a kick in the teeth is good for some - [Clint/Tony]
Pairing: Clint/Tony, mentions of past Steve/Tony
Genre: movie!verse
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2,800
Summary: Tony is tired of Steve treating him like he's breakable just because he's not a demigod or a super soldier; he's Tony Fucking Stark. He calls it quits but finds an unexpected connection with another teammate. (Humans ought to stick together, after all.)
“The world works in mysterious ways” people say, but Tony’s never really believed it until now.
Pepper thinks they should go public, and they both agree, so Steve starts looking for the right time, the right press conference and then --- it’s over. They’re fresh off a battle with HYDRA and Steve is slightly scorched but unharmed, while Tony is wrenching at a faulty thigh plate and swearing up a storm, pausing only long enough to yank off his helmet and throw it somewhere in the vicinity of Dummy.
JARVIS is running diagnostics on why the hit caused the hydraulics in the suit’s left leg to fail - and, consequently, nearly drop him out of the sky - Steve is alternating between fretfully chastising him and hovering obnoxiously, and somewhere in between yelling at JARVIS and trying to escape his armor, Tony tells Steve it isn’t working anymore.
It’s awful. It’s really fucking terrible. And when Steve tells him he doesn’t know what went wrong, Tony’s voice breaks around the words “I know” -- because looking at Steve he can see that he honestly never saw it coming.
The team was shocked when it was Steve who broke the palpable tension between them, who initiated their relationship despite their friends well-vocalized reservations -- and why not? Everyone (see: everyone) was convinced he’d get his heart broken, that Tony wasn’t the type for an apple-pie life and nights-in watching Leno, but Steve just smiled that sweet smile of his and held to it. And Tony, well he was just waiting for Steve to realize what a fuck-up he was and bail out before his mistake got any worse.
In the end, it wasn’t either reason that prompted the break.
Tony loved Steve, and knew without a doubt he loved him too. But he was tired. Tired of being treated with kids’ gloves, like he was made of matchsticks and one stiff breeze would make him collapse. He wasn’t a SUPERhero - not really - he hadn’t been born with laser beam eyes or gone skinnydipping in a toxic waste dump, and that was fine - really it was. He was fucking Iron Man for godsake. More than capable of thrilling heroics. Hell, he could fly. Into space.
But Steve saw only the man - a well-armoured man - but a man all the same. The protectiveness, the assumption that he was vulnerable every second he wasn’t in the suit...in the end, it just wore him down. It’s an instinct that Steve can’t shake, and maybe Tony loves him a little bit more for all that, but in the end he can’t be with someone who thinks of him as something less. With Steve it’s impossible to be anything more than a man, and Tony just can’t live like that.
So it ends.
The planet keeps turning, the Earth still needs avenging, and eventually it stops feeling like the arc reactor is the only thing keeping Tony alive. Steve stops looking at him sad-sorry-regretfully across briefing tables, the last of Steve’s things migrate back out of Tony’s room, and he stops finding the scattered remnants of their relationship where he’d least expect them - tieclips in his desk drawer; a lone black sock under the bed; a charcoal pencil dropped between the seats of the SI jet.
He takes a renewed interest in the company - much to Pepper’s dismay - and actually attends a few board meetings. He tinkers with the suit, blows up half the lab with a prototype teleporter, and - when he feels worn-out or frustrated, and more than a little like he just got stepped on by Bruce - he takes an hour to spar with Clint in the training room. He reminds himself that he’s Tony fucking Stark - genius, billionaire, philanthropist - and he does it enough times that he starts to believe it again.
~
And then there’s Clint.
Clint just sort of...happened.
~
He’s in the kitchen that night when Tony finally gets out of his damaged (long after Steve’s left the mansion), drinking that god-awful sports drink he likes so much, and when he sees Tony he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and grins. “Nice landing earlier. Think Lexus covers superhero collisions?”
“I’m still trying to find something that covers your mouth.”
Tony retorts without thought or hesitation - his brain moving on autopilot to respond to Barton’s usual snark. He feels a little hollowed out inside, but Barton’s laughing and he’ll take whatever distraction he can at the moment.
“Little light on the action tonight,” Clint says, in reference to their short-run battle earlier that evening. “Feel like a run?”
Tony thinks running for the sake of running is moronic and says so. “Absolutely not,” he scoffs- disdainful of the very idea. “But I’d be happy to beat the energy out of you. How’s your boxing?”
Clint rolls the bottle cap between his knuckles, scrutinizing Tony. “Free form,” he counters.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
~
Tony doesn't think about it. He’s on edge ever since he broke things off with Steve and if Clint wasn't annoying enough to warrant an inane desire to punch him in the face, then his own frustration is enough for Tony to take him to the training room on an increasingly regular basis. He's not as in shape as he should be for someone who fights crime, but he wins enough of the fights to make it interesting and there's something oddly satisfying about landing a solid hit right in Barton's laughing face.
They fall into a routine. Morning arguments over coffee and the latest debriefing from SHIELD - occasionally because Tony has been secretly testing new inventions on him (again); sparring in the afternoons - usually ‘anything goes’ but sometimes boxing, and Krav Maga whenever Clint can get Tony to pay attention long enough to learn. They have drinks most nights, and Clint gets his access to the workshop revoked on a near weekly basis. Sometimes they sketch out different battle strategies - trying to harmonize Iron Man’s flight capabilities and Hawkeye’s maneuverability and marksmanship; (they employ JARVIS on logistics and physics when Hawkeye insists Iron Man throw him after a retreating helicopter and Tony nearly sends him through an eightieth-story window).
It’s a strange, unlooked-for sort of camaraderie, but it’s nice, in a way.
Tony even starts running.
~
They fight, and it’s real. All-out, no-holds barred smackdown, because they’re on equal footing and Tony never feels like Clint is holding back for fear of hurting him (and maybe these brutal training sessions are the reason they became friends at all - because from the moment they hauled him out of the ice, it was always about Steve and Tony never really noticed Clint until he was knocking him face first into the mats).
In fact, Clint manages on one occasion to completely blindside him with a spectacular Haymaker to the temple. When Tony wakes up in the Medbay an hour later, Clint is there reading through case files. His feet are kicked up on the end of Tony’s cot and Tony gives them a sluggish kick, but Clint doesn’t budge. He just glances up over the edge of his papers, and Tony realizes he’s laughing at him.
His brains didn’t get scrambled and he knows that Clint’s going to gloat about his victory until Hell freezes over, but he can’t manage any real annoyance -- not when there’s no way he’d taken any real damage; when he knew Clint knew that too, but had stayed with him anyway.
Clint gets two weeks of crowing - telling anyone who’ll listen that he dropped Iron Man with a single punch (a bold-faced lie, thank you) - and it looks like Natasha might start devising a way to kill her partner quietly in his sleep-- when Tony throws an elbow during a fight and breaks Clint’s nose.
They stagger into the kitchen to find the first aid kit, through horrified Avengers (because Clint has roughly a pint of blood streaming through his fingers), and no amount of shouting from Thor (“A BLOODY MORNING! FORTUNE SMILES ON YOU MY SMALL FRIEND”) or Natasha (“Is the mansion under attack?!”) elicits any explanation from the battered pair beyond laughter.
Steve looks on horrified as Clint trails blood across the tile floor and Tony pulls out the most unhelpful assortment of medical odds-and-ends, one after another, before finally shoving an ACE bandage under Clint’s nose for the bleeding. They’re both laughing like it’s the funniest thing in the world.
~
It’s easy to be friends, because Clint’s an asshole - which Tony rather likes, and because they’re the only fully-human members on the team. (Natasha comes pretty close, but she’s a cyborg and is therefore ineligible for membership in their little club, despite her many fine qualities). And while neither of them is looking, that implicit understanding anchors somewhere deep inside, forging an imperceptible bond between them. They gravitate to one another - bickering and arguing, sure, but everyone else is just grateful they’re focusing their energy on insulting each other.
Tony’s never felt more comfortable with both feet firmly on the ground.
~
Natasha warms to him because Clint does, and the three of them occasionally hit the town for drinks or a few rounds of pool at a seedy underbar where no one will recognize them; once to a strip club because Natasha was practicing for a deep-op (and,damn, the woman was flexible).
They’re at one of their usual haunts, on what is probably an irresponsible night of the week for a trio of crimefighters, and nothing beyond the usual is happening. Natasha is enjoying her cherry-topped “winnings” at the bar from another round of darts played and lost to Tony (they’ve stopped letting Clint compete after Natasha set a taxi-cab on fire and Tony woke up the next morning in the cockpit of the Quinjet). He’s been throwing surprisingly well this evening, but Natasha is part-Russian and drinks like a fish, so his hopes aren’t too high that he’ll remain victorious.
Clint’s hustling pool - not that he needs to mind, but because he thinks it’s funny - and Tony helpfully authenticates the ruse by occasionally knocking into the end of his pool cue just as he’s taking a shot, causing the balls to ricochet wildly away from the pockets. Better men might have been irritated, but Clint only considers himself an ‘alright man’ at the best of times and he laughs it off, like he laughs at everything else.
Tony’s never met anyone else so amused by the rest of the world; apart from himself.
Game over, Clint pockets his winnings with a wry smile, saluting his burly opponent who scowls and rumbles off, his wallet $100 lighter. Clint gravitates naturally towards Tony, still palming the weathered cue between his hands. Tony makes a space for him, and Clint boosts his drink and throws back the remains of Tony’s double scotch. The bar is hazy, buzzing with the low-level hum of conversation, and Clint, well-pleased with himself, is grinning that slow-canary grin.
Tony kisses him, one hand on the cue above his and the other tangled in the wrinkled vee of Clint’s shirt. He licks scotch and victory from the back of his teeth, presses their mouths into bruises, hard and wet, until neither of them can breathe. And then it’s over. Clint steps back--
--just long enough to retrieve his winnings and tuck a twenty-dollar bill into Tony’s back pocket.
~
There’s no announcement, no big reveal. They don’t go out of their way to bring it up (because it never occurs to them that they should), but they don’t hide it either. They’re just themselves: laughing, fighting, kissing, fucking like normal, everyday people and sorting this thing between them one step at a time and all on their own.
A gradual awareness spreads through the team, each of them realizing “oh!” one by one what’s been right under their noses for months. Steve makes a conspicuous effort to be supportive, and his friendship with Tony slowly begins to rebuild itself.
It’s far from conventional and usually ends up with something broken or on fire, but that’s pretty standard for them. There’s relatively quiet moments too, where Tony sets up shop in the shooting range without a word and works through schematics on his tablet, while Clint sinks arrow after arrow into bulls-eyes and the torsos of dummies.
Clint knows how to cook - which is a shock to everyone, really - but he’s so lazy as to never actually bother. But sometimes he’ll whip up a hot and delicious meal and there’s always more than enough for everyone, but when Tony appears, tired-eyed and starving from a seventeen hour stint in the workshop (drawn by the savory smells JARVIS pipes in through the vents, the traitor), the team know it’s meant for him.
There’s also blowjobs under office desks, inappropriate use of SHIELD’s private comm systems, and wildly desperate we-just-survived-a-giant-octopus sex. They’re adrenaline junkies and it’s easy to get your fix when you’re an Avenger.
~
They know what it’s like to have no added advantage beyond their tech and their wits. So Tony spends extra time on arrow prototypes, and Clint takes his ass to the mat every other day - giving each other the only things they can give.
Tony learns how to defend himself outside the suit, what nerves to hit (like he’s a fucking Vulcan or something), Clint gets paralytic-tipped arrows and an isomorphic bow that responds to him and him alone (Tony gets workshop sex for that one, so it’s a win-win), and it’s crazy and it’s wild - like they’re both just one step away from pushing the other off the cliff - just to see if they could save themselves...
But it works.