Therapy

Wade is curled up on his couch presumably still hiding from Peter and Vanessa and eating Bucky sorbet. “Are you gunna pay for that?” he asks, throwing his keys at Wade’s head. The media circus around Tony has calmed some since Obadiah was picked up and Phil was freakishly sneaky so he managed to make it home finally. Obadiah had tried hard to blame Tony but there was far more evidence that that scum bag had anticipated. Tony was now busy recleaning his company, finding anyone who had anything to do with Obi and getting rid of them. It was clearly stressing him out but Bucky figured that was better than the alternative.

And then there was all the bullshit around Tony’s orientation, god even know how people got ahold of Tony’s medical records let alone why anyone thought it was appropriate to fucking share them with the world. That also seemed to be taking it’s toll on Tony but he said he was fine and Bucky’s been dealing with Steve’s stubborn ass long enough to know the type. If he didn’t want to say anything he wasn’t going to so Bucky didn’t push.

“You’re going to make a cancer patient pay for sorbet? The fuck kind of Disney Villain are you?” Wade asks, drawing Bucky’s attention back to him.

“Weasel put you on the deadpool, you can’t possibly think I’m more insensitive than that,” Bucky points out. Weasel was such an asshole for that but he got the fucked up kind of Weasel humor the action had. Wade would have done the same if the situations were reversed because they had a special brand of offensive humor.

“I’m gunna die anyways, Weasel might as well make a buck off it, I get it. But making a cancer patient pay for comfort food? You’re a stone cold bitch,” Wade says, waving a spoon full of sorbet around.

“Fuck off Wade, I know you’ve jerked off in my bed at least once, and god knows what you’ve done with my shower. You owe me.” He’s heard the weird horror adventures Weasel and Wade have had with their dicks, he was almost frightened of what he was going to find further into the apartment.

“I’ve done nothing you can prove,” Wade quips, sticking his sorbet into his mouth in some sort of attempt to look innocent and innocuous. Yeah, no one who knew even a little about Wade would be mistaking him for innocent any time soon, least of all Bucky.

“Of course you haven’t. But you can pick me up some sorbet when you inevitably go to the store to buy yourself some ridiculous food concoction,” he says.

“I’m going to remember this in the afterlife,” Wade warns. Bucky rolls his eyes and shakes his head because there was nothing ghost Wade could do that would freak him out more than flesh and blood Wade.

*

Clint was lazy as hell and he was the first to admit it. Hell, it was probably the only think he’d ever be first in, even. That made being a Dom a bit difficult because he had to do things and he’d rather Netflix and chill but with actual chilling, fuck the sex bit. That was alright but it required far ore effort than he was willing to give near anything except for college minus that time he gave college the old college try. He also gave college the old college fail because the only thing he was any good at was archery and how the fuck was he supposed to make money off that? He knew he shouldn’t have run off with the damn circus as a kid but at the time it looked better than his shitty foster home.

So now he was stuck in a dead end job cleaning shit of all things. He sucked at cleaning; Phil always made faces and hovered around until he left that spot to properly clean it when he was done. He couldn’t believe someone paid him to clean things and he was pretty sure Phil couldn’t either. It didn’t really require much work if he handed Luis the broom though, all he had to do was get him started on a story and off he went, doing most of Clint’s work for him and if Scott was around he got them to argue. And that was how he evaded actually working for a living though Phil had once pointed out he wasn’t very lazy at all given the extreme lengths he went to in order to avoid doing things. Phil maybe had a point when he told Clint that if he channeled that energy into actually being a productive human he would be successful but nah. Clint enjoyed being so lazy that he bought a cat so he could run a laser pointer up a wall and have the cat turn off the lights for him. Once he got Phil to hand him head phones that were only just out of his reach and to this day that was his greatest accomplishment.

That didn’t mean he was fucking obtuse though, regardless of what Phil might think. He wasn’t a moron, he knew Phil was off doing something because there were dishes in the sink and he hadn’t cleaned Clint’s toothpaste off the side of the sink. Phil didn’t like messes and the small messes piling up around the house indicated that Phil clearly wasn’t home during the day though he was mostly there at night. The calls explaining his absences didn’t make much sense either considering Phil didn’t much like sleeping in unfamiliar places, and when the hell did he ever stay the night at Bucky’s anyways? He swore Phil thought he was an idiot or something. He’d be offended but he kind of was an idiot so that was fair, actually.

The beauty of Phil, though, was that he was basically effortless. Phil was a simple guy and his freakish level of people pleasing made him so easy to deal with because he made most of their dynamic himself. Clint has never been able to maintain a relationship because he honestly found them exhausting, except not Domming someone once and awhile made him cranky as hell so he had to have one night stands or something to maintain good mental health. So when Phil came along he was skeptical about this whole thing working out because he was some next level lazy and Phil had a tendency to micromanage his own micromanaging. By all means this should have failed before it even started but it didn’t, instead Phil did all the work and Clint was happy to let him do everything. That was awesome. All he had to do was make sure Phil felt appreciated and loved considering he was next to vanilla and he wasn’t overly adventurous. That was fucking fine by Clint, the less work the better. Plus Phil’s praise kink was an easy thing to satisfy considering he was probably the greatest thing to have ever happened to Clint.

Phil’s praise kink was also the key to obedience too and honestly Clint hit sub gold with Phil. Most subs required a lot of love and care and he guessed Phil was no different, but he didn’t feel like work and that’s what Clint was going for. Plus punishments were easy as hell; all he had to do was ignore Phil. He was a people pleaser to the extreme if he actually liked them and when Clint didn’t give Phil attention he spent more and more time vying for his attention until he got it. Honestly ignoring him worked out great because Phil baked him things and catered to him all day and all he had to do was keep his mouth shut. In the meantime Phil basically flogged himself mentally for doing something wrong until he went batty enough to talk to Clint about it and then he had to do some work. But Phil was a quick learner and he got concepts fast so even that was easy. And all he had to do to smooth things over was pet Phil and tell him his cake was awesome. Easy.

So when Phil comes home after an inexplicable three-day absence in which Clint ate as much Taco Bell as he could without Phil chastising him for it he just ignores him. Phil says hi and Clint barely acknowledges him, pretending to be engrossed in some Netflix show while Phil fidgets for a moment. He long ago mastered the art of paying attention while not looking like he was paying attention at all so he watches as Phil goes though his usual coming home routine, sparing Clint a glance before he retreats to the shower. He returns some twenty minutes later, asking Clint how his day was and he shrugs. Phil stops and looks at Clint for a moment before moving to the kitchen. Clint silently sends a prayer to whatever deity sent Phil the freakishly good cook to him. He wasn’t much of a believer but Phil made fucking kale taste good, he must have been created by something divine, there was no other explanation.

Phil busies himself in the kitchen and Clint tries to figure out what the fuck he was even watching. From the five minutes he has paid attention to there was a lot of murder for no real reason at all. Someone else dies and now Clint was invested in finding out why everyone was being killed off. Twenty minutes later and the delicious smell of whatever Phil was cooking later he still hadn’t figured out why everyone was being brutally murdered but he did figure out that he hated the cop with a passion. Frankly he wanted to know why no one was killing that guy off, he was a total asshole and honestly the show would be better without him there. He actually doesn’t notice when Phil walks over with food until he clears his throat and then Clint realizes he’s being presented with an actual meal. Sometimes he forgot how much he loved Phil until he got handed food and then he realized how bad life was with microwave burritos.

He takes the food without comment and sticks a bite in his mouth. Of course it was probably one of the most delicious things he’s ever eaten but he keeps that to himself so Phil can stew in his being a secretive ass for while. Once he figures Phil is done driving himself up the wall he’ll throw him a bone and get to the bottom of whatever the hell has been going on with Phil lately. Until then he would enjoy his excellent food and continue trying to figure out the plot of this weird ass murder show. Phil stands there for a full three minutes waiting for Clint to say something to him and honestly he almost felt bad enough to give in to Phil’s dejected stare but he doesn’t. Eventually Phil wanders away to go do Phil things and Clint finally catches on to the plot of the damn show. Some serial killer was obsessed with some bland white girl, who had no distinguishable features that made her worthy of so much attention, but her friends were excellent and Clint liked them so he figured he’d keep watching.

He hears Phil cleaning things in the kitchen, probably the dishes from the food and whatever Clint might have left in there. He ended up doing his own dishes yesterday and it was a sad moment for him, and probably an even more sad moment for Phil when he finds them because he’ll probably rewash them. He had a weird thing about the dishes. The show goes on to reveal that the main character was even more bland and white than he initially thought but her friends do get more interesting so the kind of make up for the blandness of the main character. And her idiot boyfriend dies so he was cool with that.

Eventually Phil comes back and he stands there for a few moments hopefully. Clint nearly gives in then too because it was sad watching Phil standing there waiting for attention and it was mean to ignore him. But he needed to figure out what the hell was going on with Phil and he wasn’t going to get a real answer unless he made Phil feel like a real ass and then he’d spill his guts and they could deal with the damn problem. He hadn’t even known there was a problem but apparently Phil was insistent on keeping secrets and Clint wasn’t about to put up with it, Phil wouldn’t put up with his secrets. And the only things he kept secret was how much fast food he scarfed down before Phil could catch him and make him eat broccoli. So maybe ignoring Phil wasn’t any more pleasant for him than it was for Phil, but he intended on letting Phil know that whatever the hell he thought he was doing was not okay and then fixing it.

It takes a few minutes for Phil to do something but this time he has to hit Clint right in the god damn feelings by kneeling beside him, pressing his cheek to Clint’s knee. It takes a hell of a lot of self-control not to pet the poor man’s head and tell him he was good but he does it, folding his arms across his chest so he wasn’t tempted to do it anyways. He swears to god Phil was playing dirty when he wraps his hand around Clint’s ankle, something that he liked for some inexplicable reason. It made him feel grounded and Phil felt the same way, if for totally different reasons. His fingers itch to brush over Phil’s soft, fine hair and he realizes Phil has been gone just long enough to throw him out of whack. No wonder he had been feeling so unforgiving earlier, but he sticks to the plan anyways. He knew damn well how Phil worked and he was going to make sure he knew how much of an ass he was acting like lately.

He lets Phil stew for a few moments before pausing the show, feeling the change in Phil’s body language as he anticipated some sort of response out of Clint. Just because Clint is feeling particularly vengeful he sits there in dead silence until Phil relaxes again, apparently catching on to his punishment. He takes some time to think about how the hell he was going to do this and decides he is going to wing it. Why he even tried these things he had no idea, Phil was the brains of this operation.

“Where have you been for the last three days? And don’t give me some bullshit about being with Bucky,” he says. That wasn’t even a good lie and he was kind of man Phil thought he was dumb enough to fall for that. He might not be the sharpest knife in the door but damn; he was smarter than Scott Lang. Luis got all the crap about being the dumb one but it was Scott that was the dumb one, Luis was weirdly sophisticated, he just liked baggy clothes and had an accent. The guy went to wine tastings regularly and he actually had good taste. That seemed like a thing Phil would do and Clint sort of used him as a baseline for dapper.

Phil remains silent for a few moments and Clint finally sighs, “this isn’t looking promising,” he says with just a bit more attitude than intended. But there was no need for Phil to be keeping secrets unless he was either doing something he knew he shouldn’t be or he thought he was doing something he shouldn’t. Sometimes he confused the two because Phil was weird and gave himself senseless restrictions sometimes.

“Technically I was with Bucky,” Phil says quickly, finally breaking. Clint thanks a god he doesn’t even believe in because if this was one of those times where he was going to have to wait Phil out for days he was pretty sure he’d die. It turned out Phil could be very stubborn but thankfully that’s only happened twice over the last three years. Most of the time he was at Clint’s feet within two hours. “But it was more on business terms than friendly ones,” he says vaguely. Clint resists the urge to roll his eyes at Phil’s skimping out on information.

“And that means what, exactly?” he asks. He has an idea but he wants Phil to confirm it for him.

He gets the satisfaction of watching Phil squirm, his hand growing tighter around Clint’s ankle. “Nothing all that important,” he says, “just some stuff with Tony.”

Stuff with Tony? The only thing he had heard about Stark in the last few days was… “are you telling me without actually telling me that you spent the last three days finding and arresting a fucking international terrorist who has committed treason? And you classify this as nothing important?” he all but yells. He half wants to leave Phil in a corner for a solid three days with nothing but his own brain to keep him company but at this point it was a bit fucking late.

Phil reacts quickly and swiftly, pulling away from Clint so they were no longer in contact, a self imposed punishment because Phil was easy and mostly Domed himself. “Technically yes. I did all the behind the scenes stuff though, it was mostly paperwork.”

As if that made this any better. “And were you in danger?” he asks full well knowing the answer was yes, obviously that was a yes.

“Sure, but not really that much-”

“Shut up Phil,” Clint says in an unforgiving tone. Phil shrinks in on himself a little and Clint can’t help but feel satisfied with that, it served him right for lying like that. “You don’t get to do that, keep secrets that could very well get you killed. When the hell did you even get involved with all of this? How long, exactly, have you been investigating a god damn terrorist?” he asks. So he knew about Phil’s previous job as spy but come on, even spies had to think terrorists were a big deal, right? If they didn’t Phil was a level of badass that Clint didn’t even know was a thing until right now.

“A few weeks,” Phil admits quietly.

“Oh come on Phil, you’ve been running around chasing a terrorist for a few god damn weeks and it never occurred to you to fucking mention it? Because I feel like I have a right to know if you might not come home tomorrow because you got involved in some sketchy shit,” he says harshly. Jesus, who the hell even did that?

“I didn’t think of that,” Phil whispers.

“Well good to know that only one of us cares about whether or not you die tomorrow,” Clint snaps, “are you done with this?” He better be done with this, he wasn’t going to put up with Phil casually lying about where he was all the time only to find out he off and died somewhere doing spy shit or whatever this was.

“I don’t know,” Phil says softly and Clint gets the feeling Phil was answering a question Clint didn’t technically ask. He had meant his current project, whom he assumed was Obadiah Stane, but he was pretty sure Phil meant in general.

“And why didn’t you say anything?” he asks, loosing steam quickly. He just wanted to figure out what was going on, what they were going to do about it was going to have to come later, when he was less worried that Phil could have died.

“Because I don’t really know what I’m doing and this was supposed to be a one time thing but I realized how much I missed the job and I don’t know what that means for me because the last time I got involved like this I woke up one day and realized that job was all I had. I didn’t even have a real name at that point, just a few different aliases,” Phil says.

“If you want the job back take it, but don’t you dare lie to me about it. Fuck Phil, what if you had gotten hurt and I didn’t know what was going on? You don’t want the job to take over than I suggest being honest about it,” he says. Well, minus the details, Clint was pretty sure that might be illegal but still. Phil wasn’t an idiot, he knew what Clint meant.

Phil fidgets, “you don’t understand. My whole life centered around the job, my friends were only coworkers, I don’t really have any family, and even the people I dated were involved in the job somehow,” he says, “I don’t want that to happen again.”

“Didn’t you take that job young?” He didn’t really have the specifics but Phil had given him enough information to make a few educated guesses, “it doesn’t really surprise me that you got overinvested, you were good at something and you fit in. It can happen to anyone, especially if you don’t have a support system elsewhere. But you do have a support system elsewhere, god knows I’d never be a spy, I’m so damn lazy I get a cat to turn off my lights, I’m not spy material. And you have a bunch of other friends outside of that now, plus more life experience and a cautionary tale of what happens with you let something take up an unhealthy portion of your life. You know your limits better now and frankly I don’t give a damn what you do, just don’t ever lie to me like that again,” he says.

“Actually you’re one of the most resourceful people I have ever met and trust me I know some savvy people. Honestly your ability to make things extremely easy is nothing short of astounding, I had no idea being lazy was so difficult. But… I don’t know, I miss the job but not so much that I’m willing to lose everything I have,” Phil says softly.

“Than don’t lose everything you love, you’re overthinking things. So maybe you might have long hours and year you’re going to have to keep details to yourself for security purposes but that doesn’t have to take over your life. You’re smart Phil, you’ll figure out a balance. Now come here so I can like hug you or something because I’m only half convinced that I’m not hallucinating you,” he says. Phil hesitates but when Clint gives his a gentle nudge with his foot he crawls onto the couch and curls up in Clint’s lap. He hugs Phil to his chest tightly, taking in the solid warmth of Phil’s body and assuring himself that Phil was fine, he was holding the proof of that.

*

Bucky looked like a fucking idiot passes out on the couch with what was left of the bag of chips clutched in his arms like they were his life line and Wade can’t help but feel like he’s going to miss that. Not that he thinks he’ll miss anything really; he never was one for the afterlife. God seemed like he was too good to be true and eternal fire and damnation was a bit dramatic so he was pretty sure that was fake. So he died and that was that, no happy eternal life, no flames to burn away his sins, just nothingness for the rest of forever. That sounded fucking bleak and he would rather not think about it.

But no, his stupid fucking body was killing him and he was going to have to face death down sooner rather than later and that pissed him off. He wasn’t even old yet and yeah, maybe he was kind of a shitty person but karma could have at least killed him quickly. He would take a bullet, or hell, even a car accident. But cancer? That was slow and horrible and he didn’t want to go through that let alone put someone else through that. It was god damn cruel is what it was. This shit should be saved for child molesters or something, not garden-variety assbags like himself.

He looks down at the card, contemplating his options. So the thing was sketchy as hell considering it was all black with only a white phone number on it. It didn’t even have an area code but honestly, what were his options here? Die or die faster, or maybe this treatment would work. Probably not but hey, what’s the worst that could happen? He dies? Because he was a walking dead man anyways so that wasn’t really scary anymore.

In the end he figures that maybe, maybe it might work and if it did than maybe he wouldn’t have to abandon Peter and Vanessa like this. And if it didn’t, well, they were gunna have to go through it eventually so he wasn’t really doing anything terrible by dying. He doesn’t leave a note behind when he leaves because Bucky was noble and shit and he’d probably give it to Peter and Vanessa. The only reason he hadn’t said anything so far was because he was too caught up in his own shit.