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Phil Coulson shrugged his garment back higher on his aching shoulder and scanned the overhead signs for the hotel shuttles. Of course that sign was halfway down the terminal, and the bus he needed was just pulling away. He bit his lip rather than curse in front of the family of five that had blocked his path all the way from the last escalator. They piled into a minivan cab, which screeched away from the curb leaving skid marks and adding the stench of burnt rubber to LAX's already odoriferous fumes. Sighing, he hitched up his bag again and hauled his exhausted body toward the bus stop.
The wait for the next bus was long enough that he wondered briefly if he'd wandered into a previously unmapped time distortion field. He'd get the science team to check it out; it would explain so much. When the bus did arrive, the driver was a grandmotherly Asian woman with a wide smile full of teeth stained dark brown. She was half his size and still offered to heft his bag onto the rack, but Phil wasn't going to let the bag, or the tech inside, out of his hands in an insecure environment. He clutched it to his chest and dropped heavily into one of the hard plastic seats.
Before he had a chance to consider dozing off, the bus pulled up in front of his hotel. He slid his Pennsylvania driver's license and Costco-issued Amex card—both in the name of Phil Stone—across the check-in desk, receiving a card-key, a coupon for breakfast, and a tourist flyer for the Hollywood Wax Museum in exchange. He smiled, or tried to, and took extra care not to stumble as he boarded the elevator to his standard-issue room. At least the bottled water and internet were free. He engaged Fitz's newest security lock on the door, and finally let himself relax.
His new job as Director of the barely resuscitated SHIELD had him flying around the world like Santa Claus, making his own naughty and nice list. Except the part where he was flying coach, staying in airport business hotels, and the naughty people were trying to kill him. But some days were worth it, when he could reconnect with someone loyal to SHIELD, even better when he could convince them to return to the fold. He supposed it wasn't that different from when Howard Stark had launched the agency, hand picking the first fifty agents, and creating the structure that would allow them to take action against threats so crazy that they could barely believe their own eyes.
Phil had just spent twelve hours in Hong Kong, crossing from the Island to the New Territories and back, following leads and ducking tails, to find a safe house that had clearly been abandoned in a rush. The thin layer of dust implied more than a week and less than a month. Too long. Too late. The station's last communication had been nearly a month past. He could only hope that Agent Li had been able to get her staff to safety, and that they'd find a way to reach out again. Phil had left a couple of booby traps for his tails, or anyone else who stumbled into the safe house—annoying but not quite lethal—before he caught a random series of cabs and subways to the airport.
He'd had better luck on his layover in Honolulu. The airline lounge's drinks were watered down and the pretzels were stale, but the room had plenty of niches and sofas, perfectly suited for a clandestine check-in and handoff of a flash drive full Hydra documents. Now if only Skye could break the encryption without destroying the data, they might make some progress.
Tomorrow he was headed to Visalia, in California's Central Valley, based on a handful of tabloid stories and blog posts about a young man with an uncanny skill at belomancy and picking ponies. A recent intercept indicated he might be on AIM's to-grab list. How was this his life?
Phil stripped out of his suit, showered off the sweat and grime of twenty-four hours of travel, and slid between cool sheets with his tablet, reading glasses, and two bottles of scotch from the mini-bar. Scanning down his newsfeed, he saw anomalous tsunami warnings in the mid-Pacific and sent a quick text to Melinda. She was probably already tracking the technical glitch, but the message would double as confirmation of his safe arrival. Nothing in his emails rose to the level of urgent, despite what the senders might think.
He closed out both apps, then launched a new, encrypted browser session, and clicked over to TMZ's Avengers stream. After he'd filtered out the Stark sightings and political commentary, there were a handful of new stories left, and he clicked through each one. Thor and Jane photographed in front of the Air and Space Museum in DC: probably real—Thor loved learning about Midgard's space exploration efforts—but not current since the cherry blossoms had bloomed and faded a month ago. Black Widow Pregnancy Scare! was a blurry photo of a redhead too tall to be Natasha, even if she'd been wearing 6-inch stilettos. He paused on the next one, a congratulatory photo op; the event was thanking the Avengers for what Phil knew had been defense and rescue during an AIM attack in Mexico City, but was being called a gas main explosion. Steve was shaking Presidente Espinoza's hand while the rest of the team looked on. They'd saved hundreds of citizens trapped in collapsed buildings, but they'd been too late for dozens of others; the story was far too familiar. The next piece was lighter: Banner with coffee was a daily occurrence; the blogger had taken to cataloging the floppy hats he wore as futile disguises. There were no pictures of Clint, outside the group photo, so Phil touched his screen, scrolling back and zooming in to try to read his expression. There wasn't enough resolution, though, and Clint's face morphed into a blurry blob.
He finally set the tablet aside, checked that his phone was charging and the alarm was set, and shut off the lights. He ran a hand down his chest, fingering smooth scar tissue before tracing further down, combing through rough hair and then giving his dick an exploratory squeeze. Not worth the effort, really. He let go, rolling to one side and pulling the covers up to his neck. Exhaustion dragged him under.
Shock had him on his feet and reaching for a gun that wasn't on his nightstand before he even processed what had woken him. The building vibrated under his feet, and the curtains were swaying. Earthquake! At least a six, by Phil's personal Richter scale. Fuck California and the fucking San Andreas. He was on the tenth floor of a hotel on the airport strip, with a wall of double-pane windows and nothing sturdier than a fiberboard desk to shelter under. He could try for the stairs if he had to… His phone shrieked an alarm, flashing alternate red and neon yellow, and he grabbed it before rolling into the kneehole of the desk, just in case.
He swiped his thumb to silence the alarm, and then scrolled through the list of increasingly frantic news reports: container ships seeming to vanish from the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex, a rogue wave too localized to be a tsunami had washed away a dozen houses in Malibu in the pre-dawn hours, and now some kind of creature was oozing across the sand at Dockweiler Beach. The location didn't mean anything, until an aerial photo gave him perspective. The beach—what was left of it—was adjacent to the airport, maybe five miles from his current location as the crow—or iron-encased flamboyant hero—flies. He groped above his head for the TV remote, clicking on the power and scanning through the channels for a local news station. He'd have to come out from under the desk to see the screen, and given the still-rocking hotel tower he wasn't quite ready. The breathless description from the anchorwoman, who was probably more used to the celebrity beat, was enough to confirm that the Avengers were already on-scene. If he hadn't pulled the blackout curtains, Phil would probably be able to see Stark and Thor. He would give a lot for a live feed from the local emergency services department, and more for the kind of integration SHIELD had once possessed. For now he could only listen, scan the web, and… He texted Melinda and Skye, to see if they could provide a real-time link to the Bus's systems, but the cellular data network was either overloaded knocked down.
There was a distinct pop somewhere above, probably the roof, and the lights and TV cut off sharply. He checked…wi-fi too. An emergency light flickered on, and either the shaking was less or he was just getting used to it, so he took a chance and crawled out from under the desk. The room was relatively undamaged, which was probably an unintended benefit of bolting the artwork to the walls. Phil wrenched the curtains open, only to discover his room faced east, toward the city, so all he could see was a line of news helicopters headed toward the action, and the watery sunshine of an early Los Angeles morning.
He almost jumped when the hotel phone rang, then grabbed the receiver. The recorded voice was shaky, but the instructions were clear: "Police officials have declared a state of emergency. All flights are grounded and all civilians are warned to stay off the road." Phil could see out his window how little effect that declaration had had. "The hotel has lost power, and we are working to bring emergency generators online. Please remain safely in your rooms, keep your doors locked and your drapes closed, and wait for further instructions."
Being told to stay made him more aware than ever that he wanted to get out, and Phil pulled on yesterday's suit, pocketed his phone and room key, tucked the most valuable tech into a plastic laundry bag provided by the hotel, and disabled his security lock which (fortunately) had its own power source. The hallway was almost empty, dimly lit by emergency fixtures, and populated by a small crowd looking confusedly at the unresponsive elevator panel. Phil reset the locks behind him, and then hung the "do not disturb" sign. He'd be back, or send someone back for his things long before the hotel staff tried to force the door, if all went well. If things didn't, it probably wouldn't matter.
Tucking the laundry bag under one arm, he drew himself up into his official persona, both reliable and forgettable, and marched away from the elevators toward the emergency stairs. "You'd best wait inside, ma'am," he instructed a thirty-something woman who was dressed for the gym. "And be sure to lock your door." She looked like she might argue, might challenge why he was allowed to be out. But in the end she drew back, and he heard the deadbolt click sharply. Good. He bluffed once more—a Hispanic man in a business suit—then the fire door swung shut behind him.
The stair silo was remarkably empty. In the old days of SHIELD Phil would have gone for the roof, to radio a helicopter or quinjet, or to oversee the action. But those days were past, and he ran down, instead, counting off floors by the huge numbers painted on the walls, and pushing out through an emergency exit at ground level. He was outside, somewhere behind the parking garage, and away from both the airport strip and the main hotel entrance. A shuttle van, just sitting there, engine running and keys in the ignition was too big a temptation. He was four blocks west before he parsed the frantic crackling through the radio as the van dispatcher, trying to figure out where "Paulie" was going. They probably had a GPS in the bus. Phil reached up to turn the radio off, but instead scanned through the channels until he found the police band.
There was a current of controlled fear from the incident command center, but none of the panic that often accompanied Avengers-level catastrophes. Someone was running down a checklist of items: incoming flights diverted, subway trains stopped in stations, bus traffic halted, police control of major intersections. Speak of the devil, he could see the barricades a couple of blocks ahead, and wrenched the wheel hard to turn sharply into a side street, looking for another route.
A dozen furtive turns later he could at last see the ocean across an area that had once held homes, but was now a deserted wasteland, bordered by an unmanned, makeshift barricade of sawhorses and a garbage truck. Phil pulled right up to the barricade, and climbed up on top of the van, then up onto the garbage truck to get a view of the action. Half a mile south, the sky was buzzing with both news and police helicopters, and he thought he could make out a moving gleam of red and gold. A few seconds later there was a flash of lightning that removed all doubt.
Climbing back down with more care and stiffness than he'd like to admit, Phil rifled both trucks, pocketing a box cutter, a hand-held fire extinguisher, and a couple of Clif bars. A quick glance at his phone showed the network was still down, but he queued up a text and an email to base in hopes they'd send when the phone found a signal. He deserved some credit for not being a complete idiot, haring off into a fight without letting folks know where he was, right? Somehow, he didn't think May would buy his reasoning. But she wasn't here to argue, and the creature from the bottom of the ocean was *right up there.* And the Avengers, too, but that wasn't really the point.
A few minutes later, with sand sliding into his shoes, Phil crested the line of dunes. The creature, for want of a better term, was a mass of green and gray, not that different from the color of the ocean, really. But instead of surging in and out, it was creeping up the beach like a flow of lava, moving up from the sea instead of down to it. The advance wasn't consistent, either. As he watched, Thor directed a bolt of lightning into the leading edge. There was no sound, but the creature…flinched…Phil guessed he would call it. That section fell back a few yards, revealing the sand below stripped clean of kelp and the day-to-day rubbish and jetsam. It looked about four feet thick at the leading edge, and stretched out toward the horizon in both directions.
Up on the breakwater, a contingent of surfers and beachwalkers who'd had enough sense to draw back but not enough to run for their lives had gathered to watch the spectacle. Phil gave them a warning glare and kept moving. Just then a run-down lifeguard station collapsed as the creature reached it, and the crowd behind him screeched. Maybe they would get the message and get the hell out. Blue boards and old metal railings disappeared under the…blob, he was going to just call it a blob and be done with it. For less than a minute he could see the angular outlines of the building supports, and then the blob flattened out and went smooth again. Digestion? Disintegration? Some as-yet-unseen alien process? Phil knelt behind a concrete fire pit, though he had little hope it would fare better than the lifeguard hut if the blob got this far.
Just for the heck of it, Phil drew his gun and put a three rounds into the thickest part of it and watched them disappear even quicker than the bits of lifeguard station. He tucked the gun away in favor of the bag of mystery tech he'd been carrying for 36 hours now. The agent who'd handed it off to him had only the vaguest idea of what it was intended to do, but it wasn't like he had a lot of other choices right now.
There was a gray canister, about four inches in diameter and the width of his fingers spread from thumb-tip to little finger. He weighed it in his hands, turned it over in search of any label or instructions, and saw only a small button in the center of one end. He set it aside. The next item out he was nearly certain was a miniature EMP generator, but for obvious reasons no one had been willing to test it yet. It was a clear box about eight by ten by two, stuffed with circuit boards and blinking lights. It didn't seem a likely weapon against a creeping blob thing. Last of all was a ball of something like filament or wire, interspersed with tiny, brightly colored beads. Another complete mystery, but hopefully more destructive than the box-cutter which was currently his last line of defense.
He was weighing the canister. He could try pushing the button and flinging it into the blob, if he wanted to get that close to it. But the blob was still coming, had probably absorbed another 50 feet of sand in the seconds he'd taken his eyes off it. The advance wasn't even: it seemed like there were tendrils that would ooze outward, and then more blob would flow forward to fill in the space. He watched it another few seconds, to figure out where the next bit would grow. There was an explosion down the beach, and the scream of repulsors overhead as the Iron Man armor tracked along the border of beach and blob, strafing miniature missiles along the leading edge. Sadly, they had about as much effect as Phil's bullets.
Lightning yes, missiles and bullets no. Since Phil didn't have any lightning bolts lying around… He grabbed the cylinder first, and ran toward the nearest outthrust arm-ish bit. Running was perhaps too generous, since he sank ankle deep in the loose sand with each step, but it was faster than a walk, and hopefully faster than the advance of the blob. As he got closer, the smell of the thing was sweet, almost cloying, and it made a quiet grating noise as it slid over sand and rock. Before he worried any more about it, he pushed the button on the cylinder, felt it begin to vibrate in his hand, and threw it with all his strength out toward the blob. He wanted to watch what happened, but he also wanted to not be consumed like the lifeguard station, so he turned and ran back to his makeshift shelter.
He slid to his knees behind the fire pit. There was no sign the cylinder had had any effect at all, so he reached for the EMP. Then he looked down the beach at the helicopters, the police shouting into radios, hell, even Iron Man, and set it aside again. He was trying to figure out what to do with the ball of wire, when a streak of gray and brown fur blew by him, toward the blob. It took a second to resolve into a small dog. He half expected to see a stupid owner go chasing after it, and Phil would be left trying to rescue them both.
No owner showed up, though, and he thought he ought to be grateful. "Here, doggie, doggie." Yeah, that wasn't going to work. Phil grabbed the wire and the fire extinguisher, and took off after the damn thing. It was dancing in and out, barking and biting at the edge of the blob, but so far managing to stay far enough away to avoid being…eaten. Phil tried a sharp whistle, which had about as much effect on the dog as his bullets had on the blob. Damn it. He was close enough now to feel heat coming off the blob, and almost close enough to try grabbing the dog's trailing leash. He couldn't say for sure what senses the blob had, but it seemed ready to ooze out toward him.
Phil missed the leash, so instead he shifted his grip on the fire extinguisher, pointing the hose right at the jutting-out bit of blob, and squeezed the trigger. The rush of sound and cloud of chemicals startled the dog to silence, and then the blob sort of…groaned. He squeezed another short blast, and the leading edge dropped back a few feet, turning pink. Finally, something was working! He looked around for someone to tell, wished for a working earpiece, or maybe some flags so he could do semaphore. The dog, apparently as shocked as he was, backed up, and Phil managed to catch the leash and drag it up the beach. He waved his fire extinguisher overhead, in case someone—a helicopter or maybe someone with insane eyesight—might get the message.
He got a ragged cheer from the crowd of onlookers, one of whom rushed forward to grab the dog's leash. Phil ignored the offered handshake, and turned his attention back to the fight. The blob was advancing again, but he thought the pink part was slower. Maybe injured, but certainly not out of it. Hefting the extinguisher, he figured he had maybe one long or two short blasts left, and then he'd be back in the same situation if something didn't change, and quickly. The only card he had left to play was the ball of wire, purpose unknown. He untwisted a few feet of it, light but sturdy; he bent a length of it out into a point. There was really nothing for it but to try. He extended the point as far as he could before it started to bend under its weight, about a yard. Closer than he really wanted to be to the damn thing, if he'd had any choice about it at all. Right.
Tucking the wire under his jacket so he had both hands free, Phil set off again down the beach, not as far a hike this time, and that was its own worry. He paused when he was close enough to feel the heat of it, hoping that this wasn't as stupid a move as he thought it was going to be. He sprayed first, one long blast, tracking along the face of it in front of him until the fire extinguisher sputtered and died. Tossing it aside, he pulled out his pointy wire, took a moment to breathe, reached to the very length of his arm, and stabbed it a few inches into the blob.
It exploded.
Phil slammed hard into the beach, back and then head, and his vision went bright and blurry.
Some time… seconds? minutes? later he propped himself up on one elbow, then both, and looked around. There was no blast crater. He looked down at his shirt: no blood, but there was a tingle from his left shoulder to his fingertips. Not an explosion, then, maybe some kind of electrical discharge. He looked further; the blob was still there, but something had clearly made a difference. There was a section five or six feet wide that was black.
A low rumbling built to a loud roar as a huge plane hove into sight. Flying low, probably under a hundred feet, a C130 showing its age and plenty of wear turned to follow the coastline. Vents on the belly were already open, and as he watched a cloud of orange chemicals poured out. Someone *had* been watching, and gotten the message. The plane continued south, and all along its path the blob seemed to flinch back. But the part right in front of Phil, where he'd stabbed it, didn't flinch. It was still. Damaged, maybe even dead. The bits to either side were pulsing, maybe even trying to ooze forward again, but they were apparently stuck.
Phil pawed around on the sand until he came up with the wire. Stabbing it was right out, but maybe he could snare it. Well, not snare exactly, but— He unwound more of the ball of wire as he approached, cautious in case it had some way to recognize him or the threat the wire presented. But it really did seem to be stuck by the burnt part, even as a tendril further up the beach was moving forward again.
He laid the wire down like a tiny fence, unrolling it along the leading edge of the blob until he ran out. It was maybe thirty yards when he was done, with the little beads glinting in the sunlight, and Phil backed away carefully, wanting to see if the weird wire would do it again.
It did.
One of the tendrils touched the filament, and it was like watching a downed power line. Sparks flew, the wire jumped and writhed like a snake, and a bit of the blob seemed to die. But it didn't learn, and the next bit, ten feet down the line, tried to cross again, with the same result. Fantastic, but what the hell was going to happen at both ends of the wire?
He was trying to figure out if he could extract the wire, and maybe drag it further down the beach to try again, except that he didn't really want to go through that sort-of-explosion thing again. Then Thor was in the sky overhead, sending bolts of lightning down, followed by a Blackhawk helicopter raining electric arrows out the open door in the fuselage.
Phil heaved a sigh of relief and retreated across the road. The remains of the creature, limp and scorched around the edges, still covered the beach like an ugly blanket, and he was just as glad cleanup was outside his purview these days. Let the EPA fight it out with the locals for that joy. He looked down at his watch, but the glass was crazed and the mechanism unmoving; he fruitlessly checked his phone, and then looked up to the sun which was just past zenith. He could make it back to the hotel to shower and gather his stuff, and still be in Visalia before dark, if he could get the hell out of this suburban war zone without being caught on someone's cellphone video, or arrested for grand theft airport van.
Returning the van probably was his best bet anyway, so he started to slog back north along the paved road. He was barely three steps onto the pavement before he was almost run down by a rusted old Subaru with a young woman not much older than Skye or Simmons behind the wheel. The car screeched to a stop close enough that Phil could feel the heat of the engine against his knees.
"Sorry!" The woman? Girl? —he settled on "driver"—stuck her head out the window and the furry, familiar face of the dog from the beach followed. "God, I'm sorry," she gushed. "I was just— Thor—" She looked back over her shoulder and then back at Phil, and her eyes widened. "You saved Sadie! Thank you! Oh, but did you see them?"
Phil nodded, and stepped aside to let her pass.
"I mean, it was incredible, right?" She showed no sign of moving, even though there were more cars lining up behind her, including an LAPD black and white.
"It really was," he offered, and tried to wave her on.
"Radical!" she nodded, and finally pulled her head inside her car. Phil sighed, but then she was leaning out again, wrapping one arm around the dog to keep it from falling all the way out. "You're a hero too! Are you okay? Do you need a lift, man?"
Phil started to shake his head, but then looked back at the growing line of cars, which now included a news van with a satellite boom. "I don't want to impose," he protested, but moved around quickly to the passenger side. When she lifted the lock, he slid inside.
"It's the least I can do. Don't worry about it." She gunned the engine, and left the line of cars behind her in an oily plume of exhaust. "Sadie here is a great judge of character." She patted the dog with one hand that Phil would really rather she kept on the steering wheel and swerved past the remains of one of the barricades. "Where are you headed?"
"The Embassy Suites." He wasn’t, but it was across the street from the Four Points Sheraton he'd left so abruptly about seven hours ago.
"Which one?"
Crap. How could there be more than one? "On Airport Boulevard," he vaguely remembered from his sleepy bus ride last night. He set aside the van-guilt again, and patted at his pockets. He'd at least give her some cash for gas. Except for the part where he'd left his wallet in the hotel room.
"Okeydokey." She smiled wider, taking two turns on successively smaller side streets, before miraculously pulling up in front of the Embassy Suites sign. Phil figured it would take digital mapping and a complex algorithm to retrace their path.
"Thanks, miss…" He realized he didn't even know her name.
"Just Jessie." She nodded at the dog. "And Sadie."
"Thank you, Jessie," he repeated, not offering his own name, and got out, closing the door carefully.
"Thanks again! Bye!" she called out, pulling away almost before he had a chance to get his hand clear.
So much for his subterfuge. Just in case, he did walk into the Embassy Suites, through the lobby full of chattering business travelers, families, and tourists staring raptly at CNN, past the check-in desk, then through the restaurant, and out the service door to the loading dock. He listened carefully to see if he'd been noticed or followed, and when it seemed not, he crossed the street and walked purposefully around to the back door of the Sheraton.
The electricity was back on; automatic doors slid open to admit him, and he walked through the lobby, toward the main elevator bank, past the front desk and the bar. And stopped. He'd caught, just out of the corner of his eye, a face both too familiar and completely out of place. Phil retraced his steps, and paused in the open entrance to the bar. There was a perky young woman behind the bar, her bleached-blond hair piled on top of her head, and a vast array of beers displayed behind her. She wasn't the one he was interested in. Phil scanned across the tables and patrons; he might have judged them more harshly for drinking their lunches if he didn't have his own tendencies that way after too close an encounter with weird, amazing, psychotic life forms. A waiter came out of the kitchen, balancing a tray piled high with burgers and onion rings on one shoulder. It blocked his face until he set it down, and Phil's breath caught in his chest.
It wasn't Clint.
Of course it wasn't. He was still down by the beach, wearing a sweaty, skin-tight Avenger's uniform, not a hotel's livery, or perhaps he was already on a quinjet back to New York, fending off someone trying to administer first aid or extract an after-action report. And if this young waiter/aspiring actor with a crooked nose, messy shock of blond/brown hair, and broad shoulders evoked Hawkeye, that said a lot more about Phil's precarious mental state than the man's actual looks. Phil took a deep breath, forcing his heart to slow, and not letting himself respond when the waiter shot him a look and a slight smile. He'd been caught staring. It was a damn good thing his team wasn't here to see him. Either team.
Phil turned away sharply, and caught the elevator back to his floor. He glanced at his wrist: the watch was still broken. He checked the phone one more time: still out, damn it. But his lock was still engaged, and functioning, so he let himself in and then leaned back on the door, just breathing for a minute. He was in worse shape than he'd thought if seeing a Clint lookalike shook him up more than an ocean-carpet-alien thingy attacking Los Angeles. He clenched his eyes shut, rubbing at them until flares of light wiped away both the waiter and the blob; when he opened them he was back in control. He toed off his sandy shoes and stripped out of the ruined suit, then padded into the bathroom to start the shower.
Socks, shirt, and underwear landed a sad pile on the floor, but his broken watch and his useless phone clicked softly on the tile of the bathroom counter alongside the rest of his pocket contents. Hot water was still one of the true benefits of civilization, Phil thought as he stepped under the warm flow, soaping away sweat, sand, and fear, then scrubbing fingers gently through his hair. It was hard to admit that his hair was thin enough now that his head was sunburnt just from being outside without a hat. Embarrassing to admit that he cared, considering the gravity of the threats his organization dealt with on a daily basis. Maybe this was what it was to be human.
His phone beeped, and kept beeping, then started vibrating against the counter. He sighed, turned off the shower, and climbed out, picking it up and swiping to unlock it before it went any more crazy. In the sudden silence, things weren't as silent as they should be. Anderson Cooper was droning from the TV set that had been off and dark when Phil had entered his room. And whoever had turned it on had just as surely heard the shower cut off and the phone go silent.
Phil slid his stolen boxcutter into his hand and kicked gently at the door, letting it swing open slightly. "Hello?" he called, listening for where his visitor(s) were placed in the room.
"Come on out, Phil." The gravely voice was familiar. Comforting.
"Just a sec." He wrapped a towel around his waist, rubbed another at his dripping hair, dropped the box cutter into his shaving kit, and stepped into the room.
Clint was slouched in the armchair in the corner, legs propped up on Phil's unmade bed, still wearing that skin-tight uniform Phil had been imagining earlier. The whole room smelled of sweat and smoke, and Phil wished that his shower had been quite a bit colder right about now. Clint shouldn't be here. They both knew it. So Phil just raised an eyebrow and waited.
"Hey, boss." Clint muted the TV, but seemed to be more interested in checking Phil out than getting on with an explanation.
"Barton," Phil warned.
"C'mon, Phil," Clint wheedled. "I'm not the one who wandered into your op. You don't get to pin this one on me."
He was more right than wrong. They'd all agreed to keep the new SHIELD and the Avengers separate, for everyone's benefit. Tony Stark generated enough tabloid press all on his own, even before he'd had to establish a fund to cover Hulk-damage after Avengers operations. They didn't need to be tied any closer to SHIELD, Hydra, or Ward for that matter. And if SHIELD wanted to be taken seriously they were going to have to stand on their own. By that argument, Phil shouldn't have gone anywhere near the beach this morning. But he wasn't sorry.
Agreeing to stay out of each others' way had fallout in other areas. It had been almost three months since Phil had seen Clint, even at a distance. More than four since they'd been alone. And yes, damn it, he *was* counting.
"Okay, you're right." Phil rounded the bed and bent down, taking a deep sniff and then leaning in for a kiss. Clint's strong, square hands settled on his waist, digging into his hips and pulling him forward until he had to push away or fall over. "Hang on. Wait!"
"I don't want to wait." Clint pulled again, but pressing hard into buckles and straps only reminded Phil he was mostly naked, and Clint wasn't.
"I don't want to either. But—"
Clint whined, low in his throat. "Don't say we can't, Phil." Phil could do the right thing, shut this down before it got out of hand. More out of hand. And Clint wouldn’t fight him, much. But he wanted this as badly as Clint did; he wanted to give Clint what he wanted even more.
"All right, all right."
Encouraged, Clint pulled at him again, but Phil resisted. "Just give me a few minutes." Phil waved toward the bathroom. "You go shower—" Clint pouted comically "—and I'll make sure that my team and yours don't decide to check up on us, okay? "
"I guess." Clint flexed his hands again, then stood, pulling Phil in close again. "Three minutes." He stepped away, and this time Phil was almost the one to pull him back, to hold on. He didn't, and instead wasted twenty seconds watching Clint shed his uniform piece by piece on the way to the bathroom. Clint didn't bother to shut the door.
Phil grabbed his tablet; if he went back to the bathroom for the phone he'd never get this done. He scanned the messages from bottom to top, flagged a few for responses and trashed the rest. Half of them had been out of date before he stole the van, and the others mostly dealt with things he'd seen first hand anyway. But he answered May, Skye, and his contact at the WSC. Next, he sent a post to the Avengers "listserv" (it was something much more technologically advanced, which would message across all platforms, and even into near space, but Phil loved the way calling it that raised Stark's blood pressure, so he wasn't giving it up any time soon) that he had eyes on Hawkeye, and they wouldn't appreciate any interference for the next twenty-four hours. Last, he sent a private message to Pepper, asking her to find something to distract Stark. He'd owe her a favor, but it was worth it.
Two minutes fifteen seconds after it started, the shower shut off. Phil switched the tablet into airplane mode and fished behind the desk for the charging cable. When he looked up, Clint was leaning in the doorway, a towel around his neck, a foil packet in one hand and a well-worn tube in the other. Water was trailing down his front, leaving tracks in the fine hair, then gathering, darkening lower.
Phil's breath caught, and he wanted to look everywhere at the same time. Head to toe first, scanning for injuries, and pleased to come up empty for once. Then back up, admiring skin flushed warm from the shower and musculature so sculpted that Phil's fingers itched to touch. Finally back to Clint's face and the smirk saying he'd followed every thought that had flitted through Phil's brain. It would be embarrassing he didn't have higher priorities right this damn minute.
With two quick steps across the room, Phil dragged the covers from the messy bed to the floor. Climbing on from the other side, Clint met him in the middle, dropping the supplies and wrapping hard, warm hands around Phil's back and butt, dragging his towel down and away, pulling their bodies together and rolling. Phil relaxed, closing his eyes for a moment, and savoring the strong arms and gentle guidance. He was only half surprised to wind up as the one on top, pressed hard against Clint from chest to very eager groin, held firmly between bent knees. Warm air rushed by his ear, followed by an even warmer tongue, sending a shiver all the way to his toes. Phil groaned quietly. Clint chuckled, then nipped, almost too hard, before sucking the earlobe in, probing for the tiny hole that hadn't felt this in far too long.
"Don't," Phil protested, turning to bring his mouth in line with Clint's. "That's cheating." Before Clint could argue, Phil pressed a kiss into his parted lips, teasing in with his tongue and then opening to Clint's reply. He brought both hands up to frame Clint's face, combing through damp, short hair, holding him still and delving deeper. Strong, callused hands slid down to his ass, pulling him in tighter, as close as they could get without being in each other's skin, and they'd get there, soon enough.
"You were so hot out there." Clint's voice was quiet, almost reverent. Phil dragged his eyes open and his mind back to consciousness. He hadn't felt sexy. He'd felt like an idiot, throwing everything that he had at some weird, alien thing, and just hoping like hell something would work.
"When did you notice me?" He hadn't known where in the fight Clint was, hadn't had a thought to spare at the time. He realized now there hadn't been any buildings left near the beach. It was a damn airport approach.
"When you broke cover to try and grab the dog, you idiot." The insult was fond. "I'd ask you what you were thinking…"
But they both knew. The mutt had just been doing what they all had: trying its damnedest to stop the creepy crawly thing from taking over the beach, and then going on to do whatever else had been in its plans.
"What the hell was that wire thing you used, anyway?"
"Hell if I know," he admitted. "Gianni pulled it out of an AIM base in the Zamboanga Peninsula, and I was taking it back to FitzSimmons to figure out what it does."
"Oh, well."
Phil stretched an arm and a leg, pulling himself closer, almost back on top of Clint, and laid his head down on one broad shoulder.
"Hey," Clint protested. "Don't go back to sleep. I want some lunch." He didn't move, though, and Phil fantasized for a second that he could ignore Clint's hollow leg and get a few hours of rest. Not that it had ever worked before. "Come on," and this time he did shrug, dislodging Phil's very comfortable head. "Avenging is hungry work."
"Let's just order room service." There had to be a menu around here somewhere, and he couldn't think of any better use for his fake credit cards.
"I tried." The bed heaved as Clint stood up, opening Phil up to the cool breeze of the AC. "They're short staffed today, you know, because of the alien invasion."
Phil lay there, trying to figure out how deeply he'd been asleep that he hadn't heard Clint on the phone.
"I've got a Clif bar." He'd knew he'd had his hands on one, or two, at some point today, but he tried to picture where, and whether he'd eaten it, lost it, or fed it to the dog. He had no clue. "Maybe," he qualified. He watched, still sleep-dazed, as Clint produced a duffel Phil hadn't even noticed and stepped into a pair of black jeans that never failed to raise the ambient temperature of any room Barton walked into.
Phil groaned, then levered himself upright, feeling aches and bruises that he hadn't even noticed before. Clint noticed, and stepped closer to run a hand down Phil's back, brushing lightly across the hot skin. "How bad?" he asked. "Do you want me to get some ice?"
"It's nothing." Phil turned, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of Clint's mouth. "Give me a sec." He pulled away, and dug into his bag for the khakis and blue polo that were Phil Stone's weekend uniform.
"Can we at least mark the calendar for a fight where I don't even have a scratch, and you're the one that got the shit kicked out of him by a sea-monster?"
"Blob," Phil corrected, pulling up boxers and khakis. "And it didn't kick the shit out of me. That was the stupid wire."
"Whatever," Clint countered, reaching out to comb fingers through Phil's mussed hair. "Aren't you ready yet?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Phil pulled on the shirt, and gathered his phone, wallet, and room key from the bathroom counter. "I'm ready."
The bar was quieter, now past the lunch hour and the shock of the morning, but news was still running silently on all the screens. Most of the footage was Iron Man, of course, with occasional insets of the C-130, and Thor. Lots of Thor.
Phil was glad he'd been far outside the media glare, and it looked like Clint and Natasha had done their usual trick of being invisible in plain sight. He spotted her in the background of one shot, saw more arrows than he saw of Clint himself. They settled into one of the alcoves, seated close on one side of the table so they could watch the coverage.
"We couldn't have done it without you," Clint offered, nudging Phil with his shoulder. "What were you even doing with a fire extinguisher against a sea monster, anyway?"
"Long story." And not one he was planning to tell any time soon, though he made a mental note to make sure the van was returned, and restitution paid, so he wouldn't have to deal with the LAPD lifting his prints off a stolen vehicle.
The waiter, when he stepped into their niche, was still a surprise. Phil looked up, met the man's amused gaze, and then decided to just brazen it out. He wrapped one arm around Clint's back, and smiled widely. "My husband and I would like some lunch, please."