brandingproblem | open post

"My dad died when I was a couple of months old. My mom died when I was 18. Only child of two only children. The closest I got to a wife and kids was a kiss once and almost making it to a date. Family at all isn't something I know, and I sure as hell don't get that kind of loss. I'm not going to patronizing you by pretending I do, but I'm not going to start pretending I'm too stupid to know that it's bigger than I can comprehend, either. Respect and pity can't coexist. Respect and compassion usually do."

Oh look. Words. A lot of them. He'd apologize from that, but he's still sprawled on the kitchen floor, and he.. doesn't want to and isn't worry.

Floor time is sacred; it's hard truths time, and pointed questions time, and struggling with feelings time. Apparently.

It's better than Steve tiptoeing around everything, that's for sure. He wouldn't be able to stomach being gentle. Kind, compassionate, that's another matter, but Steve's firm in his feelings and his beliefs, and that's just one of many reasons Clint respects him.

It doesn't mean he has to be nice about it. "Neither of those things do anything for me. Am I glad you don't hate my guts? Yeah, sure, of course. But what am I supposed to do with your compassion?" He flexes his shoulders against the hard surface, just to keep the sting up. "Compassion's what made you realize maybe I need a sound beating to get my head on straight? God, I wish you didn't have to hold back. Maybe you shouldn't."

"I don't expect my feelings to do anything for you." That's also a hard truth, but an equally blunt statement. "I'm just telling you that I don't pity you."

But then he snorts. "Clint, if you want some real serious heavy pain I'll make it happen, but it's going to take some kind of... tool use. I hold back. All the time, in everything. The only exception is when I'm fighting some super powered jackass trying to end the world. That can't change."

"I know."

Which is why he said it. And he didn't regret saying it, didn't try to gobble the words back into his mouth and unsay it.

"I guess all that's fair for almost making you cry."

Spin it into an almost-joke. That he can do.

He isn't upset by the remark and wouldn't know what there is to be sorry about, anyway. Doesn't have the good sense to leave the heart of it alone, though.

Which amounts to Clint at least needing more, and the way he's leaning into physical pain.

"Good, now let's come up with a plan to give you as close to what you're actually looking for as we can get. Not here and now, that's stupid, but something we can move toward." A pause - "And no it isn't me being a martyr for you, either."

"I've got the closest to what I'm looking for. It's this. It's what I'm doing. It's the missions I make for myself. There's nothing else to plan, here." He takes a nice deep breath and hunkers over the rest of his food again, no longer pressing hard enough to become a sharp note of pain through his nerves anymore. "I don't need you to punch my head clean off my shoulders. Just some days it feels like a better option."

"Yeah. Maybe don't ever ask me questions about Rumlow and what I voluntarily engaged in those first few months out of the ice." HE is pretty done with eating, so he moves from sitting to a crouch and picks up his trash to throw away. "I'm gonna take a shower."

"Maybe don't give me ammo like that, Steve. Might be I actually use it someday." Not right now. He's not sure if he's pissed Steve off or just made him feel like he's running into a brick wall, but Clint's willing to let it all go right now if Steve is.

Steve is team hitting a brick wall, which is why he's hoping that getting into a shower smacks some kind of reset button. "I'm kinda hoping you decide to." There's a smile with that, though it's a quick one. "Might blow a hole in a wall if you detonate it right."

Not going to engage with that right now. But it's something to mull over while Steve gets a head-clearing shower.

Give him an excuse to blow up? Get some catharsis of his own? Clint's not his fucking doctor, but he is a friend, whether he asked Steve to be here or not. Their verbal spats so far have all reached a certain point and then fizzled.

Maybe Clint's the one walking on tiptoe and didn't even realize it.

He cleans up, tugs a shirt on, goes over his map again. Considers using this time to go out, have Steve come back out to an empty room, but...later, maybe. If he's feeling pettier. But he stays for now.

'Wall' is a pretty good term for what Steve feels like is going on. Like they keep trying to get around it, maybe are chipping away at it, but not quite getting there. Backing off, rather than being willing to blow through.

Whether that's a lack of trust that it won't destroy any friendship they have (valid) or something else, he doesn't know. He's pretty sure they're both doing it. He is al the way sure he is.

He is actively scared that he's going to make Clint bolt and hide better next time and that thought horrifies him.

He's in the shower for a while mulling it over, and longer for adding shaving off a couple of weeks worth of beard off with somewhat shitty disposable razors he picked up. He comes back out pretty quietly, back in sweats and socks (and t-shirt), stowes the clothes he'd had on and digs out a notebook and pencil and takes over one end of the bed, curls up and starts... well sketching his own stuff.

Which is not a map. It's actually just the view out the window. Doesn't actually count as art, just copying what he's seeing and keeping him out of the way and occupied. Buys him some time to decide if he's going to address the dance they're doing and if so what the right angle on that one is.

Clint decides to sit on the other end of the bed and stare. To take Steve in, really look at him, regard the next move. And look at the sketch, because he's a nosy little shit like that. Steve shaved. He hadn't bothered to before. Is there meaning in that, or is Clint reaching for straws, reading into something that isn't meant to be read?

"The problem with trying to get at whatever your detonation buttons are is that some of the ones I could press involves me saying shit I absolutely don't think is true, and shit you know I don't think is true. Non-starter. If you wanna tell me what you and Rumlow got up to, go for it. If you want to make me pry it out of you, we can do it that way."

Steve helpfully tilts the notebook so Clint can see what he's doing, though it's not all that interesting. Well done, at least, and he does go back to it pretty quickly.

"There's not actually much there to pry at with Rumlow, besides me being blind and stupid. First few months after I was woke up I didn't cope well and he was willing to go hard in a way that no one who wasn't some kind of psychopath would have been, but it was also about what it took for me to shut down and go to sleep. I'm mostly just... feeling like we're dancing around something, and not even knowing what it is we keep getting close to and backing off from, besides each other." He doesn't like it and he doesn't sound happy.

"We got the physical fight out. Feels kinda like we need to come to blows arguing about something until we're both red in the face." And even then. If they're going to fight, it has to be about something that feels worth it, or meaningful. "Not that there wasn't an emotional catharsis to the sparring, y'know. Just...different kind of itch this time, maybe."

He reaches out, unapologetic, unprompted, and takes Steve by the chin, tipping his face this way and that, running his fingers along jawline. "Like, help me out here, is this a cry for help, or a sign of you feeling better?"

Clint's going to learn one thing for damn sure, and that is that Steve likes being touched. There's a moment of him being a little confused by what Clint's doing and why, and that comes with a second or so of maybe a tiny touch of tension.

Once he realizes what Clint's doing, though, there's some serious easing of tension that's damn near constant in his shoulders and jaw, and he actually moves with the fingers sliding over his jaw.

"It's me feeling better," he murmurs, sounding a tiny bit embarrassed by his own responses there. "And yeah. Maybe there's some kind of argument hiding under there, or just an urge for one. But I can't think of anything worth it, and I really don't want you becoming impossible for me to find again."

He's noticed that reaction. Interesting. He pinches Steve's cheek like a doting grandmother. "You need to get cozy with the rest of the friends you got, Steve. The ones within reach. That you're in a lot more frequent contact with who also like you. I miss movie nights, too, but I can't be around to sprawl on everyone's lap eating up all the popcorn anymore."

Just ignoring entirely the idea of going to ground again and not being found until the next bloody pile of corpses he leaves behind.

"...You keep saying stuff like that, like you are actively forgetting the friends I have in reach are Nat." Just blunt, though he... kinda growls at Clint for the cheek pinch. "Though that one's gonna turn into a sparring session if she keeps feeding me peanut butter sandwiches I get within fifty feet of her. I'm not trying to rewind time. If I could do that, I'd hop back a lot further."

"See, I can't tell if that means you don't think she's cuddly and cozy, or if that means you know she is, but it's not enough. Guess if she's trying to feed you, you gotta know by now." He brings his hands back to himself. "I'm sorry it's fucking lonely, man. I'm sorry it sucks trying to figure out how to deal with it."

"Clint, you keep touching me and then reacting like I'm trying to crawl up your ass or you feel guilty because I enjoy it. Help me out here?" He knows Nat's affectionate. He really does. Right now she's not his priority. Figuring out if they're going to blow up and break down or stabilize kind of is.

"I don't feel guilty because you're affection." He furrows his brow. "You're the one who keeps trying to make some casual contact. You like that. You're about that right now and need it. Now I do it in return, and you think I'm acting weird about it?" He spreads his hands. They both need help here. What the fuck.

"This absolutely can't be what we argue about. That's too stupid."

"...Can we have the rest of this conversation laying down and not looking at each other? If it goes terribly we'll just argue about cilantro?"

Dear Steve: Show some trust in Clint. Please.

"Cilantro is good in small quantities; it's an herb that must be wielded with care and respect." And that's that about that. Steve. Come on. He's not moving. He is not moving to lay down.

"Is there a conversation we need to have, or is it a conversation that we can just not have and instead have a different conversation where you bring up what I lost, I try not to spiral, say something extremely sharp and pointy, and try to get you to break that wall or whatever?"

Just as an example???

"I thought the touching thing was to bring you back down, y'know, get you grounded, like you pinning me. I get you're lonely. I haven't been...I haven't--people'd, like that, since." Since. "Closest I get is handshakes and the people I sit to work on my arm for hours on end. You're being patient as a damn saint around me, the least I can do is try to give you what you need, too. And I'm apparently fucking that up. I don't know what we're doing. What the hell are we doing?"

The amount of work going into this is undoubtedly a reflection of both who they are as people and amount of trauma involved, but even Steve's reaching a point where he's just too fucking exhausted to do it.

Maybe that's not the worst thing.

"You know how it was important to be sure I was getting something out of wiping the floor out of you? Same thing. I needed some contact to get back down. I like contact. You don't have to keep doing it if it's not something that's making you uncomfortable. The rest of it's probably just me overthinking it and feeling like an asshole for maybe forcing it. I don't want much of anything else to do that to you."

"...Shit, Steve, I could see what the hell they got on basic cable down here and lay on you if you want. Watch bad soaps together." Which might feel too much like pretending things are normal, but they could. They could give it a go and see how that feels. Maybe.

He sets a hand lightly on Steve's arm. And then leans a little on him. Testing? Trying? "Probably should've stayed in the warehouse until you were back down. Both of us back down."

The lean's good. The touch is good. His reaction is at least more subtle this time. There's still relief and relaxation there, but it's not as... overt or intense. "TV and laying down sounds like a good way to kill time, anyway."

Staying in the warehouse... maybe? He doesn't know. Probably would have been better, actually and Clint's probably right. Location changes get complicated.

"Might even help my Spanish while we're waiting. I'm gonna settle first, this time. You handle the tv and put yourself where you want to be?"

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