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tarotgalAll right, everyone. Here it is, at long last... my NaNoFic!
Title: Assess & Acquire
Author: tarotgal
Fandom: Marvel CMU (Avengers & Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pre-Clint/Coulson
Spoilers: For the first Avengers movie and the first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Warning: Character death. A lot of character death.
Summary: When Clint Barton shows up unannounced on Phil Coulson’s doorstep, Coulson is forced to change his vacation plans. So when a simple mission to assess and acquire an object of unknown origin comes up, he figures there’s no reason he should turn that down. Naturally, things are never as simple as they seem.
Author’s Notes: Written for NaNoWriMo 2014 all in one month (a first for me!). This story is finished but will be posted in pieces. Total word count: 73,274.
Chapter 1
The buzzer pulled a reluctant Agent Phil Coulson out of sleep. You couldn’t really call it jet lag if you actually lived on a jet. But Coulson definitely noticed it felt different to be back in his apartment in New York—stationary, cold during this late autumn season, and quiet.
Or, at least, it was usually quiet. The startlingly loud buzzer sounded again, ensuring that he not fall back to sleep. Knowing it wasn’t his alarm clock or even his phone, he dragged himself out of a perfectly lovely, warm bed. He grabbed his phone off the nightstand, checking the time: 8:22am. After pulling his bathrobe on as he crossed his bedroom, Coulson stashed his phone in one of the front pockets. At the bedroom doorway, he spared a few seconds to slide his feet into slippers. Then he walked down the hall, cursing the buzzer as it went off again. It wasn’t something ready in the kitchen and it wasn’t his television magically turning on out of nowhere (this time). Yawning, Coulson crossed the living room and headed for the door to his apartment.
He shouldn’t even have been here; he should have been back on the bus with his team. Only a few people knew he was alive after the Battle of New York, but apparently one of that extremely small group was trying to get into his apartment without calling him first.
He’d been needing some time off for months now, and if this was the way he was going to be treated while on a staycation, he might as well be back in the magical place that was Tahiti.
Coulson reached the door and, instead of going for the handle or sneaking a glimpse through the peep hole, he depressed the intercom button. “Yes?” That was as polite as he could manage just now. He felt proud to have done even that much. Sleep was a precious commodity.
“Agent Coulson, it’s me.”
Recognizing the voice at once, Coulson sighed and slid his finger over to the button to buzz Clint Barton in.
Seconds passed and Coulson found himself leaning forward, eyes closed, nearly falling asleep upright against the wall. Clint would have to walk in the door, over to the elevator bank, wait for the elevator, take it up to Coulson’s penthouse, and walk down the short hallway. That gave Coulson not only seconds but precious minutes to rest.
A knock at the door shook Coulson awake. Resignedly, his hand closed over the door handle, turned, and pulled. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avenger Clint Barton stood in the doorway with his bare arms wrapped around his chest and his shoulder against the door jamb. As his handler for years, Coulson had seen Clint in a number of compromised states. He’d seen Clint with an infected leg and a fever of a hundred and three point five. He’d seen Clint with a bullet wound in his shoulder. He’d seen Clint with the stomach flu on top of three broken ribs. He’d seen Clint with a stab wound in his chest, knife still stuck in as he continued to fire arrows. But this… Coulson had never seen Clint look quite like this.
Clint’s nose was bright red and the bags under his eyes were dark, as though he’d been punched out a few days before. Before Coulson could comment, Clint snapped forward. “Hahh-Ktshhhhh!” The sneeze sprayed forward, strong and forceful, catching Coulson in its wake.
“Bless—”
“Huh huh-KIHtchhh!” A second struck almost immediately.
Coulson stepped back, grimacing. He wiped his face off with the sleeve of his bathrobe. “I take it this means you’re sick?”
Clint nodded, sniffling and finally raising a glove-covered hand to his face. “I know this is supposed to be your week off, but I really need someone to look after me and make sure I take medicine at the right time.” He sniffed again, hard, long, and wet.
Coulson was unmoved.
“I’d go see Tasha, but she’s on an op in Bulgaria; I don’t even know how to reach her.”
“So you thought I’d be able to use my S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to contact her for you?”
Clint pushed off from the door jamb and straightened up. “Not exactly.”
“You thought I’d call up Nick Fury to sit by your bedside?” That one was supposed to have been a joke, so when Clint didn’t laugh, Coulson took a step back. Fury was going to kill him.
“No,” Clint finally said. “Actually, I was hoping you’d take care of me.” Clint rubbed the back of his hand against the bottom of his nose, the glove rubbing hard against his sore nostrils. “Please?”
With a heavy sigh, Coulson stepped aside and swung his arm, gesturing for Clint to come in. “All right, but try not to sneeze on absolutely everything I own.”
Clint chuckled, and Coulson had a terrible feeling that it wasn’t a delayed reaction to the Nick Fury joke. Flopping down on the couch with his face in the couch cushion, Clint didn’t make it a minute before sneezing into it. “Hahh… hahh h’Ikshhh!”
“I’ll get you a box of tissues,” Coulson said, closing the door to his apartment and engaging the locks.
Clint lifted his head from the pillow, nodding. But his appreciation lasted only a second before his jaw dropped open. “Hah… hahh-IHKshoo! Sniff!”
“You sound terrible.”
“I feel it.”
“How long have you been sick?” Coulson crossed the living room, giving the couch a wide berth.
Clint snuffled and shook his head, as if that were an answer.
“Barton? That was a direct question.”
“Four days?”
“Four…” Coulson did the math and called up the last file he’d read on Clint. “You mean you were sick when S.H.I.E.L.D. had you trailing the man who attempted to take down Dr. Strange?”
Clint nodded, coughing into his fist. “Wasn’t a big deal. If I get some medicine in me, I’m able to hide it pretty damn… hah… huh-well… huh-KChishhhh!”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” Coulson raided his linen closet, pulling out a spare pillow and pillowcase, a couple blankets of varying weights, and a tissue box with a chevron pattern on it. When he got back to the couch, Clint was hunched over, sniffling into the back of his hand again, rubbing his nostrils raw with the tough leather. “When did you last take something for this cold?”
Clint shrugged. “Can’t remember. A day, maybe? I ran out.” As Coulson set the items on the far arm of the couch, Clint sat up to reach out to them. Coulson pulled his hand back, avoiding contact. There was nothing he liked less than being incapacitated, especially due to an illness and especially when such things could be avoided so easily by taking minor precautions. Besides, this was his week off; he did not plan on spending it in bed with a bad case of sniffles.
Another buzz sounded, and this time it was Coulson’s cell phone. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the caller ID before quickly answering. “This is Agent Coulson. Go ahead.”
It was Agent Hill, and she didn’t bother introducing herself. “There’s a situation at the New York City Science Museum. An employee has reported a new 0-8-4. I hate to ask, but our resources are stretched at the moment and you’re close, aren’t you?”
“That’s two blocks from my apartment.”
“Assess and acquire, that’s all we need.”
“Oh, that’s all? Acquire an 0-8-4—that’s all? Have you heard of Thor’s Hammer by any chance? You know I’m supposed to be on vacation.”
There was a second of static on Hill’s end of the line. And there was a sneeze on Coulson’s end, after which Clint finally dipped his hand into the box of tissues to blow his nose. “We wouldn’t ask if we didn’t have to. It was either you or Tony Stark, and we had a better chance of actually seeing the 0-8-4 if we asked you. Should be quick.”
“Hahhh-KATChhhh!” Clint sneezed again, spraying the coffee table. Apparently making use of the tissues did not mean covering his nose and mouth with them when he sneezed.
Coulson grimaced and did a few mental calculations. Agent Hill’s idea of a quick mission wasn’t always his; there was a reason he’d insisted on having his own team that he could run his own way. And he knew from experience there was never any such thing as a standard 0-8-4. But he also knew S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t about punching time clocks. “All right, I’ll do it. But if this turns into something bigger, you’ll need to send in a team, or at least backup.”
“Confirmed. I think Agent Barton’s in your area presently.”
Glancing toward the couch and rolling his eyes, “I have a feeling you may be right. I’ll call when I have the object in hand.”
“Good luck, Agent.”
Luck. He had a feeling he was going to need that. He slipped his cell phone into his bathrobe pocket and sighed as his gaze fell upon Clint, curled up into a little ball that took up only half the couch. “I have to head out for an hour, maybe two.”
“Was that Director Fury?”
“Agent Hill. She needs me to—”
“I heard enough.” Clint shivered. And sneezed. “Hahh-EHFTchhhh!” He looked longingly at the blankets at the opposite end of the couch, as if he had suddenly developed powers of telekinesis. “Coulsod? Cad you…”
Coulson could, albeit reluctantly. It had been a long time since Coulson had been in a position to tuck someone in. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to pull a blanket up over someone he cared about and slide the ends under that someone’s warm body. Not that he cared about Clint in that way, of course. They were colleagues. Sure, once they seemed like they might be able to become something more… but then Coulson up and died. Dying put a damper on your Facebook relationship status. “Don’t leave the apartment. Don’t make a mess of things. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t answer the land line. Don’t—”
“Dod’t worry. I’ll be fide.”
“Don’t forget to blow your nose,” Coulson finished, tucking the tissue box in under the blanket with the man. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Superheros—even Hawkeye—had uniforms. Cap had his red white and blue. Iron man had his armor. And Coulson had a suit—a whole closet full of them, in fact, complete with a tie rack that would make Georgio Armani weep. A complete costume change would normally take half an hour, but he managed to make himself presentable enough in ten minutes flat. With his cheeks still stinging from the aftershave, keys jangling in his pocket, and a scarf wrapped around his neck against the cold, he headed to the museum.
He knew why Hill had chosen him for this mission. The museum was only a two block walk from his place. Why bring in a team when you lay a guilt trip on a Level 8 S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who practically lived next door to your 0-8-4 already?
The science museum was unusually crowded for a Thursday; there were the usual tourists and school groups there on field trips, but there seemed to be a lot of other people as well, as if drawn there by some mystical force, commanding them all to converge on the same location at the same time. Literally the same time. A little girl who wasn’t watching where she was going collided with Coulson, hitting his left leg and doing no damage except to knock her breath out for a few seconds. Though it was her fault, Coulson apologized and swiftly moved out of the public areas as soon as possible.
He was barely free of them when his phone buzzed. He glanced at it, somehow not surprised to find it was Clint calling. He answered, pressing the phone hard to his ear but unable to hear Clint’s voice over the noise around him. Coulson turned his body toward the wall, shouting into the phone that he couldn’t hear, but it did no good. “Text me!” he finally said, and terminated the call with annoyance building in him. Clint knew he was on a mission, knew he should only be disturbed in case of emergencies.
Coulson stared at his phone, waiting for the text that would explain that Skrulls had invaded the apartment building or the Brotherhood of Mutants was torturing his downstairs neighbors for information. When the text came, it read simply: Bring orange juice.
Orange juice. He’d bothered Coulson on a mission because he wanted orange juice. Unless orange juice was suddenly a powerful substance that could bring Loki to his knees, this text had no business existing. Unfortunately, it was followed by another: The kind without pulp.
And, then, one more: Please?
Coulson sighed and quickly texted back: Fine.
And that was it. The end of their communication. Coulson showed his badge to a security guard at a door with an AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign posted on it; he was quickly granted admittance.
Behind the scenes at the museum, the pace wasn’t much different from the rest of the museum. It seemed every researcher or scientist in the city—minus every one Coulson actually trusted from Stark and Banner to Richards and Connors. At once, Coulson suspected he’d been too quick to accept this mission and thought of calling Fitz-Simmons up so he could at least Skype them into this.
He didn’t need to ask around; he only had to follow the crowd of excited people in lab coats. Once there, he had to admit the 0-8-4 was quite the impressive sight to behold. He also had to admit it looked to him like nothing more than a small Tesla Coil—something you’d see in a science museum gift shop or at a Spencer’s Gifts in a mall. It stood about a foot and a half tall, a metal cylinder with a rounded top like a giant pewter bullet. Teal and purple bolts of electricity danced around the top in no discernible pattern and with no visible source.
“We’ve had it here at the museum for months now,” a researcher named Dr. Daniels explained, when Coulson introduced himself to the group and asked who was in charge. “This morning, it just started acting up, right out of the blue like this. We don’t know where the energy is even coming from. It’s just impossible.”
“Then it’s a good thing I specialize in the impossible.” Coulson took a step closer to the object and that was when everything happened at once: his cell phone buzzed in his pocket (probably Clint asking him for another box of tissues or something) and one of the threads of energy leapt from the object and struck Coulson straight in the chest.
He stepped back, startled. Several people screamed, others jumped away from him. The researcher he’d been talking to grabbed his arm, as if Coulson were about to fall over or pass out or worse. One man ran for a security guard while another started to dial 9-1-1. But Coulson took stock of himself and realizing that felt fine.
It was the strangest thing. He’d just been standing there and suddenly there had been light shooting into his chest. But he hadn’t registered any sensation—not heat nor cold nor pain nor even mild discomfort. He felt fine, albeit a little irritated when he checked his phone to find another text message: And nasal spray.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” another researcher asked, steering him over to the nearest chair and planting him there. “We should do a full workup. Do we need to notify anyone? S.H.I.E.L.D.?”
“I’m fine,” Coulson insisted, and he meant it. But it took another hour to convince everyone else of that fact. The device, meanwhile, had stopped emitting strands of energy. It stood as plain and motionless as it apparently had been since the museum had acquired it. If its only function had been to freak out a whole room of scientists for a morning, then mission accomplished. But Coulson had a mission of his own: assess and acquire. It had looked pretty, and now it looked inert; there was the assessing portion of the mission done. Against strenuous objections from nearly everyone still in the room, Coulson picked up the item, secured it in a S.H.I.E.L.D. case, and left the museum. 0-8-4 acquired. Mission accomplished.
There was a measure of humor in the situation, he had to admit, as he pushed a small shopping cart through the city grocery store, the case sitting up front like an insistent child. His first stop in the store had been the fruit juice aisle where he had found pulp-free orange juice fortified with all sorts of things in addition to 100% of one’s daily Vitamin C. That lead him over to the vitamin and medicine section, where he spent probably far too long trying to decided which medicine would be best. He tried texting Clint to gain some direction, but each one of his texts went unanswered. So he got what normally worked for him when he felt under the weather and hoped it would help Clint just as well. Tissues, as luck would have it, were on sale, so he bought a four-pack of boxes, figuring they would last Clint a while. Then he stocked up on cough drops, nasal spray, and some saline rinse that claimed to help congestion. If Coulson knew nothing else about the agent’s condition, it was that he was congested. He also picked up normal groceries; he’d gotten home so late the night before and he hadn’t had much food in the apartment to begin with. Living on the plane most of the time meant not having a well-stocked pantry or fridge back home. Besides, it was lunchtime and he was famished.
Nearly three hours since he’d left, Coulson returned home to his apartment, multiple shopping bag handles bunched tightly in each fist. He expected to find the apartment exactly as he’d left it; that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Clint had apparently remembered the command about blowing his nose and forgotten the one about not making a mess. Used, balled-up tissues solidly coated the floor in a two-foot radius around the couch. There was a particular concentration around the side where Hawkeye’s head was. The empty tissue box had been ripped into pieces, strewn about the room. When he’d run out of tissues, apparently Clint had switched to paper towels—the roll he’d found in the kitchen—and then to toilet paper—which he’d found in the bathroom. A cereal box lay sideways on the coffee table, little Os spewing from its top across the surface except for where a bottle of water from the fridge stood like a lone pillar, sweating little beads onto the delicate wooden surface. The cell phone perched on one corner of the table showed he had eight missed messages. One blanket was on the floor, another bunched up around Clint’s middle, and a third covering the lower half of his body, excluding his feet which stuck out so that the shoes he still wore pressed into the fabric of the couch. The pillowcase had been forgotten, and still hung over the arm of the couch, but the pillow was wedged under Clint’s head, folded so it raised his head up higher. The man, somehow, had made himself comfortable enough, despite the mess, to have fallen asleep.
Coulson dropped the shopping bags, locked the door behind him, carefully set the 0-8-4 aside, and then headed straight for the couch. His shiny black shoes made a path through the sea of tissues as he stormed over and knocked Clint’s shoes off his couch.
Clint woke with a start. And a cough. And a snuffle. And another cough. “What… Coulson?”
“Shoes off the couch,” he stated. “And sit up. I’ve got medicine for you.” As Clint toed off his shoes and they clunked to the floor upon the tissues, Coulson put food away in the fridge and weeded through the shopping bags for the cold pills.
“Can’t I just take two and knock this out?” Clint asked when Coulson popped a single pill out of its blister pack and into Clint’s hand.
“One pill; it says that right on the box. We’ll see how you do on a normal dose.”
Clint grimaced as he washed the pill down with a few sips of orange juice. “Stings,” he said, before flopping back down onto the couch and sneezing into the cushion again. “h'CHIShahh!” Clint shivered, pulling the blankets tighter around himself. “I don’t feel good,” he said, curling up on himself again.
“You’ll be fine. Give the medicine a chance to work. At least you weren’t attacked by a beam of light today.”
“What?”
Before Coulson could explain in any detail about the 0-8-4 (which he was suspecting might not actually be an 0-8-4 at all but might, instead, just be some scientist’s cruel joke on them all), there was another buzzing sound.
Nothing good had come of these all day, and Coulson had half a mind to ignore it. But one glance at the caller ID changed his mind. “Hello Director Fury, this is Agent Coulson.”
“Something is going down by the docks. We need our best marksman on it, but we can’t get a hold of Agent Barton. You were his handler; do you know where he might be?”
“Agent Barton is about five feet away from me, sleeping on my couch.”
“Excellent. We’ll need you both tonight. Sending the details right over.”
And before Coulson could say another word, Fury had hung up. “Shit.”
“Hah-CUTCHHH!” Clint pitched forward from the first sneeze then further forward just a moment later with two more. “Hehh-KTchhh! HehhhChushhhh!”
“Let me reiterate: shit. I’m calling Fury back. You’re in no condition to—”
“I can do it.” Clint snuffled and scrubbed at his nose with his hand. “Whatever he needs, I can do it.” He cleared his throat and lay back against the pillow and couch cushion. “When does he need us?”
“Tonight. Sundown.”
Clint nodded and closed his eyes. “Let me rest my eyes a little, then I’ll take a look at the file.”
In the end, Clint took a three hour nap. When he woke, he sounded twice as stuffed-up but seemed twice as alert, so Coulson figured it all evened out. A sleepy marksman is a sloppy marksman, so he preferred the version of Clint who could accurately shoot compared to the version who could pronounce words properly. There had been time enough to each read through the file and strategize a bit.
There had been reports of strange items being smuggled in and out of the country at the docks. In a perfect world, that meant some bootleg DVDs or, at worst, some cultural artifacts dug up by grave robbers. In this world, however, it was much more likely to be alien devices some group planned to use to take over the world. Their job was reconnaissance and capture. If Hawkeye had a shot, Coulson could authorize him to take it, but S.H.I.E.L.D. preferred these guys to be taken alive. They wanted to track where these items were coming from and going to, and that was more difficult if parts of the operation suddenly turned up dead. But they couldn’t risk the items falling into the wrong hands in order to figure out whose hands they were. So they had to capture everyone they could and recover the items.
It seemed simple enough, but Coulson rapped his knuckles on the nearest wooden surface every time he even briefly entertained such a thought. Coulson still had reservations about taking Clint out on a mission in a compromised state, but he had to admit that the man did seem better. He was sniffly and sneezy during the elevator ride and the walk outside to a taxi. He practically sneezed his head off during the taxi ride over; given the strong scent inside the cab, Coulson wondered if Clint’s already compromised nose was reacting to whatever incense or air spray the middle eastern cabbie had used in his car. But the moment they got within sight of the docks, Clint’s condition cleared up as if by magic.
Agent Coulson took the ground while Hawkeye made his way to the top of the nearby lighthouse. The notes in the file had identified it as the best lookout point for their operation and it wasn’t difficult to guess why. With its significant height and 360 degree view, it made for an excellent vantage point; an added bonus was the fact that it was normal to see someone walking the deck of a lighthouse, in order to inspect it or keep the lighthouse operational, whereas someone atop a tall building would be conspicuous.
With the communications channel open between the two of them, it instantly felt like old times again—simpler times, times before they knew about portals to parallel universes or bridges to other planets, times before experiments changed the fabric of the universe, before superheros were such public figures, before Coulson had been legally declared dead.
“I’ve got eyes on them,” Clint said into Coulson’s ear. “And on you. Head about fifty degrees to your right. Then take the next left around those storage containers. That’s it. You’ll… you…” There was a pause, then a barely audible “n’ghht!” as Clint successfully stifled a sneeze.
“I’ll what?” Coulson asked, pretending he had not heard.
“You’ll find them.” And, just like that, Coulson did. Even though he’d known from the case file what to expect, he was taken off guard by the sheer number of items being smuggled. There were dozens of crates, towering over them, and the smugglers were putting item after item into them—greenish vials, glowing amber stones, bronze gauntlets, sea foam green canisters.
“Found them,” Coulson whispered. “Looks like four of them. Confirm?”
“Confirmed. Can’t use my net arrow unless they’re all together. Think you can do anything about that?”
“Absolutely. You’ve got my back just in case it goes south?”
“Always, Sir.” Warmth sprang up in Coulson at these words. And that warmth inspired confidence.
With a myriad of possibilities at his disposal, Coulson settled for the easiest of them all. Gun raised, he stepped out from the shadows. “Hold it right there!”
The men responded predictably. Two of them dove for weapons. One rushed at him. Another drew a gun. They were all in range; Coulson was sure of that. Yet that net arrow didn’t come. What did come was a gunshot.
Once again, Coulson was aware of a burning pain in his chest. As he fell, he saw the net fall, and he heard Hawkeye yelling his name through the comm. But it was too late. He struggled to hold on, knowing it was too bad for him to walk away from; he was already too far gone. Gunshots rang out. Arrows flew overhead. The four suspects were silent as by the time Clint reached his side and dropped to his knees.
Coulson went cold as he felt his head lifted. “No, no, no” echoed overhead and through the comm like a creepy echo. “Coulson…”
Coulson struggled to keep his eyes open—and ultimately failed. “Promise… me,” Coulson choked out, “Promise you won’t let them… bring me back.”
Clint coughed and choked out a strained, “I don’t think I can promise that, Sir.”
“You have to…” Coulson winced as the pain in his chest intensified. He felt something wet and soft touch his lips. A kiss. A kiss, strong but tender. Coulson tried to speak around it, tried to insist he wanted to die. But he wasn’t sure he believed that anymore. Then, suddenly, the pain was gone.
Title: Assess & Acquire
Author: tarotgal
Fandom: Marvel CMU (Avengers & Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pre-Clint/Coulson
Spoilers: For the first Avengers movie and the first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Warning: Character death. A lot of character death.
Summary: When Clint Barton shows up unannounced on Phil Coulson’s doorstep, Coulson is forced to change his vacation plans. So when a simple mission to assess and acquire an object of unknown origin comes up, he figures there’s no reason he should turn that down. Naturally, things are never as simple as they seem.
Author’s Notes: Written for NaNoWriMo 2014 all in one month (a first for me!). This story is finished but will be posted in pieces. Total word count: 73,274.
Chapter 1
The buzzer pulled a reluctant Agent Phil Coulson out of sleep. You couldn’t really call it jet lag if you actually lived on a jet. But Coulson definitely noticed it felt different to be back in his apartment in New York—stationary, cold during this late autumn season, and quiet.
Or, at least, it was usually quiet. The startlingly loud buzzer sounded again, ensuring that he not fall back to sleep. Knowing it wasn’t his alarm clock or even his phone, he dragged himself out of a perfectly lovely, warm bed. He grabbed his phone off the nightstand, checking the time: 8:22am. After pulling his bathrobe on as he crossed his bedroom, Coulson stashed his phone in one of the front pockets. At the bedroom doorway, he spared a few seconds to slide his feet into slippers. Then he walked down the hall, cursing the buzzer as it went off again. It wasn’t something ready in the kitchen and it wasn’t his television magically turning on out of nowhere (this time). Yawning, Coulson crossed the living room and headed for the door to his apartment.
He shouldn’t even have been here; he should have been back on the bus with his team. Only a few people knew he was alive after the Battle of New York, but apparently one of that extremely small group was trying to get into his apartment without calling him first.
He’d been needing some time off for months now, and if this was the way he was going to be treated while on a staycation, he might as well be back in the magical place that was Tahiti.
Coulson reached the door and, instead of going for the handle or sneaking a glimpse through the peep hole, he depressed the intercom button. “Yes?” That was as polite as he could manage just now. He felt proud to have done even that much. Sleep was a precious commodity.
“Agent Coulson, it’s me.”
Recognizing the voice at once, Coulson sighed and slid his finger over to the button to buzz Clint Barton in.
Seconds passed and Coulson found himself leaning forward, eyes closed, nearly falling asleep upright against the wall. Clint would have to walk in the door, over to the elevator bank, wait for the elevator, take it up to Coulson’s penthouse, and walk down the short hallway. That gave Coulson not only seconds but precious minutes to rest.
A knock at the door shook Coulson awake. Resignedly, his hand closed over the door handle, turned, and pulled. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avenger Clint Barton stood in the doorway with his bare arms wrapped around his chest and his shoulder against the door jamb. As his handler for years, Coulson had seen Clint in a number of compromised states. He’d seen Clint with an infected leg and a fever of a hundred and three point five. He’d seen Clint with a bullet wound in his shoulder. He’d seen Clint with the stomach flu on top of three broken ribs. He’d seen Clint with a stab wound in his chest, knife still stuck in as he continued to fire arrows. But this… Coulson had never seen Clint look quite like this.
Clint’s nose was bright red and the bags under his eyes were dark, as though he’d been punched out a few days before. Before Coulson could comment, Clint snapped forward. “Hahh-Ktshhhhh!” The sneeze sprayed forward, strong and forceful, catching Coulson in its wake.
“Bless—”
“Huh huh-KIHtchhh!” A second struck almost immediately.
Coulson stepped back, grimacing. He wiped his face off with the sleeve of his bathrobe. “I take it this means you’re sick?”
Clint nodded, sniffling and finally raising a glove-covered hand to his face. “I know this is supposed to be your week off, but I really need someone to look after me and make sure I take medicine at the right time.” He sniffed again, hard, long, and wet.
Coulson was unmoved.
“I’d go see Tasha, but she’s on an op in Bulgaria; I don’t even know how to reach her.”
“So you thought I’d be able to use my S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to contact her for you?”
Clint pushed off from the door jamb and straightened up. “Not exactly.”
“You thought I’d call up Nick Fury to sit by your bedside?” That one was supposed to have been a joke, so when Clint didn’t laugh, Coulson took a step back. Fury was going to kill him.
“No,” Clint finally said. “Actually, I was hoping you’d take care of me.” Clint rubbed the back of his hand against the bottom of his nose, the glove rubbing hard against his sore nostrils. “Please?”
With a heavy sigh, Coulson stepped aside and swung his arm, gesturing for Clint to come in. “All right, but try not to sneeze on absolutely everything I own.”
Clint chuckled, and Coulson had a terrible feeling that it wasn’t a delayed reaction to the Nick Fury joke. Flopping down on the couch with his face in the couch cushion, Clint didn’t make it a minute before sneezing into it. “Hahh… hahh h’Ikshhh!”
“I’ll get you a box of tissues,” Coulson said, closing the door to his apartment and engaging the locks.
Clint lifted his head from the pillow, nodding. But his appreciation lasted only a second before his jaw dropped open. “Hah… hahh-IHKshoo! Sniff!”
“You sound terrible.”
“I feel it.”
“How long have you been sick?” Coulson crossed the living room, giving the couch a wide berth.
Clint snuffled and shook his head, as if that were an answer.
“Barton? That was a direct question.”
“Four days?”
“Four…” Coulson did the math and called up the last file he’d read on Clint. “You mean you were sick when S.H.I.E.L.D. had you trailing the man who attempted to take down Dr. Strange?”
Clint nodded, coughing into his fist. “Wasn’t a big deal. If I get some medicine in me, I’m able to hide it pretty damn… hah… huh-well… huh-KChishhhh!”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” Coulson raided his linen closet, pulling out a spare pillow and pillowcase, a couple blankets of varying weights, and a tissue box with a chevron pattern on it. When he got back to the couch, Clint was hunched over, sniffling into the back of his hand again, rubbing his nostrils raw with the tough leather. “When did you last take something for this cold?”
Clint shrugged. “Can’t remember. A day, maybe? I ran out.” As Coulson set the items on the far arm of the couch, Clint sat up to reach out to them. Coulson pulled his hand back, avoiding contact. There was nothing he liked less than being incapacitated, especially due to an illness and especially when such things could be avoided so easily by taking minor precautions. Besides, this was his week off; he did not plan on spending it in bed with a bad case of sniffles.
Another buzz sounded, and this time it was Coulson’s cell phone. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the caller ID before quickly answering. “This is Agent Coulson. Go ahead.”
It was Agent Hill, and she didn’t bother introducing herself. “There’s a situation at the New York City Science Museum. An employee has reported a new 0-8-4. I hate to ask, but our resources are stretched at the moment and you’re close, aren’t you?”
“That’s two blocks from my apartment.”
“Assess and acquire, that’s all we need.”
“Oh, that’s all? Acquire an 0-8-4—that’s all? Have you heard of Thor’s Hammer by any chance? You know I’m supposed to be on vacation.”
There was a second of static on Hill’s end of the line. And there was a sneeze on Coulson’s end, after which Clint finally dipped his hand into the box of tissues to blow his nose. “We wouldn’t ask if we didn’t have to. It was either you or Tony Stark, and we had a better chance of actually seeing the 0-8-4 if we asked you. Should be quick.”
“Hahhh-KATChhhh!” Clint sneezed again, spraying the coffee table. Apparently making use of the tissues did not mean covering his nose and mouth with them when he sneezed.
Coulson grimaced and did a few mental calculations. Agent Hill’s idea of a quick mission wasn’t always his; there was a reason he’d insisted on having his own team that he could run his own way. And he knew from experience there was never any such thing as a standard 0-8-4. But he also knew S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t about punching time clocks. “All right, I’ll do it. But if this turns into something bigger, you’ll need to send in a team, or at least backup.”
“Confirmed. I think Agent Barton’s in your area presently.”
Glancing toward the couch and rolling his eyes, “I have a feeling you may be right. I’ll call when I have the object in hand.”
“Good luck, Agent.”
Luck. He had a feeling he was going to need that. He slipped his cell phone into his bathrobe pocket and sighed as his gaze fell upon Clint, curled up into a little ball that took up only half the couch. “I have to head out for an hour, maybe two.”
“Was that Director Fury?”
“Agent Hill. She needs me to—”
“I heard enough.” Clint shivered. And sneezed. “Hahh-EHFTchhhh!” He looked longingly at the blankets at the opposite end of the couch, as if he had suddenly developed powers of telekinesis. “Coulsod? Cad you…”
Coulson could, albeit reluctantly. It had been a long time since Coulson had been in a position to tuck someone in. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to pull a blanket up over someone he cared about and slide the ends under that someone’s warm body. Not that he cared about Clint in that way, of course. They were colleagues. Sure, once they seemed like they might be able to become something more… but then Coulson up and died. Dying put a damper on your Facebook relationship status. “Don’t leave the apartment. Don’t make a mess of things. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t answer the land line. Don’t—”
“Dod’t worry. I’ll be fide.”
“Don’t forget to blow your nose,” Coulson finished, tucking the tissue box in under the blanket with the man. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Superheros—even Hawkeye—had uniforms. Cap had his red white and blue. Iron man had his armor. And Coulson had a suit—a whole closet full of them, in fact, complete with a tie rack that would make Georgio Armani weep. A complete costume change would normally take half an hour, but he managed to make himself presentable enough in ten minutes flat. With his cheeks still stinging from the aftershave, keys jangling in his pocket, and a scarf wrapped around his neck against the cold, he headed to the museum.
He knew why Hill had chosen him for this mission. The museum was only a two block walk from his place. Why bring in a team when you lay a guilt trip on a Level 8 S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who practically lived next door to your 0-8-4 already?
The science museum was unusually crowded for a Thursday; there were the usual tourists and school groups there on field trips, but there seemed to be a lot of other people as well, as if drawn there by some mystical force, commanding them all to converge on the same location at the same time. Literally the same time. A little girl who wasn’t watching where she was going collided with Coulson, hitting his left leg and doing no damage except to knock her breath out for a few seconds. Though it was her fault, Coulson apologized and swiftly moved out of the public areas as soon as possible.
He was barely free of them when his phone buzzed. He glanced at it, somehow not surprised to find it was Clint calling. He answered, pressing the phone hard to his ear but unable to hear Clint’s voice over the noise around him. Coulson turned his body toward the wall, shouting into the phone that he couldn’t hear, but it did no good. “Text me!” he finally said, and terminated the call with annoyance building in him. Clint knew he was on a mission, knew he should only be disturbed in case of emergencies.
Coulson stared at his phone, waiting for the text that would explain that Skrulls had invaded the apartment building or the Brotherhood of Mutants was torturing his downstairs neighbors for information. When the text came, it read simply: Bring orange juice.
Orange juice. He’d bothered Coulson on a mission because he wanted orange juice. Unless orange juice was suddenly a powerful substance that could bring Loki to his knees, this text had no business existing. Unfortunately, it was followed by another: The kind without pulp.
And, then, one more: Please?
Coulson sighed and quickly texted back: Fine.
And that was it. The end of their communication. Coulson showed his badge to a security guard at a door with an AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign posted on it; he was quickly granted admittance.
Behind the scenes at the museum, the pace wasn’t much different from the rest of the museum. It seemed every researcher or scientist in the city—minus every one Coulson actually trusted from Stark and Banner to Richards and Connors. At once, Coulson suspected he’d been too quick to accept this mission and thought of calling Fitz-Simmons up so he could at least Skype them into this.
He didn’t need to ask around; he only had to follow the crowd of excited people in lab coats. Once there, he had to admit the 0-8-4 was quite the impressive sight to behold. He also had to admit it looked to him like nothing more than a small Tesla Coil—something you’d see in a science museum gift shop or at a Spencer’s Gifts in a mall. It stood about a foot and a half tall, a metal cylinder with a rounded top like a giant pewter bullet. Teal and purple bolts of electricity danced around the top in no discernible pattern and with no visible source.
“We’ve had it here at the museum for months now,” a researcher named Dr. Daniels explained, when Coulson introduced himself to the group and asked who was in charge. “This morning, it just started acting up, right out of the blue like this. We don’t know where the energy is even coming from. It’s just impossible.”
“Then it’s a good thing I specialize in the impossible.” Coulson took a step closer to the object and that was when everything happened at once: his cell phone buzzed in his pocket (probably Clint asking him for another box of tissues or something) and one of the threads of energy leapt from the object and struck Coulson straight in the chest.
He stepped back, startled. Several people screamed, others jumped away from him. The researcher he’d been talking to grabbed his arm, as if Coulson were about to fall over or pass out or worse. One man ran for a security guard while another started to dial 9-1-1. But Coulson took stock of himself and realizing that felt fine.
It was the strangest thing. He’d just been standing there and suddenly there had been light shooting into his chest. But he hadn’t registered any sensation—not heat nor cold nor pain nor even mild discomfort. He felt fine, albeit a little irritated when he checked his phone to find another text message: And nasal spray.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” another researcher asked, steering him over to the nearest chair and planting him there. “We should do a full workup. Do we need to notify anyone? S.H.I.E.L.D.?”
“I’m fine,” Coulson insisted, and he meant it. But it took another hour to convince everyone else of that fact. The device, meanwhile, had stopped emitting strands of energy. It stood as plain and motionless as it apparently had been since the museum had acquired it. If its only function had been to freak out a whole room of scientists for a morning, then mission accomplished. But Coulson had a mission of his own: assess and acquire. It had looked pretty, and now it looked inert; there was the assessing portion of the mission done. Against strenuous objections from nearly everyone still in the room, Coulson picked up the item, secured it in a S.H.I.E.L.D. case, and left the museum. 0-8-4 acquired. Mission accomplished.
There was a measure of humor in the situation, he had to admit, as he pushed a small shopping cart through the city grocery store, the case sitting up front like an insistent child. His first stop in the store had been the fruit juice aisle where he had found pulp-free orange juice fortified with all sorts of things in addition to 100% of one’s daily Vitamin C. That lead him over to the vitamin and medicine section, where he spent probably far too long trying to decided which medicine would be best. He tried texting Clint to gain some direction, but each one of his texts went unanswered. So he got what normally worked for him when he felt under the weather and hoped it would help Clint just as well. Tissues, as luck would have it, were on sale, so he bought a four-pack of boxes, figuring they would last Clint a while. Then he stocked up on cough drops, nasal spray, and some saline rinse that claimed to help congestion. If Coulson knew nothing else about the agent’s condition, it was that he was congested. He also picked up normal groceries; he’d gotten home so late the night before and he hadn’t had much food in the apartment to begin with. Living on the plane most of the time meant not having a well-stocked pantry or fridge back home. Besides, it was lunchtime and he was famished.
Nearly three hours since he’d left, Coulson returned home to his apartment, multiple shopping bag handles bunched tightly in each fist. He expected to find the apartment exactly as he’d left it; that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Clint had apparently remembered the command about blowing his nose and forgotten the one about not making a mess. Used, balled-up tissues solidly coated the floor in a two-foot radius around the couch. There was a particular concentration around the side where Hawkeye’s head was. The empty tissue box had been ripped into pieces, strewn about the room. When he’d run out of tissues, apparently Clint had switched to paper towels—the roll he’d found in the kitchen—and then to toilet paper—which he’d found in the bathroom. A cereal box lay sideways on the coffee table, little Os spewing from its top across the surface except for where a bottle of water from the fridge stood like a lone pillar, sweating little beads onto the delicate wooden surface. The cell phone perched on one corner of the table showed he had eight missed messages. One blanket was on the floor, another bunched up around Clint’s middle, and a third covering the lower half of his body, excluding his feet which stuck out so that the shoes he still wore pressed into the fabric of the couch. The pillowcase had been forgotten, and still hung over the arm of the couch, but the pillow was wedged under Clint’s head, folded so it raised his head up higher. The man, somehow, had made himself comfortable enough, despite the mess, to have fallen asleep.
Coulson dropped the shopping bags, locked the door behind him, carefully set the 0-8-4 aside, and then headed straight for the couch. His shiny black shoes made a path through the sea of tissues as he stormed over and knocked Clint’s shoes off his couch.
Clint woke with a start. And a cough. And a snuffle. And another cough. “What… Coulson?”
“Shoes off the couch,” he stated. “And sit up. I’ve got medicine for you.” As Clint toed off his shoes and they clunked to the floor upon the tissues, Coulson put food away in the fridge and weeded through the shopping bags for the cold pills.
“Can’t I just take two and knock this out?” Clint asked when Coulson popped a single pill out of its blister pack and into Clint’s hand.
“One pill; it says that right on the box. We’ll see how you do on a normal dose.”
Clint grimaced as he washed the pill down with a few sips of orange juice. “Stings,” he said, before flopping back down onto the couch and sneezing into the cushion again. “h'CHIShahh!” Clint shivered, pulling the blankets tighter around himself. “I don’t feel good,” he said, curling up on himself again.
“You’ll be fine. Give the medicine a chance to work. At least you weren’t attacked by a beam of light today.”
“What?”
Before Coulson could explain in any detail about the 0-8-4 (which he was suspecting might not actually be an 0-8-4 at all but might, instead, just be some scientist’s cruel joke on them all), there was another buzzing sound.
Nothing good had come of these all day, and Coulson had half a mind to ignore it. But one glance at the caller ID changed his mind. “Hello Director Fury, this is Agent Coulson.”
“Something is going down by the docks. We need our best marksman on it, but we can’t get a hold of Agent Barton. You were his handler; do you know where he might be?”
“Agent Barton is about five feet away from me, sleeping on my couch.”
“Excellent. We’ll need you both tonight. Sending the details right over.”
And before Coulson could say another word, Fury had hung up. “Shit.”
“Hah-CUTCHHH!” Clint pitched forward from the first sneeze then further forward just a moment later with two more. “Hehh-KTchhh! HehhhChushhhh!”
“Let me reiterate: shit. I’m calling Fury back. You’re in no condition to—”
“I can do it.” Clint snuffled and scrubbed at his nose with his hand. “Whatever he needs, I can do it.” He cleared his throat and lay back against the pillow and couch cushion. “When does he need us?”
“Tonight. Sundown.”
Clint nodded and closed his eyes. “Let me rest my eyes a little, then I’ll take a look at the file.”
In the end, Clint took a three hour nap. When he woke, he sounded twice as stuffed-up but seemed twice as alert, so Coulson figured it all evened out. A sleepy marksman is a sloppy marksman, so he preferred the version of Clint who could accurately shoot compared to the version who could pronounce words properly. There had been time enough to each read through the file and strategize a bit.
There had been reports of strange items being smuggled in and out of the country at the docks. In a perfect world, that meant some bootleg DVDs or, at worst, some cultural artifacts dug up by grave robbers. In this world, however, it was much more likely to be alien devices some group planned to use to take over the world. Their job was reconnaissance and capture. If Hawkeye had a shot, Coulson could authorize him to take it, but S.H.I.E.L.D. preferred these guys to be taken alive. They wanted to track where these items were coming from and going to, and that was more difficult if parts of the operation suddenly turned up dead. But they couldn’t risk the items falling into the wrong hands in order to figure out whose hands they were. So they had to capture everyone they could and recover the items.
It seemed simple enough, but Coulson rapped his knuckles on the nearest wooden surface every time he even briefly entertained such a thought. Coulson still had reservations about taking Clint out on a mission in a compromised state, but he had to admit that the man did seem better. He was sniffly and sneezy during the elevator ride and the walk outside to a taxi. He practically sneezed his head off during the taxi ride over; given the strong scent inside the cab, Coulson wondered if Clint’s already compromised nose was reacting to whatever incense or air spray the middle eastern cabbie had used in his car. But the moment they got within sight of the docks, Clint’s condition cleared up as if by magic.
Agent Coulson took the ground while Hawkeye made his way to the top of the nearby lighthouse. The notes in the file had identified it as the best lookout point for their operation and it wasn’t difficult to guess why. With its significant height and 360 degree view, it made for an excellent vantage point; an added bonus was the fact that it was normal to see someone walking the deck of a lighthouse, in order to inspect it or keep the lighthouse operational, whereas someone atop a tall building would be conspicuous.
With the communications channel open between the two of them, it instantly felt like old times again—simpler times, times before they knew about portals to parallel universes or bridges to other planets, times before experiments changed the fabric of the universe, before superheros were such public figures, before Coulson had been legally declared dead.
“I’ve got eyes on them,” Clint said into Coulson’s ear. “And on you. Head about fifty degrees to your right. Then take the next left around those storage containers. That’s it. You’ll… you…” There was a pause, then a barely audible “n’ghht!” as Clint successfully stifled a sneeze.
“I’ll what?” Coulson asked, pretending he had not heard.
“You’ll find them.” And, just like that, Coulson did. Even though he’d known from the case file what to expect, he was taken off guard by the sheer number of items being smuggled. There were dozens of crates, towering over them, and the smugglers were putting item after item into them—greenish vials, glowing amber stones, bronze gauntlets, sea foam green canisters.
“Found them,” Coulson whispered. “Looks like four of them. Confirm?”
“Confirmed. Can’t use my net arrow unless they’re all together. Think you can do anything about that?”
“Absolutely. You’ve got my back just in case it goes south?”
“Always, Sir.” Warmth sprang up in Coulson at these words. And that warmth inspired confidence.
With a myriad of possibilities at his disposal, Coulson settled for the easiest of them all. Gun raised, he stepped out from the shadows. “Hold it right there!”
The men responded predictably. Two of them dove for weapons. One rushed at him. Another drew a gun. They were all in range; Coulson was sure of that. Yet that net arrow didn’t come. What did come was a gunshot.
Once again, Coulson was aware of a burning pain in his chest. As he fell, he saw the net fall, and he heard Hawkeye yelling his name through the comm. But it was too late. He struggled to hold on, knowing it was too bad for him to walk away from; he was already too far gone. Gunshots rang out. Arrows flew overhead. The four suspects were silent as by the time Clint reached his side and dropped to his knees.
Coulson went cold as he felt his head lifted. “No, no, no” echoed overhead and through the comm like a creepy echo. “Coulson…”
Coulson struggled to keep his eyes open—and ultimately failed. “Promise… me,” Coulson choked out, “Promise you won’t let them… bring me back.”
Clint coughed and choked out a strained, “I don’t think I can promise that, Sir.”
“You have to…” Coulson winced as the pain in his chest intensified. He felt something wet and soft touch his lips. A kiss. A kiss, strong but tender. Coulson tried to speak around it, tried to insist he wanted to die. But he wasn’t sure he believed that anymore. Then, suddenly, the pain was gone.
