Headcanons - nyargles (defractum) - The Avengers (Marvel Movies) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Phil sleeps on an enormous king sized bed, the first piece of furniture he'd bought when he'd moved into this apartment. He'd bought it half with the intention of maybe one day having someone to share it with, and half with the defiance that he would never share any of this glorious space with anyone, ever. He'd had to eat whilst sitting cross-legged on the carpet, leaning against the bare, painted walls and his clothes stayed neatly packed in suitcases, but that hadn't bothered him.

These days though, Phil sleeps neither alone nor with a partner. Instead, there are usually two to six furry lumps on there with him. Clint and Natasha are the only two that always, always follow Phil to bed. Clint curls himself up into a bobble of fur next to Phil's head, tail flicking against Phil's chin as he drops off, and sometimes falls between the fat pillows sometime during the night. He'll wake up in the morning and fight his way back out with little grumpy cheeps, but it never stops him from sleeping right there.

Natasha takes the space on Phil's left. She spreads out, all four paws stretched in different directions. When she'd first arrived, she had curled up into a tiny ball in the corner of the room and it had taken two months of shamelessly bribing her with salmon cat food to get her onto the bed.

Tony had a habit of zonking out wherever he was playing, be that on the bed (hopelessly tangled between Phil's legs) or across the sofa or, one memorable time, in the shower. These days though, he tends to gravitate towards the bed, mostly because of Steve and Bruce.

Steve gives everyone licky-kisses before going to sleep. It's his version of counting everyone off and making sure they are all safe, and it's easier to do if they're all in the one room. He'd started off a puffball next to Natasha but then he had his growth spurt and had respectfully moved over to Phil's other side so that Natasha didn't have to give up any space. Steve can also fall asleep in pretty much any position possible, as Phil finds out one time when he is doped up on the good drugs after a mission and spends two hours playing with Steve's limbs in fascination, seeing how much he could move before he woke up.

Bruce is a creature of habit and tends to plop down at the end of the bed. Phil sometimes tickles him with his toes in return for Bruce always willing to act as a wonderfully furry foot heater. Bruce likes being tickled, and emits a rumbly sort of purr. (This means that between his two favourites, Steve and Bruce, Tony often spends the nights taking up as much of Phil's space as possible.)

Last is Thor, who doesn't see the point of having a regular space. He regularly rotates around and sleeps next to – or on top of – whomever he feels like, although after Natasha cracks open one eye and flashes her delicate claws, he no longer tries to steal her space.

Waking up in the morning adds an extra five minutes to Phil's various daily work-outs. He has an optimal path out of the bed plotted out in his head, and he gives himself points based on how few cats wake up and grumble at him for disturbing the peace. (Making Bruce grumble gets him double minus points because Bruce has the patience of a saint.) He's still never got full points, because Clint will inevitably clamber out from the pillows and curl himself around Phil's neck as he's still trying to pull his legs out from underneath Tony, because Clint likes to shower with him. One time, Phil forgot to take Clint in with him after a day of training exercises. When Phil got out, Clint got into the shower, sat in the middle and screeched angrily until Phil let him have a go too.

Mornings are now a whirlwind of activity for Phil. They used to be him rolling out of bed, sleepily running through his usual sets of morning work-outs, eating as he scrolls through anything in his emails marked URGENT (but wasn't evidently urgent enough to wake him up for during the night) and then heading into the office. Now, Phil has do to all of that with an extra twenty minutes to spare, because the rest of the time is spent chivying the cats into waking up and getting into the car.

He could, of course, leave them at home for the day, but there are two good reasons he doesn't. The first is that half of them (Natasha, Tony, Bruce) get really unhappy if he leaves them behind, and he'll get home and they'll ignore him for hours in a sulk. That's just unnecessary guilt. The second is that they will wreak havoc. Clint steals out of the fridge, Tony steals everything else, Thor steals food from Clint and it all ends with Natasha on top of a pile of everything stolen, hissing and refusing to share as Clint, Tony and Thor yowl. This makes Bruce run away and hide, usually in the bathroom sink which is very soon clogged up with long cat hairs and Steve run around in circles trying to make them behave with a combination of nose nudges, whimpering and biting.

(Maria spends one whole day of her downtime camped out in Phil's office on the arm of his office chair, watching his Catcam in utter fascination as he works.)

Phil will come home to Bruce shivering in the sink; Natasha smugly curled on a nest of empty leftover containers and all the cushions off the sofa; Clint next to her, the floor around them littered with the carcasses of all the bugs he had to kill in the air vents to bribe her into sharing; Thor and Tony grumbling under the sofa; and Steve lying in the middle of the floor, exhausted and hassled, and everyone very much in need of cuddles. So yes. Phil doesn't do that any more.

Headcanons - nyargles (defractum) - The Avengers (Marvel Movies) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)
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