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Dark to See the Stars

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by BattleCryBlue

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Disclaimer: I don't own shit.

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Warnings: Steve/Clint, Slash, Steve!angst. This story is also not canon with the Trainwreck Hearts Universe. Kind of a stand-alone thing.

There is a playlist for this story. Check my profile for the link and feel free to listen while you read.

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"A certain darkness is needed to see the stars."

- author unknown -

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It had been a hell of a day, was all that Clint could really think as he packed his bow away into it's case and tried to take stock of the many aches and bruises that were making themselves known throughout his body.

Because when the Avengers weren't facing down hordes of invading aliens brought from another dimension by an angry Asgardian god, they were probably fighting off mercenaries and blowing up the lab of an evil scientist intent on turning humanity into his own personal guinea pigs.

Just another day on the job, really.

Glancing up as he pulled the last drawstring and tucked the last of his S.H.I.E.L.D issue BDU's into his duffel, the archer caught sight of Steve.

The captain was sitting on his bunk across the room, his own light duffel already packed and sitting beside him, leather jacket on top.

It was the blank stare and carefully folded hands that worried the archer, however. That and the soldier's single visible battle scar in the shape of a big black bruise on his lower jaw.

There was something of normalcy in such blemishes on any other member of the team. Just a daily job hazard. On Steve, when it took getting hit in the face with a car to leave any kind of mark, it was just an ugly reminder of the fact that he was not as invincible as they sometimes pretended he was.

Feeling troubled, Clint slowly gathered his bags and gear together, wondering if Steve would ask him for a ride back to his own apartment like he usually did, or if he actually just planned to sit there and stare at the floor like a zombie until the team was called back in for another assignment.

Knowing the soldier, that probably sounded like a perfectly acceptable course of action to his mind.

The archer made it all the way out the door and almost down the hall to the elevators before he realized that no, Steve was not going to follow him, and no, he was not going to accept that. Not by a long shot.
So decided, the archer left his bags by the elevators and ducked back into the room, making up some excuse about forgetting his knife. He pretended to sift through the empty drawers for it, cursing to keep up the ruse when he came up empty-handed. He needn't have bothered.

Steve wasn't paying him a lick of attention.

"Hey," Clint finally addressed the immobile soldier, walking right up to him where he sat and kicking the blond's boot gently.

Steve looked up, and then offered him an obligatory smile that was meant to say I'm going to live; you've done your part and showed some concern for me. You can go about your day without guilt now.

It was a way out, if Clint wanted it.

And honestly, a very small part of him did. It would only be about a thousand times easier to walk away now, and spare himself the lung-stopping pangs that seemed to come stock with Steve's company lately. He could go home, clean his guns, have a beer or two and sleep the next fourteen hours away.

Luckily, or perhaps unfortunately, that part of him was very, very small. The rest of him would have sold his soul in a heartbeat if it would wipe that veiled despair and heaviness off of Steve's face.

"Come on," Clint said, and was proud that he didn't choke on the lump in his throat when he said it. "Let's go find some caffeine, huh?"

It said a lot about how absolutely shitty the soldier felt when he heeded Clint's prodding arm and stood, reaching for his coat. He followed him outside silently, and silently took his place in the now-familiar passenger seat of Clint's black SUV. It wasn't until the doors were closed and the engine started that the big blond finally relaxed, tipping his head briefly against the glass and releasing a long sigh.

He didn't say much as they drove, and taking his cue, Clint didn't ask for conversation. It wasn't often the soldier got to let his guard down and simply be, and it was the least the archer could do to give Steve what he didn't even know he needed.

A moment of peace.

Clint didn't ask the blond to accompany him in to the coffeeshop, either, but Steve did anyway. They stood in companionable silence in line at the counter, shoulders bumping occasionally as they shifted with the ebb and flow of the people around them. Clint pretended to be absorbed in the handwritten menu above the window, but he kept a close eye on the soldier, too. Steve was being just a little too quiet, taking just a little too long to pull himself out of the post-battle shell into which he always seemed to fall.

Most of the other Avengers had no problem flicking the switch: they could be fighting aliens on Monday and be ordering coffee in downtown Manhattan by Tuesday morning. It was the name of the game, and when you'd been playing it for long it became second nature. Still, it was this world—the world of bustling sidewalks and social media—that was their true comfort zone. The place in which they lived when badguys weren't knocking down their doors; the place to which they returned at the end of the day.

But to someone like Steve, who was more accustomed to the chaos of battle with a strange enemy than he was a hipster-crowded coffee joint, that switch was a little harder to find.

He'd never said it out loud, of course—never would—but Clint knew that sometimes, Steve just wanted to be a soldier again. He craved the familiarity and structure and relative security of a common enemy, a common cause, and a familiar place to rest his head at night. In the army, you were one in a million, a face in a crowd of men who all wanted the same thing.

Out here, in this big, scary, unfamiliar new decade... nothing was familiar or safe or secure. This wasn't a home to come back to, for Steve. This was the real battleground.

And day after day Clint could only watch as the waves of a harsh reality chipped away at the solider, bit by painful bit. And he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

That was maybe what hurt the most.

"Medium latte and a tall black roast," Clint shelled out a twenty to the teenager behind the counter, not bothering to ask Steve what he would want. It didn't even matter how many times he or Tony urged the soldier to try something new, the answer was always the same: regular cup of joe, black.

Even as distracted as he was by the barrista, who was apparently having trouble with basic math as she counted back his change, Clint felt it the second Steve left his side. It wasn't anything physical; wasn't anything more, perhaps, than a movement of air or a barely perceptible sound picked out of the coffehouse din.

He just knew.

Pocketing his incorrect change, Clint turned to scan the crowd, the soldier's name dying on his lips. A flash of worn leather; the squeak of hinges. Steve's blond head vanishing out the swinging side door.

Clint quickly followed.

"Steve?" He called after his friend, alarm building in his throat, setting every nerve on fire.

His concern was, for once, almost completely unfounded. Steve hadn't gone far, standing out in the alley only a few feet away from the door. He was staring, transfixed, looking like a man who had just stepped out of one reality and into another.

At the end of the alley a small group of women he'd noticed earlier in the coffeeshop were turning the corner out of sight, all peals of laughter and wafting perfume.

Clint only saw them for an instant, but it was long enough. Long enough to pick out a slender brunette among them, sleek curls falling over her shoulders and bright red lipstick framing her smile.

It didn't take a genius to connect her vintage style with the look on Steve's face, white and absolutely crushed like a man who'd just seen a ghost. One hand half-outstretched, a name on his lips that had long ago found a home on a gravestone.

"Steve," Clint called when the blond made a half-step as if ready to go after the specter of a woman who no longer existed. "It's not her."

The soldier stumbled to a halt, and in that moment he wasn't Captain America anymore at all, hero of the 21st century... he was just Steve.

Steve of 1942. Steve who listened to the Glenn Miller Band and loved the theater and doodled masterpieces on napkins and could barely form a coherent sentence when he was talking to women. Steve, who hated his Nazi enemies with all the passion of his patriotic soul, and who would march into battle with a warcry on his lips for Uncle Sam...

Steve. Who was spinning without anchor in a terrifyingly new world, and hid it every day like the champion that he was.

Clint stood there and stared at the soldier's back and ached, because it felt like he was seeing it all for the very first time. At the very least, he was understanding it for the first time.

Worry knotting up in his chest, unwelcome and cold, Clint approached the soldier slowly. He didn't say anything as he rounded the blond's shoulder, but he watched him carefully, trying to gauge how far into his own mind the soldier had fallen this time.

And somehow all he could see was that goddamn ugly bruise on the blond's skin, and all he could hear was his heavy breathing and all he could think was that he wanted more than anything to kiss him.

"I'm sorry," Steve breathed, so open and broken. He didn't even try to pretend; didn't try to cover up the thoughts running beneath the surface of his soul, open in his eyes for the world to read.

The world could read them, but only Clint could translate. Only Clint could really see what they meant.

"Hey," the archer soothed almost without thought, reaching out. The words were pointless. The meaning was all that he needed to convey.

He pulled Steve into his arms and held him tight, willing the solidarity and warmth of his own presence into Steve's reeling world.

It was the right move. Steve wrapped his arms up to grasp Clint's shoulders, his grip so tight and desperate that it was almost bruising. He held onto Clint like a man drowning, grasping for any solid safety in his atmosphere to hold onto.

Clint tried just to be there... tried just to anchor the blond in the here and now of present-day New York and that stupid, crowded coffeeshop and that empty alley... but the truth was that his heart ached for the soldier.

Steve tried to so desperately to keep it contained, to keep his struggles under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar and locked carefully away from the rest of the team, but they saw it anyway. Maybe because Captain America was naturally predisposed to be terrible at lying, but they saw.

The solider was reeling in the chaos of his own mind, one foot still in the world where he'd been raised and the other in a reality that still blindsided him more than anyone could know.

"I miss her," Steve finally admitted, his voice raw.

Clint's eyelids fluttered shut, his brows pulling together in shared pain.

"I know," he breathed, tightening his hold on the big soldier. "I know."

It seemed to Steve that it took ages to pull in a last ragged breath and pull away. To Clint, it felt like seconds. Too short, too brief. Too warm when Steve was there in his arms. Too cold when he was gone.

Days like today, the archer hated that he felt that way.

"Wow," Steve sighed awkwardly, an embarrassed flush dotting his cheeks with red. He tried to pull in a bracing breath; it just sounded exhausted and broken as he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and found the pavement suddenly fascinating. "That was—I'm just really—"

"Don't even give me that crap, big guy." Clint swung an arm around the blond's shoulders, pulling him forward and out of the alley before he could say something awkward. "What are friends for?"

Steve smiled gratefully, an expression so beautiful and innocent that it made Clint's heart ache... this time, for an entirely different reason.

They retrieved their lukewarm coffee and returned to Clint's new apartment, a cramped little studio on the 28th floor of a complex close to downtown. It was one of three the archer rented out around New York and just like the others, it housed more guns and ammo crates than furniture.

Once an assassin, always an assassin.

Because the main room was stuffy and honestly still smelled like whatever the previous tenants had cooked last, the pair kicked off their boots by the door and took up residence on the over-wide fire escape outside that had long ago been deemed the apartment's best feature. The building's wide pillar molding served as benches, and a worn loveseat and card-table had already found their way out onto the platform. Hell, one of the team—Clint would put his money on Nat—had even thrown an old rug down under the table when they'd been helping him move.

Especially in the heat and humidity of a New York summer, Clint found the makeshift retreat far more comfortable a perch then his own living room.

The two had finished their coffees on the drive over, so Clint put a pot on in the small kitchen and poured them both a second serving. It seemed like it was going to be that kind of night, and the sun hadn't even set yet.

The soldier had been quiet—even more so than usual—on the ride back, breaking his silence only to offer several heartfelt apologies for his behavior. It may have worried Clint a little that the soldier seemed more concerned that he'd had a brief break with reality in front of the archer than the fact that it had happened at all.

"Steve," he sighed at last, sitting down on the concrete ledge beside the blond and watching the soldier wrap his hands around his mug, "you've gotta lighten up on yourself. This is gonna take time."

Steve nodded once into his coffee mug, looking like he didn't believe a word coming out of the archer's mouth.

Clint huffed out a little breath through his nose and contemplated the best way to continue. The only certainty he could find was that he must continue. Staying quiet as he slowly watched the soldier fall apart would no longer suffice, and he could see that now.

"It took you twenty-some-odd years to collect those memories," Clint went on softly, turning his eyes to the chipped rim of his own mug, twisting the porcelain slowly in his palms. "Years full of sights and sounds and smells that made up your whole life. You can't expect it to take any less time to make a new one, you know."

Steve nodded like he wanted to believe it, but his eyes were still dark and troubled like he couldn't. "Twenty-five years from now... I'm not gonna see Peggy's face on every girl who walks by?"

Clint balked a little, hating the absolute hopelessness he heard in those words. Even more, he hated that he didn't have any real power to dispel it.

"Hey," Clint pressed, softly asking for the soldier's attention to return to the present.

He waited until the big blond blinked a few times, pulling himself from memory and back into the dying sunlight.

"Tell me about her," he said simply.

Steve looked so shocked, so utterly touched and taken aback... and Clint suddenly hated himself for never asking before.

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The summer sun faded into the skyline; the city grew gray and eventually darkened. Night fell. The towers and buildings around them lit up one by one like great metal Christmas trees, illuminating the velvet-blue sky with new colors.

Steve and Clint talked on, watching the moon creep lazily across the sky, a blinking crescent overhead.
Steve poured out his heart; told the archer all about the woman whose name Clint had seen in a file, but whose life he had never bothered to know. She had lived generations ago, after all... what bearing could she have on the here and now?

But Steve had lived generations ago, too, and Clint's here-and-now all but revolved around the soldier.

He should have asked, he realized as he listened. He should have asked about all these things a long, long time ago.

Steve talked about Peggy Carter until he had exhausted the topic, until he had told all that he'd heard of her, seen of her, suspected of her, recounted every word they'd ever shared and every secret hope he'd entertained, of a white picket fence and a family and a long life together. Every hope and dream.

And when he'd said all that he could, and laughed and smiled and maybe even shed a few tears, he went on.

Steve talked about Doctor Erskine, a man who had showed Steve kindness in a world that had never once been kind to him before. He talked about a father he'd barely known, but idolized as a hero and whose legend he'd dreamed of living up to. He talked about a mother he'd constantly failed, and who had, in the end, given her life in the same war he would have given anything to fight in her place.

He told of James Buchanan Barnes, a friend and brother lost to the fight against the Red Skull. He told Clint how long he'd dreamed about being even a fraction of the man he saw in Bucky; told him how for a terrifying few hours after his death, he'd considered giving up altogether.

How he'd been afraid of losing everything in his life... and how in the end, he had.

In those beautiful midnight hours, filled with endless cups of coffee and spontaneous laughter and a wonderful, cool summer breeze coming up from the sparkling city below... Clint learned more about Steve Rogers than he had ever imagined he would know.

And in those beautiful midnight hours, Clint finally admitted to himself a truth he'd been too afraid to coherently form, even in the safety of his own thoughts.

He was in love with Steve.

It was three in the morning when the soldier finally blinked himself back into reality and asked his friend what time it was.

"Not too late," the archer lied, smiling across his seventh cup of coffee.

Steve laughed, and this time the sound wasn't forced or broken or angry. It was light and real and relieved, like a laugh should be. It seemed like the weight of a thousand years had been lifted off the blond's shoulders, as if the words he'd spoken had released his worries into the breeze and they had been carried off into the night, weightless and free.

Something inside of Clint swelled in amazement, in love, in gratitude. That he was the one who was here, seeing the soldier this way—so innocent, so pure. He wondered if those lines above the soldier's eyes had ever been so completely smoothed away before, if his shoulders had ever been so relaxed or his eyes so alight. He wondered if anyone else in this decade had ever had the gift of seeing the blond so utterly, beautifully free.

He leaned back against the bannister and tried to memorize the moment, so he could remember it again when things went back to the way they were. When the world grew dark and the burdens heavy.

He always wanted to remember Steve, just like this.

Unaware of the archer's worshipful gaze, Steve leaned back against the cool granite behind him, his coffee mug grasped in loose fingers on his knee. His white t-shirt highlighted the strong line of his shoulders, the firm cut of his arms. The city lights, colored and shifting, set his face aglow.

"You're perfect," Clint found the words slipping out, dangerous and inadvertent, barely formed before they had escaped his lips.

He meant them with every fiber of his being.

Steve turned surprised blue eyes towards the archer, blinking twice. "What?"

Clint grasped for a lifeline, a safe harbor to which he could retreat. "You—you worry too much," he fumbled, "but right now... you just... seem so happy."

Steve smiled, all trust and gratitude, not even thinking to read more into the archer's words than he'd explained. "I am," the soldier breathed, looking down on the city below, setting his mug aside to clasp his hands together. "I mean—I really needed this."

The blond looked up at the archer, some of that old hesitance and embarrassment back. It was obvious he didn't know how to express his real emotions; was still not entirely convinced that it had been alright to share so much of himself.

"Thanks," he breathed instead, his eyes aglow.

"What for?" Clint tried to grin carelessly, tried to pretend like those damn, gorgeous, impossibly blue eyes weren't' threatening to completely undo him. "You're the one who gave me the gift here, pal."

Steve frowned in confusion, trying to make sense of the words as Clint approached and sat down beside him once more, knees touching.

"How many other people have you told about Bucky?" Clint asked, smiling gently over at the soldier, watching his expression like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. "And Peggy, and your parents?"

Color returned to Steve's cheeks; he was thinking he had said too much, shared too much. The thoughts were as clear on his face as they could have been from his lips, and he ducked his head. "No-one," he whispered, sounding a little ashamed.

"So you gave me a gift," Clint repeated, nudging Steve's leg with his own. "You gave me your trust."

He waited for Steve to look up at him, all grateful smiles again, as if he could hardly believe that trust could be so valuable to someone.

"I'm honored." Clint grinned. "Really."

Silence fell between them, warm and comfortable like an old friend. Steve's eyes had dropped out of focus, his mind wandering to some distant place. Clint simply watched him, grateful for the chance to do so.

He thought he might be able to spend all day just watching the blond, tracking the movements of those blue eyes, the slide of muscle beneath the skin of his throat as he swallowed... the way his lips moved. And he wasn't even afraid to admit these things anymore, a truth as fascinating to him now as it had once been frightening.

"Clint?" Steve was asking, frowning at him. Lines of concern were forming over his eyes, and the archer realized it was the third time the blond had called his name.

"Hm?" Clint shook himself, "sorry. Just thinking."

Steve didn't look convinced. "Are you alright?" He asked hesitantly, softly, always so concerned for the burdens of the people around him, even while the one he carried himself constantly threatened to crush him.

"Honestly?" Clint grinned, unapologetic, "I'm better than alright. This night has been just about perfect so far."

Steve laughed, his head tipping back just slightly.

Clint's chest swelled at the sound, his stomach doing funny little flips as he realized what those silvery notes did to him. To his body, and to his heart.

"The sun's coming up," Steve pointed out as he stood, something wistful and longing in his voice. If he felt anything like Clint did at that moment, it was because he wasn't ready for the night to end.

"Sorry," the soldier added, looking over at Clint and quickly away again. That awkwardness was back, betraying the fact that he was thinking of all the ways that he was inconveniencing or burdening his friend. "I kept you up all night."

"I stayed up all night," Clint corrected him firmly, "and you were kind enough to keep me company."

Steve's lips quirked up at the corners; he appreciated the gesture but wasn't wholly convinced. That Clint could read him so easily seemed to have escaped his notice.

"I should go," the blond nodded, as if he were informing himself of this fact and building himself up to accepting it. It was probably even true—for all his stamina, the soldier had shadows under his eyes and the whole exhausted-but-troubled look was highlighted far too vividly by that single ugly bruise on his skin.

"Yeah," Steve repeated to convince himself, standing. "I should go. Thanks, Clint... for everything."

Because the archer had been half-convinced that Steve didn't actually want to leave at all, it took him a beat too long to realize that he actually was headed inside, pulling open the big window they used to access the fire escape in place of a real door.

"Wait," Clint called, and he hated the half-desperate sound to his voice. He reached out without thinking and caught Steve's arm, his fingers encircling his wrist and refusing to release.

Steve paused, his eyes registering surprise and something else, too... something that looked too much like fear.

Not for his physical well-being, that much was obvious. But Steve's heart did not recover as quickly as his body did, and that mystifying metabolism of his could not heal the raw, unhealed wounds left there generations ago by words and sights and memories that the decades could not bring him to forget.

If the night had shown Clint anything, it was that the soldier's soul was a graveyard of memories, and he still mourned each and every one.

"Moving on will not dishonor them," Clint forged ahead and said the words that had been building behind his tongue all night.

He hadn't said them though, and that was simply because he hadn't been brave enough to bear those tortured eyes. The same ones Steve was staring at him with even now. He hadn't been brave enough to make Steve hear those words, to acknowledge that truth, to feel that pain.

"Moving on is what humans do," Clint swallowed, "because we have to. To survive. It doesn't mean we have to forget the people we used to love... it doesn't mean we never did."

Steve pulled in a shuddering breath that caught in his chest and turned instead into a strangled, painful sob.

Clint tightened his grip on the shoulder's wrist and squeezed as hard as he could.

"Steve," he whispered, barely able to breathe. "Don't let them go. But don't miss the things that are right here, right now. Right in front of you."

He didn't give himself the chance to back down, though god only knew that he wanted to.

He wanted this more.

The archer pulled the soldier towards him; he wrapped his free hand around the blond's neck and pressed their lips together.

Long and slow and deep he kissed him, his breath escaping his lungs because oh god he'd wanted this so long.

Steve's lips were soft and pliant beneath his own, and tasted like Clint had always imagined they would and a thousand times better besides. His skin was cool and moist with quiet tears.

Clint didn't let go, and Steve didn't push him away. The archer pulled the blond's strong body into his own, refused to allow even an inch of space between them.

Slowly, fumbling and hesitant, Steve's arms wrapped around him, too.

Clint didn't want to pull away, but at some point he decided that the only way he would be alive to kiss Steve like this again was if he allowed himself to breathe. And so he did, hating the loss of contact before it was even gone. He retreated just far enough to allow air into his lungs, his forehead still warm against Steve, their noses still touching. He could feel the soldier's breath as it stuttered out through swollen lips. He could hear every exhale and smell his clean skin and an intoxicating undercurrent of spiced soap and old leather, like a secret he could only catch sight of while he was this close to the soldier.

Steve didn't ask for an explanation or even question the embrace, but Clint could see the struggle anyway. The blond's brows were drawn together in confusion and disbelief and wonder, and his lips moved soundlessly as he tried to force his breathing patterns back into a familiar pattern.

Clint tightened his hold and waited for the man in his arms to ride out the storm of his own emotions. He would wait, he knew, as long as Steve needed him to. And he wouldn't let go unless the soldier asked.

He wasn't sure what he expected from Steve after a display like that. Fumbling, blushing protests seemed almost a given; any number of questions or declarations of denial could easily follow. Maybe he'd lash out. God knew a punch in the face would not be undeserved at this point. Clint wouldn't even have been surprised if the soldier simply ran, retreating from the unfamiliar with all of his old-fashioned sensibilities and ideas of what was right or wrong according the 1940's.

But after several long, agonizing minutes of controlled breathing and silently pulling himself together, Steve defied the archer's expectations for the thousandth time and gave him the biggest surprise of all.

"Thank you," the soldier said, and he didn't sound quite as calm as he looked.

"That's it?" Clint asked incredulously, pulling back just far enough to study the darting blue eyes that wouldn't meet his own.

"Yes," Steve finally blushed, "that's it. I couldn't think of anything else to say, actually."

It was Clint's turn to throw his head back and laugh, a sound that echoed into the cool morning air and sent a flock of bird bursting upward from the wires overhead.

"You know I love you, right?" The archer asked, leaning in for another kiss.

Steve smiled against his jaw, tilting his head up so that their lips touched. "Well... kissing me kind of gave it away."

"Shut up, Steve," the archer laughed.

When Clint kissed him again, the soldier did.

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This is what comes from listening to Ed Sheeran's "+" album repeatedly while writing the last chapter of Trainwreck Hearts. Namely "Sunburn", easily one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Also, I know I promised a Steve/Clint story. Here it be.

A short playlist and photoshoppy nonsense for this story, as I mentioned up top, can be found on my profile.

I'd also like to take the chance to shamelessly self-promote my brand new LiveJournal. Go follow or friend me or... whatever it is you kids do nowadays. I promise you frequent updates on my stories as well as anything else Stony-related that pops up in my head or on my screen. Best of all (maybe?) I'll be posting naughty excerpts from my Avengers stories there, namely pure smut. I know Flashover is definitely going to get a deleted NSFW scene, so make sure you're on the lookout for it.

Thanks for the support, guys. Please review!