Therapy

Phil lets Nick take the lead like always, content to let him do all the work. Truth be told he’s been stressed enough that he didn’t want to pick his own meal anyways. Nick knew what he liked, or at least he should with all the time they used to spend together even before they dated. “How are you?” Nick asks when the waitress scuttles away, shrinking under Nick’s one-eyed glare. It helped that the man wore an eye patch and a black trench coat and then had the audacity to criticize other people for being dramatic.

“You say that like you already know the answer,” Phil says, raising an eyebrow at him. Nick wasn’t a fool, in fact he was highly meticulous, a control freak even, so his presence here had a purpose and Phil knew it. And Nick knew Phil knew that but he appreciated Nick’s attempts at trying to be a normal human for once. In the end it was what drove them apart, their inability to make a balance in their relationship like normal people. Both of them were workaholics and they knew it but Phil was the only one willing to leave his job.

“You miss it,” Nick says, his singular eyebrow raising.

“I like my life the way it is,” Phil says truthfully. He loved Clint, and Clint loved him back, that was more than he ever thought he would get from a relationship.

“That doesn’t mean you don’t miss it, Phil. Don’t shake your head at me, you were never meant to play house husband and service sub, it isn’t what you crave.”

“Nick-” Phil starts but Nick interrupts him, pulling a file from the bag he had brought with him.

“All I need you to do is look at it,” Nick says, sliding the file forward. On one hand Phil is curious but on the other he didn’t want to prove Nick right about his secretly being bored with his life. He was right of course, Phil always has been the adrenaline seeking type and going from international spy work to house work was… well it was boring. The most exciting thing in his life right now was Bucky’s drama and he half hoped it was about to get worse he was so bored, and that was terrible. Poor Bucky was suffering and genuinely overwhelmed right now and Phil was rooting for his life to get worse for a thrill. Last week he half considered going to a seedy area late at night in the hopes someone might try and mug him so he’d get a thrill from that. Something told him Clint would not be happy about his choice in thrill-seeking activities. Though after Phil discovered the sorry state the man lived in Clint was in no place to judge. Freezer burritos, enough said.

He stares at the file though because it couldn’t hurt to just read it, that wasn’t a contract after all. It was only a consultation and that was pushing it really, Nick probably just needed some extra eyes and honestly he would be doing his country a favor. It could be a matter of national security, that was important; peoples lives could depend on the information he may pull from that file. Nick slides the folder forward a bit and Phil bites his lip, “just read the damn thing, you know you want to,” Nick says and Phil finally breaks.

“Ten Rings? I thought we got rid of them?” he asks, noting the half covered embalm on a crate in the background of the picture pinned onto the mission report.

“Ten rings?” Nicky echoes, “where the hell did you get that?” he asks. Phil points to the crate and Nick frowns, “I didn’t see that before.”

“I don’t believe that but alright,” Phil says, taking the file back and flipping through the information. It was easy to see where Nick would have gone with the information; the answers were obvious, almost as if they were planned out to a tee to look that way. “But I can see why you’re suspicious anyways, this case is so neatly laid out that it basically has a bow on top.” Too neat of course, any idiot with a half a brain would look at the too-obviously placed clues and come to the conclusion that this was a set up.

“I’m glad you agree, you’re about the only one,” Nick tells him and Phil makes a face.

“You need new agents, this is too easy to be real. Any idiot can see that someone planned this, a damn monkey could do it,” he says. Granted monkeys were rather intelligent animals but Phil didn’t exactly expect them to be able to outdo highly trained agents. Perhaps he misjudged, then.

“I agree, but here we are. You’re one of the best, I figured if you agreed people might stop calling me paranoid,” Nick says.

Phil snorts, “people used to call me your shadow, Nick, I doubt they’ll listen to me more than you. I’m assuming Hill agrees with our assessment?” he asks and Nick nods, “well, no one can deny Hill is good at her job. Besides, you’re the Director, it isn’t as if the agents can go over your head when you are the head so why are you really here?” There, he was getting to the point of this whole thing so he could go before he got roped into taking a job.

“Because you know what you’re doing and I trust your opinion more than a bunch of low-level agents who wouldn’t know a set up if it bit them in the ass. All I need is for you to go over the information-”

“No, I told you that I’m out. I’m not going to be slowly suckered into a job because you don’t like the new agents. Train them better, their idiocy is not my problem, Nick, it’s yours. I’m content with my life just the way it is, I don’t need you to… spice it up or something,” Phil says. Nick sits there the whole time with an unmoving expression while Phil rants and it’s unnerving. He was good at that, finding a person’s weakness and subtly exploiting it. To this day Nick’s punishments for him were the worst he’s ever suffered and all he had to do was tell Phil he had done well when he botched the instructions. How the man had ever become so creative and crafty as to use Phil’s perfectionism as a punishment tactic he had no clue but it made the man a damn good spy. It also made him a rather terrifying Dom, reason two for the breakup. No hard feelings though, except for the ones that came about when Nick inevitably tried to get his favorite spy back.

“You’re perfectly happy with your life, then?” Nick asks, and he actually does ask. He liked to make statements in question form and when the person he was talking to answered him they looked rather stupid. An easy humiliation tactic, one that worked surprisingly well on Doms. Then he’d send in Phil to sweeten them up a little, offer them a deal, salvation. It sounded more genuine coming from a sub and they fell for it every damn time. They were a rather terrifying pair back in the height of their relationship, even more so because it never interfered with the job like everyone else thought it would.

“You say that like it’s a question,” he says, raising an eyebrow.

“It is a question. You used to go nuts if you were at the desk for longer than three days; you’re telling me that you’re perfectly happy playing Stepford Sub working at a temp agency? If you can look me in the eye and tell me that’s true I’ll leave you be,” Nick says. Phil debates on cracking a joke about the eye comment but he leaves it alone, sighing and looking away instead. “That’s what I thought. So come work for me again, as a consultant, all you need to do is look at what I send you and you can do that from home. It wouldn’t even interfere with your playing Stepford Sub,” Nick says.

“First off I am not a Stepford Sub, thank you. God help me Clint is no cookie-cutter trophy husband; he doesn’t even know what broccoli is I swear. And I will think about the offer, I said think Nick, don’t look so victorious. And tell your agents to grow some brain cells, why the hell would Stark stop selling weapons to sell them on the black market? Did anyone even look at the serial codes on the weapons they managed to dig up? They should have manufacturing dates, which should tell you whether or not it was made before Stark stopped selling weapons. And if it isn’t him that selling weapons off than clearly it’s someone else. I cannot believe your agents didn’t see that,” he mumbles. This was a textbook framing, literally, he was certain he read something just like this in the Academy.

*

“I need your advice,” Phil says and Bucky snorts.

“I’m literally the last person you should be going to for advice,” he says. He managed to screw up basically everything he came into contact with and then some. Even his relationship with Steve, the most stable relationship he’s ever had, was now ruined because of something he did. He wasn’t sure what quite yet but he was certain it must have been him to screw it all up; Steve was basically a patron saint.

“Give yourself some credit, Bucky, you’re good at figuring out problems as long as they aren’t your own. Now on to more important subjects, like me,” Phil jokes, smiling just a bit and Bucky can’t help but relax a little. Phil was a very particular kind of man, if he didn’t actually think Bucky would give good advice than he would have never bothered to ask Bucky for it. “Well, not that we’re on the same page here I got offered a job. My old job actually, Nick presented it as paperwork mostly but I know it won’t end there, it never does with him. The man is in a constant state of pushing people as far as he thinks they need to go.”

Phil ends there and Bucky can’t help but feel that was an incomplete run-down of Phil’s current life issues. “Alright then, what’s the problem? Didn’t you love your old job?” he asks. The way Phil talked about it with a wistful look on his face, like he was remembering a fond childhood memory, seemed like a pretty good indication that he liked his job.

“I loved it yes, more than anything else in my life and that was the problem. I woke up one day and realized that I had nothing. No home, no friends, no belongings, nothing. I lived out of my office closet and I realized I didn’t want to live that way. I loved my job and if I’m honest I miss it, but I’m afraid that if I go back into that line of work I’ll never get out and actually experience life.”

“But?” Bucky prompts because he knows there’s a ‘but’ coming.

“But I’m bored. And it isn’t Clint, I love Clint and I know he loves me, but I’m used to travelling the world and beating people up. Now the most exciting thing in my life is apartment hunting for you and silently hoping you’ll punch Steve for being a thoughtless ass. It hasn’t been an easy adjustment, going from knowing the country’s most top secret things to making sure Clint hasn’t left hair in the sink again,” Phil says. Hell, that sounded boring as hell to Bucky and he hasn’t been a spy at any point in his life. Though he’s seen the weird things that Clint has attempted cooking and that was how Clint had been banned from the kitchen by Phil. The problem with that was that Phil was a worse cook than Clint and his attempts to learn weren’t going well.

“Not gunna lie I vote you go back to being a spy so I can tell people I’m friends with a spy. Also you beat my ex up with a bag of flour and I didn’t even know that could be used as a weapon so I have confidence in your skills,” Bucky says.

Phil rolls his eyes at him, “be serious, Barnes. What am I supposed to do here?”

“I don’t know, it’s your life. Personally I think you should talk to Clint not me, I don’t care if you’re off doing spy things but Clint would. If you chose to pick up your old job it’d probably alter the whole dynamic of your relationship so you’d have to work around all that.” It sounded like more than it was worth to Bucky but he has never been attached to a job like Phil has been so what did he know?

“Why can’t I be a normal person who gets joy from normal things? Yesterday I caught myself half hoping the neighbor’s car would blow up or something for a little fun in my life. But I’m not sure going back to my old job it the solution to that,” he says.

“First off, that’s morbid man. And second, have you tried to compensate in any other ways? Because I feel like that would be the simplest solution here- if you found something new to get your kicks maybe you wouldn’t feel so bored,” Bucky suggests. He should get Phil a job working for Weasel; it was a guaranteed never-a-dull-moment job and sometimes there was punching. There wasn’t paperwork to fill out after either, though the paperwork might actually be a plus for Phil. Bucky has stopped trying to figure the man out and so has Clint to be fair.

“Oh…” Phil says and he stares at Bucky like he just solved his whole dilemma, “that’s such an easy solution! Why didn’t I think of that?” he asks himself more than Bucky.

“Because you were expecting some weirdly complicated one, trust me, I’ve been there.” That was probably why he failed English in school, teachers acting like everything meant something and then Bucky overcomplicated simple narratives. He just started assuming everything was a phallic symbol or something. He hopes that Phil didn’t start assuming everything somehow related to dicks but Bucky figures Phil is smarter than that.

“Great, want to go skydiving?” Phil asks with far too much enthusiasm and a bright smile on his face. Bucky blanches, deciding immediately that he has created a monster.

*

Bucky is on his way to work when he gets a call. He’s half tempted to ignore it in case it was Steve, who had at least been giving him space, but when he checks the caller I.D it’s Tony. “Hey,” he says, smiling into the receiver despite himself. So he liked talking to Tony, liked that someone so… Tony would even look his way. Of course this was countered by a little voice in the back of his mind that was telling him that something was off here, why the hell would Tony Stark be interested in him? The guy could have anyone and here he was with Bucky of all people. But that little voice sounded suspiciously like Brock so Bucky ignored it, even if he secretly wondered the same thing.

“Hey yourself, you busy tonight?” he asks, amusement tinting his tone.

“Unfortunately yeah, I have to work and making a living is hard when your boss is trying to kill you. But the patrons like me so they’ll probably kill Wade,” Bucky jokes, “unless you want to pick me up after work but I get off at two a.m, which isn’t really conducive to dates.” At least for the normal person, he’s always been more of a night owl but Steve was an early morning kind of person so he had learned to work around that. Wow, no wonder Steve held out hope for Bucky, he basically organized his entire life around the guy. Well that is an unpleasant realization.

“Hmm. Well if you don’t mind I don’t mind either, I’m more of a night person anyways. Curse of the insomniac,” Tony says, drawing Bucky’s attention back to him.

“Lovely, me too and I personally think everyone who gets up to be a functioning member of society before noon should be shot. Mostly because I am not a functioning member of society but hey, we all have faults. Not much to do at two a.m though, unless we end up at a bar seedier than Weasel’s and that is a true feat,” Bucky says. He wasn’t sure that was actually possible but he was tempted to test it out, Wade would so be happy to do that. Maybe he’d ask Phil too considering the man had a death wish.

“Agreed. Rhodey gets up at like five a.m to start his routine and honestly who even does that? If I weren’t positive he was human I would assume he was a robot. I’ve seen him bleed though so clearly he isn’t a machine, also the only person capable of building something like that is me and I’m fairly certain I would remember building an entire best friend, I mean I remembered JARVIS. And, if you’re comfortable with it, night driving is fun and we probably won’t get an STI that way.” That was fair, Bucky refused to touch anything in Weasel’s bar until he wiped it down first because he didn’t want to contract some weird disease.

“Sounds good actually, it’s been forever since I’ve done that,” he says. The last time was with Steve actually, forever ago, because Bucky had always felt inexplicably safer in the night. It was a good way to get him to open up and talk if he was comfortable with a person, Clint has done that too though he also had a fair amount to share. If Tony thought Bucky was interesting he should meet Clint, the guy grew up in a circus and was deaf. That beat out Bucky’s interest in history.

“Me too, all my friends are freaks who prefer the daylight,” Tony says and Bucky laughs, shaking his head. “So where do you work anyways?” he asks.

“Ever heard of Sister Mary’s School for Wayward Children?” he asks, snickering when Tony expresses his confusion over the name of the bar, mistaking it for an actual school. “Nah, I’m no school teacher, I’m a bar tender,” he says.

“At a bar named ‘Sister Mary’s School for Wayward Children’?” Tony asks and Bucky gives the affirmative, “oh, I have got to see this.”

Weasel tries to kill him no less than three times but Bucky was used to all his tricks by now so he neatly avoids death for another shift. That had been one hell of a shock when he first started working here but thankfully Weasel wasn’t a total ass and he let Bucky adjust before throwing him on the dead pool. Now they all tried to kill each other all the time.

“You’re getting too good at this, we need someone new so we can kill them off and make money,” Weasel tells him, gently shoulder checking him.

“Or we can just wait until you get old and frail and we can bet on you to die,” Bucky counters, grinning.

“Or I can just bring in Blind Al and she definitely won’t be able to fight off the brutes that come here,” Wade suggests, “that’ll make money.”

“She’s going on the dead pool next week, Wade, it’s your job to get her here so we can kill her,” Weasel says. They go on with their plans of killing Blind Al, which nether of them would ever do because she knew how to get the best cocaine, and Bucky goes sits of the floor. Thankfully he had the foresight to bring extra clothes with him today because Phil and Clint also happened to stay up late and he had enough dignity to not want to smell like whatever was on the ground here. When Wade and Weasel realize that Bucky had sat, therefore exempting him from cleaning, they all but dive for the floor in an attempt to get out of cleaning themselves.

“Wade got there first,” Bucky says even though Weasel had landed on the ground a good three seconds before Wade.

“Did not,” Weasel complains.

“Did so, now get cleaning boss,” Wade tells him, grinning. Weasel mumbles about only being made to clean because he put Bucky on the dead pool and Bucky outright confirms it, but rules were rules, Weasel got stuck cleaning. To be fair it wasn’t like Wade and Bucky had it better while they stewed in bar juices on the ground. Thankfully Weasel was also the worst at cleaning so they got out of the bar faster than usual.

“New clothes? Got a hot date,” Wade jokes like he had been for most of the week.

“Actually yeah,” Bucky says and surprise flickers across Wade’s features.

“Stark again?” he asks.

“Mmhm, and don’t go stalking us either, that’s creepy,” Bucky tells him.

“Okay but Vanessa was working and Peter has some weird lab that keeps him at school late. I was bored and I figured keeping a buddy safe was a nice thing to do,” Wade says, giving him what Wade probably thought was a puppy dog face. It was not, he was just pouting uselessly.

“Sure, sure. Keep it to yourself, yeah?” Bucky says, eyebrow raised.

“God damn it Wade, did you whip your dick out again? Cock in pants, man, there are laws for that,” Weasel says. He looks exasperated and Bucky starts laughing, marveling that Weasel has had to tell Wade this enough times that he was annoyed with it.

“You know what, humans are born naked, being in our natural forms should not be illegal! Making being in your natural form illegal should be illegal,” Wade insists. Bucky leaves while he and Weasel argue over nudity laws.

He finds Tony outside looking largely enthused and surprisingly not dead. Bucky has met some reckless people but he has yet to meet someone so stupid as to show up in a crazy bad neighborhood with a fancy sports car. He should introduce Tony to Phil; the two might enjoy having a death wish together. “Hey,” he says, grinning at Tony.

Tony, however, zeroes in on Bucky’s left arm and for a moment he freezes because he generally made an effort to hide the arm but he hadn’t counted on being near anyone new tonight…

“Is that real? How does it work?” Tony asks and his face lights up in genuine delight at the sight of the arm. For a second Bucky is unsure but Tony didn’t ask about the accident that caused the need for the arm, he asked about the arm itself and that was far less intimidating.

“Fuck if I know, I don’t do the tech thing,” he says. Tony looks personally offended by the statement, as if Bucky has insulted him at some deep moral level or something.

“That is insulting to such a wonderful piece of work. Who made that?” Tony asks.

“Uhh. Some Vanko or something,” he says. He probably wouldn’t have even remembered the guy if it wasn’t for his being arrested on terrorism charges only a few months after he finished Bucky’s arm.

“Ivan Vanko? A terrorist made you arm?” Tony asks, giving the arm a dubious look.

“Pre-terrorist charge, yeah. Was kind of hoping you wouldn’t make that connection,” Bucky says.

“I would have anyways, Howard stole some designs from his father and Vanko tried to drag me for it when I miniaturized the arc reactor tech. Turns out you can’t charge a man for his dead father’s crimes and my mini was a whole new design so he couldn’t drag me for that either. He tried to make one of his own to prove that I stole that design too but his was totally different. Guy might be an asshole and apparently a terrorist but he’s brilliant,” Tony says, clear admiration in his tone. Bucky raises an eyebrow because he got the feeling Tony didn’t praise people often when it came to intelligence and engineering. Tony confirms as much as they take off, leaving Bucky’s shoddy workplace behind.

*

Tony was no good at the romance thing so it hadn’t occurred to him that watching the sunrise was something you’d watch in a stupid romance movie until it was happening. Bucky was curled up on his side with his head in Tony’s lap and he was running his fingers through Bucky’s silky strands. It was subtle, the dynamics, but it had been so long since Tony has acted as someone’s Dom that the simple action released a surprising amount of tension he hadn’t even known had build up. Bucky must have been left without a Dom for awhile too because he relaxed almost as much as Tony had, all but melting into Tony’s lap. He can’t help but feel just a bit of pride for being the reason for that reaction.

He gently massages Bucky’s scalp and Bucky lets out a small, contented sigh and the remaining tension in his body disappears. Tony grins, feeling inexplicably happy but unwilling to question it.