and it feels...that should feel better than it does, shouldn't it? Loki is being patient. And it all feels kind of wrong. Where's the sharpness, the baiting banter, even if it's in his head alone?

There's an overseas beer in his hand, a cat on his shoulder happy to stay there, and he's sitting on Loki's couch like they're old friends about to do some catching up. He does not understand this.

He feels like there's a phantom ache in his side. And pointedly ignores it. The beer is appreciated, but he still sets it down so he can scrub at his face with both hands.

"The kids are worried. That's why I'm here."

a different dream

[brandingproblem]

Loki was a door, before. They were always connected, but they could each open and close the door as they wanted, muffle the sound, stuff a towel underneath to block out the light.

It's a window, now. Can peer in, see one another more clearly, slide it open with not much effort. After Loki stepped deliberately into his dreams and back into his head. After Clint used that opportunity to kill, and the effects lingered into the waking world. Loki can speak in his mind directly if he wants. A thing he has not been happy with. They feel the confused twists of emotions in each other. Clint sometimes wishes he could break it, smash the glass, do something violent and harmful and severing. And he can't. Or, he could, but the damage done would be too awful to bear.

But he's also always thought of it as something that Loki does and Clint simply deals with. Loki is the one with magic, who bridged the gap deliberately, who went in with curiosity and overstayed his welcome and reaped the benefits and consequences both.

They rarely are asleep at the same time. So when Clint finds himself in a world of dreams, he simply assumes it is his own. Except that it doesn't feel quite right. He shouldn't know it's a dream, directly. He shouldn't feel so...whatever this is. He freezes. He waits. Perhaps to wake up.

[icasm]

One of the reasons Loki is so hesitant to sleep in the first place is the nature of his own dreams. A mess of prophecy, fear, trauma, longing. The whispered and screamed prayers of acolytes and believers, past and present. Occasionally with a none too terrible memory sprinkled in.

It's Nate and Lila's fault he's sleeping at all, actually. Between the two of them there have been bath bombs and sleep playlists and any number of other gifts that Loki refuses to refuse outright but definitely engaged in a little eye-rolling about, but. It's fine. It's sweet? They care and he is several years too invested in their well-being to get very prissy about them being invested in his as well.

Instead? Only a little prissy. Mostly directed at Lila who is old enough not to be too phased by it. Nate also wouldn't be, but he would call Loki out about it, so.

The dream starts here: a library with no ceiling. Where the ceiling would be are stars, constellations, the ever unfolding and branching fo the multiverse. Some of the books on the shelves speak in dead languages to each other. Some of them are screaming, but the awareness of that fact is not coupled with the actual sounds of their distress (thankfully).

There's a garden visible through a large picture window on one wall: the plants are all frozen over and the statuary is weeping blood. Thunder booms in the distance but is more of a calming presence than not.

Fun times, in the dreaming unconsciousness of one Loki Laufeyson, once Odinson, now mostly just Loki.

Oddly enough: Loki himself is not immediately present. Where does Clint focus his attention?

[brandingproblem]

It's not something he thinks he would dream about. Loki hasn't deliberately stepped into his since the incident--that he's aware of, anyway--and while sometimes things get a little twisted up and weird for their connection, it's nothing like this. Could he be dreaming about Loki dreaming? Fuck if he knows.

His steps are silent in spite of his boots, as though an extension of his body, as though padded like a wolf. He does not have a bow. He has no weapon. He is not a hunter in this place. Shivers in a shirt too thin for a place like this. He steps between aisles of books, the titles meaning nothing, though he has the incessant thought that if he opened any of them up, he would see something, a memory, a thought, a secret. It tempts his fingers. They do not reach.

What he does reach for is the window. It does not open, was not meant to open, only show off the landscape beyond it. Which isn't good enough for him. He doesn't want to shatter the glass, but he presses a hand to it--cold cold cold--like he can will it to move or disappear or turn into a door.

None of that happens. (This is not his mind or his will or his to control. He has no control. This is Not For Him.) He breathes against the glass, and instead of a fogging mist to disappear in moments, it forms ice crystals, spreads out and freezes in place.

[icasm]

The ice keeps growing, actually, moving from the window out to the wall and reaching several bookshelves. The temperature drops even lower in this room. Some of the books protest their complaint.

One of the bookshelves moves away from the wall that is half encased in ice by this point. A door opens in the wall. There is warmth, there, beyond it. Music and light and the noise of many people all in the same space.

(The library, more or less, encourages Clint to go that way. Away from the books, the furniture, the rapidly spreading cold. If he hesitates or resists it'll simply shift, force the perspective, make it so there's nowhere else for Clint to go. Up to him how that pans out.)

The doorknob is warm beneath Clint's hand and the door itself swings open at the mere suggestion of intent. Much like Loki's apartment door. The room beyond is definitely not Loki's studio apartment in Iowa.

Instead the space is massive. High ceilings. Tables of food. Some sort of feast or celebration is the first impression; the light is strange and it is difficult for Clint to get a fix on what's happening in the center of the room. Dancing, perhaps? The impression of movement, of bodies, and then that's when the clarity of the sounds catches up with the rest of it.

This is clearly an orgy of some kind.

There are no humans involved, and very few people that look even passingly human. Some are species that Clint might recognize; many are not. Some folks are dancing with one another, primarily in the nude, but most of them are fucking. None of them have noticed Clint. It's unlikely that they'd care.

Loki is not in the center of the room. He's seated on a sort of dais off to the side, drinking wine, and watching everything happening around him with a mix of pride and longing and also a distinct sense of disconnect. This is happening because of him but he is not directly involved. It's more as if he's been invoked as witness than asked to participate.

It's then that Loki notices Clint across the room, and frowns a little.

[brandingproblem]

This is deliberate, and that unnerves him. That this place could be alive, the books that whisper-scream, the spread of sky above watching him. The door is inviting. He moves--

--away, and the library twists around him. The door is before him. He swallows thick like there's ice forming in his throat and moves away again, turns, as the library turns with him, and he is even closer to the door now.

Fine. He gets it. He reaches for it, and it opens before he can even turn the knob. The library all but vanishes behind him as he's encompassed by the light and the warmth. He finds that he is already stripping off his shirt before he seems consciously aware that he's doing so. Something about warmth and sweat and sound that gets to him before anything else forms. It's heady, scent of sex and desires fulfilled. The room glitters and glints in a strange way, hard to pick out anything specific unless he blinks, really concentrates. There are limbs that he doesn't always recognize, but it's very clear what's happening now. It makes his head dizzy for a moment, and he turns to step back into the library, to embrace how much cooler it is, just to clear his head. But the door is gone.

He stumbles for just one step before righting himself with a deep breath. Reaches for a drink on a table. There's a warning in the back of his mind, about eating the food from the table of a fairy. Drinks anyway, deeply. It's sweet and light and satisfying and warming even more than the atmosphere.

Loki is there. Of course Loki's there. Why wouldn't Loki be there. But he's not part of the action. He's aside. Almost like an afterthought. Clint is still not entirely sure of what's happening, if this is Loki's mind, if this is his own, if this is just a spectacularly odd dream where someone left the window open and so much of the god wafting through. If he'll remember in the morning or if it'll leave him like smoke.

His tongue feels heavy, and he's not sure if he should give in to figuring out which it is. But he opens his mouth anyway. Doesn't look at Loki when he says: "You started the party without me." He doesn't raise his voice against the din. He does not imagine that he needs to.

[icasm]

Clint has taken his shirt off. It's a blessing, certainly, to Loki anyway that that is as far as he's opted to get in terms of disrobing. Loki hasn't stopped frowning; he has, instead, risen to his feet and crossed the space between them, picking up a handful of grapes along the way and popping one into his mouth. His eyes glance across Clint's bare skin, though it's clear in the next second that he's annoyed with himself for not resisting that particular urge.

It's clear that Loki is annoyed about something, anyway. Despite the air of physical desire fulfilled, despite the various states of undress of those around them, Loki is in a collared shirt, buttoned up to his throat, and he shoves the hand that is not holding grapes into the pocket of his slacks. There's a sense of tension in him, muscles taunt and unrelated like he's holding something back and possibly not doing too well, physically, as a result. "The party is in our honor," he explains, "but it is not for us."

Question is, does he mean the royal 'we' or he and Clint, specifically? The answer, it would seem, is yes. Loki eats another grape. "I didn't think this was quite your 'scene', as it were, anyway."

teenagers.

[icasm]

There's a carnival of some kind going on here.

That's what originally drew Loki's attention to this place. Games of chance (more or less), fried foods, bright colors. Loud children and families. It's bright and colorful and much more along the lines of what Loki would be interested in seeing than the things that his father and brother are up to right now. Politicking and feats of amazing strength, etcetera, etcetera.

Loki ditched that scene almost as fast as he could. Was he interested in other realms? Definitely. But he wanted to know about the people, not the governments or the ones who had all the power. Eventually they would die off, or the people would replace them, and things would change. Boring in the extreme.

Ultimately, though, Loki finds himself wandering beyond the borders of the carnival towards some fields, following an odd but familiar sound. Odd because he knows what it is — the sound of an arrow being loosed and then striking a target, or at least various targets — but not how it's happening to be here. On Midgard. In the 1980s or whatever their calendar reads.

(One of the hardest parts of traveling between realms is that there is not any sort of unified calendar. Loki gets it but hates it simultaneously.)

The point is, Midgardians have broadly moved on from archery and arrows to metal projectiles, Loki knows to be true. So it's weird that anyone could do it in the first place, much less strike a target with as much frequency as Loki hears. So it's weird. A puzzle to be solved. Loki moves silently through sparse woods and fields of grain alike until he reaches the source of the sounds: a man, no, a boy closer to his own age equivalent, surrounded by targets made of various materials. Some bottles, some actual targets, some just... various and sundry objects, held aloft by heavy string or rope.

It's impressive, the amount of skill he (Loki is guessing at the pronouns) has in the first place. In an outmoded technology, at that. He doesn't miss a single shot he takes, in the ten, fifteen minutes Loki spends watching, and it's doubtful that any of the earlier shots were misses either.

Something happens as Loki watches him. Stares at the way his muscles move underneath his shirt, the form his body takes as he draws the bow. It's a buzzing in his head, a weight in his stomach. He wants to stand behind the other boy, to run his fingers across his shoulders as he pulls the bowline taut. Wants to gather some of the sweat at his brow on his fingertips and see how it tastes.

Now. Loki is neither sheltered nor a fool, despite his age; Thor has had an interest in various people of an assortment of genders, defined and otherwise by this point, much to Odin's amusement and Frigga's concern, but Loki has never felt interested enough in anyone to bother entertaining them, or the idea of their naked bodies in his presence. Before today.

The other boy has stopped shooting while Loki has puzzled this new feeling over, he realizes... because, of course, the other boy has to go and collect his arrows from their locations now that his quiver is empty before he can set them loose again, and Loki purposefully decides to step on a twig in order to make his presence known. "You're a good archer," he announces, raising his eyebrows. "I didn't know people bothered learning how, here, anymore." He gives a smile that he hopes indicates that he's not a dangerous threat (to this other person). "Hi. I'm Loki."

[brandingproblem]

Of course Clint's drawn to the fairgrounds. They feel next best thing to home. He's already picked plenty of pockets, got enough to get himself some grub and maybe a couple of bus tickets. Not sure where he's going to run off to this time, or when, but the fact that he can go somewhere else is at least alluring. He's played all the games, beat most of them, gave the non-useful prizes away to awed little kids. And then he grabbed his bag of shit and went out to the field where he's got his little setup all--set up.

Adds a few items to the rotation. Some breakable, some that'll last at least a couple shots. Gets his bow, gets his arrows, trains.

And he is both so attuned to everything around him and also in his own little timezone when he's like this. Loses track of time but feels like he's got heightened senses. He hopes it stays like this forever. That he'll only get better. He's incorporating trickshots into his routine, and while he sucks at physics, at math, at all the boring shit his teachers bemoan and berate for, it all seems so simple when it comes to eyeballing trajectory, feeling the wind. He can't translate it into numbers. But he can translate it into the tension of the string, the angle of the arrow, in breaths in his chest.

He's pretty sure he's being watched. Doesn't hear or see anything at first, doesn't go looking, but just that prickle at the back of the neck, that sixth sense. So when the newcomer makes noise to officially announce his presence, Clint doesn't loose an arrow into the boy's shoulder for his trouble. Just looks over his shoulder as he tugs an arrow from an old tractor trailer tire tilted against a tree, shoves it in the quiver.

"I'm a great archer," he corrects. "People still hunt with bows. And archery's still a sport." Rolls his shoulders, grabs a few more that have gone through their targets and landed half buried in the dirt. "Fair's still going strong back the way you came. This isn't a prize game."

[icasm]

"I know where the... fair is," a dismissive handwave behind him that is still unerringly in the correct direction, "I'm not interested in that anymore." He hadn't thought of challenging the other boy to a contest if skill — too fascinated in the moment, clearly — but it's not the worst idea ever presented to him. "You are a great archer, but. You don't know me. I could… make you flee for your coin." Is that how that phrase works? Nose wrinkle. "Besides. If it was a prize game what would I even win?" Said offhandedly in the tone of someone who is pretending very hard to seem bored when they are the complete opposite. "Your name, maybe? Hm. You could lie, though. You think I'm just some dumb kid.

Something more real, then. Three truths."

Loki dematerializes in a poof of green and gold sparks before reappearing a little closer, pulling one of the arrows embedded deep in tree bark with ease. "We could use your bow. Each of us sets the targets for the other. Or just points and decides. No magic, no tricks. Three truths. If we tie, we both share."

He offers the arrow to the other boy. "Or we could not. You could just tell me."

[brandingproblem]

The second Loki says 'flee for your coin' is when Clint stops paying as much attention to his wayward arrows and more to the fellow boy. Brow furrowed. And then he just...keeps talking? In the strangest fucking way? Opens his mouth to argue that he doesn't think Loki is just some dumb kid, that he doesn't think anything about him, but he's starting to think he's a weirdo who needs picked up by whatever guardian he wandered away from--but Loki keeps talking, and Clint's brow keeps furrowing.

And then the motherfucker uses some kind of genuine actual magic, and Clint startles back several steps.

His bow is half raised. He does not take the arrow. Looks at it suspiciously like it's going to disappear (and find itself embedded suddenly in his back). Looks at Loki.

"What the fuck are you? Did I step in a damn fairy circle?"

[icasm]

"I'm Asgardian, not a fairy. Which doesn't mean much to Midgardians like you, in this part of this planet..." Loki twirls the arrow on his fingertips since the other boy is clearly resistant to taking it back, rotating it around with speed and grace like one might a switchblade. "You would probably have to go, ah, further northwest than this continent can reach to find people who'd recognize the word alone as what it is anymore." He shrugs and changes hand with the arrow, still twirling. "Godhood is weird like that."

Loki gives Clint a slightly more genuine smile. Mischievous and perhaps a little shy, all things considered. "Anyway, you should tell me your name. It's only fair; i told you mine. I haven't even lied at all and I usually do because people are so boring sometimes, especially when you first meet them."

[brandingproblem]

He's watching the arrow, because those are some impressive moves. Even if the words coming out don't make much sense to him. "Loki's a viking god, I think." It sounds kind of dumb when he says it, though. Because the kid fucking poofed himself around. Was that actual magic, or like...stage magic? What even is an Asgard and a Midgard?

His hand lashes out suddenly, snatching he arrow from Loki mid-spin. "If you're looking for not-boring, I don't know why you came to the ass end of nowhere." No one should come here. Everyone should be struggling to leave. What is with this guy? "If I say my name's Clint, do you have any reason to believe me?"