Work Text:
“Three Questions”
It was like being exhumed, I answered. And
brought to life in a flash of brilliance.
What was it like to be loved in return? Asked Joy.
It was like being seen after perpetual darkness, I
replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence.
What was it like to lose him? Asked Sorrow.
There was a long pause before I responded:
It was like hearing every goodbye ever said to
me—said all at once.
—Lang Leav
I’d like to take you for a drive
Park in a fresh-cut field, drop the tailgate of my truck
Sit you on it, stand between your legs, and kiss you hard
Fist my hand in your hair, drag my lips across your collarbone, sink my teeth into your shoulder
And tell you, without shame or expectation, that I love you
Fury is in his face saying something, probably about not dying, but all Phil can think about is how lucky he is to have taken Clint Barton for a drive.
*
Coulson’s first “annual” assessment of Natasha takes the form of an interrogation. The kind of interrogation she prefers. This, however, is unlike any interrogation Coulson has ever seen her perform.
Somehow, they are on the subject of love, relationships, and intimacy. How Natasha has succeeded in getting Phil on this topic is… well, she’s probably going to pass her assessment. Once he watches the tape and makes sure she didn’t slip something into his ginger ale.
“Just because you love someone does not mean they are obligated to care for you,” Coulson is saying. “We are all free agents, and it is folly to impinge on someone else’s freewill by presupposing their motives or declaring your own.”
Natasha looks at him so hard she almost goes cross-eyed. “What—the—fuck, Coulson? Who are you quoting?” Nat asks, slinging her legs over a chair.
Phil folds his arms across his chest. “One of my uncles. He was an old bachelor. Lawyer. Very into Rand.” High school English teacher, actually, but Nat doesn’t need to know that.
“Americans get that Rand lived through the Russian Revolution and Lenin, right?” Nat asked, opening a Twix bar. The wrapper ends up on the floor. Phil wants to cite Natasha’s upbringing in Soviet Russia as the cause of both her sweet tooth and disregard for recycling, but she would just drag one of her Louboutin stilettos across his desk, and he was really, really fond of the mahogany.
“Your attempt to contextualize her philosophy is inconsistent with her philosophy,” Phil says, smirking, throwing a tennis ball at the wall instead of Nat’s face.
Nat smirks, like she’s aware of the choice he is making—wall vs. face—and considers it a victory. “So you think that because we’re all free agents…” She shakes her head. “Phil, how do people get fucked if you can’t make a move?”
Phil ignores the obvious opportunities for humor. “There’s a difference between fucking and feeling, Natasha, and I’m surprised that you would confuse the two.”
She glares at him. “Your uncle’s definition leaves much to be desired.”
“Sexual desire is different from romantic love.”
“Enlighten me,” she says.
Phil rolls his eyes. “Seriously, you’re going to make me do this?”
“I can’t make you do anything. This is my annual assessment,” she says, leaning back to stretch in her chair.
“Pleasure is utility,” Phil says. “Mutually agreed upon pleasure is just that: a meeting of two bodies that provide mutual use and satisfaction. There are parameters, of course, within which society agrees it is acceptable for two bodies to meet—hence the age of consent—but generally, pleasure is a utilitarian thing.”
“How eloquent,” she says, arching an eyebrow.
“Sexual pleasure has acquired a shocking amount of pathos, for how simple and technical a thing it really is,” Phil says, still throwing a tennis ball at the wall. What a boring conversation.
“And love?” she asks.
Phil catches the ball in his hand. “Is a different animal entirely.”
“Not for everyone.” Nat’s tone is light. Too light.
“To us it is, and don’t pretend it’s not,” Phil says, meeting her in the eye. “Love comes with expectations and requirements and commitments that even the people doing the loving aren’t aware of until the people they love don’t fulfill them. Love is an ongoing exam that everyone is always failing.”
Nat smirks. “And here I thought it was the thought that counts.”
“Have you ever been in love, Natasha?” Phil asks.
She snorts. “You know the answer to that question. What about you?”
“I’m sure you also know the answer to that question,” Phil says, his mouth in a tight line.
“Indeed I do,” Nat says, swinging her feet off the chair and onto the floor. “I’m afraid you’ve given your whole hand away.”
Phil’s smile disappears.
“It’s Clint, isn’t it?” Nat asks, leaning her elbows on his desk.
His jaw literally drops, and that hasn’t happened since he was sixteen years old, when he saw Mark Harrison shirtless in a cornfield. “I—”
Nat tucks her hands under her chin. “You know if a woman’s been pregnant by the disgusting details she can talk about, and the more they focus on the negative, the more likely it is they had horrific morning sickness, extensive bed rest, postpartum, something like that. Similarly, people who focus on less than pleasant details have probably experienced romantic tragedy, not comedy—ugly breakups, unrequited love. The healthy ones go through the stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance,” Nat says, ticking them off her fingers. She tilts her head. “The unhealthy ones grasp at straws to explain how love works, exclusively for them or even more universally for everyone, usually in a way that ends up paralyzing any action. It’s motivated by fear. It’s self-protective, which is nice in the short run but ultimately leaves them unable to act or have a healthy relationship.”
“What makes you think I want a relationship?” Phil asks, dropping any pretense.
“You think your love for Clint is unrequited. It’s not. Given the facts, I would presume that you want Clint? Or would you rather just sit and pine while he sits and pines and do nothing about it?”
“I—I think—Clint isn’t—”
“Clint is. And you are scared shitless. Not a good look on you, sir.”
Phil folds his arms across his chest. “Since when are you a relationship expert?”
Nat snorts. “I’m not. I’ve never come close. But I know what it looks like. It’s in my job description,” she says, smirking. “Unless S.H.I.E.L.D has already ruined my reputation.”
Phil says nothing, just stares at Nat for a moment. “I think I have sufficient material for your assessment.”
“Probably.”
“I’ll let you know the results.”
“You should take Clint home with you for the holiday,” Nat says, getting up from the desk. “You’ll feel comfortable, home turf advantage and all that, and he’ll feel safe and wanted.”
“What am I supposed to tell my family?” Phil asks, in spite of himself.
“That he’s recovering from an injury. That he’s an asset who needs protecting. That your bosses are making you and didn’t tell you why. That he’s your boyfriend. You’re the great Philip Benjamin Coulson Jr. Figure it out.” And with that, she walks out of the room with all the grace of a ballerina. Or a cat. Phil doesn’t know which, mostly because he is staring at his desk, dumbfounded.
She knows his full name.
He has taken great pains to keep the junior part from everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury included.
Fucking Natasha Romanov living up to her fucking reputation.
*
His father hasn’t said a word but accepts Clint’s offer to help in the kitchen, and his mother just shoots Phil a knowing glance and gives Clint an extremely long hug before whispering something in his ear that makes him blush. Clint refuses to tell Phil what it is before saying good night and crashes on the floor on a pile of pillows and blankets while Phil walks up the stairs to his old bedroom, where his youngest nephew is sprawled out, fast asleep, on the pulled-out trundle.
Phil gets into bed as quietly as he can, thinking of Clint’s easy laughter with his family, the grudging smile he’d wrested from Phil’s irascible father, and the wink-and-nudge routine Phil’s mom had been up to. He’d have to ask her about that in the morning.
But when he wakes up the next morning, an early riser as always, he finds his mother at the kitchen table, spilled coffee mug on her lap, newspaper in hand. Her eyes are open, and she isn’t breathing. Phil takes her pulse, but he knows a dead body when he sees one. His mother doesn’t look different from the ones he usually sees.
No—he takes it back. She does. She looks peaceful, and old. They usually aren’t peaceful, and they usually aren’t old.
There’s usually a lot more blood.
Phil closes her eyes, goes to wake his father, and calls the authorities.
His father falls apart, silently, stoically, gracefully, as men of that generation do. Phil’s oldest sister, Alice, takes charge of everything. No one can bear to leave the house, but someone has to watch at least some of the ten children running around, and all of the adults are an utter mess those first few hours, so Clint takes the oldest grandchildren out back to play football and soccer. When that ceases to be a sufficient distraction, Clint volunteers to take them to a nearby ranch to go horseback riding. Phil belatedly realizes that, with that offer, Clint has won over his entire family, even though Clint, Phil is sure, is just trying to be helpful—and stay out of everyone’s way.
The next few days are a blur. Phil barely keeps track of Clint. He knows Clint is there, making sure no children disappear, even watching Phil. Clint’s ease with children surprises Phil; Clint’s circus days are often dismissed and forgotten. This is a side of Clint he doesn’t know, he doesn’t see, that he can only surmise from a file, and Phil is good at surmising things from files, but it’s quite another thing to see it up close and personal, with his own nieces and nephews.
The Clint that Phil knows is the epitome of self-control and professionalism in the field, and also someone who is always game for a beer after work and a sarcastic quip or two at Command’s expense.
Of course, Phil is Command.
Phil thinks of his mother, all warmth and light, and he sees his father, holding it together, not crying a tear but his whole body wracked with sobs all the same. They had been married for almost fifty years. Phil cannot imagine what it would be to live fifty years alongside someone, only to have them wrested from you. Phil sees the already slowed pace of his father’s walk and cannot help but think that his father is going to follow his mother sooner rather than later.
The family will survive, though. Phil’s sisters and their families are all still in New England. It is a selfish thought, he supposes, that he doesn’t have to worry about their everyday upkeep. But they are used to not seeing him except at holidays, and sometimes not even then. They stopped asking questions years ago. Phil is loved but unnecessary—not a cog that doesn’t fit, but an extra attachment to a KitchenAid, appreciated but completely inessential to everyday use. (Phil loves his KitchenAid.)
So he has the luxury of being peripheral in his grief, now, even though he is physically present. No one cries on his shoulder. Alice checks in on him periodically. And Phil checks on his father from time to time. But the sisters have each other; the brothers-in-law have each other… To enter into their circles would disrupt the established rhythms. And Phil is at peace with that. He understood place.
Clint does, too, and he gives Phil a wide berth. They eat together, but mainly, Clint sticks with the kids, who have adopted him as one of their own, so he is usually occupied with sports, movies, or—strangely—dolls. (Phil goes looking for Clint approximately once and, finding him occupied with three-year-old Sadie, five-year-old Mellie, and eleven Barbie dolls, sits down to join playtime.)
In the days that stretch out before the funeral, Phil has time to walk around his parents’ property and go for drives in his old pickup that his dad now uses for landscaping.
He thinks of his mother. He thinks of work, because he can’t help himself.
He thinks of Natasha and how fucking glad he is that she suggested he bring Clint, and how he will never, ever tell her that.
And he thinks of Clint.
*
Meanwhile, Phil is being an idiot. He even tells himself this: “Phil, you are an idiot.” But he’s had too much whiskey to care.
For the last few days, he has been forced to watch his father mourn his mother, and he has been surrounded by his sisters who, give or take a few marital annoyances, have somehow managed to remain happily—or contentedly—married for at least a decade each. Not a small feat, in this millennium.
And, of course, Phil has watched the man he’s in love with not only support his family in a time of grief but also demonstrate a shocking facility with his beloved nieces and nephews.
It would be enough to drive Nick Fury to maudlin and sentiment. Or at least Maria Hill.
Phil remembers what Natasha said about healthy and unhealthy people. And he’s Googled what to do about unrequited whatever. Everyone seems to think it’s better to get it off your chest. The fact that he is Clint’s superior is problematic, but hey…
He can always reassign Clint.
This is what Phil, halfway through a thirty-rack of Budweiser, tells himself.
He leaves the note in an envelope for Clint on the kitchen counter and grabs the keys to the pickup.
*
First reason on the list: he wants Clint to come and find him, and he doesn’t. Wants Clint to know exactly where to look: the paths to go down, the footsteps to trace, the secret trails Phil has been mapping out for years that somehow, Clint is supposed to know by instinct—just because he loves Phil. In Phil’s mind, at least, in this moment, Clint loves him.
He doesn’t know if he wants Clint to love him and to come after him, or to love him from a distance—to keep loving him from a distance—or if it would be better if this were all just some sick, twisted fantasy and he was the only one pining, if Clint was in fact just happily oblivious, was maybe reading a book or watching TV in bed, almost dozing off, Phil a distant thought in his mind, because he trusts Phil, trusts his friend, trusts his superior, trusts him not to ever have done this stupid thing, this falling in love thing.
Perhaps it’s better that Phil is out here, sitting on the tailgate of the truck alone. The moon looks like a half-eaten apple pie, casting a low glow over the corn that’s barely a foot tall. It’s not like the crop is tall enough to provide cover for two queer men having a moment within spitting distance of the road.
Maybe Clint won’t find the note Phil left him.
Maybe he’s preoccupied, and Phil will get back in time to destroy the evidence.
Or maybe Clint will do Phil the mercy, the blessed mercy, of leaving it undisturbed, of acting like he hasn’t seen it. Maybe he’ll stay outside or will arrange it so that his dad throws it away as scrap paper: unseen, unread, untouched, unabsorbed.
It would disturb things, if Clint came after him. It would change things.
The need feels like it’s going to crawl out of his bones, but Phil can live with that. He’s never had to live with this before, but he can find a way. He’s been living with it ever since he met Clint, really, didn’t know it for a good long while but—now he does. And he can do it. He can put this away, can put it to bed, can tuck it down in a deep, dark place, can take it out on other bodies when it’s seeping out of his skin, can bury the words in the hollows of his throat and the pit of his stomach, where hot lead and butterflies somehow manage to coexist.
He might have to give up country music. That’ll suck.
So long as he doesn’t have to give up Clint. Anything—anything—but that.
*
*
“We don’t have to hide here,” Clint says as Phil gets the door for Nat.
Phil just rolls his eyes, but he returns to the kitchen and holds Clint’s hand all the same.
Natasha follows Phil into the kitchen, clad in a black wiggle dress and ridiculous stilettos. She takes one look at their hands and chuckles. “So gay.”
“Pot, meet kettle,” Clint says, a big grin on his face.
“Those look like they belong in a diorama,” Phil says, looking at Nat’s shoes.
“What?” Clint asks, looking at him strangely as Natasha repeats, “So gay.”
“It’s a—middle school art project,” Phil says.
“Lucky for me I didn’t really go to middle school, then,” Clint says with a wicked smile. “Looks like papier mâché to me.”
“It’s a python print. You’ve wrestled with a python, haven’t you, Clint?” Nat says, setting two bottles of wine and her own handle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label on the table.
Clint snorts. “That was one time, and it was a baby python. It doesn’t count.”
“Do you only wear Louboutins?” Phil asks, setting glasses on the kitchen island.
“I need to piss,” Clint says. He always tries to excuse himself when Phil and Nat get started on fashion.
“Louboutins have a red lacquer sole. No one notices if I walk through a little… mess.” Nat smirks as she pours herself a whiskey.
Phil laughs so hard he has to support himself on the counter.
“Dude. That’s fucked up. Both of you. Fucking macabre,” Clint says, pointing at them before turning into the hallway.
“I love it when he forgets to play the dumb and callous assassin,” Nat says, sipping her whiskey.
Phil pours two glasses of wine. “I do, too,” he says softly.
*
“I resent that enormously.”
“Nepotism!”
and
“Not fucking fair, you power-hungry cocksucker,” have become a few of his favorite phrases. Clint says them in the shower while jacking Phil off, over breakfast in the middle of reading the morning paper, in bed as they are dozing off. But most often, he just harasses Phil over text:
CLINT BARTON
Not fair not fair not fair not fair not fair
I have to do it with MARIA HILL
(who is a woman)
IT HURTS ME
…
…
…
Do you want to see me in non-consensual pain?
PHIL COULSON
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
CLINT BARTON
Fuck you I hate you goddammit that’s hot. Usual closet, Hall C, 14:30?
PHIL COULSON
As you wish.
*
No one in Phil’s family is surprised.
Sadie, age three, immediately starts calling Clint “Uncle,” possibly due to her mother’s instructions, but Phil isn’t sure and he’s a little too frightened to ask.
*
On their first anniversary, Clint is on a job in South America. Phil spends the day at the office, hoping against hope he doesn’t hear from Clint. Hearing from Clint would be bad. Hearing from Clint would mean trouble.
It would mean his cover was blown. It would put them on a twelve-hour timetable with extremely low odds of getting Clint out alive, and it would put multiple other agents in surrounding countries at risk. It would blow an unreasonable hole in Phil’s already-blown budget for the year.
And so, for perhaps the first time, Phil understands just how irrational this is, because in spite of the fact that hearing from Clint would mean the worst, Phil wants nothing more than to hear Clint’s voice, because Phil’s mind is in a New Hampshire cornfield, listening to Clint read him that fucking poem, kissing Phil, telling him that he is not alone in how he feels, that this is insane and risky and is probably going to get them both killed—
But what the hell.
*
The fact that Clint wants to hide from him. Wants to not talk to him.
It’s been two weeks, and it’s painfully clear that Clint is not coming around anytime soon, so Phil has (pathetically) regressed to sitting on the couch in his Naval Academy sweats, eating shitty microwave popcorn and watching Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. It just happens to be on television.
Clint really likes Ewoks. Phil might have been thinking about getting Clint an Ewok bear for Christmas, as a joke.
There’s a knock at the door, and Phil lets the TV go as he gets up to get the door. No gun. Guns are for pussies, Clint always says.
He does check the keyhole, though, and his heart… well, it either jumps into his throat or drops into his stomach, he can’t decide, but it’s Clint. Work boots, jeans with holes in the knees, white T-shirt, leather jacket, sunglasses.
Phil opens the door and says nothing.
Clint looks him up and down, obviously assessing the hole-ridden sweatpants and too-small sweatshirt, and arches an eyebrow.
“So did you come back for me or for the Star Wars marathon?” Phil asks, his heart beating rapidly.
Clint barges in. “Fuck you.”
“A text would have been nice,” Phil says, closing the door. Understatement of the week.
“Sometimes I run. But I come back. How dare you have S.H.I.E.L.D reappropriate my apartment,” Clint says, walking into the kitchen and dropping his go-bag on the floor.
“The benefit of being your superior.” Phil follows him. Clint already has a beer in his hand.
Clint gulps down half the Budweiser. He’s still wearing his leather jacket, and Phil drinks in the sight. “An abuse of your authority,” Clint says, crumpling the empty beer can in his hand.
“As your boss—”
“As my partner,” Clint says, identifying precisely what he thinks of Phil for the first time, and Phil’s knees almost give out.
“You left,” Phil says, his hand clenching on the kitchen island.
“Sometimes I need space.” Clint grabs another beer from the fridge and, pausing, offers it to Phil. Considerate.
“And I need you to stay and talk me through the issue,” Phil says.
Clint grabs another beer for himself. “I’m bad at talking.”
“So we take breaks and you can go get coffee or FroYo or whatever for an hour or two and come back and talk. This is called compromise,” Phil says, staring at the floor. He takes a breath. “That said, I am never going to stop you from walking out if you want to. I am never going to beg you to stay. I don’t want to put you in the position of still having to walk out because you need to.” He swallows, hard. Losing Clint would be… Well. Bridges and crossing and coming to it and all that.
Clint is silent for a moment. Taps the counter. Guzzles his beer. “I know. Even if I want you to… ask me, to stay—” Clint is practically wincing “—I know you won’t, because you’re so—fucking—stubborn. And I’m too fucking proud to tell you that I want you to want me to stay.”
Phil snorts. “No spine at all, obviously.”
“Iowa and New Hampshire,” Clint says, a smile almost cracking at the corners of his mouth.
“Completely different,” Phil insists.
Clint tilts his head. “Our soil is better.”
“You have a remarkable amount of homestate pride for having moved away when you were so young.”
Clint ignores him. “Look, I know this requires compromise. I know. But sometimes I feel like you left all of your give in that cornfield—hell, in that truck, coming in my fucking mouth,” Clint says, looking Phil straight in the eye, and Phil knows it’s for effect, but damn it, he flushes head to toe anyway.
Phil furrows his brow. “Just because you don’t see me fall apart—”
Clint bites his lip. “I come back because I am bleeding out without you, and I miss you, and I—all I want, Phil, is to see that you’ve bled a little, too.”
Phil feels as transparent and fragile as new-blown glass, and he knows he’s safer with Clint than anyone, but learning to trust is still—well.
Phil likes to feel safe.
But Clint needs to feel safe, too.
“I love you,” Phil says, slowly, deliberately, each word falling out of his mouth, “and you will never, ever know how much.”
Phil barely sees the hit coming—Clint tackles him to the ground, his hands on Phil’s shoulders, his hips bucking up into Phil’s, legs tangling, lips frantically moving across Phil’s face and neck.
“Yes, me too,” Clint says, pressing another kiss to Phil’s neck.
“You too?” Phil asks, smirking.
“I—you know what I mean—you too, I love you too, you asshole, now kiss me, goddammit.”
Phil clutches at Clint’s back and wraps his legs around Clint’s waist, Star Wars still playing in the background.
*
Phil doesn’t have many friends outside of S.H.I.E.L.D—just his family and Maggie, his college “sweetheart” who turned out to be a lesbian (who knew). And he doesn’t really have “friends” in S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury is his boss. Clint is his partner. Nat is Clint’s friend, but she’s his—something. A cross between an in-law and a subordinate who’s only agreed to take orders to get paid.
Sitwell is a friend. So is Hill, when she’s having off days with Fury. Codependent, those two.
One day, Phil is having a meal with Sitwell and Hill in the caf, because Fury hates them all and is making them bored in order to make them accept the fact that they will have to kill people in a morally questionable way on the next mission.
Anyway, it’s Sitwell’s anniversary this week. He’s been married twenty years to his high school sweetheart, which is just a Christmas miracle. Hill, on the other hand, is the master of one-night stands. She believes in once-a-week dates the way some people believe in an apple a day. But in spite of their differing life choices, they are looking at Phil as if he has horns coming out of his head.
What had Phil said?
Oh, yes. He’d snorted at some asinine comment Sitwell had made.
“Relationships should be easy,” Sitwell was saying, as though explaining marriage to his six-year-old.
“If it’s not easy, what’s the point?” Hill asks, arching an eyebrow.
“I’m not talking about difficulty that’s pointless,” Phil says, wondering how the hell they got on this topic when he is usually so good about keeping his goddamn mouth shut. “I’m not talking about banging your head against a wall because nothing is changing. I’m talking about times when a relationship is like an army mud crawl.”
“Do you and Clint fight? Because fighting all the time isn’t healthy,” Sitwell asks, his brow furrowing with concern that is, at the moment, rendering Phil almost homicidal.
Phil just sits there. Eventually, they will realize what this means.
Clint, his beloved Clint, the one who is so fucking proud, who runs away in the middle of a fight, who says the wrong thing before the right thing, who has intimacy issues that have made at least a dozen therapists cry (okay, that might be an exaggeration)—
Clint knows when Phil is angry to the point of bursting—when it’s time to press his point, when it’s time to walk away, and when it’s time to pull Phil’s pants down and suck him off.
*
“I’m going alone,” she insists.
“What the fuck is up with her?” Clint asks, but Phil is just as bewildered.
It’s not until Phil gets the report from a third party that he understands.
He sits at his desk all afternoon with a pot of coffee and thinks. It takes him an hour to realize that he should start by reassessing Pepper Potts, assistant to Tony Stark, the most patriotic manufacturer of WMDs around, because trying to figure out what this does to Natasha will take—
Too fucking long.
Phil grabs a tennis ball and starts throwing it at the wall.
Pepper. Pepper is easy—no, not easy. Pepper is complicated. Just, in a more textbook complicated kind of way. A delightful intersection of a lot of things psychologists have already named.
Virginia Elizabeth “Pepper” Potts. Addictive personality: workaholic, gambling habit; oldest child, adult child of an alcoholic, exhibits codependent tendencies, largest narcissistic supplier for Tony Stark.
Natasha Romanov… complicates that.
Time to reassess Pepper Potts. Phil would have to flag her file and keep a closer eye on her. Clearly a higher risk—or potential asset—than he had thought.
*
A variety of factors point to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria as the most likely candidates.
“Really, aren’t they all the same?” Clint asks, sitting on a hotel bed opposite Phil.
Phil leans his head back, thunk against the wall. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”
“Just tryin’ to make you laugh, sweetheart.”
Phil rubs the bridge of his nose. “I know.”
“Need a distraction?” Clint asks, grinning as he crawls onto Phil’s bed, and Phil just smiles and sets his papers aside.
*
“UNCLE PHIL! UNCLE CLINT!”
Phil’s eyes almost bug out as, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sadie and Mellie come hurtling toward his legs.
“Sadie! Mellie! You girls are getting so big!” Clint immediately takes a knee to catch Sadie and Mellie up in his arms and showers them with kisses, arms firmly around the girls, eyes already scanning the perimeter. He looks up at Phil and nods that he’s got them.
Phil rests a hand on Mellie’s head and meets his sister Catherine’s accusing eyes. He desperately hopes that he and Clint were as successful on this mission as they thought they were.
“You guys are in New York City and didn’t call?” Catherine asks, hugging Phil tightly as her husband remains silent behind her, casting an extremely sympathetic glance towards Phil and Clint. Phil had always liked Tom.
“New York isn’t exactly driving distance from New Hampshire, Cat,” Phil says, patting Cat’s back.
“We’re on a trip, and you guys travel all the time! You could have called, you know, now that you’re a family man and everything. Alice said you’re thinking about getting a dog?” Catherine says.
Oh God.
*
“What the fuck do I pay him for if he can’t keep track of my family?” Phil says, shrugging off Clint’s attempt at keeping him calm.
“It sounds like Catherine and Tom decided to come down on a whim.”
“I pay him to keep track of their whims, too,” Phil mutters.
Clint shields his eyes from the sun and does another sweep, scanning the high-rises for good measure. “I didn’t see anything. That said, it is New York.”
Clint wasn’t called Hawkeye for nothing. But still. “I’m putting a S.H.I.E.L.D detail on all my sisters for the next three months. My fucking staff and their fucking fuckups,” Phil says.
“You’re so cute when you’re angry.”
“Shut up,” Phil says, but there’s no heart in it.
“Would you feel better if we went to stay with Catherine and Tom this weekend? We could tell them we were extending our vacation and thought we could make it up to them?” Clint asks.
“Do you think Tom would—” Phil starts, and Clint interrupts.
“It would mean that I’m cooking and we’re taking Barbie duty off his hands for forty-eight whole hours. He won’t mind.”
Phil grunts his assent. Who knew Clint Barton would be such a sucker for domesticity?
*
"Director, might not Agent Romanov and Miss Potts's history complicate the mission?"
"Have I not made myself clear, Agent Coulson?” Fury stares Phil straight in the eye. "I hope that personal concern for an agent isn't interfering with your job."
"No, sir," Phil says. Unfortunately, he’s getting better at answering that particular concern of Fury’s.
Unfortunate because it means the issue is still on the table.
“Good.”
*
Well, the one major similarity would be the intimacy issues. Jesus, the intimacy issues.
Clint. He wants to talk to Clint about this so badly it hurts. But Clint doesn’t know—can’t know. Nat hasn’t told him, and if Nat hasn’t, Phil can’t.
Sometimes, he really hates being his partner’s supervisor. This is how Fury gets back at him for having fallen in love with Clint. He lets them be together. Because every day is punishment in some way.
It’s like Fury is saying, You want to be together in this line of work? Go ahead. Enjoy. Enjoy all the lines you can't cross, all the things you can't say, all the pressure it puts on your relationship.
Phil looks at the man sleeping in his arms and tucks Clint’s hair behind his ear. How would Clint think about this? Clint is so fucking unconventional about people, and when Phil gets stuck on a problem, logically, Clint goes back—decades back. Clint goes to his circus days, to astrology and tarot and the intangibles that Phil has a hard time trusting, but he’s seen Clint freefall into that world and come up swinging too many times to dismiss it.
Phil knows precious little about tarot, and he’d never touch Clint’s deck anyway, but astrology… astrology is something Phil can try a hand at. Astrology is about mapping people, and mapping them onto each other and seeing how they fit.
Starting point: Pepper Potts, Cancer. A water sign, through and through: emotionally sensitive, nurturing and maternal, fiercely loyal to those around her.
Tony Stark, Gemini—an air sign, not fire, as Phil had initially assumed. Tony is all cool mental energy, absorbed in the abstract. Imaginative, adaptable. But Tony is also reckless and impulsive, easily distracted by shiny new things and never really scratching beneath the surface with communication. Not because he’s a Gemini, but because he’s Tony Stark, and between his upbringing and his personality and the stars and whatever, he’s never really stood a chance. Pepper tries to help him, but all her depth tends to scare the shit out of him.
Which is obvious to everyone but Tony and Pepper.
Cancers and Geminis don’t seem well suited, Phil thinks.
Nat, on the other hand, is a Scorpio. She and Pepper are both water signs, both intense and highly emotional, but Nat is fixed where Pepper is cardinal: Nat a deep, dark well where Pepper is a river, a tide, a torrent. Natasha is anything but superficial, but the word guarded is an understatement, and she and Pepper both feel deeply, but—well.
They just move very, very differently.
Clint grunts in his sleep, and Phil smiles and leans down to press a kiss to Clint’s temple.
Clint is a Sagittarius. Phil is a Capricorn. They should not work.
Phil is so grateful that they do.
*
This time, Phil knows exactly where Clint has gone, but he lets him stay awhile, on his own. Gives him space. He waits until nightfall. Knocks at the door. Clint texts back: ok.
Phil lets himself into the apartment. He’s seen wreckage before, but never this kind—never the sort left by someone he cared for. Burnt petals are still scattered across the kitchen. Bottle upon bottle of empty Johnnie Walker line the counters.
Nat has left everything. Phil shakes his head. He knows she has apartments on almost every continent and, in spite of her affinity for particular labels, couldn’t be less attached to things if she tried. The woman doesn’t even carry a purse.
Russian and all that.
Phil finds Clint sitting on the sofa, knees tucked to his chest, staring at the blank television screen. Clint is wearing Phil’s Naval Academy sweats. If they’re a bit too small on Phil at this point, they’re definitely too small on Clint. But Phil takes it as a good sign.
“Why did you put her on this?” Clint asks.
Phil sits down on the couch. “Vanko.”
“So Fury made the call.”
Phil says nothing.
“Why didn’t you fight for her?” Clint asks after a moment, eyes downcast.
“You mean like I fought for you?” Phil asks. There’s a foot of space between him and Clint. Eventually Clint will breach it.
This is the dance they have learned over the years of their relationship, the difficult dance: Clint leaves, disappears, wanders, sometimes with a note, sometimes without. Phil finds him and approaches cautiously—sometimes physically, sometimes sending a sign to Clint, to please come home. Clint has to close the gap, but Phil is right there, waiting. He comes after Clint, and Clint can see that, so it’s easy to trust, easy to close that gap.
It has taken them so long to learn this, Phil thinks as he sits there, waiting. Goddamn Natasha for putting him in this position. For making him take so much responsibility in her disappearance. For risking so much of Clint’s trust.
After a minute, Clint’s hand inches towards Phil’s—not much, but enough. “Yes. Like you fought for me.”
Phil reaches the rest of the way and grasps Clint’s hand, reassuring himself as much as Clint. “Does Nat let anyone fight for her? She barely lets me in.” Too many words tonight; he can’t help himself.
“Because you’re the Man.” A smile hints at Clint’s lips.
“Yes, because I’m so straitlaced,” Phil says, deadpan.
“I know different,” Clint says, leaning against Phil, and tears come to Phil’s eyes in spite of himself.
They sit like that a long while. “I am sorry,” Phil says, at last. “After all this, the least I could do was give her what she wanted. That it comes at such a high cost to you is…” He doesn’t have the words.
“It won’t be good for her. Out in the field, alone again, after this kind of mental—” Clint starts.
“Clint,” Phil says firmly. “Please don’t. Don’t do that to yourself. She is a professional. She has had worse than this. She will be okay. And if she’s not—well, track her yourself if you’re that worried. I promised her that S.H.I.E.L.D would be off her back. I didn’t say you would.”
“I love you,” Clint says, the relief audible in his voice, wrapping an arm around Phil’s waist and nuzzling Phil’s neck.
“I know.”
“Just wish she’d have said goodbye,” Clint said softly.
There it is. “I think that, perhaps, not saying goodbye is her way of saying she’ll be back,” Phil says, kissing the top of Clint’s head.
“Okay. Okay,” Clint says, his voice small, and Phil pulls him in tighter.
*
“You watch the Oscars.”
“Yes.”
“And the Red Carpet.” Clint is staring at Phil, which Phil can see out of the corner of his eye. He doggedly refuses to look back, just to annoy Clint.
“This surprises you?” Phil asks, underlining the bit in the file about the nuclear facility in Iran.
“I’ve met your sisters, so no.” Clint folds his arms across his chest, and Phil waits for it. “But you are one of those.”
“Mm?”
“You’re seriously going to make me spell it out? You’re one of those gay men who watches the Oscars.”
“I like movies and fashion,” Phil says.
“I am dating a stereotype,” Clint declares, and he rubs Phil’s leg with a goofy grin on his face.
“Congratulations. Please go back to your game now. I’ll be tux shopping for the next hour.” Phil sets aside his work, turns up the television, and goes to make popcorn.
He’s quite serious about the tux shopping.
“I love you,” Clint calls out after him. “I’m gonna kill people on my game now. Oh, make a bag of popcorn for me? And grab a beer?”
Phil smiles as he grabs two bags of popcorn from the pantry and two Budweisers from the fridge.
*
The Tesseract is a stubborn wench, Clint had said.
Is that what Selvak is saying? Phil had responded, amused.
Well, it’s not us.
You’re sure?
Clint had moved in close—the benefit to everyone in this room having a high enough security clearance to know about their relationship.
Everyone here is clean. As of right now, Clint had said.
So it’s the other side, then, Phil had said, and left it at that.
Now Phil is running through hallways, his earpiece long gone—too much static. He’s on a plane, watching the facility collapse into the ground, praying to something—anything—that Clint made it out.
The plane flies toward California, and he watches security footage accessible only to himself, Fury, and Agent Hill that shows Loki pointing his scepter straight at Clint Barton’s heart.
Phil closes his eyes for the rest of the flight and locks himself in a bathroom for approximately ten minutes when the helicopter lands.
*
No, Clint is everywhere he isn’t supposed to be: his S.H.I.E.L.D ID photo plastered on every wall, his file in everyone’s inbox, his face on security footage Phil has seen so many times it’s long since memorized.
His name near the top of a kill list.
Clint is in there, Hill, and he’s fighting. He missed a shot on Fury, for Christ’s sake!
You’re out of line, Coulson.
Do you know how valuable that agent is to this organization?
To this organization, or to you? Damn it, Phil—you know I feel for you. But even you can’t deny that you are wholly and totally compromised in judgment when it comes to Agent Barton, and I think it is a gross error for you to remain a part of the decision of what happens to him.
Unfortunate for you that there are few people who outrank me, then.
Oh, I’m working on Fury.
When he owes you more favors than he owes me, let me know.
S.H.I.E.L.D and God knows what else is at risk, and you would barter for Clint Barton?
You don’t want to know what I would do for him.
*
Which means Pepper.
Even in the middle of everything, it is on his mind, every conversation he and Clint have ever had about Nat and Pepper. Even just last week.
*
Besides, Clint cares far more about killing monsters than what’s going on in China. Times like this, Phil appreciates Clint’s mercenary principals. Clint would be as happy working for any moderately principled country that would pay him. So long as he has a place to sleep, coffee, and Internet access (the fight over Phil’s work needs and Clint’s gaming needs is truly legendary), Clint is happy.
“Why would I have heard from Nat before you?” Phil asks, not looking up.
“Cause you’re the boss.”
This again. Phil puts his papers down. “I am not so invested in…“ He pauses and rests his hand on Clint’s knee. “If Nat got in touch, I would tell you. I would also tell her to contact you, though you know how she is about being told what to do.”
Clint grunts.
“And I have not contacted her. She expressly wished for seclusion,” Phil says, leaning against Clint, running his thumb along Clint’s palm.
“You know how when people say one thing and mean another—”
Phil sighs. “Clint, this was not a personal conflict. This was a professional issue.”
“Like hell it was. You put her on that case—”
“Contrary to what you think, I cannot always override Fury’s wishes.”
Clint is silent. Phil, too. They’ve had this conversation several times. Phil never knows what triggers it, but he thinks it best to assuage whatever concerns Clint still has than to ask why Clint still has them. Phil knows this isn’t about him or their relationship, and it wouldn’t be wise to make it so.
“I will call her when and only when there is an absolute emergency that merits bringing her in. Fair?” he asks.
Clint rubs his face. “Fair. Sorry. It just—I miss her sometimes.”
Phil kisses Clint’s hand. “I know.”
“She missed Fiji.”
Phil sighs. Clint is still sore about that. Phil knows he shouldn’t have told Clint that Nat said she’d show. He takes the blame for that one. “We knew she would,” he says, relinquishing Clint’s hand and going back to his paperwork.
*
Only it’s not routine. Nat’s been off duty for two years, and he’s only calling because of the Avengers Initiative, and he’s really only calling Nat in because of the only conceivable reason she would agree to come in:
Clint.
There’s a situation that involves Clint.
Phil swallows hard and dials the dime-a-dozen terrorist.
“You’re at 114 Selenski Plaza, third floor. We have an F22 exactly eight miles out. Put the woman on the phone or I will blow up the block before you can make the lobby.” There was a pause and the sound of a phone bristling against a shoulder. The telltale sound of Nat’s dress. Jesus, did the woman ever wear normal clothing on a mission? “We need you to come in,” Phil says.
“Are you kidding? I’m working.”
It’s the first time they’ve spoken in years. Just like old times. “This takes precedence.”
“I’m in the middle of an interrogation. This moron is giving me everything. Look, you can’t pull me out of this right now,” she insists.
Can she not see that he wouldn’t be calling unless—
He closes his eyes.
“Natasha—” His voice almost breaks. “Barton’s been compromised.”
She only pauses for a moment.
“Let me put you on hold.”
Phil waits as Nat disentangles herself from the situation. All things considered, it sounds like she has an easy time of it.
“Where’s Barton now?” she asks, all business—but then, this is a S.H.I.E.L.D-monitored phone, and even though S.H.I.E.L.D knows all about her and Barton’s history, and his and Clint’s relationship, well—
They don’t know everything.
“We don’t know,” Phil says, grateful for his yoga practice in times like this. Ujjayi breath. Keeps him calm.
“But he’s alive.” It wouldn’t sound like concern to most, but Phil hears the hitch in her voice, and with Nat, a hitch may as well be a scream.
“We think so. I’ll brief you on everything when you get back. But first, we need you to talk to the big guy.”
“Coulson, you know that Stark trusts me about as far as he can throw me,” Nat says, and Phil can practically hear her smirking on the other end.
No shit. “Oh, I’ve got Stark. You get the big guy.”
“Bozhe moi.”
*
“Mr. Stark, we need to talk,” Phil says, getting into the elevator at Stark Tower. He presses his phone between his ear and shoulder as the S.H.I.E.L.D techs work on hacking past Jarvis.
“You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark. Please leave a message.”
And that is a mark of how edgy Phil is. Five seconds and Stark is already on his last nerve.
“This is urgent,” Phil says, taking a deep breath.
“Then leave it urgently.”
And then the elevator doors open, and Phil steps out into what is obviously Stark’s idea of a romantic meal. Stark and Clint think quite similarly.
“Security breach!” Stark says.
Pepper, however, smiles. “Phil! Come in!” She leaps to her feet to greet him and bounds over to the elevator. The joy, the energy, the light. Phil relaxes, ever so slightly.
“Phil?” Stark is asking.
“I can’t stay,” Phil says to Pepper, who gives him a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Uh, his first name is Agent.”
“Come on in. We’re celebrating,” Pepper says.
“Which is why he can’t stay,” Stark says, slightly annoyed.
“We need you to look this over as soon as possible,” Phil says, and he tries to hand the file to Stark, just to piss him off.
“I don’t like being handed things,” Stark says, and Phil smirks at Stark, because he’s got to get his rocks off somehow and annoying Stark is probably the easiest way to do it.
“That’s fine cause I love to be handed things so let’s trade,” Pepper says, and after a not insignificant amount of handling, which leaves Phil with a champagne glass, Stark has the file.
Which is the goal.
Stark tilts his head. “Official consulting hours are between eight and five every other—Thursday.”
“This isn’t a consultation,” Phil says, eyeing his champagne. Tempting, but alas.
“Is this about the Avengers? Which I know nothing about,” Pepper says, eyes going wide.
Well, that makes things easier.
Tony takes the file and heads over to his computers. “The Avengers Initiative was scrapped. I thought I didn’t even qualify.”
“I didn’t know that either,” Pepper says with a wink at Phil. If only Clint could have seen this side of Pepper, he would have seen—well, what Natasha saw.
“Yeah. Apparently I’m volatile, self-obsessed, don’t play well with others.”
“That I did know,” Pepper says.
“This isn’t about personality profiles anymore,” Phil says, looking Pepper in the eye. She bites her lip.
“Miss Potts, got a sec?”
“Just a moment,” she says to Phil, raising a finger.
Pepper and Tony obviously have some things to work out, and it makes Phil—well. He looks off to the side, down at the floor, anywhere but at the couple standing in front of him. He just can’t right now. Can’t look. Can’t watch. And it’s not for privacy reasons, it’s just…
He can’t.
“So any chance you’re driving by LaGuardia?” Pepper asks.
“I can drop you,” Phil says, watching Pepper walk towards the elevator.
“Fantastic. Oh, I want to hear about the cellist. Is that still a thing?”
“She went back to Portland,” Phil says without missing a beat. It wasn’t his fault that Pepper had thought that his college sweetheart coming to visit meant that something was rekindling.
No need to mention that Maggie had ended up marrying a woman many years down the road and that Phil had taken Clint as his date.
“What? Boo!” Pepper says with far more vehemence than necessary, and Phil stifles a chuckle.
It’s the first genuine amusement he’s felt all day. That’s… nice.
*
“You know that you have a private jet. No need to dress up for reporters,” Phil says, opening the car door for Pepper.
“The press always finds a way to snap a shot, and with this—well, it seems like something big is on the horizon.”
Phil shrugs, and Pepper laughs as he shut the door.
“Always impossible to get anything out of you,” she says as he gets in and they drive off.
“So you’re going to DC?” Phil asks as Pepper shoots him a look that says seriously?
“This is about to become a situation—military, terrorist, I don’t know—whatever it is, whatever you’re bringing Tony on for, it’s going to ruffle feathers. I’m going to go start laying groundwork to soothe them.”
“You’re an excellent asset,” Phil says.
“I’m an excellent CEO,” Pepper corrects him.
“That too. S.H.I.E.L.D is lucky that you and Stark come in a two-for-one.”
“Thank you,” Pepper says with a chuckle, looking out the window.
“I mean it,” Phil says after a pause.
“I know you do,” Pepper says softly.
“You know I didn’t write Tony’s assessment.”
Pepper lets out a burst of laughter, too sharp to be well-humored. “Yes, I know you didn’t—and I know who did. And she, as always, was right on point.”
Pepper crosses her legs and arms and turns to the window.
“Do you keep in touch?” Phil asks casually.
“No—I assume you keep her too busy to remember all her assignments.” Pepper is still looking out the window.
Phil licks his lips. Pepper Potts trusts him, enough to drop the poker face. Interesting.
What the hell. “Natasha Romanov quit S.H.I.E.L.D two years ago.” Went on inactive duty. Kind of the same thing.
Pepper looks at him askance.
“Right after submitting that report, in fact.”
The look on Pepper’s face is pain and worry and—
Poker.
There it is.
It’s Phil’s turn to look at the window, to afford her some privacy. The number of times he and Clint have talked about Nat and Pepper—“wasted opportunity,” “bad timing,” “can’t stay away,” “done for good,” “if it’s right,” “no contact”—come hurtling back to him, every comment remembered, remembered for both of them, and he cannot tell Clint.
He has an indescribable ache in his chest, a pressure that hurts, from not being able to pick up his phone and text. Clint is there but not there, alive but not present, living but not in his life—not a part of his existence anymore.
He glances at Pepper, who is not moving a muscle or making a sound. But for the unfortunate fact that they are driving through the obscenely lit Times Square, Phil would not have noticed the tears streaming down her face.
Pepper has mastered the art of crying silently. It is an art Phil can appreciate.
He turns to his own window to afford her some privacy. Her tears are tears grieved for the living. It is painfully clear that Pepper still aches for Natasha.
Not the least of which reason is because she is still wearing Louboutin heels and obsessively checking the player lists for poker tournaments in Tokyo.
He might have kept up on these things. For Clint, of course.
*
“Where are you heading after this, or is that top secret?” She attempts a weak smile.
“A party, of sorts, with your boyfriend and a few friends.”
Pepper shakes her head, clearly amused. “Old friends or new friends?”
“Some of both.”
“If I wanted—” Pepper swallows hard as they drove into LaGuardia. “If I wanted to see an old friend. Can you give me any pointers as to how I would do that?”
“Ask your boyfriend,” Phil says simply.
“Tony?” Pepper asks, confused.
“He'll see her soon enough,” Phil says as the car pulled over.
Pepper inhales sharply. “You—Phil—have you known, all this time?”
“It's my job to know. This is your stop,” Phil says, gesturing to the doors outside.
“Well, you've given me a lot to think about.”
“Have a safe flight.”
“Thank you,” she says, getting out of the vehicle.
“Goodbye, Pepper,” Phil murmurs.
*
He didn’t need to be bribed. But it was still nice.
*
Clint’s first words: “I hate this fucking thing.”
It was the size, Phil thought. Clint liked light things, adaptable things, things that were naturally camouflaged, that could learn to blend. The Helicarrier was a beast of the sea and sky, a technological feat, not a bird, a boomerang, a human being, even—for whatever reason, Clint wasn’t overly fond of travel by Helicarrier.
Clint always helped Phil see things differently.
Phil knows that people think he saved Clint, or whatever.
They have no idea how backwards they have it.
*
“Nat.”
“Phil.”
“I—”
“Don’t.” Nat’s face is a warning. She hasn’t moved a muscle.
Phil drops the file on the table and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I saw Pepper, before coming here.”
Nat’s lip quivers as she reached for the file on Clint. “You—”
“You’ve gone soft, Agent Romanov,” Phil says, aware that his tone is too sharp, that he and Nat know each other too well, too intimately for these games.
“You bastard,” she says, shaking her head slightly.
“She asked after you,” he says, keeping his tone light as Nat flips through the file. “In a very passive-aggressive, East Coast manner of speaking.”
Nat sits down and kicks her boots up on his desk. “What did you tell her?”
“That you quit S.H.I.E.L.D after the job with Tony,” Phil says, ignoring the fact that Nat has put her boots directly on top of his S.I. files. On purpose, no doubt.
“That’s not technically correct,” Nat says.
“She’s not technically qualified to appreciate the nuances in S.H.I.E.L.D protocol.”
“Cut the crap Coulson. How’d she react?” Nat asks, taking her boots off his desk and leaning forward to rest her arms on her knees. Her face is earnest—so earnest.
No pretense. No pride. Phil is struck with an urge to know what’s happened these last two years.
Sometimes Phil gets so wrapped up in games with Nat that he forgets she’s human. That the reason Clint is so angry with Pepper is because she was the only other person Nat really let in.
“I think you should call her,” he says, his eyes softening.
“Phil.” Nat’s eyes are so wide she looks like skittish. That’s new.
“Or text,” Phil says. He isn’t about to laugh, but the thought of Natasha Romanov, world-renowned assassin, brought to her knees at the thought of simply calling Pepper Potts amuses him to no end. “I know how you are about seeing too committed about these things.”
“You’re still a pretentious piece of—”
“I missed you, too,” Phil says, a hint of a smile on his face as he turns to walk out of the room.
*
Phil stands next to Fury on the bridge. They both know it’s too easy.
“You know that Loki has probably programmed Agent Barton to kill you?”
“Duly noted, Director. Now, do you have anything new or noteworthy to tell me?”
Fury stares at him. “Don’t lose your head, Agent Coulson.”
“Given that it’s Loki, the heart seems a more relevant order, but I take your point.”
For once, Phil walks away without Fury shouting an order.
*
To no avail.
Nat is working on it, he knows, and perhaps he should have more faith in the team he has worked so assiduously to assemble, but right now, all anyone can do is buy minutes—precious minutes. Fury is in a meeting with the Council, and if Loki has half the brain Phil thinks he does, he has Clint leading teams straight for them.
It’s what Phil would do, in another life.
Brutal. And elegant.
Minutes. Fury seems to think they have longer. But then, Fury is the great strategist, the long-range planner—it’s why he’s the director. On-the-ground, minute-by-minute strategy was never his strongest suit.
Phil has a plan. A few, actually.
He’s ready to go.