Therapy

Obi made one hell of a mess and Tony was pissed that he was the one stuck cleaning it. He was into all sorts of shit that Agent just loved to sniff around. Bucky had mentioned that he had a Dom but Tony couldn’t see it. The guy was a total control freak; Tony has seen that color-coded date book of his. Even the guy’s field notes were color-coded, Tony had a hard time believing that he could ever give up an ounce of control, plus he didn’t have a tell tale collar.

“If you don’t stop staring at my neck I’m going to assume you’re a vampire,” Agent tells him. Tony rolls his eyes but looks away, back into more of Obi’s files and misdeeds. They were mounting very quickly and in so many different areas that Tony kind of wanted to hurl.

“I can assure you that even if I was a vampire I would want nothing to do with your neck, Agent, I have taste,” he says, sneering at the man.

“Like Bucky? Ever nibble on his neck?” Agent asks cheekily.

“Is that your business? Because I don’t see how Bucky’s neck relates to terrorism at all,” he points out.

“Then stop staring at my collarless neck, Clint doesn’t do collars,” Agent says primly.

Tony snorts, “his loss.” Normally he wouldn’t care; collars weren’t a mandatory thing anymore, especially in relationships where both people were switches. They were supposed to indicate who played what role in a relationship but a lot of switches didn’t identify one way or another, so a collar was something of a loss of identity. Agent, however, was so not a switch even if Tony was certain he wasn’t a real sub either. More like a robot and not even a cool one. Or like neutral or something… “Oh my god all those damn vanilla movements screaming about not identifying as anything are probably just neutral or something. I mean they’re a bunch of assholes for trying to pathologize orientations, but they might have a bit of a point in not leaning any which way,” he says, eyes wide with realization.

He expects Agent to mock him or something but his eyes grow wide, “you might be onto something there. I… well, I identify as a sub, biologically that’s what I am but… eh, I’ve never really felt connected to it. To anything really, I never even considered that. You really are a genius,” Agent says, leaning against Obi’s old desk and taking that information in. “What even determines you orientation?” Agent asks.

“Some sort of gene markers. I don’t have the specifics and I’ve never been bothered to look them up. But if you have certain markers you’re a sub, and if you have other markers you’re a Dom. I think switches have some sort of combination of both but there’s a lot of debate around that. I mean people didn’t even legally recognize them until the eighties so. Personally there are hundreds of thousands of ways people do D/s dynamics, it seems pretty disingenuous to reduce all that variation in preference down to a couple of genes and then claim that’s all there is to it, clearly that isn’t true.” He’s had this argument with himself and doctors so many times over the years that he could recite his reasoning in his sleep with his mouth taped shut. He didn’t need to have the specifics of how the damn genetics worked; any idiot knew that those genetics bore no relevance on how you chose to express yourself.

Some people argued against that but they were fucking idiots, so pain play and impact play was considerably popular, that didn’t mean everyone liked them and hell, that didn’t mean everyone liked those things for the same reasons either. You could ask a person why they liked what they did and in a room of one hundred people you’d get one hundred different answers, even if they followed similar themes. Which was why Tony was so fucking irritated that people had a hard time grasping how someone could align with something other than their biological orientation. It wasn’t fucking rocket science, obviously at least one person in all the people who have lived and died had to have felt the same way he does.

“Huh. I never really considered a neutral orientation but that kind of fits honestly, there isn’t really a lot that tickles my fancy and it’s caused a lot of relationship problems. I just don’t get most stuff but the only other people who have ever said they felt similar to that are those ridiculous vanilla people. I mean I get not getting a lot of D/s dynamics, but I don’t think they should be put in jail, plus they make the assumption that vanilla relationships will stop what they perceive as abuse, which is absurd. D/s dynamics aren’t what fosters abuse, assholes are what foster abuse,” Agent says, rolling his eyes.

Yeah, which was probably why vanilla groups weren’t taken very seriously, people didn’t much like the outright accusation of being abusive or abused. The idea vanilla movements started with- that not all people wanted to work with D/s dynamics, some people just didn’t feel attracted to them- made sense. The lunacy that happened afterwards was certainly worthy of Agent’s eye roll. A lot of it, he was sure, came from a place of frustration and he got being annoyed with people telling you were wrong for existing in a certain way, but they took it to some extremes. With the aforementioned accusations of abuse, pathologizing orientations, and assumptions that everyone but them should be in jail it was no surprise that they weren’t received well. They tended to be a bunch of sanctimonious pricks.

“You know, for a small group they’re pretty loud,” Tony says. They got a surprising amount of press coverage given that no one took them very seriously.

“People just like to laugh at them, no one actually thinks they’re news worthy. In the office we used to make bets on what ridiculous thing they would come up with next. I won a lot of money guessing right and that’s why I’m Fury’s favorite,” Agent says, puffing out his chest with some stupid and misplaced pride.

“Fury likes you because you’re good at predicting the next stupid thing a person’s going to say? Guy has low standards.” But then if he liked Agent for any reason he had low standards, only Bucky was the exception to that.

“Eat shit, Stark. He likes me because I can easily adopt the mindset of others and think out their next move. It isn’t as easy as Criminal Minds likes to make it look. Now, speaking of, have you heard of this research group?” Agent asks, handing Tony some papers. He takes them and looks them over, frowning.

“The fuck is an A.I.M?” he asks.

“A terrorist organization your business partner seems to have a strong connection to, and he’s been selling them a lot of your tech-” he cuts Agent off.

“And how the hell do I get it back?” he snaps. For fucks sakes Obadiah, so he wasn’t just selling weapons? Tony clenches his jaw; somewhat happy that Obi is currently in jail otherwise he might just kill him himself.

“Well at least I know it’s unlikely that you’re involved in this now,” Agent says, taking the paper back. “JARVIS, mind sending me all video footage of Tony’s reaction to this news?” Agent asks the AI.

“Of course, sir,” the AI responds.

Tony gives the ceiling an offended look, “who’s side are you on, J?”

“Yours, which is why I fully intend on cooperating and proving your innocence. And he is innocent,” JARVIS adds to Agent.

“Your AI is terrifying and I don’t like it,” Agent tells him.

“Shove your opinions on JARVIS up your ass and tell me how the hell to get my tech back from these A.I.M people.”

*

“You know your safe word, right?” Pepper asks her.

Natasha rolls her eyes, “you’re plucking my eyebrows in some strange attempt to establish intimacy, I don’t think I need a safe word for this,” she points out. Pepper glares down at her from behind the couch she was currently standing behind, clearly waiting for her to say the damn safe word. “Fine,” she mumbles, “monkeyslut.”

Pepper sighs, “how did you end up with such a terrible safe word?” she asks.

“I made a bet with Tony and lost, but jokes on him I’ve never used a safe word so there’s no embarrassing myself later,” she says.

“You what?” Pepper snaps, “you need to use your safe word if something is making you uncomfortable, Natasha! Please remember this is half the reason we’re even doing this,” she says. Right, because Natasha had a hard time feeling things, or letting herself feel things, so Pepper had taken it upon herself to ensure Natasha’s comfort. The problem with that was that Natasha wasn’t entirely sure what comfort felt like, she’s never had that luxury and her relationship with Pepper has been the closest she’s ever gotten.

Things were fine, at least for the most part, if she was in control but she couldn’t control Pepper, she’s a person with her own life and duties. It took her a long time but eventually she came to the conclusion that she was having such a hard time with relationships because people were unpredictable and she didn’t like it. So now Pepper was trying to ease her into intimate activities, at least so long as she was comfortable with them, to try and fix this problem. Personally Natasha found that Pepper was being overly conscious but she appreciated that Pepper was intent on making her comfortable.

“Okay, but what Dom uses safe words?” she asks. The concept was completely foreign to her; she was always taught that safe words were for subs though in hindsight Ivan wasn’t exactly a reliable source for information.

“One that is uncomfortable with a situation, just like a sub would do,” Pepper counters without pause. Of course she would have a smartass response, she always did.

“Name one,” she counters back. Pepper wasn’t the only smartass here and Phil assured her that her humor was a special brand of funny. She wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that but she chose to take it as a compliment.

“Tony,” Pepper shoots back fast.

“He doesn’t count!” Natasha protests, earning sharp look from Pepper that takes her a moment to place. “Not because of his biological orientation, I don’t care about that. But the guy tried to put tuna in meatloaf, he’s clearly an abomination.” She liked to call him 626 if he was acting more like an asshole than usual and it took him an embarrassingly long time to catch on to her excellent Lilo and Stitch reference. Her comedy was lost on most people and that made her sad.

“Fine, Wanda used a safe word,” Pepper says, moving on quickly.

Natasha swears under her breath because she had no real idea who that was other than Pepper dated her for a long time. But Wanda didn’t buy her pretty collars from all over the world so Natasha thinks she’s winning. Normally Doms stuck with one collar for their subs but style was important to Pepper so Natasha started picking up pretty collars here and there and bringing them home with her. One time she got stopped in an airport because someone thought she much have a slave ring or something, which led to an embarrassing rescue from Phil Coulson. They were buds after that but only because Natasha owed him for getting the collars back and convincing the airport people that she did not, in fact, have a slave ring. Well, at least not one that wasn’t willing to be there, Phil may have had a little too much fun with that accusation in his process to bail her out.

When she brought home the extra collars, though, Pepper had nearly cried she was so happy with them. Natasha thought she might be offended, some subs would be because they cherished their collars, but Pepper was just happy to have more options than the simple black one Natasha picked up initially. She had no clue what to get so she went with black because that was her go-to color, even if Pepper reminded her regularly that black was not a color. And that she didn’t need to be perpetually prepared to attend a funeral. Natasha thought otherwise, you never know when someone will surprise you and die and she was prepared for the event every day of the week. It was forward thinking, Pepper.

“Fine. I guess some people do that. Can we get to the eyebrow plucking already? I get it, use a safe word if I don’t like you ripping hair off my face.” Pepper gives her a look, one she usually reserved for Tony, so she settles in her spot and leans back on the couch so Pepper could see her eyebrows. This grooming your Dom thing was also completely lost on her but Pepper insisted it was an intimate thing and Natasha was happy to indulge her. It wasn’t a hardship and she was apparently going to get good eyebrows out of it. She didn’t even know eyebrows mattered until Pepper brought it up. She figured having them was enough but she guessed wrong.

Pepper looks down at her for a long moment but eventually starts moving when Natasha raises an eyebrow. She carefully draws out a design, which Natasha thought was overkill, but she lets Pepper work. At leas until she ripped a few hairs out and Natasha pulls her head off that couch at warp speed, “ouch, what the hell Pep? Are you secretly a sadist or something ow.” She rubs her eyebrow while Pepper lets her adjust.

“Are you going to be alright?” Pepper asks and she sounds so gentle that Natasha relaxes some.

“I’m fine, but you could have warned me that that would hurt,” she mumbles before settling back into her seat.

“Natasha, I’m plucking your eyebrows, of course that’s going to hurt,” Pepper says. Well how the hell would she know, she’s never plucked her eyebrows.

“Well now I know I guess.” She eyes Pepper suspiciously for a moment and Pepper leaves her be until she relaxes some.

“Are you okay?” she asks. Natasha finds the question unnecessary but Pepper was treating the question seriously so she did too. She nods, Pepper goes back to plucking, and she goes back to complaining the whole time. “Natasha Romanov, I have seen you come home with stab wounds and to my horror you stitched the wounds yourself. You can handle some plucking! If you can’t then use that safe word we’ve been spending so much time arguing about, and if you can then stop complaining,” Pepper tells her before ripping out some more hairs.

“Ow! That hurts you know.” She resists the urge to rub her poor brow because Pepper was currently over grooming the poor thing.

“Yes, I do because I pluck mine too. Now look at your eyebrow, it’s done but I still have to do the other one. If you let me,” she says, handing Natasha a mirror.

She lied about eyebrows not being important, that was a fucking nice brow. It looked like a professional, it probably had a job and a family and shit. This was a responsible eyebrow.

“I can leave you like that if you don’t want me to do the other brow,” Pepper says and she means it too. Natasha is insulted that Pepper would allow her Dom to leave the house looking like this.

“Pepper, this eyebrow is a good eyebrow. Its like a CEO eyebrow, and it’s been in Forbes too, not like it slutty cheap sister to the fucking right. This eyebrow?” Natasha says, pointing to her freshly plucked left brow, “this brow is working tirelessly to support her family and this brow,” she says, pointing at her right brow, “this eyebrow is the family disappointment. She started wearing less and going out more, hanging with some girls I’ve never seen before, she probably steals money and she’s the reason Drake was sad enough to write Hotline Bling. You can’t let me leave the house like this. Unless you really are a sadist and you want to see me in pain, because I can assure you that will happen with a beautiful brow on one side and nature’s turd on the other.”

By the time she’s finished her rant Pepper is doubled over laughing and Natasha smiles, pleased that she drew such a strong reaction out of the usually severe woman. Maybe this ‘groom your Dom’ thing wasn’t so bad after all.

*

Wade stares at the ceiling strapped down onto a table in the most unsexy of ways. He loved bondage before this but this asshole had to come along and take a giant steaming shit on that. Fucking dicknugget.

“Hey Wilson. Remember pancakes?” the guy in the next… curtained area because these sick fucks couldn’t even be bothered to give them rooms in this hell hole, asks.

“Hell yeah I remember pancakes, with chocolate chips and bananas,” he says. Peter made the best pancakes and no matter how hard Vanessa and Wade tried they could never recreate them. Usually they ended up abandoning the stupid things to burn and fucking. Peter usually saved them from lighting the house on fire with the food and because he is a good person he’d usually make them the damn pancakes.

“Remember blowjobs. Never been my favorite but my dick has been so neglected here I’d take a handjob from a construction worker, the calluses would add to the experience,” he says. God, he was willing to all but sandpaper his dick, this place was ruining him. Shit, who was he kidding; he was ruined long before he got here.

“Oh man I’d fuck a donut at this point, is that fucked up? Probably. Remember the sky?” his figurative curtain mate asks.

“I’ve always been a night owl honestly but now I miss the sun,” he says.

“The sun was warm. This place is fucking freezing, like death.”

Yeah, Wade remembered the sun on his face too, warming his skin. He used to hate it then but Peter functioned like a normal human so sometimes he had to do stuff during the day. Peter used to roll his eyes when he and Vanessa would crawl out of bed, blinking slowly and avoiding the sun like they were vampires.

“I miss my kids,” his curtain mate whispers.

“I miss my Doms. I took off without telling them where I was going and now I realize how much of a fucking stupid move that was,” he says, blinking back the tears in his eyes. The fuck good would crying do him now? Bucky was right, he was being stupid and now it was too late to turn back. At least Peter is a switch, he could renegotiate his relationship with Vanessa and they wouldn’t have to split or try and find another sub to replace him or something. Even if he did hope they moved on, even if it meant replacing him.

“Me too. They probably think I abandoned them or something thanks to these fucking shitbags,” the guy wheezes out, coughing. God, Wade hoped he didn’t die off; he was all that brought him joy in this shit pit.

“Yeah well my Doms flat out know I ran out on them. I stayed with a friend for a solid week before I ended up here. He tried to talk me out of it too, not coming here, just running. I didn’t want them to see me die and now… now all they have left is me running out on them. I’m a fucking idiot.”

“We both are,” his curtain mate says, at least trying to halfass comfort him. That was sweet, he guessed. That’s when they hear the footfalls and fall silent as Captain Jackass walks in. Guy claimed his name was Francis but Wade knew that was total shit.

“Aww, Wade Wilson crying. Finally, I thought you would never break,” he says with a fucking cocky grin on his face. Wade resists the urge to rattle around in his restraints because he couldn’t break out to strangle the guy like he wanted to anyways.

“It’s cute that you think you broke me,” Wade sneers at him, lip curling to bare his teeth.

“Didn’t I?” Francis asks and Wade laughs harshly. No, he didn’t, Wade has been fucked up for so long he didn’t actually remember a time when he wasn’t fucked up. Maybe he was born broken, who knew.

“No, fuckface, you aren’t that special,” he snarls at Francis.

“Watch your mouth,” the man warns, sounding serious.

Wade laughs harshly, “or what? The problem with twenty four hour torture is that you can’t really up your game from there. You’ve got nothing to keep me silent and the only thing I’ve got left to loose is my life and that would be a relief. Feel like indulging a guy?” he asks in a snarky tone.

Francis grins slowly and leans forward like he knew something Wade didn’t. Something has changed. “Oh, see the problem with your current predicament is that you’ve had breaks. As it turns out I can step it up from here, would you like to know how?” he asks, laughing in Wade’s face.

“Not really, no,” Wade says honestly but he covers the true admission with snark to make it sound like he was being an ass instead of a coward.

“Too bad,” Francis says, fake frowning at him. He starts moving shit around and Wade silently prays he dies quick. A.I.M, yeah right, advanced ideas his ass, torture has been around since forever, they didn’t invent being shitty people though they might take the shittiest cake.

“What the hell are you even doing with us?” he asks finally, lost on what the hell all this torture and injecting shit into his body was supposed to even do.

“We told you, we’re making you better,” Francis says, snickering at him.

Wade makes a face, “god, you are so fucking skeezy,” he says as he gets wheeled off into god knows what.