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If he was totally, completely honest and forced to choose--and well, he was forced to choose, but if he had to actually choose--Clint would have to admit that he probably did fall more to the submissive side of things. He'd hate to have Fury's job for instance, and he'd rather Tony choose what went on the pizzas if they were ordering for the group--although that had more to do with the loud bitching about his taste in toppings than anything else--and he wasn't particularly driven to compete for the space behind the wheel when it came to the car. Preferred the passenger-side opportunity to zone out and watch the city go by, actually.
And fine, he secretly liked that Steve was in charge, because Steve was competent and mentally stable and didn't put up with shit, and maybe it was sort of, kind of comforting that he didn't put up with Clint's shit, either.
But none of that, none of that, should, in any sane, rational world, automatically translate to the assumption that he would enjoy waiting around on his knees for hours before being granted the fucking privilege of begging to be fucked.
"And then," Clint railed, slouching at the kitchen table, "then, after I finally fucking did it, he wanted to beat me first." He slugged his coffee back like it was something stronger and he was desperate for the hit.
"There's nothing wrong with being submissive," Pepper said, and it was really like she thought he needed the I'm okay you're okay we're all okay together sing along song explanation of why does mommy get spanked sometimes. Clint snorted at her and made a snap-snap gesture at Tony to refill his coffee.
"I know," he said, and the fight to not roll his eyes was like being murdered, it was so hard, "I'm not self hating, I'm just saying. It's insulting. Like--okay. Look. Why do I have to crawl around grovelling for cock? I'm not saying I'm too good for it, or anything." he clarified, in Tony's general direction, "But just because you're a dom doesn't make you too good for it, either. So why me, and not him? What makes him so fucking great anyway?"
Pepper smiled, a crooked little fond expression, and said, "Oh, Clint. You're such a--you're such a tomboy."
That was unfair. Not wanting to gag on someone's cock was a perfectly valid feeling. Choking wasn't fun, that was why there was a reflex against it. It didn't say anything more about him than that maybe he liked to be comfortable.
"I've tested you," Tony said and he had, because Clint couldn't believe he really tested as a sub, consistently, because the whole thing was just fucking unappealing, "and you score pretty solidly. You have low drive for social control, don't care about people obeying you, are willing to let other people make decisions for you--"
"Yeah. So? Maybe I'm just lazy and unmotivated."
"And that thought is more comforting than that you might just actually be a sub?"
That was a valid point. I'm a sub kind of dressed the whole thing up better. Made it a bit sexy, even, for anyone who was into deciding stupid stuff like pizza toppings and what detergent to buy and where to park the car. Clint could really get behind the whole thing if determining the grocery list was the key element of it.
The thing was, he hated all the actual subby parts of being a sub. He didn't want to wait on someone else's pleasure, or for permission, or to have to address people in polite terms that they wouldn't necessarily return. Didn't want to have to serve people or behave for them, or accept their decisions in the instances that it was something he cared about.
"It's possible that you're lazy and unmotivated and also really self centered and still a sub," Tony offered, not particularly helpfully.
"It's possible," Clint said, "that our culture is rewarding sociopathy." It was fucked up how many people thought that his aversion to degrading sex just meant he wanted rougher treatment. He scowled at Pepper, "Seriously. It's really getting to me. I just want someone to be nice to me. Why is that so weird? You're a sub, do you think that's weird?"
"I'm not a sub," Pepper said, "I'm a CEO."
And the reason that worked, Clint figured, once he'd had time to mull it over, was that Tony was an inept dom. Or a disorganized one. Or maybe just a hapless one. Or all of the above, and it made Clint wonder about his life that the reasonable conclusion to draw from that was that he needed a dom who was like Tony Stark.
"Don't date someone based on eccentricity and unreasonable behavior, doc," he had to tell Bruce later, when it didn't work out, while Bruce looked horrified at him and put stitches in his shoulder because no way in hell was he going to medical or an ER and explaining the whole stupid thing.
"I'll try not to," Bruce said and taped gauze on, then pressed an ice pack to Clint's head, where he was getting a nice goose egg. "Hold that. What the hell happened?"
"I was trying to date Tony--"
"Tony did this?"
"What? No. Gross. A metaphorical Tony. Like--you know." Bruce looked at him like he most assuredly didn't and also like he maybe thought Clint might be concussed and in need of a trip downtown. Clint sighed, "I mean, someone who doesn't give a flying shit and would, out of their weirdness, not mind my weirdness and treat me like people."
"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard," Bruce told him, and actually sounded like he thought it was pretty sad. It made Clint kind of feel like crap. Like pathetic crap, even.
"I told him I didn't want to kneel and he flipped out," Clint mumbled, looking at his feet, but at least Bruce didn't give him the lecture about why would you go out with someone and then tell them something like that.
"Clint, please never try to date a metaphorical Tony Stark ever again." Bruce said and pressed two aspirin into his hand, "Take these, take a nap, rethink your life choices."
Clint swallowed the pills dry, but accepted the water Bruce held out to him, "That's what got me in to this mess to start with, doc."
The real hell of it, was that the problem wasn't limited to his tragic romantic life. He hated going to his knees in public. Felt nothing but a sick flush of humiliation and--more distantly--the vague awareness that he had a really good mental picture of Cap's knees after all the time he'd spent with them at eye-level.
And it was even worse, because Cap was so nice about it, giving him outs, letting him skip all sort of appearances, but there were always those events he couldn't get out of where ignoring the protocol would make the team look worse than following it made him feel.
"You take it too seriously," was Natasha's advice, probably because she knew she looked way hotter than him and enjoyed the admiration. Her whole I'm a sub and I don't mind shtick was probably his least favorite thing about her. Not because he thought being a sub--and following it's associated roles--was something one should necessarily mind, but because her ease made him feel even more like a freak. Like his life was spinning out of his control for no reason other than his own stupidity.
And it really was spinning out of control, because after that he got into a fight with Steve about what target to go for first in a training session, and he didn't even care. Steve didn't care. It was just a cycle of push and push back that triggered some kind of fucking wave of resentment, because Clint was fucking sick of being pushed and Cap got to be the pusher all the time and no one was telling him to get on his knees and ask nicely ever, so who the fuck was he to insist on right, when Clint wanted to go left, and.
And Cap's never treated him anything but decent, even if he couldn't always stop his sometimes patronizing blast-from-the-past reflexes. Clint could have apologized, if he'd really put his mind to it, but he'd had it with always being the one who had to, so instead he stormed off, which probably just made the whole thing worse.
At least Cap wouldn't write him up on the yellow disobedient sub forms that SHIELD used to. Cap would probably just yell at him the same way he did Tony, if it came to that, and then that would be the end of it. Temporarily. Until Clint screwed it up again.
"Sorry," Clint said later, finding Steve in the kitchen making toast and studying a magazine, and decided to put a stop to the cycle before it could spiral around again, "That got away from me today."
Steve smiled, and he didn't say anything condescending like good, or I'm proud of you, or shit like that. He didn't try to knock Clint down a few pegs either, which was also pretty nice of him, because the fucking sub thing aside, he kind of deserved it.
"Want to tell me what 'that' is?" Steve asked, as the toaster popped. He buttered both slices and handed one to Clint and Clint was perfectly happy to partake of his efforts which would probably have earned him at least one point down on a sub-dom test.
"I--" Clint stopped to consider if he really wanted to spill his guts to Captain America over toast and butter, but then Steve twisted around to put more bread in the toaster, and the casualness of it made the whole situation a lot less dire and embarrassing. "I've been having a bad dom week. Month. Year." He stopped amending, because Steve probably got the drift and ending on "Doms just suck" would probably not have been the best way to patch things up.
Steve hmm-ed. "Bruce told me," he said and it was just amazing that Bruce was spreading around what he thought was the saddest story he'd ever heard. Clint winced. "He was worried you might be getting yourself into bad situations on purpose."
"I'm really not," Clint said and Steve nodded agreeably. "I'm not. I'm trying to improve my situation. It just didn't go the way I'd hoped."
Steve looked at him like he knew the whole sordid story, including the Tony Stark tie-in. "Oh, whatever," he said, because Steve was smiling, but it kind of looked like he was laughing inside, "Fuck Bruce. It's not funny."
The toaster popped. Steve buttered and shared those slices as well, and Clint wondered who was getting what score now, because he was letting himself be fed and taken care of, but Steve was providing a service. A domestic service, even. The whole thing was so fucking arbitrary he couldn't even stand it.
"Clint has love trauma," Tony explained later, loudly and to the whole team and for no one's benefit except his own, because he sounded like he was really fucking enjoying himself. He also sounded a bit drunk, and that put Clint on edge a little. Not so much because of the drinking itself, but because Tony had even less filters in place once he'd had a few and he'd been there for several of Clint's conversations with Pepper. "I believe it had to do with whipping."
"It wasn't about that." There wasn't really any point in arguing. Everything would just encourage Tony, so the best he could hope for was that the world would end in the next four seconds. Or at least be drastically threatened.
Tony smirked. "No? Then can I assume that you're fine with that?" He waggled his eyebrows and made an expression that was probably supposed to be a leer. Clint ignored him, but it didn't deter Tony at all, "Or. Hang on. Maybe it was begging? I think it was. Yeah. That was it. It was about how you were above grovelling for cock."
"I said I wasn't above--Oh, fuck it." Clint put his hand over his face and slouched low on the couch.
"Right. You just want it just like that." Tony didn't seem like a dirty talk dom so much as a trash talk one and Clint wondered if Pepper had ever just hauled off and punched him in the middle of things, just because she couldn't take the bullshit. "Without asking or anything."
"That's a bit selfish, Clint," Bruce put in, but probably just to be obnoxious. He looked really entertained, for Bruce. Kind of drily smirking, with the edge of his mouth turned up.
"I don't have love trauma," Clint told him, and realized he sounded way too serious for the ridiculousness of that sentence. "I just. I don't know. I just want to spoon and hold hands and shit. Why is that too much to ask?"
Tony leaned over the back of the couch and patted his head. Cooed. "Don't worry baby. You'll find a dom who won't mind that you're kind of rough around the edges. And the middle. And the parts between the edges and the middle."
He loved Tony like a brother--a fucking obnoxious brother that he spent a lot of time plotting to drown--but his amusement at this shit kind of hurt. Bruce's amusement kind of hurt. Because as much as Clint had to admit his life was like a fucking comedy of errors, always being on the outs wasn't a fuckload of fun. Tony had Pep, and even Thor had Jane, and god knew what Nat got up to but she came home in the early mornings sometimes, looking smug and wearing yesterday's clothes. And Clint had no one, because everybody was an asshole who didn't want to sit on the couch with him, or discuss decisions or treat him like he was a grownup who knew what he thought, wanted or liked.
"I'm lonely," he whined at Nat, lolling about on her bed. He meant it to be funny, but Nat's smile was more gentle than entertained. "Everybody's a freak. You're a freak. I'm surrounded by freaks."
"If you're that unhappy, you can register as a dom. Tony would hack it for you. He'd laugh at you, but he'd do it."
Clint considered it, then frowned, "I don't want to be a dom. I don't want any of it. I want to--"
"I know. Cuddle and talk about movies." Natasha rolled her eyes like she thought it was ridiculous, "You can do those things, you know."
"It's more that I don't want to do the other things. I know you like it--"
"I'm a freak," Natasha smiled, and Clint grinned and felt a bit bad for having said it, but she patted his arm. "Maybe you just have a bad history with men."
He did have a bad history with men, but he didn't think that was it. He just didn't have something. Whatever it was that made people want to give orders or take orders or whatever was just full-on missing. "I'm a freak," he told Nat, and frowned into his arms. And then, to be dramatic, because Nat hated that, "No one will ever love me."
Natasha patted him, and gave him a considering look that lasted for way too long, and he said, "I swear to god, if you tell me that I'll find someone who won't mind that I'm rough for a sub, I will throw myself out of your window."
"You don't want someone who won't mind that you're rough for a sub," Nat said, with that look that meant she thought he was really pretty stupid and she wasn't sure why they were even still friends, "You want someone who doesn't mind that you aren't one."
"Oh," Clint said. Then, "Oh." It wasn't the first time he'd needed Natasha to tell him who he was.
He told Bruce first because he figured Bruce was a doctor and probably familiar with all sorts of...disorders. Or whatever. He figured Bruce was the least likely to laugh at him or put him on the spot with awkward questions like well what are you then, smartass? that would then force him to try to explain things that he hadn't really figured out yet.
It was strangely nerve wracking. He'd meant to say it all cool and indifferent and then shrug like it was nothing, but it came out stammered and shaky and his chest felt like a pit.
"You know there's switches, right?" Bruce asked him, looking over his glasses like he couldn't figure out why Clint was on the verge of a meltdown. Like he was a freak for freaking out instead of for being a freak and. Clint took a breath.
"Yeah. I know. I'm not a switch." But there was paperwork for switches. He could claim it and tick the dom box for preferred role, and at least he wouldn't have to do embarrassing shit anymore and at least that was something, even if the idea of domming someone was even worse than subbing, because then he'd actually have to be thinking about it, but he could claim sub for his personal life and--
Bruce put up his hands and said, "Clint. Clint. Sit down. I think you're getting ahead of yourself. You're--" he smiled, but not with that condescending edge of silly sub or even the Clint, you dumbass that was Natasha's. "How did you get to this? Have you been doing research? Reading?"
Clint examined the smooth surface of the lab floor, shiny but slip-proof. Easy to clean. It kind of squeaked under his boots. "No. I was talking with Nat. She kind of mentioned it," he admitted, grudgingly because it probably sounded stupid to anyone else.
"Okay," Bruce said, and he was still smiling. "You're not a freak. You're probably a neutral, and there's other people who feel the same way, and you can stop picking up actual freaks in the hope that they'll be so bad at being doms that they won't notice you suck at being a sub."
He felt a surge of relief at that, and then one of betrayal. It hurt. "You knew about this? Why didn't you say anything?"
"I didn't know. You were actually coming off a lot more like you were struggling with being a masochist."
Clint frowned, "I'm not."
"I know," Bruce said, "Or, I know now. I'll send you some websites, okay? And if you hold on, I've got some books you can read."
Or course Bruce had books. It didn't occur to Clint until he was hiding at the end of the range halfway through the second of them to wonder why Bruce had these books, in particular. He wasn't ready to ask, though, so instead he went upstairs to find Nat, to let her know it was a thing that existed, and that Bruce had said he wasn't a freak, but that she might still be. She'd know that last was a lie, and that he said it out of love.
"I need to find out if I can do anything about it," he told her, suddenly. "I didn't think to ask Bruce. I was all ready to try to score as a switch and. Do you think I can just opt out?"
"Opt out." Nat said, "Just do it. Don't even opt. Just refuse the sub stuff if you don't want to do it. Tell Steve you won't anymore. You think anyone on this team is going to make you?"
"You just want me out of the picture so you can be more special," Clint told her, to disguise that he was nervous about talking to Steve.
It wasn't as nerve wracking as telling Bruce, because now he had some knowledge on his side and Bruce and Nat's blessing. Tony, of course, the giant pain in the ass, had to be there when he walked into the kitchen, sitting there poking at his computer, but it was too late to bail now.
"Cap," Clint said, getting straight to the point, "I'm not a sub. I'm not anything. I quit all the stuff." Tony looked like he was gearing up to mock, and it was throwing off all the words Clint had thought up on the walk over. "The sub stuff. And the related stuff. That stuff."
"This is a pretty drastic step just so you can skip straight to spooning," Tony said, but without any real bite. He even looked up from his computer to smile instead of smirking to himself like a jackass.
Steve didn't even blink, just put down his pencil and leaned back to say, "What do you know? You and Bucky."
"Bucky was cuddles-only?" Tony said, and if that's what they were calling it now, that was fine with Clint. At least until he got used to the word neutral as a noun, to feeling it in his mouth paired with I and me and am. And then he planned to kick up a stink about it.