The Rashomon Effect

by et.in.arkadia

Bruce's talk with Clint goes pretty well. Clint has seen it coming for a while, has been reading the writing on the wall, so he smiles with forced ease that says he's seen it coming, and he says it's all cool. Up and across Stark Tower Tony's conversation with Steve is going differently.

Bruce's talk with Clint goes pretty well. Clint has seen it coming for a while, has been reading the writing on the wall, so he smiles with forced ease that says he's seen it coming, and he says it's all cool.

Bruce looks profoundly relieved in a way that Clint can't refute, and Clint keeps smiling while Bruce grabs his spare things - a book here, a t-shirt there, a box of quinoa from the counter.

There are many books and papers tucked under Bruce's arms, charts and diagrams and scientific studies Clint never could've understood anyway. Every now and then he'd tried, and Bruce had explained some theory or law of nature or atomic principle patiently, like Bruce did everything when he wasn't The Hulk. Eventually Clint's eyes would glaze, and Bruce would shift them into sex. They had sex a lot more than they spoke.

Clint understood sex very, very well, and he thought they'd been good; knew it'd been good, but Bruce was the kind of guy who needed more than even mind-blowing sex on a regular basis, needed someone whose gaze didn't go distant when molecular concepts came into play.

Still, part of him wishes it wasn't Stark. He'd known it was going to be Stark. Still, though.

Harder to keep smiling through Bruce's kind, apologetic chatter while he dodges around Clint's bedroom, collecting things. Harder knowing Bruce will be going upstairs and that he won't ever come back down in the way Clint has known. He'd known he wouldn't be keeping him long. Still, smiling's harder than it looks.

Most of Clint is fighting watching the way Bruce's body bends and moves, he knows Bruce's body too well and it is a very good body, wonderfully responsive and commanding on demand. He fights the overwhelming urge to say Once more, for the road? because he knows Bruce will shake his head a little, and look ruffled and sad, and Clint doesn't need to see that. It goes deep with Stark, Bruce had said as much, and Clint has to not think about how they'll never be like this again because they already aren't; they were past-tense.

"-so great," Bruce is saying. "I'm really grateful, Clint. I can't th-"

"Don't thank me," says Clint, and it's enough of a snap that Bruce draws back so he says, "I'm the one who should be thanking you, okay? We're in mutual thanks." He stands up and helps herd Bruce and his overflowing arms of stuff toward the door. "It's cool," says Clint, shaking the hand that Bruce sticks out sideways and looking only once into his calm earnest eyes before he lets him go.

Up and across Stark Tower Tony's conversation with Steve is going differently.

"I don't understand." Steve's said it three time at least and every time it twists a hot little knife in Tony's gut. It's so much worse when Steve follows up with the classic amateur's mistake, but what was he expecting, really? He'd brought this on himself and it was unfortunate for them both but Steve had to learn, this had been a lot about Steve learning. A good learning exercise.

Still, it's all painfully, heart-breakingly neophyte. "Tell me what I did," says Steve. "Please. I'll change. I can fix it. I know I can. Whatever it is, just tell me."

"Steve, Steve." If Tony's chest cavity weren't so cavernous maybe he'd feel more of the heartbreak. "You're not hearing me, champ. I said we've been great, we've had a great time, right? It's just time for other things. You're so young, there're so many fish in the sea-"

"Fuck the fish, Tony," Steve says, surprising him with vehemence and swear-words. "Fuck the other fish. I thought we - we -"

"We've had fun," Tony says again, trying to keep it light, because this is growing tiresome and by now Bruce will be waiting for him in an enormous bubblebath with Scientific American and The Economist, and that's really how Tony would prefer to pass the night. Bruce had warned him, been worried about it, had wanted to be there, said the kid was in deeper than Tony thought. Tony had waved that off but he should have known better; Bruce was right about mostly everything, and Captain America was approaching a meltdown.

"Look, it's been fun, and you're an excellent dude and friend and teammate, I don't want that to change at all. Let's just cool our jets a while. I'm a really bad influence and unhealthy for you anyway, you ever think about that? I'm, like, the opposite of a Wheaties balanced breakfast."

Tony is reaching now more than a little, and he sounds like an asshole and he knows it, but maybe it's better that way. It's always easier when he plays to the persona people expect. He fortifies himself with a very large drink from his very large wetbar. Steve doesn't interrupt the ramble, just keeps looking at nothing, so Tony talks on. "You should be, I dunno, out at the bars in Brooklyn, where the young people are, and the funky music is, not-"

"Three days ago," says Steve, and he puts his face in his hands. "Three days ago you f-fucked me in your bed, twice, and then you said, you said Steve, there's never been anything like you." His head comes up. Blue eyes so big they barely fit over his cheekbones. "Was that a lie, too? Has it all been lies?"

"No, no." Tony's nonmechanical heart finally kicks at him, and he takes a seat near Steve on the couch. "I never lie about anything important. Steve. You're still not hearing me. All of this has been a real trip, and I've really liked hanging out with you, I give you so many bonus points for putting up with me for this long. But-" he flicks through a vast mental Rolodex of relations, seeking the best way to settle it once and for all.

First real fling. Got too attached. Didn't see the writing on the wall.

He feels bad, but he says it; for people bound to truth and honor like Steve and previously innocent in their romantic endeavors this pretty much put the nail in the coffin. "-there's someone else," Tony finishes.

Steve stares, his jaw tightening; his fists tighten; then he nods and looks away. "Dr. Banner."

Tony's surprised, but shouldn't be, since Steve isn't stupid. He doesn't deny it, is only vastly glad this seems to be coming to a close, because if Steve had stayed in please-let-me-fix-us territory Tony would be halfway through the bar by now. "Are we good? Can we be good? I'd like it if we were good. Take a few days to be mad at me and think about what a terrible idea I am in general, and then let's have a drink and we'll talk and-"

"Yeah," says Steve. "Okay." He gets up, brushing imagined creases from his impeccably pressed pants. On the way across the room his bright eyebrows knit together, and he pauses with one hand near the control panel that activated the door. "Tony. It's only just that." Somehow that stays as its own sentence. Then his soft phrasing is heavy with hesitation. "I haven't ever been with anyone else. You know. I don't know how to do that."

"You're a natural," Tony assures him, tossing back the dregs of his glass, hating himself and swallowing expensive liquor like bile because really it would all be better, it was such a better idea about him and Bruce, it was the best idea, and it would be better for Steve in the end.

Steve was awfully sweet for a supersoldier but he was so young, had so much growing up and fucking around to do, and sure it'd been gymnastic-fantastic in bed with Steve once Tony had gotten him warmed up, but Tony was getting too long in tooth for blushes. Really he'd done the world a favor breaking in Steve and cutting him free. Bruce was waiting for him, had been waiting for him a while.

"Text me if you have any questions," says Tony.

Steve goes.

Bruce feels terrible about Steve, can imagine how it had gone even (especially) when Tony downplays the scene; and really he's a little shocked at himself for being party to all of this, but it was Tony and they were right together, so he's waiting for him under steam and bubbles when Tony comes back.

Their mistake had been in not starting out this way in the beginning. The sense of them had been there from the start, an expectation of some day, inevitable and unpressing. Bruce had needed a long while readjusting to living around people again, let alone nine million of them in the city that never slept, and Tony had been distracted with entertaining Steve, and it hadn't been pressing.

One night a few months in Clint had knocked on his door after an Avengers debriefing. They'd had a skirmish with a well-intentioned robotics thesis at M.I.T. gone horribly wrong, and The Hulk had taken a few hits intended for Hawkeye. Clint wanted to say thanks, he said. He said that while crossing every invisible line of personal space that sociology had wrought.

Bruce, half-surprised and starting to be the kind of alone that felt lonely and, he found with his eyes on Clint, definitely interested, had drawn him inside. Inside Clint went to his knees like it was easy as breathing, and that had been lovely, really, so they kept sleeping together when it was convenient. A warm body in bed was almost as nice as a knife, Clint would say, attributing the quote to Natasha, on the nights when he slept next to Bruce.

Bruce and Tony went on working side by side, developing an affable, intimate friendship, forging professional breakthroughs daily and taking in endless cultural options at night. Maybe they'd been even luckier than most, getting to start that way as friends. With Steve often gone on missions and training runs, and being somewhat adverse to being seen with Tony in black tie, Bruce was his default social buddy; Bruce and Tony at the opera, at the museum gala, presenting at the conference in Geneva. Tony swam in invitations, and Bruce had a closet that slowly filled with fine suits and tuxedos. They worked and discovered and shared and laughed and drank and talked and waited for each other.

It hadn't been much of anything really that made them change, that switched them over. There had never been far to go. Just one night in a limo coming back from the Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. At the concert Bruce had spent a very long while poking at Tony's thigh to keep him awake, until he suspected Tony was feigning sleep on purpose.

Then instead of stopping Bruce had kept his hand where it landed, high on Tony's leg; and once it was there it was like he couldn't move his hand, it wouldn't ever move again. In the most expensive box they were partially being viewed by hundreds of dressy people while the strings soared, but that didn't matter. What mattered was Tony looking down at Bruce's hand on him, and how Tony moved to cover Bruce's hand with his own fingers. They sat like that for the rest of the night, through intermission, stayed sitting like that long after the show had ended and the audience cleared out and ushers were sweeping the aisles.

In the limo, Tony was on top of him as soon as the door clicked closed. He kissed Bruce, kissed his mouth for a long time, kissed his mouth and his cheeks and his ears and his glasses and his forehead and kissed deep into his hair.

Kept Bruce's face cradled so he wouldn't look away ever at all, so that they watched each other with wide, wondering eyes over where their lips met.

"Thank God," said Tony. "Hail Mary, mother of grace. I was so tired of waiting. Bruce. My God."

"I know," said Bruce, truthful. Holding Tony close and having Tony straddling his lap should've felt strange or at least new but was only just what it was, which was inevitable. "Me too. Why did we?" and there was no good answer about waiting so they didn't. He pulled Tony into the kind of kiss he'd been picturing for so long it was like the Mona Lisa of kisses in his head and Tony made a sound that was even better and then they were trying to climb into each others' skins.

Tony had the limo drive a slow circuit through the five boroughs twice, even Staten Island, and after that it was over, it was done, all the conclusions had been drawn with multiple controls. They came together like halves refitting. Bruce had known that they were meant to be and would be someday and that they would be good but he had never imagined such ease and lust and synchronicity.

There was never enough of Tony to be had; always, he wanted and uncovered more of him, knew without words that Tony returned the sentiment, that Tony even wanted the parts of Bruce kept down and hidden, that Tony was unafraid because he knew all Bruce was and could be and he understood.

At heart they were very much the same person with the same lightning-quick intellect few others could comprehend let alone follow let alone fully process. They were the same brashly brilliant person given wildly divergent branching paths in life, slaves to the scientific discipline that they loved and hated and tempted them, that kept them going. Tony had mostly succeeded where Bruce had gone wrong, but the weight of Bruce's hard-earned experience was a good balance to Tony's unchecked ego, and they were stronger with their branches twined.

Later in bed after loving him Tony lies holding onto Bruce, carding fingers through his hair. "You were right," he admits. "Kid was pretty into me. Think I might've fucked him up a little. I really didn't mean to."

"If there's anyone who's fully cognizant of his charms," Bruce teases gently, but Tony's eyebrows are drawn down which means he's thinking hard. "We should've done it better," Bruce says, about Steve and the way they were before, "but Cap's a good guy, strong, a lot stronger than looks, even. Wiser, too. He'll be okay, I think, and then he'll wonder how he ever tolerated your relentless jackassery."

Tony's arms tighten around him. "Guess there's nothing for it now. We've all been through it. Better that the band-aid's off."

Bruce considers. "I could talk to him?"

Tony sighs. "No. Give it a while, at least. Whole thing needs some space." He slips a finger under Bruce's chin, turns his head. "Also don't ever speak to anyone again but me. I need all of your words for my own purposes."

"Irrational," Bruce protests, but kisses him anyway, never very far to go.

In the beginning he hadn't liked Tony at all. Not one bit.

Tony was arrogant and foolhardy and overconfident, the things that the army tried best to beat out of you; and Tony had a need for speed and a dangerous streak a mile wide and a tongue laced with acid. He was everything Steve had ever avoided, and he reminded Steve at first of selfish people that he had fought; and he and Tony fought often, bickering back and forth.

On the day they saved the world, Steve watched Tony fly off to die and watched him fall and be caught, and he'd gone towards Tony's broken prone form on the ground feeling like someone had torn his heart from his chest. Then The Hulk had given a wretched roar and Tony opened his eyes, and it was like getting his heart put back in. Steve had been too relieved to notice what he should have then: that Tony came back for Bruce, not for him.

Steve had been the one to start it so he didn't have anyone else to blame. Probably Tony would have left him alone. Tony looked at almost everyone the way he looked at Steve, with hungry eyes and a challenge; left it open to the other person whether they wanted that avenue pursued. Steve's fault for letting himself be pursued, for pursuing. The night after the day they saved the world, he silenced Tony mid-argument with his mouth, and Tony had been surprised enough to let him.

It wasn't like kissing Bucky had been. It was different. There was no shame because there wasn't room for that here and Tony had no shame. He didn't love Tony like he loved Bucky, but he wanted him, and Steve was alone in a new world and Tony's bed was an intriguing place to start.

"You're rebelling," Tony had said, breaking from Steve's artlessly ardent kiss. "I like that. I can work with that."

And maybe he was rebelling, maybe Steve was kicking back against who he was supposed to be and the strange century and the new order of things, which was mostly the same as the old with some deviations, but he went back to kissing Tony, and he asked Tony to take him to bed. The other Avengers who knew they slept together although Steve never told probably thought that Tony had started it but he hadn't. It had been Steve's fault and it was his fault and there wasn't anyone else to blame.

He'd been naïve about Tony and he should have known better by now. He knew who Tony was, knew his reputation, should have known he would never stay with anyone for very long. Not with Steve at least. Steve was backwards here even more than he'd been before he was frozen and he was messed up in the head from the things he'd seen and done, woke sweaty from bad dreams. He'd liked the sound of Tony's careless snore next to him when he tried to sleep again, grounding him in now. It was much rarer to sleep next to Tony than to sleep with him, though, so that part didn't feel as empty.

The first time -

The first time with Tony had been his first time. He and Bucky had fooled around enough that Steve thought he was putting on a good enough show of it, letting Tony pull off his t-shirt and undo his belt, scratching his nails down Tony's bared skin, meeting Tony with ready lips and teeth and tongue.

But they had fast reached a point where Steve had to tell him what he'd been dreading, and told it quietly; and Tony hadn't looked disappointed or laughed at him, Tony had said, "Whoa, really, never?" and he'd grinned below raised eyebrows at Steve, said, "Are you sure? You're sure," and "This is awesome," and "Steve, I'm gonna make this so good it'll blow your mind. This is gonna be so good you won't disagree with me for a week and a half."

It hurt when Tony fucked him like he said it would, but Steve had been through every kind of pain there was and this was the best kind. Then it had stopped hurting, and it had been better than Tony said it would be. Steve got it then, got what all the fuss and chaos was about, finally understood with Tony moving in him and the way Tony looked at him and the way Tony made him come, like they were alone together at the end of the world.

Drinking isn't much for him and doesn't do much, but he's started having beers some nights with Natasha and Clint and Thor in one of Stark Tower's spare kitchens to pass time. Time has been weirdly crawling since Tony said all kinds of things and then said but there's someone else like he finally took pity on Steve and gave him a death-blow so he'd stop struggling.

He thinks about how he must've sounded to Tony, like the kid Tony thought he was, pleading not to be left alone with the lights off in the dark. Steve thinks about that and he hates himself and he hates Tony just a little. He's glad he doesn't hate Bruce, doesn't want to and doesn't feel like it. Bruce is in love with his best friend and partner in crime, and Steve understands that. Bruce is a good man, maybe better than Tony deserves.

No. He won't let wounds make him bitter, lesser. He's come too far for that. It was his fault about Tony and Tony had been right about it in the end. He hadn't lied. They'd had fun. They'd had a good time. There shouldn't be regret in that. They never really stopped fighting but it became good-natured, and they never really did much but fuck a lot and sprawl in Tony's big bed discussing and dissecting tactical strategies and past and future battles between bouts.

He'd been so new at having someone who wanted him back and was extremely demonstrative on the matter and he'd let that stand in for something more than what it was. Tony hadn't ever lied to him. Tony had never said, Steve, we'll stay together a while or Steve, why don't you move in, like he had with Dr. Banner. He'd only ever said things like Steve, you're great and Steve, the formation in the Pacific in '44 could have benefited from X or Y and Oh God, Steve, oh God.

They had started with Tony on top and stayed that way, mostly, and both of them liked it like that; but every now and then Tony let Steve fuck him, Tony wanted him to fuck him, Tony showed him how. Steve knew he'd done well and got better at it, knew he liked doing that too, made Tony moan underneath him and beg-

Beer. He needs beer.

In the kitchen Clint is sitting as expected, slowly building a vast collection of beer cans into a pyramid. At the other end of the table Thor has his head pillowed on his arms, asleep. Natasha is at an undisclosed location. Steve takes a fresh beer from the fridge and cracks it open, and Clint looks sideways and gives him a nod, as though he hadn't heard Steve approaching from thirty paces.

"Hey, man." Clint returns to meticulous can-stacking, but his hand is unsteady. "Toss me another, won't you?"

Steve eyes the beer tower, indicates Thor, who sleeps in blissful repose. "What happened here? How many have you had?"

Clint sighs. "You wanna drink with us, O Captain my Captain, you gotta get it into that pretty head of yours that when we drink we're trying to get drunk." He edges a can into position. "That's the point." He glances down the table at Thor. "Wanted to see if I could outdrink him. Didn't think it was possible." He shrugs. "It was possible."

Steve drinks from his own can then, hoping his face doesn't look horrified. "And you want another?"

"I have a high metabolism," Clint says. "You gonna help me out or do I need to get up and disturb an unfolding architectural masterpiece?"

Steve tosses him a beer, which Clint plucks out of the air with expert dexterity, no matter the number of cans on the table that were his. Steve takes a nearby chair, scooting it close to the table, and picks up an empty, starting to put the back of the pyramid into order.

Clint raises his hand in cheers, and they click cans. Since it's a habit now, Steve looks up to meet Clint's eyes on contact, or risk the silly superstition of seven years of bad sex; Tony had taught him that, and Clint must know about it too, because Clint's eyes are on him. Bruce had been there when Tony first mentioned it, Steve remembers, and contributed that the tradition had probably arisen from a court where poisoning was common, and you kept your eyes on your drinking partner while you toasted so that they couldn't poison you.

Steve drinks some more. "You beat a god at a drinking contest. I'm pretty sure that should go into the mythology books and maybe Guinness."

"To Barton the beer-wrangler," Clint says, like he likes the sound of it. "Barton the boldest bullshitter." They touch cans again when Clint waves his. "I demand no less than a constellation. Me in full profile with a bow and arrow."

"Lofty goals," says Steve. Under Clint's wavering eye he consumes several more drinks, and they build up careful layers of the pyramid, structuring it well. Thor snores dreamily at the table's end. Clint is heavily intoxicated but remarkably cogent, like drinking is just another thing he is very good at. He drinks with casual ease, one more skill to be had and exploited and sometimes enjoyed, unlike Tony, who is bad at it.

On his fourth drink, Steve is feeling enough of a comforting buzz that his tongue loosens. They're just guys together drinking, brothers in arms drinking together, and he's done this before, knows that this is the best time to get questions answered. Most of what he'd learned about love and other indoor sports he'd learned in the army during R&R and late nights at the off-base cantina with the boys and a bottle of whiskey.

"Can I ask you something?" Steve says, correcting a can.

Clint looks at him. His eyes are too bright over cheeks flushed with alcohol, and there are sallow shadows under his eyes. Even intoxicated all of his facial muscles are trained to neutral, though, and his tone still had its edge. "Shoot."

Steve has many questions. So many they can't be cataloged, so many he doesn't no where to start. But this isn't about asking Clint to explain reality television or Jennifer Aniston. The questions Steve wants to ask most seem unaskable. He wants to know how long it will last, this lingering hurt and painful distraction he can't get away from, even though he isn't really angry anymore. He wants to know how long he'll be angry for.

He wants to ask Clint how you went about being with another person after you had only ever been with one person before and only knew what one person liked in bed and had only learned one other naked body beside your own.

Steve has many questions and he doesn't know how to ask any of them, so he sits working his jaw, and then he drinks some more.

Clint raises a sandy eyebrow. "No?" He leans back in his chair, crosses broad arms, considers Steve with his head at an angle. It's so birdlike Steve has to focus on not laughing and then he's not laughing. "You want to know how to deal with being left behind," Clint says.

He says it like a statement, and Steve doesn't disagree, only sits there thinking that: left behind; that's what this is, that's why he hates this so goddamned much and is so bad at handling it. It's the last thing he'd ever do, is the last thing he'd ever want to do, breaking it off with someone he cared about who had relied on him; and he'd never do it without damned good reason. A life or death situation, maybe, or being in love with someone else, because that would only be fair, or-

Steve grips the table with one hand. He doesn't say anything, but he nods, a little; and Clint is looking at him, and Clint sighs. "You don't, really," he says. "Sorry to be the one to tell you, Steve-o. You don't. You wait around until the day realize you care less than you did the day before. Until then, you drink." He holds up his beer can.

Steve meets the toast, and Clint's steady look and his unsteady hand, and they drink until the pyramid towers over a city.

Clint and Tony have both been drinking when they get into the same elevator. Clint is on an errand from a night in with Natasha and Steve and Thor in the screening room. He'd lost rock, paper, scissor with paper to Natasha's scissor which always happened eventually and is thus anointed to go and fetch more to drink from the reserves.

Tony gets on at his office level, wearing disheveled black tie. They're not in seventh grade so Tony doesn't dodge the elevator when it opens on Clint, and he steps in. They stand side-by-side at tipsy uneasy attention.

Clint's first thought is to wonder where Bruce is, since Tony is missing a tie and also several buttons on his dress shirt; but he doesn't really like following that train of thought so he stares straight ahead. Thinks instead about how easily he'd be able to take Tony down. Tony is well-built, sure, works out, has a boxing trainer, but take away his suit and he is next to nothing in the field of physical combat. Steve had been right about that, whatever else Tony was.

Clint stands squarely next to him and thinks about the literally hundreds of ways he can take Tony Stark apart then and there. He, Clint, is younger and stronger and faster and better. He has compromised more men than Stark can start to count with all of his computers.

The elevator takes too long. Neither of them are good at not talking so finally Clint says, staring straight ahead, "If you ever hurt him I'm going to kill you."

Tony looks over, looks almost relieved to have the silence snapped. "I appreciate that," he says, and actually sounds somewhat appreciative. "I won't. It's against my mission statement. But I like having the safeguard in place."

"Not with an arrow," Clint says, and Tony nods. If he has to face Tony Stark he'll do it straight-on, on level ground.

But he doesn't think they'll come to it. Anyone can see how happy Tony and Bruce are. It had been more than a month, and they had started coming down more, had started being seen; and they were sickeningly attached, Tony always with a hand affixed somewhere on Bruce's body like a leech that couldn't be shook off.

They alternated between laughter and complex conversations about chromosomes or colliding particles or cows, Clint couldn't fucking listen when they got like that, tuned them out and tried not to watch the way Bruce's lips moved, or the way Bruce also took every chance to touch Tony that he could, the way Bruce smiled at Clint sometimes with a fondness like they'd been chess buddies.

Clint isn't bitter per se. He'd seen the writing on the wall, known it was coming and how everything would play out. All of them seemed to have been in on it except Steve, which was really an unfortunate situation; the kid was still all torn up over Stark. He'd relaxed a good bit under Clint's tutelage, become a better drinker, even come out a handful of times with Clint and Natasha to the clubs; but he stood in the shadows there, or by the bar, never dancing. Not even Natasha could lure him, and Natasha's dancing was so persuasive it was banned in Yemen.

Steve never responded to any of the many women and men who tried to pick him up, Steve never tried to pick anyone up, which meant he was still tore-up over Stark, and it gave Clint another reason to want to try out decades of learning the most inventive ways to hurt someone.

"Let's give it a few more weeks," says Tony suddenly, as the elevator dings open on his floor. "Then you and me have a go in the gym. I'll wear half the suit. What do you say?"

Clint blinks at him, surprised, and then he must be grinning broad enough because Stark actually claps a hand on his shoulder as he gets out and Clint doesn't break it.

"Wear the full suit," says Clint, and Stark smiles back at him like a shark, and the elevator door slides closed.

Not the worst guy in the world to have to lose to, Clint decides, and next time he won't lose.

With Bruce on his arm they're the toast of New York high society. They float through parties and fundraisers and host their own. The press adores them and the mayor comes over every Sunday for brunch. They finish each others' sentences and thoughts and screw like rabbits and Tony has never been happier in his life.

He's so fucking happy that it scares him and the fear had started setting in early. Most people would be glad to have their drama settled and the person they wanted finally with them and sleeping in their bed every night but as soon as he has it Tony is scared out of his fucking mind. This is the way his life is supposed to go if he had designed it in a dream and life isn't like that, life kicks your ass and pushes you down repeatedly.

Almost every day he gets up with Bruce and fucks him or Bruce fucks him while he writhes and then they go to work together and then they go out and come home and have sex and in between they would have solved a pressing issue in science and raised fifty million for some form of cancer and at night Tony lies awake with Bruce pulled as close to him as he can be pulled and thinks about the end.

He doesn't know how it will end, who or what will take this from him, but he knows it will happen somehow. Bruce shakes off the offer, then the bodyguards that Tony hires; avoids the protective cars that tail him; argues that if the Other Guy isn't an effective safety precaution he doesn't know what is. Still, he capitulates a little to Tony's worry, to settle him down; carries the cell phone with the tracking device and wears the watch that is a secret taser but drew a line at firearms.

At the start of them he thought maybe the thing to break would be Bruce, that Bruce would leave someday as was kinda his M.O. Surely he'd get tired of Tony's shit like everyone did eventually, and then he'd be off, disappearing into Doctors Without Borders somewhere. But he knows now the thing to take this away won't be Bruce. He and Bruce are in perfect accordance about that. They agree absolutely. They're excellent as they had known they would be, even better, every day is better than the one before it, and Tony's never been more afraid.

One morning he wakes up to a dented pillow and Bruce gone. He could just be in the outer room but when his phone goes to voicemail on the first ring Tony fends off a panic attack the size of Russia. He's about to call in the NYPD and the FDNY and Homeland Security and pour himself a drink even though it's 9am when Bruce comes strolling back alive into the bedroom, carrying coffee in blue-and-white paper cups and a bag of bagels.

"What?" He asks at once, looking at Tony's stricken face. Then he sees the phone clenched too tight in his hand and says, "Oh, sorry, I forgot mine again, didn't I? It's charging. I still can't get used to keeping it with me. You don't need to worry like this, Tony, it isn't good for your blood pressure. No one threatened me on 59th street. I'm good."

Bruce sets down the coffee, but then Tony is on him, knocking him back against the wall, kissing all the air out of him, fisting his hands in Bruce's curls and tugging. The bagels fall and a poppy-seed one is sacrificed, rolling far across the room.

Bruce makes a sound of protest about breakfast when he can breathe again but he smiles under Tony's mouth. Tony's anxiety worried him in return but he seemed flattered by it, too, unused to being made a fuss of for positive reasons. He never seemed to mind Tony's hovering because he wanted Tony hovering.

Tony hovers and kisses him, then sucks him off pressed against the brick of the wall, and he makes Bruce promise like he does sometimes that he won't ever leave; and Bruce says what he always says, Bruce says diplomatically and with his eyes too large that if it's in his power he won't, and then they sit on the floor half-clothed eating still-hot bagels, dipping them into the tub of cream cheese Bruce has brought.

Leaning close Bruce talks easily about the plans for the new wing of Mount Sinai hospital they're apparently funding and a paper on gamma principles he is drafting up for Fury, and Tony waits for the end and plots how to keep them going.

Bruce has never been happier in his entire life.

Clint is his best friend. Together they are unstoppable. Literally unstoppable, just ask the sorry army of aliens that had taken a wrong turn and hit Earth over Mexico. He and Clint had pushed back an entire wave all on their own while the others sucked their thumbs and played catch-up.

That was how Clint had put it, afterward, whooping and slapping Steve's back when they were victorious, when they were goddamned glorious on the battlefield. They left the lot of them in the dust sucking their thumbs while they kicked all the ass, said Clint, and Steve had to agree.

He and Clint can't be stopped when they get started. They have whole running scenes of gags now, so well-worn that Natasha usually throws something at them while Thor eggs them on, amused at the show. Clint is a master prankster, his schemes elaborate and wild, and Steve is no mean hand himself; and together they rig up the Tower with enough booby traps and tricks that Pepper is still hunting down the last and best. They are banned entirely from the library.

Clint and Natasha go out every night of the week that they can. "Gotta live large when alive," Clint would say, shrugging, dressed in close-fitting jeans and a black t-shirt that showcased his arms. In a lowcut dress that clung to her curves, spiky heels and smoky eyes, Natasha would nod. Even she cut loose when they were out, was a different woman than the stone-faced assassin who always had them covered. Natasha dancing was a revelation, and she was as good a drinker as Clint, knocking back her liquor with ease.

"I like to think of each drink like meeting an old friend," she said to Steve over mozzarella sticks in a dive-bar Irish pub in Brooklyn, while young musicians strummed nearby. "I remember the last time we met and the things we did. Try it."

Steve does. White Russians meant Natasha's disdain at the name and a night when they drank so much of the sweet mixture Clint and Thor had carried him half of the way home between them after a cab wouldn't take four, which was really unfair because it was against the law, Steve thought at the time as his friends dragged him down Second Avenue.

Whiskey meant the bar in Cobble Hill that was designed to look like a woodland cabin, where they played board games and ordered s'mores to toast at the table. He and Clint had sort of - well, really, they had destroyed Thor and Natasha at Pictionary, and after Monopoly Thor upset the table, saying the rules were inherently unfair. They'd all had to make a fast getaway, Clint tossing twenty dollar bills behind them like cover fire.

Margaritas meant Cinco de Mayo, meant strolling through raucous streetfairs and outdoor parties with his team, a frozen concoction in hand, and everywhere they went people recognized them and pressed more drinks on them and took pictures. On Cinco de Mayo he spent a long time with his friends' arms slung around his shoulders while they smiled for flashbulbs.

They walked a block arm-in-arm, and Clint said that they were like a bizarro Wizard of Oz; Tony was the Tin Man, of course, said Clint, and Bruce was the Cowardly Lion; Natasha was Glinda, the badass witch, and Steve was Dorothy, out of time and place. He himself was the Scarecrow, Clint explained, in need of brains.

Natasha had applauded this pronouncement, and Steve contributed, "Fury's the Wicked Witch of the West, with his eye patch and all," then thought about it. "That would make the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents flying monkeys. Don't tell Maria," but Clint was already doubled over cackling. Thor said, "Who am I in this imagined adventure?" and when Natasha eyed him up and down and said, decisively, "Toto," all of them had collapsed against Thor, who was the only one left standing while they rolled with laughter until they cried. When they let Thor in on the joke he left them in Queens.

Beer meant building a pyramid at a kitchen table with Clint with slow precision, setting the cans into shape.

Wine meant the party Tony and Bruce threw for the Avengers and a few dozen of their closest friends. It was a good party, light-hearted, with an overflowing bar and food table. Everyone was happy to see everyone else, and everyone ate and drank a lot, and their extended acquaintances acted as a buffer between everything.

It was the first time since their conversation on a couch a world away that Steve had spent so many hours in Tony's presence, and the first time he found he could watch Tony without the old familiar ache. Bruce and Tony were lovely together, had set out every possible amenity and went about the room, graciously welcoming each guest. He watched them move and for the first time he felt glad for them.

Steve and Clint in the corner were one of their last visits. By then Clint was on his third whiskey and second glass of wine, a dangerous combination that made him combustible. Steve had stupidly decided to match him in his anxiety over the stupid party and wearing a stupid suit and tie that itched at his collar, and by the time Bruce and Tony came over they were practically holding each other up.

There was a lot of handshaking and a lot of backslapping, and Bruce had said, "We're so glad you're here. It means more than we can say," and Tony had nodded solemnly over Bruce's shoulder, his eyes on Steve. Steve nodded back, and the ache in his chest didn't ache. It was only Tony Stark in front of him, the remembrance of the man he'd been with Steve blurred at the edges like a half-remembered dream. It was Tony and Bruce now, who spoke in "we's" and worded symbiosis. Steve smiled at them and then they went away.

"Well, that sucked," said Clint by his elbow. "Let's go. We may as well get more messed up. Maybe later we'll make something explode in the backyard."

"Okay," said Steve, tired of tracking Bruce and Tony's complimentary-colored sweaters. They made their escape and he followed Clint down and out of the Tower and into the big immaculately kept backyard. They sat at the cold fire pit near the gazebo and Clint put his feet up on a free chair and started to roll a joint balanced on a book in his lap.

Steve narrowed his eyes. "Where did you get that?"

"The library. Pepper let me back in on a day pass." Clint shrugged, grinned wickedly. "Know where Bruce keeps his stash." He kept rolling, making precise twists of paper. "You don't have to smoke if you don't like it, Dorothy," he said. "I like it sometimes. Calms me down."

They'd also brought down a bottle of wine Clint filched from the party's bar so they had two-person party, and when Clint passed him the length of burning paper Steve choked his way through a few hits. After that everything settled into wild colors and he could hear the sound of his heart thrumming behind to his ear. They lay on the grass passing the joint back and forth between them. Steve kept in the smoky air for deep breaths the way Clint showed him and when he exhaled, he sank into the ground and all the stars were brighter and closer and very warm.

"I didn't care," Steve told Clint. "I saw him, and I didn't care. I mean, I did. But I didn't."

"Progress," said Clint, nodding wisely. "Baby steps."

"I want to fuck you," said Steve.

Clint stopped nodding. Sucked in a breath. "Big step. Huge step."

"Is it so huge?" he asked, with enough suggestion that he made Clint laugh like he'd intended. "I've been thinking about it," said Steve, moving his hand through pliant air. "I think it's a good idea."

"Tell me the same tomorrow," said Clint. "Tonight's a night for wine." They lay in the grass and watched the sky move, and Clint pointed out where his constellation would go.

It's tomorrow and his head only hurts a little. Clint is his best friend and they're unstoppable. Steve presses the buzzer on the door, and then he leans into it.

Clint's headache is worse and he stays in bed, curled up against the light. If he stays in bed no one can find him, no one will be able to find him in the nest of blankets. He likes secret, unseen spaces. He likes it under here.

The buzzer goes off and he knows it's the kid and he doesn't know what to do. It's a weird feeling because Clint is pretty good in general about seeing things coming. Has a sixth sense for it, can loose a shot before his opponent makes a move. Can fire over his shoulder and strike a solid hit.

Honest to God he doesn't know what to do. He's done this, he thinks, he should've been more careful but he'd been playing fast and loose. Cap needed some fun in his life and Clint was fun. It'd been a kick watching him get bolder and more confident with them at bars, and yeah, they outdid themselves near-daily pranking the hell out of the Tower, and sure, sometimes when Steve's arm was slung around his shoulder he had ideas; but all of this was a mess, none of this could be a good idea. Steve needed him for a bro-dude pal, didn't need another overdone fuck-up contributing to the ongoing ten car pile-up that was his life.

The buzzer goes bzzzzzzzzzzz for much longer this time and Clint clutches his aching head and burrows deeper. If he stays hidden no one will be able to find him here.

After a while and some more buzzing it's quiet. Steve must've gone. Given up. Good, he thinks, that's the better thing for it because Clint isn't any good at this and plenty bad. He's pulling a pillow away from his head when the door slides smoothly open and Steve walks in like he owns the place, freshly shaved and changed and showered and entirely too awake.

Clint eyes him from his tangle of sheets, impressed. "How?"

"Tony keeps override codes." Steve lifts a shoulder: half a shrug. "It's tomorrow and I still want to fuck you and you're hiding so I thought I'd better come tell you. You told me to tell you."

Right to it then. Right. "Yeah," says Clint. "Sure. Talking about this now." He scrubs a hand over his forehead. "Cap. Steve. Buddy. I know we've had fun-"

"Don't say that," says Steve, and all the color drains from his face, and Clint's stomach feels like it's been sucker-punched. He's bad at stuff like this, he always says stuff wrong. He isn't paranoid, he has lots of references, just ask Natasha or Bruce or Ph-

"Say you aren't interested. Say you don't want to. Say you've only ever thought of me as a friend and you don't want me and you want to get a beer tonight. Say that Natasha has a new strap-on and it isn't really the best time. Say anything except that."

Clint looks at him. Steve's hair is wet and darkly blond and combed back, and he wears a plain white t-shirt and jeans to almost criminal effect. Everything about him is gorgeous and pure and shining and that's the problem, isn't it. Steve is righteous and good and filled with the forces of justice and apple pie and shit, and Clint is fucking full of shit, a goddamned professional bullshitter who got lucky and got on the right side of things when it could have gone differently.

Clint is also bare-assed naked in bed with a pounding head and heart and dry mouth tied up in sheets and hiding in a blanket-fort of his own making. Clint isn't sure he could climb free if he wanted to. He isn't supposed to be the responsible adult and he isn't supposed to be having these kinds of conversations with Captain America.

But Captain America won't leave, and over the last few months he's lived up to the legend and been the best man Clint has ever known, and the best man he knows is standing in his room not leaving and is insisting that they should be fucking and Jesus Christ he needs an Aspirin, a grilled cheese dripping with bacon, some more weed and a black coffee the size of his head before he can even begin to fucking process this.

So he says, "We've had more than fun. Okay? We are fucking awesome. We kick ass. But this is a very bad idea. You haven't been around enough to understand, but one day you'll thank me, you'll be all 'Thank you, Hawkeye, for your wise council back when I was a wee fledgling,' and I'll say-"

"Go fuck yourself," says Steve, but he says it smiling, not looking angry or put-off. Somehow he looks encouraged, starts pacing towards the bed, while Clint keeps one eye on him and another on the strategically placed blanket.

"I guess I'm going to have to post this as a Facebook status" (and even though Steve is close and getting closer, which means Clint fucked up somewhere, Clint has to feel proud about how much Steve has taken to his social media training) "since everyone seems to have missed the memo, but I am not a goddamned kid." He says it with more vehemence than he'd reacted to Clint saying We've had fun, and Clint flinches.

"I'm older than you," says Steve, and he reaches back and tugs his t-shirt up and off in one smooth go with one hand. His body is big and cut with hard lines, cut like a statue of an ancient hero. He's made of marble and gold. "I'm older than all of you except Thor, and I've fought in nearly as many battles as he has."

Steve is standing by the edge of the bed. "I've seen more than I care to tell you about, and I've done things I won't ever tell you about. Clint. Look at me." There's no disobeying when his voice got like that, so Clint blinks back, obedient. Steve's eyes are ocean-blue and surprising: sure, the trademark sincerity's there, but there's something more, too: surety, and underneath that, desire, and under that a kind of hunger that was fantastic and ravenous and kept willfully held back. "Now tell me to leave."

Clint is impressed again. Kid-Steve's mostly bluffing but has a good poker face. Should've known he had all of this in him, should have guessed he'd be as good, maybe better, at cutting loose in bed than at the clubs. Steve still wouldn't dance, but Steve knew how to fuck. Tony Stark had taught him.

Jesus, Clint's not a goddamned saint, and he's starting to founder. He is practically like the complete opposite of saintlike and none of it is fair. He's been hard since Steve's forced entry into the room and nothing's been done to change that. He's harder because Steve is standing with his knees bumping Clint's mattress with his shirt off and his stupid perfect hair gleaming and a shit-eating grin on his stupidly perfect face.

For Christ's sake he isn't a saint and actual saints have been lost for less.

He pulls a covering over his head to escape the sight of Steve standing shirtless at attention and tries again. "Look, man, you know I love you, but we really, really shouldn't. We really, really, really-"

"No." Steve's voice comes strong and confident from the world outside the blanket. "Back up. Say that again."

No disobeying when he sounded like that. Clint's breath catches in his throat and it's hard to breathe, not only because of the layers of cloth over his face. He rewinds it a dozen times in a second and he hadn't realized what he'd said when he said it but he doesn't take it back. "Really, really," he starts, and Steve coughs, and Clint repeats. "You know I love you."

"Yes." Steve's voice is softer now, and he tugs gently at the edge of a blanket. "Can I come in there?"

"Maybe for a minute," says Clint.

The blanket shifts a fraction and lifts enough for Steve to slip under. There isn't much light when he drops his side back down. "I like your hideouts," he tells Clint. "I tried all of your favorite ones after you wouldn't answer the door."

"Then you thought you'd try breaking and entering," says Clint. Steve is very close next to him under the blanket in the near-dark, his eyes are bright and close and his lips make the most exquisitely drawn bow that Clint has ever seen. Then Clint forsakes sainthood forever by incidentally pitching forward and coincidenatlly ending up with his mouth on Steve's.

"It worked," Steve points out, looking pleased on both counts, like he knew Clint would get off on spy tactics.

"You need to go," says Clint. It's very hot under the covers with both of them there and they're running out of air.

"I don't think I do," says Steve. "But you're right, I'm out of my element." A faint light glows, and he can see Steve's bent head and his fingers tapping something out on a screen. "I have questions that need answering."

"What the hell was that?" Clint demands. "What did you do?"

"Texted Tony," Steve says. "I asked him how you're supposed to persuade someone who isn't sure they want to sleep with you that it's a good idea."

"Texted Tony-"

The screen lights back up almost immediately. Steve ducks his head and reads and laughs. "Smart guy," he says, and he closes the distance between their bodies. Steve's body against his is very strong and solid and can crush and bend and break people and shoulder great weights, but his hands when they slide up Clint's chest are careful measured pressure. He doesn't press too hard or too soft. Just right.

Clint rolls his eyes and wiggles his hips. "Okay, okay, tell me. What's Stark's genius advice?"

Steve grins. He pulls at an edge of blanket to let in enough fresh air for further breathing and then he seals them in again. He settles over Clint in push-up position, a pose he could keep for hours and has a look on his face like maybe he will, one hand to either side of Clint's head and their bodies drawing parallel lines. They're barely touching and Steve still has pants on and there are bedcovers making a secret fort around them and it's the hottest thing that's happened to Clint in the history of oh maybe ever and they're barely even touching.

"Two words: oral sex," says Steve in a flawless mimicry of Stark, and Clint tries to speak and makes the sound fuck, and then he laughs, too; tries to make a grab for Steve's shoulder but gets his hair instead on purpose, and Steve is already sliding down.

When he spars with Tony Stark a few days later, Clint nearly almost lets him win.