The first sign that Steve and Clint probably aren't going to be cooperative and useful and do what he wants is when on Wednesday, three days after Natasha had left on I-could-tell-you-but-then-I'd-have-to-kill-you business, five days after Bruce had gone on a 'sabbatical'--which meant living like a hermit in the desert, most likely--and a week and a half after Thor had left on 'family business', Tony builds a stun-shock less-lethal arrowhead and Clint doesn't appear on demand to test it.
"It's not like I can't just load it into a gun," Tony tells JARVIS, justifiably peeved. "It's not like I can't shoot a goddamn bow and arrow well enough to rule out massive balance issues. That's not the point."
The point is that the intended user is the best tester, and Clint not showing up is putting a crimp in his quality control. If the batch comes out sub-par, Clint is going to more than hear about it.
"It'll be the end of arrows," Tony tells him that afternoon, hovering in the kitchen with his machine grease stained hands in his pockets while Clint acts weird and growly and stand-offish. "You can go back to building your own. Fizzle arrow was my favorite. Nothing like party sparkles to win a fight against giants."
"None of my arrows fizzled," Clint grumps. It sounds like it comes from deep in his throat. Maybe even from his chest somewhere.
"Fizzled, borked, revealed themselves as amateurish duds. Whatever," Tony says, and wanders past Clint to get himself some coffee.
"We can't all be perfect all the time," Clint grunts with an ounce more hostility than usual. He's shoveling cereal into his mouth, crunching like he thinks there'll be no more Fruit Loops by the morning and he has to get his fill now.
"Unless I build them. In which case they're better than perfect. If you could be bothered to show up to test them," Tony sniffs and Clint looks up with his spoon sticking out of his mouth and manages to be a little less scowly.
"Tony," he starts, but Tony waves him to silence with his coffee mug, then takes a long sip.
"Save your apologies, Barton," he says, even though it's pretty unlikely that that's what Clint was getting at. "You-related projects are shuffled to the back burner until such a time as you feel like they're worthy of your participation."
Clint rolls his eyes.
-----
Steve isn't any better, failing to show up to test a new, lighter-weight material that might be a potential replacement for the armored sections of the spangle suit.
"I need to shoot you a couple of times, so you can compare the impact reduction," he tells Steve over the comms.
"I don't think that would be a very good idea, Tony," Steve says, and sounds hesitant and dubious and like he honestly doesn't think it would be a good idea.
"Oh come on, Healing Factor," Tony says, a bit affronted. "It's perfectly safe. We're talking a matter of degrees here, not 'let's see which one doesn't kill you'. I won't shoot you anywhere important if you're so worried. Geez."
Steve takes a second, and then there's a huff of breath and then Steve says, "That's not what I--Tony, I'm sure it's safe. It's just not a good idea right now."
"Okay. Okay. Fine. I get it. I'll just shoot at things on my own then. Again."
Steve tries a conciliatory, "Maybe this weekend?" but Tony snorts and cuts the connection.
-----
"You're a pretty tough guy," Tony tries, and Clint stops whaling on Steve's punching bag long enough to give him a suspicious look. "And you've taken gunfire, right?"
Natasha or Bruce would bail right around now, but Clint's either more willing to be shot at, or slower on the uptake, because he considers the question for a few seconds, then slowly says, "Yes?" like whatever comes next might do him damage by Tony's merely suggesting it.
"So I'm building new armor sections for Steve's suit, but he won't come down to the lab to test it." And shooting at Clint while he's being so prickly and grouchy would be at least a little satisfying.
"I'm busy," Clint says.
"Oh god. You're such a wimp. The two of you are acting just like Bruce. Busy, not a good idea, be careful with the flamethrower."
"You didn't say there was a flame thrower involved," Clint says, like that bit of information might convince him to change his mind. Tony gives him a look.
"Of course there's a flame thrower involved. The suit has to be more than bullet diverting."
Clint frowns. Says, "Hang on. Am I supposed to be in this suit when you torch it?"
"Test torch it. And ideally Steve is supposed to be in the suit, I'm just accepting you as a reasonably resilient substitute."
"Oh," Clint says, "then still no."
-----
Tony considers reshuffling Clint-related projects back off the back burner and maybe to some kind of middle-of-the-stove burner, but then Clint snarls at him in the hallway over nothing, as he's trying to convince Steve--through his door, because Steve is acting as hermitty as Bruce--to come down and try on some Captain Boots 2.0, with special polymer soles that could either increase sneakiness or soften drops or possibly both, but they won't know until someone tries sneaking in them and/or is willing to be dropped a suitable distance while wearing them.
"Is Steve in hiding because you're being an asshole?" he asks Clint, loud enough that Steve can probably hear it through his door. Clint looks confused. Maybe he has no idea that he's been prickly and sensitive and hostile.
"What?" he says, and by the expression on his face, Tony's guessing he's right on the mark with that one. Clint's insight into his own behavior is hovering near the zero mark.
"Maybe you should learn some Banner style meditation," Tony suggests. "Or maybe you feel like jumping from the gym three catwalk in Steve-size shoes? They're probably a bit big for you, but maybe you can wear extra socks.
-----
Clint, it turns out, doesn't feel like being dropped two stories, even if Tony's willing to stack extra mats and risk reducing the reliability of the experiment.
"You throw yourself off taller things all the time," Tony tells him from the side of the pool, as Clint floats half aided by a pool noodle and half by kicking lazily now and then. "And in less controlled environments. I don't even plan to be shooting at you while you do it."
Clint gives him a mildly interested look. "There's a version of this experiment that involves shooting?"
"If I could talk Steve into it, I thought I might be able to get him to dress up so I could test the red white and armor at the same time."
"Jesus," Clint says, and splashes a little as he kicks one foot, "and you think he's hiding from me?"
-----
He finds Steve--finally--in the kitchen the next day, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and a bathrobe, miserably making tea and toast.
"You have the flu or something?" Tony asks. "You want me to turn the heat up? Make you soup? Get you one of those heat-up-in-the-microwave face warming eye mask things?"
Steve stirs honey into his tea--un-Steve-like. Steve takes his coffee black. The sweet tooth thing is more Clint and Thor--and smiles a little. "I can't get the flu, Tony," he says.
"Stomach ache? I heard Clint banging around in here all night. You didn't eat his cooking did you?
Steve snorts, looking amused more than flu-y. "I haven't had a stomach ache since nineteen forty-three," he says, in that dry tone that might or might not mean he's pulling Tony's leg.
"No wonder you're willing to eat Clint's barbeque," Tony says, even though Clint's actually pretty good at barbeque. Steve laughs, then sips his tea. Slow and in little slurps. He has his shoulders hunched, a little, and the hood of the sweater bunched around his neck.
"Well what's wrong with you then?" Tony demands, and Steve gives him a look over the top of his mug.
"Nothing. There's nothing wrong." He sounds kind of offended.
"Fine," Tony says. "Fine. Blow me off and keep me in the dark and let me build flame thrower proof pants for you all alone."
"You know it's not like that, Tony," Steve says, with what still sounds like patience, even though his hunch is getting a little more pronounced. Tony doesn't say anything pointed and sarcastic like hah, even if it's exactly like that.
-----
"Whoa. You smell a bit funky," he tells Clint, as he wrangles giant aluminum tubes past him in the hall. Clint's kind of in his way, but he's also been so cranky that Tony doesn't really want to turn his aggression back on by telling him get the hell out of the way, there's more tubes coming.
Clint could really catch a clue and move himself instead of standing there blinking. "What the hell is that?" he asks, half yelling it over the metallic clatter as Tony tries to navigate a corner.
"Oh, now you want to participate," he snaps, and gives the metal a kick as it gets stuck in the turn, sending the whole length of it into rattled clanging. "Seriously, Barton. I'm going to spray air freshener on you in about five seconds."
-----
"I'm starting to think they're the same person," he crabs at Rhodey, "I never see them both at the same time."
"Do you think Barton is secretly Captain America, or do you think Rogers is secretly Hawkeye?" Rhodey asks, sounding bored and like he's occupied with something else. Maybe checking his email like Tony couldn't design a protocol that would read them for him and send out responses and forge his signature on necessary documents.
"Who cares?" Tony says, "I built a virtual Hawkeye. I want to see if it can out-shoot real Hawkeye and I need Steve as an intelligent adversary. I don't care which one of them is which. I just need two of them."
"I'm trying very hard to take your side here, Tony," Rhodey says.
-----
"Nice to have proof that you're still separate entities," Tony says when Steve and Clint enter the kitchen. Or really, when Steve comes into the kitchen to make himself something healthy and warm like oatmeal and Clint wanders in a few minutes later looking like he's heading to the gym.
He freezes when he sees Steve, then looks over his shoulder. "I was just going to--" he says, and gestures awkwardly in the direction of the fridge. He's halfway there, and looks like he can't decide if it's better to flee or get whatever he wants from the fridge, and then flee.
"The fridge option is double the distance of just leaving," Tony tells him, to see what will happen. What happens is that they both glare at him and Clint stalks the rest of the way across the kitchen, yanks the refrigerator door open semi-violently, and grabs a bottle of water before slamming it shut and beating a hasty retreat.
Steve spends the next five minutes stirring his oatmeal with an unfocused look.
-----
"Give it a shove," Tony yells, from inside the elevator, and Clint probably has to use his whole body to do it, because after the doors slide closed he says, "This is like twenty tons of bubble wrap."
"It's not bubble wrap," Tony sniffs. "Look at it. It's gray and bouncy. And it's for insulation. I'm building a--"
"Uh-huh," Clint says, distracted. He's sniffing something, then makes an angry sound and abruptly stops. Tony can hear him bouncing his foot or something.
Then the doors open and the collapsed layers of insulation eject Clint into the hallway. "Oh shit," he says, and Tony has to wrestle through the mass of gray sheets, but by the time he's halfway over the springy heap, Clint is shoving them back in, and wriggling around the edge of them to hit the close doors button.
"JARVIS. Close the doors before Barton hurts himself," Tony says, and rolls his eyes. "You okay there, Hawkeye?"
He can sense the venom in Clint's look without actually being able to see it.
"Fine. Whatever," Tony says. "Just help me get this stuff to the lab."
-----
The heat insulation is a bust, but it seems to function great as a waterproofing agent if he melts it down. At least according to the limited tests he can run in the lab. When he gets his test robot to the pool though, it's occupied again, this time by Steve who's busy doing endless laps.
"This guy doesn't have a keel," Tony says, holding up his robot, "and he's a bit top heavy, so try not to perfect storm him, would you?"
"To what him?" Steve asks, coming to a halt and treading water a few yards away.
"At least if he sinks, there's someone here to dive for him, I guess," Tony goes on, getting to his knees so he can gently lower the robot onto the water. It bobs a little on the remainder of Steve's waves. "Cross the ocean, little guy," he says, then tells Steve, "He only has rudimentary voice command recognition. Can't even carry on a conversation, but how's that different from anyone else around here, right?"
Steve gives him an incredulous look, like he can't tell if Tony's kidding or really annoyed, then gives him a weird smile and flicks water at him before kicking out into a backstroke and nearly capsizing the robot.
-----
Clint goes out on vague Clint-ish business for a day and a half and Tony still doesn't manage to get Steve shot or dropped from the catwalk and he won't come back to the pool to dive after downed robots either, so Tony has to do it himself.
It's like being a kid again, a little, hanging out by himself in his swim trunks on the hardwood deck--the pool floor barely looks like an indoor pool--and piecing bits of things together, surrounded by shorted engines and tools and rough schematics and miniature prototypes of things he could potentially build in really big version later.
It would be more fun with Bruce, if he'd get done with being solitary and antisocial, but he doesn't pick up when Tony calls him and when he calls again, the phone is shut off.
-----
Clint comes home sometime in the middle of the next day, practically tiptoeing his way out of the elevator and peering around cartoonishly like he thinks he's about to be waylaid on his way across the living room. Tony watches his progress out of the corner of one eye while he idly taps his Starkpad with one finger.
"All clear?" Clint asks, when he's done scanning the vicinity like a paranoid squirrel. Tony rolls his eyes.
"No, Barton. I have ninjas in the air vents. I hope you've been practicing your duck and roll."
Clint grins and relaxes and leans against the wall, letting his head roll back until it hits with a thunk. "Hey," he says, "about those arrows."
"Only if you agree to jump from the catwalk. Or be shot at. Your choice."
-----
Clint doesn't show up to do either. And neither does Steve, even though he'd said this weekend.
-----
They do show up around the time Tony goes to order a pizza, though. Or rather, Clint stumbles backwards into the hall out of Steve's room, somehow managing to drag Steve after him and muttering with frantic urgency about his room and beds and other things that judging by his tone are probably filthy. He doesn't have a shirt and Steve is in his underwear and neither of them seem to notice that Tony's there until he says, "Hi guys. I didn't get the invitation," and then they jump apart and then back together, with Clint trying to shield Steve's partial nudity with his own.
"Back off," he snarls, and Tony does. At least by a step or two and only because Clint's showing too many teeth to look entirely rational.
"I can't go that far," he points out, when Clint doesn't reel it back. "It's a hallway. Where do you want me to even--" Something tickles his nose. He says, "Hang on. Do you smell--Oh. Oh," but then can't comment on the revelation because Steve's pushing Clint further into the hall, despite Clint's efforts to keep Steve back and away from Tony.
"If you're going to be possessive over Cap, then you really need to be bigger," he tells Clint, who's still losing footing, but he edges around the threat and retreats towards the kitchen. "Guess I should order extra, then?" he calls, but the only answer he gets is the sound of a door slamming.
-----
He doesn't see either of them for the rest of the weekend, if he doesn't count Clint's forays for sustenance or the time he and Steve had somehow tumbled out of a bathroom, without even a towel or a pretense at caring about propriety.
But by Sunday night it's over, and he finds them both in the kitchen, hair shower-damp and sticking up at odd angles, Steve sprawled in a chair, and Clint halfway into the refrigerator, with a slice of cold pizza dangling from his mouth while he talks around it.
"Jesus," Tony says, "this is an appetizing sight."
"Shut up," Clint says, muffled around the pizza. Only Clint could manage to get laid god knew many times straight over the course of most of a weekend and still manage to be utterly un-mellow-ed out. "You said the coast was clear." It sounds kind of accusing.
"I didn't know you meant heat. I didn't know Steve was--" he waves his hand in Steve's direction, indicating his general brain-turned-to-mash state. At least it explains their mutual avoidance, weird moods, and Steve's scent-insulating fashion choices.
"How could you--" Clint starts, but stops his angry diatribe to take a bite of pizza. Tony takes the opportunity to interrupt him.
"I'm sorry I'm not tuned in to the rhythms of your insanity. I was busy doing useful things."
Clint swallows and takes another bite, still with the fridge door wide open like he's forgotten all about it. It looks like his brains haven't quite come back on line yet, either. "You can't smell it?" he asks incredulously, then glances at Steve to check if he's offended, but Steve just looks dopey and spaced out.
"Sure," Tony shrugs. "But, I mean. Not that much and I was busy with other things. You get kind of stinky, though."
"Thanks," Clint grumps, then hauls a container of something out of the fridge.
"Bruce's lentil stew. Or curry. Soup, maybe? Something," Tony informs him. Clint puts it on the table, kicks the fridge door closed and goes hunting for pots.
"Cold pizza isn't Steve's comfort food," he explains, waving his crust, then holds it between his teeth as he needlessly test-stirs a couple of wooden spoons before settling on one. Then he gives Steve a weird soft look and bites his lip like he's struggling to not say something sappy and embarrassing in front of Tony. Maybe something like, I'm gonna take care of you baby and heat up this curry I stole from Bruce real good.
Instead he spoons a bit of the soup--or whatever--onto the end of his pizza crust and takes a bite. Shrugs. "Bit spicy," he tells Steve, bumping his shoulder companionably, "D'you mind?"
"S'fine," Steve says, then offers, "Could help."
"Nah," Clint says, spooning soup into a saucepan. "I've got it. And anyway." He glances at Tony, then shrugs like he's decided he doesn't care if Tony sees him acting moony and alpha-squishy, "I kind of--Cap."
"Steve," Steve corrects, still looking smiley and dopey.
"I'm making you coffee," Tony says, "I think you're drunk on Barton and that's just disturbing."
Clint stirs, then slams the spoon down on the stovetop and turns like he's going to yell at Tony, then doesn't and turns back around to stir furiously. Then he says, "Sorry. I thought it would be over by the time I got back. I thought I managed to be gone for the worst of it. Jesus. Steve."
Steve doesn't seem to mind. He just slides further down in his chair. "I thought Tony was giving me updates," Clint goes on, even though Steve doesn't look like he's following.
"I thought you were just being a jerk," Tony says, "I wasn't giving you coded messages. Why would I even do that?"
"You're so," Clint starts, then has to pause to turn the heat down before he burns the bottom of the saucepan. "How are you so oblivious?"
"Busy, you mean? How am I so busy? Well, Barton, some of us save the world and float in pools, and some other of us save the world, run major global companies, and--"
"I was trying to keep the smell down," Steve says quietly and Tony stops because that was supposed to aimed at Clint.
"Oh," he says, as Clint shrugs one shoulder.
"Tried to--you know. Not risk fucking up the team," Clint says, going to hunt for dishes, then spoons the soup into three bowls. Tony's kind of touched to be included. "Didn't quite work out."
Steve grins as he sets the bowls on the table, nudging Clint's arm as he sits.
"'We're fine. You're a good alpha," he says, reassuringly and probably because Clint looks guilty and more than a bit embarrassed. Tony'd swear to god that Clint has an aw shucks moment, fiddling awkwardly with his spoon for a few seconds while Steve keeps smiling, warm, but a little less drunkenly now that he's got food in front of him. Like just the sight of it is restoring him to Cap-ish-ness. "I wasn't worried about the team. I just didn't want to drag you into things you might not--"
"Yeah, yeah," Clint says, and waves his spoon at Steve's bowl, "Eat."
Clint trying to act all alpha caretaker through his social awkwardness is hilarious, and even Steve must be amused by it because he gives Clint's shoulder a little pat before picking up his spoon and digging in.
"So," Tony says, after a bit, when he's halfway through his soup and Steve's halfway through his third bowl. "Tomorrow--Do you guys want to help me test things? If Steve's recovered brain function by then?"
Clint gives him a disbelieving look, then sighs and gives it up and says, "Yeah. Okay. Just don't wake me up at five in the morning to do it."
"Deal," Tony says, and holds his empty bowl out for refill.