Chapter Text
In Steve’s experience, loss is always sudden. It’s a telegram with the War Office’s name at the top, or it’s a hand reaching out for yours that you can’t catch hold of, or it’s freezing cold water rushing up past your ears and it’s sudden and it’s painful and it leaves you feeling hollowed out and numb inside.
Filling those hollow places up again takes far longer. You walk around carrying that emptiness with you wherever you go and almost forget what it’s like not to feel like a ghost in your own life. You get so used to feeling that way that you don’t even notice when things start to get easier. Slowly at first, aching from it, you just keep moving forwards and then one day you look around at the place you are now and you can’t quite remember the first thing that began to filter through and ease that emptiness.
This thing between the six of them feels a lot like that. He can’t quite put his finger on when it starts or who it starts with, but one day he looks around and it’s somehow perfectly normal to wander into the communal kitchen area in the morning and have Tony plaster himself against his back as Steve makes coffee. Normal for Thor to stroke a hand down his cheek and smile softly as they pass in the corridor.
As time has passed, the people in their lives have fallen away one by one until only the six of them are left. Friendships outside of the team are as important as ever, but relationships never seem to last. First Jane, then whoever Natasha had been seeing, and then, finally, Pepper and that had been the most painful of all. They had all gathered a little closer around Tony after that and breathed a sigh of relief when Rhodey had immediately flown in to take care of him in ways that Tony wouldn’t tolerate from anyone else.
Even Steve tried for a while. Pepper would set him up with strong women and sweet men and Sam would appoint himself wingman, but in the end Steve simply gave up. He couldn’t hold onto anyone and it got too painful to keep trying. People can say that they understand, that they can handle it, but it never seems to matter. In the end, the six of them are on their own.
Steve doesn’t mind this like he thought he would. He’s used to being part of a team, a unit, of relying on a small group of people and making them his entire world. This is familiar to him when it begins and by the time it has wandered into the distinctly unfamiliar, he finds himself unable to care.
Because this thing developing between them might be different or strange, or even wrong according to some people, but it means he gets to pull Clint down onto the couch and tuck him close and warm against his side while they watch a movie. It means he gets to see the way Bruce smiles when Tony slides fingers into his curls and kisses him over morning coffee. It means he gets to watch Natasha climb into Thor’s lap and curl against his chest with none of the walls that she’s so painfully careful to maintain around everyone else. It means he gets to see them all feel safe with one another.
It also means he gets to walk into the common area and find Tony and Clint making out on the couch like teenagers. Clint stretched across Tony with his hands pinned above his head and kissing him lazily in total contrast to the uncompromising hold he has on Tony’s wrists. He gets to see the way Clint’s eyes snap open as soon as Steve enters the room and the warmth in them when he realises who it is. He gets to join them when Clint rolls off of Tony and beckons Steve over, Steve taking his place on top of a smirking Tony and Clint happily sandwiched between them and the back of the couch as they kiss.
It’s all leading towards something and they all know it. No one has said anything so far and Steve is certain that it hasn’t gone any further than furtive making out in steadily increasing groups, but it can’t stay like that forever. He doesn’t want it to stay like that forever and eventually he realises that his team is waiting for him to call it. For him to lead them in this just like he leads them every other time that the six of them have to work together towards a common goal.
So that’s what he does. It’s rare that all six of them are in the Tower at the same time, so he has to wait, but the next time that they are all together and no one is recovering from an injury or a board meeting or a month-long mission, he calls it.
No one looks surprised. In fact, most of them just smile at him like he’s the one they’ve been waiting for all this time, which is a little embarrassing but he’s not ungrateful. He’s pretty sure that this kind of arrangement isn’t all that common even in these new times, but he’s probably the one who has needed to adjust his worldview the most before he arrives at a place where he can look around at his teammates and say, “We all just need to be in a bed together and naked.”
Tony’s suite even has a bed that will comfortably fit them all and that is just perfect enough that Steve doesn’t even let himself dwell on his suspicions about exactly why Tony has a bed that large and how long Tony has been thinking about this. Thor’s hand comes to rest on the small of Steve’s back as they all make their way to the elevator and Steve shivers at the feel of it, broad and warm and immovably strong against him. He thinks about not having to hold back his own strength for the first time since the serum. About what it might be like to let go.
They’re almost at the elevator when Steve realises that Clint hasn’t moved. He’s still standing by the breakfast bar and watching them with troubled eyes.
Tony notices about the same time as Steve and grins back. “Hey, Hawk, sleepover’s at mine and my mom says you can stay over. You coming or not?”
Clint stares back at them and Steve can’t read the expression on his face. He’s only wearing a thin t-shirt and it’s easy to see the muscles in his arms clench and release and clench again like he’s struggling with something.
Steve takes a step towards him. “Clint?”
“No,” Clint says after a couple of seconds, his voice quiet and steady but his eyes widening a little, as if he’s surprised by what he’s saying. “No, I’m not. I don’t want to do that.”
“Are you injured, my friend?” Thor asks, sounding concerned.
Clint’s mouth curls a little, but if it’s a smile it’s not like one Steve has ever seen from him before. “No. I’m not injured or ill or anything, I just… don’t want to do that. You guys should though. You definitely should. I’m just…”
Steve takes another step forward and Clint’s eyes immediately fix on him. “You don’t want to go to bed with us?” Steve speaks quietly, trying to find out where the problem lies. “Any reason for that? You haven’t exactly seemed against the idea before now, so help me out here.”
“I haven’t-” and Clint actually bites his lip at that, something he only does when he’s in severe pain or upset enough that he doesn’t realise or care how obvious his distress is to those around him. It’s something Steve has only ever seen him do when one of them is injured or when Clint has had to admit that he can’t make an important shot. “I don’t want to have sex with you guys. I don’t want to have sex with anyone. I know I should have told you before, I know that, but I guess I just wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”
“Do you want to wait?” Bruce asks from somewhere behind Steve. “Do you want us to take things more slowly?”
“No, doc.” Clint smiles at him and it looks genuine but also kind of like he’s about to throw up. “That’s not going to- I’m never going to want it. I never do want it. So you should just… you should just go on without me. I’m going to. I’m going to head to my room for a while and maybe we can talk after. I’d… I’d like it if we could talk after.”
He makes for the stairs and Steve almost moves to intercept him but thinks better of it when he sees the look in Clint’s eyes. “Clint, we’re not doing anything without you.”
Clint laughs darkly. “Well, you’re going to have to, Cap, because I’m not doing that anymore. I won’t.”
After he’s left they all stand in stunned silence for a moment before Tony says, “Well, that’s… really not how I imagined this going.”
Steve turns around to see if anyone has more of a clue about what just happened than he does and sees Natasha quietly slipping away to follow Clint. That’s probably for the best. It just leaves the four of them and Steve can see his confusion mirrored on Tony and Bruce’s faces, but Thor is frowning like he’s just realised something. “Thor? You look like you might have some insight into this.”
Thor looks up. “I was not aware that Clint was of that ilk: on Asgard, men such as he are far more forthcoming and there is none of this uncertainty. Though it does make sense: he is always most particular about where he allows himself to be touched, even during kisses, and his own hands never wander outside those boundaries.”
“Ilk?” Tony says at the same time as Bruce says, “Yeah, I noticed that too. I just assumed he had scars or maybe some issues resulting from trauma or something similar, but you’re right: that does make sense of a lot of things. Huh.”
Steve finds himself thinking of a moment from a few days ago. Clint sitting in his lap on the couch and the two of them kissing, slow kisses that felt more playful than anything else, but Steve had swept his hands up Clint’s thighs to his butt, intending to haul him in a little closer and deepen the kiss. He remembers how Clint had immediately pulled away with a shaky laugh, moving Steve’s hands back to his knees and making a joke about things getting a little fresh for a girl like him. They had kept kissing and the mood had stayed playful but Clint hadn’t let go of Steve’s hands after that.
“Damn,” Steve says.
By mutual agreement they all move to the couches, the mood thoughtful and a little subdued. Tony throws himself down on the nearest couch and lets out a dramatic sigh. “Okay. Guys? Am I really going to have to be the one who says it? Really? Okay, no one judge me because I know we’re all thinking the same thing right now.” He looks around at them all with wide tragic eyes. “What a waste.”
“Tony,” Bruce scolds without heat.
“No, seriously, we’re all thinking it. That ass, those arms, that laser-focus intensity – you’re not telling me that you never thought about how he’d be dynamite in the sack.”
Bruce presses his thumb and index finger into the corner of his eyes and sighs deeply but doesn’t deny it. Thor makes a rueful face and stays quiet too.
“Don’t let Clint – or Natasha for God’s sake – hear you talk like that,” Steve tells him. “That isn’t helpful right now.”
Tony flaps a hand around as if he’s batting Steve’s words to the side. “I won’t. Are you serious? Please. Though, you know, it might not be the worst idea in the world. Defuse some of that tension at least. You all saw Clint’s face, right? He isn't expecting us to take this well.”
“Which is exactly why he hasn’t mentioned it before now.” Bruce takes his glasses out of his pocket, seemingly just to give his hands something to do. “He’s expecting us to shut him out after this.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Steve says firmly. “I don’t… I’m not going to pretend that I understand this, not entirely, but whatever’s wrong with Clint is-”
“Whoa, hey now,” Tony jumps in, deadly serious like he almost never is. “There’s nothing wrong with him, Steve, that’s not what this is about.”
“Do you not have this on Earth?” Thor has the same wounded expression he always gets when he’s trying not to judge his teammates for their planet’s backwards ways. Everyone hates being the cause of that expression. “It is common enough on my world and there is no shame in it. Nothing is thought to be absent or defective in a person for feeling such a way.”
“This isn’t about there being something wrong with him,” Tony repeats like he doesn’t think Steve’s got it yet.
“Well, actually…” Bruce says.
Tony turns betrayed eyes on him. “Bruce.”
“No, I didn’t mean.” Bruce holds up a hand to stave off Tony’s inevitable return to the dramatic. “I didn’t mean that. If Clint’s asexual then, yes, of course that’s fine and there’s nothing wrong with him, but we don’t know that’s what this is. We can’t assume. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here but maybe… maybe something happened to him. We don’t know. You know the kinds of missions S.H.I.E.L.D. used to send him and Natasha on. Maybe this isn’t a sexual orientation situation so much as it’s a result of trauma.”
That doesn’t seem to have occurred to Tony and he tilts his head to the side and hums as he considers it.
Steve waits a moment and then says, “What’s asexual?”
“Here.” Tony grabs one of the tablets that always litter the coffee table and tosses it to Steve. “I think this is where you and Wikipedia need to have a nice long meaningful conversation. You can join us when you’re done.”
Steve shoots him a look but turns on the tablet and does as he’s told. Sometimes it’s just easier this way when he needs to catch up in a hurry: Bruce and Tony’s explanations tend to be lengthy and confusing and Thor’s tend to be epic and worse. The only ones he can count on to just give him the facts in a clear and concise manner are Natasha and Clint and he always misses them when they aren’t around for conversations like this.
“You do have a point,” Tony is telling Bruce as Steve starts to read. “We need more information before we know what we’re dealing with here. Orientation, psychology, trauma… medical? Do you think medical is a possibility? Thor, feel free to weigh in on this anytime, buddy.”
Steve tunes them out with the ease of long practise. They’re still talking by the time he finishes the main Wikipedia article and several others it links to that look like they might be helpful. He has a better idea of what they are talking about now, but it doesn’t actually tell him anything about Clint. He figures he’s going to have to go straight to the source for that.
He’s sorely tempted to ask Bruce to sit in on this. Bruce is the closest thing they have to a medical perspective right now, which might turn out to be useful, but, more than that, Bruce has a way of navigating his way through awkward conversations that always makes Steve wonder how he manages to avoid all the landmines that Steve can never seem to help stepping on. He’s pretty sure this conversation is going to turn out to be one of those that are more landmine than solid ground.
But in the end, he goes on his own. He and Clint have always been able to speak the same language and he has to believe that this situation isn’t going to change that.
Of course, Natasha is there when Steve enters Clint’s suite. The two of them are curled up on opposite ends of the couch in his living room and tension crackles thick in the air between them. It probably shouldn’t make Steve feel better that Natasha is clearly as thrown by this as the rest of them, but it does. If Clint has managed to keep this from Natasha, of all people, it means this isn’t just a matter of the rest of them being unobservant. Clint has been actively hiding this and doing a damn good job of it. Maybe for a long time now.
Clint smiles up at Steve but it isn’t one of his better lies. He looks edgy and resigned in a way that makes Steve’s heart hurt, but Clint lifts his chin and meets Steve’s eyes squarely as he gestures him to sit down on the loveseat next to the couch.
“I’m sorry I messed up your orgy,” Clint says without inflection, like he’s been rehearsing the words in his head all the time he’s been up here.
“That’s… okay. You don’t have to be sorry about any of this.”
“I’m not sorry about being the way I am.” There’s a warning in Clint’s eyes but Steve doesn’t react to it. “I’m not going to apologise for that. But. Not telling you guys was shitty of me and I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m sorry too,” Steve says, thinking of that awful laugh as Clint had pulled Steve’s hands away from his body. “But I understand why you didn’t.”
Natasha shifts on the opposite end of the couch, tucking her knees up beneath the hem of her oversized sweater, and Clint’s eyes flick towards her for a long moment before returning to Steve. “You’ve got questions,” he says. “Go ahead.”
“All right.” Steve sits forward and looks at Clint, trying to project a calm he doesn’t feel. “I’ve been on Wikipedia and the others explained a few things to me, but I think the best expert on you is always going to be you. I kind of need to know what the situation is here, Clint.”
“I know,” Clint’s voice is light and unconcerned and fake as Hell. “I know this part, I’ve been here before. You’ve got questions so you’d better just ask them.”
“The article I read was on being asexual – is that what you call yourself? An asexual?”
Clint makes a strange shrugging gesture like he’s trying on the word for size. “I guess? I never really put a name to it but, yeah, sure. That about covers it.”
“And it’s…” Steve reaches for the correct terminology; people are more sensitive about words today and he’s trying to be careful, even though he’s normally far more likely to offend Clint by being careful with him than with whatever he might actually say. “It’s a preference. It’s about what you don’t want.”
“I’m not impotent, Steve,” Clint says flatly, like it’s something he’s said dozens of times before and he’s just bored with it all by this point. “I still have all my junk and it all works fine, I just don’t want to use it. I don’t like using it.”
“Okay, good, that’s… good.” Steve looks to Natasha for help but she’s completely focussed on Clint with an unreadable expression on her face. Steve wishes for a moment that he’d asked one of the others to come with him for this, if only so he didn’t have to do all the talking.
“I even jerk off,” Clint says in that same disinterested tone. “Not often, and it doesn’t really do much for me except release tension, but I do it. Same as any other bodily function.”
“Okay, that’s…”
“And I wasn’t touched as a kid. I mean, yeah, my dad used to beat the shit out of me and my brother, but no one ever gave me the bad touch and fucked me up about sex in my formative years. Not my parents, not at the orphanage, not in foster care, not even a little bit.”
Steve licks his lips, feeling queasy. “Now, why do I get the feeling that you’ve got this whole conversation worked out before I even got here?”
Clint shrugs. “I told you: I’ve been here before. I’ve had this conversation more than once.”
“Well, you haven’t had it with me so how about you stop telling me what you think I’m going to say and let me take a shot at it myself,” Steve keeps his voice level but lets Clint see how serious he is.
Clint shrugs again but looks slightly chastened this time. “Okay.”
Of course, now Steve doesn’t have a clue what he’s going to say. “So nothing happened to you growing up?”
“Nothing to do with this.”
“And after that?” Steve tries to tread carefully. If there are landmines, this is where they will be. “On a mission maybe? Nothing… did something maybe happen to you that made you feel like this?”
Whatever ground he’d gained immediately falls away and Clint looks bored and resentful again. “No. Nothing like that.”
“Belgrade,” Natasha says, speaking for the first time and startling Steve. Steve doesn’t know what that sharp note in her voice means but Clint clearly does because he looks absolutely furious when he whips his head around to glare at her. Clint’s face usually looks stern but he’s the most level-headed out of all of them and Steve can count on the fingers of one hand all the times he’s seen him this angry.
“Fuck you, Natasha. No. That’s got nothing to do with this.”
“What happened in Belgrade?” Steve forces himself to ask.
“I was tortured.” Clint doesn’t look away from the silent conversation he and Natasha are having with just their narrowed eyes.
“You mean raped,” the word catches in Steve's throat, hurts coming up.
“As a part of torture,” Clint says dismissively. He glances at Steve and whatever he sees on Steve’s face makes his eyes blink wide. “Hey.” He looks sad now but it’s on Steve’s behalf and not his own and that makes Steve feel even worse. “Cap, come on. It was just torture. Just another thing guys like that do when they get bored of pulling out your fingernails. You know how it is.”
“That doesn’t make it nothing. There’s no point in us having this conversation if you’re going to lie to me.”
Clint makes a face that’s equal parts frustration and shame. “I wasn’t lying,” he says. “It was nothing – it has nothing to do with this. It was just torture. Doesn’t mean anything more than that. And, you know what, yeah, it sucked, but it was a Hell of a lot less traumatic than… than some of the other stuff they did.” He tails off and rubs absently at his breastbone for a second, seemingly unaware that he’s doing it, and Steve wonders if what he’s thinking about even left a scar. Most of the worst things in life don’t.
“Clint,” he says quietly when Clint’s eyes stay distant for a little too long and Clint immediately snaps back into the room and tucks his hands beneath his thighs.
“Belgrade was shitty,” Clint says eventually, “but it didn’t change anything. I get that you want a reason, something to point to that’ll make it all make sense to you, but it doesn’t work like that. This is just how I am. I tried not to be – I tried for years to be like everyone else, to want it, but I don’t. I never have done. And I’m through pretending.”
“So you’ve… you’ve been in relationships before?”
“Yes, he has,” Natasha cuts in and something has changed, something unsaid has been communicated between her and Clint because she might be all the way on the opposite end of the couch but she’s entirely on his side now. “Several in the time I’ve known him,” Natasha glances at Clint as if to check that this is all right for her to say, “and others before then, I think. Not really anyone in the last couple of years though.”
Clint nods, looking at Natasha again and the last of the anger seems to bleed out of him at her words. “I like being in relationships. I need- I like being close like that. The emotional side. I just don’t want to have sex with them and that doesn’t tend to go down well.”
“So you’d tell them?”
“Yeah. Well. Kind of?” Clint makes an impatient seesawing gesture with both hands that Steve doesn’t really know how to interpret. “Not so much when I was younger and trying to be something I’m not, but later, yeah, I’d tell people right away. Get it over with. They’d sometimes say they were okay with it and things would be fine for a while, but no one’s ever as okay with it as they say they are. I’d- we’d try for a while, but it never seemed to make much difference in the end.”
Something in Clint’s expression makes Steve frown. “You’d… Are you saying you slept with them?”
“Of course.”
“And they were okay with that?” The thought of it makes Steve feel queasy all over again. “Sleeping with you while knowing you didn’t want to?”
Clint grins at that, a sharp movement like a knife snapping open. “Yeah, people usually are.”
“Clint-”
“Look, no one ever forced me into anything,” Clint talks over him, “so you can seriously stop looking at me like that any time now. It was always my choice. I just figured, you know, it wasn’t really fair – me being with them and them wanting that. It wasn’t fair for me to get what I wanted and not give them anything in return.”
“Jesus, Clint.” Steve finds himself nearly as horrified by Clint’s offhand tone as by what he’s actually saying. “That shouldn’t… It shouldn’t work like that. How can you say you weren’t giving them anything? Being with you is not nothing, okay?”
“But it’s not enough.” Clint shrugs and switches his attention to his own knees with a very deliberate casualness. Pokes at a worn spot on his jeans that is starting to tear around the edges. “Which is fine. I get it – sex is important to most people. I get that.”
Steve looks at Clint for a long time. Watches him wind a loose thread around his finger and pull until it breaks. “You know none of us want that from you, right?” he says carefully. “I mean, we did, but only when we thought you wanted it too. No one wants anything from you that you don’t want to give.”
“I know you don’t.” Clint doesn’t look at him but the corner of his mouth curls up slightly. “And you wouldn’t get it even if you did. I told you – I’m done with that. No more pretending.”
Steve is very aware of Natasha watching him, waiting to see what he’s going to do. He lets the silence sit for a moment and then says, “So what do you like? Kissing is okay, I take it?”
Clint’s head snaps up and he blinks a few times before frowning. “Uh, yeah? Kissing is good. But, Cap, I don’t-”
“Is it always good?” Steve interrupts him, doesn’t give him time to let that uncertainty build.
“Uh.” Clint still looks a little dazed but he’s responding to the questions and thinking about it. Falling in line automatically. “Sometimes? Sometimes I don’t want anyone’s tongue in my mouth. Usually I don’t. Sometimes it’s okay, but I like it best when it’s calm. When it’s just kissing and I don’t have to worry about what it’s leading towards.”
“Okay.” Steve nods. “So we should ask? If tongues are okay we should ask?”
Clint twitches his shoulders in something that’s not quite a shrug, starting to look cornered. “Maybe? Steve, I really don’t think this is-”
“Or we could just follow your lead,” Natasha suggests, backing Steve’s play like she always does when he needs her. “Say, if you kiss like that then it means it’s okay for us to do the same. And you’ll stop things if it suddenly stops being okay at any time, right? You’ll tell us to stop?”
Clint’s brow creases so Steve presses him. “Can we trust you to do that, Clint?”
“Yeah,” Clint says after a long pause where he gives Steve a hard and searching look. “Yeah, Cap, I can do that.”
“Okay, good. So. Nudity…?” Clint actually flinches at that and Steve nods. “Nudity isn’t okay.”
“No, well, it’s.” Clint makes a face. “I can do it, but-”
“This isn’t about what you can do,” Natasha scolds him. “I’ve seen you take out your own appendix and shoot with a broken arm – I know what you can do. This is about what you like.”
Steve has already heard several variations on the story of Clint shooting with a broken arm, but the appendix one is new to him. He makes a mental note to ask about it later. “Is it just you being naked that you’re uncomfortable with or is it other people being naked too? You seem okay with Bruce and with Thor in the mornings.”
“No, other people naked is fine.” Clint smirks. “I’m used to that – barracks, you know? It doesn’t really do anything for me that it’s supposed to, but I don’t mind it. But when it’s me I don’t – I prefer to wear clothes. Pretty much all the time.”
Natasha actually laughs at that, startling Steve with the sharp bark they only hear when something really tickles her. “Oh, you are going to break their hearts,” she shakes her head. “Seriously. You’re a cruel man, Clint Barton.”
“You’ll have to break it to them gently,” Clint says, completely deadpan but with an amused glint in his eye. “Tell them they’ll just have to settle for you and Steve instead of my godlike beauty. I know it’s going to be tough for them so make sure you have some Kleenex close to hand in case they cry.”
“I’ll draw them a sketch of what I can remember from Marrakesh,” Natasha tells him solemnly. “They can put it up on the refrigerator to look at when the pain gets too much.”
“Well, that’s not going to be too disturbing to come face to face with when I’m hunting for leftovers in the middle of the night.” The gentle teasing seems to settle something in Clint. He and Natasha are doing that silent communication thing with their eyes again but, this time, it isn’t hard to see what they’re saying to one another. Clint catches Steve watching and gives him a small crooked smile. “We done here, Steve? I think I’ve had about as much talking about myself as I can take for one day.”
He is looking a little frayed around the edges but, beneath that, there’s a familiar calm that has been missing ever since Steve made the suggestion that the six of them head up to Tony’s suite. Steve is glad to see its return. “I think we should go join the others downstairs. They’re going to be getting antsy by now.”
For a second, he thinks Clint is going to protest, but he just sets his jaw and nods curtly. More Hawkeye than Clint in the gesture. “As long as they don’t want me to talk about it either.”
It’s pretty much guaranteed that they will, but Steve only says, “Leave that to me. I’ll fill them in on everything they need to know, if that’s all right with you.”
Clint just nods again, giving his permission. “Feel free to skip over how often I jerk off when you have that conversation.”
“But that was the best part,” Steve says, feigning confusion and feeling accomplished when it gets a snort out of Clint.
“There is one more thing we need to work out first,” Natasha says, ignoring Clint’s quiet groan. “What do you want to be doing while we’re all having sex? Do you want to be in the same room as the rest of us?”
Clint blinks at the question and shakes his head, but it doesn’t look like he’s disagreeing. “No one’s going to want that. Me hanging around like a creep.”
“I think they will,” Steve says evenly. “I know I do and Natasha does, so that’s forty per cent of the group already.”
Clint looks at him. “They’re not going to want that.”
“Don’t you worry about what they want right now. What do you want? Do you want to be in there with us?”
There’s a long moment where Steve isn’t sure Clint is going to answer, but then he shrugs and says, “Yeah,” on a long exhale, looking down at his knees. “I don’t have to watch or anything, but maybe I could be there for the end bit at least. I… I always liked that part. Where you just lie there after and it’s all calm and quiet and close. That was always the part of sex I liked.”
“Then we’ll talk to the others and see what they say.” Steve reaches out and squeezes Clint’s hand, relieved when Clint immediately squeezes back. “But I think you know that they’re going to want you to be a part of this in whatever way you’re comfortable with. Clint, just think for a second about who’s on your team. I’m sure you’re not going to be the only one of us who needs things done a little different.”
He can see that Clint doesn’t really understand what he means, but Natasha nods and there’s quiet but real approval in her eyes. She uncurls herself from the couch and stands in front of them. “Come on. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can stop being the centre of attention.”
Clint brightens at that and rolls onto his feet, visibly readying himself for battle until Natasha bumps her shoulder against his and shoots him an amused look. Clint looks sheepish for a second before he smirks and bumps her back.
When Clint looks expectantly at Steve, Steve smiles and gets to his feet. He still isn’t sure what he’s going to say to the others or how this is all going to work, but it doesn’t matter really. His team can do this.