Fic: Leave The Light On (1/1)
Title: Leave The Light On
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Clint/Coulson
Word Count: 2,269
Summary: Post-Movie: Clint's back from a mission, and goes to unwind in Phil's office, forgetting that Phil's not there. Except there's a light on in the room, and a man behind the desk, and he can't help himself-he has to look. Spoilers for The Avengers (2012).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author's Notes: Inspired by the prompt: The first time, Clint is angry at Coulson for faking is death-it went a bit far afield of the tone of the original prompt, but oh well. That'll happen. Thanks, as always, to my lovely fandom-enabler, weepingnaiad <3
Leave The Light On
It’s inexplicable, it’s unacceptable: but for just the moment it takes to veer left, rather than right, Clint forgets.
Because he’s been avoiding this wing, this hallway: he’s been taking alternate routes and making certain not to pass the office that has always felt less like a prison and just a tiny bit like home; he doesn’t want to see it empty, doesn’t want to see it untouched and unchanged when Clint’s been touched, and everything’s changed. He doesn’t want to see the best, the most prized specimens from that fucking trading card collection where they hang framed, pristine on the walls; doesn’t want to breathe in the scent of a man who’s left, who’s gone. He doesn’t want to, so he’s avoided so much as wandering within a few hundred yards of Phil’s office, since it happened; since that day.
But he’s in from an assignment, and he’s tired-he’s sweaty and covered with dirt and he needs a shower and a drink and to avoid debriefing for a few more hours; he needs to smirk and feel lighter, freer because he deserves it, he’s executed a clean fucking kill: he’s in from assignment, and he’s exhausted, jet-lagged, and there’s only one place he goes when he’s like this, when he’s back from the wide world. There’s only one person he likes to see.
He’s tired, and he’s drained; he walks the familiar corridor, and forgets for a lethal moment that Phil’s not there to see.
Except-and this is the strange bit, the part that doesn’t make sense-there’s a light on in the office, the one Clint knew every inch of, had run down strategically from the first moment he set foot in it, could judge acoustics and angles, the way Phil’s voice echoed off the walls and the ceiling, around the lighting fixtures differently if he was filing reports from the desk, or fucking around with the supply cabinet behind him and off to the side.
There’s a light on in that office, and there’s a wave of something like devastation that drenches, that layers over the anguish and the things unsaid that sit rotten, festering in his gut; that frosts the mourning like a goddamned cake before it turns hot, nuclear: before it feints toward rage rather than pain because anger’s useful, he can work through anger and wield it, fletch his arrows with it.
Pain, though-hurt; it makes his limbs numb, makes his chest ache, throws his aim off. He doesn’t know how to turn the pain around like that.
So, rage: rage is what he runs with, indignant, violated-how dare anyone take Phil’s office, not now, so soon; how dare they try to replace a man like Phil Coulson, the most irreplaceable human being in the whole goddamn world, Clint’s sure of that, because of the way he walks and the pitch of his voice and the calm in him with all that bubbles beneath the surface, and the color of his eyes when he’s tired, and the strength of his grip as he’s bleeding out and still pulling Clint’s battered body through the Hungarian countryside, running on adrenaline and sheer fucking will: you can’t replace Phil Coulson.
And that’s how he enters the room, throws open the office door: vengeful, self-righteous, nostalgic, gutted, vicious. He wants whoever’s here, whoever dares to be here and dares to call themselves worthy: he wants them to fucking prove it, and Clint’s looking forward to a win, to drawing blood because no one can prove it, no one can ever come close, and his pulse is thundering, vibrating out of his chest and tapping at the stiff material of his vest. That’s how he enters the room.
That’s how he is, in the moment, when the breath gets sucked from his lungs and his eyes bulge and his heart shudders to a halt when he sees it: doesn’t believe, can’t deny.
Because, seated at the desk, shuffling mission briefs at an awkward angle for the sling cradling his left arm, is none other than the unflappable, the infuriating, the perfect fucking bastard, Phil fucking Coulson.
Clint can’t goddamn breathe.
“You’re late,” Phil says, voice bland, revealing nothing. He looks up when Clint doesn’t reply, and Clint’s taken aback by the impact of seeing those eyes on him: alive, made brighter by the slight bruise of sleeplessness smeared under them, the extra pallor of Phil’s skin. Clint blinks, tries to remember how to fight hallucinations, how to battle untruths, but he forgets it, all of it, because he’s watching Phil’s chest rise and fall under his suit and that seems real, and Clint’s not above admitting that he wants it, needs it to be real, more than anything else.
He’s not inclined to make it disappear, just yet.
The shock’s evident in his expression, Clint knows that; he was never quite as skilled at hiding what he’s thinking, but if there was any doubt, it’s erased when Phil slides the drink he’d poured-the one he’d had waiting for Clint, just like always-across the desk toward where Clint’s still standing, dumbstruck, and lets out a long, boneless sigh before he straightens, tightens: goes hard.
Clint’s stomach drops, just a little. He doesn’t know why.
“Did you really think we didn't have an ace up our sleeves?” Phil asks, all business: toeing the party line, and it makes Clint’s mouth go dry. “You've been here long enough now to know better,” and he smirks, Phil dares to fucking smirk at him, like it’s all just a big magic show, like it’s a part of the goddamned job that something in Clint shriveled, fucking died when he heard that Phil was gone, and didn’t Phil know it, couldn’t he see, and fuck, just-fuck.
“SHIELD's kept the world spinning for decades before the superheroes came to town,” Phil states it, simple. “We're not completely inept."
Clint swallows, and has to remind himself that Phil’s not a cruel man; Phil’s a good man, the best, and that’s why Clint cared in the first place, that’s what got him here to begin with. Phil’s not cruel; never means to be, at least.
But Clint; he sometimes means it.
“No, you’re right, I shouldn’t be surprised,” Clint sneers at him, shoots back with an edge of venom. “Blatant manipulation, that’s SHIELD’s MO to a fucking T.”
“Strategy, Barton,” Phil snaps, if Phil was the sort to snap; it’s more of a clipped sort of comment that cuts through the ether, as it is; it’s the sort of thing that’s said without preamble, and permits no contradictions. “We all do what we have to.”
And that; that’s just too fucking much.
He’s crossed the distance between them in the space between breaths, which is really a small space, particularly in moments like these, in moments where Clint’s seeing spots in his vision for the way his lungs heave and spill, give and take. He’s got his hands on Phil’s right shoulder, his left flank, avoids his wound but only just, furious and topped to the brim with a feeling he doesn’t want to analyze, doesn’t feel all that compelled to name.
A need he doesn’t want to delve inside, to question too deep.
“You bastard,” he hisses, and Phil doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch when Clint leans into him, close enough so that the bridge of his nose brushes Phil’s cheek. He pushes, and Phil goes, allows for the momentum and the way Clint follows, herds him down with his frame: he lets himself to be splayed on his desk, lets the pens and papers scatter to the floor as Clint climbs up, straddles him at the hips. This has never happened before-not for lack of wanting, on Clint’s part; there’s no precedent, but Phil doesn’t waver, just stares: the only indication that it’s anything more than a monthly meeting betrayed in the dark glimmer of his pupils as they fill out, as they black out the color in his eyes.
“You bastard,” Clint says again, sliding a hand below Phil’s shirt, waist to collarbone before he lifts up, straight, hard, and sends the buttons flying.
“You left me to think,” and he shakes his head, lost in his head and the slow revelation of Phil’s skin-warm skin, real skin-as he reaches for Phil’s belt.
“Left you to think what?”
“And then you sit here,” Clint snarls, ignoring the question, wrath and hunger warring in him for supremacy, for control; “like’s it’s nothing-”
Phil puts a hand on Clint’s chest, steady, and it jars him, makes him pause. “Think what, Barton?”
“That’d I’d fucking lost you!” The words are out before he can stop them, and he knows Phil reads most, maybe all of the unspoken lines that bleed through the syllables, that he gives away on his own when he hangs his head, squints his eyes against the onslaught of what it was like, what he’d known in his bones when they told him Phil was gone: what he’d lost. He knows he’s compromised, he knows, so he doesn’t bother resisting when he drops his face the rest of the way to Phil’s chest, his breathing ragged and too deep where he settles, where he sucks in air against Phil’s damp skin, against Phil’s galloping heartbeat.
When he feels a hand in his hair, threading through the strands, something breaks inside Clint, snaps and goes loose, and he exhales long, watches his breath play in the light hairs on Phil’s chest.
“I’m good, Clint,” Phil murmurs, softness and remorse etched in the undertones, and Clint hears it all twice over, from the ear to the world and the ear to Phil’s chest in turn; “but I’m not God. I can’t read your fucking mind.”
Clint breathes in again, then out; wills the tension from his muscles and his pulse because Phil’s not cruel, Phil didn’t know, and Phil’s hand in his hair, on his scalp, and Phil’s touch: it’s a high he never wants to come down from.
“When I’m done with you,” Clint whispers, wicked, as he breathes in deep before lifting up, before he maneuvers Phil the way he wants him: the right position, chest to chest and hips aligned; “you won’t have to.”
“You realize that, if my arm wasn’t useless, I’d be-”
“Shut up,” Clint tells him, and something in his eyes, or his tone, the timbre of his voice; something makes it clear, makes it bright, because Phil’s gaze darkens and he leans up, snakes his good arm around Clint’s neck and drags him down, and he sucks Clint’s lips like a drowning man gasping for air, and Clint can’t help but smile into the kiss as he lets himself ravage and be ravaged, because that need, that desperation-
Clint knows that feeling well.
______________________________
He’s having trouble, recovering when it’s over, when they’re done.
Clint doesn’t stay long, after, as a rule-but he doesn’t want to get up, he doesn’t want to leave, and if he needed further proof of just how deep into this he’d gotten himself, there it is, right in front of him: gasping out the air Clint breathes, thoroughly fucked out and showing it, ruffled for once to an extreme that burns hot in Clint’s gut when he looks at the flush in Phil’s cheeks, when he see the marks of his own teeth on Phil’s flesh; when he sees the haphazard cling of sweat-drenched hair stuck to Phil’s forehead as his lungs heave, pushing his chest tight against Clint’s.
“If you ever pull shit like this again, Coulson,” Clint warns, breathless, more for something to say, anything to say, save the words that are careening, dangerous through his head as he stares.
Phil grins at him, lets his eyes slide closed as he shifts, makes room for Clint to slide down, settle at Phil’s right side. “Empty threats, Barton.”
“No,” Clint answers, his voice dropping an octave, but suddenly breathy, just a little bit faint; Phil’s eyes flicker open and catch Clint’s, and there’s a conversation that happens there between their irises that can’t, won’t happen in words anytime soon, maybe not ever-but the understanding is there, and Phil’s face softens, and Clint knows they’re on the same page; “not empty.”
Phil’s hand gropes for his and clasps fingers around Clint’s palm, dragging it up to Phil’s chest and covering it there, tight against the sternum as he breathes, just breathes.
And that’s not empty, either-that, this: it’s so fucking full.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Clint/Coulson
Word Count: 2,269
Summary: Post-Movie: Clint's back from a mission, and goes to unwind in Phil's office, forgetting that Phil's not there. Except there's a light on in the room, and a man behind the desk, and he can't help himself-he has to look. Spoilers for The Avengers (2012).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author's Notes: Inspired by the prompt: The first time, Clint is angry at Coulson for faking is death-it went a bit far afield of the tone of the original prompt, but oh well. That'll happen. Thanks, as always, to my lovely fandom-enabler, weepingnaiad <3
Leave The Light On
It’s inexplicable, it’s unacceptable: but for just the moment it takes to veer left, rather than right, Clint forgets.
Because he’s been avoiding this wing, this hallway: he’s been taking alternate routes and making certain not to pass the office that has always felt less like a prison and just a tiny bit like home; he doesn’t want to see it empty, doesn’t want to see it untouched and unchanged when Clint’s been touched, and everything’s changed. He doesn’t want to see the best, the most prized specimens from that fucking trading card collection where they hang framed, pristine on the walls; doesn’t want to breathe in the scent of a man who’s left, who’s gone. He doesn’t want to, so he’s avoided so much as wandering within a few hundred yards of Phil’s office, since it happened; since that day.
But he’s in from an assignment, and he’s tired-he’s sweaty and covered with dirt and he needs a shower and a drink and to avoid debriefing for a few more hours; he needs to smirk and feel lighter, freer because he deserves it, he’s executed a clean fucking kill: he’s in from assignment, and he’s exhausted, jet-lagged, and there’s only one place he goes when he’s like this, when he’s back from the wide world. There’s only one person he likes to see.
He’s tired, and he’s drained; he walks the familiar corridor, and forgets for a lethal moment that Phil’s not there to see.
Except-and this is the strange bit, the part that doesn’t make sense-there’s a light on in the office, the one Clint knew every inch of, had run down strategically from the first moment he set foot in it, could judge acoustics and angles, the way Phil’s voice echoed off the walls and the ceiling, around the lighting fixtures differently if he was filing reports from the desk, or fucking around with the supply cabinet behind him and off to the side.
There’s a light on in that office, and there’s a wave of something like devastation that drenches, that layers over the anguish and the things unsaid that sit rotten, festering in his gut; that frosts the mourning like a goddamned cake before it turns hot, nuclear: before it feints toward rage rather than pain because anger’s useful, he can work through anger and wield it, fletch his arrows with it.
Pain, though-hurt; it makes his limbs numb, makes his chest ache, throws his aim off. He doesn’t know how to turn the pain around like that.
So, rage: rage is what he runs with, indignant, violated-how dare anyone take Phil’s office, not now, so soon; how dare they try to replace a man like Phil Coulson, the most irreplaceable human being in the whole goddamn world, Clint’s sure of that, because of the way he walks and the pitch of his voice and the calm in him with all that bubbles beneath the surface, and the color of his eyes when he’s tired, and the strength of his grip as he’s bleeding out and still pulling Clint’s battered body through the Hungarian countryside, running on adrenaline and sheer fucking will: you can’t replace Phil Coulson.
And that’s how he enters the room, throws open the office door: vengeful, self-righteous, nostalgic, gutted, vicious. He wants whoever’s here, whoever dares to be here and dares to call themselves worthy: he wants them to fucking prove it, and Clint’s looking forward to a win, to drawing blood because no one can prove it, no one can ever come close, and his pulse is thundering, vibrating out of his chest and tapping at the stiff material of his vest. That’s how he enters the room.
That’s how he is, in the moment, when the breath gets sucked from his lungs and his eyes bulge and his heart shudders to a halt when he sees it: doesn’t believe, can’t deny.
Because, seated at the desk, shuffling mission briefs at an awkward angle for the sling cradling his left arm, is none other than the unflappable, the infuriating, the perfect fucking bastard, Phil fucking Coulson.
Clint can’t goddamn breathe.
“You’re late,” Phil says, voice bland, revealing nothing. He looks up when Clint doesn’t reply, and Clint’s taken aback by the impact of seeing those eyes on him: alive, made brighter by the slight bruise of sleeplessness smeared under them, the extra pallor of Phil’s skin. Clint blinks, tries to remember how to fight hallucinations, how to battle untruths, but he forgets it, all of it, because he’s watching Phil’s chest rise and fall under his suit and that seems real, and Clint’s not above admitting that he wants it, needs it to be real, more than anything else.
He’s not inclined to make it disappear, just yet.
The shock’s evident in his expression, Clint knows that; he was never quite as skilled at hiding what he’s thinking, but if there was any doubt, it’s erased when Phil slides the drink he’d poured-the one he’d had waiting for Clint, just like always-across the desk toward where Clint’s still standing, dumbstruck, and lets out a long, boneless sigh before he straightens, tightens: goes hard.
Clint’s stomach drops, just a little. He doesn’t know why.
“Did you really think we didn't have an ace up our sleeves?” Phil asks, all business: toeing the party line, and it makes Clint’s mouth go dry. “You've been here long enough now to know better,” and he smirks, Phil dares to fucking smirk at him, like it’s all just a big magic show, like it’s a part of the goddamned job that something in Clint shriveled, fucking died when he heard that Phil was gone, and didn’t Phil know it, couldn’t he see, and fuck, just-fuck.
“SHIELD's kept the world spinning for decades before the superheroes came to town,” Phil states it, simple. “We're not completely inept."
Clint swallows, and has to remind himself that Phil’s not a cruel man; Phil’s a good man, the best, and that’s why Clint cared in the first place, that’s what got him here to begin with. Phil’s not cruel; never means to be, at least.
But Clint; he sometimes means it.
“No, you’re right, I shouldn’t be surprised,” Clint sneers at him, shoots back with an edge of venom. “Blatant manipulation, that’s SHIELD’s MO to a fucking T.”
“Strategy, Barton,” Phil snaps, if Phil was the sort to snap; it’s more of a clipped sort of comment that cuts through the ether, as it is; it’s the sort of thing that’s said without preamble, and permits no contradictions. “We all do what we have to.”
And that; that’s just too fucking much.
He’s crossed the distance between them in the space between breaths, which is really a small space, particularly in moments like these, in moments where Clint’s seeing spots in his vision for the way his lungs heave and spill, give and take. He’s got his hands on Phil’s right shoulder, his left flank, avoids his wound but only just, furious and topped to the brim with a feeling he doesn’t want to analyze, doesn’t feel all that compelled to name.
A need he doesn’t want to delve inside, to question too deep.
“You bastard,” he hisses, and Phil doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch when Clint leans into him, close enough so that the bridge of his nose brushes Phil’s cheek. He pushes, and Phil goes, allows for the momentum and the way Clint follows, herds him down with his frame: he lets himself to be splayed on his desk, lets the pens and papers scatter to the floor as Clint climbs up, straddles him at the hips. This has never happened before-not for lack of wanting, on Clint’s part; there’s no precedent, but Phil doesn’t waver, just stares: the only indication that it’s anything more than a monthly meeting betrayed in the dark glimmer of his pupils as they fill out, as they black out the color in his eyes.
“You bastard,” Clint says again, sliding a hand below Phil’s shirt, waist to collarbone before he lifts up, straight, hard, and sends the buttons flying.
“You left me to think,” and he shakes his head, lost in his head and the slow revelation of Phil’s skin-warm skin, real skin-as he reaches for Phil’s belt.
“Left you to think what?”
“And then you sit here,” Clint snarls, ignoring the question, wrath and hunger warring in him for supremacy, for control; “like’s it’s nothing-”
Phil puts a hand on Clint’s chest, steady, and it jars him, makes him pause. “Think what, Barton?”
“That’d I’d fucking lost you!” The words are out before he can stop them, and he knows Phil reads most, maybe all of the unspoken lines that bleed through the syllables, that he gives away on his own when he hangs his head, squints his eyes against the onslaught of what it was like, what he’d known in his bones when they told him Phil was gone: what he’d lost. He knows he’s compromised, he knows, so he doesn’t bother resisting when he drops his face the rest of the way to Phil’s chest, his breathing ragged and too deep where he settles, where he sucks in air against Phil’s damp skin, against Phil’s galloping heartbeat.
When he feels a hand in his hair, threading through the strands, something breaks inside Clint, snaps and goes loose, and he exhales long, watches his breath play in the light hairs on Phil’s chest.
“I’m good, Clint,” Phil murmurs, softness and remorse etched in the undertones, and Clint hears it all twice over, from the ear to the world and the ear to Phil’s chest in turn; “but I’m not God. I can’t read your fucking mind.”
Clint breathes in again, then out; wills the tension from his muscles and his pulse because Phil’s not cruel, Phil didn’t know, and Phil’s hand in his hair, on his scalp, and Phil’s touch: it’s a high he never wants to come down from.
“When I’m done with you,” Clint whispers, wicked, as he breathes in deep before lifting up, before he maneuvers Phil the way he wants him: the right position, chest to chest and hips aligned; “you won’t have to.”
“You realize that, if my arm wasn’t useless, I’d be-”
“Shut up,” Clint tells him, and something in his eyes, or his tone, the timbre of his voice; something makes it clear, makes it bright, because Phil’s gaze darkens and he leans up, snakes his good arm around Clint’s neck and drags him down, and he sucks Clint’s lips like a drowning man gasping for air, and Clint can’t help but smile into the kiss as he lets himself ravage and be ravaged, because that need, that desperation-
Clint knows that feeling well.
______________________________
He’s having trouble, recovering when it’s over, when they’re done.
Clint doesn’t stay long, after, as a rule-but he doesn’t want to get up, he doesn’t want to leave, and if he needed further proof of just how deep into this he’d gotten himself, there it is, right in front of him: gasping out the air Clint breathes, thoroughly fucked out and showing it, ruffled for once to an extreme that burns hot in Clint’s gut when he looks at the flush in Phil’s cheeks, when he see the marks of his own teeth on Phil’s flesh; when he sees the haphazard cling of sweat-drenched hair stuck to Phil’s forehead as his lungs heave, pushing his chest tight against Clint’s.
“If you ever pull shit like this again, Coulson,” Clint warns, breathless, more for something to say, anything to say, save the words that are careening, dangerous through his head as he stares.
Phil grins at him, lets his eyes slide closed as he shifts, makes room for Clint to slide down, settle at Phil’s right side. “Empty threats, Barton.”
“No,” Clint answers, his voice dropping an octave, but suddenly breathy, just a little bit faint; Phil’s eyes flicker open and catch Clint’s, and there’s a conversation that happens there between their irises that can’t, won’t happen in words anytime soon, maybe not ever-but the understanding is there, and Phil’s face softens, and Clint knows they’re on the same page; “not empty.”
Phil’s hand gropes for his and clasps fingers around Clint’s palm, dragging it up to Phil’s chest and covering it there, tight against the sternum as he breathes, just breathes.
And that’s not empty, either-that, this: it’s so fucking full.