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The metal door closes with a grating clang, cutting off the bright light from the corridor and leaving Phil in the gloom of his filthy cell, listening to the voices of his kidnappers fade with their steps. The stink doesn’t bother him – he’s been in more war zones that he can shake a rifle at, he’s seen worse. The idea that his inept kidnappers expect him to break, just because they’d removed every stitch and scrap of clothing off him and left him tied to a chair in a room that has obviously been used for torture sometime in the recent past, is—laughable. Even before his SHIELD induction, Phil used to be a Marine. He has had more training withstanding various unpleasant interrogation techniques than he can make an effort to remember right now.
Besides. The chair he’d been pushed onto still has a seat (Casino Royale had not been the first time Phil had seen that particular method of questioning, and he’d actually been impressed that the movie’s producers had had the balls to show it), and as for the knots they’d used to secure his wrists and ankles to the sides? Phil shakes his head as the rope slides to the floor and he can stand up, stretch his limbs, work his aching muscles while he winces as his new cuts and bruises make themselves known. The freezing cold is really the only thing that bothers him about this place. He’d worked up a bit of a sweat getting here from his drop point, and his muscles take the chill as an invitation to seize and cramp on him when he tries to fight the shivers. He’d do well to get out of this room and find the nearest guards, fast.
With that in mind, he gives the door his undivided attention, runs his fingers over the lock, feels the hinges for weaknesses. Hah! He knew it. He turns to walk back to the chair – if he rams the back under the gap between the door and the floor and heaves, the door ought to pop clean out of its jamb. Seriously, amateurs. If it were Phil in charge of this facility, the first thing he’d have done is raise the floor so the gap is no longer an issue—
The door comes flying open with a tortured creak, barely giving Phil enough time to flatten himself against the wall at the back of the room and squint at the outline of an armed man in the blinding light.
“Sir? Coulson?” Barton whispers, eyes glinting as he takes in the room. He sounds so hopeful that Phil doesn’t have the heart to fight the impulse to step forward, reassure him.
Barton’s jaw actually drops when Phil pushes away from the dark corner and takes a few steps towards him, moving into the circle of light from the open door. It serves the dual purpose of reminding Phil he’s buck-ass naked, as well a warming him up a little when his entire body flames from the realisation. (He’s sure Barton can’t see this in the dim light. Positive.) This… is not exactly the way he’d figured Barton would see him naked for the first time. (That he would, Phil hadn’t bothered doubting. They’d been headed that way since the day they met, when Phil had guided an agent safely home from a suddenly hostile area and Barton had dropped in front of him from the overhanging roof like some kind of impossibly hot spider-man, smirking approvingly when Phil didn’t flinch. Phil had only held off because naked wasn’t the only thing he wanted to get with Barton, and he’d wanted them to get to know each other first, give them both a better chance of making this work.) But perhaps now is as good a time as any, and Barton seems like he’s definitely enjoying the view, so Phil simply does not allow his state of undress to faze him.
“Hey,” Phil says casually, relishing the way Barton’s eyebrows rise in incredulity. “Let’s get moving, I’m starving. There’s a nice Italian place two blocks from the hotel they stuck me in as cover, and I’ve a hankering for pizza. I’ll even put up with the ham-and-pineapple monstrosity I’m sure you’re going to order just to spite me.”
Barton is still staring at him, but the corners of his mouth rise when Phil makes a show of closing in on him, stalking right into his space – and deftly liberating the back-up gun from the holster on Barton’s right hip. His fingers run over the shape of it, comforted by its familiarity. He doesn’t bother checking whether it’s cleaned and loaded – this is Barton. Protocol is always superfluous when it comes to him.
Then Phil makes himself step back, loathe as he is to relinquish the warmth of Barton’s body close to his; the temptation to burrow into his chest, seeking more of it, is almost overwhelmingly strong. There will be time aplenty to do so later, when he has all the time in the world to let Barton make sure he is thoroughly toasty, like he knows Barton will insist. For now, there is the small issue of getting away from wherever the wannabe bad guys had dragged him to.
The door is hanging off its lock when Phil makes his way past the threshold, confirming his original estimate of the shameful condition of its hinges. Not even the strongest lock can compensate for that. He pokes his head out of the gap, then takes a decisive step forward and fires two shots neatly through the heads of the guards that had been coming round the corner, weapons held casually across their chests. They didn’t even have time to bring them up, and Phil thinks with possibly a bit too much smugness that they certainly hadn’t expected to encounter a denuded guy holding a gun and shooting straight.
“Villains these days,” he mutters disappointedly as he crouches over them and starts methodically stripping off their pants, long-sleeved t-shirts and parkas.
Behind him, there’s a choked snort, followed by Barton’s amused drawl telling all agents to come in and finish cleaning up the mess. “I've got Coulson, safe and sound and making the rest of us look bad,” he adds, clicking off his comm and smirking outright as Phil pulls on a pair of pants and a shirt that clings a bit too tightly to his shoulders. “If you missed me so much, Sir, all you had to do was say something. You didn’t have to clean out an international smugglers ring just to get me to fly over.”
Phil shrugs, fighting his own smile. “Two birds with one stone,” is what he decides to go for, because, hell, he’s done dancing around this thing – and he’s pretty sure there’s more than just left-over adrenaline talking. “You know how I like efficiency.”
“Oh, yeah, Sir, I love it when you talk dirty,” Barton says happily, low and easy and so damn fond that Phil wants to shove him against the nearest wall and kiss him until neither of them can breathe. He lifts an eyebrow instead and jerks his head at the far end of the corridor, listening with satisfaction as Barton falls into step with him.
“You’d better behave, or I’m not letting you steal any of my pizza when you get bored with your own,” he warns him, and doesn’t bother to do anything other than not-laugh at the way Barton scoffs at that.
“Lies, Sir. You’d let me steal a lot more than just pizza and you know it.”
“No reason to get complacent. Working for it is part of the lesson.”
“Oh, I’ll work for it, alright.”
Phil sternly tells the blood that is rushing into his face that he is thirty-eight years old and does not blush when the person he likes makes it perfectly clear that he likes him back. But Barton’s voice is sinful like that, and oh-so-tempting.
“You know what? I think they do takeaway, too.”
There’s a catch in Barton’s breathing at his back, a shuffle that might be the most graceful man Phil knows tripping over his feet.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Barton?”
“You read my mind.”