I don't have time to think of a prompt (I may steal one of the above ones and write something on the plane). So here is a sad/cute piece from a five-times fic I did a while back (Five Times Clint Barton Losed His Train of Thought). Awww in a different sense ...

_________


He is lying in bed, the frayed teddy bear soft under his chin. Tomorrow is a big day in school, they’re having a race and all the first graders are allowed in and Teacher says the way Clint can run, he could maybe do real well. He can run like the wind even though he’s small, and it feels good when he does, the wind on his face and in his hair and his feet on the grass. And even Petey Doyle who’s such a big bully and mean and in Grade Three can never catch Clint like he does Barney even though they’re both older than him -- Clint can run faster than any of them and he can climb trees, too, to get away.

He looks at Teddy, and Teddy agrees that running is something Clinty is good at, almost as good as he is at throwing pebbles into tins from real far away. Too bad they don’t have that as a race, he would sure win and then maybe Daddy would be nice to him for a bit and …

… then he hears Mommy scream in the kitchen and they’re fighting again and there’s a large bump like something’s crashed to the floor and Mommy screams louder and then Daddy shouts in that slurry way he gets when he comes home from work late and there’s another bump and Clint grabs Teddy and they pull their blanket over their head and he just wants it to be silent again. He scrunches his eyes shut and he isn’t thinking about tomorrow any more at all.