Excused Absences

Phil doesn’t think that he has ever seen May eat anything.

The thought kind of filtered into his mind and took root, and he remembered that she didn’t bring anything to lunch and she didn’t eat the school lunch. He didn’t think that she was just one of those people that didn’t eat a lot either because that was her third taco. Then again… she has been having one hell of a day.

“Melinda?”

“Phil?” She responded in the same matching questioning tone as him, ripping open a packet of hot sauce with her teeth.

“How long has Garrett been bothering you?” Phil wouldn’t normal pry – he wasn’t a pryer – but he needed to know. It wasn’t for Fury, though he probably did want to know, but for himself because he was May’s friend.

“A while.”

“A while?” He repeated. “What’s a whole? You’ve been at the school for a while.”

“Yep.”

“So, since the first day?”

“Basically.”

“May, you should have said something!”

“Why?”

“Because you were being harassed and assaulted!”

“I’m fine.”

“That doesn’t matter,” He replied. “Well, it does matter but being harassed is not something that you have to just deal with. There are people who can help you.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” She told him. It really didn’t.

Yeah, sure bruised shoulders and having the corners of her books bent from being flung across the floor was annoying. She was not defenseless; she could defend herself when she needed to.

“It didn’t impede my function.”

That was the wrong thing to say she realized a second too late because Phil froze. He didn’t even look like he was breathing until he moved again.

His eyes lifted up to hers, hard set and boring into her, and his jaw set.

“Melinda,” He said slowly. “Your function is not the most important thing about you. You’re not…not some prop. You’re not defined by your ability to fight.”

May looked away first, a sign of weakness she told herself.

His words echoed around her head and she couldn’t bring herself to agree with him. She was a protector, a shield, didn’t he get that?

Who cared that he had targeted her, she could handle it. She had experienced far worse. It was better that it was her than Fitz, or Simmons, or Hank Pym with his ant farm.

“Melinda,” Phil said softly because she had spaced out again and he was nervous that she would freak out again. Because no matter what he said, she was defined by her ability to fight, by her ability to subdue whoever touched her in two seconds flat.

Garrett was right. No one would come to the aid of the Cavalry, so she had to be her own. Her function was important. It was what kept her alive this long, despite all the people who fell around her.

“Melinda,” He repeated.

But that wasn’t right, was it? Phil, with his wonderfully concerned eyes that felt too much like seeing into the looking glass, into a better life, a safer life, he was there. He came to the aid of the Cavalry. No, he came to her aid.

He gave her dry clothes, and juice, and kept her secret. He didn’t have to do that.

“Melinda,” He tried again, reaching across the small table to lay his hand on her shoulder. She startled out of her thoughts, her eyes darting to his.

“Why did you help me?” She asked. Why had he done any of the things that he has done for her.

Why today? Why did he help her fix her arm in Admin on her first day? Why did he invite her over to have lunch with his friends and try to comfort her when she panicked? Why has he done anything for her?

He doesn’t even know her, not really, not at all.

What was his motive, what does he want?

“You’re my friend,” He told her simply.

Was it that simple though? Was anything?

“You don’t have to think of me as your friend,” He assured her. “I know whatever happened before you came here has clearly shaken you up” – understatement – “but I want you to be safe and I need you to know that you’re more than a couple of fist or John Garrett’s punching bag.”

“I can defend myself,” She told him, ignoring the voice in the back of her head that said, ‘no you can’t’ and all the examples that floated around her mind of when she failed to protect anything.

“But you don’t have to,” He said softly. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“So, I see you’ve dragged May into your squad of troublemakers.”

“They aren’t troublemaker,” Phil replied, knowing Nick would not miss May listening intently to Fitzsimmons’ rambling or her walking to class with Ward. “And that’s a terrible way to greet your guest.”

“Yeah, I should work on that,” Nick deadpanned, closing the door behind him and following him into the living room.

“Then the girl scouts will start knocking on your door again and my mom can stop buying Thin Mints for you,” Coulson laughed. “Where’s Barton?”

“Someone say my name?” Clint asked from where he laid on top of the bookshelf.  “You bring it?”

“I brought it?”

“It’s drugs, Nick,” Clint told him with his face totally serious, except for his eyes that danced with delight. He jumped down from the bookshelf and greeted Phil with a high-five.

“Well, don’t overdose,” Nick responded. “Dead bodies don’t go with the décor.”

“It’s a movie, sir,” Phil assured with a smile. “When is everyone getting here?”

“Tony and Bruce have to do a thing and then they’ll be over.”

“A thing?”

“A thing,” Clint replied. “A techno-babble thing; I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know, plausible deniability and all that.”

“Where’s Thor?” He asked.

“He had that thing.”

“Oh yeah, that thing.”

“I don’t really care for that thing.”

“Me neither. But hey, more popcorn for us.”

“Where’s May?” Coulson asked. “And Nat.”

“Don’t,” Nick warned as soon as Clint opened his mouth to yell. “Yell.”

“They’re outback,” Clint told Phil. “Doing peaceful ninja stuff.”

“Yoga,” Fury supplied when Coulson turned to him in question.

“Apparently very zen,” Clint said with a shrug. “It’s very boring. But May does it in the morning and Tasha’s like her weird Russian double.”

Clint then proceeded to throw himself onto the couch next to Nick while Phil sat in the old Laz-e-Boy.  It wasn’t long after that, that the back door slammed shut and Natasha came bounding through the living room.

“Hey, Coulson,” She greeted as she passed into the kitchen before returning with two bottles of water. She twisted the cap off one of the bottles and took a long drink. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail and her skin had a shiny sheen to it. “We doing movies?”

“You bet your ass we are!”

“Clint,” Nick warned, looking at him with an ‘are-you-really-fucking-serious’ face that he found really early on you will develop if you deal with teenagers on a daily basis. They’ve talk about the swearing.

“Sorry!” He said but they both knew he didn’t mean it. “I was in the circus; no one watched their language there.”

Nick leveled an eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed by his bullshit response. That excuse didn’t fly the first time he used it.

“We’re going to get May to watch Lilo & Stitch,” He rephrased.

“Where is she?” Coulson asked. Natasha quirked her eyebrow at him and a smirk crept up her face. “Shut up.”

“She’s finishing up,” Natasha replied. “Actually–”

“Hey, Phil,” May said from the doorway. She was dressed in shorts and a tank top with her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and fuzzy socks, Coulson could not imagine what people thought was so scary about her.

“Hey,” He smiled. “So, you do yoga?”

“Tai-chi,” She replied, taking Natasha’s pre-offered water bottle before sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“We’re watching Lilo & Stitch,” Clint told her. “So, you can see the comparison between Pleakly and Fury, trust me there is one.”

“You know Clint,” Natasha smirked. “Making fun of someone’s physical ailments is bullying.”

“Yeah Clint,” Nick agreed, sharing a grin with Natasha. “I’m hurt.”

“No, you’re not,” Clint replied with a psstt. “You’re like as thick skinned as that – whatever they make Captain America’s shield from.”

“Vibratium and–” Coulson began smiling the smile he had when he was talking about his trading cards.

“Yeah that!” Clint cut in. “And totally not the meanest thing anyone has ever said about you. You should have heard what Tash-HA!” He exclaimed as he caught the cap of her water bottle that she threw at him.

There was a knock at the door, stopping Clint from spilling any of Natasha’s secrets and trying to ‘ruin her place as Nick’s favorite with his lies’ as she put it.

“Nat, get the door,” Clint said, hopping up from the couch and shimming up the bookcase. “I’m going to scare Tony.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and muttered something about boys and immaturity before leaving the room, the continuous knocking getting louder and louder the more they waited.

Natasha talked clearly and loudly, threatening more than talking because it was Tony Stark after all, to let Clint know that she was walking through first. And she did, with a small smirk and Bruce by her side, arms linked together as she pulled him along.

Then Tony came in, rambling on over Natasha’s threats, about something-or-other until… “Ah, Christ, Barton, I hate you!”

Because Clint didn’t jump out and scare Tony, no, that would have been simple, easy, so completely and utterly Captain B, Boring. Clint jumped on Tony and they both fell to the ground with a clatter and a bunch of swear words because the floor was fucking hard and Clint landed on his elbows with his knee pressed uncomfortably – i.e. very fucking painfully – in Tony’s shoulder.

And did he mention ‘that my fucking head hit the fucking floor, Barton. I could have been concussed. What the fuck is wrong with you?’ while Barton ignored him in favor of ‘fuck, damn it, can’t you, like fucking catch someone. Shit, Stark, my fucking elbow is probably going to fucking bruise, you goddamn athletic failure.’

Then Fury cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow, Tony went quiet and Clint went pale. And everyone else was just standing there because that was not what anyone thought was going to happen at all.

Then there was laughter, soft and musical, and Phil looked from the catastrophe that was Tony and Clint, still tangled up together, to Melinda.

Her hand over her mouth as music-like giggles escaped her mouth and her eyes were light and shiny, even around the bruising. She looked, better, happier, younger and then he laughed, and then everyone laughed. Clint pulled Tony to his feet before the giggles got to them as well.

Lilo & Stitch went over fine enough.

May and Coulson sat on the floor with their legs under the table and their backs pressed against the couch. Clint stayed perched on the back of Natasha’s chair while Bruce took the other one and Tony stretched out on the couch with Nick’s broken microwave, tinkering and complaining about watching this damn move again.

Seriously, again, because Nick has seen this movie enough times to be able to quote it, like Clint did throughout the movie until Natasha pushed him off the back of her chair.

And somehow, Nick got roped into watching the movie with them.

Whining, and ‘oh so pretty please, Nicky’ and ‘come on Principle Fury’ that was how he got roped into it.

He was getting soft.

So, he found himself subjected to Stark’s dirty socks and having screwdrivers dropped into his lap throughout the damn movie. But it was… it wasn’t completely a waste of time.

These kids were enjoying themselves and they wanted him there. It wasn’t like he was that overbearing parent that wanted to hang with the cool kids or whatever.

He got to see Natasha and Clint communicate with their made-up signs mixed with ASL, so Nick wouldn’t follow the conversation. And he saw them giggle and laugh with each other without every saying a word.

He got to see Banner relaxed and at ease, and Stark in his element. He watched as Phil leaned close to May and she didn’t lean back, and how they whispered back and forth about nothing in particular.

By the end of the movie, Stark had fixed the microwave (thought saying he ‘supped it up so it doesn’t suck’ made Nick think that his bowl of Ramen might sprout legs and walk out of it), Natasha and Clint had somehow managed to be completely entangled and comfortable on the chair. May was asleep against Phil’s shoulder.

‘Isn’t that adorable,’ Nick thought it was Tony who muttered it but he couldn’t help but agree (not out loud, though, he did have a reputation to think about).

A game of Apples to Apples broke out around the small coffee table and a quite discussion about if Nick was more like Pleakley or Bubbles as May slept on. No one had the heart (or lacked the common sense as Tony so gently put it because she was likely to probably snapped the arm of whoever touched her) to wake her.

It was a total of fifteen minutes before she startled awake; it had started with a twitch of the eyebrow and small distressing noises that everyone did their best to ignore. Then her head slipped from Coulson’s shoulders and cracked against the edge of the coffee table before anyone could do anything about it.

Her eyes snapped open and Coulson just barely missed her flying elbow.

“Melinda,” He said calmly as everyone kindly continued the game as if nothing had happened. “You alright?”

She gently touched the slim around her temple with shaky hands before pulling her back, confused by the pain. She let out a deep breath and sucked one in just as fast.

“I’m – I’ll be back.”

“Mel–”

“Like Terminator,” She said with a small smile before she pulled herself up unevenly on her socked covered feet, shaking the sleepy haze away before leaving the room.

“She’s not going to come back, is she?” Bruce asked quietly.

“She said she would,” Phil replied, as if all that was everything could be so definably set with a few words.  For people like Coulson, who saw the best in everyone and rolled with the punches when it got difficult, their word was all it took.

“I bet she doesn’t,” Tony said, sorting his red cards. “Your Howling Commando card, the one with the stupid mustache, for that one Barnes card you don’t have.”

“Mint-condition?” Coulson asked.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Deal,” Phil said seriously, shaking Tony’s hand from across the table. “And his mustache isn’t stupid.”

“You guys are such geeks,” Clint muttered.

“And there you go again,” Natasha jabbed him in the side. “Bullying people for things they can’t help. Phil can’t help his big ol’ crush on Captain America’s boyfriend.”

Coulson’s ears turned red and Nick wondered if he should go check on May just to avoid this stupid conversation, again.

“They’re not boyfriends,” Phil defended, an argument that lacked any real tact and one that Nick had heard a million times over.

“Uh-huh,” Natasha replied. “I’ve been through your phone. I’ve seen what fanfiction you read.”

The redness from his ears steadily worked its way down his neck and over his cheeks. He looked like he was trying to decide if it was worth denying or not.

“Shut up.”

It wasn’t.

“That’s so–” Stark began, surely with something snappy and witty that would completely destroy anything Phil could possibly say to make his apparent history fantasies any less…odd.

“I ship Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,” Clint said suddenly, making eye contact with everyone as if to tell them that if they were going to go after Phil than they were coming after him too and he was a lot less nice. “Picture it, Jefferson and his violin in the Senate with Madison having really, really–”

“No,” Tony said loudly and repeatedly. “I can’t do it. I have to learn about those guys in class; don’t make it awkward, Angry Birds.”

Clint grinned at Coulson, who returned a shy grateful smile back before all of their attention was drawn to May walking back into the room with that itchy looking white sweater from her closet and a blanket.

“I’ll take that Bucky card on Monday,” Phil said smugly as May sat down next to him, blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

“What are we playing?” She asked quietly.

Nick’s not-quite-a-suggestion that they should settle down was completely ignored, he acknowledged as he heard all the shouting and laughter that came with playing Uno for some goddamn reason.

As was his warning that they needed to be quiet and his threat that if they didn’t shut the fuck up and go the fuck to sleep he was going to taste them with his MHS taser.

They turned on Frozen and some point with that stupid soundtrack that had Clint and Natasha singing like two deaf-toned idiots and Bruce laughing, and apparently that was the gateway into playing Uno while Anna met the singing rocks.

And Nick stayed away, wishing more than anything that there was an actual door between his stupid futon and the gang of teenage annoyance that inhabited his living room.

It was two in the morning when Nick realized that the ruckus had quieted down, and that annoying movie was playing again. It was loud, which meant he had to get up. Which he might as well do because who knew if they locked the door before going to sleep.

The last thing he needed was Howard Stark down his throat because someone killed his spawn on Nick’s watch.

He bypassed the living room and that stupid movie to check the front door which was locked before returning to the living room.

Banner was asleep, curled up in the corner of the couch, while Stark laid with his feet handing over the other side. Natasha and Clint had somehow managed to fit comfortably in the chair sleeping with Clint’s head against her shoulder and her legs curled up in his lap. Phil and May were nowhere to be seen.

And as a general rule, anyone could say over (within reason. Clint could not invite the enter school over…again) but they had to sleep in the living room. Nick couldn’t remember if he ever told May that one, but Coulson should know it.

They weren’t in the kitchen or the bathroom, or May’s room which he discovered as he was standing in the middle of the room, tired and ready to kill them. He felt a breeze from the window.

The window that was not opened just cracked enough to be about to fit your fingers under. Then he heard a voice.

“So other than the first aid, the flying, and apparently tai-chi, is there anything else I need to know?” Phil joked.

“I’m an international spy,” She deadpanned, and he laughed.

“And funny! I’ll add it to the list,” He chuckled. “How’s school going?”

Nick peered out the window to see Phil lying across the roof and May was sitting next to him with her knees drawn up to her chest.

“They all look at me like I’m a monster,” She stated monotonous looking up at the stars.

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do,” She insisted. “Everyone is afraid of me and all the, the small – weak – all the people who can’t defend themselves look at me like it’s my job and it’s–”

“It’s what?” Phil asked quietly when it because apparent she wasn’t going to continue.

“I’ll fail. I can’t defend them, I – I try and try and someone’s going to end up dead, hurt. Whatever.”

“It’s not your fault if people do bad things,” Phil said, sitting up on his side, so he could look at May.

“I’m supposed to be the shield,” She said, her voice tight like she was repeating words she had heard before. “I’m supposed to protect those who can’t.”

And she had heard those words before. They were S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fucking motto. She was probably raised on those damn words.

“We all are,” Phil said earnestly. “But it’s not your job alone. And if people get hurt when you’re not there then it’s definitely not your fault.”

“And if I am there?” She asked.

Nick’s heart broke just a little. She had been doing well; not really giving anything away so Nick thought that she was fine enough. He didn’t think she blamed herself but, then again, if he was her, he would be too.

“I–“Phil looked lost for a moment. “Unless you’re hurting people than it’s never your fault. Sometimes – sometimes we just can’t help people.”

He sounded so goddamn sure about it.

“Melinda, no single person can save everyone,” Phil told her. “Even Captain America needed the Howling Commandos.”

He lied back down, letting out a long sigh when she didn’t say anything.

“Last year,” He said painfully like he had ripped the words from his soul. “Thor has this brother who is, frankly really fucking nuts. Something happened to him before the Odionsons moved to the states. Thor doesn’t really talk about it, but Loki was just so messed up about it. I was trying to help him with it.”

Nick knew why it was so painful to begin for Coulson and he knew that Phil had not talked about this with anyone, not without lack of trying. Pepper’s been at it since he returned to the school.

“He had bad days, where he was really violent, and I could talk him down from it. He just…really hated Thor, but, like he didn’t. I mean, I don’t think he truly hated Thor, just wanted to.”

“He’d go and break all of Thor’s stuff and he threatened Natasha. He screwed around with Clint’s head, something that really fucked him up. Then one day, he had this…knife. He had a knife and it’s just me and him. And I’m trying to talk him down and then he just stabbed me.”

 “Through and through, right through the heart,” Phil continued, swallowing hard. “I thought I was dead for good.”

“And I saw!” He said with a humorless. “I was for eight seconds, my heart stopped but it felt like forever. Then I wasn’t dead, it just hurt. Not – not the – not it happening, but, you know, living afterwards.”

“My parents are soldiers. The military life has been my whole life. My whole family is, really. I know death – I’ve seen enough family members come back in a box with a flag – but it never felt so…”

“Personal?”

“Yeah,” He shook his head. “It never felt so personal. It was the living after it that got me because I knew that I could die and that I was scarred.”

He pulled down the collar of his t-shirt just enough to show May part off the raised skin on his sternum.

“Not everything is all sunshine and rainbows. I thought I knew that before but you don’t really get it until everything gets so screwed up, you know?”

She nodded her head  before she probably did know. She had probably experienced it too.

“Sometimes I think I’d rather have died then,” Phil confessed, the words falling heavily from his mouth, deafening and for a moment no one dared to breathe.

“Just…” He continued with a quick shake of the head. “Just because it’d be easier, the pain and the fear would leave. And it is so damn…selfish because I have people who care about me and people I care about. And god, I couldn’t just leave Clint like everyone else had. I couldn’t leave my mom or my dad, or…there would have been a lot of people left behind if I had died. But it was so hard being alive for such a long time after being that close to death. I didn’t think I’d make it through that year.”

“How did you?” She asked, barely above a whisper.

“Friends,” He answered her solemnly. “And willpower, and help. I accepted that I would never be that guy I was before the…before Loki. And I moved on, as hard as it was I moved on.”

“No one really knows what happened with me and Loki,” Phil admitted. “I don’t talk about it much, like you don’t talk about what happened to you. I can’t talk about it.”

“Because it’s like reliving it all over again,” She said quietly.

“Yeah,” He nodded in agreement, a sad little movement that, for Nick, felt like being punched in the gut.

“No one looks at you the same,” She continued, not looking at him. “Even people you didn’t know before. It’s like they can see that you’re broken.”

“You’re not broken.”

“I’m shattered.”

“You’re not–”

“I am,” She insisted. “And there’s no one left to put me back like I was. My parents are gone.”

She took a deep shuttering breath.

“And I was too late… I just miss them a lot. They’re all I’ve ever had. It was us three against the rest of the world, you know, sometimes literally.”

She let out a sad little laugh and swiped at her eyes.

“Things got bad and I got broken. There were times that I was so sure that we weren’t going to make it, but we did. We always made it.”

Phil sat up next to her and put his arm across her back pulling her into his embrace.

“I got broken and they always put me back together and now I’m so completely shattered, into billions of little pieces and I feel like I left most of them in Bahrain. There’s no one left to put the pieces back together. I don’t think – I don’t think I can do it myself.”

Her voice broke at the last word, along with the rest of her composure. Nick couldn’t see her face but the shuttering movement of her thin shoulders under Phil’s arm was enough evidence.

“You don’t have to,” He told her, his own voice breaking as he hugged her tightly. “You don’t have to.”

Nick took his leave, leaving as silently as he came with sad eyes and a heavy heart.