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It must be the silliest thing I have ever bought, he thinks to himself, feeling the necessity to slap his own face. He stares at the ‘hoodie’ — how the seller named the product when Pietro was caught staring —, and it looks right back at him, all soft black and white 80% cotton. He holds back the curses he wants to say, because Pietro is not the type of person who buys things in a whim, but, when he does, they at least look like they’ll be useful in the future.
A black hoodie with animal ears certainly isn’t.
Not that he bought it for himself. In fact, he didn’t, and it makes things worse. Pietro feels like hiding his face between his hands, now feeling utterly ridiculous as he remembers he thought of Clint when he saw the hoodie and couldn’t help himself; he had to take it home with him. At the thought of how he impulsively bought the hoodie, Pietro’s face flushes, first in embarrassment, then in anger; he so he did a mistake, but it is not like he cannot fix it. And it’s thinking this way Pietro takes the hoodie and marches to his closet — a small one, filled mostly with costumes than normal clothes and old memories from his wedding with Crystal and his life in Attilan that he sometimes likes to remember and sometimes he wants to forget — and carefully hides the hoodie inside a giant coat Wanda bought to him when they went to Russia, once.
He’ll retrieve it tomorrow. It will be safe until then.
.
Tomorrow ends up being two weeks later, because he is a superhero and off course the world would be ended when he needed to retrieve the hoodie he bought to Clint. Why would something happen the way he planned anyway? It’s not like the universe doesn’t hate him. And normally a sane person would say he is overacting or exaggerating (Valerie Cooper), but today he feels like he is actually having a relapse, because that god-awful hoodie is gone. And Wanda has no idea what he is talking, nor Polaris or William or Thomas, for all it matters.
The thought he is relapsing comes when he considers that maybe his father came to take the hoodie with animal ears while he was saving the world. Yes, even he knows this is far too ridiculous, so he sets aside his theories and tries to find the hoodie inside his apartment.
He is once again checking the kitchen when the doorbell rings. Jumping at the unexpected sound, Pietro only sighs and gives up looking around. It’s gone. His father must have taken it. “Who is it?” He asks, looking around and thinking what place, besides his sister room — that is locked and when she does it and leaves the house it means he cannot enter unless it’s an emergency —, he didn’t check.
“It’s Clint.” He says unsure, as if Pietro wasn’t expecting him. And he wasn’t. “Wanda called me and told me you asked her to call me and say you wanted me to come here because you had something to give me?”
Pietro closes his eyes and tries to not jump out of the window. Well, at least he knows why Wanda closed her room with a key. And that it wasn’t his father who took the hoodie. Ignoring Clint, he takes the master key he has and goes straight to his sister’s room. There is a package on her bed, neatly wrapped on a purple ribbon, and with a note by its side, saying ‘I’m sorry Pietro, but I just wanted to help. Don’t get mad and don’t be embarrassed; it’s cute’.
Oh, his sister is good.
Outside the room, a muffed click echoes through the apartment and Pietro is ready to show the world how deep his knowledge on the English language (and, really, all others) goes, starting for its slangs. It’s not fair. “So, I’m inviting myself in, okay?” Is all Clint says while he moves around the place. He finds Pietro on Wanda’s bedroom, clenching the note on one fist, the package now safely on his hands.
“Is it for me?” He asks at the same time Pietro snarls: “No.”
Then, there is silence for a few seconds before Clint backs away. “Oookay.” He says slowly, raising his hands to show he is unarmed, as if Pietro is dangerous or mad. “I have no idea what is happening, but okay.”
Pietro feels deeply humiliated, though he does not blame Wanda. All this would not have happened if he had not have the stupidest of the impulses. He trades his fingers through his hair in an attempt to collect himself and breaths in and out, slowly. “Wanda played us both.” He says at last, but not in an accusing tone. “She had the best of the intentions, I assure you.”
Clint makes a face, as if he disagrees with Pietro’s statement. He mumbles something that is close to not if she knows about, but Pietro does not understand. Before he can ask what he is talking about, however, the man’s attention shifts back to him. “So, what were her best intentions?”
Pietro makes a mental note to ask later to Clint about what Wanda may or may not have find out and decides say something close to the truth. “I bought something for you.”
“Oh.” The man answers intelligently. “Well, at least that part is true, huh?”
“Indeed.” Pietro agrees. “But you are wrong if you think I will ever give it to you.”
Clint makes a face that Pietro finds hard to not smile at it. With his best blank face, he shows the package to Clint and tells him the truth: “It was a mistake that I pretend to fix. I will take my money back and we shall never speak of this ever again. It will be best for us.”
The other man stays silent for a few moments before asking, warily, if Pietro bought him a gun. Offended, Pietro holds back the urge to shove the hoodie on Clint’s face and ask if it feels like one. Instead, he snarls at the man, wishing he had a gun at the moment. “Does it look like one?” Before the man can answer, Pietro tells him what it is. “It is just a piece of cloth that will never belong to you, that is what it is.”
“Why?” Clint asks, whining. “C’mon, I came all the way here so you could give me this thing. You could at least tell me what it is!”
“It’s a sweatshirt, if you must know. With a hood.” He pauses and finds Clint’s nose much easier to stare than his eyes. “A hoodie.” He does not mention the animal ears because, really. Who would?
“And you can’t give me because…?”
Pietro hesitates for a moment. He looks everywhere in less than a second before settling again at the package on his hand. He could just end this and give the goddamned thing to Hawkeye, who will likely get as embarrassed as Pietro, give it back to him, tell him to burn and not comment with anyone for the rest of his life, but Pietro quickly dismisses the idea. Giving it to Clint would only mean he thought of Clint affectionately, and the animal ears, that so many would call cute, would not be easily forgotten.
It would haunt them both. One because he was stupid enough to buy it, on an impulse he didn’t manage to control, and the other because he would never be able to forget how Pietro thought of him with such a bizarre fondness that their current relationship does not support. Fooling around means no string or emotions attached and they already did that part wrong. The hoodie would only prove them right they are terribly at having a relationship that it isn’t a relationship, because they are both too wary to sit down and define what they have — or just sit down and admit they maybe want something more. And Pietro cannot want more of this since he does not know what to feel about the whole thing they are having right now.
Before going into dangerous waters, Pietro takes his eyes from the package and directs them to Clint’s face, whose eyes are suddenly soft. This cannot be good.
When Clint approaches him and holds him in place, face still like before, Pietro is sure this cannot be good at all. He feels like bolting or just running away but the fact they are at his house keeps him still. Running away from his house would be a little too ridiculous, so he just stands his ground, butterflies flying free in his stomach, and arches an eyebrow.
“All this ‘you can’t have what I bought you’ is because, according to Wanda, you bought suddenly, without even thinking about it, only because it reminded you of me?” When Pietro goes stiff, not because Clint knows about this (maybe a little, yes) but because Wanda noticed it. Clint smiles, thinking he guessed right. Even if he did. “Because if it is — and it looks like it — I think it’s cute.”
Pietro never wanted to die so much as he wants to now.
Before he can do anything related to jumping off Wanda’s window or running to the closest volcano, Clint kisses him slowly, no tongue, but a lot of sentiment to make up for it, and takes the package away from Pietro, who has no idea anymore is happening anymore, but is sure he cannot move anymore. For someone who constantly argue about how everything else is slow, when Clint opens the package in an absurd velocity, Pietro doesn’t want to rip the Band-Aid so fast.
The hoodie is just like Pietro remembers, but Wanda hid the dog ears carefully so Clint does not see immediately. In fact, he does not see at all, because he turns the cloth and pulls over his head as fast as he can, not even caring to see all the details. Pietro does not know what to do with this information.
When Clint’s head reappears, he looks at his chest, covered with the sweatshirt and pulls his sleeves with his fingers. “It’s comfortable.” He says. “I liked.” Pietro, however, has lost his voice because Clint’s head is covered with the black hood, the animal ears hanging on its side — bulldog’s ears. It’s the strangest thing Pietro has ever seen. Even if he bought the cloth for Clint it didn’t mean he thought of him using it. Now, of course, what is seen cannot be unseen and all Pietro wants to do is sit on his couch and laugh. Laugh. It’s utterly adorable. But mostly funny.
“So” Clint wiggles his eyebrows, making things worst to Pietro, who presses both lips together to keep from laughing. “Exactly like you thought?”
“You look…” There is really nothing to say when Clint Barton, the greatest sharp-shooter known to men, is in your sister’s room wearing a so-called hoodie that has animal ears. It’s the silliest thing ever and Pietro does not know if he now feels stupid because he is the one who bought it or because, for someone who is supposed to notice every detail, Clint failed to see the animal ears.
It says a lot of a person if they are dating someone so stupid.
Pietro lets the question go unanswered for a few more seconds, not sure what to say. Clint visibly frowns. “Not what you thought?” He asks, and when Pietro looks up at one of the dog ears on the hood, he lifts his arms to start searching for what is clearly wrong on the hood. Before his hands touch the ears, however, Pietro catches them and pulls them down slowly. “It looks like you.” Pietro answers, not sure if it is valid. But the ears match Clint’s personality and he looks as if he always had them.
“Are you sure?” Clint asks, doubting a little of Pietro’s words and he knows there is only one way to assure the man in front of him. So he frees Clint’s hands and kisses him on the mouth, taking the hood off his head just to be sure Clint won’t touch it. It takes less than two seconds for Clint’s arms pull him closer and when his hands travel south, Pietro understands that the man in front of him expected more than just a gift.
He smiles. The bastard.
.
Pietro is kissing Clint again by the door of his room when Wanda announces she has arrived. They stop what they are doing but it matters little to nothing because she smiles at them and waves them to continue what they are doing. They don’t, because they both know Clint needs to leave to his house. Wanda enters her room and, from there, asks if he liked Pietro’s present.
“Yeah.” He says and rubs his neck. “Yeah, I really did.”
“See?” Wanda says, still inside her room. “I knew it was a good idea for you to give Clint, Pietro.”
Pietro makes a face that says Wanda and he will clearly talk about that later. He appreciates what she did but she had no right to invade his personal space and take something he was going to dispose of later. Wanda, however, ignores him, as she always does when Pietro disapproves of her actions (something that does not happens often, for Pietro’s pleasure) and asks if she can see Clint with the hoodie.
“Oh, sure. I’ll get it for you.” He says and moves to enter his room when Wanda’s eyes glow and the cloth materializes on Clint’s body. “Or you could do this.”
She analyses him for a moment before sharing a brief smile with Pietro. Pietro looks at her and says silently that Clint does not know about the dog ears. Her eyes glints in response, and he knows Wanda wants to laugh as much as he, but decides to play along. “It suits you.” Wanda answers and fights a smile. “Pietro really knows your style clothing.”
Next to her, Pietro can only snort and bump slightly against her. He loves his sister dearly, but sometimes Pietro has this impression she is much more her father than Lorna and him combined. And he looks like Magneto while Lorna has his powers.
“He knows me well.” Clint says suspiciously, sure that something is going on, because the twins are trouble made it double — Stark said it once and since then it’s been everybody’s favorite quotes about them —, but Pietro cannot let him discover yet; it would ruin all the fun. “I do.” He agrees, fighting a smile of his own, and moves to take the hood of Clint’s head, one more time, his fingers then treading into his short blond hair so Clint can understand Pietro does mean what he says. He really does know Clint well enough.
Well enough to know Clint wants to talk about what they have, by the way he closes his eyes at the soft touch in his head. “You should leave, now. It is getting late. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
“Oh. Right. Leaving.” He says smartly and kisses Pietro on the mouth before pecking Wanda on the cheek.
Before the door closes, Wanda uses her powers again to put the hood on Clint’s head. Pietro looks at her, not amused, but she only shrugs. “You can’t expect me to leave him without his hood, right? Pietro, what if it starts raining?!” She is smiling wickedly, however, and it makes Pietro wonder how he could have lived without his sister for such a long time, after Decimation Day.
.
Wanda and Pietro are old enough to not laugh at such prank, or at least that’s what they tell each other. After they settle on the couch, Wanda changes the channels until she finds something interesting, but, seconds later, they can’t stop laughing. Pietro is usually a pessimist person, even he knows such. His second mutation, according with Lorna, is the ability to find flaws in everything, but today it was a good day and it makes him hope better days will come.
.
Fifteen minutes later, Pietro receives a number of messages, all having an angry tone because Wanda and he, apparently, forgot to tell Clint that his new hoodie has animal ears. Dog animal ears.
OH MY GOD.
PIETRO.
I HATE YOU.
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS. HOW OLD ARE YOU?
AND I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DRAGGED WANDA INTO THIS.
I DON’T CARE WHAT WE HAVE, I’M ENDING THIS RIGHT NOW.
SERIOUSLY.
I’M SERIOUS, OKAY.
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE CALLED ME OUT ON THE STREET ABOUT IT?
AND HOW MANY PEOPLE CALLED ME A $#@%#?!
02/10/2013 — 03/10/2013