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“You’re still you.”
Phil turned from staring out over the garden and the distant sea as Clint emerged from the kitchen, carrying two steaming mugs and hip-checking the door closed behind him. The porch boards creaked as he settled himself next to Phil and passed over one of the mugs. Phil took it without really looking, “Hmmmm?”
Clint smiled softly, “I said, you’re still you.”
“Huh,” Phil huffed a wry laugh, “how did you know?”
“You get this look,” Clint reached out and gently ran his thumb between Phil’s brows, smoothing, “right here. As if you’re trying to read some kinda code written inside your skull. It’s not there. You are not ‘a bunch of ones and zeroes’. You’re not a machine. Whatever body you’re in now, you’re still Phil Coulson. You’re you and I know it.”
He punctuated his sentence by planting a kiss right to same spot and Phil sighed, leaning into it,
“How do you know?”
Clint laughed, “Do you really think I could know you for this many years, be married to you for more than twenty of them, and not know? Knew you before, know you now. I know you my love.”
Phil shuffled until their thighs were pressing together, “Indulge me?”
“Ah,” Clint sipped at his coffee and slung his arm around Phil’s shoulders, “one of those nights.”
“Hmmmm,” Phil agreed and put his mug down so he could snuggle in closer, seeking out Clint’s solid warmth.
“Alright then. First, me. You love me, don’t you?”
Phil nodded, “I do.”
“You do.” Clint hugged him in tighter and Phil could hear the smile in his voice, “I feel it every day, have done every day for all these years, in every little thing you do. New arrows, fresh bread, midnight walks, early morning kisses. That’s not made up, that’s not a computer. That’s you.”
“But that’s not a fair test,” Phil protested mildly, “I loved you before, when I was…before. Jemma downloaded all of me after the Framework into here and that would have been there, any programming could have built on that. I’ve loved you longer than I can remember, certainly longer than this body’s existed. That doesn’t prove anything.”
“Proves you’re the sweetest man alive,” Phil laughed as Clint kissed him again, “but don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”
Phil let the kiss go on a long, long time, slow and sweet and achingly familiar. When it ended, Clint was grinning and he narrowed his eyes at him, “Are you trying to distract me?”
Clint waggled his eyebrows suggestively, “Why, are you willing to be distracted?” Phil raised his own eyebrow, “Come on, I’m 76, you might not get this offer too often…” Phil didn’t move and Clint rolled his eyes, “Oh, alright love. Okay, two. Lucky. You tried to play it cool but I saw you. Sneaking pizza under the table, belly rubs, dog hair all over your suit trousers. You loved him too, right until his very last day. And you know I hadn’t even met him when I first lost you so there wouldn’t have been any memories of him to be downloaded, would there? You loved him all on your own.”
“He was an exceptionally friendly, brave and gorgeous golden retriever. A toaster would have loved him.”
“You are not a toaster.”
“You know what I mean.”
Clint rolled his eyes again, “Fine. Three. And I’m cracking out the big guns here.”
Phil pressed his eyes closed and leaned hard into Clint’s side, “Please.”
Clint pressed a slow kiss to the top of his head, “Three then. Enoch.”
“Enoch.” Phil sighed, the pain of that sacrifice still cutting as deep as it had all those years ago, “Enoch.”
“Yes,” Clint put his mug down and picked up Phil’s hand, “Enoch. He was a person. You’ve told me enough about him that I know that, and you know it too. He was a person and he had friends and loyalties and loves and hopes and fears and he had mechanics in him, same as you. Lights and switches and things that go bing. Didn’t stop him being happy or sad or scared or very brave. Didn’t stop him being real. Didn’t stop him being a person.” He shifted so that they were facing each other, “All that is true, right?”
“Yes,” Phil nodded.
“Then if it’s true for him, it’s true for you too.”
“But Enoch was always…Enoch.”
“And you’ve always been Phil,” Clint said, so firmly, so certainly that Phil couldn’t help but believe him, “ Always was, always will be. You were Phil when I met you in S.H.I.E.L.D., Phil when you took down Loki, Phil on The Bus, in the Framework as that dorky teacher, when you had your badass shield-arm and when you were Ghostrider. You were Phil when Simmons made you your first LMD body and when they made this one, you were even Phil when you were a TV for a while,” he started to chuckle as he always did at this point, listing all Phil’s past personas, and Phil had to smile himself - he had led a most bizarre life, “and,” Clint continued, “most importantly, you were Phil when I married you and you are Phil now. Always. Hell, if you ended up as a head in a jar like on The Simpsons you’d still be Phil. Doesn’t matter what body you’re using or what it’s made of, doesn’t make you any less yourself, no more then these hearing aids or my Stark-brand shoulder and hip make me any less me. You’re still you. And I still love you.”
Clint finished by kissing Phil again, gently on the lips and then cheekily on the end of his nose. When he leaned back Phil found his breath catching, looking at that beloved face, so familiar and so open and honest, so totally free from any kind of lie, “You mean it don’t you,” he said, his voice full of the wonder he never quite got over when it came to Clint no matter how long he’d had him for, “You really believe that it’s no different. That I’m no different. It really doesn’t matter to you.”
“It matters to me when it matters to you. When you get worried. Or sad. When you look at me and see how old I’m getting - shush, I am - and you wonder what comes next. It matters to me that you can love me for the rest of my life, but I won’t be here to love you for the rest of yours, even though you have to know I’ll still be loving you wherever I am. It matters to me that out of all the time you’ll have, we won’t get enough of it together. That matters to me. But this?” He waved a hand, encompassing all of Phil in the gesture, “This has never mattered to me. You’re my Phil, no matter what.”
Something loosened in Phil’s chest and he shuffled back towards Clint, re-tucking himself under his arm, sighing contentedly, “When did you get so clever?”
“When I persuaded you to marry me.”
“As I recall it was less persuasion that tracking me down across the globe, demanding to know what the fuck I was thinking not coming to find you, and then refusing to ever let me out of your sight again until I pulled my head out of my ass and asked you. There were handcuffs at one point.”
Clint grinned, “See?” he hummed happily, “Clever.”
Phil laughed and tipped his face up for another kiss. Clint obliged, pulling him close, stroking his hand across the fine hairs at the back pf Phil’s neck. He was still smiling when they parted,
“Feeling better?”
Phil nodded again, “Much. Thank you. Again. As always.”
“Anytime darlin’. Anytime”
He picked up his coffee and sipped, wincing at the way it had cooled and then evidently decided to drink it anyway. Phil followed suit and together they watched the twilight fall over their little patch of earth in comfortable, companionable silence. Eventually though, Clint put down his mug, “So,” he said gently, “this mood of yours, any idea what brought it on today?”
He always asked, always, just in case there was any way he could help and usually Phil had no reasons for him. But tonight,
“Actually, yes.”
“Yeah?”
“I had an email. From Jemma.”
“Oh,” Clint frowned, “she alright? And Fitz and Alya?”
“They’re all fine,” Phil assured him, “It’s just….she has an…offer. A gift she’d like to give us. And I wasn’t sure if we…if you, would want it. But I think you should decide for yourself.”
Clint tipped his head to one side, puzzled, “Okaaay, that’s cryptic. What does she want to give us?”
Phil took a deep breath as whatever passed for his heart these days began to race, “Time,” he said simply, and passed Clint his phone, “She wants to give us time.”
Clint stared down at the screen, at the photo of, well himself. His 40 year-old self, lying on a laboratory table. He sucked in a breath, “Babe, is that…”
“It is.”
“But I thought the tech was all gone. Discontinued or whatever. Lost.”
“It was,” Phil took back the phone and scrolled a little, “but Jemma had this one left. Or she fetched it especially, I don’t know. But, you can see she’s already altered it. She says, it’s for you or for no-one.”
“She’s offering to make me an LMD.”
His voice was quiet and for all their long marriage, unreadable. Phil nodded, carefully, “Yes.”
“I’d be, you know, like you? I’d last as long as you?”
“Yes,” Phil said, “but it’s just an idea, we don’t have to, you don’t have…”
“Yes,” Clint exclaimed, suddenly standing and grabbing for Phil’s hands, “are you kidding? Of course yes!”
Phil found himself being pulled up and swept into Clint’s arms, startled into laughing, “You don’t have to decide right now, you can take some time to think about it…”
“Think about it?” Clint crowed and he spun Phil round, lifting him right off his feet, “Think about whether I want to spend more time having adventures with the love of my life? To stay with you forever? Honey, it is not even a question!”
Phil felt the tickle of a hope he hadn’t dared to own, “So, I’ll tell Jemma yes?”
Clint laughed, “Tell her yes and please and thank you and as soon as possible.”
It was hard not get caught in in Clint’s enthusiasm, but Phil tried, “It’ll be hard,” he cautioned, though he couldn’t stop smiling, “we’ll have to keep moving, every few years probably. Things will change around us, friends will age on us, die even. We could last almost, well…forever. That’s a long time.”
“Not if I get to spend it with you.” Clint put Phil back on his feet but kept his hands on his hips, keeping him close. Phil swayed towards him, always towards him,
“I mean it love; you’ll feel different.”
“I should hope so,” Clint grinned, “if I’m going to be a robot too then I demand to be a badass one. I want my shoulders back. And my ass.”
Phil raised an eyebrow, “Your ass?”
“My ass is disappearing Phil, actually disappearing! At this rate I’m gonna be totally assless by eighty!”
Clint’s indignation was so complete that Phil couldn’t help chuckling, “Your ass is a thing of beauty. But that’s not what I meant by different.”
“I know babe,” Clint stilled and became more serious, shifted even closer to Phil and cupped his face, “I know what you mean. But whatever else changes I’ll still be me, because you’re still you. We’ll still be us. And now we’ll get to be us for a long, long time. I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t be worth that.”
Phil leaned into the touch and pressed his own hand to Clint’s chest, over his heart, almost dizzy with relief as the years-old, bone-deep dread that had dogged his steps since the day Clint had found him roaming urban China lanced and started to drain away, “Neither can I sweetheart,” he said, and leaned in for a kiss that burned with the potential of so many, many more to come, “neither can I.”
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