Chapter Text
Everything finally comes to a head on a hot, August day. Outside the temperatures are climbing up into the 90s, but Tony isn’t stupid enough to venture outside in New York in the middle of summer. He’s been spending a lazy day on the couch down on the communal floor, no Stark Industries meetings or work projects to worry about, just a few bits of code to mess around with for fun. Pepper is out with Holly for the day and Tony has a half-formed plan of giving the newest armor prototype a test flight later, but for now he’s content to stay here with the team wandering through as they please.
Most of the others don’t stick around; they’ll say hello to Tony, maybe draw him into a quick conversation, and then leave to continue with their own plans for the day. Tony is fine with that- he does enjoy having some time to himself, after all- but he also doesn’t mind when Natasha shows up and camps out in the living room with him. She’s been a bit cagier lately, ever since her well-intentioned questions triggered an identity crisis for Tony back in May. He doesn’t hold it against her but in some ways the two of them are too similar and he knows that Natasha is less quick to forgive herself. Even if it has been well over two months by this point.
So when she walks in, book in hand, and nudges one of Tony’s legs he doesn’t hesitate to sit up and make room for her on the couch, even as he complains, “You couldn’t have taken one of the chairs?”
“The couch is more comfortable,” Natasha replies. She stretches out, a little tentatively, and Tony is quick to adjust and give her room.
“I know, that’s why I was over here first,” Tony grumbles. The look Natasha gives him makes it clear that she sees through his faux-annoyance and he drops the charade to grin at her instead. She sighs, but gives him a wry smile in response, and Tony is hopeful that she’s finally, finally stopped kicking herself over what happened back in May.
And then Barton shows up.
Natasha has to hear him first because she tenses suddenly and mutters, “Shit,” under her breath. She’s already setting her book aside and standing up by the time Tony hears the sound of someone stumbling, very loudly, down the hall towards the communal living room. He doesn’t know what’s happening at first and he’s half-ready to call for the armor when Barton staggers into the room. He has a conspicuous brown-bagged bottle in his hand that’s clearly been open, although Tony doesn’t know when Barton broke into the booze.
A drunk Clint Barton, this early in the day, is never a good sign, but a drunk Clint Barton being confronted by Natasha Romanov is bound to be a disaster. Tony doesn’t know what the issue between them is, not yet, but he’s picked up on the growing tension between them over the last few months- and there’s no missing the fact that the casual stance Clint takes when he sees her is a little too casual to be genuine.
“Oh, look, the whole fucking peanut gallery is here, how awesome is that?” Clint says sarcastically, already moving towards the kitchen.
Natasha gives Tony a look but he just shrugs. How the hell is he supposed to know what’s going on with Clint, especially if she doesn’t? Whatever their current problems are there’s still no one in the Tower who knows the archer better than Natasha.
“Don’t drag me into this, I was here before you walked in,” Tony says. He turns back to his tablet but keeps one eye on the situation as Natasha follows Clint into the kitchen.
“Just getting food, then I’ll get out of your hair, Stark,” Clint calls back. His voice isn’t as slurred as Tony would expect, given how he’s swaying on his feet, but that’s explained when Clint continues with, “I just walked here from fucking Bed-Stuy, I’m starved.”
Just tired then. Tired, and probably started drinking when he hit the lobby. Clint’s an idiot but even he usually isn’t stupid enough to be drinking on the street in the middle of Manhattan in broad daylight. Still that doesn’t explain why Clint hoofed it to the Tower from Brooklyn in the first place and Tony doesn’t hesitate to ask, “Yeah, and why exactly did you think that would be a good idea?”
“Didn’t have any other choice,” is Clint’s only response.
Tony rolls his eyes, a little annoyed but also not surprised by Clint’s caginess considering the mood he’s obviously in. “Fine, keep your secrets, if that’ll make you feel better,” Tony replies and flips through some more of the code on his tablet screen. Whatever is going on here clearly isn’t his problem, especially not with Natasha’s eventual involvement practically inevitable.
Sure enough, the next thing Tony hears is Natasha asking, “Weren’t you supposed to be spending today with Bobbi?”
Tony is glad that the couch hides most of his expressions and movements because he immediately winces at Natasha’s tone. Shit, if Clint was supposed to be spending the day with his girlfriend only to show up at the Tower halfway to drunk…
“Clint,” Natasha sighs. “What did you do this time?”
“Oh, right, because it’s always my fault when shit goes sideways,” Clint snaps. There’s the sound of a dish clattering on the counter. Tony has to push back the urge to make a quip about protecting the china because he doesn’t give two fucks about the plates, not really, but he is very invested in the storm brewing in the kitchen at the moment.
“So things did go to shit then.” There’s a moment of pointed silence from Clint before Natasha sighs again, a little huff of annoyance, and says, “Bobbi broke up with you, didn’t she?”
How Natasha deduced that from what little information Clint shared so far, Tony has no idea. Must be the weird assassin brain-share that the two of them have going on, though judging by they way Clint is muttering curses under his breath the archer isn’t thrilled that Nat figured things out.
“Apparently I was, quote, trying too hard in all the wrong ways, unquote, which is a new one for me, isn’t it?” Clint says with a forced cheer that sets even Tony’s teeth on edge to hear. “I think six months is a new relationship record too, so all in all I don’t think I did too badly this time-”
“Clint.”
“What do you want me to say, Nat? I’ve been through this with Bobbi once today and I’m not in the mood to rehash it with you,” Clint says. There’s a few beeps from the microwave and then the low hum as Clint reheats whatever food he grabbed.
“Rehashing the situation is how we usually stop this from happening again,” Natasha says.
Tony frowns down at his tablet screen. There’s something off about she phrased that, like Clint’s relationship is a joint op that they need to debrief on, even though Natasha hadn’t been a part of the relationship at all.
Clint doesn’t seem to share Tony’s confusion, but there is vitriol in his voice when he says, “Yeah, but rehashing things with you hasn’t done me too much good so far, has it?”
“It’s stopped you from accidentally cheating on your girlfriends again,” Natasha snaps back.
Part of Tony wants to speak up and ask if they even remember that he’s here, because he’s pretty sure this is a conversation that he’s not supposed to be privy to. Part of him wants to ask how you accidentally cheat on a partner (although he has no doubt that Clint did, in fact, somehow manage to do just that). Mostly though Tony wants to stay quiet and keep eavesdropping, to try and figure out the source of whatever weirdness has been creeping up between the two ex-SHIELD agents lately.
“Can it, Nat.” The microwave beeps and Tony can smell Clint’s food when the archer takes it out. “I just want to get something to eat and spend the rest of the night drinking my sorrows away.”
“Not down here-”
“Yeah, I know not down here, I didn’t fucking forget Stark’s sobriety attempt, thank you very much!” Clint interrupts.
“Well that phrasing stings a little,” Tony calls out, because that one he isn’t going to let slide. He’s going on a week without drinking, and although it’s not his longest sobriety streak- three months in a cave still has that one beat- he is a little proud of himself nonetheless.
One of the many silver linings from his crisis back in May, apart from the obvious advantages to his relationship with Pepper and Rhodey, is that Tony realized that he can’t keep drinking his problems away. If Steve hadn’t showed up to talk sense into him that night in his workshop, Tony has no doubt that he would have let his relationship fall apart in a fit of drunken despair. The idea is enough to scare him into at least trying to stay sober, even if there are some days that Tony thinks he’ll go crazy without a drink. He’s not naive enough to think that his relationship alone will be enough to get him to stop drinking, because god knows Tony isn’t living in a Lifetime movie, but he’s hoping the drunken memory of genuinely expecting his relationship to end will be enough to keep him moving forward anyway.
Tony doesn’t particularly care what the rest of his teammates do, or drink, as long as they stop involving him in it. But Natasha seems to have a different opinion and she’s quick to say, “You shouldn’t drink at all, Clint, that’s not going to solve anything-”
“There’s nothing to fucking solve!” Clint cuts in. “Or did you miss the part where I got fucking dumped today?” The sound of the microwave slamming shut echoes loudly across the communal floor and then Clint says, “Get the fuck out of my way, Nat.”
“At the very least, I don’t think you should be drinking alone right now,” Natasha says, her voice quieter than Clint’s but edged with steel.
Tony tenses on the couch and lowers his tablet, listening to see if a physical fight is going to break out between the two assassins. Tony doubts he would be able to do much to stop the two of them, but if needed JARVIS can raise an alarm and Steve or Thor would be able to put an end to any fight that got started.
Clint laughs, the sound loud and harsh in the tense stillness of the room. “Yeah, well, I’m not fucking drinking with you so get out of my way.”
Tony slowly, carefully, turns to look over the back of the couch again to get a better idea of the situation. For a moment it doesn’t look like Natasha is going to move and Tony starts to wonder if he should be calling for backup now before a fight actually breaks out, especially when Clint takes an aggressive step forward. But Natasha, it seems, doesn’t want to actually provoke him and she sweeps to the side just before Clint’s plate of food can jab her in the chest. Clint storms out of the room, nearly clipping the edge of the doorway, and Tony watches as Natasha signs something rude at his retreating back.
“Well then,” Tony says to break the growing silence, when it’s obvious that Natasha has no intention of speaking or even moving any time soon. “Do Barton’s break-ups always go like this?”
“Not quite,” Natasha says. The casual tone from earlier is gone, replaced with clipped vowels and an unreadable face, and Tony has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Fucking super-spies, always making shit more difficult than it needs to be.
“How do they usually go then?” Tony prompts, because that’s a question that he doesn’t already have an answer to. Bobbi Morse was Clint’s first attempt at dating since the Avengers came together- understandable, given Loki and the fall of SHIELD and everything else that’s happened in the last three years. But that just means that Tony is working with no data and while there are plenty of theories bouncing around his head- have been, for several months in fact, and all of them are circling closer to that shiny green aromantic label- he needs actual information in order to confirm or deny anything.
“Clint fucks up, and I tell him how to not do it again,” Natasha says, her words curt.
Tony has so many questions about that, so many things he wants to ask, but he settles for, “And how did that particular routine begin?”
Finally Natasha’s mask cracks a little and she exhales, loud enough to almost be called a sigh, and turns to actually face Tony. “Clint’s always been bad at relationships,” Natasha explains. “Bad in ways that I didn’t even know it was possible to be bad.”
“Like accidentally cheating on his girlfriend,” Tony cuts in because, yeah, he hadn’t forgotten that one.
“Exactly,” Natasha says. “It’s like… he gets into a relationship and forgets how to read people entirely. He always does too much, or not enough, or seemingly just forgets that he’s in a relationship altogether. It’s infuriating to watch so I started offering him advice, which helps a little until he goes and finds some new way of messing things up.”
Tony frowns. Clint can be a bit of an idiot, sure, but it’s usually about dumb things. Making a bad call and refusing to admit he was wrong, or forgetting that he was meeting someone, or just acting like an idiot to get a reaction from someone. Misreading people and situations has never been a flaw for the ex-SHIELD agent, and even if Tony knows that relationships aren’t like covert ops it’s hard to picture Clint floundering that much when he dates someone.
Unless… “You sure the problem isn’t just that Clint’s not entirely alloromantic?” Tony asks, making sure to keep his tone light. He hasn’t talked about aromantic identities with Natasha since shit went sideways back in May, and he doesn’t need to fuel another one of her guilt-trips.
“Clint would have said something after you came out if that was the case,” Natasha says.
Tony has to tread lightly here, he knows that. “He doesn’t seem to have been very… comfortable.... around you lately though,” he says, choosing his words with care and caution.
“He would have said something to me,” Natasha says, with the sort of firm conviction that only comes from a friendship where your life has literally been in the other person’s hands.
Except Tony has those friendships too, has had his literal heart in his friends-turned-partners’ hands, and he knows all too well how unnervingly easy it can be to keep secrets from the people who mean the world to you. “Maybe,” Tony says, noncommittal, because regardless of whether Clint would have said talked to Natasha or not the fact remains that there’s little Tony can do in this situation.
If Clint is on the aromantic spectrum- and right now that’s still a pretty big if- Natasha isn’t the person that Tony should be discussing that with. But it’s not like he can talk about it with Clint, definitely not while the guy is drinking and honestly, he’s not sure Clint would want to listen to him even while sober.
Maybe he should get Pepper to talk to Barton instead. She, at least, has practice with those kinds of conversations. Tony’s pretty sure if he tried he would just make a mess of things.
Natasha doesn’t stick around the communal areas long after that, and Tony is disappointed but can’t really blame her. She’s rattled by the encounter with Clint, not that she would ever admit to it. Tony hopes that whatever is going on between them gets sorted soon, for both their sakes. And for his, if he’s being honest, because while Tony would hardly consider his afternoon “ruined” by this encounter there’s an unease that he can’t shake and he vacates the living room soon after Natasha leaves.
At least he still has armor test flights to help clear his head. And if Tony maybe pops down to D.C. to catch a late dinner with Rhodey, back on the east coast only for the evening, well, who can blame him for that? (Even if Rhodey is less-than-thrilled when he learns that Tony took an experimental armor out for such a long test flight.)
One of the repulsor boots goes on the fritz when he’s twenty minutes away from New York and as he makes a delicately landing he has to concede that, maybe, Rhodey was right about keeping his test flights limited to local airspace only. Still he has plenty of information about the new armor and once he’s back in the workshop he has JARVIS start running equations while he digs into the wiring in the faulty repulsor boot.
Tony never intends to lose track of time in the workshop, but sometimes he can’t help it. Sometimes the overload of projects makes it impossible to leave, like what happened at the beginning of the year. Other times, like now, Tony just gets wrapped up in the joy of solving a new engineering puzzle. He already rebuilt the older versions of the armor that had been destroyed back when he was too busy to keep up with repairs, so it’s not like there’s a time crunch to get this new one built. No, for once Tony gets to work on the Iron Man armor purely for fun.
“Sir, Agent Barton is on his way down to the workshop,” JARVIS says when Tony nearly has the power issue sorted out.
Well, the night had been enjoyable for a little while at least. “Let me guess, he’s coming down to drunkenly give me suggestions for arrows again?” Tony asks, mostly rhetorical. “I don’t care what he says I’m not helping him build another boomerang arrow.” Not that building arrows that somehow break the laws of physics isn’t fun, but depending on how drunk Barton is by now this could just be an exercise in cajoling him back upstairs to sleep.
“I do not think Agent Barton is planning on discussing weaponry,” JARVIS says. “He appears to be… distressed.”
That gives Tony pause. “Distressed?” he repeats. “What do you mean, distressed?”
“He is rather drunk, and rather emotional,” JARVIS says, as if that’s any kind of explanation.
“Emotional,” Tony echoes again. “JARVIS you’ve gotta help me out a little here, what do you mean-?”
And that’s as far as Tony gets before the door to the workshop opens- because Tony hadn’t thought to put any lockdown protocols in effect, why would he on an otherwise normal night- and Barton comes stumbling into the workshop.
“You!” Clint shouts, and almost fall over when he tries to point at Tony.
You, tucked away in his charging station, perks up almost inquisitively, no doubt wondering if maybe the archer had been talking about him instead. Tony has to quickly shoo the bot back when You starts rolling forward. The last thing Tony needs is for the bots to start interfering with what looks to be a delicate situation.
“Me,” Tony calls back to Clint. “What are you doing down here, Barton?”
“Looking for you,” Clint replies as he slowly weaves between projects and workbenches, moving closer to where Tony is standing.
“Yeah, I got that part, but- Christ, Barton, be careful!” Tony snaps as Clint nearly knocks a delicate prototype onto the floor. “You are definitely way too fucking drunk to be here right now!”
“Yeah, well, ‘s your fault,” Clint replies. He knocks into a workbench and seems content to stay there, clinging to the edge to keep himself upright.
Tony sighs and has to resist the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Oh my god, you’re a disaster,” he mutters under his breath. Still, Tony grabs two stools and drags them over to Clint, gently pushing the archer down onto one and taking the other himself. “What, exactly, do you think is my fault here? Because the drinking is all on you, buddy.”
“No, the drinking is on you-u,” Clint says, almost in a sing-song. He sighs and rests his head on top of his arms on the workbench, muffling his voice as he continues, “Tha’s what I was comin’ down here to yell at you about. ‘s your fault.”
“Thought you were drinking because Bobbi broke up with you today,” Tony says. He’s still confused about what Clint is doing down here, and has absolutely no idea why Barton thinks he’s to blame for anything, but maybe this is the chance Tony needs to pry some answers out of his teammate.
Tony immediately feels guilty at that thought. He knows, all too well, what it's like to pass out drunk and wake up with your secrets known to the world. He also knows what it's like when that betrayal comes from someone you thought you could trust, and even if Tony isn't planning on sharing anything that Clint says with the other Avengers... well, that barely excuses what he's about to do.
But if Clint isn't talking to Natasha- and Tony has no doubt that he's not talking to Nat at the moment- then Clint probably isn't talking to anyone, which definitely isn't a good thing. Left to his own devices, Clint will bottle everything up and let it fester until something finally has to give. Tony, for one, would rather address the current situation before something sets the archer off and he makes things more difficult than they need to be.
Clint, still with his head resting on his arms, manages to wiggle one hand out to wave vaguely in Tony's direction. "That too," he mumbles. "There's a lot of reasons to drink today."
That's a sentiment that Tony knows all too well. "And one of those reasons is me," Tony repeats. "Is one of those reasons also Natasha?" Because after witnessing their conversation earlier he very strongly suspects that Natasha is at the heart of whatever is going on with Barton's romantic issues, whether she knows it or not.
"That," Clint says, surprisingly firm for someone as drunk as he is, "we're not gonna talk about."
"Well then what are we going to talk about?" Tony presses, because he's willing to let the Natasha subject drop. For now, at least. "Because you came down here for something, bird boy, but so far you've been surprisingly tight-lipped about it all. I'm pretty sure the alcohol is supposed to loosen tongues, not make you even more cryptic than usual."
"Fuck off, Stark." It's Clint's usual reply when Tony is being irritating, and it stopped carrying any real heat behind it years ago. What does sting is Clint's next remark, a callous, "You should dig out that bottle I know you still have stashed down here and drink with me, maybe get on my level if you want me to talk.”
Of course Clint would know about the bottle of liquor Tony still has hidden in the workshop, because despite how well Tony plays up the "functioning" part of his functioning alcoholism there was never any hope of hiding the reality from either of the SHIELD wonder-twins. Tony has always known that, but it still takes him aback with how much it hurts to hear Clint mention it so casually, to hear Clint tell him to drink when he knows-
It's late on a Saturday and it had been a good day, a lazy and relaxing day, and Tony is almost a week sober. But that doesn't stop him from standing up, opening one of the low cabinets lining the wall, and pulling out an old bottle of whiskey that's been hidden there almost since he finished renovating the Tower after the Battle of New York. He sits back on his heels and rolls the bottle in his hands, tells himself that if he drinks it’s going to be to help Barton and not because he just desperately wants to drink, and asks, "If I drink with you, are you actually going to talk?"
“Nope,” Clint says, “but you should drink anyway, ‘s more fun.”
“That’s the fucking problem,” Tony mutters under his breath, but he's pretty sure Barton is lying. Clint came down here looking for him for some reason, was drinking supposedly because of him, and he's pretty sure Clint wants to talk about whatever's eating at him more than he's letting on.
But that doesn’t mean Tony has to drink with him to get him to talk.
He slams the bottle of whisky against the workbench, startling Clint who had fallen into a bit of a drunken daze, and pushes a mostly-clean coffee cup towards him. “Have at it,” he says. “But I’m not joining you.”
Clint shrugs, like he couldn’t care less despite goading Tony only a few minutes earlier. “Your loss,” he says, and pours himself a healthy portion of the whiskey.
“Not really,” Tony replies, but if Clint hear him he doesn’t give any sort of response, just tips his head back and drains the cup in one, long draught. “You feel like talking yet?” Tony asks as Clint pours himself another drink.
Clint shrugs. “Nothing to talk about.”
“Bullshit. You came down here for something.”
“I came down here to fight you,” Clint tells him, which surprises Tony because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t remember Clint trying to throw a punch at any point. “Decided that might be a bad idea.”
“You really have to stop resorting to punch first, talk later,” Tony says. “Why were you going to fight me?”
“Because it’s your fault,” is Clint’s only reply.
Tony rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, my fault that you’re drinking, we’ve established that.”
But Clint shakes his head, so hard that when he looks back up at Tony he’s a little cross-eyed, and says, “No. I mean, yes, but that’s…”
Tony is starting to get worried now, or at least more worried than he already was. "Wait, wait, wait, are you serious- Did I actually do something to upset you?" Tony asks incredulously. "Before this afternoon I hadn't seen you in, like, three days! What did I do?"
"Fucking hell, just leave it alone, Stark." Clint's words are muffled by the glass of whiskey and slurred from the drinking, and if Tony hadn't been expecting exactly that response he wouldn't have caught it at all.
"Nuh-uh, nope, absolutely not," Tony says. "You don't want to talk about Nat? Fine. You don't want to talk about Bobbi and whatever the fuck continues to go wrong with your attempts at romantic relationships? That's... Well, I'll figure out what's going on there eventually so if you don't want to talk about it now then just don't. Hell, if you had told me that you had come down here because you wanted company while you drank yourself stupid that would've been enough for me- would have, past tense, because now you're saying that I'm responsible for something here and I want to know what."
Clint doesn't say anything, just keeps staring into his drink, and Tony lets out a huff of frustration. "Really? You're just gonna drop that bombshell on me and then not say anything else?"
Tony notices the way that Clint's hand tightens around the glass, the way his jaw clenches, the absolutely pointed way he refuses to look in Tony's direction. And Tony knows that he should let this go, should stop trying to pry for information, because Clint is drunk and clearly not in the mood to talk despite coming down to the workshop, and nothing good can come from continuing to needle at Clint like this. But Tony can't let the conversation go, not now that there's a very, very good chance that at some unknown point he fucked up something badly enough that Clint, even drunk off his ass, is being stubbornly tight-lipped about what he did.
"Clint, please," Tony says, and he's not begging but even he will admit that he's been startlingly sincere in this moment. "If I fucked up, I want to know. All joking aside, if I did something I want to know what I-"
"You fucking came out to us, that's what you did!" Clint bites out suddenly, and Tony goes very, very still.
Of all the things Tony was expecting- which, considering the number of admittedly dumb jokes he makes at his teammates' expenses on a weekly basis, there were a lot of possible scenarios he had been considering- that hadn't been one of them. Had he been misreading the situation with Clint all along? Had Tony been imagining Clint's discomfort towards Natasha, when it had been discomfort towards him all along?
For a moment Tony feels outside his own body, so thrown by Clint's outburst that he can't focus on anything at all. He's overwhelmed by a feeling of betrayal, so painfully familiar that it's like a stab to the chest. He's used to people faking friendships with him; Stane was not the first, and Tony is not delusional enough to think he'd be the last. But he never would have thought that one of the Avengers, one of his own goddamn teammates, would lie to him like this.
Either Clint's tongue is finally loose enough to talk, or he finally realizes exactly how that outburst sounded, because after a few too-long seconds of stunned silence the archer starts babbling again, “You came out and started talking about aromantic shit and everyone is researching it and acting like everything is fine and nothing about this is fucking fine! Because if you’re aromantic and that’s fine then Natasha has been wrong this whole fucking time and I’m-” He cuts off suddenly, viciously, and downs the rest of his drink. “I’m not fucking drunk enough for this, that’s what I am.”
"Yeah, well, that can be fixed," Tony says, still in a bit of a daze and trying to process Barton's rambling. God knows that wasn't the only bottle of liquor stashed in the workshop, and Tony grabs the half-empty bottle of vodka that he had hidden behind a cabinet and almost forgotten about, while Clint pours himself another drink from the whiskey and sets to work draining that as well.
Tony sets the vodka down next to Clint, careful to leave it far enough away that the archer won't accidentally knock it over in a moment of drunken pique, and turns over Clint's words in his mind.
He thinks he knows what's going on now- at least, he hopes he knows what's going on because the only other alternative involves the sort of lies and betrayal that Tony knows he can't handle coming from a teammate. Barton's word-vomited explanation hadn't been entirely coherent but Tony still thinks he got the gist of what's going on in Clint's drunken brain. Now he just has to tread carefully and try not to fuck up this conversation anymore.
"Okay," Tony says at last. "I have one question for you."
"Just one?" Clint says sarcastically. Tony pretends not to notice how his hand shakes as he grabs the bottle of liquor again.
"I really think one question is all I'm going to need," Tony says. As long as he's right about this, that is. Clint doesn't say anything to that and Tony just keeps talking, trying to stay casual to hide how much his heart is still racing. “It’s actually the question Sam asked you when we hired Holly, do you remember that?”
Clint shakes his head but, given the way his jaw is clenched so tight it's a wonder his eyes haven't popped out of his head yet, Tony is willing to bet that he's lying. Like he lied when Sam posed the question four months ago, but that's easier to understand considering he was surrounded by the entirety of the Avengers at the time... including Natasha. Tony doesn't know what Clint meant by her "being wrong this whole fucking time" but he's willing to bet that that time frame goes back further than just eleven months ago.
Clint looks like he's about to vibrate out of his skin with anxiety, so Tony asks the question he's been dying to get an answer to ever since February, ever since Clint first talked about dating Bobbi and the seed was planted in Tony’s mind. "Clint, are you aromantic?"
This is the root of tonight's particular problem, Tony knows it is, and maybe he had been half-expecting some Hollywood-perfect scene where Clint suddenly sags in relief and spills all of his deep fears and worries about his romantic orientation. What happens instead is that Clint shrugs, still as tense as a piano wire, and takes another sip of his drink. "I have no fucking idea. How the fuck is anyone supposed to know that shit anyway?"
“A reliable source informs me that “butterflies” play an important role in figuring out if you’re romantically attracted to someone,” Tony says.
Clint snorts. "Really? Butterflies? You go through your own fucking identity crisis and the best you can give me is butterflies?"
"Hey, don't look at me, I'm not the expert in what romantic love feels like," Tony says. "I don't experience that shit at all." He cocks his head, studying Clint for a moment, looking past the painfully drunk exterior and trying to work out what's going on in the man's head. "What about you?" he finally asks.
"What about me what?"
"Do you experience romantic love?" Tony asks. "I mean, that's a pretty important thing to figure out if you want to know if you're aro or not."
"Like I said, I don't fucking know," Clint snaps. "It's like- like it's there sometimes and then other times it's not. It'll go away once I start dating someone, or I'll realize it was never love and was just... fuck, I don't even know. Fucking indigestion or something, it just wasn't real to begin with. And- and sometimes it is real and I know I love someone but I still fuck it up 'cause I just can't do relationships right. I can't- I can't fucking figure it out. 's like everyone got a translator when they hit puberty and mine got lost in the mail sometime when I was running around with carnies."
And that officially wins the award for "Saddest Sentence Tony Stark Has Heard All Year" and he doesn't even consider cracking a joke about it, not for a single second.
"So if I’m understanding you right you don’t know if you’re aromantic because sometimes the attraction is there, and sometimes it’s not, and you can’t tell if the attraction is romantic or something else altogether," Tony summarizes instead. "Does that sound about right?"
Clint nods and, okay, they're making progress here.“Have you looked at any of the grey-aromantic labels out there?” Tony asks.
"Grey-aromantic...?" Clint repeats slowly, frowning in confusion..
And Tony has to frown too because he knows Clint's heard that word before- hell, Sam used it when Tony came out to him and Thor, and Tony very definitely remembers Clint being there. (He also clearly remembers the look Clint gave Natasha during that conversation, and given what little Clint has already let slip Tony wonders if maybe he wasn't the only person to have a Nat-induced identity crisis in their life.) But if Clint is seriously struggling to place that phrase...
Oh.
Well, shit.
"Okay, I'm going to rephrase that last question," Tony says. "Have you looked into anything about aromantic identities since I came out to you guys?" Because he knows that Nat and Steve had done their own research, and Bruce and Sam already had some knowledge about aromanticism... but the more he thinks about it, the more he's pretty sure he's never heard of Clint looking into this himself.
There's a beat of silence where Tony almost thinks Clint is going to lie again, or simply refuse to answer the question at all, but then the archer sighs and admits, "No. I haven't." And Tony is surprised when Clint doesn't leave it there, instead also saying, "I didn't want to think about this. If I didn't know anything I didn't have to find out if I- if I was..."
"If you were aromantic," Tony finishes, when Clint's words trail off and he doesn't finish that thought.
Clint shrugs. "Or that I'm not."
"Jesus, you have issues with this, don't you?" Tony mutters. It's understandable, if a little infuriating to work around now. Tony remembers being a little daunted at the idea that his weird romantic hang-up could be an actual identity. He imagines that feeling must be a lot worse for someone who can't tell if they experience romantic love just occasionally or not- to say nothing of also dealing with whatever bullshit Natasha may have put into Clint's head god knows how many years ago.
"Okay, first things first: JARVIS, lock down the workshop, total isolation and that includes Rhodey and Pep," Tony says. He can hear the locks on the door immediately engage, and the glass walls surrounding the workshop turn opaque. "If someone asks tell them that I'm deconning the space- or that I've hit a bad patch with the armor and am pissed off, whatever will make Cap worry less." Tony turns back to Clint and asks, "Unless you'd rather go somewhere else for this conversation?"
"I don't think I can move," Clint admits, sounding miserably drunk.
Tony sighs. "J, please also send fruit baskets to Rhodey and Pepper and Happy and anyone who's ever had to deal with me when I was drunk because dear lord they have the patience of saints."
"Fuck you," Clint says again, although this time it's noticeably more slurred than usual. “Help me- help me find my phone. I gotta send a text.”
Part of Tony wonders for a moment if he should cut Clint off, or at least take away the half-bottle of vodka before the archer can drink himself into a coma. But Tony also knows, from painful first-hand experience, that someone as drunk as Clint is probably won't take kindly to that and Tony would much rather get to the bottom of this aromantic mess than fight with Clint about his drinking. Especially because- pot, kettle, et cetera.
“It’s in your pocket, I can see it from here, and I’m not getting it for you,” Tony says. Clint grabs the phone with a crow of triumph and begins sloppily typing a message. “Who do you need to text anyway?”
“Dog,” Clint says.
“Dog,” Tony repeats. “You’re… texting a dog?”
Clint has no business giving Tony that particular look of disgust, not with how drunk he is. “No, I’m texting about a dog,” he says. “I gave Kate my dog to look after before I came back here and she's gonna steal him again if I don’t meet her tomorrow and I’m not gonna be able to meet her. I need- I need to tell her to bring Lucky back to my place ‘cause I’ll be there later so it’s okay to leave him.”
“Right, I always forget you have that hidey-hole in Brooklyn,” Tony mutters. “And a dog, really Barton? A dog that you make your sidekick watch for you?”
“Don’t call Katie-Kate a sidekick she’ll kick your ass,” Clint says. “And it’s not a hidey-hole it’s a- it’s a building. I got it from the Russians. Got Lucky from the Russians too.” There’s a pause as Clint’s fingers fumble over the touchscreen keyboard and then he adds, a little absentmindedly, “He’s missing an eye. But I saved the rest of him.”
“That phrasing is just so wrong,” Tony says. “And I’m- frankly I’m going to ignore the rest of what you said, I don’t need to think about you maybe illegally owning an entire building.”
“‘s not illegal,” Clint mutters. He sends the text and tosses his phone aside. “Got a lawyer to look into it. Says I should be okay and he’ll help me beat up the Tracksuit Mafia.”
Tony decides that he's just going to roll with whatever Clint is saying and pretend that he understands it. The night has already been far, far too long and Clint is too drunk for Tony to start questioning him about an entirely new topic now. "Alright then," he says, because honestly, what else is there to say to that?
"Time for more questions," Tony continues finally sitting back down on the other stool. "What, exactly, do you think aromantic means?"
"Not feeling romantic attraction to people," Clint says. He sounds confused, like he's not sure where Tony is going with this, and Tony has to resist the urge to facepalm because Jesus, Clint really missed a lot of information here.
"Yeah, of course, but what I mean is- do you think aro people never feel romantic attraction at all, ever, under any circumstances?" Tony presses.
"Well... you never experience romantic attraction..." Clint say slowly.
Tony sighs and looks up at the ceiling with an expression of pained suffering on his face. "Good lord I can't believe I'm being held up as the pinnacle of any identity, let alone aromantic ones. Okay Barton, aromanticism 101: It’s not an all-or-nothing sort of deal.”
“What?”
“It’s a spectrum, like most things like this,” Tony explains, and god help him but part of him really wishes he had taken Clint up on his offer to drink. Maybe this conversation would be less painful if Tony wasn't quite so sober. “Sexualities aren’t limited to gay or straight. Gender isn’t limited to male or female. There are more romantic orientations than just alloromantic and the no-romantic-attraction-at-all-ever flavor of aromantic.”
Clint stares at Tony, looking at him like he's grown an extra head or something. "What?" he repeats.
“Grey-aromantics are a thing,” Tony says, trying so very hard to make sure that his voice stays calm and level. “People who experience romantic attraction sometimes, but not all the time. Or only under certain circumstances. Or don’t know if they experience romantic attraction or platonic or anything else. It’s not one-or-the-other, it’s a spectrum. And quite frankly I think you fall somewhere on that spectrum.”
"No," Clint says, quietly, almost to himself. "No, not that's not possible, that's not- that can't be-"
"Why can't it be possible?" Tony asks, and he has to force himself to stay patient. Barton has some weird hang-up about this, Tony's picked up on that easily enough. He wants to figure out what's going on here and try to actually help Clint, and he can't do that if he loses his cool right now.
Clint jumps, and Tony wonders if maybe Clint had been talking to himself after all. There's certainly a dazed look to his face, like he's caught up in own thoughts and not entirely in the here-and-now with Tony. But that changes in a split-second as Clint scowls and says loudly, heatedly, "Because I can't be aromantic!"
"Why not?" Tony asks.
“Because if I’m aromantic then Natasha was wrong and the last six years are fucking bullshit!”
There’s near silence after Clint’s outburst, the only sound Clint’s heavy breathing and the rattle of glass knocking against the counter as he picks up his drink with a very unsteady hand. Tony would be willing to bet that Clint hadn't intended on actually letting that little tidbit slip out, especially considering the archer won't even look at him now.
Tony takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Look, it’s obvious you have some baggage with Natasha-” and yeah, Tony doesn’t miss Clint's flinch at the mention of Nat, "-and I am so very much not the person to help you with that. What I can help you with, if you want? Is doing some basic research about grey-aro identities.”
“And if I don’t want that?” Clint mumbles. He finishes his drink again and he sets it back down on the counter, this time turning to the half-empty bottle of vodka. Tony does not envy his stomach in the morning.
“Then we’ll drop the subject and I’ll keep you company while you drink, or help you back to your room if you don’t want company,” Tony says.
Clint narrows his eyes and squints at Tony. “Why are you being so- so-?” He waves a hand, nearly upending the bottle over the bar.
Tony takes a moment to think, weighing his words carefully before he speaks. "I've suspected that you might be aro-spec for awhile," he finally admits. "From things you've said, and the way you act and react in certain situations, but I thought you were researching things or at the very least talking about it with Nat. But you've been acting weird around her- and I definitely know now that something is going on there, so don't think of denying it- so I started thinking that maybe you weren't talking about it with her. And that maybe you weren't thinking about this at all."
Tony shrugs, not sure what else to say. "I'm a nosy asshole, you know that. I was probably going to pester you about this eventually because the curiosity was killing me. You coming down here drunk just sped up that timeline a bit."
"Oh, how lucky for me," Clint mutters. It doesn't come out quite as sarcastic as Tony thinks it was supposed to sound. "Well sorry to ruin your fun, Stark, but I don't want to actually research this. I'm-"
"If you say "fine" I'm cutting you off and tossing your ass out of my workshop," Tony interrupts. "Because clearly you're not fine with this. If you were fine you wouldn't be down here drinking and spilling your secrets to me. I think you want to research this but you have some fucked-up version of the Sunk Cost Fallacy holding you back. Just because you've spent apparently six goddamn years telling yourself that you experience romantic attraction like everyone else doesn't mean that you have to keep lying to yourself now."
"'s easier though," Clint insists.
"Easier," Tony echoes, a little dumbfounded. "Easier than what? Than not hating yourself? Than not hating Natasha?"
"I don't hate Natasha," Clint cuts in viciously. "I don't hate her. I hate what she said. There's a difference."
"What did she say?" Tony asks, because there's no way he can pass up an opening like that.
But Clint shakes his head and says, “No. No no no, not talking about her or that.”
"Well apparently you aren't talking about anything anymore, if you don't want to even consider looking into-"
"It's easier," Clint interrupts him again. "To just be fucked up. To not- not love people right. Than to have an explanation for it, a real explanation, and have to deal with dating and telling Natasha and- and everything else." He glares at Tony, bleary-eyed and drunk off his ass, and adds, "I hate you, y'know. For having your relationship with Pepper and Rhodes. You don't even feel romantic love and you get to have them and I hate you for that."
Not for the first time Tony is profoundly grateful that he's not drunk right now. Drunk-Tony probably would have taken some offense at that, but Sober-Tony feels his heart break a little. He'd never be stupid enough to pity Barton, because he knows that that's the last thing the archer wants or needs, but that doesn't mean that he's unaffected by Clint's words. "You're really trying to outdo yourself with the tragic sentences tonight, aren't you?" he mutters under his breath.
"Hmm?" Clint says, questioning, having not caught what Tony said. Good. He didn't need to hear that.
"Nothing," Tony lies. "Listen, have you considered that, maybe, actually thinking about your romantic orientation and what you want- and are comfortable with- in a relationship might make your relationship attempts go a little smoother? Instead of forcing yourself to play out some amatonormative storyline that, clearly, you don't quite fit into?"
Clint just stares at Tony. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
Tony sighs and says, "Okay, look. My relationship only works because Pepper and Rhodey know I'm aromantic and romance-repulsed, and they respect that and they don't push for more than I can give them. You can also have a relationship where your partner doesn't push you for more, and where they know that your idea of "romantic gestures" might not match up with theirs and that you might not be able to read their romantic needs as easily as they're used to. As long as you're upfront about that crap, and your partner is willing to work with you? You can make a relationship work, Barton. Being aromantic doesn't mean you have to be alone- though there's nothing wrong with being alone if that's what you want instead."
Clint keeps staring while Tony talks, his eyes a little unfocused but Tony's pretty sure that he hears him. Whether he understands what Tony is saying is a different story. "Okay," Clint says at last. "Okay. Let's do it."
"Do... what?" Tony asks, a little cautious, because he can't quite follow Clint's drunken logic and he's not entirely sure what the archer is talking about.
"Research. Looking shit up," Clint says. He takes a swig from the bottle of vodka and coughs, hard enough that there's a moment of pure terror where Tony thinks Clint is going to vomit over the otherwise-clean workbench. But Clint manages to keep the liquor down and, after a moment, he rasps, "I'm game. Fire up Google and let's do this shit."
Tony suddenly has a bad feeling about how the rest of this night is going to go, but since this was his idea it's hardly like he can back down now. "Alright, JARVIS, you know what sites to pull up," he says, and several screens pop up in front of where Clint is sitting. The archer, startled, nearly falls backward off the stool, but Tony manages to catch him and push him back upright at the last second. "Okay, Clint," Tony says, gesturing towards the websites. "Let's have at it."
Tony has no idea how successful they're actually going to be with this. He just hopes that Clint will be sober enough to remember any of this in the morning.