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SHIELD base 43, “The Casino”

Pahrump, Nevada

2016

“You know what would be nice?” Phil asked the room at large. “If just once, when we investigated a string of Inhuman disappearances, the answer was ‘coincidental vacation’ instead of ‘trafficking.’”

“I’m still rooting for ‘Hogwarts,’ Daisy murmured into her comm, using a touch of her power to nudge the roulette wheel. The ball teetered and fell into the 18. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands in front of her like Scarlett O’Hara. “I win again!”

Phil winced. “Ease up a little, Daisy, I think they heard you halfway down the Strip.”

“She has to do something to catch their attention,” Fitz said from his place at the monitor. “She’s been in there for three hours already and nothing. Are we sure this is the right place?”

“We’re sure,” Phil said. 

“Shithole like this, mob kickbacks are probably the only thing keeping them in business,” Mack muttered, from his spot at the bar. 

“I know, right?” Daisy said brightly to the scowling croupier as she raked her chips into her little hot-pink handbag. “It must be beginner’s luck.” 

“Daisy, I think you’ve hooked a fish,” Melinda said. She was currently undercover as the world’s angriest cocktail waitress. “Your three o’clock.”

Daisy glanced up from under her heavily mascaraed lashes as a man approached her. He was tall and good-looking in an oily sort of way, wearing a cheap, flashy suit and a red silk shirt open halfway down his chest. He smiled down at Daisy, taking the opportunity to look down the front of her blouse. Phil gritted his teeth and reminded himself that Daisy was an agent and a superhero and fully competent to take care of herself.

“Hi, I’m Brad,” the man said, elbowing an old lady out of the way to stand next to Daisy at the table. “Looks like you’re having an exciting day.”

“I’m Missy,” Daisy told him, with a wide smile. “And, yeah! It’s amazing. I mean, I never win at anything! And now, here I am!”

“I’m surprised you don’t have an entourage,” he said. “I mean, hot girl like you, hitting it big at the tables…”

Daisy bit her lip. “I’m, ah, flying solo this time,” she said. 

“Oh?” 

“It’s like this,” Daisy said, leaning in confidingly. Brad’s eyes flicked down to the neckline of her dress; Phil gritted his teeth. “I just broke up with my boyfriend, see? And I, um, I don’t have a lot of family, you know? So he was, like, totally bitchy about the whole thing and he said I was going to die alone playing World of Warcraft, which, I mean, he knows I’m totally an Eve Online person, that wasn’t even funny. So I said, hey, if I’m gonna be alone, I’m gonna be alone in Vegas, right?”

“His loss,” the man—“Brad”—said. He reached out and traced a finger along Daisy’s jaw. “But, hey, you’re not alone right now.”

“Ew,” Fitz said.

“I think I just threw up in my mouth,” Jemma said.

“Please tell me you’re gonna ask me to punch that guy later,” Mack said.

“Not if I get there first,” Phil replied, scowling. On the monitors, Daisy did an excellent job of batting her lashes up at Brad and not obviously wanting to kick him in the balls. 

“Let me buy you a drink?” Brad asked.

“I don’t know…” Daisy said. She bit her lip again, looking up at Brad shyly. “I mean, I’ve got kind of a streak going, you know? Seems like I should keep it up while I’m hot.”

“Nothing could keep you from being hot,” Brad said, looking down her dress again. 

Daisy giggled. “Well, in that case… maybe one drink.”

She followed him to one of the recessed tables that lined the floor, making sure to take every opportunity to play up how she was in Vegas alone and had no family to notice if she went missing.

“You might as well be wearing a ‘kidnap me’ sign on your back,” Jemma muttered.

“I can’t believe he’s falling for this,” Mack said.

“I can,” Melinda said, grimly, stalking over to take their order.

“He is the type,” Phil agreed. There was a certain kind of criminal—generally young, nearly always white and male—who found it all too easy to believe in his own infallibility despite all evidence to the contrary. 

“Um,” Brad said, looking at Melinda’s stone face. Daisy cleared her throat significantly, and Melinda sighed.

“What can I get you,” she said.

“The lady will have a Sex On The Beach,” Brad said, recovering enough to waggle his eyebrows.

“Oh, ew,” Fitz said.

“And I’ll have a Red Bull and vodka.”

“Now I’m definitely going to have to punch him,” Mack said.

“Cut the chatter, people, he’s going to make his move soon,” Phil said, though he privately agreed. “Daisy, are you still green?”

“It must be so cool to live here,” Daisy said, making doe eyes at Brad as Melinda waited at the bar for the drinks. “I’m just green with envy.”

“Mission’s a go,” Phil said. He had a good feeling about this one; things had always gone well for him in Vegas.

The Hub

2005

Phil’d been awake for 37 hours, but he wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon; he was hyped up on stimulants and adrenaline and the indefinable, sweet pride of mission success. They’d busted a trafficking ring, taken the whole thing down bottom to top, and the only thing better than the looks on the traffickers’ faces when they’d slapped on the cuffs had been the moment when he’d gotten to tell a room full of terrified and desperate parents that their children had been recovered unharmed. It was the closest he’d ever come to feeling like a genuine comic-book superhero.

He’d been skeptical when the Director had asked him to take his new pet sniper on the op, but he was gladly eating his words; the man—Hawkeye—was everything his reputation promised; clever, quick on both feet and wits, and possessed of the sort of deadeye aim Phil’d always assumed was only found in fiction.

He was a pleasant companion, too; he and Phil had spent the better part of a week stuck in a studio apartment together. Phil had been dreading it, but Clint, as he’d soon insisted Phil call him, was dryly funny, a good conversationalist, and, wonder of wonders, a good cook. Add the fact that he had a body like a statue of Apollo, gorgeous eyes, and a quick, ready smile, and Phil had been half-infatuated even before he’d seen the man make a kill shot from four streets away, in the rain, while hanging upside-down off the roof of a moving truck. The somersault dismount and the cheeky wink he shot the traffic camera that he knew very well Phil was monitoring from the ops van were just unnecessary.

Appreciated, though.

“Coulson!” Director Fury rounded the corner with a dramatic swirl of his coat. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

“You just saw me, sir,” Phil pointed out. “At the debrief.”

Fury smiled. “Yes, but that was the official debrief. Now it’s time for the unofficial one.” 

Phil thought longingly of his apartment, then turned to follow his boss to his office. It was before lunch—at least, Phil thought so, he’d crossed a lot of time zones that day and was wickedly jetlagged—but Fury still pulled out a decanter and two heavy crystal glasses. Phil accepted one, swirling the liquor and enjoying the rich scent.

“To mission success,” Fury said, lifting his glass.

“Making the world a safer place,” Phil agreed, toasting back. They spent a few moments lingering over the first sip, and Phil found his mind wandering. He’d never previously spent much time thinking about archery. Apparently, he’d been missing out.

“So,” Fury said. “Hawkeye.”

“I know.” Phil raised his glass in acknowledgement. “You told me so.”

“Seems like you two worked together all right.”

“He’s extraordinary,” Phil said, a little too fervently. 

Fury shot him a keen look. “Ah.” He raised an eyebrow. “So it’s like that.”

Phil briefly considered denying it, but for what? If he’d wanted to be stuck in a closet he’d have joined the Army.

“He’s attractive, funny, kind to animals, and the best shot I’ve ever seen,” he told Fury with a shrug. “If he has compatible opinions on the Howling Commandos he might just be my perfect man.”

“He’s also a co-worker.”

Phil raised an eyebrow of his own. “If that’s suddenly a problem, I’ve got bad news for about 80% of this agency.”

Fury sighed, set down his glass, and pulled a device from his pocket—the Security Blanket, they called it. The switch that, when flipped, would block out all surveillance in the room for 90 seconds, even SHIELD’s own internal systems. 

Phil froze, then carefully set his own glass down on the edge of Fury’s desk, watching as the red light came on.

“I was going to wait a while to tell you this,” Fury said. “I’d rather keep it to my eyes only, honestly; even saying this much is a risk. But seeing you two working together on this op… you can work. The two of you will be a good team. So I’m going to trust you with this. He’s married.”

Phil blinked. “What?” From the Security Blanket’s presence, he’d been expecting to be told that Barton… was an alien, or that the touch of his penis would drain your life, or that he was in witness protection, or something, not… that. “He never said anything.”

“It was the only condition he put on his recruitment, that I hide his family. A safe location and new identities for an alias, Mrs. Alias, and Bouncing Baby Boy Alias. My eyes only, nothing on paper or through official channels. Apparently he picked up some enemies during his mercenary days.” 

“Oh.” Phil wasn’t sure what to say. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m the only one who knows,” Fury said simply. “But I’m not invulnerable, as much as I’d like to think so, and I may need a backup on this one day. It needed to be someone I can trust absolutely. Someone Barton can trust absolutely.”

“I see.” Phil swallowed hard. He was disappointed, of course. He was sure he hadn’t imagined the spark between them, the way they’d connected, the possibility that had seemed so obvious. But it was just sad, to think of Clint having to hide his family away like that, not even feeling safe enough to acknowledge that they existed. 

He must be so terribly lonely. 

“In that case,” Phil said, and took a fortifying swallow of his bourbon, “I think we’ll work together well. I can see us becoming…” he huffed a little breath, setting his half-formed daydreams aside. “Good friends.”

“Well, that’s good,” Fury said, as the light on the Security Blanket clicked off. “Because I want you to be his new handler.”

It was a kindness, really, Phil thought later. It kept him from misinterpreting Clint’s overtures of friendship. It saved him the indignity of getting turned down, the possible damage to what would quickly become a close and treasured friendship.

It was really all for the best.

The Casino

2016

“Can you excuse me a minute?” Daisy asked. “I was at the roulette table all afternoon, I need to go powder my nose.”

“Sure, babe,” Brad said. “Don’t worry, I’ll watch your drink for you.”

“Thanks!” Daisy hurried off to the ladies’ room, clearing it quickly before sighing and flipping her comms over to her private channel with Control, aka Phil. “I am embarrassed to be letting myself get kidnapped by that loser,” she said.

“I get the feeling his targets are usually a lot drunker. How’s the equipment holding up?”

“All good on my end.” She rubbed at her hip. “I’m not even sore where the tracker went in.”

“We’ll stay on you as close as we can,” Phil promised. “Don’t be a hero, Daisy, if things start to go south, use the panic button and we’ll get you out.”

“Or I could get myself out with my neat-o super powers,” Daisy said. “Just putting it out there.”

Phil sighed. “I’m serious, Daisy.”

“Don’t worry so much.” She smiled at him reassuringly in the hidden camera they’d stashed behind the second mirror from the left. “I’ll be fine, Coulson. This is important, this is keeping them from taking Inhumans who can’t protect themselves. Those people need us to protect them. To be the shield, isn’t that what you always say?”

“Yeah.” Phil was so damn proud of her it made his chest hurt a little. “It is. Do good, Agent,” he said, his own little ritual. “Stay safe. And when the mission’s over, I’ll buy you a real drink.”

“Drinks are dropped off,” Melinda said into the open channel. “Surprise: he didn’t tip. And he’s drugging her drink right about… now.”

“Showtime,” Daisy said, flipping back to the main channel. She pulled an Advil bottle out of her purse and shook out a handful of pills, picking out a single pink one from the brown and replacing the rest. She put the pill under her tongue and ran her hands under the tap, half-drying them on the cheap paper towels. “Let’s catch some bad guys.” She put a little wobble in her walk as she left the bathroom, tossing her hair back over her shoulder when she caught Brad’s eye. He handed her the adulterated drink eagerly.

“The neutralizer should work on the most common sedatives and nearly all the hypnotics and anti-convulsants,” Jemma said quietly. “Try to drink it quickly. You may still feel a little woozy but you shouldn’t lose consciousness.”

Daisy smiled and took a giant slug of her drink. 

“Mmm,” she told Brad.

“You know, I never thought of the parties at SHIELD Academy as training for the field,” Fitz said thoughtfully, “but really, that’s the only other place I’ve seen people drink something that bad with that much apparent enthusiasm.”

“You should see the Ops candidates,” Phil told him absently, watching Daisy in the security monitor. “It’s like pledge week on fraternity row every weekend with them. Or, well. It was.”

“It’s so neat, the way they make the colors blend,” Daisy told Brad, taking another brave swallow. Brad had only sprung for well liquor; it couldn’t be pleasant. Phil told himself that he’d buy Daisy a bottle of something good when this was all said and done.

Daisy blinked, taking a sudden little stutter-step to one side. “Whoo, head rush,” she said. “Damn, I think I forgot to eat lunch.” She moved to set the glass back on the table; she only got it on halfway, and it fell to the ground with a crash. It was the signal; she was feeling the drug, but still felt all right to proceed with the op. Phil took a deep breath: this op was important for more reasons than just the obvious. It was the first major op they’d tried to run jointly, SHIELD agents handling the infiltration and ATCU taking point on the public parts. He hoped he wouldn’t regret the decision, but SHIELD just didn’t have the infrastructure for this kind of sting anymore, even if he hadn’t needed to take the President’s request into account.

“Ooops,” Daisy said, looking down sadly at the sticky puddle.

“Aww, hey, don’t worry, baby,” Brad said, closing a hand tight around her bicep. “What say we get out of here, huh? Get you something to eat?” He started steering her toward the exit. “Hey, can you clean that up?” he snapped over his shoulder to Melinda. From the way she narrowed her eyes, Phil added several punches to Brad’s eventual tally.

As soon as Daisy and Brad were through the door, Melinda and Mack started moving, following them at a distance. Mack stayed in the public spaces, while Melinda took service hallways, the two of them flanking their targets as they moved through the casino while Fitz traced the movement of Daisy’s tracker and Phil monitored the video surveillance. He felt his guts coiling up with tension as he watched.

“Where’r we goin’?” Daisy asked, stumbling a little. Phil hoped she didn’t overplay it; it would be easy to sprain an ankle in those shoes. “Isn’t the restaurant back th’other way?”

“That place sucks, baby, I’m taking you somewhere better,” Brad said, hurrying her along. “Maybe get some crab legs, you like crab legs? I know a buffet where you can get crab legs.”

“That sounds nice,” she agreed. 

Phil looked at the floor plan and compared it to Brad’s path. “Looks like he’s taking her to the parking garage,” he said.

“Copy,” Melinda said. Mack, who was still in public, nodded at a security camera. They stopped trailing, each taking the most direct route to the garage that wouldn’t cross Brad’s line of sight. Phil clicked over to the comm channel the support and pursuit vehicles were on.

“Red One, Red Two, the operation is a go,” he said, alerting the ACTU agents who were waiting, one vehicle in the garage and one around the corner from the casino. “Agent Johnson has made contact and given the signal. Suspect is a white male, early thirties, brown and brown, five-ten, one-eighty, terrible suit. He is taking Agent Johnson to a second location. Agents May and Mackenzie are following; be ready to engage secondary surveillance.”

“Copy that, sir.” Two dots on the monitor turned from yellow to green as the drivers started their engines, preparing to move when Phil gave the word.

On Daisy’s channel, he could hear her doing a great job delaying Brad, making it look like the combination of intoxication and impractical shoes.

(Those shoes were very practical, with blades hidden in the heels and a few other surprises besides; not for nothing had Phil worked for five years running ops with the Black Widow.)

Monte Carlo

2010

The thing about looking the way Phil looked was that people always tended to underestimate him. This was usually good, for his purposes, but right now it was pissing him off; Phil and Clint had both been (embarrassingly) knocked out and handcuffed to a wall in someone’s evil basement lair, but Clint, as his presumed bodyguard, had taken a beating first. 

Phil could see him, tied up against the opposite wall, a crumpled heap in the shadows.  He hadn’t woken up yet, though Phil was almost certain he could see him breathing. The only mercy in the whole situation was that Natasha had gotten away clean; she’d been planting bugs when they’d gotten jumped, and the protocol in these cases was well-established. She would be working on a rescue right now, might already be halfway to… wherever this was. They just had to hang on.

Phil forced himself to take some deep breaths, ignoring the way it made his aching head spin, and tried to stay in character, just in case their captors hadn’t made them yet and had kidnapped them for some other reason. Bill Carlson would not be taking this situation calmly, Phil decided. Bill Carlson was an embezzler, a money man for a crime syndicate who had cheated them out of millions and was living the high life off his ill-gotten gains. Bill Carlson always looked over his shoulder, never went anywhere without his bodyguard. He would, Phil decided, be anxious about Clint.

“Clint,” he called, and he didn’t have to try very hard to make his voice shake. “Clint! Is that you? Are you there?”

Did Clint move, over in the shadows? Phil couldn’t tell. And was that blood at the end, where Clint’s head was? If Clint was actively bleeding, screw his cover, Phil was going to dislocate a thumb and get the hell out of his bonds and go over there. “Clint! Wake up!”

There! He definitely moved that time, groaning faintly. Phil felt dizzy with relief. (Or possibly that was the head wound; the kidnappers had hit him pretty hard.)

“Clint, say something.” Phil was trying to sound like a frightened embezzler and not a handler who’d lost contact with an operative, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was. 

Clint groaned again and mumbled something that sounded like “ill.” Phil wasn’t sure whether it was an attempt at his name or a description of Clint’s condition, but it didn’t matter. At least he was responsive.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Phil said. “Can you wake up a little? I can’t see you.” He strained his eyes, trying to see into the gloom. “Can you tell if anything’s broken? Are you bleeding anywhere?”

The sad pile of Clint on the other side of the room stirred, and Phil held his breath as a series of pained grunts and soft curses marked Clint’s efforts to take an inventory of his injuries. Finally, he flopped over onto his back, turning his head towards Phil.

“Ow, fuck,” he said, and his voice was unnervingly wet.

“Clint?” Phil could hear the sharp note of concern in his own voice.

“‘m okay, boss,” Clint said. “Nosebleed. Fucker head-butted me.”

“What else?”

“Bruised ribs. Maybe a little cracked. Split m’knuckles on the ugly one’s teeth. Mis—ow. Miscellaneous contusions. Hell of a headache.”

“Concussion?”

“…maybe.” Which meant “definitely.”

“Stay awake. Talk to me.”

“Maybe you should talk t’me,” Clint said. “I saw that guy lay you out with a nightstick, Ph—boss. ‘f I’m on head injury protocol, you definitely should be.”

Phil shook his head, but a wave of sick pain swept over him at the movement. “Ugh.”

“See,” Clint’s voice was sharper, more concerned. “’s what I mean. You hurt anywhere else?” 

“Just my head,” Phil said, being very careful to move nothing except his lips. “Fine, we can take turns talking.” He gave up on the idea of maintaining their covers. It was more important to make sure Clint was all right.

“You first.” Clint shifted a little, letting out another hurt noise. “I wanna know the truth about that story with the stuffed raccoon that’s going around the Level Ones.”

“Their version’s a lot more entertaining than the truth, but okay,” Phil said. “But then you have to come clean about why Hill gets that look on her face whenever the cafeteria serves catfish.”

“Sounds fair.”

“So, it all started when Sitwell got food poisoning…”

They went on for some time, swapping stories back and forth, and if it hadn’t been for the head injuries and the bleeding and the being kidnapped part of things, Phil would have been having fun at first. Partway through Clint’s second story, though, he started to get increasingly worried. Clint’s speech was getting thicker and slower, his pauses longer. He’d stopped shifting his weight over in his corner, trying to find a more comfortable position. Phil could think of several reasons for this, and none of them were good. 

His handcuffs were tight, too tight to slip out of easily, and the ring in the floor they were attached to didn’t give him much room to move. He pulled, trying to gauge if there was any give, but it was solid.

Clint trailed off in the middle of a sentence.

“Clint?”

“mmmph.”

“Keep going. What happened next?”

“…wha?”

“What happened with the fishhook?” He could hear his voice getting higher, thinner with fear. “Clint?”

“I… I don’…”

“Clint!” 

Clint made a protesting noise. “…tired,” he mumbled.

“I know, I know you are, but you can’t sleep yet,” Phil said, pulling harder on his cuffs. Had the ring moved a little? He thought it had.

“I… what? ‘sat the baby?”

Phil’s breath seemed to freeze in his body. “Yes,” he said, and his stomach turned over with guilt. “Clint, the baby needs you to stay awake.”

“Colic ‘gain?” Clint’s voice was still faint, but wasn’t he a little more alert?

“Yes, the baby’s got colic. You need to talk to the baby, Clint.” The bones in Phil’s wrists ground together under the pressure as he pulled harder on the cuffs.

“…poor lil’ thing,” Clint said, and Phil sucked in a breath at how different he sounded; even struggling through his injuries, his voice was unmistakably lower, warmer. 

Full of love.

“…betcha miss your papa, baby,” Clint said. “Always in… middle of th’night, huh? Wake your poor mommy up alla time.”

Phil wondered, distantly, if he’d been more badly injured than he’d thought in the struggle, or if it was listening to this, this soft and loving side of Clint that he wasn’t supposed to see, that was causing the pain in his chest.

Clint started to sing, his voice rough and thready but achingly sweet.

Phil pulled harder. The skin on his wrists had started to bleed, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except that this not be the last time that Clint got to sing to his son, chained to the ground and bleeding. 

Phil had thought that he’d done a good job, compartmentalizing his feelings for Clint. He’d thought that he’d successfully tucked up the seeds of romance that he’d felt at first, and diverted everything into a close but platonic friendship.

He’d been deluding himself. It made no difference that Clint didn’t feel the same, that there was no chance for it to ever bear fruit; Phil loved him, and he couldn’t bear the thought of facing a world that didn’t contain him.

Clint stopped singing, and the last things Phil knew before he passed out were a snap of agony in his wrist and Natasha, breaking down the door of their cell like an avenging angel.

Clint never remembered what they had talked about, during their captivity.

Phil never told him. 

The Casino

2016

By the time Daisy and Brad crossed the threshold into the garage, Mack and Melinda were in place in their respective vehicles, ready to tail them to (Phil hoped) the lair of evil Inhuman kidnappers, or at least a solid lead to the next step in the chain.

“Come on, baby, crab legs time,” Brad was saying, towing Daisy along by her upper arm as she swayed on her heels.

“Crabby, crabby,” Daisy said, pinching her fingers like claws and giggling.

“Right,” Brad said, looking around the garage. He couldn’t be more obviously up to no good if he were wearing a t-shirt that said “Felonious Intent.” He headed for—

“Suspect is approaching a white panel van,” Fitz announced, “because of course he is. Nevada plates, license number is—oh, are you kidding me? It’s a vanity plate. 84LLZD33P.”

“What kind of criminal kidnaps someone in a car with a vanity plate?” Red Two—Agent Angela Flores—said.

“Hopefully the kind who will lead us straight to the heart of his employer’s criminal enterprise,” Phil said, as Brad unlocked the van.

“You look a little tired, baby,” Brad said to Daisy. “I think you should lie down in the back, take a little nap. I’ll wake you up when we get to the restaurant.” He opened the back of the van, though Phil didn’t have a good camera angle to see what was inside.

“Ooooh, is that an air mattress?” Daisy said. “That does look comfy. And I love leopard print!”

“Seriously?” Melinda said.

Daisy wobbled her way into the back of the van, skidding and flailing dramatically while Brad, who was starting to look decidedly sweaty, finally shoved her in.

“Wake me up when we get to crab legs,” she said drowsily, just before he closed the door.

Phil heard soft, scuffling noises on Daisy’s comm line as he watched Brad, on the security monitor, scrub a hand through his hair and get into the driver’s seat of the van. He fiddled with the radio—Phil heard tinny music filtering through Daisy’s line—and then pulled out of the parking deck, followed, at a distance, by four different vehicles who fanned out into a rough net around him. Fitz coordinated the drivers as Brad drove sedately and legally through the late afternoon traffic, while Phil focused on his line to Daisy.

“Clear,” she murmured at last. “No surveillance inside the van that I could find, and the back’s closed off; he can’t see me.”

“Nice work earlier, Red and Blue teams are in play,” Phil told her. “How are you feeling?”

“Wicked cotton-mouth and a little bit of a headache, but aside from that I feel pretty normal,” she said. “Tell Jemma thanks for the magic pill.”

“He seems to be buying it so far,” Phil says. “You’re doing great, Daisy.”

“Thanks.” She takes a deep breath, clearly audible over the comm. “I think you’ll want to sweep the van,” she said. “I don’t think he cleans up in between… jobs. I found a scrunchie with red hair caught in it—looks consistent with Eliza Rourke—and there are scorch marks on the floor underneath this disgusting air mattress.”

“Tara Mendes has flame abilities,” Phil murmured. “It’s not definitive, but I agree it at least supports everything else we’ve found so far.”

“I just hope they’re all still together, wherever he’s taking me,” Daisy said.

“Yeah.” Phil swallowed, contemplating the hideous possibilities. There really wasn’t a good reason for abducting Inhumans. Even if this didn’t lead back to Hydra influence, there were plenty of bad people in the world who would do unspeakable things to get an edge. Tony Stark had made himself a hero to try to mitigate the damage his weapons could do in the wrong hands. This had the potential to be even worse; at least Jericho missiles had no families, couldn’t suffer. “Yeah,” he said again. “I do, too.”  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fitz frowning at his monitor and tuned his other ear to the pursuit channel.

“—dumb luck,” Melinda was saying, “but that’s three in a row, and I don’t like it.”

“It’s definitely suspicious,” Fitz said. “I think at this point it’s worth the risk to try and get closer.”

Phil scanned the display and saw the issue: Brad had caught a series of yellow lights, and the agents tracking him had fallen outside the surveillance perimeter and hadn’t been able to catch up.

“Could he be engineering this?” he asked.

“Manually, not a chance,” Fitz said. “But if there’s someone with good tech behind this, it could be set up. I’d probably put a transponder on the van and set some scripts up in the city’s system to funnel pursuers away automatically.”

Phil’s pulse quickened as he remembered another seemingly-minor quirk they’d turned up in their mission prep. “Fitz,” he said. “The dead spot.” A section of the city’s traffic cameras were offline, the casualty of—it had seemed—an unrelated hit-and-run accident the day before.

“Shit.” Fitz scanned through his monitor screens. “Yes, he’s approaching that area now. Red One, you’re the closest, please proceed to Echo coordinates ASAP.”

“I’m trying, but traffic is jammed up all of a sudden,” Red One—Agent Park—said, voice gone tight.

“Coulson, we’re slowing down,” Daisy said, and Phil muted his other line to focus on her voice.

“Things may be getting hot, Daisy,” he told her quickly. “We’ve got your back, but be careful. Don’t blow your cover.”

In the background, Fitz was swearing at a traffic map that had suddenly lit up in orange and red, seemingly out of nowhere.

“I’ll be fine,” Daisy said. “It feels like we’re off the road. Must be about showtime.”

“We’ll be listening, Daisy,” Phil promised. “You’re not alone.” 

“We’ll do this, Coulson,” she said. “I know you guys will be right behi—” there was a blast of static, and then silence.

“Daisy? Daisy!” Phil whirled. “Fitz, I just lost Daisy’s comm.”

Fitz looked up, face pale. “Her tracker’s gone too, and I can’t get the van on the traffic cameras. It went into the dead zone and just—vanished.”

Phil took a deep breath, pushing down the looming panic, and opened the all-team channel.

“Red Team, Blue Team, be advised, we have lost surveillance and tracking on Agent Johnson. They were last seen entering Echo quadrant. Get yourself over there ASAP; we need to find that van.”

He fought back the urge to jump into a transport and go there himself; he’d do more good here, coordinating efforts, ready to deploy resources as soon as they knew where to send them. At least, he reminded himself, anyone who wanted to buy Inhumans probably wanted them alive. Daisy was a good agent. She would keep her head.

“Tell Agent Singh to get Gamma Team on standby and prep the quinjet for rapid deployment,” he said. “Stevens, get me General Talbot.”

As his agents scattered, he pulled up their maps of the city, zooming in to Echo quadrant. Vans didn’t just vanish into thin air; it had to be somewhere. 

“We’re coming, Daisy,” he muttered, scrolling past the surface maps and pulling up the overlay of the sewer and utility lines. “Just hang in there.”

The Helicarrier

2012

“Sir,” Phil said, falling into step beside the Director. “Could I speak to you for a moment? In private?”

Fury nodded, diverting to the stairwell that would take them down to the deck where the higher-level offices were. He shut the door behind them and activated the anti-surveillance measures.

“This matter is… sensitive,” Phil said. Fury nodded, once, and pulled out his Security Blanket. They were tiny, these days, but they still had a switch and a light. Phil curled his toes inside his shoes, trying not to twitch and fidget. He was burning with coiled energy and the desperate need to do something, anything. Clint was gone—he’d been stolen, right out from under them—and he was enduring who knew what horrors while they flew around in circles over the ocean, looking for a lead. And then there was… the other question.

“Barton’s family,” Phil blurted, as soon as the light came on. “Are they okay?”

Fury sagged, looking relieved it wasn’t something worse. “Yeah, Phil,” he said. “They’re fine. All the routes to their location are in the monitoring we’re doing anyway, and I made sure they were part of the face trace. Nobody suspicious has been within six hundred miles.”

Phil dropped into the chair in front of Fury’s desk, all his muscles going weak with the release of tension. He’d been so afraid.

“Good,” he managed to say. “That’s good. If something happened to them while he was—imprisoned…”

“If Loki made him hurt them, you mean,” Fury said, and Phil shuddered, revulsion making his gorge rise, burnt coffee and stomach acid in the back of his throat.

“Don’t even say it,” he said. Clint’s son must be eight or nine by now. A boy needed his father at that age. Phil imagined a father needed his son, as well. “It won’t happen. You’ll protect them.”

Fury nodded, his eye keen and kind. “Yeah, Phil,” he said. “I’ll protect them.”

“And we’ll get him back.”

“We’ll for damn sure do everything humanly possible,” Fury said. “Man’s a hero; losing him would be a fucking waste.”

“Yeah.” Clint was a hero, but he was so much more than that. He was Phil’s friend, true to the core. He was a husband, a father, so devoted that Phil had never seen him so much as flirt with another woman, even though he spent so much time apart from his family. 

He was amazing, and Phil loved him, and Phil was terrified.

Later, as he lay dying, his blood pumping hot on the cold metal floor, Phil looked into Fury’s eye again, and hoped he’d remember his promise.

The Casino

2016

The maps didn’t give them anything.

Red and Blue teams scoured the area and didn’t find anything.

Fitz’s algorithm scanned every traffic camera in the city, looking for where the van had gone. Nearly two hundred white panel vans driven by someone who could potentially have been a white man with brown hair came up on the scan. None of them had a vanity license plate. They started running searches on them, anyway, looking for any suspicious patterns. 

Phil had every ATCU team within five hundred miles on standby, Vegas SWAT had been called in for an “exercise,” and there was a helicopter at Nellis ready to scramble on his word… but he had nowhere to send them. He still had Daisy’s comm line in his left ear, hissing with static. He was fairly sure he’d developed an ulcer over the last two hours; it had always been hard, manning the comms, but at least before he’d been handling seasoned agents, people so extraordinary their only peers were actually superhuman. He’d never lost—lost contact with—an agent as young as Daisy, before. 

He always used to deploy the young ones in groups, before. It had given them time to build their confidence and experience before they had to fly solo. Of course, he’d had bench depth, then. Now there was no such luxury.

Fitz and Simmons, in the corner, were trying to repurpose some Stark missile guidance code into an algorithm that could pierce whatever interference was blocking their line to Daisy. They were pale and red-eyed, but steady, focused; they’d come so far in the last few years, grown so much. He was proud of them—so proud he could burst with it, sometimes—but he wondered, too, if he’d done the right thing, taking them into the field. They’d both suffered for it. 

Fitz hit the last key sequence, sending his patch out to the satellite network. Phil was already turning aside to look for the next potential solution when his left ear was pierced by a squeal of feedback, and then—

“—are we even doing here?”

He heard Daisy’s voice, clear and steady in his ear, and his legs turned to water underneath him as he sank into his chair. 

“We’ve got her!” Fitz was saying into his other ear. “We’ve got the tracker signal again, she’s in—she’s out in the middle of the desert.”

“Vitals are green,” Jemma added, and Phil took a complete breath for what felt like the first time in hours.

“It’s receiver-only, I’m afraid, sir,” Fitz said, looking up at him from over the monitor. “We still can’t get transmissions through. But we can hear her, and we can find her.”

“Good work,” Phil told him. “Get your gear and get to the quinjet, I want us ready to take off in five.”

In his left ear, he could hear a low murmur of sound—someone else, talking to Daisy, but either too quiet or too far away for her comms to pick up.

“Are they going to hurt me?” Daisy asked, and Phil clenched his fist even as he reminded himself that she was playing a role.

“They haven’t hurt anyone so far.” Another voice, this one closer, another woman. “Just do what they tell you. They’ll want you to use your power on camera; it’s how they set up the auction. Too dangerous to have us out with the paying customers.” There was a rattle, as of metal on concrete; Phil recognized the sound of chains. He scooped up his laptop and started down the hall to the armory.

“But if you all have powers—couldn’t you get away? Couldn’t you fight?” Daisy, again, her voice thrumming with anger.

The other woman scoffed. “Half of us are as likely to hurt ourselves as do anything useful,” she said, “and the others, they keep sedated. You’ll see.”

“They can’t just—sell people!” Daisy said. “This isn’t the nineteenth century, there are laws!”

“Who’s going to stop them? People don’t want to protect us, they—shh!”

Phil froze, halfway into reaching into his locker for his tac vest.

“Wakey, wakey,” a rough male voice said. “New girl, it’s time to get your picture made.”

“Don’t do anything stupid!” the other woman hissed—from the sound of it, right into Daisy’s ear. “Just play along.”

“Who are you?” Daisy said, her voice tremulous and thick. “Where am I? Let me go! I want to go home!” 

Phil pulled on his armor and holsters as Daisy’s captor threatened her. She played up her persona beautifully, acting confused and afraid, getting the man to let information slip.

“Three guards at a time, overlapping shifts,” he relayed to the rest of the team. “That’s just on the captives, there are more at the facility. Sounds like they’re underground. The auction is scheduled for tomorrow, they’ve got preliminary bids for everyone except Daisy.” Phil stopped moving, his heart sinking. As much as he wanted to deploy now, to rescue Daisy and the others… if he waited until the bidders arrived, they could take the whole operation down in one sting. If they moved now, odds were that whoever was behind the auction would just start up again, somewhere else, with a new batch of kidnapped Inhumans to sell.

“Fuck,” Phil said, and kicked his locker closed.

He had to wait.

SHIELD Field Office, Location Classified

2013

“I have to admit, Phil, I’m impressed,” the Director said, closing the last dossier and pushing it aside. “I didn’t think May would go for it; I’ve been trying to entice her back into the field for years.” 

“She’s just the pilot,” Phil said, and Fury chuckled. 

“I’ll believe Melinda May is just a pilot on the day my eye spontaneously regrows,” he said. “So, do you have everything you need?”

“I’m concerned about the information blackout,” Phil said, after a moment. “Are you sure it’s necessary?” 

Fury scoffed. “You really want Stark up in your business? I’d think you’d be glad for the break.”

“No, of course not, but… Barton and Romanoff are SHIELD, sir. They know how to keep secrets. And it doesn’t sit right with me, keeping them out of the loop on this.”

“Phil. I understand, I do. But you need to trust that I know what I’m doing. It’s not forever, but I need to keep this compartmentalized for now. You’ve been at this game a long time; you understand need-to-know.”

He sighed. “As long as you realize I’m going to keep asking.”

“I’d expect nothing less.” Fury reassembled the file and pushed it back across the desk to Phil. “If that’s all?”

Phil hesitated, and Fury sat a little straighter. “Perhaps you’d rather talk in private,” he said, and Phil nodded.

“I don’t know why I keep waiting for you to ask,” Fury muttered, as the light came on. “Yes, I checked on Barton and his family after New York. Yes, they’re doing fine. Barton took some time off, went home for a spell. He even brought Romanoff, believe it or not. Guess the man’s finally learning to trust someone other than himself.”

“Good.” Phil relaxed a little. He was glad, really he was; Clint needed all the support he could get in the aftermath of Loki. He tried hard to quash the part of him that wanted to ask questions that he couldn’t know the answers to. Did he ever tell his family about me? Does he miss me? Did he grieve, when you told him I’d died? Did anyone take care of him, when I wasn’t there to do it? It would be equally horrible if the answers were no or yes.

“I wish I could have been there for him,” Phil blurted. It hurt, a little, knowing that when Clint had finally been ready to open up, it had been to someone else. If Phil hadn’t been in Tahiti…

“You were busy recovering, Phil,” Fury said, his voice oddly gentle. “Here. I have something to show you.” He opened his private safe—the one that only opened to his retinal scan and would explode if anyone else tried to open it—and took out a brown envelope. He slid a photograph out and handed it to Phil.

“Oh,” Phil breathed. It was Clint, looking weathered and worn but smiling, standing on a green hill in front of a blue sky. A lanky, brown-haired boy was hugging him, arms wrapped around his waist, and a younger girl was caught up in his hold, her arms in what looked like a stranglehold around his neck. Beside him, a woman was leaning in to kiss the cheek that wasn’t buried in the little girl’s hair, a sweet smile on her face.

“They had another baby,” Phil said, softly. “I’m glad. He looks—he looks happy.” He looked up. “Thank you, sir,” he said, handing the photo back. 

“I’ll have to burn this,” Fury told him. “You want another look?”

“It’s fine,” Phil said. “I’m pretty sure I’ll remember.”

The Casino

2016

Waiting was the right thing to do, tactically as well as morally, but that didn’t make it any easier. Phil sent the teams off to sleep in shifts, keeping one group of agents poised to deploy at all times in case things took a turn. He planned the raid, everything meticulous down to the second. He sketched out contingencies and backups for every scenario he could think of, plus a few for if things went wrong in a way he hadn’t thought of yet. The whole time, he had Daisy’s feed in his left ear, listening as she spilled a glass of water with her power for the auction video, as she pulled intel out of her guards and fellow captives and fed it back over the comm—the comm which had gone silent on her end and which had, as far as she knew, never come back online.

Phil was so proud of her he ached with it.

When she went to sleep, he forced himself to take a rest as well; he told the agents monitoring comms to wake him if anything happened, but he didn’t take the earpiece out before lying down. Daisy’s soft, even breath—a little congested, like maybe her nose was stuffy or swollen, and he hoped it was allergies and not injuries causing it—accompanied him into sleep.

He woke to the sound of a low voice, and it took him a minute before he placed it.

“—don’t know why I’m even bothering, if you haven’t answered by now, you aren’t going to. I mean, I know you would if you could, sir. Coulson.”

His chest tightened. He was, he thought, maybe getting too old for this job.

“But I just—if you can hear me, or if, if this is getting recorded somewhere and you hear it later, I just want you to know. I know you’re going to do everything you can to get me out of this. I know you’d never l—leave me.” Her voice broke, and she sniffed wetly. “And I just wanted to thank you. For that. For caring, for giving me a place to belong. Lots of people see potential in Inhumans, but you… you saw potential in me when I was a nobody in a van. And I know we don’t always see eye to eye, but I don’t forget that, you know? I never forget that.” Another thick breath. “So, yeah. See you soon.”

The Playground

2015

The reinforced doors clanged heavily behind Cal as his guards escorted him into the lab. He looked around nervously, his shoulders relaxing a little when he saw Phil. He nodded at him, like Phil was a business contact he was seeing across an airport.

“Phil.”

“Cal.”

“How’s the arm?”

“Been better. How’s the, ah…” he trailed off.

“Gorilla testosterone cocktail?” Cal chuckled. “It’s about worn off. Dr. Simmons thinks the last of it will get burned away cushioning me through the…” he waves a hand at the gurney, the monitors, the robotic probes. “Procedure.”

“Well. Small mercies.”

“Yeah.” He looked around. They’d been over everything multiple times; the new memories were selected and prepped, the machines programmed and loaded. 

“You don’t have to go through with this,” Phil said. 

“So you’ve mentioned.” Cal met his eyes steadily. “I think it’s for the best.”

“It hurts,” Phil pushed. “We’ll do what we can to manage the pain, but the doctors say you have to stay conscious the whole time.”

“I know.” He smiled a little, but his eyes were haunted. “But honestly, Phil, I think it’s… fitting.” 

“We don’t torture people for punishment, Cal.”

“No. But the things that I’m forgetting… it’s only right that they should burn a little on the way out.” He glanced at the gurney again; there was a hospital gown laid out on it. “Before we get started, though, there was something I wanted to say to you.”

“We’ve got some time.”

There were a couple of rolling stools in the room, meant for the surgeons and techs. Cal took one and waved Phil to the other. “I’m confident that I’m making the right choice,” he said. “For my own comfort, yes, but mostly for Daisy. You were right about that; she’s got such a compassionate heart. It would have hurt her, to know that I was suffering, regardless of how much I deserved it.”

Phil nodded. 

“I know that’s why you made the offer,” Cal continued. “For her.”

“Not entirely for her,” Phil said. “You did what you did because of Jiaying. She did what she did because of Whitehall. If SHIELD had kept Whitehall contained, none of it would have happened. I figure, SHIELD owes you this one.”

“Not every SHIELD agent would see it that way,” Cal said. “But I appreciate it. Regardless, that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.” He sighed. “Like I said, it’s the right thing to do. But I hate that it means leaving Daisy alone again. For a while, she had her parents back—granted, that didn’t work out real well, I know. But she had us. And after I… go away, she’ll just have you.”

“Cal,” Phil said. “I promise you, this isn’t about that.”

“No, I know.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I know it’s not. You proved that you aren’t trying to take my place when you let me come with you to the ship. But the fact remains, she’s still going to need a father, and you’re going to be the only one left in the running.”

“Skye isn’t looking for me to be her father,” Phil said, his voice twisting a little. “Hell, sometimes I don’t think she wants me to be her boss.”

“That’s the funny thing about it, Phil.” Cal’s expression turned distant, and he smiled to himself, like he was lost in happy memories. “When your heart opens to a child, you become a parent, regardless of anything else that happens. And your heart’s telling you that Daisy’s your little girl. It’s right there in your eyes, in the way you look at her.”

“How’s that?”

“Proud. And sad. And terrified.”

“Well.” Phil cleared his throat, chest gone suddenly thick. “I can’t argue with that, I suppose.”

They sat in silence for a while, and then Cal shook off his reverie. “Well, time’s a-wasting,” he said. “I should get changed so we can get started. Today’s the first day of the rest of my life, after all.” 

He went into the little bathroom and changed, then the technicians came and helped him get settled on the gurney. The restraints were well padded, the gurney cushioned. They covered him with heated blankets. Phil had insisted they make him as comfortable as possible, within the bounds of the procedure.

“Well,” Cal said, looking up at him. “Here goes nothing.”

“You’ll do great, Cal,” Phil told him. “You’re going to be a fantastic vet.”

“It’ll be nice,” Cal said wistfully. “To live like that, saving lives again instead of taking them. Thank you.”

Phil nodded.

“Just promise me one thing, before I go?”

“If I can.”

“Once this is over. When I don’t know to do it anymore. Watch out for her? Our Daisy?”

Phil put all the strength and certainty he could into his voice. “I promise.”

“Yeah.” Cal’s face creased, tired and sad, but somehow peaceful. “That, right there? That’s the look I mean.” He drifted for a moment, lost in thought, then added, “Oh! One more thing, Phil. Remember her birthday for me?”

“July second,” Phil said. “1988.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Best. Day. Ever.”

It wasn’t easy, watching the TAHITI procedure being performed; Phil knew his nightmares would be back. But afterward, when Cal was transferred to a regular hospital to finish recovering from his “car accident,” Phil stopped by his room, pretending to be a claims adjuster, just to set his own mind at ease. Cal looked ten years younger, the lines of grief and guilt smoothed from his face. He was already a favorite on the ward, charming the nurses with his sincere kindness and his enthusiasm about the new veterinary practice he was going to set up with the insurance money.

“We’ll do adoption days on the weekend,” he said. “And free spays and neuters. Different waiting rooms for the dogs and the cats, and we’ll get little cookie jars for the treats.”

Phil smiled, the knot of guilt around his chest finally loosening. “It sounds great.”

Cal beamed at him. “Yeah,” he said. “It’ll be a magical place.” 

On July 2, Phil found Daisy, as she now wanted to be called, sitting in the SUV, staring out the window with over-bright eyes.

“Happy birthday, Sk—sorry. Daisy,” he said, maneuvering himself into the seat next to her, holding back a wince as he jarred his arm. He pulled a packet of Little Debbies out of his pocket and handed them to her, followed by a lone birthday candle. “I’m afraid you’ll have to assemble it yourself,” he said, apologetically. “I’m a little short-handed just now.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but gave him a watery smile. “Thanks,” she said.

“I know you might not be feeling it, but there’s a cake in the break room with your name on it,” he told her. “And I mean it literally has your name on it. Mack went to that bakery in Springfield.”

“That’s really nice of them,” she said. “It’s just…”

“Hard,” he finished. “I know.”

She sniffed. 

“So, I had an idea,” Phil said. “You know, Cal opened his vet practice last week. You want to take a drive out there? I know you’ve read the reports, but it’s different, seeing him in person. Seeing him happy.”

“Is… would that be okay? I mean, I didn’t know if it needed some time to settle, or whatever.”

“It’ll be fine,” Phil promised. “Without the Kree blood fighting against the imprint, there was nothing to keep it from taking. He’s solid.”

“In that case… yeah,” she said. “Thanks, Coulson. I’d like that.”

“Come on,” he said, opening the door. “We can take Lola.” He looked at her, brave face and wet eyes, and his chest ached with how he felt about her: proud, and sad, and terrified. 

She might not be his daughter, but she was the closest thing to family he had. He smiled at her. “I’ll even let you drive.”

The Casino

2016

The auction was scheduled to begin at eight, after the attendees were treated to dinner. The raid was scheduled for seven, right in what would hopefully be the time of greatest distraction.

Naturally, things went tits-up at 5:22.

“Earthquake girl! You’re coming with us.” The voice of Daisy’s primary guard had become familiar to Phil over the last day. He stiffened; the captives weren’t supposed to be moved until just before the auction.

Daisy hissed a curse under her breath, then protested loudly as she was, judging from the sound, shackled and pulled out of her cell. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me?”

“Just shut up and do as you’re told,” a second guard said, and Phil noticed, his heart sinking, that the man sounded unsettled. “The boss wants to see the new merchandise.”

Phil frowned. He didn’t like this; unexplained variations in routine were never a good sign. He sent the signal for the team to prepare for an early activation, and moved to gear up himself, just in case, while he listened to Daisy being dragged up some stairs and—if her bewildered protests were anything to go by—into a part of the base she hadn’t yet seen.

“Sit down,” the guard said at last.

“I don’t know what you—” Daisy started to say, but was interrupted by a loud smack: Phil’s hands curled into fists at the sound of the blow.

“I said sit. down.”

“So this is our latest… acquisition,” said a new voice, female this time, clear and businesslike.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the guard.

“I heard you gave Brad some trouble,” she said.

“I don’t like assholes that get handsy,” Daisy said, her voice a little muffled but defiant.

“Mmm.” There was silence for a few seconds. “Roberts, secure her. Mr. Bauman will be down in a few minutes; he would like an interview.”

Phil’s blood curdled in his veins. 

The Triskelion

2010

"So what's the story this time?" Clint asked, pulling up a chair at the conference table. It was only his second day back on active duty after his recovery from the cranial hemorrhage that had nearly killed him in Monte Carlo. Phil was doing his best not to hover, but from the indulgent looks Clint kept shooting his way, he didn't think he was succeeding.

"Follow-up from Monte Carlo," he said. "Apparently some new intel has come in. I haven't had a chance to find out more.”

“I’m not sure I like that you aren’t in the loop on this,” Natasha said, brow creasing in concern. 

“It’s… unsettling, I agree. Particularly since we’re in the Director’s conference room.” Phil tipped his head at their surroundings, notable equally for the quality of the furnishings and the soundproofing.

“Yeah,” Clint agreed. “I haven’t heard a lot of good news in rooms fancier than I am.”

“Isn’t that every room?” Natasha teased.

“Exactly,” Clint shot back, smirking. “My point stands.”

The heavy door swung open and the Director came inside.

“Director,” Phil greeted.

“Sir,” Natasha murmured.

“Break it to me gently, sir,” Clint said. “What is it, killer robots? Aliens? I mean, one of these days it’s got to be aliens, or Hollywood’s been lying to me all these years.”

Fury sat down, not responding to Clint, and glanced around the room. He didn’t clear his throat, but there was a certain throat-clearing implied in his silence.

“I’m not going to blow smoke up your asses,” he said. “Operation Blue Star is being terminated effective immediately under section 685.” 

“What?” It took a moment for the blaze of indignation to clear enough for Phil to realize that he’d spoken. Clint was looking at him wide-eyed from across the table, and he took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. “Sir, that’s absurd.”

“So, for those of us who don’t have the SHIELD handbook memorized,” Clint said warily, “what exactly is section 685, and why does it mean we’re letting a drug ring walk?”

“It’s the ‘whoops, I arrested your informant’ regs, right?” Natasha asked.

“More or less,” Phil agreed. “It’s for when two agencies have competing interests in a situation. Informants, or undercover agents, or a planned sting, that sort of thing. We can usually reach some sort of agreement with whoever we’ve come into conflict with, but in extreme cases the op with the higher priority can quash any operations that might interfere.”

“Who determines priority?” Clint demanded.

“In this case,” Fury said, “The World Security Council.”

“Do we have any details at all?” Phil asked. “What other agency is involved? Surely we could come to some kind of compromise.”

“I’m afraid not.” Fury looked around the room again. “I don’t have to tell you that this is extremely classified,” he said. “But in aid of cutting off any half-baked ideas you might have about ‘accidentally’ continuing to pursue this—” Clint immediately looked so innocent that Phil could only interpret it as guile— “I’m going to tell you that the organization you were pursuing in Monte Carlo is apparently in the process of being acquired by the Langoustini crime family.” 

On the other side of the table, Clint went suddenly very still.

“Wait,” Phil said. “This is about the mob? That doesn’t make sense, we’ve coordinated with the FBI a dozen times on organized crime.”

“The Langoustinis are different,” Clint said quietly. “I ran into them once or twice, back in my merc days. They used to be the same old Godfather shit, but when the old man died… the new generation likes to have fingers in a lot of bad-news pies.”

“Pies, to continue Barton’s metaphor, with unfortunate implications for global security,” Fury said. “The current leadership are interested in expanding the family’s reach internationally, and aren’t overly particular who they partner with. An agency whose name none of you are cleared to know has an active operation targeting the Langoustinis, in particular what you might call the emerging markets arm, which is currently led by a gentleman by the name of Ricky Bauman. Bauman runs a tight ship; it’s been impossible to get agents in undercover, nobody will flip or inform on him. People who try… tend to disappear. It is strongly suspected that Bauman has his own network of informants in law enforcement who keep him up to speed, hence why we have been requested to stay very far away from this operation. There are literally years of infiltration work on the line.”

“They couldn’t get into the organization, so they targeted the Rosenkovs?” Natasha asked.

“The Rosenkovs were a softer target,” Fury said. “The hope is that if the Langoustinis

do make the move to acquire or partner with their operation, an undercover agent could gain access that way. Either way, the Rosenkov operation is no longer in our hands. We’ll be passing on our records and putting this one in deep freeze.”

“If Bauman is truly so cautious, the operation is likely already in jeopardy,” Natasha observed.

Clint laughed, but there was still an uneasy set to his shoulders. “Yeah, that rescue was hardly quiet.”

“We’re hoping Bauman will see it as evidence that their organization is trustworthy. SHIELD is going to leak some intel suggesting that our encounter in Monte Carlo was a coincidental contact in pursuit of other operational objectives and that we aren’t concerned with pursuing the matter further. As for the rest… I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.” 

Phil bit his lip. It didn't sit right with him, letting something like this go—the operation in Monte Carlo was moving a remarkable amount of drugs, and he wasn’t afraid to admit he bore them something of a grudge for the harm they’d done to Clint. On the other hand, he understood the difficulty of infiltrating a high-value, low-trust target.

“I hope this Bauman is bad enough for catching him to be worth letting the Rosenkovs go,” he said at last.

“From all accounts, he’s the logistics man that keeps the whole thing spinning,” Fury said. “You’ll like this, Barton: apparently they call him the Ringmaster.”

The Casino

2016

Phil secured the last strap of his vest as he sent the emergency deployment signal to the team, already sprinting to the jet. The rest of them started arriving as he stowed his gear, his ears straining for a sound over the comms besides Daisy’s breathing, which had developed a slight wheeze he was trying very hard not to think about.

“Sir, what’s happened?” Fitz asked. “Why are we moving now?”

Phil caught Melinda’s eye. “We were hoping to catch the ringleader,” he said. “But it looks like we’re tangling with the Ringmaster instead.”

Melinda’s mouth tightened. In the back of the group, one of the strike agents cursed and was hastily shushed by his squadmates. “He’s there?” Melinda asked.

“On his way.”

“I don’t understand,” Jemma said. “Who’s the Ringmaster?”

“Ricky Bauman,” Melinda said. “Highly-placed in the Langoustini crime family. Smart. Ruthless. Slippery. This isn’t good.”

“It does make sense,” Phil said, crossing his arms. “He’s got a knack for expanding the family into non-traditional channels. He was involved with Justin Hammer, with Obadiah Stane—but the FBI could never pin anything on him. Nobody will ever flip on the guy; the rumors—hush.” Over the earpiece, he heard the sound of a closing door.

“Good afternoon.” It was a nondescript voice, to belong to someone with as much blood on his hands as Bauman was rumored to have. Pleasant, a little raspy, with a generic American accent. “Liza. Chris.”

Phil hardly felt the quinjet taking off, he was so focused on the feed. The three criminals greeted each other as though they were about to start a normal business meeting, as though they didn’t have a kidnapped woman chained to a chair in the room with them. “Hurry,” he told Melinda. “They’ve brought Daisy to meet Bauman, something must have tipped them off.”

“And you must be… Missy,” Bauman said at last. “Our little earthquake girl.”

“That’s me,” Daisy said, a spark of defiance still in her tone.

“Funny,” Bauman said. “That’s not the way you usually introduce yourself.” 

“Fuck! Melinda, they’ve made her,” Phil called. “Get us there now!”

The jet leapt beneath them as Phil strained to hear what was happening, motioning to Fitz to throw Daisy’s feed onto the intercom so they could all listen. Over the more powerful speakers, he could hear—crashes? The sound of motors? But distant, tinny—some kind of video, he thought.

“What is this?” Daisy said. “I have no idea what—”

“I’m Agent Daisy Johnson of SHIELD,” Daisy’s recorded voice was thin but unmistakeable. “Joey, I’m here to help you.”

“Wow, where’d you find that?” Daisy asked. “I mean, she really looks like me, huh? I guess it’s true what they say about everyone having a twin—”

“Stop.” Bauman’s voice was quiet, but firm. “You talk a good game, girly, but it’s time to give up now.”

Silence over the line. Silence in the jet. The only things Phil could hear were the whine of jet engines being pushed to their limits and Daisy’s light, panicky breathing.

“Liza,” Bauman said. “I’m disappointed. I specifically told you to be careful, and you picked up a plant on your very first batch.”

“I’m sorry!” The woman’s voice was high-pitched, now, her smooth delivery subsumed in panic. “Sir, I’m sorry, this will never happ—”

“Stop.” Bauman cut her off with a word. “I’m not interested in apologies. This happened; we need to deal with it.” His voice got louder as he spoke, as though he were moving closer to Daisy. Phil could hear her chains clank, as if she had flinched a little, then begin to rattle. She must be trying to use her power, though if her hands were secured—why hadn’t they done training with her hands bound?

“Stop that,” Bauman commanded, voice gone whip-sharp. “There’s a gun on either side of you, and we will shoot if you try anything.”

“You’ll shoot me if I don’t,” Daisy snapped, “so why should I do what you say?”

“Hmm,” Bauman said. “Good point.”

Phil heard the unmistakeable sound of a gun cocking—

“No,” he said, his body seizing up in horror, hardly even seeing the white, stricken faces around him in the cabin, “no, no—Daisy!”

There were two shots, and then silence.

2014

The Hub

“We lost The Sandbox,” the agent told him. Her hair was soaked with blood and she was covered in bandages, but she was upright and conscious, and that was about the best Phil could expect. “We still haven’t been able to raise the Academy.”

Phil crossed his arms, studying the list. It was grim. “What about the Avengers?” he asked. “Any word?”

“Nothing so far, sir,” she said. “We’re trying to raise Stark, but with all the traffic…”

“Keep trying,” he told her. He’s all right, he thought. He has to be all right. Clint’s been staying at Stark’s tower, it’s like a fortress, and even if someone got through, the AI would shut them down. And even if he was with his family, Nick never told anyone else that they existed. There’s no way Hydra got to them. There’s no way.

“Just keep trying.”

2016

The Casino

“What the fuck was that,” someone said, and it took several seconds for Phil to parse the voice, to realize what he was hearing—

“You just shot your own minions!” Daisy said, and a great sob of breath broke out of Phil’s throat.

On the other end of the comm, Bauman gave a rusty chuckle. “I really hope your backup’s on the way, girly,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to do that for over a decade.”

“What,” Daisy said.

“I’m FBI,” Bauman said, and Phil reeled with shock, a dozen thoughts fighting for dominance in his mind: oh thank God, he’s not going to kill her and wait, is he burning his identity? and but Bauman’s been active more than a decade and no wonder nobody could ever get an agent in and shit, no wonder they 685-ed Monte Carlo. 

From the sound of it, Bauman—or whatever his real name was—was unchaining Daisy. “Been undercover with this circus for way too fuckin’ long. I keep asking to stop, they keep talking me back in. No more. I’m done.” There was a clank of metal hitting the ground. “So. Backup?”

“Um, maybe?” Daisy said. “My comm went dead while I was getting kidnapped. I’ve got a tracker in, but I don’t know if it’s still transmitting.”

“So there might be help on the way, or it might be up to us,” Bauman said. “Fair enough. Take Liza’s gun, she won’t be needing it. How are you with knives?”

“…okay?” Daisy said. “But I mean, I do have the, you know. Earthquake powers.”

“Awesome,” Bauman said. “Just remember we’re still underground and don’t bring it down until we get everybody out, okay?” There was a strange clattering, creaking sound.

“Do you seriously have a secret passageway?” Daisy sounded a little excited.

“Would you build an evil lair without one?”

“Good point,” Daisy said.

“I’m starting to like this guy,” Fitz murmured.

“I’m still reeling over the fact that the FBI managed to keep a high-level undercover operative active that long,” Melinda said, which: fair point.

They listened spellbound as Bauman and Daisy visited a weapons stash (“Whoa, is that a crossbow?”), freed the captives (“come with me if you want to live!” “Seriously?”), and started making their way out of the compound, meeting—apparently—only token resistance on the way (“since when do mobsters fight with swords?” “Since swords don’t make any noise to bring reinforcements, you got a better idea?”) Bauman’s cover lasted long enough for him to order the rest of his forces inside the dining room where the bidders were gathered for dinner, then Daisy triggered a false threat alarm that raised blast doors inside the entire room, trapping them inside. They blew up the control console afterward.

By the time the quinjet touched down outside the base—which was now quite distinctly marked by a column of greasy smoke—Daisy and Bauman, who had by now become “Ricky,” were feeding the formerly-captive Inhumans canapés and wine off a liberated catering cart. 

Phil charged off the jet and over to Daisy, who flung herself off the overturned ammunition crate she’d been sitting on and threw her arms around him.

“I knew you’d come,” she said, half-laughing, and he wrapped her up tight in his arms, letting himself, just this once, forget to be the Director first.

“I will always come for you,” Phil promised, and then the others caught up, Fitz and Jemma grabbing Daisy in hugs of their own, Melinda laying a hand on Daisy’s shoulder and smiling.

When Phil could look away from the miracle of Daisy’s bruised but grinning face, he looked over at Bauman, who was watching the proceedings with a soft smile. The photos Phil had seen of the man had always shown him dour, muscular and pug-faced with a scowl under his shock of auburn hair; it was surprising the difference a pleasant expression made. Phil straightened his shoulders; it was time to stop indulging himself and get to work.

“Mr. Bauman,” Phil said, stepping forward and extending his hand. “I’m Phil Coulson, ATCU.”

Bauman barked a laugh, grabbing Phil’s hand—his own was roughly callused in a way that seemed odd but familiar—and shaking it. “No shit,” he said. “Phil Coulson, really?”

“I’m sorry, have we met?” Phil thought he’d remember, but his memory was… not the best, sometimes, since TAHITI. He did have a kind of nagging feeling that he’d seen the man before, though that could always be the surveillance photos.

Bauman grinned. “No,” he said. “But I think we’ve got a mutual friend.”

“I don’t think we run in the same circles,” Phil said, before he could think better of it.

“You’d be surprised,” Bauman said. “Allow me to introduce myself.” He bowed with a theatrical flourish. “Barney Barton, FBI. I’ve heard all about you from my brother. And,” he continued, while Phil stared at him open-mouthed, his brain refusing to process this latest revelation, “I could really use a lift home.”

Well. Fuck. 

Chapter Text

2014

The Playground

“I’m going to tell them, Maria.”

“Phil. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“We’ve got precious few people we can trust at this point,” Phil said. “It makes no sense to insist on a complete information blackout, and if any of the Avengers is Hydra I will eat Stark’s suit, repulsors and all.”

She sighed. “They took it pretty hard, Phil,” she said. “They’re going to be angry.”

He slumped in his chair. “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know. But it’s just going to get worse the longer we put things off. At least if I do it now I might get some points for, you know. Not being Hydra.” He could feel his expression slip, going a little off-kilter. It was bad enough, thinking of Stark’s reaction—thinking of Cap’s reaction, hell. But when he thought of facing Natasha, facing Clint, and telling them that they’d been lied to, and that he hadn’t seen fit to come forward until now… his stomach churned. He couldn’t see any other way he could have handled things, but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to the looks on their faces, or that he wasn’t dreading the possibility that this would be too terrible a betrayal to be forgiven.

Maria seemed to detect the shift in his mood. “For more than that,” she said, her voice softening. “Okay. Fine. I’ll set something up.” 

“Thanks,” he told her.

She smiled, a little wobbly. “I’ve lost too many friends, Phil,” she said. “Don’t you dare let them kill you over this.”

“No promises,” Phil told her, trying to keep his voice light. 

“I’ll send you the info,” she said. “Hill out.”

The screen blinked off, and Phil took an unsteady breath. At least, no matter how things turned out, he wouldn’t be in suspense for long. He ran his hand over the Toolbox again. So much information—base locations, weapons and supply caches, secret accounts—Fury must have been diverting resources for a decade or more.

And at the end, a single encrypted text file, unlocked with Phil and Fury’s private passcode.

The Barnard family

Charles, Laura, Cooper, and Lila

7629 Rural Route 40

Goose Lake, Iowa 52750

Smoking Ruins of the Langoustini Crime Family’s Evil Desert Lair 

2016

The FBI wasn’t exactly happy to accept the ATCU’s debrief of one of their longest-serving undercover agents in lieu of instant delivery of said agent to the closest field office. Fortunately, after Talbot threw his weight around, they allowed themselves to be consoled by the presence of a bunker full of horrifying international criminals to fight with the NSA and CIA over and the three thumb drives full of detailed records that Bauman—Barton—Barney—had brought out of the base along with a set of samurai swords and a veggie platter.

Phil hadn’t even known Clint had a brother. He’d almost have suspected some kind of deception, except that once he’d started looking, the connection was obvious; their voices were similar, their turns of phrase, their idiosyncratic weapon choices, the casts of their features, their graceful, long-fingered hands.

Bauman. It was blindingly obvious, now. If Barney had really been undercover for as long as he’d said, he would have gone under right around the time that Clint had been recruited into SHIELD. Phil wondered whether it was really old enemies from his mercenary days that had driven Clint to hide his wife and children so long, or if it was more a fear of what would happen if his brother’s cover was blown.

Phil felt a little better, if that was the case. It had always hurt a little, that Clint had never trusted him with the secret. It helped to think of it as a matter of operational security.

It had taken most of a week to deal with the immediate aftermath of the op. Busts this large were always complicated, but the additional presence of eleven newly-turned Inhumans, none of which were able to control their powers beyond a rudimentary level, made things jurisdictionally tricky. Fortunately, rescuing them from a group of evildoers who wanted to auction them off for their powers had earned Daisy, and through her, SHIELD, enough trust that the group agreed without much incident to go with her to the Playground for evaluation and training while the ATCU handled the inter-agency business. 

The arrests were hardly any better, especially since a good number of the imprisoned bidders were foreign nationals. Fortunately, Barney had kept excellent records; each of the attendees had been required to put up a sizable amount of earnest money in order to participate in the auction, and the financial records were enough evidence of human trafficking—at a minimum; the CIA was lobbying for the purchase of powered American citizens to also be considered trafficking in stolen US war materiel—to keep them all in custody despite any amount of squawking from their embassies. Phil was happy enough to leave the jurisdictional wrangling to Talbot; once the Inhumans were safe, SHIELD didn’t need to stay involved.

Besides which, he’d promised Barney a ride home.

He’d wanted to call Clint a dozen times since they’d picked Barney up. He’d even gone so far as to run over the different ways the conversation might go in his head (his favorite opening line was “Hey, I picked you up a souvenir in Vegas”) but it wasn’t his place; undercover—especially the sort of long-term undercover Barney had been doing—was emotionally and psychologically strenuous at the best of times, and every operative had their own ways of dealing with it. If Barney needed some distance from Ricky Bauman before he contacted his family, Phil would do what he could to see that he got it.

Finally, though, when the last of the intel was captured and off to the analysts, Barney came by Phil’s office, leaning against the doorframe with a studied casualness that was so like his brother it made Phil do a double-take.

“So,” Barney said. “About that ride.”

“It’s all yours,” Phil promised. “Just tell me where to point the jet.”

“It’s probably nowhere you’re ever heard of,” Barney said. “A little town in Iowa called Goose Lake.”

“I think I know where that is,” Phil said.

“You should come with me,” Barney said. “The family would love to meet you.”

Phil concentrated on keeping control of his face. “Thank you,” he said. “That would be very nice.”

Phil almost changed his mind four times in the day and a half between that conversation and them actually leaving. It wasn’t that he thought Clint would be angry for Phil to find out about his secret; it was nerves, plain and simple. He had a lot of experience being in love with Clint and not letting on, but he was a little worried about his ability to keep up appearances when A) seeing Clint in person for the first time since his death while B) bringing home Clint’s brother from being undercover with the mob with C) Clint’s formerly-secret wife and children looking on. In the end, though, the lure of seeing what he’d spent so long imagining was strong enough to overcome his fears, and he said nothing.

They flew to Chicago and then branched off on their own, giving the team some leave time. Phil wasn’t entirely sure why Barney had invited him along, but he wasn’t about to question his good fortune. He wanted to see the farm, to meet Clint’s family, to get to know a little of the part of himself that Clint had always hidden from SHIELD. From Phil. And if Clint was there—Barney hadn’t said, and Phil carefully hadn’t asked—well. They had been talking about finding time to see each other soon. Clint would be preoccupied with his family, of course, but it had been such a long time since Phil had seen him. And to see him like this, bringing his brother back to him… Phil imagined Clint’s rare, wide smile breaking over his face when he saw them. It was a good thought. 

He and Barney drove with the top down, letting conversation lapse under the sound of the wind blowing past. Once they were well out of town, away from the congestion of the city, they couldn’t have asked for a nicer day to drive. The sky was brilliantly blue, with a few puffy white clouds scattered across it like a child’s painting. Phil flipped on the scanner in his dash; as soon as he was sure they were alone, he slowed the car.

“Something wrong?” Barney asked.

“I thought you might like to get there sooner,” Phil said mildly, and flipped the switch to engage Lola’s flight capacity and the retroreflectors. Barney watched in delight as the car settled onto its repulsors, and whooped with glee as Phil pulled them smoothly into the air.

“I guess this isn’t really a ’61!” Barney said, once they were in the air.

“It’s got a few aftermarket parts,” Phil admitted, grinning. He did a few flashy flourishes, enjoying the way Barney threw his hands into the air like he was riding a roller coaster, and then settled back in to flight altitude. His heart pounded as he checked the GPS: they would be there in a little over an hour.

Theta Protocol Facility

2015

Phil’s phone buzzed, and he glanced away from the monitor, unable to keep from looking. It wasn’t that he thought Clint would call him—Clint, and all the other Avengers for that matter, had bigger things on their minds after what happened in Johannesburg. But the thought of being unavailable to answer if Clint did call was unsupportable, so Phil looked.

Seeing Clint’s name on the screen surprised Phil enough that he almost dropped the phone scrambling to answer it.

“Clint?” 

“Hey, Phil.” 

Clint sounded exhausted, but just hearing his voice made something uncurl in Phil’s gut.

“Is everyone all right?” Phil asked, keeping his voice gentle. 

“More or less,” Clint said. “I guess you’ve probably heard about what happened.”

“There’s a lot of chatter and a lot of panic, but not much in the way of useful intel,” Phil said. “I did see the footage from Johannesburg, though.”

“Yeah. Shit, that was bad.” Clint sighed. “They’ve got some powered kids fighting for them; apparently the girl can… get in your head. Make you relive your worst memories, see shit that ain’t there.”

“Clint,” Phil said, helpless and horrified at the implications. 

“What? Oh! No, Phil, I’m okay,” Clint said. “Managed to avoid her. She got the others, though. They’re not saying much about it, but they’re all pretty ragged. Bruce, especially, poor bastard. She basically stuck a burr under the Hulk’s saddle and set him loose.”

“I did wonder,” Phil said. “I know it wouldn’t have happened like that without a reason.” 

“Yeah.” Clint sounded so worn down that Phil racked his brain for anything he could possibly offer to help.

“The usual channels are buzzing,” he said. “Maria and Colonel Rhodes are doing as much as they can, and I’m feeding Maria anything we have that could help, but Dr. Banner’s going to be in jeopardy the minute he shows his face to a camera.” He paused. Clint hadn’t asked for anything, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need anything. “I’ve got a base that nobody’s made yet; it’s not much, but it’s stocked with supplies and it can take a quinjet. Should I give you the coordinates?” It would be a sacrifice—sending the Avengers there would burn The Retreat—but that’s a small price to pay for Clint’s—for the Avengers’ safety.

“No,” Clint said. “I mean, thank you, Phil. That means a lot. But you don’t have the resources.”

“You’ve got to go somewhere,” Phil protested. “You’ve got to land eventually and all Stark’s property will be watched. I know I don’t have much to offer, Clint, but please let me help.”

“Hey,” Clint said. “Phil. Don’t say that. You’re helping, okay? Shit, talking to you is the first thing I’ve done this whole damn day that feels normal. I never really got used to running big ops without having you in my ear. It’s… shit. This sounds stupid, but I just needed to hear—I just needed to talk to you, you know?”

“You can talk to me any time you need to,” Phil said instantly. His chest ached at the loneliness in Clint’s voice. “I just wish I could do more. Where will you go?”

“I’ve got a safe house of my own,” Clint said. “Off-book.  SHIELD never touched it. It’s pretty remote, got a good system in place. We should be safe to lie low.”

The farm, Phil realized. Clint must be talking about the farm. His breath caught; all he could see was that photograph Fury showed him, Clint surrounded by his family. Laura, Cooper, Lila.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Phil asked. “That you’re not being tracked?”

“If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that,” Clint said. “Tony’s on it, and he’s uniquely motivated right about now.”

“I won’t tell you to keep me in the loop,” Phil said. “I know there probably won’t be time. But if you think of anything I can do…” he turned back to his monitor and starting to open folders. He was sure there’d been some kind of prototype psychic shield at the Garage, not that they’d had any actual psychics to test it on.

“You’re doing it,” Clint said softly. “Just—be careful, yeah? I don’t want our shit to spill over on you. This Ultron thing… it’s bad, Phil. It’s gonna get real bad.”

“You’re the one who needs to be careful,” Phil said. “Try to remember you’re a sniper and stay out of the line of fire, okay?”

Clint chuckled, a little rusty. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“And promise me if you think of something, you’ll call.”

“If I can,” Clint said. “You know how these things go; situations change.”

“I’ll be ready.” They were both quiet for a little while, just breathing into the phone. Phil was reluctant to end the conversation, as though the open line was a tether, connecting them; something he could hold on to and keep Clint safe.

There was a muted electronic pinging on the other end of the line.

“I gotta get that,” Clint said. “And probably I should eat something.”

“Probably you should,” Phil agreed. “Be safe.”

“You too. I’m gonna be really pissed if you get yourself killed again before I actually get to see you in person. I’m beginning to think someone’s conspiring against us.”

“Not as pissed as I will be,” Phil said, and he couldn’t hold back a little smile; things had been difficult, especially at first, but he was happy to know that at least now they’d repaired their friendship enough that Clint wanted to see him, their technical fugitive status notwithstanding. “Go, feed yourself. Fly your plane. Call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” Clint said. “Keep your fingers crossed for us, the next couple days.”

“I always do,” Phil promised, and Clint cut the line with a ghost of a chuckle. He stood there looking down at the screen as it dimmed and then turned off, then tucked it into his pocket, where he’d be sure to feel it if it rang again.

“Start the preflights,” he told Agent Koenig. “I think it’s time to activate the carrier.”

Goose Lake, Iowa

2016

As they drew near to Goose Lake, Phil’s stomach knotted up with nerves. It was stupid; he didn’t even know for sure that Clint would be at the farm. The Avengers’ reach was global, even more than SHIELD’s had been; Clint might be on a mission. He might not even be in the country. Besides, Phil had no good reason to worry about what would happen when they saw each other again. The two of them had been in frequent communication, emailing and calling and video-chatting back and forth. They even texted, though Clint’s texts tended more toward strings of emoji than actual conversation. (Phil found it endearing, though he carefully never said; he had a reputation to uphold.)

They’d planned to get together several times, only to be thwarted by the seemingly inevitable demands of their jobs. If it weren’t for Clint’s vocal frustration, Phil would have started to worry that Clint was trying to let him down easy. After the second time their plans had to be cancelled, though, Clint had sworn a blue streak in three languages and said, “I swear, Phil, I’m starting to think it’s time to retire from the field. What good is saving the world if I never get to live in it?”

(Phil hadn’t known how to respond. There was a part of him that jumped at the possibility, because a Clint who wasn’t in the field was a Clint much less likely to be shot or stabbed or blown up or knocked off a building. There was another part, though, that thought it would be a shame, like retiring a racehorse somewhere he’d never get to run. Also, there was the matter of world security.)

Clint still hadn’t told Phil about his family—a fact which stung more and more as time went on—and he’d never mentioned the house in Goose Lake. Even so, Phil was fairly sure that Clint would forgive the intrusion, seeing as he’d brought Clint’s brother home. 

At least, Phil hoped he would.

“There,” Barney said, pointing, and Phil sucked in a breath; there it was, a big white house next to a green hill. “Set her down in the drive?”

“Of course,” Phil said. He guided Lola down in a gentle curving descent, flicking the retroreflectors off as soon as they were low enough, and settled her on her wheels.

Barney looked over at him, a little pale despite the bright afternoon sun. “I gotta admit,” he said. “I’m a little nervous.”

Phil tried to smile, though he wasn’t sure how reassuring it was. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “There is no world in which the Clint Barton I know wouldn’t be happy to see his brother come home.”

Barney chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right, at that. Kid always had a heart bigger than his head.” He drew a deep breath and got out of the car.

He’d hardly stood all the way up when the front door of the house slammed open, spilling out a small, shrieking hurricane that, upon further examination, resolved itself into two young children. Barney dropped his duffel bag like a stone and ran to meet them, sliding to his knees in the grass and letting himself be nearly bowled over by the force of their enthusiastic hugs, laughing and crying at the same time as he covered their faces in kisses. It was a beautiful sight, and Phil’s heart ached to see it. 

Then the door slammed again, and Phil caught his breath; it was Laura, running out of the house, followed closely by Clint, and Clint—

Clint was holding a baby.

Phil was dimly aware of Laura reaching the knot of people on the lawn, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from Clint, from Clint’s baby, his new baby, chubby and tawny-haired, with the broad Barton nose and a dimple in his cheek. Clint was running toward the car, past Barney—why was he running past Barney? He looked—they looked—

“Phil!” Clint had reached the car, his face alight with joy. He pulled the door open and reached in with the hand that wasn’t full of baby, grabbing Phil’s wrist and tugging. “Come here, oh my god, you devious bastard, I can’t believe it!” Phil managed to get his feet outside the car, and followed Clint’s pull upright, where Clint hauled him in close to his side, wrapping his arm around Phil’s waist and squeezing tight.

“Clint, what—” Phil started to say, but trailed off in confusion as Clint dropped his head into the curve of Phil’s shoulder, his breath puffing onto Phil’s neck, making him shiver. He wasn’t even sure what he meant to ask—are you angry? when did you have another baby? why are you hugging me and not your brother?

“Phil, oh my god,” Clint breathed into his neck. “I can’t believe you’re here, I—” he tightened his arm, trying to pull Phil closer to him, and there was no power on earth that could have kept Phil from sinking into the embrace. He ended up basically cheek to cheek with Clint, his heart fluttering like a bird in his chest. 

“I can’t believe you’re finally here,” Clint said again, his voice thick. On Phil’s other side, the baby giggled, and a tiny, sticky hand patted at his cheek.

“Yeah, Nate, look, it’s your Uncle Phil,” Clint said, kissing the baby’s forehead. “Uncle Phil brought Papa home.”

Phil startled, pulling back a few inches, trying to see Clint’s face. “Wait,” he said. “Papa?”  

“Yeah,” Clint said. “Phil what—are you okay?”

He looked back over Clint’s shoulder, where, surrounded by the other children, Clint’s wife was kissing Barney Barton.

Well. At this point, he supposed the proper term was more like making out with Barney Barton. There was definitely tongue involved. And groping.

“Wait,” Phil said again, stepping back even further. Clint tightened his arm, refusing to let him get too far away. Phil blinked his eyes, hard, but nothing changed. “What is going on here?”

Clint looked behind him. “What, them?” he said. “This is nothing, man, I’ve seen much worse. They’re being discreet because of the kids.” 

If Clint’s arm hadn’t been there, Phil thought he might have fallen over, his mind too locked up to make sure his legs kept working.

“And you’re… okay with that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Clint sounded honestly confused. “I mean, sheesh, they have’t seen each other since right after Nate was born, they deserve a little snuggle time.”

Phil liked to think that he was an open-minded man. Polyamory was one thing—honestly, the idea of Clint being in an open marriage was one that Phil might possibly have daydreamed about occasionally—but he was having trouble with this situation. Somehow Clint had never struck Phil as the type to share a wife with his own brother. 

“He’s your brother,” he told Clint.

“Yeah?” Clint blinked at him, puzzled. “And she’s his wife.”

“I think I need to sit down,” Phil said, as everything he thought he knew about Clint Barton tumbled down around his ears. If Laura was Barney’s wife—if the children called Barney “Papa,” did that mean—was Clint—but then why had Fury—

He wobbled on his feet. Clint gave him a sharp look, then whistled. “Barney!” 

“What? I’m a little busy!”

“What did you do to my—to Phil? He looks like he’s about to pass out!”

“Wasn’t me,” Barney said, coming over with his arm around Laura—because she was his wife, apparently—and the children—his children? clinging around his legs. “He was fine when we got here. Must be something you did.”

“Fury told me you were married,” Phil told Clint. “He showed me a picture.”

Clint blinked at him, his face doing something odd. “…oh,” he said.  “I… oh. Shit.” He shook his head, like a dog shaking water out of its coat. “Wait. Fury told you?” His grip loosened, and Phil’s heart sank. This was it, then: this was when everything would go to hell.

“I was supposed to be his backup,” Phil said. “In case something happened. And he knew that I—” he cut himself off, conscious of his audience. Barney had, Phil was distantly surprised to realize, almost an exact replica of Clint’s “you have got to be shitting me with this shit” facial expression.

“For the love of God, Clint, I told you this was going to backfire someday,” Laura said, shooting Clint an unimpressed look.

“Oh, no, Barney, we don’t need to talk, Barney, we have an understanding,” Barney said, rolling his eyes. “Here, gimme Nate, you’re gonna drop him in a minute.” He reached out for the baby. “Hey, c’mere, sport, come see Papa, that’s right.” He kissed the baby’s dimpled cheek. “Thank you,” he told Clint, his voice gone serious. “I mean it, Clint. Thank you for everything. You know what—you know how important it is.”

“They’re my family too,” Clint said, his eyes bright.

“I know,” Barney told him. “But let me take a turn now, okay? It sounds like you and Phil here need to have a conversation.”

“Yeah,” Clint said. He glanced at Phil, uneasy, then leaned forward to give Barney a smacking kiss on his cheek. “Yeah, Barn, I think I will. Welcome home.”

They smiled at each other, the same sweet expression mirrored between them, and then Barney turned to face Phil. “Hey, man. I don’t want to get in the middle of things between you and my brother, but… I feel like I need to say, he may have done some dumb shit, but he did it to protect us. And he never even thought about what it would mean for him. And I can’t tell you what to do, or how to feel, but…” he sighed. “I guess I’m just hoping… just, can you hear him out?”

“I—” Phil looked helplessly between the brothers, and Laura, and the children. He didn’t know what to say, or what he was feeling, or what was even happening, really. “I’ll always listen to anything Clint needs to tell me,” he said at last. 

“That’s all anyone can ask.” Barney nodded at him, then turned away, leading his family—his wife, his children, and not Clint’s after all—into the house.

Phil stood for a moment in stunned silence. His mind was reeling, and he didn’t know which of the revelations to address first. Laura was Barney’s wife? The children were Barney’s children? Clint had been lying about lying about being secretly married? What the hell did Barney mean, an understanding? Were Phil and Clint supposed to be the ones understanding something? And if so, what?

“So, uh,” Clint said. He seemed to notice that he still had an arm around Phil’s waist, and let it drop, scrubbing his hands over his jeans nervously. “I might have lied to Fury a little bit when I first joined SHIELD.”

“So I see,” Phil said, faintly. “May I ask why?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time?” Clint groaned. “Shit, okay, that sounds terrible. Look, it’s kind of a long story, and you seriously do look like you need a glass of water or something. Let’s just… sit on the porch for a minute, okay? And I’ll try to make sense of it all.” He paused, his hand hovering just above Phil’s elbow, obviously wanting to take his arm.

“I—sure,” Phil said. Clint gave him a tremulous smile and led him up the shabby wooden steps onto the wide porch, settling them onto a porch swing that creaked gently under their weight.

“You weren’t supposed to know,” Clint blurted, after a few awkward seconds. “I mean, it was supposed to be a secret. When it didn’t come out in the Leak I figured Fury’d buried it himself.”

“I was the only one he told,” Phil said. “He wanted backup, like I said. But the timing was because… well. He could tell that I was developing an interest in you. He wanted us to work more closely together—this was before Delta—and he didn’t want anything to interfere. I think he was concerned that if you had to turn me down romantically we wouldn’t be able to trust each other enough to run missions together.”

“Wait,” Clint said. “When he told you—was this after Vegas?”

“Yes,” Phil admitted.

“Hot damn, I knew it!” Clint crowed. “We had chemistry, right? There was some serious motherfucking chemistry in that shitty little walk-up.”

Phil sighed. “All right, yes,” he admitted. “I was going to ask you out, after. But even if I hadn’t been, what difference would it have made? And what did Barney mean, you thought we had an understanding? What have you been telling them about me?” 

“Nothing bad, Phil, only good stuff, I swear,” Clint said, turning in his seat to face Phil more fully, his face open and concerned. “I just—I guess I talked about you a lot, when I was home. They could tell how I felt about you. Barney and Laura said I should tell you, that I shouldn’t keep putting my own life on hold for them, but I thought—I mean, I’d say things, and you’d agree with me, and I thought it meant one thing but apparently it meant something else? Fuck. I’m screwing this up.” He dropped his face into his hands.

“Clint.” Phil waited until Clint looked up at him, then continued. “Are you telling me that all the times you made comments about being able to have a life someday and looking forward to the time when you could afford to care more about personal things than professional things, you were, what, talking about us?”

“Well, yeah,” Clint said. “I mean, what else would I have been talking about?”

“Your wife and child? That… you had no idea I thought you had. Fuck.” Phil covered his eyes with his hand. He had always assured Clint that he understood. Had, in fact, on more than one occasion, done it while looking deeply into Clint’s eyes. Had tried as hard as he could to radiate unconditional support and platonic affection, because Clint had sounded so wistful, and Phil had wanted so much to make him feel better.

“Do you ever feel like your life is a comedy of errors?” he asked his shoes.

Clint chuckled, nudging his side comfortably against Phil’s. “All the damn time,” he said. “But, hey. Comedies, they gotta have a happy ending, right?”

“Do they?” Phil looked up, turning back to see Clint’s face, searching his expression.

Clint’s face was soft. He met Phil’s eyes, solid and comfortable and certain, and Phil felt himself starting to relax a little despite himself. “Well,” he said. “We get to decide, don’t we? So I say they do, and you say…”

“Yes,” Phil said. “I—I want to say yes.”

“Then that’s your answer.” 

“Yeah,” Phil said, and his voice came out a lot shakier than he’d meant it to. “I… I guess it is.”

“Can I…” Clint said, holding out his arm ready to slide around Phil’s shoulders.

“Go ahead,” Phil said at once. “Whatever you want.”

Clint chuckled, pulling Phil close and tucking him under his arm. Clint’s torso was warm and solid; this close, Phil could smell him, his familiar fresh cologne overlaid with a whiff of baby powder. He curled his hands into fists to keep himself from putting them somewhere inappropriate. 

“Feel like I’ve been waiting to do this for fifteen years,” Clint said. 

“You haven’t even known me for fifteen years,” Phil protested.

“Ten years, then. Close enough.” He sighed. “Tell me this, though. If Fury hadn’t told you that I was married, would you have understood that when I talked to you about the future, I meant our future? Or was I just fooling myself?”

Phil thought about it, trying to recall the way things had been between them, sharing the safehouse in Vegas. “It’s hard to say,” he said slowly. “I’ve spent a long time making very sure to keep that knowledge at the front of my mind. But… I think it’s likely.” 

Clint groaned, his expressive face somehow conveying both amusement and disgust. “I can’t believe that my boss has been cock-blocking me for ten years.”

“You weren’t cock-blocked, you were unavailable,” Phil said. “I’m not some kind of asshole homewrecker, I wasn’t going to make a move on a married man.”

Clint snorted. “You forget,” he said, smirking, “I was there for the Great Honeypot Debacle of Ought-Nine.”

“The Great—that was for a mission!” Phil spluttered, indignant. “I didn’t just wake up one day and decide that’s what I wanted to do for the weekend. Also, he was a criminal, and it was a planned op, it just… went a little sideways.”

“I’ll never forget the expression on Woo’s face,” Clint mused, “when that guy walked right past the Black Widow and offered to buy you a drink.”

Phil waved him off, his face heating. “That’s different, and you know it.”

Clint scuffed a toe on the faded boards of the porch, making the swing sway and creak. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Still, though. When you took him up on it I nearly swallowed my tongue. I’d never seen you so… seductive, I guess.”

“That’s because I was trying to seduce him,” Phil said reasonably, “and I was actively trying not to seduce you.”

“It’s probably just as well,” Clint said. “My self-control was under enough strain as it was. I’d have wanted to say yes, but I wouldn’t have been able to.”

“Were you just planning be celibate until Barney came back?”

“Well, not celibate exactly, but I wasn’t going to get involved with anyone. The thing is,” Clint said, “you gotta understand, he was never supposed to be under this long.” He sighed, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling, his shoulders slumping. He looked so tired, all of a sudden. Phil laid a hand on his knee—lightly, ready to snatch it back if it were unwelcome—and Clint covered it with his own hand, rough warm fingers curling around Phil’s.

“Fuck, I’m glad he’s out of that shit. I was starting to think he’d never make it home.” Clint’s voice went distant. “I don’t have the words to tell you how much it means to me that you were the one who helped him get free. Barney had told us that another agency had helped do the final sting and he was getting a lift from the AIC, but he didn’t tell us who you were. When I looked out the window and saw my brother getting out of Lola…” he shook his head. “I swear, Phil, I thought I’d fallen asleep waiting and was dreaming it for a minute. Everything I’d wanted for a decade, delivered to my door. I don’t usually get that kind of day.”

“Imagine how I felt.”

“Yeah,” Clint winced. “Sorry. In my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time?”

“Help me understand, Clint,” Phil said. “Walk me through it.”

“Laura is Duquesne’s daughter,” Clint said quietly. “The three of us, we’ve been hiding from him since I was fifteen.”

Phil blinked, the pieces of Clint’s history falling into a new configuration. “Oh,” he said. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Clint cleared his throat. “Her name’s really Lorelai, actually, but she hasn’t used it in forever. She was the ‘lovely assistant’ in the show, you know? Duquesne would throw knives around her, Trick would shoot apples off her head, that kind of shit. She had this green sequined leotard. I was just a kid, I thought she was nice, but Barney… it was like the world stopped existing when she was around. He would have done anything for a chance with her. And Duquesne knew it. It started off easy, you know? Cash a check for him, pick up a package the next town over, come to dinner, just a dad making sure this kid is good enough for his little girl. And then by the time Barney realized what the deal really was, he was in too deep. Didn’t know how to get out, and wouldn’t go without her. And then…”

“Cedar Rapids?” The place where things had fallen apart, where a teenage Clint had been left for dead after discovering his mentors’ crimes.

Clint nodded. “Cedar Rapids.”

Mercy Medical Center, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

1986

Clint had woken up—for certain values of waking—ten or eleven times so far, but he hadn’t figured out how many days that meant he’d been in the hospital. Not like it mattered. There was never anyone there except for doctors and nurses and cops, trying to get him to talk.

Clint didn’t feel like talking. He hardly felt like breathing, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. At least whatever it was they kept putting into the tubes on his arm made it easy to just kind of drift and not think too much about…

The door creaked open, letting in a shaft of light from the hall, and Clint shut his eyes and tried to keep his breathing steady—or as steady as he could, considering how much each breath hurt his chest. He wasn’t in the mood for more nurses trying to get him to talk. If he pretended to be asleep they would come in, inject things and take his blood pressure and write notes, and leave again.

He waited for the rattle of the cart, but instead the door closed again, and he heard the sound of the curtain being pulled between Clint and the empty bed on the other side of the room.

“Oh fuck,” someone whispered, in a tiny, hoarse voice. “Fuck, Clint.”

His breath caught, and he couldn’t help groan at the pain of it as his broken ribs moved. 

“Clint?”

It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be Barney. Barney had let him go with the Swordsman, Barney had been so angry. Barney hadn’t come to find him…

He opened his eyes. Barney was standing next to his bed, looking down at Clint with horror in his reddened eyes.

“Thought you… left,” Clint wheezed, trying to keep his breath shallow.

“Trick said Jacques killed you,” Barney whispered. He reached out, his hand hovering above Clint’s arm like he was trying to find a place to touch that wasn’t covered in tubes or wires or bandages. “But then I heard them find you on the police scanner. I came as soon as I could, but…” he bit his lip, finally resting his hand feather-light over Clint’s, careful not to jostle the needle in the back. “Jacques went batshit,” he said. “Screaming, breaking things—even Trick was scared of him. I—” he drew a few wobbly breaths. “He hit Lori,” he said. “He gave her a black eye. Clint, I had to get her out of there, we had to run, he’s looking for us. I came to get you, but—” he trailed off, and even in the dim moonlight from the window Clint could see his gaze flicking over Clint’s battered body, the casts and bandages and wires. He could see the wheels turning, that look that Barney got when he was trying to find a way out of an impossible situation. Clint had seen that look before. (Clint was five, and Barney pushed him into the back of the closet and lied to Pop about where he was. Clint was nine, and his face was bruised and Barney was looking at the circus posters. Clint was eleven, and Barney was telling Trickshot how his little brother could beat all the midway games, how he never missed.)

Clint was fifteen now. It was his turn to do some rescuing for once.

“Barn,” he said. “You can’t take me with you.”

“We can figure it out,” Barney insisted. “I can—I can come back when you’re better.”

“He’ll be looking for you,” Clint said. “He’ll be watching. If he thinks you took Lori away he’ll never stop.” 

“I can’t just leave you.”

“Just for a couple years, Barn. I’m gonna be here for a while, they said. The cops have my picture, they’re trying to find out who I am. You gotta stay away, you’re eighteen. If they find out you were helping Duquesne they won’t care why, you’ll go to jail, real jail, not just juvie.” He blinked back tears, his chest aching now from more than just his ribs. “They’ll put me in the system, but it’s only three years. Once I age out—I can come find you, you can, you can send me a message or something so I’ll know where to go. You can find somewhere safe for us and Lori, somewhere nobody knows about but us.”

Barney’s jaw was set, stubborn, but Clint could see him weakening.

“I can’t even walk, Barn,” he said. “They say I’m gonna need to go to special therapy after this. I go in the system, the state has to pay for it all, all the hospital bills and shit. Listen, I hurt my head when he pushed me down the stairs. I’ll pretend I don’t remember what happened, I’ll give them a fake name. Nobody will be able to find you.”

“You’re my brother,” Barney said, and scrubbed his sleeve across his face. “What kind of an asshole just leaves his baby brother in the hospital?”

“The kind that has some fucking—ow, shit—common sense,” Clint said, gasping in pain when he breathed a little too deeply. “You always took care of me, our whole lives, Barn. Let me carry some of the load this time.”

“Shit,” Barney said. “Shit. Okay. But only because you’re hurt, understand? It’s just so they’ll take care of you. And if they treat you bad, Clint, you get me a message and I’ll come to you, okay? I’ll—I’ll get a PO box or something, I’ll make sure you have a way to reach me, I promise.”

Barney stayed as long as he could, hiding under Clint’s bed when they heard the medicine cart rattling in the halls, finally slipping out when the cold gray light of pre-dawn started seeping in through the window. 

Clint didn’t cry until after he had gone.

Barnard Residence

Goose Lake, Iowa

2016

“So that’s what we did,” Clint said, sniffing a little. Phil squeezed his hand, overcome with sadness for the frightened and desperate boys he and his brother had been, but at the same time admiring their bravery and resourcefulness. They had faced hurt upon hurt, but had both struggled through and become heroes.

“It must have been hard, being apart from him,” Phil said. 

Clint gave him a watery smile. “It was,” he said, simply. “Both times. But you do what you gotta do, right?”

Phil nodded. “I assume the ruse in Cedar Rapids worked?”

“Yeah. I let them think the concussion had fucked with my memory, that I didn’t remember the attack. They figured I was just some homeless runaway who’d gotten in the middle of a drug deal or something. I told them my name was Charlie Barnard. Kinda my way to keep Barney close, you know?” 

Phil nodded.

“I got real lucky,” Clint continued. “I guess the story got some press at the time—you know how it is. Human interest story, kid put in the hospital, all that. I was expecting a group home but there was this couple who volunteered to foster me. They were a little older, getting close to retirement. She was a doctor and he was a teacher. I was a miserable punk, but… they were good to me. They really cared.”

“I’m glad,” Phil said softly.

“They helped me with school,” Clint said. “Drove me back and forth to rehab. And when I turned eighteen they didn’t kick me out. Said I’d always have a place in their home. I left—I had to go find Barney. But I did come back to visit. They even let me bring Barney and Laura, once I found them again.”

“So what did Barney do all that time?”

“He’d joined the Army, if you believe it,” Clint said. “He got him and Lori some fake papers, they got married and he went and enlisted. They could live on base, then, lots of security around, the Army would move them around a lot. It was the best thing he could think of to do. He’d always managed to get me a way to contact him—a PO box, usually, but sometimes a phone number where I could leave a message. When I aged out of the system he sent me a bus ticket.” He rubbed the back of his neck with the hand that wasn’t wrapped up in Phil’s. “The Davises—my foster parents—I think they figured that I remembered more than I said about how I ended up in the hospital, but they never pushed me about it. They just wanted to make sure I was safe. But before I left, I told them a little. Enough to keep them from poking around and maybe stirring up attention they didn’t need.” He cleared his throat. “Barney told his CO I was his cousin, a good shot, had me show off a little. They made me a deal, that if I enlisted we could serve in the same unit. They’d even adjust our tours to match up. So that’s what I did. It worked really well for a while. We got to stay together, live together like a real family. Then, a couple years later, me and Barn got deployed to the Gulf.” 

Phil nodded. He’d known some of this; Clint had told him in bits and pieces over the years. It was different, though; the missing pieces being filled in, no more sudden stops in the story where Clint was leaving gaps where his family belonged.

“We were worried about Laura. Even in the Army, we’d had a couple of close calls, suspicious people asking around, shit like that. We didn’t want to leave her without backup, but we couldn’t exactly take her with us. It was the Davises who solved it, in the end. They’d just retired, and they were moving—here, actually.” He waved at the house. “They invited Laura to stay with them while we were deployed. We talked about it, and that’s when we had the idea. We explained a little more about what had happened—that Laura was hiding from her abusive dad, that he was the one who attacked me—and asked them to introduce her as my wife—well, ‘Charlie’s’ wife.”

“Building her a legend,” Phil said, nodding. “Establishing her in the community, so she wouldn’t stand out.”

“And then we got Barney a set of ID under the name Charles Barnard,” Clint said, simply. “We look enough alike. We figured, as long as we didn't spend much time in town and never showed up at the same time, the Davises could have a former foster son called Charlie who’d deployed with the military, and nobody would look close enough to realize that “Charlie” was two different guys.”

“Duquesne went to prison in the nineties, though,” Phil said. “Why keep it up, once he wasn’t a threat?”

Clint shrugged. “Habit, at first,” he said. “You look over your shoulder long enough, it becomes a way of life. Plus, you know as well as I do being locked up doesn’t automatically mean someone can’t be a threat. And then once we got out of the Army and started doing merc jobs, there was a whole other set of reasons to have a clean ID, just in case. We tried to make sure nothing we did ever touched the Barnard identity or the Davises. And then we got recruited.”

“Barney to the FBI, and you to SHIELD.” Phil shook his head. “Are you telling me that all these years, the FBI and SHIELD were both under the impression that they won the bidding war to recruit Hawkeye?”

Clint smirked. “Yeah. I mean, when you look at it a certain way, they both did win; it’s just that nobody knew Hawkeye was more than one person.”

“And in addition to the recruitment bonus and cleaning up your civilian record, your price was for Fury to fix the Barnard identity for you.”

Clint nodded. “Coop was just a baby. We were going government, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t still be making enemies. It was just supposed to be a backup, a contingency plan, but…”

“But?”

“But Barney met Armando Langoustini.”

2004

Davis Farm

Goose Lake, Iowa

Clint woke to the smell of frying bacon and a shaft of bright sun dancing through the curtains to hit him square in the face. It took him a minute to get oriented; his quarters at SHIELD were on an interior hallway, and the only “window” was one of SHIELD’s weird screen things that rotated between a tropical beach, a snowy mountain, a forest, and a field, so the sunlight threw him. Then he saw his high school diploma, framed and hung on the wall, and remembered: Barney had called a family meeting, and Clint had taken a weekend pass and caught a red-eye to Chicago. By the time he’d made it to the farm in his rental car, he was ready to pass out, and had stayed awake just long enough to kick off his shoes and collapse face-down across his bed. (And it was his bed, his bed in the room that the Davises had made for him in their new house, and he never thought of that, never looked at the archery posters and purple bedspread, without a lump rising in his throat.)

He stumbled to his feet, tripping a little over the blanket that someone had spread over him in the night, and crossed the hall to the bathroom to try to regain a little humanity. Once he took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, and changed into something that didn’t smell like plane, he went downstairs.

The kitchen was buzzing with activity. Molly stood at the stove, frying bacon, while Rich was at the counter making piles of toast. Laura and Barney were sitting at the table, their chairs pulled so close together they were touching all down their sides; Barney had his arm around Laura, and was trying to use the other arm to feed Cooper, though from the quantity of mush on Coop’s face and hands and the high chair tray, it wasn’t going so well.

“Here comes the airplane into the hanger,” Barney said, and Cooper turned his head at the last moment, smearing yellow goo on his cheek. He saw Clint and grinned, all four of his teeth showing.

“If that’s the best you can do, Barn, it’s probably good that I’m the one going to flight school,” Clint said.

Everyone turned toward the door to greet him. Growing up like Clint had, he'd always found it hard to let himself trust in moments like this, but despite himself he felt the muscles in his back unfurling with each greeting, from Molly’s “good morning, sweetheart,” to Cooper’s enthusiastic “ba ba ba!” 

“Hey,” Clint said, giving the room a general wave. 

“Pull up a chair, breakfast is nearly ready,” Molly said. Clint went over the the stove and stole a piece of bacon, dropping a kiss on her cheek on the way and trading nods with Rich. On his way to the table he kissed the top of Cooper’s head—the only part not covered in baby food—and gave Barney and Laura a quick hug before taking a chair on the other side of the table.

“So,” he said, munching on his bacon. “Got your message. Sounded urgent.”

Barney sighed, trading looks with Laura. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry to make you come out like this, I know you don’t get much time off, but something’s happened, we need to talk face to face. All of us.”

“I’d suggest we wait until after we eat,” Rich said, carrying platters of food to the table, “but I know you boys, you’ll just fret at it the whole time either way.”

Laura smiled, but it was a little thin. “He’s got your numbers.”

“We’ll work things out, boys, whatever’s going on,” Molly said firmly, bringing over the bacon and taking her own seat. 

“I hope you’re right,” Barney said. There was silence for a few minutes as everyone filled their plates, then he took a deep breath and said, “the Bureau wants me to go undercover.”

“Weren’t you already doing that?” Clint asked. Since Barney had been recruited to the FBI, he’d been working out of the field office in Omaha; his experiences with the circus had made him a go-to man for doing sting operations, mostly to do with guns or drugs. It had also helped him to keep an eye out for any of Duquesne’s former associates who might know about the Bartons.

“This would be different.” Barney raked a hand through his hair. “See, on my last job, there was someone important in from out of town. I didn’t know who he was, just that we needed to impress him, that he was looking to expand his drug operation and we wanted to get in on it. I had literally just met the man, we were walking down the street to get a sandwich, and a car ran a light, jumped the curb, almost hit us. I pulled the guy out of the way.”

“I take it he didn’t nominate you for a good citizen award,” Clint said.

Barney chuckled. “Not exactly,” he said. “He got up, brushed the dirt off his suit, shook my hand, thanked me, and went about his business. But before he left, he called me in for a private meeting. He gave me five thousand dollars cash and a business card with his private number, and said that his organization could always use men who were quick with their minds as well as their feet, and to give him a call if I ever wanted to move up in the world.” He took a deep breath. “His name is Armando Langoustini.”

“Holy sh—” Clint cut himself off, glancing guiltily at Cooper, who was gumming happily on a little piece of banana. “Barney. That’s the mob. You’re talking about going undercover with the mob.”

“I know.”

“Like the for real mob. The Godfather mob. The horse’s heads in people’s beds actual mob.”

“That’s pretty much what I said,” Laura sighed. “But he still wants to do it.”

“I don’t want to do it,” Barney protested. “I just—I feel like I should do it. We’ve been trying to get an in with the Langoustinis for years, and they’ve made every agent we’ve sent in. They’re bad news, you know? And they’re expanding. This could be our only chance to really make a difference.”

Clint forced down the part of himself that was howling in denial and tried to pull up his brand-new SHIELD agent mindset. “I’m sure the Bureau is leaning heavily on you to say yes,” he said. “So what kind of op are we talking?”

Barney leaned forward, looking relieved. “Temporary,” he said. “Just a couple months, maybe a year. And it wouldn’t be all the time. My cover has an elderly mom in bad health—she’s retired Bureau, that was how I was giving my reports—so I’ll tell Langoustini I have to stay close to Omaha. Once I’ve gotten enough intel for us to move on him, they’ll pull me, and that’ll be it.”

Clint looked at him hard. “But?”

Barney sighed. “You’re right; it’s dangerous. A lot more than the work I’ve been doing before. If they make me… well. Let’s just say that in the past, people who inform on the Langoustinis wind up with very few people left alive to go to their funerals. SHIELD’ll take care of you, Clint, but…” he trailed off, looking down at his plate even while he pulled Laura closer with one arm, laid the other on Cooper’s downy head. “The Bureau will try to hide my real identity, but what they do hasn’t been enough before. I don’t trust that their work will hold up, not with what happened to our other guys. But, Clint. You got SHIELD to fix up Charles Barnard.”

This was it, then. This was why the family meeting. “You want to send Laura and Cooper back to the farm,” Clint said. “You want the Bartons to disappear.”

Barney looked around the table. “We could close the house in Omaha,” he said. “Put it around that I got transferred somewhere far away. Molly and Rich could tell their friends that Charlie got deployed again and Laura and the baby came back to stay while he’s overseas. I know it’s an imposition,” he added, looking at the Davises. “But they’ll be giving me hazard pay while I’m under, and I’ll be living on the mob salary, so it’ll all go to Laura, we’ll be able to pay our own way.”

“Barney, that isn’t even close to being a concern,” Rich said. “Of course we’d welcome Laura and Cooper, any time. But we’re worried about your safety.”

“There’s something else,” Laura said. “Barney. Tell them.”

“My ‘mother’? The retired agent I told you about?” Barney said, scrubbing his hand over his mouth. “Armando Langoustini sent her flowers last week. And sent me another note, saying that his people’s families are always taken care of.” He swallowed, hard. “I’m worried there may not actually be much of a choice.” 

“Fuck,” Clint said, then looked at the baby in a panic. Just his luck if Cooper’s first word was a four-letter one. “Sorry. I mean. Shi—I mean. Barney. That’s not good.”

“Maybe all three of you should move out here and let the FBI go hang,” Molly said.

“I can get you on at SHIELD,” Clint offered. “Just say the word.”

“Clint. According to our best estimates, the Langoustinis either directly cause or contribute to more than a hundred deaths a year. A hundred. And that isn’t even counting everything else—drug crimes and kidnappings and trafficking—if there’s something that makes money off human misery, they’ve got a hand in it. And the old man’s heir apparent is recruiting me. I just—I don’t know if I can say no to this. Not if I want to sleep at night.”

“This isn’t the same as what you’ve been doing,” Clint said. “Barn. You know this. Serious undercover like this? You’re gonna have to get them to trust you. You’re gonna have to be a mobster. I don’t know if that’s the best way to get a good night’s sleep.”

“Then at least I’d be haunted by something I did instead of something I didn’t do!” Barney said, his voice rising before he cut himself off with a glance at his son. “I’m tired of waiting for someone else to do good in the world,” he said, quieter. “It’s time I stepped up and did my share.” 

Nobody said anything for a moment, and the only sound was Cooper, babbling happily as he chased smooshed banana chunks across the tray of his high chair.

“Laura?” Molly said, at last. “You’ve been very quiet. What do you think about all this?”

Laura shook her head, a bittersweet half-smile on her face. “I married a hero,” she said, quietly. “And I always knew that he wasn’t the kind who only ever rescues one person. I think I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for a long time.” She leaned harder into Barney’s side, her head dropping to rest on his square shoulder, and Clint felt uneasy witnessing the naked love on his brother’s face as he looked down at her.

“I’ll be careful, hon,” Barney said. “Lori. I swear to you, I’ll be careful.”

“I’ll help,” Clint blurted. “I mean, they’re teaching me all this spy shi—stuff, right? It’s gotta be good for something. Barney can use our old codes, our old drops, and let me know when he’ll be doing something real visible with the mob, right? And then I can come to Goose Lake and play Charlie home on leave or something. Like establishing an alibi, you know?” 

“The two of you are like peas in a pod,” Molly agreed. “If it weren’t for the hair you could pass as twins.”

“So we get Barney a wig,” Clint said. “And then sometimes he can be Charlie, and sometimes it’ll be me. Two guys, one name. Nothing to connect to Barton and even less to connect to whatever Barney’s mob name is.”

“Bauman,” Barney said. “It’s Ricky Bauman.”

“Seriously? Isn’t that a little on the nose?”

“It was the first thing I thought of!” Barney said. “It was supposed to be a three-week job, I didn’t know I’d have to join the mob as him.”

“All the more reason to make sure your real name comes nowhere near, I guess,” Clint said. He sighed. “I hate the thought of you doing this,” he told Barney. “But I get where you’re coming from. If it was me, I know I’d feel the same way. You can count on me.”

“Us, too,” said Rich. “You’re family, of course we’ll help however we can.”

“I—thank you,” Barney said, his voice a little thick. “Seriously. Thank you.”

“Well. Now that that’s settled, how about I take my little man here out to play so you two can have some alone time to work out logistics or… whatever?” Clint said, getting up and trying to figure out a way to get Cooper out of the high chair without covering himself in goo. “Wow, buddy, you’ve got that everywhere.”

Cooper laughed, probably at the face Clint was making. “Da!” he said, pounding on his tray. Mashed banana splattered. “Da da da da da!”

“No, bud, I’m Uncle Clint, dada’s over there,” Clint said, searching around for the chair latch.

“Huh,” Laura said.

“Uh-oh,” Barney said. “I know that tone. That’s the ‘I-have-a-plan’ tone.”

“Hear me out,” Laura said slowly. “We’re talking about the two of you both taking turns being Charlie—being Coop’s father, as far as the neighbors go.”

“Yeah,” Clint said.

“Which is fine now, because he’s not talking, but I’m not sure I like the whole plan resting on a toddler remembering to call you “Uncle Clint” at home and “Dad” in public,” Laura said.

“Yeah, good point,” Barney said. “So what are you suggesting?”

“We’re going to be teaching him what to call you anyway,” she said. “So… what if we teach him to call you ‘papa’ and Clint ‘daddy’? That way, we’ll know who he means, but if anyone outside the family hears, they’ll just think we use both.”

“It’s smart,” Rich said. “But are you sure? It might be… difficult, to hear your son calling another man father.”

“You know I’d never try to take your place, Barn,” Clint said. “And I’ll understand if you don’t want to. But Laura’s got a good point. If we don’t do it this way, we’ll need to think of some other way around the problem.”

Barney was quiet for a while, eyes fixed on Clint and Cooper. Finally, he sighed. “Laura’s right,” he said. “It’s the best way to do it. And… I think it will help, when I’m gone, knowing that when my boy doesn’t have his papa, he’ll at least have a daddy.”

“It’s just names,” Clint said, laying a hand on Barney’s shoulder. “He’ll always know who his father is, Barn. Me and Laura’ll make sure of that.” 

“Yeah.” Barney sniffed. “Well, you better.” He cleared his throat. “Well, go on, it’s time you figured out how to get strained peaches out of a baby’s ears.”

“He’ll probably have some in his diaper, too,” Laura said. “And make sure to check his belly button.”

“Ugh.” Clint opened the high chair and scooped the baby out, perching him on his hip. He’d just wash his clothes later. “Well, come on, sport,” he told Cooper. “Time to get you cleaned up, and then you and Unc—Daddy can go play on the swings, you like that?”

“Da!” Cooper said. 

“Yeah,” Clint said, carrying him upstairs. His stomach was flipping over; what had he gotten himself into? “Yeah, that’s me.”

At least it was only for a year.

Barnard Residence

Goose Lake, Iowa

2016

“So what happened?” Phil asked. “Obviously, the timeline got extended.”

“Barney was too good at his job,” Clint said, laughing a little. “Both his jobs. He kept getting promoted in the organization, but also kept giving the feds enough intel and evidence to keep making busts, prevent some seriously bad shit from happening. Every time he’d be ready to get out, there was always one more shipment to find, one more murderer to catch. He’d come visit and leave here determined to get an exit plan, but then he’d get back to Vegas and learn about something terrible that only he could stop. Before we knew it, he’d been in for years.”

“And you’d spent years acting married, even though you really weren’t,” Phil said. “You flirted, maybe, but it was always casual; you never took anyone home, never dated. I would have noticed.”

Clint shrugged. “I didn’t want to risk it,” he said. “I mean, even people from Goose Lake travel, and post their pictures online, and gossip’s practically the official pastime in small towns like this. ‘I saw a guy who looked kind of like Charlie when I was on vacation in New York’ is a lot less exciting of a story than ‘Laura’s husband is cheating on her in the big city,’ especially if it was with another man, which, you know,” he shot Phil a heated look, “it would have been. I just thought, better safe than sorry, right? And every time we talked, Barney was sure that this would be the time he’d get out for good.”

“You could have told me, though,” Phil said, finally voicing the thing that bothered him the most, especially now that he knew his feelings had been reciprocated all along. “Not at first, I know, but did you really think you couldn’t trust me to keep your secret?”

“Of course I trust you, that was never the issue,” Clint said at once, and Phil felt a little knot of hurt in his chest loosen and slip away at the certainty in his voice. “It was—I couldn’t trust myself, you know? I’m not exactly good at moderation.” He tightened his arm around Phil’s shoulders. “At first, yeah, maybe I could have dated you and kept it a secret, but back then we still thought Barney would be home in less than a year, so I thought it would be better to wait until I could be honest with you. After Vegas I was actually really worried, because I was pretty sure you were going to ask me out—which you totally were—and I was trying to figure out if I could convince you I was in the closet or something, or if I should try to think of a way to put you off for a little while without making you think I wasn’t into you. But then the next time I saw you, you told me that you were my new handler, and you’d pulled way back on the flirting, and I thought, okay, cool, he isn’t going to ask because he’s kind of my boss, now.” He looked down at his scuffed sneakers, sheepish. “And then once we realized that Barney wasn’t getting to come home any time soon, I knew I had to figure something out. By then I’d gotten to know you better. I knew I wanted everything with you, if we could swing it. A real life together, like Barney had with Laura.”

Phil bit his lip. “Then why didn’t you say something then?”

“I just…” Clint shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I can be kind of superstitious about some things. Circus, you know?”

“I know.” Phil had noticed. Had taken notes on it, in fact.

“I started feeling like I’d jinx it, if I tried to move too fast, tried to push for something before I could offer you everything.” Clint’s voice got quieter. “You didn’t deserve to feel like a dirty secret. I did start trying to sort of feel you out about things, and you… well, we talked about that. So I thought we had an unspoken agreement, that we were putting things on hold but we’d pick it up when we could.”

Phil blinked. “That doesn’t—Clint, I dated people during that time. You met some of the people I dated. Did you think I was… I don’t even know what to call it. Violating the terms of our tacit potential relationship?”

“You never looked at any of them the way you looked at me,” Clint said. “I figured you were lonely, you know? I never wanted that for you. I hoped that they were making you happy.” He looked away, clearing his throat. “I did get kind of worried about Audrey, though,” he admitted. “I really wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t. She was too nice. And for a while there it looked like maybe she could give you what you needed. I’d have been an asshole to get in the way of that, especially when all I’d have to offer in exchange were secrets and lies.”

“I thought you disapproved, but I was afraid to ask why,” Phil confessed. “You aren’t wrong; I was trying to get over what I thought was my hopeless infatuation for my unavailable friend. I was trying to make things work with her, and I didn’t want to use you as an excuse.” He sighed. “I’m not proud of the way I acted, then,” he said. “It was unfair to her. She could tell that I was never quite ready to commit to her; it’s why she moved, in the end. She thought it was the job, and that was part of it, but mostly it was because I didn’t really want to get over you.”

“I wasn’t proud of myself, but I was relieved when that happened,” Clint said. “I realized I’d almost waited too long and lost my chance. So I decided I’d give you some time—I didn’t want to come in and catch you on the rebound—and then I’d finally talk to you.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Right around the time I was gear up to do it… well, aliens.” Clint waved his hand in a gesture that might have been meant to convey “giant alien death robot” or possibly “intestinally-hazardous food truck hoagies.”

And after that, Phil had been… gone.

“I hated myself, after New York,” Clint said, turning his body in to face Phil, his fingers tightening around Phil’s hand. “I’d been going around just, just letting things ride, thinking that there was always more time, once work was different, once Barney got back. Even after Audrey, I was still taking my time, waiting for the perfect moment. But I’d been fooling myself. I’d been letting myself stay where it was comfortable. I’d risked everything, and I lost everything. I’d never even—it wasn’t just the chance to be with you, I’d lost you.” Clint’s voice broke, and Phil pressed into his side. “God, Phil, I never felt anything that hurt that bad. You weren’t just my friend, you were… my future, you know? When shit got bad I had these fucking daydreams, I’d like imagine what kind of place we’d live in together, what side of the bed you’d want. I was a mess.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Nat thought I was trying to get myself killed,” he admitted, and Phil stiffened in horror.

“Clint—”

“I wasn’t!” he said, hastily. “I would never. I got people depending on me, you know? But I was just… I was messed up, Phil. I was so tired. I wasn’t sleeping good, never had much appetite. I was getting slow, missing shit I should have caught. Nat went to Fury, got me put on admin leave, and came  an told me she was taking me away somewhere, and I could pick where but I couldn’t say no. I gave her this address and told her to take me home, figured keeping the secret hadn’t done me much good so far.”

“Was she angry?”

“Nat? Nah. Mostly I think she was impressed I’d managed to keep it quiet. She understands about compartmentalization. Maybe too much, sometimes.”

“I asked after you,” Phil said. “I know we talked about this, but as soon as I was re-activated I asked Fury. He said you were doing well.”

“Eventually,” Clint said. “I’d at least started figuring out who I was without you, without SHIELD. When you called me…”

“I know you were angry,” Phil said. “You had every right to be.”

“It was like when you’ve been out in the cold and you start to warm up again,” Clint said. “It hurt so bad, but at the same time I felt more alive than I had in… I mean, I was hardly blameless in the whole secret-keeping arena, you know? And I was so fucking happy to have you back, to know you were alive even if you weren’t really in my life much anymore. I made up my mind, the next time we got to spend time together, I was gonna tell you about Barney and see if you’d be okay with…”

“Secret trysts?” Phil suggested.

Clint laughed wetly. “Something like that,” he agreed. “But then shit kept happening to keep us apart, and I started to wonder if maybe the universe was trying to tell me something. Barney and Laura both thought I was being a dumbass, by the way,” he added. “They thought I should just fly up to your base and kiss you like the end of a movie or something.”

“How much of this did you tell them?” Phil said, not sure how he felt about knowing that two strangers had known so much more about his love life than he had.

“Pretty much everything,” Clint said. “I mean, not anything, er, explicit. But who else did I have to tell? They were the only people in my life who actually knew about my whole life. I had to talk to someone. Are you mad?”

“I’m a little embarrassed,” Phil said, “but I’ll get over it. After all, it sounds like they were on my side. It’s almost a pity you didn’t take them up on their advice, though I admit I likely would have been too shocked to respond appropriately. And I’m sure the team would have been entertained.”

“I, ah. I could do it now,” Clint said quietly, his body gone still. “Kiss you, I mean.”

Phil looked at him. He looked different than the cocky young rookie that had enchanted him in Vegas; he was broader in the shoulder, his face more weathered, his body language more sure. But his beautiful eyes were the same, the brave bright spirit that Phil had loved so long was the same. Phil raised his other hand to cup Clint’s cheek, thankful for the sophisticated sensors that let him be confident that he wouldn’t use too much force by mistake, and pulled him gently into a kiss.

Phil had imagined kissing Clint a lot of different ways, over the years. Generally, he’d envisioned it as a whirlwind of adrenaline, perhaps after a near-miss on a mission; one of them pushing the other against a wall, maybe, or the side of a tank, biting desperation and grasping, guilty hands. This was nothing like that.

Clint sighed against Phil’s lips, his body going pliant and heavy against Phil’s side as his mouth fell softly open and his eyes fluttered shut. Phil took his time with this, their first kiss, feeling the shape of Clint’s lips, plush beneath his own. He waited until his own lips were buzzing before deepening the kiss, pulling the sweet pout of Clint’s bottom lip between his teeth and sucking it. Clint moaned, reaching across their bodies to urge Phil closer, and the swing creaked as they shifted.

“Ewwwww, more kissing,” A small voice said, startlingly close to Phil’s ear. He froze, his tongue still in the middle of exploring Clint’s incisors. “Everyone is just kissing today.”

Phil opened his eyes as he felt Clint drawing back a few inches. He shifted his hips a little, trying to angle himself away from their unexpected spectator.

“Lila,” Clint said, his voice suspiciously level. “Me and Uncle Phil are busy right now. Why don’t you go inside and play Legos.” 

She heaved a sigh that seemed to come from her very toes. “Mommy and Papa are kissing in the living room,” she said, voice glum. “They said we should go play in the barn, but the barn is boring, Daddy.”

Phil started laughing; he couldn’t help it. He leaned in for one more quick kiss, then reluctantly straightened back up. “Later,” he mouthed, and Clint chuckled ruefully.

“Okay, jellybean,” he said, running his hand over his hair, rumpled by Phil’s eager fingers. “What do you want to play?”

“Can we shoot arrows?” 

Clint’s face went soft and fond. “Yeah,” he said. “Come on, Phil, let’s go shoot some arrows.” He leaned in, his breath so close to Phil’s earlobe that Phil shivered. “And later tonight, Barney and Laura can pay back the favor.”

Barney and Laura came outside an hour later, flushed and rumpled and looking so transparently happy it felt intrusive to look at their faces.

“Home looks good on you, Barn,” Clint said softly, curling his hand around Phil’s.

“Thanks,” Barney said, pulling Laura a little tighter into his side and raising an eyebrow at their entwined fingers. “Not sure I really believe it yet, but… seriously, Clint. Thank you.”

“And you too, Phil,” Laura added. “I know you weren’t trying to, but… from where I’m standing you rescued my husband just as much as any of those other people. The FBI was never going to help him leave. They’d have left him there until he pushed his luck too far and got killed. I thought—” her voice wavered a bit before she firmed it up—“I thought the best we could hope for was that he’d find a way to flee the country, that maybe we could eventually join him somewhere with no extradition. I never dreamed that he’d be able to really come home.”

“I’m the one who owes you, Barney,” Phil said. “I thought we were going to lose Daisy. I know the FBI would have preferred you kill her to preserve your cover. I can never thank you enough for making a different call.”

“That kid’s phenomenal,” Barney agreed. “I’ve seen stone-cold made men who didn’t have half her guts. You should bring her with you, next time you come.”

Phil couldn’t help smiling, warmed by the implications of that next time. “I’ve helped to bring a lot of agents in from the cold,” Phil said quietly. “But I can honestly say that I’ve never been as happy to do it as I am now. You deserve this; all of you.” 

“I know you probably have to get back soon,” Barney said. “But we’ve got plenty of room, and we’d like a chance to get to know you a little.”

Phil raised an eyebrow, though he was relieved that he wouldn’t have to brave the insalubrious-looking motor lodge they’d passed on the way into town. “You didn’t get enough of me during the debrief?”

“Enough of the agent? Sure,” Barney said. “The guy we want to meet is the one who turned my baby brother into a Lifetime Original Movie.”

“I’m not that bad,” Clint said, leaning against Phil’s back and resting his chin on Phil’s shoulder. He was sun-warm and a little sweaty, and the rise and fall of his chest through Phil’s suit coat felt amazing.

Barney snorted. “You’re exactly that bad,” he said. “You were one Spelling away from being played by Patrick Duffy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Phil said, feeling a little giddy. “Patrick Duffy’s too old. They’d get someone younger and make him take his shirt off a lot. Plus, the whole thing where he was living a double life and the man who was really married was actually his brother who looks just like him? That sounds more like a soap opera to me.”

“Oh God, they’re teaming up now,” Clint moaned, slumping more heavily against Phil’s back. “Laura, I’m doomed.”

“You’ve been doomed for a long time, hon,” she told him. “I seem to recall Thanksgiving of… was it 2005?”

Clint ducked his face into Phil’s shoulder. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, muffled.

“I’ve always wanted to ask,” Laura continued, eyes dancing. “Did you really subdue a terrorist using a chicken leg?”

“It was a turkey leg,” Phil said, keeping his face and voice unruffled. “We were undercover at a Renaissance Faire.”

“You know,” Clint said, “When you say it, I can actually hear the silent ‘e.’ How do you do that?”

“It’s a gift,” Phil said, and reached around behind himself to give Clint a little squeeze of reassurance.

The fact that his hand landed on Clint’s ass was entirely coincidental.

Supper that night stretched out for several hours, the main course turning into pie turning into several pots of coffee as the Bartons reconnected, catching up on everything from school projects and scouting badges to developmental milestones to an apparently perennial discussion of whether the tractor should be replaced or repaired. Phil got pulled into the conversation, too; Barney was very curious about Daisy, and once Laura and Clint had heard the (edited, so as to be suitable for little ears) tale of how she and Barney had escaped from the underground base, Phil was made to promise that he’d bring her with him the next time he came to visit. The promise of there being a next time, coupled with the way Clint pulled their chairs close together, slinging his arm around Phil’s shoulders and insinuating his foot between Phil’s ankles, made him feel warm from head to toe. It satisfied a part of him that he hadn’t realized was empty, to not only know about Clint’s secret life but be invited to be part of it. 

When Laura and Barney had finally collected their sleepy children and headed upstairs, he and Clint sat for a moment in companionable silence, finishing their last cups of coffee.

“So here’s the bad news,” Clint said. “My room shares a wall with Lila, and she’s a real light sleeper. And the bed in the guest room squeaks every time you breathe too hard.”

“I’m not expecting anything,” Phil said, though he couldn’t deny he was disappointed. Clint had been pretty clear about his intentions earlier. “Just being here is enough; I can wait for more.”

“I’m not sure I can,”  Clint said. “Twelve years, Phil. That’s a hell of a lot of foreplay.”

“So what do you suggest?” Phil asked. 

“Hm.” Clint looked thoughtful. “Couch pulls out, but sound carries pretty well up the stairs. There’s the hayloft—”

“Remember Châteaurenard?”

“—not the hayloft, roger. What about the pasture? We don’t have any stock right now. We could take a blanket out there, look at the stars.”

“That sounds… nice, actually,” Phil said. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

“Why don’t you go up and change,” Clint said. “I’ll find a blanket.”

“Sounds good,” Phil said, and then he had to kiss Clint’s smiling face before he made his way upstairs.

His stomach fluttered with nerves as he changed his clothes, pulling on his favorite battered jeans and a henley; he still wasn’t accustomed enough to the prosthetic to have incorporated short sleeves back into his wardrobe. He studied his reflection in the spotted gilt-framed mirror. He looked tired, but overall pretty normal, and he felt strange about it. As many earth-shattering revelations as he’d experienced that day, shouldn’t it show somehow? He didn’t look like a man whose world had been turned on its head. He didn’t look like a man whose most cherished secret wish had just been granted. He looked like a business traveler making the best of an unexpected flight delay.

He looked, truth be told, like a very good spy.

He was gripped, for a moment, with something like terror. After all this time, after all the secrets, could he and Clint really let everything go and just… be together? Was there even a place in their lives that could intersect anymore? Would the habits of more than a decade prove too entrenched to be broken?

He shook his head, wishing he could shake off his half-formed anxieties as easily, and made his way downstairs.

“Hey, you’re just in time,” Clint said. He was speaking quietly, probably out of courtesy to the rest of the family upstairs, but the intimacy of it sent a tremor down Phil’s spine. “I found us some supplies.” He held up a large, battered picnic basket. Phil could see a faded quilt peeking out from under the lid.

Phil smiled at him; he couldn’t help it. “Lead on,” he said, and then he took Clint’s offered hand and followed him out into the clear summer night.

“We keep thinking about getting some stock,” Clint said, picking his way unerringly over the uneven yard. “Besides the chickens, I mean. Dairy goats, maybe, or alpacas. But it’s only Laura living here full time and the kids aren’t really up to that much in the way of farm chores yet.” He stopped, as though struck by a thought. “Huh. I guess maybe that’ll change now, depending what Barney decides to do. Maybe the feds’ll pension him off and he’ll go full-on farmer, who knows.” He shook his head, clearly visible in the light of the full moon. “Weird to think about it, after all this time. Barney being home.”

“I imagine it must be.”

“I mean, it’s good weird, don’t get me wrong. It’s just…”

“That the goal you’ve been working toward for years of your life, that you used to imagine happening, has finally happened, and now your world looks totally different,” Phil said, softly.

“Yeah.” Clint’s voice was just as soft, but awed. “Yeah, that’s it. How do you always know these things?”

“I felt like that when the Avengers came together,” Phil said. “In a way, I feel like that now.”

“Phil, I—” Clint said, then stopped, cleared his throat. “I’m sorry that you thought I didn’t love you,” he said. “I’m sorry if… if I hurt you, just assuming things. But I can’t help feeling, um. Honored, I guess. That it’s that important to you, you know? That you care.”

“I’ve always cared.”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “I know. I think I could always tell. Probably that’s part of the reason I didn’t just come out and say it; I thought you could tell with me, too.”

If Clint had been anyone else, Phil would have burned with humiliation to know how transparent he had been, to know that his secret hopes, his most cherished dreams, were so clear despite all his efforts to keep them hidden. It was Clint, though, and Phil found himself strangely content to be so known by him.

“Well,” he said, trying for  his usual dry tone, “you know what they say about assumptions.”

Clint bumped their shoulders together. “They make an ass out of you and… umption?”

“Something like that,” Phil said, and he had to lean over and kiss Clint’s cheek, creased with smiles.

Clint led them through a gate and out into the pasture. The grass came up to Phil’s shins, thick and plush underfoot, making a soft underlay for the quilt that Clint pulled out of the basket and spread on the ground.They sat beside each other, and Clint rummaged in the basket again and came up with provisions: baggies of cookies and little boxes of milk.

There was a little light pollution on the horizon, from the direction of Goose Lake’s tiny downtown, but for the most part the sky was clear and vivid, the stars pricked out distinctly and the light of the moon casting sharp shadows.

“I don’t usually get to see the stars like this unless I’m on a mission,” Phil said. He leaned back on his hands, tilting his face to the sky, so deep and bright it was almost dizzying. Clint mirrored him, his body a warm line against Phil’s side.

“Do you know the stars?” he asked. “I mean, the constellations and such?”

“Only what I need to navigate,” Phil admitted. “Orion, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper. The north star.”

“When me and Barn were kids, we had a neighbor with a telescope,” Clint said. “Old guy, I think he’d worked for the county. Sometimes we’d sneak out of the house at night and go over to his backyard. He’d let us look, sometimes. Tell us the stories. He was… nice.”

“I’m glad.”

“I would try to get Barney to tell me the stories again, later, after we… left. But he couldn’t remember. So he started making up new ones.”

“Oh?”

Clint’s voice warmed. “Yeah. It got to be kind of our thing, after a while. At night, after our work was done, sometimes we’d go lay out in the bed of one of the trucks and look up at the stars and make up our own constellations and stories to go with them. We had this whole system worked out.” He chuckled. “Came in handy, later; we used it to encode information, stay in touch after Cedar Rapids and then when we were freelance, after the Army.”

“Do you still remember them?” Phil asked. “Your stars?”

“Mostly.” Clint lay back on the blanket, holding out an arm. “Here, put your head on my shoulder.”

Phil moved close, resting on Clint’s solid strength. Clint curved his arm around him, fingers stroking Phil’s bicep through his shirt sleeve.

“That’s Orion, I know, but when we were kids, we called him the Ringmaster,” Clint said, pointing with his free arm. “Mr. Carson’s son was ringmaster when we were there. I guess he was probably 25 or so. He had a string of girlfriends and hookups, rode a motorcycle and wore this leather jacket… we thought he was the coolest guy on earth.”

“That explains so much,” Phil said, hiding his smile in Clint’s shoulder. Clint thumped his arm lightly, laughing, his chest shaking under Phil’s head.

“Yeah, probably,” he said. His voice was warm, rumbling under Phil’s ear, and Phil wanted to hear it exactly like that every day for the rest of time.

“Tell me more?” he asked.

“That’s the Fortune Teller,” Clint said, tracing out an outline with his finger. “Miss Louise was her name, though she used Madame Zorah for work. She did the crystal ball and the cards and the palm reading, and she helped with the costumes and the camp kitchen. She really liked kids, though she never had any herself. I dunno why, I asked her one time and she got real sad looking, so I never asked again. But she was always looking out for Barney and me and the other kids. She’d find things for us to do to help her, you know? I’m sure we weren’t actually that much help, but she’d make you feel like you were really contributing.”

“She sounds like a wonderful person,” Phil said softly. 

“Yeah,” Clint said. He was quiet for a little while, then drew a deep breath. “I never really had any grandparents,” he said. “Pop’s folks were dead before I was born, and I guess my mom’s people disowned her for running off with him—can’t really blame them, honestly. But Miss Louise was probably the closest thing I had to a grandma, back then. I’m sure she got tired of me always hanging off her, but she never let on.”

Phil imagined it, Clint tiny and skinny and hungry for affection, and his heart clenched. “It sounds like maybe she was happy to have you around,” he said gently. 

Clint’s arm tightened a little around him. “I hope so,” he said.

“I’m sure she was.” Phil rested his hand on Clint’s chest, taking comfort in the steady beat of his heart. “I know I am.”

Clint traced lightly over the back of Phil’s hand, sensitive fingertips mapping out the lines of tendon and vein. “I dunno how I got so lucky,” he said. “But I’m sure as hell not going to waste it this time.”

All at once, Phil felt swept away, dizzy and overcome with emotion; hope and awe and disbelief and joy, all mixed together and through a wild, consuming love for the man beside him. They had done so much, endured so much, and yet they were still there, lying snugged up on a blanket in a field in the middle of Iowa, looking at the stars. “You’re so amazing,” he blurted out.

Clint’s arm tightened around him. “Phil,” he said, helpless sounding. “I don’t…”

“You just—you’re—I respect you so much,” Phil said, groping for the right words to express the tide of feeling. “I l—love you, and I have for so long, but it’s not just that, it’s that you’re so loyal and brave and clever and fun. You—you’re a beautiful person, and I never thought you—” and he wasn’t sure what else would have come spilling out of his mouth if Clint hadn’t made a soft, tremulous sound and rolled over on top of Phil, kissing him like air was a concern for other people.

“You say these things,” he gasped out between kisses, “you say these things, Phil, like you don’t know how much I’ve always—like you aren’t everything, like I haven’t dreamed of you and wanted you for all this time.” Their legs slotted together, Clint letting his hips press down into Phil’s, and Phil could feel Clint’s cock swelling behind the fly of his jeans. He arched up into Clint’s body, reveling in the heat and weight of him, real and present, so much better than he had imagined.

“I can hardly believe it,” Phil whispered. “Even now, even here, I keep expecting to wake up.”

“Believe it,” Clint groaned, skating his lips along Phil’s jawbone, setting his teeth to the skin just too softly to mar it. “Believe me.” 

Phil tilted his head back as far as he could, baring his neck, his hands fisting in the back of Clint’s soft cotton shirt. The grass rustled underneath his head.

“You can leave marks,” he said, then felt his face go hot; he’d never—he didn’t usually—

“How are you even real,” Clint said, and pushed his face into the soft skin of Phil’s throat,  mouthing at the tendons, leaving a trail of sensitized, stinging patches. “How’d you even know I—fuck, Phil, I could eat you alive.”

“Do it,” Phil blurted. He was drowning in Clint, dizzy with him, his wet mouth and solid body and clutching hands, his dear face, the only thing between Phil and a blanket of stars. “I want you to, Clint, I want everything. Anything. Please,” and he was begging now, his tongue running off without any consultation with his brain. “Please, Clint, don’t make me wait—I can’t wait another night to feel you come.”

“F-ffuck,” Clint gasped, “fuck, Phil, yes, of course, take—we need to be naked,” and he reared up, pulling his shirt off and tossing it over his shoulder into the darkness. “Come on, Phil, naked,” he said again, shoving at his jeans, and Phil tore his eyes away from the mesmerizing sight of Clint’s torso limned in moonlight to wriggle out of his own shirt and curse five generations of ancestors of the man who invented the button fly.

A short and undignified interlude later, they were mostly divested of clothing, and Phil pulled at Clint’s arms, urging him to lay back down. The feel of Clint’s skin settling over his was a shock of pleasure, all hot and silky and perfect, and all he could do was arch into Clint’s weight, his vision full of stars, every nerve firing yes. 

“You feel so good,” Clint said into his neck, alternating words with eager, nibbling kisses. “So good, fuck, I knew you’d be so good—ah!”

Phil tightened his grip on Clint’s ass and pulled him down as he bucked up again, their wet cocks skidding together between their bodies, rough and urgent, almost painful, perfect. He was hot where Clint was touching him, cool everywhere else, the clover-scented wind raising goosebumps on his bare skin. “Yes,” he hissed into Clint’s ear, the sweat-damp spikes of Clint’s hair tickling his face. “Yes, come on, fuck me, make me feel it in the morning—” and then Clint cut him off, surging into a rough kiss, swallowing his words and pulling Phil against him with all his considerable strength. They moved together, unified in purpose, rutting desperately hard.

Phil had tried not to think of Clint this way—it had felt wrong, like taking something that wasn’t his—but he was only human, and there had been lonely nights when he had given in to his baser urges, had put himself behind a locked door and allowed himself to fantasize about how it might have been, in another world where Clint was his. He’d thought of so many scenarios, of showers and safehouses, his apartment, Clint’s apartment, the back seat of a car… but nothing like this, never like this, pinned down to the ground in a field humping like a teenager. It was all the better for it; it was real. He could never have imagined how Clint would feel, how he would look, eyes wild and breath heaving. Phil had never felt like this with a lover, needy and greedy and grasping; only the fact that Clint was meeting him with just as much urgency kept him from pulling away.

“You’re really mine,” Phil said, blood fizzing with wonder as his orgasm coiled in his balls.

“I always was,” Clint said, and Phil was distantly conscious that he made an embarrassingly loud sound as he started to come, each pulse feeling like it was coming from his toes, long like stretched taffy and twice as sweet. Clint cried out, thin and high, and collapsed onto him hard, his hips jerking as he drove his cock into the wet slick space between their bodies until he came too, biting down on Phil’s collarbone as he shook and shook and settled. 

They lay there for a while half-stunned and panting, their hammering hearts gradually slowing back to some semblance of normal. Finally, just when Phil was starting to think about maybe letting go to stretch out his cramped limbs, Clint sighed, nuzzling apologetically at the tender spot where he’d bitten.

“I hate to interrupt the afterglow,” he said, and the roughness in his voice sent a shiver down Phil’s spine. “But I think I’m getting mosquito bites on my ass.”

Phil chuckled, brushing a kiss into Clint’s hair. “We can’t have that,” he said, and his own voice was pretty wrecked too. “I’ve got dibs.”

Clint laughed, the motion sending happy little aftershocks through Phil’s sensitive cock. “That you do,” he agreed. He kissed Phil again, soft, lingering little presses of lip, as tender now as he had been greedy before, and then got up on his hands and knees, making a face as their bellies peeled apart with a sticky noise.

“Dare I hope you packed some napkins or something in the picnic basket?” They’d fucked themselves right off the blanket; Phil could feel blades of grass prickling against his bare shoulders, the sharp green scent of crushed plants filling his nose. He couldn’t bring himself to care much.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Clint shot back, rummaging in the basket and coming up with a tub of baby wipes. 

“Full marks for preparedness, agent,” Phil teased. 

Clint chuckled as he pulled out a few wipes. He handed some to Phil and scrubbed at his own belly with the others. “Do you see my shirt anywhere?”

“Nope,” Phil said, not looking away from where Clint was kneeling, still astride Phil’s left thigh. “What a pity.”

Clint grinned at him, eyes crinkled in delight. “Why, Agent Coulson, I never,” he said, laying a hand dramatically over his heart. The effect was dampened somewhat by his handful of baby wipes. Phil couldn’t help reaching up to trace the shape of his beautiful smile, and Clint turned his face into Phil’s hand, kissing his palm.

They never did find Clint’s shirt, finally giving up and stumbling back to the house half-dressed and come-drunk, unwilling to let go of each other for longer than it took to open the door. Phil pulled Clint into the guest room, unwilling to part, and they settled into the bed with as little squeaking as possible, curling up together under the soft sheets and patchwork quilt.

The next morning, they were both covered with marks; Phil’s throat was mottled with hickeys and Clint’s back and ass were dotted with mosquito bites, as well as a distinct bruise on one cheek where Phil had gotten over-excited and squeezed a bit too hard with his prosthetic hand. He wanted to feel bad about it, but it was hard when Clint kept pressing on the mark and going all soft-eyed and smug.

Barney took one look at Phil when they came down to breakfast and burst into loud, honking laughter. Clint just rolled his eyes at his brother, pushing his chair closer to Phil’s and slinging an arm around the back of it, brushing a kiss over Phil’s ear and whispering, “worth it.”

Phil couldn’t help but agree.

The Barton Farm

2017

“I can just drop you off,” Daisy told Clint for the third time, fidgeting as Phil unloaded their luggage from the SUV. “I’m sure there’s a hotel nearby that has wifi, I can work on those candidate reports, stay out of your hair.”

“Daisy,” Clint said, keeping his voice low. “Listen, Phil hasn’t ever met the Davises before, and just between you and me, I think he’s a little nervous about it. He needs someone from his side of the family here to back him up.” 

“I’m not—” Daisy started, her cheeks flushing.

“Uh huh,” Clint said. “Sure. Because it was someone else that he decided wasn’t getting enough micronutrients and started making superfood smoothies for.”

“He just needs to make sure that I’m up to the job,” Daisy said, looking at her shoes. “Jemma says I need special supplements. Because of my powers.”

“And yet somehow all the other agents with powers are left to muddle through alone, smoothieless,” Clint pointed out. “Anyway, Lila would be heartbroken if you left. She thinks you’re the coolest. After you were here last Christmas, she’s decided that since she was horribly cheated out of having a sister when Nate turned out to be a boy, she’s adopting you.”

“She didn’t even talk to me at Christmas,” Daisy said. “And I was only here for two hours before we got called out for that guy who developed rage-beams at his family reunion.”

“She gets shy,” Clint explained. “But ‘Daisy and Papa escape from the bad guys’ is like her favorite bedtime story ever. You’re her hero.” 

“I—really?”

“Totally,” Clint said. “Don’t worry, we’ll try to keep her from pestering you too much.” 

“Okay, fine, I’ll stay,” Daisy said. “But just for foster kid solidarity, not because you’re right.”

“Awesome,” Clint said, holding up his fist for her to bump, which she did, rolling her eyes, though a reluctant smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Satisfied, Clint went around to the back and took some of the bags from Phil, taking the opportunity to steal a quick kiss behind the tailgate. “Daisy’s nervous,” he murmured into Phil’s ear, noticing with delight that it made him shiver a little. “Do me a favor and help keep her from getting too overwhelmed? I know we Bartons can be a little much.”

Phil smiled at him, eyes going soft. “I think it’s nice, how excited the kids are to see her,” he said. “But I’ll try to run interference if it looks like she needs a break.” 

The screen door slammed, and Lila came running down the porch steps with a joyous shriek. “They’re here!” she yelled over her shoulder, before flinging herself at Clint. He dropped the suitcases he was holding and scooped her up, pulling her close and burying his nose in her hair, smelling the sweet scent of her, baby shampoo and hay and sunshine. She squeezed her little arms around his neck as tight as she could. “Daddy, I missed you,” she said. “You haven’t been here in forever.”

He swallowed down a pang and kissed her chubby cheek. “We were here for your birthday in March, jellybean.”

“That was so long ago!” she said, then pushed back a little. “Okay, put me down now, I gotta say hi to Uncle Phil and Daisy.”

He set her down reluctantly, and she ran over to demand her tribute of hugs. The door banged again, and he looked over and grinned to see Cooper coming down the stairs.

“Hey, bud,” Clint said, accepting Coop’s quick, embarrassed hug; he was starting to get to the age where he thought he was too old for such things. “Man, did you grow again? I swear you’re taller than you were in March.”

He smiled and ducked his head, looking shyly pleased. “Yeah, Mom had to cut off some of my jeans into shorts for the summer,” he said. 

“That’s her side of the family coming out,” Clint told him. “Me and your Pop run more to shoulders than height.”

“Which is just as well, considering your lines of work,” Phil said. “Hi, Cooper.”

“Hey, Uncle Phil. Thanks for the comic books you sent.”

“You’re welcome,” Phil said, looking pleased. “I hope you enjoy them.”

“Yeah, they’re really cool! My favorite is the one where Doctor Terror makes evil clones of everyone on America Force, and they all have to team up to defeat their greatest weaknesses…”

Clint smiled, glad to see the two of them getting along, and went to check on Daisy. Lila had waylaid her around the other side of the SUV, and seemed to be narrating the story of an epic play battle that she and Cooper had fought with all their toys. He caught her eye, and shot her the hand signal for “extraction,” raising his eyebrows to make it a question. She shook her head, making the signal for “hold,” so he figured she was okay. He went back to pick up his bags off the ground and made his way inside to look for the rest of the family.

He found his brother in the living room, kicked back in the recliner with a sleeping Nate starfished across his chest.

“Hey,” Clint said, keeping his voice low.

Barney smiled. “Hey,” he said. “I’d get up, but…”

“Nah, man, raincheck,” Clint told him, crossing the room to ghost a kiss over Nate’s soft hair. “He’s getting so big.”

“He’ll be disappointed he missed you getting here,” Barney said. “All he’s been talking about all day is seeing Daddy and Uncle Phil and Daisy.”

Clint swallowed hard, a lump rising in his throat. He let his hand rest on Nate’s back, taking comfort in the soft rise and fall. “Barn, I know the others are just used to it, but… you don’t have to teach him to call me that. I mean, you’re back, now. He’s got his dad with him, he doesn’t need—”

“You better not be about to say what I think you’re about to say,” Barney interrupted. “Clint. You are every bit as much their dad now as you ever were. Just as much as I am. You—” he cleared his throat, taking a deep, steadying breath. “I know how much you sacrificed for us. I know how you put your own life on hold. And I know that you love them just as much now as you ever have.” He met Clint’s eyes unflinching, though they were both tearing up a little. “I’m Nate’s Papa, Clint, but that doesn’t make you any less his Daddy. You remember that, when you’re off fighting aliens. You have family here waiting for you and you always will. You just keep that in mind.”

Clint sniffed, his eyes burning, a lonely ache that he’d never quite let himself acknowledge softly fading from his chest. “I am going to hug the shit out of you when you don’t have a kid on your lap,” he said quietly.

Barney snorted. “I think I can cope,” he said. “Go on back to the kitchen, Clint, Molly wants to see you.”’

Clint paused. “Phil—”

“I’ll direct him,” Barney promised. “Go on.” 

Clint ruffled his brother’s hair as he passed into the kitchen, which was full of steam and the smell of cooking.

“Clint!” Rich looked up from the table, where he was shucking a pile of corn on the cob, and beamed. “There you are at last. We were starting to think you got lost.”

Molly turned away from the stove and set her spoon down, rushing over to envelop Clint in a hug. “Sweetheart,” she said. “It’s so good to see you again.” 

Clint folded her into his arms. He was a full head taller than she was, now, but she still had the power to make him feel like a scrawny, terrified kid, wanting connection but afraid to reach for it. He’d never forget the first time he’d accepted one of Molly’s hugs, the morning of his eighteenth birthday when he’d come downstairs with a bag packed, ready to be kicked out now that the checks would stop, and had been greeted instead with a birthday cake with his name on it and his own set of keys to the house.

“And you must be Phil,” Clint heard Rich say. He straightened up, turning, to see Phil hovering uncertainly in the door to the kitchen. Clint had seen him face down murderers and terrorists and aliens and murdering terrorist aliens with less visible discomfort, and his heart swelled with affection and gratitude, that Phil cared so much what the Davises thought of him, that he let himself show that he cared. Clint’s family would never know how much of a gift it was, to see Phil’s feelings that way, but Clint knew, and he would always appreciate it.

He smiled at Phil, letting his face go exactly as sappy as it wanted to—probably very, if Natasha was telling him the truth about how he looked at Phil these days—and crossed the room to stand beside him, holding his hand.

“Hey, babe,” he said, leaning in close. He could feel the tension in Phil’s body relax, just a little. “These are my foster parents, Rich and Molly Davis. Rich, Molly, this is, um, this is Phil Coulson.” He looked around the room, feeling golden joy bubbling up inside him, making him smile until his face hurt. “He’s gonna marry me.” 

Molly smiled, coming over to them and taking Phil’s other hand. “We have heard so many good things about you,” she said, her voice soft and a little thick. “Clint’s loved you for a long, long time.”

Phil looked over at Clint, his eyes shining. “I have, too,” he said. 

“Clint’s always been a special boy,” she continued, “and I can see that you make him happy.”

“I want to,” Phil said. “I try to.”

“And that’s all that anyone can ask,” Rich said, coming over to stand beside his wife. “We look forward to getting to know you, son. Welcome to the family.”

Chapter Text

Look at this amazing comic that Snowzapped drew to illustrate the reunion scene! Nate's epic side-eye at suddenly being squashed between two hugging big people gives me LIFE. Also look at his adorable little FEET. And Phil's HAND. I love it SO MUCH.