Archive of Our Own ^beta

The hell of it all was that he actually liked Barton. Like, high-school kind of like, with the tingle at the base of his spine and the funny feeling in his knees and the stomach full of fucking butterflies, that kind of like.

It was ridiculous – and unfair, too. Unfair for a lot of reasons; unfair because Barton was his subordinate and S.H.I.E.L.D. had regulations about that; unfair because Barton was Barton and Phil had regulations about that; unfair because, regardless, they still had to work together; but most of all, unfair because Barton was interested – actually interested – and Phil couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Well. Wouldn't do a damn thing about it, but in this particular circumstance, wouldn't and couldn't were pretty much the same thing.

So it was really starting to wear on Phil that Barton couldn't seem to stop flirting with him for five consecutive seconds. He'd make suggestive comments over the radio during missions ("radio silence, Barton, do you need me to provide the technical definition?"), shoot him those cocksure grins in debriefing sessions (always just a little too bright, a little too happy for the stuffy, oak-panelled conference room), brush close to Phil on his way out of the firing range after mandatory testing (and Phil would take a five-minute break to clear his head before re-qualifying on his next weapon).

It shouldn't have been a problem. Barton flirted with everyone. And technically it wasn't really that at all. The flirting was not the problem; it was the fact that, when he wasn't flirting, he was being genuinely nice.

He showed up at Phil's office door with coffee when he brought in his completed reports (admittedly, that was rare to begin with, but when he did bring paperwork, there was always coffee, too). He always had a legitimate reason for disobeying Phil's orders in the field (and with the Avengers, reasoned insubordination was as close to obedience as Phil was ever going to get). He whispered, "good luck," when he brushed past Phil on the firing range, and if the gesture was all flirtation, the words were still sincere (and Phil went forty for forty and resolutely didn't ask himself whether or not Barton's words had helped with that).

So there he was, with his rules and his regulations and his stomach dropping to his knees every time Barton shot him a look that lingered a little too long in a meeting and his stupid, inadvisable, unacceptable high-school crush hidden behind layers of suit jacket and stiff professionalism, and it was ridiculous, and it was unfair, and yet he did nothing.

There were rumours about all of the Avengers. Even Bruce. Hell, even Fury. Some were little more than wishful fantasy on the part of those whispering the rumours behind closed doors and shielding hands; some were true enough that their subjects blushed fire-bright when they overheard what was being said; and some were truer still (or so false that it didn't matter), and made their subjects hold their heads up high and grin in challenge or absolute lack of shame, yeah, you wish you had a piece of this. The latter category seemed to apply almost exclusively to Stark and Barton, who, if even a fraction of the rumours were true, saw far more action than was right or reasonable for symbols of national security.

So Barton flirted, people talked, and Phil did nothing.

Clint was pretty sure it wasn't that Coulson didn't like him. Not entirely sure – Coulson was inscrutable on his best days, and Clint knew his people-reading skills were not so hot – but pretty sure.

He'd caught sight of the agent's eyes following him as he left the conference room, lingering just a little longer than was strictly necessary or appropriate (not that he was particularly hung up on appropriate). He'd felt him shiver when Clint moved past him on the firing range (and maybe Clint kind of liked that shiver, and maybe he wouldn't mind feeling it again). He'd noticed the slight softening of Coulson's expression when he brought in his paperwork (and coffee, always coffee, because Clint was convinced the man slept in his office half the time, and not at all the other half).

So yeah, Clint was pretty sure it wasn't that Coulson didn't like him.

That only made it all the more confusing, though, because of all the people he had ever shown an interest in beyond base flirting, Coulson was the one with whom he'd tried the hardest – and the one from whom he'd gotten the least back. The man was a consummate professional or something. Clint didn't know; all he knew was that he wanted to see that perfectly-knotted tie loosened a little, those neatly-stacked papers pushed just slightly into disarray, the tension at the corners of those calm grey eyes relaxed even the tiniest fraction.

He just couldn't seem to find a way past the smooth, blank walls of Coulson's defences to get there.

It wasn't like Coulson had shut him down. Clint knew when to call it quits, and for all he enjoyed pushing people's buttons, he was very careful about not pushing the wrong ones. Coulson, though, was all mixed signals and uncertainty, all eye contact and body language and appreciation, until he wasn't. Clint didn't know what to do with that. Coulson wasn't like anyone else he'd ever done this dance with, and to be honest, that was kind of terrifying – but also kind of fascinating.

Maybe he just wasn't doing this right.

There was a reason Clint flirted. It was easy, the kind of social exchange where you knew where you stood. He was charming, when he wanted to be; he knew people tended to fall for the scruffy hair, the twinkle in his eyes, the confident grin that was a forgivable lie. He flirted, they flirted back, eventually they took it casually to the next level. Or they didn't flirt back, and he moved on. Or they swept his legs out from under him with a flawless spin kick, drew his own hidden weapon from its holster, and pressed it between his shoulder blades while they threatened unpleasant murder if he ever tried anything like that again, and they resumed their assignment in the morning without another word, and Clint never flirted with Natasha on the job again.

But maybe Phil Coulson was not the kind of guy you flirted with to win him over.

Maybe Clint would have to try something a little farther out of his comfort zone.

Damn.

Barton had paperwork for him again.

Phil was not entirely sure where it was all coming from; he would have guessed that, even with the younger agent's impressive ability to drag his heels on anything that seemed even faintly official, it had all been completed by now. Apparently, not, though, because here he was with yet another stack of surprisingly neatly-filled-out forms.

He'd come with coffee, as usual – and not just S.H.I.E.L.D. sludge this time, either. When Phil took his first sip, he was immediately struck by notes of walnut and dark roast; at headquarters, any flavour other than 'burnt' was already unusual, but he would have recognized his favourite coffee from the little shop down the street no matter what.

This didn't bode well.

He squared his shoulders, took a deep swallow of the coffee, and accepted the forms. "Anything else I can help you with, Barton?"

"Uh, yes, sir, there, uh, there is."

He blinked. This was not the easy confidence he'd come to expect from the man in front of him, and that in itself was worrisome. Stacking the papers he'd been handed against first their short edges, then their long, he used the simple motions as an excuse not to meet the gaze he could feel prickling along his scalp.

When the silence dragged on past the point of discomfort, he asked, "What can I do for you?"

"Well, I, uh," said Barton. "Sir."

Phil looked up then, eyes narrowed, because something was definitely off here. "Barton, did you have something you needed, or are you just being a fairly effective distraction?"

"I," Barton said, and then, "No. I guess not."

The door managed to swing almost all the way shut behind him before he spun around and marched all the way back to Phil's desk, fists clenched at his sides.

"Do you, uh, want to go for coffee with me sometime?"

Oh. So that's what this was. That's where all the banter and lingering looks and stacks of coffee cups from the S.H.I.E.L.D. cafeteria were leading. Phil felt like maybe he shouldn't have been surprised, but he'd never returned Barton's advances (and oh, he'd wished he could), nor had he ever seen the other agent take things from joking to straightforward like this before.

Barton was serious about this, then. They could have something. It was right there, just waiting for Phil to say yes, walk down the street with Barton to his favourite coffee shop, never mind that he'd just had coffee, that wasn't the point. They might talk as their drinks got cold; Phil might get a glimpse of that dazzling smile Barton pulled out on his superiors every time he was in trouble for anything, only without the need for him to actually cause any disruptions. Phil might let it slip how long he'd been paying this kind of attention to Barton; he might find out that it went both ways.

And then Barton would probably invite him over, he would refuse, things would become incredibly awkward incredibly fast… he knew the drill. He'd been there before.

Best to get a handle on it now, while he still could.

"I'm flattered, Barton, but no. Thank you."

Silence. He plastered the blandest of smiles across his face, hoping Barton would get the point, and began absent-mindedly filling in paperwork with his left hand.

"Even for those triple-shot macchiatos I know you'll deny you get every morning down the road?"

Phil almost did deny it, but there was a cardboard cup in front of him containing exactly that and Barton was the one who had put it there. Instead, he just said, "Even for those."

"Even for me?" and he was clearly regaining some of the bravado Phil had unseated, because the light, teasing tone was back in his voice and the knuckles of his fists were no longer as white as they had been.

"I don't play favourites, Barton," Phil said mildly.

It was a lie. Just by entertaining this conversation at all, Phil was quite clearly playing favourites, and somehow, he had ended up playing them with Barton. That was the end of it, though. It had to be.

"Was there anything else I could do for you?"

Barton's shoulders slumped. Phil willed himself with every instinct in his body not to second-guess his decision. "No, sir. Um. Thank you."

This time, the door fell shut behind him unimpeded.

He didn't get it.

He and Coulson had known one another for long enough now that Clint figured he knew the other agent's signals pretty well. They'd been one another's partners, backup, point men on countless missions, working in close quarters and in silence long enough that they ought to be practically telepathic by now. He'd thought the distance they maintained between them was more out of some misguided attempt at professionalism than out of any real desire for it, and he'd gone along with it anyway because he'd thought it made Coulson more comfortable.

This wasn't the kind of sign he'd thought he might misread.

Then again, it wasn't as though Clint had ever really played the long game before. He was self-aware enough to know that he stayed away from anything that seemed like it might require actual involvement, and self-reflective enough to guess at the edges of why that might be, and so this unguarded step forward he'd tried to take with Coulson was… unpractised, to say the least. Maybe he still hadn't figured out how to do it right.

Maybe there wasn't a 'right.' He didn't blame Coulson for not wanting to get into things; it wasn't like Clint was exactly a wise choice. Especially not for a guy like Coulson, who was steady and strong and reliable and actually got stuff done without its resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in repair costs to the City of New York, which was better than the rest of them seemed to be able to manage; a guy with an actual reputation to uphold and people to impress and the regard of his supervisors.

Yeah, Clint didn't blame Coulson at all for choosing to stay out of this one.

Okay. He could work with that. If Coulson didn't want to chance it, Clint wasn't going to push his luck. He could do this, stay away from danger zones, keep his mouth shut, do his job. Coulson could do it, did it every day, and so could he.

It had been a while since Phil had seen Barton in person. There were the morning briefings, of course, but the archer sat at the far end of the long table, kicked back in his chair and hid behind the bored look on his face while Phil updated the team. He was the last to enter the room (though never late) and the first to leave, and other than that, Phil only saw him as a green blip on a high-tech radar screen during assignments.

They still heard one another, but even that was different. Where once there had been jokes and casual disregard for rank and hierarchy ("Come on, Coulson, just one little arrow." "You are not testing the integrity of Iron Man's new armour while he is already engaged in battle." "So… after he wins?" "If I see one wayward shot, I'm pulling you from active duty."), now their interactions were strictly business ("Hawkeye, do you have a visual?" "Confirmed, base." "Engage at will."). Had he been asked a week or two ago, he would have said he'd gratefully grasp at any straw that kept Barton within radio regulations while on missions, but now that he actually had what he wanted with no grasping required, it was – well, uncomfortable. Unsettling.

He'd gotten used to Barton's smart-assed remarks over the radio.

Not that he was worried. No. Not that he held his breath every time the Avengers went out, waiting for Barton to make a crack at someone's expense (anyone's; it didn't have to be Phil's). Not that he began to get into the habit of flipping over to the audio feeds from the gym whenever Barton was in there sparring just to hear the banter and reassure himself that things were still okay. Not that he went back to biting the edges of his nails ragged, a habit he'd broken years ago out of pure self-discipline, when he listened in on those channels and Barton wasn't bantering or flirting or doing any of the things that would have given Phil back a sense of that particular brand of normality.

Not that he was worried. Not at all.

And it didn't bother him, either, when Barton's training logs started to come in with fewer and fewer hours spent sparring and doing team drills, and more and more hours on the shooting range in the middle of the night. He wasn't thinking about the fact that Barton was spending less time with the group and more alone, or that the easy chatter with which he'd used to fill the radio waves had faded away to a few terse exchanges at the start of each assignment. He wasn't dwelling on the fact that, where Barton had once delivered his paperwork by hand with coffee and a cheerful grin, he now pushed it under the office door at night so that Phil found it when he got to work in the mornings, slightly wrinkled but as neatly-written as ever.

It wasn't the coffee he missed, but he told himself it was anyway. For nearly a week, he almost had himself convinced.

Then, he called Barton into his office.

It was two subsequent calls and a visit to the shooting range by Steve before the archer actually showed up. When he did, his fingers were shaking and the skin of his forearms grooved by his bracer, and he explained, apologetic and out-of-breath, that he'd been training.

Yeah, Phil could see that, all right. He'd seen the kinds of hours Barton had been putting in on the range, and right now he looked like every single one of those hours was catching up to him at once.

"Thank you, Captain Rogers," said Phil, the honorific serving as both respect and dismissal, and Steve nodded and left.

The door closed on him and Phil said, "Have a seat, Barton."

"I prefer to stand, sir."

"This isn't an interrogation. Relax." As if that were going to happen. Phil could see the tension in Barton's muscles from here, shoulders drawn tightly together, fingers curled so that they dug into his palms.

"I'm fine. Sir."

Phil folded his arms across his chest, leaned back in his chair. "I'm not buying it."

Barton raised an eyebrow.

"You've been acting strangely for weeks now. You maintain radio silence. You pay attention in morning briefings. You – "

"I thought those were all things we were supposed to be doing."

"They are. But you're Clint Barton. Rules roll off you like water off a duck's back."

"Maybe your information is out of date."

"Clint, when I said no to you earlier, it wasn't personal."

"I don't – what?"

Phil stared impassively back at him across the desk until Barton had regained his equanimity, then backtracked very slowly. "You asked me out for coffee earlier. I said no. It had nothing to do with you."

There was a pause; then, "Uh, mind giving me a little more information here?"

Right.

Phil had set himself up for this. It was why he'd called Barton in in the first place. He'd thought of half a dozen ways to explain; he was armed with an entire repertoire of S.H.I.E.L.D. standard-issue bland looks; he was ready to get this over and done with and move on.

But it was Barton in front of him. Barton, the guy who'd had Phil's back on every special-tactics mission he'd been on for the last five years. Barton, who'd known Phil longer than anyone else at S.H.I.E.L.D. save for Director Fury himself. Barton, who'd brought him coffee and backed off when Phil said no and who was sitting in front of him now with nervousness and feigned unconcern clearly warring for supremacy on his face.

Barton, who interested Phil and intrigued him and made him wish he were different, made him wish he didn't have to explain, made him wish he could just return the casual flirtations that had once been tossed his way.

He didn't want to explain; didn't want to talk about it at all. He'd tried this before, and he knew how it turned out. Still, it was no more than he felt he owed Barton, and the most he had to give.

"I'm not what you're looking for, Clint."

"… How do you know what I'm looking for?"

"I know I'm not it."

"You're just gonna go ahead and make that decision for us both, huh?"

"I understand how this works, Clint. We have coffee, you flirt – outrageously, I might add – we enjoy ourselves, you eventually try to take me home with you."

"Hmm. Yep, yeah, that's kinda how I saw it going, too." Barton's words were braggadocio; his eyes belied it, layer of abject fear obvious in the way they were fixed on Phil, the way his smile was slightly too broad and the corners of his mouth tightened around it.

"I can't do that."

"Uh, okay… want to maybe explain that a little?"

"Not particularly." The words meant nothing, because he already knew he was going to have to lay it out; he'd planned to lay it out, but this last-ditch attempt at saving face slipped from him almost involuntarily.

"You don't think that maybe I deserve to at least understand why I'm being shot down here?"

"I'm not shooting you down. There is nothing to shoot down." Oh, lies.

"Look, just give me a reason, Phil, that's all I'm asking for. Give me a reason and I'll never say another word about it." Now they were both alive with anxiety and poorly-maintained emotionlessness. Barton's face was open and his brow furrowed; Phil's was carefully blank, but the fingers of one hand had migrated to the cufflink on the other and were fidgeting with it in a manner more revealing than any expression he might have worn.

"Because, Clint, I'm not interested in… the sexual aspects of a relationship. I never have been, and I never will be. And I highly doubt that's what you're looking for."

Dead silence, or it would have been, had Phil been able to hear it over the string of profanity repeating itself over and over again in his head.

"You know, you could just tell me you're not into me. Plain English goes a long way around here."

This was a bad idea. He should have known this was a bad idea.

"It's not you. It's anyone."

Barton blinked, opened and shut his mouth once or twice. "No sex with anyone? Ever?"

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

"Not just me."

"No, Clint, not just you. I'm – " it should have been easy to say, as clinical and clean-scrubbed as the syllables sounded in his ears, and yet it wasn't " – asexual."

"… And you want that to stop us before we even try?"

Phil stopped, breath half-indrawn for his next retort, and stared. "What?"

"I mean, what the hell, Phil, I'm not just some mindless sex automaton, that's not why I'm here."

This was very, very much not how Phil had pictured this part of the conversation going. He wasn't sure he even had the mental capacity to address the phrase 'mindless sex automaton.' Instead, he said, "But you – "

"I have a reputation, yeah, and not entirely ill-gotten. But if you were really looking, you'd've noticed I haven't exactly been flaunting that lately."

"You haven't?" Phil had been treating Barton's and Stark's rumoured escapades as just part of the background hum of life with the Avengers. It wasn't as though he checked on the status of their reputations.

"No. As a matter of fact, I've been maintaining a pretty committed relationship with Nock and Draw here." He held up his hands so there could be no mistaking his meaning.

Phil just raised an eyebrow. "… 'Nock and Draw?'" he asked, because surely even Barton wouldn't stoop that low.

Barton shrugged. "I figure if I'm ambidextrous, then it counts as training."

There was no possible response to that, so Phil just dropped his head wearily into his hands (which were not named, thank you very much) and sighed. "What are you suggesting, Barton?"

"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm saying I want to do this with you. If you want."

If he wanted. As if he hadn't been thinking about it for weeks (months). As if it had never occurred to him how easily he and Barton fit together when they were out on assignment or doing the dance of sarcastic give-and-take during briefings or playing at one-upmanship over the radio. As if his stomach weren't doing the thing with the goddamn butterflies again right now, just at the fact that they were even having this conversation.

And yet.

"I… need to think about this. You need to think about this, too." There were implications to the kind of relationship he could handle, the kind of relationship Barton was agreeing to enter, and they needed to be properly considered. This wasn't something either of them could just jump into feet-first.

"I have," was the earnest response. "I will. Look, all I'm saying is… just don't rule it out, that's all."

"I'm not."

And he really wasn't. The realization startled him.

Maybe there was a chance this thing might actually happen after all.

Hours later, Clint was still probing at the edges of their conversation, trying to figure out exactly what he should be feeling.

Under any other circumstances, he would probably have written the whole thing off as some kind of horrible disaster and spent the rest of his S.H.I.E.L.D. career pretending it hadn't happened. It wouldn't have been the first time, although it was usually the junior agents who couldn't look him in the eye, and not the other way around. But this time, Phil hadn't exactly said no, and he hadn't exactly shut Clint down, and if maybe he hadn't exactly said yes either, Clint had still put a hell of a lot of work into wringing out the few words Phil had said, and he didn't want them to go to waste.

He was guessing that he'd been trusted with something not many other people knew, or at least not in so many words, and he supposed that ought to make him happy, or something. Maybe he would have been, if he hadn't had Phil's I need to think about this ringing in his ears along with the advice, You need to think about this, too.

Yeah, okay. He hadn't just been throwing meaningless words out there when they'd been talking, no matter what Phil might think; he'd meant what he'd said. If Phil was up for it, then he was, too, and he'd do whatever it took to make it happen.

Digging around in his top dresser drawer, he pulled out the shiny Stark tablet computer that was standard-issue for each of the Avengers. He called up a search window, began typing, but paused after only a couple of letters.

"Uh, JARVIS?"

"Yes, Master Barton."

"Could you, uh… I mean, can we… can this stay off the record? I don't want Tony or anyone to, you know…"

"I can ensure that your browsing history is kept private, sir."

"No, like, really private. Not oh-well-it's-private-for-everyone-else-but-I'm-Tony-Stark private. Can you do that?"

"I assure you I can, sir."

"Okay. Um, thanks, JARVIS."

"You're very welcome, sir."

He frowned at the little search text box, backspaced over the letters he'd already typed in, and entered what Phil had said earlier. Asexual.

Clint didn't know what he'd been expecting when he hit the search button, but he was pretty sure he hadn't thought there would be five million hits.

"Uh," he said aloud, scrolling up and down the first page of results. "Um, little help here, JARVIS?"

"I suggest selecting the first result and working from there, sir."

"It takes a Tony Stark supercomputer to tell me that?" But he did it anyway, clicking on the first page summary (lack of sexual attraction to others, lack of interest in sex) and settling in to read.

He supposed it kind of figured that a relationship with Phil Coulson would involve preparatory paperwork.

The next time Phil got a mission report from Clint, it was well past midnight and the paper was edged under the door with a crinkle that sounded almost like a flourish. He smiled to himself at the rare opportunity to get a jump on Clint Barton of all people, strode silently to the door, and opened it onto Clint's sheepish grin.

"Late night?" the archer asked, holding up two cardboard cups of coffee.

All right, so maybe it wasn't quite the coup Phil had hoped it might be. On the other hand, he did end up with a completed mission report, coffee (from his favourite place again; were they even open at this hour of the night? Phil was fairly certain the answer was, or should be, no), and Clint's bright-yet-anxious grin as he asked, "Want some company?"

"Why not?" he returned, because data entry for the Avengers Initiative was in equal measures boring and painful (depending on the dollar amount), and Clint was a more-than-welcome distraction.

In his office, Phil returned to his spreadsheets and Clint settled on the least unpleasant of the visitor chairs, sipping his drink. "Are you really busy right now?"

"That depends," Phil answered with some degree of wariness.

"On what?"

"On what you've spiked your coffee with."

Clint's startled laugh was reward enough for the typo it caused, and he pushed his cup across the desk to Phil's keyboard. "Nothing, I swear. Seriously, do you have a minute?"

"It's two o'clock in the morning," Phil said drily. "I think I can spare the time."

"Don't you mean oh-two-hundred hours?"

"It's pronounced oh-two-hundred, and I'm off the clock."

"You're off the clock, but you're at headquarters in the middle of the night doing… some numbers thing?"

"Yes."

"You sure know how to have a good time."

"Did you need something, or are you just here to keep me from making these entries?"

"I brought coffee," Clint pointed out reasonably. "No, can I, uh, ask you some questions?"

The hesitance in his tone conveyed fairly effectively to Phil what this conversation was going to be about, and with a last, longing look at the columns that were nearly completed on his screen, he hit 'save' and turned his full attention on Clint. "Go ahead."

"So, um. I did some…" Clint rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, embarrassed, "uh, reading, and…"

"Reading?"

"You told me to think about this. I don't need to think. I know what I want. So I did some research instead."

"And you have questions."

"Yeah. I mean," he swallowed, "if you still want to… do you?"

Phil sat very still for a moment, taking in what was happening to him. Clint Barton was sitting in his office at two o'clock in the morning (oh-two-fourteen), bearing a gift of coffee Phil didn't even know how he'd managed to get, doing research for him, and asking him if he was still interested in being… something more than just colleagues.

The answer seemed fairly obvious. "Yes."

"Okay. Then you need to tell me what that means for you."

"'Means' for me?"

Clint sighed, kicked his feet against Phil's desk so that the chair he was sitting in rolled a few inches back on its casters, then studied his worn shoes. "I can pretty much guess some of the things you don't want," he said. "But I need to know what you do want. What's okay. What… what you like and what you don't like."

"I… don't know," Phil admitted. At Clint's puzzled look, he added, softly, "No one's ever asked me that before."

They blinked at each other in the glow of the desk lamp, neither one quite sure what to say. Phil was bracing himself for Clint's next words, waiting for the dismissal that would surely come if Clint had any sense at all. Too damaged, too much baggage, too many strings attached. This was not Phil's first rodeo (or third, or fifth).

"Okay, let's start with the easy stuff," Clint said. "No sex, right?"

It took him a moment to realize – this wasn't dismissal. This was something else altogether.

"No sex," Phil confirmed, waiting for a lightning strike that never came. "No… making out. Touching. Nothing like that."

"Touching at all, or, you know, touching?"

A hesitation; a decision, and his voice was firm when he said, "Ask me first?"

"I can do that. What else?"

Phil hesitated for a second time, stared at his desk, tracing the grain of the wood with his eyes, letting the seconds tick off in silence until Clint said, "Just tell me what you need, Phil."

He sucked in a breath. "No… nakedness," he said, watching Clint carefully as he said it. "I prefer clothes."

"Okay," said Clint. "No problem. What else?"

The look on Phil's face must have given away more than he intended, because Clint added quickly, "You can tell me later, too, it doesn't have to be now. Just so I have something to go on."

After a moment, he nodded. Later. Maybe.

"So," said Clint. "We good?"

Another nod.

"I have another question."

"Go ahead."

"Can I touch you? Just, I don't know, shake your hand or something, I don't care. It just feels weird, being so… close to you and far away, you know? Like I can't get to where you are, and I'm trying, but I don't know. Is it working at all?"

There were no words to answer that, or if there were, Phil didn't have them. The only thing he knew how to do was reach over his desk, catch Clint's hand in his own, and fold it close, gripping tightly and resting his cheek against their interlaced fingers.

It's working.

He didn't know how long they sat there before his computer beeped and whirred, putting itself into power-saving mode, and the moment broke.

"I'd better…" Clint said, inclining his head toward the door.

"Yeah. And I," Phil gestured at the now-darkened monitor where his data had once been.

"Yeah."

At the door to Phil's office, Clint paused, fidgeted, bit his lip, and finally spoke.

"Can I ask you one other thing?"

"Why not? You've already asked me everything else."

"It's just, uh…" Clint's hand twitched on the doorknob and Phil watched his fingers tighten around it. "Nothing bad happened to you to – to make you the way you are, did it?" He flung up both hands, palms out in a defensive gesture, to stop Phil from trying to answer just yet. "I know that isn't always how it works, but – I mean, you don't have to tell me even if – look, I just want to make sure I…"

Phil wasn't sure what to do. Half of him wanted to drop his head to his desk in frustration and tell Clint that no, nothing 'bad' had to happen, this is just who I am, but the other half was too lost for words at the fact that Clint was trying so hard not to hurt him, trying so hard to make this strange, confusing, ill-advised thing they had going work, to say anything at all.

"No," he managed finally, putting away the shards of a half-dozen failed relationships because it wasn't quite a lie, and his voice sounded strangely hoarse in the thin air of his office. "Nothing bad."

"Okay," said Clint, "okay. I just…"

He let the pause linger, searching for the words.

"I don't wanna screw this up, Phil, that's all."

Before Phil had a chance to respond, he was gone.

"So, hey," Clint said conversationally, leaning against the doorframe of Phil's office, "am I allowed to ask you out now?"

"Hmm?" Phil replied absently, still focused on whatever he'd been working on when Clint showed up. "Are you aware that the Avengers Initiative goes through more lost-sensitive-item reports in a month than any other unit manages in a full fiscal year?"

"Is that, like, Coulson code for 'quit screwing around out there?'"

"I don't know. Would that work?"

"Probably not. You never answered my question."

Phil looked up. "Question?"

Clint sighed. Phil must be really out of it right now. Way too much paperwork, and Clint knew only one way to beat that. "Come on," he said. "Let me take you for dinner. You haven't left your office all day, I've been watching."

"Do you have any idea how wrong that sounds?" Phil asked, but he did put down his pen and rest his chin on both hands, elbows propped on the paperwork as he looked at Clint over the container of pencils and Post-It notes at the edge of his desk.

"Not if it works," Clint told him, and was gratified when Phil pushed the papers aside and stood.

"All right, Agent Barton," he said, "give me your best shot."

Clint grinned, tilting his head toward the street. "Follow me, grasshopper," he said. "I know a little place."

The 'little place' he had in mind was a tiny, hole-in-the-wall bistro down a side alley it had taken him months to discover even when he'd lived out on the streets and scraped together his meals from the remnants discarded by restaurants like these. He had a history with it; he'd been caught, once, by the owner, as he picked through what had been thrown away over the course of the day. He'd been dragged away from the trash cans, dusted off and brought inside, and there'd been a square meal and as much bread as he could swallow and some extra tucked into his pocket for the next day. After that, there had always been somewhere for Clint to go if he grew really desperate, and it hadn't seemed to matter that he had no way to pay.

It wasn't always about what you got out of the deal. Sometimes, it was about what you gave.

Dinner passed in earnest conversation, the kind where every revelation (their favourite foods, Phil's childhood nickname, the reason Clint preferred a recurve bow) seemed earth-shattering and unforgettable because it was so new to them, but when Clint closed his eyes halfway through the night and tried to remember everything, all he saw was Phil's smile, the way one corner of his eye crinkled up more than the others when he laughed, the way he held his fork in his left hand to eat like they were at some fancy restaurant instead of just Clint's favourite little back-alley bistro.

He didn't mind. Those seemed like the parts worth remembering anyway.

Walking back, they took a wrong turn (or maybe not so wrong; they both knew how to get to headquarters from where they were, and yet the detour passed without comment). Phil pointed out one tall, grey building in a forest of others and said, "My favourite place in the city."

"Why?"

"I once watched a Doombot punch Tony Stark here, and he stopped talking for five entire minutes."

The laughter that escaped Clint at Phil's comment was sincere, and not just because the image was hilarious. Little things like that, things that gave away the secret that Phil actually had a personality underneath all that Dolce, were fast becoming what Clint liked best about the older agent's deadpan conversations. They were a privilege not many people had; it was only in the last couple of weeks that Clint had even begun to get to hear them.

He looked around for something to say in return, but anything he thought of died in his throat, unsaid, because his memories here weren't of Tony or Doombots or anything that might make Phil laugh. All he saw was, Stopped a mugger there, stabbed in the arm there, used to sleep there until someone else moved in on the territory.

"You stop talking, too?" Phil teased gently. "Maybe this really is my favourite part of the city."

In answer, he shot Phil his best un-amused smile (and with Phil Coulson as a teacher, Clint's best was pretty good), pulled his hands out of his pockets, wiped them unnecessarily on his jeans, and held one out to Phil.

The split-second hesitation was enough time for him to realize what he'd done, enough time for his fingers to twitch with the sudden bolt of regret that shot through him, enough time to blink his gaze away from Phil's with an unspoken apology on his face, but not enough to take back his hand or his mistake.

And then Phil took his hand and he breathed out, and the deep relief he could feel etched on his face matched the small, secret smile on Phil's, and yeah, okay, this – all of it, the research and the hesitations and the uncertainty – was worth it just for that.

At headquarters, they separated. Phil retreated to his office; Clint took over three rifles, a combat compound bow, and the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s basement obstacle training course. He was hyper-energetic right now, vibrating a little with the overload of the evening, and though he was self-aware enough to know what he'd like to be doing right now, the obstacle course would do. It would add hours to his training log, too. Phil would probably approve.

His mind kept returning to the evening, on and off (okay, on, almost always on) for the next week, as he racked up far too many hours of solo practice and turned in every single sheet of paperwork he completed individually.

"Clint," said Phil finally, "you're allowed to finish all of them before you bring them to me, you know."

"Gee," Clint replied, barely suppressing a chuckle, "it's almost like I want to come see you or something."

Softly, "You don't need paperwork for that."

"Okay," agreed Clint with a shrug. "Dinner?"

Phil was already putting away his work.

They went out for dinner every Wednesday now, barring extenuating circumstances (which, given the Avengers, were unfortunately not unusual). There was no particular reason for the day, other than that it had been a Wednesday the first time, and Clint was apparently a creature of habit.

Afterward, Clint would offer his hand – always an offer, nothing more – and Phil would take it, and they would walk back to headquarters together, following long and impossibly winding routes, half because Clint insisted he could get Phil lost on the streets of New York, half because even if he didn't, neither one of them seemed inclined to mourn the far-from-wasted time.

Sometimes, Clint would spot something from his days on the streets. "Only the real criminals would hang out there," he'd say, indicating a nondescript back door onto a dirty alleyway. "Used to be you couldn't get within five blocks of here unless you were carrying a switchblade or a gun. And then only if you were good enough to know how to use it."

"What makes you think we're not carrying weapons?" Phil would have been surprised if, between the two of them, they weren't in possession of at least a small arsenal at all times.

Clint just laughed.

More rarely, they'd run into something Phil knew that Clint didn't. "Second-oldest bar in New York," he told Clint one day, far from home on a day when they both felt like getting especially lost. "They say they're the oldest, but they're relying on a technicality."

"Buy you a drink?" was all Clint would say in return, and Phil let him, because the bar was comfortable and homey and not too crowded on a mid-week night in early autumn. Inside, there was a jazz quartet and five-dollar beer which turned out to be on the house when Phil called the Irish bartender by name and paid with a S.H.I.E.L.D. credit card.

Clint gave him an appreciative smile; Phil shrugged it off (Tony Stark's money they hadn't spent, not his) and, instead, held out his hand for Clint's. What he got instead was a purple crayon, taken from the little cup on the paper-covered table, and a broad grin. "You're not allowed to use it to do paperwork."

Phil used it to draw a vague representation of an archer, kneeling on a rooftop to take aim, wearing a ludicrously bright purple outfit over Clint's strenuous objections.

He didn't know how many weeks they'd been doing this – enough so that Clint stopped looking alarmed every time he brushed against Phil as they walked; enough so that Phil was growing accustomed to having his office invaded by a certain S.H.I.E.L.D. agent late every night – before they found themselves walking home along the reservoir, arguing with feigned heat about music. Phil was vehemently defending the sanctity of jazz and big band in the face of onslaughts from Clint's favourite classic rock groups, gesturing with both hands to make a point about Cab Calloway's orchestra, when Clint's arm slipped around his shoulders and pulled him close, just for a moment.

Almost as soon as he'd done it, Clint jerked away and reeled backwards, expression of shocked guilt on his face. "Shit," he muttered, "shit, shit, Phil, I'm sorry, I…"

They froze, standing apart from one another on the path, and Phil drew a breath to consciously unlock his muscles one by one. Clint was still whispering apologies, looking anywhere but at Phil, and that was not okay.

"Clint," he said.

"I know, I know, I'm – Phil, I'm sorry, I just…"

"Clint."

The abortive attempts at explanations stopped, Clint's eyes fixed on the gravel he was pushing around with the toe of one shoe. This wasn't fair, Phil thought, not to Clint, not to either of them. They were – well, God only knew what they were, but something, at any rate, and Clint deserved to be able to have that without guarding his every move.

Phil wanted to give him that.

"It's okay," he said tightly. "Really."

"I should have – asked, or, I don't know – "

"Clint, this is what people in relationships do."

He saw Clint's eyes widen at the word relationship, but all the younger man said was, "Only if they want to."

"I do want to."

Clint didn't need words to answer that one; a sceptical eyebrow raised in Phil's direction conveyed very effectively that he was not an idiot and Phil was not convincing.

"I… want to want to. If that makes any sense."

A familiar crease appeared between Clint's eyes, frown forming on his face as he turned Phil's words over in his mind. Phil wanted to reach out and smooth it away, wanted to grasp for that connection they'd had just a moment ago, until he'd shattered it. Instead, he waited.

Finally, Clint nodded. "Yeah," he said, "okay. So, uh… what now?"

Phil had been wondering the same thing, but it wasn't until Clint asked that he found an answer. He stepped close, tucked his arm through Clint's to bring them close together, and gestured to the path ahead of them.

The walk home was nearly three quarters of an hour; they walked, shoulder to shoulder, breaking neither their rhythm nor the cautious, comfortable silence they had found.

I want to want to, Phil had said, and it was all the motivation Clint needed. He'd pulled out the Stark tablet again and was spending his off-duty hours scrolling earnestly through page after page of websites and resources and personal stories, trying to figure out the best way to proceed.

It was when he caught himself actually making a list of ideas that he knew he had it bad.

Knowing it wasn't enough, though, and Clint hemmed and hawed, went back and forth on the idea of even suggesting anything to Phil; he read and re-read the list on his tablet, then deleted everything on it and erased the file; he sounded out sentences in his head as he took target shots, rapid-fire, then rolled his eyes at everything he came up with and sent another nine arrows into the centre of the target before he had time to think of something even worse.

And yet, somehow, he ended up hesitating one night after dinner at the door to Phil's office. He knew how the routine went; he'd let go of Phil's hand (reluctantly, and the feeling always seemed mutual), Phil would smile (and Clint would glory in it, privately), and he'd go back to his quarters or the firing range or the gym to get in some extra training hours.

"Can I come in for a second?" he asked tonight instead, and even though he was in Phil's office pretty much daily, even though they were standing in a corridor at headquarters blinking in the light of half-a-dozen fluorescents and a classified number of video surveillance cameras, the question seemed somehow private, quietly loaded, almost intimate. Clint never asked for permission like this; when he showed up at Phil's office, it was always with his hands full of paperwork and coffee and pieces of bowstring and throwing darts and God only knew what else, and he knocked with one foot on the already-open door until Phil motioned him in. The fact that he was asking like this was a signal – permission not just to come in, but to rest his fingers carefully against a boundary and push, just a little.

Phil held the door for him, waited until Clint was inside, and closed it behind them.

"Can I… look," began Clint without preamble, "I want to try something. And if you don't want to, you can just say so, and that's fine, we don't have to, it's not important. But I just… I wanted to ask."

He'd needed to say it all at once, get it out there for Phil to react however he wanted. Now, though, he stood by the edge of Phil's desk, fingers picking at the cuffs of his shirt as he waited for a response. He tried not to ask anything of Phil unless he knew it was something the older man could give, but the words were still in his head, I want to want to.

"What do you want to try?" and it was a more cursory response than Phil would normally give, but Clint could tell by the pitch of his voice, by his stance over at the door, that he was nervous, too, wary of whatever was coming next.

"I want to kiss you," Clint said.

Phil blinked, but didn't respond. The corners of his mouth tightened and tugged downward.

"Not, like… I get that you have limits. I don't want to do anything to cross them. I just thought maybe if you knew what was going to happen, and… if you were with someone you trusted… you might want to try it."

There was quiet for a moment, Clint fiddling with his shirt cuffs as Phil drew a breath, held it, let it out in a long, controlled sigh.

"I've tried it before," he said.

"Okay," Clint nodded, holding up his hands to show that he was backing off. "You don't want to, that's cool."

"It would have to be understood," Phil said, words rapid and even, keeping his gaze trained on Clint's shirt buttons, "that it wasn't a lead-up to anything else. Just that, nothing else."

"If you don't want to, we're not going to. At all."

"I want to. I just need you to… take it for what it is, and not as some stepping stone to other things."

"Say that again."

"Say what again?"

Clint smiled. "'I want to.'"

Phil's face softened. "I want to. Clint, I want – come here."

He swallowed, throat suddenly dry, and stepped cautiously into Phil's space, arms hanging loose at his sides. Easy, Barton, easy, he warned himself, and then the touch of fingers against the back of his neck was electric, Phil's hand drawing him close, the slight warmth of exhalation against his skin before dry lips brushed against his, and, well.

In the figurative sense and no other, Clint was well and truly fucked.

He stepped back, stranglehold of feelings threatening to overwhelm him, and said, low-voiced, "Good night, Phil."

Phil's answering "good night" was barely whispered, but as he said it, he met Clint's eyes for long enough to give him the faintest hint of a smile.

Definitely fucked.

It was Phil who suggested the next step, some weeks later with his fingers tangled in the back of Clint's hair, one of Clint's hands settled gently on his shoulder, not pushing.

"What do you get out of this?" he asked, resting his forehead against Clint's. He was comfortable with the touch, even enjoyed it, as long as he was the one initiating, the one in control of when and where and how it happened. As long as it was with Clint.

Clint laughed, pulling back far enough to for them to see each other properly. "Are you kidding?"

At Phil's shake of the head, though, he sobered. "I get… I just," and he trailed off in a mumble Phil couldn't hear.

"Sorry?"

"I just like the contact, okay?"

"The contact?"

"Yeah. I just like – " he lifted his hand from Phil's shoulder, let it fall again " – this."

Phil thought he might understand. Clint needed the physical contact the way Phil needed Clint – to fill something empty in him, slot some puzzle piece into place he didn't know was missing. Maybe when their hands linked on the street, Clint felt the same warm rush of affection Phil felt when the younger man showed up at his door with miraculously-obtained coffee and ink-stained fingers. Maybe a kiss was to Clint what a smile and a shared, private in-joke in the middle of a too-long meeting were to Phil.

He let his hand slip down to Clint's back, asked, "May I…?" and, at Clint's wordless nod, wrapped both arms around him and just held, letting the half-inch of space between them go, letting his hands grip tightly so that he could pretend they weren't shaking at all.

From somewhere buried deep in his shoulder, Clint asked, "What're you doing?"

"Contact," said Phil. "Good?"

"Mmm," said Clint, his words muffled by a layer of suit jacket. "You?"

Normally, Phil would have had to consider the question; would have had to think that Clint was warm, safe, comfortable, that Phil had never expected to feel this way about another person's touch. Normally, there would have been a delay in his answer and a few carefully-measured words.

"Good," he said without a moment's hesitation, then realized – without demands or expectations, without needing to worry about what came next, it was true.

After a while, Clint asked, "What about your paperwork?"

"It'll keep."

More time, hum of office fluorescents, whir of one of Tony's unmanned robots travelling down the hall.

"'m gonna fall asleep on your shoulder."

"Okay."

Clint pulled back a little to look up at him. "Really?"

"I'm not using it for anything else right now."

"Mmmkay," and he dropped his head back to Phil's shoulder without further conversation, shifting a little so that Phil felt the soft huff of a laugh against his neck. "Might never move again. Just so you know."

Phil was strangely okay with that.

Waking up under mission conditions was hell.

Except that he wasn't on a mission, last he could recall, so why did he have that crick in his neck, that ache in his back, that twinge in his shoulder blades that said goddammit Barton you're too old for this shit next time you're asking for a goddamned hotel room.

He could open his eyes, but opening them was like giving in and admitting he was done sleeping, and since as far as he knew he was not out on assignment right now, he didn't see why he shouldn't keep them shut as long as he wanted. The light was annoyingly bright, though, and so he tried to roll over and just about fell out of his chair.

Well, that explained it.

Eyes were definitely open now and, sitting up, he got a distinctly unfamiliar view of a distinctly familiar room.

"Morning."

It took him a moment or two to remember words and how they worked (no coffee, and seriously, had he ever been in Phil's office without coffee before?), but then, "Why am I at your desk?"

"You fell asleep." As if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"At your desk?"

A grin played around the corners of Phil's mouth. "Not quite."

Oh. Right. With the holding and the shoulder and all that stuff. Yeah.

"Did you sleep like that?" Phil was settled on the floor in the corner of the room, back against the wall, tie loosened, cuffs unbuttoned. Clint kind of liked it.

"You were in the good chair."

Well, you put me there. Clint didn't say it. The fact that they both knew Phil had done it was enough.

"Next time, we're gonna do this in a bed. No, not like that – " as Phil's face fell " – not like that, just, my neck, I need that for stuff. Can't spend every night in a desk chair."

"Clint, I don't – "

"Or, hell, two beds, bunk beds, what do I know? Or chairs, chairs are good too… Uh, let me start over." But Phil was laughing, just a little, shoulders shaking as he pressed his sleeve to his mouth to try to retain some semblance of aloofness. It wasn't working.

"Look, just… I like this. Can we do it again?"

Judging by the look on his face, Phil was not entirely opposed to the idea. Still, Clint waited until he made real eye contact and nodded his yes.

"Great. Then we can work out the rest later. Like, after coffee."

"Clint. My limits haven't changed."

"Yeah, I know. Clothes, communication, nothing squishy. I got this. Not expecting anything to change. Especially not you."

Phil opened his mouth to answer, then paused, closed it again. The number of expressions that crossed his face, rapid-fire, Clint thought maybe he'd broken and needed to be reset. The one he settled on, though, was unexpectedly soft as he looked down at his shirt cuffs and began buttoning them.

"You know," he said finally, and Clint thought, fuck it.

He stood up and made for the door of the office. "Need coffee," he said, one hand on the knob. "Love you, Phil."

The door swung noiselessly shut behind him, but that was okay. Phil didn't need to tell him, not in words.