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“What are we?” He asks the question softly, mouth pressed to his coffee cup, and she can’t tell if he’s scared or embarrassed or just trying not to be overheard in the half-empty coffee shop.
“You’re human,” she reassures him because this Coulson, or this not -Coulson, is probably worried about that.
“Okay.”
He looks at her for a long moment, like he’s putting together what she is, and a frisson of fear works up from her gut. It’s not something she’s felt because of Coulson since…really since she’s known him, since he showed up in her bunk and basically told her he’d help her even when they were fighting. To look at Coulson’s face and feel fear instead of deep security is…Terrifying.
“But,” he continues, like he’s shaken off something darker, “I mean, what are we to each other ?”
It seems like such a simple question, but it brings her up short.
“We’re…family.”
“Family,” he repeats. His mouth moves around the word, and then his lips move for a moment after.
“Neither of us really have anyone else,” she continues, but that feels cheap, like it’s about circumstances and not them. And even though this isn’t Coulson, somehow she can’t stand the thought that he would misunderstand how important they are to each other. “And we…We’ve always just gotten each other, you know? Like from the very beginning, we just kind of clicked.”
He nods once, almost like he’s agreeing, like this applies to him, to this pale shadow of Coulson.
“But we’re not related. You’re not my…”
He kind of cringes, doesn’t complete the sentence, and she’s not exactly sure how to feel about it or how he feels about it.
“No. Not related. Not, not exactly that kind of family.”
It’s never occurred to her to define exactly what kind of family they are.
He nods, though, like this isn’t weird even though it super is.
“I thought you’d be older.”
“You thought ?”
“I have...dreams?” Like he’s not sure all of the sudden, and like possibly things have happened in his dreams that makes her being his daughter extra wrong.
It’s not something she’s thought about before, not exactly, but she doesn’t hate the idea, if she’s honest, of Coulson – any version of Coulson, even this one – having dreams about her, like the kind that mean she’s definitely not his daughter.
“You dream about me?”
It’s only fair. She dreams about him a lot. Mostly appropriate. Sometimes not.
“Just…images. You in a black suit, and these blue aliens, and I just knew…”
“Yeah?” She prompts him when he doesn’t speak for a minute.
“I just knew I loved you.” His voice is so soft she almost can’t hear it, and it breaks something inside of her or maybe heals it or maybe both, she can’t even tell anymore.
“We love each other,” she agrees because that’s easy to agree to because she loves him and she’s never ever doubted that he loves her, too.
The real Coulson, anyways.
“But… How?”
He looks so worried about it, about the label that goes on it, on whatever it is between them. She wonders if real Coulson has worried like this, about what to call her, what to call the thing they share.
“Maybe when you’re…” She has to stop herself from saying ‘when you’re you again’ because it feels like a fucked up thing to say to someone, even if they’ve become this, become something they would hate, become everything they would hate. “Maybe when you remember everything, that’s a conversation we should have.”
There’s something almost eager, she thinks, in the way he nods, and she’ll never exactly trust this Coulson, not really, but maybe she can trust him enough to want something more than what he has right now.
“What are we to each other?”
“So we’re really gonna do this, huh?” She thunks down on the other side of the rec room couch and takes a small sip of her coffee before setting it on the table, suddenly terrified of this conversation. Like once there are labels involved, it might change things, or it might define things. And after the talk they sort of almost had in the framework, it's occurred to her that Coulson might be eager for a familial label that in she’s decided she definitely doesn’t want.
Not that she can, like, tell him that.
“You said we should,” he reminds her, then glances down at his coffee cup. “We don’t have to, if you’re –”
“It’s fine. We should do this.”
“You sound like you’re about to go into battle.”
“It’s scary, Coulson,” she acknowledges, and he nods once.
“In there, you said we’re family.”
“We are,” she answers, already defensive, maybe about him wanting them to be less, maybe about him wanting that to mean...
“Hey,” he reaches across couch, stretches his body to fill the gap she left between them, and touches her arm, soft and easy, and it settles her a bit. “You’re the closest thing I’ve had to family since my mom died.”
It makes her smile, and also want to cry a little. When she moves to face him, legs folded underneath her, it dislodges his hand, but he turns to face her, too.
“You’re the closest thing I’ve had to family pretty much ever," she acknowledges, something so vulnerable about telling him his importance to her, “and I’m scared of messing that up.”
“Because when you talk about a family, you’re not looking for a father.” He says it like he knows, like he gets it, like he’s considered it and he’s come to a conclusion, and she just can’t tell whether it’s a conclusion he’s happy with.
“No. Not really. Not… Not from you.”
She closes her eyes, afraid to even look at his face, but she hears him draw a short, nervous-sounding breath before he speaks again.
“For a while, I thought that was what you wanted.”
“Because it was what you wanted?”
“What I want doesn’t matter, Daisy.”
“That’s stupid,” she cuts him off, crueler than she meant to be, and then bites her tongue. “I mean, it matters to me, Coulson.”
He shakes his head, like he wishes that what he wanted didn’t matter to her, and it’s hard not to be annoyed.
“The you in the framework seemed a little weirded out that I wasn’t older. Is that –”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Whatever he was dreaming about was, though.”
He swallows, kind of half nods like he’s acknowledging her point, and then barrels in the other direction.
"What do you want to call this?”
“Is that important to you? That we call it something?”
He smiles, but it’s a sad kind of smile, and she’s not sure whether she’s more scared of ruining things based on defining things, or based on refusing to define things. But Coulson is scared, too, and somehow his vulnerability makes it easier to move towards him on the couch, an awkward scootch until she’s right beside him, still facing him, her calf pressed to his knee.
“I’ll tell you a secret, okay?”
He smiles at her, bemused maybe, but also happy, like he just wants her to tell him anything.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t hate the idea of you having dreams about me. Ones that maybe make you uncomfortable. I have those, too.”
His response is a slow breath sucked in through his mouth, and then he’s ridiculously still.
“Coulson?”
“Can I…kiss you?”
A knot in her chest loosens, and it’s not like she’s fully acknowledged this to herself before, that this is what she wants, but it turns out it probably definitely is. And it’s still scary, but also a lot less scary than she had worried this conversation would be.
"I thought you were weirded out by this," she says even as she gets closer, presses her leg harder against his and leans into him. It’s close in a way she doesn’t think of her and Coulson getting, close in a way that’s new, and even at this short distance he feels good.
"I was at first." He reaches forward and touches her, though, right hand on her shoulder, sliding down her arm.
“And then?” She leans into his touch, over him so she’s almost in his lap, and Coulson’s left hand reaches for her hip but pauses before it lands there. It doesn’t even occur to her that he’s nervous about the hand until she’s pressing it to her hip, and he exhales as his fingers flex into her.
Coulson shakes his head, and she watches his eyes dart down to where his fingers rest over her jeans. He can’t really feel it, she knows, but he looks fascinated anyways, especially when his fingers slip up just barely under her shirt.
“You’re Daisy,” he tells her, like this is something important, like she’s something important, and she kind of really, really loves the sound of her name when he says it like that.
“What does that mean?”
He shakes his head, eyes dip down away from her gaze and back to where his fingers are almost brushing against the skin just above the waist of her jeans. Maybe it’s too big a question to get at right now, or maybe it’s just really simple.
She kind of gets it anyways. He’s Coulson.
“You didn’t answer me.”
It brings her up short for a second, and then she smiles slow on an easy exhale.
“Yeah, Coulson,” she laughs into the words, “you can kiss me.”
The fingers on her arm tug her down gently, but mostly he leans up into her so his lips brush softly against hers. It’s a momentary single spark and then it’s over, but they almost freeze against each other, so she can feel him breathing against her lips, warm and even and almost tickling from her mouth down her spine.
“Daisy,” he whispers her name, and she hadn’t realized her eyes were closed until they pop open and he’s there, staring up at her.
“Hi,” she offers because she doesn’t know what to say in a moment like this, isn’t sure she’s ever had a moment like this, something slow and acknowledging what’s already there. It’s so different from her past, from fumbling into half-formed connections.
“Hi.” He smiles around the word, and she can’t remember if she always found his mouth fascinating — the way his lips move and the way his chin is emphasized by his smile.
She leans down to kiss him the second time, longer and slower, and Coulson presses her forward with a hand on her shoulder blade, another on her lower back just under her tshirt.
He tastes like coffee and something spicy behind it — something that maybe is just him, and she’s weirdly thrilled at the idea that she’ll get to figure it out, what Coulson tastes like under his coffee. And then his tongue presses behind her teeth, and she loses coherent thought altogether under the sensation of his hands on her, his mouth on her.
When she finally pulls back, Coulson makes a sad little longing sound, one that makes her lean forward to bump her forehead against his.
“I wouldn’t have been so scared of this conversation if I knew it would end here,” she whispers near his temple, and he answers with something like a moan as he draws her lips back against his.
It's not a bad way to be family.