Protective.

Now, more than ever, Clint wants to protect Phil.

Dedicated to Clockwork Rebel - this started off as a cute little prompt in my inbox and unfurled into this long, emotional thing where my feels sort of exploded and the story took me with it. I hope CR likes it, and I hope you all do - feel encouraged to leave me feedback! It is much appreciated! Sorry if it wasn't what was expected, but it was sure fun to write!

Rating mostly for language. There's some fluff, some feelings, and just stuff, I don't know. This really got away from me. Spoiler alert: no sex; sorry - it just didn't naturally happen.

Marriage was the only answer.

It had been a thought entertained by Clint before, but only in his daydreams. Stuff he idly thought of while waiting in perches, or training, or napping on the tiny couch in Coulson's office. He'd never been too much for marriage, and big pointless events involving any kind of formality; but that at changed. He simply wanted to love Phil, and show him love. Forever. Especially after the Chitauri.

Especially after the Chitauri. It was like one massive blow to his heart after another; Loki hypnotizing him with that fucking scepter. The fact that he tried to murder Natasha, and did murder innocent people. He was glad to do it, under that heavy blue fog. And it wasn't necessarily the deaths themselves that haunted him; it was his willingness to do it, to do anything, to see Loki smile in approval and pat his shoulder. Like a dog.

But none of this had compared to Coulson. Nobody knew about them, or the late nights sometimes spent in Coulson's office, on that couch. Or the desk. Or, once, in the locker room of the gym, their skins slippery against the tile of the showers. Phil was a private man, and Clint respected that privacy. It was hot, anyway, fucking your boss on the sly. It was seeing Phil open up, being the only person to make him melt like that, and watching that expertly built wall crash down around them.

When Fury told them he had died, Clint could feel time stop. All he could think about was the fact that he and Phil had a date later in the week, it was a monthiversary - six months? seven? - and it was important, he'd already made reservations. He'd purchased a suit, a nice one with a light purple vest, a color Phil loved on him.

He'd bought a ring.

But for the rest of the universe - especially New York - time didn't stop. It kept going. And there were things he had to do, he had to do his job. It wasn't the first time he'd have to set aside his life to perform, but it was by far the hardest. He was relieved that his mind and fingers were so in tune to his bow, his aim almost unmistakable. He fought with all he had and focused his mental energy on keeping himself from shattering into a million pieces.

It was one week, a whole week after Loki's departure back to Asgard, that Fury brought Clint into his office. He was absolutely drained, and hadn't done anything except sleep and cry the past seven days. He kept Phil's ring in his pocket, or on his own finger, anywhere he could manage to grab it when his chest hurt too badly. He stroked it as he slouched in his chair. Fury regarded him with folded hands and a pitying expression. Clint tried to muster a glare, but wasn't sure if it came across.

"Barton. I understand you've been through a lot this past week."

"Not every day that a megalomaniac unleashes an alien force on us, Director," Clint muttered.

"It's also not every day that we lose a loved one."

Clint flinched. "I don't know what-"

"Clint." Fury opened his hands with a sigh, palms facing up. They looked helpless. Clint bit the inside of his cheek to stop the throbbing in his throat. "Sir," he croaked.

"I know that you and Agent Coulson had a personal relationship."

"Just... friends, sir..."

"Clint." The Director's voice was impossibly soft, which unnerved the archer. "You can't get one over on me. I know that the both of you got pretty serious. Which is why I've decided to tell you first and foremost that Coulson is safe."

Clint's mouth ran dry in a matter of seconds. "Safe? I don't... he's..."

"Alive. A little banged up, and still healing... but he's stabilized and expected the make a full recovery."

"Phil's alive," Clint whispered. "He's... but you said-"

"I did what I had to do in order to save this city, and likely the planet."

Clint shot up from his seat and lunged for the door. "Barton! We're not finished," Fury barked. Clint didn't so much as look behind him as he opened the door. "Fuck off," he mumbled.

It had taken a sprint to Tony's penthouse and the words "hack Fury's database" to figure out where Coulson was being treated. Tony was more than willing to help him every step of the way, going so far as to round up the other Avengers for an impromptu kidnapping. The SHIELD compound that held Phil wasn't even outside the city, and was easy to find. Tony bitched excitedly about Fury the entire way there; "That fucker. Thinks he can trick the Avengers - I'm Tony fucking Stark. You spies gotta learn, I will always dig shit up."

Tony busting dramatically into Phil's room was unnecessary, and Clint worried over whether it would negatively effect Phil when he saw him. He looked normal, and alive, and maybe a little weaker than before, but in one piece. Alive. Alive alive alive. It was a mantra in Clint's mind. Phil looked shocked, and then irritated. "Jesus, Stark - what are you doing?"

"Ah - first of all, you're welcome," Tony snapped. "We're here to recover you."

"Recover? - I am recovering. Here. In the recovery center."

Clint moved toward the bed, blood rushing in his ears and drowning their pointless banter. His lips trembled with last-second insecurities; what if he pulls away. But it didn't matter, because he went in for it, and went all in. He cupped Phil's face as he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to his lips. Phil hesitated (and Clint thought he might die right there) before giving up any resistance and returning it. Clint hummed in relief, which washed over him in such a paralyzing wave that he thought maybe they'd melt together.

"Holy shit," Tony exclaimed. "Yeah, uh, I think we're due an explanation? Like, now?"

It didn't take a lot of explaining. It didn't take a lot of anything; everyone kind of suspected something about one or the other of them, and they were all accepting. Natasha's smiles rarely met her eyes, but at that moment, she was practically beaming.

The wedding was put together quickly. Clint couldn't hold back the need to have Phil all to himself, forever. And so he proposed the night they took him back to Stark's tower. Phil kept his composure, but Clint unraveled, and it was the opposite of what Clint expected to happen - he cried on Phil's shoulder. His good shoulder, anyway. And then Phil undressed him, and they were more tender than they'd ever been.

Before word got out, everyone was more or less scared shitless of both Clint and Phil. Clint for his obvious strength and temper, and Phil for his unwavering authority. Now that their marriage and relationship were public, typical 'special treatment' rumors ran rampant through the SHIELD bases. Phil was cool as he ever was. Clint didn't know how he could do it, because when he saw the sly little smirks and heard the whispers, he had to contain his fury. "They're mocking us, Phil."

"Coulson. We're at work, remember? It's Coulson."

"Do you hear them?" Clint slapped his palms down upon the surface of Phil's desk. The older man leveled him with a parental look. Clint huffed. "Do you, Coulson? They're calling you -"

"Yes, Barton, I've heard it all. All of the insults in the book. The opinions of employees that far beneath my level does not concern me; I'm sure they'll have been cycled out of this building within the year. They never stay long, do they?"

"Not under Fury's tyranny," Clint sniffed. "Wait... don't change the subject."

Phil chuckled and sighed, leaning back in his seat. He regarded Clint with an affectionate smile. "Clint. Don't let it bother you. Okay?"

Clint took his hands and stroked his husband's ring finger. "Whatever you say, boss."

No length of time spent together was really enough. Clint resumed hiding in the vents, mostly because he enjoyed the feeling of admiring Phil just being Phil. It wasn't much different than how he was normally, but he had little habits and tics that he wasn't aware of doing when alone. Never had Clint seen Phil bite his nails in front of other people, or drink from soda cans with a straw. He sometimes stroked his shirt over the wound, and Clint was positive that he wasn't aware of it.

But he couldn't always just stalk Phil. That was weird, and he felt he was breaching some kind of trust. So he crawled lazily through the vents in search of interesting gossip, or interesting anything. It took several tries before finding an actual conversation in one of the break rooms.

"I always knew. Always knew it."

"No you didn't."

Clint's ears perked up, but his stomach went strangely hollow.

"Bullshit I didn't. Coulson's always been a faggot. Thought I saw him eyeballin' me once."

A new, third voice chimed in: "Nobody's eyeballin' you, you ugly motherfucker."

"Shut up, Jensen."

"Never reckoned that Barton was a fag, though."

"Me neither."

Clint fumed in the vents, peeking down through the tiny slits to try and make out the faces of these three fuckers. Jensen. He didn't know a Jensen, but Tony would know where to find his file.

"I wonder who pitches and who catches."

"Don't tell me you're one of them, Boyd."

"Fuck off."

"I bet Coulson takes it. Seems like he'd be the bitch in that relationship."

By the time Boyd, Jensen and their guest were done laughing, Clint had left the vent with the two names seared into his brain. He saw red all the way back up to Tony's penthouse.

The only thing Clint had plenty of was time. Time and patience, and those were the only tools he needed. Well, maybe his bow. Just in case.

Time and patience brought him the third name - Smith - and their routines. He studied them tirelessly for the majority of the following week. He outlined their habits and haunts. He took note of when they convened at which break room, how often they got up from their desks to give their legs a stretch. They were all mere office workers, drones that hardly registered to Clint as useful agents. He learned that two of them were married, both with children.

Jensen was a corpulent pig with a bad seventies mustache. He barely had a neck and marched around as if he weren't a paper-pushing waste of space. He had a wife and two kids. He got up from his desk frequently to procrastinate; grabbing a coffee, stopping by Boyd or Smith's offices, flirting with an uncomfortable female employee. Boyd and Smith were younger and had similarly tall, slim builds. Boyd was married with one kid, a newborn. Smith did not take any personal calls during work, which surprised Clint. Smith was real quiet unless winding down with the other two. All of them had terrible work ethic and seemed to do all they could to get out of doing work at all.

Clint memorized their schedules and addresses. He located their lockers and began studying what they brought for lunch.

It started with an arrow. A smaller one, not very fancy at all. He waited until they showed up to the gymnasium, where they sometimes walked a lap around the track while waking up with their coffees. His fingers tingled as he drew back, and he waited until he got that feeling, when it was just right, and he let it fly. It whizzed right between two of the men, nearly slashing one of their shirts open. Clint relished the sharp thud as it stuck into the opposite wall. The three men looked at him as though he were crazy.

"What the fuck?"

"Watch it, pal."

Clint approached them with a tight smile and yanked the arrow from the wall. "Just an accident. You know how it is."

As he turned, he listened to their hushed grumbling. There was no doubt in his mind what, exactly, they were calling him. He struggled to keep walking the other way. In time, he reminded himself.

The next morning, Jensen found that his lunch had been tampered with. His brand-new jug of cranberry juice was uncapped, the cap sitting beside it when he opened his fridge. Boyd and Smith also found their lunches changed; Boyd swore up and down that his sandwich, which he'd made himself, was missing the meat. All three decided to toss it and opted for fast food.

Barton did all kinds of tricks over the next few days - his favorite was taking insignificant yet noticeable items from their desks and hearing them try to find it from the vents. He'd taken an engraved letter opener, a stapler, two scotch tape rollers, and even a watch. He shifted around a couple items per desk. He left through the ceiling, which allowed the office door to be locked the entire time. When they started catching on to the strange item behavior, which took place with seemingly nobody behind it, he had to keep himself from laughing like a hyena.

When Barton was bored with rearranging their pens and papers, he took it a bold step further and visited their homes. He never entered - he didn't like to enter a very private place unless he absolutely had to. He had no interest in bothering the families - just the bastards.

So he tapped on windows a little at night. Maybe banged on a door frantically one morning just to disappear. He unlocked two sheds and left the doors swinging open, leaving the locks hanging. Soon, all three men began showing up late for work. They stopped taking lunches to work. Occasionally, if he worked hard enough, Clint could find them in some corner of the facility, murmuring their paranoid suspicions to each other.

As if the fact that they were paranoid didn't tickle him enough, his next meeting with Fury proved to hold a few more surprises.

The meeting itself was typical. Fury rattled off on some recent missions, informed him of a near-future mission (run-of-the-mill assassination), and bitched for ten solid minutes about Tony hacking his computer systems to leave pictures and videos of kittens all over the place. "Better than that goddamned porn he put on here a few weeks back. Couldn't even sign in without my motherfuckin' speakers on blast, moaning all over the goddamn place. Fuckin' nasty shit."

Clint cracked a smile and nodded, thinking about how he'd sat in Tony's lab during part of that process. Maybe he'd keep that detail private. "Yeah, Tony gets into stuff."

"No matter how many times I change the password," Fury agreed. "Anyhow, I need you to get out of here, Barton. I got some knuckleheads to give the boot."

Clint's heart skipped a beat before giddily punching through his chest. "Firing somebody, sir?"

"Somebodies. Few of my junior agents haven't been working to their full potential." Fury swiveled a little in his chair, eyeing Clint thoughtfully. "You know anything about this? You're my bloodhound. You got any info?"

Clint shrugged and shook his head. Fury narrowed his eye and nodded. When he stood up, Clint followed suit, waiting for a proper dismissal. Fury clasped his hands behind his back and sighed, staring at the photographs on his wall. He lazily paced the length of his desk and leaned on the corner. "Very well. But if you did know what's bee driving those fuckers nuts, or - dare I say it - if you were somehow involved..."

Clint swallowed hard.

"...then I'd understand. I've been waiting for a good reason to get those motherfuckers out of my face. You're free to go, Barton."

He didn't have to be told twice.

Dinner was ready as soon as Phil got home. He'd made sure to cook his favorites - a hearty casserole, garlic mashed potatoes, sweet rolls. He and Phil didn't eat a lot of heavy food; you had to be fit for the job. But he couldn't resist, after hearing about those three jackasses being terminated. Sure, they'd get fat severance packages and recommendations for positions elsewhere; but they wouldn't be near his husband.

Phil sighed as he shed his jacket and slumped into a kitchen chair. "Rough day?" Clint asked. He squeezed his shoulder and planted a kiss on his head.

"There's not enough hair up there to do that."

"You have plenty of hair."

"White lies are still lies."

"Heads with less hair are even more kissable. It just allows me to be closer to you; no barriers. Not even hair can get between us."

Phil laughed and shook a pointed finger at Clint. "You're good, Barton. I'll give you that."

"I'll prove it later. For now, feast on this lovely home-cooked meal, darling," Clint teased.

"Oh,thank you, babe, but what's the occasion?"

"That I love you, and you love casserole, and that's it."

"That's it?"

Clint finished setting the table and sat across from him. "Isn't that enough?" He smiled coyly and nodded toward the food. "Eat up, Phillip."

"Don't push it," he responded evenly.

They served themselves in companionable silence, which was soon punctuated by Phil's soft noises of satisfaction. "God, this is good," he moaned. "So. We had to let go of three agents today."

Clint attempted to restrain the grin trying to split his face in half. "Really. Why?"

He didn't look up until he heard Phil's silverware clink loudly against the plate. He met a look upon glancing up, one that asked, are we really going to do this?

"Clint..."

"Phil. I didn't really do anything -"

"Spying on them through the vents, right? Toying with their belongings. Visiting their homes?"

Clint opened and closed his mouth, unable to form coherent thoughts, much less communicate them. "I - how -"

"What reason was it this time? Hmm? I recall a situation involving somebody borrowing your bow; another in which somebody ate your leftovers..." Phil counted on his fingers, eyebrows drawn in annoyance. "Somebody trying to hit on Natasha. What impossibly small thing did these people do to invoke your wrath, Clint?"

"They were... talking about you."

"I'm Fury's second in command, everyone talks about me. On a daily basis. I can handle it."

"No, not like - fuck, Phil, they were calling you a faggot." The kitchen fell into an uncomfortable silence this time, the last word hanging in the air like a bad smell. Clint regarded the tabletop with feigned interest. Anything to avoid Phil's disappointed stare; he couldn't stand that he was able to feel this bad over something that seemed, to him, so trivial. He loved Phil, and only wished to keep him away from anything that might upset him. It didn't feel good to be the one to end up upsetting him, instead.

"They called me... that, and you practically stalked them into a bad enough state of being that they got fired over it?"

"Yeah, if... I mean, if that's the way you wanna describe it, I guess, yeah."

To Clint's surprise, Phil began laughing. It started as a chuckle, but soon the laughter was bubbling up from his gut, and his eyes became shiny with laugh-tears. He waited patiently until Phil seemed to be calming down before offering a concerned look. "Phil? You okay?"

The older man wiped his eyes and coughed a little, letting the last few giggles escape before answering. "Yes, Clint. I'm okay. It's just - you're absolutely ridiculous. And protective. And I love you."

Clint smiled, the tension seeming to break. "I love you too. It's just..."

"Hey," Phil interrupted. He reached out and took Clint's hand, stroking the calloused knuckles he adored. "Let's... just drop it. No more stalking, unless it's me."

"Deal - if you'll allow me to... make it up to you. Right now."

It took Phil all of forty-five seconds to race to their bedroom.

end.