Epic Promptathon 2020

[inkvoices]

It's all go with the Bingo Challenge and AU Exchange, but it wouldn't be summer without THE EPIC SUMMER PROMPTATHON! Yep, it's that time of year again. ARE YOU READY?!



Just before we get started we have some info and rules we’d like you to read…

HOW PROMPTATHON 2020 WORKS

Step One: Leave Prompts

Prompts can be anything – simple or elaborate, words or pictures, songs or poems, lyrics or phrases, anything that inspires a fanwork. Use your imagination. Go wild!

We welcome ALL THINGS MARVEL, although we do like it if Natasha and/or Clint is in there somewhere, individually or as friends, lovers, spouses, partners, in gen fic, ANYTHING. That means we do welcome other characters and pairings (and threesomes or moresomes).

Leave as many prompts as you want. We’re serious. Keep coming back. We want as many prompts as we can possibly get. Just make sure each prompt is in a separate comment.

Step Two: Squee

Been wanting to jump into the fandom but not sure where to start? Now’s the time. Newbie or a lurker? Here’s the perfect opportunity to say hello! Promptathon is a fun, no-pressure environment. If all you want to do is post prompts and share in the squee, you’re more than welcome! And by squee we mean chatting in the chat thread, replying to prompts to chat about prompts, and just lots of excitement all over the place.

Step Three: submit fanworks like there’s no tomorrow!

The usual Community Rules apply. There’s no length requirement on fanworks submitted. You can create drabbles or epics, vids, art, fanmixes, anything at all; it’s just all about getting creative! You can fill as many prompts as you want, and prompts can be filled multiple times by whoever wants to fill them.

HOW TO POST FILLS

1. Respond in a comment to the prompt you are filling. Please post the entire work in the comment if it's short enough OR post a link, and consider posting the first section as a teaser. Please don't post works directly to the comm - we’re all about one-stop shopping, so keep everything in this main promptathon post. We'll do a masterlist of fills at the end.

2. Label your fill/comment in the subject line with 'FILL', your title, and a rating. Example: FILL: 5 Times Clint and Natasha Were Awesome (PG) When filling in the subject line, you may need to view the comm in its original style (if you don't already). Just make sure you can see a subject line when responding with your submission. This makes it A LOT easier for us to make that masterlist and for people to spot your fills.

3. Make sure to include a rating and warnings OR 'choose not to warn' at the start of your fill, as per the comm rules. Help us out and make sure folks know what they're clicking on :)

4. Please put anything NSFW behind a cut or link.

TIMELINE

TODAY: Prompting starts! GO, GO, GO
SUNDAY 2nd AUGUST: We open for fills! (You can also continue prompting)
UPDATED: MIDNIGHT FRIDAY 25 SEPTEMBER: Promptathon, both prompts and fills, ends at midnight in whatever your timezone is PROMPTATHON IS CLOSED!

If you have any questions about anything please feel free to ask! We have a questions thread as the first comment to this post and you can always PM a mod.

OKAY THEN BEST BAR EVER, LET’S GET PROMPTING!

Comments

[franztastisch]

"Needing to kiss to hide from bad guys"

Re: FILL

[sorcer3sssupreme]

oooohh yesss

[franztastisch]

Clint and Natasha have always been private people. Trying to remain private is the Tower is... a challenge to say the least

[franztastisch]

Magical libraries.

[gsparkle]

sigh.

[franztastisch]

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”
– Muhammad Ali

[franztastisch]

"You, of all people, deserve a happy ending. Despite everything that happened to you, you aren’t bitter. You aren’t cold. You’ve just retreated a little and been shy, and that’s okay."
— Sylvain Reynard

[franztastisch]

Natasha escaped the Red Room when she was young and joined a travelling circus. Young, slightly feral but always trying, she falls in love for the first time with the boy who does the archery display. But he has his own problems.

Re: FILL

[sorcer3sssupreme]

Get a little closer, let fold
Cut open my sternum, and pull
My little ribs around you
The rungs of me be under, under you
-Fineshrine, Purity Ring

Re: FILL

[sorcer3sssupreme]

I hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums
Oh, what a shame that you came here with someone
So while you're here in my arms
Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young
-Die Young, Kesha

(aka Clubbing but make it OT3 ;P )

Re: FILL

[sorcer3sssupreme]

Trading clothes!
bonus points if it's consensual.

double bonus points if the clothes that are traded have the person asking's logos on them 😂 (e.g. Clint has a sweater with a Black Widow logo on it)

[sgteam14283]

(slides this in at the last moment)

"I signed up for a reality wedding dress show with my ex and they just called asking if I wanted to be on. Please be my fake-boyfriend 'cause I want a nearly-free dress."

[inkvoices]

Just to say you can keep prompting until prompathon closes in September :)

And that I will read this prompt!

[sorcer3sssupreme]

"I'm the security guard here and trying to kick you out, please stop flirting with me"

[kiss_me_cassie]

Except I keep picturing Bucky and Clint here. But. Oh. Wait. I could... YES. Very excited on this prompt!

(Please writing god, give me time and a muse to do this!)

[sorcer3sssupreme]

Imagine Your OTP: ruining a fancy art gallery show

(credit for this one goes to alistra who led me to this Franz Ferdinand music video 😂)

[alistra]

Sparked by this Tumblr post.

"I don't usually mind isolation, I like being by myself. Only now and then... I don't know. If only there was a way to order occasional companionship like you do a pizza."

"Prostitution. You literally just explained the unique selling proposition of prostitution."

[inkvoices]

Murder Mystery Party

[sorcer3sssupreme]

UGH this is so much my jam... I need more time to do all these prompts 😂

[inkvoices]

At some kind of retreat (ie writer's retreat, musicians, art...) - could be AU or undercover?

FILL Putty in Your Hands, gen, unbeta'ed

[alistra]

It's been going on a week now that they've been perfect guests of this marriage-councelling resort to the wealthy. Clint didn't think that the one talent he's going to need the most here would be patience, but he's started wondering whether there's such a thing as whiplash from too much nodding with fake sympathy. For almost the entire week, Clint, posing as Clark Ratcliffe, has been sitting in a circle of husbands bemoaning the stressful effects that financially suppressing the 99% has had on their ability to keep up with the libidinous demands of their mistresses. Since Natasha, in her role as Nadine Ratcliffe, has been purposefully cold to him and spent her time with the circle of frustrated wives, Clint's entertainment has been sparse. The only highlight comes when it is his own turn to share.

To relieve at least some of his boredom, he starts embellishing the Ratcliffe's previously agreed-upon backstory with an affair of his own. It's worth it, too, to pretend not to be aware of most of the racist and homophobic discomfort halfway through the tale. In fact, it's so entertaining, he's adding another whole fifteen minutes of waxing lyrical about the imaginary young intern's impressive black cock, carrying on until eventually their spiritual leader calls a break and runs, suspiciously hunched over, for the nearest exit.

Alas, today's exercise has less comedic potential: It is a pottery class.

"That's it, time's up!" instructor Harem Pants chirps, happily applauding themselves as much as the group of adults hunched around chunks of clay.

Clint mentally claps himself on the back for not groaning his frustration. Although she has her back to him, he knows that Natasha will see right through it.

"Let's see what magic you guys wrought!" Harem Pants stage-whispers, as if sharing an illicit secret. Clint cannot be bothered to use the clearly made-up hippie name they introduced themselves with, not even in the privacy of his own mind and especially not if they insist on talking to a room full of adults as if they were a group of kindergarteners.

Everybody swivels their chairs around to share their work with the group and with a small smile, Nadine Ratcliffe's eyes meet her husbands. It's smooth, the way she first places her clay sculpture on the table before minutely raising both hands, stretches her fingers and sharply twists them palms outwards - it's unlikely anyone else will have picked up on the fact that she's signed All Done in ASL.

Finally!

Clint allows the relief at ending the charade to flit across his face.

"Let's see, who wants to go first? How about you, Benjie," says Harem Pants, unaware of the exchange. "Do you want to show us what you cherish about Hilda?"

It doesn't take an academically trained art critic to see a piggy bank in the young man's piece of clay, even though he makes a valiant attempt at describing some vague symbolism surrounding an animal that bonds for life. At least Hilda seems smitten, so maybe it'll work out alright, Clint thinks. He's wondering whether Esther across from him will be making up something about the Leaning Tower of Pisa or just forego all pretence and straight up admit that what she crafted is a dick, when he hears his own name.

"Nadine, what do you cherish about Clark?" Harem Pants asks.

"Clark and I have, like, really learned so much from, like, your seminar and that?" Nadine says, her accent as fake as the cheeky twist to her smile is real, "and I'm, like, so grateful?" She turns her work around to show to the room. Offset with a pattern that, if you were to look really closely, could potentially resemble tiny hourglasses, an arrow pierces the shape of a heart. "When we first met, it was like, as if cupid had struck me down? He, like, shot me with his arrow and ever since then, it's like, been a completely different world for me?"

Clint doesn't have to fake the broad grin splitting his face while the room oohs and aahs with misplaced romantic notions.

"That is so beautiful!" Harem Pants sounds close to tears. "Clark? What did you make for Nadine?"

"First of all, I don't think there's enough clay in the world to make models of everything I cherish about her," he says, and unsurprisingly, everybody sighs happily all over again. Natasha grins right back at him and even if appearing to have reconciled themselves is as good a way to finish the mission as any, he finds he's not lying about this part.

"But above all, she's this..." he proudly shows off his creation, biting his tongue to keep a straight face as the room falls silent. Brows draw together, heads tilt in scrutiny of the shapeless blob in front of him.

"It's a big rock!" he explains after a moment, full of fake exasperation. "She's my rock!"

Immediately, the room titters a chorus of "Yes, naturally!", "Of course!" and "That's what I wanted to say right away!"

The fake Ratcliffe's meet in the middle of the room, Clark lifting Nadine right off her feet in a tight embrace, ringed by terrible sculptures and smitten couples.

It's the entirely genuine Natasha who whispers into Clint's ear: "You're so full of shit," her quiet laughter the sweetest declaration of love he's ever heard.

[inkvoices]

Supernatural AU where if you seperate a person from their soul you can own them, control them, and they must always come back for it (kind of like a selkie's skin or daemon idea?).

Someone walking away from their soul for freedom? Rescuing someone's soul?

FILL: where soul meets body (T, unbeta'd)

[sorcer3sssupreme]

The girls in the Red Room are always taught to distrust anything male. Including parts of themselves.

So Natasha isn't nervous when they tell her she's ready for her graduation. They take her and Phyrelas into a part of the compound she's never seen before, strap them both into peculiar hard beds that makes her feel like they're being prepared for dissection and put on strange ambered goggles. She's excited as they pull the pair further apart, measuring something in the air between them before cutting with something that looks nothing like the scalpel she'd been expecting. She thinks of the freedom she's been promised.

She tells herself the emptiness that floods into her as the blade cuts what should only be air is not pain. Because how could it be when it's just… nothingness.

---

The first time they give her a false daemon as a cover-- a delicate butterfly trapped in a necklace-- she almost screams as its silken wing brushes her neck. It's not cool scales and a sullen color and wrong wrongwrong. She swallows the scream and when she comes back, fresh blood under her fingernails, she crushes the butterfly for even trying to pretend.

---

The SHIELD archer falters when he should have killed her.

"You… you have no…"

He wavers on his perch and Natasha grins all the way back for escaping him so easily. She has no idea how anyone in the field could be so squeamish about a simple daemon separation.

---

The next time they meet-- well, face to face, anyway-- he keeps his bow up, even if he does still look queasy from just looking at her.

"I've seen you with a bird, a cat, a praying mantis, which… that one was a bit on the nose, don't you think?" He takes a breath. "So which one is it?"

He's off kilter not knowing her daemon and she can't fathom why. Surely another assassin doesn't need to know their target's soul to kill them. Not a good one, anyway.

"Isn't it obvious?" Natasha laughs, genuinely amused. "None of them."

---

The time after that, it's at a party. A ball, technically. He eyes the bat clinging to her bar necklace with the same derision she feels somewhere deep, deep inside.

"Why does it bother you so much?" she asks in an undertone.

"It's just not right to…" he gestures vaguely, something that hints at moving two things apart. "Like that."

Natasha blinks. "You're just meant to kill me. Why do you care?"

She doesn't miss the way his opossum daemon bares its teeth. A defense mechanism, she knows.

---

The alley is rainy and miserable (or maybe that's just her). And she's cornered.

She can hear the bowstring straining, a creak just above the dull drone of rain hitting the pavement. Vibrating with how much effort he's put into not killing her.

She's not sure she's worth it.

"You could come with me," he says.

She trembles, bares her teeth. "They'd kill me."

His eyes dart to her side. Which is ridiculous because that's where his daemon would be, not hers. But he can't know that. His daemon whispers something to him.

"What if we can help?"

Natasha wants to laugh. It's a completely mad idea. And the glimmer of hope it gives her makes her want to cry. She thinks she hates this SHIELD agent for making her feel that again.

"They would slaughter you," she replies.

"Well… I was thinking you might give me a fair shot." He pauses. "Ha. Shot. Sniper pun."

Natasha's lip curls in distaste. But… he is here, having not killed her several times and offering to not only not kill her but maybe even give her a shot at freedom. Real freedom, that is.

"Shoot me, then," she says, only half joking.

"What?!"

"Shoot me, I have a plan," she tries again.

Clint goggles at her. But after a moment he adjusts the aim of his bow and looses it.

She curses, grabbing onto her should to try and stem some of the pain and bleeding.

"Hey, you said to shoot you…"

"I wasn't expecting it to hurt more than a gunshot," she hisses.

"It's the shaft." Clint grimaces in sympathy.

Natasha flexes her injured arm experimentally. "Well. Your turn."

"Wait wha--"

Natasha slashes along Clint's hairline. The blood coats one side of his face almost immediately.

"You could've avoided getting that in my eye, at least," he grouses.

"My other idea was to give you a black eye. Work with it."

"I'm seeing your point, now. What next?"

"How well can you play injured?" she asks.

Clint looks at her. Then he and his daemon look at each other pointedly. It's then that she notices Clint fighting hard against a grin, "You want me… to play possum…"

He finally succumbs to the laughter, doubling over.

"I might want to revisit the head trauma idea…" she says to herself.

She carries him into the Red Room. The front guards don't give her a second look. The interrogation rooms are at the center of the facility. They're heavily fortified but not heavily guarded. Turns out most of the guards can only stand the screaming for a few hours at a time. Weak.

The guards there now are strapping Clint onto a table. They don't notice Natasha stepping silently behind them. She knocks two of them out at once, smashing their heads together. The third draws his gun but she's slightly faster. She dives under the table as the bullet hits the wall behind where she was just standing. She uses her momentum to drive her full weight into the last guard's heavy mastiff daemon. She can't be sure she hears the telltale snap of breaking bone but he goes down just the same and Natasha rolls up to sit on his chest. A well-placed punch knocks him out cold.

She ducks on instinct when the gun goes off again. But it's a guard's body that falls.

"Aw c'mon, my aim isn't that bad is it?"

He grins at her from the other side of the room. She blinks at him. Her heart is beating wildly in her chest. She looks at the SHIELD agent's lopsided grin. Then blames the erratic rhythm on being closer to her daemon than she'd been in months.

Natasha searches the guards for the keycard she needs, lifting a few spare clips off the guards as she goes. When she looks up, Clint is edging closer and closer to the door, his eyes fixed on the guards. Or, if she knows him (which… she tries not to dwell on), the lack of a part of the guards. She decides to take pity on him and leads them both out of the room.

"So they're all…" he mimes the same thing he'd done before-- two things being pulled apart.

Or maybe, she thinks now that she's seeing it again, it's one thing being pulled into two.

Natasha nods. "They say it's so we're less vulnerable in the field. But then they always have a piece of us. They control us that way. We always have to come back."

Clint nods sharply and swallows. He's not quite looking at anything.

The guard's keycard opens the daemon collection. The animal-shaped souls stare at Natasha impassively as she walks down the alphabetized cages and containers. She finds Phyr, filed under 'Romanova', waiting at the back of his cage for her. He's hard to spot, blending into the shadows where the harsh fluorescent lights can't reach. She elbows through the glass and reaches in with her injured arm for him to use to avoid the glass. He hesitates for a long moment. He stares, unblinking, at her. Finally, he seems to make up his mind and coils his way up her arm.

Clint is staring at Phyr when she emerges and she feels so exposed-- her soul literally on display-- that she almost wishes she could put him back. Sensing her discomfort, he winds tighter around her neck, hiding his red underbelly and much of his head under her hair. This seems to snap Clint's attention back to her.

"Alright," he says, "Let's get you out of here."

[inkvoices]

lighthouse keeper

[inkvoices]

Quilt made from scraps of damaged, destroyed, and old Avengers uniforms/suits

[sorcer3sssupreme]

*fully sobbing about this*

[inkvoices]

AU in which the AI (or an AI) that Tony creates is Clint or Natasha

[alistra]

"Her" Fusion? (as a separate idea sparked off this one).

[alistra]

Pick a window from https://window-swap.com/ and write which of your charas are there and why. Is it a safe house? A mission? A stake out?

[alistra]

It doesn't feel the way the memories insist it should.

[alistra]

I wish I was as unaware of my flaws as you pretend to be.

[sgteam14283]

may or may not be inspired by a recent event

Natasha has never experienced a tornado before. Until one time her and Clint are at the Farm that is.

[alistra]

I can't believe none of us has thought of this before:

Team-building excersise!

[alistra]

I made a fist and not a plan.

FILL: Last Friday Night (Teen and Up)

[inkvoices]

Warnings: bar brawl violence, victim with minor head wound, one f-word use

Last Friday Night

The friends of the loud-mouthed, Nazi-tattooed asshole Steve knocks to the floor take a minute to realise what just happened before they start to react. One of them grabs an empty beer bottle by the neck, ready to swing, and another lifts a bar stool by the leg with both hands. Sympathetic members of the crowd start drawing closer, faces ugly, along with the idiots who love a brawl.

“Now what?” Natasha asks flatly, from where she’s sitting next to Clint at the table they only managed to get on this busy Friday night by showing up early.

“Oh, I was going to improvise,” Steve says, voice casual but eyes darting all over the bar as he calculates movement, angles, opportunities. Watching his opponents edge nearer and weighing up which one will be brave enough - or stupid enough - to make the first move. Well, the second or third move, if Nazi Number One violently shoving a young women out of his way, so that her head caught the edge of a table as she fell down, and Steve taking offence count.

James is already on his feet and taking up a position just behind Steve to his left, where James can use his metal arm to cover for where Steve would usually use the shield - which he doesn’t have with him because this was meant to be a casual night out.

Clint, on the other hand, is still munching on fries and wings.

“Did you make a fist and not a plan?” Natasha sighs and steals one of Clint’s fries as she stands up.

“Planning is for suckers,” Clint says, holding up his basket so she can take a few more, at the same time as Steve says cheerfully, “It’s my night off.”

Natasha and James exchange a look, which says that one is your idiot.

“I’m fine. Seriously,” Natasha can hear the woman saying where Sam has guided her out of the line of fire, and Sam replying, in his best reassuring-the-civilian tone of voice, “Sorry, but I’m gonna have to disagree. I used to do this for a living, okay?”

She looks over to see him brushing the woman’s braids back behind her ear so he can inspect a cut above her eyebrow that’s bleeding heavily, painting the side of her face and dripping onto her top. Head wounds bleed a lot, so Natasha knows it looks worse than it probably is, but she’s lucky it missed her eye.

“You don’t have a concussion, but I’d like to put a couple of butterfly stitches on this,” Sam says. Then, louder, “Can someone get me a first aid kit please?”

“Get it your fucking self,” a guy mutters - the one who thinks using a beer bottle as a weapon would be a good idea.

Clint finally gets to his feet, throwing his now empty food basket at the guy and making him drop the bottle, then the biggest guy is taking a swing at Steve and Natasha is demonstrating to another, who charges at her spewing sexist bullshit, that targeting her isn’t the easy option.

Meanwhile one of the bar staff is directing Sam and his patient through a door at the back and another is on the phone, probably to the police. Natasha would feel offended that they don’t think the Avengers - well, half of the Avengers - can handle this, but she’s still holding onto a faint hope that they haven’t been recognised. Either way, to be fair the staff are probably calling the police on all of them.

“One with the least bruises has to explain to Coulson,” Clint calls out, grinning wildly as he ducks under a thrown stool.

“Not fair,” Steve complains and James laughs.

Steve’s serum works faster than James’ knockoff version, so any bruises Steve gets will be long gone by the time they have to report this shit. All James and Natasha have to do is let a few hits land so they have a mark or two.

Clint always ends up with a mark or several; his close combat fighting style still works best for protecting others rather than defending himself, even though Natasha has managed to improve it over the years, mostly by yelling at him to put his mask on first before helping others. When Clints moves to cover Natasha’s back she adjusts to protect him in turn and that solves the problem.

James, however, is displaying terrible technique as he knees an opponent in the balls, but then, beyond making sure no one he cares about gets badly hurt, James doesn’t really take these kinds of fights seriously. For which they’re all thankful, because if he did there’d be a pile of dead bodies to deal with at the end and no one needs that when they’re off the clock.

“Come on,” Steve says, clearly more bothered about having to try to explain his inability to deal with assholes without escalating the situation than he is by fighting three of said assholes at the same time. “What am I even supposed to say?”

Natasha thinks it’s an excellent demonstration of teamwork when the rest of them manage to be almost perfectly in sync as they tell him to, “ Improvise.”