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Barton – Clint – has been in medical for barely two weeks, and he's apparently spending his waking hours formulating and attempting breaks for freedom.
“He can't go home unsupervised, and the barracks on-base just isn't an adequately supervised environment. He needs assistance with mobility, medication and day-to-day tasks,” explains Doctor Patil. She looks distinctly frazzled. “We've tried to explain this to him,” she adds, almost plaintively.
“He can come home with me,” Phil says, because his mouth is apparently running on autopilot today.
“Seriously?” Fury asks, when Phil gets called onto the carpet to explain his request for leave, or, if possible, permission to work from home.
“He needs the help,” Phil says weakly.
“If you plan on babysitting every time Barton gets injured, you might as well install a home office right now and be done with it,” Fury says, but he signs the forms anyway.
So.
He packs what he needs from his desk with care, ensuring he's got his laptop, his tablet, his phone, all of their cables, his portable drive, and his code chip to log on to SHIELD's databases remotely. Then he swings past Barton's tiny single at the barracks and stuffs the gymbag he finds deflated in the closet with a variety of clothing, toiletries and shoes. A rummage through the bedside cabinet produces a case with a couple of sets of hearing aids and spare batteries, which he tucks into a pocket on the side. A book with a plethora of dog-eared pages goes on top, and the lot gets lumped down to Phil's car and stuffed into the trunk.
When he turns up on the ward, Clint is sleeping the sleep of the medicated. The head nurse looks mildly guilty but also mutinous, so Phil just bites his lip to keep in any hard words about them drugging Clint into passivity, and signs Clint out. After all, this little experiment might go horribly wrong, and he might find himself dosing Clint's chocolate milk just to get some peace.
The hearing aids are still on the cabinet, so Phil wakes Clint with a gentle squeeze-and-shake to an area of his shoulder he knows isn't broken or bruised.
“Hey,” he says, when Clint's eyes flicker open and land on him.
“Hey,” Clint replies, foggy and too-loud. “I think they roofied me. Applesauce.”
Phil manages not to laugh, but can't keep back a smile. He bunches his fingers and thumb together, touches his cheek, moves his hand towards his ear and touches his cheek again. “Home?” he says aloud.
Clint's brow furrows, and he mimics the sign Phil makes, only his hand is different, more like the letter 'D' in the alphabet, his index finger extended and his middle finger and thumb touching.
Phil frowns, too. “Wrong?” he asks, holding his hand with thumb and pinkie extended, rolling his knuckles across his chin. He drops his closed fist to his sternum and rubs his chest. Sorry.
Clint shakes his head, a short, abrupt movement. Sign D-O-R-M, he signs, then repeats the sign he'd made. Not sign H-O-M-E, he signs, and replicates Phil's sign exactly.
It's Phil's turn to shake his head. Home YES, he signs emphatically, knowing he's probably murdering his word order. Mine, you-and-me.
Clint's confusion is evident when he touches his forehead with his fingertips and sticks out his pinky and thumb as he moves it away. Why?
Phil shrugs. He's been asking himself that, if he's honest. Instead, he points his forked index and middle fingers at Clint in the strictly-ASL but fairly-universal sign implying he needs to keep an eye on him.
Clint huffs and rolls his eyes, reaching a clumsy hand out to slap around and recover his hearing aids. “Admit it, you just want me around because I'm pretty,” he says aloud, letting his free hand circle over his face to emphasise his point in both languages. “And because you heard on the SHIELD gossip tree that I'm great in the sack.”
Clint has at least a dozen stitches, a splint on one leg and the bruises on his exposed skin are in that unpleasant yellowy-brown stage of healing. He's still too pale, and he's visibly lost muscle tone in the two weeks since Phil met him.
He's also undeniably beautiful, and he's Phil's soulmate. Phil's idle fantasies about meeting his soulmate had always vacillated between 'slow, dewy-eyed, sweet courtship' and 'desperate, raw, take-me-now passion'. (Heavily weighted to the latter, if he's honest.)
His soulmate being held together with tape and twine was never part of the picture.
“Maybe sweet-talk me when you can make good on your promises,” Phil says with a warm, crooked smile as he loads Clint into a wheelchair.
He thinks that it's possible Clint's hand ends up on his ass for balance purposes, but he doubts it.
*
It's easier to communicate than it was those first few days, since Clint's hearing has come back a little and the doctors okayed him to start using his hearing aids again. He's been sticking with the over-ear ones, because it meant he didn't have to have a dehumidifier at his bedside. Phil had done a run down to supplies for batteries, and the tiny television had had closed captions, so until the cabin fever had set in, Clint'd been pretty happy.
Now that they're back at Phil's cluttered but cosy studio apartment, Clint has a choice.
“The BTE's are better, anyway,” he says, when he's swapping out batteries and tucking everything away into their cases in the drawer Phil'd cleared out, just for him. “They're just vulnerable to loss or breakage if I'm fighting hand to hand, so I have the ITE's for that. Or for if I have to go in undercover as a hearing person. They try not to do that to me, though,” he says with a grin. “I suck at it.”
The pair he'd had in the hospital had been matt black and had comms built in, his standard field ears. Clint's preferred 'off-duty' pair are a glossy deep purple. They're nowhere near as large as the clunky beige plastic aids Phil remembers seeing people wearing decades ago, but they're certainly not subtle.
In typical Clint style, they're bold, they're obvious, and they're unashamed.
Yeah, I'm Deaf, you wanna make something of it? they seem to proclaim.
“They're very you,” he says, and Clint's smile is cocky.
That smile does things to Phil's belly that they're still some time from being able to thoroughly explore, yet. Doctor's orders.
Doesn't mean Clint's not trying to hurry along the timeframe, skip the hours of physio and bedrest for something a little more fun.
*
Phil looks over from his tablet to glance down at Clint, who's snuggled in close again.
They're in front of the television, and since the choice was a) ear-splitting and painful to Phil or b) captions, Clint is reading the dialogue of an old re-run of Dog Cops. It's kind of domestic, which is weird in an itchy, new-skin way. It might be less confusing if Phil wasn't still making the effort to keep his touches fairly chaste.
“You're on my arm,” he says, nudging Clint with his shoulder and dropping his tablet to point at the trapped limb in question in Clint's field of vision.
“You're being so virtuous around me I'm touch-starved. You even banished yourself to the sofa, completely unnecessarily, I might add. Pet me or something,” Clint grumbles.
Phil sighs. “Get off my arm, and I will,” he says, slowly and distinctly.
Clint levers himself upright, wincing a little and looking at Phil as though he suspects it's a ruse. Phil just grabs a cushion to prop his tablet up, then stretches his freed arm out across the back of the sofa.
Clint doesn't need another invitation. He curls right in against Phil's body from knee to ribcage. His shoulder snugs into Phil's armpit, and Phil's arm curves down naturally across Clint's back.
It's nice.
And if Clint's hand ends up creeping from Phil's knee to under the cushion, high on his thigh, well, Phil's steady enough to be able to breathe through the thump of his heart and the burning flush on his cheeks. He even drops a casual kiss or two on the top of Clint's head, and each time, Clint's body does this tiny little wriggle that snuggles him in that little bit closer.
*
The mornings are becoming Phil's favourite time, he's not going to lie. Not because he's much of a morning person himself, but because Clint is even less of one, and once he's off the heavy painkillers and is able to move around the apartment on his own, morning-Clint is adorable.
Clint sleepwalks through the first few hours of waking like his brain's still tucked up in bed. He's permanently rumpled and he scowls at the sunlight creeping through the shades like it personally offends him. His bare toes peek from beneath the cuffs of loose pants that ride low on his hips, and coffee is the one and only thing on his mind.
Caffeine, caffeine, caffeine, he signs, his hands rubbing together with excitement, as he shuffles his way across Phil's wooden floors to the pot of dark liquid.
Phil glances over to check that Clint's wearing his aids before saying, “You always look like you're considering the switch to super-villainy when you do that. I think it's the avarice in your eyes.”
Clint pouts ridiculously and ferociously, and makes grabby hands, which needs no translation.
Phil smiles fondly, pours him a cup, and leans in to steal a kiss when he hands it over.
Oh.
Oh.
He hadn't meant to do that last part, but Clint's got a hand cupped around his jaw and is responding enthusiastically. Clint is actually setting the cup of coffee aside on the counter and looping his arms round Phil's waist, and, given it's his first coffee of the day, that's almost touching.
“Let's go back to bed, actual bed, together,” Clint mumbles against Phil's mouth. “I got my stitches out yesterday.”
“That's not as much of a turn-on as you think it is,” Phil says. He's got his hands on Clint's hips, and his thumbs have slipped under Clint's t-shirt to rub small circles on Clint's always-warm skin.
“Really?” Clint asks.
“Really,” Phil says firmly. He tries to be firm, but given he's nipping at the side of Clint's neck, he's not sure that comes across as well as he hoped.
Phil's pretty steady on his feet, he's got great scores in agility and hand-to-hand, but Clint spins him easily to press him against the counter.
“You say, not a turn-on,” Clint says, letting his hips press forward in a long, slow roll.
Phil's breath stutters out of his lungs. It rushes over the shiny, red, wet spot he'd left on Clint's neck, and Clint shivers. “You're recovering,” Phil protests, weakly. One of his hands has migrated up Clint's back, the other is definitely clutching his ass. There's no way he can deny that.
“I'm four days from being cleared for sexy-times. I'm meeting my PT requirements. I jerked off three times yesterday with no ill effects,” he says, and Phil's eyes sink closed.
“You're a menace,” Phil says, embarrassingly breathless.
“I am horny, and I'm gonna go blind as well as deaf if you don't lend me a hand here,” Clint says, the pout back on his face even as he grinds forward again. “Enough with the kid gloves, snap on the latex. Or not. I know you got my panels from the docs. And since I plan on giving this bonded thing a good hard go,” another thrust “so long as you're negative, too, you can have me any way you want me.”
There's a ringing in Phil's ears that's kind of annoying but probably an indicator for how out of hand the situation's gotten. Also, the red mark on Clint's neck is now a proper actual hickey, and there's a second spot next to it that's getting there. Oops.
“No having,” Phil says, trying to sound stern. “Not yet.”
Clint makes a grumbling, whiny sound that somehow thoroughly encompasses just how cock-blocked he's feeling. Phil pets him consolingly. It'd probably be more comforting if his hand wasn't still down the back of Clint's pants.
“I'd settle for a completely non-acrobatic blow-job,” Clint says sulkily.
“Okay,” Phil agrees, because he's got his limits, and apparently he's reached the point where he's willing to compromise the rules in favour of nakedness.
Clint's sunny, wicked smile as he tugs Phil towards the bedroom makes it totally worth it.