Work Text:
“Do you know what would not suck, here? What would not suck here would be if you were to sit the fuck down and hold still.” Clint pushed Coulson down onto a fallen tree and held his hand palm-out at him. “Fucking STAY.”
“Sleep when I’m dead,” Coulson said, ducking clumsily around the hand. “We need shelter and, um, and, shelter, no wait, that was the first thing. We need hot water, and to stop bleeding. Resting and not bleeding when we’re dead. Wait. No, but.”
“Yeah, got it, blood loss is a problem, and you’re losing it a fuckton faster than I am, and I will goddamn kill you myself if I have to spend the last several hours of my life before freezing to death herding your ass because you won’t just let me work the fucking problem. I don’t know if you noticed, but besides the bleeding, you’re also drugged and stupid, so just. Sit. Down. And. Stay. Down.” He pushed Coulson back into place. “Look. I will set this alarm for five minutes. In that time I will work out the shelter problem and NOT chase you anywhere because you will stay here. Cool?”
Coulson giggled, because of course he did why would anyone give Coulson a drug that would allow maintenance of dignity, and waved at the air around them. “Cooler than cool! Ice cold!”
“God. Okay. Timer starting. You tell me when my time is up. While you SIT.” Clint turned away, got out his compass and a somewhat scorched map he hoped still included what his best estimate was regarding their current position, and went to work.
In two minutes he’d found that okay, no, their current position was not on the map (had been, but flames and paper are only BFFs ‘til the oxygen runs out, which was, unfortunately, after char had progressed past here on the map). However. It came close enough, and as best he could figure on a good day it was a fifteen-maybe-twenty-minute jog-and-climb out from here to the abandoned cabin he profoundly hoped had been cleaned and restocked after the time he’d found it by accident three years prior.
Because he'd been there for a full week and eaten just about the whole kitchen, and also he'd been in bad shape on arrival and he wasn't sure it would have even been possible to salvage most of the linens.
Anyway. He looked around at the sky, judging he had maybe as much as ninety minutes to sunset, and thought about their injuries and whether it made sense to try to get there or whether he should use that time to build enough of something they could survive the night nearby. His was minor, well okay maybe moderate, but annoying, because it was a slug to the left shoulder, down in the meat of the front side of the delt. Bullet was still in him, which wasn’t ideal, but it was slowing bleeding even if it was probably also poisoning him, but more problematically it was going to impede his ability to put together shelter in place. And Coulson’s wounds were bloodier – less deep, more surface area – but he was also still shaking off (or, hell, possibly just enjoying) whatever the fuck they’d given him while they held him.
It was also possible that at least one of his captors had gotten a message out before Clint shot him in the face with what would probably qualify as epic prejudice, which meant besides that they needed shelter because snow and ice are not good sleeping surfaces for humans, they also needed to be relatively out of sight, and further away was better than not. Plus, a fire in a cabin fireplace would still put up smoke, but it would be a lot less visible in the night than an open fire in the woods.
Yeah, they needed to go. Clint checked direction, found a decent point of reference (good times for GPS: now, but no dice, ugh), and turned back to Coulson. “All right. How’s my time?”
“Not done yet,” Coulson said.
“Kay. Well, are you ready to let me see if I can pack that gash any tighter before we hit the road?”
“No road,” Coulson said. He closed his left eye and squinted, then tried again with his right. “No path, no road, we’re fucked. Hey, that sounds nice.”
“What does?”
“Fucking.”
Clint raised his eyebrows. “Okay, well, we’re just going to forget that for now and work on shelter, okay? When you’re sober and we’re warm, then if you still wanna wax poetic about orgasms, you go for it. Come on, let me see that cut.” He pulled loose the bandage tied over a wad of unoptimally-clean t-shirt between a couple of ribs and pried a little at the edge. There was some, but not enough, clotting, but probably Coulson wouldn’t actually bleed to death while they were walking, so that was good. He tied it back, a little tighter, trying to ignore the pained wince that brought, and zipped Coulson’s coat back up.
Coulson let him work, then stood up, weaving in place a little. “Map?”
“That way,” Clint said. “There’s a cabin.” He pointed and started walking, checking after a second that Coulson was behind him.
“Not orgasms,” Coulson said behind him.
“Right, we are currently not discussing orgasms.”
“No no no. Not what I was thinking of.”
“Okay.” They walked for a few minutes, and god, this was going to take the whole ninety because Phil kept stumbling, but Clint thought probably they could make it.
Please, he half-muttered, let there not be anyone in the cabin, and also let it have food. And wood. And no bears.
“Bears?”
“Sorry. Thinking aloud.”
“But not about orgasms.”
“True. I usually have zero bears in my sex fantasies. Of any kind, in case you were, horrifyingly, about to ask.”
“Okay.”
They took a few more steps before Coulson announced, “Fucking!”
“What?”
“That’s what I was thinking about.”
“I think we already covered this.” This was going to be a really long walk. At least Coulson was keeping it quiet?
“No no no. I was thinking of fucking, not orgasms.”
“Oh. Okay. Also, you are way more high than I am happy about.”
“Sorry. True. We can’t fuck until I’m not high. Rules.” Clint looked over his shoulder, and Coulson pointed with an index finger to emphasize how important that was.
Clint didn’t swallow his tongue at the casual implication that then they could, because what the hell, and just managed a slightly gruff, “Give or take.”
“But I bet you’d be great at it. All your focus and so much touching. And skin!”
“Not sure what the scoring rubric looks like, but in any case, right now let’s do walking.”
“Kay. Walking now, fucking when I’m not high. But all your skin has such pretty muscles under. I hope there’s a mirror.”
Clint considered taking his hearing aids out. Jesus. Except he wasn’t sure Coulson was up to remembering he’d need to sign if he had a problem. Shit. He went with ignoring the comment.
Five minutes later Coulson said, “Because I bet your ass is amazing. So much lean muscle and pushing and pulling.”
Ignoring the comment: not effective. “Some people think so, sure.” Clint gritted his teeth and checked their trajectory. So far, so good.
“The other people are wrong.”
Clint was pretty sure he was going to regret this question. “Other people?”
“That don’t think so. About your ass. Wait, unless they don't think so they know so because they’ve seen it fucking. I want that to be no one.”
“Uh, okay, that train’s left the station, but I am 100% sure you do not actually want to be having a discussion with me about my sexual history while we walk in the snow and try not to bleed to death.”
“Not history, no.”
“Okay, well good.” Clint took one look at the grouping of rocks ahead of them and decided they definitely were going around, not over, that mess. “Here, this way.”
“But it was that way.”
“Yeah, but I can’t climb that without both hands, and I definitely can’t do it and help you.”
Coulson thought about that for long enough that Clint had them most of the way around the obstruction and back on their former path by the time he spoke again.
“Future. I want to talk about your sexual future. And skin. And you'd probably be all generous about everything, fun and serious and--”
“Maybe no.”
"No fun?"
"No we are not talking about my sexual future."
“…Oh.” Coulson shuffled along for several minutes this time, then said, “No, I know you won’t want to. But it doesn’t hurt to imagine. I bet you could hold me up free-standing—“
Clint held up a hand. “Hey. Hold up. I have zero comment right now on what I would or would not want to do with who, but I know, not a shadow of a doubt, that Phil Coulson does not want to tell one of his subordinates about his sex fantasies when he’s not in command of a damn thing. Stow it.”
“But! Your shoulders! And your arms! Ohhh and your mouth. And your ass. We already talked about that one, though.”
“Coulson, swear to god I’m gonna gag you.”
Coulson scowled and walked silently again for a few minutes, then stopped still.
“What’s wrong?”
“With what?”
“With …you? You stopped walking.”
Coulson looked down at his feet. “Oh. I forgot.” He started walking again and added, “But with what?”
“Your feet?”
“They don’t fit in my mouth.”
Clint went back over the conversation. “Oh. I will gag you with my glove or something.”
“No no. You need your fingers, and plus the bandage is being a bandage.”
Which… was true, and oh thank god there was the peak of a roof which was definitely their cabin. Clint pointed. “Look! Shelter!”
“Does it have mirrors?”
Clint considered whether it would be wrong to get Coulson tucked away in the cabin, then go back and kill the captors again. Seriously, who made a drug that made the prisoner completely fixate on porn? What was the point of that? “I don’t remember,” he said. “But once again, we’re going to not have this conversation until you are not high.”
“How will you know?”
“Among other things, you will stop fucking wanting to have this conversation.”
“No,” Coulson said, as though that made any sense.
“Whatever, man. Just, keep going. Come on.” Clint pushed ahead, turning to check every dozen or so paces to be sure Coulson was keeping up. Naturally, one of the moments when he was turning back to check was the moment he lost his footing and slid. “Shit, wait. Crap.” His impulse to windmill his arms to maintain balance shot pain, kind of a lot of it, through his damaged shoulder, and of course then Coulson stopped walking, probably because Clint had said wait, so he said, “No, come on, this way” and then (fuck) slid down the slope toward the cabin (well, that was something) on his ass.
Ten seconds later Coulson landed sprawled and injured-side-first against his hip and thigh with a painful thump, having apparently taken Clint’s ‘this way’ to mean ‘copy what I do.”
He untangled them and got back up (ow, he really hoped this cabin had something to treat a sprained… everything) and stumbled over to try the door.
Which was locked, because of course if you have a cabin two hundred miles from anywhere interesting, keeping it locked up tight is top priority.
He looked for the key on top of the door frame (nope), then under the crap under the window.
“See, I said,” Coulson said.
“Hmm?”
“Fantastic ass.”
“Yeah, I’m an ass. Got it. Oh hey. Key!” Clint held it up and then stuck it in the door, turned it, and pushed.
It was beautiful. There was wood. There was a fire laid. There was a blackout curtain for each of the three windows. There was canned food stacked in neat rows in open-fronted cabinets behind a table and little sink. There was a pretty decent field medical kit next to the door, and a chair next to the fireplace near a bed Clint wanted to fall into maybe now. But, no. Clint dragged Coulson in and closed the door behind them, pulling the bar across on the inside, then rooted around for matches in his bag, lit the fire, pulled down the curtains, and started considering next steps.
“You found a cabin,” Coulson said. “You found this cabin.”
“Yes, that was what we were looking for. Here, come here, there are blankets.”
“Blankets are good. Hey, did you make the fire?”
Clint frowned. “Coulson, you were standing right here?”
“Were there bears?”
“Nope, no bears, no Goldilocks, no little pigs.... Here, let’s get, ugh, your pants are more mud than cloth.” Clint spent an instant hoping that getting Coulson out of his pants wasn’t going to lead them back to previous conversational topics, then said, “Okay, pants off, blankets on, chair by the fire.”
“Why do I want to know about the …mirror count in this remote cabin?”
Clint considered his options. “You seemed a little obsessed about the topic on the way here. For now, let’s assume there are no mirrors unless there’s one in the bathroom.”
“Okay.” Coulson shucked his pants, hissing as that tugged at the bandage covering his other wound. He pulled a blanket around his shoulders and went to the chair, sitting down hard and staring into the flames, face pale and dazed.
Clint came over and prodded at the smaller logs in the grate, then added a couple of larger ones and waited to make sure everything caught. “You feeling woozy?”
“Very. Also, I don’t remember getting here. Wait, I don’t remember… there was a compound…”
“Yeah, you sent a coded SOS. I caught it first, came to get you. Turned out it was only a few miles from that time with that Kuranov asshole and his thugs. Your more recent thugs got dead, we got holes punched in us, the compound got exploded, you and I got chucked twenty feet through the air, my ride in didn’t stick around for completely fair reasons, we eventually got out.”
Coulson hmmed and pulled the blanket closer. “It’s freezing.”
“Hence the fire. Hey, you be okay for five while I get water to heat here?”
“Think so.” Coulson frowned and watched the flames some more. Clint watched him for a few heartbeats, and okay, he kind of looked like hell and was swallowing like he might puke any time, but probably even if he did, getting hot water going and assessing their supplies was important. He went to check for pans or buckets (four good-sized pots in the cupboard beside the sink along with some sturdy bowls and a drawer full of various implements; bonus. He could cook and heat water at the same time), then just went out and scooped a couple of potfuls of fresh snow off of surfaces outside.
Those, he set to heat next to the fire, running a hand across Coulson’s forehead as he went past. Coulson muttered something and tried to paw at Clint’s hand, but he was at least 80% asleep and he probably really needed the rest, so Clint left that alone and went to open up the medical kit.
Twenty-five minutes later he had the slug out of his own shoulder (surgery on own self with nondominant hand 0/10 would not recommend, ugh) and some very ugly stitches holding him together well enough. He dumped some alcohol on the wound, slapped on some gauze and tore tape with his teeth. Good enough, and he felt …okay. Tired, but okay, and that was good because that meant both the saline and the blood he’d found in the fridge could go into Coulson. Whoever had restocked here had been thorough, thank fuck.
He went back to Coulson, who was fully asleep, and opened up enough of the blanket to get to the rib slice. The bandage had come partially undone, probably during that stupid last slide and thump, and it was bleeding pretty freely again, but Coulson didn’t stir when Clint pulled everything off and started daubing with more alcohol by flashlight. That was good and bad; good because at least he didn’t have to feel it, bad because probably that ought to have woken him unless he was seriously unconscious now. Clint aimed the flashlight at his face and ugh, pulse was okay, but he was looking pretty blue. Maybe that stored blood would be good sooner rather than later. Crap. Also, crap, he should have done this before his own shoulder. Good job, self.
Clint put the cold blood in one of the semi-hot pots of water to warm it up and started working on stitching up the slice. Jesus, he’d seen it in the first place but Coulson had been holding the t-shirt on it at the time; it was at least 10 inches and deep enough that virtually none of it had sealed up at all. He couldn’t find any particular areas where it seemed like a big vessel was cut, so he decided it was (probably?) all stuff that would heal if it was just held shut and given time. The t-shirt was a bloody soaked mess and the bandage was pretty terrible too, but okay, priorities. He put in 20 stitches as quickly as he could, slapped butterfly bandages across between them, and put on gauze and tape, then went back to the stored blood. It wasn’t warm exactly, but it didn’t feel ice-cold any more, and anyway soon seemed good. He took a minute to feel glad that it’d only been a couple of months since he’d done a refresher of the field-medic course, then started looking for a vein.
Also 0/10 in real life situations, jesus, do not want.
It only took a few more minutes to get the blood going and start working on the other wound, and then, despite that Clint wanted to get up and make food with roughly no fraction or area of his body, he did. Fortunately this was going to involve nothing more intensive than heating up canned soup, which was both easy to make and easy to eat. God, then he kind of wanted to sleep until next Tuesday, but probably that wasn’t in the cards. He opened the cans and dumped them into a pot which he set on the single-burner cook stove on the table. He stared at it and stirred it, waiting for it to be at least warmer than his skin.
“Clint?” Clint spun to see Coulson blinking blurrily at him.
“Don’t get up. You’re transfusing.”
“Cold.”
“I know. The blood itself isn't exactly warm but you didn't look like you could wait. Sorry. Hang on.” Clint went over and shoved the chair a little closer to the fire, then took off his coat and piled it over Coulson’s lap. “Soup in a sec, then we’ll problem-solve.”
“Kay.”
He went back to the soup and stuck a finger in. Close enough. He picked it up and grabbed a spoon, then took it over pan and all to set on Coulson’s lap on the coat. The pan was hot, sure, but more warm was more good, as far as he could tell. “Here. Open.” He put a spoon of thick broth to Coulson’s lips and waited, then poured it in. “Okay?”
“Can feed myself,” Coulson said.
“Sure, but we’re sharing.” Clint took a bite and then held up another, going back and forth until at least their bellies felt sort of warm and also Coulson was starting to perk up a bit.
“Any idea about exfil?” Coulson finally asked when they’d scraped the pan clean and Clint was sitting with his hands draped over his knees on the floor next to the chair.
“Not a clue,” Clint said. “Phone went boom somewhere in the melee.”
Coulson blinked a couple of times. “Oh. Cabin. Should be…something. Radio?” He looked toward the table. “Over there?”
“Oh? Clint went and looked, and sure enough, on the side of the cabinets was a box with a Starktech logo on it and a thumbprint reader on the side. Clint pressed his thumb on the glass and took out the little radio. “Huh. Okay, so I guess I’ll find out. You warm enough?”
“No, but… okay for a few.”
Clint took the radio closer to the window for better signal and called them in, then came back. “So, good news, got through; bad news—“
“This is the kind of scenario where there is always a storm brewing in the winter in the mountains.”
“Exactly. So, certainly not until well after daylight. Probably 18 hours.”
Coulson shrugged. “Did you already give me the saline?”
“No, thought I’d see how you did with the whole blood.”
“OK. Good, because I feel like shit still.”
“Sorry. Shoulda stitched you up before me.”
“Uh, no. Like airplane masks.” Coulson pulled the blanket tighter around him. “But, still freezing, and you already gave me your coat so you should be feeling it too. Rest of the blankets on the bed?”
Clint nodded, ignoring his body's interest in shivering now that Coulson had mentioned he ought to be cold.
“Then we should—by that I mean you should—build up the fire and then we can go crawl in the damn bed and huddle for warmth.”
“Sounds like—“
“Porn? Yeah, well, I already started that pretty good earlier, so I can see why you’d want to avoid it, but it really will keep us warmer and I expect we’re both gonna be sore as hell as it is. I seem to remember an unplanned ice slide in addition to violent wounds.”
“True. Also, god I was hoping you’d forgotten. About the porn, I mean. The rest, it's probably good you remember since otherwise we were going to have to go looking for fucking brain damage and that's never the right end of anything.”
“No such luck. Anyway, blood’s done, so let’s see if we can get warm.”
Clint held up a hand again to keep Coulson down, then stopped the IV, took out the needle, and shoved the chair sideways a couple of feet. “Still good? Didn't jolt anything loose?” Coulson shook his head, although his face looked a little pinched, so Clint hauled the mattress off the bed and onto the floor nearer the hearth, and tossed a couple more logs on the fire. “Okay?”
“You’re helping me stand up out of that off the floor in the morning so I hope you thought about that, but fine.”
“Deal.” Clint pulled the blankets into a sort of nest and helped Coulson ditch his blood-matted shirt for a softer long-sleeve t-shirt on a shelf near the bed frame, then knelt on the mattress to help him get, not gracefully but also not too painfully, horizontal. He went and checked the cook stove burner was definitely off (because dying in a fire seemed like a terrible idea after surviving the rest of this shitshow) and fiddled with the flue a bit, then crawled in next to him.
Coulson was already breathing evenly, lying on his uninjured side, but he reached back and pulled Clint up close. “Take your ears out,” he said.
“Uh, no, I think probably you'll sleep pretty hard.”
“And you shouldn't hurt yourself more on my account. They'll have engaged the perimeter remotely when you called us in.”
Clint paused at that, then, because he apparently trusted drugged and half-dead Coulson more than most healthy people in his life, took out the little hearing aids and put them in the case in his pocket, then emptied his pockets onto the seat of the chair. “All right,” he said. “Done.” He lay down, curled around Coulson's back and pulled up the blanket.
Coulson's hands came up into the firelight and sketched out good. Also, sorry about the porn. He had to spell out porn, which was both embarrassing and hilarious, and Clint snorted and nearly missed the rest, which was more or less, all true, though.
Clint came up on his elbow and looked down at Coulson's face, but as far as he could tell, the man was asleep.
Well.
Okay.
He lay back down and watched the firelight cast shadows for a while, but as expected, with warmth and silence, he fell asleep before very long.
Clint felt a jolt and then a rumble against his chest, and was frowning before he was even properly awake. He rarely slept with anyone and without his ears. Then he remembered, and his eyes popped open in the dark. The fire was low, probably down to embers, and the room was warmer than it had started, but getting chilly again. “Coulson?”
Oh, right. He couldn't hear. “Hang on, getting the fire, then ears.” Then he tried to roll over.
God, ow.
He must have groaned because he felt Coulson laughing—well, making a shuddering hitch that was probably a painful laugh, anyway—so he offered a raspberry and finished rolling over. Sort of. Ow. Finally, he was upright (ish) and rolled himself onto his knees, managing to lever a couple more logs onto the fire and maneuver them around a bit with the poker. Soon enough, they caught and brighter flames came up. Clint looked back at Coulson, who had rolled onto his back and looked a lot better for the... hm. Maybe six? Hours of sleep. Well, they probably had another seven or eight to daylight, so going back to bed seemed like a pretty great idea, except for how now that he was up, Clint's bladder thought it was time to get up and start the day.
“Gotta piss,” he said. “You?”
Coulson wagged a hand yes and then pointed at Clint. “You. First.” his mouth shaped.
Clint took his aids out of the case and stuck them in his ears one at a time. “Because airplane masks?”
“Because you probably don't want to lift me out of bed with your bladder screaming,” Coulson said.
“Good point.”
Clint stood (god, ow) and staggered around the mattress and the chair to the tiny bathroom. He didn't bother to close the door; for one thing there was no light in the room, and for another... whatever. When he was done, he zipped up and went back to help Coulson, who, because of course he was, was rolled over and trying to push himself up off the mattress.
“Hey, yeah, let's not bust your stitches open more. Actually, we really should look at it again while you're up, if you can. But first, toilet.” They shuffled their way carefully around the chair again, and Clint helped Coulson with balance, then helped him back to the fireplace.
“Chair,” Coulson said.
“Hang on then, my pockets are on the seat.” Clint grabbed up his stuff and took it to set it by the sink, then grabbed the medical kit and came back to settle Coulson into place and wrap a blanket around him again.
The gauze was stained, but not soaked, and as far as Clint could see, the stitches he'd placed were holding. A few of the butterflies had come loose—too wet—but several were also holding in place, and when Clint wiped carefully along the cut, only tiny droplets of blood welled up. “You want more stitches or...?”
“It actually looks better than it has any right to,” Coulson said. “That asshole had a whole plan about cutting as deeply and sharply as possible without causing an immediately-fatal bleed. I think he was hoping I'd die of gangrene. Not that I'm out of the woods completely.”
“You're not dying of gangrene. SHIELD doesn't have a form for that.”
“Smartass. No, just bandage again. They're probably going to want to open it back up for more cleaning anyway.”
“Sounds awesome.”
“Sounds better than gangrene.”
“True.” Clint set to work bandaging again, making a neater, thicker gauze pad this time and fastening it more securely.
“So, earlier. I told you a lot of things.”
“You really want to talk about this?”
“Hey, you said I could. No longer high, more or less warm.”
“I didn't actually think you'd remember anything. I was just trying--”
“I know. To put me off. Still, we should clear the air.”
“About how you kept telling me you want my ass and acted all sad about how I might not want yours?”
“Pretty much. You know there's no pressure, right?”
“What?”
“That I'd never have said it out loud anyway, and I'd never hold it against you that you don't want any of the things I said.”
“About my ass.”
“I might have mentioned your arms, too.”
“Yes, yes you did.” Clint looked up. “It was ridiculous.”
Coulson pressed his lips together. “Yes, well, unattainable crushes sometimes work that way.”
“What? No. I'm no one's idea of unattainable.”
“Not true.”
Clint shook his head. “You know what? I get that we need to finish this conversation, but I need to be a lot less tired to do it. Also, now that we've slept, I'm starving again. Should we have more soup, or more soup?”
“Soup, maybe,” Coulson said.
Clint got up, then bent, slowly because ow and gathered up another blanket to drape over Coulson while he went back to the cook stove to heat another couple of cans. He was hungry, but mostly he just didn't want to try to make sense of Coulson's position right now. He opened two cans of beef barley and stirred them in the last pan, then went and got the other one and stepped outside to scoop up snow to fill the sink basin with. They'd probably want to wash that in the morning; might as well let it melt now. Actually... he stirred the soup again then went to get the warm clean water from by the fire, dumped that into the dirty pan, and got more snow to heat by the fire for later.. Yay efficiency.
They ate silently, although this time Clint did offer Coulson a spoon of his own, and then added one more log to the fire, rearranged the blankets on the bed and went back to sleep.
When they woke again, it was morning, and Coulson had a fever.
“See, what did I tell you? Gangrene.” Coulson's words were slurred and his eyes were glassy, which, all right, that was worrying.
“Not gonna happen,” Clint said, patting Coulson's hand. He pawed through the stuff in the medical kid and came up with a vial of injectable penicillin and a syringe. “Allergies?” he asked.
“None.”
Clint handed over a couple of Tylenol, then looked through the charts in the kit, came up with a dosage, and found another vein. Then he built up the fire again, opened one of the window blinds for light, rummaged through the food supplies, and let Coulson sleep.
When evac arrived, just after noon, he was washing up the pots and pans, fretting about Coulson's rising fever, and trying to figure out how to get Psych not to know the details of what had happened when Coulson was drugged – they had to report it; it was why he hadn't given prophylactic antibiotics initially. No idea what the drug was, no idea what the reaction would be, and no backup for hours. Still, he felt frustratedly protective of Coulson's privacy. Well, maybe it could wait until he was awake for input.
The chopper landed a quarter-mile away, but thankfully three guys that didn't have any unwanted holes in them jogged up and took care of everything. Clint took out his ears again, stuffed the case in his pocket, and slept all the way back to DC.
--
He woke to a repeating poke to his uninjured shoulder—well, he'd been awake before, but fallen asleep again in the chair by Coulson's bed—and opened his eyes. “Sir.” He grabbed the aids off the table and stuffed them in his ears.
“How's the shoulder?”
“Shitty, but I got everything out okay and they say it'll heal.”
“Were you worried it wouldn't?”
“Not like I depend on my arms for my livelihood, sir.”
Coulson shook his head. “Barton, for all you're a smartass and a showoff, you have the worst self-image of just about anyone in SHIELD. You just pulled off a solo rescue of a senior agent being held deep in the woods without backup and while dragging the delusional senior agent through the snow while both injured yourself and managing his injuries. I think you're more than just a bow.”
“I think you're still delusional. At least you've started talking about work, though.”
“You ready to talk about it? The other thing?”
Clint wasn't, but fortunately with more rest had come a better sense of balance about the whole thing. “Sir, I might never be ready to talk about the time I dragged you through a mountain forest while you offered up an ode to my ass.”
Coulson smiled. “Hey, everybody needs a hobby. I could tell you about it again here."
“I might have better answers here. They do have a mirror. It's in the bathroom. Also, god, a hobby? My ass is your hobby? I don't know if that's better or worse, but I guess you are probably still on some painkillers.”
“I am, but you'll be either relieved or horrified to learn that I'm pretty much in possession of my faculties.”
“Oh?”
“Because before you write all this off as a stupid story that happened this one time, and before you go drawing more conclusions based on incomplete data, I'm about to tell you something I didn't think to mention in the moment.”
“Jesus, please tell me it's not that you were confusing my ass with Captain America's.”
Coulson laughed out loud, then winced. “No. The guys who had me, it's really too bad none of them survived.”
“Sorry not sorry.”
“Oh, no, you were right to shoot them in the face. But they were apparently brilliant pharmaceutical chemists, and abysmal interrogationists.”
“O...kay?”
“So before they came in to give me whatever that stuff was, they stood outside my door and talked about it. They wanted me to give up a bunch of SHIELD stuff, but they said, and honestly it would have been impossible not to overhear them, that whatever I was thinking about when the drug took hold, I'd become obsessive and very truthful about. They asked questions, which I refused to answer, but they were trying to make me think about intel that matters to operational security. Instead, I just kept thinking about something that would be completely unhelpful to them. Clint Barton's amazing ass.”
Clint stared. “Uh, I don't really know what you want me to say.”
Coulson rolled his eyes. “The obsession and truthfulness were the drug's fault. The topic, I chose.”
“Yeah, great, you love me for my fabulous butt muscles. Cool.”
“No, I love you for a bunch of other things. I picked that because it was operationally irrelevant. If I'd told them all about your brain, that might have blown future covers, or...” Coulson slowed and stopped. “What?”
“Did you just say you love me for my brain?”
Coulson blushed a little. “Not in so many words? Jesus, Clint, I said I didn't say anything I didn't mean. I just didn't say everything I did mean. But you still don't have to do anything about it. I just wanted to be clear that what you heard was neither made-up nor intended for your ears, exactly.”
“Uh.”
“So put whatever you need to in the report, and let me know if you need me to change our reporting relationship. I knew whoever answered the call would probably hear shit they didn't want to about my level of interest in the topic.”
“Your level of interest. In the topic. Of my ass.” Clint shifted forward in the chair. “So, what I also heard was that you thought this was unattainable. Why?”
Coulson blinked several times. “Because I'm pretty accustomed to having unattainable crushes?”
“Captain America and... me? Okay, what. That's ridiculous. Also, yeah, I think I need a change in reporting relationship.”
Coulson nodded and stared at the wall past Clint's head. “Figure out who you want to work with, then.”
Clint leaned a little to the left, into Coulson's field of vision. “You. I want to work with you. I just probably shouldn't report to you if I'm holding you up in front of a damn mirror every night.”
“Oh.”
“Also, you sure you're in possession of your faculties?”
“Mostly, why?”
“I'm beginning to think we've missed some fabulous kissing opportunities in our time in the field, and that maybe now would be a time to do something about that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Clint lifted forward off the seat of the chair and met Coulson halfway. He didn't go nuts with it, because kissing a guy whose arm is still strapped to a board for application of drugs probably wasn't a candidate for extreme sport, but still, sooner seemed better than later. By a lot.
--
“Hey Coulson?”
“I keep telling you, naked time is a good time to call me Phil.”
“Yeah, yeah, habit. Whatever. I have an important question.” Clint shoved open the bedroom door, then turned around and picked Phil up without warning, bring his legs up to either side of Clint's hips. “This what you had in mind?”
Phil looked over Clint's shoulder and laughed. “You might have gone overboard,” he said, glancing around at three mirrored walls.
“Yeah, well. If I want to stock a cabin in the remote woods, I call you. If I want decorating advice I go to the top. So I asked Stark. We can always tone it down later, right?”
Phil watched as Clint crossed the room, then shook his head slowly. “Or not.”
Clint chuckled and dumped him on the bed. “Or not. This is what happens when you get in bed with a smartass and a showoff.”
“Think I can live with that.”