Archive of Our Own

"I'm sorry Sir, we just didn't know who else to call. You're his medical proxy, and he doesn't have an Alpha on file, and as his handler..."

Raising his hand in a sharp, silencing motion, Phillip J Coulson, Level Six Agent of SHIELD, stalks past the nurse babbling at him frantically and approaches the observation window, sheer dread sitting heavily in the pit of his stomach. He knows what he's going to see but that doesn't prepare him, doesn't help to calm the terror he's carefully kept banked since he received the call from medical.

His omega has gone into heat.

'No, no, not your omega,' he reminds himself viciously as he steps up to the glass, looks into the sealed contamination pod. 'He never...'

And he hadn't.

Clint Barton, Level Four Agent and World's Greatest Marksman had been dating him for nearly eight months, but he had never once brought up bonding, never once asked him to share a heat.

Now it's nearly too late.

"It's hitting him hard," the nurse continues, sounding meek and unsure. "Harder than it should. He was able to speak with Dr. Massey... he says his last heat was more than six years ago. He was on illegal street suppressants for years before..."

"Get out," Phil interrupts, his voice all calm, even chill despite his bubbling panic.

The nurse makes a sound of protest, but a single look sends the woman skittering out of the antechamber, the door sealing closed behind her with a reassuring slurp.

Phil waits three beats, gets his breathing under control, then raises his gaze to the glass, eyes searching the room on the other side for his asset, his partner of almost a year. He's not in the bed, not in the chair beside it, but Phil hadn't expected him to be; instead he searches the corners, the ceiling and the walls. He's pleased to see that the vents are welded shut – if they weren't Clint would already be gone – but why...

"Clint?"

A long, pained whine crackles across the comm system he's opened up between the heat-room and the antechamber, and it takes all his considerable training and self-control not to startle when Clint pops up right in front of him, having been crouched below the window, just out of sight. He's flushed and sweating, his face twisted with hurt, and he's got himself pressed tight against the glass like he wants to fall right through it.

Phil's system lights up like an alarm, demanding he comfort his omega, because his instincts couldn't give a damn about anything else. Clint is hurting, and it's only going to get worse if Phil doesn't get in there and get his hands on him, get their skin and their sweat and their saliva all mixed up together as they...

"Don't."

Phil freezes, his hand already reaching out to hit the button that will open the door and let him into the larger room, grant him access to his beautiful archer. He can see the bonding gland swelling beneath the skin on the side of Clint's neck, can see the way his pupils have exploded and his thigh muscles have started to clench, and he wants, oh he wants because Clint needs him...

"Please," Clint gasps, even as he presses himself impossibly closer to the glass, rubbing against it like a cat. "Please sir, don't come in here. Just leave, ok, please?"

"Clint," Phil growls, and it's low and rough but anyone would be hard-pressed to miss the pleading underneath. "Why? You're hurting baby – let me..."

"I don't want that!" Clint snarls suddenly, shoving himself back from the glass and staggering away, his arms wrapped around his belly as he hunches over, protecting his abdomen as he presses his back to the far wall. "I don’t... I don't want you, so just go Phil. I'll be fine..."

"You won't be!" Phil snaps, even though he feels like he's been slapped, like he's been shot. The rejection hurts more than he's willing to admit, given that he and Clint have never talked about where this thing between them was going.

That had been pretty damn clear.

"Clint," he pleads, stepping forward to press his hands flat against the glass, but Clint has crumpled to the floor and drawn his knees up to his chest, shaking his head and refusing to look at him. "Please. You're not going to be ok, you know that. You can't just ride out a heat like this. Your vitals are already off the charts, you could..."

Phil chokes down the possibility, unable to give it a voice, but it's a well-known fact that omegas can die if left unattended during a heat. Normally a knotting dildo will do in a pinch, but they're no substitute for the intimacy of a relationship, and often leave the omega pale and weak and ill for weeks afterward. With Clint's heartrate already too high, and the knowledge that he's been suppressing his heats for years weighing heavily on his shoulders, Phil doesn't doubt that he's going to need something more real to get him through this safely.

"Please," he begs against the microphone, his turn to press against the glass and get as close as he possibly can. "Clint please. I know you don't... love me, I know you wouldn't want to bond with an alpha like me, but you could die. Please, just let me..."

"No!" Clint cries, flinching from Phil's words and wrapping his arms up over his head, his entire body trembling. "I can't, I don't want..."

"Then tell me who you do want!" Phil shouts, immediately ashamed of himself, horrified by what he's offered.

He's never said it before, but he does love Clint.

Maybe the omega isn't in love with him, but that doesn't stop every urge Phil has, every natural instinct from screaming at him, demanding he shut the fuck up this instant and get in there to comfort his chosen partner.

"Natasha."

It's a whimper, barely audible, and Clint sounds as weak and frightened as a child, but the name is like a knife to Phil's heart.

"Nat, please, I need... I need Nat."

Phil's never heard the name before and he feels as though he's been hit by a truck, but he nods once, hard.

"Then I'll find her. Try not to die before I get back."

It's harsh and it's cruel but even as he turns away he knows he means it.

Don't die.

Please don't die.

He finds the name in Clint's phone, buried deep.

It takes him three tries to connect the call.

He doesn't want to, he doesn't, but there's nothing he can do and if he has to bring a bedpartner to his omega to keep him alive then he'll swallow his Alpha pride and do it.

The warm, fond, female voice that greets him when the phone picks up makes him nauseas.

"Finally forgiven me Little Bird, or did you just get tired of pouting?"

"Is this Natasha?" he asks, his throat aching.

The silence at the other end puts him on high alert, and very suddenly he wonders just who it is he's talking to, beyond the woman his... beyond the woman Clint is willing to let guide him through his heat.

"Is this Phillip J Coulson of SHIELD?"

"I don't want to know how you know that," he says, without knowing he's going to, because his heart is pounding now against the inside of his chest. "Clint's in trouble."

"Where?" she asks sharply, a rumble and rush of static suggesting she's already moving.

"New York. The corner of eighth and main. How long..."

"Five minutes, eight tops," she interrupts. "I'll meet you there. What's happened?"

"He's going into heat."

"Shit."

It's hissed, low and under her breath and in Russian, and all the hair on the back of his neck stands up.

"Can you keep him isolated until I get there? No Alpha access?"

"Already done. He's... he's asked for you."

"Little idiot. He hasn't told you has he?"

"Told me what?"

"Six minutes, Agent Coulson."

The line goes dead and Phil has to stand there with his fist pressed to his mouth, breathing hard through his nose to keep himself from vomiting. This is wrong, this is wrong, he's going to tear this bitch apart...

No.

No, this is who Clint asked for, and he'd rather Clint survive this than...

His mind blanks out a bit as he makes his way to ground level, shoving past junior and senior agents alike. His senses have all gone sharp and intense, everything around him too bright and too loud and too intense, and every nerve he has is tuned to Clint. Clint, who is upstairs aching, needing, and keeping himself separate and away, rejecting him and his suit...

He'd planned to ask.

He'd planned a date, one that Clint would love.

He'd planned how he would ask.

Ask, to put a name on what they were to each other, ask Clint to move in with him, ask him to share his next heat and consider an official bonding...

His deep-seated insecurities and fears, those that all Alphas have, had led him to imagine all the ways that Clint could say no, all the ways that he might be rejected, but he'd never thought...

It doesn't matter.

He's out on the sidewalk in the middle of the hideous rush of New York, and two seconds later a motorbike is skidding up to the curb in front of him in an illegal parallel park, a lithe, trim woman climbing off and stalking toward him. Her stride is strong and sure and she pulls her helmet from her head as she comes, unleashing a cascade of curly red hair, and Phil's heart stops for all of a second.

The Black Widow.

It all comes crashing in on him in a moment's span of time; finding Clint in Belarus when he'd gone to recruit him all those years ago, that time he'd disappeared on an op in Budapest that he never should have made it back from, only to turn up three days later with better stitching in his side than the archer could have possibly made in his own hide. The letters Phil has seen Clint write but never post, the Russian this woman had spoken on the phone, and...

"Phil Coulson?"

"Miss Widow," he croaks, and the look she flashes him is full of pity, and it makes him rankle.

He leans forward, broadening his stance as his lip creeps up off his teeth, and he breathes in deep, only to fall back, startled.

She's a beta.

"How..."

"Take me to him," she demands, grabbing his elbow and turning him around, marching him back into the building.

He's so stunned that he does as she bids.

He gets her through the security by punching in his emergency override and they're up to the twenty-third floor before he has a chance to think the better of it. The code will ping Fury, Hill, Sitwell, and May, and about six or seven more higher ups alerting them to a possible breach, and they'll be sweeping the building before he even has the chance to get one of them on the phone. Funny how he stops caring the moment he swipes them into the observation room, comes into sight of the window where Clint is lying flat on the floor, head back, teeth bared as he claws at his own skin.

"Do you have a gym?" the Widow asks, stripping out of her leather jacket and tossing it onto the table along with her helmet.

"I... yes, of course, we... what?"

"Where?"

"One flight down. Why..."

"Back up."

That's all the warning he gets before she slaps the button on the wall and the door opens, a wave of Clint's rich, hot scent crashing out to drown him. Phil gasps and stumbles backwards, half hunching over as all the blood in his body goes careening south fast enough to make him dizzy. Clint's up and out of the room before Phil even knows what's happening, and they instinctively step toward each other, Phil's heart singing at the way his omega reaches out for him but...

But there's dread on Clint's face.

He opens his mouth, opens his mouth to ask why, please, what can he do, to promise anything and everything in his power, but before either of them can utter a word the Black Widow is belting Clint so hard across the face that she sends him staggering sideways toward the door.

"Nat..." Clint chokes, voice wavering, and Phil snarls as he catches sight of the blood dribbling down Clint's chin from his split lip, but she strides forward at a stalk, backing Clint out into the hallway.

"Look at you," she hisses, advancing on Clint even as he backs away, his eyes wide and bright and full of fear as they try to see everything at once, assessing the sudden threat of being out in the open. "Pathetic. Mewling for some Alpha dick."

"He's mine, he..." Clint whimpers, looking to Phil with an unreadable expression, but the Widow keeps herself between them.

It's all Phil can do not to tear her apart, her words and her touch so vicious and assaultive, but there's something going on here that he doesn't understand and so he turns all his control to holding himself back, even as he catches sight of Fury and Hill jogging up the hallway toward them, guns drawn. He waves them off violently, but of course Clint sees them and he snarls, backing away.

The redhead moves forward on delicate feet, herding him up the hallway, and Phil realizes what she's about to do a second before it happens. Waiting until Clint's gaze turns to him once more, she uses that distraction, that vulnerability, and attacks with a vicious roundhouse kick that sends Clint tumbling down the open stairwell.

Phil leaps forward, ready to stop this because it doesn't matter, he doesn't care what this is about, this bitch is attacking his omega. Fury and Hill seem to agree because they're close behind him, snarling for answers, but the Black Widow is ahead of them both, pummeling Clint backward with a flurry of kicks until they're all crashing into the gym one floor below, startling a class of Level Two's practicing their hand-to-hand.

"What the hell is going on?" Fury barks, storming forward like to grab the Black Widow by the scruff of the neck.

Phil, hormones screaming, darts in front of him and snarls, shows his teeth and drops into a fighting crouch.

"Coulson!"

But his cry is nearly drowned out by the roar of an angered omega.

"Mine," Clint hisses, eyes blazing like he's thinking of ripping Fury's face clean off, but before he can get three steps toward him, Natasha grabs him by the arm and flips him over her shoulder onto his back.

"Get up," she hisses, dancing away from Clint's half-hearted swipe. His scent is spiking, hot and irresistible, and Phil's knees wobble. "Get up! You think you're worthy of him, rolling around on the floor, whining like a bitch? You don't deserve him! Maybe I'll fuck him Clint, since you're too good for it."

Phil blinks, but before he can get any kind of grip on what is happening Clint is snarling fit to kill and attacking the Black Widow with a vengeance.

"Coulson, what..."

"He's in heat," Phil chokes, watching as his omega, his beautiful omega launches a blitz of strikes at the Widow's face. "He rejected me, he wouldn't... he wouldn't accept me."

It comes out small and broken, and the silence of his two friends on either side of him is telling.

"I didn't know she was the Widow," he insists, turning to face his Director even though he can't fully straighten up, his belly cramping to hard as Clint's scent creeps into his brain. "Boss, I didn't know. He asked for her, I..."

"Breathe Phil," Fury says heavily, moving to lay his hand on Phil's shoulder before he thinks the better of it. "Hill. Lock down the floor, clear this fucking gym and get the air filters up and running."

Maria nods and stalks away toward the junior agents caught staring at the spectacle that's overtaken their gym, and as soon as the last one is through the drawer Phil crumples to the mats, unable to hold his own weight any longer. Arms wrapped around his middle, he hunches over, groaning, and Clint must hear him because he snarls again, the angry growl of a tiger. He moves to dart past the Widow but she knocks him back again, hissing vitriol the entire time, and Phil forces himself back to his feet, fighting both the physical pain and the confused ache of misunderstanding.

"Why," he gags, watching Clint fly at the Widow like to kill her. "He rejected me, why would he ask for her, why would he ask for a..."

"I don't know," Fury rumbles from a respectful distance, seemingly unaffected by the scent of omega heat thick in the air. "But I think you need to have a talk with your boy Coulson."

"He's not the only one," Maria growls as she comes back to stand beside them, her sharp eyes following the fight that rages in front of them. "He's been holding more than one thing back."

They fight for eighteen hours with hardly a break, and it's vicious and violent and nothing is held back here. Phil cannot tear himself away from it, sits in agonizing pain in the corner fighting his own fight – against his instincts, against himself – as he watches Clint Barton get the absolute shit kicked out of him.

To be fair, he gives as good as he gets. It's clear the two have fought each other before, know each other's moves and styles intimately, and the fact that Clint is in heat, fever raging and slick running down his thighs, doesn't seem to faze him at all.

Maria wasn't wrong – Clint had been holding back in hand-to-hand.

This is a level of skill that Phil has never seen before.

A level of stamina and cold indifference too, as by the time Clint's scent takes a dive and his knees wobble, dumping him onto the mats panting and soaked in sweat, the both of them are black and blue and bleeding. The Widow goes to her knees beside him before Phil is even halfway across the floor, cradling Clint's head in her hands and trying to drag his face up to the light, but he's gone limp and shuddery in the middle of the gym and he only manages to pant her name before passing out, right there at Phil's feet.

They get him up to medical and hooked up to every monitor known to man in the space of five minutes, and he’d thought that would make him feel better but it doesn’t. Well, a little he supposes, but not enough, not enough to make this all ok. Clint is battered and bruised, his lip split, tooth chipped, breathing harsh and shallow and rattling with cracked ribs, and yet Phil is the one who feels like he can’t breathe.

The nurses try to reassure him. Not the one from before – she must be a little smarter than he’d originally thought – but two or three others that come and go with awkward, uncomfortable reassurances. He and Clint had kept their relationship discrete, but it must be all over SHIELD by now, and he doesn’t doubt that the juniors from the gym have been talking.

They’ll have all heard some bastardized version of the story by now; how Hawkeye would rather risk death than share his heat with Phil Coulson, how he had rejected the senior agent’s suit in favor of a fight with the Black Widow.

He doubts Clint will care. He’s always been an unconventional omega, and what harm does the story do his reputation? Anyone would expect the World’s Greatest Marksman to reject him, and holding his own against the Black Widow, knowing her personally?

He’s likely a legend already, their little sparring session a cautionary tale to the alphas that have dogged him for years.

If anyone – Phil included – had learned anything from their little display, it was that heat or no, Clint Barton could take care of himself.

No half-crazed, heat-maddened omega, he had fought through his instincts and done some serious damage of his own.

Natalia Romanova, alias Black Widow, had a fractured wrist, split knuckles, a twisted ankle, and enough bruises to shame a peach.

They're both dehydrated.

Both exhausted.

Both have depleted their electrolytes, and are probably going to be starving when they wake up.

Oh yes, she’s still here.

She’s refused to leave Clint’s side for even a moment, and even know lies beside him in the hospital bed, curled up against his side with her casted wrist lying on Clint’s chest.

Phil doesn’t think he’s ever hated someone he was so grateful to before.

It’s giving him a damned migraine.

“It’s not you.”

Phil blinks, lifts his head from where he’s been holding it between his hand and finds the Black Widow looking at him over Clint’s shoulder, her eyes dark and intense.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not you.”

She says it again with as much conviction as she did the first time and Phil kind of hates her a little bit for it. Visibly gritting her teeth, she sits up in the bed and leans back against the pillows, taking Clint’s hand when he reaches out for her in his sleep. Looking down at him, she brushes back his hair and frowns, sighs.

“He’s asexual.”

Phil stares, stunned.

“What?”

“Understand this,” she says sharply, looking up at him quite suddenly, eyes flashing. “I only tell you because he will not.”

Looking him up and down, she seems to take his measure before her face softens.

“He’s in love with you,” she says, turning back to Clint, her fingers back in his hair, tracing the bruises around his eyes.

“He’s told you this?”

“This and much more,” she answers with a shark’s grin, and very suddenly she looks young and mischievous and he can see exactly how she and Clint might be friends. “He says you are a good man, Phillip Coulson. He says I should come to SHIELD, come to you. This is how I know he means it.”

Phil swallows hard, doesn’t know what to say, because this is more than he ever...

“He has been badly used by men,” she murmurs. “By Alphas. When I first met him, he was black and blue and starving, and going into a heat that would have surely killed him, but he wouldn’t let even me touch him; a female, a beta.”

Phil breathes through the silence, thinks about the way Clint flirts, the way he winks and smiles and kisses, and then smoothly moves away when Phil reaches for him, the way he says ‘let’s wait’ but doesn’t say for what or how long.

“He won’t sleep with you. He won’t ever sleep with you, even if he wishes he could, even though he thinks that’s what it will take to keep you,” the Widow says, and it’s a bit sad and a bit angry and a bit pointed all at once. “He knows it would break him apart.”

She huffs a laugh, stares down at the man who is turned on his side and curled toward her despite the way she had just beaten him down, showing Phil his back.

“He has that much self-preservation at least,” she murmurs proudly.

Phil feels his heart break.

“He’s in love with you,” she repeats, “And he is absolutely terrified. He would do anything in his power to keep you, and lives every moment in fear of the one when you’ll leave him.”

“I’ve been in love with him for five years,” Phil says quietly. “Haven’t slept with him yet. Still love him.”

The Black Widow watches him with wary eyes, no doubt judging his sincerity, and it’s easy to hold her gaze, to stare right back.

It’s not a lie.

“He rejected me,” he hears himself say, and as he speaks the words he feels an odd, eerie sort of calm come over him, dulling the sharp pain in his chest to a deep, melancholy ache. “Still love him.”

The Widow hums, looks down and puts her hand on Clint’s cheek.

“Still breaking Alpha hearts then Little Bird?”

Phil jerks like he’s been stung and Clint flinches hard, the muscles in his massive shoulders bunching and flexing beneath his paper-thin gown.

Not sleeping then.

Shit.

“Tasha,” he whimpers, “Why’d you gotta...”

“Hush,” she scolds, sliding from the bed and walking around to Phil’s side as Clint carefully raises it into a sitting position, hissing under his breath.

“It seems he hasn’t lied about you, Phillip Coulson of SHIELD,” she says formally, offering Phil her hand for a shake, and he feels like he’s passed a test somehow. “I’m glad. You may call me Natasha – I think I shall be seeing quite a lot of you in the near future. In fact, I think I'll go speak with your director now.”

Startled, Phil automatically gets to his feet, but she waves him back.

“I can find my way,” she says with a sly smile, before turning to Clint with a stern look. “Besides, you two have some things to talk about.”

“Tash,” Clint mutters, staring at his lap as a warm, pink glow sweeps across his cheeks.

Natasha shakes her head sadly, steps forward and takes Clint’s face in her hands, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Be brave Little Bird,” she murmurs in Russian, and Clint whines, but she extracts herself quickly and easily and slips from the room without another word.

Silence prevails, Phil’s heart pounding in his ears as Clint refuses to look at him, until he can’t possibly bear the quiet or the distance another moment.

Getting to his feet, he crosses the space between them and grips the rails of the hospital bed hard, watches Clint worry at the edges of the bandages wrapping his knuckles.

“How do you feel?” he asks, because it’s important and he needs to know, but also because he isn’t sure what else to say. "Are you ok?"

Clint’s head bobs in a guilty, pathetic nod, then he clears his throat and answers aloud as well.

“I’m ok. Tasha, she... knows when to pull her punches.”

Very suddenly Clint lifts his head and meets Phil’s gaze with desperate eyes, grabbing on to his wrist and gripping tight.

“I’m sorry,” he swears intently, “Sir, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...”

He’s talking about Natasha. He wouldn’t have called Phil ‘Sir’ otherwise. He knows this, knows he should be upset about the fact that Clint has kept this from him as his handler – since the Black Widow has been on their recruitment list for years – but he finds that he absolutely cannot bring himself to care.

“I’m... glad you have her,” he says, but it tastes like a lie on his tongue, sharp and bitter. “I’m glad she can... take care of you.”

Feeling like he’s swallowed a rock, he runs his eyes over the damage done to his partn... his asset, the bruises and the cuts and the blood and the pain.

“She does,” Clint agrees, though Phil hadn’t really meant it, not in his heart. “I don’t... I mean, I can’t...”

“She told me,” he murmurs, putting his hand over Clint’s where it’s fallen onto the blankets, careful of the bandages. “Clint. I don’t understand, why didn’t you just...”

“Because I can’t!” he snaps, jerking his hand away and drawing his knees up to his chest, half-turning away as he wraps his arms around himself. “Because I hate it! Doesn’t matter that I’m an omega, that I have to have a heat, I don’t...”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Phil says quietly, his heart aching as he watches Clint crumble in front of him. “I was just... surprised. I never thought you’d reject...”

Phil clears his throat, straightens up and smooths his tie, all Agent Coulson calm.

“I wasn’t expecting you to spar through your heat with the Black Widow,” he concludes lamely.

“Fucking isn’t the only natural F,” Clint mutters nastily. “God damn Alphas think you need a fuck, like a heat turns you into some sloppy whore drooling for anybody’s knot... well they’re wrong aren’t they. Me and Tash do just fine.”

“More than fine,” Phil scolds gently, unsurprised by Clint’s vehemence, well-aware of the unwanted attention he’s received over the years and seeing those interactions in a whole new light. “Hill was quite impressed, more than she expected to be.”

Clint blushes and looks away, still holding himself tight.

“So. You’re ace huh?”

Clint barks a laugh, a little hysterical and entirely miserable, but he looks Phil mostly in the eye again, which is what he’d been aiming for.

Looks at his tie at least, which is an improvement from staring at the opposite wall, looking like he’s half a second from bolting.

“Yeah,” he chokes, “One too many bad experiences when I was a kid, you know how it is.”

He doesn’t.

He doesn’t and he doesn’t want to, and he wishes Clint didn’t either.

Not for the first time he wishes he could hunt down every man who’d ever touched Clint Barton, had ever hurt him or betrayed him, but he can’t.

He can only make sure he doesn’t do the same.

Taking Clint’s hand in his own, he tugs gently until Clint lets him have it, brings it to his mouth and kisses his bandaged knuckles, presses his fingers flat over Phil’s heart. Clint stares up at him with wide, wet eyes, absolutely terrified, and for the first time since all this started he feels a real spark of hope.

“How much did you hear?” he asks quietly, brushing his thumb over the back of Clint’s hand, watching as his blush deepens and he stares at their interlocked fingers.

“I...”

“I wasn’t lying Clint. I never said it, but I was in love with you.”

“You... was?”

“Still am,” he says with a soft smile. “As far as I’m concerned, nothing’s changed.”

“It will,” Clint mumbles, achingly heartbroken, and all Phil’s instincts scream at him to comfort his omega, aw hell, his omega. “It always does, you’ll...”

Phil stops him by tucking a finger under his chin, lifting his face and pressing a long, chaste kiss to his mouth, close-lipped and heartfelt and sweet. Clint whines, long and loud, and reaches up to grab his lapels, pull him close so that he ends up leaning over him protectively.

“It won’t,” he promises, wrapping his arms around Clint’s shoulders and holding him close, petting his hair. “And if it ever does you can get your friend the Widow to knock the sense back into me.”

“I’ll tell her you said that,” Clint chokes, and his tears are hot on Phil’s wrist when Clint rubs his cheek against his forearm.

“I love you,” Phil murmurs, and it’s the first time he’s said it to him, the words ringing honest and sure.

Clint tightens his grip and sobs.

”Alpha.”