Steve swallows his first glorious bite of proper New York pepperoni pizza, looking at Clint with a pained expression on his face. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope,” Clint says, popping the ‘P’. “Take a bite, drink some juice, wait five minutes. You’ll puke otherwise, and I’m not having Mother-Hen-Stark on my ass because I let you hurl.”
Casting a mournful glance down at his pizza, Steve sighs unhappily, but does as bid, putting the slice back in the box and reaching for the juice on the side. “Mother-Hen-Stark?” he says as he unscrews the cap. “Dare I ask?”
“Only if I can ask about the atmosphere between you two,” Clint says, and he sounds casual but Steve knows he’s serious. “What’s up with that?”
Steve takes a swig of juice, the orange flavour bright and sharp against his tongue. He puts the carton back and follows with a drink of water, feeling infinitely better already.
“Steve?”
He hesitates, but deep down he knows that he’s not going to be able to keep a lid on everything forever. They’re going to keep looking for explanations about what happened to him and why, and he doesn’t want them wasting their time when he has half the answers already.
“I didn’t tell you all of it,” Steve admits slowly. “When I explained what had happened.”
“Right,” Clint says warily. “And logic tells me that that missing chapter has something to do with Tony?”
Steve breathes out. Considers lying. Decides he can’t do it.
“It was all about Tony,” he says, “Whatever sent me there, took me there, wanted me to learn something. In other universes, there have been wars – fights between groups of superheroes. With Steve Rogers on one side and Tony Stark on the other. Seems it was bad enough that something somewhere wanted this universe to avoid it.”
Clint’s mouth is slightly open. “You and Tony were at war?” he asks, sounding astounded.
Steve nods. “In some universes, we killed each other,” he says hollowly. “There was a fight when I was there – a couple of versions of me who weren’t too swell. One of them had killed Tony and lost it, completely lost it.”
Clint hasn’t looked so grave in a long time. “Well, I can empathise with the whole having a version of you doing asshole things, I guess,” he says with a shrug and a depreciating smile. “Go on.”
Steve isn’t sure he wants to, but he makes himself. “A few universes I never met Tony,” he says, and then breathes deep. “And in a hell of a lot Steve Rogers was sleeping with him. In a relationship with him. Even married him in a couple.”
Mouth promptly dropping open all over again, Clint stares at him, looking completely poleaxed. “A version of you married Tony?”
“Two that I know of,” Steve says, and reaches for the pizza again, taking a bite. He chews, swallows, shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know what to do. I just wanted to get back and make sure we were okay, that he knew I didn’t blame him, but now we’ve got all this goddamn baggage from stuff that hasn’t even happened here, because I saw-”
He abruptly stops, not wanting to share exactly what he saw. Unbidden, the image of him leaning across the bed to kiss Tony once again rises into the forefront of his mind, and he shoves it away. This is not what this is about.
“Versions of you married Tony,” Clint repeats, and then seems to shake himself out of his daze. He throws his hands in the air and rocks the chair back on two legs. “Are you actually – you two. You fucking morons. You could only fall ass over teakettle for each other whilst you were in a goddamn coma.”
Steve’s hand falters as he reaches for the juice. “What? We’re not -” he begins, frowning. “It doesn’t mean the same in every universe; Tony and I don’t feel that way-"
“He wouldn’t leave,” Clint interrupts bluntly. “He was glued to your side, holding your goddamn hand and he would not leave. Bro-code completely and utterly disregarded. He pretty much lost the plot. And he realised he was losing the plot because he was totally gone for you – which, by the way, are his words and not mine.”
There’s an odd ringing in Steve’s ears, he’s sure of it. He knew Tony was different with him when he woke up – less abrasive, less flippant – but it was because of the fight, and the guilt, not because he has feelings for Steve, right?
Right?
“Ass over teakettle,” Clint replies deliberately, each word emphasised to make his point. “Whilst you weren’t even awake, Jesus.”
Rallying his scattered thoughts, Steve tries to argue. “It’s because he felt it was his fault,” he tries. “He felt guilty-”
“Yeah, he felt guilty, and then he felt more than guilty,” Clint says pointedly.
“What?”
“God, you – seeing as you just woke up from the second unnatural period of suspended animation in your life, I’ll let the being stupid slide. Hang on - I know, here, watch this.”
Shoving a hand into his pocket, Clint pulls out his phone. He flips the screen sideways, taps rapidly with his thumbs and then hands it over. Steve takes it cautiously, and he sees a Youtube video with just over a million hits loaded and ready to go. The still image is a tad blurry but not too hard to make out; he can see Clint and Tony in the doorway of Avengers Tower, heads down and ready to walk outside towards a waiting car. Tony’s car, the sleek black Audi with the blacked out windows. There are reporters everywhere, and he feels frustration roll through him because they’re not allowed to be there, and he knows that they’ll have broken the public order notices because they wanted news about him.
“Try and ignore my bad-assery and don’t tell me off for punching a reporter until you’ve watched it all,” Clint says.
Steve lowers the phone and looks at Clint, despairing. “You punched a reporter?”
“Shhh, no, of course not,” Clint points at the phone. “Watch."
Sighing, Steve lifts the phone and taps the grey play symbol with his thumb. It flares to life in a riot of noise and colour; reporters shouting and yelling, cameras flashing left right and centre. Clint and Tony are clearly trying to ignore them, doing well until they quite clearly and abruptly stop trying.
There’s no doubt about what Clint wanted him to see when he hears it. Tony’s voice, loud and raw and vicious, devastating in its honesty. Almost as heart-wrenching as the look on his face.
‘I am not going to do anything without Captain America, you got that? He is going to be fine, and you know why? Because there is no-one else who is going to be leading this team, and the universe knows it. There is no-one else I want leading this team, there is no-one else I want beside me, anywhere, at any fucking time. Now get the fuck out of my way so I can get back to him.’
Steve lets out a shaky breath, his stomach churning in a way that has nothing to do with his hunger. God. It’s not even just about what Tony said, it’s the way he said it.
Steve passes the phone wordlessly back to Clint, not even caring about the latter half of the video and Clint socking the reporter. He feel like he’s been hit by a goddamn train, because now he knows exactly how Tony feels about him, and that just goes to make the whole goddamn mess of a situation more complicated.
The feeling that he and Tony are an inevitable thing is stronger, closer and more terrifying than ever before.
“Sorry,” Clint says unexpectedly after a few minutes of silence, and he does sound sorry, but also unrepentant. “I thought you should know.”
“What do I do,” Steve says before he can stop himself, because he might be Captain America and a strategic genius, but relationships have never been his forte and hell, everyone knows it. He’s lost here, and has no clue as to where to go next-
“Man it up and join the rest of the multiverse in loving Tony?”
“But I’m not in love with Tony!” Steve bursts out. “I can’t just –”
“Can’t just make yourself love him?”
Steve nods soberly, reach up to rub his face. The IV line snags on the edge of his blanket and he reaches for it, tearing the tape off in one vicious yank, before sliding the needle out of the back of his hand and tossing the line away. It doesn’t make him feel any better.
“I feel like I have to,” he says. “God, if he-”
“You don’t have to,” Clint says firmly. “Tony’s a big boy; if you don’t feel the same way about him he’ll deal with it. He’s Iron Man for god’s sake, he’s dealt with worse. Always has, always will.”
Nodding again, Steve unhappily acknowledges that Clint is right. As long as he treats this right – as long as he treats Tony right – there’s no reason for this to be a disaster.
“But maybe you do feel the same way.”
Frowning, Steve turns to look Clint in the eye. He still looks deadly serious, but shrugs as Steve looks at him. “You two are…I don’t know. Intense around each other at the best of times. And come on, if the rest of the multiverse has gone for it…”
He trails off, the implication unspoken but simple to infer.
