Archive of Our Own

No matter how many times Phil saw the portal, it never failed to awe him. The edges of it glowed silver, occasionally twinkling with a blue or violet sparkle, and the center was as clear as glass, save for the occasional shimmer. When it had first opened, expanding from the center in the middle of the SHIELD cafeteria, it had caused a hell of a stir, not in the least because the view through the portal was of an identical cafeteria--very nearly down to the personnel. Later investigation had revealed that there had only been four unmatched people, two on each side.

Investigation had also revealed that it wasn't even close to being an isolated incident. Portals of all shapes and sizes had opened up all over the world. Despite their name, nothing had come through them, and initial tests seemed to indicate that they were impermeable. But for all their lack of tangible impact, they'd caused a hell of a stir among everyone from physicists to philosophers. If other worlds existed, what did that mean for the truth of destiny? The discovery that soulmates on one side of the portal weren't necessarily soulmates on the other side had thrown just about everyone for a loop.

Phil knew that Fury was sure that Phil's fascination with SHIELD's portal stemmed from the hope that his counterpart might not be blank, might actually have a soulmate. Phil had given up on telling him that it wouldn't matter. Even if they hadn't determined that soulmates weren't entirely consistent between universes, you were meant to meet the supposed other half of your soul as a teenager, before your life settled into permanent lines. Whatever generated the names on people's forearms, whatever made them go grey when a soulmate died, Phil firmly believed that early merging of lives was the real foundation of soulmate relationships. He wouldn't have that regardless of what his counterpart revealed.

No, the portals drew Phil because of the sheer potential for discovery. There was a whole world on the other side, as fascinating in it's extreme similarity as in it's small differences. Why did they appear where they did? Why the varying sizes? Many of them were barely three feet by six feet.

At eight feet tall and nearly twelve feet wide, the one in the SHIELD cafeteria was the largest, at least as far as they knew--not all governments were being forthcoming with information. Between the size and the security that it was possible to rapidly and thoroughly surround the SHIELD portal with, it quickly became the center of portal research.

The cafeteria had, of course, been converted into a secure lab, but with his clearance, Phil could come have a look whenever he wanted. Six months after it had appeared, he found himself wandering down to look at the portal whenever had a minute free. Tonight, it was almost one in the morning and he'd just escaped debriefing after a long, exhausting mission. He should have gone to crash on one of the SHIELD bunks, if he couldn't make it all the way home. Instead, he was here, sitting on a plush red couch that Stark had requisitioned for the lab and contemplating the blue and violet sparkling. Phil would tease Stark about spending so much time staring at the portal that he needed a couch just to be comfortable doing it, if he himself wasn't the next worst offender on that count.

"Hey, Agent," Stark greeted him. It came in stereo--both through the portal and from the lab area behind Phil. Stark kept irregular working areas regardless of universe. Strictly speaking, he was only consulting for the SHIELD research team assigned to the portal, but in practice he ran the lab. Fortunately, Fury and Hill had anticipated that and chosen the team accordingly.

"Stark," Phil acknowledged, nodding at the version through the portal before turning to look at his own universe's version. "Have you unraveled the mysteries of the universe yet?" He wasn't entirely joking; the portal certainly qualified among those.

"Making progress," Stark said airily. He came around and plopped down onto the other end of the couch from Phil. "If you were a little less cautious, we might have figured out this one a bit sooner."

Phil raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Stark nodded. "Turns out the portals aren't entirely impermeable after all."

Phil sat up. "You got something through?"

"In a manner of speaking," Stark said. "A thirty-something thrill-seeker in Minnesota managed to weasel his way past security there and just stuck his hand right across it. No special effort required. It startled the hell out of him--the bet had only been to touch it."

"You said if I'd been less cautious..." Phil began, mind working.

Tony nodded. "Our Minnesotan thrill-seeker is blank. We've checked it since then, with the handful of blanks we could locate. Nearly all of them--not 100%, but close--could get through. So we checked a couple dozen grays as well. It's the other way around for them--almost none could get through, but a few could."

"You're assuming you'd have figured it out sooner because, as a blank, I'd be able to pass through," Coulson said, "but that isn't guaranteed."

"No, but it's pretty likely," Stark said. "None of the blanks who were able to cross over had a living counterpart on the other side. It looks like the portal prevents either universe from having more than one copy of the same person."

"So we looked into you," Portal Stark said. Phil didn't jump, but it was a conscious effort; they'd been trying not to interfere too much in each other's universes. He turned and gave Portal Stark his attention. "You were the only blank who wasn't involved in testing the portal after the thrill-seeker did his thing, being off on a mission until now, and we figured it was information we," he gestured to between himself and Stark, "should have."

"And by we," Phil said dryly, "you mean SHIELD leadership on both sides of the portal."

"That too," Portal Stark said. "Anyway, the Phil Coulson on this side of the fence died in the Army Rangers at the age of 23, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to cross."

Well, so much for revelations his counterpart might have for him. Maybe Fury would let it go now.

"Hey," Stark poked Phil in the shoulder and smirked at him when he looked over. "Wanna give it a try?"

Phil snorted and shook his head. "I'm not stepping outside of my universe to satisfy your curiosity." Still, he couldn't resist looking back at the portal, eyes tracing the flaring, sparkling border once again. He'd been all over the world, first with the Rangers and then with SHIELD. He usually took his post-mission downtime local to the mission, if it was safe, so that he wouldn't associate all the places he went with violence and evil. But to go outside his universe--perhaps it was better to say outside his reality--well... He couldn't suppress the thrill of excitement that went through him at the idea. No matter how similar the other world was to his own, just the idea of stepping through the portal made his blood sing.

"You don't have to cross over completely," Portal Stark wheedled. "Just poke a finger through. Just to see."

Phil hesitated, and Stark clearly sensed weakness, because he leaned forward when he spoke next. "Now that we know people can pass through," he said intently, "Fury's going to want to do some investigation, right? And of all the senior SHIELD agents who can pass through, you're by far the highest ranking. We should at least know if the option is available, right?"

"I can check that when the moment comes," Phil said, but it was weak. He wanted to check. To know for sure.

Stark scoffed. "It could take weeks before Fury convinces the powers that be that sending someone through here, where we can monitor the process properly, is the smart thing to do."

After a moment, Phil slowly pushed himself to his feet and stepped up to the portal. He let his eyes drift over the slight shimmer of the surface for a moment. He raised a hand, almost skimming his palm over the near-invisible surface before pushing forward. His hand passed through the portal with so little resistance that Phil didn't think he'd have noticed if he hadn't been paying such close attention to the surface. As he held his hand across the threshold, it almost seemed like it was tugging him in. Maybe that should have been disturbing, but the truth was, Phil just wanted to step through.

"Looks like I was right," Stark said, and Phil twitched and yanked his hand back through the portal.

He adjusted his cuffs self-consciously before turning to Stark. "Apparently so. And now we wait."

Stark made a face. "I hate waiting."

"Most people do, Mr. Stark." He nodded farewell to both to his universe's Stark and Portal Stark, and left the lab. But instead of crashing in SHIELD's temporary quarters, he signed out a vehicle and drove himself home. Somehow, being so close to the portal felt like too much of a temptation.

***

Stark had been absolutely right when he said it would take Fury weeks to convince the higher ups to approve a mission to the other side of the portal. It took, in fact, a full seven weeks. Fury had Phil in his office not ten minutes later. "I sold it as a diplomatic mission, rather than an exploratory one," Fury explained. "I couldn't seem to get it through their heads that there was anything interesting about a nearly exact duplicate of our own world." The two of them exchanged an exasperated look. "But the idea of having two of our world's most in-demand personnel potentially at our disposal turned their heads."

"There's twice the world to watch over as well," Phil observed dryly.

Fury put on a tone of exaggerated patience. "But the timing of our crises probably wouldn't be the same, Phil. That's why it's a diplomatic mission, so that we can work out a mutual assitance agreement." They both chuckled. Their worlds were so similar, most crises probably would be at the same time. "Hey, it got them off their butts," Fury said. "Anyway, this being a diplomatic mission with excellent communications and the only potential danger in crossing the threshold itself, I'm thinking one representative. Someone senior." He arched his brow. "Have any suggestions?"

"You're not subtle, Nick."

Fury shrugged. "I wasn't trying to be. You've already tested the portal out, I assume? You can cross through?"

"Why would you assume that?" Phil asked blandly.

He expected teasing, but instead Fury's expression turned serious. "Mostly because you've been spending an average of two hours a day in the lab with the damn thing. So here's a real question, Phil. If I send you through, are you going to be willing to come back?"

Phil sat up, startled. "Nick, as interesting as a near-duplicate universe is, it is a near-duplicate. Why on Earth would you think I'd stay?"

Fury shook his head. "I don't know. I've just got a feeling."

"If this is about the Phil Coulson on the other side and what I might learn from him," Phil said, tamping down a surge of exasperation, "we've already determined that he's dead."

"I know. I also know that you wouldn't be able to cross over if he wasn't," Fury said. "So no, it's not about that. But the existence of these things is making a lot of people re-evaluate--"

"I swear to God," Phil broke in, "if the next words out of your mouth are 'soulmates' or 'destiny'--"

"--a lot of things," Fury finished, glaring. "I'm just saying, you don't know what will change when you enter that portal."

"I won't deny I want to be the one to go through," Phil said. "Just the idea of a parallel reality..." He shook his head. "Of course I want to go through, but it's the experience I'm looking for, the exploration. I'm not looking to leave this world behind."

Fury just looked at him for a long moment. "I'm going to hold you to that," he said finally. "Now let's talk mission planning and negotiation terms."

As much they wanted to get the mission underway, neither Phil nor Nick were willing to half-ass the preparation for a diplomatic agreement, which meant that even after mission approval, it took another week before Phil was prepared to make the crossing.

Stark and his SHIELD R&D team used the time to test what could cross the portal's threshold and what couldn't. It turned out that anything--except most people--could pass through, but only if carried or pulled over by a person capable of crossing. Anything tossed, rolled, or otherwise directed through the portal bounced off the surface like it was a wall.

By the time Phil was prepared to cross, Stark had managed to get one of SHIELD's few blanks assigned to him just to sit next to the portal and hand things through to Portal Stark so that they could share data. Phil stepped into the lab carrying a suitcase, garment bag, and briefcase and blinked, bemused, at Agent Sinclair reclining in a plush leather easy chair next to the portal. He had his feet up and a tablet in his lap, and when Portal Stark wandered up to his side and called, 'Yo!', Sinclair stuck his hand through the portal, took the tablet Portal Stark gave him, pulled it through and held it out in Stark's general direction. To Phil's surprise, Stark came over to Sinclair and took it rather than making the Agent bring it to him.

Catching Phil's look, Stark scrunched up his face. "Agent Sinclair made a solid argument that if he had to spend all day doing nothing but handing things through for me, I could contribute a few steps to the process."

Phil suppressed a smile and looked down at Sinclair. "You just sat down and refused to move until he did, didn't you?"

"Yup," Sinclair said. "Took awhile."

"I imagine it did," Phil said. Sinclair must have the patience of a saint if he'd managed to outlast Stark's hissy fit. "Is everything ready for the crossing?" Originally they had intended for the lab to be cleared for this particular crossing, but Stark had made a reasonable, if strident, case for at least some monitoring.

Sinclair put his tablet away. "Yes, sir, we're ready," he said.

"Despite the baby agents trotting in and out of here, passing messages through the portal to their counterparts on the other side and disrupting real science in the process," Stark added. "Don't think I haven't been looking for a wireless signal that can pass through. So," Stark clapped his hands together, "are you doing the whole pomp and circumstance thing?"

"It's not a state visit," Phil said dryly. "My counterpart on the other side, their Jasper Sitwell, will be meeting me."

Stark tilted his head. "We have a Jasper Sitwell, don't we?"

"We do," Phil confirmed. "He joined SHIELD a year after me, and he'd be the one to take over my responsibilities if I was killed in the line of duty, so the substitution makes sense."

"Huh." Stark's gaze went distant. "I would have thought there would be an additional person in SHIELD at your level, rather than shifting everyone up one in seniority..."

"I doubt it's that simple," Phil said. "But we're hardly going to map out their entire command structure so that you can follow the flow of differences."

Stark pouted. "Why not?"

"Because," a new voice said from through the portal, "it would be a major breach of operational security."

Phil turned his attention to the portal and smiled slightly at the familiar sight of Jasper's shaven head and small smirk. It might be a different Jasper Sitwell, but you wouldn't know to look at him. "Agent Sitwell," Phil greeted him. "I'm Phil Coulson. It's good to meet you."

"Likewise, Agent Coulson," Sitwell said, and there was a reserve in his voice that Phil wasn't used to hearing. It was an discordant reminder that this Jasper Sitwell hadn't come up through the ranks close on Phil's heels. This Sitwell hadn't found him half dead in the Australian desert after the original team blew their extraction, or asked Phil to be best man at his wedding, or driven thirty-six hours overnight because Phil's father had just had a major heart attack and he couldn't think straight enough to handle a car but he had to be there. "Ready to come across?"

"I am." Phil hefted his three bags.

Before he could take a step Stark yelped, "Wait!"

Phil's heart just about stopped, though he didn't so much as twitch outwardly. "Problem, Mr. Stark?"

"You're a new person go through," Stark said, plucking half a dozen objects off the bench in front of him and hurrying over to Phil. "Like hell you're going through without instrumentation. Hold still."

Phil sighed and looked through the portal to find Jasper silently snickering. "I take it yours," Phil nodded to Portal Stark, "does this, too?" Stark ignored him, focused on clipping a variety of sensors to Phil's clothing.

"Oh yeah," Sitwell said.

"I resemble that remark," Portal Stark said.

Stark abruptly stepped back from Phil. "Okay, you're good to go," he said, clapping his hands together. "If you could step through slowly, in the name of science, I'll get better readings."

"In the name of science," Phil agreed dryly. He wasn't actually teasing, though; he wanted them to understand the portals as much as anyone. So he stepped up to the threshold, took a breath, and stepped through with deliberation.

The threshold passing over his body left an odd prickling behind, like pins and needles sweeping over him, lingering for only a second everywhere except his left arm, where it took a good count of five to pass.

"How'd it feel?" Portal Stark asked.

Maybe Phil should re-label the Starks , now that he was on this side of the portal. Later. "Like pins and needles sweeping over my body. It lingered in my left arm."

"Lingered?" The Starks said in stereo. Phil looked from one to the other; their thoughtful frowns were identical. "That's never happened before," Portal Stark said. He stepped up to Phil and began plucking the instrumentation off of him. "Hopefully the readings will tell us more." He stepped over to where Sinclair sat on the other side of the portal and started handing things through, Phil apparently forgotten.

Phil smiled to himself and turned back to Sitwell. First names for people from my side of the portal, he decided. Last names for the people on this side. Maybe it'll help me remember that these aren't my friends. Not yet, anyway. "Lead on, Agent Sitwell," he said.

The layout of the rest of the lab that the cafeteria had become was identical to that on Phil's side. Considering that this lab had only been created after the portal had opened, it implied interesting things that the thought process of the people who'd set up the labs were so similar even once aware of the other side.

"So, you're your world's version of me," Sitwell said as they passed out of the former cafeteria and into the halls of headquarters.

Phil blinked. He hadn't thought of it that way at all, despite their mirrored roles. "No, actually. My world has a Jasper Sitwell, too. Actually, he's one of my closest friends."

Sitwell frowned. "So what does he do?"

"He's my second in command," Phil said. "Like Maria is Nick's second in command."

"First names?"

"When off duty, yes," Phil said. "Normally I wouldn't be so informal at work, but I need a way to distinguish between the people from my side of the portal and the people from this side. First names versus last names seems simplest."

Sitwell's expression lightened and he nodded. "That makes sense."

"Who's your second in command?" Phil asked curiously. "I admit that I can't think of anyone junior to Jasper that I feel would do as well as he would."

"At the moment? Agent Dennis Friedman." Sitwell's expression was mostly even, but if his tells were the same as Jasper's, he wasn't too happy with Friedman as his second. Phil couldn't blame him; the Dennis Friedman he knew on his side of the portal was decent enough agent with plenty of seniority, but he wasn't a creative thinker. Half of Phil's job was finding the right ways through and around rules and standard operating procedure. He doubted Friedman could do that. Sitwell's 'at the moment' implied that he had someone else in mind, maybe even someone else in training, though, so Phil just nodded and let it go.

As much as Sitwell was identical to Jasper, Fury was even more like Nick. Maybe it was the confident ease with which he greeted Phil, maybe it was that Phil knew Nick far better, but it made the occasional reminder that Fury didn't actually know him all the more eerie.

The first meeting consisted of Phil, Sitwell, Hill, and Fury. There had been some serious consideration of whether it was appropriate to have Phil negotiating opposite three people, but the simple truth was that of the dozen or so agents on each side of the portal who were able to cross, Phil was the only one truly qualified to negotiate. In the end, they agreed that Phil's knowledge of the three of them from his own world probably balanced out being outnumbered.

For that first meeting, no negotiating really happened. There was a lot of groundwork to lay and a lot of time spent ascertaining where the similarities and differences between agencies lay, lest they assume that because most things were the same, everything was the same. Having crossed at mid-morning, Phil didn't make his way to the quarters that had been prepared for him until after dinner.

Phil couldn't help but chuckle to himself when the door slid shut behind him. The temporary quarters were identical to those in his own world, of course, but this time the sameness was reassuring rather than unsettling; generic temporary quarters had always been identical and indistinguishable.

Phil moved to his garment bag, which had been hung up by a junior agent, and unzipped it, extracting a spare hanger to use to on the suit he was wearing. He hung it separate from the clean suits; after being worn all day it would need to be laundered regardless of the care he gave it, but that was no reason to let it wrinkle on the floor. His tie he hung up to be worn again, and the shirt went into the laundry basket. Phil padded into the small bathroom in undershirt, boxers, and socks and cupped his hands under the faucet to splash some water on his face.

And froze.

There was a line of scrawled black curled around his left forearm where there had been only bare skin that morning.

For a moment Phil was too stunned by its simple existence to even read the name inscribed into his skin. But after staring at it long enough, it eventually sank in: Clinton Francis Barton.

He'd never heard the name before. It most certainly hadn't been written on his arm before. Phil had his cellphone in his hand and dialling before he really registered that he couldn't call Jasper from a parallel world. But it rang through anyway. "Sitwell."

Phil remembered just in time that he'd probably just called this world's Sitwell. Apparently cell towers and phone numbers could be added to the list of similarities. "Agent Sitwell. This is Coulson."

"Coulson? Is there a problem with your quarters?"

If there had been any doubt that he hadn't dialled across universes, that settled it. "No, no problem," Phil said. He took a couple of deep breaths and steadied himself. He couldn't vent to this Sitwell, couldn't spill out the sudden whirling in his head, but it was something Sitwell should probably know, regardless. "But there has been a development with my crossing."

"Oh?" Sitwell said neutrally.

Phil took another breath. "When I passed through the portal, a pins and needles sensation lingered in my left arm. I didn't think anything of it at the time. But I've just now discovered that I apparently developed a soulmate mark in that location during the transition."

"Mind if I ask the name?"

Sitwell's even tone broke through Phil's shock. He didn't sound surprised at all. He also wasn't attempting to fake surprise. "You already know the name," Phil said. "It's been maybe thirty minutes since our meeting ended, but you've already spoken to someone else whose soulmate mark just appeared. Clinton Francis Barton. He's a SHIELD agent, isn't he?"

"He is," Sitwell confirmed. "He actually left a message for me while we were meeting; I called him as soon as we were out."

Phil closed his eyes and concentrated on dealing with what was in front of him at this moment. "What did he say?"

"He said not to mention it unless you did." There was a long pause. "Do you want to meet him?"

Phil's knees abruptly felt weak. He managed to tug the desk chair out and sink into it. "I don't know," he said. "I accepted the fact that I don't -- didn't -- have a soulmate a long time ago. I built a life for myself that wasn't centered around someone else. I don't even know if this mark means anything, given--" Phil stopped to take a breath and felt something in him stutter when Jasper said nothing. No, not Jasper. Sitwell. This wasn't his friend.

"Sleep on it," Sitwell said when Phil had been silent awhile. "Clint's prepared to ignore it if that's what you want."

"What about what he wants?" Phil asked.

"Clint noticed the mark shortly after you came through," Sitwell said instead of answering directly, but his voice had warmed a little. "He's had the whole day to absorb this, and you've had, what, five minutes? Think about it. Sleep. Let me know what you decide in the morning."

It didn't make sense to argue. Phil did need time to absorb what this meant, and as much as he wanted to talk, to try and work through what he was feeling aloud, Sitwell wasn't going to be able to help him with that. So Phil said good night, hung up, and carefully set the phone down on the desk.

After a moment, he turned his attention back to the name scrawled across his skin. Clinton Francis Barton. Clint, Sitwell had called him. A SHIELD agent, like Phil. A man who had, like Phil, been blank until that morning.

There were a few ways people tended to react to being blank, but there were two that accounted for most blanks. The first was depression. The second was single-minded dedication to something--a cause, an art, a career, whatever captured the individual. Phil knew he was a textbook example of the latter. Some blanks dated other blanks, or grays. When he'd finally accepted that his name was never going to appear, Phil had decided that if he was meant to have a relationship, he'd have a mark. Since he didn't, his time and focus and passion must be meant for other things. SHIELD was a worthy pursuit.

Eyes tracing the name on his forearm, Phil wondered if Clint had joined SHIELD for the same reasons. It was a hell of a coincidence for the man apparently meant to be his soulmate to also be a member of SHIELD. Assuming Clint was actually meant to be his soulmate. Was there a Clint Barton on Phil's side of the portal? Did fate reach across universes? If it did, why hadn't the mark appeared until Phil crossed? If it didn't, would the mark vanish when he crossed back?

Would it even matter if it did? Phil knew the name of his soulmate now. He knew with utter certainty that he'd never forget it. If he never met Clint, if he went home and the name faded and he never returned, he'd still wonder, occasionally, what Clint was doing at that moment.

"Well, that settles at least one thing," Phil told himself wryly, rubbing his thumb over the name. He would have to at least meet Clint.

Standing, Phil went ahead with his evening routine, losing himself in the familiar motions. But when he stretched out in bed and closed his eyes, he couldn't quiet his mind. What would Clint be like? He was a SHIELD agent, but Phil didn't even know what division. He had to be younger than Phil, because Phil had been the most senior blank on either side of the portal. Well, the most senior qualified blank. Clint could be older if he was Research, or Administration. Something about that didn't feel right, though. Don't be foolish, Phil told himself. Soulmates grow together, that's why they're so often in similar professions. Clint might be nothing like you.

The thought sent a thread of wistfulness through Phil. People were meant to meet their soulmates when they were young. They learned each other while they were still forming their places in the world, they shaped their lives to fit each other. Phil was nearly fifty, and his life had a strong, set shape already. It must be much the same for Clint. Meeting each other would probably be like meeting any other stranger. Flashy, mystical connections were for movies, not real life.

*

The first thing Phil did the next morning was contact Sitwell and arrange to meet Clint. The meeting with Fury and Hill had to be pushed back, but they didn't argue, given the circumstances.

Phil found himself fussing with his tie in the mirror and blew out a breath. "You are who you are," he told his reflection. "The way you knot your tie isn't going to change that."

The walk to Sitwell's office went quickly; he had the same one as Jasper did in Phil's world. Knowing when he was close made it easier for Phil to stride up to the door and knock without pausing. Sitwell called out for him to come in, and Phil opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind himself in one motion. There was a couch pushed up against one wall of the office, and as the door clicked closed the man who had been sitting there stood, eyes on Phil.

"Clint Barton," Sitwell said, "meet Phil Coulson."

There is no way this man isn't a field agent, Phil thought, a flush of heat going through him. Clint was about Phil's height but more muscular, his shoulders and arms in particular corded with strength. He wore battered combat boots, black cargo pants, and a grey henley with the sleeves pushed up above his elbows. His hair was dark blond, his features more rough than pretty. He made every fiber of Phil sit up and murmur, Yes, please. Phil made himself hold out a hand to shake. "Pleased to meet you, Agent Barton."

Clint's fierce, focused gaze swept over him, and for a moment uncertainty sparked in Phil, because you were supposed to grow old with your soulmate, not get halfway there before you even met them. But then Clint's eyes met Phil's and his lips quirked up into a smile. "Clint is fine," he said taking Phil's hand.

Phil found himself smiling back. "Call me Phil, then." He paused, hanging onto Clint's hand longer than a handshake should properly go on. He tilted his head. "Those aren't gun calluses."

Clint's smile broadened into a grin. "Archery."

Phil's eyebrows went up. "As in a bow and arrow?" he asked, intrigued. Just how good did you have to be with a bow and arrow to bring them into SHIELD?

"Yup," Clint said cheerfully. His thumb slid warmly over the back of Phil's hand. "You should come down to the range some time. I'll give you a demonstration."

"I'd like that," Phil said. He finally let go of Clint, missing the warmth of his hand immediately.

Sitwell coughed not-so-discreetly. When he had their attention, he said, "You've got an hour," he said. "But I'm going to have to reclaim Agent Coulson for the negotiations at ten."

Clint made a face, but nodded.

"Breakfast?" Phil suggested. "We don't have time to go off base, but we shouldn't co-opt Agent Sitwell's office."

"Yeah, sure," Clint agreed. He looked over at Sitwell. "Thanks, Jasper." Sitwell just waved them out.

The two of them fell into step as they made their way through the hallways. They didn't speak, but the silence wasn't uncomfortable. It wasn't a mystical connection, but it wasn't like going on a first date, either.

They were just two turns away from the portal lab when Phil realized where he was going and stopped dead.

"Problem?" Clint asked.

Phil shot him a sheepish glance. "I just realized I was headed to the old cafeteria, but the portal lab is there now, of course."

Clint looked around them and returned Phil's sheepish glance. "Oops?"

They laughed and Phil waved for Clint to lead the way. "In my defence," Phil said, "I spent an awful lot of time in the cafeteria before the portal opened, so the habit is pretty ingrained. Approaching a senior agent in their office is intimidating for a lot of personnel. I think I learned more and got ahead of more problems by being around when someone just 'had a minute while they finished their coffee' than I did when I was officially working."

Clint nodded. "And the break rooms are segregated by clearance level, so if you stick to them you miss talking to a lot of folks. If I was on base but not training, I was usually in the cafe so that I could hang with friends who didn't have my clearance. The new place isn't as good as the old once, unfortunately. Too small."

Phil was less surprised than he might have been the day before to discover that the new cafeteria had been set up in the same location as on his side of the portal. "I take it Agent Hernandez handles space assignments for you, as well?" Phil asked as they stepped into the cafeteria.

"I actually don't know," Clint said. "I don't have much to do with Administration. Mostly my handlers take care of that stuff."

Phil nodded; it made sense. The the implications of Clint's comment sank in. "Handlers?" he asked as they each picked up a tray and slid it along to the breakfast buffet. "You have more than one?" Most field agents settled on one primary handler by the time they finished their probationary period. They'd occasionally work with others, of course, but only one handler was really considered 'theirs'.

"Yeah," Clint said casually, but he kept his eyes on his food as he loaded a plate with bacon, eggs, and fruit salad. "I get along with all the supervisory types okay for an op or two, but I don't do conventional or by the book so well, and eventually folks need a break from always making allowances."

Phil thought of all the ops where he'd wished for a little creative thinking, all the times when he'd asked for input on a plan and gotten respectful silence. "I once stopped a gas station robbery by giving up my gun in favor of a bag of flour," he said, silently promising himself that Jasper would never know he'd brought that up himself.

Clint shot him a startled glance and then broke into a grin that made the potential future teasing worth it. "Gun as distraction?" he guessed as they took their trays over to a table. "Flour as projectile. Hmm. Or a blinding agent, if you got it open."

"Projectile," Phil said, smiling. "But it burst open when it hit the guy, so I got blinding agent as a bonus."

"That must have been a hell of a throw," Clint said, eyes trailing briefly over Phil's shoulders and arms.

Phil fought down a blush. "It didn't feel like it, at the time."

"Never does." They took a moment to dig into their food. After a few bites, Clint waved his fork at Phil. "So how'd you end up at SHIELD?"

"I was in the Rangers with the director," Phil said. "They recruited him a couple of years before me. Not that they didn't ask, but I was twenty-eight and I was still hoping..." Phil's eyes dropped to his forearm, but the mark was covered by his suit. His gaze slid across the table to Clint's arm and the neat black cursive curling around his arm. Phillip Jonathan Coulson. "Well, ten years or so didn't seem like an impossible age difference between soulmates. Nick came around again after my thirty-fifth and I signed up then."

"I didn't want one," Clint blurted. His shoulders hunched up and he stabbed his eggs with his fork. "A soulmate. When I was a kid, I mean. Or a teenager. Or, honestly, through most of my twenties." He looked up at Phil warily, like he expected Phil to be angry.

All Phil could think was, At least one of us didn't spend half their life waiting. "Why not?" he asked, because it seemed important. He kept his tone relaxed, though.

Clint seemed to respond, his shoulders coming down a bit. "Life was pretty shitty before SHIELD," he said, pushing the eggs around on his plate. "And it wasn't anything I could get myself out of, at the time. Not any of it. Just the thought of dragging someone else into that mess made me nauseous."

"But you don't mind that you have a mark now?" Phil asked.

"I never really believed in fate, the way other people talk about it," Clint said. He hesitated before meeting Phil's eyes. "But you showed up at pretty much the exact moment I was ready for this. The first moment I was ready for it. It... makes me wonder."

"I'm still not sure that fate has anything to do with it," Phil said carefully. "I spent a lot of time reading the literature on soul marks, before I joined SHIELD, and the reality is that we know very little about them. One of the things that we do know is that being soulmates doesn't guarantee a perfect relationship."

Clint snorted. "Nothing in life is guaranteed. The question is, is the risk worth the attempt?"

Phil just looked at Clint for a long moment. The other man looked back steadily. The appearance of the soul mark had shocked Phil, but it really hadn't made him rethink his position on fate. Clint, on the other hand... He liked Clint, more than he'd like just about anyone on first meeting. Even more than that, Clint was unexpectedly compatible with the life Phil already had. He wouldn't expect Phil to keep a regular schedule, or be hurt if he didn't share all his secrets, or wonder what had happened if Phil came home injured. He'd understand about losing an agent in the field, and the terrible things they sometimes saw.

The new soul mark didn't make Phil wonder if there was more to soulmates than he'd thought, but Clint did.

Phil wasn't going to do anything drastic after one breakfast, but he did want to see how this might work. "Would you like to have dinner with me?" he asked. "It'd have to be late, after my meetings today."

"Yeah." Clint's eyes sparkled. "I'd like that."

*

Years of practice at compartmentalizing missions away from other duties or private concerns got Phil through the rest of his day in reasonable order, but the moment he stepped into the quarters that had been assigned to him, it came rushing back. The Mark, meeting Clint, breakfast, the date tonight. Part of Phil felt that he should have taken some time to go down to the lab and have someone fetch Nick for a report, since Phil's sudden soulmate mark was entirely outside the realm of what they'd expected from this trip. But he hadn't.

Maybe he was dodging Nick a little bit, given the way they usually butted heads over soulmate issues, but it wasn't like anything about the mark was urgent. I should at least see how the date goes, Phil thought. I can report tomorrow with more complete information.

Clint was arranging dinner for them, since Phil had been tied up in meetings and couldn't guarantee that the restaurants he knew and liked were the same on this side of the portal. It seemed likely, as close as everything was to identical, but in a restaurant a single person missing in the kitchen could make all the difference. Clint would be coming to get him in twenty minutes, so Phil quickly stripped down and jumped into the shower. He hadn't bothered to bring casual clothes, so after giving himself a fresh shave he settled for clean suit pants and a shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the cuffs rolled up.

There was a knock at his door just as Phil was checking himself in the mirror. "He knows you didn't bring a full wardrobe," Phil muttered at his reflection. He hurried over to the door and pulled it open. He took in Clint, from black slacks to rich amethyst dress shirt to silver rings on his fingers, for a breathless moment. If it wasn't for the name on his arm, Phil would have assumed Clint was completely out of his league. "You look amazing."

Clint flushed like he wasn't used to being complimented. "You too," he said, then winced, his already pink cheeks darkening.

"Thank you," Phil said warmly, before Clint could apologize for what he clearly felt was a poor compliment. Maybe 'you too' wasn't the most eloquent way to greet a date, but it had definitely been sincere, and that counted for a hell of a lot in Phil's book. He stepped out into the hall with Clint. "Where are we headed?"

"There's this Thai place I really like," Clint said. "It's not too far from base, which I figured was a good thing, since it's already late and you've got meetings tomorrow."

"Chao Thai?" Phil asked, hopefully.

"Yeah." Clint shot him an inquiring look. "It's the same on your side?"

"I don't know about that, but it's good," Phil said. "One of my favorites."

Chao Thai certainly seemed the same as it was in Phil's world: the same facade, the same decor, Phil even recognized a couple of the same servers. The host greeted them with a smile and guided them to a table for two with a candle in the center. The candlelight softened Clint's features, but Phil found himself looking for the rough edges, warmth sparking as his eyes traced them.

Taking up their menus, they didn't speak until the server came around to deliver water and take their drink orders, both ordering a Thai beer. Not the same one, Phil noticed with relief. He knew some soulmates that were so alike it was eerie, but it had always struck Phil as artificial, as if they didn't think they were allowed to be separate people.

"So, is this place the same?" Clint asked, resting his elbow on the table as he leaned toward Phil.

"So far," Phil confirmed. "I even recognize some of the staff. It's remarkable, really, how similar our worlds are. The only significant differences, as far as I've seen, have been the few of people we found who are on one side but not the other."

"There's all sorts of gossip going around about why the portals opened up," Clint said. He kept his eyes on Phil's, something Phil found people rarely did, but Clint seemed comfortable with their gaze. "Including a handful of people who are convinced SHIELD opened ours on purpose, but that the other portals were an accident."

Phil's eyebrows went up. He wasn't particularly well plugged into the rumour mill on his side; agents seemed to find him too intimidating too gossip with. Jasper was just about his only connection, but people knew he was friendly with Phil, which limited things in his direction, as well. Phil was willing to bet that the things Clint had heard were going around his version of SHIELD as well. "What else do they say?"

"Some folks think we just hit the space-time lottery," Clint went on, pausing for a moment to take a sip of his water and taking his eyes off Phil in the process. Phil found himself eagerly seeking his gaze when he looked up again. "You know, all the universes drifting around the... whatever... and two of them had to run into each other eventually, and we happened to be it."

"Theoretically possible," Phil allowed. He raised his own glass to his lips, pausing a moment when Clint's eye dropped to watch him sip it. If he hadn't been drinking, Phil thought his mouth might have gone dry. He licked his lips, and Clint's eyes followed the motion. "But that suggests that the degree of similarity between our universes is also coincidental, and that seems a bit much."

"Not if you assume that universes that are similar to each other exist closer together in space-time," Clint pointed out. He ran his fingers idly over the side of his water glass as he spoke. His hands were broad, fingers spotted with little scars, but his touch looked light. The kind of touch that might tease.

Phil made himself take another sip of his water. "That's a pretty big assumption," he pointed out, but privately he thought there was something to it. The idea that there universes just so happened to run into each other, and just so happened to be alike, and just so happened to hold two blanks who became soulmates... That strained the concept of coincidence to the breaking point.

"True enough," Clint said easily. "There's another school of thought that says that someone hostile opened the portals so that they could attack, but that theory is dying out pretty fast."

Phil chuckled softly and Clint's lips quirked even as he tilted his head inquiringly. "Our World Security Council was convinced it was the prelude to an invasion," Phil explained, “so that rumour had some upper level support for awhile."

Clint snorted. "Sometimes I think those jokers wouldn't know an invasion if it bit them on the ass. The number of times I've been sent on an 'urgent' mission that turned out to be ordinary..." He shook his head. "But when Loki came calling, they thought one nuke would take care of it."

Phil went still. Loki. "How did it happen with Loki?" he asked quietly.

It was Clint's turn to freeze. "I guess it would have been different in your world," he said with a sudden grimace, looking away.

Despite the topic, Phil found a wry smile tilting his lips. "I was about to say the same thing."

Clint's gaze snapped back to him. "Why? No, wait, you asked first." When Phil started to demure, Clint waved him off. "Loki came through via the tesseract, at the Pegasus research base. I was briefing Fury; I'd barely warned him about the tesseract opening in both directions when Loki came through." Clint stopped and took a long breath. "Loki put me and Agent Williams under some sort of mind control. He made me shoot Fury, but I was able to put it in his vest instead of in his head." Clint set his jaw and looked Phil in the eye. "I helped Loki organize his forces, gather what he needed, and attack the Helicarrier. Natasha--the Black Widow--knocked me out during the battle, and when I woke up, Loki's influence was gone. I joined her, Rogers, Banner, Stark, and Thor in defending the city after that."

"There are six Avengers in your world?" Phil asked.

Clint looked quizzical. Apparently that hadn't been the question he'd been expecting. "Yeah. No one took my place on your side of things?"

Phil shook his head. "No. It's just the five. In our world, Nick had no warning at all that anyone might come through the tesseract. Loki took control of Nick and killed the two agents on the security detail. Assistant Director Hill took control in his absence. When the attack on the Helicarrier came, it was Nick who led it. Natasha got him back, and joined the others for the battle." He paused. "During the attack on the Helicarrier, I confronted Loki," he said quietly. "He stabbed me through the back. I was six months recovering."

Clint winced. "Fuck. Sorry," he reached out, hesitating briefly before laying his hand over Phil's. "That was a pretty shitty topic for me to just throw out there. I'm not very good at..." He waved, somehow taking in the restaurant and the romantic lighting and the names scribed on their arms and wrapping it all up into trying to get a relationship going. Then he dropped his eyes to their hands and winced, started to pull back,

Phil turned his hand over and caught Clint's before he could think about it. "You're not any worse than I am," he said. Clint's fingers were warm, the unusual pattern of his calluses pressing into Phil's skin enticingly. He smiled, and Clint relaxed. Seeing him respond, a surge of accomplishment and relief went through Phil. He rubbed his thumb over Clint's hand. "You called Agent Romanov 'Natasha'. I take it you're close?"

"I brought her in," Clint said. "Fury sent me to kill her, but she... well, she reminded me of myself." Clint smiled faintly. "This SHIELD team was after me for... God, I think it was eight months straight. I wasn't having any trouble keeping ahead of them and getting my contracts done, but I was so tired of... fuck, everything. One day they started getting close and I just couldn't think of a reason to take my exit strategy. It didn't seem to matter if they were there to kill me or to take me in." Phil caught his breath, which was stupid, Clint was here, but he couldn't help it. Clint squeezed his hand. "Lucky for me, it was the latter. When Natasha's turn came, I was on the SHIELD team, and she just walked right into my scope. Couldn't do it, not knowing where her head was just then."

It probably hadn't been anywhere near that simple. SHIELD didn't sign kill orders on a whim. Clint had held fast to his own judgement and made the hard call, even though it had probably gotten him into deep shit with people he obviously felt he owed his life to. Phil took a quick breath, because suddenly he wanted badly to be closer to Clint. A table between them was... What you need right now, Phil reminded himself. They were in the middle of a restaurant, and he was supposed to be getting to know Clint, not diving into the man's arms and never letting go.

"We never got that close," Phil made himself respond. "There was an operation with five different groups after the same objective. SHIELD was one, Romanov's employers were another. When the dust cleared, she was wounded. Dying. We brought her back to medical, and by the time she was stable Nick had convinced her to stay."

Clint started to reply, but Phil noticed their server returning with their drinks and straightened up, reluctantly letting Clint's hand go. Clint followed Phil's gaze as their server stopped at the table next to theirs, unloading two of the four drinks on his tray. The man at the table smiled at the server, but the woman was frowning. As the server turned towards Clint and Phil, the man leaned forward, but she leaned back.

"Your drinks," the server said, and Phil turned his attention back to his own table. Two bottles and two chilled glasses were set down. Phil caught Clint's eye and Clint tilted his head slightly toward the neighbouring table, eyebrows raised: What's up with them?

Phil put touched his chest over his heart and flipped his fingers dismissively: Not in love. Or just Bad date.

Clint grinned crookedly and thanked for server for the drinks.

"Are you ready to order?" the server asked.

"I'm afraid not," Phil said sheepishly. He'd hardly looked at the menu.

"I'll return in a few minutes."

When they were alone again, Clint leaned across the table and, flicking his eyes quickly at their neighbors, murmured, "I get the feeling he's been ordering for her, and she isn't too happy about it."

"Ten buck says they're soulmates," Phil returned, equally quietly. Clint's eyebrows went up in surprise and Phil shrugged. "Non-soulmate couples try harder."

"Isn't that backwards?" Clint asked. "If you're going to spend the rest of your life with someone, shouldn't you do everything you can to make them happy, to make sure you understand what they need from you and how you can be comfortable together?"

Phil smiled warmly and took a moment to take a sip of his beer, directly from the bottle rather than pouring it into the glass. Clint's eyes flickered from Phil's down to his mouth and back... more than once. Phil licked the foam off his lips as he set the bottle down, just to see the way Clint's eyes followed the motion and met Clint's gaze steadily when he looked up from the glance. "You should," he agreed, "unless you're under the impression that you can do whatever you want and your soulmate will fall all over you, because your soulmate is made just for you, right?"

Clint snorted, and glanced at the neighbouring table, where the woman was looking intently at her menu and the man now looked disgruntled. "Someone's in for a rude awakening."

"Most people come through it for the better," Phil said, but privately he was relieved his own soulmate didn't need their eyes opened like that. Then he took a second look at that thought and quickly opened his menu and dropped his eyes. The server would be coming back soon.

If Clint noticed Phil's sudden awkwardness, he didn't mention it. "You sound like you've known a lot of soulmate pairs."

That surprised Phil into looking up. "Yes, of course. Almost everyone I know got their name by the age of twenty. I've seen more first meetings than I can count. You haven't?"

Clint shook his head. "Not before I came to SHIELD. I--" He hesitated, then forged onward. "I was a mercenary before SHIELD, and in a circus before that. One is solitary, the other... Well, Carson's wasn't a place people went when they had a happily ever after waiting for them."

Phil couldn't help wanting to know more, but it was obvious his past was a difficult subject for Clint. Probably one he only brought up with people he knew well and trusted. And Phil.

Despite that, pursing the topic would only make him uncomfortable, and Phil didn't want him to be uncomfortable. "I'm guessing no one at SHIELD dropped their lunch tray and sprinted across the cafeteria to declare their immortal union to their soulmate," he said instead.

Clint grinned--as intended--and leaned forward. "Did that actually happen?"

"My hand to God," Phil swore solemnly, and then broke into an answering smile. "To be fair, Ray had always been a bit dramatic. Waxing poetic about what would happen when he found his soulmate was his favorite topic. Cavemen versus astronauts was a close second, though."

"Cavemen versus astronauts?"

"You've never run into that debate?" Phil asked. "Who would win in a fight, cavemen or astronauts?"

Clint thought for a moment. "Do the astronauts have weapons?"

Phil broke down laughing, and then he had to explain why--that was always the first question anyone had asked when Ray brought it up--and of course then they started the discussion. They still hadn't decided on food when the server came back, and had to send them away again, with apologies.

"I feel bad," Phil said, forcing his attention to his menu. "We're tying up a table."

"The place isn't full, so it shouldn't be a problem as long as we tip well," Clint said, “but I am having a problem, here. I can't decide what to order."

"What are the options?" Phil had his eye on two or three dishes himself.

"Drunken prawns," Clint said, "but the drunken prawns here come with red and green peppers, which means half the dish is left over even if I eat all the prawns and snow peas. So I need more food. Which makes me want to order the beef pineapple fried rice, but if I order both I won't eat all the fried rice, either, and if I only order the beef fried rice, then I'm eating almost all rice for dinner, which means I'll probably be hungry again later."

Phil smiled. "Order both and we can split them," he suggested. "I'm not a big fan of snow peas, but I'll happily take the peppers off your hands."

Clint lit up. "And broccoli with peanut sauce to round things out?" he suggested.

"Perfect."

"Best Thai food I ever had was in Seattle, of all places," Clint said as they set their menus aside. "I have no idea how the place didn't have some sort of award. It wasn't tiny, or out of the way. Just a regular restaurant on a regular street, except the food was fucking amazing."

"Some places aren't fancy enough to get the recognition, but the customers know what's up," Phil suggested. "I know a sushi place like that."

Discussing favorite restaurants carried them through the server returning and finally taking their order and led naturally into favorite cities. They'd been in a lot of the same places, which wasn't too surprising, since Phil was learning that each version of SHIELD dealt with pretty much the same trouble spots. Clint had very different experiences of the same cities, though. His stories were filled with the odd contrast of architectural detail--a hazard of spending so much time climbing and taking position on buildings, Phil supposed--and survival type street knowledge. Phil, on the other hand, had a painful familiarity with bureaucracy and law enforcement agencies in most cities, along with odd mission related details that spanned subjects from the composition and politics of local drug rings to the distribution of recycling centers.

The more they talked, the more animated Clint became. He talked with his hands, laughed easily, and kept leaning across the table, as if to get closer to Phil. Phil had never thought that he could have that kind of energy himself. Not that he didn't connect with people, or laugh with them. He had friends. He flattered himself that he had a bit of wit. It hadn't ever been easy, though.

With Clint, the warmth, the energy, felt like it bubbled up naturally, like it had been hiding away somewhere inside him, waiting for someone to call it out. He felt flushed, and his skin seemed to tingle every time their hands made contact. He didn't want to look away from clint, and he smiled until his cheeks hurt, and almost choked on his food laughing while eating. They had a playful spoon fight over the last drunken prawn. Clint let him have it, and Phil found himself slipping the prawn between his lips and pinching the tail off a little slower that he needed to. When he licked his fingers afterward, Clint's eyes followed every movement.

His eyes didn't miss much at all. Phil had seen his gaze catch on Phil's cufflinks a couple of times, and with the dinner dishes mostly demolished, Clint caught Phil's hand and turned it so that he could see the cufflink better... though the way that his thumb trailed teasingly over Phil's wrist might have been the real motivation. "That looks custom made," he said, looking up at Phil, almost but not quite through his eyelashes. "Something special?"

Phil blushed a bit. "Not the way you're thinking. I made the set."

The cufflinks weren't particularly fancy: each was made of four small, beveled onyx gems set into silver, with a diamond shaped lozenge of silver. He had more complicated, and more whimsical, pairs at home, but a businesslike set had seemed appropriate for this trip. Not a vacation, Phil reminded himself, despite the relaxed dinner and the good company and the way he could feel his pulse under Clint's fingers. This mission.

Clint's eyebrows went up, and he leaned down for a better look in the low light, his fingers tightening to hold Phil's wrist steady. His breath puffed out across Phil's skin, he was so close. "They're beautifully done," Clint murmured. "Do you only make cufflinks?"

"More cufflinks than anything else," Phil admitted. It almost looked like he was going to kiss Phil's hand, like they were in some sort of fairytale, soulmates traveling across universes-- "I've done brooches, hairpins, pendants, and rings as well," Phil interrupted his own rapidly spiralling train of thought, "but mostly as gifts. I don't like to make something that isn't going to get used, and I can't guarantee that anything not a gift will find use unless I can wear it myself." Clint was wearing silver rings tonight. Would he wear a ring that Phil had made? Or maybe a cuff for his wrist, something wide, hammered silver with--

"I make a lot of gloves for the same reason," Clint said, finally releasing Phil's wrist. Phil had to resist the urge to trace the warm patches where Clint's fingers had pressed against him. "I go through 'em pretty quickly, so I might as well."

"Gloves?" Phil asked. He ran quickly through the possibilities. "Knitted, I'm guessing?"

"Close," Clint grinned. "Everyone thinks they're knitted when they see them, but actually I crochet."

"Where did you learn that?" Phil asked curiously. "I know a few agents who knit, but crochet, not so much."

"On a mission, actually." Clint chuckled at the memory. "We were staking a guy out, and the perfect location to keep eyes on him was this yarn arts store. The owner didn't mind someone camping out there, but she wouldn't shut down, and she didn't wanted the agent--me--to creep out the patrons. She figured as long as I was working on an appropriate project, it would be okay. I think she would have settled for an endless series of squares, but once I picked it up, chains and squares started getting boring. By the end of the mission, I'd made my first pair of gloves, though they were more like fingerless mittens."

"I imagine it's nice to be able to take your hobby with you on missions," Phil said, thinking of warm wool wrapped around blunt but clever fingers. "Jeweling has so many small, finicky elements that I'm afraid to move it around much. Not to mention that carrying gems and precious metals is not advisable in some of the places we work."

"It can be nice," Clint said. "It can also lead to other agents giving me shit." He wrinkled his nose. "I got called 'grandma' more times than I can count. Of course, that ended after the time I ended up using my crochet hook to take out the guards when my team got captured."

In his mind's eye, Phil could easily see Clint's eyes going flinty, hands curling without hesitation around the object others had mocked him for. Grinning and folding his arms on the table, Phil urged him to continue, "That sounds like a story."

They ordered dessert because it seemed wrong to keep tying up a table without adding to their bill. The plates were cleared again far too quickly, and Phil felt his shoulders slump when the bill folder was laid on the edge of the table. He didn't want the evening to end, didn't want to let Clint out of his sight. He'd never connected with anyone so easily, never had a conversation where every comment only drew him in deeper. Maybe... maybe soulmates weren't mystical connections and destiny, no matter how much people talked about them like that. Maybe soulmates were as simple as the person who would always understand where you were coming from.

But the universe wasn't going to rearrange itself for him again; time kept moving forward. Clint paid, since Phil didn't have a bank account on this side of the portal, and they left the restaurant together, walking close enough for their shoulders to bump. The car was parked a few blocks away from the restaurant, because this was New York, but the night was mild and the walk passed all too quickly. As the car came into sight, Clint broke off his story to say, "Hey. You want to come back to my place for a drink?"

Phil smiled. He had meetings tomorrow. He didn't care. "I'd like that."

Clint had a small apartment in Queens. It wasn't quite a studio, but it was still very much the apartment of an agent who spent the majority of their time elsewhere. Still, there were a few personal touches, the most obvious of which was a crocheted blanket in at least half a dozen shades of purple. Phil ran a hand over it while Clint fetched a couple of beers from his fridge. Turning, he grinned at Phil and nodded at the blanket. "My biggest project to date. Did that while I was laid up with a broken leg. Working with yarn is pretty nice during the winter."

Phil stepped in close to accept the bottle, his fingers brushing warmly against Clint's. "I'm surprised you don't keep it in the bedroom," he murmured.

Clint touched his free hand to Phil's shoulder, ran his fingers down his arm, and cupped Phil's elbow in his hand, using the touch to guide him to the couch. Phil fought down a shiver, then wished he'd just let it happen. Clint sat sideways on the couch, facing Phil, his hand dropping from Phil's elbow to rest lightly on his knee. "It's too warm to sleep under it just yet, but it's nice to cuddle up in on the couch."

Phil met Clint's eyes, took a long pull from his beer, and then set it aside. Clint followed suit, and when Phil leaned in to kiss him, Clint was ready. The kiss was slow, but though it started light, it gradually grew deeper. Clint hand slid up from Phil's knee, thumb rubbing maddening circles into the inside of Phil's thigh until he broke the kiss with a moan. "Are you planning on doing something with that hand?" Phil asked, voice rough already.

Clint chuckled, husky and low and apparently perfectly tuned to send a rush of heat through Phil. "Eventually," he murmured. "But it's doing its job pretty well at the moment."

"Driving me to distraction?" Phil asked, but he slid a hand into Clint's hair and pulled him back into the kiss before he could answer. This kiss was hungrier, more urgent, and Clint met him every step of the way. Clint's hand on his leg felt good, and he tasted good, and he even smelled good. Kissing Clint made Phil want to push in closer, to feel the heat of him all along his body. Before he really thought about it, he was kneeling on the couch, one knee planted between Clint's legs, leaning in to press their bodies together as they kissed. Clint's hands clutched at his hips, and he moaned eagerly into Phil's mouth.

Phil's heart was pounding, the rush of arousal through his veins making him breathless. He had to break the kiss for a moment just to catch his breath. Clint slid one hand up to cup Phil's cheek, stroking the line of his jaw. "Phil," he said, and his voice was gravelly enough to send a shiver through Phil. "If you want these clothes to be presentable tomorrow, we should probably get you out of them now."

Laughter bubbled up out of Phil at the mix of practicality and blatant come on. "Not a line I've heard before," he said, sliding backwards off the couch and standing before Clint. He toed out of his shoes and bent briefly to remove his socks, tucking them into the loafers and nudging both under the couch. He'd probably have trouble finding them tomorrow, but that was better than tripping over them. Phil straightened and started unbuttoning his shirt from the bottom up.

Clint leaned forward, arms braced on his knees, and looked Phil over with the kind of heat that turned the necessity of undressing into a strip tease. "What line?" he said, grinning. "I'm just making sure you're presentable for your meetings tomorrow."

Phil arched an eyebrow and slowed before slipping the last button through it's hole. "You think I'm not organized enough to wake up in time to stop by my on-base quarters for change of clothes?"

"I think," Clint paused, his breath stopping for a moment as Phil paused, then slowly shrugged out of his shirt. "I think," Clint went on, voice rough now, "that I'm going to wear you out too well for you to get up that early."

Phil tossed his shirt over the back of the couch next to Clint and dropped his hand to his fly. He opened the button, then drew down the fly, hips tilting slightly forward despite himself as he did. "Confident," he remarked, “but I recover well."

Clint laughed. "Well, that's just an excuse for round two in the morning." He reached up, abandoning the idea of simply watching, and tugged on Phil's pants, sending them sliding down Phil's legs to the floor.

Phil stepped out of his pants, clad only in his boxer-briefs now, and looked down at Clint, who settled his hands on Phil's hips and leaned in, eyes half closed as he took a deep breath. "Are you... smelling me?"

"Mmmm, savoring the moment." Clint opened his eyes; when Phil met his gaze, the hunger there triggered a throb of arousal. Clint slowly slid his hands up to hook his fingers into the elastic waist of the boxer-briefs.

"I'd think you'd be impatient to get to the good part," Phil said. It was something he'd gotten used to with his bed partners. Once they got down to it, he was more than capable of showing them a good time, but there wasn't much exciting happening before he could get hands on.

Clint laughed, and Phil's pride pricked--didn't he think Phil would be any good? "Don't I get a minute to decide which good part?" he asked, and Phil realized Clint thought Phil had been teasing. "But if you want to speed things up," Clint said, standing and taking Phil's hands in his own, "you're welcome to." He placed Phil's hands at the fly to his own pants and grinned crookedly.

"Well, far be it from me to refuse such an invitation," Phil murmured, but instead of opening Clint's pants, he let one hand rest at his waist and cupped the other over the hot bulge of Clint's cock straining at the fabric.

Clint groaned. "I can get that invitation engraved, if you want."

Phil laughed and finally popped open the button and lowered Clint's fly. "Not necessary." He leaned in for a kiss as he pushed Clint's slacks down over his hips. He could feel them whisper past his own bare legs, standing as close as they were. Clint kicked his pants away without breaking the kiss, and somehow when he was done he was pressed even closer to Phil, his boxer-clad cock brushing teasingly against Phil's.

Moaning into the kiss, Phil reached around to cup Clint's ass, which made Clint buck his hips into Phil's. Phil broke the kiss with a gasp. "We have got to get into the bedroom."

"Yeah," Clint agreed. He led the way, stripping off his shirt as he went. In the bedroom they took a moment to shed the last of their clothes, watching each other with parted lips, and eagerly climbed into the bed together. Phil pushed Clint down onto his back and crawled over top of him, leaning down for another long, heated kiss.

Clint, it turned out, had wandering hands. Even as they kissed, he petted Phil's hips and thighs, stroked the length of his back and squeezed the curve of his ass. Phil kept getting distracted, breaking the kiss to gasp or moan. "Are you always this tactile?" Phil said, shivering as Clint slid his hands up Phil's flanks, thumbs just brushing the sides of his pecs.

"I guess so?" Clint said. "I like getting to know my partner's body, seeing what they like." He slid his hand over and rubbed his thumb over Phil's nipple, grinning when Phil bit back a moan. "You mind?"

"Not... not at all," Phil said shakily as Clint took his nipple between two fingers and gently rolled it. He closed his eyes as Clint brought his other hand into play, toying with Phil's other nipple. God, it felt so good, those broad hands teasing him, palms splayed over his chest even as fingers teased his nipples.

"Hmmm. I think..." Clint trailed off, and then shifted them so that Phil was on his back, Clint sprawled half between his legs and half on top of him, propped up on his elbows and idly brushing Phil's sides with his hands. "I want to do a little in depth exploration." He lowered his head, and Phil moaned low in his chest as hot, soft lips closed around his nipple. It felt so good, but he should be... he should be... The thought detrailed as Clint brought a hint of teeth into play. Phil flailed, unsure where to put his hands. They eventually landed on Clint's shoulders. Strong, muscular shoulders. Phil whimpered and shut his eyes, suddenly a little overwhelmed with how good everything was.

The hot, teasing touch left his nipple and Phil blinked and looked at Clint, who was now watching him with concern. "Everything okay?" Clint asked.

Phil let out a shaky laugh. "Yeah. Just--" not used to getting this much attention, but he didn't want to sound self-pitying, "--you're really good at that. Overwhelmed me a little."

Something in the tilt of Clint's head told Phil that Clint didn't entirely buy that, but he let it go. "Let's try a few more things and see what else I'm good at," he said, waggling his eyebrows, and Phil laughed.

As it turned out, Clint was good with his mouth in general. After switching nipples, apparently just for the sake of fairness and the pleasure of making Phil moan, he worked his way down, finding Phil's ribs with the tips of his fingers and tracing them with the point of his tongue, sucking kisses into his sternum, his belly, a patch of skin below his navel. Phil was sure Clint would move on to his cock, but instead he sat back on his heels and started trailing his hands up and down Phil's legs, at first lightly enough to tickle but, when Phil jerked his leg in reaction, settling down into a firm, certain stroke that made Phil's skin tingle.

Propping himself up, Phil watched, a little bemused, as Clint cupped Phil's knee in one hand and slowly slid the other around to the back, fingers rubbing a small circle into the hollow there. It started off seeming random and silly, and slowly grew into a focal point of heat that had Phil's cock throbbing and his mouth dry. "That's not even an erogenous zone," he said, his voice breathless. He'd have been embarrassed, except it looked like Clint was just as turned on by doing it.

"Isn't it?" Clint asked mischievously, lifting his fingers for a moment and then lightly, teasingly stroking the spot.

Phil moaned helplessly, the fleeting touching sending a shudder of sensation through him.

Clint chuckled and kissed Phil on the top of his knee, then moved on, working his way down Phil's calf and reaching his foot. "I'm ticklish," Phil warned breathlessly, because if Clint tried a light touch on his foot, the kick he'd give would put the earlier jerk of his leg to shame.

"Don't worry," Clint said, and dug his fingers firmly into the arch of Phil's foot, right where it always ached after a long day. The mingled pleasure and relief was almost a shock, and Phil gasped, then flopped down onto his back, covering his face with his hands. Clint kept rubbing, and Phil tried to bite back a moan. Fuck, a foot rub shouldn't feel this good.

Clint worked over both feet while Phil slowly came apart, eventually dropping his hands to clutch at the bed sheets and letting the moans come, because damn, Clint had earned them. When his second foot was gently placed back on the bed, Phil expected Clint to start working his way up the other leg. Instead he crawled right back up over Phil and settled down on top of him, ducking in for a hungry kiss, his cock hot and damp at the head where it pressed against the crease of Phil's hip.

Phil eagerly released the sheets in favor of sweeping his hands up over the strong planes of Clint's back and gripping his shoulders. He leaned up into the kiss, deepening it, drawing Clint's tongue into his mouth and sucking on it for the pure visceral pleasure of it. Clint groaned deep in his chest, hips stuttering, rubbing his cock shakily over Phil's skin. Squirming, Phil managed to shift them so that their cocks were pressed side by side between their bellies.

Groaning, Clint rolled his hips again. The friction was hot and a little bit rough, their combined pre-come not enough to make it smooth. Phil's didn't want it smooth, didn't want it easy and practiced and barreling toward climax. He let his hands slide down from Clint's shoulders to grip the cheeks of his ass, encouraging him to thrust again, and harder.

Clint obliged, bracing himself on knees and elbows and rutting against Phil. He broke the kiss to gasp in a breath, but Phil didn't let him go for long, dragging him back down into the kiss with a hand in his hair. Clint whimpered, but it wasn't a bad sound, not at all. Phil rubbed his fingers over Clint's scalp and the press of his mouth against Phil's went soft even as his cock throbbed tangibly between them. There was something amazing about that, that just kissing Phil could make Clint feel like that, could make him want like that.

Slowly withdrawing from the kiss himself, Phil murmured, "I could come just like this. Your body against mine, feeling how hard you are, how hot your skin is against mine."

"Thought I was supposed to be wearing you out," Clint breathed, but he never faltered in the steady roll that rubbed them together.

Phil hummed. "You think I'm not going to sleep well and deeply with you curled up close behind me? You think coming for you isn't going to leave me sated and relaxed?"

Clint moaned and kissed Phil urgently, but briefly. "I want that," he said against Phil's mouth. "Want you all wrung out and satisfied."

"Just a little bit more," Phil urged him on. Clint dove back into the kiss, rubbing faster against Phil. He shifted one hand to Phil's hip, tugging. Taking the hint, Phil thrust up against him as best he could and God, it felt good, all friction and heat and sweat sliding over Phil's skin. Clenching his eyes shut, Phil moaned and pressed his head back into the bed, hips jerking up as he came in long, slow pulses of sensation, climax washing over him in waves.

"Yes," Clint groaned, "yes, yes, just--" His voice broke and he shuddered with his own orgasm. He slumped in the aftermath, heavy on top of Phil. Heavy, but not unwelcome. Phil found himself gently rubbing Clint's back as they caught their breath, a soothing motion rather than an arousing one.

Eventually Clint shifted to one side. Phil climbed out of bed and went and found the washroom, where he wet a washcloth with warm water, returning to clean both of them up. He dropped the washcloth in the laundry basket when he was done and crawled back into the bed. They lay on their sides, facing each other, and for a moment they just looked, both smiling.

"This is nothing what I imagined having a soulmate would be like," Phil admitted after awhile.

Clint's eyebrows went up. "What did you expect?"

"I always figured the soulmate pairs I met were so well matched because they all met so young," Phil said. "A lot of them got their names before they were even eighteen. When you dedicate yourself to someone that young, of course you learn to fit together. You change in parallel, fit yourselves to each other."

"You make it sound like any two people could fit together like soulmates do, if they worked at it."

Phil shrugged one shoulder. "I guess I thought they could."

"Then what did you think the point of the marks was?" Clint's tone was curious, not accusatory.

"I didn't know," Phil said. "And, to be fair, soulmate researchers don't know either. They've been trying for over a hundred years to figure out what makes two people soulmates. But for all the research that's been done, it's just a collection of all the things we know don't make people soulmates. Sometimes, I didn't think there was any point at all, that maybe soulmate marks were vestigial, something left over after the need for them had passed." Phil snorted softly. "There are a few people on my world who are going to take great pleasure in seeing me eat my words."

Clint smiled, eyes sparkling. Then his expression softened, became almost shy. "It's almost exactly like I imagined it. Except better."

"I thought you didn't want a soulmate?"

"Up through my twenties," Clint reminded him. "After I'd been settled at SHIELD awhile I started thinking about it. I mean, I didn't have one, and I didn't really want a name to appear at that point--I was thirty-three by the time I got really comfortable, and the idea of having a fifteen or sixteen year old soulmate didn't appeal--but I wondered what it would be like sometimes. Fantasized about having a soulmate. Not meeting them, but having them in my life already." He flushed slightly, eyes drifting away from Phil. "Mostly I thought about having someone to laugh with. Someone who understood where I was coming from, who could follow the way I thought and liked how it went."

"Someone who understood what SHIELD meant to you," Phil put in softly. "Not just a job, but a... a kind of salvation."

Clint met his eyes again. "Yeah." His mouth turned up at the corner. "But as much as I enjoyed thinking about it, I didn't think a person like that could really exist. I have a hard enough time getting anyone but Natasha to put up with me for more than a mission at a time, and much as I love her, she's got a cynical edge that I can't--don't want--to connect with. I need to believe the world is worth what I give it." Clint chuckled softly. "I guess I was kind of right, in the end, since my soulmate had to come from a whole different universe." He regarded Phil warmly. "I'm glad you're here."

"Me too," Phil said softly. Then a thought dawned. "Oh shit," he said. "Nick is going to kill me."

*

"'Why on Earth would you think I'd stay?' you said," Nick said, glaring at Phil through the portal. His hands were braced on his hips. The lab had theoretically been cleared of scientists for this meeting, but Phil could see Stark peering in the door. "'I'm not looking to leave this world behind,' you said."

"I wasn't looking for this," Phil said, exasperated. "How was I supposed to know I'd find my soulmate in this world?"

"You should have trusted my gut," Nick growled.

Phil raised his eyebrows. "And given up the chance to meet my soulmate?"

"You didn't used to care," Nick said, but he relented after a moment. "No, of course not. But shit, Phil, what are you going to do over there? I doubt their Sitwell is going to want to give up his position."

"You're getting ahead of yourself, Nick," Phil said. "This introduces a new variable to the portals and crossings. Only blanks and a few greys could cross, so does not being blank anymore mean I can't cross back? If I can, what about Clint? We don't know."

"So why not see if you can still stick your hand through?" Nick asked, nodding at the portal.

Phil hesitated. "Now that I've got him," he admitted, "I don't want to risk interfering with the connection. But there's a lot we can learn before we just go jumping through the thing. In the meantime, I'll do the job I came to do."

Nick rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Assuming the WSC doesn't decide this constitutes a conflict of interest."

"That one I can't help you with, I'm afraid." Phil couldn't help smile, thinking about his 'conflict of interest'. Of Clint.

Nick lowered his hand and glared at Phil. "Be a little less happy while you complicate my life. And arrange a meeting between me and your guy."

"Official or unofficial?"

"It'll have to be at least a bit official," Nick said, waving at the portal. "But mostly? I just want to see what kind of person it takes to make you do an about face from 'soulmate marks mean nothing' to 'I don't want to risk it.'" Phil blushed despite himself and Nick grinned. "And now I really want to meet him."

*

Standing in the lab, facing the portal, Phil took a deep breath and reminded himself that every test Stark and the other portal researchers had devised said that there was no reason he shouldn't be able to cross freely. Sure, but soulmate researchers don't understand what changes about a person when they find their soulmate, either, an uncertain voice whispered. What if it's changed you too much?

Then I shouldn't be able to cross back at all, Phil told himself. I'm not going to be stuck on the opposite side from Clint. Especially since--

"Hey."

Phil turned towards Clint, standing at his side, and had to smile at the sight of him, despite the lines of concern drawn into his expression. "You okay?" Clint asked.

"I'm fine," Phil assured him. "Just... a little worried about getting stuck on opposite sides."

Clint reached out and took his hand. "We're going through at the exact same time," he promised. "No stranding."

"Hey, lovebirds," Tony called from Phil's home world. "You ready to do this thing or not?" He leaned to one side, peering through the portal. "Other me, you're ready, right?"

"I'm ready," Stark confirmed. Both Phil and Clint were festooned with sensors. "But the eminent Director is late."

Phil checked his watch. "Not yet."

"Three minutes," Clint said. "I wouldn't make any assumptions, Fury is--"

"Never late," Nick and Fury finished in concert, striding into into the lab on their respective sides of the portal. They eyed each other warily at the perfectly timed response. Nick continued. "All right, Coulson, let's get this show on the road. I need to know if I'm losing one of the best damn agents I've got." He glared at Clint for a moment. Phil would have worried, but Clint grinned back in a way that made Phil wonder just what those two had said to each other during their first meeting.

Phil squeezed Clint's hand and together they stepped up to the portal.

"One," Phil murmured.

"Two," Clint said.

"Three."

Together, they stepped forward.

The first time, Phil had felt like the portal was drawing him in. This time, it was more like stepping through a spider web. It clung for a moment, but then parted around him and fell away, leaving only a vague sense of contact behind. Clint's hand remained steady in his. Back in his home reality, Phil turned to beam at Clint, who grinned back for an instant before pulling Phil into a long kiss. If there was more relief in it than Clint would ever admit, well, Phil wouldn't mention it.

"Get a room, kids," Tony and Stark said, in truly disturbing stereo. Phil broke the kiss to shoot an exasperated glance at Tony while Clint turned to glare at Stark.

But when they turned back to each other, they both had to laugh. "Your place or mine?" Clint asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Phil smiled, squeezing Clint's hand. "I'm thinking both. "

"Both is good," Clint agreed, eyes sparkling.

~!~