"Do any of you know how to make the, uh, y'know," Clint gestures vaguely at the array of strings in front of them. Tony had stopped for a well-deserved ice cream break, Steve had spotted an art store nearby, and somehow it ended with the three of them standing in front of a shelf full of strings and threads, Clint making vague arm gestures that didn't really help to explain anything. "Bracelet thingies?"
"Bracelet thingies," Steve repeats, a bit amused, and Tony laughs a bit, because he's an jerk like that. "Very descriptive."
Clint sticks his tongue out at Steve, "Shut up. You know. Those... those thingies that girls like to put on their ankles."
"Really not helping your case here, buddy," Tony drawls, examining some yarn that claims to glow in the dark. He cups his hands around and looks at them with one eye, disappointed when the light is dim. He was expecting something neon and bright, but that was just weak. "Darn."
Clint looks amused at Tony's dilemma because he's mean like that, but still frustrated that he's not getting his idea across, "You know, like, those knotty thingies? With like, six strings, and..."
Clint makes precise little movements, as though he's trying to show them what he's thinking of, but Steve still looks blank and something niggles at the back of Tony's mind, the image of a girl with a bright smile right as she asks you a traveler on the bus and Tony points will you show me that before Jarvis finds him and takes him back home to a livid Howard.
"Oh, oh," Tony snaps his fingers, the uncomfortable memory sitting like stone in his gut even as he gestures excitedly,"You mean an, um, a, a chevron friendship bracelet!"
Now it's Clint's turn to give him a blank stare, and Steve looks a little amused as he asks, "How did you know that?"
"I, um," Tony turns red, "That's a story for another time."
Steve exchanges looks with Clint, amused and curious, but they don't push. Clint gives a vague finger motion, "Like, with the six strings..."
"...and the knotty thingies!" Tony agrees, bouncing a bit on his toes.
(He hopes that they're talking about the same thing, or else this would be awkward.)
"Like, they look like fishtail braids?" Tony says, "But they're tied onto each other? And they're, like, diagonal and can be in v shapes!"
"Exactly!" Clint beams, snapping his fingers. The barrier has been broken and communication has begun. "Yes! You can do those?"
Tony hesitates, "Yes?" He says.
Probably?
Maybe?
Sort of?
He settles on yes.
Steve still looks confused, but it's a fond sort of confusion, so he claps a hand on Tony's shoulder and smiles wide and says, "Mind showing me how to do it?"
"No problem!" Tony grins, wide and full and a bit excited. "From what I recall, it was really fun to make!"
"Sounds fantastic!" Steve's smile is wide and full of teeth and he looks like he'll start clapping or something.
"Okay, so we have to choose three colors each, right?" Clint asks, leaning over to peer at the threads, an excited edge to his grin.
"Yeah," Tony picks up a bright pink thread and grins sharply at it, "Knock yourselves out."
Steve looks them through and settles on white, dark purple, and a pastel pink. He thinks that they will make a fitting contrast against each other, and he gives Tony a wrinkled twenty dollar bill. "I know that you said you'd cover the road trip costs," He says quietly, "But this doesn't really count as a road trip cost, does it?"
Tony stares at the bill in his hand for a moment, dumbfounded, and then he laughs a bit and says, "Stevie, darling, I'm a millionaire."
Steve shrugs, the tips of his ears turning a bit pink as he mutters, a bit embarrassed, "That doesn't mean that your money will run on forever."
"Aw, Steve," Tony presses two hands to his chest, smiling fondly, "You didn't have to, but... That's very sweet. Thank you."
Steve beams, "No problem."
Clint watches them with a slight smile. He's grateful to them all, but he's a carnie kid through and through, and as such, he's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Clint, though he can seem noble at times, thinks to himself that he's not about to let precious money slip through his fingers. "What colors did you guys go with?"
Steve holds up his, smiling a bit, "What do you think?"
"Looks fabulous," Clint grins widely, holding up his own, all different shades of purple, from a pastel, creamy purple to an eggplant purple. "I'm sticking with purple."
"What a surprise," Tony, who has long since become accustomed to Clint being obsessed with the color, drawls, a fond roll of his eyes accompanying his words.
Clint offers Tony a toothy grin, crooked but earnest, and asks, "What about you? Something flashy, I bet."
"You know me so well," Tony winks at Clint and holds up three of the primary colors. The yellow is eye searing, the shade of a dandelion's petals with the brightness of the sun. The red and the blue are equally bright, each strong and bold and Tony looks quite proud of himself.
It's just like Tony, to choose the most eye catching and eye searing colors. It's a talent, really, Clint thinks, and he laughs. "They look fantastic," He says. "I see you went with all primary colors?"
"What can I say?" Tony shrugs, "I like to keep it simple."
Steve looks amused as they make their way to cashier's, "Am I hearing this from the same man that tinkered with his phone in order to make it either accept or decline a call with a clap or two claps of his hands?"
"That's different," Tony huffs.
Steve shakes his head, smiling a bit, but doesn't argue.
When it comes to engineering, Tony is a different beast entirely. Though they haven't known him for long, this was something that Clint and Steve had quickly learned.
"So what made you think of doing a chevron bracelet, anyway?" Tony asked Clint curiously.
Clint shrugs, playing with the threads idly, "I knew someone who did them, a while back," he clears his throat, "So I was just reminded of them when we saw the string, s'all."
He doesn't say much else, and they don't pry. They know better, by now.
Clint is willing to tell them about her while they're on the bus that night, making the bracelets with patient, slow twists of their fingers.
She was a circus performer.
Only there for a short while... she wasn't one to stick around, but she stayed for a few months. Less than half a year, Clint remembers.
She wore all pink, walked around on her hands instead of feet and once took down armed robbers when they visited the grocery store. Kicking down the gun and wrapping herself around the body like a snake, picking up the gun and pointing it at the others with the cheerful threat that if they did not put the guns down, they would be in trouble.
Young Clint had thought that she was the coolest thing since sliced bread. He had been awed, she had smiled mysteriously when he asked how she had done that.
She wore these little anklets, woven and lovely, shades of pink and red and once, for Clint, purple.
She taught it to him, but he hadn't fully remembered. There was more to do, after all.
(She vanishes, a few weeks later, a bright pink chevron anklet on Clint's wrist that he didn't have when he had gone to sleep that night. The adults say nothing, and she would have slipped from his mind if not for the bracelet around his ankle.)
Clint tells the story lightly, focusing a bit more on how amazing she had seemed to him as a child, focuses more on how she was a performer through and through instead of how she had pulled three kids off him once. He leaves out details that would make Steve and Tony question him, leaves out little details like how he used to go to her when he didn't particularly want to deal with the mess that was the rest of his circus life.
When he finishes, it's with a flourish, loud and laughing and he bows a bit, too, for good measure.
Steve is thoughtful, and Tony grins (that odd little grin he gets whenever someone tells a personal story, something intrigued and fond and terribly kind. It makes you get attached to him terrifyingly fast, that way he acts like every word from your lips is gold).
"Should've figured you were in the circus," He says, teasing and light, leaning back with a crooked grin on his lips, "You're quite the performer."
(Clint thinks of SHIELD, of bared smiles and sweet words, of kissing girls before he shoots them between the eyes, you're a good actor, for a sniper, and Clint snarks, you can never be too careful in this line of work.)
"I know," he smiles instead, sweetness and sugar and he isn't sure if it's true or not (he's tricked himself, a bit, perhaps), "I'm a dazzling star, always catching everyone's attention."
"You wish," Tony snorts.
Steve elbows him, and Tony laughs a bit at Steve, though nothing was said.
Some part of Clint yearns for that, though he knows that he's already part of it.
"What about you?" Clint asks Tony idly, "How'd you learn?"
Tony's shoulders are forcibly relaxed, his smile bright but his posture is too relaxed, it's normally stiff and straight backed and the ease at which he holds himself isn't Tony anymore, it's Stark, the smile that tells the cameras he doesn't care and the set of his shoulders that is at east no matter where he is.
Steve can see it too, Clint knows, and Steve rips his eyes away, uncertain of how to look at Tony when he's like that.
Never mind is on Clint's tongue.
"Pretty girl in a bar," Tony says lightly, grinning white teethed and wide at Clint, "She taught me how to make it and then we made out. Nothing exciting, unfortunately," he laughs, a bit self deprecatingly, and that would set off alarm bells if the posture and smile hadn't already.
Tony isn't the type of person to say nothing exciting.
He'll embellish.
He'll exaggerate.
But he won't says something like nothing exciting. To someone like Tony, it's a waste of breath.
That's okay. Clint lied a bit, with his story, too (he would lie, but it's so much easier telling the truth, especially if nobody believes you).
The air isn't tense, hasn't got there yet, because Tony knows that they know that he's lying but he can't bring himself to care and they don't either, so when Clint laughs and makes a joke about bars and Tony, they laugh and the conversation spills into constellations and Greek myths and idle little things that don't matter to any of them.
And this? This is alright.
(Maybe even better than alright.)