I Try To Picture Me Without You But I Can't
Sam couldn’t determine whether his choice to come back was selfless or selfish. Hell, maybe it was somewhere in-between. Selfless, since he was willing to put all of his anger over Clint’s stupid, reckless decisions behind him. Selfish for more reasons than he could name, the least of which being how much of an asshole he’d been when he left.
That had just been the start of him unraveling. The nightmares, which had before been almost under control again - aided by Natasha and Clint’s willingness to sit up with him, grounding him and talking him down, bringing him back after each one – had resurfaced. By that first morning, he’d woken up shaken and feeling somehow that in a matter of a day he’d regressed to the early months, right after he came back home for good, where his anger got the best of him more often than not and he barely slept at night because the nightmares were so bad.
And so he’d swallowed his pride, and contacted Clint. Now here he was, awkwardly standing on the front step, feeling like he was breaking and entering if he used the key but uncomfortable just knocking as if he were a guest. Finally, after way too much hesitation, he went with the key option and unlocked the front door.
No one greeted him, which felt a little strange, but he could hear the sound of pots and pans being moved about and smell something already cooking in the kitchen.
Clint called, “Sam? If that’s you, we’re in here.”
He entered the kitchen to discover Clint standing by a cutting board covered with mostly unchopped vegetables. Natasha searched through the fridge while Lucky and Koschei both darted underfoot. Somehow, Sam almost expected that Natasha and Clint would look different now, though he couldn’t have said why. Seeing Clint standing there, his arm still in a sling made him realize that although it had felt like way too long since he’d last seen them, it had barely been any time at all.
He cleared his throat. “What would you have done if it hadn’t been me?”
“Invite whoever it was to dinner,” Clint said easily, his tone too light for comfort.
Before Sam could dwell on that, Natasha greeted him with, “Hi, Sam” and crossed the room to press a brief, almost chaste kiss to his cheek. “I thought we could save any talking until during or after dinner.” She raised her eyebrow. “As long as you think you can restrain yourself from breaking another one of my glasses.”
He winced. “I deserved that. Yeah, I can promise to keep my cool this time.”
She leaned in to kiss him again, this time on the lips. “Good. I figured as much.”
Clint offered Sam a half-grin. “We’re glad you’re here, man. Especially since I’m hoping you could lend a hand to the dicing. Not having two arms is making it go pretty slow.”
Sam jumped at the chance and agreed immediately. He moved over to the small pile of poorly chopped or completely unchopped tomatoes, onions, carrots, and avocado, and immediately accepted the knife from Clint. For a moment, just a moment, thanks to the cramped confines on the kitchen, Sam found Clint pressed against him. He could feel Clint’s lithe body through the light fabric of t-shirt, smell the familiar, comforting scent of his shampoo – and how many nights had that smell helped ground him as much as Clint’s words did? Somehow, just like that, his remaining reservations fell away because he could never imagine leaving again.
Still, he fought the urge to tug Clint closer. Then the moment passed and Clint moved away to take over stirring the pot of tomato sauce Natasha had just added some sort of spice to, and Sam couldn’t say anything because at least that activity had much less potential for the loss of fingers. A good thing since Sam wasn’t certain how well he would respond to having to take Clint to a hospital-like setting for the second time in a matter of days.
Natasha easily twisted around Clint to slide a tray of garlic bread into the oven and then moved over to the counter where a pitcher full of liquid sat. She poured three glasses and divvied out between the three of them. A Moscow Mule, given the smell of ginger beer. Natasha’s proclivity towards drinks with vodka. Sam took a sip, shooting a look at Clint when he did the same.
“You better not still be taking the painkillers.”
“This is my only painkiller.” Clint took another long sip. “I promise I’m not completely self-destructing, Sam.”
At least Clint owned up to his destructive tendencies. Sam took another gulp of the drink, nervous that his earlier promises that he wouldn’t lose his self-control again might fail once his inhibitions went down.
“How’s the shoulder anyway?” Sam asked, to take himself away from those thoughts.
“Hurts less,” Clint said. “I’ll be in a sling for a couple of more days. I ended up dragging myself to the Health Center this morning and I might be getting some referrals for MRIs or PT or something like that. The word surgery’s been thrown around but since no one’s diagnosed something official yet, I’m in denial that it’s a possibility. I guess if that’s the way it has to be, I’ll consider something around the summer break because I’m not about to screw myself over again for yet another semester. I’m still coming back from the disaster with last semester.”
“Fair enough. At least you’re taking care of yourself.”
“I’m trying to,” Clint said quietly, guiltily, and Sam felt his own guilt shift into something more akin to shame.
While Sam knew his anger towards Clint’s recklessness wasn’t irrational – although his demonstration of that anger had definitely been – to see Clint’s body language change, his eyes downcast, his shoulders slumped, made Sam feel like the biggest asshole on the planet.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a bit sharper than he’d meant it to be, but designed to catch Clint’s attention. He tried to pretend that he hadn’t also seen Clint flinch as well. “I know you are, okay? I know. I’m sorry for walking out after what happened to you and I’m ever sorrier for what I did before walking out. It kills me to see you getting hurt like this but that wasn’t fair to you. Hell, it wasn’t fair to either of you, but it especially wasn’t fair to you.”
“Nah, man, that’s not true,” Clint said quickly. “You’re the one none of this is fair to. I mean, for fuck’s sake, you just got out of the military - ”
“- a year ago, but who’s counting?” Sam interjected.
“ – and now I’ve dragged you into this whole mess,” Clint continued, barely missing a beat. “You’ve been through so much shit while you were in and since you got out and you’ve got all of these amazing goals for yourself. I’m just fucking it all up like I always do. And the worst part of it is that I know it and that makes it even worse and - ”
Sam didn’t mean to cut Clint off. He also didn’t mean to cross the kitchen in two steps or cup Clint’s face in his hands – and nearly let go when Clint all but recoiled as though he expected to be hit. For Christ’s sake, he probably did. Sam knew just enough about Clint’s upbringing to know it was bad without knowing many specifics. Now that he thought about it, he’d also most likely scared the hell out of Clint when he threw the glass the last time. But before Sam could back off, Clint reached up with his good hand to keep Sam’s in place.
Sam didn’t mean to kiss Clint but that was somehow exactly what he did.
He also definitely did not mean to follow it up with, “You’re such an idiot, Clint.”
Clint only laughed. “Yeah, I know, I get that a lot,” he said, before kissing him again.
That was where Sam somewhat lost track of time. It might have been a few seconds or nearly a minute before the oven dinged and the two of them separated. Clint’s face was flushed but for the first time in what seemed like longer than Sam could remember, his smile was completely genuine.
Natasha pointedly cleared her throat. “Now that the two of you have finished kissing and making up, any chance I could get some help bringing the food to the table?”
Sam leaned in to kiss Clint one more time before striding over to Natasha and pulling her into a kiss as well. As always, she fit against him perfectly. He knew all the more that he couldn’t leave the two of them again.
“We’re glad you’re back,” Natasha murmured, almost as though she could read his thoughts.
“I’m glad to be back,” he admitted. Then, before he could talk himself out of it, promised, “And I’m not going anywhere.”