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Phil is deep in the slums of Kuala Lumpur when he feels his wrist tingle.
He ignores it, just as he’s been ignoring the flare of pain in his ankle with each step he puts on his foot. Tightening his hold on Clint as they move past rows of rotting, dilapidated buildings, he takes care to keep his palm firmly over the wound in the archer’s side. It’s bleeding a lot more profusely than he liked, and the grey tinge on his face isn’t doing much to ease Phil’s concern.
There’s a loud crack and he ducks just in time for the bullet to whizz past his shoulder, nearly stumbling to his knees in the process. Another shot makes him lurch to his left. The tingle on his wrist flares into a steady burn, and Phil nearly loses his grip on his gun. In his arms, Clint coughs, the sound worryingly wet. It’s enough for Phil to quicken his steps.
“We’ll be at the safe house soon,” he tells him, even though he’s pretty sure the other man is in no condition to understand or even acknowledge him. “Hang on, Clint.”
In his ear, JARVIS’ clipped British accent soothes his frayed nerves, helps him feel calmer than he should be as the AI directs Phil toward the safe house Billy had set up at Phil’s instructions. He finds it behind the facade of a shack, has to look twice before he catches the retina scanner embedded almost invisibly next to the door, but then they’re inside, Clint and him both, they’re out of the fray and they’re safe.
“Director, I’ve put in for an extraction. A quinjet is on its way.”
“Thanks, JARVIS,” Phil says as he gently lays Clint on the couch. “What about the others?”
“Miss Romanov and the Captain were picked up by the Bus a couple of minutes ago, and Mr Stark has Dr Banner. Most of the agents are accounted for, we’re still looking for the rest.”
“My team?”
“They all seem to have gotten out safely, sir.”
Phil’s chest eases at JARVIS’ report. Heading to the bathroom, he rummages around the bathroom for first-aid supplies, bringing them back out to where Clint is still lying unconscious. He lays them out, bandages, scissors, and a bottle of Scotch, just in case Clint wakes, then methodically snips open Clint’s field suit. He peels it away from skin, grimacing at the way it tugs where blood has dried.
The slug is still stuck in his gut, and although Phil itches to have it tugged out, he just cleans the wound as best as he can and packs it with gauze instead. Clint stirs, groaning when Phil applies pressure on the wound, and Phil has to shush him, willing him to settle, before he seals the edges of the dressing with tape. He hopes it holds.
“Sir, the extraction team will arrive in precisely three minutes.”
“Got it, JARVIS.”
He hobbles to the bathroom to wash Clint’s blood off his hands, then uses the remaining bandages to wrap up his ankle tightly. It sends a twinge up his leg that makes him wince, but it's still incomparable to the now searing pain on his wrist, which he hastily slaps a bandaid over. Sinking down onto the edge of the couch, he uncorks the bottle and takes a long swig as he prepares himself for the wait.
That at least helps to distract him from the name that’s slowly etching itself into skin.
Up until his fifteenth birthday, Phil firmly believed he would find his ‘one’.
His parents weren’t each other’s soulmate, sure, but there’s always a feature on CNN interviewing the latest matches, blissfully recounting epic tales weaved with fate and destiny. Phil has yet to actually meet a matched pair, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting what they have, that absolute certainty that who they were with were exactly the right person for them.
He would always dream of his soulmate, wonder what she’s like. Would she be dainty or athletic? Tall or short? Is she in his school, in his town? As his collection of Captain America comics grew, so did his imagination—from long blonde hair to a closely cropped head, anchored by broad shoulders, solid arms, and thick thighs, plus a wide, charming smile. He’d be respectable, polite, and homegrown, always down for a cuddle. He wouldn’t mind that Phil is kind of a geek, that he’d have inherited his dad’s male pattern baldness, that his eyes scrunch up strangely when he smiles.
Most importantly, he would love Phil as much as Phil is going to love him back.
Then he comes home one day to his mom’s packed bags, a tearful hug, and a whispered, “I hope you find your ‘one’ one day, Phil. Then you’ll understand.”
Phil doesn’t. It’s a moot point anyway, because he never gets his mark when he turns sixteen a year later, while his peers turn up with their own one by one. The house grows three times bigger with just him and his dad, who becomes increasingly bitter with age.
When SHIELD recruits him straight out of college, he goes and never looks back.
In his years of being shuffled in and out of various medical facilities around the world, Phil has come to realize that they will always share the distinct smell of iodoform. The med floor at the Tower is no exception.
It’s been a couple of hours since Clint’s surgeries, a handful of which Dr Seilern was quick to inform Phil were straightforward and complication-free, and that his first-aid abilities are outstanding, as always. Debriefing was short—they’d managed to round up the cell once an Enhanced team came on the scene.
They’re all a little banged up, even Steve, although he’s well on the way to recovery. Last Phil checked, he was getting ready for a sparring session with a couple of agents stationed at the Tower, to work off the adrenaline, Phil, you know how it is. Phil barely manages to send a sharp look Tony’s way, and the billionaire mimes zipping up his mouth with a quick grin.
The burning on his wrist has long since faded to a dull ache, no longer painful, but still insistent in its presence. He’s spent the better part of five minutes placing the bandage on just so, once he’s certain Clint is in the clear, making sure it’s precise in its coverage. The name, when Phil finally gathered up the courage to look at it, is common but unfamiliar, and if Phil gets his way, will remain so. He has absolutely zero interest in whatever—or whomever—destiny has cooked up for him.
He’s halfway through the AAR when Clint stirs, the beeping of the machine he’s hooked up to increasing in frequency as his heart rate speeds up. Setting the tablet aside, Phil leans forward and takes Clint’s hand in his.
“Hey,” he says, watching as Clint blinks groggily, holding him down when he struggles instinctively to sit up. “Hey, no, you’re at the Tower. You took a bullet to the gut and nearly bled out, stop moving so much.”
He knows the exact moment when Clint realizes where he was and who he was with and settles, laying back down. Without letting go of his hand, Phil cards his fingers through the short blond strands.
“How are you feeling?”
Clint frowns, considering. “I don’t feel anything. How much morphine did you give me?”
Phil huffs out a laugh. “Dr Seilern had to dig the slug out of you, but you’re otherwise okay. It’s going to take a while to heal, though. Bruce offered to inject you with a version of his serum, but I suppose you won’t want that?”
Tensing, Clint and quickly shakes his head, only relaxing when Phil shrugs. “Thought not. You’re going to have to sit through physio, then.”
“Yeah, I’m totally cool with that.”
“You say that now, but I know you’re going to skip out on half the sessions,” he chides teasingly, making Clint scrunch up his face at him.
His phone buzzes, and Phil lets go of Clint’s hand to pull it out from his pocket. It’s Melinda with updates from the Bus—they’re on their way to Azerbaijan to pick up a couple of Enhanced teenagers who had been wrecking havoc. He’s tapping out a reply to her when his hand is caught and turned over, the skin-colored bandage in plain sight.
“You got hurt?” Clint rasps. His fingers are gentle as they run over the edges of the bandage in a slow caress, eyes flicking up to meet Phil’s.
“Just a minor scratch,” he says, pulling his hand away and giving him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it.”
He pretends not to see the way Clint frowns.
Phil had never expected to meet someone like Clint, much less fall in love with him.
He’s heard of the circus performer-turned-mercenary-turned-vigilante, of course, even before he became the talk of SHIELD once news of his recruitment filtered in through the grapevine. Clint Barton was on every wanted list, domestic and international, but no one seemed to be able to come within ten feet of him. Every single agent wanted to catch a glimpse of the legendary archer who had effortlessly taken down or evaded not one, not two, but six highly-trained teams, including two of STRIKE’s.
They’d only succeeded on the seventh try because they decided to give up on retrieval, focusing on recruitment instead. Even then, Phil had to pull out every trick in the manual and a few more he had hidden up his sleeves to get The World’s Greatest Marksman to stay still long enough to hear him out. Clint disappears right after, however, only to show up a week later at an op Phil was running in Berlin and proceeding to shoot four arrows, lightning quick, into the guards who were readying themselves for an ambush.
It’s not enough, of course; they were greatly outnumbered. In the end, they spent the next eighteen hours locked in a shipping container just off the Baltic coast, before the cavalry appeared.
“Never thought I would be this close to the mythical Hawkeye again,” Phil jokes, once they’ve exhausted the option of banging on the container walls in the hope that one of them gives. He slides down to the floor, clenching his teeth as pain spikes through him with each movement.
“Shh, stop talking.”
Sinking his teeth into his leather shooting glove, Clint peels it off, then pulls off his shirt and starts ripping it from the hem. Reaching over, he ties it off tightly above the wound, then drags an empty crate over.
“Lift your leg. You need to keep it elevated.”
Phil does as he says, lifting his leg to place it on the crate. Clint sinks down next to him and leans his head against the wall of the container, resting an arm over a bent knee. Phil can’t help but sneak a glance over at him. Without the mask, the vigilante is handsome, with strong features, plush lips, and long-lashed eyes in a brilliant shade of blue. His gaze travels past the defined jawline and the thick column of his neck, along the muscled arm to the bared wrist, and gasps.
“Your mark,” he says in dismay.
The sliver of skin is riddled with raised scars, white and neatly rounded. There’s just a hint of grey peeking out from underneath the burns, but what the script used to say is anyone’s guess.
“Oh, that.” Clint shrugs. “Once it appeared, the Swordsman—that’s the guy who trained me in the circus—burned it off. Can’t have distractions, he said.”
“Did you see it?” Phil asks tentatively.
Clint shakes his head. “It happened too fast. It’s fine, though, it’s better not knowing.” He slides a glance at Phil. “What about you? Have you found your soulmate?”
“I…” Biting the inside of his cheek to steel himself, Phil says, “I don’t have a mark.” He braces himself, but the shoe he’s waiting for doesn’t drop.
“Huh. Old Rosie never had one either… the fortune teller at the circus,” he explains at Phil’s questioning noise. “She always said it’s no loss, though. Said marks are way more trouble than they look.”
The force at which the relieved laugh tears out of Phil’s throat makes spots dance in front of his eyes, and he gives his head a hard shake to clear them. Next to him, Clint grins, and it’s almost as warm as the hands he braces on Phil’s thigh when he leans over to check on the tourniquet. The last thing he remembers before everything goes black is the gleam of Clint’s teeth in the light of Phil’s dying phone.
He almost wishes he’d died in that container when he wakes up to a smirking May. Almost. That thought quickly dissipates when he sees Clint dozing off in a chair in a corner of the ward—it’s a great ‘we’re glad you’re not dead’ gift. His shiny new Level 6 access card comes in at a close second.
He thought that would be the end of it, but then Clint keeps showing up when he’s stuck with bed rest, first with forms he needed help with, then with coffee and donuts at his office. Not just any donuts, but the good ones with sprinkles on top, the ones the cafeteria lady only makes once every few weeks.
Shitty SHIELD coffee soon turns into baseball games and beers, then backstreet bowling alleys and dinner at Phil’s apartment, and then when he realizes it, it’s been nearly eight years and eleven months, and more days than he wants to count. Through it, they’ve weathered everything from alien gods to apocalypses to superheroes—they’ve become superheroes. They’ve even endured death together, temporary though it may have been, coming out from the other side stronger and (mostly) unscathed.
It really doesn’t get any better than this for two men with no soulmates, Phil thinks. As far as he is concerned, Clint is his other half. Nothing will change that, not even this Matthew that is seared into the skin of his arm. Especially not him.
In the darkness of ward, Phil presses his palm firmly over the bandage, then turns to curl into Clint’s uninjured side, trying to match his breathing to the steady heartbeat. He’s lived almost all his life with no soul mark, and though the Fates had decided to finally gift him one, it doesn’t mean he has to tell. No one needs to know.
It’s a long time before he falls into restless, uneasy sleep.
It takes Clint all of three days to find out.
In Phil’s defense, he hadn’t really been trying to hide it. Clint isn’t Hawkeye for nothing, and they’ve been through enough to be able to know what the other is thinking with a single look.
“When were you going to tell me?”
Phil turns away, not wanting to see the look of profound hurt on his face. He was never going to tell Clint, not if he could help it, but—
“Eventually,” he says.
They’re back in their room at the Tower, Clint’s doctor having given them the okay. Phil had been so glad to have his own bed again, he got careless. He didn’t even realize that he’d left the bandage on the edge of the sink after the shower until he’s already making himself comfortable on the bed, marked hand pulling the covers up over them both. By the time he does, it’s already too late.
Clint runs his thumb over the name once, before his grip loosens and falls away.
“Do you know him?”
“I don’t. And I don’t want to, I’m not interested.”
“You should be, he’s your soulmate, Phil. He’s probably been looking for you all his life.”
Phil shrugs. Lifting a hand, he cups Clint’s cheek. “I don’t care. I’m with you. I chose to be with you. This means nothing to me.”
Careful not to jostle Clint, he rises up onto an elbow and kisses him forcefully, trying to drive the meaning home with lips and tongue. When he pulls back, he’s satisfied to see the dazed look in Clint’s eyes, the red wetness of his lips. But Clint wouldn’t be who he is if he gave up just like that, though, so Phil waits.
“I just don’t want you to think you’re stuck with me. I mean, if you meet him one day and decide that—”
“What, that we’ll run off into the sunset together? Because that’s what soulmates do? Leave behind family and friends, the people they love, the people they swore to care for until their dying day, all for a name? All our lives we’ve been told that’s what people do, that this is what we should be living for. Do you think that’s how it should be?”
“Phil…”
“No.” Phil says forcefully, shaking his head. “No, Clint. I chose you. I will continue to choose you, mark or no mark. You have to believe me.”
He leans down and kisses Clint again, urgently, desperately, until Clint is kissing him back just as hard, fingers digging bruises into his arms.
“I do,” he mutters, breathless. “I believe you.”
He doesn’t exactly sound convinced, but Phil doesn’t call him out on it, and focuses on making him forget—if only for a while—about the mark and all that comes with it.
Matthew turns out to be Matthew Kim, their liaison from the National Intelligence Service of South Korea. Born and raised in Dallas, he’s tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair that looks soft to the touch and eyes that curve into crescents when he grins. Phil is instantly drawn to him, and tries his best to pretend otherwise.
“Director Coulson, it’s an honor to meet you in person.”
Even his voice is a nice, smooth tenor. Phil has to fight the urge to clench his fists at the tingle of electricity that shoots up his arm when they shake hands.
The next ten minutes are some of the worst in Phil’s life. Matthew and him are sitting at opposite ends of the table, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to reach out to his soulmate, to touch him again. The very air between them seems to crackle.
He all but leaps out of his chair the second Jimmy is done with his briefing, having heard none of it. “Wheels up in thirty minutes. I’ll be taking point from here.”
With a curt nod, he slides the door open and strides out, needing to get away from the tendrils of yearning, needing the comfort of Clint’s arms and his familiar scent surrounding him, grounding him, but he’s not nearly quick enough.
“Wait, Director Coulson, Director Coulson! Phillip.”
Phil stops, wrenching his arm from Matthew’s grasp. “What is it, Mr Kim?”
“Call me Matt.” His eyes are round and earnest as he gestures towards Phil’s left hand. The inside of his wrist is covered by a fresh band-aid. “May I?
Wordlessly, Phil raises his arm, letting Matthew gently peel the tape off. His fingers are long and slender, he notes, nothing like Clint’s. They send sparks dancing across his skin. He shivers.
When his name is revealed, Matthew lets out a sound that’s between a laugh and a gasp. “It really is you. You’re the one I’ve been looking for all this time.” He rolls his right sleeve up, his eyes meeting Phil’s. “You’re my soulmate.”
It’s unnerving, the way the curlicues of his name stare up at him from pale skin, and for the second time since meeting him, Phil has to pull away from Matthew’s grip.
“There are a million Phillips in the world, it could be anyo—”
“You felt it, didn’t you? When our palms touched.”
“It doesn’t change a thing.”
Matthew beams. “It changes everything. Phillip, we’re destined to be together. Made for each other.”
“No, Matthew, I know nothing about you, not your childhood, your family, I don’t know the first thing about the things you like or don’t like. I don’t know if you snore, if you’re a picky eater, how you take your coffee…” Shaking his head, Phil says, “You’re nothing more than a name on my wrist.”
“You can learn. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, do anything. I can make you happy.” His face twists eagerly as he pleads, eyes shining with a near-fanatical light. This is what marks turn people into—fools chasing after nothing more than an intangible connection they can’t explain.
Phil laughs. “You don’t understand. I already have someone who makes me happy. Someone I chose to love of my own free will, not because he was the one who was chosen for me.”
Behind them, the door to the briefing room opens, and Jimmy is staring between the both of them, a question in his eyes as he taps at his folder. Phil nods.
“I’m sorry, Matthew. I hope you find the one you’re meant to be with one day.”
It’s an echo of his mother’s words, half a lifetime ago, and just like that, Phil gets it.
“You’ll get it then.”
He finds Clint in the range, loosing arrow after arrow at the swiftly moving targets, brow furrowed in concentration. Not wanting to distract him, Phil stays where he is, taking in the way Clint systematically shreds the target boards with unerring accuracy, even while seated. The burst of fondness would have taken him by surprise, if he isn’t already so used to it whenever Clint is nearby. He loves watching him at work.
It doesn’t take long before the boards grind to a stop, signaling the end of a training cycle. Phil steps forward, grinning when Clint’s face lights up.
“I’m pretty sure target practice is not on the list of approved activities from the doctor, Clint.”
“It’s on my list,” Clint counters. “I’ve been so bored, I half-considered going to Bruce.”
“You could still do that.” Phil grins when Clint shoots him a dirty look. “Just saying.”
Rolling his eyes, Clint presses a button on the controller to bring the targets forward. Phil watches as he makes his way across the gym, examining the tips of his arrows as he dislodges them, sticking the still useable ones in the quiver on his back and discarding the rest. His gait is easy and sure despite his injury, the confident carriage of a man who’s certain of who he is and where he wants to go. Clint has filled out over the years; his body is nothing like the lean twenty-something year old vigilante he used to be, but it makes Phil’s blood sing with desire all the same. If anything, Phil finds him even more attractive like this.
“You’re gonna tell me now, or are we doing the thing where I pretend I don’t know something is bothering you until you internally combust,” Clint teases, dumping the full quiver beside the bench Phil is sitting on before perching himself gingerly on the edge. “Spit it out, Phil.”
“I…” Taking a deep breath, Phil confesses, “I met him. Matthew.”
It’s minute, but he catches Clint stiffen.
“Oh.” Clint looks away, avoiding Phil’s eyes as he picks at the fray in the knees of his jeans. “What’s he like?”
Phil shrugs. “I don’t know, we didn’t talk much.”
“Did you feel the pull?”
“I did.”
Clint nods, painfully nonchalant. “Apparently all mates feel it, that’s why it’s practically inevitable that they always end up together.”
He’s still not looking at Phil, so he reaches out and lays a hand over Clint’s, stilling his fingers. “I told him I’ve already met my soulmate. One who makes me happy, whom I love with all my heart. I love you, Clint.”
“I know you do, but…”
“And I will continue to love you, until my dying day. Hell, beyond death, even. I’m not going anywhere.” Phil squeezes the hand underneath his, then a thought strikes him. "You know, you could meet your soulmate one day, too. Just because your mark is burned off doesn't change the fact that you have one, out there. And if you do—"
"I would never leave you," Clint interrupts fiercely, turning his hand to lace his fingers with Phil's. "Never."
The warmth that rises in Phil's chest nearly suffocates him. "Then trust that I won't ever leave you too. Will you trust me?"
It seems like an eternity before Clint finally looks up, meeting his gaze squarely. His eyes are a liquid blue, and the uncertainty and fear in them would have sent Phil to his knees, if he wasn’t already sitting down. As it is, he pulls Clint closer and into his arms, feeling the shuddery exhale against his neck. When Clint finally answers him, it feels like a boon.
“You know I do. Always.”
A promise of forever. It’s a good start.