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They get that drink.
It’s two years later and they’re sat on the floor of Phil’s mother’s house. There’s a layer of dust settled on every surface and a crack down the edge of Melinda’s glass and it’s the least romantic setting Phil could ever imagine, the damp and abandoned kitchen of his empty childhood home, but Melinda’s head is heavy against his shoulder and her hand is tangled with his own. Every time he tries to shift to get more comfortable she ends up closer to him, and when he lets their entwined hands rest against her thigh she lets out a soft breath, like something important has finally slipped into place.
The whiskey is smooth, poured from a bottle he found stashed on the top shelves of his father’s study. He doesn’t know how long it’s been sitting there but it was the only bottle he could find when Melinda had turned up on his doorstep, eyes red with tears.
“Is it too late for that drink?” she’d asked, and he’d shook his head.
“It’s never too late,” he’d replied.
She’d rested her hand on his arm as she’d moved down the hall and Phil couldn’t help but notice that her engagement ring was gone; that the bag she’d dropped at the foot of the stairs was an overnight one, like she was planning to stay.
He’d found her sat in the kitchen with two glasses already in hand and after he’d poured the whiskey and settled beside her on the floor Melinda had rested her head against his shoulder, uncharacteristically quiet even for her.
What feels like hours later she’s kicked her shoes to the other side of the linoleum and Phil’s threadbare pyjama pants are doing nothing to keep out the chill. He has an arm low around her waist, holding her to his side, and she’s warm and solid against him, reminding her of safe houses and ops long gone when they’d huddled together for comfort, telling themselves it was for warmth.
Their partnership has never been simple.
There are so many things she could tell him now that they’re finally here, like how there had been a moment on her mission in Tehran days earlier when she’d thought that her time was finally up, that whatever luck or faith or ability that had made her indestructible had run out and she would die without knowing what he tasted like, what he felt like under her hands, what it would mean to wake up beside him every morning and feel him smile bright and warm against her mouth.
Or how after her extraction, after she’d been sewn up in medical and been ordered to take a day she’d walked out across the floor of The Hub and seen him talking with Hill and Sitwell, his smile edging at the corner of his lips even as Hill’s face had turned dark.
How the hammering in her heart had settled in that moment and she’d known, suddenly, that he was more real than anyone or anything else in her life could ever be. That he was her calm.
She could tell him all of these things, lean forwards and kiss him and push her hands under his shirt, but instead she sits back and lets his face swim before her, his tired eyes and the worried lines of his mouth and his beautiful smile encouraging her to be open. She wants to kiss down the bridge of his nose and tell him that everything will be okay, even if she doesn’t believe it herself.
“I’m not marrying Andrew,” she tells him in the end, and his eyes widen in surprise, something warm and solid blooming in his chest.
“Lin,” he murmurs, reaching out to card his fingers through her hair, and the reverence in his voice makes her feel like this was the right choice. Her smile is watery and she can’t think about Andrew for too long without wanting to cry. She had loved him, she tells herself. The last two years haven’t been a lie. But loving Andrew feels like stepping stones on the path to a different life. One where this partnership and friendship she and Phil have been building for twenty years finally lets them be together. Deep down she knows it’s always been him.
“We’re going to be okay, aren’t we?” she asks, and Phil gathers her back into his arms.
He doesn’t kiss her that night. As the morning creeps through the kitchen windows he pulls the only set of clean sheets in the house from the laundry and settles them over the spare bed. He presses a kiss to her forehead as she curls on her side beneath the covers and she holds his hand as he tries to leave the room, squeezing his fingers in love or thanks or apology – he really can’t tell.
Years from now Daisy will ask them about this day and Phil will try to tell her about the night that happens three weeks later, when he puts on a suit and his good tie and Melinda wears a red dress that he’s never seen before and refuses to let go of his hand as they weave their way through Friday night Manitowoc towards the restaurant Phil’s father always took his mother on their anniversary.
It’s the first night he kisses her, soft and sweet as they return home and Melinda leans back against the front door with a tug at his tie. She tastes of red wine and chocolate and she scrunches her nose as he leans down to mouth at her collarbone.
“Coffee,” she murmurs against his forehead and Phil chuckles; reminds himself not to eat tiramisu the next time he takes her out.
“So that was the drink, huh?” Daisy asks years later, a knowing smile curling at her lips. It scares Melinda sometimes how alike Daisy and Phil can be. She’s seen that look on his face in varying forms for thirty years – doesn’t want to know how Daisy knows about that night in Russia.
Her husband nods, fingers curling in the back of her shirt as she turns from her position on the side of the couch.
“No,” she objects, and Phil’s face clouds with confusion. Daisy leans forwards, intrigued and amused by their typical disagreement. Even after four years getting information about their relationship is like drawing blood. She selfishly loves hearing stories of their life together, piecing together the family she’s only just found.
May’s still looking at Coulson with a playful smile, his confusion giving way to amusement as she settles her feet across his lap and digs her heel into his thigh. “Stop trying to make it sound romantic. I turned up on his doorstep and we ended up drinking whiskey on the dusty floor of a kitchen. We were both hungover the next morning and he was too afraid to look me in the eye for the next week. I was the one who eventually asked him out to dinner.”
Coulson laughs in surprise and tries to interject and as they bicker Daisy watches the way his left hand slides over her ankle, lines of electricity lighting up his hand at the touch.
They’re so careful with their relationship, so protective of each other’s heart. But every now and then there are moments like this one that Daisy thanks whatever universal being upstairs let them keep each other. She’s heard whispers of what it was like in those few weeks when May believed him to be dead, the hushed way some of the agents talk about their marriage.
“So you’re telling me that your grand romantic plan to win May’s heart was on the dusty floor of a kitchen?” she needles, and May reaches up to squeeze his arm.
“He made up for it later.”
Daisy laughs, affection turning to delight at Coulson’s blush.
They deserve this moment, she thinks. After death, Hydra and each other. Somehow they won.