ack! this is late but it's still wednesday somewhere in the world, right?

have you started a fic and then the mojo abandoned you? have you had the kernel of an idea that bloomed into a plot and then hit a brick wall a thousand metres high? then mail us an excerpt from 500 - 1000 words of your unfinished work(s) at bc.unfinished@gmail.com. we could use more submissions and you'll find the support you need here every wednesday... or, erm, almost every wednesday.


today's untitled submission comes from heartequals who said...

This is roughly the first 800 words of a 2000~ word fic (or it's at about 2000~ words now). idk it's like basically done but needs a couple more scenes but I haven't looked at it two months so yeah basically SQUEE WOULD BE REALLY APPRECIATED BECAUSE I AM SO DOWN ON IT. I also kinda forgot what I was writing and what the ending is supposed to be? uh. oops? The ;; designate scene changes.

It was inspired by this cover: http://heartequals.tumblr.com/post/32088772095/whatever-you-like-t-i-cover-by-anya-marina

Title: HELP NO TITLE

excerpt: Love is for children. Indulgence to the point of hedonism is not.


;;


“What now?” says Clint. He doesn’t expect the girlishness – no, the youthfulness – of her leaping onto the king bed with a grin. She looks several hundred assignments younger in her black stockings and red dress they bought that day while she jumps up and down. He frowns in confusion, about to speak, but she bounces off the bed and tackles him before he can get a word out. He falls to the floor under a flurry of red hair and well-placed punches. She sits on his chest and pins him with arms above his head, smirking. He writhes under her and she leans forward to rest her forearm on his throat. He stills.

“I’ve got some ideas,” she says.

They stare at each other until it becomes something that is dangerously close to a moment. Then he flips her over onto her back.


;;


They do this when their SHIELD-appointed psychologists start making noise about “mental health” and “relaxing.” They do this when one or the other or both of them does something that makes Agent Coulson pinch the bridge of his nose and sigh. They do this when Director Fury’s eye starts twitching and he orders them out of his sight. They do this when Natasha appears at Clint’s bedside looking harassed or when Clint climbs through her window looking frustrated and alone.

They do this because they have to, because there’s only so long you can go on sacrificing yourself without demanding a little bit in return.


;;


“Interesting,” says Natasha. “Not what I had in mind.”

Clint fingers the fabric at her hip, some cotton blend that’s turning him on more than he’d like to admit. He wants to rip it to pieces. “Oh really?”

She arches up under him and his breath catches. She bites his earlobe and whispers, “I was thinking we could start with the man standing outside our door with a gun.”

He puts a hand on her back to keep her close. “Girl after my own heart,” he murmurs against her cheek and draws a finger against the knife holstered at her thigh when he feels her smile.


;;


They only go to big cities because big cities are predictable. They’ve spent enough time in every big city in the world that they know the best places to stay, the best places to eat, the best corners to hide in. They can fit in comfortably. They know who to avoid and who to blackmail.

They go to Paris when they’re feeling decadent, Beijing when they’re feeling spoiled, São Paulo when they’re feeling free. He gets bored in Tokyo and she’s irritated by Dubai but that’s okay, because there’s always other cities – as tourists, they fall in love with Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Vienna. By mutual agreement they try to avoid Moscow, Warsaw, Delhi, even if means taking a longer flight or driving five hours out of the way. The one place that is absolutely out of the question is Budapest. There are a dozen SHIELD agents positioned around the city that wouldn’t twice about shooting them both. A shame, really, because Clint really wanted to buy Natasha this diamond necklace he saw in the corner of his eye while he was running down a street and getting shot at. It was a really pretty necklace. He’s sure she would have liked it.


;;


They decide on hand-to-hand combat because any idiot who is going to stand outside a door with a gun is not worth the dignity of bullets or arrows. And why should he spend the time and energy cleaning the blood of a moron off one of his arrows when he could spend the time and energy cleaning up Natasha? He stole really expensive bubble bath for fun today.

“If I run you a bath, will you drown me in it?” he asks as he removes the screen from the window and prepares to scale up the side of the building.

Natasha smiles. “Wait for my scream,” she says, patting him on the ass as he lifts himself out of the window, knife clenched between his teeth.


;;


It’s a big world out there and they’ve been a lot of places together, both on assignment and on leave. They’ve got maps of the most of the major cities on earth committed to memory. They can go almost anywhere.

But they love Las Vegas best. It’s really too small for them to go to as often as they do, but they can’t help it. There are too many companies to blackmail, too many people to haunt, too many places to slip in and out of. It’s easy to blend in to the crowds in Las Vegas and twice as easy to make themselves known. Las Vegas is both a challenge and a comfort.

It was also the first place they escaped to together. It’s a special city for them.