Chapter Text
They’re working really late into the night when it happens, that first connection that makes Clint think maybe he’s not alone in all this. That moment that makes him think maybe he’s not crazy after all. The first time, he still thought he was hallucinating. It took months, maybe years, for Clint to convince himself it actually happens. That Phil sometimes appears, someone who isn’t Agent Coulson and who isn’t even plain Coulson his tentative friend and then even later, his for real friend. A friend who got him birthday gifts and visited him in the hospital. But Phil is someone who rarely visits. He’s quiet and shy and strangely contained in ways Clint doesn’t even begin to understand. So it takes years for him to really believe Phil, as he sees him, exists and is not a product of his overactive imagination, a pining wish he accidentally takes out in the daytime.
Years later, it’s one of those nights Clint has come to enjoy. They’re in Coulson’s office in New York. It’s dark out, but he and Coulson are on totally different timezones than everyone else anyway; they’ve been working the night shift emergency alert for the last few weeks, and by now, 2am is lunch time. So all the late hour does is lend a private quality to their work without the heavy burden of exhaustion.
In the beginning, it took more than a little time for them to gel as a team. At first Clint’s main goal in life and as a SHIELD agent (and no one said he was good at making life decisions at the time) was making a living out of being contrary. Coulson didn’t take on assets of his level. Or with his authority problem. At least, not then he didn’t.
Then one day, Agent Coulson made an exception, and to this day Clint isn’t sure why. They clashed from the moment they met and Clint had taken special offense at Coulson’s super bland face. But from the second their first op went live it was like even the rough edges blended together seamlessly. Coulson was definitely in charge but he listened to Clint -- at first to his idle chatter and then later to his questions disguised as sharp antagonism. He listened and then gave Clint the information he needed or even changed the plan based Clint’s suggestions. And he managed to do it all without making it sound like it was a big deal.
It had been heaven, was still heaven really, to have someone who understood him that much. Who shored up his strengths, filled in his weaknesses. Coulson would listen to him the way no one else would, took his opinions as informed instead of rude or obnoxious just because they questioned the guy in charge’s plan.
When Natasha had entered the picture a few years later, it had almost ruined a lot of it. It wasn’t her fault, Clint could have handled a lot of it better all around. Should have known that those first all night planning and researching sessions meant something more. Meant that he could ask, or try, or whatever it was that was needed to make bringing Natasha in less of a clusterfuck.
But they got past it. With less pain and recriminations than Clint could have ever hoped for.
The first time he and Natasha worked together there had been that same frisson of connection. After, Clint had felt lost, like maybe working with Natasha had killed whatever it was he and Coulson had. Had broken something irrevocably. But it hadn’t. Natasha is family, but in a different way.
Sometimes, Natasha joins them, tossing out ideas as she flicks pieces of fortune cookie at their heads. Mostly though, that’s not how Natasha works, so it’s just the two of them. Alone in the dark hours, piecing together an op from the ground up.
“I shouldn’t tell you,” Coulson says quietly one night, during a break, “but I’m sure you’ve heard the rumblings.”
“Hmm?” Clint asks, mouth full of chow fun. God bless the 24 hour, short order, Chinese place down the block. Clint thinks SHIELD alone keeps them in business with those hours.
“This one is your last requirement for the promotion review.” Coulson emphasizes it with a raising of his eyebrows.
Clint smiles and finishes swallowing his food. He leans back into the couch they’re sharing and nods. “Yeah, that’s about what my personal tally says as well.”
Coulson spends a few seconds watching him, observing him. Clint shivers as he practically feels the assessment run over his skin.
“You should run it,” Coulson finally says.
Clint blinks, his entire relaxed demeanor sucked away with shock. “I’m sorry, what?” He then adds, “Then who’s up high?” because that’s always his question.
“Whoever you want,” Coulson says, shrugging. “You should run it,” he says again and Clint doesn’t make much more sense of it the second time around.
“You’re ready.” Coulson puts down his cup on the nearest flat surface. It’s his office, so it’s full of places just large enough for a mug. Then he turns on his side of the couch to fully face Clint. “You’re more than ready and it’s at my discretion at this point. You were ready six months ago, but you wouldn’t have agreed with me then.”
“You think I will now?” Clint’s eyebrows have migrated into his hairline and haven’t come back down yet. To be fair, Clint does feel a little ready, not that the idea doesn’t scare him shitless, but it’s a kind of shitless he’s used to. Clint also knows that it would solve one of the hiccups of moving from the Specialist track to the Special Agent track. If he does this now, the promotion is real as soon as the ink dries, no probation, no supervisory period, no extra months of being tugged along on a leash. That alone makes it pretty appealing, despite the terror.
Coulson’s gaze remains steady and Clint, as usual, crumples. “Yeah,” Clint says, “I can see keeping the stopwatch on this one, making sure everyone moves on time.” The stopwatch was more of a metaphor these days, everyone’s time keeper is synchronized to the microsecond before being handed out and the mission time is officially counted down off the central console next to the op commander.
They’re quiet together for some time, Clint takes the moment to look away from Coulson’s piercing gaze to finish stuffing his face. And to maybe stop that sharp feeling from tugging at his chest. Coulson’s belief in him has always done funny things to his insides.
“You really think I’d do okay?” Clint eventually asks when there are no more noodles to root out of his cardboard container.
“Barton,” Coulson sighs, “Clint. I wouldn’t recommend you if I thought you’d just do okay.”
Clint’s smile just about splits his face as he looks up. “I just figured your blatant favoritism was finally showing.”
That’s when it happens, a flash of something, a half second of shock followed by a dull red flush that Clint would miss if he wasn’t looking. “Barton, the mere fact that you don’t spend large chunks of your down time confined to base proves that we’ve gone beyond favoritism and straight into Stockholm syndrome.”
Clint laughs because he loves it when Coulson gets just a little sassy, but at the same time he’s sad because he managed to scare that quiet, supportive Coulson -- Phil --he’s come to like back into his shell. Clint has seen him more and more recently, especially in their most recent night shift assignment. Phil’s a guy he wants to get to know better, see even more often. He’s also a guy who’s making Clint think he’s a little nuts, until the next time he makes an appearance.
It’s not that Clint doubts his own mind, but it’s just that… Clint doubts his own mind. When he’s really invested, it’s hard not to. For a brief few seconds, Clint feels selfish, more selfish than usual at any rate, so he shifts the topic back. “Will you be there?” he asks casually, maybe not as smoothly as he would have liked because Coulson’s face goes through a series of expressions.
“Be there?” Coulson asks, idly sorting through their food garbage and tossing the empties into the plastic bag it all came in.
“In the command center,” Clint clarifies even though he’s pretty sure Coulson knows exactly what he’s talking about.
“You’d be in charge,” Coulson informs him mildly, tying a knot in the plastic bag before looking up. “Once the clock starts, you’re captain,” another metaphor, someone early in SHIELD had a strong Navy background and certain phrases had become embedded into SHIELD culture. “Every agent on the op reports to you no matter their rank. You can put me wherever you want.”
Clint wants to say it, he really does, but he can see the edges of that quiet friend coming back out and he doesn’t want to scare him away again, so he swallows the terrible sex joke and ducks his head. “And if I do something wrong?”
“Then you’ll fix it.”
That makes Clint’s head snap up. “What?” He shifts on the couch, finding it uncomfortable for the first time in years. ‘Then you’ll fix it’ isn’t at all like the ‘then I’ll be there’ Clint was expecting.
Coulson does that thing where he stares at Clint, like he has a million things to say and is trying to find the best place to start. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he starts slowly, curving his body inward, fully facing Clint, bringing a leg fully onto the couch. “Everyone, even me. The trick is not to panic. The trick is to be able to make the next decision and the next. The trick is to keep focused and not get stuck on one bad call.”
Clint feels pinned by Coulson’s gaze, which never wavers. “So what?” Clint asks. “You just move on? No matter what?” All thoughts of teasing out that quiet friend are gone, because Clint genuinely doesn’t understand people who can just freeze out terrible things. What if someone dies and it’s a result of Clint’s decisions?
“No,” Coulson says, more emotion in that single word than Clint often gets out of him in a whole week. “No Clint, of course not.”
“Oh,” Clint says, relieved. For a second there, he was worried maybe he didn’t know Coulson at all.
“The idea is to deal with it later,” Coulson says carefully, licking his lips. “It’s not always that simple, sometimes you have to learn to make decisions through the fear, the horror,” he pauses and there’s a catch in his voice, “the grief.”
“And then?”
“You try to move on as best you can.”
“Yeah,” Clint sighs, sliding back onto the couch. “I’m not so good with that last part.”
Coulson leans in, voice going low and secretive. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“Yeah?” Clint asks, tilting his head in Coulson’s direction.
“No one is.”
Their eyes meet and Clint sees him then, that quiet, supportive friend, but he sees more too. He sees why that friend is so quiet, so hidden. Clint sees grief, endless, terrible grief inside of terribly sad eyes. Clint is reaching out before he realizes it, taking Coulson’s hand inside his own.
They don’t speak. Clint spends those seconds trying to find a way to ask ‘are you okay?’ without sounding nosy or any number of other things that would piss him off if asked to him in this type of situation. It turns out, reaching out seems to be enough, Coulson’s shoulders sort of loosen up just a bit and the lines around his eyes soften. Clint is just about to say something, anything, when the alert chimes on Coulson’s phone and then both turn their attention to solving the next crisis.
Clint takes the lead after all. When the time comes to finalize the placement of personnel, Clint takes a long look at Coulson who stares back at him calm and unperturbed.
“Coulson,” Clint calls out.
“Barton?” He’s already moving, probably towards the position he assumes Clint has been holding for him.
To be fair, Clint has been holding a slot in the infiltration team too, but that’s not where he wants to put Coulson for this op. “You mind going up high?” he asks before Coulson finishes his short walk to the equipment check.
Coulson’s hand briefly freezes over the standard comms and ammunition packet before swinging a few inches left and grabbing the more specialized gear. He looks up at Clint and his smile and nod seem softer than usual.“And pass up the chance to be Hawkeye’s sniper? Are you insane?” He moves on to firearms and double blinks at finding his own hardware waiting for him.
Snipers, even world class ones, if given a choice, prefer their own equipment. With the distances they shoot, what would be negligible errors or quirks can get compounded into missed shots, or worse, collateral damage. Clint’s seen Coulson’s range scores; Coulson keeps his certifications solid because he’s a guy who can’t stand being under-prepared for anything. They’ve shared a range enough for Clint to know where and how Coulson’s personal property is stored. Though he did have to go to Fury for the override to the locker, the look on Coulson’s face makes all the extra effort completely worth it.
As Clint gives the go order, he turns to Coulson and says, “I’d wish you luck, but you don’t need it.”
Without blinking, Coulson returns the line that Clint usually says. “Never do.”
“Good man,” Clint finishes out their routine like they’ve always said each other’s lines.
The op goes smoothly. Well. About as smoothly as anything ever does. It’s strange being the bug in Coulson’s ear rather than the other way around, but it is soothing in a weird sort of way.
There’s a lull in the middle, as there usually is, and the quiet click of a private line coming up catches Clint’s attention.
“Barton,” Coulson’s steady voice comes through, “this is usually when you bother me with what I’m sure you believe is your sparkling wit.”
Clint smiles and switches his channel. “Yeah, well this is usually when you beg for radio silence.”
“I don’t beg,” Coulson comes back, managing to convey the feeling of offended dignity. “I creatively negotiate.”
“You’ve been planning this for years haven’t you?”
“I plan everything for years.” Coulson’s voice sounds impossibly light over the radio. It might actually all be in Clint’s head, but he still laughs anyway. There was always something about Coulson making jokes that relaxed Clint.
There’s a second, right when things get a little ugly, when Clint realizes he’s the one who has to give the kill order. It’s a slim distinction, because he’s made the decision himself maybe hundreds of times in one-on-one combat. Even when he’s playing sniper, when his job is to simply be an extension of another person’s reach, he’s made the decision on his own. SHIELD isn’t the military, despite their quasi-military appearance, and Coulson has never been like any other commanding officer. Clint knows if he needs to, he can renegotiate the fire order. Has in the past, though he’s learned better ways to do it than apologizing and then tearing out his earpiece.
To give the order to another human being, when it’s planned and premeditated and not simply a desperate scream from across the room to ‘kill the asshole already’, feels different. Maybe this is what those manuals were talking about. This moment right here.
“Take the shot,” Clint forces out, because the information is theirs, the allies who can’t know are gone and none the wiser, and the asshole in Coulson’s scope has a side business in human trafficking that’s making every portion of this operation twelve times trickier. Clint really wants those girls out safe, almost more than he wants the information. The information will eventually lead to saving people’s lives, but it feels a lot less concrete than watching Team C open up those chained doors and help scared looking girls out into the sunlight.
Coulson finds him later, sits next to him at the table as Clint fills out paperwork and organizes the clean up crew. Coulson doesn’t say anything, he just starts disassembling and cleaning his weapon with easy precision and rote movements. Clint nods at him in an absent sort of way but feels his shoulders relax as Coulson gets on with his work. When he’s all done, he zips the rifle back into its case and pulls out a tablet, opening up a familiar-looking AAR form. It’s the form Clint has filled in countless times over the years.
“Make sure you hand that in on time,” Clint jokes.
Coulson’s hands don’t even skip a beat. “I should make you hunt me down for this thing, as a final lesson.”
Because Clint worries that Coulson would take to the vents for effect, he shakes his head. “Oh no, buddy, you’re sitting right there till it’s done.”
Eventually, Coulson taps his shoulder so Clint can watch him hit the submit button.
“Excellent,” Clint says with a sigh of satisfaction. “Gold star on your assessment.”
Coulson’s shoulders rock up and down in a silent laugh and and then he leans in just a fraction and whispers, “It’ll take a few days for the paperwork, but Fury’s already got you on his schedule.” He doesn’t wait for Clint’s response before leaving. Bastard always did like a good exit line.