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SHIELD prided itself on its mission focus: mission first, people second, and everything else a far distant third. It was why Agent Phil Coulson filled out so many forms for his assets. Their focus should be getting the job done and survival, not perfecting bureaucracy.
Despite what Barton might think, SHIELD did not actually have that many forms. Coulson had been in the Army, an organization that took bureaucracy to dizzying heights. They used to joke in his unit that there was no better adversary of the US Army than its own red tape. Meanwhile, SHIELD leadership prided itself on having the least amount of bureaucracy to any other federal agency.
That said, SHIELD was still a federal agency. So once a year, the focus of its upper management shifted away from the mission and to budget defense.
Coulson sat at his computer, cursing Fury, God, the World Security Council, and the Senate Appropriations Committee as he attempted to shrink the past year’s Operations Schedule into a human readable format on a PowerPoint chart. Two years ago, when he’d shown a high-level schedule that he made in Excel–the very format he actually used to track missions and ops–he’d been instructed in no uncertain terms that anything less than a two-level deep Gantt chart was unacceptable. The following year, he’d presented the two-level deep Gantt chart and then been told that it was an unreadable “eye chart” and to not get so into the weeds. So here Coulson was, trying to create some sort of unholy cross between the system he actually used, the system they claimed they wanted, and what would actually look good on a PowerPoint chart.
A twinge of a headache started in his temple as PowerPoint snapped an arrow to the wrong box for the third time in the row. He wished PowerPoint would stop helping so much, and just let him do what he needed to do. He clicked the end of the arrow again, re-aligning it and somehow that messed up the textbox it was attached to.
Coulson hit ctrl-Z and wanted to kill himself.
That wasn’t fair. Coulson was not and never had been suicidal. He just wished that he’d made very different life choices. Like when the newly minted Director Fury had looked at him and said he wanted him to be the Senior Agent in Charge of Operations, he should have asked more questions about how many PowerPoints he was going to be expected to make.
It could be worse. Coulson could be the head of finance or R&D, who together were pulling together the story on why SHIELD R&D was five hundred million dollars over budget and requesting one billion more dollars in the next fiscal year. Turned out developing new quinjet technology was not as cheap as anyone thought. Coulson had already provided his two-cents to their story: a list of operations that would have been more successful either in objective or keeping assets alive with the new quinjet in play.
Barton loved the quinjet. R&D had let Strike Team Delta field test the prototype, which they had done gleefully. By Barton’s assessment–which Coulson sanitized for the three slides that he supplied the Quinjet Acquisition Team–between the quinjet’s speed, stealth, and hover capability, operations would run three times as smoothly.
Coulson wished he’d been on the test runs, instead of back in the office reading the mission reports. Strike Team Delta had taken the idea of a field stress test to heart and done maneuvers that weren’t even in the requirements set for the jet. They’d used its stealth to get right up on their target’s doorstep and rain death from above. In one particular mission, Barton had bunjeed out of the back, nabbing something nearly out of an AIM scientist’s hand, before being jerked upwards by Romanoff’s expert piloting. It had read like something out of Mission Impossible and sounded incredibly fun.
Of course, Coulson didn’t do things like that, not anymore. Instead of fighting bad guys, he fought his own leadership and PowerPoint.
He hated everything.
Coulson took off his reading glasses, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stop the twinge of his headache from blooming into a migraine.
He’d chosen this job. He had done this to himself. He could blame Fury all he wanted, but Fury had given him a choice. Coulson could have stayed a field agent. But no, Phil had said yes and here he was, hating his life.
Sometimes he felt like he’d ruined his own life by taking this job.
A knock at the door. “I swear to God,” Coulson said crankily, not opening his eyes or moving. If he let go of the bridge of his nose he just knew the headache would blossom. “If that’s you, Collins, needing more charts for the quinjet story, I’m going to burn this whole building down.”
“Aww, boss, no. I like the Trisk. It’s still shiny.”
Clint. Just the sound of his voice caused some of Phil’s tension to ebb. He dropped his hand and opened his eyes, looking up to where his partner stood in the doorway. And then blinked owlishly as his eyes struggled to focus on the longer distance after staring at his computer screen for so long.
When Clint Barton came into focus, he was leaning in Coulson’s doorjamb, his impressive arms crossed over his broad chest. He was clad in SHIELD sweatpants, which of course he somehow managed to make look good, and a decidedly non-regulation purple shirt. When Coulson wore the regulation sweats he felt like Jabba the Hutt; only Clint Barton could make them look like he stepped out of GQ.
For a half a beat, neither of them said anything, Phil letting himself just enjoy the sight of Clint while the archer’s sharp eyes studied him in turn. Then Barton asked, “You okay, boss?”
“Charts are due for the Budget Defense by end of day today,” Coulson said by way of answer.
Barton’s face contorted into confusion. “I thought that was supposed to be next month?”
“It was.” Coulson couldn’t help the crossness that leaked into his tone. “Apparently this Friday is the only date that works for the next three months and they didn’t tell us this until this morning.” Fury was being generous by giving them until end-of-day today to get the charts done so they could dry-run them with him tomorrow, then work revisions on Wednesday, before readaheads were due to the staffers on Thursday.
Barton’s eyes went wide. “Shit,” he said. “Don’t let me bother you then. Get back to it.” And then before Coulson could say anything in response, Barton left.
Coulson stared at the empty spot in the doorway, feeling as if the laws of physics had just altered before his very eyes. His tired, aching brain literally could not compute what had just happened.
In all the time Coulson had known Clint Barton, he’d never just disappeared when Coulson implied he was busy. And certainly not when Phil clearly let his distress leak into his tone. The archer was many things and a nuisance was generally considered high on the list, by Barton’s own estimation. Barton loved annoying Coulson, loved wheedling and wasting his time even when he knew Coulson was busy.
And of course, Coulson loved to be annoyed by him. It was the foundation of their relationship: to Coulson, Barton was never a nuisance. Talking to Barton, venting to him, explaining to him the finer points of PowerPointing until the other man’s eyes glazed over, that was part of the process. And it was the Clint Barton of it all that kept Phil Coulson from wanting to burn SHIELD and all of its bureaucracy to the ground.
Not that Coulson could blame Barton if he’d grown tired of hearing Coulson grouse about PowerPoint, budget drills, and de-risking. Barton was a field agent after all. Coulson wasn’t so far removed from the field that he didn’t remember what it was like, and how ridiculous it had seemed to hear senior leadership complain about the stress of making a PowerPoint when he was getting shot at in the field.
It was a sobering thought: that maybe Barton viewed Coulson like Coulson used to view his superiors.
The thought rang untrue even in his own head. Phil knew it was just his crankiness projecting something that Clint would never, could never think. Phil firmly reminded himself that no matter how much of a field agent Barton might be, Clint was still Clint. This was the man who, inexplicably, loved him–PowerPoints and all. Then Coulson refocused on his PowerPoint. Because these charts were due by “close of business” today, which in SHIELD parlance really meant before Fury walked in the door at seven am tomorrow, and Coulson did intend to sleep at some point tonight before the dry-run of the brief started at nine tomorrow. Coulson had set himself a hard limit of 2200 and it was–he glanced at the clock–already 1800.
The twinge in his head persevered, but so did Agent Coulson. He slid his glasses back on and started trying to re-align his fake Gantt chart.
Coulson made it to the next slide, the true meat and horror of his portion of the presentation: the measures of performance and effectiveness for Mission Operations. This was where he was expected to boil down a year of taking down bad guys, neutralizing 084s, and saving lives into a few hard numbers that even a congressional staffer could understand. Which was frankly an impossible task.
How did a person even begin to look at something like STRIKE’s Madripoor Op and boil it down into a percentage of effectiveness? Coulson had to counterbalance the fact that four of five critical objectives were achieved and the last one failed at the expense of two lives. Not to mention the unexpected bonus of the seven young girls Rumlow had found: victims of human trafficking that SHIELD was able to return home. But the WSC and Congressional Committees didn’t have time to hear about the nuances of every mission, every team, every win or loss. They just wanted to be able to look at a chart that said “yes, SHIELD is performing at the expected level within the budgetary constraints.”
Coulson was allowed to provide a third chart that elucidated on one major mission for the year and then a fourth chart that captured some high-level achievements of the past year in more plain terms. Romanoff always found that chart particularly hilarious since one of the achievements the WSC asked him to status every year, in one line, was the Black Widow. For the past four years next to her name it simply read “continued cooperation, successfully integrated in Strike Team Delta.”
The WSC lived in fear that Romanoff was a sleeper agent, and while that was a truly terrifying thought, Coulson thought after four years their concern was perhaps no longer warranted. Either that or the Red Room was playing a much longer game than SHIELD could imagine.
A mug clanked onto his desk. Coulson looked up, startled.
Barton stood next to Coulson’s desk, a steaming mug of coffee in Phil’s favorite Captain America mug (when had Barton stolen that?) already placed on the desk while Barton held out a bottle of water and a small packet. Instinctually Coulson held out his hand, and Barton dropped what turned out to be a blister pack of pills into his palm.
“Medical’s best headache concoction,” Barton said, placing the water bottle next to the mug of coffee. “Take it and drink the whole water bottle before you start on the coffee.”
The promptness Coulson obeyed perhaps gave the impression that once he had been the asset and Barton the handler, but Phil had learned a long time ago to let Clint take care of him. A team had to take care of each other to survive, and Coulson had to trust that his agents had his back as much as he had theirs. Coulson swallowed the pills and chugged the bottle of water, under Barton’s watchful eye.
“How much longer are you here for?” Barton asked, casually leaning his hip against the edge of Coulson’s desk.
“Until it’s done,” Coulson said, tossing the now empty water bottle in his trash can. “Hoping to leave by ten.”
Barton hummed in response, peering at Coulson’s computer screen. Coulson let him look at the measures of effectiveness chart while he picked up the mug and took a sip. A complex blend of dark roast, with that perfect earthiness Phil loved, exploded in his mouth. This wasn’t just break-room coffee. This was the good stuff from the coffee cart on the fifteenth floor of the Triskelion.
“Why are you changing the template?” Barton asked, his sharp eyes and mind somehow remembering the format Coulson had used last year. “Just update what you showed last year with new math based on this year’s ops.”
“The WSC particularly asked for this format,” Coulson said, hoping his tone didn’t sound as bitter as he felt. It wasn’t just that it was a new template. It was that they rejected at least three of Coulson’s measures of performance last year and forced him to wholesale create new ones. Coulson and Hill had been ideating randomly on what to use this year, but they hadn’t thought they were in any rush. Until today. So here Coulson was, picking three new measures for the WSC to hate again this year.
“What does this even mean?” Barton asked, pointing to one of the measures Coulson had chosen. “Why is STRIKE only 75% effective?”
And Coulson found himself pulling out his Excel sheet and showing his detailed breakdown of mission objectives and achievements for the past year. Obviously there was always some subjectivity when creating a hard statistic based on qualitative objectives, but Coulson hadn’t created the numbers out of nothing. Barton listened as Coulson walked him through the math, nodding at appropriate times, his sharp eyes analyzing the Excel.
“Based on what you just said that number is wrong,” Barton said, pointing to the screen. Coulson blinked at the excel sheet, scanning the equation and linkages to other cells in the sheet. Sure enough, a parentheses was misplaced, throwing something into the numerator that should have been in the denominator. For a man who often proclaimed himself an uneducated carnie, he had an incredible eye for detail and math.
“Saving my ass on and off the battlefield,” Coulson muttered as he clicked into the cell. Barton laughed at that, his hand coming down on Coulson’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze.
Phil absolutely did not let his mind dwell on the solid feel of his hand, but neither did he shrug it off. They had rules, the two of them, of what was and was not appropriate in the workplace. Rules Phil maintained for his own sanity and decorum. But at this moment, he needed that strength; he needed that hand.
But he also needed to focus on updating these numbers and checking any more errors, not how much he would like to turn and bury himself in the man’s arms.
“Well if you need to send up an SOS, you know where to find me,” Barton said. He glanced up at the clock. “I should probably get out of your hair, let you finish this.”
Coulson wanted to protest. He liked Barton here, leaning on his desk, talking through these charts as if they were the parameters of an upcoming mission. He missed this. He missed Barton.
Which was, perhaps, a silly thing to think about the man he lived with, the man he loved. Every day Phil came home to Clint. Every day they talked and laughed and chatted. But that was Clint and Phil. This was Coulson and Barton, putting their minds together to achieve some sort of objective. Phil missed this, the work version of them that rarely existed these days.
“Okay,” Coulson said.
“Don’t worry, boss. You’ve got this,” Barton said with a bright smile. “And don’t forget to drink water.” He squeezed Coulson’s shoulder one more time, and then once again disappeared.
A part of Phil wanted to sigh and stare after him like a lovestruck teenage girl. It was amazing that no matter the fact they had been together for two years, living together for one, Phil could still feel lovestruck about the man. The rational part of Coulson, however, dove back into his Excel sheet, re-analyzing his calculations and making sure his story was straight. Sure, the measures of effectiveness might be made-up, but they could only be somewhat imaginary.
Eventually he gave up on his measures–they were going to hate whatever he did anyway–and flipped to his chart of high-level achievements for the year. He was trying to figure out how to boil Hand’s operation in Sokovia down to a pithy one-liner when Barton’s voice said, “Knock, knock.”
Hadn’t he just left? Coulson glanced at the time on his computer screen to discover an hour and a half had passed. Coulson looked up in surprise.
Barton stood in the doorway, still in his purple shirt and sweats, holding up a brown paper bag heavy with something greasy. The smell of burgers wafted through the office.
“No PowerPointing on an empty stomach,” Barton said, waving the bag. “Pretty sure that’s in the safety regs.”
And that sounded like heaven. Phil couldn’t wait to step away from his computer, sit on the couch for even fifteen minutes, and eat a burger with Clint by his side. They could even close and lock the door, so that for a few minutes they could truly be Clint and Phil, and not worry about what all of SHIELD might think. That was exactly what Phil needed, to not be staring at this fucking screen for even five more seconds. Phil opened his mouth to tell Clint so when the phone rang. He picked it up without thinking, “Coulson.”
“The story on the quinjets isn’t working,” Hill said without preamble, in a clipped tone that said she was pissed. “I need you in Collins office right now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Coulson said. He hung up the handset and looked at Barton. “That was Hill she…”
“Needs you,” Barton finished with a wistful smile. “No worries, boss. I’m done for the day, and there’s plenty to eat at home. Take it all with you. There’s three burgers in there and enough fries to feed an army.”
Coulson stood, closing his laptop and shoving it into his work bag along with the few papers he needed. “You really don’t have to do that, Barton.”
“Yes, I do, Phil,” Barton said back in a soft tone.
Phil looked up from his computer and to Clint, who hadn’t moved from the doorway. His expression was fond, his eyes soft, and Phil wanted to call Maria back and tell her that damn-it-all it was already after six. He just wanted to eat fucking dinner with his partner. But Coulson knew better, knew they didn’t have time, when what he really needed to be thinking about was somehow tying the measures of effectiveness he was making up to the quinjet story.
Yes, if he could show a quantitative number for how the year's measures would have increased if the quinjet was in play, or maybe compare and contrast Delta’s effectiveness against STRIKE’s, perhaps that would get the story across.
Clint handed the burgers to Phil, and Phil’s hand reflexively closed around the bag. “Better get moving,” Clint said with that interesting fond smile. “Don’t want to keep Hill waiting.”
“No, I don’t,” Phil said, and yet he didn’t move.
Coulson’s deskphone rang again, and Coulson was moving. Barton stepped out of his way in the doorway. “Good luck, boss. You got this.”
Whether Coulson had it or not remained to be seen, but he appreciated Barton’s confidence.
#
It was after midnight–and after four more iterations of the slide deck–that Hill accepted the final draft and sent it to Fury’s inbox. She then refused to let them go home, sending them to the quarters in the Triskelion for agents to crash in. Usually such quarters were reserved for agents coming back late or hot from a mission at odd hours, or for the on-call handlers and support that had to be available to manage operations 24/7. That said, it wasn’t the first time Coulson crashed there or on the couch in his office because maximizing sleep was more important than sleeping in the comfort of his own bed.
Phil sent Clint a text and then crashed out in his assigned room, his alarm set for seven am.
#
Fury was not satisfied with the quinjet story, and worse, he was angry they didn’t include the plan for starting the prototype of the helicarrier in the next fiscal year. Ramirez, the head of finance, lectured him on fiscal responsibility to the tax payer–they were already in the hole on the quinjet, how could they start something new that was even more ambitious–to which Fury just responded with, “We’re trying to protecting the fucking tax-payer from mother-fucking aliens.”
That was the end of that, and Hill locked the three department heads (Finance, R&D, and Ops) in a conference room threatening to not let them out until the slides were done.
It took ten more hours and a mysterious pizza delivery–at least mysterious to Ramirez and Collins, Coulson recognized the handwriting on the pizza box as belonging to Barton–to get them another set of slides they could submit to Fury.
Coulson almost made it home that night. He even gathered his stuff and made it out of the office door. And then an op went bad.
Strike Team Beta was on a mission in Columbia. Their targets had been more armed and more informed than intel had led them to believe. Now their handler was dead, and they were lost and scattered in the jungle. Coulson went straight from the conference room to the Mission Operations Center, trying to pull together the fractured team so they could get out with their lives.
Despite the strong message of SHIELD’s effectiveness they needed to give to the WSC, the fact was SHIELD did not always win.
Coulson scrambled SHIELD’s one quinjet and the one team capable of operating it. The quinjet could get there in half the time, but even that might be too long.
When it was all over, twenty-eight hours later–two members of Beta dead, another one critically injured, but the last two seemingly whole and all ensconced on the quinjet that was headed home–Coulson went to his office and crashed.
Only to be woken up three hours later by Hill, demanding he add a slide to the deck accounting for the recent disastrous op and how the quinjet would have changed the outcome if it was involved since the beginning.
Coulson was going to snap and murder them all.
#
It was mid-day Thursday, Coulson had maybe ten hours of sleep total since Monday, and he sat at his desk, reading through the hard copy file of Agent Allison Chavez. She was one of the two agents who had died on Beta’s disastrous operation. The other agent was Agent Alexander Kelly. Coulson had known Kelly fairly well, as a handler in charge of one of the primary strike teams. Kelly’s death notification protocol had been fairly straight-forward. Kelly had no family to speak of, his parents having died five years back; he only had a sibling he sent gifts to at Christmas and birthdays. Coulson had typed up a formal letter to Kelly’s sister and already placed it in the overnight mail. It would then be SHIELD HR’s job to get his personal effects to her and then walk her through the benefits she would be gaining.
Agent Chavez on the other hand had been young, a junior agent with a close-knit family back in Roswell, New Mexico. Chavez’s notes on what to do in case of her own death had been very clear. Her parents would need to be informed in person. And as the Senior Agent in Charge of Operations, this fell to Coulson.
The flight options to get from the Triskelion to Roswell were a nightmare. Commercially he could fly DC to El Paso, with a layover at Dallas, Atlanta, or fucking Midway. And then it would still be an almost four-hour drive. Flying into Albuquerque wasn’t any better.
He’d called his contact at the Air Force, to see if there was anything going that way he could get on. They could fly him direct from DC to Holloman Air Force Base—still a four hour flight—but Holloman was a little over two hours from Roswell. There was just no way that Coulson could get to Roswell and make it back in time for the Budget Defense.
Fury had made it clear the Budget Defense was the priority and authorized for Coulson to make the trip out either Friday afternoon or over the weekend. Coulson disagreed—nothing was more important than communicating to these people that their daughter was dead.
A knock sounded at the door, and Coulson looked up. Barton stood in the doorway, still in full tactical gear. He looked as tired as Coulson felt. They must have just made it back from Columbia. “Agent Pasierbowicz is going to be okay,” Barton said and stepped inside the room, as if intending to crash on the couch.
Coulson stood, which stopped Barton in his tracks. “How long would it take the quinjet to get us to Roswell, New Mexico?”
Barton’s face scrunched as he calculated in his head, and if Coulson had been less bone-deep tired he would have found it adorable.
“Maybe three hours if the headwind is bad,” he said.
“Can you and Romanoff turn it around to take off in the hour?” Coulson asked.
“Of course. I’ll grab Tasha. She just went to shower, but we can be back in the air whenever you need, boss.”
“Would you two be good to then fly us back tonight?”
“Do you need us for whatever you’re doing in Roswell, or can we sleep in the jet?”
”You can sleep in the jet,” Coulson said.
“Then we’re good,” Barton answered. He hesitated a moment and then said, “Do I want to know why we’re going to Roswell?”
Coulson grimaced, looking down at the file. “I need to tell Agent Chavez’s parents that she is dead.”
Barton’s face turned grim. He then stepped fully into the room, kicking the door closed behind him, crossed the room over to Coulson, and pulled him into a hug.
The Kevlar of the tacsuit was rough. Barton still smelled like sweat and blood. But Phil held him tight. He hated this part of the job. He hated walking into a loving family’s home and telling them that their daughter had died because an operation that should have worked like a smooth oiled machine—maybe would have if they’d had a quinjet—went horribly sideways and their kid had just been one of the unlucky ones to take a bullet. Right now this family thought everything was right in their world. And yes, Coulson could let them operate under that delusion for another day or two, but it was a lie. Their world had gone to hell and they didn’t even know it.
“We’ve got you, Phil,” Clint said softly. “And if you want me to come with you, Tasha can sleep on the jet and fly us back. I’m good.”
Phil appreciated the offer, he really did, but he knew Clint hated this sort of thing more than most. As a man who grew up without a real family, there was something particularly painful for him about going into a loving home and blowing up their lives.
“We’ll figure it out on the way out,” Phil responded, because he didn’t want to talk about it right now. What he wanted was to take Clint home, crawl into bed with him, and pass out for three days. Or for the WSC to push out the brief another three months. Or mostly for Chavez to not be dead. But what he needed was to get Barton back on the job, getting the quinjet fueled and ready to go to Roswell, so Coulson could be back for the Friday 1000 brief with the World Security Council and the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Copy,” Clint said, and he stepped back, becoming Agent Barton once more. “I’ll track down Tasha and we’ll have the quinjet ready to go in an hour.”
“I’ll meet you at the pad,” Coulson said.
For a moment neither of them moved. Then Clint stepped forward again, tipped up Phil’s chin, and kissed him. “We’ll get through this, boss,” Clint said softly.
“We always do,” Phil answered.
Then Barton was gone, off to get the jet up and running. Coulson drug a hand over his face, looked down at the file—open to Agent Chavez’s smiling face—and decided he needed a shower and change of clothes before he left. It wouldn’t do to show up at her parents looking like death himself.
#
It was Friday 1400, and Coulson still had not made it home. Strike Team Delta had landed him back at the Triskelion at 0100 this morning. Coulson sent Barton and Romanoff home and instructed them to take Friday off, meanwhile he crashed back in Triskelion quarters, managing at least six hours of uneasy sleep.
Sleeping after watching grief crush two loving parents was never an easy task. Phil wished he’d asked Clint to stay with him. He wanted to curl into his partner’s side and let Clint whisper comforting nonsense into his ear. But SHIELD quarters were really only built for one–each bed merely a long twin, like a college dorm–and after pulling off the rescue of Strike Team Beta, Clint deserved and needed to sleep in his own king sized bed.
The Budget Defense had been a bloodbath that lasted three hours. Oh, the WSC loved the idea of the quinjet and appreciated the stories of how much more effective it would make them, but not at the cost of $500 million this year and $1 billion in the next.
They’d offered half that, and Collins had retorted that half a Quinjet was just a very large paperweight. It had devolved from there. This was why Coulson was of the opinion that scientists and engineers shouldn’t be allowed to brief politicians.
The hellicarrier had been a nonstarter–Ramirez had been right on that, and Fury hated it when Ramirez was right–but even Coulson had to admit it was a good idea to get the plan in front of them. When R&D finished their analyses next year and truly baselined the operational requirement, then they could go back to the various funding bodies and see what magic they could make happen. A successful quinjet fleet would only help that story.
If they could get the SAC to fund it, which at this point, felt like a large lift. After the meeting, Fury and Hill had held the department heads hostage for another hour and a half to figure out how to repitch the WSC and SAC before the final budget numbers were signed into law.
Now at least, Coulson was in his own office and for once not being asked to do anything. After the week he had, he more than deserved to go home, but was debating whether he was good enough to drive. SHIELD had drivers he could ask to take him home, for situations like this, but he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to call Clint and have him swing by and then maybe they could pick up Thai food on the way home.
Coulson’s phone rang, and he cursed himself for dithering. He should have left straight after Fury released him. With his luck, this was another op gone bad, and he was about to get pulled into another 48 hours of hell.
“Coulson,” he said, picking up the phone.
“Barton took over conference room 12A, and so help me, if you don’t deal with him, I am going to shoot him,” Hill said, and then promptly hung up.
On the positive side, this at least answered the question of who should drive Coulson home. Coulson hung up the handset, packed up his bag, and headed down to conference room 12A for whatever the hell shenanigan Barton was doing there.
Unlike Hill, Coulson generally enjoyed Barton’s shenanigans, and after the week they’d had, Clint undoubtedly knew Phil needed this. It was one of the many, many things Phil loved about Clint. While the rest of SHIELD saw Coulson as some sort of humorless automaton, Clint saw what he called the “asshole adrenaline junkie” within. Phil believed that shenanigans and jokes had their time and place, and sometimes it was the perfectly placed wisecrack in the middle of an Op that actually made everything come together.
After the hellish week this had been, Phil thought he was prepared for whatever he might find in that conference room: anything from Clint and Nat using pictures of fellow SHIELD agents as a target board for a dart competition, to Clint taking over a conference room table with a pick-me-up picnic for Phil.
Yet somehow Agent Coulson was completely taken back when he saw Agent Barton dressed in a suit, standing at the front of the conference room in front of a large PowerPoint projected onto the wall. The SHIELD standard PowerPoint cover page was titled, “A PROPOSAL.”
”Agent Coulson,” Barton said smoothly, as if this was an everyday occurrence. “Please, come in, sit down. I have a print out for you.” He motioned to the table where the middle seat—usually reserved for whoever was chairing the meeting—had a full-sized print-out of the slides.
Coulson’s brain tripped like an old engine trying to start. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had seen Barton wear a suit, and this suit was impeccably tailored. It emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the long, clean lines down his chest. Phil wanted to walk up to him and run his hands over the smooth lapel, and then sneak his hands under the suit jacket and begin the process of mussing him up.
But at least Phil had known Clint was capable of wearing suits. Never in a thousand years could Coulson even imagine Barton making a PowerPoint, even as a joke.
“Boss,” Barton said, a slow and fond smile spreading across his face. “I know you’re tired, but if you could just please sit down, I promise this will be worth your time.”
Coulson nodded, because there was nothing else to do but lean into it and figure out what Barton was proposing. He sat down at the seat and picked up the print-out.
It was an old habit formed from too many meetings that were a waste of time; at the beginning of any brief, Coulson immediately flipped through the charts, especially to see what the “bottom line up front” (or BLUF in SHIELD parlance) might be. So Coulson picked up the charts, mostly expecting some sort of joke to lighten what was a terrible week or to discover the world was ending, because Barton making a PowerPoint was a sign of the Apocalypse. Instead, he found neither, his brain tripping over several of the words. He had to spread the slides out before him and take them in all at once.
”Benefits,” one slide read. “Better insurance rates, easier paperwork, tapping this ass until death do us part.”
“Reasons,” another slide read. “We already live together. I love you.”
None of it made sense. Coulson kept coming back to the BLUF slide, with its large size 18 font declaring: “Let’s get married.”
A ring box thumped onto the BLUF print-out, directly in Coulson’s line of sight. He picked it up, more out of habit than anything, and flipped it open to see a simple golden band. Phil looked up from the ring to Clint. The man was on one knee by the side of Phil’s chair, smiling up at him.
“You always do skip ahead,” Clint said fondly, as if Phil ruining this proposal by flipping through the charts was just another quirk he loved about him. “But I do have a whole presentation, if you want to hear it.”
“You want to get married?” Even saying it, even seeing the ring and the charts, it didn’t work, it didn’t make sense. After this hell of a week? After PowerPoint and dry-runs, after ops gone to hell and telling a couple they would never see their baby again, after a week where Phil felt like he wasn’t even close to his best, Clint wanted to marry him?
“Believe it or not, I would have gotten married last year before we moved in together,” Clint said. He rested a hand on Phil’s knee. “Phil, I don’t think you really grasp how much I love you.”
“You made me a PowerPoint,” Phil said, by way of answer. “You used the official template.”
“For you, I would do anything,” Clint answered. Clint had said it before, he’d acted on that before, but it was these fucking dumb PowerPoint charts that made it sink in.
Because Clint Barton was a hero. Agent Barton taking a bullet for Agent Coulson didn’t mean he loved him, because Coulson had seen Barton take bullets for people hated. But Phil hadn’t even thought Clint knew where his SHIELD-issued computer was, let alone know that there was an official PowerPoint template. For the love of God, the man had even used this year’s annual template update–Coulson could tell by the updated header with the updated shield logo and motto at the top.
Phil Coulson didn’t think anyone in his entire life had ever loved him this much.
“I did have a whole spiel planned,” Clint said, when it was clear that Phil was unable to find the words to talk. “But if you would flip ahead to slide five, I’d be happy to talk you through my actual proposal.”
“To get married,” Phil said.
“Yes, Phil, to get married.”
“You’re proposing at work?” Phil said. He was beginning to wonder if he was hallucinating. Or maybe he’d lost consciousness back in his office, and that’s why his notoriously Luddite partner–the man used a bow for fuck’s sake–was proposing to him in the office with a PowerPoint presentation.
“Of course at work,” Clint said, his eyes dancing. “We met at work. We became friends at work. We had our first kiss at work. Phil, you asked me to move in with you at work. Why would this be any different?” And that was a solid defense, Phil had to give him that.
“Can I walk you through my proposal?” Clint asked, pointing to the front of the room to the PowerPoint still being displayed.
“Uh, of course,” Phil said, because who was Agent Coulson to deny a man the right to present a PowerPoint. And then the most unbelievable thing Phil Coulson had ever seen in his entire life happened. Clinton Francis Barton gave a PowerPoint presentation.
“Clearly I want you to marry me,” Clint said, sailing past the BLUF slide. “There are a ton of benefits, and I’m sure you could list the tax benefits and crap better than I can. But from my estimation, the main benefit is I get you forever. And that’s really the only fucking thing I care about.” He clicked to the next slide. “The reason I want to marry you is obvious. I love you, Phil.”
For a moment, Clint looked like he was going to say more, and then he shrugged helplessly. “I mean that’s the crux of it, I guess.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I love you.
“So my proposal,” he continued, as if that wasn’t in fact a proposal of marriage. He clicked to the next slide, one Phil hadn’t made it to in his quick scan. “I’ve got the quinjet fueled and ready to go. I’ve already packed bags for both of us, and they’re loaded in. We go to the pad, we fly to Boston. I got us hotel reservations at the Ritz-Carlton Boston–I know how much you love that place. No intention of doing anything fancy tonight. I know you’re wiped. We go to the Ritz, we order room service, we go to sleep.
“Tomorrow, we have an appointment with City Hall at 10 am. We get married, and then we go wherever we want for lunch, and we do all that historic shit you love in Boston. Walk the whole Fucking Freedom Trail. We do whatever you want. I already put in the leave request for Monday so we have two whole days in Boston, it will be great. And then we fly back on Monday.”
Clint clicked to the last slide which said “Summary: We’re getting married” and then past that to the final standard template chart that simply said, “Questions.” Then Clint came back to Phil’s side on one knee again, looking up at Phil with perhaps the most serious expression Phil had ever seen.
“What do you say, Phil?”
“Massachusetts has a three-day waiting period for marriage licenses,” Phil said. “They won’t let us get married tomorrow.”
“I actually picked up the license two weeks ago,” Clint answered, and of course Phil had been sure before–of course the answer was always yes–but the image of Clint Barton doing paperwork for Phil Coulson–it was miraculous, it was unfathomable, and how could Coulson say no to that?
“I don’t want to wait anymore,” Clint continued, as if Phil might still be on the fence. “We could die any day, and I don’t want to look back and think we wasted our time or kept putting something off. We have this weekend. We’re getting married first thing tomorrow morning. And I told Fury if he so much as thinks of calling you before noon tomorrow, I will go postal and blow this whole place to hell. So please, Phil, say you will marry me.”
“Of course, I’ll marry you,” Phil said–or he intended to. As soon as he said, “of course” Clint was surging up into his arms, kissing him so hard it pinned him back into the chair.
“I swear, Phil,” Clint said, when he pulled back. “You’re never going to regret it.”
Of course he wasn’t. How could Phil Coulson regret anything about his relationship with this perfect man? Phil didn’t say that; he wasn’t sure he could form the words.
“It’s a good plan,” Phil said. “But we can’t take the quinjet.”
“What? Of course we can. It’s mine.”
“It’s not yours. It’s SHIELD’s. And it’s the only prototype. We can’t just take it to Boston for the weekend.” And in response, Clint hit the button on the remote in his hand that controlled the slides.
A back-up slide appeared on the screen. It was a scan of the Quinjet Prototype Authorization Form, authorizing one Clinton Francis Barton to use the quinjet for a “team building mission” starting that day, signed by one Nicholas J. Fury.
There was really nothing else for Phil to do at that point, except say yes.
Three days later, when Barton flew them back to SHIELD, the two men wearing matching golden rings, Coulson wondered if he should build the morale impact of the quinjet into the next revision of slides.