Chapter 2
*******
Tony doesn’t sleep in the yellow and gray bed.
He doesn’t belong in that bed or in that room; they’re painful reminders of the way Nick had hoped his life would go, his soulmate nestled safely inside until they were both secure enough to share a space. Instead Nick was left waiting for God knows how long, and the person he hoped for never materialized. Time passed until he started piling things on top of the bed, things he actually used and needed more than the idea of a soulmate, the dream getting buried slowly under day-to-day reality.
And now suddenly here’s Tony, and even though Nick had made space dutifully—the law requires all soulmates to cohabitate in some form, at least at first—the room isn’t his. It can never be his; there’s no place for him here any more than there is room for Nick in his life, no matter how God or fate or nature or whatever disagrees. It’s wrong, it’s a mistake.
So Tony stays on the living room couch, because it’s more honest than pretending to be anything than the unwanted guest he actually is, and Nick the long suffering host that’s just too polite to ask him to leave. He lays awake blinking at the ceiling all night, falling asleep mere minutes before being awakened by slamming cabinet doors, the hiss of a coffee maker, and a scowling Nick Fury.
“I’m headed out to the office. I don’t know when I’ll be back.” The Avengers had all cleared their schedules for the customary six weeks, but of course Nick wouldn’t have made such plans. He had no idea he was going to meet his soulmate yesterday.
“Aren’t you supposed to take time off? To be emotionally available to me and shit?” Tony bats his eyelashes and laughs a little to show it’s a joke. He can’t actually think of anything worse than the two of them trapped in this tiny apartment all day, staring at one another and not even trying to fill the uncomfortable silence.
“I’m short my two best agents and an entire Avengers team; I can't be gone, too.” Nick purses his lips before grudgingly adding, “I’ll make sure to keep close to headquarters for awhile, though.”
“I'll be at the Tower during the day, then, and come back in the evenings.”
Fury makes a noncommittal sound, shifting a travel mug of coffee from hand to hand as he shrugs into his coat. “Well. Lock the door when you leave.” He looks like he’s about to say something else, then shakes his head minutely and charges out.
*******
“Dum-E,” Tony says thickly, then clears his throat and tries again. “Hey, Dum-E.” He was up all night on the world’s most uncomfortable couch, and he’s tired, not half drunk. And he’s certainly not drunk in the workshop, which is stupidly dangerous, and certainly not drinking during the day. No siree. “Did you know that Butterfingers is your soulmate? Because he is.”
The two bots turn to one another, Dum-E making a questioning sound before swinging back toward Tony.
“Yeah.” Tony gives him a wide eyed, earnest nod. “It’s true! Now, I may have arbitrarily decided that right this very moment, but it doesn’t make it any less real. I can paint a little doodad on your arm if it legitimizes anything. You’re soulmates, boys! Congratu-fucking-lations!”
He raises his glass in a halfhearted toast, swearing under his breath when he accidentally kicks over the trashcan near his feet. The workshop is usually his refuge but even it seems ruined right now, as if all the joy has been sucked out of everything. Dum-E moves toward him again, looking as concerned as a faceless, eyeless bot can look, and Tony wags his finger warningly. “Don’t you do it. Don’t you look at me when Butterfingers is right fucking there.” Butterfingers wisely pays no attention and focuses on picking up the mess under the table.
He’s the smart one.
Tony sighs loudly, resigning himself to a day of complete unproductivity, and pulls out his phone. He shouldn’t do it, knows he’s moving out of “solicitous” and edging straight into “obnoxious”, but also decides that he doesn’t care. He signals the Avengers again, wanting confirmation that they’re safe, wanting to imagine that wherever they are, they’re happy, too.
Ping! Ping! Ping! Steve and Natasha’s chimes are almost simultaneous, Clint’s lagging only a few seconds behind.
Bruce doesn’t signal back at all; he goes one better and calls.
“I’m in India. I’m not sure exactly where in India. I could ask, but…” he trails off, leaving the I don’t really care unspoken. What did geography and political borders matter when a wave of biology and mysticism was driving him toward his soulmate?
“What’s it like?” Tony’s words are careful, both from the whiskey and the heady relief from a familiar voice in his ear. This whole thing would be easier to tolerate if his friends were around right now. “What does the pull toward her—or him—feel like?”
“It’s hard to explain.” Bruce’s voice fuzzes out for a second. “Kind of like a really strong gut feeling, but it's pretty unprecise. I mean, I’m sure I’m getting closer, but then again I might also be on the wrong continent.” He laughs dismissively, sounding delighted and hopeful in a way Tony has never heard him. “How are you doing?”
“I’m just great; things are going great.”
*******
He forces himself to return to Nick’s apartment, taking the stairs both to delay the inevitable and punish himself a little. By the fifteenth floor he regrets giving in to such a stupid, self-loathing idea and takes the elevator the rest of the way.
As it turns out, he needn’t have worried. Nick doesn’t return home until well into the night, Tony already fast asleep on the couch. They sleep in separate rooms and eye each other suspiciously over morning cups of coffee before Nick disappears to SHIELD and Tony to the Tower.
That’s the way things continue for the next five days.
*******
For complete lack of anything better to do, and a rather distressing desire for a little human interaction—in whatever form he can get it—Tony goes to a meeting.
Pepper raises her eyebrows in surprise but says nothing as he slides nonchalantly into a chair nearest the door. Soon enough he realizes his tactical error; Pete LaSaffre is running this meeting, and though the man is generally harmless he’s also a long-winded gasbag, spurred to even greater heights of obnoxiousness by trying to impress his suddenly present boss.
“What are you doing here?” Pepper hisses the moment the last attendee has staggered, shell-shocked and three hours older, out of the bore-fest.
“What are you talking about? I’m running a business.” This has never been his favorite part of Stark Industries—he really just wants to be free to invent and play and build forever—but the fact that he despises meetings and press releases and paperwork doesn’t mean that he isn’t good at them.
“You can not be here,” Pepper insists. “You have five more weeks of leave that you have to take.” She shakes her head at his good-natured scoff. “People get sued over things like this, Tony.”
The hilarity of the thought of Nick Fury suing him for emotional abandonment almost makes it all worthwhile. “I don’t think we need to worry about that.”
“No, you’re going to do this the right way,” she says firmly, snapping her portfolio closed. “Even if you don’t care about the personal consequences, it will look bad for the company. People can forgive a lot—as you well know—but they’ll take a pretty dim view of you seeking out your soulmate and then rejecting him. No. I’m not allowing this. Absolutely not.”
“I’m not rejecting him,” Tony points out. “I’ve spent every night at his place. This week he’s staying at an apartment here in the Tower. See how well we compromise and work together? Like two halves of the same turn-taking whole!”
Pepper purses her lips doubtfully, looking him up and down. Clothes rumpled from being dragged out of a suitcase, bags under his eyes from no sleep and too much solitude. Pepper has always seen too much when she looks at Tony, has always seen more of him than he's ever wanted anyone to see, and it's what he loves and hates about her in equal measure. “Tony,” she says softly, empathy and regret laced through the word, so much that it hurts. “I wish it could be different.”
He twines his fingers into hers, surprised when she allows it. “We never got our chance.”
Pepper won’t show any disappointment, not for his sake, no matter what the hopes between them had been only two weeks before. They’d had nothing but promise and possibilities as long as Pepper’s soulmate didn’t show up, as long as it could have potentially been Tony. He’d ruined that by gambling on his soulmark. Now that possibility is gone.
“I wish I could help,” she says, not looking at him. “I would fix it all for you, if I could. But you have to figure this out on your own. You can still be happy, if you just try to make it work.”
“What about you?” he can’t help but ask.
“I can be happy, too,” Pepper says firmly, gazing down at the mark on her arm. “I’ll just have to wait longer.”
*******
It's 3am and Tony isn't tired in the slightest, but he is suddenly tired of his workshop, hitting that odd wall where what he's doing is more frustrating than fun or even mildly interesting. He washes his hands with and dries them absently on his jeans, immediately getting them greasy again.
"JARVIS,” he whines. “JAAAAAARVIS.”
“Yes, Sir?” It never ceases to amaze Tony how the artificial intelligence can weave long suffering, silent sighs into such short sentences.
Once a night of insomnia would have meant going out and looking for some hell to raise, or for someone to help warm his bed, because no way and no how would a night of not sleeping and not working ever include being on his own. Now it's different; four, sometimes five, other Avengers live here in the Tower, and all have a collection of issues that prevent a good night's sleep regularly enough that he never has to be alone if he doesn't want to be, and never has to look for company farther than a few floors below.
But they’re all gone now, scattered to the wind for this soulmate thing. Pepper is keeping a distance for obvious reasons, and he can’t call Rhodey either; he’ll be pissed if he finds out Tony’s hiding and working instead of putting in some quality bonding time with Nick.
“I’m—” bored, Tony intends to say, and is surprised to hear “—lonely” come out instead.
There’s a longer than usual pause from JARVIS. “Director Fury is in his apartment—"
“Ewww. Hard pass.”
“—and Agent Barton is awake, playing a video game in his living room."
"What?” Somehow Clint snuck back in the Tower without him noticing, has been here for who knows how long, probably lonely as well without Natasha around. Better still, as a fellow insomniac Clint will never demand to know why Tony isn’t in bed himself. “Why the hell didn’t you say so before? Tell Tweetie I'm on my way down, and I'm bringing pizza!"
*******
"So, it turns out we don't have any pizza. This is basically the same thing, right?"
Tony chucks a bag of frozen pizza rolls at Clint, who raises his knees in a heroic effort to protect his crotch, the bag nailing him on the thigh instead. His lip curls a bit—he's only wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts, probably what he attempted to sleep in—but he never misses a beat with the controller he's mashing.
"You make 'em. I'm killing aliens."
"I guess someone doesn’t understand how a proper host behaves.”
Clint snorts. "And I guess you don’t understand that a fictionalized, high definition world is counting on me to kill these aliens!"
"Fine, lazy ass. Prepare to quake in awe of my domesticity!" Tony empties the entire bag onto a pan, then sticks it in the oven. "JARVIS, make this...“ he gestures vaguely “...all happen somehow."
"Of course, sir."
“When’d you get back?” Tony asks, both of their eyes trained on the television screen. I'm so fucking happy to see you, he doesn't add. It feels too much like admitting a weakness, not that Clint would care, but Tony's been feeling unacceptably vulnerable far too frequently lately. “I didn’t even know you were here.”
“I’ve been around,” Clint answers vaguely, raising his controller unnecessarily as his game character jumps. “I thought you were staying with—oh, you alien bastards!”
For once the high distractibility Clint exhibits when not on the job works solidly in Tony’s favor. He gleefully points out more incoming aliens and generally revels in being in the presence of another warm blooded person, until JARVIS announces the food is ready. Clint pauses his game to dump the whole pan of pizza rolls onto one plate and sticks it in the middle of the coffee table, then the two friends get busy blistering their mouths and tongues on super-heated junk food.
"These are gross," Tony observes, not slowing down his eating in the slightest. "They don't taste like any pizza I've ever had."
"Etshotoodiffitsgooofoyou," Clint answers indecipherably, then swallows, wincing at the burn. “You hear anything from Bruce?”
“He’s fording rivers, climbing mountains, and traversing deserts to find his other half. Have you been in touch with our star-spangled spider couple?”
“They’re somewhere tropical—I keep getting lots of pictures of Natasha’s feet with beaches and oceans in the background.” Clint digs his phone out from under a mess of magazines, holds up a picture of a tanned Black Widow and Captain America taking the perfect vacation couple-selfie. “She seems happy.”
It occurs to Tony for the first time that Clint’s soulmate might be here in this very apartment, snug in the prescribed second bedroom, or maybe even in Clint's own bedroom, sleeping the way any reasonable person would be at this hour. Tony hadn’t even considered that idea before barging in the way he always had, the way he always could before they’d gone and changed everything.
“Oh my God, Tweetie—is your…person here?” he whispers, suddenly hyper-aware of his loud crowing over every Barton video game death.
Clint wipes his hands on a paper towel before tossing it onto the table. “Nope.”
“Isn’t she supposed to be?” Or Clint is supposed to be wherever she lives. Then again, maybe she works at night or puts in long hours, like Nick, who’s barely in his own home beyond sleeping and making coffee.
Clint shrugs with a wry half-smile, and for the hundredth time in this soulmate shitstorm Tony has a bad feeling, but for the first time it’s for somebody else.
“Is everything…uh…okay?”
“Everything’s great.” Clint’s half-smile fades into a non-smile.
“Well then let’s get some details!” Tony affects the airiest tone he can conjure to cover the uneasiness screaming inside of him. Something’s off, something’s wrong. Clint may not be the most open person in the world, but he’s more expressive than this clammed up, stone faced, Barton-shaped lump beside him. “What’s her name?”
“Angela."
“And??” Tony rolls his eyes and makes an exaggerated come on gesture when Clint just blinks stubbornly. “And what does she do for a living?”
“She sells real estate.”
“Oh, she sounds badass.” Tony elbows him teasingly, but it’s like nudging a block of wood. “When do I get to meet her?”
“Never!” Clint does smile this time, but there’s something distressed underneath it. Let it go, Tony reads there. Stop stop stop stop.
But he doesn’t. He can’t. “Can I see a picture, at least?”
“Don’t have one.”
And that right there, along with a palpable escalation of guarded tension sets off the final warning bell in Tony’s brain. He chews his lower lip for a moment, eyes still on Clint, who’s staring at the floor and determinedly working the nap of the carpet into some sort of design with his big toe.
“JARVIS, show me Angela.”
The words no sooner leave Tony’s mouth than Clint is turning back toward him with a furious “Don’t you—”, but it’s too late, as a woman’s image appears projected between them.
Tony barks a surprised laugh, because surely it’s not the right woman. JARVIS would have gotten her information off the national registry, but maybe it’s wrong, or maybe JARVIS himself has stumbled for the first time and is just showing the wrong picture—but one look at Barton’s stricken and angry face confirms that it’s not wrong. This is her. This is Clint Barton’s soulmate.
“She’s—”
Tony’s mouth opens and closes almost comically, like a stunned fish, and for one glorious moment he thinks it isn’t going to happen, that his traitorous, careless, stupidly impulsive mouth isn’t going to run away from him. He doesn’t want it to, has never wanted it to, from the first tactless statement he ever made to the one he’s inevitably going to make right now—but when when when has anything ever gone the way he’s wanted it to?
Clint’s eyes are desperate and pleading and Tony would clasp his hand over his mouth to catch the words if it would do any good, but it’s already too late.
“—so old!” he continues, shocked.
Angela’s in her sixties, at the very least, but women these days take such good care of their appearance that she might be even older. Clint makes a strangled sound as his hand slices through the picture, as if it were something he could actually cut and not just an image. JARVIS, always somehow more emotionally intelligent than his creator, disappears it quickly.
“I bet she creamed her jeans when you walked into her life,” Tony adds immediately, even as his face twists in apology for the horrible words that oh my god he can’t stop saying. His default reaction to surprise has always been verbal diarrhea of the worst sort. “Do the dentures get in the way of your makeout sessions? Is your back all torn up from cougar scratches or is it your—”
“Fuck. You.”
Clint’s face is red and his hands are shaking, but he still manages a ragged dignity as he marches out of his own apartment, jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth are audibly grinding as he slams the door behind him.
Tony looks at the video game, still paused and blinking patiently on the television, at the empty plate messy with pizza roll leavings.
“I’m sorry,” he says helplessly, too late.