Chapter Text
Phil swung gently from his rope and considered all the life choices that had led him to this point. Not in a regretful way, more just...wondering why significant moments in his life lately seemed to end or begin with the same ridiculous scenario: him, suspended by his ankles over a vat of something dangerous and painful.
And this was definitely a significant moment, or it would have been if they hadn't ended up here. Tonight was supposed to have been the night he and Clint finally had sex. They'd waited long enough - more than long enough a tiny voice had been telling Phil for a while - and Phil had let a week pass after the sex pollen incident before talking to Clint, just to be sure that he'd made the decision entirely without any chemical influence. He'd considered it from every angle, thought long and hard about the last few months, and come to a startling realisation: they'd gone past the point where things falling apart would be anything except excruciatingly painful and adding sex to the mix wasn't going to change that.
Therefore the logical choice was to stop putting it off and just...do it. Let the relationship progress and make the moment right and memorable for both of them. Make it worth all the waiting.
The part Phil had conveniently forgotten was exactly how ridiculous their lives could be, which was the only explanation for why he was currently reliving this scenario rather than learning the taste of Clint`s skin. Sometimes it felt like fate had a sadistic sense of humour when it came to his personal life.
"You know, this was a lot more fun the last time."
OK, this time it wasn't quite the same set-up because Clint was also hanging up somewhere behind him. Phil tried again to twist around so he could at least see Clint, but all he managed to do was make himself swing in a sort of uneven circle that made his stomach lurch uncomfortably. He had to rely on Clint's voice to give him some clue about how the other man was faring.
"I'm not saying last time was my favourite thing we've ever done," Clint continued, "but at least you were up here and I was down there. I get why you couldn't rescue yourself now."
"You didn't understand before?" Phil asked.
"Hey, your badass competency is a big part of why we were supposed to be having sex tonight," Clint said cheerfully. "Watching you do your super-agent thing is such a turn on, makes me think all kind of inappropriate things. I figured last time you were just tired or woozy from all the drugs and that's why you didn't escape."
Phil's head was already throbbing from being suspended upside down so he couldn't blush, even if he still wanted to every time Clint said things like that.
"Are you saying you're not woozy from whatever they knocked us out with?" Phil asked curiously, focusing on that part because he was fairly sure this wasn't the right time to be encouraging Clint to flirt.
There was a short silence and then Clint said, "Maybe a little. Mostly I'm upside down with my hands tied behind my back and a huge vat of acid under me. The combination is making my brain a little fuzzy."
"You'll feel even worse when we finally cut down," Phil said tiredly. "Particularly if Stark is the one who finds us."
"Don't even joke about that," Clint warned. "You know what will happen."
"Give what's happened in the past, I don't really want to imagine."
Clint snorted and Phil wondered briefly where he found the breath to do that, except this was Clint: the man once made a living from doing tricks that included hanging upside down shooting arrows at things. If anyone could cope with being suspended by his ankles over a vat of acid for a few hours, it was Clint.
***
There was no way to keep track of time but Phil thought it was less than half an hour later when Clint sighed loudly.
"Are you alright?" Phil asked.
"This has been the weirdest two weeks of my life," Clint said. "Which is pretty fucking amazing considering what our lives are like normally."
"There was that time in Salem," Phil said thoughtfully. "That was an odd few days."
He couldn't see Clint but he could imagine the rolled eyes and curled lip that probably accompanied Clint's derisive grunt.
"That was the kind of weird we deal with now," Clint said. "Witches and monsters and reality turning into pink jelly, they're not as weird as they used to sound. And I'm starting to question our sanity levels when witches and pink goop become just another Tuesday in the office."
Phil couldn't help chuckling because Clint had a point. A couple of years ago, he would have called the psych department in if anyone had submitted the reports he now signed off as perfectly normal.
"What's starting to get weird is the way the entire universe seems to be determined to stop us doing anything more dangerous than holding hands," Clint continued. "I mean, we make the entirely rational post-sex-pollen decision that it we can handle some consensual, probably awesome, sex and bam. Nobody leaves us alone for five minutes."
Phil craned his neck, trying to see behind him to where Clint was hanging, but all he managed to do was make his head hurt more.
"It's not been that bad," he said weakly.
"Really." The flatness of Clint's voice said everything. "Thor. Bruce. Steve."
"It's unusual to have so many of my evenings spent counselling your teammates," Phil admitted.
Clint did have a point. It felt like all they'd done over the last two weeks - since the day Phil had invited Clint to bring an overnight bag on their next date, actually - was work far into the night and have their date nights thwarted by depressed Avengers on the rare nights when the bad guys stayed at home.
Thor had been the first one, somehow already sitting on Phil's sofa when he got home with Clint on their first free evening. Clint had taken one look at Thor's morose expression and bolted before Phil could say anything. Then there had been Bruce, calling into Phil's office just as he was about to leave for the evening and they'd ended up talking until the early hours.
Yesterday evening had brought Steve to Phil's door, looking distressed and in need of someone to talk to who wasn't equally unhappy (Bruce and Thor), overly sarcastic (Tony) or oddly absent from the Tower lately (Clint). Phil had been expecting Clint with a bag of Chinese food but it was Steve standing on his doorstep instead and how often was he likely to have his childhood hero looking to him for help?
Not to mention that with Steve looking at him earnestly, Phil hadn't been able to think of any good excuse and his entire brain rebelled at the idea of telling Steve Rogers, Captain America, to go away so he could have sex.
So he'd invited Steve in and sent a message to Clint while he was making coffee, feeling pathetically relieved when Clint's reply had been filled with understanding instead of irritation.
***
"You know, not criticising your planning here because the first part of tonight was pretty fucking amazing, but this definitely ranks as our worst date yet," Clint said a while later. "Getting trapped under a restaurant was actually a lot better than this. At least we could use the time productively. I can't even see whether you're shirtless or not because you're behind me. I'm assuming you're shirtless otherwise I'm questioning their bias here, given how happy they were to cut up the shirt I bought specially to wear for you, but most of the fun last time was because you're hot when you're partially naked. This is less fun."
"I think you're mistaking me for someone else," Phil said lightly.
"This is about the hot shirtless you thing, right?"
"Mostly."
"One day, I wish you could see what I see when I look at you. Because I'm pretty sure that you're not seeing what I am and that makes me sad sometimes."
Phil had to clear his throat a couple of times before he could reply. "The feeling is mutual."
Clint snorted. "Hey, I know that I've got a great ass."
"That's not what I meant."
There was a long silence before Clint said quietly, "Yeah, I know."
***
Clint was right; the first part of the evening had been great. Their first few attempts to get together had failed miserably but that only made Phil more determined to get everything right this time. They needed a plan, something more detailed than a decision to get takeout and not bother to set a make out timer.
Their first time together shouldn't be a quick fuck and a nap before rolling out of bed and heading straight into work, Phil had decided. That was obviously where they'd been going wrong for the last couple of weeks. It needed to be special. Memorable. Dinner and nice suits and all the other romantic clichés. They'd done the whole dating thing according to the rules so why had they tried to rush into the next stage?
So today Clint had gone back to Stark Tower to change after work while Phil went back to his apartment to clean and buy the ingredients for a meal they could cook together. When Clint arrived wearing a shirt that made his eyes even bluer and carrying an overnight bag, Phil had instantly decided they'd made the right choice.
The hunger in Clint's eyes had confirmed it and Phil had barely closed the door before Clint was backing him up against the wall and kissing the breath out of him. It had been so tempting to just throw dignity to the wind and rut against Clint until they both came right there in his hallway, but there was a plan. He had steaks and red wine and he'd even got out the good tablecloth for his kitchen table.
So he'd unwillingly pulled back from the kiss and said, "We should eat first."
"You planning on wining and dining me?" Clint had asked, nibbling at the spot just under Phil's jaw that made him shiver. "Because you don't have to, you've got me already."
"I was trying to make this special," Phil had protested.
Clint had lifted his head and fixed Phil with an oddly fond look. "That's...shit, Phil. Do you have any idea what it does to me that you'd care enough to do that?"
Their next kiss had made it more than clear exactly how Clint felt and Phil had smiled against his lips and conceded defeat, whispering that the food would keep until they were hungry for it. They'd stumbled down the hall into Phil's bedroom, fallen onto the bed and were in the middle of trying to unbutton Clint's shirt when both their cell phones had gone crazy at the same time.
"Now?" Clint had whined.
It was a reaction Phil could sympathise with but the urgently flagged messages they'd both received had forced them up and out of the apartment anyway.
***
There was a gap in Phil's memory after he'd stepped out of the building, but the small aching sting on his neck and the cotton wool sensation in his mouth had filled in the blank. That and the fact that he'd woken up suspended over a vat of acid again. Reconstructing the narrative wasn't really important when the key elements - rope, acid vat, empty warehouse - were all shouting loudly that whoever had taken them wasn't interested in killing them or getting information. It narrowed down the options a lot and Phil had quietly concluded they were most likely being held as a bargaining chip: someone wanted something and they were using him and Clint to get it.
Or nobody had expected to get both of them and now they were panicking, which was an even more worrying possibility. If that was the case, it raised questions about who had been the target of the kidnapping and what their captors were going to do with the extra body.
Underneath all those thoughts was the constant lurking worry about what was going on out in the rest of the world. He and Clint had both received emergency calls, that's why they'd been leaving the apartment originally, which meant that somewhere out there something was badly wrong and neither of them were there to stop it.
Phil could feel his headache worsening and he couldn't tell whether it was because his thoughts were going round in endless circles or from being upside down for so long.
Probably both, he admitted to himself.
There was a pained grunt from behind him and Phil tensed. This whole ordeal would be slightly easier if he could see Clint instead of having to rely on only what he could hear.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
Clint didn't answer immediately but there was another sound of pain and Phil barely restrained himself from fruitlessly trying to twist around again.
"I had an idea," Clint said eventually. "It was a bad idea."
"What was it?"
"Thought I'd try dislocating my shoulders and trying to get my hands over my head and in front of me," Clint said. "Then maybe I could reach my feet and figure something out from there."
"That sounds...painful," Phil said carefully.
"It is."
"Did it work?"
"Got myself a dislocated shoulder," Clint said tightly. "It always looked a lot easier when the acrobats were doing this."
"Are you going to be alright?"
"I'll get back to you on that."
"Clint-"
"Boss, I'll be..." Clint trailed away and paused for a moment. "Did you hear that?"
Phil frowned. Somewhere in the distance there was a faint noise, a low thumping. A moment later the sound came again, louder, and then much closer there was a sound Phil recognised.
"Cavalry's coming," Clint said. "Sounds like Stark and Thor for sure..." He trailed off and there was a moment of silence before he said in a sick tone, "Shit, Stark."
"I can definitely hear his repulsors," Phil agreed.
"He's going to laugh his ass off at this," Clint said.
"As I recall, when I was stuck up here and you were down there," Phil said, "you found the whole thing highly entertaining."
"I regret everything I ever said."
Phil had to smile slightly at that. "Everything?"
There was a long pause and then Clint said, "Well, no, not-"
His words were drowned out as a wall somewhere to Phil's left blew out with a loud concussion. The air filled with dust and Phil coughed, which sent him swinging wildly from his rope. Behind him, Phil could hear Clint choking and swearing and over all of the uproar there was the sound of Stark's laughter, amplified through the Iron Man helmet.
This was definitely entering the record books as the worst date night Phil had ever lived through.