Chapter Text
November 10, 2004, 11:02 am
“You guys are gonna love one another,” Clint said, bouncing a little as they walked down the sunny street toward Las Ramblas, where Clint had arranged to meet his friend. “I mean, you’ve got so much in common! You’re both smart and funny and badass and—oh! Did I tell you, when we met I thought Nat was gonna be my soulmate for like three seconds, because the first thing she said to me was exactly the same thing you did? But it was just a coincidence, she’s got other shit going on, it’s complicated. But isn’t that funny?”
Phil shoved down a surge of completely inappropriate jealousy that he was mostly sure was down to the bonding hormones. “Hah, yeah,” he said. “Crazy.”
Clint looked at him sharply. “What’s—oh. I said that wrong.” He stopped walking and tugged Phil a little closer with their joined hands. “Hey. Phil. Me and Nat, we aren’t like that, okay? Well, okay, we did use to sleep together sometimes, but like, in a friends with benefits way, not like in a true-love way. I mean I do love her, obviously, but not—ugh.” He dropped Phil’s hand to run both his hands through his hair. “She’s my best friend, and we’ve known each other for a long time, and she’s basically the sister I never had. And she is going to love you because you are my soulmate and you make me happy. Okay?”
Phil stepped close and rested a hand on Clint’s chest, feeling his heart beating beneath Phil’s hand and Phil’s words. “Okay,” he said. “I promise, I’ll try not to be weird when I meet her. I’m just nervous, mostly,” he said, realizing even as he said it that it was true. “She’s important to you, so I want to make a good impression, but also I’m still a little bond-crazy and it’s making me want to detour straight to the Barcelona airport and kidnap you back home with me and hide you in my apartment for a year.”
Clint pulled him forward into a hug and brushed a kiss along his cheekbone. “Not gonna lie, that sounds like a great idea,” he said. “But we both know we aren’t gonna do that.”
“Yeah,” Phil sighed, taking comfort in the warm circle of Clint’s arms. “I know.”
They pulled apart reluctantly and continued down the street hand-in-hand.
“Remember,” Clint said quietly as they approached the restaurant, “she knows I’m undercover, and the place we’re meeting is a big tourist spot, so just… go along with whatever she says, okay? We’ll fill her in when we get somewhere safe to talk.”
Phil nodded, his shoulders curving in a little and his stride shortening as he pulled himself back into Peter Clark. Clint changed, too, his graceful walk turning into a swagger, his chest puffing out, and he slipped his hand out of Phil’s to stick it possessively into Phil’s back jeans pocket.
“Ty ne takoj smešnoj, kak ty dumaeš’,” Phil told him. You’re not as funny as you think you are.
Clint—no, that expression was Lyosha—smirked at him. “I think I am, Petya,” he said, his Russian accent back in place, seamless if Phil hadn’t known the truth.
They made their way onto Las Ramblas. It was packed with tourists, many of them familiar faces from the cruise; Phil noticed a few people looking at them, nudging companions and whispering, no doubt recalling the Great David Hasselhoff Meet And Greet Fan Brunch Incident that had apparently already become legend. He let himself shrink a little more into the lee of Clint’s arm, keeping a watch in the crowds for anything untoward.
“Ah!” Clint said, after a moment. “There.” He nodded at a small crowd gathered around a street musician, listening to what seemed to be a translated version of “Wonderwall,” done in flamenco style.
“Natashenka!” he called as they approached.
A slightly-built woman, wearing a light trench coat and a scarf over her hair, turned to face them. She pulled off her massive, old-fashioned sunglasses, revealing a face as flawlessly lovely as a pre-Raphaelite painting. “Lyoshka!” she exclaimed, pulling off her scarf and shaking out a cloud of red ringlets. At least five people around her turned to stare; it was rude, but Phil understood the impulse. She ran up to Clint and kissed him on either cheek, her scarlet lipstick somehow not leaving a smudge. She tucked her hand into the crook of his free arm. “What took you so long, tovarisč?”
Phil felt his jaw dropping open at this near-perfect re-creation of his fervid youthful imagination, and shot a betrayed look at Clint, who didn’t seem to notice.
“Cousin, I have such good news,” he was saying, looking excitedly down into her upturned face. “I have met my soulmate at last. This is Peter Clark. Petya, this is—” he glanced at her.
“Natalia Ivanovna Pautina,” she said. “A pleasure to meet you.” Her accent was distinct and flawlessly authentic, and if Phil hadn’t been listening to Clint put his Russian off and on like a coat for the last two days, he wouldn’t have questioned it; as it was, Phil wondered. How many faux Russians could one mission contain before things strained the bounds of probability?
“Vy i në prëdstavljaëtë, kak ja rada s vami poznakomit’sja, Natalia Ivanovna,” Phil replied, with his best “meeting the VIPs” manners. You have no idea how delighted I am to meet you. “Moj dorogaj Lyoshka tak vysoko o vas otzyvalsja.” My dearest Lyoshka has spoken so highly of you.
“Cut it out, you two,” Clint muttered, his lips barely moving. “We can sniff each other’s butts later.” He raised his voice back to normal volume. “We must go somewhere to talk! I think you said you knew a cafe?”
“Yes, yes, this way,” she said, and led them off down a maze of side streets, until they were away from the touristy part of town. “There,” she said, nodding at a shabby little cafe on the corner that was already doing a bustling business, if the crowded patio was any sign.
As soon as they walked in, Natalia was greeted with enthusiasm, and they were ushered to a table in a corner, conveniently positioned with a good view of the doors and windows and a clear path to the back door. Almost as soon as they sat down, a waiter appeared, put down an assortment of tapas and carafes of water and wine, and disappeared again. Natalia lifted a finger slightly, glancing around them with sharp green eyes, and then nodded.
“Do you see anyone you recognize, Lyosha?” she asked.
“No, we’re clear,” Clint said quietly, in his normal voice.
“Good,” she said, and by this point Phil wasn’t even surprised when her own Russian disappeared as well, leaving behind a smoothly generic newscaster’s American accent. “All right, then, tell me what’s happened. Who’s your friend, really?” She eyed Phil. “Interpol? NATO?”
“NATO?” Phil said, giving her a mildly affronted look. “Seriously? That’s hurtful.”
Clint snickered, shooting Phil a look so openly fond that he couldn’t help but smile dopily back, ruffled feathers smoothed.
“Oh my god,” Natalia said, looking back and forth between them with wide eyes. “Seriously? He’s really—”
“Yeah,” Clint said, beaming. “This is Phil. He’s undercover too—SHIELD, can you believe it?—and he’s my soulmate. Really.” He unzipped his track jacket and tugged the v-neck of his t-shirt aside, revealing the top of his revealed soulmark. Phil unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve a few turns, turning his arm so she could see the loops of Clint’s writing on his skin.
Her hand reached out for a moment as though she would touch, then she pulled it back, clearing her throat. “Well,” she said, a little stiff. “Congratulations, both of you.”
There was something vulnerable in her face as she looked between them, a bittersweet shadow in the way she watched Clint smile down at Phil’s arm and reach out to hold his hand, and it hit Phil like a chunk of falling debris: Natalia was worried. For all Phil’s concerns, earlier, it had somehow never even occurred to him that Clint’s Nat might be feeling the same way he was. Phil was the interloper, true, but he was Clint’s soulmate. Everyone knew somebody who had met their match and then slow-faded all their friends; it wasn’t pretty, but it happened. And Nat was Clint’s ex-lover, even if platonic; for all she knew, Phil might be one of those jealous men who didn’t like to be reminded that their soulmates even had a life before they heard their words.
He wasn’t. But she had no way of knowing that, yet.
“You know, I’m a little nervous about meeting you,” Phil said, not trying to hide the tension in his voice anymore. She looked up, her eyes widening, and Phil gave her a wobbly half-smile. “Clint was so excited to introduce us; I know you’re really important to him. Plus, well, aside from Vitya, you’re the first member of his family I’ve gotten to meet.” He shrugged, self-deprecating. “It’s hard to make a good impression when you’re trying to maintain opsec at the same time.”
“That’s true,” she said, her expression relaxing a little. “Still, at least you appreciate the difficulty. Imagine if you’d really been Peter Clark.”
Phil nodded, his face twisting a bit at the thought. If he’d really been Peter Clark, he wouldn’t have deserved Clint, though possibly he would have deserved Alexsei Sokolov. It wasn’t a comfortable image.
“I just wanted to say,” he told Natalia, “I know my bond with Clint is new, and he and I have a lot of details to work out, still. But I want to assure you that if I had designed my soulmate from the ground up, exactly to my taste, that person still wouldn’t have been as amazing as Clint is. And I am completely committed to, to building a life with him, to sharing his life, and that includes all the people he loves. So I hope that you and I can get to know each other, and maybe be friends someday, because we’ve got Clint in common, and I think we both agree that he is…” he looked over at Clint, who was looking at him with soft surprise breaking over his face, his eyes shiny with unshed tears. “He’s really something special,” Phil finished. “Someone amazing. And I look forward to every hour we’ll be given to be together.” He looked down, his face hot. “So, um. Hi. It’s really good to meet you.”
“Oh,” Natalia said, her voice gone soft. “Yes. I see it now; you’re every bit as absurdly romantic as he is.” Phil looked up, and saw her lift her hand to Clint’s face, brushing away an escaped tear. “Congratulations,” she told him, and this time she sounded like she really meant it.
Phil was opening his mouth to keep the conversation going when he was interrupted by a shrill electronic rendition of “Suspicious Minds.” He froze for a second, then hurriedly pulled his cell phone from his pocket: that was the emergency tone; this was Melinda letting him know something had gone wrong.
“Hello?” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral in case anyone on her end could hear.
“Cindy, good morning!” Melinda said, her voice full of false cheer.
“Are you in immediate danger?” Phil said crisply, assured from the coded greeting that nobody could hear his side of the conversation.
“Oh, yes, we’ve got lots of that here today,” Melinda said. “We decided to go to the Picasso museum, but there are so many crowds you can hardly see the paintings, I think we only managed to get to about twenty of the exhibits the whole time we were here.”
Twenty attackers, Phil translated, nearby but not yet moving on them, using bystanders as cover. Shit.
“What’s their objective?”
“I know!” Melinda said, laughing a little. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they, I swear if I could I’d want to take one home with me and lock it up in my house forever.”
Kidnapping, then. Phil relaxed a fraction. “Is it the Russians?”
“Oh, yes, I think so,” Melinda said. “I’ve seen a lot of old friends there, you know how it is.”
“Activate your panic beacon,” Phil told her, “I’ll get backup and come after you.”
“Of course I did, you know how I feel,” she said. “Oh, Cindy, my date needs me, I’m going to have to let you go. We should get together soon!”
“As soon as I can, I promise,” Phil said.
“Great!” She made a sharp noise, some kind of cut-off exclamation. “Oh, Cindy, you’ll never guess who just walked in. David Hasselhoff!”
“Oh god,” Phil groaned. “Really?”
“I know! The real David Hasselhoff! It’s so exciting. Ooh, I think he’s coming over this way, gotta go! Bye!”
Phil lowered the phone, feeling his entire body humming into high gear, a spike of adrenaline clearing everything else from his mind. Clint and Natalia were looking at him, concerned and alert.
“Melinda and Jeffries are about to be abducted from the Picasso Museum,” he said, dropping automatically into briefing mode. “Melinda says she recognizes some of the Russians, but there are about twenty in the group, and they’re using the tourists in the museum as cover. Also, Hasselhoff is on the scene.”
“She won’t be able to fight without risking Jeffries, the museum, and every bystander in the place—and odds are, Hasselhoff will be drawing a crowd just by being there,” Clint said. “Shit. They must have gotten wind somehow that she was close to flipping Jeffries. Goddammit.”
“She’s got a beacon,” Phil said. “It’ll transmit for a week; if we stay within about ten miles, we’ll be able to track her with the receiver in my phone. The trouble is, we don’t know where they plan on taking them and what they want to do.”
Clint and Natalia exchanged looks. “If Ivankov’s made them, we don’t want to leave Melinda with them for long, case be damned,” Clint said. “He’s a fucking psycho; we’ve seen him do some fucked up shit to people he thinks betrayed him. Your best bet is to get them away from his guys before they manage to get wherever they’re going.”
“Fuck,” Phil swore. “My team’s all in Italy, we weren’t expecting anything to go down until the end of the cruise. They’re at least ninety minutes away if they’ve got aircraft; if they don’t, we’re looking at a few hours. If we can keep the trail, maybe—”
“Phil,” Clint said. “We can do it ourselves, we don’t have to wait.”
Phil looked at him dubiously. “Melinda’s message said at least twenty,” he said. “Even if we’re able to get her free right off, that’s still only the three of us, one in unknown condition and two who had to infiltrate, against twenty fighters who’ll be coming in fresh.”
“Four of us,” Clint said.
“What?”
“He means I’ll help you,” Natalia said.
Phil blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Are you FBI as well? That would help, but even so—”
She and Clint both dissolved into laughter, Clint’s raspy and warm, hers like ringing crystal.
“…what did I say.”
“I, ah, I was going to try to work up to this,” Clint said. “I mean, it’s not bad—I don’t think it’s bad, I think it’s good—but I need you to trust me and not freak out, okay?”
“O…kay,” Phil said.
“So, um, Nat is… her name isn’t…when we first met, we…” Clint trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck.
“What he’s trying to say is that I’m the Black Widow,” Natalia said, her body braced as though expecting an attack. “If you are really SHIELD, you’ll know that name, I think.”
“I was getting there, geez,” Clint said, petulant.
Phil opened his mouth to speak, then realized he had no idea what he was going to say. After the last two days—meeting his soulmate, finding out his soulmate was a mobster, finding out his soulmate wasn’t a mobster, getting David Hasselhoff’s drink thrown in his face—he couldn’t even muster much shock over learning that his soulmate’s best friend was the legendary international mercenary that every senior agent at SHIELD had been engaged in a years-long unofficial race to contact and recruit. It was as though he’d already reached his maximum capacity for surprise for the week, and anything else would just be another drop in the sea.
Honestly, the most prominent thought in his head just then was a rather petty gloating that he was going to get to wrap two missions at once, right under Blake’s nose, and meet his soulmate to boot.
“Phil?” Clint was looking at him, worried.
Phil shook himself out of his daze, and then straightened, pulling his professionalism over what he was pretty sure was quite an unimpressive expression, and thought about the mission. An FBI hostage rescue sniper, Phil himself, and the Black Widow? Now that sounded like a pretty even match-up against twenty Russian mobsters. “It’s an honor to meet you, ma’am,” Phil said, turning to Natalia. “I’m Agent Phillip Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, and as soon as we’re done here, I’m authorized to offer you a job.”
“Huh,” she said, eyeing him sharply. “I was under the impression that SHIELD had me under a kill order.”
“Not for several years,” Phil said. “The Director received intelligence that you might be amenable to recruitment, and your target list has been in alignment with SHIELD’s operational objectives for some time.”
She looked him up and down, and then nodded, as though coming to some internal conclusion. “Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” she said. She picked up her scarf and twisted her hair back up into it with deft, purposeful movements, then grinned at him, the haughty chill of her previous formality evaporated like mist. “But you can call me Natasha.” She slid her sunglasses back on and cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Phil,” Phil said, smiling back at her. “Now let’s go wrap this up so we can talk recruitment.”
“I’ve got weapons in my hotel room,” Nat—Natasha—said. “Yes, Clint, that includes yours.”
“This,” said Clint, rubbing his hands together in glee, “is gonna be so epic.”
November 10, 2004, 12:19 pm
“You know,” Phil said, shrugging on a bulletproof vest, “when Natasha said she had your weapons, I thought she meant a sniper rifle.”
Natasha looked up, startled. “He doesn’t know?”
“We only met like thirty-six hours ago,” Clint said. “And a lot of that was—”
Phil cleared his throat.
“—not spent talking,” Clint finished. “We’ve still got a lot of backstory to fill in.” He looked over at Phil over the quiver of arrows—actual Robin Hood, Legolas arrows, with feathers on the ends—that he was inspecting. “It’s a long story, but short version: one of the things I did in the circus was an archery trick shooting show, and I’m still better with the bow than any other weapon. It doesn’t have the range of a rifle, but it’s a hell of a lot quieter; great for infiltration work. Plus, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve with the arrows that you can’t do with a bullet.” He pulled one from the quiver and held it up. The arrowhead, rather than being, well, arrow-shaped, was a sort of elongated capsule. “Knockout gas.” Another one. “Grappling hook.” Another. “Boomerang arrow.”
“Wait,” Phil said. “What’s a boomerang arrow?”
“It comes back to you after you shoot it,” Clint explained, looking a little defensive.
“That is so cool,” Phil told him.
“This soulmate thing makes more and more sense all the time,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes. “Phil, come pick a sidearm.”
Phil went, looking at a beautiful assortment of pistols. “Do you have any hand grenades?” He picked up a Smith & Wesson MP, a duplicate of his standard duty weapon when he wasn’t undercover, and tested the balance; it felt good.
She smiled at him approvingly. “I think we can make that happen.”
A phone rang, and he and Natasha both looked up; Clint pulled a slim flip phone out of a hidden pocket, frowning. “It’s Vitya,” he said, flipping it open. “Hello?” His forehead creased as he listened for a moment. “Hang on, Vitya, I’m putting you on speaker, Nat and Phil are with me,” he said, hitting a button. “Okay, go ahead.”
“We are in the shit,” Vitya said, his accent thicker than Phil had ever heard it. “I heard Jennifer on phone, bro. She pissed because Tyler, he was talking like maybe he don’t need to cooperate no more with Ivankov, like maybe he should get out, keep money. She thinks it Melanie, making him change his mind. She sent Pavel and Dmitri to meet some more of Ivankov’s bros, they gonna take Tyler and Melanie to meet her out in the country. That won’t be good meeting, bro.”
“Shit,” Clint said. “Vitya, Mel tipped us off just before they got to her; they kidnapped her, Tyler, and probably David Hasselhoff from the Picasso Museum about twenty minutes ago. We’re gearing up to head after her; she’s got a tracker but it’s only short range.”
“Even Hasselhoff, bro? Ugh.” Vitya made a disdainful sound. “They got no respect for art.”
Phil met Natasha’s eyes, then quickly looked back down at the stash of knives he was picking through so he didn’t burst into undignified laughter.
“I heard where Jennifer is meeting them,” Vitya continued. “Farm, out about forty kilometers from city. I have address.”
“Where is it?”
“Tell me where you are, I meet you,” Vitya said. “You need more people for these bros, Lyosha. They bad news.”
Clint paused a moment, then sighed. “If you want to come, I won’t stop you,” he said. “I’m texting you the address of the hotel, get here as fast as you can.”
“I be there. Five, ten minute,” Vitya said. “Melanie is nice lady, she don’t deserve this shit.” He hung up, and Clint closed the flip phone slowly.
“Well,” he said. “I guess it’s twenty to five, now.”
November 10, 2004, 5:43 pm
“I never realized corn was so explosive,” Phil said, looking at the plume of fire towering into the sky.
“I did,” Clint said grimly. “Course, I grew up in Iowa, so.”
“I like your soulmate, Phil,” Melinda said, looking up from where she was applying butterfly bandages to a slice in her calf. She looked remarkably unruffled for someone who’d been tied up in a barn until a half hour ago.
“Yeah,” Phil said, grinning at her sappily. “Isn’t he great?”
“You’re great,” Clint said, leaning over to pick a stray piece of hay out of Phil’s hair. “I swear to god, when you jumped down out of the hayloft and clotheslined those dudes, I thought I was gonna come a little.”
“Bro, gross,” said Dimitri Kuzmenko, from where he was hogtied in the dirt. “Too much information.”
“Shut up,” Natasha said, kicking him in the leg. “I think it’s sweet.”
“You would,” Unidentified Tracksuit Bro Number Five said, craning his neck to glare at her around his own bonds. “Crazy bitch.”
“There’s no need to use gendered slurs,” Phil told him.
“You said it,” Jennifer Jeffries—who was responsible for Melinda’s stab wound—said. “You’ve always been a sexist fuck, Ivan.”
“I don’t think you have much room to talk,” Melinda told her, “considering the names you called me earlier. After I was kidnapped by the Russian mob at your instigation.”
“That’s different,” Jennifer spat. “That was personal. Tyler finally got off his ass and started doing something useful, and you were talking him into giving it all up! And for what? So he can predict exact change in some dead-end job in the middle of nowhere?”
“More like ‘so he’ll stop helping fund Mikhail Ivankov’s gang war,’” Clint said.
“Uncle Misha will do better with that territory than anyone else would,” she said sulkily. “Tyler could have gone into the family business!”
“Good when family is bakers,” Vitya said, handing Melinda another bandage. “Run tea room, maybe. Not good when family hurt people, bro.”
In the distance, a warehouse burst into flame.
“Aw, olives,” Clint said plaintively. “No.”
“I saved you some,” Phil said, pulling a plastic bag out of his pocket. “I saw how much you liked them while we were hiding in there, so.”
Clint leaned over the bound form of Unidentified Tracksuit Bro Number Eleven, who was currently unconscious, and kissed Phil enthusiastically. “Best. Soulmate. Ever,” he declared.
Melinda sighed. “Blake needs to hurry up,” she said. “I need a break from the two of you until you finish bonding. There are some things I just don’t need to see.”
“They may not change much,” Natasha said thoughtfully. “Clint’s pretty demonstrative.”
“Hey, I can tone it down when I need to,” Clint said. “Just, not right now. I’ve got, like, hormones and shit.”
“I have every faith in your professionalism, sweetheart,” Phil told him, getting lost in his eyes again a little. Stripped down to an undershirt and the armored vest Natasha had produced from her hotel room, with a bow and quiver of arrows—of all outlandish things—strapped to his back, he was lavishly, absurdly beautiful, like something Phil had made up, if Phil had ever been quite that lustfully imaginative. The flickering light of the burning grain silo traced the muscles in his arms with gold, and he ran his finger absently over the cut of Clint’s bicep.
“Maybe I’ll go check on Jeffries,” Melinda said, waving her arm at the outbuilding where they’d left Tyler to watch over David Hasselhoff, who was sleeping off a punch to the head he’d sustained when he tried to help them with the rescue. “We don’t want him to change his mind about cooperating after all this trouble.”
“He did take it pretty personally when he found out you were a spy,” Phil said.
Natasha laughed at them, then gestured at the red-orange blur on Melinda’s leg, exposed by the first aid. “That’ll be you someday,” she said, “and I’m sure you’ll be every bit as bad as they are. I’ve seen it happen a million times.”
“I won’t,” Melinda said grumpily, “and neither would you, I bet.”
Natasha’s eyes went distant, her hand moving to a spot low on her belly. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “The most surprising things can take one off-guard sometimes. Ah! Is that one of yours, or should we be arming ourselves again?”
Clint squinted up into the sky. “It’s not a chopper,” he said. “Looks military… oh, it’s one of your little VTOL numbers,” he said, turning to Phil. “Those things are sweet.”
A quinjet. “It’s about time,” Phil said. “I’m dying for a shower; I smell like wine and pig shit.”
“Only a little,” Clint said generously.
They watched as the quinjet settled daintily in the pasture and opened its hatch. A swarm of people in SHIELD’s navy tactical gear came out, guns at the ready, and then staggered uneasily to a halt as they took in the bound mobsters, the five of them, and the raging agriculture fire in the background.
“Goddammit, Coulson,” Agent Blake said, pulling off his goggles. “I send you on a fucking David Hasselhoff cruise and you end up breaking half of Catalonia, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I think you’ll find this farm’s only about fifty acres,” Phil told him mildly. “I doubt that’s even one percent of Catalonia.”
Clint snickered. Melinda rolled her eyes.
There was some commotion inside the quinjet, and a few more people started down the gangplank; one of them shouldered his way through the agents and rushed up to Melinda, reaching out as though he wanted to touch her, but visibly pulling his hands back.
“Oh my god, Agent May, you’re wounded! Are you all right?” he demanded.
Melinda jumped, then stared up at him as though he’d just started to tap-dance. “…Dr. Garner?” she said, bewildered. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He jerked as if struck, and reached out toward her. “It’s you,” he said softly, his eyes widening. “It’s you.”
“Fuck,” she said, her voice gone high and lost. “Oh, fuck,” and she threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her head in his chest. Peeking out from the bandages on her leg, Phil could see her flame-colored soulmark coalescing, shaping itself into words.
“Wow,” Clint said. “Her too?”
“I guess so,” Phil said. “Huh. You know, I think he was at the briefing we had at the start of this mission? No wonder we were both so—”
“Yeah,” Clint said. “No wonder.” He sounded a little relieved, and Phil could hardly blame him; Clint hadn’t exactly met Melinda on her best day.
There was a brief pause while everyone pretended not to notice Melinda and Dr. Garner whispering to each other while he periodically laid helpless, tiny kisses on her ash-smeared hair.
“So,” Clint said at last. “Do you think it was the water on the cruise ship, or is there just something about David Hasselhoff’s music that makes people find their soulmates?”
“I hate you,” Phil told him. That concert would haunt his nightmares, he was sure.
“No you don’t,” Clint said, stealing a kiss and nipping at Phil’s bottom lip a little on the way back from it.
“You’re right,” Phil said, taking Clint’s hand and twining their fingers together. “It’s the opposite of that.”
“Aw, Phil.” Clint leaned his head on Phil’s shoulder. “I opposite-of-hate you, too.”
Someone cleared their throat loudly, and Phil looked up to see a stocky redheaded guy that seemed kind of familiar but that he was pretty sure he didn’t know, and—
“Director Fury,” he said.
“Barney?” Clint said at the same time, then, “Holy shit, Marcus?”
“Wait, Barney your brother Barney?” Phil asked, then, “Who’s Marcus?”
“I am,” Director Fury said. “Or I was, that time in Venezuela.” He tapped his scarred cheek significantly. “Could have gone a lot worse for me, if I hadn’t gotten spotted by someone who valued saving people more than following the SOP.” He nodded at Clint. “It’s good to see you in the flesh again, Hawkeye.”
“You’re Hawkeye?” Phil demanded, whirling to face Clint. The mysterious agent who’d saved Nick—which Phil had been low-key resentful over for the last twelve years—was Clint?
“Uh, yeah?” Clint said.
“I thought you were with Interpol!”
“I’ve been detailed to them a few times,” Clint said. “Special skills and all. You look upset, Phil, is something wrong?”
“No, no, it’s fine.” Phil said. “My life is a badly-written movie, but it’s fine. You realize I was in Maracay that day too, right?”
“If you’d stayed at the safehouse with me when I asked, you punk, you’d have met Coulson here in 1992,” Fury said, punching Clint companionably in the shoulder.
“Wow,” Clint said, sounding bewildered. “I—I don’t even know what to say.”
“Well, I for one am glad you didn’t soulbond in 1992,” the redheaded man—Barney?—said, “seeing as how you were at least three times more reckless then. Judging from the condition of this place, the two of you might have, I dunno, blown up Vancouver or something by now.”
“…you might have a point,” Clint admitted, then he stepped forward, engulfing him in a hug. “Christ, it’s great to see you, Barn,” he said. He held out his hand for Phil, then pulled him close, still hanging on to his brother—the resemblance was really quite pronounced when they stood next to each other—with his other arm. “Barney,” he said, his face practically glowing. “This is my soulmate, Phil Coulson. Phil, this is my brother Barney.”
“It’s great to meet you,” Phil said, and then let out a little oof as Barney pulled him and Clint both into an enthusiastic, three-way hug.
“Welcome to the family, Phil,” he said. “My kids are gonna be so excited to finally have another uncle.”
“I… I don’t have a lot of experience with kids,” Phil said. “But I’ll do my best.”
“They’re easy,” Clint promised him with a soft smile. “All you gotta do is love ‘em, really. Bring some presents and play with ‘em a little and listen when they talk, you’ll be golden. They’re gonna love you.”
“So, not to interrupt the family reunion, Agents Barton,” Fury said. “But I do need to debrief a little.” He nodded at Natasha. “I’m Director Fury of SHIELD, ma’am,” he said. “I take it from the fact that you aren’t currently tied up that you’re an ally in this venture?”
“Oh,” Phil said, delight bubbling up in his chest. “Sir.” He looked at Natasha imploringly, and she rolled her eyes and nodded. “Please allow me to introduce Ms. Natalia Alianovna Romanova, who assisted us in the rescue op. You’re familiar with her work, of course, under the code name Black Widow.”
Fury’s eyebrow shot skyward, and he looked actually surprised for a moment before barking out a laugh. “Only you, Coulson,” he said, grinning. “I swear to god.” He turned to Clint. “Another friend of yours?”
“I got a lot of friends,” Clint said. Barney rolled his eyes.
“Of course you do.” Fury looked around at the scene, deep satisfaction in every line of his posture. “So. Now that your cover is as burned as that grain silo and you’ve soulmated Coulson, here, can I finally convince you to come work for me?”
Clint looked over at Phil and grinned. “Can I learn to fly one of those jets?”
“You’ll learn to fly everything we’ve got,” Fury said.
“Can I use the bow in the field?”
“We’ll customize one for you.”
“And I can work with Phil?”
“It’s SOP for soulmates who are both field-qualified.”
“And you’ll help Barney make sure Uncle Vitya is okay? He’s actually related to some of those shits, I don’t want them to make trouble for him.”
Fury nodded. “We’ll figure something out, Barton, I promise.”
“Then, yeah,” Clint said. “Okay, sure. Sounds good.”
Barney sighed. “I knew this would happen eventually,” he told Phil. “I think the only reason he stuck it out with us this long was that he thought you were Russian.”
“That’s a funny story,” Phil said. “We’ll fill you in later.”
Fury turned to Natasha. “I don’t know if Agent Coulson had time to mention it, Ms. Romanova,” he said, “But SHIELD has a recruitment packet prepared that we’ve been trying to deliver for quite some time.”
“He did mention something of the sort,” Natasha said. “However, I’ve been independent for a long time, Director Fury.”
Clint turned toward her, his eyes wide and pleading. “Nat,” he said.
She looked at him for a long moment, her face still, then sighed. “Oh, fine,” she said. “Yes, I’ll come with you. God knows you two need someone to keep you from getting lost in each other’s eyes and falling down the stairs to break your necks, and Coulson promised me that scone recipe anyway.”
“Excellent,” Fury said, clapping his hands once. “You know, Coulson, I knew from the moment I met you that you’d bring me good luck. You’re promoted, effective immediately; welcome to Level Six. I’ll be wanting you to take over the new Strike Team Delta.” He waved an arm at Clint and Natasha. “Meet your specialists, Hawkeye and the Black Widow.”
“Oh my god,” Blake said, “this is going to be a disaster.”
Phil grinned. “Welcome aboard, specialists,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to working with you.”
“Um, excuse me?”
They all turned around, to see David Hasselhoff limping towards them, leaning heavily on a sheepish-looking Tyler Jeffries.
Fury looked at Phil. “You are fucking with me.”
Phil shrugged. “Things got a little out of hand,” he said. Behind him, he could hear Blake swearing.
“Hi,” David Hasselhoff said. “Um. I don’t suppose you could help me? I need to get back to my cruise, I’m supposed to be in Marseille—” he broke off, peering and Clint and Phil. “Have we met?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” Phil lied, keeping his blandest face on.
“Oh. Well. Anyway,” David Hasselhoff said. “About that ship? I really need to get back there. This is really inconvenient, you know? I mean, I’ve been kidnapped before—they really love me in Germany—but usually they just want me to go sing karaoke or something and they give me a ride back when we’re done.”
Fury took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.
“Agent Blake,” he said. “Can you please come over here and debrief David Hasselhoff?”
Blake’s groan was like music, and Clint’s face was like dawn breaking. Phil slipped his hand into Clint’s back pocket and smiled at him, letting his face look exactly as silly and happy and euphoric as he was feeling.
The rest of their lives were going to be amazing.
December 2, 2005
“So,” Phil said, stretching his well-used muscles luxuriously.
“So,” Clint repeated, tracing his finger through the mess on Phil’s belly. “So what?”
“The whole family’s going to be at Barney and Laura’s place for Christmas,” Phil said. “So I was thinking maybe… that might be a good time to go ahead and get married?” His stomach tightened with nerves waiting for Clint to answer, even though he could feel Clint’s joyful agreement reverberating along their bond and written all over his face in the seconds before he opened his mouth to reply.
“That is a fantastic idea,” Clint said, leaning down to kiss Phil, very thoroughly. “At the beginning, or the end, you think?”
“Maybe Tuesday the 27th?” Phil suggested. “That way we could be with everyone for Christmas, do final prep on Boxing Day, and then steal a couple days from the end of the trip for ourselves.”
“I like the way you plan,” Clint told him, slotting himself against Phil’s side, his hand dropping to trace Phil’s soulmark, leaving syrupy warmth in its wake. “December 27th.”
“It’s a nice day—” Phil said, then stopped himself.
“For a white wedding,” Clint finished the quote, curling his lip into a quite credible Billy Idol sneer, which Phil then had to kiss off his face. It was a moral imperative.
“What was that for?” Clint asked, when Phil had finally had to pull back and catch his breath. “I mean, not that I’m complaining, ever, about you kissing me, but that one seemed specific.”
“You get my jokes,” Phil said, his eyes burning with unexpected tears. “You laugh at my jokes. You like my comic collection. You’ve rescued seventeen animals since we met and you paid all their vet bills yourself. You—god, Clint. I love you. You’re perfect.”
Clint squeezed him tight. “I’m not,” he said softly, kissing Phil’s temple. “And neither are you, and that’s why we’re great. We don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect fit.”
They kissed again, kissed and kept kissing, and when they were finally through, Clint nuzzled his head into the hollow of Phil’s shoulder.
“You know,” he said, “I bet we could get David Hasselhoff to sing at the wedding. Since he brought us together, and all.”
Phil hit him with a pillow, and it escalated from there.
Once they managed to turn off the fire alarm and calm down the dog, Phil looked around at the chaos and felt like he would float away with joy. He and Clint were a perfect fit, at home and at work and in bed and everywhere. His life was a lot more chaotic and unusual now than it had been before, but Phil found that he actually liked it that way.
Clint reached over and picked a feather out of Phil’s hair, smiling tenderly at him, and Phil reached out and twined their fingers together, the way he had on the cruise ship over a year before.
“Eŝe čego ne hvatalo,” he said.
“Yeah,” Clint told him, squeezing his hand, and looking over at him with a face shining with love. “Yeah, I love you too.”