Work Text:
You saved my life, not once but twice
You keep me free from falling
You saved my life, make it all alright
When I don’t feel like talking
You make sure I always see the daylight
-- “Daylight” by Shinedown
Phil was buried up to his elbows in files when Clint found him.
Literally, there were stacks of manilla file folders piled high enough to obscure Phil’s forearms on the desk (and Clint loved Phil’s forearms, so this was beyond the pale). Even as Clint took this in, one of the too-thick folders succumbed to gravity and started slowly sliding off its fellows. Phil didn’t even look up as he rescued the folder and nudged it back into place.
Clint sighed and leaned on the door frame, arms loosely crossed. “Phil,” he said softly. The senior agent twitched slightly but didn’t look up. “Phil,” Clint repeated more firmly.
The scratching of Phil’s pen stopped, but he still didn’t move.
“You can’t keep doing this.”
Phil’s suit jacket shifted as his shoulders tightened, tension now evident in his form. Slowly, he tilted his head up to meet Clint’s gaze. Phil’s eyes were hard. “How could you possibly—” he started, his voice cold as a Russian winter, but Clint interrupted him.
“Working yourself to death won’t bring them back.” The tone of the archer’s voice left no room for compromise.
“I know that,” Phil snapped.
“Do you?” Clint shot back. “Because that’s not what it looks like from where I’m standing.”
Phil was silent. Clint took a breath and let it out slowly. “Look,” he said more calmly. “There was nothing else you could have done. I know it, you know it, Fury knows it, Martinez and Olson knew it. There’s no way you could have known which way it would fall. Sometimes our intel’s crap, sometimes things go wrong that we can’t control. And it sucks. But working yourself to the bone isn’t going to make it better.”
“I haven’t been working that hard,” Phil protested.
Clint couldn’t help the skeptical eyebrow raise. “This is the fourth night in a row you’ve still been in your office past nine pm. Do you even remember what the apartment looks like at this point?”
“Yes,” Phil said petulantly. “It’s purple. And I remember that because I lost the argument.”
The memory tugged a small smile onto Clint’s face. “‘Captain America’ is not a color recognized by Sherman-Williams. I was always going to win.”
“I still say you cheated.” The tension slowly drained from Phil’s frame until he just looked like Clint’s exhausted partner, rather than the paperwork automaton the junior agents claimed he was. “It’s not that late, is it?”
“Phil,” Clint said flatly. “It’s ten thirty. We are literally the only two people in the building outside of the command center. Even the cleaning crew has come and gone.”
“Oh,” Phil said.
The precariously balanced file folder decided to make another bid for freedom. Phil was a full second too late, reaching for it just as the file hit the ground, spilling yellowed pages filled with typewritten forms and sepia-toned photographs.
“Are you seriously cross-referencing files from the ‘70s?” Clint asked incredulously.
“No,” Phil said, lying badly. He bent over, trying to quickly tuck the files back in the folder before Hawkeye could see any more of the contents.
Clint sighed again, fond this time, and stepped into the room. “C’mon,” he coaxed, gently pulling Phil up from the floor. “Let’s go home, get some food, and go to sleep. Ancient history will still be here tomorrow.”
Phil only resisted for a moment before relenting and allowing his partner to tug him close. “Fine,” he admitted, as if accommodating basic human needs was a concession he was barely allowing. But he leaned into Clint as the archer ushered them out into the hall, flipping the lights and locking the door behind them. Clint figured that “nominally grudging” was about as good as he could hope for at the moment.
His partner continued to surprise him, however. Phil paused, halfway down the hall. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “For coming to get me.” Unspoken was the dozen years before he met Clint when uninterrupted late nights at the office had been the norm, rather than the rare exception.
Clint pushed down his initial reaction. He and Phil had already talked about it, the Pre-Clint time. As well as Clint’s own Pre-Phil time. There was no need to drag it all out again now.
Instead, he just pulled the other agent into his arms and held him close, as Phil’s hands clutched fistfuls of the back of Clint’s jacket in turn. “Always.”
Clint lost track of how long the pair of them stood there. Eventually, he let go and pressed a kiss to Phil’s cheek as they separated. “C’mon, sweetheart,” Clint said, taking Phil’s hand in his. “Let’s go home.”
A small smile made its way onto Phil’s face as he tightened his grip. “Let’s.