[ @thecopperriver challenged me to write a ficlet about Clint convincing Thor to get a tramp stamp. I have delivered]

The Avengers are lazing around the
tower one day when Thor first notices the tattoo on Clint’s shoulder.
An arrow, beautifully rendered, with words curling about it. Learn to slow down when you’re in a hurry.
The words are traced onto Clint’s skin in black and grey, looping
curls of ink snaking their way around his shoulder blade.

Before he can wonder if this is
appropriate, Thor reaches out to trace across it with his fingers.
Strangely, there are no raised scars where the ink has been placed
deep in Clint’s skin. This was done without threading or cutting, and
Thor wonders what that would feel like, to be permanently marked in
that way.

“Was this painful?” he asks.

Clint turns, as though unsure what Thor
is asking about, but then nods. “A little. Not terribly.”

“Did you bleed?” Thor asks.

“Yes. A little. They do it with a
needle, so it could be a lot worse.”

Thor nods. He has seen the scars some
of Asgard’s warriors burn into their skin using seidr and flame,
great shining runes that sit on the skin forever. This, though, is
more delicate and refined.

“I have more of them,” Clint offers
up. “Want to see?”

Thor nods. Clint gives him a toothy
grin, lifting up is shirt. Splashed across his ribs is a stylized
hawk, its beak open and screaming fury to the heavens of Clint’s
skin. The detail in the hawk’s eye is incredible, the whole of
Midgard reflected in it as a globe of green and blue.
Thor admires it for a few seconds, then looks up to where Clint is
smiling at him.

“It is a remarkable piece of art,
Clint Barton. You have chosen well in what marks you make on your own
skin.”

“You’re the first to say that,”
Clint laughs.

“Why so? They are clearly works of
art.”

“I have a tramp stamp. Relic of when
I first ran away from the circus.”

“And does this… tramp stamp… not
become you?” Thor asks.

Clint spins to face away from Thor
again, arching his back. His pants are slung low on his hips. Across
his back, more letters spiral. Nemo me
impune lacessit.

“No one provokes me with
impunity?” Thor translates in confusion.

“Old archery motto. I got
it in a fit of teenage angst.”

“While I admit, friend
Clint, that it is perhaps boastful, I do not see how it should earn
such scorn.”

Clint laughs again. “Thor…
ah…”

“What?” Thor raises an
eyebrow, using a hand on Clint’s shoulder to spin him around so he
can see into his eyes.

“Well, it makes me look a
bit… slutty?”

“Sexually available?”
Thor asks, trying to understand.

“Yes, that.”

“Is that not a good thing?
And is it not fitting? I have noticed that you do not share many
Midgardian’s distaste for speaking of sex.”

Clint clutches his stomach,
laughing so hard that for a moment, Thor worries that he’s going to
make himself sick. When he finally recovers, he hangs off Thor’s arm
for a few seconds as his last chuckles slip out.

“You’re…. you’re not
wrong,” he wheezes. “We should make that a thing. Avengers with
tramp stamps changing the world for the better.”

“Would that indeed benefit
your world?” Thor asks.

“I mean, maybe? It’s
definitely make a few people feel better about their teenage years.”

“Then I am willing. Where
does one acquire such a tattoo?”

“You can’t be serious…”

***

Thor is, in fact, utterly
serious. Just a week later he finds himself lying flat on a strangely
shaped chair, while Clint hovers above him, and a thick bearded man
readies some sort of purifying solution.

“What does it say?” Clint
asks.

“Ástar
firna skyli engi maðr annan aldregi,”
Thor intones. “A poet of yours wrote it long ago. I think one might
say ‘fault for loving let no man find/ever with any other’ in your
language now.” He turns his head to one side to catch Clint
blushing.

“That’s
pretty heavy for a tramp stamp, Thor.”

“Were
we not hoping to change the perception of these marks?” Thor asks.

“Yeah
but…”

“Well,
you said that this placement indicates sexual freedom. Should I not
place a quote of love there?”

“Yeah…”
Clint agrees slowly. “Yeah I guess you’re right.”

***

It’s
an hour later when Thor walks out with a bandage slapped over his
back and new words graven into his skin. He can’t stop grinning,
especially when he stands in front of the mirror in his room that
night, craning his head to look at it.

His
smile only widens when he wonders what Loki will say. Loki has always
liked the Havamal. After all, he did help the poet compose it.