Fic: My Heart Used to Be Broken Clockwork [1/?]

[jade_dragoness]

Title: My Heart Used to Be Broken Clockwork [1/?] [The Body Electric 'verse]
Author: J.D. aka jade_dragoness
Summary: Clint has been hearing the rumors of Coulson being a robot for years. He always thought they were hilarious. When he learns the truth… it isn't funny at all.
Pairing: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Rating: R
Spoilers: None
Warnings:Violence
Word Count: 6,080
Disclaimer: Never ever will be mine. *sadness*
A/N: Part of The Body Electric series.
Feedback is hugely welcomed.
*-*-*-*
AO3 Link
*-*-*-*

It’s never a good sign, Clint couldn’t help but think ruefully, when I wake up with a pounding headache. Especially, when he had no idea of how he’d become unconscious in the first place. He lay still, keeping his breathing steady and deep, in case he’d been captured, and through the pounding of drums in his head he listened for enemies. It took entirely too long for him to concentrate on the voices around him, because it felt like some stupid and suicidal (’cause Clint was going to kill them) person had given Thor a full drum set, telling him to go wild.

Phil’s calm and --incredibly sarcastic if you knew the guy-- voice asked, “Does this look like Antarctica, Mr. Stark?” Clint relaxed since Phil hadn’t used any of the code words indicating hostiles. They were safe.

Only once he’d relaxed Clint remembered being on the Quinjet and their spectacular crash landing, or at least, their impending crash.

Stark grumbled something about a volcano, Clint wasn’t really paying attention as he was focused on making sure that all his limbs were intact and all his fingers and toes were exactly were they should be. Other than the blades of grass feeling uncomfortably prickly under his neck, Clint was in one piece. Last thing he’d remembered was scrambling for his seat and Tony yelling from the cockpit before Clint had gotten up close and personal with the Quinjet’s ceiling.

Everything went black after that.

Clint opened his eyes when Nat swore a blue streak in Russian, turning his aching head to squint incredulously at her. He hadn’t heard those words from her in a couple of years, not since he‘d gone against orders and brought her in to SHIELD. Nat rarely let loose street slang unless she was really surprised, and she was rarely surprised.

Clint followed everyone’s gaze and stared at a dinosaur. A dinosaur. A freaking stegosaurus, if Clint was remembering his dinos correctly. Either that was a real life dinosaur or he was hallucinating or--

“I‘m dead, aren‘t I?” he asked groggily. “Because I swear I see a dinosaur.”

“You‘re not dead, it‘s real,” Phil said at once. And Clint couldn’t help smiling a little even through his headache. Only Phil would sound completely and utterly unimpressed by a real and living dinosaur. “I‘m glad to see you awake, Agent Barton.”

“Don‘t want to be seen lying down on the job, sir,” Clint managed to say as he slowly sat up, taking care to keep the pain in his head from setting off a bout of nausea. Phil’s blue-eyed gaze was steady and grounding. Clint couldn’t help but feel both thrilled and surprised at how, when everybody else was gaping at the dinosaur including Nat, Phil would rather look at him.

Clint suspected Phil ‘Professional Agent’ Coulson wasn’t aware of how much of his concern he gave away with these lingering looks, and Clint wasn’t about to tell him about it either. Clint basked in the attention, enjoying it for a long as he could --as always smothering that little voice which kept saying it wouldn’t last-- as he swept his eyes over Phil’s body. To Clint’s mute relief, he didn’t look hurt. There were singed holes in his suit jacket and on the cuffs on his pants and even grass stains on his knees, but other than that Phil looked remarkably unruffled and intact.

Thank god. All gods, except Loki. That guy was still on Clint’s shit-list.

“Please, tell me we have aspirin,” Clint asked, masking the reaction that nearly made him flop back down onto the grass from sheer and weakening relief. Nat gave him a quirk of lips that told him exactly how obvious he was being to her, before she tossed him a packet of pain killers. Then Steve did her one better and tossed Clint the case with his bow and quiver. Clint grinned as he caught it, mentally thanking Steve for knowing exactly what was missing to make him feel better. He had Phil, Natasha and his bow. All was right with the world once again.

Tony cried out in delight as he found the Iron Man case. A moment later, Tony had gotten the helmet out. Yet Clint thought it was a bad sign when the rest of the suit didn’t deploy as well.

“JARVIS, where the hell are we?” Tony asked.

As Clint dry swallowed the pills, Phil touched his face gently, checking Clint’s pupils for a concussion. Clint had to resist asking him to kiss it better. It couldn’t work. Phil had some very unwavering opinions about PDAs while on missions. Tony would sooner turn celibate, swear off booze and give up his billions before Phil acted anything less than ‘Agent Coulson’ while on duty.

And honesty, Clint kinda lo-- liked that about him. It made it all the better --and hotter-- once Phil let down those walls.

“JARVIS, are you able to contact anyone? What about McMurdo Station?” Phil asked, as he helped Clint to his feet, apparently satisfied Clint wasn‘t bleeding into his brain. He gave Phil a quick nod to show he was fine, got a skeptically raised eyebrow before Phil turned away to face Tony, who now had the Iron Man helmet tucked between his elbow and his side, freeing up his hands.

“I am unable to contact anyone, Agent Coulson,” JARVIS said apologetically.

“Shit,” Clint said, not in the least bit surprised. Of course their luck sucked balls. Their state of the art super-jet had crashed them in a newest version of ‘The Lost World’; of course, it wouldn‘t be so easy for them to go home again. “So we‘re stuck here? Damn it, why did Thor go on vacation again? He could have flown out on his hammer,” he groaned.

“We’re hardly stuck,” Tony said dismissively, as he shot Clint an annoyed glance. “There‘s probably something blocking our signal. We just need to find something to boost it and I‘ll be able to call SHIELD HQ to come pick us up.”

“What do you need, Tony?” Steve asked gently.

Tony rubbed his hands as a brilliant, cocky grin spread across his face. It the sort of grin which normally made Clint want to jury rig something to explode messily on him when he least expected it, but it honestly made Clint feel better to see it now. If Tony thought he could get them out of this, then it was as good as done. Not that he’d ever say such a thing aloud. Clint enjoyed deflating Tony’s ego not puffing it up.

Tony said, “Get me everything electronic you can find and let’s see what I can put together.”

“You heard, Iron Man, Avengers. Let‘s get to it,” Steve ordered, in his firmest Captain America voice. He turned to Phil. “I would appreciate it, Agent Coulson, if you would stay to guard Bruce.”

Clint blinked and for the first time noticed that Bruce was unconscious behind him. There was a nasty large bruise running across his temple and into his dark curls. Jesus. His head had to be more banged up than he thought not to have noticed him.

“Consider it done, Capt. Rogers,” Phil said, as he nodded at Steve before he pulled out his gun and sat next to Bruce on the grass.

Tony shoved pulled out a tool kit from the pile of stuff next to them and handed it to Natasha, who took it without complaint. He set off at once, carrying the Iron Man case and helmet. Natasha followed with one of her guns in hand. Steve said something low to Phil before he trailed after them, limping slightly. Clint shot Phil a look and got an acknowledging nod in return before he also followed after his teammates, his bow in hand, and a quiver full of arrows at his back.

Clint wasn’t worried about Phil. In that age old question of who would win in a fight of Spy versus Dinosaur the answer was always: Phil Coulson.
*-*-*-*

“How in the hell did we survive that?” Clint asked disbelief, as soon as they stepped into the crash site. Small fires burned all around them, only the green vegetation of the semi-tropical jungle they’d crash-landed in had kept everything from going up in a huge fire. There was a wide trail of wreckage and knocked down trees for a good 150 yards, and the smell of burnt chemicals, plastics and who-knew-what-else lingered in the air as a faint miasma.

Clint whistled, impressed despite himself. The only big pieces of debris he could see were the wings and tail and even they were broken into multiple pieces.

“I designed the jet to take an impact,” Tony said, as he looked over the site.

“It doesn‘t look like it,” Clint pointed out.

Tony snorted, “You‘re alive aren‘t you? Anyway, it seems like the jet’s body made it down in more or less one piece but fuel-line caught on fire. We got pulled out in time and that‘s what matters. If it had been a regular jet then tiny pieces of our shattered and burned bodies would be feeding the dinosaurs.”

“Thank you for that mental image, Tony,” Steve said, his mouth a grim line. Natasha sighed in exasperation. Clint grimaced in disgust.

Tony ignored their reactions as he crouched down to pick up a fragment of wreckage. In his hand, gold circuitry gleamed in the sunlight. Tony tossed it aside. “That‘s useless.”

“You’ll need to tell us what you need,” Steve said calmly.

“Just bring me everything you can find that isn‘t too melted or burnt,” Tony said absently as he put down the Iron Man case and the helmet. Natasha held out the tool kit, but Tony just pointed at the leaf-strewn ground. She rolled her eyes but lowered the kit next to the helmet, anyways. Tony sat down, uncaring about the dirt and opened up the tool kit before doing something fiddly with the helmet.

Steve, Natasha and Clint spread out and using a search grid pattern they tracked down every piece of debris which had once made up the Quinjet’s computer systems. For about an hour they worked, staying within sight of each other and downwind of the smoke from the last of the burning jet fuel, before they began running out of pieces big and unburned enough to be useful.

Clint had found just one more piece of tech debris he thought could still work, which he dropped at Tony’s side before he decided he needed a break. Normally, he had more stamina than this, but he’d been knocked around by the plane crash badly enough that he hated moving more than he had to. His bruises had bruises. He was taking a breather.

“Can you really put something together with this junk?” Clint asked.

“I‘ve made better with worse,” Tony said absently, as he poked at the odd spherical thing he had in his left hand. A slender silver cable led out from the helmet and into the port which looked cobbled together from part of Tony’s watch. “JARVIS, ping me.”

“I‘m getting only a 75% signal return on the signal amplifier, sir,” JARVIS answered after a second. “With an additional loss of 0.2% of power.”

Tony swore under his breath in… was that Hindi? Bruce and Tony were spending entirely too much time in the labs together if Tony was picking up Bruce’s favorite curse words.

“That doesn‘t sound good,” Clint said quietly.

“Fuck, it‘s just-- if the rest of Iron Man hadn‘t been fried with the EMSF which took the Quinjet down…”

“EMSF?”

“Electro-Magnetic Stable Field,” Tony explained. “Whatever we were hit with wasn’t an EMP. There’s similar inference but if it’d been a pulse it would’ve dissipated after a second. And a series of pulses would have taken down JARVIS by now.”

Huh, Clint could actually follow that. Tony was getting a lot better about explaining the science side of things lately. Struck by a worrying thought, Clint frowned as he asked, “Hey, what about your nightlight?”

Tony looked up at him and blinked. “My what?”

Clint tapped his own chest. “How‘s the ticker?”

“Oh, that… it‘s fine,” Tony said dismissively.

“There has been a loss of 47% power,” JARVIS cut in, his British accent making his voice crisp and even more disapproving than usual. “The arc reactor’s power level is now at 30%, and dropping.”

Tony glared at the helmet.

“And you didn‘t think this was something we needed to know?” Steve demanded from right behind them, making Tony yelp and Clint twitch in an aborted move to fire his bow.

“Jesus, Cap,” Clint breathed as he dropped his arms, returning the bolt to the quiver. “How many times do we have to remind you not to sneak up on us on your red booted feet?”

Steve ignored him as he crosses his arms with rim of his shield was partially visible on his back. With his fiercely determined expression, Steve looked like an image straight out of poster. Hell, considering his high popularity with the public there probably was a poster with him looking just like that.

“Tony…” Steve said warningly.

“Steve,” Tony replied with a roll of his eyes before he looked back down at the piece of cobbled together technology he was half inventing and half recreating. “The reason I didn‘t mention it is simple. Without a working Iron Man suit to drain away most of the power in the arc reactor I wasn‘t in any danger. Even at 30%, there‘s enough energy in this baby to keep me alive for the next ten years without me having to replace the core. So, it just didn‘t matter.”

Steve sighed heavily, before crouching and putting his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Okay, I believe you. Next time though, how about letting us know so we don‘t worry? You know your Ms. Potts will have my hide if anything happens to you.”

“Don‘t worry, Cap. I‘m still in warranty condition,” Tony said, looking up and flashing Steve a killer sexy smile which made even Clint reel a little, and he was firmly, and completely taken, thank you very much. Steve --being made of sterner stuff than your average man-- simply smiled back and squeezed Tony’s shoulder.

A deep roar rumbled out from behind them. Simultaneously, they turned and saw Natasha running flat out towards them.

“Run! Dinosaur! Run!” she shouted. Nat’s green eyes were huge and scared. Fuck, Natasha never got visibly scared unless she was facing the Hulk on a bad day.

The freaking huge T-Rex which crashed out of the trees kinda explained her reaction, though.

“Fuck me sideways,” Tony muttered, staring as he jumped to his feet. “A T-Rex. Of course. Did we land on Isla Sorna or Nublar?”

“Tony. Run.” Steve snagged the Iron Man suitcase while Tony grabbed the helmet and the unfinished amplifier.

The T-Rex opened its wide jaws and made move to sweep its head down to bite Natasha, so Clint shot an arrow down its throat. The T-Rex roared. Instead of scaring it off, it looked even more pissed. Clint shot it again, using at the last explosive arrow head in his quiver. The arrow flew beautifully through the air but glanced off the dinosaur’s thick dappled green-grey hide before embedding itself in the ground. The tyrannosaurus snarled as the arrow exploded with a low boom and knocked it off its feet. It grunted and lay dazed on the ground for several seconds before it got back up. Thick red blood trickled down from its snout but other than that it seemed unaffected by the blast.

Clint swore in amazement. He couldn’t believe the arrow hadn’t even penetrated the T-Rex’s skin. The dinosaur’s hide had to be like a rhino’s. The explosive head could punch holes in concrete.

“Well, we‘re fucked,” Clint muttered. He wondered, Why in the hell don’t I have dinosaur-hide rated arrows? Okay, the chances of this happening had never been high on the list, but he would’ve said the same thing once about alien invasions.

Natasha flew by him, running so fast her red hair streamed behind her like a war banner. “Stop trying to shoot it and run!”

“You don‘t have to tell me twice,” Clint said and lopped after her. Behind them the dinosaur roared again, louder and angrier than before. The sound was so loud it felt like the pressure wave would pop his ear drums. The noise kicked extra adrenaline into his system and he picked up his feet until he was only a foot behind Nat.

“Technically, that was the third time!” Natasha called over her shoulder.

“Figure of speech!” Clint protested, and because he never could resist going up against some orders, even Nat’s, he twisted mid-run to face the T-Rex and shot another arrow. The arrowhead exploded in mid-air and custom polymer webbing, strengthened to hold even the Hulk for a few seconds, bloomed out and wrapped around the dino‘s muzzle.

The tyrannosaurus slowed to a stop, shook its large head and with a loud frustrated huff began stomping around, dragging its snout on the ground.

“Uh-oh,” Clint winced as a large reptilian foot smashed down on the pile of debris they’d collected. Another stomp took care of the tool kit. Clint turned back around and caught up to Natasha, Steve and Tony who’d found copse of thick, tall trees to hide in.

Clint slid in and flattened himself to the ground, lowering his profile. For several seconds he gasped for breath until he took control of his breathing and brought it and his pounding heart back down to his baseline rhythm. Tony was swearing softly, his voice so low that Clint couldn’t catch most of the words other than the hard clicks of ‘fuck-fuck-fuck’. Steve was clutching the shield in his arms like a security blanket, his eyes closed as he focused on his hearing. Even Natasha was forcing herself to take slow and controlled breaths. She looked calm enough to fool nearly everyone, but Clint could see from the artery in her neck that her heartbeat was racing away compared to its usual low beat.

It’s times like these, Clint thought with hysterical giddiness, which really makes me appreciated having the Hulk and Thor on the team, because we could really use them right now.

Nat’s wide eyes stared in the direction where the T-Rex was growling although a huge tree trunk blocked her line of sight. It took the sounds fading off as the dinosaur moved away before she was back to looking cool and collected even to Clint‘s eyes.

“Okay, I‘m no longer going to be able to laugh my ass off whenever I watch the lawyer run into the bathroom to get away because I wish I had one now,” Clint managed to say, once he was calmed the fuck down. His voice still came out more wavering than he’d like.

“I don‘t know what that means,” Steve sighed, resigned at once again missing a pop-culture reference.

“We’ll watch Jurassic Park when we get back,” Tony promised, giving him a pat on the back.

Clint turned plaintive eyes toward him. “Can we get out of this place? Before I‘m turned into a dino appetizer? Please?”

“The signal amplifier is only halfway done,” Tony said regretfully.

“That‘s a problem,” Natasha said grimly. “The dinosaur stomped all over the pile of scraps you were working on.”

Tony swore again. “Shit, I needed some of those pieces.”

“I‘ll go check to see if we can salvage any,” Steve said quietly.

“No,” Natasha cut in sharply. “You‘re still limping. I‘m faster on foot than most of you and I‘ll have a better idea of what I‘m looking for.”

“If you find the tool kit, bring that back with you. It’s the only one we‘ve got,” Tony said. “Maybe, maybe I‘ll still be able to pull something together.” But he didn’t exactly look like he believed his own words.

Clint winced and hoped the tools had survived a T-Rex stomp. Steve nodded in agreement, and Clint raised his left fist which Natasha gently bumped with a fist of her own before she slipped out of the copse.

“We need get back to Agent Coulson,” Steve said, as he looked from Clint to Tony. “We can‘t afford to be split up like this if there are more of those around.”

Clint’s hands twitched. “Hell, yes,” he agreed fervently. Nightmare scenarios of what else could be lurking around the jungle played in his mind’s eye. “One word: Raptors.”

Tony’s mouth twitched up at the corners. “They were exaggerated you know. They‘re not really people-sized.”

“They’re creepy, and they hunt in packs,” Clint reminded him.

Tony paused, considered the thought and shuddered. “Okay, that‘s a fair point. Although, I feel a bit strange we‘re using a movie from the 90s as a reference for how to deal with dinosaurs.”

“Not even Coulson can have a contingency plan in place for everything,” Clint said, feeling oddly blasphemous for admitting it aloud.

Tony smirked. “I‘m going to tell him you said that.”

“Fuck you, Stark,” Clint grumbled.

Tony fluttered his eyelids. “Anytime, you sweet-talker you.”

Steve snorted with amusement, making them both stare at him in surprise. He shrugged at their expressions. “I was just wondering how either of you managed to charm Ms. Potts and Agent Coulson with such language.”

“Hell, if I know,” Tony and Clint said simultaneously.

“Jinx,” Natasha said dryly as she slipped back into the copse, badly startling all of them, even Steve. Tony glared at her and received an amused glance. “You both owe me a Coke. Make sure it‘s real sugar, and not that corn syrup that Americans put in everything.”

“Fructose is a real sugar,” Clint argued, as Natasha put down the grimy tool kit. It now had a crack in the casing but otherwise looked to be in one piece. Way to go SHIELD issued equipment!

“Let‘s not have that argument again,” Natasha said calmly, although her eyes were doing that ‘I’m laughing on the inside’ glint which she never admitted to doing. “You didn‘t win last time.”

Clint grimaced.

“Nothing else made it?” Tony asked.

Natasha shook her head, “Everything else too broken up.”

“We‘ll find a way out here yet,” Steve said, firmly. “Even if we just have to survive long enough for SHIELD to track us back down.” He looked at all of them with strong determination and soul-deep sincerity. “We’ll all make it home.”

The thing about Captain America was, even an unashamed realist like Clint, a skeptic like Tony and a cynic like Natasha, totally and completely believed him when he made promises in that voice. Clint was, of the very quiet opinion, that Steve was magic. He was so unabashedly good like last minute rescues, an extra candy bar in your pack, hope, faith and all those good things. Although, he’d sooner cut off his arms before admitting it to anyone, even Phil.

As soon as they nodded at him, Steve gave the order to head back to Phil and Bruce.

Clint took point, as he had the best eyes in the group. It had nothing to do with his eagerness to see Phil again. Okay, that was a total lie.
*-*-*-*

The sight of Phil sitting calmly next to a prone Bruce loosened a tight muscle in the back of Clint’s neck. Phil looked distracted and didn’t notice them come back as quickly as he normally would have which was weird, but considering the whole craptastic day they’ve been having Clint was hardly surprised he was lost in thought.

Phil looked them over carefully, taking in their crestfallen expressions and the scowl on Tony’s face. He asked mildly, “So, we can‘t phone home?”

“No,” Tony groaned. “I was only able to find about half of the components I needed. Everything else went up in smoke or was trampled by the dinosaurs.”

Clint sat next to Phil. “Remind me to build ‘dinosaur’ rated arrows when we get back to New York, sir. They have damned tough hides. Do you think you could get me adamantium arrow tips?” Or maybe he should consider frag arrowheads, although he really would have to be extra careful of innocent bystanders with those. Assuming of course, they ever got away from Jurassic Land before they ended up eaten.

“I believe I have an answer for your problem of lack of components,” Coulson said calmly.

The exhaustion of having fought HYDRA hours ago, crash landing, then having to deal with nearly getting eaten by a T-Rex, slipped away from them as the hope of rescue made everyone straightened.

Clint smirked. Of course, Phil would have a solution. He wasn’t even surprised.

“Why the hell didn‘t you say so? I almost got eaten by a tyrannosaurus,” Tony complained. “And as cool as it sounds, I don‘t actually want death-by-dinosaur written on my gravestone.”

Clint blinked and they all watched as Phil shrugged out of his suit jacket. Out of the corner of his eye, Clint could see Steve look bewildered and Natasha raising an eyebrow, as Phil rolled up his left sleeve.

Tony opened up his mouth to say something, what exactly, Clint would never learn because Phil grabbed a huge knife and slit his arm wide open.

“Phil!” Clint cried out, terror stopping his heart. Moving faster than he ever had in his entire life Clint dropped his bow and clamped his hands around Phil’s forearm, hot blood spilling over his fingers.

It wasn’t enough, the cut was too long. He couldn’t stop it!

Steve, Tony and Natasha all reacted nearly as fast, shouting, grabbing and tightening their hands over the long cut until all their hands were stained red. They were all babbling a jumble of nonsense Clint couldn’t hear over the roaring in his ears.

“I‘m fine,” Phil said quietly, cutting through the noise, shutting everyone up. “I‘m not bleeding. Look at my arm.”

Clint wanted to shake Phil. He wanted answers for what the fuck he was thinking but Clint couldn’t get past the awful suffocating fear to get his brain working.

Slowly, Tony, then Natasha and finally Steve loosened their hands. Clint would’ve screamed at them but he couldn’t get past the lump in his throat. To his disbelieving eyes, no more of Phil‘s precious blood dripped out through the long cut and onto the grass. No new blood flowed from the cut. Not even from where Clint’s clamped fingers weren‘t holding on tight. Clint stared at Phil completely at a loss, thinking ‘What the fuck?’, in endless repeat one.

Phil looked at him calmly, as if he hadn’t just sliced into his own arm and scared decades off Clint’s life. It was that expression which made Clint think something was wrong, a feeling which dug itself into Clint‘s gut with long, sharp claws. Something was utterly and completely wrong. Yet even with that feeling, it was the trust which Clint had in Phil which convinced him to loosen his numb fingers and his hands, and let him go.

As soon as Clint released his arm, Phil did the fucking impossible, pulling back on his own skin until Clint could see that underneath the skin there was metal bones and joints, tendons which looked like carbon fiber and… nothing human. It felt like his heart had stopped all over again. Either that or he was too deeply in shock to even feel it beating anymore.

Tony said something then Steve said something but all Clint heard was Phil saying softly, “No, Captain Rogers. All of me, every part, is artificial.”

It was too much.

Clint didn’t even realize he’d gotten to his feet, driven by the need to get away, until he felt Phil’s fingers wrap around his arm, holding him firmly in place.

“I couldn‘t tell you,” Phil said quickly. His blue eyes stared at Clint with an intensity which would normally left him with weak knees… now it just made him want to run. “I‘m classified top secret for the Director‘s Eyes Only, due to matters of international security.”

Jesus, fuck. No. Clint couldn’t deal. He couldn‘t hear this.

“Let me go,” Clint growled and tried to pull away but Phil’s hand was unyielding. Like a machine. And an insane urge to laugh bubbled up in his chest. Of course… it all made sense now…

“No, this isn’t the time for you to indulge in a temper tantrum, Agent Barton,” Phil said sharply.

The urge to laugh got even stronger. When was it time to get upset that the man you’ve been fucking for nearly four months (4 months, 2 weeks and 2 days) was a robot? Was there SHIELD protocol somewhere? There probably was, knowing Phil… fuck, just thinking those words made him want to break something, because… he hadn’t known Phil at all, had he. Clint had spent years at his side, running ops, hearing him in his ear, and yet he hadn’t known this.

Clint should have known because it all made sense now. Why else would someone as fucking perfect as Phil Coulson decide to give him the time of day?

“He‘s right, Clint,” Natasha said coolly. Her voice broke through to Clint because that tone of voice was a never a good sign. Under Nat’s carefully constructed poker-face there was a lot of anger in her eyes, but she also looked at him with a silent promise that she would be at his side to get answers. Considering how unbalanced and out of it he was feeling right now that promise was the only solid piece of ground Clint had under his feet.

“Why have you chosen to tell us now?” Steve asked, his brows furrowed. “If you‘re that top secret shouldn‘t you have kept quiet?”

“Probably but the circumstances changed your need-to-know,” Phil said, and then he said the stupidest thing Clint had ever heard like it was reasonable and obvious. “I want you to use my components to finish your device.”

“What?!” Clint shouted alarmed, feeling his heart again as it lurched and sped up in panic. He practically gave himself mental whiplash at how quickly he went from feeling like his world was falling apart to feeling worried out of his fucking mind. “No fucking way!” he shouted, not even hearing Steve and Natasha speaking. The thought of cutting Phil up like he was so much scrap metal was… fuck no. Not going to happen.

“I recognize pieces of this technology,” Tony said, sounding so calm that it actually cut through Clint‘s building anger. Jesus, everything had to be FUBAR for Stark to be the calm and reasonable one. “It‘s Stark Tech, some of is over thirty years old and yet it‘s in pretty good condition.”

“Howard Stark designed me well,” Phil agreed.

Clint was taken aback at how fond Phil sounded. Tony, on the other hand, looked like he’d been clobbered by a Hulk fist, wearing huge brown eyes which make him look like Bambi with a goatee. Clint would’ve laughed, but there nothing was remotely funny about any of this.

“My father made you?” Tony asked. When Phil reaffirmed it he looked more like a stunned fawn. “Jesus, Dad got into everything didn‘t he?”

It made sense. Who else on the planet other than Tony Stark would’ve had the brains to pull off something--someone like Phil but another Stark?

“The same event which took down the Quinjet has drained my batteries,” Phil said to Tony. “I‘m about to fall into an involuntary standby mode. Take everything you need, I won‘t feel it in that state.”

Clint felt that thump of panic in his chest again.

“Leave behind what you can‘t use. I‘ll just slow you down,” Phil continued, finally letting Clint’s arm go. Yet, Clint didn’t care because Phil’s knees instantly buckled, leaving him sitting on the grass and staring up at Clint with those gorgeous blue eyes, which had been stealing the air from Clint’s lungs for the last two years.

Alarmed, Clint dropped to his knees and grabbed his shoulders. “Coulson? Wait!”

Phil slumped, yet his eyes remained locked on Clint’s face like he was memorizing him until the awareness in his eyes began to fade away looking too much as if… as if he was dying.

“What are you doing?” Clint shouted his voice breaking. “No, don‘t go! Don‘t do this! Phil! PHIL!” Phil’s eyes were still open, but there was nothing in them anymore. Clint shook him. “Phil!”

Phil wasn’t breathing anymore.

“Clint. Clint,” Tony said, touching his shoulder. Clint shrugged him off and gently lowered Phil flat onto the grass, clinging to the fact that he wasn’t dead. He was an android; they couldn’t just die, right? He was in one piece. If he would just wake up…

Tony continued, “Clint, this is all very touching but you need to let me have access to his chest so I can finish the--”

Clint spun around and tried to punch Tony in the mouth with all the strength in his left arm with his drawing arm, his strongest arm. He would’ve had Tony spitting out teeth if Steve hadn’t caught his wrist before he could land the blow.

Tony reared back, his brown eyes widening in shock. Clint wrenched his arm free from Steve’s grip and stood before them.

“Touch him and I‘ll kill you, Stark,” Clint said, cool and deadly. He drew out the knife from his belt sheathe. He wasn’t going to stand here and let Tony fucking Stark cut up Phil, like he wasn’t the most amazing anything to ever happen to Clint. He was hit with a flash-pop of memory of Phil holding him in bed, chuckling against Clint’s neck from something Clint had said. It was so hard to believe Phil wasn’t human… but it honestly didn’t matter, not when he faced the possibility of not having him at all. Clint’s breath stuttered before he forced himself to breathe steadily. Glaring at Tony, he growled, “I‘m not letting you take him apart.”

“Jesus, Barton!” Tony yelled angrily, gesturing at the sky. “Coulson gave me permission! Or do you want to be stuck here until we get eaten by the savage wildlife?”

“Find another way!” Clint shouted, pointing the knife tip at him in emphasis. “You‘re always telling us you‘re such a fucking genius. Do something else!”

“There’s no other way! I can‘t magic tech out of thin air! Even I need materials to work with,” Tony yelled back.

“Tony‘s right,” Steve added quietly. “You have to let him do this. Stand down, Hawkeye.”

“No,” Clint scowled. “I will do a lot shit, take a lot of crap for the team, but this is were I draw the line.” Clint swallowed down hard, feeling his eyes threatening to water. “You gotta understand, we‘ve been together… dating for months. I can‘t let you do this.”

Steve stepped back like he’d been slapped. His blue eyes filled with sympathetic sorrow. “Tony is there--”

“There‘s no other way, Cap,” Tony said sharply, cutting him off. His stiffly determined expression softened with genuinely regret. “I‘m sorry.”

“I‘m sorry too, Clint,” Natasha whispered at Clint’s back.

Too late, Clint remembered, that out of the entire team he should always keep an eye on the Black Widow. She was the most dangerous of the entire team because if you lost sight of her then you were already screwed since you‘d never see her coming.

The sharp sting of the needle entering and leaving his neck was a soothing caress compared to the ache in his chest at the realization that he’d failed to protect Phil. Clint reflexively attacked. As she danced to the side, out of reach of his knife, Natasha’s face was solemn. Clint dropped the knife a split second later as soon as his brain caught up with him.

“Tasha…” Clint managed to mumble as his field of vision darkened around the edges. Steve’s strong arms caught him under his armpits as all the muscles in Clint’s body stopped listening to him. Steve carefully lowered him onto the prickly grass.

Tony moved past them without looking back.

“I‘m sorry, Clint,” Natasha repeated quietly, as she hovered over him, her hands brushing away the tears which had spilled out of his eyes, dripping down his temples.

The last clear thought in Clint’s mind before everything went black was-- Don’t hurt him. Please, please… don‘t…

TBC in [Chapter Two]

a/n: Poor Clint! D=