Keeping Watch (Clint/Coulson)
There is no such thing in SHIELD as retirement, let's get that straight right now: you die, you take an advisory position, you might even get to the point where you only take a mission or two a year. It's not retirement. No one goes off to Florida or the backwoods or where-ever people go these days to commune with their old age.
No, SHIELD agents of a certain age become legends and are talked about like ghosts, and they rarely—if ever—turn up at HQ. Unless they're bleeding.
Or, apparently, their SHIELD agent son is wounded.
(Phil's mother's name is Victoria and she seems sweet enough. Until someone [read: Tony] makes a side comment to try to lighten the mood and she backhands him with words, and Clint actually cracks a smile.
Because of that smile, Natasha deals with Tony.
Nick deals with the rest of the Avengers.)
"You know," Clint says after a few hours, unable to bear the silence in Phil's room, "I can go... if you want some time alone. With him."
The look she gives him says everything and Clint bows his head slightly, eyes flicking from her to Phil to the floor—it's been four and a half years since he and Phil married and still, he's like the little boy waiting to be thrown away.
What she wouldn't give to show the Bartons just what that little boy has done with his life...
"I do think that it's time for us to get something to eat, though." She smiles as she speaks and pats Phil's hand, adding, "He's safe and I'm sure Nicholas could find us if there was a need. Come. Let's get some water into you before you end up in the bed with him."
"I'm not that bad."
"Darling, you're flagging. And besides, I'd like to see you eat something."
He stops suddenly and groans. "You read the report? How did you get that?"
"Level 7, Clinton."
He resists grousing further: to be fair, in the decade he's known Victoria, she's always managed to find out whatever it was that she wanted to know. Also, she likes feeding him. Even if she hadn't read the sitrep of the Loki Incident (report #87101-1-A9) she'd still be dragging him to the helicarrier mess.
Which means her next demand will be that he rests. (This, though, he knows she'll compromise on. After all, he overheard her asking one of the orderlies to bring a cot into Phil's room earlier.)
In the mess, he's ordered to a table with a look and the point of a finger; he watches from his seat as Victoria slides around the line, picking off items that she deems decent enough and adding them to the tray. No one says a word when she cuts them, reaches for something they were about to take—this is Victoria Winslow Coulson, no one wants to do anything that would land them on her bad side. Also, most of them are in too much awe to do more than blink at her.
(Like mother, like son, Clint thinks. He smiles again, tiredly, and looks forward to telling Phil, yet again, that he is definitely Victoria's child.)
He's a little dazed when she sets the tray down before him and Victoria touches his forehead, calls his name, and says, "Clinton. Eat. You know what he's like when he finds out you've been skipping meals."
That's enough to get Clint moving.
The rest of the meal is spent in comfortable silence... except for the click of cellphone camera every now and again. (She smirks with each noise, enjoying the rare moment of notoriety and wonders how she can use this to her advantage.)
Phil comes around a few hours later—he's badly injured and there are months of rehab in his future—and he's got so much narcotics in his system that the first thing he does is look at his mother and say, "I think I got stabbed."
Victoria laughs because, yeah, that's her Phillip.
Thankfully, it doesn't wake Clint, but Phil, stoned out on morphine, flicks Clint in the ear when she turns to gather the ice chips and Clint goes from passed out completely to fully alert in three seconds flat.
"Hi," Phil says with a blissed out smile and a glassy expression.
"It's a really good thing you're cute when you're drugged," Clint mutters back. He forces himself upright, despite Victoria's glare, and kisses Phil's forehead; he's caught with Phil's good hand and kissed properly, and when he pulls back, he says, "You are so in for it when you're sober."
"You still love me."
Clint rolls his eyes. "Lies."
"I love you."
"You're stoned—you'd love anyone."
Okay, she knows he's teasing or there's no force in the universe that would stop her from flaying the man where he stands. (Seriously, her boys... their teasing borders on foreplay at times and she almost feels like she should leave the room.
She doesn't.)
"Never."
"Go back to sleep," Clint says. His voice is fond, though tired, and Phil's not so stoned he doesn't hear it; he waits until Clint is back in bed himself to drift off, winking at Victoria and muttering, "Make him eat."
"Already done. You rest."
"Thanks."
She strokes his hair until he's out and keeps watch over them both.