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Chapter Text

*

He is waiting for Coulson to change his mind.

*

Two days after Coulson pries Clint open like a corpse in a morgue to examine everything that’s vulnerable and ugly inside of him, he calls Clint into his office and tells him to close the door behind him. Clint appreciates the privacy, but not the implication that what they’re doing is so embarrassing they have to hide it.

“I need to get an idea of where your reading and writing ability levels lie,” Coulson says. Clint shifts his weight from foot to foot. He’s not ready to sit down yet.

“They’re low,” Clint says.

“What grade level did you attain?”

Clint bites his tongue for a second. The sharp pain helps him focus. “Attain?”

Coulson nods, as if confirming this new piece of information about Clint. Doesn’t know any fucking words at all. “What’s the last grade you finished?”

“Fifth.” He’d taken it twice but hadn’t passed it either time. He’s watching Coulson closely enough that he sees the man wince. Clint smiles at that, unsure why he feels so perversely pleased.

“All right. Would you mind if I asked you to read something for me?”

“Sure.” He sits down and acts relaxed. “Let’s get this freak show on the road.”

The only book Coulson’s got with him is the SHIELD handbook. Clint stumbles through reading the first page, demonstrating how absolutely useless it is when he tries to ‘sound out’ words, staying silent when Coulson asks him questions about the content of what he’d just read, writing out sentences that Coulson recites to him on an already half-full legal pad. He doesn’t look at the blocky, uneven letters once they’ve left his pen, just slides the notepad over to Coulson.

“Do you know the alphabet?” Coulson asks, his fingers tapping out an irregular pattern on the paper.

“Of course,” he says, glaring at Coulson. He’s dumb, not dead.

“Recite it for me.”

Clint rattles through the first few letters, but stumbles when he gets to L. H, I, J, K, L…and then, he remembers from the months he spent stuck at this juncture in the sequence when he’d still been in school, it’s something that ends up sounding like ‘element.’ L, M, N, T…Fuck. Three-year-olds can do this. L, M, N, O, P, fucking P, then Q, R, S…T? He closes his eyes. He hadn’t thought it would be this bad.

“T,” Coulson prompts.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “T, U, V.”

“There’s a couple more after that,” Coulson says, after a lengthy pause.

“Yeah, well. Who needs them? They’re the reject letters, anyway.” Like X. Who needs to use X? “I know the alphabet,” he says quietly. “Just not always in order. But I know all the letters.”

“Okay,” Coulson says.

Coulson’s got him multiplying three-digit numbers by two-digit numbers (which he can do, if he can keep from inverting the figures) when Clint realizes that he’s bitten through part of his cheek. His fingers stutter on the page, turning a zero into a lopsided six.

“That’s enough for today,” Coulson says, taking the pen and paper out of Clint’s hands. Clint’s never been so happy to have something taken away from him. “Thank you for giving me this information. Let’s meet again on Friday.”

Two days. He nods. Makes himself say, “Thank you.” Leaves and doesn’t close the door behind him.

*

For most of Clint’s life, being able to read has been like being able to fly. Sure, it would be nice, and sometimes he’ll dream about what it would be like to have words or wings, but at some point he always comes back down to earth.

He has a new blanket that he doesn’t unfold and six paychecks that he doesn’t know how to deposit and one superior agent who will soon realize that Clint’s not worth the effort.

*

“Day two,” Coulson says on Friday, pulling out a form and putting it on the desk in front of Clint.

Clint looks at it. The words on the top of the page are bold and all capital letters; he’s reasonably sure that they stand for something—but the groups of letters seem too long for that, so they might be words. He glances up at Coulson, who nods his head back at the paper. “Take your time,” Coulson says, as if Clint doesn’t know that Coulson’s time is too valuable to be wasting it on Clint.

Right. Okay. He can do this.

The first part’s numbers and letters mixed together, it’s definitely naming the type of form. RANGE ACCESS, it says after that, the letters huge and pushed together. “I already have range access,” he says, trying to pretend that he’s confused about that, and not about the next line of text on the page which starts with…request, and then for, which he knows, and then something long that begins with per…

“Your current level of access only extends to working hours,” Coulson says, interrupting Clint’s train of thought.

“Yeah, but I can—” Clint clears his throat and tries to look innocent. “I can, um. I can get all the practice I need during those hours.”

“You sneak in during the middle of the night.”

“Maybe,” Clint says with a grin, trying to look playful instead of trapped.

“Definitely.”

“How do you know everything?”

“I have many spies,” Coulson says, pushing the form closer to Clint. “Start working. Let me know when you need help.” When Clint needs help, not if, which makes it both easier to speak up when he runs into something incomprehensible, and also harder, because Coulson already knows Clint’s going to fail.

He gets a lot of it fine, and asks Coulson for definitions when he runs into words he can’t decipher. And, come on, who needs to know words like ‘pertaining’ and ‘indemnity?’ besides SHIELD agents?

He’s about halfway down the page when the nausea that he’s been feeling for five days (since the forms disappeared from his room and reappeared in front of Coulson) starts to build again. He feels like he’s whipped his cock out and started masturbating in the middle of Coulson’s office, like he’s doing something private and shameful in front of someone who—someone whose opinion he cares about.

“Is it just writing it out?” Coulson asks softly, looking at the pen clutched in Clint’s hand. Clint relaxes his grip quickly, because he doesn’t want to crack the plastic and get ink all over himself. “Or is reading comprehension the primary concern?”

Clint reminds himself not to use the word retard, because Coulson finds it offensive. “It’s all a—a fucking concern.”

“All right.” Coulson goes back to work on his computer, typing up reports faster than Clint can fire off arrows.

When Clint’s done, he shoves the paper back across the desk and tells himself that he is not allowed to vomit until he leaves, because there’s a limit to the amount of humiliation that he can survive in any given year. Coulson reads it over quickly. Clint’s mouth has gone dry. He wants to stab himself with his pen so that he’ll have an excuse to run out of the room.

“Most of this is just fine,” Coulson says. Clint clenches his teeth and waits. “There are a few errors, though. Would you like me to correct them, or go over them with you?”

“Whatever you want,” Clint says, forcing the words out.

“Clint,” Coulson says, putting the paper down, “this is for you. What do you want?”

Clint keeps his desire to stab himself to himself. “Show me the fucking—the errors,” he growls. Coulson points them out, writes his corrections underneath Clint’s words in blue ink, and Clint nods like there’s any chance he’ll remember any of this.

He takes the form with him when he leaves. He keeps the pen too, and takes the blank copy that Coulson gives him. “I’ll be in at eight tomorrow,” Coulson says, because Coulson doesn’t believe in weekends (or food, or sleep, or possibly breathing, if you ask the junior agents). “If you bring it back then, I can get it approved before the end of the day.”

Clint nods and leaves.

He fills the form out later that night, working as carefully as he can. He checks it over about a dozen times once he’s finished. Finds two places where he’d copied over answers into the wrongs sections and three spelling errors.

He spends most of the next day on the roof, ten floors above the office where Coulson’s working away, waiting for Clint. The forms end up wrinkled, clenched in Clint’s sweaty grip, but he can’t make himself go back inside until the light in Coulson’s office winks out and his car pulls away from the building.

Clint’s not just stupid, he’s a coward. Has been since he was a kid. He slips back into the building and puts the forms on Coulson’s desk. He leaves both of them, so that Coulson can sift through the layers like an archaeologist examining the work of prehistoric man, so that Coulson will realize the enormity of the task he’s facing.

He is still waiting for Coulson to change his mind.

*

Coulson gives him worksheets to do. Some of them are laughably easy, other ones might as well be written in Latin. (Latin, which Coulson knows.)

“We’re going to try a variety of approaches,” Coulson says, the first day that Clint comes in and doesn’t find a worksheet already set out for him. “Most of them probably won’t work, but it’s not your fault if they don’t. We’ll just keep going until we find what fits for you.”

Coulson gives each new tactic about two weeks before evaluating how well it worked. Clint goes into Coulson’s office almost every morning and stays until Coulson’s phone rings or someone knocks on the door. On Sunday mornings, Coulson turns his phone off and doesn’t answer his door until at least ten AM. Clint brings coffee with him on all the weekdays and bagels on Sundays. It’s an apology, but sometimes—when Coulson hums into his coffee mug or brushes Clint’s fingers when he takes his bagel—it feels a bit like flirting. Those first few minutes of every morning are the best part. It goes downhill pretty quickly after that.

The first thing they try is vocal repetition. They start with the alphabet and spelling simple words. Clint’s sick of the sound of his own voice by the time they give up on that one (t, h, e, the, t, h, e, y, they, t, h, e, r, e, Fuck this shit).

After that they try identifying Latin roots. Clint likes that one because it keeps turning into impromptu history lessons about the Roman Empire, but he doesn’t like that it makes words even stranger to him, even more foreign than they already were.

The deep breathing exercises actually do help. It’s weird to be reading and not feel breathless, tense, braced for a blow. It’s not a strategy on its own, but it helps him get through some of the rest.

Clint’s favorite failed attempt by far is when they try to turn words into pictures of what they represent.

They write out Bow and draw the shape of a bow around it, write Arrow and draw the ends of a shaft coming out either end. Clint writes Bullseye on the edge of his page, draws target circles around it, and doodles an army of Arrows coming at it.

It’s his favorite because Coulson is a terrible artist. “Do ‘pirate,’” Clint says, leaning over Coulson’s shoulder. Coulson sighs, writes the word, and puts what is probably supposed to be a pirate hat on top of it. “Why does the pirate have a conehead?” Clint asks.

“Art is subjective,” Coulson says. Coulson writes out another word—sight, which sounds the same as site, and is what Clint does when he looks down the shaft of an arrow—and carefully draws some lines around it.

“…is it being eaten?”

“What? No. It’s an eyeball.”

Clint squints at it. “It looks more like a mouth.”

Coulson sighs and then draws on some fangs. Clint adds a moustache.

When they go back over those words the next morning, and then again the morning after that, Clint’s only barely better with them than he was when they started.

*

His salvation comes, as it has so many times before, from his body. His body, which had instinctively understood the high wire, and which thinks faster than his mind, and gets sweaty palms whenever Coulson smiles at him.

It’s late in the evening because Coulson had been in meetings all day, and they’ve taken their lesson down to the archery range. Clint’s got new arrows with lightweight metal shafts that have spiral patterns down the sides, supposedly to decrease wind resistance. They all seem to veer a bit too far to the right, but he doesn’t know why yet.

“Thought,” Coulson prompts.

Clint takes a deep breath and sights his target. “T, h,” he draws the arrow farther back than necessary and squints at the bullseye. “O, u,” it’s a tricky ending. He takes a deep breath. Releases. “G, h…t.”

He gets through a full quiver of arrows. After he’s collected them, Coulson shows him the worksheet, with blue check marks all over it.

*

The next day Coulson brings in a kid’s book and muffins to go with Clint’s coffee. “We’re celebrating,” he says, setting a muffin on the desk in front of Clint. He’s taking the muffins out from a blue Tupperware container and he’s pulling napkins out of a canvas bag that had held everything. The canvas bag’s got Sierra Club on the side and a picture of a stork.

“Um. Are you possessed?”

“No,” Coulson says, settling in and taking a bite of his own muffin.

“Is it your birthday?” Clint asks. He’s almost positive it’s not his own birthday, because his birthday’s in either June or July (a J month, definitely, and not January; he’ll look it up when he needs to know).

“No. If it were my birthday I would have brought in French vanilla cupcakes, not blueberry muffins.”

“I like blueberries,” Clint says slowly.

“I know,” Coulson says, raising an eyebrow. “Now open that book and eat your congratulatory muffin.”

*

Clint gets crumbs all over the first two pages. When he finishes it two days later (it’s only twenty pages long and is more pictures than text, he doesn’t know why Coulson’s blowing it out of proportion), he gets muffins with almonds in them.

When he fills out a form with only one draft there are lemon bars.

Some of his memories are a bit foggy, but he’s pretty sure that no one’s made food for him—just for him, not cafeteria food or communal meals—since he was eight. His mom had made dinner for them sometimes, for him and Barney and his dad, before the accident. Old Mary in the circus had given him tea when customers were slow. Trick Shot had given him food, but mostly just so he could take it away when Clint failed.

(He very carefully thinks of the baked goods as food and not gifts because his memory of not getting those are much clearer.)

*

Clint still brings bagels on Sundays and Coulson still says Thanks and now sometimes Clint says You’re welcome.

*

He learns to read to the rhythm of draw, sight, release. He takes his bow with him to Coulson’s office, and he holds it in his lap as he bends over the books—books now, not just forms (even if they are only a step above Dick and Jane). Sometimes he catches himself getting frustrated, and when he does he just adjusts his hands and breathes. Other times Coulson says Clint, which startles him enough to rattle some of the tension out of him. He likes it when Coulson says his name.

*

“Dr. Seuss is a fucking asshole.”

“Theodore Giesel was a gift to humanity.”

“What the hell even is a Lorax, Coulson? It’s not in the dictionary. Why would someone write a book about a creature that’s not even real? If he wanted to write about a ridiculous animal, why didn’t he just use a koala? Or a platypus?”

“Because he was a poet.”

“He was a lunatic who wanted to fuck with kids’ heads. If you give me another Seuss book, I’m quitting. Not just lessons, either, I will quit SHIELD, Coulson.”

“You’re only saying that because you haven’t read Horton Hears a Who yet.”

*

Coulson still lets him go on missions. He spends extra time going over the mission briefings with Clint and highlights all the important information with a purple marker before sending him off.

When Clint gets back from a mission in Mexico that takes a week longer than it was supposed to, leaving him exhausted and dehydrated but unharmed, Coulson fills out his forms for him.

“This is a one-time thing,” Coulson warns, “and I’m only doing it because I want you in bed as soon as possible.” Clint really hopes that Coulson doesn’t notice his blush.

When Coulson’s finished completing Clint’s IH-24 and the IH-24B (because even though the mission had been a shitshow, Clint had still managed to achieve the mission objectives) he claps Clint on the shoulder. Clint’s still wearing his uniform, which is sleeveless, so Coulson’s hand touches Clint’s skin. It’s nice. He stares at Coulson’s back as the other man leaves the room and thinks about what it would be like if he touched Coulson.

He’s not tired and his forms are done, so he steals a car from the motor pool and follows Coulson home. He’s not going to do anything, he’s just—curious. Definitely not lonely, because he’s used to solitude by now. He parks a couple of blocks down from Coulson’s house—a tiny little brownstone thing—and watches through the window as Coulson gets out mixing bowls and a muffin tin. He watches as Coulson takes off his tie and rolls back his sleeves before pouring fresh blueberries into the batter. He watches as Coulson leans back against his counter after he puts the muffins in the oven.

Coulson looks tired.

*

The next day Clint digs up as much courage as he’s ever been able to find in himself and asks Coulson if it would be okay if he came over sometime to use his kitchen.

“Do you like to cook?” Coulson asks slowly, looking a bit confused.

“Don’t know,” Clint says shortly, already regretting his question. “Never have.” He’s stolen a lot of food, but acquiring isn’t the same as creating.

“What do you want to make?”

Clint huffs out a frustrated breath and scrubs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Pasta? Noodles?”

“Sure,” Coulson says. “Tomorrow. You can ride home with me.” Clint nods and looks back down at his book. “No need to take a company car this time,” he adds. Clint stares at him. “Spies,” Coulson says. “Everywhere.”

*

Coulson tells him to put salt in the boiling water and explains the science behind it, tells Clint that throwing spaghetti against the fridge to see if it’ll stick is an acceptable way of seeing if it’s done, and doesn’t seem to mind that Clint hadn’t brought any of the food over himself.

The next dinner, Clint brings a loaf of bread from a store. He’s cashed two of his paychecks now.

At their third dinner Coulson takes his shoes off and changes into a t-shirt before they start making chicken parmesan. Clint runs through lists of all the words he knows and then thinks very hard about paint drying and Fury yelling at him, because the sight of Coulson’s forearms, his bare wrists, his fucking toes, is driving everything else out of his head.

*

Of all the things Clint learns—vowel combinations and breathing techniques, spell check and reminder post-it notes—the fact that Coulson likes him takes the longest to sink in.

*

“Are you seriously hungry again already?” Clint asks with a frown, looking at the mission report (first draft) in his hands. Coulson’s taken to writing notes on them that have nothing to do with relevant information. Sometimes he doodles, each element of his tiny pictures labeled because he’s that bad an artist. “I’ll grab you a sandwich from the mess, but you have to bring me cookies next time I do something good. Multiple cookies. Peanut butter ones.”

“No, that’s not—” Coulson takes the form back from him and picks up his blue pen. Clint sighs and slouches. He wonders how many drafts of this form he’s going to have to go through, especially if Coulson keeps writing in the margins. When Coulson hands it back, Would you like to get dinner? is crossed out, and underneath it is written, in Coulson’s perfect, even hand, is Would you like to go out on a date with me?

*

There used to be more to this ending, but the trajectory of the story changed, and now it goes straight from here to the next part.

Chapter Text

He reads the words and feels bile start to rise up in his throat. He shoves the paper back across the desk. “I’m not a fucking—a fucking fag,” he says, the words burning his mouth. He leaves the room without turning his back to Coulson. 

Coulson’s not safe anymore.

*

Clint books it into the closest vent entrance, secures it tight behind him, and crawls until he’s choking on dust.

Jesus Christ. Coulson’s a fag. Clint’s not—he doesn’t want that, doesn’t want to get fucked or hold hands with a guy or, or kiss one, or—

His breath is coming in ragged pants and the corner he’s squeezed himself into is small enough that he feels claustrophobic instead of protected.

Clint’s not a fag, because if he was, his dad would kill him. Barney, who’d spent most of their time in the Children’s Home beating kids up for looking at him sideways, would hate him.

His dad had hated a lot of people. Retards, blacks, Japs, fags. He’d get drunk and yell at everybody. He’d used a lot of words that Clint hadn’t realized were bad, not until the orphanage, when he’d learned through trial-and-error which were insults and which were identifications.

Race mattered in the children’s home, but there had been kids of every color coming through the doors daily. It mattered, but not in the same way that being a fag did. That was a label that would stick with you. Being white or black meant that you were different from some kids, but that you were the same as others. Being a fag crossed all borders: everyone could hate you.

Coulson—Coulson’s a fag, which maybe Clint should have seen coming, because of the baking and the…the niceness. It makes a bit more sense, now, why Coulson was doing all those favors for Clint.

Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have run. Maybe he should have stayed and repaid Coulson, kept their deal steady. What’s he going to do if Coulson turns on him and tells Fury how much of a liability Clint is? Coulson has Clint’s secret, and for the first time in months, Clint worries that Coulson won’t keep it. Clint doesn’t want to go back to the circus anymore; he doesn’t want to start over again.

He likes it here.

But his dad’s dead and Barney’s hated Clint for a long time with a lot less reason.

He rests his head on his knees, curled up in his quiet, dusty corner, and wonders why Coulson had written down those careful words. Clint doesn’t lisp or giggle or wear make-up or anything, his hands don’t flap around, he works out enough that he doesn’t look like a sissy. Why’d Coulson think he was gay?

Maybe Clint had thought about it, but there’s a difference, he reassures himself; there’s a difference between thinking about things—idle thoughts, nowhere thoughts—and wanting. He turns the words that Coulson had written over and over in his mind until none of them make sense. Would you like to go out on a date with me? He wishes he’d kept the page, so he could read it; make sure that it was real. Dinner. Date.

Fag.

Clint claps both of his hands over his mouth and hopes that the intersection he’s in isn’t above any high-traffic areas, because he can’t keep himself quiet.

He’s—he might be—

*

The next morning he changes vents. It’s safer to keep moving. At the entrance to the new shaft that he settles in, closer to his quarters and a bathroom, he finds a stack of forms with a post-it note stuck on the front. It’s Coulson’s handwriting.

Clint leaves it there until the end of the day and grabs it at night once some of the lights have been turned off. It’s dark in the shaft. That’s a good reason for why it’s so hard to read it, for why the letters blur and Clint can’t make himself breathe deep and take it one sound at a time.

You need to fill this out.

Mission completion form. Clint’s got to turn that in before they can send him out again. He makes a quick trip back to his room to get his cheat sheet and a pen. He’s got versions of all the common forms with the boxes that stay the same already filled out. Name, rank, handler.

He’s got a separate page to sort out the date (Month, day, year, or, courtesy of their pneumonic device attempts, Mom Doesn’t Yodel). He fills in all the usual stuff and curls over the form to fill in the rest. Every time his mind skips to Coulson’s voice—explaining, calming, joking—his fingers stutter on the page. He’s got a stash of blank forms, and he tries to get it done before the night’s out, but by the time the traffic outside the vent picks up—people coming in to work, grabbing breakfast in the canteen—he’s still not done. His hand’s cramping, even though he’s starting to get used to holding a pen the same way he is with his bow.

He’s hungry; not used to missing meals anymore. Not since Coulson and home-cooked dinners and blueberry muffins. He goes back to his room (nothing new at the vent entrance, nothing obviously disturbed below), changes into clean clothes, folds the forms and tucks them in the waistband of his sweats, and heads down to the canteen.

He’s grabbed his breakfast—fruit, a plain bagel, things that he can hide in his pockets—when Hill catches him.

“Morning, Specialist.”

“Hey,” he says, eying the exit.

“Did you and Coulson have a fight?”

He almost gets whiplash from looking at her so quickly. He bites down his automatic fear and takes his time responding. “Not that I know of. Why’d you ask?” Close enough to casual.

Hill frowns and leans towards him like they’re sharing a secret, even though they’ve never really talked before. “Something’s up. I said ‘Hello’ to him this morning and he didn’t smile at me.”

“And?”

“I’ve been working here for almost five years. Coulson always smiles. Add that to the fact that you’re not in his office having breakfast with him…”

He feels a shot of panic go through him, a stale, reflexive fear; she knows his routines; she could hurt him. “Maybe he’s been replaced with an alien doppelganger,” he says gravely.

Hill looks alarmed. “Do you think so? Oh my god. That actually makes sense. Okay. Don’t panic. We have procedures for this. Except, shit, Coulson wrote most of them—”

“He’s fine! Probably just had a bad morning.” Hill doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she stops trying to leave. She’s leaning against the wall at Clint’s side. She doesn’t look like she’s eager to walk away from him. “Did you know about Coulson?” he asks, as quietly as he can.

“That he’s been replaced by an alien doppelganger? No, that’s news.” She sounds amused, but he knows she can go from amused to homicidal in about as much time as it takes him to draw an arrow.

“No, that he’s—that he—” Vaguely, he knows that ‘fag’ isn’t a word he should use around a girl. “That he…likes men?”

Hill stares at him like he’s gone crazy. “Of course I knew. He hasn’t had a boyfriend in a while, but it’s not a secret, a lot of people know. Are you seriously telling me that you didn’t know?”

“He wasn’t wearing a fucking sign,” Clint hisses.

“No, but he has been hitting on you pretty much since your recruitment.” Clint, who had been living in a storm of confusion his first few months at SHIELD, had obviously not been able to tell the difference between someone who wanted him, someone who liked him, and someone who gave a shit about him. They were all equally foreign. “I can’t believe it took him this long to make a move.” Her face drops. “Oh. Is that why he’s in a bad mood? Did you…you said no?”

“I’m not gay,” Clint says, a bit too loudly; a couple of people give them curious looks. He controls the urge to flinch. He is a specialist, he reminds himself. He is Hawkeye. None of these people can touch him.

“Okay, okay. Sure. I hope you let him down gently.”

He’s pretty sure that yelling at Coulson and running wasn’t the gentlest way he could have handled the situation. “Whatever. He’s fine.”

“Unless he’s been replaced by an alien,” Hill reminds him.

“Jesus Christ. I’ll check on him.” The idea of having an excuse to talk to Coulson makes him feel…he doesn’t know. Makes him feel something that twists his stomach and lifts it at the same time.

“Okay,” she says. “But check in with me in half an hour, or I’m sounding the alien alarm.”

“Uh. Is that a real thing?”

She shakes her head sadly at him. “Can’t believe you haven’t read the handbook,” she says, walking away. “I thought Coulson would have taught you better.”

*

He doesn’t take Coulson a coffee, even though it’s a Thursday morning and there’s hazelnut. Coulson’s not picky about coffee, but he lingers over the cup of hazelnut Clint brings him on Thursdays, breathing in the steam, smiling over the rim of his cup.

Coulson’s door is closed, and for a weird, displaced moment Clint feels like he’s inside and out at once. He’s never knocked on Coulson’s door before. Coulson’s door is almost never closed unless Clint is in his office.

He knocks and Coulson tells him to come in. He braces himself and opens the door. If Clint didn’t know Coulson as well as he does, he’d have thought that the man was fine. But Coulson’s hair isn’t brushed as neatly as it usually is. His keyboard’s at a crooked angle, which only happens when Coulson’s feeling tense. There’s no coffee cup on his desk, because it’s Clint’s job to bring it to him. Coffee every morning and canteen bagels on Sundays; Clint had looked forward to the times their hands would touch.

Clint doesn’t get touched a lot. He can kind of get why Coulson misread the signs. Clint had misread himself too.

“Hey,” Coulson says. Hill was right, Coulson’s sort of terrifying when he’s not smiling. “It’s been a while.” Clint shrugs and closes the door behind him. It’s quieter without the ambient sound. He tells himself that he’s not trapped and steps further in. Coulson rubs at the bridge of his nose. “We should talk.” He’d told Clint once that he didn’t actually get headaches there, but that his dad had; it’s a borrowed gesture. (Clint tries as hard as he can not to be like his father, but it doesn’t always work.)

“I owe you an apology,” Coulson says, with a sad smile that Clint doesn’t like at all. “I put you in a very uncomfortable position, and I’m sorry for that.”

“You thought I was a fag.”

“First of all,” Coulson says, looking Clint straight in the eye for the first time. “I never want to hear you use that word again. Not when you’re with me, and especially not in my office.”

“Sorry. Thought you wanted to talk about it.”

“I do want to talk about it, I’m absolutely willing to talk about it—but that is an ugly, offensive word.”

“People ever call you a fag?” Clint asks, inching closer.

“A couple of people,” Coulson allows. “Back when I was in the army, mostly.” Clint nods. His dad had been in the military; he’d learned a lot of hate there. “Has anyone ever used that word on you?”

Clint’s mouth goes dry. He doesn’t like the way that Coulson asked him, Used that word on you, like it was a belt or a curse or a weapon. Doesn’t like that he’d used it on Coulson. “Not much,” he says. “In the Children’s Home sometimes.”

“You going to stay a while?” Coulson asks, not quite making eye contact. Clint hesitates and Coulson rubs the bridge of his nose again.

“Okay,” Clint says, doing a quick visual check to make sure that the vent’s screws are still loosened. “Just don’t try anything gay.”

Coulson stretches a leg under his desk and scooches Clint’s chair out for him. “I will do my utmost.” Coulson straightens out his keyboard and Clint can see the lines of tension between his eyebrows fading away.

By the time he gets Coulson to explain what Utmost means, Clint’s stopped checking the exits.

*

He catches Hill a couple of times in the canteen and gets close enough to her that sometimes she sees him and asks him to sit with her. When it’s just the two of them, he tries to ask her about Coulson. About his last boyfriend (older than Clint, moved to Colorado, nice guy) and about the other gay employees at SHEILD.

She’s not hard to talk to, and she’s honest with him. There are other people at SHEILD—people Clint knows, and has worked with, and talked to—who are gay. A woman in the armory, two of the navigators (who had dated, apparently, and had a soap opera-worthy break-up right before Clint’s recruitment), the guy in HR who Clint always sweet-talked into giving him soap and sheets when he was too tired to fill out the proper forms.

He’d never really thought about it. About flirting with someone to get what he needed, regardless of their gender. He’s always known that there is a difference between the many masks he puts on, and the person who lives behind it. He doesn’t know how Coulson had seen both the mask and what lay underneath; he doesn’t what Coulson wants from him. (He doesn’t know what he wants from Coulson, but he knows—he knows, deep in the pit of his stomach where his fears curl up tight: he knows he wants.)

He and Coulson only meet three times a week now, and Clint’s progress slows way down. There’s not enough room in Clint’s head anymore. He’s got too much information coming in from other areas; there are a lot of new words that he’s learning on his own.

He’s started saying ‘gay’ instead of ‘fag.’

*

Clint spends more time in the vents than ever before. His room is too full of Coulson. There’s the bullseye-carpet, pillows, the black-and-white pictures of hawks that Coulson had helped him find and buy; the keypad lock on the door with symbols instead of numbers because of course, of course Coulson would think of that; the chair that Coulson had sat in while he read Clint Grapes of Wrath, waiting for him to recover from a mission gone wrong.

Coulson helps him fill out a form for increased laundry access so that he can wash the dust from the vents out of everything. Clint gets most of the form done by himself. (Coulson’s hand had brushed against Clint’s when he’d corrected the department code and neither of them had moved their hands away.)

He’s in his favorite spot—above the conference room to the east of Coulson’s office, where he can hear when Coulson leaves or if he’s got a visitor and if he’s doing okay, but not close enough to have to admit to himself that he’s stalking—when he makes himself reevaluate.

He’s spent a lot of time not looking at himself too closely, he realizes, curled up so tight that his ribcage can’t fully expand, his whole body feeling tight and trapped. He forces himself to look at himself as closely as he does his targets. Tries not to flinch from what he sees.

Coulson’s taught him how to learn a target, but it had been Barney who’d made Clint learn to keep watch. No one’s gonna take care of you but you, Barney had said. Sometimes, looking back on things, Clint’s surprised to realize how young they’d both been the first time things fell apart.

Clint likes Coulson.

He likes Coulson in ways that are different from how he likes Hill, or how he’d liked Trick Shot or the kids in the Children’s Home. Clint’s list of friendships to use as a baseline comparison is embarrassingly short.

But Coulson also makes him feel nervous, makes him feel unsettled. He gives Clint a weird thrill in his stomach; his skin practically itches when Coulson touches him. He makes words flow through Clint’s fingers faster than they ever have before; sometimes, Clint catches some of them.

*

It’s the hardest thing Clint’s written. The letters are different sizes and dinner’s only got one ‘n,’ he realizes, when it’s to late to change it; the ‘o’ and the ‘u’ in ‘you’ are flipped. Clint can’t make himself write it again.

He slides it across to Coulson, errors and all, and hopes that it isn’t a mistake.

Coulson’s still for a very long time, during which both of Clint’s knees start involuntarily bouncing. Maybe Clint had written it so badly that Coulson can’t read it. Maybe he’s disgusted. Angry?

Goddamn.

“Are you doing this because you want to do this,” Coulson asks, “or because you feel like you have to?” He looks serious, looks calm, like either answer would be okay.

As hard as it had been to write it down, it’s almost harder to say it out loud. “I want to go on a date with you,” Clint says. Would you like to go to dinner? He swallows and forces himself to say the words. “Because—” His fingers flex, like they’re searching for a weapon; a bow, a pen. “I want to.” Once it’s out there, the words hanging in the air between them like a line of dirty laundry, Clint feels okay. After a lifetime of failing, he feels like trying again.

“Dinner sounds great,” Coulson says. There’s a smile on his face that Clint doesn’t recognize. For the first time in weeks Clint’s lungs, when he breathes out and then in again, feel like they’ve found clean air.

*

 

Chapter Text

He looks like a stranger.

He glares at the mirror, adjusts his stance, and evaluates again.

He looks…rectangular, somehow, in the crisp button-down shirt he’d stolen from storage and the dark jeans he’s never worn outside of the Macy’s (the saleswoman had stared at his ass the whole time he’d tried them on. He’d been grateful for her help—he’d been drowning in a sea of denim before she took pity on him and helped him out. He hoped the Macy’s salespeople worked on commission; he’d bought a lot).

The jeans he’d settled on for tonight—‘professional cut,’ whatever that is—have weird creases down the front, like some stranger in a sweat shop had ironed them for him. It makes his thighs itch. The jeans are tighter than the sweats he usually wears, and he can’t figure out how to wear them with his combat boots. Tucking his jeans in makes them bunch up funny, but pulling them over the tops creates a bulge around his calves. He could cuff them, but that would reveal their pale, undyed underbelly, and Clint’s not sure that that’s okay. At least he still looks tough, strong; that’s usually the look he goes for; he looks like he’d be hard to knock down.

He doesn’t look like somebody Phil Coulson would want to go on a date with. (A date. Clint’s first.)

He fidgets with the jacket that he’d grabbed with the shirt (they’d been on the same hanger in the store, so he’s pretty sure they match). He buttons it. Unbuttons it. Takes it off. Puts it back on; buttons it. The undershirt, underwear, and boots are the only things about his outfit that aren’t new. The boots are the only shoes he has, and the t-shirt’s worn thin. One of the junior agents had said that the t-shirt made his arms look good, so. So hopefully, if they get to a point that Clint can take off his button-down, or roll up his sleeves, hopefully Phil will like his arms and hopefully this whole fucking thing won’t be a disaster.

He scrubs his hand over his hair, trying to get it to do something. Stand up on end, maybe, or look sexy, or—he should just shave it. He and Fury could match. Fury’d hate that.

It’s only 6pm. He’s got a whole hour to kill. He sits down on the edge of his bed, puts his elbows on his knees, and tries to calm himself down.

Coulson won’t care what he looks like.

Probably.

(Clint still doesn’t know what it is that Coulson wants from him.)

Clint should call and cancel. If he was smart, that’s what he’d do: pick up the phone, dial Phil’s number (and probably accidentally call the Fazoli’s in Brooklyn whose number is only one digit different than Phil’s), and say that something’s come up. Or that he’s sick. Got called on a mission. Forgot that he was meeting with someone else. The problem is that Phil can usually tell when Clint’s been lying, and most of the excuses Clint has are things that Phil could check up on and disprove.

Coulson is his handler; it’s his job to make sure Clint’s okay. (Clint’s not quite sure how that’ll translate when they’re off the clock.)

He stands up and looks at himself in the mirror again. He looks like a bouncer, with his dark clothes and scarred knuckles. Phil’s probably going to show up in a tuxedo or something and Clint’s going to look like his Mafioso bodyguard.

He takes off the jacket and switches to a plain white windbreaker he’d found in the range one day. Then changes back to his jacket, then takes his boots off. He’s about to change his jeans when the alarms sound and the speaker system starts blaring. There’s been an attack.

Thank god.

*

It only takes him a few minutes to change into combat gear and grab his bow. He knows what he looks like in these clothes, he knows where all the pockets and weapons and armor plating are hidden. The first wave of agents is pulling out and Clint snags a ride on a helicopter. They’re headed to Massachusetts, where some Godzilla-like monster is tearing up a mountain. Halfway through the ride Clint’s earpiece fizzles and then he hears Coulson’s voice.

“Hawkeye, report.”

“I’m in the air, sir. Jumped on board with Sitwell’s team. Figure I’ll do some recon when we get there, report back on the situation. Cool?”

“We’ll specify the parameters of your assignment once we get more intel. Until then, report back every twenty minutes. Sitwell will be your supervisor until I am on scene—I’ll be there about ten minutes after you arrive.” He’s probably imagining that Coulson sounds more worried about him than is usual.

“Yes, sir.”

“Be safe.”

Clint bites his lip and doesn’t say anything. Most of his usual responses are kind of rude, and the only serious ones he can think of are too honest.

*

The fight is long. Half of the mountain is practically barren by the time they bring the creature down. Tree trunks have been smashed into splinters and stone has been pounded into clouds of dust that have turned all of the shiny black SHIELD vehicles dull grey mixed with the creature’s ochre blood. There are a few deer carcasses and a lot of small wildlife mixed in with the debris, but at least no agents have died.

Clint collects as many of his arrows as he can. The science team is used to working around him; they take readings from the creature’s body while he plucks arrows out of its eyeballs. His weapons didn’t do as much damage as Sitwell’s rocket launcher, but he’s the one who had gotten the beast into position.

He’s covered in dust and his hands are coated with the creature’s sludgy blood when he gets back to the command center. Coulson’s there, standing in the middle of a swirl of people, calmly giving orders to everyone. He’s got a bulletproof vest on, but under that, instead of a suit, he’s wearing a blue sweater. It’s hard to see clearly, since Coulson’s covered in a mix of blood and dirt, but Clint’s pretty sure his pants are a dark grey instead of black.

Coulson’s still dressed up for their date.

Clint climbs on top of a van and crouches there until it’s time to leave. He watches Coulson. Knowing that his handler is smart and actually seeing him take quiet, competent control of an enormous crime scene swarming with agents are two different things; Clint never tires of watching him in action.

Coulson says that Clint’s mind works in its own unique way; coming at problems sideways, upside down. Coulson (like Mary the fortuneteller, who Clint had known when he was still Barney’s dumbass little brother) says that Clint’s mind is special: he views the world through his own private kaleidoscope. Sometimes, though, Clint wishes for Coulson’s eyes, which see everything all at once; wishes for Coulson’s mind, which moves like a river, taking everyone else along with him.

In the middle of a destroyed battlefield Coulson’s texting Fury, reading a report that Sitwell’s holding up in front of him, and engaging in two separate conversations at the same time.

Everybody there respects him. They listen to him, they report to him, they obey him. Hill teases him about his clothes when there’s a lull in the activity and Coulson lies and says he’d been planning on going to an opera when they got the call.

(Watching, Clint realizes he'd been right: he absolutely would have looked like the mafia bodyguard trying to protect Coulson from hitmen. As nice as Coulson probably looked, Clint’s kind of glad Godzilla chose today to visit.)

Clint imagines what would happen if Coulson admitted that he was taking bird-brain out on a date. If they were lucky, he’d just get laughed at. If they weren’t, Coulson would get called fag by the people who are calling him sir.

Clint’s never questioned the fact that Coulson’s out of his league, but right now it feels like they’re members of different species. Clint waits until the fleet start to move out before he jumps down to the mobile command center and goes to Coulson’s side.

“I bet you planned this,” Coulson says, lifting one arm from his side only to drop it again with a sad splat. “You waited until I was in the splash zone before you got the target into position, didn’t you?

“You’ll have to wait for my mission report to find out,” Clint says, smirking; he’s been trained out of all his tells.

(He’d made the shot as quickly as he could; he’d had to jump across a line of trees like a spider monkey to get there, and he’d only barely made it in time. The monster had been heading for the front lines; for Coulson. Be safe.)

“At least you weren’t wearing one of your suits,” Clint says, painting those words over the jumble of panicked warnings still uselessly swimming around his mind.

“My suits are insured,” Coulson says, looking cross. “This was my first date outfit, which isn’t under SHEILD coverage.”

Clint’s not sure what it says about him that he finds Coulson’s ridiculous clothing obsession kind of endearing. “What about your second date outfit?” he asks, after a quick check of the area to make sure they’re alone.

Coulson looks up at him and smiles. A bit of goo drips off the tip of his nose. “My second date outfit is just fine.”

*

Their next date is delayed because Clint spends two weeks in Brazil sitting on top of a mansion, keeping his scope trained on an empty parking lot and reading The Giving Tree on his Kindle. The Kindle (a present from Coulson, like the ficus and subscription to Bowhunting magazine) lets him look up words quickly, and he can hide whatever he’s reading from other people. The Giving Tree makes Clint feel sad and he reads it a couple of times to figure out why.

He keeps wanting to discuss it with Coulson, but of course, Coulson isn’t in Brazil, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing he ought to break radio silence for.

On the fifth day after the op goes live, Clint starts A Wrinkle in Time. It’s the longest, densest book he’s tried yet. Ten days later he shoots seven different people. The op’s gone perfectly, according to the chatter among the agents on the flight back, but Clint can’t help but feel that any op that ends in bloodshed is a failure. Most of the projects Coulson works on are to prevent the ones like this.

He finishes chapter three right when they land. The list of words that he’s had to look up is getting embarrassingly long, and he’s completely lost track of the story. He’ll go over the vocab and the plot in the morning with Coulson, which makes it less demoralizing.

It’ll probably take a while.

Clint’s kind of looking forward to it.

Hill debriefs him that night and sends him on his way. His room is too quiet, he’s not hungry, so he sneaks down to the range and tucks himself up in an alcove near the ceiling. The familiar soundtrack of bullets hitting targets, guns being dismantled, and people talking lulls him to sleep.

He forgets to bring coffee to his meeting with Coulson in the morning, but Coulson’s already got breakfast for two set out on the desk. Clint sits down, pulls out his Kindle, closes his eyes, and breathes for a few minutes. He can hear Coulson drinking his coffee and typing away and it makes Clint feel at home in a way that the base and his bedroom hadn’t been able to do.

“Let’s talk Giving Tree,” Coulson says, when Clint opens his eyes and reaches for a croissant. Clint tucks his feet up on the leather chair and turns his Kindle on.

Within half an hour the food is gone and they’ve moved on to L’Engle. When Coulson’s phone beeps for the fifth time Clint pushes himself out of the chair and moves to leave.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Coulson says. “I missed you.”

Clint—who’s never had anyone who’d wanted him to stay around, let alone someone who wanted him to come back—says, “Yeah,” and, later, when he brings Coulson some lunch, he says, “I missed you, too.”

*

Coulson plans their second date. He’s by far the smarter of the two of them, so Clint hopes this one won’t go as badly as their first had. “Friday’s retro night at the cinema, and they’re showing Return of the Jedi,” Coulson says, shifting in his seat. It’d be the equivalent of bouncing up and down in anyone else.

“Sure. That’s, uh—Star Wars, right?” Coulson stares at him. For a long time. Clint wonders if this is how his targets feel. It’s not a pleasant experience. “What?”

“You haven’t seen Star Wars?”

Clint shifts his weight. “No. Is that—”

“You poor, deprived human being,” Coulson says, reaching out to pat Clint’s shoulder. Clint hasn’t flinched away from Coulson in months, but he has to consciously stop himself this time. Clint understands that Coulson’s teasing him, he gets that, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just that Clint doesn’t like feeling any stupider around Coulson than is absolutely necessary, and having his pop culture ignorance added to the mix doesn’t feel great.

“Missed out on a couple of movies when I was growing up,” he says, trying to use his words like whitewash, covering up all his faults.

Coulson’s hand stops patting Clint on the shoulder and he just squeezes instead. Coulson seems to find more excuses for casual touches these days. Clint’s on the look-out for some windows of opportunity of his own, but he’s never sure when it’s okay to make a move.

He’s come to accept that Coulson’s touches are meant to comfort, to soothe, sometimes, to tease. They’re not invitations. They’re not a request, and definitely not a demand. Over their breakfast reading session last Sunday, when they’d finally given up on Wrinkle of Time and moved to Where the Wild Things Are, Coulson had said, “I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

Clint might not be able to read words longer than five letters on a page, but he can read between the lines of Coulson’s voice just fine. Coulson had been telling the truth. Clint, who wasn’t used to those kind of words yet, had mumbled something indistinct and held the book up in front of his face.

Everything makes him uncomfortable.

He wants Coulson to keep touching him.

He’s been spending a lot of time in the range, because the lines and curves and force of his arrows make sense, unlike the stumbling slow activity of his brain.

“This is great,” Coulson says. “I get to be there to introduce you to the magic for the first time. I hate to show them to you out of order, but this will probably be the only chance we have to see Jedi in theatres. I’ll explain the plot of the first two before we get there.”

“There’s more than one?”

*

Clint opens his door at 6:57pm. Just like he’d expected, Coulson’s leaning against the opposite wall, arms folded, looking at his watch. He shrugs, caught out, and gives Clint a little smile.

“Your obsession with being exactly on time is sad,” Clint says. He’s watched Coulson from the vents before, standing outside of rooms until the exact time he was supposed to arrive, knocking on the door in time with the chime of some internal clock.

“It keeps the newbies on their toes. They think I’m a robot,” Coulson says proudly.

“Some of them think you’re an alien.”

Coulson frowns. “I prefer robot.” Clint’s pretty sure that they don’t program robots with senses of humor, but the trainees don’t get to see that side of Coulson.

Coulson holds out the coat he had folded over his arms, and says, “I brought you a present.”

Clint takes it from it and holds it out. It’s black, leather; it fits loosely across his shoulders and is pulled in at the wrists. He’d worn it for an op in Belgrade. He’d loved it. “Is the wardrobe department going to come after me for this?”

“I am a man of mysterious means,” Coulson says.

Clint narrows his eyes. “You baked Marsha something.”

“Apple crumble muffins.” Coulson smiles again and Clint tastes the memory of those muffins; he’d just finished his first chapter book. Balto. Wide, frozen expanses of cold, an intrepid race across the ice, and at the end of the journey a Sierra Club bag of baked goods had been waiting for him.

Clint slips the leather coat on over his button-down shirt (no tie, the top two buttons undone; he’s been people-watching civilians for fashion tips). Coulson gives him a long once-over and then smiles. Clint fights the urge to turn and run, to twirl and give Coulson a show, to zip the coat closed and pull his head inside like a turtle. But he’s always been braver than he is smart, so instead he just says, “Thanks. You look really nice, sir.”

Coulson’s second date outfit is more casual than the one that had been ruined on the mountainside. He’s wearing another nice sweater; this one’s green and looks soft; it makes Coulson’s eyes brighter. Makes Clint more aware of the crinkles that grow around them when Coulson smiles. “You can call me Phil,” Coulson says.

“Phil-not-like-landfill,” Clint replies automatically.

“Phil-like-phlegm,” Phil counters.

They trade F’s and Ph’s as they walk to the car: philosophy, Fredericksburg, phrenology, fantastic.

*

The theatre’s pretty empty, and they’d gotten there early so they could claim seats in the back: no one behind them, eyes on all the exits. Coulson buys the tickets, popcorn, and sodas; Clint repays him by pretending that he has any idea what’s going on in the movie. Part of it’s that he doesn’t remember who half the characters are, but more of it is that Coulson had only gotten one tub of popcorn. And they’re both kind of hungry.

Their hands keep touching.

Clint is very aware of how pathetic it is that the brush of Coulson’s hand can make his entire arm tingle, but that doesn’t stop his body from leaning toward Coulson like a lopsided tower.

The fat little monkeys are throwing some sort of party when Clint finally decides to make his move. He scrubs his fingers clean on his jeans, turns in his seat as much as he can, and puts his only-slightly-buttery hand on Coulson’s face.

He kisses Phil Coulson for the first time in the back row of an old movie theatre. Coulson, after a moment where time stops and Clint’s heart freezes in his chest, kisses him back. Coulson tastes like popcorn and Sprite. His lips are soft. Clint’s eyes close almost automatically, so he’s not sure how he knows that Coulson is smiling.

Clint’s kissed girls before, but this feels different. He doesn’t know if it’s because he wants it so much this time, or if it’s because it’s with a man, or if it’s just because it’s Coulson. He wishes he didn’t have to stop.

In the dark nervous place inside of Clint where he worries that Coulson will leave him, there is another fear: fear that Coulson looks at him like a child, a student, a retard to be pitied. But in the dark of the movie theatre, lit by the flickering movie screen, Clint feels uncomfortable only because of the amazement he sees in Coulson’s face.

“All of my geeky middle school fantasies just came true,” Coulson whispers, pulling back a bit. Clint’s perversely proud of having made Coulson sound so breathless.

“I’m pretty sure we’d have to be watching a Captain America film for that to be true,” he whispers back, body thrumming with adrenaline, with the pleasure of knowing Phil well enough to tease him like this.

“Well,” Coulson says, a look in his eyes that Clint doesn’t know how to read yet, “there’s always next weekend.”

In the end of the movie the rebels win and Clint reaches for and holds Phil’s hand.

 

Chapter Text

Coulson kisses him again before he drops Clint off at SHIELD headquarters. As second dates go (especially considering the non-event that their first date had been), Clint’s putting this in the win column. Lola’s gear-shift digs into his stomach and Coulson puts his hand on the side of Clint’s head and it feels perfect.

But once he gets out of the car he feels unsafe. He feels like gravity’s failed and his body’s coming apart from the ground under his feet. It’s new, and terrifying, and he blames it all on Coulson.

He wants to call Coulson back.

He doesn’t call.

They’ve planned their next date for a week from today. Coulson said he was going to make dinner in his apartment and asked Clint to bring the wine. (He didn’t ask if Clint could manage it, if he knew where to go or what to bring, if he had enough money. Clint likes that Coulson trusts him.)

When he gets to his room he tucks the movie tickets into Trick Shot’s book.

His dreams taste like popcorn and Sprite, but they still smell like gunpowder.

*

It’s not often that Coulson gets sent on long-distance jobs off-comm, much less month-long ops without even being allowed to say goodbye. It’s the longest they’ve been out of contact since Clint started at SHIELD. And whatever this mission is, the details are locked down tight. No matter how much digging Clint does, he can’t find any info about where Coulson’s gone or what he’s doing. Hill humors his pestering at first, but eventually she bans him from Command and tells him to chill the fuck out.

Sitwell sends him on some easy gigs to keep him from getting underfoot. They’re mostly surveillance jobs. Clint would have enjoyed the impromptu vacations if he wasn’t so worried about Coulson (and if he didn’t have so much maneuvering to do to hide his unfiled paperwork. He’s out of practice, and Sitwell’s no slouch).

Hill’s the one who calls him when Coulson comes back, so he forgives her for withholding information earlier on. Because Coulson is…

Coulson’s sick when he comes back. Not Medical-sick, not body-sick. The doctors check him over and don’t protest when Hill tells Clint to sign him out. Coulson says thanks (the last thing he says that night) and lets Clint and Maria walk him down to the parking garage. He hands Clint the keys when Clint asks for them and doesn’t seem to notice that Clint’s planning on driving his car. Hill, on the other hand, is as shocked as Clint.

He reminds Coulson to put on his seatbelt and he complies. When they get to Coulson’s apartment, Clint parks, turns the car off, opens Coulson’s door for him, undoes the man’s seatbelt, and pulls him out. Coulson sags against the hood and Clint locks everything up before hoisting Coulson’s arm over his shoulder and carrying the man inside.

Clint’s dealt with shock victims before, but never like this. It’s never been someone he loved. He feels helpless, useless in a way he almost never lets himself feel.

He opens the door to the apartment with the key Phil gave him when they started doing dinner regularly. It’s strange to find it dark and not already filled with the smell of Coulson’s cooking. He thinks that it’s a good thing Coulson doesn’t keep plants at home. Clint’s been watering the ones in his office, but it hadn’t seemed right to come here alone.

Coulson lets Clint take him into the bedroom without complaining. Almost without noticing. Clint leans him against the wall, since Coulson doesn’t seem capable of standing on his own anymore, and strips Coulson out of his suit piece by piece. His tie is perfectly done and his shirt’s tucked in. Coulson had obviously waited to fall apart until the last possible minute.

Clint gets him out of his shoes, slacks, jacket, and shirt, and starts to shift him over to the bed. Coulson, for the first time since he got back, reaches out for Clint. Wraps his arms around him and holds on so tight it hurts. There aren’t any bruises on Coulson’s body, no wounds that Clint can see; Medical wouldn’t have let him go if he’d actually been injured, but Clint still wishes for a physical hurt that he could help to heal.

Instead he just holds Coulson while he cries. As far as he can tell, with Coulson’s face pressed up against his chest, there are no tears. Coulson’s body shudders and hoarse cries crawl their way up from somewhere inside of him that Clint hadn’t known existed. Clint holds him, holds him up, holds him until he thinks they’ll both evaporate; he holds them both up until there’s only Clint’s useless half-formed words (they’re lies, but they’re all he has: it’ll be okay, you’re okay, and, when those are gone, I’ve got you) and Coulson’s nonexistent tears.

When Coulson quiets down Clint tucks him into bed. He leaves Coulson there while he double-checks that all the doors and windows are locked and the alarm system is set, and then he curls up on top of Coulson’s covers, between Coulson and the door, on guard. Coulson eventually falls asleep, but Clint keeps watch like a dream-catcher, ready to wake him at the slightest sign of a nightmare.

*

Coulson’s talking in complete sentences again (dry, sarcastic, almost-believably-normal sentences) and Clint’s in the cafeteria to grab snacks because he’s almost caught up on his paperwork and deserves a cookie or five when he hears someone call Coulson a fag.

Clint, who’s been dreading this since before their first date, turns around and looks the other man up and down. He’s large and blond and eating an apple at the corner table, talking to a couple of other guys. He must be new. Clint doesn't recognize him.

“I think I misheard you,” Clint says, walking over and interrupting the table’s ongoing conversation. His pockets are full of granola bars to restock some of his hideaways, but he’s got Coulson’s favorite crappy dessert treats in his hands. “What’s that you were saying about Agent Coulson?”

When the other man calls Coulson a fag again, Clint drops the desserts and launches himself across the table. It’s been a while since he was in a good old-fashioned brawl, and it’s fun while it lasts. He gets in enough hits to feel placated when the other agents finally separate them. He manages to pocket a package of Twinkies that miraculously hadn’t gotten squished before Sitwell pins his arms and frog-marches him out of the room.

The other guy is still on the ground. There’s blood on Clint’s sleeve, splattering the SHIELD insignia. There are agents he recognizes standing around looking worried, and someone’s called for medical.

Clint feels only a vicious satisfaction.

 

 

*

It’s pretty clear from the video surveillance who started the fight. Clint analyzes his form, makes a note to practice his left uppercut (he’d left himself wide open, it’s embarrassing) and smiles at the blonde woman across the table in the interrogation room. “Sorry, what was the question?”

“Why did you attack Security Specialist Franklin?”

“Felt like it.”

“Agent Barton, I feel I should remind you of the severity of your situation. You’re looking at a minimum of three months’ suspension for physically assaulting another agent. There’s footage of the attack, a room full of trained witnesses, Franklin’s word that he did nothing to provoke you, and your…somewhat less than adequate explanation.”

Clint shifts in his seat. He hasn’t spent that much time in lock-up, but the times he had weren’t exactly pleasant. (He’s having flashbacks of being thirteen and scared and lonely for his brother.)

“I’m pretty sure nothing I say is going to make up for punching…what his name…in the face, so what’s the use?”

The woman leans forward, her elbows on Clint’s spread-open personnel folder, and tells him, in a voice that suggests that if it mattered to him, then it’ll matter to her.

Clint doesn’t believe her for a second. “Can I talk to Coulson before I talk to you?”

“No. I don’t want you changing your story.” Her tone remains sympathetic. Clint tries not to glare at her, because he knows she’s just doing her job.

He really wants Coulson.

He makes himself take a deep breath and thinks of Coulson saying his name, quiet and calm. Holds onto the memory for a long beat. The silence stretches a moment too long.

“SHIELD’s got rules about discrimination, right?”

She leans back and nods at him. Her expression hasn’t changed at all.

“That include name-calling?”

“It depends. What did he call you?”

Franklin had been talking about Coulson, not Clint, but it makes it easier to be honest if he can at least lie about that. “Fag.”

He feels uncomfortable saying the word now. It feels like years, like a lifetime since he’d spit the word at Coulson. It still feels like yesterday when he’d realized that the word was a weapon, and that he’d hurt Coulson with it.

Franklin, Clint’s willing to bet, had probably known exactly what damage that word could inflict.

“Did you have any interactions with Security Specialist Franklin before he called you a fag?”

“You mean did I grab his dick or something?”

“No. I meant, is there any reason that you know of why Franklin would have a grudge against you? Why he’d want to hurt you, or get you in trouble?”

“I honestly don’t know.” He really didn’t. Coulson’s one of the kindest men Clint’s ever known, even if he does try to keep his heart under wraps, and Clint’s never even seen Franklin before that afternoon.

She nods and looks down at her papers. Clint really hopes she’s not going to make him fill anything out. “Hang tight,” she says. “I’ll be back soon.” Her eyes, Clint notes, look different now. The sympathy in them seems a fraction more genuine. Clint reminds himself not to hope.

She takes her folder with her so he just stares at the table and counts the seconds in his head. Coulson had told him once that it freaked people out when Clint went still. He hopes he gives whoever’s watching the surveillance feed of his room nightmares.

After about two hours, she comes back in. “Two witnesses have confirmed your story. On behalf of internal investigations, I apologize for Security Specialist Franklin’s conduct. You can be assured that he will be appropriately reprimanded. You, however, will be on one week’s unpaid suspension, and when you return, you will attend mandatory anger-management courses. Physical violence isn’t the right way to respond to every attack, Special Agent.”

“Just most of them.”

“In your line of work? Probably.” Her eyes are green, Clint notes, and tired.

She holds the door open for him, but he doesn’t feel like he can leave yet. “I know he’s probably just an asshole,” Clint says, “but maybe Franklin just didn’t know any better.”

“He’ll be taking a sensitivity training course,” she says, her eyes softening for the first time as she looks at him. “If that’s the reason, we’ll take care of it.”

“And if he’s just an asshole, I’ll keep punching him.”

She sighs, but almost fondly; it reminds him of his mom. “I hope I never have to see you again. Good luck, Special Agent. Thank you for your time.”

“Whatever.” He waves a hand over his shoulder and books it to his room. All his stuff’s still there.

Coulson stops by pretty soon after that and explains to Clint that one week’s suspension doesn’t mean that he has to leave the base. He can stay in his apartment. “Or you can stay in mine,” Phil says, shrugging and not making eye contact. “You’ve got the whole week off, you might as well relax a little. Watch some TV.”

“Maybe make you dinner,” Clint muses, thinking about what he might be able to make without risking burning down Coulson’s nice kitchen.

“That would…that would be nice,” Coulson says. “I, uh—I hear you defended my honor today.”

Clint shrugs. He doesn’t know who had sussed out the actual details of the situation, but it’s almost reassuring that Coulson still knows everything. When Coulson backs him up against the wall and kisses him, Clint goes easily. When Coulson finally lets him up for air, Clint gives him his slightly-squished Twinkies.

Coulson says thanks, and not just for the Twinkies. Clint twists them around and kisses Phil until his lips are swollen, his eyelids lowered lazily.

(He does set fire to Coulson’s kitchen, but only once, and only for a little bit. Coulson’s mostly just angry that Clint shot all the fire alarms.

Coulson, Clint discovers, is even hotter when he’s angry.)

*

There’s paperwork waiting for Clint the next morning. “Declaration of romantic intention,” he sounds out. “Declaration of—wait, what?”

“It’s a form,” Phil says, “alerting SHIELD as to the altered nature of our relationship.”

“There’s paperwork for this shit? And you want to fill it out? Wait, what am I saying, of course there is, and of course you do. No.” Clint tries to look firm, and not like he’s sulking.

Or scared.

“All you have to do is sign.”

“No.”

“This doesn’t change anything,” Coulson says. “It just protects us in case something—like yesterday—goes wrong.”

“Who’s going to know? Who gets to read this?”

“Fury. Hill. Probably Sitwell. And anyone with clearance levels higher than ten.”

“Mine’s only nine.”

“Then you should feel lucky I’m letting you take a look at these papers. They’re classified, you know.” Coulson’s eyes are knowing as he looks at Clint. Clint avoids his gaze.

He takes the forms back to his apartment and tries to read them. Two days later he brings them back, asks Phil if signing them is really the best thing to do, and writes his name down when Phil says Yes.

*

“Fury wants to see me.”

“Oh.”

“Fury’s going to kill me.”

“Fury is not going to…Fury is probably not going to—”

“I am never coming to you for reassurances ever again. I am never signing anything you give me ever again. I am never—”

“If your meeting’s at two, you better run.”

Clint swears, kisses Phil for good luck (apparently good-luck-kissing is one of the normal things Clint didn’t know about, a Midwestern ritual or something; Phil insists on it whenever they have the chance), and heads to Fury’s office.

*

“Phil is one of my oldest friends,” Fury says. He’s holding Phil’s paperwork—Clint’s signature at the bottom, lopsided as always—in his hands.

Clint tries to dig his way out of his chair using his shoulder blades. If he presses against it hard enough, it’ll have to work eventually, right? “I know. I promise, I’m not going to hurt him. I’m not fucking with him, I—”

“Phil is one of my oldest friends, but—and this is very important for you to hear, Barton, so listen closely—that is not as important as the fact that he is your superior officer. If you ever, ever, feel that he is abusing his power, or that you are being taken advantage of, or if there’s anything you need that you feel uncomfortable asking for from Phil, I want you to come to me or Hill. You’re an important asset to SHIELD, and your health and safety, both on and off the job, is paramount. Do you understand?”

Clint’s pretty sure that he understands, he’s just not sure if he believes. “Are you serious?”

“I don’t joke, Barton. Now get the fuck out of my office.”

“Right. Okay. Uh—thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome. Now leave and shut the door behind you.”

When he tells Phil about it, he laughs, and then smiles, and then bakes Fury a muffin basket.

*

Clint fucking hates Russia.

“Hold on,” he says, keeping his gun trained on his target, straining to keep an eye on every possible movement that her body might make. She’s many different kinds of threat, and Clint’s down to his last precious reserves of energy. He’s tired, hungry, worn down to the bone. The knife-wounds scattered along his forearms and hands where he’d fended off her attacks have stopped hurting because most of him has gone numb. “This whole thing would be a whole lot easier for me if I just shot you, so please—please just give me a minute so I don’t have to do that.”

She shifts her weight, relaxing against the wall where Clint’s cornered her. He wants to laugh with how little he believes her tell.

Clint thinks. There’s something here; something off-pattern. Something sideways that he can’t quite put his finger on.

He shifts his weight and she responds in kind; ready to move if he moves. “You remind me of somebody,” Clint says.

“If you’re about to say that I remind of your girlfriend, I will rip off your tiny dick and feed it to you.” Her voice is flat.

Yeah. The resemblance is definitely there. Clint opens his mouth and shoots her in the split second of waiting-to-listenthat people habitually give to someone about to talk. Clint, who’s stumbled unexpectedly into that moment too many times not to learn how to take advantage of it, strips off his coat and presses it against the gunshot wound in her gut, covering the red blossoming on her dark blue gown before it has a chance to spread.

She gasps and presses a knife that Clint hadn’t known she was carrying up against his jugular.

“Help me get out of here or I’ll kill you,” she says, her hand not wavering.

“You remind me of my brother,” Clint says conversationally, pressing the coat tighter to stop the flow of blood and trying not to swallow. Her knife is warm. Body temperature. He doesn’t feel it split the skin before he feels the blood trickling down his neck.

“He want to kill you too?” she snarls.

Clint, whose first instinct had been to nod (which would have sliced open a vein or two), says, “Yeah.”

“Smart man.”

“I’ve always thought so,” he replies, pressing down harder.

Her breath hitches in her throat. A little bit of blood spills out the corner of her mouth. It matches the red of her hair, complements the blue of her gown.

(She’s probably never gone on a first date worried about looking like a hitman. But bleeding out under his hands, her mouth twisted in a gasp and a snarl, she doesn’t look like the type of person who goes on many dates. He wonders is he should feel sorry for her.)

“If you don’t help me get out of here, you’re signing my death certificate,” she says.

“That’s already been signed,” he tells her quietly. (Fury’d signed it. Coulson had talked Clint through the forms.) “The only way out of here is on a SHIELD stretcher. Whether you’re alive or not is up to you.”

“Your brother should have killed you when he had the chance,” she says, baring blood-stained teeth at him before her eyes roll back in her head and the knife falls out of her hand before she can take her next breath. Clint, who’s had that same thought himself a time or two, keeps applying pressure and waits for Coulson.

*

Her name’s Natasha. Natalia. Black Widow. Romanoff, Romanov, Romanova. Clint’s pretty sure there’s no way he could misspell her name on his report that wouldn’t turn out to be a legitimate variation of some kind.

Coulson had taken custody of her, given Clint two blank copies of all the reports he had to turn in, and left him alone in medical.

Clint fills everything in. They’ve bandaged him up and hooked him up to IVs. He’s dehydrated, on the edge of starvation, sleep-deprived.

Coulson’s never left him alone here before if he could help it.

Clint fills out both drafts by himself and is pretty sure that the second is worse than the first.

*

Clint hides both copies when Hill shows up for the debrief, and she fills the forms out for him when he shows her the bandages on his hands and wrists. “Defensive wounds,” he explains, when she gets to that part of the report.

“I’ve seen her,” Hill says. “Did you even try to hit back?”

“At first. But then…” Clint’s fought like that before, but not in a long time. In the years after the circus, when he’d been recovering from wounds that should have killed him but didn’t, when he’d had to remind himself to care enough to eat, when he hadn’t thought the word suicide but had looked forward to the jobs he should have been smart enough not to take—in those years, he’d fought like Natasha, Natalia, Natalie Romanoff Romanov Romanova.

Clint’s always had a simple name but he hasn’t always known who he was either.

“Then what?”

“I saw the opportunity to bring in a valuable asset,” he says. He’s repeating the words already written on the papers his lying on, scrawled in his nearly illegible hand. They’re accurate but not important. Hill’s probably gonna figure that part out on her own, but Clint’s not going to make it easy for her. “I offered her the out, and she took it.”

She sighs, because she knows him too damn well, and finishes the forms without any other follow-up questions. “Coulson’s pissed,” she says, while he painstakingly signs his name on the bottom line.

“Yeah.”

“He won’t say it, but you scared him.” He looks at her sideways, but she’s not looking at him. “Don’t go off the grid like that again,” she says, taking the forms back from him. “You scared all of us.”

*

In the fight that follows, Coulson calls Clint stupid and Clint accuses him of being an emotionless robot. Coulson leaves without saying goodbye and Clint escapes through the vents.

It takes a while to get there from medical, but there are two hideouts in the SHIELD maintenance vents that Clint is positive no one knows about. He has enough food stashed there to keep himself going for a week, maybe ten days if he rations appropriately, and he alternates between the two every twenty-four hours just to keep track of time. One is above the water-heaters, the other is right next to a fan; the changing temperatures don’t really do much for the dizziness he still feels.

He wishes he’d brought his Kindle. He wishes he’d killed the Black Widow two weeks ago when Coulson had first given him the order.

He wishes Coulson hadn’t called him stupid.

He wishes it had taken Coulson longer to figure it out.

*

Five days after the fight Clint drops back into Medical, picks the lock on the pharmacy, and passes out while trying to figure out which pills will make the world stop spinning.

*

Hill’s there when he wakes up.

“It’s funny,” she says, glaring at him with pinched lips and angry eyes. “When I told you not to go off the grid again, I didn’t realize it was opposite day.”

“I didn’t leave SHIELD property,” Clint says. His voice hurts his throat. He hasn’t spoken in a week. “I was on medical leave, so it’s not like you needed me for a mission. I gave my debrief. What’s the problem?”

She cuffs both his hands to the bed and leaves.

He picks both the locks, but it takes him nearly ten minutes, and he’s sweating by the time he’s done. He passes out before he can muster up the energy to leave. 

When Coulson comes in he’s wearing plainclothes and he looks tired. Wrecked. He looks like Clint’s throat feels when he tries to talk: raw.

“You made the right call,” Coulson says, shutting the door behind him and locking it.

The entrance to the ventilation shaft in this room is right above Clint’s bed, and the window isn’t shatterproof. Coulson’s trying to keep other people out, not keep Clint in. The monitor still gives away the increase in his heart rate.

Coulson pauses and then takes a step back towards the door. “Want me to unlock it?”

Clint shakes his head. He makes himself breathe through it. They both wait for his heartbeat to slow down.

“You made the right call with Widow. She’s talking, and she’s telling us—well. She’s giving us a lot of information, but she’s also…she was ready to give up. You did the right thing. I don’t know that many other agents would have seen the signs you did. We were lucky you were there.” Coulson’s words are an apology, but his eyes are still angry.

“She okay?”

“She’s recovering faster than you are. But then, she didn’t break out of Medical AMA.” Coulson makes a move towards the chair at Clint’s bedside and Clint’s heart rate gives him away again. Coulson sighs. “I’m sorry for what I said before. I hope you know I didn’t mean—”

“Who are we right now?” Clint interrupts, his words a demand despite how weak his voice is. He has to know.

“What do you mean?” Coulson’s voice is careful now. He looks confused.

“Are you—are you Coulson? Or Phil?” (Clint understands that usually the two are the same, Phil Coulson, because he’s seen the borderland in between. He’s seen Coulson leave the building and drive home, he’s seen Phil dicing up tomatoes for his homemade sauce. He’s seen Phil Coulson’s forehead creased in concentration as he works with Clint (Clint Barton, Hawkeye) side-by-side, searching for the meaning in familiar words.)

“Considering Fury forced me to take some leave time, I guess I’m Phil.”

“He—what?”

“Apparently I was making a nuisance of myself,” Phil says, putting his hands in his pockets. “I was, well—I didn’t deal with your…with the—I wasn’t performing up to my usual standards.”

“Which means…?” Clint’s not following. It must be the drugs.

“I drove everyone crazy,” Phil says, his voice quiet and rough. “I had the probies searching the building in grid patterns for a solid thirty-six hours looking for you. I yelled at Hill. I disobeyed a direct order from Fury.”

“What order?” Clint can’t imagine how something like that could happen.

“He told me to sit down and shut up, and I told him to stick him eyepatch where the sun don’t shine.” Clint is shocked and warmed and ashamed all at once.

“I’m sorry I called you a robot.”

“I’m sorry I called you stupid.”

Neither of them are good at apologies. Coulson—Phil—tries to keep going, but the beeping of Clint’s monitors stops him. He hovers, halfway out of the room. Clint doesn’t want him to leave, but he’s having trouble catching his breath. When he does, he tells Coulson to come sit down.

Clint believes that Phil is sorry. He believes that Phil didn’t mean it when he called Clint stupid. He’s too tired (his body flashing hot and cold like he’s still in the vents, tucked up quiet in corners, trying to breathe and not think) to find the words to say that out loud so he just fumbles for Phil’s hand. He’s uncommonly clumsy because of the bandages, so Phil holds one of Clint’s hands with both of his own. Phil’s hands are tan and familiar, but there are new bruises on his knuckles. “I punched a wall,” Phil explains, following Clint’s line of sight. “It looked at me funny.”

“Good thing you taught it a lesson then, sir.” He doesn’t smile when he says it. He’s too damn tired to smile.

Phil smiles for him, and Clint relaxes for the first time since he got back, tension he doesn’t understand releasing. Phil’s hands tighten over his. Clint doesn’t need to hold on because Coulson’s holding on for him.

Phil falls asleep minutes later and Clint breathes, in and out, like he’s on the range with unfamiliar words in his mouth and his bow in his hands.

*

The sleep together before they fuck. There’s months in between the two events. Months, three kitchen fires, two more fistfights (both on the job), one more bullet-wound, and the Black Widow turning into Natasha. She likes Clint and is suspicious of Phil who’s suspicious right back. She comes over for dinner sometimes but not always with forewarning.

(This is only a problem once. Well, twice. Well, maybe three times, but the third time Phil was the only one who was embarrassed. Clint just found it funny. Natasha did too, even if she still refused to smile.)

(She asks Clint, early on, if she’ll be expected to fuck all of her handlers, too. Clint tells her that she can not-fuck whoever she wants, including her handler. Once she figures out that he and Coulson still haven’t gone beyond kissing—which is awesome, enjoyable, almost enough all on its own—she teases him unmercifully. But she also helps him pick out clothes for his dates and tells him what wines he should bring. He worries at first about following her advice, but it turns out she’s right and Coulson’s pleased and so he asks her opinion more often than he should.)

He and Coulson sleep together before they fuck. Usually they take turns: one of them sleeping while the other stays on watch, in Medical on or the plane or in Coulson’s office. It’s probably good, because after they fuck the first time, Clint runs away. Phil tells him that it’s okay, they can debrief in the morning. Clint thinks he’s kidding until Phil asks him about flavored lubes over muffins.

Clint leaves after they fuck the next couple of time. Goes for runs until his thighs and calves and feet ache, or goes to the range until he can’t hold his bow up any longer, or climbs through the airshafts until even he doesn’t know where he is anymore. (Coulson always cleans them up and Clint always leaves. Coulson never tries to stop him.)

“I think I want to stay,” he says eventually. They’re in Coulson’s apartment, the lights off, the scent of garlic and oregano from dinner still permeating the air. Clint’s just returned from a mission and he already feels exhausted, beaten, worn out. Putting his clothes back on seems like too much of an effort.

Phil smiles slowly at him. “Do you want to be closer to the door, or the wall?”

“Which side do you want?”

“I want the side you don’t want,” Phil says, mumbling and blinking sleepily into his pillow. Phil looks very comfortable. He’s also lying on the side closest to the door.

Clint eyes the bed, surveys the room. “I guess…wall.” There’s a window right above the bed. A better escape route, if it comes to that.

Phil rolls closer to the door and pats the empty space on the bed like he’s summoning a frightened pet. “I’m not a dog,” Clint says, crawling cautiously to the area Phil’s made for him.

“Good boy,” Phil murmurs, patting him vaguely on the head when he slips under the covers. It’s unusual for them to be like this. Uninjured, with space to move, and safe enough that they don’t have to sleep in shifts.

Clint lies on his back. Then his side. Then his back again. Eventually Phil grumbles and grabs Clint’s arm, pulling him against Phil’s back. “It’s called spooning,” Phil says.

“I knew that.” He tries not to sound defensive.

“You okay being the big spoon? You can keep your eye on the exit this way.”

Clint’s words catch in his throat. A thrill of warmth and fear shoot up his spine. “Yeah, it’s—uh, it’s fine.” His knees are pressed behind Phil’s knees. His chest presses against Phil’s back when he breathes. “What do I do with my other arm?”

“It’s an age-old problem,” Phil says, sagely and sleepily. “The elbow dilemma.”

He doesn’t fall asleep that night. Everything hurts, and also, also there’s someone touching him. His instincts take a couple of nights before they catch up and let him relax enough to actually sleep.

The first time they fuck and then sleep together (they have a lot of firsts) Clint sleeps with his arm under Phil’s head. The next time he folds it between them like a broken wing; after that he stretches it above his head like Peter Pan.

He broaches the topic with ‘Tasha, who takes it as an invitation for some inventive sparring. His entire body, but especially his arms, are screaming with pain when he drags himself to Phil’s that night. The two of them rearrange about a dozen times before Phil (asking permission every step of the way) switches sides of the bed and spoons Clint, one arm underneath his head, like a pillow, the other crossed over his chest.

“I’ll watch your back,” Phil says. Phil’s lying between Clint and the wall, his knees tucked against Clint’s knees. His chest presses against Clint’s shoulder blades when he breathes. Clint doesn’t try to rearrange them, and quiets the part of him that wants to.

“I know,” Clint says instead, and feels Phil smile against his neck.

When ‘Tasha finds out that he solved his problem by becoming the little spoon she laughs at him, then congratulates him, then kicks his ass all over the gym for an afternoon, helping him figure out new ways to slip out of the loose hold Coulson keeps around him while they sleep. It’s the first time Clint hears her laugh.

*

The first time Phil says it, he writes it down. They’re lying in bed, sheets tangled and blankets on the floor, talking about maybe getting a cat (that Clint wants to call Phlegm, whereas Coulson’s campaigning for Freud), when Phil reaches over to the bedside drawer and pulls out a slip of paper. He hands it to Clint, who reads it. And rereads it. And asks Phil to say it out loud.

“Please,” Clint says.

“But you—”

“I want to hear you say it,” Clint whispers. He can almost hear it in his own head, each letter sounded out, each word built carefully on its own, but the sentence as a whole is unsteady. Each word is a leg in an uneven tripod. He wants to hear it in Coulson’s voice. “Please, Phil?”

Coulson props himself up on his elbow and smiles down at Clint. “I love you,” Phil says, as if it’s an easy thing to say, as if it makes him happy to love Clint.

As always, Phil makes words mean something new. He draws the disparate elements of I love you together and connects them, redefines them, hands them to Clint so that he can keep them in the new building of his brain that he’s constructing one lesson at a time.

His body has always known things that his mind has to work to understand, so he follows its lead. He crushes the letter in his fist and grabs onto Phil too tightly. Phil murmurs something against Clint’s head, kissing his ear, rocking him gently and then settling them with Phil on his back and Clint wrapped around him, holding onto Phil and his words with everything he is.

*

Trick Shot’s book and all the things kept safe within its pages burns in New Mexico. Clint loses the last third of the book, which he has yet to read, the movie tickets from his first date, a photo of him with Phil that Hill had taken, a newspaper clipping about the Amazing Hawkeye, a picture of Barney holding him when he was a baby, his latest promotion letter, and Phil’s first I love you.

He loses his mind and the book and Phil, and relearns Yes in the brilliant blue glow of Loki’s mind.