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Chapter Text

The walls have ears, and those ears belong to Clint Barton.

Clint always eavesdrops. It's such a common occurrence that frankly, it offends him when people genuinely think that they can get away with whispering big, big secrets on SHIELD property.

Phil leaves Maria's office, and the SHIELD medical officer asks, "Tahiti? He really doesn't know?"

Maria looks grim. "He can never know."

Clint wants to know. Clint wants to know with the power of a thousand burning suns. If it had been someone else, his curiosity would have been aroused anyway, but this is Phil they're talking about. Phil, whom he hadn't even known had died until after Tony Stark had taken them all out for food and he'd eaten his weight's worth of shwarma in the hopes that it would stave off the guilt and self-loathing and Natasha had pulled him aside when they got back to base and told him. Phil, who had contacted Clint the moment he had managed to pickpocket a cell phone from someone because apparently no one carried cell phones to the beach in Tahiti. Phil, who had phoned Clint before he phoned anyone else, and had rattled off one of their long rotating security codes and then said 'I'm not dead. I love you. Got to go, someone's coming' and hung up on him. Phil, who had apparently not been in Tahiti.

So yes. Clint wants to know.

He's tempted to bust out of that air vent right there and shake Hill, demanding to know what she meant. Only two things stop him: the first – he's already on shaky ground with a lot of SHIELD personnel, what with having led an attack on them, and Hill's office walls are currently one quarter glass. He doesn't need everyone to see but be unable to hear what the fight would be about. The second is that he wants to know if Phil really doesn't know. It seems unbelievable. Phil had been the unspoken third-in-charge after Director Fury and Assistant Director Hill. Phil knows everything.

Instead, Clint stays where he is, silent, watching. The SHIELD medical officer leaves and Maria flicks a switch, turning her office wall from transparent into one-way glass. Clint is glad that Phil's office has real walls. He never quite trusts that one-way glass actually works. Phil (and Clint) could kick off and relax properly in there without all the new rookies walking past and seeing him. Of course, the downside is that since Phil is still technically dead, he doesn't actually get to use his office any more. Maria doesn't reveal anything though, just opens a different file case and gets started on some reports.

Much later, Clint slips down into Phil's office via the air ducts, mostly because the door remains locked and he enjoys the rumours that fly around the building any time anyone hears him clomp around in here, and sinks into the chair. The computer still works, and Clint quickly logs in using Phil's credentials. (There are also upsides to having a hypothetically dead boyfriend with Level Seven clearance and an empty office that no one quite dared clear out.)

It is quickly obvious that even with Level Seven clearance, there is nothing on file about Phil's treatment and resurrection. Clint wonders briefly if that is because there is apparently a Level Eight above Phil – unlikely, come on – or if it is just something Phil isn't allowed to know about and therefore not kept on the servers. Clint glances at the clock on-screen, and quickly logs out.

Clint's new car – a sort of combination 'sorry you were mind-wiped by Loki', 'please don't forget about SHIELD now you're an Avenger' and 'condolences on the dead boyfriend' present from SHIELD – gets him to Phil's new safehouse in record time. (After Stark got a hold of it, it also has a sweet purple paint job and good enough auto-pilot that he can concentrate on firing arrows.) Clint saunters up the drive and lets himself in through the biometric scans.

"Have you been hacking my SHIELD account again?" is the first thing that Phil said to him, calling from the bedroom.

"It's not really hacking if you give me all your passcodes," says Clint, toeing off his boots because Phil is picky about things like that. He pads into the bedroom and presses himself against Phil's back, nuzzling his face into the back of Phil's neck.

Phil leans back slightly into him, but carries on tying his tie. "It's really not necessary, you know. You're Level Seven too."

"Yeah, but... it's different," says Clint. "You have access to different stuff than I do."

Phil gives him an odd look, but turns around for a quick kiss nonetheless. "Because we run different ops. No one's restricting your access; they just don't think you're interested in the hundred and fifty other ops that don't involve you."

Clint realises then that he and Phil are having two different conversations. Phil thinks that Clint is using his account because he's paranoid that he's still being kept out of confidential information after the Loki-incident. Clint is... well, he is a little bit, sometimes, but not often any more. "I know," he says and he means it. Phil's surprise flashes across his eyes for a moment, neither of them mention it and the moment passes.

"You're leaving soon, aren't you?" He asks, even though he already knows. There are two packs, one for clothes and personal items and the other for weapons and tech, by the bedroom door, and a suit bag. The size of them tells Clint that Phil might be gone a while.

Clint flops down onto the bed and Phil sits down next to him. "Yeah. It's not for long though." Phil holds up a hand before Clint can tell him to stop lying, he knows how this goes, it's not like they don't do this all the time. "It's different now," says Phil quietly. "I have a strike team of my own. This isn't cover ops or long missions. The packs are only that full because we might have to travel quite a lot, very quickly, so I'm taking everything with me instead of having to come back and get it or have it sent out to me. It really shouldn't be long."

Clint thinks about it. "Okay. We should go on vacation when you get back. Now that I have lots of downtime as an Avenger and you get to pick your own missions. Something short," he says quickly. "Maybe you can show me Tahiti."

Phil smiles at him, sweet and genuine. "Okay. I think you'd like it. Definitely short though. I was going out of my mind with boredom after the first three days."

Clint squints at him. "You were there for six months." Phil doesn't seem to be lying, which means that he genuinely doesn't know what's up with this Tahiti business.

"Exactly." Phil stretches. "I've got to get to the airfield. Meeting the rest of the team there in fifteen." They stand, Phil using the cane that he can feel free to use at home. Clint quickly swoops and picks up the packs before Phil can, and Phil pinches him on the arse. "I can do that myself," he says, but he sounds fond as he picks up the remaining suit case. (No one touches Phil's suits, not even Clint and the only exception is if Clint is peeling the suit off him.)

"Ow! Are you taking Lola?" Clint ignores him and carries the packs out for him.

Phil shrugs, which means yes.

"Give me a lift back to base?" Clint loves abusing Lola privileges, and he would definitely not get away with it if Phil did not love Clint almost as much as he loved that damn car.

"Fine," says Phil, eyes crinkling with amusement. Clint likes making his eyes do that. He leans out of the window wearing a pair of Phil's aviators and Phil lets him crank the music up high until they're two blocks from SHIELD and need to practice some modicum of discretion, or as much as they can manage in a bright red car. Phil leans in and gives him a kiss – their 'I'm leaving for a mission that doesn't involve you, honey, I'll try not to die' kiss – and drives off the moment Clint hops out.

Clint heads inside. If Phil is only going to be gone a couple of days, he's got to get moving and see what information he can dig up.

Chapter Text

Clint might not be on the Bus right now, but he still has eyes on it. It's one of the fringe benefits to being teammates with Tony Stark these days. Clint has a hacked feed to the Bus' comm channels and three cameras planted on that thing because he is still a SHIELD agent and a specialist and this is what they do; they plan for emergencies. What he isn't, however, is horribly insecure about his relationship with Phil, which means that he has no reason to actually check in on these surveillance methods.

Seriously, he is not that guy who creepily watches his boyfriend through hidden cameras. (Technically, that guy would be Phil, although a. it was his job and b. he doesn't have to do it any more.) If Phil wants or needs to talk to him, Phil actually calls or messages him.

Phil doesn't call him, or message him.

Clint squints at his phone. He's bored. There have been no emergencies in the half a day since Phil left, which means that Clint doesn't even have any paperwork to not-do. There is absolutely nothing in the SHIELD database that tells him anything about Tahiti, because he's completely scoured it. He's doodling on a sheet of notepaper, brainstorming ideas for new trick arrows he wants. There's a Level Three monthly review on the range right now and a Level Four training exercise in the simulation room. (Natasha's run off with Steve Rogers to hunt down hideously attractive, brainwashed Russian soldiers and didn't invite him along.)

His phone crackles to life, playing the theme to Men In Black, which means it's Phil. Clint picks it up after three rings, to prove that he wasn't just lying around hoping his boyfriend had enough free time on his mission to call him just to chat. "Hey," he says, feeling his voice go all fuzzy and warm and actually kind of liking it.

Phil doesn't reply and Clint gets a muffled sort of static. He frowns, and fumbles for the SHIELD dictaphone app. Phil does this sometimes; he'll phone Clint or their answer phone for a recording he can use later. Clint just has to figure out if he's in danger and calling for back-up, or interrogating someone for evidence.

Squishing his earwig in in case he needs to relay a message up to Maria quickly, Clint puts the phone on speaker. The conversation just seems to be idle chitchat so far. Then again, that's exactly what half of Phil's interrogations sound like. Clint logs himself in on the laptop and pulls up Phil's current mission parameters. What? Clint can multi-task when required. He squints. Reading and listening at the same time was never his strong suit (he suspects that it's no one's strong suit except Natasha's), but he manages to pick up the gist of it. 084, Peru, landed a couple of hours ago.

"...our history, Camilla."

Clint pauses. That would be Phil identifying the person. No surname though. Peru, Camilla, she's sounding very familiar with Phil. Ex... girlfriend? Philip Coulson, were you seriously flirting with an ex-girlfriend on a phone call to me? writes Clint on his piece of paper in large block letters, a reminder to himself to ask Phil this when he gets back. He only gets halfway through the word 'flirting' when she punches him, and Clint drops his pen.

"Agent Hill, I think there's something wrong on SHIELD 616," says Clint into his earwig, hand over the phone mic. He doesn't want voices to start coming out of Phil's jacket when he's being interrogated, after all. "Coulson's being interrogated, team is incapacitated." 

There's a pause on Hill's end, and Clint can practically feel Hill scowling at him. "Roger that, Hawkeye. 616's due a confirmation on flight path change anyway, we'll check in now."

There is nothing that Clint can do. Phil is on an aeroplane over Peru and apparently outnumbered enough that his team is incapacitated. (In the back of his mind, Clint wonders who managed to disarm both Ward and May.) He wants to commandeer a jet and fly out there right now but that's not what they do. Phil's been on the end of the line as Clint gets shot, tortured, disappears off-grid for days.

Clint goes for the hidden cameras, thanking his stars that he is friends with Tony Stark, a fact he never thought he would thank anyone for. The cameras load and Clint winces at the bruses on Phil's face. He clicks back into Phil's file, and types in 'Location: Peru, Name: Camilla' and hopes that's enough for the search engine to go on. It is. Camilla Reyes, Comandante. He's about to tell Hill when Phil speaks again.

"It's blue skies from here on out."

Clint's stomach drops. That's unofficial SHIELD code for 'shitstorm is here', because they are sarcastic bastards. A second later, there's the sound of a blast – not a gun, something bigger – a roaring static and then a crunch and the call drops.

"Hawkeye, anything after 'blue skies'?" asks Hill in frustration.

"Some sort of explosion. Bigger than a gun, smaller than an engine going out. Audio contact is out but I still have visual. Hijacker's name is Camilla Reyes, she and Coulson know each other from the Peru op ten years ago. Hole in the side of 616. No confirmation on the rest of the team, but I don't have cams in the rest of 616." He takes a moment to link Hill in on the cam streams.

The camera positions could be better – only two of the three are pointed at the communal area; one overlooks the wall damage and he can see Phil in the other. He's going to have to ask Stark for cameras that swivel. And also rethink the idea he doesn't need cameras in the lab, conference room, hold or anywhere else that Phil doesn't spend most of his time.

"They're on their own for this one," says Maria sounding very unhappy. "We haven't got anything close enough to get there whilst it matters."

"Can't you take remote control of the plane?" Clint's knuckles are white as grips the desk, watching Phil hold on for dear life.

"Remote access currently disabled. Pilot knew what he was doing."

Things get a little blurry after that. Clint sees a glimpse of the rest of the team in the background and is vaguely relieved that they're all right but he's more focused on Phil. He doesn't know the rest of them, doesn't care about them, not yet. And then an enormous yellow thing erupts into view and flies past Clint's camera. "The fuck?!" He says out loud, forgetting he's on comm with Maria.

"Looks like they're clear of immediate danger," says Maria warily. He hears her turn the comm on. "SHIELD 616, status report please."

Clint breathes into the silence. He glares at Phil. He glares at all of the team for deliberately blowing a hole in the side of an aeroplane when Phil was in the room. He glares at Camilla. "Worst ex-fucking-girlfriend ever," he snaps, pulling out his earwig and throwing it onto the desk.

He stalks down to the range and checks himself into an aisle and empties out four clips before anyone even manages to ask him what he's doing here and doesn't he know that it's booked out right now for the Level Three review? He growls at them and stomps back out. He stalks in an empty corridor for five minutes and then gets impatient and drives to Phil's safehouse even though Phil obviously won't be there and stalks around some more.

Eventually, his phone rings. It's an unknown number. Clint picks it up. "I cannot believe you," says Clint. "It's been two days and you have had two near-death experiences and one hot ex. I cannot fucking believe you."

There's a pause. "Are you more mad about the near-death experiences, or the hot ex?" Clint scowls, and gives him stony silence.

Phil sighs. "Sorry, I'm joking. It wasn't meant to be this crazy."

"I know," says Clint, and he's definitely not pouting. "When will you be back?"

"Tomorrow morning. On route to the Slingshot now, and I think we'll take the night on the ground. None of us really want to sleep on a plane with a giant hole in the side, just in case."

Clint leans his forehead against a wall, and relaxes. He's not mad at Phil, not really. If he got mad at Phil every time one of them were in danger, he'd never stop being mad. It's just the idea they're not doing this together that he has to get used to. Clint doesn't play the military wife role well. (Neither does Phil.) "You coming home after debrief?"

"Will you be there?" 

"Yeah," says Clint. "Yeah. I'm there already."

"Okay," says Phil, softly. "Sorry for dragging you in. I know there wasn't anything you could do, but I just wanted you to know –"

"Shut up," says Clint fondly.

-

"Soooo, Camilla?" Clint asks into the darkness, half muffled into Phil's shoulder as he bites it. "You just happened to come across your sexy ex-girlfriend from Peru the first time you return to Peru in ten years?"

"Urgh," groans Phil. "I can't believe you're asking me about her during the afterglow. Is nothing sacred any more?"

Clint grins, and tucks his arm around Phil, snuggling in closer. "You are so lazy after you get laid."

Phil strokes Clint's arm, callused fingers brushing across the fine hairs. "It was ten years ago. It wasn't exactly for the mission but that was a part of it. We parted amicably after the mission ended, didn't keep in touch."

"I know," says Clint, who does know. He'd read the rest of that file afterwards. "I just mean. You just automatically trusted someone just because they're sexy and you'd had a thing with them even though it was ten years ago? Rookie mistake, Coulson."

Phil sighs. "Yeah." He rubs his chest where the scar remains. "I think I'm having an after-life crisis."

"Hmm?" Clint frowns. This is a turn in the conversation.

"You know, the personal team, the young agents, the Bus. Lola." He sounds like he's quoting something. "The team needs to work out how to communicate and we should have done that before ploughing into high level cases."

"Yeah, next thing you know, you'll be ditching me for some hot young thing," says Clint with a huff. "Phil, if you're seriously worried that you're not accomplishing anything in your life, can I remind you that you are technically still dead and yet third in charge of a shadowy secret government agency, you saved everyone within a two block radius of Union Station two days ago and you have the Avengers on speed dial? Do you know how many people get to have an after-life crisis? The list stands at you and Captain America."

Phil presses his lips to Clint's. "Maybe I won't ditch you for some hot young thing after all."

Clint laughs, and rolls them back over.

Chapter Text

"We're going after an asset," says Phil when he gets off the phone, flopping back onto the bed, and Clint narrows his eyes.

"When you say 'asset', do you happen to mean another ex?" He asks, because he's allowed to be a little bit snippy about it if Phil comes across two exes in two missions.

Phil makes a slight gurgle of distress and presses his face into Clint's chest. (Clint's very bare chest.) "No! He's a SHIELD scientist who got intercepted on one of his moves between locations, and he – no, Clint, just no."

"Oh. Okay," says Clint, raising one knee and hooking his leg around Phil's hip. "Momentary jealous phase over." He grins.

Phil groans, and plants a kiss onto his breastbone. "No, no, no sex right now, this is top priority. I need to go brief the team." It doesn't stop him from pressing another flutter of kisses across Clint's neck and shoulder as he rolls out of bed. Spacious as it is, and as much as being team leader gets Phil the biggest living quarters, the Bus is still an aeroplane with limited space. The bed takes up most of his room. (The closet takes up quite a lot too.) Clint groans as Phil tosses his clothing at him.

"I hate you," says Clint. "Why you couldn't just come home last night, I still don't know." He starts to fumble around for clothing, clinging to the morning fuzziness and disorientation he can indulge in when he's not on a mission and doesn't have to strip and change in seconds.

"I was tired, you were tired, we were at HQ, Bus was closer," says Phil, who is somehow already in one of his suits and just tugging his tie into shape.

He's typing in a message to send to the rest of the team's rooms when Clint says, "No, wait – oh damn, never mind." Phil looks up as he hits 'send'. "You could have waited for me to get off the Bus before getting them all up," he grouses, dragging jeans and underwear over his ass at the same time. Phil shamelessly ogles him for a moment.

"Consider it stealth training," says Phil unsympathetically, sweeping his hair into place and then reaching up and unhooking the cover off the air vents. Clint looks at the small opening mournfully, presses a last kiss to Phil's lips and hoists himself up. As he shuffles off, Clint mutters grumpily, "Fucking air duct crawl of shame." He hears Phil chuckle behind him.

This mission, it's really tempting to bring up a feed of the Bus' cameras onto his smartphone, the one that Stark foisted off onto him and told him would 'sync his quiver', whatever that meant, but Clint's insecurity issues aren't that bad. He just has issues trusting that Ward and May would protect Phil like he would.

Clint checks in at HQ, hoping that someone, somewhere, has a mission for him to help him relieve stress. There's no such luck. Seriously, Clint gets dibs on life-affirming adventures with Captain America next time. He does manage to talk Hill into letting him do a couple of demonstrations for 'Situational Adaptation 102' though, which just covers what do to if an agent ends up unarmed when they would really prefer not to be. Clint covers the basics: chairs, pens, extension cords, hamsters. (Okay, the hamster was one time, and it was an accident.)

He almost tries to talk the probationary agents into trying archery because that improves hand-eye co-ordination that firing guns does not, and then remembers that he's only useful because he's the only person who can do that with a bow. It's fun anyway. He confiscates all of their guns and locks the door and then tells them that the last person still conscious gets top grades. Clint ends up dodging brawling baby agents for forty minutes, and by the end, he is too thoroughly distracted and exhausted to worry too much about Phil.

Clint's phone rings as he gets out of the lecture and he almost misses the call. It's a number he doesn't recognise; there aren't that many people who would be calling him anyway. "Hello?" He jams the phone between his shoulder and ear as he locks up and heads down to his cupboard of an office.

"Coulson went into the field." The voice is familiar, and Clint straightens up. He walks quicker, striding down the hallway, and people slide out of his way.

"May. Why?" The team leader doesn't go into the field. That's not the way it works. Team leader has to stay behind the front lines to direct everyone else. (Clint isn't even paying attention to the fact that May 1. apparently knows that he and Phil are together and 2. knows that this is the right sort of situation in which to call Clint.)

'Who're you talking to? Isn't this mission need-to-know?' That voice is new; Clint only recognises it second-hand from videos and snatched passing lines when he's been hiding out in Phil's bunk. It's one of the science team – Fitz or Simmons, Clint can't keep them straight.

"Someone who needs to know," says May to Fitz or Simmons, and then turns her attention back to Clint. "Because I'm just the pilot." There's a bite to her words; Clint can't tell if she's angry at herself or him or Phil. Perhaps it's all three.

Clint breathes down the phone. 'He'll be fine', he wants to say. 'He knows how to handle himself in a field situation', he doesn't say because Phil doesn't need anyone to defend his competency. "Well, you don't send the Calvalry in first thing," he says instead.

"Don't call me that," says Agent May, and hangs up on him.

There's nothing for Clint to do. That wasn't a phone call asking for help or back-up – it was a strictly informational phone call. Clint logs in and brings up their current mission. There isn't much information about it apart from the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist Dr Franklin Hall is missing and they are in pursuit, probably Phil is the one who would be checking in and updating S.H.I.E.L.D. except for the bit where he is apparently in the field right now.

Clint scowls, and logs off. There's nothing to do but fret. For all that he does trust Phil to be an extremely competent badass... well, there's no denying that there's a lot that's changed. Ten years of action, even as a specialist handler, takes a toll. It's not so much the age or the speed that even matters because there are always undercover ops that require older agents, but the lifetime of injuries, of landing badly on an ankle, unhealed muscles that always pull a little bit or old scars that predict the weather. They add up. Clint feels them fairly often too, but Phil has a few years on him and besides, there's that whole pesky dying business.

Not that Clint has mentioned any of this to Phil; there's nothing he could point out that Phil hasn't already noticed about himself.

The next time Clint gets word, it's because SHIELD 616 is scheduled to land, and Clint swings by the airfield to meet them.

"I don't need to go to Medical," Phil is saying as they disembark. May looks unimpressed. (The science babies tumble past them in search of beer, taking Skye with them. She doesn't have time to do any more more than give Clint a startled, fleeting glance.)

"That sounds familiar," says Clint with a grin, shoving his hands in his pockets because they don't really do public displays of affection. "Stealing my lines now, are you?"

Phil sighs. "Usually when you're saying it, you've broken something and it's often your face." He has a gauze pad pressed to his eyebrow. "Mine is a graze at best and I don't have a concussion." The corners of his eyes crinkle upwards in welcome.

"I'll take care of him," says Clint to May. Behind them, Ward looks Clint up and down. He frowns, and maybe there's the start of a challenge there, one of those douchy bro stare face-off moments (and no, Clint does not have better words for that, because a douchy bro stare face-off is exactly what it would be), except Clint really doesn't care about that right now, so he turns his back and dangles keys in front of Phil. "Come on Coulson, if you don't go to Medical and get the all-clear for driving, I get driving privileges in Lola."

Phil scowls at him. May waves them off like she's handing possession of a small child over to its guardian and walks off without a backwards look. They shuffle off side-by-side to the Medical bay where Phil gets a quick check over, after which Phil holds out his hand. Clint sighs and drops Lola's keys into his hand.

"So, I hear you're thinking of becoming a field agent," says Clint as he jumps into the car, careful not to leave a dirty boot mark on the seat.

Phil groans. "I'm never doing that again," he says, which probably means that he really enjoyed it even though everything went tits up, and he's considering doing it a lot more. "Did you know that I can't strip a gun any more?" He looks at his hands like they've betrayed him. "I didn't know that. Also, the mission was an abject failure although we did save a country and possibly the entire world as a side effect."

Clint leans over, slipping a hand onto Phil's knee and squeezing. Phil's lips are pressed tight as if to stop himself from saying more and his knuckles are white where he's gripping the steering wheel. Thinking back to the team, Clint runs through them all in his head. No one was missing, and no one was injured, so Phil isn't feeling guilty about that.

"Oh – the asset?" Clint winces when he realises who was missing from the plane.

"Dead. I assume," says Phil. They pull into the garage, but he doesn't get out. "Swallowed up by a ball of liquid gravitonium. It – I don't even know what it did to him." He passes a hand over his eyes and when he takes them away, he looks older, tired, a little bit broken.

Clint takes over the packs, hauling them up into the safehouse as Phil follows behind, trailing fingers over Lola's shiny surface with a faraway look. He peels Phil's suit jacket off and flicks open the top button and manhandles Phil into the couch.

"I killed him," says Phil eventually, leaning his weight onto Clint's chest. "I was supposed to save him, and I killed him."

"I presume you had a good reason for it," says Clint, inspecting the head wound and retaping the gauze firmly over it.

Phil smiles, slightly. "Yes."

"Then it's okay," says Clint firmly.

"That's it?"

"That's it. I'm a simple man, Coulson. If you say you had a reason, then I believe that you thought it was better to kill him than to recover him. End of."

Phil looks at him consideringly. "All right." And that's that.

Phil is lying, of course, because Phil is one of the best men that Clint knows and he will lie awake at night turning it over in his mind, wondering if he could have done it differently, better. Clint won't. Clint has faith in very few things, and one of them is Phil.