Work Text:
Phil Coulson had always enjoyed singing.
He'd been around music ever since he was born. They hadn't had a lot of money in the Coulson household, but they'd always had music, and to him, the way he'd grown up, music and family were pretty much the same thing. Phil's mother would sing as she worked, whether she was in the house cooking and cleaning or outside taking care of the yard work. His father would sing every day as he walked down the road to catch the bus to the plant. They'd sing in the evenings, his mother washing the dishes as his father dried, Phil sitting at the kitchen table working on his homework, because if there was one thing Phil had learnt from his parents besides his love of music, it was that hard work would get you everywhere.
And it had. It had taken him to government work, then to S.H.I.E.L.D., then to the Avengers Initiative. It had put him in a position of authority – not that anyone would necessarily particularly want that position of authority if only they knew what it was really like to ride herd on the Avengers. It had put him here, today, sitting in his office with the door shut, dealing with the paperwork from the Initiative's last assignment and listening to some of his father's old jazz and big band favourites.
He'd long ago learnt to lock his office door when he wanted to listen to music. Not that that stopped the more ambitious Avengers – Clint could pick the lock in no time, and while Tony couldn't, he had plenty of robots that could – but at least it sent a message. Think twice about messing with Phil Coulson's head right now.
It was a worthwhile warning for them, because they enjoyed nothing more than messing with his head. He knew them all, knew their secrets, probably knew more about half of them than they themselves did, and they knew it. Screwing with him was their way of getting a foothold, of gaining some kind of edge over him, however artificial it might be. He'd read their files; he knew about their families – knew that Howard Stark had never treated Tony like a son, knew that Steve had loved his mother and that she'd died young of tuberculosis, knew that Bucky Barnes' family had considered him one of their own. He knew that Clint Barton had grown up taking abuse and thinking it was normal, that he'd been raised to a life of crime and he'd spent the rest of his life escaping it. That, unlike him, unlike the rest of the Avengers, Clint had nothing to associate with the word 'family,' and never had.
Which was why it was so difficult for him to fit the image he had of Agent Barton into the one he was getting now.
He'd been to the infirmary to have Dr. Banner sign some documents; as valuable a fighter as the Hulk was in most cases, failure to actually become the Hulk at a critical juncture led to unfortunate and paperwork-necessitating incidents. It had been a long day, and as Phil walked down the corridor of the Avengers' living quarters, all he could think about was getting back to his own, putting on some classic rock at low volume, and relaxing into the sound. He'd been thinking that he could almost hear it already, when he realized that no, he could hear it already.
Avengers Mansion was fairly well-soundproofed, but that only worked if the doors were closed, and Clint Barton's wasn't. Maybe he had left it ajar; Clint was totally unobservant and don't-carish about anything that didn't have to do with assignments or his weaponry. Or maybe it was deliberate, because JARVIS normally sounded an open-door chime and Phil couldn't hear one now. Either way, the door was partway open and Clint was – well, he was singing. He was singing classic rock.
Phil came to a dead stop. He knew some of the Avengers could sing. He'd heard Steve Rogers, old army songs and slow, sweet jazz standards. He'd heard Tony as well, or at least, what Tony called singing, which was more a sort of toneless-yet-enthusiastic accompaniment to heavy metal beats, occasionally tempered with a mangled attempt at some lighter fare.
But this – this was different. The way Clint was singing was real and heartfelt; it was obvious that no one had ever taught him, so the sound was rough and raw and untrained, but somehow, to Phil, it sounded just like home. He heard his father in it, teasing undertones and tripping notes; his mother, gentle in the way the words trailed softly into nothing.
It wasn't something that had ever even occurred to him, but "Behind Blue Eyes" would never be anything but Clint's song to him again.
Phil realized full minutes later that he was still standing motionless in the middle of the corridor, listening to music long since ended. He already missed it, already felt the strange emptiness he'd used to feel lying in bed at night, when his mother and father were quiet and he longed for the sounds that filled their house during the day. He wanted to hear it again, but it wasn't as though he could knock on the door and ask – especially given that he and Clint didn't really know one another very well, and anyway, Clint had made it abundantly clear that he thought Phil was just a straight-edge suit whose only job was to get after him for paperwork.
It might have been true at one point, but then Phil had seen Clint's files and watched him on the range and tallied up his successful missions. Clint was good, really good, and Phil had started to try to piece him together just by observing and noticing. Tiny details, nothing that would raise red flags for anyone who wasn't looking, but enough to perhaps tell Phil some stories that Clint himself would never have condoned.
Not this, though. This was a surprise, and something more.
With a sigh, Phil started walking again. The idea of vinyl had lost some of its lustre, but it was still his best way to relax.
And in the meantime, he could start thinking of ways to hear that voice again.
In the end, the idea quite literally came to him, in the form of Tony Stark and Thor.
They were pleading for 'team-building exercises.' In theory, that was a good thing; Captain America himself was always encouraging them to do things as a group, increase their trust in one another, and develop their ability to function smoothly in concert. Captain America's ideas of team-building, however, were nothing like Tony Stark's. Whereas Steve tended more toward the wholesome-group-activity side of things, Tony had a habit of ferreting out the ways the Avengers could get themselves into the most trouble, and then roping in others to help him make it happen.
Thor had been a good choice. No one did puppy-dog eyes like Thor, not even Clint.
This time, though, it wasn't necessary. Tony had found a karaoke bar in the East Village, somehow managed to convince Thor that it was the greatest thing Midgard had to offer, and was now sitting across from Coulson in his office rambling about camaraderie and and downtime and 'psychological relief.'
Phil looked at him until he stopped talking.
Then, he said, "Fine."
Tony gaped. Thor glanced from Phil to Tony, confused, and then said, "You said he would not agree so easily."
Tony said, "It's fun. I didn't think he would agree at all."
"You're not going unsupervised," Phil said. "I'm coming with you, and you're all officially on your best behaviour." They were meaningless words, designed to distract Tony's suspicions from the significant lack of difficulty they'd had in getting permission, but they worked.
"Let's go spread the word," said Tony. "Phil Coulson said yes to fun!"
"Keep it up, Stark, and I'll retract my permission," said Phil, already feigning engrossment in paperwork he'd filled out hours ago.
The bar Tony had chosen was ridiculous, but then again, what had Phil really been expecting?
The lighting was warm-hued and dim, somehow giving the impression of smokiness despite clear air. The walls were painted red, the fixtures chromed and flashily reminiscent of nineteen-seventies pornography. It was all tame, though, positively subdued, when their eyes landed on the furnishings themselves.
"That's…" said Natasha.
"… a lot of animal print," Clint finished with a grin. They did that a lot.
"What manner of creature is this?" Thor asked, but they were all too stunned to tell him.
Under their feet, a leopard-print carpet spread across the room, leading from the entryway up to the bar and back to the stage with the far, mirrored wall. Squat chairs and couches dotted it at regular intervals, all patterned in eye-searing zebra stripes, various shades of white and gold contrasting with, well, everything.
"It's like a Magic Eye," said Bruce.
"Don't look at it too long; you'll lose your soul."
"Tony…" said Phil, but there was no possible way he could finish his sentence. There were simply no words.
"Great," said Tony cheerfully, "glad you like it. C'mon, we sit over there," and he waved a vague hand toward a corner where a cluster of chairs had been pushed together at odd angles.
This was not exactly what Phil had expected – but then again, with Tony Stark, he should have learned by now to triple-check every single item Tony brought to his attention. Still, a deal was a deal, and he discreetly slipped Tony a general-issue S.H.I.E.L.D. credit card, saying, "It's on me."
It really wasn't, because the card was funded by Fury's Avengers-earmarked account, which was ultimately funded by Stark Industries, but those were just details. And Tony held the card aloft, despite Phil's urging him not to do that, not to take away Phil's ability to pretend he wasn't responsible for whatever happened, and called out, "It's on S.H.I.E.L.D.!" to the sound of cheers and the eager placing of drink orders.
Phil buried his face in his hands. This was not a promising beginning to the evening.
It was true that Steve couldn't get drunk – at least, as far as the concerted efforts of the Avengers had been able to discern. But what the super soldier lacked in intoxication, he made up in boundless enthusiasm, and it was Steve who was first up on stage, singing an old Frank Sinatra hit that Phil knew and loved and no one else really remembered at all. It got the rest of them inspired, though, and next it was Tony, tossing back the remnants of his rum and Coke and actually knocking one out of the park to Black Sabbath.
He must have been practising, Phil thought. The idea of it made him smile.
That was it, then, for ice-breaking; now everyone was lining up for a turn at the microphone. And under cover of carousing and rejoicing and the fact that Thor was up there singing along to no accompaniment whatsoever because he only knew Asgardian traditional songs, which sure as hell weren't in the karaoke songbook, Phil nudged Clint and said, "Go on. Get up there."
Clint looked at him, shook his head.
"Why not?"
He made a face, somewhere between apology and scorn. "Nah," he said, putting down his drink. "I don't do that."
And, well, that had been the whole point of this exercise, but Phil wasn't in charge of the Avengers for nothing, so he just shrugged and said, "Okay, then. Suit yourself."
They watched Thor finish strong, exchange places with Natasha, and go right back to the sign-up sheet to put himself down for another turn.
They watched Natasha impress everyone, as much with her athletic moves as with her singing prowess, and then hand the microphone over to Bruce.
They watched Bruce take a line nobody was expecting and pull off a fantastic Louis Armstrong, and it was almost enough to distract Phil, almost, but not quite.
Finally, Clint asked, "What about you?"
Phil smirked a little, because there it was, it was working, but all he said was, "I'm just here for the show, Barton."
That was it. His move. He was counting on Clint's inability to resist cracking his façade.
"I'll make you a deal," Clint said, and there it was. "You want me up there, I'll go. But you first."
It took Phil approximately fifteen seconds to persuade Steve to swap turns with him, approximately one point three minutes to locate the song he wanted in the book. Clint had a predilection for The Who; well, Phil could work with that. "I Can See For Miles" had always been one of his favourites anyway.
The microphone felt strange in his hands, but the words were good and warm and strong, they always were. He missed it when he kept himself away from it for too long; listening was one thing, but the opportunity to sing was rare and treasured, even in a frighteningly tasteless karaoke bar with half a dozen ridiculous superheroes as his audience.
So he sang. He sang, and Tony tried to say something to Clint, and Clint put a hand up and covered Tony's mouth without ever taking his eyes from the stage. He sang, and Thor and Steve paused in their conversation to listen. He sang, I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles, head tilted back and not even trying to hide the way he got lost in it, and it came back to him like he'd never stopped.
When he finished, Tony had to loosen his grip on the mic, wave a hand in front of his eyes and snap his fingers a couple of times before Phil came back to himself and immediately pretended he'd been there all along, pushing away Tony's hand in annoyance and stepping down to sit back in his seat – or stumble into it, rather, because of Thor's somewhat hefty clap on the back.
Next to him, Clint muttered, "Didn't know you had it in you, Coulson."
"I'm sorry?"
"Best damn singer I've heard in this bar in years."
Phil didn't know where to go with that first – Clint's compliment, the look in his eyes when he'd given it, the fact that Clint was apparently already familiar with the bar and hadn't thought to mention it to them…
"A deal's a deal," Clint said, and Phil knew he'd been stabbed in the back by too many people not to treat that as sacred when he said it. And there he was, up on the stage already, Steve's turn being pre-empted for the second time that night, and Phil waited for it while Clint flipped through the thick songbook for a choice.
Phil knew what they were waiting for; he'd have been expecting it himself if he hadn't heard Clint's choice of music earlier. They would all be expecting something hard and energetic, vibrant, The Clash maybe, or Steppenwolf, because no matter how old Clint got, he was still a young punk.
But no; Clint found what he wanted, handed the book over to the DJ behind the table, and grabbed the mic with one hand, loosely, like he didn't really want it in his grip at all. And yes, Phil had been expecting something slower, quieter, maybe more challenging, but Jeff Buckley – he hadn't seen that coming. He couldn't have guessed at the way Clint's voice rose and held with the lyrics; he couldn't have foreseen the way each indrawn breath would shoot straight through him; he couldn't have predicted the way the words were dragged out over the air, like there was friction in them, like they had weight and substance and resistance.
Phil hardly heard the bar go quiet behind him.
Fuck.
He was in trouble.
Phil was never quite sure afterward how it happened. He hadn't drunk enough not to remember, but he must have had a few more than he'd thought, because somehow he ended up onstage with Clint, Tony and Thor, all pretty far gone by this point, rocking out hard to "Hammer to Fall" (Thor's choice, of course, and no one had the wherewithal to argue). Thor, naturally, didn't know any of the words, but it didn't seem to bother him, swinging his microphone around as if it were Mjölnir.
Too much like Mjölnir, in fact, because he managed to smash it into the wall so hard on an upswing that it came apart completely, pop filter rolling off into the corner and wires sparking from the exposed receiver head. Thor stared at it, nonplussed, until Tony took it out of his hand and pulled him off the stage, laughing and apologizing to the bar manager glaring at them.
"I'll buy you a new one," he promised, handing over the ruins of the one he held, "or maybe I'll just buy the bar, what do you think, you want to sell the place? I can afford it, I'm good for it, really."
Steve rescued them all, wrapping one hand around Tony's wrist and covering his mouth with the other as he dragged both of his teammates back to their table.
Phil looked sidelong at Clint, still on the stage. Clint shrugged at him and smiled a little, looking as tired as Phil suddenly felt. With the drinking and the singing and Thor's microphone smash and the sudden silence, all the energy had gone out of him and he was just about done for the night. He was about to suggest getting off the stage, maybe rounding up the rest of the team and heading for home, and then there was music playing and they both turned to look at the DJ.
The DJ shrugged back, made a face, I didn't do it.
But there was music playing and Phil knew the song, knew it and loved it well, had fallen asleep enveloped in this music before, and so he wrapped his hand around Clint's microphone because he'd been sharing with Thor, and sang the opening lines.
Clint didn't let go, just stepped closer to Phil so that their shoulders brushed and their eyes met over the microphone, and sang with him.
A little more stupid, a little more scared, every minute more unprepared, and Phil thought, Jesus, he could sing. That voice was everything Phil had remembered from the corridor, slow and rich and breaking just a little over the transitions in a way that made Phil want to drop the microphone and never sing again, made him want to cling to it like a lifeline to Clint and never let it go.
Around them, the bar stopped – just stopped dead, no clinking of glasses or running of water or anything, Tony staring at the stage and shoving wads of bills at the bar owner without looking at them, caught up in the way Phil's and Clint's voices met and contrasted. Neither one of them saw it; neither one was paying attention to anything but the music anymore, the music and each other in the smoky after-midnight bar lights.
Clint, taking over, I wanna hurry home to you, put on a slow, dumb show for you and crack you up…
Phil, responding, God, I'm very, very frightening, I'll overdo it…
Clint, then Phil, then both, You know I dreamed about you, I missed you for twenty-nine years…
Dead silence. Neither of them dared to be the first to breathe.
Phil's brain was overclocking, panicking, because of the music and the song and the way he had leaned over the mic, leaned into Clint and rested on him while they sang, the way their words had mixed and mingled in the air between them, all of that, and this was the real world now, they weren't singing anymore, and sooner or later one of them was going to have to break.
It was Clint who turned around and walked offstage, because Clint had always been good at that, good at closing off, good at walking away, good at believing that was what he had to do to protect himself.
Phil watched him go.
When he stepped off the other side of the stage, Tony was there to meet him, grab his arm and spin him around, none too gently. "You have," he said into Phil's ear, moustache bristling against the skin, "about five seconds to go after him," and abruptly shoved Phil in Clint's direction.
Jesus Christ. Phil was taking advice from Tony Stark.
He went.
They sat outside the bar in silence for a good half hour before Clint spoke.
They sat outside the bar in conversation for a good hour and a half, while the other Avengers filed out in groups of two and three to head for home.
They watched the lights go out around them, leaving just the streetlamps on the corners of the block, and talked, and went on talking.
They ran out of words in the half-dark, Clint sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, Phil's arm gentle around him as they stood, brushed off, and walked home leaning into each other for the contact neither one wanted to lose.
Phil's suit jacket was the first to go, dropped on the pile of crumpled laundry by the door to Clint's quarters. He thought about objecting, and didn't.
Clint's fingers at his tie, at the buttons of his shirt, were more careful than he would have expected, until he thought of tiny, half-inch darts fletched by hand in the armoury, bowstrings neatly threaded and served with delicate knots. He raised his own hands gently, returning the favour, and slid the shirt back over Clint's shoulders to let it fall to the floor.
Touch at his shoulder, so light he barely felt it. "Phil…?"
Oh.
"It's nothing," he said. "Long time ago."
"Is this a brand?"
"Long time ago," he said again. "They got me out."
Clint leaned forward to look, to look and feel and touch soft lips to the mark on Phil's shoulder, the mark Phil tried hard to convince himself didn't matter, wasn't there. The mark that had him shy away from contact, duck and turn to the side, shielding it, but not today, and not tonight.
Instead, he rested his cheek against Clint's hair to let the tension in his body dissipate, and saw.
"Clint."
The younger man stepped back, looked up to meet Phil's gaze, and the light went out of him a little at the look on Phil's face.
He wanted to ask how Clint could notice one mark on Phil's body, how he could see and worry for and love something so small next to this, but as soon as he tried to say them, all his words seemed meaningless and he just ran his fingers up and down Clint's back, feeling the marks and scars and furrows there. This was a story, written on Clint's skin, and he felt small, so small, reading Clint's files and watching his gestures and thinking he could possibly know anything about this man from that.
"Come here," whispered Clint into the dark, lying back on the bed and catching Phil's hand in his own, pulling him down, wrapping cautious arms around him so that they lay against one another, skin on skin, heat between them like a promise for later, and they waited.
And Clint sang, Hallelujah, unaccompanied and quiet, gritty like Jeff Buckley never was, and it was all Phil could do even to breathe.
There'd never been something so intimate, not anything, not moments with a lover, not the edgier things Phil sometimes engaged in when the time and the partner were right, nothing compared to lying here with Clint and feeling his voice right there in his chest, rising and falling with the words as he sang them, and Phil was not expecting this; he was not prepared; there could never have been a way to be prepared for this.
Clint drew his hands gently up Phil's arms, across his chest, coming to rest clasped against Phil's breastbone, and let the last of his words die there, gentle and tenuous through the darkness.
"Stay," he whispered.
Phil breathed in slowly; held it; let it out.
He stayed.