Fic: Alright is Two Different Words [Clint/Coulson, Dyslexia!Verse, part 2/4]
Title: Alright is Two Different Words [2/4]
Author:
hoosierbitch
Series: Dyslexia!Verse
Rating: R
Notes: The first part of this series is As It Is Written. The second part, Things Ain't So Lonely Anymore, was written by the amazing
arsenicjade, and is now part of the canon. The first chapter of this part is here. (You can find them via my LJ dyslexia!verse tag, or on AO3.)
Content Advisory: Internalized and externalized homophobia and homophobic language, references to child abuse and neglect. If you need more information, please contact me.
Excuses: So, I’ve been stuck on this part for a long time, because after I posted part one, I realized I didn’t like the ending. So I deleted it. (You can still find it here, if you want to see the way things used to be!) Now, instead of the last chapter ending with Coulson asking Clint out to dinner and Clint accepting, this happens!
Thanks:
ivorysilk and
alfadorcat did a lot of coaxing, soothing, and midwiving, before we even got to the betaing stage. Any remaining mistakes are all mine.
Summary: Coulson’s not safe anymore.
*
He reads the words and feels bile start to rise up in his throat. He shoves the paper back across the desk. “I’m not a fucking-a fucking fag,” he says, the words burning his mouth. He leaves the room without turning his back to Coulson.
Coulson’s not safe anymore.
*
Clint books it into the closest vent entrance, secures it tight behind him, and crawls until he’s choking on dust.
Jesus Christ. Coulson’s a fag. Clint’s not-he doesn’t want that, doesn’t want to get fucked or hold hands with a guy or, or kiss one, or-
His breath is coming in ragged pants and the corner he’s squeezed himself into is small enough that he feels claustrophobic instead of protected.
Clint’s not a fag, because if he was, his dad would kill him. Barney, who’d spent most of their time in the Children’s Home beating kids up for looking at him sideways, would hate him.
His dad had hated a lot of people. Retards, blacks, Japs, fags. He’d get drunk and yell at everybody. He’d used a lot of words that Clint hadn’t realized were bad, not until the orphanage, when he’d learned through trial-and-error which were insults and which were identifications.
Race mattered in the children’s home, but there had been kids of every color coming through the doors daily. It mattered, but not in the same way that being a fag did. That was a label that would stick with you. Being white or black meant that you were different from some kids, but that you were the same as others. Being a fag crossed all borders: everyone could hate you.
Coulson-Coulson’s a fag, which maybe Clint should have seen coming, because of the baking and the…the niceness. It makes a bit more sense, now, why Coulson was doing all those favors for Clint.
Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have run. Maybe he should have stayed and repaid Coulson, kept their deal steady. What’s he going to do if Coulson turns on him and tells Fury how much of a liability Clint is? Coulson has Clint’s secret, and for the first time in months, Clint worries that Coulson won’t keep it. Clint doesn’t want to go back to the circus anymore; he doesn’t want to start over again.
He likes it here.
But his dad’s dead and Barney’s hated Clint for a long time with a lot less reason.
He rests his head on his knees, curled up in his quiet, dusty corner, and wonders why Coulson had written down those careful words. Clint doesn’t lisp or giggle or wear make-up or anything, his hands don’t flap around, he works out enough that he doesn’t look like a sissy. Why’d Coulson think he was gay?
Maybe Clint had thought about it, but there’s a difference, he reassures himself; there’s a difference between thinking about things-idle thoughts, nowhere thoughts-and wanting. He turns the words that Coulson had written over and over in his mind until none of them make sense. Would you like to go out on a date with me? He wishes he’d kept the page, so he could read it; make sure that it was real. Dinner. Date.
Fag.
Clint claps both of his hands over his mouth and hopes that the intersection he’s in isn’t above any high-traffic areas, because he can’t keep himself quiet.
He’s-he might be-
*
The next morning he changes vents. It’s safer to keep moving. At the entrance to the new shaft that he settles in, closer to his quarters and a bathroom, he finds a stack of forms with a post-it note stuck on the front. It’s Coulson’s handwriting.
Clint leaves it there until the end of the day and grabs it at night once some of the lights have been turned off. It’s dark in the shaft. That’s a good reason for why it’s so hard to read it, for why the letters blur and Clint can’t make himself breathe deep and take it one sound at a time.
You need to fill this out.
Mission completion form. Clint’s got to turn that in before they can send him out again. He makes a quick trip back to his room to get his cheat sheet and a pen. He’s got versions of all the common forms with the boxes that stay the same already filled out. Name, rank, handler.
He’s got a separate page to sort out the date (Month, day, year, or, courtesy of their pneumonic device attempts, Mom Doesn’t Yodel). He fills in all the usual stuff and curls over the form to fill in the rest. Every time his mind skips to Coulson’s voice-explaining, calming, joking-his fingers stutter on the page. He’s got a stash of blank forms, and he tries to get it done before the night’s out, but by the time the traffic outside the vent picks up-people coming in to work, grabbing breakfast in the canteen-he’s still not done. His hand’s cramping, even though he’s starting to get used to holding a pen the same way he is with his bow.
He’s hungry; not used to missing meals anymore. Not since Coulson and home-cooked dinners and blueberry muffins. He goes back to his room (nothing new at the vent entrance, nothing obviously disturbed below), changes into clean clothes, folds the forms and tucks them in the waistband of his sweats, and heads down to the canteen.
He’s grabbed his breakfast-fruit, a plain bagel, things that he can hide in his pockets-when Hill catches him.
“Morning, Specialist.”
“Hey,” he says, eying the exit.
“Did you and Coulson have a fight?”
He almost gets whiplash from looking at her so quickly. He bites down his automatic fear and takes his time responding. “Not that I know of. Why’d you ask?” Close enough to casual.
Hill frowns and leans towards him like they’re sharing a secret, even though they’ve never really talked before. “Something’s up. I said ‘Hello’ to him this morning and he didn’t smile at me.”
“And?”
“I’ve been working here for almost five years. Coulson always smiles. Add that to the fact that you’re not in his office having breakfast with him…”
He feels a shot of panic go through him, a stale, reflexive fear; she knows his routines; she could hurt him. “Maybe he’s been replaced with an alien doppelganger,” he says gravely.
Hill looks alarmed. “Do you think so? Oh my god. That actually makes sense. Okay. Don’t panic. We have procedures for this. Except, shit, Coulson wrote most of them-”
“He’s fine! Probably just had a bad morning.” Hill doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she stops trying to leave. She’s leaning against the wall at Clint’s side. She doesn’t look like she’s eager to walk away from him. “Did you know about Coulson?” he asks, as quietly as he can.
“That he’s been replaced by an alien doppelganger? No, that’s news.” She sounds amused, but he knows she can go from amused to homicidal in about as much time as it takes him to draw an arrow.
“No, that he’s-that he-” Vaguely, he knows that ‘fag’ isn’t a word he should use around a girl. “That he…likes men?”
Hill stares at him like he’s gone crazy. “Of course I knew. He hasn’t had a boyfriend in a while, but it’s not a secret, a lot of people know. Are you seriously telling me that you didn’t know?”
“He wasn’t wearing a fucking sign,” Clint hisses.
“No, but he has been hitting on you pretty much since your recruitment.” Clint, who had been living in a storm of confusion his first few months at SHIELD, had obviously not been able to tell the difference between someone who wanted him, someone who liked him, and someone who gave a shit about him. They were all equally foreign. “I can’t believe it took him this long to make a move.” Her face drops. “Oh. Is that why he’s in a bad mood? Did you…you said no?”
“I’m not gay,” Clint says, a bit too loudly; a couple of people give them curious looks. He controls the urge to flinch. He is a specialist, he reminds himself. He is Hawkeye. None of these people can touch him.
“Okay, okay. Sure. I hope you let him down gently.”
He’s pretty sure that yelling at Coulson and running wasn’t the gentlest way he could have handled the situation. “Whatever. He’s fine.”
“Unless he’s been replaced by an alien,” Hill reminds him.
“Jesus Christ. I’ll check on him.” The idea of having an excuse to talk to Coulson makes him feel…he doesn’t know. Makes him feel something that twists his stomach and lifts it at the same time.
“Okay,” she says. “But check in with me in half an hour, or I’m sounding the alien alarm.”
“Uh. Is that a real thing?”
She shakes her head sadly at him. “Can’t believe you haven’t read the handbook,” she says, walking away. “I thought Coulson would have taught you better.”
*
He doesn’t take Coulson a coffee, even though it’s a Thursday morning and there’s hazelnut. Coulson’s not picky about coffee, but he lingers over the cup of hazelnut Clint brings him on Thursdays, breathing in the steam, smiling over the rim of his cup.
Coulson’s door is closed, and for a weird, displaced moment Clint feels like he’s inside and out at once. He’s never knocked on Coulson’s door before. Coulson’s door is almost never closed unless Clint is in his office.
He knocks and Coulson tells him to come in. He braces himself and opens the door. If Clint didn’t know Coulson as well as he does, he’d have thought that the man was fine. But Coulson’s hair isn’t brushed as neatly as it usually is. His keyboard’s at a crooked angle, which only happens when Coulson’s feeling tense. There’s no coffee cup on his desk, because it’s Clint’s job to bring it to him. Coffee every morning and canteen bagels on Sundays; Clint had looked forward to the times their hands would touch.
Clint doesn’t get touched a lot. He can kind of get why Coulson misread the signs. Clint had misread himself too.
“Hey,” Coulson says. Hill was right, Coulson’s sort of terrifying when he’s not smiling. “It’s been a while.” Clint shrugs and closes the door behind him. It’s quieter without the ambient sound. He tells himself that he’s not trapped and steps further in. Coulson rubs at the bridge of his nose. “We should talk.” He’d told Clint once that he didn’t actually get headaches there, but that his dad had; it’s a borrowed gesture. (Clint tries as hard as he can not to be like his father, but it doesn’t always work.)
“I owe you an apology,” Coulson says, with a sad smile that Clint doesn’t like at all. “I put you in a very uncomfortable position, and I’m sorry for that.”
“You thought I was a fag.”
“First of all,” Coulson says, looking Clint straight in the eye for the first time. “I never want to hear you use that word again. Not when you’re with me, and especially not in my office.”
“Sorry. Thought you wanted to talk about it.”
“I do want to talk about it, I’m absolutely willing to talk about it-but that is an ugly, offensive word.”
“People ever call you a fag?” Clint asks, inching closer.
“A couple of people,” Coulson allows. “Back when I was in the army, mostly.” Clint nods. His dad had been in the military; he’d learned a lot of hate there. “Has anyone ever used that word on you?”
Clint’s mouth goes dry. He doesn’t like the way that Coulson asked him, Used that word on you, like it was a belt or a curse or a weapon. Doesn’t like that he’d used it on Coulson. “Not much,” he says. “In the Children’s Home sometimes.”
“You going to stay a while?” Coulson asks, not quite making eye contact. Clint hesitates and Coulson rubs the bridge of his nose again.
“Okay,” Clint says, doing a quick visual check to make sure that the vent’s screws are still loosened. “Just don’t try anything gay.”
Coulson stretches a leg under his desk and scooches Clint’s chair out for him. “I will do my utmost.” Coulson straightens out his keyboard and Clint can see the lines of tension between his eyebrows fading away.
By the time he gets Coulson to explain what Utmost means, Clint’s stopped checking the exits.
*
He catches Hill a couple of times in the canteen and gets close enough to her that sometimes she sees him and asks him to sit with her. When it’s just the two of them, he tries to ask her about Coulson. About his last boyfriend (older than Clint, moved to Colorado, nice guy) and about the other gay employees at SHEILD.
She’s not hard to talk to, and she’s honest with him. There are other people at SHEILD-people Clint knows, and has worked with, and talked to-who are gay. A woman in the armory, two of the navigators (who had dated, apparently, and had a soap opera-worthy break-up right before Clint’s recruitment), the guy in HR who Clint always sweet-talked into giving him soap and sheets when he was too tired to fill out the proper forms.
He’d never really thought about it. About flirting with someone to get what he needed, regardless of their gender. He’s always known that there is a difference between the many masks he puts on, and the person who lives behind it. He doesn’t know how Coulson had seen both the mask and what lay underneath; he doesn’t what Coulson wants from him. (He doesn’t know what he wants from Coulson, but he knows-he knows, deep in the pit of his stomach where his fears curl up tight: he knows he wants.)
He and Coulson only meet three times a week now, and Clint’s progress slows way down. There’s not enough room in Clint’s head anymore. He’s got too much information coming in from other areas; there are a lot of new words that he’s learning on his own.
He’s started saying ‘gay’ instead of ‘fag.’
*
Clint spends more time in the vents than ever before. His room is too full of Coulson. There’s the bullseye-carpet, pillows, the black-and-white pictures of hawks that Coulson had helped him find and buy; the keypad lock on the door with symbols instead of numbers because of course, of course Coulson would think of that; the chair that Coulson had sat in while he read Clint Grapes of Wrath, waiting for him to recover from a mission gone wrong.
Coulson helps him fill out a form for increased laundry access so that he can wash the dust from the vents out of everything. Clint gets most of the form done by himself. (Coulson’s hand had brushed against Clint’s when he’d corrected the department code and neither of them had moved their hands away.)
He’s in his favorite spot-above the conference room to the east of Coulson’s office, where he can hear when Coulson leaves or if he’s got a visitor and if he’s doing okay, but not close enough to have to admit to himself that he’s stalking-when he makes himself reevaluate.
He’s spent a lot of time not looking at himself too closely, he realizes, curled up so tight that his ribcage can’t fully expand, his whole body feeling tight and trapped. He forces himself to look at himself as closely as he does his targets. Tries not to flinch from what he sees.
Coulson’s taught him how to learn a target, but it had been Barney who’d made Clint learn to keep watch. No one’s gonna take care of you but you, Barney had said. Sometimes, looking back on things, Clint’s surprised to realize how young they’d both been the first time things fell apart.
Clint likes Coulson.
He likes Coulson in ways that are different from how he likes Hill, or how he’d liked Trick Shot or the kids in the Children’s Home. Clint’s list of friendships to use as a baseline comparison is embarrassingly short.
But Coulson also makes him feel nervous, makes him feel unsettled. He gives Clint a weird thrill in his stomach; his skin practically itches when Coulson touches him. He makes words flow through Clint’s fingers faster than they ever have before; sometimes, Clint catches some of them.
*
It’s the hardest thing Clint’s written. The letters are different sizes and dinner’s only got one ‘n,’ he realizes, when it’s to late to change it; the ‘o’ and the ‘u’ in ‘you’ are flipped. Clint can’t make himself write it again.
He slides it across to Coulson, errors and all, and hopes that it isn’t a mistake.
Coulson’s still for a very long time, during which both of Clint’s knees start involuntarily bouncing. Maybe Clint had written it so badly that Coulson can’t read it. Maybe he’s disgusted. Angry?
Goddamn.
“Are you doing this because you want to do this,” Coulson asks, “or because you feel like you have to?” He looks serious, looks calm, like either answer would be okay.
As hard as it had been to write it down, it’s almost harder to say it out loud. “I want to go on a date with you,” Clint says. Would you like to go to dinner? He swallows and forces himself to say the words. “Because-” His fingers flex, like they’re searching for a weapon; a bow, a pen. “I want to.” Once it’s out there, the words hanging in the air between them like a line of dirty laundry, Clint feels okay. After a lifetime of failing, he feels like trying again.
“Dinner sounds great,” Coulson says. There’s a smile on his face that Clint doesn’t recognize. For the first time in weeks Clint’s lungs, when he breathes out and then in again, feel like they’ve found clean air.
*
Chapter 3 should be done within a week, the fourth chapter is in its infancy. That'll take the timeline up to the movie. The first post-movie piece is done. I'm working as fast as I can, I promise!
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Author:
hoosierbitch
Series: Dyslexia!Verse
Rating: R
Notes: The first part of this series is As It Is Written. The second part, Things Ain't So Lonely Anymore, was written by the amazing
arsenicjade, and is now part of the canon. The first chapter of this part is here. (You can find them via my LJ dyslexia!verse tag, or on AO3.)
Content Advisory: Internalized and externalized homophobia and homophobic language, references to child abuse and neglect. If you need more information, please contact me.
Excuses: So, I’ve been stuck on this part for a long time, because after I posted part one, I realized I didn’t like the ending. So I deleted it. (You can still find it here, if you want to see the way things used to be!) Now, instead of the last chapter ending with Coulson asking Clint out to dinner and Clint accepting, this happens!
Thanks:
ivorysilk and
alfadorcat did a lot of coaxing, soothing, and midwiving, before we even got to the betaing stage. Any remaining mistakes are all mine.
Summary: Coulson’s not safe anymore.
*
He reads the words and feels bile start to rise up in his throat. He shoves the paper back across the desk. “I’m not a fucking-a fucking fag,” he says, the words burning his mouth. He leaves the room without turning his back to Coulson.
Coulson’s not safe anymore.
*
Clint books it into the closest vent entrance, secures it tight behind him, and crawls until he’s choking on dust.
Jesus Christ. Coulson’s a fag. Clint’s not-he doesn’t want that, doesn’t want to get fucked or hold hands with a guy or, or kiss one, or-
His breath is coming in ragged pants and the corner he’s squeezed himself into is small enough that he feels claustrophobic instead of protected.
Clint’s not a fag, because if he was, his dad would kill him. Barney, who’d spent most of their time in the Children’s Home beating kids up for looking at him sideways, would hate him.
His dad had hated a lot of people. Retards, blacks, Japs, fags. He’d get drunk and yell at everybody. He’d used a lot of words that Clint hadn’t realized were bad, not until the orphanage, when he’d learned through trial-and-error which were insults and which were identifications.
Race mattered in the children’s home, but there had been kids of every color coming through the doors daily. It mattered, but not in the same way that being a fag did. That was a label that would stick with you. Being white or black meant that you were different from some kids, but that you were the same as others. Being a fag crossed all borders: everyone could hate you.
Coulson-Coulson’s a fag, which maybe Clint should have seen coming, because of the baking and the…the niceness. It makes a bit more sense, now, why Coulson was doing all those favors for Clint.
Fuck. Maybe he shouldn’t have run. Maybe he should have stayed and repaid Coulson, kept their deal steady. What’s he going to do if Coulson turns on him and tells Fury how much of a liability Clint is? Coulson has Clint’s secret, and for the first time in months, Clint worries that Coulson won’t keep it. Clint doesn’t want to go back to the circus anymore; he doesn’t want to start over again.
He likes it here.
But his dad’s dead and Barney’s hated Clint for a long time with a lot less reason.
He rests his head on his knees, curled up in his quiet, dusty corner, and wonders why Coulson had written down those careful words. Clint doesn’t lisp or giggle or wear make-up or anything, his hands don’t flap around, he works out enough that he doesn’t look like a sissy. Why’d Coulson think he was gay?
Maybe Clint had thought about it, but there’s a difference, he reassures himself; there’s a difference between thinking about things-idle thoughts, nowhere thoughts-and wanting. He turns the words that Coulson had written over and over in his mind until none of them make sense. Would you like to go out on a date with me? He wishes he’d kept the page, so he could read it; make sure that it was real. Dinner. Date.
Fag.
Clint claps both of his hands over his mouth and hopes that the intersection he’s in isn’t above any high-traffic areas, because he can’t keep himself quiet.
He’s-he might be-
*
The next morning he changes vents. It’s safer to keep moving. At the entrance to the new shaft that he settles in, closer to his quarters and a bathroom, he finds a stack of forms with a post-it note stuck on the front. It’s Coulson’s handwriting.
Clint leaves it there until the end of the day and grabs it at night once some of the lights have been turned off. It’s dark in the shaft. That’s a good reason for why it’s so hard to read it, for why the letters blur and Clint can’t make himself breathe deep and take it one sound at a time.
You need to fill this out.
Mission completion form. Clint’s got to turn that in before they can send him out again. He makes a quick trip back to his room to get his cheat sheet and a pen. He’s got versions of all the common forms with the boxes that stay the same already filled out. Name, rank, handler.
He’s got a separate page to sort out the date (Month, day, year, or, courtesy of their pneumonic device attempts, Mom Doesn’t Yodel). He fills in all the usual stuff and curls over the form to fill in the rest. Every time his mind skips to Coulson’s voice-explaining, calming, joking-his fingers stutter on the page. He’s got a stash of blank forms, and he tries to get it done before the night’s out, but by the time the traffic outside the vent picks up-people coming in to work, grabbing breakfast in the canteen-he’s still not done. His hand’s cramping, even though he’s starting to get used to holding a pen the same way he is with his bow.
He’s hungry; not used to missing meals anymore. Not since Coulson and home-cooked dinners and blueberry muffins. He goes back to his room (nothing new at the vent entrance, nothing obviously disturbed below), changes into clean clothes, folds the forms and tucks them in the waistband of his sweats, and heads down to the canteen.
He’s grabbed his breakfast-fruit, a plain bagel, things that he can hide in his pockets-when Hill catches him.
“Morning, Specialist.”
“Hey,” he says, eying the exit.
“Did you and Coulson have a fight?”
He almost gets whiplash from looking at her so quickly. He bites down his automatic fear and takes his time responding. “Not that I know of. Why’d you ask?” Close enough to casual.
Hill frowns and leans towards him like they’re sharing a secret, even though they’ve never really talked before. “Something’s up. I said ‘Hello’ to him this morning and he didn’t smile at me.”
“And?”
“I’ve been working here for almost five years. Coulson always smiles. Add that to the fact that you’re not in his office having breakfast with him…”
He feels a shot of panic go through him, a stale, reflexive fear; she knows his routines; she could hurt him. “Maybe he’s been replaced with an alien doppelganger,” he says gravely.
Hill looks alarmed. “Do you think so? Oh my god. That actually makes sense. Okay. Don’t panic. We have procedures for this. Except, shit, Coulson wrote most of them-”
“He’s fine! Probably just had a bad morning.” Hill doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she stops trying to leave. She’s leaning against the wall at Clint’s side. She doesn’t look like she’s eager to walk away from him. “Did you know about Coulson?” he asks, as quietly as he can.
“That he’s been replaced by an alien doppelganger? No, that’s news.” She sounds amused, but he knows she can go from amused to homicidal in about as much time as it takes him to draw an arrow.
“No, that he’s-that he-” Vaguely, he knows that ‘fag’ isn’t a word he should use around a girl. “That he…likes men?”
Hill stares at him like he’s gone crazy. “Of course I knew. He hasn’t had a boyfriend in a while, but it’s not a secret, a lot of people know. Are you seriously telling me that you didn’t know?”
“He wasn’t wearing a fucking sign,” Clint hisses.
“No, but he has been hitting on you pretty much since your recruitment.” Clint, who had been living in a storm of confusion his first few months at SHIELD, had obviously not been able to tell the difference between someone who wanted him, someone who liked him, and someone who gave a shit about him. They were all equally foreign. “I can’t believe it took him this long to make a move.” Her face drops. “Oh. Is that why he’s in a bad mood? Did you…you said no?”
“I’m not gay,” Clint says, a bit too loudly; a couple of people give them curious looks. He controls the urge to flinch. He is a specialist, he reminds himself. He is Hawkeye. None of these people can touch him.
“Okay, okay. Sure. I hope you let him down gently.”
He’s pretty sure that yelling at Coulson and running wasn’t the gentlest way he could have handled the situation. “Whatever. He’s fine.”
“Unless he’s been replaced by an alien,” Hill reminds him.
“Jesus Christ. I’ll check on him.” The idea of having an excuse to talk to Coulson makes him feel…he doesn’t know. Makes him feel something that twists his stomach and lifts it at the same time.
“Okay,” she says. “But check in with me in half an hour, or I’m sounding the alien alarm.”
“Uh. Is that a real thing?”
She shakes her head sadly at him. “Can’t believe you haven’t read the handbook,” she says, walking away. “I thought Coulson would have taught you better.”
*
He doesn’t take Coulson a coffee, even though it’s a Thursday morning and there’s hazelnut. Coulson’s not picky about coffee, but he lingers over the cup of hazelnut Clint brings him on Thursdays, breathing in the steam, smiling over the rim of his cup.
Coulson’s door is closed, and for a weird, displaced moment Clint feels like he’s inside and out at once. He’s never knocked on Coulson’s door before. Coulson’s door is almost never closed unless Clint is in his office.
He knocks and Coulson tells him to come in. He braces himself and opens the door. If Clint didn’t know Coulson as well as he does, he’d have thought that the man was fine. But Coulson’s hair isn’t brushed as neatly as it usually is. His keyboard’s at a crooked angle, which only happens when Coulson’s feeling tense. There’s no coffee cup on his desk, because it’s Clint’s job to bring it to him. Coffee every morning and canteen bagels on Sundays; Clint had looked forward to the times their hands would touch.
Clint doesn’t get touched a lot. He can kind of get why Coulson misread the signs. Clint had misread himself too.
“Hey,” Coulson says. Hill was right, Coulson’s sort of terrifying when he’s not smiling. “It’s been a while.” Clint shrugs and closes the door behind him. It’s quieter without the ambient sound. He tells himself that he’s not trapped and steps further in. Coulson rubs at the bridge of his nose. “We should talk.” He’d told Clint once that he didn’t actually get headaches there, but that his dad had; it’s a borrowed gesture. (Clint tries as hard as he can not to be like his father, but it doesn’t always work.)
“I owe you an apology,” Coulson says, with a sad smile that Clint doesn’t like at all. “I put you in a very uncomfortable position, and I’m sorry for that.”
“You thought I was a fag.”
“First of all,” Coulson says, looking Clint straight in the eye for the first time. “I never want to hear you use that word again. Not when you’re with me, and especially not in my office.”
“Sorry. Thought you wanted to talk about it.”
“I do want to talk about it, I’m absolutely willing to talk about it-but that is an ugly, offensive word.”
“People ever call you a fag?” Clint asks, inching closer.
“A couple of people,” Coulson allows. “Back when I was in the army, mostly.” Clint nods. His dad had been in the military; he’d learned a lot of hate there. “Has anyone ever used that word on you?”
Clint’s mouth goes dry. He doesn’t like the way that Coulson asked him, Used that word on you, like it was a belt or a curse or a weapon. Doesn’t like that he’d used it on Coulson. “Not much,” he says. “In the Children’s Home sometimes.”
“You going to stay a while?” Coulson asks, not quite making eye contact. Clint hesitates and Coulson rubs the bridge of his nose again.
“Okay,” Clint says, doing a quick visual check to make sure that the vent’s screws are still loosened. “Just don’t try anything gay.”
Coulson stretches a leg under his desk and scooches Clint’s chair out for him. “I will do my utmost.” Coulson straightens out his keyboard and Clint can see the lines of tension between his eyebrows fading away.
By the time he gets Coulson to explain what Utmost means, Clint’s stopped checking the exits.
*
He catches Hill a couple of times in the canteen and gets close enough to her that sometimes she sees him and asks him to sit with her. When it’s just the two of them, he tries to ask her about Coulson. About his last boyfriend (older than Clint, moved to Colorado, nice guy) and about the other gay employees at SHEILD.
She’s not hard to talk to, and she’s honest with him. There are other people at SHEILD-people Clint knows, and has worked with, and talked to-who are gay. A woman in the armory, two of the navigators (who had dated, apparently, and had a soap opera-worthy break-up right before Clint’s recruitment), the guy in HR who Clint always sweet-talked into giving him soap and sheets when he was too tired to fill out the proper forms.
He’d never really thought about it. About flirting with someone to get what he needed, regardless of their gender. He’s always known that there is a difference between the many masks he puts on, and the person who lives behind it. He doesn’t know how Coulson had seen both the mask and what lay underneath; he doesn’t what Coulson wants from him. (He doesn’t know what he wants from Coulson, but he knows-he knows, deep in the pit of his stomach where his fears curl up tight: he knows he wants.)
He and Coulson only meet three times a week now, and Clint’s progress slows way down. There’s not enough room in Clint’s head anymore. He’s got too much information coming in from other areas; there are a lot of new words that he’s learning on his own.
He’s started saying ‘gay’ instead of ‘fag.’
*
Clint spends more time in the vents than ever before. His room is too full of Coulson. There’s the bullseye-carpet, pillows, the black-and-white pictures of hawks that Coulson had helped him find and buy; the keypad lock on the door with symbols instead of numbers because of course, of course Coulson would think of that; the chair that Coulson had sat in while he read Clint Grapes of Wrath, waiting for him to recover from a mission gone wrong.
Coulson helps him fill out a form for increased laundry access so that he can wash the dust from the vents out of everything. Clint gets most of the form done by himself. (Coulson’s hand had brushed against Clint’s when he’d corrected the department code and neither of them had moved their hands away.)
He’s in his favorite spot-above the conference room to the east of Coulson’s office, where he can hear when Coulson leaves or if he’s got a visitor and if he’s doing okay, but not close enough to have to admit to himself that he’s stalking-when he makes himself reevaluate.
He’s spent a lot of time not looking at himself too closely, he realizes, curled up so tight that his ribcage can’t fully expand, his whole body feeling tight and trapped. He forces himself to look at himself as closely as he does his targets. Tries not to flinch from what he sees.
Coulson’s taught him how to learn a target, but it had been Barney who’d made Clint learn to keep watch. No one’s gonna take care of you but you, Barney had said. Sometimes, looking back on things, Clint’s surprised to realize how young they’d both been the first time things fell apart.
Clint likes Coulson.
He likes Coulson in ways that are different from how he likes Hill, or how he’d liked Trick Shot or the kids in the Children’s Home. Clint’s list of friendships to use as a baseline comparison is embarrassingly short.
But Coulson also makes him feel nervous, makes him feel unsettled. He gives Clint a weird thrill in his stomach; his skin practically itches when Coulson touches him. He makes words flow through Clint’s fingers faster than they ever have before; sometimes, Clint catches some of them.
*
It’s the hardest thing Clint’s written. The letters are different sizes and dinner’s only got one ‘n,’ he realizes, when it’s to late to change it; the ‘o’ and the ‘u’ in ‘you’ are flipped. Clint can’t make himself write it again.
He slides it across to Coulson, errors and all, and hopes that it isn’t a mistake.
Coulson’s still for a very long time, during which both of Clint’s knees start involuntarily bouncing. Maybe Clint had written it so badly that Coulson can’t read it. Maybe he’s disgusted. Angry?
Goddamn.
“Are you doing this because you want to do this,” Coulson asks, “or because you feel like you have to?” He looks serious, looks calm, like either answer would be okay.
As hard as it had been to write it down, it’s almost harder to say it out loud. “I want to go on a date with you,” Clint says. Would you like to go to dinner? He swallows and forces himself to say the words. “Because-” His fingers flex, like they’re searching for a weapon; a bow, a pen. “I want to.” Once it’s out there, the words hanging in the air between them like a line of dirty laundry, Clint feels okay. After a lifetime of failing, he feels like trying again.
“Dinner sounds great,” Coulson says. There’s a smile on his face that Clint doesn’t recognize. For the first time in weeks Clint’s lungs, when he breathes out and then in again, feel like they’ve found clean air.
*
Chapter 3 should be done within a week, the fourth chapter is in its infancy. That'll take the timeline up to the movie. The first post-movie piece is done. I'm working as fast as I can, I promise!
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