Chapter Text
When Clint opened his eyes he found himself still in that halfway-space between big and little. He needed to pee, though, and the gust of air from beside him made him jump. Warmth spread through his pants as he turned to stare at Phil, who was deeply asleep on Clint's side of the bed. He blushed, even though Phil clearly had no idea what Clint was up to, and fidgeted until he was done. The alarm clock on Phil's nightstand told him it was 9AM, which wasn't so bad considering he was taking the entire day, if not month off after the past week.
He kinda wanted to prod Phil awake, but the dark blue patches under his eyes told him not to, so instead he squirmed his way out of bed as quietly as possible, waddled into the bathroom and cleaned himself up. Showering felt good, like he'd washed off yesterday's embarrassment. He was still keenly aware that he didn't feel big, per se. He just felt like he ought to feel big. Which meant he should probably be big, he just… Wasn't.
He stood deliberating over his underwear drawer for a while. Wearing underwear seemed the most sensible thing to do, but he knew his track record when he didn't feel big. He dug out a pull up. It would hide away under his jeans just fine, and he didn't want to pee his pants in front of everyone. Daddy would be proud that he was doing this by himself, he thought, even though Daddy was asleep and had gone off to rescue South America from killer bees, or missed the last bus home or something.
He had cold pizza for breakfast along with a large cup of coffee and a glass of juice, because no one told him not to and pizza was a perfectly balanced meal, thanks, and then ended up on the living room carpet, digging through the box of toys for another Lego sign that didn't say "POLICE" on it because their fire station looked all wrong with the wrong sign.
"JARVIS?" He asked, and looked up at the ceiling even though that wasn't were JARVIS lived. "Does Tony have Lego's?"
"I believe he does. He is in his workshop currently, if you would like to see."
There was something soft in JARVIS' voice that Clint couldn't quite pin down, but whatever. He thought JARVIS was kinda amused by his antics, sometimes.
"'kay, tell him I'm coming to visit?" He replied, and then made his way out to the elevator. Phil had, at the very least, come home to sleep next to him. Things couldn't be that bad, could they? And besides, Clint had to keep occupied until he woke up. He'd drive himself nuts if he had to hang out and do nothing half the morning.
He'd been in Tony's workshop enough times to know that Tony didn't normally have a gigantic box of toys on the floor in front of the couch he had down there, but Tony was bent over it, digging like he was on a mission.
"I had a fire station before," he said, sounding perfectly normal. "But I took it apart and I think the sign is at the bottom?" He was in his jeans and a t-shirt again, and he looked perfectly Big today. Clint thought maybe him being Little was dragging Tony into his own headspace.
"I can help you," Clint offered, and they kneeled side by side for a while, until Clint found horses and Tony found swords and those were all fun, too. "I can make us a new sign," Tony said. "And we can put lights on it. Look, this is the only white horse so I think maybe it should be king?"
"Mr Banner has prepared lunch in the communal kitchen," JARVIS interrupted them a little while later, and they both blinked and looked up like they'd woken from a deep trance. "Can I leave the stable here?" Clint asked. Tony nodded and shoved the whole tray under the couch where it wasn't immediately visible. They got to their feet, shook out the stiffness of having been still for a while, and made their way towards the kitchen together.
Phil was there, and Clint stiffened at the sight of him, but pretended he hadn't noticed and got in line after Tony to get rice. Bruce ladled it up on plates for them like it was a school lunch, and he managed to snatch the seat right next to Tony, with Steve on the other side.
He snuck little peeks up at his Daddy between bites of curry, but Phil looked too busy to notice. He was discussing the situation in Bolivia with Natasha, who didn't seem all that interested, really. Her eyes darted between the two of them, like she was trying to figure something out. Clint swallowed down the lump in his throat, and pushed the last few bites of chicken around on his plate. Steve patted his thigh, and Tony scowled at his rice. Clint felt like he'd manipulated them both into some weird "Avengers Against Agent"-campaign, and that felt a little dumb, too, but Daddy hadn't even given him a kiss hello even though Clint had been waiting for him for days.
Finally, when Phil turned to Bruce to compliment the food Clint couldn't take it anymore, and got quietly to his feet so he could stalk out of the room back towards Tony's workshop. The horses tipped over when he pulled the tray of lego out from underneath the couch, but his hands shook too much to right them properly, and finally he just rested his forehead on his knees and fumed instead. His pull-up was maybe a bit damp, too, though he couldn't remember when that had happened, and the warm food had made him drowsy even though the churning in his stomach seemed to be pushing tears out of his eyes without his help. His belly didn't seem to care that he was probably overreacting and that it wasn't Phil's fault that Clint felt little and icky, and that Steve had had to come in and take care of him and wash his sheets.
Tony came in after a while. He sat down beside Clint, leaning against the couch like he'd done earlier. He didn't say anything for a few minutes, just kept digging for knights and helmets in the box of people he had in front of him. Clint tried to rub his face dry with his knuckles, but he was pretty sure his face was all red and blotchy anyway.
"Steve got a little upset and they're all talking right now," Tony said quietly, and Clint unburied his face from his jeans and looked at him. "In front of the others?" He asked in a trembling voice, and Tony gave him a funny look. "'course not, they're downstairs in our living room."
"Oh."
They were quiet for a bit again, just building and listening to the whirs and clicks of the workshop. Dummy had a few lego bricks, too, and was trying to piece them together enthusiastically.
"Sometimes I don't go Big right away, either," Tony said. "Yeah," Clint replied. "But your Daddy doesn't forget that you sometimes go little either, right?" Tony shrugged. "No, but it's my job to let him know when it feels like I'm about to, or if I want to."
"I'm no good at that," Clint mumbled.
"Hi, boys," Phil said, looking a little nervous and a lot tired. He was leaning against the doorway, looking uncertain of his welcome. He still had those rings under his eyes, Clint noticed. "I think we need to talk?"
Clint squirmed, and Tony scowled at Phil. "Clint?"
"'kay," Clint mumbled, but couldn't help the tears that suddenly started filling his eyes again, because the lump in his stomach seemed to grow the closer he got in proximity to Phil.
Phil didn't say anything on their way down. Clint stood beside him in the elevator, his head repeating over and over he left without saying anything, until he was fuming again. He stomped his feet childishly when the doors opened. He wanted to see Phil's reaction, wanted him to look like he was upset by Clint's anger, but when he looked back and Phil was hanging his jacket up on a coat hanger like he always did the lump twisted violently behind his ribs instead. Clint kicked off his sneakers so they bounced off the hallway wall, and that did it. Phil shook his head warningly. "That's not okay, kiddo. I get that you're angry, but we don't do that."
Clint scowled.
Phil sighed. "I'm going to make some coffee. Would you like a cup?"
Clint blinked, because Phil never let him have coffee when he was little. "Huh?" He said, and Phil turned around to really look at him. "What?"
"Never mind," Clint replied, and turned to go to the bedroom so he could change his pants without Phil knowing. For the first time in a very long time when it was just the two of them, he felt uncertain and icky about having had an accident, even though Phil had never said a bad word about his little problem. He passed Phil in the kitchen, rooting through the cupboards.
"Would you like the green or the blue cup?" Phil asked, and Clint scowled so hard he wasn't sure his face could physically put his eyebrows closer to his nose. "Wait for me in the living room, please," Daddy called, and though Clint wanted to keep stomping around and make it clear he was really, really upset, the living room seemed as good a spot to fume as any. The squish in his pants when he sat down gave him almost vindictive pleasure. That's what you get for not paying attention, he thought, and then immediately felt guilty and embarrassed. He felt the cushion beneath him surreptitiously, but it felt dry.
Phil came in moments later with Clint's green sippy cup and his own yellow coffee mug. The plastic felt lukewarm to Clint's touch, and when he sipped at it he couldn't help but give Phil a genuinely surprised look. It was filled with sweet, milky, chocolate-y coffee. He squirmed, and Phil squeezed his knee.
"I didn't forget, you know," he said in that slightly hoarse voice that Clint loved so much. "It's just that I don't have that timer inside of me that tells me when you need to play."
Clint couldn't help but squirm, because they'd had this conversation maybe a million times already.
"Although I will confess I dropped the ball this past week. I'm so sorry, Clint, I meant to call you, but by the time I remembered that I hadn't we'd already gone behind enemy lines, so to speak. No radio contact."
Clint fidgeted even more, and turned the sippy cup upside down to see if it would drip on his pants just for the sake of it. Phil tugged it away from him, and held it against his dark grey suit pants. Clint picked at his cuticles instead, to avoid looking Phil in the eye.
"And that's a shitty excuse, I know. I'm very glad Steve and Tony were here, but maybe next time you could let me know that you're waiting for me to take the first step?"
"That wouldn't be you taking the first step," Clint whispered.
Daddy watched him for a little while. "I didn't know you needed Little-time," he said, and Clint only just managed to keep from pouting at him outright.
"I forget to call you all the time, but you already know where 'm goin' a'cause you're my boss," Clint muttered, and Phil closed his eyes for a moment. "So you already know where I go, but I didn't, and then you were gone and I had a cut on my arm and I hadn't even been little for weeks, and all the sheets were wet, and -" on some level he knows he's making a hash of explaining to Phil why he'd been upset, but this is what it's like, being stuck right in the middle. He can't always find all his words and things just happen.
"Do you think we could try to do this weekend over again? Like a do-over?" Phil asked, his voice soft like it was when he wanted Clint to know he was trying to be honest and home-Phil instead of work-Phil.
Clint shrugged.
"Only if you remember to tell me before you go away to keep half of Southern America from collapsing in a big pile of pyramids and drug lords," he mumbled around the index finger that kept sneaking into his mouth. Phil snorted.
"Yeah. Yeah, I can do that."
They sat in silence for a few moments, the lump behind Clint's chest bone somehow lessening in size and leaving a large, sleepy void instead. He yawned. Phil smiled at his hands, still holding Clint's cup.
"'m wet," Clint whispered finally, because his pants felt cold and wet and uncomfortable now, and Phil nodded. "I know. I think it's time for a cuddle anyway, huh?" He did that thing where he pinched his hand around Clint's neck and shook a little, and Clint squeaked at the way it tickled. "Dooon't," he laughed, as Phil's hand squirmed in under his sweater and tickled his belly. "I'm gonna leak, Daddy, and it'll be your fault," he laughed. "Probably too late for that," Phil laughed, and Clint blushed. "Come on, kiddo. Changing time."
"Steve was really nice to me," he said a while later after Phil had cleaned him up and dragged them both into the bedroom to have a nap in their borrowed sheets, "but he's not you."
Phil smiled, a tired sort of smile that was only for Clint. "And he didn't read me a story, either."
"Wow," Phil replied. "I should report Captain America to the police."
"Uh-huh," Clint muttered, trying to keep his eyes open even though Daddy was doing that thing where he scraped his nails gently down his back. He kept hitting the edge of the diaper that was sticking out of Clint's pants, but it was too comfortable and pleasant for him to get very embarrassed about it.
"But he had dry sheets and Tony has Lego horses."
"Yeah," Phil said. "Those are good too."
Clint spent a moment staring up at Phil's blue eyes.
"So you're really not tired of your Clint?"
Phil's fingers stilled for a second, but then repeated their slow trip up and down his back.
"Never," he whispered, "though if I ever forget to let you know I'm off to war again, I should probably let you know that neither you, Steve or Tony need to kick me in the kidneys, because Natasha will probably get there first, and I'm pretty sure Thor cursed me to turn into a toad if I overstep. I'm really sorry."
"'s okay, Daddy. I maybe wet the couch a little bit and I think there are legos in the washer and we're out of watermelon shampoo and 'm sorry, too."
Phil didn't quite know what kind of forgiveness that would translate into when Clint felt bigger again, but as far as peace offerings went, it wasn't so bad.
"That's okay. We can clean all that up."
"And I want a fire station lego kit."
Ah, Phil thought as he drifted off. Bribery. The secret to forgiveness.