Home Improvement

by pagination

Summary:

“Did you shoot me?” Phil asks, confused.

“In my own defense, I didn’t notice you standing behind me,” Clint says.

“In my own defense, I was standing behind you.” Phil sits up with a small groan. Clint tries to offer a hand, but gets his arm thumped by the arrow. That’s probably fair. “I’m not up on my archery technique, but doesn’t that mean you’re fantastically bad at this?”

Notes:

• For lil_grl_lost.

lil_grl_lost asked for domestic fluff, first meetings, and alternate universe. This is my first attempt at domestic fic. I'm afraid it might not be quite what the prompter asked for--they say 'write what you know,' and as the state of my house, my laundry, and my nutritionist's stress levels attest: I don't know domestic.

Hopefully somewhere in the mishmash of the rest of it, the story comes close to what the prompter was hoping for! Happy Holidays!

Chapter 1: September

 

Clint

 

“My shower was broken,” Simone tells Clint.

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon on a Sunday, or maybe a Wednesday, Clint doesn’t know. All he knows is that he was asleep, and then he wasn’t asleep, and then Simone. There’s a Simone.

He stands in his boxers, holding up or being held up by the door, and blinks at her.

She snaps her fingers in his face. He starts. “Shower,” he mumbles. Three week op in Baghdad following a six week op in Moscow following a four week op in Belize—the word sounds like it's in a foreign language.

“Landlord,” Simone says clearly. She prods him gently on the chest. He sways. “My shower was broken. You weren’t around. I had two kids I couldn’t wash, Clint. You’ve met my kids. You know how serious that is?”

Clint remembers children. Small, loud people. Easily breakable. Do not touch. “I’ll fix,” he promises muzzily, half-turning towards his apartment. “I have a wrench. I’ll whack it. I whack.”

“It got fixed,” Simone says patiently. “Phil fixed it. But you have to do something, Clint. You need to hire some kind of building manager. The place is falling apart. I don’t wanna complain, because it’s still better than it was when the Russians were trying to muscle us out, but if Phil wasn’t around, Grills would be in the hospital with electrical burns right now, and Karen would still be living with broken windows. Phil’s replaced some of the smoke detector batteries, he’s fixed that bannister on the third floor, and gotten new locks for the entrance, but it’s not fair to keep asking him to do all that. It’s not his job, and he’s doing it on his own dime.”

“Uh,” Clint says. “What,” he says. And then sadly, “You keep flickering in and out. In and out. Like.” He wiggles some fingers.

Simone frowns at him. Then she sighs. “Go back to bed, Clint. And then shower, and drink some coffee. And after you’ve done that, come find me. We need to talk.”

Ominous. Clint sways some more. “Okay,” he says agreeably. He can do that. He shuffles in place.

 

+++

 

Four hours later, he sits up in bed and says, “Wait. Who’s Phil?”

 

+++

 

So apparently, there’s this guy named Phil.

“Tell me again,” he mumbles into Simone’s kitchen table, half a carafe of coffee later. “He what?”

“He lives in 210,” Simone tells him, reeling a bundle of skinny limbs and overlarge head out from under Clint’s chair.

“Andy lives there,” Clint argues.

“Andy lived there, two months ago. Then Andy moved to Jersey, and the apartment was empty. Nick had a friend who was looking for a place. He seemed like an improvement over everybody else coming by about it.” She frowns at him. “We left a message for you about this at Stark Tower. You ran his background check.”

Clint never. He protests, “I don’t get messages at Stark Tower.”

“You sent over the paperwork,” she says, her patience starting to sound strained. She’s got her kid upside-down over her shoulder and he’s waving his legs lazily in mid-air, looking puzzled at the lack of footing.

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I couldn’t have. I didn’t do it.”

Simone gives him an exasperated look. Then she excavates through strata of kid art and magnets on her refrigerator, ignoring her kid’s grabby hands to show a stained, official-looking document.

Clint frowns at it. It informs him that Phil Coulson, age 47, writer, with no recent rental history, has good credit, no criminal record, no loans, and no outstanding judgments against him.

“Huh,” he says.

“I had Andy’s key, so.” Simone shrugs. “For the record? I’m not your building manager, either.”

Clint rubs the back of his neck, feeling tension settle back into his shoulders. Under the judgmental stares of Simone and her upside-down kid, he doesn’t feel up to admitting that he somehow managed to forget that he’s the landlord here. It’s not like he didn’t have more important things on his mind. Fury and Hill finding out last year that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD, Captain America blowing up Latveria, the Avengers staging a reunion tour to take out Project Insight:  rebuilding an entire intelligence agency from the ground up is distracting, okay?

In the grand scheme of things, finding out he’s got a new tenant who’s been helpful with building repairs isn’t that big a deal.

“You should meet him,” Simone says.

He’s about to argue—he’s busy!—when he meets the eye of stern maternal authority. He folds like an origami chicken. “I should meet him,” he agrees meekly.

“And don’t scare him off. We like him.”

Clint’s hurt. “I wouldn’t—“

“No arrows, no explosions, no mafia goons, no secret agent shenanigans, no criminal activity, no felonies, no flirting.”

“I don’t—”

“In fact, don’t even talk to him,” Simone orders. “Just pay him back for all the repairs he’s been doing for you, and hire a building manager.”

In retrospect, Clint’s kinda disappointed in her. If there was ever a way to guarantee he’d fuck this Phil guy up, it was by ordering Clint not to fuck him up.

Now that he’s been reminded that he’s the landlord here though, Clint feels a belated sense of responsibility. His buyout of the building a year ago was one of those things that seemed a good idea at the time. (Most of the things in his life seem like good ideas at the time, right up until they turn into bad ideas. He can count on the fingers of one hand the good ideas that stayed good ideas, but if he second-guessed his decisions because of his 95% track record of failure, he’d be a shut-in or come down with a terminal case of dead.)

Of all his bad ideas, buying the building is one of the few that he hasn’t regretted. Not too much. Not enough to wish he hadn’t done it, say, though sometimes when he’s elbow deep in sewage he doesn’t know what to do about, he has a twinge or two. But it wasn’t like he wouldn’t have ended up in the same position—the sewage one, that is—even without buying the building. He can’t be too bothered by the messier consequences.

He ambles out into the hallway and starts knocking on doors. Middle of the afternoon on a weekday—weekend? Maybe?—there are still a few people willing to answer the door to a gypsy landlord who’s looking to do some guilty home maintenance.

The few he manages to find are gratified at the attention.

“Except there ain’t nothing left needs doing,” Jube tells him, sleepy-eyed under pink hair. “I mean, if you wanted to, you could take out the garbage, I guess.”

“You’ve been complaining about that broken outlet for three years,” Clint objects.

“Phil fixed it,” Jube says. Her face warms. “He’s a great guy. I like him a lot. If you’re looking for something to do, how about Deliberately Androgynous Chris’s hot water problem?”

Clint knocks on Deliberately Androgynous Chris’s door. After a while, Deliberately Androgynous Chris answers it dressed in a towel, dripping wet and steaming gently.

“Oh,” Clint says, clutching his wrench.

“Phil—” Deliberately Androgynous Chris begins apologetically.

“Never mind,” Clint says.

It’s the same all over the building. On the first floor, he pauses for a long time to stare at a wall. He’s there long enough for Apartment 114 to open his door and lean out, immediately squinty-eyed and suspicious.

“Didn't there used to be a hole here?" Clint asks, pointing.

114 doesn’t even bother to look. “Phil did it," he says.

"I did it. I remember. The track suit—“

"No, Phil fixed it."

"I liked that hole," Clint objects, more from principle than from any real attachment to the memento. He’s feeling a completely irrational resentment at this ongoing evidence of Phil's interference in his business. It’s petty, he knows. "Who the heck asked him?"

114 levels an unimpressed stare at him.

Clint sighs. It’s not like he doesn’t know he’s being stupid. "So what's he like?"

114 thinks for a second. “White?”

“That doesn’t actually help.”

114 shrugs.

Eventually, Clint washes up in front of Phil's apartment door. He thumps at it with the increasing conviction this guy will turn out to be some sort of supervillain. AIM, maybe. Leftover HYDRA. Nobody answers the door, though—middle of the afternoon, normal people go to work, or so he’s been told.

Clint could've legit keyed into the apartment, because Landlord. Landlord rights. More importantly, Landlord key. But. High road. It isn’t like he has evidence this Phil is anything more threatening than a do-gooder with an addiction to home repair and helping his neighbors. It could happen. In New York. In Bed-Stuy, New York.

He backs away from the door, eyeing it the entire way. Nobody jumps out to shoot at him.

Since nobody seems to want him as a source of repair and good looks, Clint retreats to his place to put a post-it on his wall: Do landlord stuff later. After a little thought, he puts up another post-it, Ask Jarvis what landlord stuff is.

He drinks some milk that tastes like it might've gone off. There are chunks in it. He finishes the carton.

He makes a third post-it. Buy milk.

Then he eats three power bars, a dry packet of ramen, grabs his bow and quiver, and heads to Stark's place to get some range time. Maybe he’ll do some patrolling around his neighborhood tonight. It’s been a while since he’s been home. Wouldn't hurt to see what’s changed.

 

Phil

 

Technically, Phil has only been back living in the United States for about a month. He’s aware that after fifteen years of working overseas, in war zones and famine areas and, when the occasion calls for it, prisons, he's developed unreasonable standards for the quality of his living situations. It’s the reason that the apartment he’s currently in is acceptable to him—practically luxury after seven months of living and working out of a refugee tent in Ethiopia—and it’s certainly nowhere near as bad as the places he considered before Marcus swooped down on him like a horrifying real estate shadchan out of his distant past.

He appreciates the assist. He does. He draws the line at actual matchmaking, though.

“I’m not looking for a partner,” he says tiredly, when Marcus shows up at the VA, twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. “I have a job, a life, and another book I’m trying to finish—“

“This one better not have me in it,” Marcus growls.

“—that is not about you,” Phil finishes, tapping the eraser end of his pencil on some Medicare forms. He eyes Marcus sourly. “None of my characters have been a one-eyed, one-balled jackass with a Matrix fetish.”

“I’m packing a full clip in my pants,” Marcus counters. He slouches down on the guest chair, making it creak, and looks smug. “Your girlfriend's bullet never got near the goods.”

“Besides, fans love that character,” Phil adds prosaically, ignoring this. It’s true. Neville Flynn, the character that is Phil categorically denies is Marcus, has gotten lot of fan mail. He’s gotten almost as much fan mail as Richard Campbell, the ostensible author and main character categorically not modeled after Phil. The reading habits of the English-speaking (and internationally the French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean-speaking) public continue to frighten and baffle him.

He’s had arguments with his publisher about this. His publisher hired him a self-esteem coach.

“People are morons,” Marcus says. “Stop catering to them.”

“Says the man who’s spent a lifetime in public service.”

“I have a deep-seated instinct for public service. Like finding you a girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Or a fleshlight, whatever rubs your pickle, Cheese. Watching your pathetic, lonely ass moping around is giving me hives. What’ll we put on your eHarmony profile?”

“I both loathe and despise you. I hope you realize that.”

“Successful writer,” Marcus says, ticking the achievement off on a finger. “Not homeless. Boring-ass job—though why the fuck you bother with this—“

“It’s the right thing to do,” Phil says, because he knows it’ll irritate him.

“—Movie optioned, don’t give me that look, Cheese, I run a goddamn spy agency. You don’t think I know how to turn on TMZ?”

“How do you even know what TMZ is? Aren’t you too old?”

“You know what this finger’s for?” Marcus demands, holding up the entirely predictable one.

“Don’t you have an agency to run?” Phil asks tiredly.

“I can’t hang out with my oldest surviving friend?”

“I'm at work, Marcus. I'm working.”

“There’s a bar around the corner.”

Phil rubs at his forehead. He’s been doing a lot of that since he returned to the U.S. and Marcus’s welcoming arms. “Did they know when they hired you that you have the work ethic of a Siamese cat?”

“Fuck you,” Marcus says agreeably. “I got plenty of work ethic. My entire life is a goddamn work ethic. I stopped a land war in Asia this morning. If I want to go to a bar, I’m fucking going to a bar, drinking the bar, and then going back to work, because my work ethic don’t give a shit how sober I am.”

“I don’t understand how you’re the director of a security agency.”

“It’s the eyepatch and the coat. Makes me look like I mean business,” Marcus says. He grins, showing more teeth than is really called for at this hour. “It was the black leather underwear that tipped me over the promotion board, though.”

Phil has the vague urge to rip out his eyeballs.

“Six years, Cheese,” Marcus says, slouching down further in his seat. “You pig-headed son-of-a-bitch. Six years I've been pitching SHIELD to you, and now that I’ve got you in the States, you want to waste your talents arranging medical insurance for vets? You want ideas for your damn books, let me show you what kind of shit is really going down out there.”

As though Marcus would let him write a novel about classified ops. “I object to the word ‘waste,’” Phil says.

“I object to the actual waste,” Marcus retorts. “You’ve brought down entire governments and extracted thousands of refugees through hostile territory. You telling me the best thing you can do with your time now is to fill out Medicare forms?”

“I’m good at forms.”

“You’re good at political analysis, international logistics, and being an accidental badass. SHIELD could use those qualities. And I know for a fact that you’re not HYDRA. I trust you. I can count the number of people I trust on the fingers of one hand. You know how badly national security was compromised by those fuckers? You could serve your country. You could work for me, Cheese.”

“And yet, I’m unmoved.” Phil says thoughtfully, “I suppose there must be something wrong with me.”

Marcus barks a laugh. “I have lots of guns. Experimental guns. And we work with Steve Rogers. You join SHIELD, you might even end up taking showers with him. Different stalls, mind.”

Phil decides not to touch the suggestion about Rogers. “My days of trying out every experimental weapon just for the sake of seeing what it does are over. In case you hadn’t noticed.” He nods down to himself, his hip and the scar and a whole sequence of bad life choices culminating in, in reverse order, the scar and his hip.

“I’m not asking you to come back as a field agent. I want you to come back to head up operations. And the Army’s experimental weaponry’s shit compared to ours,” Marcus says bluntly. He slouches back, hands folded across his stomach. “What’s it gonna take to get you to come join me?”

“I can’t think of anything, offhand,” Phil admits.

Marcus’s eyes narrow. “You know I’ll find something eventually.”

Phil knows. Marcus usually finds a way. He looks down at the stacks of paper waiting for him—veteran qualification forms, requests for transfer, appeals for judgment, patient referrals—and scrubs at his face. “Where’d you say that bar was?”

 

+ + +

 

It’s misting tonight, a cold damp that ignores Phil's umbrella and oozes cheerfully through all three layers and his overcoat. September in New York is unpredictable in the best ways, the weather still clinging nostalgically to the idea of summer while toying with wet rehearsals for winter. Rain at this temperature isn’t the trial that summer humidity is, but the cold still grabs at his hip and clenches tight; he was limping by the time he reached Herkimer. Standing still in this alley with his hands ludicrously raised in a show of harmlessness, he lists to the right and the support of the wall behind him.

It’s leaving stains on his coat. He can feel them. It pains him on a spiritual level.

Private Harris, previously of the US Army, is visibly in a mood to pain him on a more physical level. The gun he’s holding on Phil is rock-steady. That would be more comforting if it wasn’t for the rest of Harris, which is shivering intermittently.

Then again, from a certain point of view, it’s actually an encouraging sign that he’s managed to pull himself together well enough to mug Phil. “Sorry, sir,” Harris says.

“If you’d warned me you were going to hold me up, I would’ve planned ahead and gotten some cash,” Phil says reproachfully. He dislikes being taken unprepared. It’s a matter of professional pride. “You could have mentioned after group, or left a note with the front desk. What do you need, Harris?”

“Dog food, sir,” Harris says sadly. He shuffles in place. “It’s $19.98 a bag.”

That's outrageous. Phil opens his mouth to say something indignant about price gouging, when an arrow whacks into the ground by Harris's foot.

Harris looks down. Phil looks up.

“Don’t move,” says a voice. Against the fuzzy glare of street lights and windows, Phil can just make out the shape of an arm and hip on a fire escape landing several floors up. “You must be new,” says the same voice again:  male, drawling, baritone. “I mean, you’d have to be new, right? Out-of-towner, or just lost? Because I don’t see how you could be a local and decide this is a good place to hold someone up. There’re lots of better spots out there. Logan’s good. Put down the gun before I make you—”

Harris collapses.

Phil’s moving almost before Harris hits concrete, his weak leg almost buckling when he kicks the gun across the alley. It skitters away before smacking into the opposite wall, disappearing into a stack of cardboard boxes on the rebound. Phil, though, is already struggling down onto one knee, his trousers be damned. Harris’s breathing is stentorian, whuffled through his scarf. Phil pushes it carefully out of the way before doing a quick check for injury.

It isn’t the first time Harris has fainted or had a seizure. The IED that invalided him out did a number on his blood pressure.

Phil hears the rattle of the fire escape, then the crunch of feet landing behind him. “Aww, socks, no,” says the voice. Harris’s pulse is steady, so Phil checks his eye dilation one by one before checking his scalp for damage. Out of the periphery of his vision, Phil catches motion; the archer is investigating Harris’s gun.

“Hey,” the archer discovers. “This gun isn’t loaded.”

Reassured that Harris is simply unconscious, Phil struggles back to his feet to inspect the arrow he snagged on his way down to the ground. It’s too dark to see with clarity, but it’s light enough to see essentials. The shaft is some kind of carbon fiber, the tip blunt, the fletching dark, not quite flat enough to be black.

Phil pulls out his phone and thumbs across it for emergency services.

“Who holds up a guy with an empty gun?” his would-be rescuer grumbles.

“A man who doesn’t want to hurt anyone,” Phil says. He frowns at the archer. Blond hair. Blunt, bulldog features. Impressive arms. T-shirt, ripped jeans, and tube socks. No shoes. In September? He says severely, “Where’s your jacket? Yes, I’ll hold,” he adds into the phone.

“That’s my arrow.”

“You have a gun, I get an arrow.”

“There aren’t any bullets,” the archer complains.

“Then it’ll be about as effective as an arrow without a bow.” The emergency system is playing soothing hold music at him. Phil sets it to speaker. “If you don’t mind.” He opens his hand expectantly.

The archer wrinkles his forehead at it. “What?”

“The gun?”

“I’m not giving it to you.” He hunches his shoulder. “You took my arrow and you didn’t even say thanks for saving you from the fainting guy who was mugging you.”

“You didn’t save me. You scared PFC Harris, who has a tenuous grip on reality and a dog.” There’s something wrong with the construction of that sentence. Phil considers fixing it, but the archer has already plowed on.

“Why’s he mugging people?”

“He wasn’t mugging people. He was mugging me.” Phil pinches the bridge of his nose and pushes back the headache that’s crawling up the back of his neck. “He needed to borrow money to buy dog food. I understand the presence of the gun makes it look suspicious.”

“Is dog food some new term for crack?”

“Not unless Alpo is doing something excitingly avant garde with their formula. May I have the gun, please?”

The archer looks down at the gun, then looks suspiciously at Phil.

“Thank you for trying to save me from an apparent mugging,” Phil adds politely, because good citizenship should be encouraged, even if it comes armed with poor judgment and breathtakingly obsolete weaponry. “I’m happy to trade it for the arrow, if you like.”

“I can’t give you the gun,” the archer objects, though he looks torn.

“What, exactly, do you think I’m going to do with it?”

“You might throw it at me?”

Phil's mouth twitches. “I’m tempted.” A groan at his feet brings his attention back to Harris, who stares glassily at both of them before wobbling back to his feet.

The archer has another arrow on his bowstring, though it isn’t pointed at Harris yet. He’s shoved the gun into his waistband.  

Harris focuses on him. “Hullo, sir,” he says after a second.

The archer blinks. “Uh,” he says. The bow lowers further. “Hi?”

“I have a dog,” Harris announces.

The archer tips his head. “Me too. He likes pizza.”

Harris thinks about that. “I like pizza,” he says shyly. He gives it some more thought. “I like cats, too.” He’s been working on expressing wants and likes in group. The archer appears to find nothing wrong with this.

“I’m a kangaroo man. They have built in man-purses.”

Phil’s phone chooses this moment to stop being on hold. “You have reached—“ begins a bored voice, before Phil switches it off speaker and holds it up to his ear. Through the nasal insistence of the emergency operator, he can hear the archer and Harris begin a surreal conversation about inappropriate pets. It takes a while to dispense with the operator, who seems to be taking it personally that Phil doesn’t need emergency services anymore. “I’ve only got sixty-five bucks in my pocket,” he hears the archer say in the background.

By the time he hangs up, Harris is gone. Damn it. He frowns at the man left behind.

“Don’t look at me,” the archer protests, raising his eyebrows. “I don’t know where he went.” He points out of the alley, which is exactly as unhelpful as he’s been so far, so at least he’s consistent.

Phil limps to the mouth of the alley and looks out onto the street. No Harris. Bother. While he thinks, the archer ambles up beside him and cranes his neck to look, too. No luck. Since there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do, Phil just shakes his head and heads towards his apartment building, his forehead still creased over the growing headache.

For some strange reason, the archer trails after him.

“So, this is like some kind of rom-com,” the man says, slinging the bow over his shoulder. “You know, like those . . . what do you call them, meet cutes?”

“Not really.”

“I saved you from a mugger,” the man argues.

This man might actually be an lunatic. Phil reminds himself he has to be courteous to the deranged and focuses on him. He has the hopeful air of a dog who’s been repeatedly kicked, but is convinced that this time will be different. Despite his exhaustion and low-burning irritation, Phil softens. “Thank you.”

“You want to get coffee?” the man asks.

He wants a shower, his dinner, and his bed, in that order. He wants to lock out the rest of the world, because he’s spent the entire day around people, and people are not his preferred drink. He wants to watch television until he falls asleep, or maybe read a book if television isn’t offering anything mind-numbing enough. He especially wants to be silent and still for the foreseeable future, until he has to crawl out into the real world and pretend to be anything but the introverted, socially impaired hermit he is at heart.

“Maybe some other time,” he says, politely, and climbs up the stairs to his apartment’s door.

“Are you visiting someone here?”

Phil pauses and half-turns. At the base of the stairs, the man is peering up at the building. “I live here,” he corrects.

“What,” says the man. “You what?” he says, and embellishes further with, “Are you sure?” And then he says blankly, “Shit. Are you Phil?”

There doesn’t seem much to be said to this, so Phil just nods.

The expression of dismay on the man’s face isn’t especially flattering. “Of course you are. So, okay. I’m Clint.”

“Nice to meet you,” Phil says, and offers his hand. Clint’s is callused in interesting ways, rough from labor and what Phil suspects is regular use of a gun on top of the bow. Strong grip, but not competitive.

Clint holds it a little longer than Phil would have expected, his forehead wrinkling. “Clint Barton,” he clarifies, like that should have some sort of meaning to Phil.

It does. Of course it does. Phil says, realizing. “Clint Barton.” His absentee and hopelessly irresponsible landlord. Suddenly, so many things about this building start to make sense.

Clint’s shoulders hike up, a sheepish look crossing his face. He rubs at the back of his neck. “Yeah, I know. But I’m not like Tony or Steve, you know? I’m just a regular guy.“

Phil considers and discards several appropriate responses to this apparent irrelevance. Finally, he says, “My kitchen sink needs replacing.”

 

Clint

 

It’s not like Clint’s the most famous Avenger around. Tony and Steve, they have that covered between them, and Clint, well, he’s fine with that. Being recognized is a liability in his line of work; it means he can’t do the kinds of ops that are in and out, blend in with the crowd. He’s okay with being more famous than memorable. He doesn’t like  attention. It paints a target on his back.

But, you know, it’s not bad to be recognized as an Avenger. It’s kinda nice. It’s a thing. It’s an icebreaker and a conversation starter on really bad dates, and gets him out of stuff sometimes, like a 'get out of detention free' card: sorry ma’am, I know this book is overdue, but I was out of town on Avenger business. Sorry sir, I know this looks bad, but the cat was already purple when I got here and I’m an Avenger.

Phil obviously doesn’t recognize him as an Avenger.

The night ends with him trailing after Phil up the stairs and down the hall, getting an eyeful of Phil’s ass and shoulders once he takes off the overcoat—it’s a nice ass, really nice, the judges give it 9.5—and then meekly nodding while Phil shows him where the patch job on the kitchen sink is falling apart. Phil makes him strip off his socks before entering into the apartment, though. And brings him a warm, wet cloth to wipe his feet down. And then fleece-lined slippers. And after the inspection’s done, a cup of hot, sweet tea, which he watches Clint drink before somehow maneuvering him out of the apartment so smoothly, Clint’s blinking at the closed door before he realizes he’s back in the hallway still wearing the damn slippers.

He’s never felt so cared for and put in his place, all at the same time. And he’s pretty sure Phil doesn’t even like him that much.

Natasha’s in his living room when he breaks back into his apartment. She’s stretched on his couch, flipping through a battered Richard Campbell paperback that he recognizes from his bookshelf.

“Nice look,” she congratulates, her nose still in the book.

He shoves his makeshift paperclip lock picks back into his pocket. “You could’ve opened the door when you heard I was trying to get in.”

Like that would’ve happened. “Eighteen seconds. You’re getting slow. What were you doing?”

Clint sneezes, sniffles, and puts his equipment in the corner. “Saving my new neighbor from a mugger, I thought.”

She looks up at that, faintly interested. “You thought? What were you actually doing?”

“Apparently, preventing a homeless former vet from buying dog food. Not my neighbor. The mugger.” When Natasha’s expression turns expectant, he admits, “I gave him some money.”

“I’ll bet that made an impression on your neighbor.”

“It wasn’t that much,” Clint lies. "Phil was going to do the same thing anyway." He shoves his hand into his newly emptied back pocket. His fingers encounter a little tickle of paper. He frowns.

“Is this your new neighbor Phil?”

“Yeah. I don’t think he’s AIM or HYDRA,” Clint says, and pulls out a wad of cash that he knows for a fact wasn’t there when Harris went to find his dog. He stares at it. Even without looking, he knows how much it’ll turn out to be.

Tasha is saying something else, but Clint isn’t listening; he’s working back, trying to figure out where and when Phil could’ve slipped that much into his pocket. There was an initial offer of repayment, that Clint had refused, pretending he didn’t know what Phil was talking about. There was Phil showing him the kitchen sink and explaining the leak beneath it. There was crawling into the eerily tidy space under the sink to check out the water— that was it, then, when Phil bumped into him trying to get down to show him, and Clint said no, he got this, it was all under control. That was when he managed to slip sixty-five dollars in twenties and ones into his back pocket without Clint even noticing.

“Wow,” he blurts out, breaking into Natasha’s commentary. “That’s hot.”

He becomes aware of Natasha looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

“These jeans are tight, right?” he asks.

Tasha opens her hand to him, so he puts the folded bills in her palm and plops down next to her, crowding her space. She lets him. He figures they probably look like those youtube videos that Steve keeps sending around the Avengers mailing list, link after link of puppies lying down next to crocodiles, or wolves tolerating inquisitive baby sheep. Off-camera, the crocodile probably ate the puppies and had weird cravings for kibble and squeaky toys the rest of the week, but nobody’s gonna say that to Steve.

He’s definitely the pug in this scenario.

“Phil,” Tasha prompts, while Clint tips his head back and stares at the ceiling. There’s a stain from an old leak up there.

“Mid-forties, 5’9”, one-sixty, blue eyes, brown hair, thinning. Nice face. Good shoulders. Excellent ass. No obvious distinguishing marks. Right-handed, paper cuts and ink stains on his fingers. Maybe administrative? Weak left leg, probably the hip. Really sexy pickpocket skills.” And the kindest eyes Clint has ever seen. He doesn’t say that part.

“That’s all?”

“Hot,” Clint says, tilting his head back further until he can see his kitchenette upside-down. “Soccer dad hot. He wears a tie. A brain-damaged guy had a gun on him, and he didn’t bat an eye. He stole my socks.”

“Is that a metaphor for something?” Tasha asks, amused.

He takes a foot out of the slipper and wiggles the bare toes at her. “I need to get laid,” he sighs.

Tasha gives as a clinical opinion, “You all need to get laid. All of you. Except for Tony. If I wanted to live in a monastery, I’d go live in a monastery.”

“You don’t live with Tony or me,” Clint objects.

“Like I said,” Tasha says, and allows him to put his bare foot on her lap, even though it’d hamper a quick getaway. This is how Clint knows she really loves him. That, and the whacks upside the back of the head, the constant attempts to set him up with someone, and the way she sometimes puts paralytics in his coffee to try them out.

She turns the page of her book and makes a satisfied noise. “I’m taking this with me,” she informs. “Are you going to ask him out?”

Clint makes an offended noise and closes his eyes.

 

+ + +

 

So, like, Clint isn't incapable of being a good landlord, exactly. He just knows what his strengths are. Shooting things? Strength. Surviving falls? Strength. Being a badass and kicking Evil’s ass? Strength. Home improvement? Not a strength. He breaks more than he fixes. Forbes Magazine actually did a piece on how much shit he breaks. Helicopters. The Port of New York. Baltimore. He’s pretty sure none of his tenants read that article.

Well, maybe that guy Phil. Phil probably would have read that article. Except he didn’t, obviously, because there were pictures. Mostly of helicopters, the Port of New York, and Baltimore, but the point stands.

The next morning he makes a few phone calls and arranges for a new sink to get delivered and installed for Phil the following week, which is nice because it’s a landlordy thing to do, and he gets to bask in the warm glow of doing something right. He spends the next two days at the Tower, not avoiding Phil at all because that would be stupid. He’s got no reason to avoid Phil. The guy’s a better landlord than Clint is, saves messed-up vets off the street, has mad pickpocketing skills, and watched Clint make a fool out of himself. It doesn’t bother him. Clint’s got self-confidence coming out of his ears. He knows his street value.

Anyway, he’s spent his entire lifetime not really giving a fuck about what other people thought of him. He’s not going to start now.

He goes on a date in his downtime—nice girl, accountant, but it’s all kinda dull and doesn’t get any better when it turns out she’s a groupie. She invites him up for coffee. He politely turns her down. Tony offers to get him strippers, and Clint appreciates the thought even though he doesn’t see the point. On the third day, he packs up his clean laundry—Jarvis is the best, the absolute best—and goes back to Bed-Stuy.

Simone takes one look at him and says, “Damn it, Clint, I told you—!“

“I didn’t do it!” Clint yelps reflexively. Then he stops dead. He turns around to stare at the hazy air. Simone’s hair is powdered grey. “What’s with all this dust?”

 

Phil

 

“So here’s the thing,” Clint says. And then he stops.

Phil, standing in the hallway outside what used to be his apartment—or rather, the hallway that is now part of his apartment, since the actual wall separating said hallway from apartment has mysteriously disappeared—blinks once. “Yes?”

Clint opens his mouth. Then he closes it again. He rubs the back of his neck. “I expected you to be yelling already,” he says sheepishly. “I didn’t actually have any kind of explanation.”

“It would have to be a pretty impressive one,” Phil says thoughtfully. He steps over the threshold, carefully avoiding the piles of drywall and splintered wood that are all that’s left of the front wall. Once inside, it’s not much better. The kitchen cabinets have been dismantled to their component parts, and now all that’s left is white-splotched steel piping and wiring. The leaking sink, he notices without surprise, is still intact.

He looks over at the wall between the living area and the bedroom.

It’s possible his shoulders slump. Just a little. Well. At least he made his bed this morning, so wherever it is, it has hospital corners.

“I was trying to get your sink replaced,” Clint says, hovering behind him. Hopelessly, he adds, “I packed up your stuff so it wouldn’t get all dusty?”

Phil follows his glance to the floor next to his plaster-covered sofa. There are a couple of boxes and a suitcase sitting next to them. He doesn’t recognize the suitcase. “I used to have more stuff than this,” he reflects, looking down at the collection. It’s disturbingly small.

“Oh,” Clint says, looking hangdog.

There doesn’t seem to be much to say. Phil has lost worldly belongings (such as they were) to fires, military actions, and floods. Once, in an incident with Newark TSA that he’s still bitter about, to a controlled explosion. He’s never lost his worldly belongings to an inept landlord and a kitchen sink replacement though.

He should, he supposes, be angry. Mostly, all he feels is resigned. “Should I ask what this means for my security deposit?” he asks, distantly curious.

“Uh,” says Clint.

Phil nods to himself and limps to pick up the suitcase. He doesn’t recognize the suitcase. He doesn’t let that bother him. He’s already rehearsing what he’ll say to Marcus and his apartment-finding skills the next time they meet, when Clint makes a small squawking sound like he’s run head-first into a wall.

Since all the walls have disappeared, Phil just raises an eyebrow at him.

“Where are you,” Clint begins, then coughs. He goes after the back of his neck again, rubbing at it like he’s trying to dig his way through to his spine. “Do you have a place to go?”

It’s a good question. “I imagine there are hotels somewhere.”

“You don’t have someone to stay with?”

“I’m new to the city. I hadn’t exactly planned a contingency for having my apartment surgically extracted,” Phil says dryly. The devastation is almost awe-inspiring. He’s never had a landlord go to such lengths to evict him from his home, and that includes Mugabe sending the Fifth Brigade after him in Zimbabwe.

Maybe Marcus will put him up. If Phil can find him.

Clint makes another flattened duck sound.

“You should have a doctor look at that,” Phil says absent-mindedly, wondering if he should keep his keys or just leave them here because, as it were, no more door.

“You can stay. With.” Clint squints through his lashes at Phil, unbearably awkward. “Um.”

Silence. Phil focuses on him. Courtesy towards the deranged. Right. “I beg your pardon?”

“Me,” Clint says. “You can, in my bed, loft, I mean—“ He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “At least until I get this fixed.”

“Your loft,” Phil echoes flatly.

“I’ll change the sheets?”

Phil’s forehead starts to wrinkle. He can feel it.

“To clean ones?” Clint volunteers, as though there were some doubt. Since he feels the need to articulate that, there apparently should have been. “It’s a nice apartment. You wouldn’t be in the way. I mean,” he corrects himself, “I wouldn’t be in the way. Just for a few days, until, you know.”

“Until you get this fixed?”

“You wouldn’t have to pay rent or anything?” Clint hastens to say, phrasing it as a question like he’s checking for the socially appropriate move.

Phil shoots him an incredulous glance.

“No rent,” Clint says quickly.

It sounds about as appealing as dysentery. It isn’t as though Phil has too many options, though. He has plenty of savings, it’s true, but hotels in New York are damned expensive, as he knows from the three weeks he spent looking for an apartment when he first arrived. Marcus is who the fuck knows where; the last number he gave Phil currently goes to a speed-dating service, because Marcus is a dick.

He needs a place to stay. Preferably one where complete strangers can’t wander by to watch him sleep. He’s done enough of that in his lifetime.

“Fine,” he says, resigned to the inevitable. Clint’s eyes open wide, shocked and, Phil thinks, more than a little horrified by the agreement. It makes Phil feel better. “Do you mind getting the other two boxes?”

He limps past Clint with the suitcase. After a few seconds, he hears Clint go to pick up the boxes and trail after him. If the man can do this much damage just trying to replace a sink, he’ll be interested to see what’ll happen when he tries to rebuild an entire apartment.

It will probably end poorly. In the meantime though, Phil will get ringside seats to a debacle that promises to be more entertaining than the last few disasters he was up close and personal for. With luck, it’ll involve far fewer fatalities. And hey, no rent.

Phil’s always been one to look at the bright side of life.

 

Clint

 

Phil moves in.

Like, whoa. It’s weird.

Clint’s not used to having a person in his living space. He’s used to Natasha being in his space, sure, and Blake, who’s about as cuddly as a pterodactyl, and Jasper, who’s a bobblehead with snark moderation issues, but other than that . . . . oh. There’s also Tony, who doesn’t understand about mine versus thine, and Thor, who thinks Clint’s either his best friend or a talking teddy bear, and okay, that thing with Wade is kind of odd, bromance with a side of major psychosis, and Barnes, holy shit, who lost all his body shyness with HYDRA and doesn’t see anything wrong with showing up when Clint’s on the pot to ask him ear-burning questions about the latest thing he found on the internet, “and what do ‘goat see’ about this image, I don’t understand,” Jesus Christ.

The point being, those guys are all at the Tower. Clint doesn’t live at the Tower precisely because when he’s there, he’s got all these people in his space. He needs his space, yo. He needs to be able to stretch his wings and be free. He’s gotta be the Lone Ranger, the rogue, Shane riding off into the sunset. With his dog.

And now there’s Phil.

Clint gets some clean sheets out of his underwear drawer—long story, laundry’s complicated—and makes up his bed to make it okay for a guest like Phil. He even does some housekeeping, too: empty beer bottles in the recycling bin, dirty socks in the hamper, shoes in the garbage (long story, footwear’s complicated) electronics in the bathroom (long stor— you know what? Never mind.) Lucky’s interested and follows him around, because he’s never seen Clint do housekeeping before.

Phil just looks around a bit, like he’s not surprised by anything he sees, and takes his stuff up to the loft.

Too late, Clint realizes that whatever makes Phil limp will probably make climbing up to the loft really hard. He’s just about to offer the sofa instead—it unfolds into a shitty bed, but at least it’s on the ground floor—but Phil just looks at him when he opens his mouth, like he knows exactly what’s about to come out of it.

Clint snaps his mouth shut. Phil nods once to himself and limps up the stairs.

Wait. What just happened. Did he just . . . stop Clint with a look?

Clint shivers.

(Scary.)

That first night, he comes back from trying to track down the rest of Phil’s stuff to find his apartment smelling of something amazing. He finds Phil in the kitchen, wearing an Iron Man apron. It’s the kind of gift that Clint keeps because he thinks it’s funny, and then never uses. Kind of like his entire kitchen, with the exception of the coffee pot.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Phil says. He’s doing something on the stove, Lucky sitting at his feet and staring up at him like he’s a walking, talking milkbone. “I thought I’d make us dinner. You’re not vegetarian, are you?”

Clint says, “What?” because this is a guy whose entire apartment he accidentally destroyed, and usually that sort of thing doesn’t end up in him getting a home-cooked dinner. At least, it hasn’t the last eleven times.

“Fried quinoa cakes with roasted peppers and feta,” Phil says, while his pan sizzles. “And fajitas, if you want them. I assume you’re not a vegetarian.”

“What?” Clint demands again, diverted, and, “No. What?”

“The meat-lovers pizza in the refrigerator gave me a clue. Any allergies?”

“No.” The entire kitchen thing is fascinating. Clint finds himself wandering closer, mesmerized by the idea of having an actual home-cooked anything. Steve and Bruce cook at the Tower, sometimes, and Tony sometimes has a chef up, but it’s just not the same.

Phil looks up from the pan to look him over, and suddenly Clint is distracted by a whole lot more than the food.

He thought Phil was hot when he was standing over the unconscious mugger in a suit and overcoat, Clint’s arrow (heh) in his hand. Now Phil’s standing at Clint’s stove, wearing an apron over slacks and a rolled-up shirt that's unbuttoned at the collar, making food for him. When he puts that together with black-framed glasses, it’s one of the sexiest things Clint’s ever seen.

He wants to lick Phil’s spatula. He wants to churn Phil’s butter. He wants to fork Phil’s sausage and lick his plate clean. Clint's a little too old to be discovering he has some kind of domestic superkink. Shit. He wonders if Martha Stewart does a gay pin-up calendar.

Lucky stares up at him like he’s judging him, all, hands off the man who’s making us food, asshole. The dog’s smarter than he is. Damn, he needs to get laid.

“Do you want to set the table?” Phil suggests.

Clint reroutes some blood to his brain to process that. Aw, plates, no. He doesn’t own any.

Dinner (on one paper plate and a pizza box lid) is amazing. The quinoa cakes, which sounded kinda hipster, is dotted with salsa and incidentally is the most incredible thing he’s ever eaten. The fajitas taste like the real deal, straight off of a street cart on Isla Mujeres. Phil watches with fascination while he inhales his first serving, then gets up and serves him more before Clint can work up the nerve to try licking the plate.

He gets up to fourths before he cries uncle.

After they throw away the plates and clean the kitchen, Phil sits at the table and starts doing some work. It looks like he’s writing some kind of report, from the files he keeps referring to. Boring. Clint sprawls out on the sofa and turns on the TV to watch a rerun of Community. Tony’s convinced the characters are modeled off of the Avengers. Clint calls dibs on being Troy.

It’s a nice, quiet night. Eventually, Phil packs up his work and says good-night, so Clint turns off the TV and rolls up on the sofa with a blanket and a Lucky-shaped, hairy body pillow while Phil goes upstairs.

Surprisingly, Clint has no trouble falling asleep, even with a stranger sleeping in his place. He’s out almost as soon as the lights flick off.

 

+ + +

 

Phil’s got a dental hygiene routine. It involves floss and mouthwash.

So weird.

 

 

 

Chapter 2: October

 

Phil

 

“You can stop laughing anytime now,” Phil invites, while Marcus sprawls across the booth, cackling like a demented Big Mouth Billy Bass.

Since it doesn’t seem like Marcus will be taking him up on that offer anytime soon, Phil turns with a sigh to his notes and his hamburger. The latest novel is stuck; the protagonist, having just shot Marcus’s fictional stand-in for really good reasons, is dodging Israeli Security in Tel Aviv.

“That time we ran the Turnabout on Uday Hussein’s man at Ben Gurion,” Phil reminds. “There was a hallway off the Brosh Gate. How did we get in?“

“Bailey,” Marcus says promptly, leaning into his elbows with a fierce, sharp grin. “He lifted a card off the dick with the Kalashnikov, remember? And then Maria used the spray.”

Phil scribbles a note, frowns at his outline, then makes a dissatisfied sound and shoves the entire thing back into his bag. “We shouldn’t have gotten away with that.”

“We shouldn’t have gotten away with most of the shit we did,” Marcus counters, sounding supremely unconcerned. “Benefit of being young and stupid—the only thing that saved our asses was that we didn’t know how dumb we were.”

“We’re moderately smarter now,” Phil says dryly, and Marcus’s grin actually gets meaner, the asshole.

“Moved in with Barton doesn’t sound like a whole lot smarter.”

“Not like I had a lot of choices, Marcus.”

“I would’ve invited you over if I knew you needed a place. And if you had the clearance to know where I live.”

Phil levels an unimpressed look at him. “I’ve seen how you live. I’m better off with Clint.”

“Oh, so it’s Clint now. That’s all it takes for you to get on a first-name basis with the guy? A little demolition? You’ve gone soft in your old age, Cheese.”

“The man drinks coffee straight out of the carafe. I have to admire anyone that dedicated to caffeine,” Phil informs, and flips his spoon to mock strike at Marcus’s blind side. Marcus blocks it handily with his fork. Then he slams his elbow down on the table to point an accusing finger at him.

“Motherfuck— You like him. Like like.”

"What is this, high school?" When Marcus growls, Phil informs, “His dog’s named Lucky. The damn thing’s missing his left eye too, except he makes it look good.”

“Cheese, you irritating shit.” Marcus’s eye narrows, gleaming. “You want to jump his bones and ride him like a goddamn pony. Clint Barton, your landlord. The guy fucked up a simple sink repair. You and me, we sat in a goddamn yurt surrounded by yaks in the summer of 2001, and you told me that your biggest turn-on was competence.”

“And guns.”

"And then your next girlfriend shot me, the boyfriend after that blew up the plane we were on, the girlfriend after that turned out to be a double agent—"

"Competence and guns," Phil says inarguably. "The only thing Ilsa did wrong was miss hitting your balls."

“You got no taste in— What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Phil considers. “I’m attracted to event horizons?”

Marcus starts laughing again. Phil sighs and bends his head over his notes.

 

+ + +

 

Annoyingly, Marcus isn’t wrong.

Clint is irritating, that goes without saying, but Phil finds him hard to dislike. The first weeks as Clint’s roommate pass faster and easier than Phil could ever have expected. Most of the day, Phil is either at work or working—the two are distinct, the former for the VA, the latter for his publisher—and when he comes back to the apartment, it’s even odds that his roommate and host won’t be there.

Clint’s hours are erratic. He wanders in past midnight on some nights, while on other nights he doesn’t seem to have left the sofa bed all day. In the mornings when he does manage to wake up while Phil is there, he drifts through the apartment in bare feet and pajama pants, looking rumpled and vulnerable, and making betrayed sounds at sunlight, socks, electronics, the empty coffee pot—

Phil starts putting a new pot of coffee on to brew first thing in the morning. It’s the least he can do, he reasons. If he were at a strip club, he would tip the performers. A pot of coffee seems more than fair for the floor show Clint puts on for him, all unwitting.

After the first night, Phil returns to his own apartment to retrieve his dishware and extra pots. He isn’t used to cooking with a real kitchen for an appreciative audience. If Clint’s not home for dinner, the leftovers will be guaranteed to have disappeared by the next morning. Lucky designates himself Phil’s devoted slave; Phil can’t sit down or stand still for more than a second without having dogness immediately drape itself across his feet. Clint, as far as he can tell, is in perfect harmony with his dog. If he’s in the apartment, the minute he realizes food might be in the offing, he immediately materializes in the kitchen to sniff at things, steal tastes of whatever ingredient Phil is working with, and do whatever menial tasks Phil sets him to with a childlike enthusiasm that’s only equaled by his sheer incompetence.

It’s infuriating. It’s endearing. Phil sneaks a look at where Clint is happily whacking at Yorkshire pudding dough with a spoon. He’s got a gob of it already on his cheek.

It’s attractive.

Phil privately decides Marcus might not have been wrong about him being lonely.

 

+ + +

Clint has more Avengers-themed clothing than any grown-up should ever have. And his cleaning practices are . . . perplexing.

Phil buys more laundry supplies. There’s something weirdly satisfying about having Clint wander around smelling like Snuggle Soft.

 

Clint

 

Clint sort of registers the knock on the door, but it’s Saturday and it’s early in the morning, and he’s rolled up into a burrito in a blanket on the sofa, so he doesn’t worry about it.

Stairs creak in an uneven pattern he recognizes, after a few weeks of hearing it every morning and night. Footsteps cross the floor. Whoever’s at the door knocks again. Clint listens drowsily while Phil opens it, talks quietly to whoever’s on the other side, then closes the door.

He thinks about waking up. He decides to fall asleep again instead.

 

+ + +

 

When he finally does roll off the sofa, it’s because Phil is doing something in the kitchen. Breakfast, by the smell of it. Clint follows his nose to the coffee machine, which is miraculously full. He makes a satisfied sound. Ever since Phil moved in, Clint has apparently been remembering to turn on the timer thingy on the coffee machine, even though he doesn’t remember doing it. There’s always coffee. It’s awesome.

“Whatsit?” he mumbles after his first half-pot, wandering to peer over Phil’s shoulder.

Phil’s making some kind of omelette thing. It smells good. Like eggs and ham . . . shampoo? Clint sniffs at Phil’s hair. Phil twitches.

He smells like shampoo. Oh good. Clint rests his chin on his shoulder and watches, happy with life.

Maybe he falls asleep again a little bit. Dunno.

“Comfortable?” Phil asks, an eternity later.

Clint mumbles. He’s great. Just great.

“Food’s ready,” Phil says mildly, “if you could just detach yourself from my shoulder.”

He sounds amused. Clint blinks awake, realizing the kinds of liberties he’s been taking. “Sorry,” he mumbles and retreats. The smell of Phil is still in his nostrils, and it’s kind of strange, but familiar and comfortable by this point.

They settle down to breakfast. “Who was at the door, earlier?” Clint thinks to ask.

“Simone. One of her outlets blew.”

Clint stops, fork halfway to his mouth. “Should I go fix it?”

“I already fixed it,” Phil says reassuringly. He levels an amused glance at Clint over his plate. Clint squirms. Deactivate bombs and timers, he can do. The last kitchen outlet he tried to handle by himself, he almost blew off his ear.

He just needs more practice, is the thing. He eyes the outlet by the stove. He could unscrew it, see what goes on in there, get one of those meter things with the gauges and the beep beep. . . .

“No,” Phil says calmly.

“What?”

“You are not allowed to mess with the electronics in the apartment.”

How did he—?

“Barton.”

Clint straightens. “Yes, sir,” he says without thinking, then blinks.

Phil doesn’t seem to have noticed anything off about his reply. Clint slouches down; there’s something about combining that much command presence with that much competence that’s doing a number on him. Morning wood’s supposed to happen before breakfast, right?

He eats his eggs.

 

+ + +

 

So the thing is, Phil’s kind of an awesome roommate.

Clint’s always felt mostly safe in his own place—don’t get him wrong, it’s his place, of course he feels safe in it—but it’s always been more of a place than a home. Home isn’t something he’s ever done much of. He says, “I’m going home,” and that could mean pretty much anywhere; he’s got no particular attachment to any one place or another.

Bed-Stuy is home because of the people there. He likes them. They leave him alone, mostly, and sometimes complain at him about stuff that’s broke (well, now they complain at Phil, who just fixes stuff or tells Clint what to do) and he’ll own it, sometimes the broke stuff is his fault because, hey, arrows. Life is like that.

But Phil’s made his apartment into a home. Clint can’t figure out how. It always smells like something good’s cooking, even when Phil’s not cooking. He hasn’t added any mess or decorations. If anything, the place is cleaner than before Phil moved in, so there’s less of the clutter that comes with just . . . living.

He can’t figure it out. It’s kind of nice, though, coming home to someone who isn’t just the dog. And he's pretty sure Phil's starting to warm to him, so there's that. 

 

Phil

 

Clint sometimes puts his tube socks in the freezer.

He might be insane.

 

+ + +

 

“Hey, so,” Clint says over dinner one night, carefully nonchalant over his third serving of phad kee mao. “I might have to go out of town for work tomorrow. I don’t know when I’ll be back, exactly. Maybe three or four days?”

Phil chews, swallows, and considers him. Technically, he doesn’t know Clint does, except that somewhere in his past is a world of pain, its evidence left over in scars. He’s recognized bullet entry wounds, road rash, suture scars, surgery scars, and cigarette burns. There are all kinds of questions Phil prefers not to answer about his own past. Clint hasn’t asked; Phil’s reciprocated in kind, appreciative of the courtesy.

“Do you need me to pack a lunch for you?” Phil asks, since Clint doesn’t seem to want to meet his gaze.

Clint perks up, surprised. “I’ve never had anyone pack a lunch for me before,” he informs naively.

Phil remembers the cigarette burns and decides on impulse that it will be the most ridiculously over-the-top lunch ever. “Is there anything I should know while you’re gone?”

“Um,” Clint says. He wrinkles his nose. “I was gonna got a friend—Jarvis—to help line up contractors for your apartment. He might call. If he does, just let him know what schedule works for you.”

Phil nods and passes a noodle down to Lucky. The dog sucks it in and drools, mumbling happily around the burn of chili. Like master, like dog; they both have an unnatural tolerance for spice.

“And sometimes people drop by,” Clint adds.

Phil raises his eyebrows. He hasn’t noticed anybody visiting Clint in the time he’s been there. Nobody except tenants with complaints or things that need fixing. Phil’s mostly taken care of them himself without bothering Clint, since he seems baffled, if well-intentioned, by much of his own toolbox.

“Um.” Clint’s rubbing the back of his neck again. “If they’re wearing tracksuits, don’t let them in, okay? Or call the cops. The bathtub’s metal, so it’s good cover. If it’s a anyone in a beekeeper outfit or paramilitary uniform, evacuate the building. If it’s a really hyperactive guy with a goatee, don’t let him touch any of the electronics.”

Phil stares at him, with the errant thought that Clint is probably destined to be a fictional character at some point.

Clint smiles weakly. “And no people food for the dog. It’s bad for him.”

Since he then puts the rest of his plate down on the floor for Lucky to slobber over, apparently without any recognition of irony, Phil decides that insofar as apartment-sitting instructions go, he’ll just use his best judgment.

 

Clint

 

The op’s in Haiti, which isn’t the worst place Clint has ever been, but it’s still a shithole in too many ways to count. The weather during October is shit, the sanitation is shit, the corruption is shit, the poverty is shit. The one good thing is that the security is also shit, so Clint and the team he goes in to support manage to get their job done with a minimum of fuss. The worst off is Clint, who falls through an observatory roof, lands on a stuffed jaguar, then gets a snoutful of some kind of gas that’s left him dizzy and impaired on the long-term memory. Of the others, Parker twists his ankle tripping over a goddamn stray dog, and Kobayashi gets food poisoning from street food even Clint was too suspicious of to eat. Objectively, it’s two gold stars after a solid year of near misses and blown ops. Subjectively, it’s still two weeks spent in a sniper’s nest with three bottles of water in 100 degree weather and 95% humidity.

He finishes his debrief in record time, gives up a record amount of blood for testing, checks himself out of medical care AMA, and heads to Bed-Stuy. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with the Avengers now; he just wants to go home.

He’s at the door with his key in the lock, already starting to relax, when he hears a noise inside. It’s definitely a voice. It’s definitely not Lucky’s.

Fuck.

He left the SHIELD tac suit behind, but he’s still got a couple of guns and his second-favorite bow. The apartment is close quarters, and one of the guns is low-caliber enough that there isn’t any real worry it’ll punch through a wall and hit a neighbor. He reinforced his apartment walls for that very reason when he bought the place. Clint draws, takes a breath, then kicks in the door. He’s a goddamn professional. He’s tracking movement and checking the perimeter before his brain even catches up to what he’s seeing.

There’s a guy sitting at the kitchen counter, working on a laptop. Lucky, sitting at his feet, is gnawing purposefully on a piece of pizza. That, at least, explains why there wasn’t a welcoming bark to warn the guy that Clint was at the door.

The guy. Phil. Phil is the guy. He almost shot Phil. Because Phil is living with him. Which he . . . forgot.

His heart is pounding so hard, it actually hurts his throat. Maybe he should’ve stayed in medical.

Phil, who looked up at the door bursting in, considers Clint and his gun. He looks completely unsurprised.

“Welcome home,” Phil says placidly. “I ordered pizza.”

The sight of Phil triggers some kind of memory download. The entire thing floods in at once and slots in place: the background checks, the repairs, the mugger, the apartment. The conversation with Tasha. The low-grade hard-on Clint seems to be carrying around with him all the time these days. Phil being his usual unflappable, even-keeled self even with a crazed roommate pointing a gun at him is the hottest thing Clint has ever seen. If he wasn't so exhausted, his dick would be hard enough to plant in Iwo Jima. He slouches against the door frame and stares blankly at Phil . . . .

. . . who has slid off the counter to approach Clint, his hands open and empty. Clint realizes dizzily that he probably thinks Clint's having some kind of PTSD episode or flashback.

“It’s me,” Phil says in a gentle tone Clint has only ever heard him use once before, with a confused vet in an alleyway outside the apartment. “I’m Phil Coulson. You’re Clint Barton. I’m living with you. The date is October 23rd, 2014. It’s 9:30 at night. You’re in your apartment in Bed-Stuy, where you have a dog named Lucky, holes all over the walls, and a collection of Avengers novelty underwear so large, you refuse to do laundry more than once a month.”

“I’m fine,” Clint says. His voice comes out rough. He lowers the gun. “Sorry. I just . . . I forgot for a second I had a roommate.”

Phil tilts his head. “Come in and sit down,” he says, his hands opening and closing like he wants to touch Clint but is forcing himself not to. He looks so honest-to-God concerned, something in Clint’s chest warms. “Are you hurt?”

Clint knows he looks bad. He’s got medical tape all over his face from the roof glass. What isn’t covered in antibacterial cream is bright red from the sunburn. “I’m fine,” he says anyway as he shuffles in and closes the door. Phil gives him a look, and he finds himself amending, “Minor cuts and abrasions, first-degree sunburn, bruised ribs, minor vertigo and some memory loss. Shit. How did you do that? I didn’t mean to tell you that last part.”

“Is the memory loss permanent?” Phil asks after a second where it looks like he’s working very, very hard to keep his voice level.

It’s the closest Clint has ever seen him to being upset. It’s fascinating in a terrifying kind of way. “No? Docs said I should just . . . rest? And report in in the morning?” He tries looking pathetic so Phil won’t ask him anymore questions.

Phil, who is made out of kittens and rainbows and everything beautiful in the world, doesn’t ask him anymore questions. “Let me make you a plate,” he says, sighing a bit. “You look like you could use a bath.”

Clint could really use a bath. He makes a pitiful sound and shuffles towards the couch while Phil tactfully goes into the kitchen. By the time Clint’s got his shoes off and dumped his gear, Phil’s back again with a couple of slices of pizza and a mug of something that smells really good.

Apples, Clint decides after sniffing the air. Apple cider. Hot. The real thing, too.

He lowers himself to the sofa, his ribs complaining the entire way. When he’s settled back, Phil’s pulled the coffee table next to the sofa so the plate and mug will be in arm’s reach.

“Thanks,” Clint says, heartfelt.

Phil looks at him, his face unreadable. Then he smiles. It’s Clint’s favorite Phil smile, the one that doesn’t reach his mouth but lives completely in his eyes, like he’s amused by some private joke only he and Clint know about. Clint feels that warm feeling in his chest grow and spread.

Phil wanders away. Lucky, having finished his pizza, comes to beg at Clint’s knee. A few seconds later, Clint hears the water turn on in the bathroom. Phil’s running him a bath.

He stares down at the pizza, and the big, hopeful dog eyes peering over his plate.

“Aw, dog,” he sighs.

 

+ + +

 

“I’m in trouble, Tasha,” Clint groans.

They’re in a quin, heading south to meet up with the rest of the team Clint’s been called in to support. Tasha’s heading west after dropping him off, something about a possible HYDRA lead that has Barnes and Steve all shiny-eyed in the back of the plane.

“When aren’t you in trouble,” Tasha says, unconcerned. She makes a tiny adjustment to their altitude, then slides a sweet smile to Clint. “It’s if you aren’t in trouble that I'd worry.”

“You’re annoyed at me,” Clint discovers. “Why are you pissed at me?”

“You invited a complete stranger to live with you and didn’t warn me.”

“That’s Phil.”

“The one with the pickpocketing skills who’s making you look bad to your tenants?” She pops a piece of gum in her mouth, crumples up the wrapper, and flicks it at his face. It hits him dead in the forehead. “He seemed nice.”

“You met him?”

“I saw him,” she corrects. “He didn’t see me. He’s a little quieter than your usual type.”

“He’s more civilian, you mean,” Clint sighs. He has a strict rule about knowing—in the Biblical sense—non-combatants. No, and way. He needs to rethink that rule.

“I meant quieter. With scars like that, he definitely hasn’t been a civilian all his life.”

Scars. Scars? Clint jerks up in his seat, his eyes wide. “You’ve seen him naked?”

“You haven’t?” She glances at him sidelong, one eyebrow rising over the smirk. God, he loves her. “You’ve been living with him for a week, and you still haven’t seen him naked?”

“He changes his clothes in the bathroom with the door closed,” Clint objects.

“And?” Tasha asks, puzzled.

Clint deflates.

“I’ve been wandering around the apartment mostly naked for days, and he hasn’t looked twice,” he whines. “Shit. I need to get laid, Tasha. My personal shower time is getting longer and longer every day. Having him around all the time is—” He groans again and thumps his head down on the console.

Something beeps. That’s probably important. He rolls his head to the side to look pathetically at Tasha; she reaches around him to flick a switch. The beeping stops.

“You want him that much?” she asks.

“He cooks for me, Tasha,” he says reverently. “I don’t think he even likes me that much, but he’s nice to me. He does my laundry sometimes. I ruined his apartment, and he takes care of me. Even when he’s tired, he fixes stuff for the other tenants because he can do it better than I can. He’s about a million times smarter than me, but he doesn’t make me feel stupid.”

“And you think he’s hot.”

“Lucky likes him, too.”

“Lucky doesn’t want to get into his pants.” Tasha studies him, that eyebrow rising still further. She pops her gum. “You haven’t even looked into him, have you? You have no idea who he is.”

“I know who he is. I ran a background check.”

The other eyebrow rises.

“Through a rental agency that I found on the internet,” he admits.

“You’re an embarrassment to covert operatives everywhere,” Tasha marvels. “I’m ashamed to know you.”

Clint opens his mouth to say something when Barnes pushes his way into the cockpit area from the back, his hair all in his eyes and his face grim. He’s got his whole serial killer goth look going, but Clint’s got his number now; the Winter Soldier’s not so bad, as long as you don’t challenge his manhood on the shooting range (Clint) or persuade Captain America to be an experimental lab bunny for new armor (Tony).

“Are we there yet?” Barnes demands, all scowly-faced murdertime. “Steve needs to go.”

Steve has some weird hang ups about the quin’s sanitary facilities. “Tell him to go out the side,” Clint says.

“Where are we?”

“Florida.”

Barnes considers, decides that Florida deserves to be pissed on, and disappears into the back again.

“Children,” Tasha sighs.

“You’re the one who volunteered to go with them,” Clint points out, adjusting altitude and leveling out as the quin jolts and alarms go off. Side door opening.

She makes a disgusted sound.

Clint fishes into his gear bag and pulls out the lunch that Phil packed for him. He kinda wants to eat this in private because he knows Tasha will try to steal everything, but at the same time, it’s Tasha; they share everything, up to (and sometimes including) their underwear.

The bag is heavy. Inside, he finds a few disposable tupperware containers. The first one, labeled ‘Japan,’ he opens contains grilled salmon, stewed carrots cut into flower shapes, some kind of flat yellow pickle cut into the shape of leaves, a few saran-wrapped rectangles of seaweed, and three rice balls. They’re molded into oblong pandas, the resemblance made complete by seaweed cut and wrapped around them for the black fur, ears, tiny noses, and round, solemn eyes. It’s . . . the cutest thing he’s ever seen.

Mutely, he shows Tasha the food.

She stares at it. Then she dives into the bag and pulls out the second container. It’s labeled ‘Korea.’

"What the hell is this?" she demands.

"He's been packing lunches for me," Clint says. 

She opens the container. The smell of something incredible whips through the air.

Right on cue, the alarm for the side door turns itself off. Barnes pops his head into the cockpit area again, his murderface gone now that Steve doesn’t need to go pee-pee. “What’s that?” he demands, sniffing. Goddamn vultures. Clint curls around the tupperware in his arms, shielding it with his body.

Tasha stares at Clint. “You are in so much trouble.”

 

Chapter 3: November

Phil

 

Phil’s fully aware that he is an imperfect person. His flaws are many and countless. He’s private and emotionally unavailable. He’s not trusting. He’s pathologically incapable of not meddling. He’s secretive. He doesn’t know when to give up. He once did a thing that later had to be blamed on a meteor because impact crater, and satellite footage, oops, but if they didn’t want people to push that button they shouldn’t have made it to begin with.

He doesn’t know how to cook a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey.

“I got over ten thousand people over forty-six countries, a budget the size of a public school district, and a special congressional investigatory panel coming after me with melamine dildos. I got an international council of dickheads overseeing me, all but one of them completely new and so green the fucking Sierra Club wants to make calendars outta them. I got actual goddamn space aliens wanting to emigrate to Norway because their crown prince is shacking up with an astrophysicist I could snap like a fucking Pocky, and you want me to tell you how to cook a motherfucking turkey?”

“Did you use paprika in your brine that time in Portugal?” Phil asks, pinning the phone between his shoulder and ear while he navigates the grocery cart with one hand and force of will.

The subsequent silence is eloquent. Phil picks up a bag of onions and tosses them into the cart. Onions are always useful.

“Dried pepper flakes,” Marcus finally concedes.

“Just honey?”

“Honey and molasses.”

And garlic and lemons. Phil tosses them into the cart, too.

“You’re cooking an actual Thanksgiving dinner for this asshole?” Marcus asks, sounding morbidly curious.

“For some people at the VA,” Phil corrects, “and for Clint. He can’t remember when he had a home-cooked Thanksgiving before. I told him he could invite some of his friends, if they behave.”

Marcus snorts.

“You’re welcome too,” Phil adds, squinting at some carrots. “Same rules I gave Clint’s friends.”

This time, Marcus’s snort is borderline amused. “I just might,” he says. “Just to see the look on—“ He breaks off. “Fuck. Gotta go. Later, Cheese.”

Marcus hangs up. Phil tucks the phone away and turns his attention to cranberries.

 

Clint

 

“You want me to what,” Tasha says.

“I know, it’s a terrible idea,” Clint says, dangling one-armed off the climbing wall. He turns his face up to check on the next handhold; Tony’s programmed the wall to arbitrarily fall apart or disappear handholds without warning. It’s great. “I just promised Phil I’d ask you if you were interested.”

“Why does he even know about me?”

“I might’ve mentioned,” Clint mumbles, because of course he did when he was tired and vulnerable, and of course Phil is kind of an interrogation ninja who can crack Clint’s brain open like an oyster without asking a single direct question. “I said you probably didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, so. Hey, that charity fundraiser thing that in December that Tony wants us to go to, the Avengers thing for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Can I wear a purple tux?”

“Why haven’t you asked him out yet?” Tasha asks, refusing to be distracted.

“I did. He said no.”

“When?”

“When we first met.”

“Would this be when you almost shot his friend from the VA?”

“It’s not like I’ve made a better impression,” Clint says sulkily, and climbs up another couple of feet. “I blew out his apartment and then I almost shot him after Haiti.”

“With an arrow?” Tasha asks, interested.

“A gun.”

She loses interest. “You might be right. He’s more likely to develop a better impression of you if he doesn’t see you every day. Maybe after he moves back into his apartment.”

Clint winces. Unfortunately, Tasha sees it. Her eyes narrow.

“I might have . . . forgot to get started on the apartment fixing,” he confesses.

Tasha doesn’t say anything, but her face speaks volumes.

“I’ll do it tomorrow,” he promises. “I swear. I can fix this.”

“I don’t understand how you’re not still a virgin,” Tasha says in a conversational way. “I expect you just tripped over people and your dick fell into them?”

“You’re not funny.”

“You really like him, don’t you?” She sounds almost sympathetic. That's suspicious.

He hunches his shoulders and refuses to answer. There’s nothing he can say at this point that won’t get him into trouble. Except it turns out that being silent also gets him into trouble.

“Thanksgiving,” Tasha says slowly.

Fuck. “It’s a bad idea,” he pleads.

“I think it’s a great idea,” she says. “I can look into him and decide if he’s good enough for you.” She watches with interest as Clint’s face falls in dismay.

Aw, Black Widow shovel talk, no.

 

Phil

 

The VA group is fairly large, a total of maybe forty people, but they’re all veterans or health care workers, sometimes both. They’re an understanding group, generally speaking, even with their grab bag of issues. With the contrivance of the center director, they’ve got a Thanksgiving potluck dinner in progress.

Clint’s friend is named Natasha, and she’s gorgeous. He introduces her to Phil with an anxious look, like a child bringing home a stray cat.

Phil feels his heart sink, for no reason he chooses to go into. He offers her his friendliest nod and offers his hand.

“He hasn’t said much about you, but I’m happy to meet you,” he says.

“Funny. I know all about you,” she says, and gives him a slightly terrifying smile. “I’ve enjoyed your books.”

Clint looks up, puzzled.

Damn.

The problem with fame—the reason why Phil doesn’t publish under his own name—is that he never really knows what to say when someone wants to talk about his books. He writes them. Then they’re done. As far as he’s concerned, they have nothing to do with him once he announces them on his blog and schedules the few book signings his publisher insists on. Richard Campbell's blog has a large following, though it’s mostly full of carefully anonymized, declassified stories from the VA and friends from and still in the military or various security services.

He smiles his blandest smile at Natasha, whose eyes glint like she’s reading every growling thought. For a split-second he considers denial, but he rejects that almost instantly. There are too many pictures of him online under his writing name for that to survive a two-second Google search.

“They’re not everyone’s cup of tea,” he says instead.

“They’re not my usual reading, but Clint had them, so I thought I’d try one out,” she says brightly. “I ended up buying the rest. I especially enjoyed the one you set in Budapest.”

“What,” Clint says.

“I was impressed at the authenticity. There aren’t that many people who know about the fourth stairwell in the Bastione. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought you really had broken in and set up a sniper’s nest in the third alcove.”

“What.”

Phil eyes her. She has the flexibility and physical control that could belong to the yoga instructor Clint claimed she was, but there’s an evil glint to her eyes that these days he only gets from Marcus. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Except that she’s friends with Clint, who came home a few weeks ago drugged, armed, and sporting glass cuts and a bruised rib. He has some ideas.

“It was the only choice for a nest, given the sight lines for the scene,” he says guardedly.

She beams at him. “Of course it was.” What the hell kind of yoga instructor is she, exactly.

“But that’s not—“ begins Clint.

“What happened to your leg?”

Clint slaps his face with his hand. He apparently thinks he’s being subtle, because the realization that he wasn’t is clearly readable in the appalled glance he shoots her a split-second later between his fingers.

There’s something almost refreshing about such directness. “There was a thing that happened outside Torit a few years ago,” he tells Natasha at his blandest. “I fell off a roof chasing a kite. It was a silly tourist thing to do.” Especially since the kite was shooting people. With lasers. 

Her eyes narrow.

“Torit,” she says slowly.

“What,” Clint says, his hand dropping. It’s apparently his word of the day.

“The turkeys are about to finish cooking,” He smiles warily at Tasha. He can’t keep the smile from warming for Clint, who looks torn between goggling and glaring at him. “Feel free to make yourselves at home. If you want to help out in the kitchen though, I won’t say no.”

He beats a retreat to the kitchens, where the first timer is about a minute away from winding down. There’s probably some sort of sexual metaphor implicit in the act of basting and carving a turkey. He should give it some thought.

 

+ + +

 

Phil is working on carving the second turkey, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hands dripping with grease and juice, when Clint comes through the kitchen door and says accusingly, “You’re Richard Campbell.”

“Sometimes,” Phil admits.

“Richard Campbell the writer. The writer who writes those books.”

Phil makes a noncommittal sound.

“I like those books,” Clint says, sounding betrayed. Phil isn’t certain what it is about the fact that Phil writes them that’s bringing that note to Clint’s voice, but he can’t quite stop himself from smiling.

Obedient to his publisher’s script for How To Deal With Fans Who Tell You They Like Your Books, Phil, Seriously, Pretending to Have Diarrhea So You Can Run Away Is Not Right, What The Hell, he asks, “Why do you like them?”

“What?”

“Some of my readers like them because of the plot, or the action. A lot of security or ex-military like the technical details.”

“All of those, I guess? I mean, I like the characters a lot, too.”

Oh, Lord. “Which ones?” Phil asks, hiding his twist of anxiety by nodding at a newly arrived volunteer. She swoops in to grab the full platter of turkey slices and bears it off in triumph.

“I mean— you know, Richard. I like Richard the best.” Clint pauses. Then he adds awkwardly, “The main character, you know?”

Phil tries not to think too hard about what that means, that Clint likes the character modeled after him the best. He also tries not to think about his sudden urge to grin giddily. Instead, he jerks his head to the stack of plates on the center island. “Bring that platter closer?”

Clint obediently hauls a new platter over to where Phil’s still carving. “I mean, I like Neville a lot, too. He’s an asshole. The way they’re written, I just figured the writer was someone who knows what it’s like, you know? Out . . .  there . . . .” Phil hunches his shoulders. Here it comes. “You’re black ops!”

“I was Delta. Once. A long time ago. Should I put the dark meat together, and the white meat over there? Or should I layer them?”

“But you cook!”

Phil decides to group the different meat types together. It makes things easier for people to follow their preferences. “Killing people and making a decent omelet aren’t incompatible skill sets,” he says wryly, adding a massive drumstick to the platter. Behind Clint, other staff are wandering in and out, plating side dishes and bringing them out for the crowd. Nobody in this crowd would bat an eye at this conversation. “I had to do something with my free time after I was discharged. I was too old for the field, anyway. It’s a young man’s game.”

“You’re not old,” Clint protests.

There are days when compared to Clint, Phil feels positively ancient. He tries not to smile at this determined declaration though, and assumes he fails from Clint’s pleased look. “It’s a whole man’s game, then,” he temporizes. He tilts his head to indicate his hip. “I can’t move fast with this anymore. It was time to get out. I’d already published a few books—sitting around on your ass waiting to be deployed can be good for plotting and writing—so I had a career of sorts to fall back on.”

Clint eyes him doubtfully over a growing mountain of turkey. If he doesn’t notice how his arm muscles flex to hold the tray, Phil certainly does.

He notices a little too much, really. The last of the large slices he can manage goes onto the platter, and Phil debates trying to shave off more splinters before deciding it’s not worth it. Two more turkeys to go. He licks absent-mindedly at the juice on his fingers and then just starts sucking on them: it's faster.  The juice is good, though. He explores  the webs between his fingers with his tongue and frowns over the knife— should he bother to wash it when he’s about to use it on another turkey?

There’s a quick hiss, the rasp of a sharp inhalation. Phil looks up. Clint is staring at him, his eyes dilating. Phil frowns at him, briefly worried about Clint’s bruised ribs and the strain of holding the platter, when Clint’s tongue flicks out to run across his lower lip. Phil blinks. Clint's mouth glistens. Phil swallows.

Suddenly, his pants don’t fit as comfortably as they used to.

Oh dear. This is so unsanitary.

“Clint,” says a voice from the door. Natasha. Clint shivers once and blinks, like he’s rousing from a daydream. Phil turns away to the sink so he can distract himself with washing his hands. Kindly, Natasha orders, “Take the platter out to the nice people, Clint.”

Ears pinking, Clint turns on his heel and wanders out of the kitchen. Phil might be imagining the alarmed glance he shoots to Natasha.

Phil finds Natasha alarming, though. It’s possible he’s projecting.

Hands washed, he goes about the business of manhandling the third turkey out from the foil where it’s resting onto the cutting board he’s cleared for the purpose. He’s conscious of Natasha watching him, but he’s been watched doing dead drops by enemy snipers, and once shaved his legs while Marcus kibitzed. He can handle a dubiously yoga instructor-designated redhead with a suspiciously disciplined blink reflex.

“2011,” Natasha says, when he’s done making his first cut.

She saunters further into the kitchen and leans against the counter. He puts his first slice onto a fresh platter and hums at her, noncommittal.

“2011,” she says again. “July, 2011. I was there, in Torit.”

Phil lays down another neat slice of white meat while he thinks. His inevitable conclusions he keeps to himself. “Yoga conference?” he suggests pleasantly.

She narrows her eyes.

“Clint trusts people,” she says. That pauses Phil; he looks up at her, curious. Her gaze is steady and sharp. “I don’t.”

“Neither do I.”

She nods, like it’s the answer she expected. “I was going to tell you to be careful with him, but I don’t think I will. He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

Phil lets his forehead wrinkle. She can’t possibly mean that.

He says with conviction, “He really can’t.”

Their eyes meet in perfect understanding. She snorts. It’s an indelicate sound. “He really, really, really can’t.”

 

Clint

 

Ex-Delta badass aside, Clint figures he should rescue Phil from Tasha. Phil’s his— roommate, crush, screwed-over tenant . . . thing. He’s got a responsibility.

It takes him forever to figure out where he’s supposed to dump the turkey. Then some of the vets want to talk to him. By the time he heads back into the kitchen, he’s convinced Phil’s ready to kick Clint out of his life and run for the border. It doesn’t bear thinking of.

His shoulders squared and his business face on, he straight-arms his way into the kitchen. “So listen,” he says belligerently, stalking in—and then stops dead.

Phil and Natasha are standing over the third turkey.

They both have knives.

They’re both laughing.

He blinks.

They take one look at him. If anything, they laugh harder.

This looks bad.

 

+ + +

 

Two weeks later, Natasha says thoughtfully, “I like Phil a lot.”

It’s really, really bad.

 

 

Chapter 4: December

 

Phil

 

Bonding over knives and turkey apparently counts as a meaningful human connection.

(Marcus would be so unsurprised.)

Natasha is a regular now, in Phil’s life and in the apartment. He never sees her come in; he suspects that she doesn’t always use the door. A few times she’s shown up at the VA, wandering around and lending a hand here and there before parking herself in his office to read another of his books. 

Phil’s working on his eleventh book at the moment. She’s on number six.

He comes back from work one day to find her sitting on the sofa, going through his latest draft on his laptop. He supposes he should feel something other than resignation and a complete lack of surprise.

“I’ve read as far as the fight scene in Heathrow. Nice choice with the F-60, I like that,” Natasha says, while he makes tea for them both and starts the rice cooking with seafood, sausage, chicken, tomatoes, garlic, onions, and an assortment of spices. “What you’re missing here though, is a love interest.”

She eyes him challengingly over the back of the sofa. Not for a second does it occur to him to say, Just like a girl. For one thing, he likes his guts inside his body. For another thing, it’s not the kind of thing he would think anyway. “I usually try to avoid that kind of thing. It's not my field of expertise."

“You should break out of your comfort zone, then,” she says, stretching out again. “Otherwise, I like the way this story’s headed.”

This is the story he’s using to excise some old demons about his hip. He takes the two cups of tea and wanders over to hand Natasha one. She takes it and sips without even looking up at him. He feels obscurely honored. “Love interest,” he prompts.

She draws her legs up to make room for him. He sits while she allows, “Maybe not with any of the other characters you have right now.” Her eyes crinkle. “Although Richard and Neville—“

Oh, ugh. Yuck. No. No.

She laughs at him. “They work well together.”

“Not that way,” Phil protests. He twitches again. “He might or might not be modeled after a friend of mine.”

“Platonic besties?”

Besties. What. Phil looks pained, mostly to make Natasha laugh again. She doesn’t laugh much; he likes it when she does. “It’d have to be one of the antagonists or support staff, or maybe one of the witnesses.”

“Or it could be one of the Delta team.”

Phil regards her quizzically. She’s perfectly serious. There are only two members in the fictional team he introduced in this story, backup for Richard and Neville’s ongoing operations. One of them is a woman. The other one, he’s been toying with giving some of Clint’s mannerisms.

Sure enough, she says, “The new sniper you introduced in chapter two could be a good candidate. I like him for a relationship.”

“Or a one-time fling.”

“Relationships are hard, and friends with benefits have a time and a place. But there’s something to be said for partnerships.”

He says as tactfully as he knows how, “Richard wouldn’t come between an established couple.”

“There are all kinds of partnerships,” Natasha says deliberately, meeting his gaze. “Not all of them are romantic or sexual.”

Phil has had suspicions, but something in him loosens at the confirmation. “Platonic besties?” he asks, covering that flutter of relief with a smile.

Her eyes roll. “Love interest,” she says firmly, tapping the laptop monitor. She raises her eyebrows at him as he moves, and clutches the laptop in a clear message of mine, do not touch.

He isn’t that stupid. “Does Richard seem like he needs someone?” he asks, rueful.

“Not at all,” Natasha says, her smile returning. “I think I like that best about him.”

“Thank you.”

“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t use someone in his life.”

That’s true enough, if more personal than he’s ready to go with Natasha yet. He heads back to the kitchen. “Jambalaya today,” he tells her over the counter. “Stay for dinner?”

 

+ + +

 

Phil’s not stupid. He may not be particularly plugged into the news or TMZ or really, any of the web sites that his publisher’s PR keeps sending to him to monitor, but he’s done his own research: once out of professional curiosity three years ago, when the Avengers saved New York from the Chitauri; again after he told Marcus about Clint shooting arrows at Harris and all Marcus did was cackle.

He knows Clint’s an Avenger. He’s fairly certain Natasha is, too. He also knows it’s none of his business unless they decide to bring work home with them. He has certain suspicions about why Marcus found him an apartment in Clint’s building, but he’s choosing not to worry about it since Clint hasn’t tried to sell him on SHIELD.

Tonight, privately warming himself at the memory of Natasha’s and Clint’s obvious enjoyment of dinner, Phil stretches out on the easy chair and grudgingly supposes Marcus might have done well by him. Now that he knows they’re not sleeping together (and why should it matter if they are, if he’s not going to make any moves? demands his inner monologue, shut up, inner monologue) it’s obvious that the affection between Natasha and Clint is bone-deep, but nothing like sexual. They’re more like siblings, if anything.

At some point during the evening, he realizes that Natasha is actually trying to put Clint on display. She starts a tickle war and rips his T-shirt—“Aw, shirt,” gripes Clint, dismayed but undeterred—so his chest is exposed. She pins him under one thigh and wedges his leg up ridiculously so his pants are drawn tight across his ass. She gives him a wet willy when he tries to be dignified so he howls and does a one-armed back flip over the back of the sofa, showing off some truly phenomenal upper body strength and flexibility.

It’s fascinating. It’s hot, yes—he shifts in his chair—but it’s fascinating.

“Are you pimping him out?” Phil asks quietly, when Clint wanders off to get another beer, half-naked and bouncing like an over-caffeinated bunny.

“Is it working?” Natasha asks, her eyes alight.

“Only a blind man would miss that he’s attractive.”

“Then what’ll it take to push you over the hump?”

What’ll it take. What’ll it take? Clint is hopeless, impossible, kind, generous to a fault, selfless to the point of disaster, endlessly optimistic, and a walking trouble magnet. He’s a man who started from less than auspicious beginnings and became a superhero. He inhales jellyfish but makes horrified faces over the texture of broccoli, he argues that beer is a vegetable because it contains wheat, he once tried to put in a hook to hang up a picture and ended up having to replace the wall. Phil wants to pound him like a nail; lick him like a lollipop; do things to him that are still illegal in forty-six countries, and then cuddle him and feed him ridiculous things.

“Let me think about it,” he temporizes.

The way she smiles is sly and far too knowing for comfort.

 

Clint

 

“What,” Clint demands, peering after Tasha on the fire escape as she leaves. “Why are you grinning like that? What? What?”

“Never you mind,” she says. It’s no comfort whatsoever.

 

+ + +

 

Clint blames MSG.

Clint blames MSG and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, an op in Mauritius that went really well (and an op in Haeju that didn’t). He also maybe blames six cans of Red Bull that didn’t need to happen, and a recurring wet dream of going down on Phil that he can’t stop replaying in his head, because it’s so damn . . . .

He adjusts himself. It doesn’t help. Anyway, Clint has insomnia. Someone’s got to pay.

He’s up on the roof, idly shooting boomerang arrows at random stars when a voice behind him says, “…Oh.”

It’s not a great idea to surprise a guy who’s just shot a boomerang arrow. Clint whirls; being sleepless has him on edge, given it’s the third night he hasn’t had any. It’s only the fact that he turns on his heel and overbalances a bit that keeps him from getting smacked in the head by the returning arrow. He has a brief glimpse of Phil standing there, his eyes widening, before suddenly there’s no Phil.

He looks down.

Oh shit.

“I didn’t do it!” he says reflexively, scrambling across the roof to get to his— to him. To Phil.

Phil, sprawled out on his back and blinking up at the sky, makes a small sound of bewilderment.

Clint drops to his knees beside Phil’s head and peers down at him. Phil stares blankly back. In the bleeding yellow lights set up around the roof, the dark spot on his forehead actually doesn’t look that bad, but Clint knows from personal experience that it’s going to come in as a spectacular bruise in a few hours. Holy shit. He is the worst landlord ever.

“Did you shoot me?” Phil asks, confused.

Clint winces. “A little bit?”

Phil raises his hand to his face. The boomerang arrow is clutched in it. “Why did you shoot me?”

“In my own defense, I didn’t notice you standing behind me,” Clint says.

“In my own defense, I was standing behind you.” Phil sits up with a small groan. Clint tries to offer a hand, but gets his arm thumped by the arrow. That’s probably fair. “I’m not up on my archery technique, but doesn’t that mean you’re fantastically bad at this?”

“It’s a special arrow,” Clint explains. He tries to take the arrow back. He gets thumped again.

“An arrow that shoots backwards?”

“The Israelis have a sniper rifle that shoots around corners.”

“An arrow,” Phil repeats, enunciating each syllable, “that shoots backwards?”

And it’s not exactly that Clint is embarrassed by the boomerang arrows. The boomerang arrows are cool. It’s just that it’s so hard to explain the coolness of the boomerang arrows to anyone but Kate, who’s boss, and Tony, who admittedly finds them cool only from an engineering perspective. It’s especially hard to explain the coolness of the boomerang arrows to someone who’s just been the victim of friendly fire with one. “It’s an arrow,” he says instead, “that you shoot in front of you, and then it comes back around. You know, sort of like a self-retrieving—“

“Oh,” says Phil with mild interest. “Boomerang arrow.” And apparently, that’s it. He hands it back.

Phil is magic.

With the arrow transferred back to Clint’s possession, Phil doesn’t have anything left to thump him with, so he offers his hand again to help Phil up to his feet. It only seems fair. And maybe it’s a sign of some kind of budding friendship—though probably not—that Phil lets him help this time. He winces visibly when he gets upright though, and the act of straightening seems to cause all kinds of pain.

Clint’s about to get a little panicky about that, when he remembers Phil’s limp, and decides it’s probably safest to assume that Phil came pre-damaged.

“I suppose there’s a reason that you’re out here shooting arrows at the moon at three in the morning,” Phil says, resigned.

“It was looking at me funny.”

“Is lunar aggression a regular thing for you?”

“Only at night.”

“Is it your brain or your body that won’t shut down?” Phil asks, and Clint stops aiming at the moon to blink over at him. “Insomnia,” Phil clarifies. He stands there in an overcoat and what looks like a pajama set beneath, and he watches Clint like he doesn’t actually find him annoying as fuck. “Is it your brain or your body?”

“Both,” Clint admits after a second. He turns back to let the arrow fly and starts counting. One, two, three, four—

Phil steps up beside him. He smells like shampoo. It’s distracting. Clint glances over. —Five, six—

“Is it safer to be in front of you or next to you?” Phil asks, seven, eight, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“What?” Clint asks, nine, and Phil says mildly, “I know a few tricks that could help you sleep,”  twelve, three, and Clint says, “What?” and right about then, that’s when the boomerang arrow comes back.

He blinks up at Phil. Gravel hard. Sky far away. “Boomerang arrow,” Phil says placidly. “Neat.”

 

+ + +

 

Phil made him hot chocolate, the real deal with little marshmallows in that Clint once told him he drank in the circus.

Clint curls up under the blanket that Phil’s buried him under and watches, baffled and awed, as Phil turns the page of the most mind-numbing reading ever. Clint has soaked for an hour in a bath that Phil drew for him; he’s had a cup of chamomile and a couple of cookies from a batch Phil baked while he was soaking; he’s been gently manhandled onto the sofa bed with clean new sheets and pillow covers. Now the lights are off, Lucky is snoring in the corner like a white noise machine, and Phil is the only spot of light in the world.

Phil’s reading OSHA regulations to him from a binder he brought home from work.

What the fuck.

Maybe if thoughts about Phil weren’t part of the reason he can’t sleep, this would work better. He can kind of feel it working now; his IQ is dropping with paragraph, because government writers, they’re not picked for their ability to grab an audience. The problem is that it’s in Phil’s voice, and Phil’s voice is like . . . .

It’s like an addiction Clint doesn’t want cured.

“1910.22(a)(3). To facilitate cleaning, every floor, every working place, and passageway shall be kept free of protruding nails, splinters, holes, or loose boards. 1910.22(b), aisles and passageways. 1910.22(b)(1), where mechanical handling  equipment is used, sufficient safe clearances shall be allowed for aisles, at loading docks, through doorways and wherever turns or passage must be made. Aisles and passageways shall be kept clear and in good repairs, with no obstruction across or in aisles that could create a hazard.”

On the other hand, he could do with a lot less OSHA.

“Phil,” he says, interrupting the next page turn.

Phil looks up and hums inquiringly at him, his face peaceful and shadowed in the lamp. The top button of his pajama top is open; Clint can see the hollow of his throat, and the light reflecting off a wisp of chest hair. Under the blanket, his hand twitches. He wants to mouth that skin, hear Phil make a shocked sound, straddle his thighs and

He opens his mouth. Hey, you know I hear pacifiers are soothing, so how about you put your dick in my mouth? No. You know what sucks? Insomnia. You know what else sucks? Me. No. You know who fell from Heaven? Satan. Wanna bone? NO.

“I need to sleep,” he says desperately.

“Yes, I know,” Phil says, his eyes kind.

“So don’t take anything I say seriously.”

“Alright.”

“I like having you as a roommate.”

Phil’s eyes crinkle up at the corners. “You’re not that bad yourself, Clint.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

Clint hunches his shoulders. “I sort of forgot to get your apartment fixed.”

There’s a long, long silence after that.

In a small voice, Clint says, “You’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t imagine,” Phil says pensively, like he’s trying to figure it out himself. “I suppose I’m just defective that way.”

“If you’d been an irritating roommate, I would’ve been all over getting your apartment fixed. But you cooked for me.”

“Of course. There’s always a fatal error somewhere.”

“In my own defense, I got distracted.”

“I’ve noticed that you’re distractible.”

“Because of things. Like, you know, HYDRA. And alien technology. And aliens. I should’ve told you that I’m Hawkeye.”

“Those seem like distracting things,” Phil says agreeably, and turns the page. “Do you want to hear about 1910.22(b)(2)?”

“No, I mean—I’m Hawkeye. The Avenger. With the arrows, you know?” He mimes drawing the bow in miniature, and adds an automatic, pew! as he releases the imaginary string, because he can’t not. Phil is just watching him patiently. Clint’s shoulders sag. “You don’t believe me. Is it because I’m a huge fuckup? Because I am, but that’s sort of my superpower.”

“You shot me with a boomerang arrow,” Phil reminds. “I believe that you’re Hawkeye.”

“Because I accidentally shot you?” What the hell kind of rep does he have, exactly? He thinks about getting upset about that.

“Because you own a boomerang arrow,” Phil corrects. He looks up. “And I did some digging after you shot at Harris. The popularity of the Hunger Games aside, you have a distinctive calling card.”

Clint can’t deny that. He plucks at the blanket over him, and supposes he should be relieved that Phil isn’t mad at him. He is, too. He’s relieved. That’s a weight off his mind, whew. Except now Phil knows, and he’ll have no reason not to move out, or push Clint to fix his apartment.

Phil sighs, closing the binder. “Do you think you can sleep now?” he asks.

No. “Yes.” It’s almost 0300. Clint slouches down under guilt. He kept Phil up.

If Phil minds though, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he tucks the binder away in his bag for the morning and nods, saying a quiet, “Good night,” as he turns off the floor lamp and heads towards the stairs in the dead black. Clint listens to him limp up to the loft. A few seconds later, the bed springs creak: Phil’s in bed.

He concentrates hard and listens.

New York is never really quiet—somewhere nearby there’s a car alarm going off—but he’s had enough practice at filtering through sounds that he can push it to the background. He waits. And waits. And after a few minutes, the sound he’s searching for is there if he listens for it:  the heavy, even in and out of Phil breathing in deep sleep.

Clint takes a breath and slides his hand under his waistband. If he’s quiet, Phil probably won’t wake up. Clint imagines him in his bed, the top button of his pajamas open, his mouth open a little and his hair rumpled. If Clint were sleeping with him, he could open those top buttons and kiss his way down his chest. Maybe Phil would wake up. Maybe he would make one of those sleepy little sounds that make Clint’s toes curl with fondness. He could slide down Phil’s stomach down to his pants and slide them over his hips. Phil would thread his fingers in Clint’s hair, and—

He wraps his hand around himself and bites his lower lip. He’s done so well since Phil moved in, only jerking off in the shower or while he knows Phil’s at work. Just this once, it can’t do any harm. He’ll just be quiet. Phil will never know, right?

 

Phil

 

It seems unfair that OSHA makes Phil tense.

Watching Clint huddled under the blankets, blinking sleepily and baffled, like he wasn’t entirely sure what was happening but didn’t want to do anything that would risk stopping it— the wave of tenderness swells through Phil the same way it has all night, cutting off his air and making his extremities ache.

He has it bad, damn it. And now he can’t sleep.

And isn’t that just pathetic.

He regulates his breathing, deepening it in the way it is when he’s asleep. Years of experience have taught him that the best way to sleep, for him, is to go through the motions until his body’s fooled into it. Darkness. Closed eyes. Breathing. He lets his mind drift, disconnected threads of thought occasionally surfacing and then floating away without his attention.

He’s almost there. He relaxes into the bed and just lets

 

 himself

 

      be. . .

 

In the quiet, the sound of Clint’s moan has the concussive effect of a bomb.

Phil’s brain jerks awake.

He’s woken up to Clint having nightmares before, and his usual treatment is to let the dream run its course unless it sounds too bad. Those times, Phil turns on the light up in the loft and works his way down the stairs. Clint invariably wakes up, hypervigilant. He’s drawn on Phil more than once, eyes wild but trigger discipline still good. Phil pretends to be suffering from either insomnia or an inconvenient bladder, and does whatever seems appropriate to deal with Clint’s confused state.

In the morning, Clint doesn’t seem to remember anything, so Phil hasn’t said anything.

He shifts in bed now, preparing to get up and pretend to need to go to the bathroom.

Clint groans. “Phil,” he gasps, his voice stuttering, and there’s something about that voice that isn’t nightmare at all, but

Phil freezes.

For a few seconds, he can’t hear anything; the blood roaring in his ears blots out all noise. When it recedes, his heartbeat is thudding too loudly to hear anything fuck, fuck his body, it’s the most uncooperative little shit—

Then he can hear again. And under the uneven, rapid rhythm of Clint’s breathing, he can hear the the rustle of blankets, the quiet slap of skin on skin.

His body stops being an uncooperative little shit in the worst possible way.

He grits his teeth and tries to breathe like he’s still asleep while something unbelievably hot happens downstairs. It’s not the first time Phil’s heard guys around him jack off. There’s plenty of that in the Army, when being out on the field for a long time meant almost no privacy and eventually, zero body shyness. But this is different. This is Clint.

He wants to go downstairs. He wants to go downstairs and crawl into the sofa with Clint, wrap himself around him so he won’t feel like he needs to hide his sounds. He could—

But a larger part of him points out that it isn’t the time or place. Clint is doing something private, something Phil doesn’t have any right to be listening to. He obviously thinks Phil is asleep. The right thing to do would be to let Clint know that he’s being overheard, in a way that doesn’t embarrass him. Maybe pretend he’s just startled awake. That way, Clint could stop or continue; it would be his call.

He should definitely pretend to wake up. Soon. Any second, in fact. Now. Right now.

Now.

Now?

He lies in bed, his hands fists by his sides, and strains his ears. He’s a bad man. Later he’ll feel really horrible about this.

It feels like forever, but eventually, Clint grunts and then falls still, his breathing raspy but slowly subsiding. The tent in Phil’s pants doesn’t show any signs of subsiding. His teeth clenched, determined to be quieter than Clint was, he starts to take care of the problem.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. He’ll say something tomorrow. He’ll apply coffee until Clint is lucid, then tell Clint in a calm and rational way that he really wants to take Clint out to dinner, then get him naked in bed for dessert.

Tomorrow.

Marcus will never stop laughing at him.

(Tomorrow.)

 

+ + +

 

In the morning, Clint is gone. There’s a note stuck to Lucky’s bowl: BBS plz feed dog ok thxbye! :) :) :)

Fuck.

 

Clint

 

Fuck North Korea. And fuck pot-bellied pigs.

And that’s all Clint’s gonna say about that.

 

+ + +

 

Clint’s exhausted, and filthy, and just done with people and the world at large, seriously, just done, when he realizes that he’s left his keys at SHIELD and doesn’t have anything on him that can open a door besides his bruised shoulder (ow) and his gun. (Bad?)

He thumps his head on his door a few times. He has a roommate. Maybe his roommate will open the door. He’s too tired. Thump. Help. Thump. Me. Thump. Help. Thump. Help. Thump.

Phiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil . . . .

The door opens. A black guy Clint has never seen leans out, dressed in nothing but miles of smooth skin and a towel wrapped around his waist.

He’s built. He’s wet. He’s gorgeous.

Whatever Clint was going to say (he has no idea what it was) dries up in his mouth as he takes the supermodel in.

“Yo,” says the guy.

“Uh,” says Clint.

“You must be Clint. I’ve heard all about you,” says the guy, and opens the door wider, his welcoming grin fading to be replaced with concern as he gets a good look at him.

“You’re not Phil,” Clint says stupidly.

“You look terrible, man,” says the guy. “I’m Sam. C’mon in. Phil’s finishing his shower. You fresh off the field? Sit down, get a load off. You hurt anywhere?”

Clint scrapes together some of his brain in the face of Sam’s—Sam’s!—worry and manages to produce, “I’m fine, I just— I didn’t realize he had visitors, I’ll just go—“

He manages to half-turn, but Sam’s there, all warm voice and impossible charm. “It’s your apartment, man. Where do you think you’re going, dressed like that? Anyway, you can’t go to Stark’s thing without Phil making sure you’re okay. He’d kill me. You’ve obviously never seen how scary Phil is when he’s irritated. There isn’t enough hazard pay in the world.”

Still murmuring cheerful nonsense, he gently herds Clint unresisting into the apartment. Without quite knowing how Sam does it, Clint finds himself seated on the sofa, divested of his grimy jacket and his hands wrapped around a warm mug. Sam hasn’t even touched him, he realizes a few seconds after he discovers that he’s been given hot chocolate with little marshmallows. A few seconds later Phil comes padding out of billows of steam, a towel around his waist, his hair adorably rumpled.

Clint stares. Phil is half-naked. His chest is hair. There. His chest is there. It has hair. His chest is hairy, and there’s a long scar across the right pec, another scatter of scars (GSW, he recognizes, he’s recognizing them.) His chest is right there, and his arms, and his legs are bare, and. And.

His brain shuts down. His blood is busy going other places right now.

“Buh,” he says.

 

+ + +

 

It turns out that Sam is Steve and Barnes’s Sam, Sam Wilson the Falcon, HYDRA-destroying, Winter Soldier-tracking, Captain America-protecting, free world-saving, Black Widow-impressing Sam. "Phil and I go way back," Sam says, his face creasing in one of those whole-body grins that makes the entire place light up. "I saved his ass once."

"Lies," Phil says.

"There was this pissed-off goat," Sam says. "There's nothing like stitching up a guy's butt cheek for breaking the ice."

Sam’s nice.

Clint wishes he’d go away.

“I’m not wearing that,” he protests, staring at the suit Sam brought from Stark. It’s a tuxedo, which is the first thing that’s wrong with it, but it has little buttons and looks like it’ll constrain his arms—he can’t fight in something like that—and there’s barely even any purple in it, which is wrong, that’s wrong, purple is his color, he makes that shit look good.

He clings to the towel wrapped around his hips like a Victorian bride and thinks about stamping his foot.

Phil and Sam are exchanging glances, Clint can just tell. He’s cranky already about North fucking Korea and fucking pot-bellied pigs (do not ask do not do not do not) and having to dress up to go to this thing that he forgot about, the Avengers’ Make-A-Wish thing although, okay, it’s a good cause and he wants to do it, but. Tuxedo. Tuxedo! What’s that line about lipstick and pigs?

“I’m not wearing that,” he says again.

“I’ll help him put it on,” Phil tells Sam.

“Fine, I’ll wear it,” Clint says, and throws up his arms. His towel slithers down around his feet. Sam gaze drops. Phil pointedly looks elsewhere.

Oh, right. He’s not wearing pants. Well, shit. Clint puts his hands on his hips and glares at Sam. He refuses to be embarrassed.

“Okay,” Sam says, looking like he’s finding something really fucking hilarious. Clint glares harder. “Right. That’s my cue. I’m going, I’m going. You better be there tonight, or Tony’s coming after you, you hear?”

He leaves.

(Thank God.)

Once Sam is gone, the tension in the air dissipates. Okay, it’s mostly Clint’s tension, but it’s his apartment, so he can tension it if he wants to. He stalks off to find some underpants and discovers Phil did laundry (aww!) while he was gone. Since Tony’s the shithead who’s making him do this thing, he pulls on a pair that have Tony’s face on the crotch. The pants are okay. They’re easy. Tony sent over socks too, so he puts those on as well.

And it’s not like he can’t put on a shirt by himself, he’s a grown man, okay? He can put on a goddamn shirt, but these buttons are just tiny and pearl, and for fuck’s sake—

“Here,” Phil says, materializing right in front of him. “I’ll get those buttons. Stay still for me.” And just like that, Clint’s bad mood is gone.

He stands there, passive, while Phil works his way through the buttons, top down. He watches. It’s what he’s good at, watching. He watches Phil’s fingers maneuver each button through its hole and lay it flat; watches him smooth the shirt front down over his skin so there aren’t any wrinkles; watches him take his wrists and put cufflinks through the holes there: gold arrows crossed by quivers, cute, three guesses who came up with that one.

He tucks the shirt into his pants. Clint feels each slide of his hand like an electric jolt, straight to his groin. His lips have gone dry. He licks them.

Phil’s gaze flickers up to meet his. His eyes are darkening, intent.

Phil slides the tie around his neck and his fingertips are warm and gentle against his neck. Clint shivers at the touch, once, and knows Phil feels it. Phil meets his gaze, too knowing and too kind, and Clint thinks dizzily, I could just kiss you, and doesn’t. The bow tie is complicated, but Phil does it without hesitation, like it’s something he does every day. He taps the underside of Clint’s chin with his knuckle, once. Clint lifts his head.

Submissive dogs expose their throats to their alphas, Clint read once. He feels exposed, with Phil’s fingers working at his throat. He feels vulnerable.

Phil’s fingertips ghost across his throat, sliding into that sensitive hollow where ear meets jaw. Clint makes a wounded sound, giddy, and closes his eyes.

He feels like he’s being stripped naked.

“The trick to a good bow tie," Phil says, his voice is pitched deep and rough, "is to just . . . tie a bow." He sounds breathless. Clint feels his voice like a touch under his skin.

Phil’s step away feels vast, improbable; empty space where there used to be solid ground. A few seconds later though, he’s back. Fabric slides up his arms, silk-lined, cool. Phil is dressing him in the suit. It settles over his shoulders, a warm, light weight, and he feels Phil running his hands across his shoulders to straighten its lines.

Clint opens his eyes just in time to watch Phil circle around to his front again. He’s got a tiny furrow between his eyebrows, like he’s concentrating. His heart in his throat, Clint waits while he arranges the lapels, tugs the shirt’s collar up and straight, runs careful fingers down his front—

He shivers again. This time, when Phil meets his eyes, Clint leans forward.

Astonishingly, Phil leans too.

Their mouths meet. . . .

 

+ + +

 

"Aw, suit, no," Clint whines. "I just got this on."

 

 

Chapter 5: January

 

 

Epilogue

Marcus is a pain in the ass. He brought eHarmony pamphlets to the diner. Printed ones. If he wasn't Phil's oldest living friend and here with a protection detail, Phil would end him.

"Happy New Year, motherfucker," Marcus says.

"Blow me," Phil says placidly.

They haven't chatted since before Christmas, when Marcus left on his traditional black ops infiltration payoff tour of Europe. In the last week of the calendar year, a lot of traditionally Christian government offices, military centers, and intelligence agencies are understaffed and undersecured, making it a perfect time to plant bugs and exfil. "It's like fucking Christmas," Marcus exulted once back in the day, rappelling down Interpol HQ in Lyon with a backpack full of data.

Phil has had time to do a lot of things since  Christmas. He's taught Clint to make paella. He's taught Lucky to catch. (They're working on the 'fetch.') He's started taking yoga with Natasha, which has proven surprisingly therapeutic for his hip.

He's also finished his book. Per their usual agreement, Marcus gets the first official read-through so he can excise anything he deems a possible security issue. Natasha got the first unofficial one; Clint the second. What Marcus doesn't know just amuses the shit out of Phil.

“This new character.” Marcus says, pulling a printed draft—"For pity's sake, paper? What about the trees?" Phil protests—of Phil’s newest book with favor. “I liked him.”

“Which one?” Phil asks. There are a lot of new characters.

“Will Brandt,” Marcus says, tapping the folder. “He’s my kind of asshole.”

Phil eyes Marcus and then busies himself with eating a hard-boiled egg. It occupies his mouth. Saves him the trouble of having to comment, because he really wants to. Oh, does he.

Marcus’s eyes narrow at him. “What’s so damn funny?”

It’s a near thing: Phil almost sprays bits of egg at him. He manages to swallow, instead. "Nothing. You're wasting your time," he adds, nodding to the eHarmony pamphlets. Through the window, he spies Clint trotting across the road. He's wearing a Santa hat and Phil's Army shirt under a jacket.

"Not if you're doing that 'burning gaze meets across crowded rooms' shit with your fictional stand-in and this Brandt guy."

"Fiction," Phil emphasizes. 

"Reads to me like ready to get hooked up," Marcus retorts, his eye gleaming. "You wanna go the commercial way, or you want me to start setting you up on blind dates? 'Cuz I'm telling you, Cheese, with your dating history, a computer algorithm and a guy with one eye could still do a damn sight better than you when it comes to picking someone out." 

"You're surprisingly invested in setting me up with someone. Projecting, Marcus?"

"If you're not gonna join SHIELD, I gotta save the world by my lonesome. One lonely boner at a time."

Phil huffs a chuckle, and shakes his head. "I'm set."

The diner door opens, the bell over its swing ringing. Clint’s at the door, looking a little lost until he catches sight of Phil. His face lights up.

Phil suspects his own is doing something similar. Marcus turns to look at what’s caught Phil’s attention. He stiffens.

Clint catches sight of Marcus. He stops dead. “Director Fury?” he says, looking confused. "What are you—?"

Marcus whips around to stare incredulously at Phil.

“Marcus, you’ve met my boyfriend, right?” Phil asks pleasantly, and bites into his toast.

 

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Home Improvement