brandingproblem | open post

"I can still promise I liked you for your personality first before your way with fucking did me in." Phil's always been terribly sweet and tender when he sets Handler Mode aside. Which was a blast to start to navigate as someone not used to sweet and tender in partners.

"But if you want physically swept off your feet, I might want a good reason. A timely rescue to swoop in. Kiss passionately while things explode in the distance."

Well, he likes being tender and sweet. He blames his romantic streak and Clint's rather adorable when he gets awkward about it. "It was my personality? Huh. For me it was your arms." He smiles slyly because he's teasing. The arms help but Phil's never dated anyone long for purely physical reasons.

"Avengers fieldwork might give you that chance. There's a lot of explosions involved."

"Being able to stand you holding my leash has its perks, who knew?"

He pulls his hand back, not for any discomfort but simply having enough of leaning across the table for the touch at the moment. "When, and it's definitely when, we start getting back into the sexy kind of intimacy, we'll probably have some new rules there, too, at least temporarily."

"That's understandable."

Clint's trust and autonomy were violated by what Loki had done. The sort of sex they had engaged in before required a lot of trust. It would take time to build that up again.

"I'll be satisfied just to have you in bed again."

"I'll probably have to--" He runs a hand through his hair, considering the path of that sentence and then ditching it to start again. "I'm kind of nervous to see your scars. Is that weird?"

"I don't always like looking at them either." Because they're new and fresh and not part of his body like the other ones he has. Phil deliberately looks at them to get comfortable with them.

"When you feel ready to look at them and touch them we'll start there."

"I don't know if it's a matter of being ready at that point. I felt a little bit, earlier." A shrug. "Maybe I'll just have to strip off your shirt myself and take a look."

"When you reach for my shirt I'll know what you're after." Phil expects Clint's reaction won't be good. The scar is not nice to look at and worse it'll make the guilt he carries a lot heavier. Even though Phil doesn't blame him at all.

"Do you ever think..." And maybe it's too heavy, these what if's. "He did it like that on purpose? So that you'd suffer for a bit before you croaked. Or to show me his good work if I showed up. He could've done plenty of other things to you instead."

"No," Phil says with a firm shake of his head. "He wanted me dead. His aim was to go right through my chest and kill me."

There was no intention of suffering or dragging it out or making Clint watch. Whatever thoughts have circled around Clint's head Phil's confident it wasn't that complicated for Loki.

"I was in his way and he was going to remove me." That was that.

"He could've slit your throat. Guy keeps blades on himself. Using the staff sends a message. Bigger impact, messier." He lets out a huff of air. "I'm thinking too hard about it, aren't I?"

"You know his mind better than I do. It's possible." He shrugs. "But to me it felt like he just wanted to stab me in the back."

Phil did have a big gun on Loki and was threatening him. Removing the threat had to be on the God's mind at the time. "I imagine a Midgardian challenging him was also not fun for him."

"...Depends on the circumstance. Probably." Clint rubs a hand over his face. "I think I'm thinking too hard about it. Easy to do since I've had to recount and relive every single moment on repeat for a while."

"Well, I'm always here to be a voice of reason when you overthink." Phil does have a different perspective on it. He's happy to help Clint untangle his thoughts and work through the guilt. As much as he can.

"I don't think that's a thing anyone's really accused me of doing before." His form of levity: taking himself down a peg. "Though I guess now with everything that's happened, no one can ever accuse me of being a dumbass save for me."

"I've known you for a long time and I promise you've had dumbass moments. I have reports on a few of them." He nudges Clint's foot, not playfully but to scold him for talking down on himself. "But I don't think it's bad you're trying to make sense of a senseless situation."

"It wasn't senseless. That might be the worst part about it, really. Some of the opening moves were dependent on random happenstance, but it was otherwise all very calculated. Weird balance between things he knew about Midgard--about Earth, and humans and our defenses and SHIELD and all--and the things he didn't know. Pop in through the Tesseract; we're gonna have it in a secure location surrounded by scientists who are gonna be top of their fields and highly trained security personnel. Weed out the weakest and thin out the numbers by doing some slaughter, take control of the lucky or gifted few left standing. Let them do all the heavy lifting."

He motions to himself, a heavy thump against his chest. It left no mark, but he can feel that pinprick touch as plain as day. "Assign a general, one of the soldiers, whoever's highest clearance and is going to know the most. That's the right hand man to disseminate orders, gather supplies, help get the scientists set up with whatever the fuck they need. You just need one person to trust, and it's whoever's going to be able to tell you the most about military reaction times and security forces, whoever is going to be to the job and get it done and not dick around, whoever's most likely to keep everyone else in line. Step in only when necessary. It's not senseless at all. It's full cold calculation."

Phil holds up a hand. "Not senseless as in poorly planned."

He doesn't want to belittle what Clint went through. He would never do that on purpose though he seems very good at doing it on accident.

"Senseless in that we can't understand how he took control. We can say magic or unknown technology all we want but that doesn't actually answer it. We may never get an answer given how little we actually understand of how the mind works. None of that will ever make sense."

"...Right. Sorry. I'm--sorry, you're right. I, um. I shouldn't have gotten us on the topic in the first place. We should drink and be merry. We'll probably end up sharing some deep dark thoughts in the middle of the night when we realize neither of us is asleep anyway."

"If you need to talk about it, I'll listen." Phil didn't mean to push Clint away from talking about it. He never intended to do that. He's glad that Clint trusts him enough to talk about it.

"And it will either be deep, dark thoughts or the most random bullshit we can come up with." He shrugs. Both are possible when they are sleep deprived.

"I'll also listen to you," Clint points out. "If you need to get anything off your chest to me, or just aloud in general. Pretty sure good boyfriends listen."

"I really want to pass this field physical." Phil twists the stem of his wine glass between his fingers. "Being stuck at a desk I can't imagine it. I want to be in the field."

He wants to lead from the field. Without that... Phil's not sure what he's going to do.

"You're still healing and doing PT. You might have some odd pulling to compensate for on the shooting range, but once the pain's receded and you're back up to your usual strength, hopefully there won't be a problem."

He can't promise there won't be. Healing's a complicated thing, and Clint's got dumb fucking luck on his side sometimes (and probably good genetics, somehow) that nothing's debilitated or incapacitated him for good.

"And you're still a good people person. If something happens, maybe you don't lead teams in the field, but you don't necessarily have to be stuck at a desk."

"At least I'm dating the best guy to help me learn how to compensate." Phil smiles a little. Clint's faith in him is very reassuring.

"I'll have to talk to Fury. I can't see him letting me go easily and I don't want to go. You know what SHIELD means to me."

"I know. There's other positions you can do, but I know how much the field work means, too." He shrugs, sips at the wine. "It won't hurt to actually consider Tony's offer, too."

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