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"Yeah." About not letting him visit an at the time critically injured agent until cleared. About dealing with a lot, but that alone doesn't feel like an excuse.

Phil touches him again, and he gets it, he definitely does, and it's nice, and he allows it, but it's also just kind of weird in a way that's hard to define. He opens his mouth to say more, then...doesn't, and chews on his donut instead.

Phil lets the silence sit for a bit to see if Clint will say anything else but no, he doesn't say anything else. It's frustrating but much about Clint is. Always has been and for some reason that doesn't discourage Phil.

"Do you need me to forgive you?" he asks, still studying Clint. "Or apologize for risking my life against an alien god?"

He expects the answer will be no on both counts but Clint can surprise him.

"No." But then he stares into the middle distance, frown deepening. "Don't apologize. But..." An amendment. "Do you forgive me? Because you don't have to. If you don't."

"I never blamed you in the first place," Phil says honestly. Now he has to look away. "This is going to sound awful but I was... kind of relieved when you showed up in security footage. I thought... I thought you died when the New Mexico base collapsed."

He's not particularly proud of this fact. It's selfish and cruel. It might have been easier on Clint if he had gone down with the base. Then he wouldn't have the guilt to live with.

Phil, though, he's not sure who he would have become in the emptiness of a world without Clint Barton. "And then Nat and I started planning how to get you back."

"...I meant for not being here. I kinda...I figured that you probably didn't blame me for getting mindscrambled like I was. I mean. It doesn't help, really, but." Clint shakes his head. "I was too good to just let us all get buried. Hill tried her best, though, I gotta give her that."

"I don't blame you for that either," Phil says with a little shake of his head. "It would have been nice, yes. But god, I'm just too old and tired to be mad that you needed time and space after everything."

Anger, resentment, what would they do but delay getting Clint back? Phil had his darker moments late at night when the pain was bad but they're both fucked up for various reasons. He just don't want to waste the time.

"I can yell if it'll make you feel better. A good dressing down?"

"No...no, if your heart's not in it, it's not really gonna do me any good, huh?" It's a halfhearted joke. "If you really feel it, then go for it; I can take it."

But he can hear some implication. That yes, he should have showed up. That under different circumstances, Phil would've been pissed about it.

"I didn't know Nat had gotten you back when I woke up," he says, his thumb back to idly stroking. "When I could stay conscious long enough to hold a conversation I demanded to know your status. Knowing you were alive and yourself that's been enough for me."

He shakes his head. "It was starting to be not enough. I think Nat sensed that in my texts. I really do just need to see you until you're ready for more."

"Ready for more," he echoes. "You make it sound like I'm gonna move in." That's not what Phil means, he's pretty sure, but it's where he's decided to take it. "What about you? You're making this about me, but, god, you must've thought you lost me, and a lot of good people died, and you got stabbed by an alien despot. You can't tell me you're just good, like I'm the only one with problems."

"Sometimes I wish you would." Phil's not going to deny that. Out of the two of them he's the romantic. He likes happy endings and sappy rom-coms where everything works out. He likes the idea of this thing of theirs working out.

"If you're here when I'm trying to sleep you can see how many problems I have." Phil wants to lean against Clint's side because Clint would never let anything happen to him. He's very protective.

"I dream of dying. I dream of having to give the order to kill you. Sometimes Loki kills you in front of me. I have problems."

It shouldn't be gratifying to hear Phil admitting to some of his issues. But it is. It feels good to know that he really isn't the only one fucked up. (That the focus shouldn't necessarily be solely on him.)

And it means he doesn't have to necessarily reply to the idea that Phil would like him to move in. That's a conversation for another time. Probably. Maybe for over vacation. Maybe for not right now, because there's no way in hell he's having that conversation with a clear head.

"Natasha came pretty close to doing me in. If she hadn't knocked some sense in me..." A one shouldered shrug. "I get dreams, too. They suck. Sorry."

Natasha would try her best to save Clint. She owned him. But she would also put him down if there was no way to save him. She would have made it quick and clean and painless.

Phil sighs and gives in, leaning over to press his shoulder against Clint's. "I hate this post-op come down. It's worse than Monaco. And I'm not sure how to come back to center."

Near death experiences facing off against Gods and almost losing the man Phil's now certain he's in love with have done a number on his head. It will take SHIELD psychologists a long time to help him untangle it all.

He wants to like it so badly. There's the part of him that craves this, to be with his boyfriend, to touch him and kiss him (and blow him, sure), to go back to normal or some semblance thereof.

But there's another part that wants to crawl away and hide from it. To recoil as if burnt.

But he needs this. Right? They both definitely need it. So Clint doesn't say anything. Allows Phil to have this. It's nice and he's going to make himself like it, damn it.

"Time." An unhelpful suggestion, even if it's true. "And talking things out. You'll come back to center, Phil. You need to heal up first. Full recovery, and then you'll have an excuse to strip off your shirt so you can show off your battle scar."

Clint usually relaxes against him when they're like this. Phil doesn't like that he doesn't so he stubbornly stays in place so either Clint will tell him to move or get over whatever is bothering him.

"You will too," he says softly. "You'll find your center."

He frowns at the idea of showing anyone his scar. Phil doesn't even like to look at it in the mirror.

"You're my center." It's cheesy and sappy, but he knows Phil likes that. The curse of all those schmaltzy Hallmark movies and the like. Maybe that'll distract him.

"We're both gonna be okay. It's just gonna be a process is all. And the process will suck." The process has sucked. Immensely. "But we'll get there."

It does touch that soft, sappy part of Phil. If they weren't both incredibly twisted up by what had happened he would even believe it was entirely genuine. It mostly is. Clint can be sweet like that. It just doesn't feel like Clint's heart is in it right now.

"No vacation in New Mexico," he says after a few minutes of silence, staring into the middle distance. "No deserts."

Is this awkward? It must be awkward. Because he should probably cuddle up, hold Phil tight, kiss him, and then make lewd suggestions for other activities whether cleared by medical or not.

Instead of just letting Phil lean on him and drinking coffee feeling like his skin is tingling in all the wrong ways..

"Pretty sure a nice cabin in the woods is gonna be about as far from a desert as we can get unless you wanna take a yacht out in the middle of the ocean."

It's awkward. He's not sure why it's awkward for Clint. As well as he knows his boyfriend he's not sure what's going on right now.

"I'd rather avoid yachts after what happened near Calais." Phil sighs heavily as he sits up leaning away from Clint.

"I suppose I should be the first to tell you," he says, his tone a little more serious. "Even with physical therapy I may not be able to clear for field work. That makes my future with the Avengers Initiative questionable."

"No, it doesn't." Clint sets his drink aside and angles himself toward Phil. There's an impulse to reach out, to take his hands, but he...doesn't. "You don't have to be in the field to be with the Avengers. We're gonna need people doing all the work none of the rest of us are trained to do. You can be a desk jockey. Queue up missions for us, feed us intel. Take care of fallout. It doesn't make anything questionable."

"Someone needs to be in the field and active on the ground with the rest of you." His tone is patient and logical. "Someone has to be your direct handler and it might not be me."

He's been involved in the Avengers Initiative from the beginning. From when Fury first started writing the whole thing up. They used to strategize in dingy diners in the early years together. He's worked hard to see it this far.

"I can coordinate some of it from a desk, you're right." Phil hates the idea a little bit. He can sit at a desk for hours and do paperwork but the whole of his career being a desk? He doesn't know how he's going to handle it. "I thought you'd want to know."

"We can be our own eyes and ears on the ground. We need someone with eyes in the sky and a farther reaching network of intel. If you think you're gonna miss the exercise, I'll be sure to give you plenty." Phil has to be involved in the Avengers. In any way that he's capable. "The team came together cuz of you, so I hear. Hey, if nothing else, you can be our mascot."

There's a little more of the Clint he knows. Phil smiles just a little.

"If you say the word mascot around Stark I will have to kill both of you." Because that would create some sort of costume or joke suit that Stark would expect him to wear and there's only so much of Stark's nonsense Phil can take on any given day.

"Can you work with a different SHIELD handler? Can they?" he asks, trusting Clint's insight. He's already had this conversation with Natasha who's come to see him. They had tea.

"I can." He knows that he can. He'll do whatever he needs to do. But: "It won't be easy, and it won't be pretty. It'll be a step back for me. But I also know I can't act out too much. Won't look good, given the circumstances." Not that it looked good when he first started out, but many years on he should know better. Being more or less cleared of having something magic tampering with his head can easily be walked back.

"They are gonna wanna be more independent. It's a SHIELD project overall, but half the team aren't affiliated but through circumstance. Fury's burned a lot of goodwill after Stark's hacking. They trust you behind the wheel, or at least, given your near death experience helped glue some of the more disparate pieces back together, you're definitely an ally. Banner's the oddball, but it seems like he and Stark get on like scientifically-inclined peas in a pod, and he shouldn't have any objections to you. Group's gonna need more wiggle room than your average strike team."

And no average handler is going to be able to keep them right on the edge of the line. Phil rubs his hand over his face. He really is the best option to handle the Avengers but if he can't be in the field then he's not much good as a handler. Handlers went into the field.

"It's not definitive," he says with a heavy breath. "Daily physical therapy should help but the doctors are blunt with their warnings. And I'd rather tell you myself than you hear it from the SHIELD rumor mill."

Which even with the organization in disarray was still going strong. Somehow. He knew it was only a matter of time before people speculated if he wasn't really dead after all.

"And you know I don't want to be relegated to a desk."

Clint rubs his hands together, glancing away in thought. Phil's still got a road to physical recovery. And might never be one hundred percent again. Even still, he's managing himself pretty well. There's every possibility that this is just worst case scenario being speculated on.

But. Also every possibility that this really needs to be prepared for.

He looks back. "What would you do otherwise? I mean, if you're not cleared for the field and you don't want to be stuck at a desk. What are your options from there?"

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