little highway girl

Clint won another round of Spider Solitaire. The night shift case worker had scarlet fever and Jan had beaten him at seven out of thirteen rounds of Rock Paper Scissors. So here he was, the third of four double shifts. He sipped his terrible coffee and started another round of cards.

( It wasn't like he was slacking off or anything. )

All That Love, All Those Mistakes

By sunspot, aka: unavoidedcrisis.
Collaborative artwork by king_stitch.
Beta'd by tsukinofaerii.

Fandom: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
Relationships & Characters: Clint/Steve, implied Thor/others, Steve/others, Clint, Steve, Thor, Jan
Rating: NC17
Word Count: 19,500
Warnings: strong language, sexual content, discussion of prostitution
Author's Notes: Written for au_bigbang '12. Many thanks to my lovely artist, king_stitch, and my fantastic and ever patient even though I so didn't deserve it beta. Thank you to road_rhythm for saving my smut when all hope was lost. Thanks always to chat, for putting up with my whining, and thanks to the AU Bang mods for another great round.

This story is basically 0% like the story I set out to write, but I'm actually pretty pleased with the direction it chose to take.

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All that love, all those mistakes; what else can a poor man make?
- Josh Ritter

After a life on the street and now a job at a run down community centre, Clint classifies himself as a hard-and-fast pessimist. Until he gets the stuffing knocked out of him by a local street gang and suddenly his life is like a bad rom-com, complete with the boy with the smile that makes his knees weak, the ever-helpful matchmaking best friend, gratuitous Abraham Lincoln, and one or more cracked ribs. Okay, maybe he's still a pessimist...

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