Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/5975313.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      The_Avengers_(Marvel_Movies), The_Avengers_-_Ambiguous_Fandom, The
      Avengers_(Marvel)_-_All_Media_Types, Marvel_Cinematic_Universe
  Relationship:
      Clint_Barton/Phil_Coulson
  Character:
      Clint_Barton, Phil_Coulson, Nick_Fury, Jacques_Duquesne, Buck_Chisholm,
      Swordsman_(Marvel), Original_Characters
  Additional Tags:
      Alpha/Beta/Omega_Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Omega_Clint_Barton, Omega_Clint,
      Alpha_Phil_Coulson, Alpha_Phil, Knotting, Knotting_Dildos, Bonding, Soul
      Bond, Rough_Sex, Roughhousing, Attempted_Rape/Non-Con, (But_NOT_Clint/
      Phil_and_only_briefly_alluded_to_a_few_times), BAMF_Phil_Coulson, BAMF
      Clint_Barton, BAMF_Phil, BAMF_Clint, Torture, Blood_and_Torture, Murder,
      Murder_Husbands, Mpreg, Post_Mpreg, Babies, Animalistic, Animal_Traits,
      Possessive_Behavior, Consensual, Consensual_Violence, Consensual_Sex,
      Mating_Cycles/In_Heat, Rimming, Made_For_Each_Other, Poor_Clint_Barton,
      Poor_Clint, Angst, Angst_and_Hurt/Comfort, Angst_with_a_Happy_Ending,
      Hurt/Comfort, Emotional_Hurt/Comfort, Mutual_Pining, Dark_Phil_Coulson,
      Dark_Phil, (Depending_on_your_thoughts_on_crime_and_justice), Protective
      Phil_Coulson, Protective_Phil, Childbirth, Backstory, Marking, Biting,
      Top_Phil_Coulson, Top_Phil, Bottom_Clint_Barton, Bottom_Clint, Major
      Character_Injury, Discussion_of_Infertility, Clint_Barton_Needs_a_Hug,
      Phil_Coulson_Needs_a_Hug, First_Time, First_Kiss, Nick_Fury_is_a_Good
      Bro, OTP_Feels, Purring, Growling, Non-Linear_Narrative, Morning
      Sickness, Body_Modification, Body_Image, Pregnancy_Kink, Post-Traumatic
      Stress_Disorder_-_PTSD, Pregnant_Sex
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-02-11 Completed: 2016-03-17 Chapters: 3/3 Words: 56620
****** Every Monster, First a Man ******
by giddytf2
Summary
     Oh, Clint thinks when he sees Phil for the first time in Fury’s
     office on board the Helicarrier, it’s you, the one I never thought
     I’d find and found anyway.
     (Or, Omega!Clint and Alpha!Coulson in a dark, Alpha/Beta/Omega world
     of fangs, claws, purring and snarling, who somehow find and fall in
     love with each other anyway while a monster from Clint's past returns
     and threatens to rob him of everything he loves.
     And if you're not into MPREG, you can read Acts I and II as a
     complete story!)
Notes
     After coming across the Alpha/Beta/Omega primer here on AO3, I was
     intrigued enough by the concept to write an A/B/O Clint/Coulson
     story. Along the way, it turned out more violent, dark, animalistic
     and angsty than I'd intended at first, but it feels somehow right
     given the nature of A/B/O dynamics. (At least to me as of writing
     this.) If you're wondering why Clint and Coulson (and every other
     person) in the story have fangs and claws, snarl and purr and behave
     cat-like sometimes, it's just my personal twist on A/B/O traits.
     Please heed the tags. I am serious when I say this story is pretty
     damn dark in certain parts and has graphic depictions of violence,
     torture and mutilation. (You familiar with NBC's Hannibal? Then you
     know what I'm talking about.) The underage tag is only there to be
     safe since it refers mainly to Clint's and Coulson's sexual self-
     discovery as very young teens. And yep, there's also MPREG. If you
     don't mind being spoiled and want to check for potential triggers,
     I've listed them out in the End Notes.
     The Swordsman AKA Jacques Duquesne and Trick Shot AKA Buck Chisholm
     appear in the story, but they are way darker and evil here. So if
     you're a fan of their official characters, I ... think you may be
     squeamish about them here, particularly the Swordsman. Coulson may be
     darker than some fans like too, but I will leave that to your
     discretion. You may also notice the other Avengers don't show up in
     the story - I wanted to focus solely on Clint and Coulson and their
     relationship over time.
     The soundtrack I listened to while writing Act ! was NBC_Hannibal's
     Red_Dinner, the track used in the season 2 finale's last scene.
     Exquisite and haunting. For Act II, it was Pie_Jesu,_From_Requiem. A
     sublime song. For Act III, it was Michael Nyman's Scent_of_Love, one
     of my all-time favorite piano pieces.
See the end of the work for more notes
***** ACT I *****
                                    ACT I:
 
What Clint will remember most after he awakens in the Helicarrier’s medical
bay, with Phil gripping his hand like a limp lifeline, is how hot his blood had
felt as it cascaded in a torrent onto barren ground from his ripped open belly.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
“So yeah, I’m an Omega,” Clint says, head tipped back slightly, lips tensed
into a combative line. “You gonna make something of that, sir?”
Coulson stares at the other SHIELD agent across his desk. He’s tempted, very
tempted to say, yes, and you and everything about you are going to consume me
whole, and I will embrace my destruction and rebirth in your hands.
What he says instead, with an impassive face, is, “Do you want me to make
something of it?”
Because it isn’t enough that he’s an Alpha. He has to go and provoke the most
dangerous, skillful, gorgeous Omega on the Helicarrier (in the whole fucking
world) too, an Omega he’s only known for months (a lifetime, it feels like a
lifetime already). Hormones make him stupid like that sometimes. (Love makes
him even more stupid, but that’s something he only learns later, with a stupid
smile on his face and a stupid ring that Clint slides onto his finger and
tightens around his stupid heart.)
Clint’s face goes slack with surprise. Clint blinks, like a soaring, large bird
that’s just sighted movement in the snow far below and thinks to itself, today,
I will not go hungry.
“Well, sir,” Clint says, and oh, Coulson will be hearing Clint’s voice gone low
and husky like that in many night-cloaked fantasies to come. “You can try.”
He is tempted, very tempted to leap to his feet and toss said desk aside (and
he’s done this several times, for completely different reasons, to the chagrin
of SHIELD’s purchasing and cleanup departments) and tackle Clint to the floor.
During the annual Mating Hunt - if Coulson is to participate this year, if
Clint participates as well (please, god) - that’s the least of what he’ll have
to do to earn his right to be Clint’s Alpha. Clint’s mate.
Is he going to try?
Fuck, yes.
Without breaking eye contact, he sends the plastic bottle of heat suppressant
pills across his (spared) desk back to Clint with a flick of his fingers. Clint
catches it with his left hand and palms it. He sees Clint’s lips tremor for a
moment before straightening again.
It’ll be worth casting aside his person-suit, worth letting the beast out once
more to feel those supple lips against his and upon his flesh.
“You’ve been working for SHIELD for years now. You know we have strict
regulations against discrimination towards Omegas. The only reason we’re having
this conversation at all is because you hid your status when you should have
reported it. Especially to me, your handler.”
Especially an Alpha like me, he thinks, who would give you the heads of your
foes upon a silver platter, if you only asked.
Clint fidgets with the bottle with both hands, eyes half-lidded and simmering
as they continue to stare at him.
“The only reason?”
Coulson sits back languidly. Draws in a deep breath tangible with Clint’s
delicious scent and subdued Omegan pheromones - not masked by the Beta scent
cologne for once - and already has to restrain himself from ordering Clint to
dispose of the suppressants, to prepare for the Hunt. To get down on all fours
on the floor, right here, right now and spread those muscular thighs and
prepare for him.
“Yes,” he replies, his face as impassive as ever.
Again, Clint’s lips tremor for a moment.
Coulson wants to bite them until they bleed. Until they’re tremoring for wholly
different reasons, parted and letting loose high-pitched whimpers and loud
moans as he fucks Clint’s slick, tight hole hard and fast.
Yes.
“All right, sir. Can I go now?”
The little shit is grinning at him.
He should not be feeling as amused as he is about it.
He waves Clint off and deliberately doesn’t watch Clint strut away in that snug
Hawkeye outfit, turning his attention to the intimidating pile of folders and
paperwork on the right side of his desk. No, he is not going to look at Clint’s
ass and no, he is not going to think about Clint’s plump, firm ass and all the
ways he hungers to fuck it. No.
“Sir?”
Coulson raises his head to find Clint at the now half-open door of his office,
one gloved hand on its steel knob, looking down at the carpeted floor with a
bowed head. It’s such a switch from his cocksure attitude mere minutes ago that
Coulson does a double take and sits straighter, drinking in the submissiveness
of Clint’s pose.
The beast in him clamors within its human-shaped cage for freedom to claim this
Omega.
Sshh, Coulson soothes, soon, soon.
“The Hunt’s coming up in a month,” Clint murmurs, still looking down at the
floor.
Coulson says nothing until Clint glances at him again.
“Yes,” he murmurs as softly, gazing into Clint’s bright, blue eyes. “I know.”
He says nothing else as he watches Clint nod and then stride out of his office,
shutting the door behind him. He says nothing about how flushed Clint had
become at his reply, from forehead to chin, about how Clint’s broad chest had
puffed up with a visible, deep inhalation before Clint left.
He hopes Clint won’t be forgetting his scent anytime soon. He hopes Clint will
be jerking himself off tonight in his quarters, thrusting those long, callused
fingers into a quivering, desperate hole and thinking of him while he does so.
Alone in his office, Coulson lets his fangs show and gleam in a grin of
unbridled anticipation.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Clint feels so fucking stupid for the wetness flooding his eyes, his face, but
he can’t stop it. It’s probably the drugs in his veins right now, making his
brain incapable of thinking, making his body lose control so pathetically like
this, making him embarrass himself in front of Phil like this.
“I never even wanted kids,” he says almost incoherently, trying to cover his
searing eyes with a trembling hand, feeling the sting of the IV in his forearm.
“I didn’t - I - What’s wrong with me?”
He lets Phil move his hand away from his streaked, contorted face. He lets Phil
grasp it and kiss the back of it and he can’t think, he wants to yank out the
IV and cleanse his blood and body of all the drugs in him although this time
the drugs are the merciful kind. (Not the kind they dosed him with all those
years ago, no, never again.) The kind that are keeping physical pain at bay.
The kind that’ll help him forget, even just for a while, that his body’s been
irreversibly maimed.
“What he did to you,” Phil says quietly, carefully, holding his hand to a
bristly cheek that hasn’t been shaved in days, “was traumatic, sweetheart. You
have every right to be upset and angry at the damage caused, even if it’s your
choice to not have children.”
Clint blinks once, then another time as he stares up at the plaster ceiling of
his med bay room. His eyes keep filling up.
“S’not even the first time I’ve been stabbed,” he whispers, and he still feels
so stupid and he gets what Phil is trying to say. He just doesn’t believe it.
How can he, when what happened to him is his own fault?
The cycle of vengeance doesn’t give a fuck who’s the good guy or the bad guy.
It doesn’t give a fuck who started it. All it gives a fuck about is how much
suffering it can dole out to everyone, until everyone’s dead.
And the fucking bastard who started it, who did this to him is still alive in
SHIELD custody.
The cycle isn’t appeased yet. Not by a long shot.
Someone still has to die, and if there’s any higher power that truly exists out
there, if he ever does believe in it, he’ll pray that it won’t be him or Phil.
(Prayer’s never worked yet for him, but for Phil, for Phil, he’ll try again.)
Clint hears Phil sigh, feels it as a brush of warm breath upon the back of his
hand. He smells and breathes in the familiar Alpha pheromones that Phil’s scent
glands are pumping out, and they comfort him, assuage him.
It’s still not enough to make him forget the stitched-up, bandaged wound
marring his lower abdomen in a horizontal, straight line.
There’s probably nothing that ever will.
“Dr. Chiew said it’s too soon to judge the long-term effects of your injuries.
She also said there’s still a chance you can have children later on.”
Clint continues to stare up at the ceiling. He feels Phil’s lips upon the back
of his hand again, and once more he has to blink his eyes, pressing his chapped
lips together. An apology is threatening to bubble up his throat and spit
itself out at Phil, an apology for being a useless Omega mate now. There are
laws that protect Omegas from being abandoned by their Alphas simply for
infertility (although it took goddamn centuries for them to pass on a global
scale), and Phil will never do that to him, he knows that, never, which make
this sudden urge to apologize all the more idiotic.
Still. Still, he feels as if he’s become … lesser. As if he (and Phil) has been
robbed of something infinitely precious.
“I never wanted kids,” he rasps, still staring at the ceiling. “I never
imagined myself having any ‘cause I never thought I’d live this long. I thought
I was gonna die in Waverly that night. I thought every day after that was gonna
be my last, and who thinks about kids when they’re on the run and starving and
stealing from people and they got no home?”
He sucks in a quavering breath, then turns his head to look at Phil with dark-
ringed albeit clear eyes. Phil’s grasping his hand with both of his now to that
bristly, handsome face, stroking the back of his fingers with a thumb. Phil’s
eyes are dark-ringed too, heavy-lidded and bloodshot with exhaustion (and he’ll
find out later that Phil had sat at his bedside for five days straight after
the emergency surgery and had to be force-fed by Fury by day two).
Phil is gazing at him with all the goddamn love in the universe, even now, and
Clint has to curb himself from apologizing for being unworthy of it.
“I never thought I had a future, Phil, until SHIELD crashed into my life and
shot me in the thigh and wouldn’t let me go. Then I met you.” He swallows hard
past a lump in his throat as he gazes back at Phil and squeezes Phil’s fingers.
“Then I met you, and you changed everything and you became home and after all
these years, I still can’t imagine being anywhere else but with you. You
asshole. I hate you.”
He sees Phil’s lips quirk up in that not-smile. He sees Phil’s eyes glistening
even in the dimmed light of the hospital bed lamp.
“I hate you too,” Phil rasps in return, throat bobbing hard. “More than life
itself.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Oh, Clint thinks when he sees Phil for the first time in Fury’s office on board
the Helicarrier, it’s you, the one I never thought I’d find and found anyway.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Clint has no regrets whatsoever about flushing away his heat suppressant pills,
watching their white, oval shapes vanish in a whirlpool of clear water.
(Although he’s definitely still using contraceptives, he’s not that crazy.)
He’d hoped that Phil would find them, that Phil would be the first to learn of
his Omega status and … do something about it.
He’s been dying to be claimed by Phil since they met each other over five
months ago.
He probably will die from the bliss if Phil fucks him during his next heat. Dr.
Chiew had told him that since he’s been on suppressants for almost twenty years
- with only a handful of heats throughout those years - going off said
suppressants will likely result in one intense , prolonged heat that may last a
week or more. And unlike the past handful of heats, an Alpha knotting him and
coming inside him will be a necessity, not a mere option if he wants to remain
sane and alive at the end of it.
Good thing he already has someone very, very suitable in mind for the job.
“The things I do for you, Coulson,” Clint murmurs, smiling to himself as he
strips naked and gets ready for another night of fantasizing about his handler
(his friend, his Alpha) and coming like a speeding freight train.
If what Myers told him is true, for the first time in almost ten years , Phil
will be participating in the Hunt again. The last time Phil had done that,
Myers said, the Hunt had ended with Phil still unmated. But zealous rumors had
abounded afterward, about Phil chasing after several Omegas just for the thrill
of it and fucking them all until their screams of pleasure echoed through the
designated forests.
Apparently Coulson fucks like a champ, Myers said, grinning unabashedly. We’re
talking ‘fuck ‘til ya can’t walk anymore and roar the whole place down like
some mega beast’ kinda champ. Most people won’t believe it now since he’s so
calm and quiet, but I know one of the Omegas he fucked in that Hunt and that
woman’s mated now and still says Coulson’s name with goddamn stars in her eyes.
Myers had no idea how close he’d come to getting an arrow through his eyeball
if he’d said that he was one of the Omegas Phil had fucked so good like that.
After this year’s Hunt, he won’t let anyone else touch Phil again.
Phil is his. His alone, goddamnit. He’ll rip their faces off if they even try
to take Phil away from him (and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s done that,
no, but he never talks about it, not even to the SHIELD shrink, not unless he
wants to end up binge drinking whiskey and vodka for a week straight from the
returning nightmares).
As he fucks himself with a knotted dildo on his bed, he thinks about Phil in
that damn dark gray suit and purple tie, sitting behind his damn desk so calm
and quiet when he’s a champion at fucking Omegas into a frenzy. He wants to
drown in Phil’s rich, earthy, clean scent and virile Alpha pheromones. He wants
Phil’s cock, Phil’s knot so bad. He wants something real, something permanent
with Phil. He wants a bond with Phil, he wants -
So yeah, I’m an Omega. You gonna make something of it, sir?
Do you want me to make something of it?
“Yes,” Clint rasps against his pillow, his achingly hard cock in one hand and
his other hand shoving the dildo in and out of his quivering, desperate hole,
remembering how tasty Phil’s scent had been in Phil’s office. “Yes, Phil, god,
please claim me -”
He comes to the image, the fantasy (reality) of Phil slamming a long, fat cock
into him to the hilt and knotting him and roaring at the heavens. He comes so
hard that he blacks out for a minute, regaining consciousness to find his
softening cock still in his fist and his needy hole still clenched tight around
the dildo and his inner thighs drenched with slick. There’s semen all over his
hand and his sheets and he’ll have to change them before falling asleep but
fuck, that was worth it.
“Two weeks,” he whispers to himself, “just two more weeks,” and then, alone in
his quarters, Clint lets his fangs show and gleam in a grin of unbridled
anticipation.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
“There are some things you don’t come back from, Cheese,” Nick says, and
Coulson hears what Nick is really saying him.
This is your last chance to back away, Phil. Becoming a devil to slay a devil
is going to change you.
They stand side by side as they observe in person SHIELD’s latest and most
notorious detainee being transfered into the SHIELD armored prisoner transport
vehicle by four armed agents. No one looks at the chained detainee’s horribly
disfigured face for long, not when it has two beady, black eyes that stare with
a palpable, murderous malice.
For once, here be a monster with a truly honest face reflecting what remains of
its dead soul.
“I know. But I’ve got a lifeline this time,” Coulson replies, staring right
back at those beady, black, hateful eyes, hoping his pheromones being pumped
out by his scent glands in response to his Alpha rage will reach and choke the
monster. “And he’s waiting for me to come home.”
They watch the transport vehicle drive off the compound as Nick says, “Then you
make sure you go home when you’re done.”
And you let me deal with the cleanup, Coulson also hears. You deal with coming
out of this unscathed so you cango home.
“I will, Nick,” Coulson says, thinking about his beloved mate who still has
nightmares about the assault, who must always bear the long, irregular scar of
it on a vulnerable lower belly. “I will.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Phil is almost fourteen years old when he develops his very first knot. It’s a
late Saturday afternoon in Manitowoc, overcast and serene, just the kind of
weather he likes. He’s in his bedroom upstairs while Dad is out with friends
and Mom is downstairs in the kitchen preparing dinner, oblivious to him locking
his door and drawing the curtains and then scrambling onto his bed with almost
overwhelming, equal amounts of excitement and nervousness.
He pushes his jeans and underwear down to mid-thigh and tugs his t-shirt up. He
has to bite his lower lip hard to not groan as he touches the knot at the base
of his erect cock and squeezes his right hand around it. Holy shit, it feels so
good. He squirms against his pillows and on the sheets, propped up against the
headboard, allowing himself one tremulous moan as he strokes himself a few
times and squeezes his knot again, this time with both hands.
Ben, an Alpha like him, told him about getting his first knot last year and how
awesome it feels to jerk off while having one. Jason, who’s a Beta, told them
Betas don’t get knots at all and that Betas can mate with anyone they choose
(as long as the other person wants the bond too, of course). He and Ben had
been astonished by that, having only been told by their parents about Alphas
being able to mate only with Omegas and vice versa. Ben’s dad, an Alpha too,
also told Ben that when an Alpha meets their fated Omega mate, they’ll just
know.
And it’ll be one of the most amazing things to happen to them. Ever.
Not only that, Ben had whispered to him, Jason and Zach (a Beta too) in the
canteen during recess months ago, my dad said it feels really, really good when
you put your knot inside an Omega! Like the best thing ever!
So holy shit, if just squeezing his knot with his hands already makes him want
to blow like a geyser, what will it feel like when he sticks his whole cock and
knot into the body of an Omega?
He’ll probablydie from the bliss. What a way to go, though.
When he comes with his very first knot in hand, he has to smother his face with
a pillow to stifle his groan. He won’t discover what it’s like to have sex with
an Omega until six years later in The Point, in a one night stand that has him
leaving the woman’s apartment the moment she falls asleep. He’s … disappointed
by the experience. Possibly because he’d just wanted the act of losing his
virginity to be over and done with. Because he’d hoped, in some way or another,
that Ben - and all the other Alpha boys back in their high school class - had
been right about sex being mind-blowing with an Omega, man or woman.
It turns out that he needs to cultivate a relationship with an Omega (or Beta,
although it’s very rare for him and never worked out) before sex will feel
really good for him. He learns that the hard way over the years that turn into
decades, over multiple relationships that fizzle out eventually, inevitably
when he places his job above all else, be it as a Ranger or as a SHIELD agent
later on. He learns that even when the sex does feel really good, it isn’t
enough. He’s missing something vital, something that he can only find with an
Omega mate who’s fated to be his.
He needs that mythical, life-changing Alpha-Omega bond that everyone whispers
about in a reverent tone, that can only be formed during a heat with an Omega
who gives him explicit consent to do so, with a skin-breaking bite to the
bonding gland in an Omega’s shoulder.
Isn’t it just his luck, then, that he doesn’t believe it exists at all?
Isn’t it just his luck, that he doesn’t believe that fated Omega for him exists
either?
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Oh, Coulson thinks when he sees Clint for the first time in Nick’s office on
board the Helicarrier, it’s you, the one I never thought could exist. But you
do. You do.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Coulson hates feeling helpless like he is now, watching Clint weakly thrashing
about on their bed in the throes of another vicious nightmare. It’s been two
weeks since Clint was discharged from the med bay and permitted to return to
their apartment in Brooklyn for further recuperation. Two weeks, and almost
every night, Clint dreams of the assault and relives it with frightening
severity.
He wants so badly to console Clint, to hold his mate close to him and stroke
his hair and face and tell him everything’s going to be all right again. But
they’ve learned the painful way - a solid punch to Coulson’s face the first
night Clint was back here - that Clint can’t control what he does when he’s
still ensnared in a nightmare, that Clint physically lashes out if he’s
touched.
So he watches and he waits beside Clint on the bed. He says his mate’s name and
calmly, firmly tells Clint that he’s safe and that he has to wake up as Clint
claws ineffectively at the sheets and lets out heart-wrenching gasps of terror.
Clint is so pale that his skin is almost gray. His scent has a sickly tinge to
it, made stronger by fear and panic. His longer-than-usual blond hair is matted
with sweat that also soak large patches on a white t-shirt and make Clint’s
skin shine in the warm illumination of their bedside lamps.
Coulson’s scent glands are pumping out as much pheromones to calm Clint down as
they can. He bends down as near to Clint’s ear as he can and says Clint’s name
again.
“Clint. You’re safe, sweetheart. You’re with me and you’re safe. You’re only
dreaming.”
He has to withdraw to his side of the bed to stop himself from touching Clint.
He swallows hard when he sees that Clint is still immersed in the nightmare,
whimpering words that sound like stop and no and don’t.
Fuck this. If Clint punches him again, he doesn’t care. He can’t stand this. He
won’t let his mate suffer a second longer.
“Clint.” Coulson reaches out to caress Clint’s stubbly cheek with the back of
his fingers. “Clint, wake up.”
The instant their skin touch, Clint goes rigid. Clint’s eyes snap open and dart
all over the room, halting on him, staring at him as if Clint isn’t sure
whether he’s real or not while still hyperventilating.
“Hey, you,” Coulson murmurs, smiling softly as best he can, caressing Clint’s
cheek over and over. “Welcome back.”
It seems to take forever for Clint’s breaths to slow down and deepen. Coulson
sees Clint’s lips work soundlessly for a few seconds, perhaps getting ready to
fire a quip that’ll fracture the taut atmosphere and let Clint don his macho,
wisecracking, nothing-can-hurt-me mask again. (It’s a mask Clint’s worn for
months now, worn so expertly that no one outside of this room knows it isn’t
Clint’s true face, that it never was.)
“Do you know who I am? Where you are?”
Clint blinks, then says with a gravelly voice, “Phil. Home.”
The two words fracture the mask Coulson is wearing, instead. He barely holds it
together as Clint hurls himself into his embrace and almost crushes his ribs
with both arms and tangles their legs. He can’t hug his mate as fervently, not
with Clint still healing from his injuries and he runs his fingers through
Clint’s damp hair and purrs deep from his chest, knowing the rumbling sound and
vibrations will settle Clint even more.
Oh, tonight’s nightmare must have been horrific for Clint to openly seek solace
from him like this.
“Why?” Clint asks wetly against his neck. “Why?”
Coulson has a multitude of answers to that:
Because life isn’t fair.
Because this fucked up world is full of fucked up people, and neither gives a
damn about the innocent and the good.
Because I wasn’t there when those two fucked up bastards that you trusted as
your mentors assaulted you in that motel room long ago and robbed you of your
remaining innocence.
Because I wasn’t fast enough when one of them came back and robbed us of the
future we both wanted after all.
Because I failed you.
What he says, however, is, “Sshh, don’t torture yourself wondering why. Maybe
there’s no answer at all. Maybe the only answer is for us to stay united and
move on and not look back.”
He hates himself for the hypocritical bullshit (even though he knows it’s what
Clint needs to hear right now). He knows precisely what the answer is to ending
Clint’s nightmares once and for all, to allowing them to really move on and
never look back.
He knows now what he has to do.
Clint merely squirms closer to him, rubbing a damp face against his shoulder.
He shuts his eyes and purrs more as the sickly tinge fades away from Clint’s
scent that gradually restores itself to its familiar crisp and sweet quality.
He strokes the back of Clint’s neck, strokes and presses on the bonding gland
in Clint’s shoulder, sensing with his fingertips the raised tissue that marks
his mating bite there.
Yes. Tomorrow, he’ll get the equipment he needs. (He can easily erase all
records of their removal from inventory with no questions asked, being second
after Nick in SHIELD’s hierarchy of power.) He’ll go to the warehouse and
secure it. Clean up and prepare its soundproofed, underground cell. Then he has
to talk to Nick, but he already knows what Nick will say. He knows Nick will
have his back, especially in this. He’ll make things right again.
For Clint, he’ll do whatever it takes to make things right again. Even if it
means becoming a monster himself.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Clint discovers his Omega status when he’s thirteen years old and already in
the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders, abandoned by his parents when Pop got
drunk and killed himself and Ma in that car accident, abandoned by Barney when
they ran away from the orphanage and Barney realized there’s a whole world out
there to explore without a little brother to drag him down. He has yet to be
taken under the Swordsman’s wing at this point nor Trick Shot’s, but in
hindsight, knowing what fucked up Alphas they were even then, it’s a damn good
thing.
He’s alone for once in the tiny caravan he has to share with Anastasia the
Fortune Teller (but she’s a really nice Beta and like the grandma he never
had). He’s curled up on his bunk when he’s suddenly soaked between his legs
with something warm and thick and slick. He won’t know for months yet that the
stuff is called slick, that all Omegas who hit puberty will produce it whenever
they’re sexually aroused, even more when they’re in heat. He won’t know for
months yet either about heats, about how it can almost drive some Omegas insane
if they aren’t fucked by an Alpha throughout one. (Thank fucking fuck for heat
suppressants, is what he can say now.)
The slick soaks his jeans so quickly that he scrambles off the bunk in a mess
of long, lean limbs from the shock of it. He has enough presence of mind to
lock the caravan’s wooden door (and Anastasia won’t be back for ages from the
card games at the Horse Master’s caravan anyway).
“What the hell?” he says to himself, unzipping his jeans and shoving them down
to his knees. “Wha?”
For a second, he’s terrified that he’s going to see blood and that he’s dying
or something. But no, it’s just this translucent, shiny stuff that’s … coming
out of his ass.
He slides his right hand between his legs. His fingers encounter more of the
slick stuff coating the back of his balls and his asshole and jeez, there’s so
much of it and it smells sweet somehow and … whoa. Whoa.
“Oh my god,” he whispers as he gingerly touches his hole with his fingertips.
He shudders from head to toe at how damn good it feels just to do that, to rub
his fingers across it again and again and spread the slick stuff in the crack
of his ass. It’s hardly the first time he’s played with his hole. In fact, he
usually does so when he jerks off since it feels just as good. But this time …
his hole’s never felt like this before. Like the slightest touch sends jolts of
electrifying pleasure through his whole body. Like it’s aching to be filled
with something big and hot and long . Like it hurts if he doesn’t fill it up
now, with something, anything -
He pushes one finger in and it enters him to the last knuckle easily in one
slide. The pleasure from that strikes him so hard that he tumbles back onto his
bunk on shaky knees and free hand, his other hand still between his thighs. He
is so glad that he can stay silent while jerking off and coming, because the
expanding pleasure of pushing in two more fingers, of thrusting them in and out
of his slick, snug hole is beyond his ability for his quaking body to contain
for long.
The pleasure explodes deep in his hole when his fingers rub hard across a
sensitive, spongy bump (that he’ll learn later is his prostate, also known as
That Magical Spot That Makes Him Come Like Krakatoa). For the first time in his
life, he comes without touching his cock once, his fingers shoved deep inside
himself, his mouth open wide in a soundless scream.
He will never be the same again after that night, after learning how to
pleasure himself so acutely, after learning about dildos and using knotted ones
to help him get through heats before getting his hands on suppressants.
He will never be the same again after that night, too, after learning that
people you trusted to protect you, to be your friend can turn on you in a
heartbeat when you least expect it. That people are just monsters in human-
shaped bodies who’ll willingly devour their own kind when they can get away
with it.
Sometimes, when he dares to think about that seedy motel room in Iowa again, he
thinks that maybe there were three people who’d died in there instead of one.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Only after a year - after dashing out of the hospital, hot-wiring a car,
getting the fuck out of the circus and out of Waverly before those cops
returned and never looking back, never looking back - does Clint break down
into piercing sobs and unheard howls of anguish, curled up on yet another seedy
motel room floor, still tasting hot blood in his mouth and feeling tender skin
and flesh rend asunder beneath his fingers.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
“Heard Barton’s gonna join the Hunt this year,” Agent Williams says through the
small speakers on Coulson’s desk, and that’s all Coulson needs to hear for his
whole attention to be focused on the security video feed running on the
transparent projected screen over his desk and in front of him.
Agent Williams, Nguyen and Ramirez, all junior agents in line for a promotion
soon, are in one of the many break rooms scattered throughout the numerous
floors of the Helicarrier’s staff offices. Williams is pouring himself a mug of
coffee while Nguyen and Ramirez are seated at a square table with their own
mugs of coffee. The camera observing them is well-hidden and located in the
ceiling in a corner of the room, and so the only face visible to Coulson right
now is Ramirez’s.
Ramirez is an Alpha. And from the look of Ramirez’s face at Williams’ casual
comment, the agent is quite pleased about Clint’s participation in the Hunt
this year.
Alone in his office like he is, Coulson doesn’t bother to hide his derisive
snort. This little brat thinks he can take on an Omega like Clint ? During the
Hunt?
Kids these days are getting more and more arrogant, it seems.
“No kidding? Where’d you hear that?” Ramirez asks, eyes lit up with eagerness
even in the grainy quality of the video feed.
“Barton told Myers and Singh when they were talking about it last week. Seemed
pretty hyped to be in it, and Myers got the vibe that Barton didn’t mind if
everybody knew it.”
“Damn. He’s pretty hot. Have you seen his ass?”
Williams, a Beta, lets out what sounds like a benevolent snort. Coulson gets
why heterosexual Betas like him don’t understand the appeal of an Omega to
Alphas. Omegas are rare enough as it is in this world, much less unmated ones
who’ve long matured and are as exquisite as Clint.
Well, then. There’s going to be more competition to deal with than Coulson
expected.
Crushing them all beneath his heel in his Chase after Clint will be divine.
“Hey,” Nguyen says. “I … found out some things about the guy from a friend.”
“Yeah?” Ramirez says.
“Yeah. Old cop in Iowa. He ran into Barton almost twenty years ago during a
homicide investigation. Although, technically, he doesn’t know it was Barton.
Said it was one of the most disturbing cases he ever handled in his career.”
Ramirez and Williams gaze at the other Beta in the room. So does Coulson,
drumming the fingers of his right hand on his desk.
“Did you guys know Barton used to be in a circus? That he was some kinda kid
prodigy with a bow and arrows and had his own act for a while? The Carson
Carnival of Traveling Wonders?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I remember a circus like that,” Ramirez says, leaning forward with
his forearms on the table. “Didn’t know Barton was a performer in it though.”
“Well, nobody would. He used a fake name the whole time he was with the circus,
and I don’t mean his stage name.”
“‘One of the most disturbing cases’, huh?” Williams says. “What’s that about?”
Nguyen takes a sip of his coffee.
“Word was, he had two mentors in that circus. One was a French guy who
specialized in bladed weapons, and the other guy’s gig was archery. And yeah,
he was the guy who taught Barton that.” Nguyen pauses a moment, then says with
a quieter voice, “So this was back in the 90s, right? One night my friend gets
called over to this grubby motel near the circus when it was in town. The
owner, this old lady, is fucking hysterical and scared out of her mind and can
barely tell my friend what the fuck happened apart from some kinda crazy,
violent shit going down in one of the rooms. She was a Beta so my friend can’t
even calm her down with his Alpha hormones.
“When he and his partner charge into the room, they see blood everywhere , like
a slaughter house. All over the walls and the carpet. Even the ceiling . They
see this blond, half-naked kid curled up into a ball as far away as possible
from the corpse of a huge Alpha on the bed with his throat ripped out. Kid’s
just drenched in blood and shivering. He’s bruised all over and has defensive
wounds on his arms. Obvious the other guy attacked him and he’d been fighting
for his life.”
Ramirez and Williams are silent, listening intently with grim eyes.
“So the two cops think that’s it, right? Attacker’s down and dead, and the
victim’s still alive. Then my friend looks down at the floor at his feet and he
…” Nguyen pauses again, longer this time. “He looks down and he sees a torn off
face. Right there on the carpet like some kinda gory Halloween mask. And he
sniffs the air, and he realizes there was another guy involved but the other
guy’s gone, which means he’s still alive and on the run and missing his face.”
“Jesus fuck,” Ramirez mumbles.
“Yeah,” Williams says, mouth agape, coffee in hand forgotten. “Fuck.”
“Yeah. After other cops, the ME and an ambulance arrive, they take the poor kid
to the hospital and ID the dead guy as the guy with the archery act in the
circus. His stage name was … Trick Shot? Something like that. Anyway, after the
kid’s treated and in recovery, they get some idea of what happened in that
room. Kid’s cagey and nervous. Not his first brush with the authorities. Kid
won’t ID the guys, but tells them the guys were Alphas he knew for years. That
they went drinking ‘cause he’d just turned eighteen and was back in his home
town and he wanted to celebrate, you know? The two guys wanted to celebrate
too. Just not the way he expected.
“Kid says they drugged him with something. Tried to force him into heat, he
thinks, but it didn’t work ‘cause of his suppressants and he tried to fight
them off. They got violent, tried to rape him and it became a kill-or-die
situation. He ripped out one guy’s throat with his teeth. Tore off the other
guy’s face with his claws. Says that’s all he remembers.”
Ramirez and Williams glance at each other. Then Ramirez sits back while
Williams rubs one hand over his mouth, both aghast.
Coulson, watching and listening like an omnipresent deity, feels light-headed
and sick to his stomach. He presses his hands hard and flat on his desk, for
the alternative is to let his unsheathed claws score deep grooves into its
polished surface.
Curiosity kills the cat.
It seems it can also kill top-level agents who decide to (furtively) access
security camera feeds and program (without Nick’s permission but that’s nothing
new) a regular scan of them for any mention of his asset (his Omega, his fated
mate, his).
“That is some fucked up shit, Dennis,” Ramirez mutters, shaking his head.
“No shit,” Nguyen says after letting out a snort. “Imagine a guy with no face
running around in the middle of the night in a small Midwestern town scaring
the hell outta people! The cops never found him despite him missing his goddamn
face . And since the kid gave them a fake ID and vamoosed from the hospital and
the circus before they could question him again, they couldn’t find him either.
They had to confirm ID of the other guy using DNA from what was, uh, left
behind.”
“He was the French guy?” Williams asks.
“Yeah. He was known as the Swordsman, if I remember right. The case was all
over the local news for a while. After the cops found out the kid was a
performer in the circus too, the circus wasn’t allowed to leave until everybody
was questioned. A whole lotta performers and crew members ran anyway. The cops
had a fucking field day catching and arresting more criminals who’d used the
circus as a hideout. And the kid was never named since it was confirmed he was
actually still a minor.” Nguyen takes another sip of coffee. “I didn’t put the
two and two together until Barton mentioned being in a circus when he was a kid
and being from Iowa. I mean, how many blond, arrow-shooting, Omega circus
prodigies from Iowa could there be, right?”
Ramirez leans forward again, this time with a smirk.
“Hey. Does Barton know that you know?”
“Hell no, of course he doesn’t! I don’t wanna die, man.”
The three agents crack up with low laughter edged with lingering uneasiness.
The sound crackles for an instant through the speakers on Coulson’s desk, loud
in the absolute silence in Coulson’s office.
“You told anyone else?” Williams asks. “You gonna tell anyone else?”
“No and no. And you two assholes better not either. I’m just guessing that that
kid was Barton, all right? For obviousreasons, I’m never going to verify it.”
Nguyen sighs heavily. “I just … wanted to get it off my chest.”
“Wise decision. I hear Barton and Coulson are tight. Real tight.”
“Oohshit, Dennis, you in trouble now,” Ramirez says while snickering.
Coulson sees Nguyen’s head tilt back for a moment. From Ramirez’s amused
reaction, he assumes Nguyen rolled his eyes.
“After something like that ... damn. You gotta give Barton major props for
winning a fight against two Alphas while drugged up. Especially if those guys
had been high on their rut pheromones.” Williams, standing all this time, leans
back against the counter with his mug of coffee still in hand. “Still, why’s he
joining the Hunt? You’d think thelastthing he’d want is to be claimed by an
Alpha.”
Ramirez shrugs and says, “Who knows. Maybe he’s gotten over what happened and
wants an Alpha mate now. You’d be surprised at how an Omega’s heats can make
them so desperate.” He smirks again, wider and edged with something dark. “I
bet Barton’s cool act is just that, an act. I bet that when he goes into heat,
he turns into some wildcat who begs all pretty for Alpha cock to fill his big
mouth and ass.”
Coulson doesn’t care that he’s scored at least one deep groove into the surface
of his desk now. Ah yes, important mental note: Take Agent Ramirez down a peg
or ten during the Hunt. Preferably with his claws reducing that insolent tongue
to bloody shreds.
“Holy fuck, Georgie.” Williams let out an appalled laugh. “You make me glad to
not be an Alpha.”
“Hah! I feel sorry for you that you’re not! You got no idea what you’re missing
out, chasing and fucking Omegas who think your cock is their entire universe.”
Williams’ expression goes deadpan.
“So you still wanna go after him, huh? He might just rip your face off. Unless,
you know, that’s your thing.”
“Oh, fuck off, Jimmy.”
The three junior agents laugh again, but Coulson isn’t listening to their
gossiping anymore. He’s seeing in his mind a blood-splattered, traumatized
teenager with spiky, blond hair and stark blue eyes curled up into a ball in a
grisly murder scene, his innocence lost forever. He’s seeing Clint (the Clint
he knows, the Clint he’ll love for all of his life) in the same state and pose,
frozen in that moment in time, trapped there no matter how far he’s run, how
much he’s grown.
Now, now he understands why Clint is still unmated after all this time.
And how did SHIELD miss this ghastly part of Clint’s past in their background
check? How could Clint’s previous handlers not know about this if they’d done
their jobs right?
(Coulson ignores his brain telling him that he hadn’t known about it either
until now. That he is Clint’s handler too and that handlers work with what
they’ve got now and not with what’s buried in the past but he’s angry, he is
angry and he wants blood.)
Before the week is over, heads are going to roll.
Before the following years are over, Coulson will ensure that he makes the most
damned one of all do just that.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
“I told McKinney to keep it off my record, after he found out about it,” Clint
says quietly, carefully, studying his beloved mate’s face with the large,
vulnerable eyes of a boy. “It was bad shit I wanted to put behind me forever,
Phil, and I didn’t want it to … stain the new life I got with SHIELD. At first
McKinney was gonna tell Fury, but since it was Fury who wanted me in SHIELD, he
was gonna tell you instead and I … I begged him not to. And he didn’t.”
Phil gazes back at him with an outwardly placid expression, stroking the side
of his neck with gentle fingers.
He senses the storm brewing behind Phil’s big blue eyes, anyway. Phil’s scent
is developing that recognizable, sharp hint of ire too (but it’s never directed
at him, never).
“And what did McKinney gain by doing this for you?” Phil asks quietly, oh so
carefully.
Phil may as well have bared his fangs and snarled an oath to dismember McKinney
for making him beg for anything. Phil’s really protective of him like that,
although it only shows whenever they’re alone, when they’re just Phil and Clint
here in their apartment and not Agent Coulson and Hawkeye on a mission. He’d be
a liar if he said it doesn’t turn him on like crazy. It’s nice to be loved so
much. (It’s nice to be loved at all.)
His eyes crinkle with a smidgen of amusement and a whole lot of affection as he
lifts his right hand to touch Phil’s cheek.
“Nothing,” Clint murmurs, his slight smile turning bittersweet. “Except maybe a
few nightmares of his own.”
Phil angles his head at that. Clint senses the storm in him abate in the light
of curiosity, feels his fingers going still.
“At the time, he said he had an Omega kid almost my age. He said if his kid had
gone through what I did, he would hunt down her attackers to the end of the
world and make them pay with blood. Then bury them and wait for time to erase
them completely from existence.”
After a minute, Phil begins stroking the side of his neck once more.
“Well. I can relate to that,” Phil says, straight-faced, and Clint lets out a
huff of laughter and leans forward to touch their foreheads together. He shuts
his eyes.
“Hey, Phil?”
“Hm?”
“Promise me you won’t do all that?”
Again, Phil’s fingers go motionless against his neck.
“Why?”
With his eyes still shut, Clint bunts his forehead against Phil’s and rubs his
mate’s broad, sturdy chest with both hands. He sighs when Phil envelops his
shoulders and upper back with sinewy arms that have held him close for so many
nights now (and for the rest of their lives and beyond, if he has it his way).
“I don’t want you to turn into them,” he whispers. “I don’t wanna lose you.”
When he thinks back to this hushed, pellucid afternoon in their apartment’s
living room in the years to come, he remembers most the press of Phil’s soft,
open lips to his, the glide of Phil’s tongue into his mouth. He remembers
Phil’s hands guiding him onto his back on the couch, stripping each item of
clothing from his body until he’s naked and writhing under Phil’s relentless
kisses and caresses. He remembers Phil thrusting into him to the hilt in one
motion, going in so easy and good from the slick and he remembers arching off
the cushions and crying out and coming and coming around Phil’s ample knot, his
eyes squeezed shut and his heart burst open.
But he doesn’t remember Phil saying you won’t lose me, you won’t.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
What Coulson will remember most after Clint awakens in the Helicarrier’s
medical bay, after hours-long emergency surgery and a five-day coma, gripping
Clint’s hand like a limp lifeline, are the excruciating, strident gasps of
agony spilling from Clint’s gaping mouth while Clint is raised to the heavens
as a gutted sacrifice by a man.
A man with the face of a monster but just a man, just like him. A man who can
bleed. A man who can suffer.
A man who can die.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
The steel needles are the first to wrench a scream out of the piece of shit
scumbag tied to the bolted down metal chair, going deep as they do under grimy
fingernails.
“Your hands were very important to you, weren’t they, Duquesne?” Coulson says
nonchalantly as he pushes another needle under the nail of his prisoner’s right
forefinger with gloved hands. “Being the Swordsman and all.”
He doesn’t care that Duquesne is still screaming, still struggling to free
himself from the metal restraints around his neck, midriff, biceps, wrists and
shins. Nick did an excellent job of soundproofing the cell. No one outside of
it will hear anything.
“Clint’s hands are very important to him too, being a master archer and all.
Oh, you didn’t know him as Clint, did you? No, he called himself Jeremy back
then. He was smart even then, to use a false identity when he had to mingle
with the likes of you.”
Coulson sits back on his rolling chair to admire the numerous needles sticking
out of the ends of Duquesne’s fingers like slim, silver parodies of claws. He
still has dozens more needles in the top tray of the metal kitchen cart next to
him, but perhaps it’s time for something more … permanent.
“No, I won’t stop,” he says as nonchalantly, after Duquesne pants and groans
and has the nerve to try speaking to him again. “Not until you’ve suffered for
every second of pain you inflicted on my mate.”
He rummages around in the second tray of the kitchen cart until his hand lands
on what he’s seeking. He brings out the object in question, his face as aloof
as it was hours ago when he dragged down this sorry excuse for a human being
from the van that’s still parked aboveground inside the warehouse.
“Did you know he told me everything that you did to him, from the day you met
each other in the circus?” he says, examining the large combination pliers in
his hand by holding it up in the air in front of his face. “Everything that
hurt him and broke him, in as much detail as possible? No?”
Duquesne’s beady, black eyes are also staring at the large combination pliers.
“Well. He did.” Coulson lowers the pliers and grips the third finger of
Duquesne’s right hand with his free hand. “And I have so much time, so many
things for you to experience. So don’t be too hasty to die on me, hm?”
He hears Duquesne’s breaths hasten as he squeezes the finger between the
pliers’ jaws until they’re between its sharp cutters.
He blinks, and he hears Clint’s excruciating, strident gasps of agony, hears
the spatter of Clint’s blood upon barren ground like rain from Clint’s ripped
open belly.
He blinks again, and he hears once more Duquesne snarling those fucking words
up at Clint.
How do you think he’ll feel, knowing that he’s the reason you’re dying now?
Coulson’s vision is engulfed in red. He squeezes the pliers’ handles and with a
sickening crunch, Duquesne’s severed finger falls off onto the cement floor. He
silently goes for the next finger and severs it as well, ignoring Duquesne’s
even more shrill screaming. He is ruthless and methodical with each squeeze of
the pliers’ handles.
He halts only after all of Duquesne’s fingers are on the floor, fleshy and
bloody parodies of dead, impaled worms.
He takes out a butcher’s meat saw next.
Eventually, Duquesne stops screaming.
Coulson stares down at the severed right forearm in his grasp with a stoic
visage. It’s peculiar how a mobile limb that was once attached to a living
creature can instantly become nothing more than a mass of meat and bone once
detached.
At least this particular mass of flesh and bone will never, ever harm another
person again. (Never harm Clint again, never.)
As he chucks the forearm aside, a now weakened and delirious Duquesne lets out
a wretched moan, returning to consciousness after blacking out from him
cauterizing the stump with a blowtorch. The acrid stench of burnt flesh still
permeates the stuffy air of the cell.
He’s sitting face to face with Duquesne when Duquesne finally manages to focus
those beady, black eyes on him.
The satisfaction he feels when he sees the fear in those eyes is far from
minuscule.
“What … are you?” Duquesne whispers.
As if from afar, Coulson feels his lips quirk up. Whatever expression he has on
his face now, it’s enough to make Duquesne recoil from him, to make Duquesne
whine low like a dog.
“You can’t tell?” Coulson says so very nonchalantly. “Today, I’m just a mirror.
Do you like what you see?”
Duquesne never does give him an answer, but he doesn’t mind. He already knows
what it is.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
The fourth Alpha to attempt to claim Clint is almost adorable in his
enthusiasm. It takes Clint less than five seconds to throw the dark-haired,
brawny Alpha kid down onto the leaf-strewn ground and keep him down.
“You wanna keep going with this?” Clint asks coolly, one hand on the back of
the kid’s neck and one knee digging into the kid’s lower back. “My advice would
be ‘no’.”
“I yield,” the kid wisely gasps.
“Good boy.”
The kid scrambles away to a safe distance from him the moment he lets go, and
he can’t help but be amused when the kid turns around and glances at him with
an expression of flagrant desire mixed with regret. Kid knew he never had a
chance, but he gave it a shot anyway. Clint has to give some kudos for that.
Certainly with the reputation he knows he’s got among the rookies as the
legendary Hawkeye, specialist agent with a hundred-percent successful mission
record and the only agent in SHIELD history to have lasted beyond six months as
the equally legendary Agent Phil Coulson’s asset.
He’s especially proud of that last bit. It’s just more proof to him that he and
Phil fit together, like a bow and arrow in war.
After tonight, everyone will know how true that is.
He doesn’t bother watching the Alpha kid leave. He kneels on the ground and
gazes up at the starlit sky, at the full moon hanging low and bone-white. The
moon is bright enough that it’s illuminating the verdant leaves and thick
trunks of the towering trees surrounding him. He feels assembled, whole as he
gazes upon it, as if he belongs here in the wilderness, naked from the waist up
and garbed in black tactical pants and leather boots, having cast aside his
person-suit. He’s ravenous for one particular Alpha to hunt him and claim him
tonight.
He’s already fought off three other Alphas, but he’ll gladly fight off as many
others until that one Alpha makes his appearance. (Please let it be soon.) He’s
only had to flash his fangs and claws once, against Cooper who he’s worked with
on a mission before, slashing at Cooper’s face when Cooper pinned him to the
ground on his back and tried yanking off his pants.
It’s fucking weird how he can wake up screaming in terror from a nightmare
about that night in that seedy Waverly motel and yet not feel any of that
terror at all when he’s being similarly attacked in reality. His shrink once
mentioned that this is something called compartmentalization, that he can
separate different streams of thought and even shove certain ones into locked
boxes that stay locked in the darkest recesses of his mind. Whatever it’s
called, it’s the reason he can be the SHIELD specialist agent he is today, the
reason he hasn’t already gone insane.
Cooper is very fortunate, indeed, that he didn’t just burrow his claws in and
swipe.
He arches and bares his neck, his arms spread at his sides. He laughs
noiselessly to himself. He can smell at least three new Alphas lurking in the
bushes all around him, watching him, lusting after him. He hasn’t even produced
any slick yet -
All thought flees from his brain when an ear-splitting, terrifying roar
reverberates throughout the forests and silences every living creature in them.
He’s heard his share of Alpha roars in his time during previous Hunts, but none
have ever sounded so powerful, so enthralling. None have ever managed to make
him gush with slick until his pants are wet.
But then, considering who that roar belongs to, he would have been surprised if
he hadn’t gushed slick out like he just did.
“There you are,” Clint says, grinning, sniffing the air and inhaling that rich,
earthy, virile Alpha scent whose owner he’s fantasized about so many times in
the past six months.
Phil is close. And getting closer, closer -
The crush of twigs and leaves under leather soles is the only warning Clint
gets before a familiar and yet utterly extraordinary figure bounds into view,
landing on both feet into an elegant crouch a dozen feet in front of him. Clint
has to blink hard to realize that the also half-naked, muscled, supreme Alpha
sex god in identical tactical pants and boots he’s gaping at is Phil.
Clint’s eyes widen as Phil, with one hand on the ground between spread thighs,
slowly lifts his head to stare at him with huge, unblinking eyes that almost
glow in the dimness of night. Iridescent moonlight delineates the impressive
contours and swells of Phil’s broad shoulders and tensed arms. Phil’s chest is
just as impressive, flat and firm, with flat, small nipples, dusted with curls
as dark as the thin hair on Phil’s head. Fuck, Phil even has rippled abs that
rival his and Clint knows that Phil has to regularly work out too to stay in
prime physical condition but oh fuck, he never thought that underneath those
tailored suits, Phil would be so goddamn hot and magnificent and perfect.
Ooh fuck, Phil even has his claws and fangs out.
Clint feels no shame whatsoever as more slick gushes out of his hole to soak
his pants. Phil has yet to do anything other than look at him, and already he’s
battling the excessive impulse to sprawl on his back and spread his legs and
have Phil fuck him right then and there.
No. No, that wouldn’t be fair to both of them. They deserve the thrill of the
Chase. Phil has to earn the right to be his Alpha, his mate (and oh god, just
the thought of that is making his hunger for Phil’s knot radiate through him),
and he has to give it all he’s got to evade capture so that there’s no doubt in
the eyes of society that Phil is worthy of him. (Phil doesn’t need to prove
anything to him, not after all the missions they’ve been on together, not after
all the times Phil’s saved him and cared for him as only the finest Alpha can.)
Oh yeah, they’re going to have the fucking time of their lives tonight.
Clint bites his lower lip as he watches Phil blatantly sniff the air and smell
his potent Omegan pheromones and slick. Oh yeah, oh yeah, if the rumbling,
pleased growl coming from Phil is any indication, Phil really likes how he
smells.
They stare at each other for precious seconds, their eyes wide and unblinking,
unwilling to forfeit even a microsecond of the enticing sight of each other.
(To remember each other like this, to remember how right they’ve always been
and will always be, how fated they were to meet and fall in love with each
other and stay together.)
Then, the three Alphas lurking in the bushes charge into the open at Phil. They
barrel into him from different directions, forcing him away from Clint with
raucous growls and fangs all out.
Clint springs into a pouncing position on all fours, his own fangs bared in a
snarl of outrage. There are no official rules of the Hunt for Alphas other than
to not permanently injure or kill other participants. There are, however, many
more unwritten ones and one of them is that ganging up on one Alpha with other
Alphas is bad form. The lowest. The choice made by the weak.
Clint needs not worry, though.
In a matter of minutes, Phil has flung one blond Alpha against a tree trunk,
knocked out another twice his size with a brutal right hook to the head and is
now shoving the third, dark-haired Alpha face down into the ground with one
hand on the back of the Alpha’s neck and the other twisting the Alpha’s left
arm at a tortuous angle. Clint almost grimaces at the yowls of pain coming from
the downed Alpha (who he’ll find out later is a junior agent called Ramirez)
when Phil yanks harder on said left arm.
And no, he feels no shame whatsoever about his hole gushing even more slick as
Phil bends down to snarl loud and aggressively near the Alpha’s ear, placing
sharp, glinting fangs so near to a vulnerable neck and its hammering pulse.
“I yield, I yield,” he hears the Alpha whine into dead leaves.
Phil doesn’t let go.
Clint, in a more relaxed pose now, tilts his head to one side and continues to
observe with large eyes and a curious expression. Why isn’t Phil letting the
other Alpha go? Does Phil want to fight him some more? Hurt him?
(Weeks from now, when they’re in bed in Phil’s apartment become theirs, Phil
will tell him about what Ramirez had said about his mouth and ass. Phil will
tell him about how he’d fantasized about ripping out Ramirez’s tongue with his
claws for days afterward, and Phil will be mortified about it and Clint will
chuckle and kiss Phil and tell his red-faced mate how sweet he is.)
Again, Clint’s eyes widen when Phil lifts his head to gaze at him. His breath
snags in his throat when he realizes that Phil isn’t letting go because Phil …
is waiting for his permission to do it.
Holy shit, and here he thought he can’t possibly be more turned on.
He nods once. It’s enough for Phil who finally releases the poor, whimpering
Alpha from his iron grip. Like the Alpha Clint had taken down earlier, this
Alpha swiftly scampers away. Unlike the other Alpha, he doesn’t even glance
back and vanishes into the shadows, leaving Clint and Phil alone with two
unconscious Alphas.
The unconscious Alphas may as well not be there at all, staring at each other
so ardently like Clint is at Phil and Phil at him.
“Mine,” Phil growls out.
If Clint sees Phil every day for the rest of their lives, he will still
remember the possessiveness, the devotion in Phil’s voice and Phil’s eyes as
vividly as he does right now.
He crouches on all fours, ready to sprint away. He keeps his eyes locked to
Phil’s as he deliberately spreads his thighs and arches his back. He can
pinpoint the instant Phil gets an even stronger whiff of his pheromones and
slick, of his pungent desire for Phil when Phil’s eyes widen and blaze, when
Phil curls up his upper lip and growls again.
“I’m yours,” Clint rasps, flaunting his own fangs in a wicked grin. “If you can
catch me.”
He runs.
He laughs with joy as he dashes through the forest, vaulting over gnarled tree
roots and springing off tree trunks, heedless of the noise he’s making that’s
giving Phil an easy lock on him. Phil isn’t bothering to hide the noise he’s
making either, racing after him with quick, heavy strides.
Phil catches up to him soon enough and attempts to tackle him from behind. He
manages to swivel around and swing a fist at Phil’s face, a move he knows Phil
will easily deflect. Phil blocks it with a forearm while going for a low punch
in the belly, a move he easily deflects. He narrowly avoids getting chopped in
the neck while Phil blocks his jab at Phil’s ribs. They exchange many more fast
punches and kicks like that, always giving the other that microsecond to
intercept a strike before it actually lands, testing each other’s strength and
endurance without hurting each other.
It’s so fucking hot to Clint that he thinks maybe this should be their foreplay
every time they have sex. (Oh god, oh yes, Phil is going to fuck and claimhim
soon.)
After delivering a high kick at Phil’s face that makes Phil leap back, he
sprints away again into the forest, laughing even more joyously. He doesn’t
give a damn that his pants are making squishing sounds from all the slick
steeping it, that he’s only half-heartedly running away now, struggling with
the growing urge to just go on his knees and hands and let Phil take him
already.
He wants Phil so much, so bad, and he’s tired of waiting, of living another
second without Phil deep inside him and filling him up until there’s no more
emptiness in him.
He wants Phil now.
When Phil tackles him this time, he goes down on his back with Phil on top of
him and between his spread legs. (In retrospect, he should have teased Phil for
choosing a secluded spot with a freaking pile of leaves to cushion their fall,
but his beloved mate is a softie like that where he’s concerned.) He doesn’t
even get winded, but he does stay still for the seconds it takes for Phil to
tug his arms up over his head and hold him down by the wrists. He puts up a
very convincing fight, snarling up at Phil and tensing his stretched arms
(because he knows how good they look like this and he knows how often Phil
glances at them whenever he’s wearing his Hawkeye outfit) and bowing up his
back (because he knows how good his torso looks too, tautened and displayed
like this for Phil).
Phil also snarls down at him, leaning down until their noses are grazing.
They’re still growling as their noses skim against each other, as they rub
their noses and foreheads against each other. Their growling tapers down to
rumbling purrs as Phil nips him on his upper lip, then his lower one, as he
nips Phil’s lips right back. He gasps when Phil nips his chin and along his
lower jaw as well, up to his right earlobe that Phil then bites once.
Clint relaxes onto the leaves beneath him when Phil raises his head to gaze
down at him again. They stare into each other’s eyes, breathing softly against
each other’s parted lips. Phil purrs once more as he shifts his hands from
Clint’s wrists to Clint’s hands, entwining their fingers. They’re already
marking each other with their scents, mingling their pheromones, combining them
into a scent that will declare to all in range that they’re mated.
“You’ve earned me,” Clint rasps, still breathing through his tremoring, parted
lips, getting consumed by his need for Phil’s cock and knot. “Now claim me.”
The seconds Phil takes to tear open his tactical pants and shove them down to
mid-thigh feels like a tormenting eon to Clint. Phil isn’t wearing anything
under his pants and Clint isn’t ashamed at all about the high-pitched moan he
lets out at the sight of Phil’s long, erect, flushed, glorious cock framed by a
thatch of dark hair. It’s better than his fantasies, better and bigger and
thicker than anything he’d ever imagined. Phil’s cock is so hard that it smacks
against Phil’s belly, already leaking pre-come and the sight and delectable
smell of it is making Clint’s mouth water and his slick hole clench with lust.
He lets out another moan as Phil tears off his pants and exposes his own erect
cock and throbbing ass to Phil’s sight. His mind blanks out from the pleasure
as Phil pushes in three long, callused fingers into his slick-soaked,
quivering, desperate hole at once, opening him up, preparing him, massaging
that sweet spot in him that has him grappling at Phil’s arms and writhing on
the ground and moaning for Phil to pump him full of his fertile seed and breed
him.
He arches off the ground at Phil pulling out those long fingers. He gasps and
whines at Phil grabbing him and hauling him closer by the thighs, and when Phil
finally, finally thrusts that big, thick, sumptuous cock into his ass, all the
way to the hilt, he screams at the moon and comes on the spot, convulsing and
clamping so tight around his Alpha’s perfect cock, shooting ropes of his own
seed all over his heaving stomach and chest.
Phil lets out a spine-tingling sound that’s somewhere between a growl and a
roar. Phil slams his legs onto those broad shoulders and bends him double and
oh god, oh fuck, oh fuck, Phil is thrusting in and out of him with everything
he’s got, shoving in until their skin slap, pulling out until Phil’s almost
popping out then fucking in again, again and again and again. He’s not even in
heat (and won’t be for weeks yet if Dr. Chiew’s prognosis is correct) and
already he feels like he’s going mad, scratching at Phil’s back with his claws,
crying out brazenly with every thrust and gratified snarl that Phil makes.
“I’m going to fill you up until you burst,” Phil growls into his ear, almost
unrecognizable from his usual sedate, low voice. “Fill you up with my babies
and watch you swell so beautifully.”
Phil emphasizes his words with a thrust so ferocious and deep and good that
Clint feels it all the way up to his cervix. Clint screams and comes a second
time, convulsing even harder in Phil’s arms and around Phil’s huge, hot cock
that keeps plunging into him. He can feel the knot beginning to bulge at the
hilt of Phil’s cock now, every time Phil’s hips piston against his and oh, it’s
going to be massive and he isn’t sure if he can take it. (He can and he will.)
“I dreamed of this every night since I - I found out you were - aahh - gonna be
in the Hunt too,” Clint moans, his voice hoarse, his words slurred from his
multiple orgasms, his eyelids fluttering. “Dreamed of you. Fucking me. Knotting
me. Loving me.”
Phil presses their foreheads together as Phil’s thrusts start to stutter and go
erratic. Oh, Phil’s going to come in him soon and yet Phil is still aiming at
his needy prostate with each thrust, thinking about him, about his pleasure.
It’s driving him crazy with bliss, with love for this man.
“Just like I’m yours, you’re mine,” Clint rasps into Phil’s lips.
Then, he bares his throat and turns his head to the side, brandishing the
bonding gland in his shoulder. A bond between them won’t formally form yet
until Phil bites him and breaks his skin over the gland during a heat. For now,
a bruise of teethmarks will be enough to prove to others that Phil has claimed
him (forever, forever).
“Clint,” Phil groans out, like he’s dying from pleasure or elation or both.
Phil thrusts into him another time, then another, and then with one mighty
push, Phil’s knot also enters Clint’s quavering, raw hole, expanding even more
inside him and locking them together. Massive doesn’t even begin to describe
Phil’s knot, stretching his inner walls and hole so full that he feels like
passing out.
Clint shouts and thrashes when Phil bares his fangs and swoops down and bites
his shoulder over the bonding gland. It’s painful, but so worth it as Phil
comes inside him at the same time and gluts him with thick, hot seed, as Phil
then raises his upper body and his head to the night sky and roars his
dominance.
Clint comes a third time to the sensation of Phil’s bulbous knot pressing hard
against his prostate, of Phil’s spurting seed plugged up inside him, open-
mouthed and smiling.
He thinks maybe he actually dies this time from the surfeit of pleasure, if
only for a while.
When he comes to, blinking and limp and satiated, he’s still locked with Phil,
his spread legs now lowered to Phil’s sides and his arms stretched up over his
head and their hands linked again. Phil is tenderly kissing his eyelids, his
forehead, his nose, his cheeks, saving his lips for last. Phil is still so big
and hard inside him, twitching from time to time. Phil is now a heavy weight on
him, but he doesn’t mind it one bit, basking in the feeling of protection that
the warm, solid shield of Phil’s body offers him.
He kisses Phil back when his energy returns to him, now that their savage
mating is over (just for tonight) and he can enjoy the pliant softness of
Phil’s lips. They kiss and kiss until their lips are wet and puffy and they
need to breathe again.
“I still got my boots on,” Clint says, sounding like he’d been screaming at the
top of his voice until it broke. (Which he did.)
Phil reluctantly draws away from Clint’s face to regain his own breaths and
glances down at their still joined lower bodies with heated eyes. Phil’s lips
quirk up as Clint playfully nudges his ass (that gorgeous, gorgeous ass) with
the heel of one of said boots.
“I think I tore your pants too much for you to be able to wear them again,”
Phil says flippantly, stroking Clint’s sweat-damp hair away from his forehead.
“It’s fine. I can walk back to HQ naked,” Clint replies with a deadpan
expression, and for that, Phil bites him on the collarbone, an undisguised
retaliation for even thinking about letting other people see him nude.
Yeah. Even jealous Phil turns him on big time.
He is in so much trouble.
He grins and snickers, even after Phil nips him on the tip of his nose. He
feels so full, so good, so content. He feels like he can confront the whole
world and win. (He can, he can as long as Phil is with him.)
“Somebody else’s gotten lucky tonight too,” he says, listening to the distant
groans and unmistakable noises of avid sex wafting through the cool night air.
Phil is staring at him with those fierce, unblinking eyes, studying his face
from forehead to chin and back up as if Phil is committing every inch of it to
memory. The intense concentration on him should be freaking him out. Instead,
it simply makes his heart surge with immense affection. Makes him squeeze his
drenched inner walls around Phil’s knot, and they groan in unison and nuzzle
each other’s faces.
“None as much as me,” Phil growls low and soft (and oh man, if Phil talks like
this to him all the time, his brain’s going to be inept mush).
“You better believe it, sir.”
Clint grins up at his Alpha - his Alpha, his mate! - and stretches his upper
body and arms as much as he can across whorls of crushed, desiccated leaves,
exhibiting to Phil’s gaze what Phil possesses now. Phil drags large, warm hands
down the length of his arms then back up in soothing, rhythmic worship that
soon has Clint purring deep in his chest.
“I think at this point, you should call me Phil.”
Phil has one eyebrow raised, his face deadpan. Phil is also flexing his hips,
pressing his knot on Clint’s prostate and Clint huffs out a sound that’s an
amalgam of a laugh and moan.
“Been calling you that in my head from the moment we met.”
They gaze into each other’s eyes for a long while. Phil cups the left side of
Clint’s face with a hand, then presses and drags a thumb across Clint’s lower
lip. Clint doesn’t lick or bite it, riveted as he is by Phil’s eyes so focused
on him.
“Since then?” Phil murmurs, and Clint knows that Phil isn’t just asking about
Clint thinking of him with his first name all this time, that Phil is asking
about so much more.
“I think I was waiting for you to claim me from the moment I was born, Phil,”
he whispers, meaning every word.
“And I,” Phil replies, voice also a whisper, “am blessed to be claimed by you,
my beloved mate.”
 
 
 
 
***** ACT II *****
Chapter Notes
     It was suggested to me that I separated the detailed MPREG and
     childbirth parts of the story to its own chapter so readers who like
     A/B/O dynamics but not those things can still enjoy the story. So
     yep, Acts I and II can be read as a complete story if MPREG /
     childbirth is not your thing.
     While writing this Act, I listened to Pie_Jesu,_from_Requiem. A
     sublime song that I felt suited the overall mood for it.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
                                    ACT II:
 
And tonight, it’s Coulson’s turn to have a nightmare instead.
He’s back in that vast, dusty cave with its open ceiling. He sees Duquesne and
he sees Clint lifted up into the air with that knife in the belly and he sees
Clint’s blood, so much of it that it’s a crimson waterfall that perishes upon
barren ground.
He hears Clint’s excruciating, strident gasps of agony spilling from a wide
open mouth. He hears Duquesne’s rough breaths of excitement.
He aims his gun at Duquesne and fires it. Blood erupts from Duquesne’s right
shoulder, the one farther away from Clint. He can’t shoot Duquesne in the head
in case the bullet hits Clint too and Duquesne is turning around and glaring at
him with those black, beady, hateful eyes and Clint is plummeting to the ground
with his lower belly torn open and bleeding, bleeding and dying.
He lets out a resounding roar that rattles the heavens. He unsheathes his claws
and bares his fangs and Duquesne isn’t even fazed by the gunshot wound,
charging at him like he’s charging at Duquesne. The blotchy, bloated, hairless
skin over what was once Duquesne’s face wriggles with undead worms and demons
beneath it. Duquesne’s fangs and claws are long and sharp and blackened.
In this nightmare, Duquesne sinks those fangs into his arm and his chest and
his face. He fights back with all he’s got, snarling and clawing at Duquesne’s
fucked up visage but his fingers stick into the bloated, blotchy, rotten flesh
as if it’s melting and his fingers are starting to melt too. Fuck, it hurts and
Duquesne is gnawing on his cheek and nose and eyeball and it fucking hurts and
Clint’s being swallowed down by a churning, crimson lake and isn’t moving at
all, Clint’s eyes are open and milky white, Clint’s dead and Duquesne is
tearing his throat out and he screams and screams -
“Phil! Phil ! Please wake up!”
He blinks. He gasps and gasps and he blinks again. He sees a familiar plaster
ceiling. It’s plain and white and there’s no blood on it, no undead worms and
demons squirming beneath it. His shuddering hands fly to his face and his face
is whole and intact and devoid of any fang marks. He’s sprawled on his back on
a king-sized bed and his t-shirt is damp at the neck and underarms with sweat
and so is his hair but at least it’s not blood , it’s not - oh god, Clint.
He lurches upright and kicks off the covers. His eyes dart around the semi-lit
room and he gasps and calls for his mate, again and again and he doesn’t hear
anything, he can’t breathe, he -
“Phil, I’m here, babe. Look at me. I’m here.”
He feels two warm, callused hands cup the sides of his head. He squeezes his
eyes shut and opens them and oh, there’s his mate, right there in front of him
in a white tank top and dark purple sweatpants, looking at him with such big,
concerned eyes. He reaches out for Clint and frantically inspects him for
injuries, running his hands all over Clint’s head, neck, shoulders and arms,
tugging up Clint’s tank top and running his hands across Clint’s chest and back
too.
Then, his hands encounter the bandages around Clint’s lower abdomen.
Time freezes. So do his hands and the breath in his heaving lungs.
He can still hear the pitter-patter of Clint’s blood as it showered down upon
barren ground. He can still see the spray of blood from Duquesne’s shoulder. He
can still see, feel Clint’s blood blackening his tremorous hands and forearms
up to the elbows as he pressed his folded up jacket over the yawning wound in
Clint’s belly.
Clint’s blood is still there under his fingernails, no matter how many times
he’s scrubbed them.
It will always be there, like the long, horizontal scar under those bandages
around Clint’s lower abdomen.
“Phil. Look at me.”
Clint is still gripping his head, shaking it. He blinks quickly, then blinks
again, harder.
“I’m okay. I’m okay now,” Clint is saying to him, constantly stroking his
trembling arms and chest while pumping out assuaging, honey-sweet Omegan
pheromones from his scent glands. “See?”
Coulson stares at Clint. He stares and he sees … Clint . He sees his mate’s
exquisite face, his mate’s wide, glistening eyes, his mate’s tremulous smile.
He sees his mate distressed by his distress, sees how valiantly his mate is
trying to conceal it from him, to put away his own anxiety.
He sees his mate, healing, living.
And when he encloses his arms around Clint, crushing Clint to his body, burying
his face in the side of Clint’s neck and the steady pulse in it, he finally
believes it.
“What happened wasn’t your fault,” Clint murmurs like he has for many nights
now, embracing him as tightly, rubbing his back in circles. “It wasn’t.”
Damning, rueful words spew out from Coulson’s numb lips anyway.
“I should have listened to you. I - I should - He was - he was right, I’m the
reason he found you, the reason you almost died -”
“No. No. Shut up.”
Clint is gripping his head with both hands once more, forcing him to to look
Clint in the eye. Clint’s eyes are glistening even more now. They are also
sharper, even more resolved.
“You listen to me, and you listen to me good. You saved my life. You’re the
reason I’m alive .” Clint’s throat bobs in a long, hard swallow. “You’re the
reason I wanna go on living , Phil. Do you understand?”
Coulson blinks, and he’s in that cave again and SHIELD medics have surrounded
him and Clint. They’re placing an oxygen mask over Clint’s ashen face and
pushing him aside. Someone is pulling him farther and farther away, holding
strong to him, saying in his ear, he’s alive, Cheese, he’s still alive.
He blinks, and above the oxygen mask, he sees that Clint’s eyes are open and
blue and gazing back at him, seeing only him. Clint’s head rolls as the medics
lift him onto the stretcher. Clint’s eyes linger on him and he struggles out of
the hands restraining him and he bolts across barren ground to his mate,
clutching the wavering, blood-splashed hand that reaches for him.
Clint’s alive and Duquesne will soon cease to be and he’s quiet now, he’s calm
and quiet and so are the undead worms and demons in the shadows of his
nightmares.
“Clint,” he rasps, unable to say more past the boulder lodged in his throat.
Clint makes a sound that’s more like a sob than a low laugh, smiling
tremulously at him once more.
“Hey. There you are, babe,” Clint whispers as Clint gently strokes his wet
cheek with a thumb. “There you are.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
When Phil begins fucking him against the wall, supporting him with both arms
under his thighs, Clint stares over Phil’s shoulder at the silver platter on
the seat of the bolted down metal chair. He stares at the rivulets of cooling
blood snaking towards the platter’s gadrooned edge, at frozen, scarred flesh
thawing in the stuffy air of the underground cell. He stares at half-open,
beady, black eyes now filmed over and milky white.
“Faster,” he gasps into Phil’s ear, clutching at Phil’s bunched shoulders,
wrapping his legs tighter around his Alpha. “Harder.”
He rewards Phil’s instantaneous obedience by baring his neck for Phil to bite,
by clenching around his mate’s rapidly thrusting cock until they’re both crying
out. He twists his hips in a circle while Phil is deep in him, and Phil rewards
him with a thrust so forceful that he slides up the wall and his breath is
knocked out of him. He moans without reserve. He claws at Phil’s upper back. He
laughs soundlessly as Phil bites his neck again, claiming him, possessing him.
And when Phil’s knot swells inside him and locks them together, when he comes
all over Phil’s belly, he stares at what remains of the bastard who almost
killed him and he feels triumphant.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
As the portrait photographs of the eight homicide victims appear in two rows of
four across the wide transparent projected screen, Coulson is relieved that
Clint isn’t here with him and Nick in Nick’s office, that Clint is on a short
team mission far away from New York itself.
“The last three murders happened in NYC within the past four months,” Nick says
as they stand side by side in front of the screen, and Coulson can hear the
steely edge in Nick’s voice that reminds him of lightning striking the distant
horizon of an obsidian ocean. “The others are spread out across the east side
of the country over an eight year period. One in Baltimore. One in Louisville.
One in Springfield.”
“And the earliest known two in Des Moines,” Coulson says, staring at the young
men in these photos who will never see or know anything again. “Iowa.”
He stares at the young men’s short, blond hair. At their blue eyes. At their
strong jaw lines and prominent noses. At their statuses under their photos that
confirm them all to be Omegas. He stares at the late Agent Aaron Walsh, the
latest victim who had, by all accounts, been a decent, responsible SHIELD agent
who was well-liked by his peers.
He stares at them all, and sees a very familiar, beloved face stare back.
He has to consciously open up his hands that have become aching, gritted fists.
“If it wasn’t for Walsh, this motherfucker would probably have stayed off our
radar a lot longer. And the way the fucker exhibited Walsh’s body in that alley
like he did, with those hooks and ropes? Like a giant bird soaring in the sky?”
Nick crosses burly arms over a solid chest, staring at the screen with a scowl.
“It wasn’t a coincidence he killed one of ours, Phil. He wants us to know he
exists.”
Coulson says nothing. He continues to stare ahead at the photos, at all these
men who must be buried in closed caskets, missing their faces that were cleanly
sliced off with a blade. While they were still alive. The MEs for all eight
cases were unanimous in their assessment of that.
“You see the resemblance, too. Don’t you?”
It takes Coulson a long time just to nod.
Nick lets out a heavy sigh, then says, “You know Barton better than anyone
else, him being your mate. You know who may be gunning for him now? This
possibly a guy from one of his previous missions?”
Coulson stares ahead at the transparent projected screen, but he sees instead
three junior agents in a break room unaware of being spied on. He hears once
more the flow of quiet words from Agent Nguyen’s mouth from years ago. He
recalls every single word, every detail. Every name.
He recalls one, most of all. The one he’d searched for after Clint told him
everything while they sat on the couch in their living room on a hushed,
pellucid afternoon. Hunted for through SHIELD’s colossal databases and then
through more … unofficial means. (It’d felt particularly good to batter his
fists bloody into the face of the former carny who’d laughed when he asked
about ‘Jeremy’ and the Swordsman, when the carny said that he hoped Duquesne
got what he wanted and ‘fucked the little shit to death’.)
“It’s someone from Clint’s past before SHIELD.”
He senses rather than sees Nick turn his head to gaze at him. He doesn’t return
it.
“He may have killed more men before these eight. No … not may. He very likely
has. Maybe as far back as twenty years ago. The murders in Des Moines are too
confident to be done by someone who hadn’t killed before then.” He lets his
hands grit into painful fists again, and he doesn’t care if Nick sees it. “He
knows. He knows that Clint is in SHIELD.”
“Who is this guy?”
“The Swordsman. Jacques Duquesne. He and Clint were … co-workers in the Carson
Carnival of Traveling Wonders when Clint was a teenager. He and another circus
performer assaulted Clint in a motel in Iowa when Clint was seventeen, during
which Clint tore his face off with his claws.” He finally turns his head to
look forebodingly at Nick. “And Duquesne’s specialty was bladed weapons.”
Nick’s heard all he needs to hear.
Coulson leaves Nick’s office hours later, after rounds of calls and commands
sent to the relevant departments to pursue and capture Duquesne. SHIELD is also
working with the NYPD and FBI on this, which means more manpower for the hunt,
more territory covered.
They have to stop Duquesne before Duquesne murders more men.
They have to catch Duquesne, before Duquesne catches Clint and kills him too.
Only in the privacy of his office does Coulson allow himself to collapse on the
chair behind his desk, to tremble from the inside out at the uninvited,
gruesome visions of Duquesne mutilating Clint with a knife. He has his SHIELD
comm pad in hand. He’s opened up a photo on its screen and he stares at it, at
Clint curled up on his side in their bed and gazing at the camera with a rare,
bashful smile that makes Clint’s crinkled eyes twinkle with fondness. (A smile
that Clint bestows upon him alone.) He traces his handsome mate’s whole, intact
features with his fingertips, until he is no longer trembling.
They have to catch Duquesne. They have to. And when they do, he knows Duquesne
won’t go down without one last stand, without taking down as many others as he
can with him to hell. Someone’s going to die, and if there’s any higher power
that truly exists out there, if he ever does believe in it, he’ll pray that it
won’t be Clint. Prayer’s never worked yet for him, but for Clint, he’ll try
again.
For Clint, he will do anything.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Coulson doesn’t know what to feel, seeing that his face looks exactly the same
in the mirror now like it did yesterday. He stares at his reflection as cool
water continues to pour from the tap into the rectangular, stainless steel sink
in front of him.
He’d expected to see something change after washing all that blood off himself.
Maybe see something crawling under its skin, squirming around like undead worms
or demons feeding on his mortal flesh. He’d expected to be horrified by what he
saw. (To be horrified by what he’s done.)
He’d expected to be a monster now.
But he’s … not.
He’s still just a man. Just a man from Manitowoc, Wisconsin who found his
calling in an espionage, law-enforcement and counter-terrorism agency ruled by
one of the oldest, best friends he’s ever had. Just a man who almost lost his
beloved mate to a knife in the belly in a vast, dusty cave hours away from New
York City. Just a man who’s killed another man who had killed so many other
men. (According to Nick, the last official tally was seventeen. The Feds are
still investigating a cold case in Philadelphia before confirming its victim as
the eighteenth.)
It had been surprisingly easy to saw through cervical vertebrae. (It’s going to
be a long time before he forgets the sensation of bone and marrow separating
and snapping.)
After drying his face and upper body with a towel, he takes his time to dress
in a plain, black t-shirt and jeans. Without the water running, he can hear the
vibrating hum of the enormous portable freezer just outside the bathroom and to
the left of the bathroom’s door. It hadn’t been as easy to haul the body and
dismembered limbs from the bolted down metal chair to the freezer, nor had it
been easy to stuff everything inside it.
Duquesne was a giant bastard, in more ways than one.
Coulson glances one last time at the freezer as he stands in the bathroom’s
doorway. By this time tomorrow, Nick will have sent a trustworthy cleanup crew
to deal with the blood, torso and limbs along with the bathroom, his stained
clothing and the van still aboveground. They’ll do a thorough job as only a
loyal crew with Nick’s approval can. By this time the day after tomorrow, there
will be absolutely nothing left here of Duquesne, except for one section of his
anatomy. He’s already left instructions with Nick about leaving that section in
a plastic bag in the freezer.
He’ll need it to honor the promise he made to his mate when they married years
ago.
He’s greeted by a cool evening breeze when he stealthily departs from the
warehouse to an unremarkable, black car parked several blocks away that Nick
had arranged to be there. He passes a few pedestrians but they don’t look at
him and neither does he look at them. They’re ghosts passing in the night,
already forgotten in each other’s wakes.
He doesn’t look at himself in any of the mirrors of the car. He doesn’t think
about the numerous times he scrubbed his hands in that stainless steel sink
despite wearing gloves the whole time. He doesn’t think about how tautly he’s
gripping the steering wheel, about how he wants to pop his claws and rend the
dashboard apart and roar and roar until his voice is lost to him.
Clint’s waiting for him at home. That’s all that matters.
Their apartment is tranquil when he enters it and shuts the front door with an
almost inaudible click. The lights are on in the living room and kitchen but
Clint is nowhere to be seen. He saunters to their bedroom and yes, there’s his
mate, there’s his gorgeous, sweet mate slumbering in black sweatpants on their
bed, lying on his side with those long, lean legs slightly bent at the knees
and those adroit, callused hands tucked under a bulky pillow that cradles that
precious head of lush, golden hair.
Clint looks so young when he’s asleep, like a boy. Like the boy that life never
gave him the chance to be.
Coulson goes to the bed with noiseless steps and goes down on his knees at its
side, facing Clint. He doesn’t think about how easily his knees buckle. He
doesn’t think about how his hand is visibly quavering as he strokes Clint’s
longer-than-usual hair from Clint’s forehead. He doesn’t think about the
bandages around Clint’s lower abdomen, nor about the healing wound underneath
them.
What he does think about is how glad he is that Duquesne is dead, how relieved
he is that Clint will never have to fear the monster returning ever again. (But
it’s going to be a while before he can look himself in the eye in a mirror
again, just in case.)
“Phil?”
Clint’s eyes are flickering open. Clint rolls onto his back while rubbing his
eyes with a knuckle, snuffling once, and the motions are so boyish, so innocent
that Coulson feels unfit to touch Clint with his (tainted) hands. He says
nothing as Clint blinks big, vibrant eyes up at him.
“Hey, babe,” Clint murmurs, eyes crinkling. “You’re back. Everything okay on
the ‘carrier?”
Coulson quirks his lips up and runs his fingers through Clint’s hair while
Clint purrs. He thinks about how sleek the golden strands are between his
fingers. He thinks about how smooth and rounded Clint’s skull is under his
hand. He thinks about how fragile it is, how easily it can be fractured,
broken.
He thinks about how easily he can still lose Clint, and the price to be paid to
ensure otherwise.
“Yes,” he replies, leaning down to press his lips upon Clint’s forehead.
“Everything’s fine, sweetheart. Everything’s fine.”
“Okay. You hungry? There’s still some pizza in the fridge. Thought we could eat
it together.”
His lips quirk up even more. This time, his eyes crinkle too.
“Yes. Pizza sounds good.”
Yes, for what he has with Clint, it is a price worth paying. No matter what he
becomes.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
“Oh man … Oh. Fuck. I didn’t think - I didn’t know it could hit so fast.”
Clint’s face is flushed and shiny with sweat. Clint’s eyes are heavy-lidded and
his lips are reddened and parted to let out low moans every so often. Clint is
simply curled up in a fetal position on the bed, wearing only a black tank top
that’s sodden with sweat, but already he sounds so wrecked.
“You’re going to be fine, Clint,” Coulson says, rubbing Clint’s bare arms and
kissing Clint on the head once, twice. “I’m going to take care of you.”
Clint’s scent has noticeably changed since ceasing his intake of heat
suppressants almost two months ago. During their first mating in the Hunt,
Coulson could tell from Clint’s scent then that Clint was still detoxing from
the suppressants. Clint’s body had years upon years of the medication to
expunge from its system, which is why Dr. Chiew had warned them both that when
Clint’s first heat after coming off suppressants strikes, it’s going to last at
least a week. It’s going to be severe.
Coulson prefers to call it extraordinary.
Clint’s body is now a living furnace, a battleground for Clint’s tenacious will
and the undeniable, mounting ache of his heat, the all-consuming lust to be
fucked and bred (by him, by him ). Just an hour ago, Clint was still able to
walk by his side across the Helicarrier’s runway to a quinjet. A half hour
later, Clint could scarcely stand upright, much less put one foot in front of
the other as they shuffled from the elevator to the front door of their
apartment. (And thank fuck they were alone and didn’t cross paths with anyone
else from the car to their apartment, with any other Alphas , pumping out so
much heat pheromones like Clint was and evoking his rut pheromones. He would
have probably killed any Alpha who dared to challenge him for Clint then.)
Once inside, he’d slithered his arms around Clint’s shoulders and under Clint’s
knees and carried Clint straight to their bedroom. Clint hadn’t protested at
all. Whimpered when he laid Clint on their bed and deftly stripped Clint of a
black leather jacket, jeans, boxer briefs, socks and boots. The tank top is
still on only because Clint had wriggled away from his hands, panting and
curling up into a shuddering ball, already on the edge of coming just from his
limited touches.
He’s so hard inside his slacks that he feels on the edge himself, his iron
control threatened before he’s even removed his own clothing.
And Clint smells so fucking delicious, so ripe for the taking.
There’s no time, no need for foreplay this time. Clint’s dripping with sweat
and slick, so much slick that Clint’s trembling thighs slide together with no
friction. Clint’s hole is already as prepared as it can be, and naturally so.
He can shove his cock into Clint right now and he will meet no resistance.
Clint will be even tighter during a heat, his inner muscles dictated by the
heat to clinch around the cock that pummels and grinds against them, to milk
that cock for every drop of seed.
“Fuck,” Clint groans, writhing on the bed now and panting again and clawing at
the sheets. Clint’s cock looks as hard and aching as his feels, angry red and
leaking pre-come and curved up on Clint’s heaving belly. Clint’s eyes are
squeezed shut. The long moan that spills from Clint’s open mouth is deafening
in their bedroom.
Coulson has to also squeeze his eyes shut. To physically hold himself back from
pouncing on Clint and flipping his mate over and shoving his cock in right now.
Yes, he’s an Alpha, but he is no animal. (He’ll stop whenever Clint says so, no
matter how far into Clint’s heat they go. Clint is who and what matters most
throughout all this, not him.)
“I’m going to get the drinks and food,” he rasps as he retreats from the bed,
his breaths becoming deeper, coarser. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart, I
promise.”
The vehement whine he hears from Clint almost kills him.
He roughly kicks off his shoes and strips off his tie, jacket and dress shirt
as he dashes to the kitchen. He doesn’t give a damn where they land on the
floor, and neither does he give a damn about ripping his slacks as he strips
them off in front of the fridge. He grabs several large bottles of fresh juices
and packaged sandwiches from it and dashes back to the bedroom with them. He
and Clint won’t be leaving the bedroom for some time and they’re going to need
all the sustenance they can get within reach of the bed once the mating begins,
they -
In the doorway, he stops dead in his tracks at the vision of Clint now naked
and on knees and elbows on the bed, presenting himself so sublimely to his
Alpha. Clint is moaning softly with each breath, his head on his hands on the
sheets. Clint’s back is as sinuously arched as it can be, elevating that plump,
spectacular ass in the air, offering an unobstructed view of that slippery,
quivering, succulent hole desperate to be filled by Alpha cock.
Coulson lets out a sound akin to a groan of pain when fresh, sweet slick gushes
from Clint’s hole and trails down Clint’s inner thigh.
“Need you,” Clint rasps. “N-need you so bad, babe.”
Clint is looking at him now with those heavy-lidded, wild eyes, bucking his
hips, spreading those muscular thighs even farther apart.
“I’m here. I’m right here, sweetheart.”
He dumps the juices and sandwiches on the bedside table. He strips off his
socks and underwear, panting too, his breaths longer and deeper in tandem with
Clint’s shorter, shallower ones. His freed cock smacks against his belly, the
hardest it’s ever been yet thanks to his rut pheromones and Clint’s heat
pheromones suffusing the air. His chest constricts with something brilliant and
almost painful as he savors the magnificent view of his mate’s pale yet
flushed, smooth skin and luscious curves laid bare for his eyes. He alone has
the privilege of seeing Clint this way, for the rest of their lives. He alone
has been gifted with an Omega mate as splendid and unparalleled as Clint.
He can only hope his performance as Clint’s Alpha today and for the rest of the
heat (the rest of their lives) will meet with his mate’s approval and
satisfaction.
Clint reaches back for him impatiently, tilting up those svelte hips in bold
invitation. He clasps Clint’s hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. Clint’s
breaths hasten as he climbs onto the bed behind Clint and seizes Clint’s hips
with both hands, as he lines himself up with Clint’s eager hole.
He sees Clint’s fingers grabbing at the bed sheets. He hears Clint rasping his
name, then again. He feels Clint shuddering so hot and feverishly under his
hands.
Coulson will never forget Clint’s escalating, shattered wail and Clint throwing
his head back so gracefully when he thrusts in to the hilt in one movement. He
immediately sets a brutal, grueling, beatific pace, pounding Clint’s ass hard
and fast and deep, gripping Clint’s hips so strongly that there will be ten
finger-shaped bruises on them in the coming morning. In other circumstances, he
wouldn’t be fucking Clint as ferociously as he does now. He usually prefers
more intimate, tender lovemaking with his mate where he can take his time
moving in and out of his mate’s cherished body, kiss him and whisper sweet
nothings to him.
But a heat is all about breeding. Regardless of the fact that Clint is still on
contraceptives, what Clint needs is to be fucked as hard as possible, to be
filled with Alpha seed, again and again and again until Clint’s body decides
it’s had enough.
Judging from Clint convulsing from head to toe and coming all over the sheets
after his third thrust, crying out his name and numerous expletives, Clint has
no complaints whatsoever about his savagery.
Coulson is soon sweating himself and breathing harshly from the incessant,
steady thrusting, his muscles rippling with each one. Clint is babbling
incoherently, jerked forward and back across the bed with each powerful thrust,
telling him how his huge cock is splitting Clint open in the most amazing way,
how Clint wants him deep inside forever and ever.
God, he wants that too, he wants to stay deep inside Clint, to glut his mate
full of his seed and his babies and watch Clint swell with them and give birth
to their family. Oh, he wants. (But he can’t say, not yet, not for a long while
yet, perhaps never since Clint is on contraceptives and does not want children.
And he’s fine with that, he is.)
After one long, slowing thrust, Coulson arches his neck back with his eyes
shut, going still for a moment deep inside Clint, inhaling deeply through his
mouth. Fuck, he hasn’t had sex this potent since … well, ever. It’s not the
first time he’s had sex with an Omega during a heat, having done that with
several exes before. They were pleasant experiences with pleasant people whom
he parted with on amicable terms. It just figures, though, that the best sex of
his entire life would be with this big-mouthed, obstinate, arrogant, reckless,
beautiful, delightful, exceptional Omega man who’s his, his.
Sweat rolls down his temple and the side of his warm face as he smiles to
himself, his fangs out, and resumes thrusting. His knot is growing, he can feel
it catch against the rim of Clint’s puffy, slick hole. Soon he’ll have to push
it inside Clint, push it in and lock Clint to him and -
“Phil … Wait. P-Phil. Stop.”
He has to bite his inner cheek hard and tense up his whole body to the point of
actual pain to obey his Omega mate, but by god, he does it. He ends up
motionless with his cock half inside Clint, his strained arms framing Clint’s
body while he hunches over Clint’s back. He hears Clint suck in a shaky breath,
then another, and then Clint is trying to roll over and oh, oh, he knows what
Clint wants and he definitely wants it too.
He withdraws from Clint with a slick noise. They groan in unison at the
separation, agonizing even in its fleetness.
“Sorry, I’m sorry, babe,” Clint says, faint and ragged. “Just wanna s-see your
face.”
“It’s okay,” Coulson murmurs, kissing his mate on supple, parted lips. “It’s
okay. I’m fine.”
He snatches a nearby pillow as Clint flops onto his back on the bed, already
lifting those long, lean legs to draw him in. He tucks the pillow under Clint’s
hips, which tilts them at a wonderful angle for him to push easily back inside
Clint. Clint makes an exultant noise in his throat as he thrusts anew, aiming
for that sensitive, spongy bump inside Clint over and over until Clint is
clutching at his shoulders and panting and making louder, even more exultant
noises.
“Wanna see y-your face when you - when you knot me,” Clint rasps, staring up at
him with heavy-lidded eyes that shine with so much goddamn love. “When you come
inside me and bite me.”
Coulson’s hips stutter when he realizes what Clint’s just said to him, what
Clint has just offered to him.
“You - you want the bond,” he says with wide, astounded eyes, going stock-
still.
“Yeah, Phil. I w-want it.” Clint nods jerkily, his throat bobbing from a hard
swallow. “I want the bond with you.”
And there it is, the explicit consent that he’s been waiting for, dying for
ever since meeting Clint for the first time in Nick’s office. Clint wants that
mythical, life-changing Alpha-Omega bond that everyone still whispers about in
a reverent tone, that bond that he’d once never believed could exist, much less
for him. Clint wants it with him, of all the millions upon millions of Alphas
in this world.
Oh, oh, there’s no going back now, certainly not for him.
“It’s you,” he whispers, gazing down at his beloved Omega mate, the left side
of his chest throbbing, “the one I never thought could exist. But you do. You
do.”
Coulson is utterly lost when Clint angles his hips to let his cock slide in
even deeper, when Clint turns his head to the side to flaunt the bonding gland
in his shoulder. He bows his head to nip at the skin around the bonding gland
while delivering furious, swift thrusts that go so deep that Clint is urging
him on with a litany of cries and moans now, rigid with feet curled downward
from the overload of pleasure through his heat-crazed body. He can tell when
Clint’s fangs show too, when Clint’s moans begin to rumble like growls and
Clint’s claws are out to scratch at his back. He can feel how hard Clint’s cock
is against his belly every time he thrusts into Clint and Clint rubs mindlessly
against him.
Clint is so tight and wet and perfect, like he was born to be Coulson’s Omega
mate. (To be the revered bearer of his children.) Clint is his. His for
eternity, and no one will take Clint away from him, no one, no one -
He raises himself up onto his hands. He gazes down at Clint who’s gazing up at
him with an open, quivering mouth and eyes wide with lust and possessiveness
and awe, their faces inches apart. His feet slip on the sheets for a second. He
feels Clint winding his legs even tighter around his hips. He glances down at
the place where Clint is stretched so incredibly around him, at his knot
pressing hard against Clint’s sweet, sore hole. He can feel every place that
their bodies touch and shift together. He can feel Clint’s heartbeat all around
him, thundering with his.
“Yes,” Clint pants. “Lemme see - lemme see you like this.”
He feels Clint clinch around him, and his hips jerk roughly once, twice and
then, still staring into Clint’s eyes, he pushes his knot vigorously past the
rim of Clint’s hole. It expands quickly even as Clint clinches even more around
his cock and knot, as it tears rough, salacious sounds from both of them.
“Yes, yes, bite me, Phil, bite me, bond me, bond us together, do it now -”
He’s sinking his fangs into Clint’s bonding gland and the skin around it before
Clint moans another word out. He hears Clint shriek as his teeth break skin and
draw blood, but he’s coming and so is Clint, long and lean limbs thrashing
madly, flushed cock spurting fertile seed all over their bellies and chests. He
grabs one of Clint’s shoulders and scratches down Clint’s arched back with his
other hand. He bites Clint’s bonding gland even harder, tasting wet metal on
his tongue, his eyes squeezed shut as his own cock spurts again and again deep
inside his mate. Clint is quaking around him, letting out keening, euphoric
whimpers and he snarls with gratification, overwhelmed by the pleasure that
rages along his nerves and throughout his own convulsing body.
When the pleasure slams into his brain, Coulson feels Clint’s fangs sinking
into his shoulder and he hears Clint growling too, claiming him, possessing him
and he’s gone, he’s gone. He’s flying so high that he doesn’t know where he
ends and where Clint begins, doesn’t know whether his feet will ever touch the
ground again or whether it’s him or Clint’s who’s making those gasping sobs
that shake their chests, whether it’s the rush of his own blood through his
galloping heart or Clint’s that he’s hearing.
Then, after immeasurable eons among the stars and the planets and Clint, Clint,
he falls.
He lands as a feather would upon verdant grass, lightly, smoothly, his eyes
opening to half-mast, his tongue sliding out to lick at Clint’s bleeding
shoulder and clean it, salve it. Clint is rubbing a bristly face into the crook
between his neck and left shoulder, and he can tell that Clint’s eyes are shut,
that Clint’s face is damp. He’s still knot-deep inside Clint, and this being
sex during a heat, his knot and Clint’s clenching inner walls will keep them
locked together even longer than usual.
He groans low as he shifts up onto his elbows over Clint. He feels like he’s
been hit by a heavy-duty truck and run over several times after that, but damn,
it’s the good kind of physical pain after mind-blowing sex like this. The best.
Clint is covering his face with both hands.
“Oh my god,” he hears Clint say brokenly behind those hands, and a chill
zigzags down Coulson’s spine, coalescing in his belly as an icy rock.
Did he hurt Clint without knowing it? Has Clint changed his mind after all? Is
Clint regretting the bond? Is -
“Be honest with me, okay, babe?”
Clint’s lowered his hands and oh, Clint’s face is tear-streaked and Clint’s
eyes are blue and huge and bright as they stare up at him. He nods wordlessly.
Clint presses both palms to his own temples, then rasps, “Is my head is still
there on my neck? Is it? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure it went kaboom from all that
amazingness, from you fucking me so damn good and then biting me like that and
that was so hot, that was so hot, Phil, and I can’t find my head anymore. What
am I gonna do?”
Coulson is unable to stop his lips from tremoring hard with mirth any more than
he can stop himself from pushing his knot against Clint’s prostate. He chuckles
aloud when Clint moans and laughs at the same time, his exquisite, damp face
glowing with an exuberant smile.
“You little shit,” Coulson says with the utmost affection, his eyes twinkling.
“I mean it! I can’t feel my head anymore and I think my legs have disconnected
from the rest of me and I feel like a quinjet landed on me and you are so
fucking big inside me and I dunno how I’m gonna survive a week of heat sex this
awesome.” Clint licks his lips, his clear eyes twinkling as much. “That was
amazing. That was unbelievable. You’re unbelievable.”
Coulson dips his head down to lick into Clint’s mouth in a languorous kiss,
nipping Clint’s puffy lower lip, sighing at Clint enfolding those muscular arms
around his shoulders and kissing him back so sweetly. He’s grateful for this
respite in the heat. He knows that when his knot wanes and he withdraws from
Clint’s body, it may only be a matter of minutes before Clint is consumed by
writhing, mindless desperation to be fucked and bred again. (And he’ll give
what his Omega mate wants, give and give and give until they’re both senseless
from the pleasure.)
He feels Clint’s breath upon his lips when they eventually, reluctantly part.
He feels Clint’s prominent, charming nose pressing into and resting against his
cheek. He feels rather than hears Clint breathe in.
“You smell so good, babe.”
“So do you,” he replies, nuzzling Clint’s face, inhaling Clint’s scent deeply.
It’s become even sweeter, sweeter and fresh and sacred. Clint smells like
spring nectar, like cleansed grass after the rain, like chocolate-mint cake
straight out of the oven on a cool afternoon, like the two of them entwined
under the bed covers in the morning when they don’t have to go anywhere and all
they need is each other.
“We smell like we belong to each other. Like we’re one,” Clint murmurs into his
lips. “After you bit me, I swear I heard your heartbeat like it was my own.”
It is, Coulson wants to say, my heartbeat is yours, and yours mine.
“It must be the bond,” he says instead, raised up on his elbows again to gaze
down at Clint. “There have been some cases of Alpha-Omega pairs bonding and
becoming so close to each other that their scents become identical, that they
can sense each other even when they’re physically apart.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I could do that before we bonded. There’s a reason we’re the
best handler/asset pairing in SHIELD, ya know.”
Coulson doesn’t disagree, contented as he is at the very idea that Clint could
have felt his presence even when he wasn’t nearby, that Clint wanted to feel
him close always. It will be interesting to officially test the capabilities of
their bond in the years ahead, to discover just how profound and intimate it
is.
He stays still as Clint reaches up to touch the curve of his shoulder, where
Clint had bitten him. His eyes flit to Clint’s bitten shoulder, to the no
longer bleeding ring of his teethmarks on Clint’s bonding gland. In time,
they’ll heal into raised tissue that will declare to all who see them that
Clint has been claimed, mated and bonded with an Alpha of his choosing, that
Clint is now off limits to anyone else for life.
He has never felt such an intense feeling of rightness before with anyone else,
with the way Clint touches him with those warm, callused hands, lighting up his
very atoms with a single caress across his skin. He knows he never will again.
(And in the years and years to come, Clint will tell him that he feels the same
way too, that there will never be anyone else for Clint, even beyond death.)
“I love you,” Clint rasps, caressing the sides of his face with both hands,
throat bobbing hard.
It isn’t the first time Clint’s said those words to him, but something in the
left side of his chest aches so rapturously all the same.
“I love you too,” he rasps in return, swallowing hard past a lump in his
throat. “More than life itself.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
“I still get nightmares about them,” Clint whispers against the fragile skin of
Coulson’s collarbone, holding him tight around his waist under the bed covers
after they’ve made love for the first time in his - their bedroom. “I still
remember what it felt like to bite into Buck’s neck and rip open his throat
with my fangs. I still remember digging my claws into Jacques’ face because he
wouldn’t stop even when I begged him to, and I knew he’d kill me if I didn’t
stop him first. And I’m scared, Phil. I’m so scared that he’s gonna come back
and take everything away from me like I took his face away from him.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
“And I promise you,” Clint hears Phil say to him, just before Phil slides the
platinum ring onto his finger and kisses him so tenderly, sealing the vow, “I
will love and protect you for all our lives. Only death can take me from you,
and should anyone be foolish enough to even try to take you from me, I will
give you their head upon a silver platter, if you only asked.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Duquesne’s parody of a visage without its prosthetic human mask is truly a
horrific vision to behold. What was once a face with stark hazel eyes, angular
cheekbones, aquiline nose and thin lips is now a lumpy and hairless mass of
scarred skin and deformed tissue with two black, beady eyes and two vertical
slits for nostrils.
I did that, Clint thinks to himself as he faces his former mentor, his would-be
killer alone in a vast, dusty, sunbathed cave with its open ceiling almost a
hundred miles away from New York City (from Phil). I made this monster.
“I ought to thank your Alpha, actually, for you and I to be here today.”
Duquesne’s French accent is gone, replaced by a neutral-sounding Midwestern
accent that can’t pin him to any particular state in the country. It’s an
unsurprising feat to Clint, who’d spent years in Duquesne’s company and knows
how many skills Duquesne could effortlessly pick up just by putting his
frighteningly intelligent mind to it. The other carnies had good reasons to
respect, to fear him even then. (They were the same reasons he’d been so eager
for Duquesne to become his mentor, to the point of blindness.)
What does stun Clint is that Duquesne can speak so distinctly with no lips.
“You vanished without a trace after that night,” Duquesne snarls, revealing
startlingly white and sharp teeth. “No one knew where you’d gone, not even
Anastasia. You can imagine how frustrated I was to not find a trail to you,
dear Jeremy, after what you did to me.”
Clint’s heart jumps to his throat at the mention of the old fortune teller’s
name. Jesus, he hadn’t thought about her in decades. The last time he’d seen
her was the night before the assault in the motel, in her caravan that he used
to share with her when he first joined the circus. She’d told him not to go
into town, not to go with Chisholm and Duquesne no matter what. She told him
she’d heard things, she’d seen things in her dreams that were bad, really bad
if he did.
He hadn’t listened. He’d cared about her like family, but he didn’t believe she
could actually foresee the future. (No one did except Herman the Giant who left
the circus two years before he left.) He’d brushed off her protests and hugged
her and said, I’ll be fine, Nastya, they’re my friends, don’t worry about me, I
can take care of myself.
And look where that’s gotten him.
“Oh, no, your name isn’t Jeremy, is it? Just another lie you spun to me and
Buck and everyone else, Clint.”
Clint’s belly is roiling with fear, he won’t deny that. But he sure as fuck
isn’t going to show it to Duquesne.
“Why, Jacques, did I hurt your feelings?”
He smirks wide, flashing his own fangs.
Duquesne also smirks. The action tugs and wrinkles the plastic-like skin of his
distorted face. It makes Clint think of bugs and worms wriggling under its
surface. It makes him want to vomit.
“No. I can’t say the same about Anastasia, however.” Something akin to an
expression of mock innocence now warps Duquesne’s face. “By the time I was done
with her, her feelings were the least of what was hurt about her. I put her
down like the sad, old bitch she was, and I had to do it because of you. Don’t
you feel bad now, Clint?”
Clint is unable to control the muscle twitch in his lower jaw. He glares at
Duquesne, his lips pressed into a livid, thin line. His gloved hands also
twitch then go still.
Anastasia is - was a good soul. She was a lonely, kind sweetheart who couldn’t
even bear to swat a spider in her caravan and always shared her food and time
with whoever needed them. She cared for him when no one else did, not even his
own brother who left him. She didn’t deserve whatever Duquesne did to her (and
no, he doesn’t want to even guess, having seen the gory crime scene photos of
Duquesne’s more recent victims). None of the people Duquesne’s killed deserved
what happened to them.
Another innocent soul is dead because of him.
“Your Alpha wasn’t very nice to Gregory when he paid him a visit, oh … four
years ago? Your Alpha battered him until his cheekbones were fractured and he
lost several teeth. You remember Gregory, don’t you? The sniveling, sad little
Beta clown who hated you so much because the crowd loved you and not him.”
Again, Duquesne smirks, his black eyes gleaming with something unholy. “He
screamed so wonderfully, I must say, while I tested my new blades on him. He
was so earnest in contacting me and telling me that an agent of SHIELD was
searching for me, that the agent hurt him when he said that he hoped I would
fuck you to death.”
Clint’s belly roils worse with fear and rage as Duquesne cackles boisterously,
the demented sound echoing in the cave. Phil’s never told him about this visit
to an ex-carny. If Duquesne is telling the truth, Phil found Gregory - who he
does not remember - and … talked to the guy after he told Phil not to look for
Duquesne, to leave Duquesne in the past and let him rot there.
Oh, Phil, he thinks, his chest aching for his beloved mate who must have been
driven to bring Duquesne to justice while keeping him at a safe distance. Phil.
“And I had to wonder,” Duquesne drawls, taking a few steps to the right,
staring at Clint all the while, “ why would an agent of SHIELD look for me and
ask about Jeremy over fifteen years after what happened in Waverly? It was
obvious he didn’t visit Gregory in an official capacity, which meant … it had
to be personal.”
Clint takes a few steps to the right as well, staring back at Duquesne. They
circle each other with at least twenty feet of space between them, their backs
straight, their shoulders and arms tense. Clint is acutely aware of the
stainless steel folding knife in the side pocket of his Hawkeye outfit. He
knows Duquesne has at least one blade on his person too.
He knows only one of them is going to leave this cave whole.
“Now how could I ignore a tantalizing trail like that, hm?” Duquesne makes a
tsk-tsk noise with his tongue. “He led me straight to you.”
Without breaking eye contact, Clint takes out the stainless steel folding knife
and flips it open at his side.
“Finding me doesn’t mean you win, Jacques,” he says, his voice as edged with
menace as his bladed weapon. “I’ve learned a lot since we last met.”
Duquesne also draws out a bladed weapon from the side pocket of his black
combat pants, a wood-handled linoleum knife with a carbon steel, hooked blade.
Clint knows far better than to assume its small size means Duquesne is less
likely to kill him with it. Duquesne intends to get up close and personal with
it, to cut him and feel the blade hurt him.
“Well.” Duquesne grins from ear to ear, displaying both rows of razor-sharp
fangs. “That makes the two of us, boy.”
For someone as massive as Duquesne, the fucker moves fast. Clint needs all his
speed, strength and dexterity to evade Duquesne’s lightning-swift stabs. He
blocks a low, upward stab aimed at his gut, making sure Duquesne can’t get at
his forearms to cut their tendons or veins. He goes for Duquesne’s neck while
pushing Duquesne’s armed hand back, but Duquesne’s strong , strong enough to
block him and yank him off his feet. He lands on his ass and rolls away to
safety a split second later from under a stab at his chest. He leaps out of the
way when Duquesne lunges at him, then again when Duquesne swipes at his neck
and chest.
He can’t let Duquesne grab him again. If Duquesne does, he knows Duquesne will
go for a deep stab through his underarm into his lung or into his neck or up
into his skull via the underside of his jaw. All three will end with him dead
and he really, really prefers not being dead.
He blocks another high, downward stab with a hand slam on Duquesne’s inner
forearm, then a low stab that he also slams away with a palm on Duquesne’s
outer forearm. Duquesne is fucking relentless, stabbing at him over and over no
matter how many times he parries and tries to stab and slash Duquesne in
counterattacks.
Then, he draws first blood when his knife slashes across Duquesne’s left outer
forearm.
Duquesne leaps back and glances down at the straight, crimson wound for a
moment, as if he can’t believe Clint had managed to do that at all. They’re
both breathing heavily, sweating, their fangs bared and their eyes wide and
feral, their hearts hammering like war drums. Duquesne then slowly raises his
head to stare at Clint.
Clint expects him to say something, to snarl in outrage at being cut by the boy
he’d once mentored. Instead, Duquesne charges at him in utter silence, hacking
at him violently, propelling him backward and ah fuck, he’s in deep shit now.
This is Duquesne no longer holding himself in check. This is Duquesne after
almost twenty years of madness and obsession and heinous serial killing with no
one stopping him all that time. Twenty years of becoming even more adept at
using bladed weapons than he already was.
Clint dodges and parries as best he can, grunting and grimacing when he blocks
one particularly mighty, downward stab for which Duquesne uses his full body
strength. He feels the impact all the way to his marrow but then, then he sees
the fleeting opening for him to slam his hand against Duquesne’s wrist and make
Duquesne drop his weapon.
The wood-handled linoleum knife goes spinning out of Duquesne’s hand.
Clint stabs upwards at Duquesne’s neck, already envisioning the folding knife’s
blade slicing through the carotid artery in it.
For an instant, sunlight glints off the hooked blade of another linoleum knife.
And then, it’s buried deep in Clint’s lower belly.
It happens so fast that Clint can’t even scream, even as the blade carves a
horizontal path through his flesh and organs, as Duquesne lifts him up into the
air with the knife still in him. His own knife drops from his lax hand onto
barren ground. His hands scramble and claw frantically at Duquesne’s arms. He
goes stiff from the paralyzing agony exploding from his abdomen and he gasps
and gasps as Duquesne stares up at him with psychotic eyes and that nasty grin.
“You robbed me of my face, my life,” Duquesne snarls.
Oh fuck, motherfuck, it hurts so bad and he can feel and hear his blood
showering down on Duquesne’s arms and to the ground like rain -
“Now, I will rob you of the children you will never have -”
He’s going to die, he’s hurting and bleeding so fucking bad and he’s going to
die and Phil doesn’t know he’s here, Phil doesn’t know about the innocent
family in Queens that Duquesne took hostage to coerce him into coming here
alone, Phil doesn’t know he’s here and dying -
“And then I will rob you of your life -”
And he’s sorry, he’s so sorry he won’t get to talk to Phil one last time, to
tell his mate how much he means to him, to thank him for loving him when no one
else did, for everything -
“And I will rip your face off and mail it to your Alpha.”
Clint gasps and shudders and gasps again as Duquesne’s fanged grin stretches
even wider.
“How do you think he’ll feel, knowing that he’s the reason you’re dying now?”
Clint can’t answer. He can’t even think. He can only feel pain, devastating
pain and … a peculiar, distant tingle in the back of his brain. It’s
intensifying by the second, and it feels so familiar, it makes him think of
spring nectar and cleansed grass after the rain, of him and his mate entwined
under the bed covers in the morning when they don’t have to go anywhere and all
they need is each other.
Phil, his lips move soundlessly to say.
He hears the booming shot from Phil’s gun before he sees Phil himself. He sees
blood spray from Duquesne’s shoulder, feels it splatter his left cheek. He
hears Phil roaring that ear-splitting, terrifying roar as Duquesne wrenches out
the knife from his belly, as he plummets to the ground onto his back.
His vision goes hazy and dark at the edges. His blood is pumping out across his
belly and down his sides onto the ground. He hears the rapid noises of
ferocious one-on-one combat from faraway, hears pained grunts and enraged
snarls and flesh striking flesh. He’s going numb, going into shock. He stares
up at the cave’s open ceiling and it looks like an eye, like a god’s all-
seeing, cold eye staring back at him. He wonders if gods are just ancient
monsters who can’t be seen, who can’t be heard, who can’t be trusted.
He wonders how Phil found him. He wonders if he’ll get the chance to say
goodbye to his beloved mate after all.
Again, that ear-splitting, terrifying roar reverberates in the cave. It sounds
different this time, not a war cry but a cry for help, need help now . He feels
rather than sees Phil at his side, hurriedly stripping off a black suit jacket
and folding it, taking away his arm and pressing the jacket down on his slashed
open belly. It hurts, it hurts and he thinks he cries out and Phil is saying
sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I have to, I have to.
He gasps and chokes and gasps and then he doesn’t have to anymore as more
people come into view, as an oxygen mask is strapped over his face and
something pricks the skin of his arm that makes the pain go away. He sees Phil
being dragged away from him by Fury as he’s lifted onto a stretcher. He sees
Phil struggling to free himself as Fury says something in his ear. He sees his
courageous, noble, devoted mate and he has to have Phil near, he has to tell
Phil all those important things before it’s too late.
Phil breaks free from Fury and runs to him. He reaches out for Phil with a
wavering, blood-splashed hand, squeezing Phil’s hand in return after Phil
clutches it and doesn’t let go.
He tries to open his mouth, to speak.
He can see Phil’s lips moving, saying something to him, but he can’t hear
anything anymore.
He tries to say those six words that he always says to his beloved Alpha, be it
as a whisper into Phil’s ear in Phil’s office or a rasp into Phil’s mouth when
they’re making love. He thinks that maybe he does say them, when he sees Phil’s
face crumple and Phil clutches onto his hand and won’t let go even in the
rescue helicopter.
He thinks, as his eyes shut and he tumbles into darkness, that not everyone is
as blessed as he to have his beloved Alpha at his side as he dies.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
“I love you so much,” Clint rasps into Phil’s pliant lips, as Phil thrusts easy
and slow into him and cradles him in strong, sinewy arms on the plush cushions
of their couch. “Always.”
“And I love you,” Phil rasps in return, as Clint arches up against him and
clamps tight and hot around him. “No matter who and what I become.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Five hours since the emergency surgery, and Clint’s dark-ringed, sunken eyes
are still shut and unmoving. The surgeons told Coulson that they may stay that
way for days, with Clint in an induced coma and in urgent need of quarts of
blood for transfusions for the grave amount of it Clint lost before arriving in
the Helicarrier’s medical bay. The surgeons told him that Clint will never be
the same again, that there are parts of Clint far too damaged to be saved, if
Clint is to remain alive.
We had no choice but to remove one of his ovaries along with its fallopian
tube, they said. We almost had to remove his uterus as well, and we may have to
if any complications arise, especially infection. However, the other ovary is
undamaged. We can harvest and preserve the eggs from it, if you want us to do
that, just in case.
Coulson once thought that three other certain words were petrifying, be it to
utter them or to receive them. Then Clint strode into his life and suddenly,
those three other certain words became the easiest words to say, the most
exhilarating to receive. (And there are nights when he’s far away from Clint on
a mission, that remembering Clint saying those words to him is the only thing
that helps him sleep, that helps him to get through another day without his
mate at his side.)
But now, oh, now he knows three far more petrifying words: Just in case.
Just in case he needs those eggs to be able to have children with Clint. Just
in case Clint’s uterus has to be removed after all. Just in case Clint doesn’t
recover even after surgery by the best medical team SHIELD (the world ) has to
offer. Just in case Clint dies.
It’s still a very real peril. Brisson, as blunt a head surgeon as he is, had
told him that Clint is still in critical condition, that the next forty-eight
hours will determine if Clint survives or succumbs to his injuries.
Just be prepared, Phil, Brisson said. It’s up to him now.
So Clint sleeps the sleep of the grievously wounded, while Coulson maintains a
vigil at Clint’s bedside and doesn’t sleep at all. He sits on a cushioned
armchair and stares at his comatose mate’s pallid face, at the bruises marring
his mate’s burly arms, at the thick bandages binding his mate’s abdomen. He
stares at the IV fluid, drugs and blood trickling into Clint’s veins via
transparent lines embedded into Clint’s inner forearm. He stares and reaches
out to caress Clint’s stubbly cheek with the back of trembling fingers, and
Clint is cold, so cold to his touch.
(He’d scrubbed his blood-drenched hands and arms in one of the sinks in the
men’s restroom during the emergency surgery. He’d completely forgotten about
Clint’s blood on him until he realized other people in the med bay were staring
at him, at the blood bath of his arms and shirt. Then he’d fled to the nearest
restroom and he’d turned on the tap to full blast and then he’d scrubbed and
scrubbed and scrubbed until his skin was red and raw with his own blood boiling
beneath it.)
“We got him, sweetheart,” he rasps, and alone with Clint like he is, he doesn’t
care that he sounds like his voice has gone through a grater. “We got the
fucking bastard before he could run again. And we got to the family in Queens
before any of them died from their injuries. They’re all going to survive,
Clint, all four of them.
“I knew something was wrong when you wouldn’t pick up my calls. I knew
something was wrong when you deliberately used a SHIELD-issued car with a
tracker instead of Lola, when you left the city without a word to anyone. And
when I got to the caves first, I just … somehow I just knew where to go to find
you. It was like this … tingle in the back of my head. I just followed it when
it became stronger and stronger and then …”
He strokes the crown of Clint’s head. Runs his fingers through golden, short
hair now silky and flat after being washed.
He sucks in a long, tremulous breath, hating how sickly his mate’s scent has
become from the drugs.
“There you were in the air, and there Duquesne was with his arms soaked in your
blood, and in that moment I thought my world had ended.”
In the ensuing silence, all he hears is the muted beeping from the bedside
patient monitors flanking the head of Clint’s bed. He has to stare at Clint’s
chest to be certain that it’s still rising and falling, that Clint is still
breathing, that Clint is still alive. He has to lean against the side of the
bed to remain upright, to not just keel over and lay his head upon Clint’s
chest and allow the deluge of sobs proliferating in his chest (his soul) to
pour forth from his mouth.
There will be time for that later, when (when ) the doctors tell him that
Clint’s going to be okay, when he’s alone and no one can see or hear him to
realize that the legendary Agent Phil Coulson is just another flawed, fucked up
man with a heart so big he had to seal it behind layer upon layer of armor
(until Clint strode into his life, until Clint became his life).
He sucks in another long, tremulous breath as he grasps Clint’s limp hand with
both of his.
Duquesne is in SHIELD custody now, with Nick overseeing the necessary
proceedings to formally charge Duquesne with at least eight counts of first
degree murder and to get Duquesne to confess to all of them. (A week from now,
Nick will tell him that Duquesne had gleefully confessed to all eight along
with nine other murders, detailing each one to such excess that the senior
agents recording the confessions had to receive intensive counseling later.)
Duquesne will never be a free man again just for his first degree attempted
murder of a SHIELD specialist agent like Clint. Duquesne is looking at lifelong
imprisonment in isolation at best, with zero chance of parole.
But is that due punishment that fits the crimes? Or will it be Duquesne’s last
laugh?
The chances of Duquesne not ending up in a state facility for the criminally
insane will be slim to none, psychopathic and sadistic serial killer that he
is. Unlike in a prison, Duquesne will receive far kinder treatment in such a
facility. Duquesne will receive regular meals and medication, a bed, a room to
himself for the rest of his life. Duquesne will probably be studied by
psychiatrists to broaden their knowledge on abnormal, violent Alphas and their
behaviors, and become the subject of their published papers in established
psychiatric journals. The press will clash in a vulturous frenzy over rights to
exclusive interviews and strew his name and past - oh god, Clint’s as well -
across the papers and on television and the internet, especially if they find
out about how his face became so mangled, if they find out that it’s the
catalyst for his serial killings. Duquesne will go down in the history books as
one of the country’s cruelest serial killers, all the more nefarious for
targeting Omegas.
Duquesne will be a star, just like he was when he was the Swordsman in the now
long-disbanded Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders.
Duquesne will be alive.
And as long as the monstrous fucker lives, there will always be the risk of him
escaping from captivity, free to harm Clint again and kill Clint.
“It won’t be our world ending,” Coulson whispers into the fragile skin of the
back of Clint’s hand as he holds it to his face. “Not ours.”
Clint remains still, silent and cold. Clint looks like he’s already dead.
Ages later, Nick enters the room with slow, steady steps. Coulson doesn’t turn
around to look at his old friend. Slumped in the armchair, Coulson stares on at
Clint as Nick stands behind him and to his right, a bastion of authority and
support in black leather and an eye-patch.
“I want his head, Nick,” Coulson growls, still staring at his comatose mate,
still sounding like his voice’s gone through a grater, like his world may still
end right before his eyes. “Look at what he did to my beloved mate.”
He feels Nick’s hand upon his shoulder, feels it squeeze his shoulder. He is
unashamed of the wetness that springs to his eyes. It won’t even come close to
being the first time Nick sees him emotional, and Nick won’t judge him for it,
not now, not this time.
“Do you remember the warehouse?” Nick asks quietly after more ages later, his
hand still on Coulson’s shoulder.
Coulson still doesn’t look at Nick. He turns his head only the slightest to the
right, expressionless. Inside his mind, however, he is rapidly dredging up
images on that warehouse from his tremendous mental data banks, recalling a
nondescript warehouse with exterior brick walls, sandy concrete floors and
squalid, rectangular windows in the Bronx. A warehouse that only he and Nick
know about. A warehouse with a soundproofed, underground cell and its bolted
down metal chair.
“Yes,” Coulson says, and now in his mind, he sees himself dressing all in
black, armed with a pistol, a tranquilizer gun and a syringe of methohexital,
tugging a black mask over his head. He sees himself speeding up in an unmarked
van to the SHIELD armored prisoner transport vehicle ferrying Duquesne from one
glorified cage to another, firing his gun at the wheels of the escort car in
front of the transport vehicle, backing up as it spins out of control and the
transport vehicle crashes headlong into it and rolls onto its side. He sees
himself knocking out fellow SHIELD agents with the tranquilizer gun, sees
himself opening the back doors of the downed transport vehicle to find the
agents in it unconscious from the impact but not Duquesne, chained up in a coop
and watching him, grinning at him.
Duquesne won’t be grinning so much when he plunges the syringe of methohexital
into his carotid artery.
By the time he drags Duquesne down to the cell from the van, Duquesne won’t be
grinning at all.
“It’s a last resort, Cheese,” Nick says in the present, knowing exactly what’s
been going through his mind. “The last. You talk to me before you do anything.
Do you understand me?”
“Yes, boss,” Coulson replies, his eyes clear once more to gaze on at Clint, but
what he really wanted to say was, it’s the only resort, Nick, to protect my
mate like I promised him. The only one.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
The first time he and Phil make love after the knife fight with Duquesne in
that vast, dusty cave, he has to contend with the persisting impulse to obscure
the scar across his lower belly from Phil’s sight. It’s so stupid because
Phil’s seen it already. So many times.
The first couple of weeks after being discharged from the med bay, Phil
sometimes had to help him just to get out of bed. Phil often had to help him
walk around their apartment, letting him go off on his own only when he was
within sight and reach. (Normally, hovering like this would annoy the shit out
of him, but it isn’t everyday that he’s disemboweled with a knife by the fucker
who attacked and tried to rape him when he was a teenager, and still being
alive has made him all the more appreciative of a doting, faithful mate like
Phil.) Phil had to help him every time with bathing, to wrap his healing wound
in waterproof covers, to change the bandages afterward and apply the required
ointments.
So yeah, it’s so stupid that he feels humiliated about it when he already has
so many other scars on his body. It isn’t like Phil’s going to divorce him just
because he has this humongous one now.
But he knows how much Phil wants children, despite Phil not saying a word to
him about it. He knows, every time Phil rubs his belly after they knot during
his heat, every time Phil sees an Alpha-Omega couple with a baby and his
beautiful, blue eyes go fleetingly soft with longing.
And this goddamn scar is a sobering reminder to them both that Phil’s dream is
just that now. An unattainable dream.
Only as long as Phil chooses to stay with him. (A defective Omega like him.)
He does his best to not let this distressing thought show on his face as he
sits on the side of their bed and pulls his black, v-neck sweater over his
head. He’s evidently thinner than he was before and his muscles aren’t so
defined anymore but hey, a prolonged stay in the med bay after getting
disemboweled (and after a strenuous round of infection) can do that to a guy.
(The excuse doesn’t guarantee Phil will still find him as attractive, though.
He’s heard of Alphas getting turned off by their Omegas after long periods of
illness where their bodies or scents changed, and boy, has his body changed
inside and out.)
After dropping his sweater to the carpeted floor, he gazes up at Phil who’s
standing in front of him and gazing down at him. Phil’s eyes are crinkled and
warm. Phil is still garbed in a dark blue t-shirt and black sweatpants. Phil is
totally silent as he lithely goes down on his knees, maintaining eye contact
all the while.
Clint would be lying through his teeth if he says the mere action - an Alpha
voluntarily going down on his knees in front of an Omega - doesn’t turn him on
so damn much. Phil has a way of flipping stereotypes on their heads like that
and making it look so sexy.
Phil knee-walks forward to insinuate himself between Clint’s spread thighs,
still locking eyes with him. Clint happily accepts the kiss that Phil bequeaths
his lips, then again, again, until Phil plants more kisses down the vulnerable
line of his throat. He cups the back of Phil’s head with both hands as Phil
nuzzles the sparse hair on his chest and breathes his scent in deeply. He gasps
as Phil tongues and sucks on his nipples while caressing the arched length of
his back, his fingers curling in Phil’s thin hair. His hands begin to quaver
when Phil goes lower, when Phil gets nearer and nearer to the scar on his lower
belly.
He doesn’t realize how jagged and loud his breaths have become until Phil’s
mouth is poised over that very scar, until Phil gazes up at him and keeps
looking into his eyes as he plants a kiss on it, then another, then another
along its length, saying more than any words can.
“You asshole. I wanna punch you in the face,” Clint whispers after Phil has
kissed the entire length of the scar, lavishing as much love upon it as Phil
does upon any other part of his body.
Phil hugs him around his hips and gazes up at him with large, ingenuous eyes
and quirked lips. It’s a really cute look on Phil, but Clint can’t say so
because he’s too busy trying not to bawl like a baby and embarrass himself.
“How about you kiss me instead and let me make love to my gorgeous,
incomparable husband?”
As it turns out, it’s one of Phil’s excellent ideas (not that Phil’s other
ideas aren’t excellent too, but he is always down for this particular idea).
They end up on the bed with Clint lying on his back, his arms stretched up over
his head and Phil on top of him and tucked in the cusp of his spread thighs,
arms also stretched up, their hands linked (just like they did during their
very first mating so many years ago). Phil takes his sweet time pushing that
long, fat cock into him. Phil kisses him over and over and steals his breath
away. Phil stays buried inside him, barely withdrawing before thrusting in now
and then, keeping them stimulated while dragging out their lovemaking for as
long as possible. Phil feels heavier, warmer to him. Phil feels heavy and warm
and solid, a protective presence between him and the rest of the world.
Phil feels like home.
After they’ve come (with him going off like a damn rocket in Phil’s hand and
Phil filling him up inside), they lie on their sides facing each other under
the covers, their legs intertwined and Phil stroking the side of his neck with
gentle fingers. Clint is the first to fall asleep, and he’s certain of that
because Phil is still staring at him with those crinkled, warm, beautiful eyes
as his own eyes flutter shut. Phil’s done this countless times, regardless of
whether they’re here in the sanctuary of their apartment or whether they’re on
a mission alone, just the two of them (just the way he likes it), and after
what happened to him, he’s fine, just fine with it.
The monsters roaming this world they live in won’t get him, not anymore, not
with Phil watching over him and shielding him.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
A short while after a home-cooked dinner of peanut noodles with shredded
chicken and vegetables at home, Phil drives them to a nondescript warehouse in
the Bronx in an unremarkable, black car that Clint immediately pegged to be
SHIELD-issued. (The only car Phil will ever own is Lola, and he knows Phil will
never drive Lola to where they’re headed, not unless they want Lola stolen and
stripped down and never, ever seen again.) Clint isn’t sure of what to make of
the abrupt trip or of Phil’s atypical reticence all the way to their
destination.
He doesn’t ask any questions, though. He silently gazes out the windshield and
sits relaxed in the front passenger seat in his black leather jacket, white t-
shirt, jeans and boots. Phil, similarly attired but in a navy blazer, grasps
his hand without hesitation when he reaches over to hold Phil’s.
Phil’s hand is trembling. Phil’s scent is tinged with a slight sourness that he
learned years and years ago to recognize as anxiety. Phil’s expression is
inscrutable, a smooth slate.
Clint still doesn’t ask any questions.
He hasn’t come this far with his best friend, his husband, his Alpha mate in
all things to not trust the man now.
Clint feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle when Phil parks the car
several blocks away from the warehouse. Phil must have a reason to not want
even a dull, SHIELD-issued car to be seen and recalled near the place, and he
highly doubts that it’s an innocuous one. Whatever is in the warehouse, it’s
something Phil doesn’t want anyone else to know about, something truly for his
eyes only.
And still, he doesn’t ask any questions.
In the dimness of night, passing under warm street lights that skirt the
sidewalk, they amble to the warehouse side by side with Phil leading the way.
Phil is still so reticent, so withdrawn, as if walls have suddenly risen and
surrounded Phil, separating him from Clint. It makes the hair on the back of
his neck prickle even more. It makes his belly go cold and clench. He resists
the urge to seize Phil’s hand and tug Phil nearer to him, to check that his
mate is still here with him and not just a figment of his imagination.
When they arrive, Clint doesn’t see anyone else around. There’s a stray dog or
two loitering around in the shadowed alley next to the warehouse, and he kneels
on the sidewalk and whistles softly at them to get their attention. The dogs
look at him but don’t come any closer, eying him with wariness. They stay at a
distance even after he snaps his fingers and says, “Come here, boy. Come on.”
Phil stands beside him and says nothing. He glances up at Phil and sees that
Phil is observing him with eyes that are blatantly fond and yet … somber.
Mournful. As if some clock is ticking down to a calamity and Phil is the only
one who knows what it is. (As if he is going to be the source of it, and what
is up with that?)
Phil walks ahead as Clint stands up, already forgetting the dogs. Clint follows
him to the side of the warehouse, to a door painted black, and watches Phil
unlock it with a silver key on a metal key ring that he’s never seen before
(and he knows all their keys, like the keys to their apartment, to their
private safes, to Lola). It’s dark inside the warehouse until Phil switches on
rows of fluorescent lights hanging from the rafters of a ceiling thirty-two
feet high with exposed metal purlins. Clint blinks a few times from the sudden
glare, then gives the spacious interior of the warehouse a once-over.
It’s completely empty, its concrete floor sandy from lack of use and its
rectangular windows boarded up from the inside. It’s chilly and the air in it
is stale. It’s as average as a warehouse gets, a place nobody would bother
inspecting with anything more than a cursory glance. No one’s been in here for
a while.
But Phil must have come here at some point in the recent past, to have
something for him to see. (Maybe as recent as earlier today, since Phil was out
the whole afternoon while he napped in their bedroom.) Something important
enough that Phil won’t even tell him what it is. Something that’s gotten Phil
so nervous that his usually confident mate can scarcely look at him.
“Phil?”
Phil doesn’t respond to him. Instead, Phil walks up to what appears to be a
rectangular door in the cement floor. It’s colored identically to the cement,
with no visible hinges, and with the insertion of another key from that metal
key ring by Phil in a hidden lock, the door is opening up by itself via gas
struts pushing it up and to one side. A straight flight of brick stairs is
leading down into a dark basement.
“Phil,” he says again, faintly. “What is this place?”
Phil is now standing at the top of the stairs, one foot on a lower tread,
looking at him with those somber, old eyes. Phil raises his right hand with its
palm up and wordlessly offers it to him to take. Neither of them comment on how
it’s visibly trembling.
Without hesitation, Clint goes to Phil and grips Phil’s hand, weaving their
fingers. Phil squeezes his hand so hard that it almost hurts as they go down
the stairs into what seems to be a basement, but he doesn’t comment on it
either. When Phil switches on the ceiling lights here, he sees that it’s more
of an underground level than a basement. They’re standing in a long corridor
with featureless, gray walls and a concrete floor, with a single door to the
left. Like the trap door, this door is colored identically to the wall and has
no visible hinges. Phil releases his hand to open the door with yet another key
on that metal key ring.
Clint is taken aback by the astringent smell of bleach that assails his
nostrils after the door fully slides open. Holy shit, it’s like somebody
marinated the room with it. He waves one hand in the air in front of his face
while Phil strides into the dark room and turns right and presses a switch on
the wall.
“Oh man, what is with the bleach? What is this place -”
The words die in Clint’s mouth when he sees the bolted down metal chair in the
center of the windowless room, when he sees the metal cuffs on it that are
unmistakably for constraining someone to it. He freezes in place when he sees
the gadrooned-edged silver platter and its high, silver dome with its ornate,
engraved band and reed handle on the seat of the metal chair.
He stares at the silver platter with wide, bewildered eyes. He approaches it
with tentative, precarious steps, suddenly unable to quite sense the floor
beneath his feet anymore, like there’s a cavernous pit under him. He sees Phil
go to stand next to the metal chair with equally tentative steps and he glances
at Phil to see Phil watching him silently, cautiously.
Phil’s scared. Phil’s scared of him. Of how he’s going to react.
He deliberately draws in a deep, calming breath as he gazes down at the silver
platter and its dome. He’s standing with his beloved mate ( beloved, always) in
an underground cell in a nondescript warehouse in the Bronx, but he is also
careening back in time, remembering himself seated next to Phil on the couch in
their living room while Fury sits on an armchair perpendicular to the couch.
Duquesne was kidnapped by a masked assailant while en route to the detainment
facility in Ossining two days ago, Fury had said to them without fanfare, his
one eye blazing.
He’d cursed aloud, his hands gritting into fists on his lap, the healing scar
on his lower belly abruptly aching like crazy. Fury had said nothing about his
swearing. Phil had said nothing either. Phil had simply stared at Fury, his
face inscrutable, an utterly smooth slate. Fury had stared right back, saying
nothing for many minutes. Then, as if from a million miles away, Fury talked
about a manhunt already underway for Duquesne and his unknown accomplice, about
Phil returning just in time from his mission in Bogotá to participate in the
pursuit (to protect Clint while Clint was still recuperating, still exhausted
and frail, but neither Phil or Fury said this out loud).
He had no idea when Fury left their apartment. He’d wilted on the couch with
his maimed insides churning into an ocean of nausea and dread, his fists
vibrating from it, and then Phil had returned from the front door and pulled
him into a crushing embrace and said against his hair, it’s okay, everything’s
going to be okay, sweetheart, I promise, it’s going to be okay.
And Phil … Phil had indeed kept that promise, amongst others.
Back in the here and now, Clint gazes at his quiet mate with large, unguarded
eyes, at his mate’s equally large, unguarded, glistening eyes. They stare at
each other in a profound silence that settles over them like a warm, thick
cloak.
It’s Phil who eventually breaks the silence, rasping to him, “I promised you,
on the day we married, that I would do this to anyone who dared try take you
from me.”
Clint swallows hard even as he gazes on at Phil. Yes. Yes, he remembers.
He glances down at the silver platter and its dome again. He draws in another
deep breath, paying no heed to the stink of bleach, and lets it out as a
noiseless sigh. He reaches for the dome’s handle and then lifts the dome off
the platter in one smooth movement. He lets the dome plunge from his hand to
the floor at his side. It hits the cement floor with a clang.
Being a SHIELD specialist agent, he’s seen his share of grisly spectacles, the
kind of shit that would make regular folks scream and run for the hills and
never look back. He’s created his own share of grisly spectacles, whenever he
has no choice but to kill an enemy on a mission with an arrow through the eye
or a bullet through the brain.
So as he stares down at Duquesne’s upright, decapitated head thawing on the
silver platter, at its half-open, milky eyes and sagging lower jaw, he doesn’t
know what to feel or think. His shocked brain is probably still processing the
fact that he’s staring at a decapitated head that once belonged to his former
mentor, his friend in the circus. A decapitated head that Phil had removed from
its body and placed on a silver platter for him to see.
His shocked brain is still processing the fact that he isn’t afraid of Phil
even after this. That he loves his mate even more, that Phil loves him this
much, to hunt down anyone who harmed him to the end of the world and make them
pay with blood.
“Did you hurt him?” he whispers, still staring down at Duquesne’s decapitated
head.
He doesn’t know if he’s asking Phil or his dead former mentor (his attacker,
his tormentor, the psychotic bastard who almost raped him and killed him, the
fucker). He doesn’t know how much this has cost his beloved mate. He doesn’t
know if Duquesne had managed to claim one last victim before dying, one who
least deserves to be on the list (all because of him, him).
It’s Phil who replies, “Yes.”
Clint stares down at the decapitated head. He stares and stares and his chest
starts to tremor and so do his hands, his claws unsheathing and his fangs
baring themselves as he snarls, “Good.”
Long minutes pass before Phil asks, “What would you like to do with it?”
Clint finally looks at Phil, his claws and fangs retracting, his heart slowing,
his chest and hands firm once more. The walls around Phil are gone. The slight
sourness from Phil’s scent is gone. Phil’s hand grasping the backrest of the
bolted down metal chair isn’t trembling. Phil’s eyes are no longer somber or
afraid.
“I was thinking about giving it to the dogs outside. But that would be
insulting to their palate.”
Phil’s lips quirk up at that.
Clint gazes down at the decapitated head once more. In the wake of his rage,
his chest throbs with something weighty and wintry, something akin to pitiless
snow falling and falling and suffocating the world, life beneath it.
“He killed all those guys because of me,” he rasps, swallowing hard again. “He
killed poor Anastasia because she cared for me. He even killed an ex-carny who
helped him. He almost killed that couple and their two kids in Queens, just to
get to me.”
“No.”
Clint glances at Phil, who looks him in the eye and says, “He killed them
because he was a sadistic, serial killing piece of shit. He chose to kill
them.”
Like I chose to kill him, he hears Phil not say aloud.
They’re still looking each other in the eye when Clint raises a hand with its
palm up and wordlessly offers it to Phil to take. It doesn’t tremble at all.
Without hesitation, Phil comes to him and grips his hand, weaving their
fingers. Clint reaches for Phil’s other hand and holds it too. He bunts his
forehead against his mate’s and rubs them together. He smiles softly at Phil’s
tiny huff of pleasure, of relief.
When he leans back, he gazes into Phil’s big, beautiful blue eyes. He sees
nothing at all of Duquesne in them, or of wriggling, undead worms and restless
demons. He sees only his handler, his best friend, his lover, his husband, his
Alpha mate, his everything.
He sees only Phil.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Duquesne’s disappearance is marked as a closed case by SHIELD, the NYPD and FBI
six months after the fact, with all official inquiries from other agencies
choked off and blanked out even earlier. Duquesne’s identity and capture by
SHIELD are never discovered by the press, much less broadcast, and in the eyes
of the press who’d christened him the Face-Off Killer while reporting on the
serial killings of blond Omega men across the country, the unidentified
murderer remains at large.
Eight months after the fact, there are no more fresh news articles about the
Face-Off Killer, on the internet or on paper. The press becomes far more
interested in reporting about the latest political shenanigans leading up to
the next presidential election and the never-ending, compounding wars in the
Middle East and exotic viruses threatening humanity.
Nine months after, it is as if Duquesne had never existed. His SHIELD file
disappears, as do his files in other agencies. All video, audio and image files
from the SHIELD detainment center of him are wiped out. All SHIELD reports
involving Duquesne’s attack on Clint in that cave also disappear. Any mention
of his name and references to him are also erased from the internet (and
considering how low a profile Duquesne had kept since the assault in that motel
in Waverly, there were next to none apart from a couple of trivia websites
referring to the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders).
Coulson doesn’t question how Nick pulled it all off. Neither does Clint.
And he will never tell Clint that it had all been at his behest to Nick.
Bury him, he’d growled to Nick, as Clint slept the sleep of the grievously
wounded in the Helicarrier’s medical bay. Erase him completely from existence.
Okay, Cheese, Nick had replied, turning a blind eye to the dampness of his red
eyes, grasping his shoulders with both hands, okay.
“C’mon, put away the damn thing and snuggle with me already.”
Try as he might (and it’s a lackluster attempt, really), Coulson can’t stop the
tender smile that curves up his lips at his delectably nude mate’s grousing.
Clint is snuggled up to him already, tucked against his side with one arm over
his belly and both legs entangled with his under the bed covers. He lifts the
comm pad in his hand above his head when Clint swats at it like a cat would. He
bursts into a chuckle when Clint climbs over and up his body just like a cat
would to snatch the comm pad away.
“All right, all right, I’m putting it away. See?”
He switches off the comm pad’s display and places it on the bedside table next
to the lit lamp. When he turns back to face Clint, Clint yanks him down onto
the bed and under the covers, eliciting another chuckle out of him. They lie on
their sides, face to face, their legs entangled once more, their heads sharing
one pillow.
Clint says his name softly.
“What?” he asks as softly, gazing at Clint’s appealing visage, at his mate’s
eyes half-lidded with drowsiness and serenity. He breathes in his mate’s crisp
and sweet scent. He smiles a closed-lipped smile as Clint strokes the hair
above his ear with gentle fingertips.
“He’s gone,” Clint murmurs after a millennia. “He’ll never hurt us again.”
Clint’s eyes are half-lidded, and they are sharp, so sharp and perceptive.
Coulson shuts his eyes even as his smile turns bittersweet and tremulous, as
Clint continues to stroke his hair. It’s ridiculous of him, he knows, to keep
scanning the news and SHIELD channels and other unofficial channels for any
hearsay of Duquesne’s decapitated and dismembered corpse to surface. He knows
Nick’s cleanup crew did a meticulous job of disposing of Duquesne’s remains and
everything else. He knows Nick had personally seen to it that nothing about
Duquesne’s disappearance can ever be linked to him or Clint (or SHIELD).
Still. Still, this world they live in teems with monsters. Far crueler monsters
than the likes of Duquesne.
He will protect his beloved mate, his family from them all.
“He’s gone, Phil. He’s never coming back. But us?” Coulson opens his eyes when
Clint takes his hand and holds it against a belly that’s still flat and firm
(but not for long, not for long). “We’re still here, babe.”
Coulson swallows visibly and presses his hand over the long, faded scar there.
Over the new life growing behind it.
“Yes,” he whispers, his eyes crinkled, his smile now steadfast. “We are.”
 
 
 
 
 
Chapter End Notes
     And in the final Act, look forward to more sex (including
     pregnant!sex), more comfort after all the hurt, more Clint and
     Coulson bonding and of course, baby!
***** ACT III *****
Chapter Notes
     Holy crap, I did not expect the third and final Act to be as long as
     Acts I and II combined! That's right, people, we are talking over
     28,000 words of Clint and Coulson dealing with male Omega pregnancy,
     childbirth and Pheels diabeetus galore to the max.
     And speaking of childbirth, the one depicted in this Act is based off
     the real life experiences of several women I know who've experienced
     natural childbirth. So if you read it and you (possibly) go whoa at
     some of it, yep ... this and that actually happened, haha.
     The soundtrack I listened to while writing this Act is Michael
     Nyman's Scent_of_Love, the first three minutes of it anyway.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
                                   ACT III:
 
On his third evening in Yangon, Myanmar, Clint is throwing up onto the gnarled
roots of a towering Burmese rosewood tree. The nausea smacks into him so
swiftly and ruthlessly that he’s hunched over and seizing from his body’s
effort to retch before he even thinks it. All he can think afterward, after he
stops dry heaving and staggers away from the sour-smelling mess on the ground,
is thank fuck that nobody’s around to see some random white guy vomiting his
guts out in public.
His ear piece comes to life with four, sedately spoken words.
“Barton. Talk to me.”
Whatever discomfort his body is experiencing abates upon hearing his handler’s
familiar, bolstering voice. (His mate, his beloved mate who’s always there for
him, no matter where they are.)
“I’m okay, sir,” he says as he resumes his journey on foot back to their
hideaway in the heart of the city where Coulson is, wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand. “Probably that greasy fish curry from dinner.”
As appetizing and filling with rice as it was, just thinking about the red oil
that saturated the curry makes him feel like gagging again. Ugh, he won’t be
eating that again any time soon.
“Be glad you didn’t order the goat testicle curry, then.”
Clint smiles to himself as he walks on, exiting an alley to join the ever
bustling, polyglot crowd of Burmese, Chinese and Indian people on the sidewalks
bordering colonial architecture, gilded pagodas and high-rise buildings alike.
He passes a multitude of riders on scooters and bicycles, vendors offering deep
fried snacks, a burgundy-robed monk and a traffic sign written in local
alphabet as he murmurs, “I’m still gonna try it if we have the time. I heard
they’re like chunks of pure lard.”
Coulson doesn’t say anything, but he can tell that Coulson is still concerned
about him.
And okay, maybe thinking and talking about eating chunks of pure lard isn’t the
wisest idea right now, if his gurgling stomach is anything to go by.
“I’m fine, sir,” he says quietly, pulling his black leather jacket tighter
around his body. “Didn’t run into anyone. No trouble.”
“Acknowledged,” Coulson replies as quietly.
Clint knows this quick job is nothing more than a milk run, just him passing a
dead drop to leave some much needed information for the SHIELD sleeper agents
in the city while Coulson babysits him. It’s the first time since his showdown
with Duquesne that he’s left the States on a mission with Coulson, the first
time he’s alone on the job with his handler. Under any other circumstances, he
would be pissed off as hell to be saddled with a job like this, as would
Coulson. A job like this is an insult to the finest handler/asset pair in all
of SHIELD and no, it’s not a brag, they earned the rep by working smart, hard
and fast together on the toughest missions and maintaining a hundred percent
success rate for the last six years. (And no other team has yet to achieve the
same.)
But hey, it’s not every day he almost fucking dies from being eviscerated and
loses internal organs along the way and almost dies again from infection. It ’s
not every day that he wakes up from a days-long coma to see his beloved mate
looking like absolute hell, staring at him with bloodshot, glistening eyes as
if his whole world had almost ended. It’s not every day that he wakes up from
another days-long coma, even more feeble and laid low, to find his mate passed
out with a head of tousled, dark hair laid on his chest, his mate’s arm around
him as if he’d literally been trying to stop death from taking him away.
The doctors would later tell him that his heart had begun to fail, that they
had to shock him with those electric paddles while his bone-weary mate watched
helplessly from the sidelines, slumped against a wall like it was all that kept
him standing. For seventeen seconds, he had died.
So he hadn’t objected when Fury gave them this little job (getaway). Neither
did Coulson.
You’re serious, he’d said with relish to Fury as he and Coulson sat side by
side in identical armchairs in front of Fury’s ostentatious desk. We are gonna
go to Yangon as a couple on a romantic holiday. As a sugar daddy and hiscub.
Fury had, unsurprisingly, shot him a very unimpressed look.
As a married couple, with Phil being a businessman to close a deal in the city
while he’s there. It’s as solid a cover as it gets, Fury retorted, since you
and Phil are married. Mated and bonded, even. No one will question it.
Clint had turned to his mate then and with big puppy eyes, said, Daddy, I want
a new bow and quiver of arrows and a purple Bentley.
His mate had, unsurprisingly, also shot him a very unimpressed look. (The
twinkling eyes ruined it, though.) Fury had sat there behind his desk with a
totally expressionless face (and he’ll find out in the coming years of birthday
parties and babysitting with Fury’s wife and two daughters that this is what
Fury looks like when he’s laughing his ass off deep inside at one of his
oldest, best friends).
But hey, hey, it really is nice to relax for once, to do a job so easy it’s
wham, bam, thank you, ma’am with their eyes shut and their arms tied behind
their backs. It’s been years since he and his Alpha had gone on any semblance
of a holiday, anyway, and he isn’t going to complain if it’s on company dime.
He slips into an aging, four-story, fin-de-siècle building and goes up a
winding, wooden staircase to the second floor. He halts at the second plain,
mahogany door on the right of a narrow hallway, but he doesn’t knock on it. He
doesn’t have to. Coulson can hear him via the minuscule microphone attached to
the collar of his t-shirt. There’s also that discernible tingle in the back of
his head again, telling him that Coulson’s in the studio apartment beyond the
door, that Coulson’s approaching the door to open it.
Man, he loves the bond he has with his Alpha mate.
He goes inside the apartment as silently as Coulson came to the door, with a
hand brushing Coulson’s forearm as he passes the other agent. He collapses onto
a beige-colored couch with red, square pillows while Coulson locks the door and
secures the place, sprawling on it with his arms spread out, basking in the
blast of cool air from the air-conditioner. He is not a fan of high humidity
and the tropical monsoon climate.
Clint removes the earpiece and mike as Coulson saunters to the couch and sits
beside him. The heat must be getting to Coulson too, what with Coulson not
wearing his suit jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt to the
elbows. Coulson is still wearing his tie, though, a dark green one with lighter
stripes.
Their unwritten rule on the job - one they’ve followed consistently for many
years now - is that as long as Coulson is wearing a tie, they are strictly
handler and asset. Every other aspect of their relationship is pushed into a
box in their heads and kept there until the mission is over.
(Compartmentalization, as Dr. Langley still likes to call it.) As long as
they’re on an assignment, even a cinch like this, they can never truly let down
their guard. SHIELD has a fuck-load of enemies worldwide, not to mention the
personal enemies that agents may have (and jesus, does he know what it’s like
to be fucked up by one). The risk of ambush if they’re pegged as SHIELD agents,
of being abducted and dragged off to be tortured and interrogated for SHIELD
secrets is always there.
But well, there is a reason he and Coulson are the finest handler/asset pair in
all of SHIELD. They can handle themselves just fine in an attack. (The more,
the merrier!) And he knows what Coulson is capable of doing, if they ever do
get ambushed by anyone dumb enough to even try. He knows how far Coulson will
go to protect him, to save him, and Coulson knows how far he will go to do the
same, regardless of whether Coulson has a tie on or not.
On the couch, Clint and Coulson gaze at each other silently for a minute.
He stays still as Coulson, still locking eyes with him, reaches up with one
hand to the knot of his tie and slowly tugs it down. He stays still and watches
as Coulson flips up the crisp collar of his dress shirt and lifts the loop of
the tie past his head. He watches Coulson fold the tie neatly. Watches the
tension seep away from Coulson’s shoulders. Watches the warmth fill back into
the gorgeous, gallant Alpha’s big blue eyes, watches those pliant lips quirk up
in that little not-smile.
And then, the man before him is Phil, just Phil again.
“What happened?” Phil asks, cupping his cheek with one large, callused hand.
He holds Phil’s hand to his face with one of his own, pressing his nose and
lips to its warm palm. He smells clean skin and rich spring nectar and earthy,
cleansed grass after the rain. It’s his favorite scent of all time (of them,
just them and no one else).
“Like I said,” he murmurs, kissing Phil’s palm once, “it was probably just the
fish curry.”
Phil makes a noncommittal noise through his lips. Clint identifies it as Hmm
No. 15, also translatable as ‘I will make this ambiguous, nice sound that makes
it seem like I agree with my most perfect, always-right, super-hot mate but I
am actually still concerned about him and won’t say it’.
Before Clint can say anything else, Phil leans forward and presses his nose
into his cheek and sniffs him. Phil’s beard stubble tickles, damnit. Clint
cracks up from the sensation, from his mate sniffing him again.
“What is up with you sniffing me so much!” he says with an amused grin,
pressing his palms on Phil’s chest as if to push him back. “You’ve been doing
that so much. Like, for weeks.”
Phil moves lower down to the side of his neck and sniffs it as well, inhaling
long and deep. It’s hot as hell to Clint, but he’s also still very much amused
by his mate’s behavior.
“You smell … even better lately,” Phil murmurs after sitting up to look him in
the eye. “I’m not sure how to explain it.”
Clint shrugs and puts on a smug expression.
“Yeah, I’m awesome and unique and exceptional like that.”
In seconds, Phil is hauling him to the king-sized bed nearby and showing him
how awesome and unique and exceptional he is with that long, hard, fat,
marvelous knotted cock and oh, Clint has no complaints about that. This is an
assignment masquerading as a romantic holiday, after all. (And Phil only has
himself to blame for not letting him brush his teeth first before jackhammering
him through the bed and trying to kiss him.)
After making love two more times in the night and early morning, they really do
dine on goat testicles curry for brunch later in the day in a cozy, air-
conditioned restaurant. They sit face to face with their feet touching (and
rubbing, but no way is he going to admit they’re playing footsie) under the
rickety, wooden table.
"Far from the first pair of balls to be in my mouth,” Clint says, smiling
impishly at Phil before digging his fangs into aforementioned balls, making
Phil snort and his eyes crinkle.
They are unexpectedly tasty. And yes, just like chunks of pure lard.
Phil smacks him on the head when he asks with an overly innocent expression,
“Do you think your balls would taste and feel the same if they got cooked in
curry?”
Hours afterward, they’re on a commercial flight to (SHIELD-friendly) Bangkok,
where a quinjet is waiting to take them back straight to New York City. On the
journey there, Clint is napping with his head on Phil’s shoulder while Phil is
browsing through paperwork when nausea smacks into him again, so rapid and
intensely that it wakes him up in a cold sweat and shivers. He lurches out of
his seat and darts to the lavatory in the back of the quinjet. He hears Phil
calling his name before the lavatory door shuts behind him but he can’t answer,
he can’t, he’s bent over the toilet bowl with one hand on the wall and vomiting
what feels like everything from inside his stomach.
Okay. Okay, so eating goat testicles wasn't such a good idea.
It’s a testament to how severe the vomiting was that his ears are ringing and
it’s only after he’s rinsed his mouth and washed quivering hands that he hears
the knocking on the lavatory door, hears Phil saying his name several times.
“Hi, babe,” he says after opening the lavatory door and seeing his mate
standing there with overtly concerned eyes. (Doesn’t help that he sounds like
his voice went through a wood chipper.)
“You threw up again?”
“Yep.” He glides his hands down the lengths of Phil’s sinewy arms over Phil’s
dark gray jacket, appreciating the firmness and strength in them. “I’m fine. I
feel much better already.”
Phil follows him back to their seats and sits down first before he does. He
tucks himself into Phil’s side and rests his head on Phil’s broad shoulder
again, feeling chilled and tuckered out. Ugh, he really does not like throwing
up. What he does like (although he isn ’t going to admit it just yet) is Phil
pushing his nose into his hair and sniffing a few times. What is up with that?
Does he smell that good to Phil? (Even after puking?)
"You're not even being subtle, ya know,” he mumbles, his eyes shut, his lips
curving up. “I’m fine.”
Phil responds by sliding an arm behind him and pressing a hand to his belly,
rubbing it with relaxing, up-and-down motions. He likes the feeling too
(although he isn’t going to admit it either any time soon).
Yeah, vomiting aside, this was one of his most favorite missions ever. One of
the nicest holidays he’s been on. Maybe for the next one, they can spice it up
with a gunfight or two, or an arrow-shooting fest with the local bad guys. It’d
be great foreplay for him and Phil. Yeah.
After a cursory debriefing with Fury (who’s eaten goat testicles curry too,
what do you know), they scuttle back to their apartment in Brooklyn and crash
in bed until late morning. For breakfast, Phil deals with the scrambled eggs
and bacon while he prepares toast with fruit jam and butter. He adores Phil’s
scrambled eggs … which is why he is doubly frustrated when the nausea slams
into him again while they’re consuming said breakfast at the kitchen counter.
Phil is reading something on his comm pad (which is something Phil’s been doing
a lot lately too) as Clint jumps up from his seat and scampers to the nearest
toilet bowl. He hears Phil calling his name, hears Phil’s chair screech across
the floor as Phil stands up but he can’t answer his mate, he can feel the bile
burbling up his throat, oh crap, here he goes again -
He’s on his knees this time while he pukes out whatever he’s eaten so far and
maybe every other meal he’s had in his entire life. It takes him a long time to
realize that Phil is in the bathroom with him, propping his head up with one
hand over his forehead and rubbing his back with the other. He dislikes the dry
heaves most. They make his stomach cramp and nothing comes out of it except
really sour-bitter goop. Gross.
“Okay,” he croaks when he can, standing up in one motion with Phil’s assistance
and swaying in place. “Burmese food does not agree with me, man.”
He shuffles to the sink and rinses his mouth a few times. Phil flushes the
toilet then goes to stand beside him. Phil is rubbing his back once more when
Phil says, “I don’t think this is food poisoning.”
Clint runs a hand across his mouth as he stands upright and faces Phil. He
frowns in puzzlement at his mate.
“Huh? This isn’t food poisoning? What else would make me throw up like this?”
Phil gazes at him with speculative eyes.
“It could be emesis gravidarum.”
Clint’s brow furrows more even as he smiles.
“Wha? What’s that in English?”
Phil purses his lips into a thin line, then murmurs, “Morning sickness.”
When the two words settle into Clint’s bewildered brain, really settle in, he
gapes at Phil with what must be a comical, stunned expression, his mouth
opening into an ‘o’. Morning sickness? Morning sickness? But that ’s something
that’s only experienced by people who are … who are -
“You … you think I’m …” Clint clears his throat loudly. “Pregnant.”
“Well,” Phil replies, and god, Phil looks so calm and collected and hopeful,
“you’ve been off contraceptives for months now. And we’ve gone through at least
one heat since.”
Clint blinks. Then he blinks again, and again. He is suddenly overwhelmed by
the urge to cross his arms over his belly. To protect it.
“I guess …” He clears his throat a second time and does cross his arms over his
belly, gripping his flanks (and he’ll find out later that this is paternal
Omegan instinct asserting itself). “I guess we should … get some tests.”
Phil nods and says, “The pharmacy two blocks down should have them.”
“Yeah ... Yeah. Okay.”
Clint’s eyes flit down to the vicinity of Phil’s chest, then back up at Phil’s
serene face. He’s not completely sold on him being pregnant instead of having
food poisoning. Not yet. He only started getting nauseated and throwing up when
they were in Myanmar. It really is just as likely that his digestive system
can’t tolerate the foreign food (and it’s not the first time this has occurred
so there’s precedent).
Then again … it doesn’t explain his scent becoming so much more appealing to
his Alpha mate. For weeks, already. Food poisoning sure as heck doesn’t
influence his hormone levels. And his last heat was … two months ago.
Holy crap.
Holy crap on a flying, deep-fried cheese stick.
Maybe … maybe Phil is right.
Clint blinks again. Sucks in another deep breath. Gazes with wide eyes at Phil,
at his calm, collected and hopeful Alpha mate who gazes back with crinkled,
luminous ones.
“Okay,” he murmurs, his lips curving up into a tremorous, equally hopeful
smile. “Let’s go get those tests.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Both Coulson and Clint breathe a whopping sigh of relief when Dr. Chiew
verifies that Clint won’t be losing his uterus, while Clint is recuperating in
the medical bay from the ravaging bout of infection. It would have been best if
Clint didn’t have to lose any internal organs, period, but losing one ovary is
still preferable to losing both. With the uterus intact and finally healing
plus a functional ovary and fallopian tube, Clint’s chances of bearing children
has risen from ‘almost zero’ to ‘very cautiously optimistic’, with the solemn
warnings that even if Clint does become pregnant, the risks of miscarriage and
other complications are high. Very high.
“I highly recommend that Clint wait at least six months after discharge,” Dr.
Chiew tells them, standing at Clint’s bedside, commandeering their attention
and larger than life despite being just five feet tall, “if you intend to have
a baby soon.”
Clint doesn’t say anything to confirm or deny that. Clint doesn’t say anything
at all about having a baby until five months have passed after being discharged
from the medical bay.
“I wanna stop taking contraceptives,” Clint whispers to him in the dim solace
of their bedroom, nuzzling his cheek and huddling closer to him under the
covers. “Is that okay?”
“Okay,” he whispers back, his heart humongous and throbbing in his chest as he
encloses Clint with his arms and feels Clint’s shaky sigh against his
collarbone.
And that’s all they have to say about it, really. Whatever happens, will
happen. Whatever doesn’t … well, Coulson’s used to being inundated by setbacks
and challenges. (To not getting what he wishes for dearly.)
He still has Clint. He still has his asset, his best friend, his lover, his
husband, his Omega mate. His everything. That’s what matters to him.
Clint shares this mindset with him. Their low expectations of a pregnancy
results in them being able to enjoy heat sex without worrying about its
consequences, to be fully engulfed by the ferocious pleasures of each other’s
bodies as he fucks Clint harder and longer than he ever has before on their
bed, knotting Clint over and over and coming deep inside his thrashing, moaning
mate who begs for more, more. He pumps so much seed into Clint that by the
third day of the heat, it gushes out of Clint ’s slick, puffy hole whenever he
pulls out of Clint’s limp and insatiable body.
“Oh fuck, that’s so good, that’s so good.”
Clint can scarcely speak above a whisper, can scarcely move by the fourth day,
but every uttered word is infused with pure pleasure. For Coulson, even the
slightest, subtle roll of Clint’s hips while he’s knot-deep in Clint is killing
him with the same pleasure.
“Are you all right?” he asks, sounding just slightly less wrecked than Clint,
pulling Clint back closer and tighter against his exhausted but extremely
satisfied body with both arms.
“Phil, babe. I have never been more all right,” Clint rasps, and their
shoulders shake together with silent laughter.
Yes, no matter what the outcome is of this heat sans contraceptives, they still
have each other. There will be future heats. More chances.
Coulson kisses the flushed, sweaty skin of Clint’s neck and shoulder, nips at
the bonding gland with its raised teeth marks. (His, his!) He rubs at Clint’s
lower belly with his left hand. His fingers brush across the scar there, across
healed skin and flesh, and he exults in the soothing heat, the vibrant life
emanating from his beloved mate.
The monster who harmed his mate is dead, but he and Clint are here. Still here.
Unfortunately, so are their nightmares, although they lessen in frequency and
loosen their claws on them with the passage of time. It takes at least two
months after Clint is discharged for Clint to no longer spend every night
enslaved by the horrors he’d lived through. For Coulson, there are no languid,
dreamless nights until the day he’s gripping Duquesne’s decapitated head with a
gloved hand in a windowless cell under a nondescript warehouse in the Bronx.
He finds it almost amusing that his nightmares diminish only after committing
such a brutal act of violence. He isn’t sure what it reveals about him.
Sometimes, he isn’t sure if he’s just a monster in a person-suit who doesn’t
realize he is one. Sometimes, he isn’t sure whether it’s Duquesne that Clint
sees in his nightmares or him.
“Sshh, you’re safe, Clint. You’re at home with me and you’re safe.”
It still makes his chest ache to see Clint in the throes of a nightmare, to see
Clint clawing at the bed sheets with a face so pale that it’s gray, to smell
the sickly tinge of fear to Clint’s scent, to hear Clint let out those heart-
wrenching gasps of terror. Tonight, he knows Clint is dreaming again of the
moment he was stabbed and mutilated in the belly from Clint’s whimpers of oh
god and hurts and Phil (the one that slices Coulson to the quick, every time).
But unlike the nightmares before Duquesne’s demise, Clint now allows Coulson to
embrace him even during the nightmare. Clint no longer physically lashes out in
any way. Instead, even entrenched in fearful visions of the past, Clint
instinctively rolls towards him and clutches at his clothes and seeks the
intimate pulse in his neck, the heavy beat of his heart.
“That’s right,” he murmurs into Clint’s hair, stroking Clint’s nape and upper
back. “You’re safe now. He’s gone, sweetheart. He’s gone. But we’re still here,
remember?”
Clint shivers against him and whimpers again, a tiny and plaintive sound. He
can feel Clint’s facial features set in an anxious frown against his neck.
“We’re home, in our apartment in Brooklyn. We’re in our bed, sleeping after
another day of physical therapy with Dr. Latham and counseling with Dr.
Langley. We had wheat bread-and-chicken sandwiches for breakfast, and I’m
remembering that because you were craving for pork instead and you were pouting
as I explained to you again why red meat is bad for your recovery.”
Clint makes another tiny sound, not a plaintive one. Clint isn’t shivering
anymore. Clint’s breaths have slowed down and deepened.
“Yes, you were,” Coulson murmurs on, now against the warm, smooth skin of
Clint’s forehead. “You didn’t hesitate to stick out your lower lip at me. You
even made it tremble when I said no the second time, don’t deny it.”
He shifts down the bed just enough that he’s face to face with Clint, that he
can gaze at Clint’s now tranquil expression, at Clint’s shut eyes and their
long lashes, at Clint’s supple lips lax in slumber.
“And when we were back home again, we lazed on the couch and talked and napped,
and I watched you sleeping and I thought to myself, ‘I want to capture this
moment in my hand. I want to be here, with you, forever.’”
He grazes the pointed ends of Clint’s eyelashes with his fingertips. He traces
four invisible lines down Clint’s stubbly cheek with his fingers. He watches
his beloved mate sleeping peacefully, free from the nightmare, and he thinks to
himself, forever isn’t long enough, it isn’t.
“It’s just you and me here, and no one else,” he whispers into Clint’s lips.
“Just you and me.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
For the first time in Clint’s life, he’s actually too nervous to take a damn
leak.
“Goddamnit, this is ridiculous,” he mutters, laughing at himself, holding his
flaccid cock over the small, plastic cup in his right hand. “I’m standing right
here in front of the toilet and I still can’t go.”
Phil - bless him, man - doesn’t ridicule him for it at all. Instead, Phil lets
out that (cute) huff of laughter from behind him, then presses a high forehead
to his right shoulder.
“If you touch me, you are gonna make this harder,” Clint says, and Phil is
snickering aloud now against his shoulder. When he realizes what he said, so
does he.
“Do you want me to get a bowl of water? To put your hand in?”
“Asshole,” he retorts, his teeth glinting through a broad grin.
“Wrong hole to concentrate on right now, Clint.”
They snicker together again, Clint leaning back into Phil who reaches up to
grasp his upper arms, forehead still on his shoulder. Clint is glad that
they’re laughing together, though. It’s breaking up any tension in the room.
Distracting him from the six as-yet-unopened home pregnancy tests on the marble
counter next to the porcelain sink.
All he has to do to get things rolling is to pee.
“Okay … okay, hold on, I think I can do it now. I can -”
Clint snorts and laughs again but oh yeah, oh yeah, there he goes tinkling into
the cup, fucking finally. He manages to fill about three-quarters of it, and
although it’s his own urine, he still wrinkles his nose at it as he places the
cup on the marble counter.
Clint does the first test, removing the testing stick from its wrapper and
dipping its absorbent end into the cup for ten seconds. He flattens his hands
on the counter and bows his head as he waits. He bites his lower lip when Phil
places a solid hand over his on the counter and says nothing. When the ten
seconds are up, he lifts his head to look at Phil in the mirror. Phil, standing
next to him, smiles back at him.
“We have to wait for five minutes to get an accurate result,” Phil says as
Clint takes the testing stick out and places it on the counter with the result
window up.
“Okay,” Clint mumbles, ignoring the wavering of his hands.
Clint is too anxious to leave the bathroom. He paces with his arms crossed over
his chest while Phil stands leaning against the white, floor-to-ceiling cabinet
next to the sink, a cool and composed figure with loose hands at his sides.
Phil doesn’t stop him from pacing or say anything about it, and he appreciates
it. He really does.
After those five minutes have passed, he has to take a deep breath before
glancing down at the testing stick. He stares at the crossed blue lines in the
result window and frowns. One of the lines is really faint, so … what does that
mean? Is it a positive?
“Hm. I think this test is defective,” Phil says.
Clint lets out a growl of frustration and rolls his eyes. Phil snorts, then
runs a hand down his back in commiseration. (And if Phil can sense how taut the
muscles of his back are from nervousness, Phil doesn’t say anything about it
either.)
“Let’s do two more tests,” Clint says, and Phil replies, “Okay.”
These two testing sticks also require a five minute wait for results. Clint
leaves the bathroom this time and flings himself onto the couch, tapping one
foot incessantly on the floor. At some point, Phil walks by and ruffles his
hair and strokes the back of his head.
Before he knows it, they’re back in the bathroom and the two testing sticks are
on the counter top, ready for their perusal. Clint stares at the vivid,
vertical red lines of the upper stick, then at the vivid blue cross of the
lower stick. He blinks, and blinks, but the lines remain, stating starkly what
Phil had suspected (and correctly deduced).
“Positive,” he rasps, blinking again, tucking his hands under his arms.
“Positive,” Phil murmurs beside him.
They turn to face each other in unison, Clint still with hands under his arms
and Phil drawing in a long, deep breath that only quavers at the very last
moment. They stare at each other for precious seconds, their eyes wide and
unblinking, unwilling to forfeit even a microsecond of the enticing, solacing
sight of each other, still so after all these years together. To remember each
other like this, to remember how right they’ve always been and will always be,
how fated they were to meet and fall in love with each other and stay together
… and become a family.
“One more test,” Clint whispers, swallowing visibly. “Three outta three, okay?”
“Okay,” Phil whispers in return.
They linger in the bathroom. Clint leans against the counter with his hands
tucked into his underarms now, trying to keep them still, trying to keep his
jaw still too by gritting his teeth. He doesn’t respond to Phil running a hand
down the side of his neck and along his shoulder. He doesn’t think he can.
He doesn’t turn around to face the counter as Phil inspects the testing stick
behind him. He feels Phil’s hand flat upon his belly. Feels Phil’s hand press
down, feels its long, callused fingers spread as if Phil is protecting his
belly, protecting what’s in it and yep, there goes his eyes, flooding hot and
wet even before Phil speaks.
“It’s positive.”
His arms have become smothering bands around his chest. He blinks hard and
grits his teeth even harder but his vision keeps blurring and the muscles of
his lower face just fucking won’t obey him anymore and his hands are shaking
and ah shit, his nose is blocking up and Phil just has to kiss him on the
forehead and open up the floodgates.
He hears someone sniffle audibly. He feels his whole face contort and his lower
jaw wobble and he lets himself be crushed in an embrace, hugging Phil’s
shoulders as tightly, burrowing his wet, searing face into Phil’s long neck.
Phil clasps his nape. Rubs his lower back in circles with his other hand. Phil
is trembling too.
“We’ll have to -” Phil clears his throat and sucks in a rocky breath. “We’ll
set an appointment with Dr. Chiew as soon as possible.”
Clint nods against his mate’s neck, and sniffles again.
“Yeah,” he croaks.
“We’ll have to clean out the store room. Figure out where else to put the
stuff. And, baby stuff. We have to get baby stuff. Baby clothes. Bottles. A
cradle. And a crib when the baby’s bigger.”
Constricted as his throat is, Clint manages to chuckle a bit. It’s so uncommon
to hear his top-level SHIELD agent of an Alpha mate babble like this. It’s
reassuring that he isn ’t alone in his concerns, his excitement.
“And diapers,” he says, his voice husky though firmer.
“Diapers,” Phil reiterates. “Many, many, many diapers.”
“Can we paint the walls purple?”
“Of course we can. Purple is a lovely color. Royal and mysterious and magical.”
“Just like me.”
“Of course.”
And then, they’re laughing together, softly and candidly, still hugging each
other and swaying slightly in place in front of the bathroom sink and mirror.
Clint shuts now dry eyes when Phil kisses him on the cheek.
“I’m scared, Phil,” he whispers into his mate’s ear, scared of possible
complications, of his maimed body failing them, of losing their baby. (Their
baby.)
“So am I, sweetheart. And it’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay,” Phil
whispers back, and Clint thinks that maybe, in time, he will believe that too.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
In the refuge of their Brooklyn apartment, Coulson and Clint sit facing each
other on the window seat overlooking the main street. Clint is ensconced in a
pile of bulky pillows, a multi-hued, Aztec-print blanket tucked around legs and
rotund belly. Clint had been gazing out the window at the city hubbub ten
floors down before Coulson sat down on the side of the window seat, but Clint
is welcoming of his presence. (Always, babe, Clint would surely say, if he were
to ask if that’s so.)
Clint appears at complete peace with himself, with the world around him. Clint
is heavily pregnant by now, a mere two weeks away from the estimated birth date
of their baby. Clint is wearing Coulson’s light gray cable knit sweater yet
again, and he loves that Clint is so attached to it, to the fact that it’s his
and smells like him and feels warm and comforting like him.
Clint reaches out to touch his cheek with a gentle hand. Clint smiles at him,
so unreservedly, so sincerely, and he thinks, I’m glad I killed that monster.
I’m glad he’s dead, that you can smile like this and no longer dream about him.
He leans forward and presses his face to Clint’s neck to smell Clint’s (their)
scent, to breathe it in another time, to suffuse each and every cell of his
body with it. He feels Clint’s fingers rubbing the back of his head and neck,
cupping it in affection. He sits up and then sits quietly while Clint studies
his face from forehead to chin, as if Clint is searching for something
ephemeral in the dunes and valleys of his visage.
He wonders what Clint is seeking. He wonders what it is that Clint sees when
Clint looks at his face.
Is it me you see, he wants to ask, or do you see someone else?
He blinks, his hands suddenly going cold, his insides suddenly shivering.
Do you see me at all, he wants to ask, or do you see onlyhim?
“I’m here,” he says, the two words tremorous at their edges.
Clint gazes on at him, just like he did so many years ago when they were
sitting on the couch instead, speaking of monsters not dead yet and letting
them stay asleep in the past (but he had to wake them up, he just had to,
didn’t he and Clint almost died because of it). He hears Clint speak in his
mind, in their past.
I don’t want you to turn into them. I don’t wanna lose you.
And he hadn’t said, you won’t lose me, you won’t.
He hadn’t known then what would happen to him, what would change about him if
he committed the same acts a monster did. He hadn’t wanted to make a promise he
couldn’t keep.
Now, though, he knows.
Now, he can make that promise. Now, he can mean it, and keep it.
“I’m right here, sweetheart. I’m not lost,” he rasps, his throat bobbing from a
hard swallow. “How can I be, when I’m with you?”
Clint grips his hands and weaves their fingers together over his gravid belly.
Clint gazes on and on at him with those beautiful, large eyes, and smiles that
unreserved, sincere smile and says, “I know. I see you, Phil. Only you.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
After the word of Clint’s confirmed pregnancy spreads through the Helicarrier
like wildfire, Coulson is deluged with congratulations and well wishes from his
fellow SHIELD agents for days on end. Clint experiences something similar,
although Clint has significantly fewer people approaching him, and always with
Coulson at his side. Coulson has no objections to that. As decreed by social
norms, a pregnant Omega person should not be approached by any other Alphas
without the Alpha mate’s explicit approval. They do so at their own risk, and
pay the price should the Omega’s Alpha mate rebuke it and … chastise the
offending Alpha.
Coulson and Clint may not always agree or even follow those social norms, but
to their relief, nobody on board the Helicarrier is idiotic enough to push
Coulson’s Alpha buttons.
Well, except Nick goddamn Fury. But that’s more a case of Fury being an even
more formidable, terrifying Alpha who’s the leader of SHIELD and one of
Coulson’s oldest, best friends of his entire life, who’s definitely earned the
right to tease and make jabs and drive him up the wall with his - how does
Clint put it, again? - assholishness.
"I believe congratulations are in order, Cheese," Nick says with a grin,
enveloping him in a bear hug and patting him firmly on the upper back twice.
"You're going to be a great father."
They stand next to Nick’s ostentatious desk in Nick’s vast, ostentatious office
on board the Helicarrier. Nick is back after a months-long mission in Burkina
Faso, and it’s good to see his old friend in person again. Against Nick’s
shoulder, Coulson shuts his eyes and lets his visage break into an expansive
smile. He pats Nick’s upper back as well. After they step back and look each
other in the eye again, their expressions go deadpan.
"Second to me, of course,” Nick says.
"Of course,” Coulson replies, nodding once.
They gaze at each other for a moment. Then, Nick laughs aloud and hugs him once
more and hey, he can grin as much as he wants to, it’s not every day that he
gets hugged by Nick and congratulated for becoming a father soon.
Yeah, he’s going to be a dad. He’s going to be a dad, and he’s going to love
his child like it’s his very heart walking around outside his body (and it will
be exactly like that, he just knows it) and he will never, ever stop loving his
child with everything he’s got. He can’t wait for his and Clint’s baby to be
here with them.
Nick is sitting behind his desk while he sits in one of the armchairs in front
of it when he requests for parental leave. Nick, the asshole, makes a show of
pulling up a transparent projected screen displaying his SHIELD profile and
zooming in on the section detailing whatever leave he’s taken for the duration
of his employment.
“Hm,” Nick says, focusing his one eye on the terribly sparse section far too
much and steepling his fingers, “either HR has been slacking with their updates
of your profile, or I’m looking at a guy who hasn’t taken a legit holiday in
well over twenty years of service.”
“I had that vacation in Yangon. And in Bora Bora five years ago,” Coulson says,
one eyebrow raised, pointing a forefinger at Nick.
“Yangon was an assignment. And that vacation in Bora Bora only happened because
your mate forced you to stay put in the hospital while you recovered from the
gunshot wound to your arm,” Nick retorts, also with one eyebrow raised.
“I strolled on the beach at sunset. I cuddled sting rays with Clint.” Coulson
raises his other eyebrow. “I think that does constitute as a vacation.”
“Jesus fuck, and Sharona thinks I’m an unromantic bastard who’s married to his
work,” Nick mutters, utterly deadpan, and that’s when Coulson loses it,
chuckling behind one fist pressed to his mouth.
“I will have you know, that Clint and I don’t need holidays because we already
have a fucking wonderful sex life between missions -”
Nick throws his hands up in the air in horror and says, “I don’t need to hear
this shit -”
“And sleeping in and having sex with my mate is already a holiday to me -”
“I don’t need to hear this shit, Phil -”
“And -” Coulson’s deadpan expression cracks for a second. “I would rather not
have every fucking be recorded on my profile but if you insist, I suppose Clint
and I can … come to an agreement over it.”
Sometimes, Nick really has a way of saying a multitude of things simply by
staring at him with that intense, brown eye and far too straightened lips.
“Parental leave approved, you over-sharing dumbass,” Nick says as Coulson’s
second bout of chuckling wanes, that brown eye twinkling. “Now get the fuck
outta my office and go do whatever sentimental shit it is that you do with your
mate that isn’t fucking. And I better not see your face around on the bridge
until your leave is up!"
“Unless it’s you calling me back to the front lines, right?”
“See, Cheese, this is why you are my right hand man.”
“Of course, boss. Until then.”
Coulson is still smiling to himself as he heads up to the Helicarrier’s runways
where Clint is waiting for him. Clint’s parental leave is already approved, and
once they board the quinjet that will take them back to New York City, they
will truly be on a vacation. A vacation that will last for months. It’s the
first time since they’ve known each other that they will be spending so much
time together outside of work, with none of its obligations to disturb them,
that also isn’t sick leave where they’re hurting and recovering from trauma.
They’ll either strangle each other by the end of the first week, or they’ll
become even closer than they’ve ever been.
He’s going to put his money on the third option: They’ll probably strangle each
other by the end of the first week and become even closer than they’ve ever
been.
Oh yes, he can’t wait.
When Coulson scans the runways for Clint, he sees Clint already standing near a
quinjet, attired in a sleeveless, black tactical suit that exhibits those
ravishing, strapping arms. Clint is well aware of the effect his bared arms
have on people around him, and it’s no coincidence that he chose a snug
tactical suit either, one that flagrantly flaunts his curved belly.
Omegas are rare in this world. Male Omegas are even rarer. Pregnant male Omegas
are the rarest of all, venerated by some cultures and societies in Europe,
Middle America and Asia throughout the ages for their scarcity and fertility.
In recent decades, scientists worldwide have devoted more time and research on
male Omegan biology, and the more they’ve learned about the intensive
metamorphosis a male Omega must experience in pregnancy and birth, the more
respected male Omegas have become. About damn time, really, considering how
much discrimination and oppression they’ve had to endure throughout history in
places that do not venerate them.
Clint had concealed his Omega status from SHIELD for that very reason, despite
SHIELD’s strict regulations against such discrimination. Clint had feared being
reduced to - again, as Clint put it - a ‘glory hole on two legs’ or a ‘baby
popper’ in the eyes of other agents, losing their respect, losing his sense of
self.
But that was before I met you, babe, Clint had said to him on the night after
the Hunt, before they christened his bed from his to theirs. That was before I
realized that maybe I can get what I wish for, after all.
And now, Clint is open about his Omega status and his pregnancy, and he is
treated with even more deference by his peers. As it should be.
(Clint had to bust the ass of a young, arrogant Alpha agent a head taller and
even wider who foolishly grabbed Clint’s arm even after Clint told him to back
off, with a single punch to the face in front of a crowd in the Helicarrier’s
main gym. Neither Coulson or Clint had told anyone apart from Dr. Chiew about
the pregnancy at the time, but Clint had already begun wearing snug tactical
suits since he can’t fit into his Hawkeye outfit anymore, and agents would have
to be blind to not notice the bulging of Clint’s once flat belly. Clint had
made his point very clearly about his maintained badassaderywith that punch.)
Clint hones that hawk-sharp gaze on him as he approaches Clint. He locks eyes
with his Omega mate as he loosens the embroidered, purple tie around his neck.
He sees Clint’s lips bow up and part into an exuberant smile as he tugs the tie
over his head and balls it up in one hand, as he walks faster and smiles in
return. He and Clint embrace each other at the same time, Clint’s arms wrapping
around his shoulders and his arms winding around Clint’s midriff, their lips
seeking each other and crashing together in an unbridled, open-mouthed kiss.
They may still be on the Helicarrier but fuck it, he isn’t wearing his tie
anymore. He’s not Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD. He’s just an Alpha dad-to-be
who’s officially on holiday from work and he’s kissing his beloved mate and the
bearer of his baby, the most gorgeous Omega in the whole fucking universe and
nobody can ever convince him otherwise.
“When we get home,” Clint rasps into his devoured lips, holding the sides of
his head with both hands, “you are gonna fuck my brains out on every available
surface. Capisce?”
“Yes. Yes,” he says, kissing Clint again, before they board the quinjet hand in
hand.
In spite of the fact that Coulson does what Clint had appointed of him - on the
couch, on the kitchen counter next to the sink, on the dining table, then in
bed, may whatever gods there be bless Clint’s heightened libido - Clint’s
slumber afterward is not an untroubled one. Clint is suffering another
nightmare, rare as they are becoming. As Coulson blinks himself more awake and
shifts onto his elbows on their bed, he sees Clint begin to curl up into a
ball, to shiver and whine under his breath.
Most times, Clint lies taut on his back with his fingers clutching at the
sheets during a nightmare, rigid with fear and panic. Once in a long while,
however, Clint dreams of the assault that set off the chain of events that
would lead to Clint nearly dying in a vast, dusty cave almost a hundred miles
away from New York City. Clint dreams of ripping out Buck Chisholm’s throat
with his fangs, of ripping away Jacques Duquesne’s face with his claws. Clint
dreams of curling up into a blood-splattered, human ball against a seedy motel
room’s wall with defense wounds on his arms and tears rolling down his crimson-
slathered face, frozen in that moment in time, trapped there no matter how far
he’s run, how much he’s grown.
Coulson carefully and unhurriedly eases Clint out of the stressful, inflexible
pose without waking Clint up. He strokes the lengths of Clint’s arms until they
unbend and go limp. He strokes Clint’s round belly and sturdy thighs,
persuading Clint’s legs to also unbend and lower with constant, circular
rubbing and hushed words of encouragement. He wriggles closer to Clint once
Clint is somewhat stretched out on his side again.
“Clint,” he murmurs, stroking away the creases of his mate’s brow with the back
of his fingers. “You’re home. You’re safe. They’re both dead. They’ll never
hurt you again. I promise.”
Clint’s face slackens from its overwrought frown into something neutral,
something placid. Clint breathes deep and steady. Clint sleeps on.
“Yeah. It’s just you and me here, sweetheart.”
He hears Clint make a tiny sound, something almost like affirmation. He presses
his hand upon Clint’s belly again. Swallows past the lump in his throat even as
his lips quirk up.
“It’s just you and me,” he whispers. “You and me, and baby.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Clint is alone in the apartment, playing chess on a transparent projected
screen with the game’s artificial intelligence in the living room, when he
feels the baby move for the first time. He doesn’t realize it for what it is at
first, assuming it’s just his stomach rumbling. His mind is partially on the
game while the rest of it is on Phil, who’s had to go back to the Helicarrier
despite officially being on parental leave until the baby’s born.
I’m sorry, Nick says he definitely needs me for this, Phil had said to him
before racing out the door. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise. I’m
sorry.
It’s okay, babe, he’d said back, holding his mate’s noble, adored face with
both hands to kiss him, then again, then another time. I can still kill a guy
in twenty-six different ways, ya know. I can take care of myself. I’ll be fine.
It’s true, and he knows that Phil knows it. But it doesn’t mean he hadn’t
already begun to miss Phil the moment he and his Alpha mate were no longer
touching each other. He doesn’t ache any less knowing Phil is just a call away,
that their apartment is safeguarded by the most advanced security SHIELD has to
offer that will put Phil’s mind at ease (for some time at least) while Phil is
away. He knows that Phil will be thinking about him like he is about Phil, both
wishing to be together again in their den, their sanctuary from the rest of the
world.
And when the baby moves again, when Clint realizes what the sensation of
butterflies fluttering inside and across his lower belly really is, Clint has
never wished so badly for Phil to be here with him.
“Baby?” he says faintly, going motionless on the couch, his eyes widening as he
glances down at his belly.
He slides his hands under his purple sweatshirt and presses them both on his
belly. At a little over four months, its swell is palpable though still easily
concealed by a loose top. There are days when he forgets that he’s pregnant,
remembering only when Phil reminds him to take his vitamins D and C, his iodine
and iron supplements. He still has his six-pack abs, for eff’s sakes, stretched
as they are.
Ten minutes pass in nervous silence while Clint remains on the couch with his
hands pressed to his belly, nibbling on his lower lip.
Then, just when he thinks the baby’s fallen asleep (because Phil said that’s
what babies do a lot even in the womb), he feels a stronger sensation rolling
through his belly, like a curious nudge under his navel. There’s no mistaking
it for independent movement within his body, the movement of a living being in
him.
He gasps, his breath snagging in his throat.
Oh man. Oh man , there’s … a baby inside him. There’s a human being in him
who’s half of him and half of Phil, growing inside him right now, a little
human being who’ll depend on him and Phil for years, decades to come to survive
in this enormous, senseless, screwed up world. A little human being who’ll call
him Daddy and call Phil Papa, who’ll look like the two of them and smile at
them and run into their arms when they call, who’ll mean more than the entire
universe to them, no matter what and when.
Oh man, his soul is going to walk outside his body in mere months, for the rest
of his life.
And he can’t wait. He can’t wait.
“Hi, baby,” he whispers after lying on his side on the couch, curled up with
his shoulders hunched and his legs bent up over his belly, arms still tucked
under his sweatshirt. “Hey.”
He blinks his eyes numerous times to clear them. He rubs his lower belly with
both hands and for a while, his breaths are slow and deliberate and hoarse, the
left side of his chest thrumming with what he can only describe as a lark’s
song at dawn, a song of hopes and dreams coming true.
He falls asleep with his hands still on his belly. He dreams of open, pellucid
skies and prodigious gales beneath his spread wings, soaring high above vast,
dusty caves that can never touch him again, never taste his blood again.
Hours later, Clint awakens to familiar fingers gingerly carding through his
hair.
Phil’s back and kneeling next to the couch, his black suit jacket unbuttoned
and his tie missing. The sun is pale in comparison to the tender expression on
his face.
“Phil,” Clint murmurs, blinking up at Phil, purring as his mate continues to
caress his scalp.
“Hello,” Phil murmurs back.
Clint blinks harder, then says, “Phil. I felt the baby move.”
It’s Phil who blinks now. Phil, whose whole face begins to smile as the words
sink in and oh, the sun is nothing in comparison to the expression on Phil’s
face now.
Clint lifts up his sweatshirt for Phil to rest a hand on his belly. He places
his hand on Phil’s, tangles their fingers. He shifts their hands to where he’d
last felt the baby move, low and under his navel.
“Here?”
“Yeah. It was like, I dunno, like lotsa bubbles popping. Then I felt this poke
from inside.”
Hushed minutes pass, but there is no movement beneath their hands. Clint is
pretty certain the baby’s asleep now, and he tells Phil so, hoping his mate
won’t be too disappointed.
“It’s fine. I can feel the baby move later.”
“Yeah. We got time.”
Phil smiles at him again, that closed-lipped, sun-smashing smile that glows
from Phil’s crinkled eyes, and slowly, indubitably, he smiles in return. He
smiles and squeezes Phil’s fingers over the mound that houses their growing,
cherished baby and then he laughs, softly and bodily, because he’s here to do
so, even after everything that’s happened to him. Because he can.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
As the months pass, the transformations to Clint’s body become more visible,
and Coulson isn’t just talking about the rounding belly that’s getting bigger
and bigger with their baby inside. Just a week after they take those home
pregnancy tests and then officially confirm the pregnancy with Dr. Chiew in her
office on board the Helicarrier, Clint sheds most of his body hair over a
period of twelve days.
It’s the very first thing Dr. Chiew had mentioned will happen to Clint, that
his fluctuating hormone levels will cause it (among other things), and so
Coulson doesn’t sprint that swiftly to the bathroom where Clint is taking a
shower, even after hearing Clint’s muffled holler of shock. He swings open the
door to see Clint slathered in suds in the shower, gaping at the clumps of
short, fine blond hair on his palms that were once happy to stay where they
were on his forearms and chest. The cascading water from the shower head soon
washes them off Clint’s hands and into the shower drain.
“Holy shit,” Clint says, running his hands over his now totally smooth chest
and arms, his lower jaw sagging. “The hair just came off! Just like that!”
Coulson opens the shower door, heedless of the water sprinkling him and
dampening his white t-shirt. Clint hasn’t had to shave his face for the past
three days, which also helped clue Coulson in about Clint losing other body
hair soon. As the water sluices off the soap suds from Clint’s body, he sees
for himself just how much body hair Clint’s shed today.
“I think your treasure trail is gone. You still have some pubic hair,” he says
with as straight a face as he can, abruptly finding the situation more than a
little hilarious. “And you still got your hairy legs. For now.”
Clint glowers at him from under drenched bangs (and eyebrows still there, thank
god), eyes narrowed and lips puckered.
“Are you laughing at my hair loss?” Clint growls, but now there’s also a twitch
to Clint’s lips, one that makes Coulson’s own lips do the same. Yeah, he has
firsthand experience with hair loss. The permanent kind. But Clint’s never
found his thin hair unattractive. If anything, Clint finds it extra attractive.
Something about his ‘Alpha-ness being so Alpha that even his hair can’t handle
his uber masculine hotness’. Which is more than a little hilarious too.
“How does it feel?” Coulson asks instead. He blatantly lets his eyes rove the
length of Clint’s attractive, still brawny body from soaked head down to
shapely toes that curl on beige-and-brown mosaic floor tiles. His gaze lingers
on the budding swell of Clint’s belly at three months of pregnancy. He can
still see the ripples of Clint’s abdominal muscles stretching over it.
Clint’s glower instantly fades away as he resumes stroking his chest and arms
under the continuous outpouring of water from the shower head. Coulson’s own
toes curl as Clint skims one hand over and down the swell of his belly too.
Damn, he really is developing some kind of kink for Clint’s pregnant belly, if
all it takes for him to start to harden is the sight of Clint touching it.
“It’s … it’s kinda … nice,” Clint mumbles and ah, Clint is smiling at him, that
mischievous, knowing smile. “Wanna feel?”
Slowly, purposefully, Clint slides both hands from the top to bottom of his
belly, framing it with wide-spread fingers.
Clint’s amused laughter peals in the misty, heated expanse of their bathroom as
Coulson strips in record time (courtesy of his Ranger days) and hops into the
shower with him. Clint is still laughing as he maneuvers Clint against the
shower’s tiled wall and kisses and nips at Clint’s lips, cheeks and lower jaw.
But when he turns Clint around, when he molds himself to Clint from shoulders
to thighs, grinds his erection between Clint’s ample buttocks while cupping
Clint’s belly with both hands, Clint makes a wholly different, strident sort of
sound that goes straight to his rock-hard cock and makes them both quiver with
lust. He fucks Clint with his hands on Clint’s belly the whole time, rubbing it
while Clint moans against the wall and comes and clenches around his spurting,
knotted cock.
Okay, maybe everything about Clint is becoming a kink to him. (And naturally,
when he blurts this out, Clint chortles about it and smirks like a smug brat
and yes, he still loves the little shit anyway.)
After those twelve days, Clint’s face is, as Clint himself describes it, baby-
butt smooth. It also becomes more rounded, more youthful and softer. Clint’s
skin everywhere smoothens and glows with health. Clint’s golden hair on his
head thickens and turns lustrous and lush, and Coulson is addicted to running
his fingers through it, messing it up every chance he gets when Clint gels it
up into stiff spikes. He likes it without gel now, likes being able to smell
Clint’s scrumptious scent whenever he buries his nose in it.
(Clint gets the hint after the fifth time he ruffles Clint’s gelled hair into
unsalvageable disarray. This being Clint of course, Clint still uses some gel
to style it, but he can’t fault his mate for wanting to appear decent, not when
he styles his own hair daily.)
If he can’t sniff Clint’s scent from his hair, he resorts to sniffing Clint’s
cheeks or neck or even chest (that has so far remained flat and firm). It
cracks Clint up every time he does so, with Clint claiming it’s his beard
stubble 0r his gusty exhalations tickling him. It also cracks Clint up every
time Clint catches him staring at Clint, especially when it’s with his lips
parted and his eyes glazed over like a hormone-addled Alpha dolt (that he is,
yes, he won’t deny it) but he can’t help it, he really can’t.
His beloved Omega mate is just so … beautiful. Like … a celestial angel
descended from the highest tier of heaven, golden and beaming and just …
beautiful.
“You are so ridiculous,” Clint gasps after catching him staring with starry
eyes for the umpteenth time while in their bedroom, covering his eyes even as
he smiles and laughs boisterously. “A ‘celestial angel’? Seriously?”
Oh. Did he say that aloud?
Clint is still laughing as he goes up to Clint and grasps Clint’s head with
both hands. He sniffs Clint’s cheeks and kisses Clint’s yummy lips. He caresses
Clint’s muscular, hairless arms from wrists to shoulders. He caresses the sides
of Clint’s baby-butt smooth face (and he has to agree, it is that smooth) and
runs his fingers through Clint’s opulent, non-gelled hair and Clint doesn’t
protest at all, not one bit.
“You keep this up and you are gonna spoil a guy.”
In the wake of his mirth, Clint’s voice is low and sultry. Clint gazes at him
with heavy-lidded eyes teeming with fondness. He kisses Clint once more, long
and lightly, then draws Clint into a hug with his Omega mate’s head upon his
shoulder.
“I would give you the world, if you only asked,” he whispers into Clint’s ear.
And Clint, who could have so easily snarked at him for that, raises his head to
whisper into his ear, “I don’t need to ask, babe. I already have it.”
And all over again, Coulson falls in love with Clint.
To his elation, Clint regularly falls in love all over again with him as well,
although there arecertain times when he has to remind Clint about that so Clint
doesn’t stuff an arrow up his ass. Like right now, weeks later in Dr. Chiew’s
office, as Dr. Chiew informs them of the many other physiological changes
Clint’s body will undergo in the months ahead such as seesawing emotions,
swollen ankles and feet, increased urination, stretch marks and peculiar
cravings.
Oh, and because Clint is a male Omega, he will experience shrinking, retracting
genitals too. (Yes, Coulson does cringe inwardly.)
“What,” Clint says, staring at Dr. Chiew with very wide eyes.
“Yes,” Dr. Chiew says from behind her desk, her mien the epitome of
imperturbable professionalism. “Your testicles will gradually retract into your
body. And your penis will also shrink.”
“Retract? Shrink?” Clint squeaks, staring at Dr. Chiew with very, very wide
eyes.
“It’s temporary, I assure you. It’s an integral stage in your body’s
preparation for a natural birth. After you’ve given birth, your testicles will
come down again and your penis will -” Dr. Chiew pauses for just the slightest
instant. “Grow back relatively to its former length.”
“Relatively?” Clint squeaks even higher.
“Relatively. Based on former recorded cases of male Omegan pregnancies, it’s
more common that the penis will grow back to a somewhat shorter length. But,
there really is no way of determining this for you. It’s on a case-by-case
basis.”
Clint stares at Dr. Chiew for a very long minute, his lips pressed together,
his blue eyes so wide that the whites are visible around the irises. Coulson,
in an armchair next to Clint in front of the doctor’s desk, sits very, very
calmly and silently and wonders when exactly Clint is going to stick that arrow
up his ass today. Probably the moment they walk out of the office.
“My balls are gonna vanish and my dick is gonna shrink.” Clint slowly turns his
head to stare at Coulson instead with those wide, horrified eyes. “I was not
told about this, Phillip. I was not told about this -”
“There have been cases where a male Omega’s genitals grew back significantly
larger and longer than before.”
Clint slowly turns his head back to stare at Dr. Chiew, his eyes still wide,
his lips pursed once more. A few seconds pass. Then a few more. Then, Clint
opens his mouth to speak, only for Dr. Chiew to add, “But like I said, that’s
the exception, not the norm. Out of several thousand cases, only five were the
exception.”
Clint shuts his mouth. He sits back in his armchair and stares into space with
glassy eyes, the tips of his lips quirked up in a parody of a smile.
“Everything’s fine,” Clint says to himself very, very casually.
Coulson is pretty sure now is not a good time to smile even with affection,
much less make any noise resembling laughter. He wants to tell Clint that he
doesn’t care what size his genitals will be in the future, that he’d love Clint
even if Clint’s cock and balls disappeared permanently … but he is also a wise,
cautious man, and he very much prefers his head to be lacking arrows.
“Wait,” Clint says seconds later, his eyes opening so very wide again. “Am I
gonna grow boobs?!”
Dr. Chiew is impressively still the epitome of imperturbable professionalism.
(Coulson will be leaving a positive review on her SHIELD profile, yes.)
“Short answer: No. Long answer: Most pregnant male Omegas present with
noticeable breasts by the second month of pregnancy. It’s actually a rather
reliable indicator of pregnancy for a male Omega. That is, unless you’re in the
minority that doesn’t develop breasts at all. It’s a genetic thing. Since
you’re already four months pregnant and still have your pecs, it’s safe to say
you won’t develop any breasts. You’ll have to bottle feed.”
Clint glances down at said pecs under his black, sleeveless tactical suit, then
raises his head again with a contemplative expression.
“Huh. I … dunno whether to be relieved. Or disappointed.” Clint glances down
again at his chest and cups and squeezes his pectorals with gloved hands. “I
mean, I could have had my own set of awesome boobs to play with! Like, my own
fatty Ben Wa balls! How cool would that have been!”
Dr. Chiew’s mien fractures at last with a stifled, amused smile when Coulson
stares deadpan at her, an expression that declares, yes, this is my mate. This
is the man I have chosen to be bonded to for the rest of my life.
Clint’s mood lightens even more during the ultrasound that has Dr. Chiew
rubbing a transducer across Clint’s exposed and gelled belly while Clint
reclines on a tilted bed. Although this is Clint’s third ultrasound, Coulson is
still as fascinated as Clint by the achromatic, erratic images forming on the
video screen of their baby in Clint’s womb as seen from various views and
angles. Dr. Chiew freeze-frames a clear shot, then measures the baby from crown
to rump. Then she examines the baby’s internal structures, including the brain,
heart, spine and stomach, and also the placenta and umbilical cord. Everything
checks out, to his and Clint’s tremendous relief.
“I think baby’s going to be a big one,” Dr. Chiew says with a smile. “Do you
want to know the baby’s sex?”
Clint makes his position on that clear by putting his hands over his ears and
singsongs, “La la la la.”
Coulson quirks his lips and says, “We prefer to find out only at the birth.”
Today’s appointment concludes with Dr. Chiew renewing Clint’s prescription of
antenatal vitamins as well as a five-month prescription of ‘do not fucking jump
off fifty-story buildings.’ (Coulson thinks that maybe he’s a little in love
with her.)
“That was just one time!” Clint predictably grouses after hearing the good
doctor’s deadpan delivery. He turns to Coulson and says, “Tell her it was only
one time.”
“Three, actually,” Coulson’s traitorous mouth replies.
Clint glowers at him, then says with twinkling eyes, “Phil? Babe? This is the
part where you say, ‘Yes, honey,’ and, ‘Of course, honey.’ We gotta practice
this shit again.”
“Yes, honey.”
Clint nods in exaggerated approval, and there’s Dr. Chiew with that stifled,
amused smile again as she hands over the prescription slip to Coulson and tells
them to scram. (Coulson thinks that maybe she’s more acquainted with Nick than
he knows, the way they both enjoy kicking him out of their offices.)
As they stroll down the corridor side by side, Clint’s little, impromptu game
lasts until he realizes that Coulson will only say those two lines, no matter
what flies off Clint’s tongue. Coulson thinks that he’s gained the upper hand
over his rascally mate but no, Clint just has to go and say, “I’m a fat, ugly
blimp with swollen feet and a flat pug face.”
Coulson opens his mouth. Closes it.
Clint gives him a pointed look with one raised eyebrow.
“I win,” the little brat says pompously when he refuses to say anything, and he
stares at Clint with narrowed eyes, saying something else entirely with them.
As expected, Clint cracks up, his playful snicker echoing in the corridor.
Clint leans forward to kiss him on the lips. Clint walks ahead first after
that, and Coulson stands where he is and smiles to himself for several moments.
No, he thinks before walking again and catching up with his mate who grins at
him, no, he’s pretty sure that he’s the one who’s won big time in this game of
life. He has Clint and their baby to prove it.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Sometimes, the appointments with Dr. Chiew are much more somber. Dr. Chiew
tells them in her no-nonsense manner about stillbirth, about the risks now that
Clint is headed into the sixth month of pregnancy. Clint grips Coulson’s hand
under the desk, his face pale and impassive. Coulson squeezes his mate’s hand
back.
“From now on, bi-monthly appointments until the birth. Maybe more,” Dr. Chiew
says, her forearms resting on her desk and her fingers steepled. “No skimping.”
Coulson and Clint concur with the doctor.
Dr. Chiew also tells them about the more painful aspects of the transformation
of Clint’s body, such as his hips widening increasingly in the upcoming months.
Male Omegas have it worse than female Omegas (and every other gender) due to
the male Omegan skeletal structure that includes a narrower pelvis but a pelvic
brim notably wider than that of males who aren’t Omegas.
“You’re going to get lower backaches often as the baby turns and the head
aligns inside the pelvis, especially in the final month as the ligaments of the
sacroiliac joint loosens. The joints of your bones are going to soften due to
your pregnancy hormones, which means your joints are going to hurt too. The
pain will be at its worst during labor, if you intend to give birth naturally.”
“Okay,” Clint says, unperturbed.
“And speaking of natural birth, you’ve very likely noticed the physical changes
to your genitalia as well as the perineal area.”
Clint flushes tomato red at that and glances away from Dr. Chiew. Coulson
strokes Clint’s fingers once under the desk, his own lips twitching up when he
sees Clint’s lips do that too. To say that both of them have noticed the
changes is a bit of an understatement. He certainly remembers how sensitive
those changes are to his touch. And his tongue.
“Uhm, yeah,” Clint mutters, scratching the side of his neck, turning even
redder. “I gotta admit, I didn’t expect the … folds.”
“They’re called vir labia. Not all male Omegas develop them during pregnancy
but if they do, it’s usually in the fifth month, around your perineal area.
They’ll disappear about a month or two after birth. Are you having any issues
with them? Any pain or bleeding?”
“No. No, not at all, Doc. None.”
Coulson’s lips twitch even more when Clint shoots him a heated glance. Ah, it
seems they’ll get to enjoy these changes until Clint gives birth. An acceptable
trade-off for the discomfort Clint must suffer.
Dr. Chiew smiles at them both, an affable smile that takes years off her round
face and elicits a similar smile from Clint.
“Good!” Dr. Chiew claps her hands once, then says,” So. Now for the the Big
Question: Natural or Cesarean?”
Clint’s answer is resolute and immediate.
"Natural. No drugs."
Coulson and Dr. Chiew share a split-second look that Coulson is certain Clint
doesn’t miss. Coulson has read enough medical literature on male Omega
childbirth by now to know that Clint’s choice is the most precarious of all,
especially for the male Omega. It’s Clint’s choice, however, and he respects
that. It isn ’t him carrying a baby to term for months while undergoing
numerous, taxing physical changes. It isn’t going to be him pushing out a baby
after hours of agony without any painkillers. (It isn’t him who was drugged by
Alpha bastards intent on raping him. It isn’t him who was disemboweled by one
of those Alpha bastards.)
“Okay. But just to let you know, you can always opt for an epidural at any time
during labor.” Dr. Chiew pauses, then says, “A Cesarean section is the much
more common choice of delivery by male Omegas. It’s stressful in its own ways,
but you won’t feel any pain, the delivery of the baby is much quicker and it
greatly reduces the chances of other complications arising.”
Clint shakes his head, his visage set in a determined frown.
"I want a natural birth. No drugs." Coulson can now see that Clint is gritting
his teeth hard, that his fangs are showing. "I don't want a knife near my
belly. I don't want a knife near my baby."
"Okay, Clint. Okay,” Dr. Chiew replies benevolently, calm even in the face of
Clint’s abrupt anger.
Clint’s hand is now squeezing Coulson’s in an aching vise. Coulson rubs his
thumb across tense tendons and rigid bone. He pumps out calming Alpha
pheromones for Clint’s sake (and since Dr. Chiew is a Beta, she isn’t affected
by them). Clint looks at him and then, just as abruptly, Clint’s anger and
fangs recede, leaving Clint with an apologetic expression and lowered eyes.
“Sorry, Doc,” Clint murmurs, scratching the side of his neck again. “Stupid
hormones.”
“Nothing to apologize about, Clint,” Dr. Chiew says, smiling again, sincerely.
“Still, due to the past trauma to your reproductive system, complications may
arise that require an emergency C-section. Do we have your permission to
perform one if it’s needed?"
Clint glances at Dr. Chiew, then away. Clint then glances at Coulson, and he
sees a flash of emotion in Clint’s eyes that seems to be … guilt? For what?
Clint glances at Dr. Chiew again and says, "Yes. To save the baby, yes."
Coulson gazes at Clint’s profile. Clint doesn’t look back at him. Clint has
lowered his eyes once more and is staring at the burnished surface of Dr.
Chiew’s desk, reticent.
Still, Clint’s fingers curl around his when he tightens his grip on them.
"Phil?” Dr. Chiew asks. “Do you have anything to say or add?"
Coulson gazes on at his mate’s face, outwardly stoic. Inwardly, he’s … he is
not pleased that Clint is willing to die to give birth to their baby naturally.
He gets why Clint doesn’t want a C-section, he really does. Clint doesn’t need
his PTSD compounded on top of strain of the birth itself. But Coulson doesn’t
want his beloved mate to die. He’s already gone through that once, a fucking
helpless and useless thing who could only stand aside while Clint was
defibrillated in his room in the med bay, Clint’s infection-weakened heart
going dormant for seventeen seconds (that lasted eons, eons).
If it comes to choosing between Clint and the baby, he already knows what his
choice will be.
“If something goes wrong,” Coulson says, gazing at Clint who finally looks back
at him with such wide, open eyes, “do everything in your power to save Clint
and the baby. But if you have to choose between them, do everything in your
power to save Clint. Everything.”
Clint says nothing. Coulson sees the long line of Clint’s throat shift in a
hard swallow as Clint lowers his eyes yet again.
Clint’s fingers remain entwined with his, warm and strong and real.
After signing the mandatory patient contract, he and Clint leave Dr. Chiew’s
office in a silence that vibrates with a tension that hasn’t manifested between
them for many years, like a bowstring on the verge of snapping in two. Coulson
isn’t angry, no, not at all, and he can tell that Clint isn’t either from
Clint’s sweet and fresh scent. This tension had incarnated itself only a
handful of times, always with Clint being afraid that he’s screwed up somehow,
that he’s done something that Coulson can’t abide and will shove Coulson away.
They walk down the empty corridor side by side with a forearm’s breadth of
space between them. Looking ahead, Coulson stretches out his right hand across
that space for Clint’s left hand. There is a moment’s hesitation, just a
moment, before Clint clutches his hand and tucks himself against Coulson’s
side. Coulson releases Clint’s hand then, but only so he can wrap an arm around
Clint’s waist to draw Clint even closer, so Clint can tuck himself even tighter
against him and find shelter in him. (Always, always.)
“It’s funny, ya know? I’ve jumped off planes in the middle of the night into
raging war zones in just my Hawkeye outfit and bow and arrows. I’ve fought
mercenaries armed with machine guns and RPGs with a knife and won. I’ve had
showdowns with assassins and warrior monks and ninjas trained by the most
dangerous terrorist organizations in the world,” Clint murmurs as they walk on,
their heads leaning together. “I fought the psychopathic sonofabitch who tried
to kill me twice and I survived. But this? Having a baby?” Clint huffs out a
tremulous laugh. “This is the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life, Phil.
How funny is that, huh?”
Coulson halts in his steps when Clint does so. He stands still and silent and
fond as Clint turns to face him, rotund belly bumping him, glancing down at the
vicinity of his clavicles before looking him in the eye.
“When the Doc asked me about the C-section, you … you know I didn’t mean that I
wanted to die. Right?”
Coulson reaches up and gently tweaks the rim of Clint’s ear, then cards his
fingers through the lush, golden hair above it.
“I know, sweetheart. I know what you meant. But I stand by what I said as well.
If something really does go wrong, we can … try again. We can try again. But,
Clint?” He traces the hinge of Clint’s smooth lower jaw with his fingertips. He
purses his lips, his chest suddenly throbbing, a heat simmering behind his
eyes. “There’s only one of you. And I would really, really rather not lose you
again. If I have to choose between you and the baby, it will always be you. If
that makes me a monster, so be it.”
Coulson waits with breath frozen in his lungs for Clint to lash out, to rend
his person-suit asunder so the monster in him will have nowhere to hide
anymore. He returns Clint’s unblinking, unguarded gaze. He’s prepared for
Clint’s judgment, for Clint to see the wriggling, undead worms and restless
demons beneath his skin at last and say, you’re no different from them, not at
all.
But of course, of course his Omega mate remains full of surprises, for Clint
rests a hand upon the left side of his chest and says instead, “I’ve met a
lotta monsters in my time, babe. But you? You can never be one, because you’ve
got this heart right here that’s so big you gotta seal it behind layer upon
layer of armor so it doesn’t get hurt.”
And because Coulson is unable to speak then, he draws Clint close to him once
more. He kisses Clint on the cheek and feels it bunch up as Clint smiles. Then
as one, with their arms around each other, they resume their journey back home,
the fleeting tension between them once again a hazy, trivial thing of the past.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Phil is sound asleep on his right side on the bed, his head on Clint’s swollen
belly, his chest rising and falling with deep, languorous breaths. Two pillows
propping up his head and shoulders, a reclined Clint caresses the arcs and
sweeps of his Alpha mate’s dark, thin hair with the pads of his fingers.
The expression on Phil’s face is tranquility embodied, like the sun ascending
above the horizon, gracing the world with warmth and reverie and light. Clint
is grateful, very grateful to be alive to see it. To be able to touch Phil like
this, to plot out the ridges and channels of his beloved mate’s handsome face,
to brush a finger across Phil’s pliant, dry lips, to feel the glimmer of Phil’s
eyelashes when he taps them.
He should have died over twenty years ago, he thinks, in a grimy motel in the
city he was born in. He should have died even earlier than that, he thinks,
when his old man was still alive and would beat Ma and Barney and him in his
drunken fits, bellowing about killing them all for making his life hell, for
being his burden. He thinks it’s a damn miracle, sometimes, that he survived
beyond babyhood at all.
But he is grateful that he has. He is. He would never have met Phil, otherwise.
He wouldn’t have become the valuable, useful SHIELD specialist agent he is
today. He wouldn’t be here, in this Brooklyn apartment, in this cozy bedroom
with its deep purple-and-gold curtains and taupe carpet and sunny lamps,
carrying in him the baby of the man who saved him from dying at the blade-
versed hands of another.
Duquesne. The Swordsman, who once told him that he would become a rising star,
a comet.
Once upon a time, Duquesne was just a man too. Duquesne was just a man with
stark hazel eyes, angular cheekbones, aquiline nose and thin lips, a man who
laughed at the dumbest jokes, drank shitty beer with the other carnies, could
speak more than eight languages fluently and had dreams of becoming the most
famous blade master in the world. Duquesne was a man who had choices at his
fingertips, like so many other people on this Earth.
And in the end, he made the wrong ones. The worst ones. He chose to harm and
rape and kill, and now he’s dead while Clint still lives.
Clint is still alive, because in the end, he made the right ones.
“And you’re the best one,” he whispers to Phil still slumbering against his
belly, his mate and husband who loves him so much and accepts all of him, scars
and fucked up past and mistakes and all.
The baby must agree too, wriggling like they are now inside him. He laughs
soundlessly to himself and lays a hand on his belly next to Phil’s crown.
“Okay, okay, settle down,” he murmurs, rubbing his belly over Phil’s (his,
their) cable knit, light gray sweater. “I’ll tone down on the mushy thoughts, I
get it.”
Phil decides to wake up then, snuffling and stretching a sinewy, toned body
that still makes Clint’s mouth water, that makes something in his chest skip a
beat. Clint gives him a tender smile that’s returned in kind, like the first
rays of sunlight streaming in through a gap in the curtains. He breathes in
their mingled scents of spring nectar, cleansed grass after the rain,
chocolate-mint cake straight out of the oven on a cool afternoon and something
else, like baked apple pie and evergreen leaves.
Clint feels the baby move again.
So does Phil.
Clint’s smile broadens as Phil’s eyes go round as saucers, as Phil peels away
the sweater to press a stubbly face harder to his belly with a blooming smile
of astonishment and delight. It’s the first time Phil is feeling the baby move.
It’s another exquisite moment in time to be committed to memory, to heart.
“I think the baby just touched my face with a hand,” Phil says, in awe.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s … It’s surreal.”
Clint’s laugh this time is audible and low.
“Imagine what it feels like from inside.”
Phil’s eyes go round again as the baby wiggles some more, directly against his
face.
“Hello, baby,” Phil murmurs, stroking the curved side of Clint’s belly, “hi,”
and then as one, they laugh, softly and bodily, because they’re here to do so,
even after everything that’s happened to them. Because they can.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
If there is anything that cuts Coulson to the quick worse than hearing Clint
whimper his name during a nightmare, it’s seeing his mate cry, due particularly
to how infrequent it occurs and how exposed Clint must feel to break down like
that.
“They’re gone. They’re fucking gone!”
Clint is sitting on the side of their bed in just a dark purple, long-sleeved,
v-neck sweater that covers his burgeoning belly and groin. His black sweatpants
are on the carpeted floor near his bare feet in a heap. Clint doesn’t even make
the effort to hide his crying which, for Coulson, is as evident a sign as any
of the level of Clint’s distress.
“Hey. Hey,” Coulson says, kneeling down in front of Clint and clasping Clint’s
pressed-together thighs with both hands. “What do you mean?”
Clint runs his hands down his flushed, streaked face and sniffles noisily.
“My balls, damnit. They’re gone!”
Coulson’s benign expression doesn’t change one bit. He is, however, grimacing
inwardly. Ah. Well, Dr. Chiew did warn them about this (and about Clint’s
severe mood swings). It’s an inevitable stage in the gradual transformation of
Clint’s body in preparation for the birth. Still, he can’t blame Clint for
being so upset about it. What guy wouldn’t be upset to wake up one day and find
his testicles missing?
“Clint, it’s only temporary -”
“My balls are gone, Phil!” Clint gestures wildly at his covered groin, his eyes
glistening and rimmed red. “And there’s - there’s something weird going on
lower down too! Like, bits that weren’t there before! It’s freaking me out!”
Coulson risks a small, consoling smile. He caresses the sides of Clint’s tense
thighs as Clint wipes at his face again with the back of his hands, humbled by
the fact that Clint permits him to see him like this, all armor stripped away,
all defenses down and out for the count. Clint has no idea how brave he is, to
bring their baby to full term despite all the perils and hardships that come
with being a pregnant male Omega.
And yes, if the medical literature on male Omega pregnancies he’s read are
authentic, he knows precisely what Clint is talking about. There’s absolutely
nothing to worry about.
“Sorry,” Clint mumbles, sniffling again, his head bowed.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Coulson says as he wipes away a tear under
Clint’s left eye with a thumb.
“It’s just …” Clint flails his hands about in illustration of his feelings. “I
feel so outtacontrol. I feel like my body isn’t mine anymore. I know the Doc
told us about all this but … it doesn’t mean I like it.” Clint grasps Coulson’s
upper arms, as if to anchor himself. “And I want this baby. Our baby. I want it
so badly. I shouldn’t feel bad about the rest, right?”
“Just because you want the baby doesn’t mean you can’t be upset about the
aspects of pregnancy that change your body in ways you don’t agree with. Okay?”
A lengthy minute ticks by before Clint nods jerkily, his eyes still lowered and
damp.
“Is it okay if I take a look? Or do you want me to leave you alone?”
Clint seizes one of his hands, and he lets Clint pull him closer. He envelops
Clint in a hug and rubs Clint’s back with both hands, purring deep in his chest
and emitting reassuring Alpha pheromones, feeling Clint nuzzle the crook
between his neck and shoulder. He smells Clint’s Omegan pheromones pumped out
in return, creating a cycle of scent-centric alleviation.
“Ya know what’s wrong with me?” Clint asks, muffled.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, sweetheart. This new, well, development is a
natural part of the transformation too.”
“It is?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Clint sits up, calmer and no longer beset by sobs. He wipes his face
one last time with the long sleeve of his sweater. “Okay, you can look.”
Coulson stays on his knees as Clint slides up the bed and leans back on his
hands, drawing his legs up onto the bed. Coulson receives an unobstructed view
of Clint’s genital and perineal areas after Clint spreads his thighs and … yes,
just like Dr. Chiew forewarned them, Clint’s testicles have fully retracted, a
smooth, slight, hairless bump (due to Clint shedding his body hair months ago)
in their place. Coulson likens it to the mons of a female human, the fatty
mound of tissue of the vulva’s anterior portion. But Clint being a male Omega,
there’s the penis above it, decidedly shorter and smaller than it was before
(although last he checked, Clint can urinate and ejaculate just fine from it).
There’s the likelihood it will shrink even more by the time the birth takes
place, the male Omegan biology’s measure of keeping the male genitals out of
the way and making as much room as possible for a natural birth.
And ah, just like the medical journals depicted, Clint has also developed vir
labia folds.
“Does it look bad?”
Clint is averting his eyes and biting his lower lip. Coulson strokes the inside
of Clint’s left thigh in a compassionate gesture, smiling benignly at Clint
even though his mate isn’t looking at him. It hasn’t escaped his notice that
Clint had refused to sleep naked next to him as well as let him into the
bathroom whenever Clint was showering for the last two weeks. While Clint was
fine with being held in bed, Clint had also refused to let his hands anywhere
below his belly, twisting his lower body away from his under the covers.
Not once was he irritated by the behavior. He was far more concerned with
Clint’s mental wellbeing. He understood Clint’s anxiety and need for space
while processing the drastic changes to his body and their effects on his
thoughts and emotions, and it seems Clint has reached the stage of no longer
being able to ignore nor conceal said changes from him.
Coulson gazes at the vir labia folds between Clint’s legs, at their petal-like
symmetry and rosiness, at the splendid, arousing way the folds frame that
luscious hole that spills out such fragrant, delectable slick.
He licks his lips, already tasting that slick on them, upon his tongue. He
gazes at Clint’s face until Clint’s eyes are dragged to his again.
“Honestly?” he rasps. “I think you look fucking beautiful. I want to eat you.”
He can see the instant Clint believes him, see it in the loosening of Clint’s
shoulders, in the smoothing out of Clint’s brow and the arch of Clint’s supple
lips in a relieved, sunny smile. He sees Clint nod. He hears Clint ’s breaths
quicken as he extends his arm to touch this new portion of his Omega mate’s
alluring body.
He presses the back of his fingers upon the silken, smooth folds and caresses
them firmly from bottom to top.
Clint shudders violently and gasps. Clint’s cock hardens in a heartbeat,
springing up to smack against the curve of his pregnant belly. Clint’s hole
gushes thick, translucent slick that trickle down and over the vir labia, down
to the beige sheets under Clint’s buttocks.
Oh. Oh, now that was a fascinating reaction.
“Uhm. Can you - can you do that again?”
Clint has become flushed, breathless and raspy, his toes curled on the bed and
his hands fisting the sheets. Clint has gone down on his elbows, unable to prop
himself up on his hands anymore. Clint is definitely turned on.
Coulson gives his Omega mate a fierce, lascivious smile, letting his fangs peek
for a second or two.
“Oh, I’ll do more than that,” he growls, and without waiting for Clint’s
response, he dips down and swipes his tongue against the now engorged, blushing
folds over and over, licking up and swallowing Clint’s slick with frenetic
zeal. God, god, Clint smells and tastes so damn incredible, like a high he
can’t get enough of, can’t live without. He can feel Clint’s thighs shaking in
his hands, feel Clint’s heels knocking on his upper back, Clint’s hands
grappling at his head as Clint writhes. (Ah hah, Clint must be on his back
now.) He can hear Clint crying out his name and a myriad of curses, begging him
to not stop, don’t stop, don’t stop, babe, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come-
He closes his mouth around Clint’s cock just in time to swallow down Clint’s
come, sucking on it until Clint whines and yanks at his hair and ears. Clint is
still panting as he goes back down to Clint’s hole and oh yes, oh yeah, he
loves to make Clint groan just like that, he loves to rim and tongue-fuck Clint
like this, pushing his tongue into Clint as far as he can go (but no blowing,
no blowing air, air embolisms are not good). He drives his tongue along the
gorges between Clint’s vir labia folds, conquering every inch of quivering,
delicate flesh, and oh, Clint’s moaning so prettily and his body’s coiling, his
long, lean legs jerking up reflexively and Clint is coming again, his slick
hole squeezing around Coulson’s tongue, his wet folds fluttering against his
cheeks.
Startlingly, fantastically, Clint comes again after Coulson pierces Clint with
three fingers folded together and thrusts them in and out no more than seven
times. He watches Clint convulse from the overwhelming pleasure, watches Clint
claw at the sheets and throw his head back and open his mouth wide in a
wordless cry. He watches the swell of Clint’s belly undulate, and he thrusts
his fingers as deep as possible into Clint’s rhythmically clenching hole, only
realizing now how achingly hard he is in his jeans, hard enough to drill
through steel.
“Oh my god, oh god … Phil, I gotta ride your cock right now.”
Coulson withdraws his fingers. Strips off his jeans and underwear and clambers
onto the bed, half-sitting up with pillows against the headboard, his legs
stretched out, his arms at his sides. Clint crawls over him and straddles his
hips. He molds his hands to the hanging swell of Clint’s belly over Clint’s
sweater, bracing its weight as Clint lowers himself onto his cock.
“Clint … oh, you feel -”
“Fuck, oh fuck -”
He groans in unison with Clint as Clint’s hot, slick body parts for him and
then accepts him in one adamant slide. This has been his and Clint’s favorite
sex position ever since Clint’s belly started to bulge, giving Clint control of
the pace and depth of thrusts while allowing them to still face each other and
hug and kiss even after being knotted. In just a month or so, Clint’s belly
will be too big for them to make love like this, and Coulson?
Coulson intends to make full use of that month to drive him and Clint mad with
sexual bliss like this.
As soon as Clint settles in Coulson’s lap, Clint is rising up again, his hands
upon Coulson’s shoulders, his eyes shutting to half-mast, his head tipping
forward. Coulson exhales hard as Clint sinks back down, his hands pressed to
Clint’s belly.
“Oh. Oh, that feels so good, babe … oh yeah.”
Clint’s head is now tipping back loosely, his spine arching and fluid even with
the gravidness of his belly. Clint moans once more while he rolls his hips from
side to side. Coulson murmurs little sounds of pleasure as he absorbs the new
sensations of being enclosed by Clint’s vir labia, as Clint’s lips fall open
and tremor.
“Oh fuck, Phil, you feel so good.”
“Clint. Clint,” he whispers.
Clint’s hips make a circle, pressing down until they’re both panting, then
circle back. Clint torments him like this several more times, clenching tight
around him, baring that warm, smooth throat to his eyes, his fangs. Clint
shudders around him and cries out when he surges forward to bite such succulent
flesh offered so willingly to him.
“Fuck me, Phil,” Clint gasps. “Fuck me hard.”
Still supporting Clint’s belly with both hands, Coulson draws his knees up and
thrusts deeper into Clint. He grips Clint in place as he works his hips fast
and strong, giving Clint every inch of his cock and yet making sure he doesn’t
hurt him, doesn’t hurt the baby. In just seconds, Clint is panting hard, each
breath breaking into a hoarse moan. Clint’s cock is hard again, rubbing against
Coulson’s flat belly and his own round belly with every thrust. Coulson moves
one hand away from Clint’s belly to grip Clint’s muscular thigh. He stares up
at Clint while their foreheads are pressed together, at Clint’s eyes scrunched
shut as he’s plowed hilt-deep again and again and again.
“I’m gonna come again, gonna come, gonna come -”
“Yeah, come for me, sweetheart. Come for me -”
Clint’s eyes flare open. His mouth falls open in a soundless scream and then
yes, oh yes, oh yes, Clint’s cock is pulsing and spurting ribbons of come onto
Coulson’s stomach and Clint is fucking squeezing his cock and wrenching harsh
gasps out of him. He arches beneath Clint, his churning hips going erratic as
he approaches his own orgasm. His thrusts turn shorter, sharper and Clint is
now sobbing aloud and coiling up again with full-bodied tension and oh god,
god, holy shit, Clint is coming again, quaking against him, jetting even more
slick around his cock and down his balls, held upright by nothing more than
their foreheads pressed together and his hands on Clint’s belly and flank.
Clint is insensate from the waves of pleasure as he thrusts in one last time,
shoving his knot past the rim of Clint’s hole. He goes damn mindless himself as
he comes deep inside his mate, roaring and juddering and wishing it will never,
ever end.
Damn. Is he ever glad that their apartment is on its own floor. Just, damn.
After minutes - hours? days? - he reaches up to grasp Clint’s slumped shoulders
with both hands. He bunts his forehead against Clint’s, feeling a spark of
worry at Clint’s lack of reaction until Clint groans from obvious fulfillment
and bunts him back. He releases a soft sigh and slides his left hand down to
rub Clint’s rotund belly.
“Are you okay?” he murmurs.
Although Clint’s eyes are shut, Clint nods, their foreheads still touching.
“Yeah … yeah, I’m - I’m okay.” Clint also sighs. “I am way more than okay.”
They chortle together between lethargic kisses and caresses as they wait for
Coulson’s knot to shrink. Eventually, Clint opens his eyes and gazes into his,
reluctant to get up and let Coulson’s cock slide out of him (and Coulson
certainly empathizes with that).
“Temporary loss of balls, a shrunken dick and weird meat curtains … for epic,
mind-blowing chains of orgasms?” Clint rasps, grinning like a man who’s just
come five times in a row. “Yeah. I can deal with that,” and Coulson grins too,
palming Clint’s generous buttocks and already brainstorming ways to make Clint
come even more times in succession the next time.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
 “How am I gonna be a good dad, Phil, if I never had one myself? What if I -
what if …”
“What if?”
“What if I become my dad? What if I become a drunk bastard like him and I turn
into a monster and hurt -”
“Clint.”
“What?”
“Look at me. Please.”
“This is fucking embarrassing.”
“What is?”
“Look at me, I’m just talking about my old man who’s been dead for decades and
I was just eight years old and I didn’t even cry then. Stupid goddamn hormones.
I hate feeling like this. I hate that I still dream about my old man and about
him and wake up scared even though they’re both dead.”
“Hey, come here. Come here, sit between my legs. Let me hold you. It’s okay to
feel that way. It is.”
“How am I gonna take care of our baby if I’m like this? Like I’m …”
“Like you’re what?”
“Weak. Scared. Worried. All the time.”
“Do you think strong, brave people never feel any of that? Ever?”
“I dunno. I … I don’t know.”
“I was once told by a wise, one-eyed man that courage and strength do not come
from the absence of fear, but from the mastery of it.”
“Like … when I leap off a building and shoot my arrows?”
“Are you scared when you do that?”
“I … I guess I don’t think about it. I just - I do what I gotta do. ‘Cause the
mission depends on me. ‘Cause people depend on me. I mean, if I start thinking
about whether I’m gonna get hurt or die, I’ll never get the job done. And other
people will get hurt and die instead. I can’t allow that.”
“Hmm.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No, sweetheart. I’m laughing with you. You have no idea, do you? You have no
idea what a magnificent person you are. You have no idea how impossible it is
that you’ll ever be like your father. We all feel scared, all of us.”
“What, even Fury?”
“Yes. Even Nick. Especially him. He has thousands of agents under his command
at any given moment, and every decision he makes for SHIELD affects us all, the
world and he knows that.”
“Why is it impossible, Phil? Why?”
“Because unlike you, your father was a slave to his fear. He didn’t care about
anyone but himself. He was a coward to the end, who hid in the bottles he drank
dry. A selfish, abusive coward who took your mother down with him because
that’s how scared he was of himself and everything else. Then there’s you,
Clint, the man who leaps off fifty-story buildings without hesitation and runs
headlong into epic gunfights with a bow and arrows and confronts old enemies
alone despite being afraid, because you don’t want other people to get hurt and
die.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Exactly. And what else? You know exactly how to be a good dad, because you
know exactly what you needed that your father didn’t give you. And you have so
much to give. Look at how much you’re looking forward to our baby being born,
to our future together. Look at how much you care about our baby’s well-being,
and they’re not even here yet. If I even deigned to set up a scoreboard between
you and your father, I have to say, you are winning by an unbeatable streak and
I don’t see that changing any time soon, if ever.”
“Deigned? Did you actually say deigned?”
“Yes. Feeling better now?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“Good.”
“Phil?”
“Hm?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
“Clint?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you, for everything.”
“You’re welcome, babe. Always.”
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Clint’s water breaks at approximately 1:39 PM on a Thursday afternoon, while
Clint is napping in his medical bay room next to the birthing ward on board the
Helicarrier. Coulson is sitting in an armchair next to the bed, skimming
through the usual paperwork (and there’s always paperwork, it never, ever ends)
that SHIELD demands of practically everything, which is why he’s prepared for
Clint jolting awake and scrambling to sit up while shoving down the blankets
covering him.
“Oh, shit,” Clint mumbles, when they see the splash of wetness spreading across
the white sheets between Clint’s thighs.
“Oh,” Coulson murmurs, his chest suddenly and simultaneously too constricted to
breathe and too vast for his skin to contain. He’s stroking Clint’s tousled
hair before he knows it, stroking Clint’s smooth cheek as Clint says, “I’m
scared, Phil.”
Clint’s eyes are wide and shining. Clint’s lips are also tremoring into a soft
smile, an excited one, and Coulson pulls Clint into a snug embrace with his
head tucked under his chin, the line of his throat working in a long, hard
swallow as he rubs his mate’s back from shoulders to waist.
“I know. So am I, sweetheart. And it’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
He hugs Clint tighter when Clint does the same to him. He nestles his face into
Clint’s luxuriant hair and he tells himself to breathe, breathe.
It feels like only yesterday that he and Clint were in the en suite bathroom in
their apartment, gaping at the pregnancy tests with their blue crosses or red
double lines. Their baby is coming. Their baby is going to be here with them
soon.
“Get me the sweater, please,” Clint says a few minutes later, referring to the
cable knit, light gray sweater that still flows loosely over Clint’s hefty
belly at this point in time (and smells so much more of Clint than him now,
considering how often Clint’s worn it throughout the pregnancy).
Coulson retrieves it from the wardrobe next to the bed then helps Clint don it
while Clint sits on the side of the bed. Indeed, it swaddles Clint like a
thick, succoring blanket, adding warmth over Clint’s white t-shirt and
stretchy, black (and now soaked) sweatpants. They leave the room with Coulson
at Clint’s left side, an arm wrapped around Clint’s waist. Coulson instructs a
passing nurse to inform Dr. Chiew of Clint’s water breaking, and then they
saunter on to the private delivery room in the birthing ward that Coulson had
booked months in advance.
It’s at the very end of a long corridor of delivery rooms, the farthest from
the rest of the medical bay. It is also one of four rooms that are
soundproofed. With Clint insisting on a natural birth and no drugs whatsoever,
he is certain Clint will appreciate that feature of the room when the most
painful phase of the birth commences.
Clint experiences the first major contraction three doors away from their room.
Clint stumbles to a halt in the middle of the corridor, his back ramrod
straight, his eyes narrowed and his lower lip sucked in. Apart from that, Clint
makes no noise and lets Coulson press gentle hands to his lower back and the
underside of his cramping belly. And damn, cramping may be an understatement to
describe how hard Clint’s belly is as the uterine muscles contract.
It lasts for half a minute, after which Clint says with a face going slack,
“Well, that was fun.”
Clint and Coulson smile wryly at each other. It’s only going to worsen from
here until the baby is born, and Dr. Chiew had already warned them that first
births can drag on for half day. Maybe more than a day.
Coulson really, really doesn’t want his beloved mate to suffer. But what can he
say, since Clint is so single-minded about being drug-free?
Clint’s body is his own, and Coulson respects that, even if it means Clint’s
going to be in agony.
Dr. Chiew shows up while Clint is making himself comfortable on an inclined
birthing bed. The bed’s stirrups are different from those Coulson’s seen in
regular hospitals in that they’re lower, padded and meant to be stepped on as
counter-pressure. Clint eagerly tests them out, grinning and stepping hard on
them with bare feet and long, lean legs as athletic as they’ve always been. (If
not more so, due to Clint having had more free time to physically work out in
lieu of being on missions or at the archery range.) To Coulson’s approval, the
stirrups don’t budge. They’re durable enough to handle Clint’s strength.
“Somebody’s having a good time,” Dr. Chiew says in jovial greeting, smiling at
them as she enters the room in a white lab coat and a high-neck, black midi
dress, her black hair tied up in a bun.
“Hiya, Doc,” Clint says then stomps on the stirrups again. “You’re about to get
up-close and personal with my snatch.”
“Wouldn’t be the first one I’ve seen,” Dr. Chiew replies with an amused smirk,
snapping on a pair of medical gloves.
Coulson can’t help the quirking up of his lips as Clint draws him nearer to the
side of the birthing bed and grins up at him. That’s his mate right there,
cracking terrible jokes and being playful and positive while they’re heading
into new, dangerous territory.
There’s no telling what may occur in the hours ahead. There’s no guarantee that
everything will proceed smoothly, that there won’t be any complications, what
with the physical trauma Clint had to endure almost two years ago to his lower
abdomen. On top of that, out of all the genders, Omega males have the highest
mortality rate for childbirth, even with current achievements in obstetrics.
Coulson plants a kiss on Clint’s left temple, and tries not to let his hands
tremble.
He helps Clint strip off Clint’s sweatpants. Clint teases him about him folding
it up by habit and putting it aside on a nearby white table. Clint goes silent,
though, as Dr. Chiew examines him between his now naked legs. Clint doesn’t
like anyone else except Coulson touching him, but Dr. Chiew is a necessary
exception. She’s a professional, ethical Beta doctor too (which is why Coulson
allows it in the first place).
“Okay,” she says once she’s done. “It might be while.”
Clint is still single-minded about not receiving any painkillers for the labor
and birth, even after another major contraction that lasts for almost a minute
and has Clint grimacing.
“No.” Clint shakes his head several times, his lips pressed together in that
stubborn way Coulson’s so familiar with. “No drugs. If something goes wrong, I
can’t feel it and - no drugs.”
Coulson shares a quick glance with Dr. Chiew, then strokes the back of Clint’s
head and nape.
“Okay, sweetheart. Okay.”
Dr. Chiew comes and goes throughout the following hours, checking the dilation
of Clint’s cervix with each visit. There are two other births taking place in
other rooms, and while she’s attending to them, it’s just Coulson and Clint in
the privacy of their warm-lit delivery room. They share a few bottles of water
and some jell-o (although Clint eats all the grape-flavored ones). Clint goes
to the en suite bathroom often to urinate, the first four times on his own,
then with Coulson supporting him every time after that, particularly when
contractions hit. Coulson knows Clint had felt vulnerable being naked from the
hips down in front of Dr. Chiew, but as the pain ratchets up, as the
contractions become longer and closer, he also knows Clint is no longer giving
a damn about it.
“Aww, man, this sucks,” Clint groans into Coulson’s shoulder and through yet
another minute-long contraction, while he and Coulson stand near the birthing
bed with Coulson’s arms tight around him, swaying in place. The swaying motion
seems to help Clint tolerate the pain (and if he remembers right, it’s helping
the baby turn and move down through Clint’s widening pelvis too).
“You can still change your mind about painkillers,” Coulson says, massaging the
cramping muscles of Clint’s lower back. “It’s not too late.”
Clint shakes his head forcefully against his shoulder. He hushes Clint’s
protests. He purrs deep in his chest and also massages the bonding gland in
Clint’s shoulder. It’ll help with the pain alleviation as well, along with the
Alpha pheromones his own glands are pumping out. At this point in labor,
Clint’s pelvis is spreading even farther and wider apart to make room for the
baby to pass through and it’ll only be a matter of time until Clint will want
to be off his feet again.
Clint has only more agony to look forward to, for hours yet.
The labor progresses into active labor five hours after Clint’s water breaks.
Clint’s contractions now last a minute, coming every three to five minutes with
a peak that sometimes leaves Clint incapable of speaking. In other
circumstances, Coulson would be joking about how he’s finally discovered a
means of muting Clint’s running, cheeky mouth. But one look at Clint biting his
lower lip, at Clint’s creased brow, at Clint rocking back and forth on the
birthing bed and groaning through gritted teeth, and everything flies out of
Coulson’s mind except to comfort his suffering mate in whatever way he can.
“S’strange … I’ve been shot and stabbed and worse,” Clint pants, after a really
vicious contraction has passed and leaves him sweating and wan. “And I never
felt pain like this ‘fore.”
Coulson presses his left hand to the rounded underside of Clint’s belly, where
a once gaping knife wound has long healed into a faded, horizontal scar. He
hugs Clint closer to his torso, nuzzling Clint’s temple and stroking Clint’s
hair.
“Do you want drugs now?”
Once more, Clint shakes his head vehemently.
“Clint, are you sure?”
Mere minutes before, Dr. Chiew had cautioned them that at the speed Clint’s
labor is now advancing, it will soon be too late to administer an epidural for
it to take full effect before Clint has to push. This is Clint’s last chance to
have it.
“I’m sure,” Clint rasps faintly, and the exhaustion apparent in his mate’s
voice sends a stabbing sensation through Coulson’s chest. “Just … be here with
me.”
Coulson presses a kiss on Clint’s temple, then on Clint’s cheek when Clint
gazes up at him with tired but gleaming eyes.
“I’m here. I’m right here.”
Later, Dr. Chiew examines Clint again, and this time, she tells them with an
encouraging smile that Clint is almost dilated to ten centimeters. Coulson is
now sitting on the side of the birthing bed, supporting Clint upright with one
arm around Clint’s back, rubbing Clint’s contracting belly with his other hand
over Clint’s (his, their) cable knit sweater. Clint is leaning his head against
Coulson’s. Clint says nothing to Dr. Chiew’s announcement, breathing audibly
and shallowly, his eyes shut and his long eyelashes dark fans over pale cheeks,
the small line of pain between his eyebrows seemingly etched there in
permanence.
“Just a little while longer, Clint,” Dr. Chiew says as she sits on a stool
between Clint’s legs, her brown eyes kind. “You’re almost there.”
A little while longer turns out to be about nine minutes, which ends with Clint
suddenly shuddering and sitting up straighter on the birthing bed, gasping
loudly. Coulson braces Clint with both arms, one still around Clint’s back and
the other for Clint to grip with an iron hold with both hands.
“Oh my god,” Clint rasps, blinking a few times. “I can - I can feel the baby
move down, I -” Clint gasps again. “I’m sorry, I have to, I have to push -”
“Clint, go for it,” Dr. Chiew says, snapping on a fresh pair of medical gloves
and shifting closer to the birthing bed between Clint’s spread legs.
Coulson can feel Clint’s belly harden and rise under his hand with each
contraction, with each vigorous push that has Clint stepping hard on the padded
stirrups and panting after each one. Dr. Chiew had told them months ago that
this stage of the birth usually lasts from a half hour to one, though it can
also last much longer.
Their baby is almost here. Their baby.
“You remember … when Sitwell once told us about … that kidney stone he got?”
Clint is still able to speak in the transient lulls between pushes, hoarsely,
the words catching between sharp breaths.
“Yes,” Coulson murmurs, smiling in amusement as he recalls that very story and
how horrified Clint had looked throughout Sitwell’s rather graphic recounting
of passing a kidney stone that had felt like ‘a ball of razor blades slashing
its way through his urethra and all the way out his dick in epic slow motion’.
“Yeah, the pain level for that? I think that - that probably came pretty
closeto … this …”
Coulson waits to respond until Clint has finished pushing another time, his
throat constricting at the sight of Clint’s right hand squeezing the side
railing of the birthing bed, its knuckles bone-white.
“At least we’ll be getting a baby out of this and not a kidney stone,” he says
with a deadpan expression.
Clint laughs (laughs!) at that, his whole flushed, sweat-dotted face lighting
up with an open-mouthed grin and crinkled, twinkling eyes, and Coulson knows
then, somehow, that they’re going to be just fine. Even Dr. Chiew smiles.
Unfortunately, Clint’s mirth is short-lived. Another massive contraction hits
all too soon, and Clint winces and hisses between his teeth.
“Oh god, here comes another one, fuck, fuck, motherfuck, FUCK -”
Coulson glances in Dr. Chiew’s direction and sees that she has her gloved hands
in the cusp of Clint’s spread, quavering thighs and okay, okay, he remembers
reading about this part, he remembers seeing this part from various childbirth
videos he searched online. Dr. Chiew ’s using her hands to make sure Clint
doesn’t push too fast, doesn’t tear because -
“You’re doing good, Clint. The head’s starting to crown, okay?”
Clint doesn’t answer her, still caught in the latest contraction and push. He’s
panting hard afterward, sweat rolling down his right temple.
“You know - you know when -” Clint swallows hard, then sucks in another harsh
breath as yet another contraction begins to surge through his fatigued body.
“When they said it’d be like- oh, oh fuck, that hurts- they said it’d be like
pushing out a goddamn watermelon through a pin hole? They weren’t kidding!”
Clint doesn’t speak at all for the next several pushes, biting his lower lip
hard, grinding his teeth to not scream, squeezing his eyes shut and forgetting
to inhale any precious oxygen until Coulson strokes his now damp hair, his face
and tells him to breathe, Clint, breathe, you need to breathe.
“Let go, sweetheart. It’s okay,” he whispers, brushing his thumb across Clint’s
reddened, gnawed lower lip. “It’s just you and me and Tam. No one else can hear
you. I promise.”
Clint inhales sharply once, twice through his mouth. Clint grabs at the
birthing bed’s side railing again, the sweater’s sleeve rolled up to the tense
bicep. Clint turns his head and instinctively, Coulson nuzzles his face,
pressing more kisses to Clint’s cheek and corner of his lips.
“Okay,” Clint rasps, his eyes shut. “I’m going to scream now.”
Tears spring to Coulson’s eyes the first time Clint does so, as Clint begins
pushing their baby’s head out. Clint’s muscular thighs are shaking from the
exertion and agony, and he can hear every iota of that agony in Clint ’s voice,
see it in the curling of Clint ’s feet and toes against the stirrups, in the
veins standing out in Clint’s arms and feel it under his hand that’s now
grasping Clint’s left thigh.
“You’re doing really good, Clint. The head’s crowning at its widest now, okay?”
Again, Clint is unable to speak as he sucks in deep, gasping breaths through
his mouth in the momentary reprieve between unforgiving contractions. Coulson’s
right arm is about the only thing keeping Clint upright now, and he’s loath to
move away from Clint for even a second to raise the inclination of the birthing
bed. That, and Clint’s left hand has his left forearm in a vise-like grip,
fingernails digging red crescent moons into his skin. (He sees them, but he
doesn’t feel them at all.)
When Clint pushes again with yet another contraction, he screams a second time,
louder and higher in pitch. Coulson blinks searing eyes hard as Clint turns his
head towards him once more, seeking release and comfort from his Alpha. He
tucks Clint’s head under his chin and nuzzles the top of Clint’s head. He
squeezes his eyes shut. He entwines the fingers of his right hand with Clint’s
at Clint’s rigid side. He doesn’t care that Clint’s scream is deafening, that
it careens through him like an avalanche flattening his defenses. He wishes he
could endure the agony for his beloved mate, all of it, all of it. He wishes
Clint doesn’t have to suffer like this at all, for bringing into this world
their precious and so yearned child -
“Okay, the head is out!” Dr. Chiew says with cheer from afar. “It’s almost
over!”
Coulson’s knees go weak the instant Clint’s scream cuts off and segues into
coarse, hot panting against the hollow below his throat. He feels Clint’s whole
body shudder and then unwind for the first time since the contractions started.
He lets go of Clint’s left thigh and embraces Clint with both arms, rubbing
Clint’s upper right arm over and over.
“Oh my god … oh my god, oh my god.”
Coulson opens his eyes and glances down to see Clint’s face pale and tear-
streaked and happy.
“Okay … okay, I was wrong,” Clint says gravelly and faintly, gazing up at him
with glistening eyes at half-mast. “This is actually - actually more like
pushing the fucking quinjet out.”
Coulson snorts and blinks again, and again when his stupid eyes fill up again.
“Well, that’s another image I’m not going to get out of my mind soon,” he says
with what he hopes is a firm, nonchalant voice.
And oh, oh, there’s that resilient, joyful laugh again, that open-mouthed grin
and those crinkled, twinkling eyes. Coulson pets Clint’s spiky, blond hair gone
darker from sweat. He gently wipes away the sweat and tears from Clint’s face
with the long sleeve of his black t-shirt. He’s so proud, damn proud of how
strong and dedicated his Omega mate is to him, to their baby, of how Clint is
stroking his left arm and thinking about him even now, consoling him when Clint
is the one in so much pain.
“Phil?” Clint rasps, his voice a little more steady now.
“Yes?” he asks against Clint’s forehead.
“I want a new Hawkeye outfit … More purple and padding and sexy lines to show
off my hot bod.”
Coulson presses a kiss to Clint’s forehead.
“Done.”
“And I - I want a new bow and arrows to play with. Arrows that make things go
kaboom … Lots and lots of kaboom.”
Coulson nods, utterly straight-faced.
“All right.”
“And I want - I want a mini Hawkeye outfit for baby too. It’d be like … like,
mini-me and mega-me.”
Coulson’s lips tremor for a moment, but he holds fast to his deadpan mien. It’s
a damn endearing image, their baby in a Hawkeye onesie, clinging onto a toy bow
and arrow with chubby hands.
“Okay.”
“And I - and I want a baby harness … so I can take baby along with me when I’m
running and leaping around. Good exercise regimen!”
“Uh-uh,” Coulson says, shaking his head, still utterly straight-faced.
He almost loses it when Clint lets out a noise of outrage and smacks him
(weakly) on the chest.
“This is - this is especially the part where you say, ‘Of course, honey.’ This
part!”
Coulson begins to chuckle, and so does Clint, their shoulders shaking and their
foreheads touching. But all too soon, too soon, Clint is overcome by another
contraction, a truly mighty one that makes Clint bare his teeth and scrunch his
whole face from the pain.
“Oh god, here we go again -”
“Okay, one more big push, just the shoulders now,” Dr. Chiew says, amiable and
unflappable as ever.
Clint screams once more as he pushes as hard he can, hunching forward, his head
clasped against Coulson’s with one large, warm hand cupping the side of his
face. Halfway through the contraction, Clint’s eyes abruptly pop open from
shock. His scream fractures into a stuttering gasp.
“Stop kicking me, baby, I’m not a goddamn punching bag!” Clint cries out
shrilly in the direction of his (not as) rotund belly, still pushing.
Mouth agape, Coulson drops his hand from Clint’s face to Clint’s bulging lower
belly where the rest of their baby is … struggling inside his mate’s straining
body, trying to free themselves from stretching and compressing flesh that’s
gradually squeezing them out. He’d read about babies already opening their eyes
after their parent has pushed out their heads, but kicking inside? On top of
the brutal contractions?
Jesus, he’s going to really spoil Clint for the next year or so. At the very
least.
“Come on, you can do this, Clint!” Dr. Chiew says confidently. “Just one more
big push!”
Clint is beyond exhausted. Clint sucks one sharp, shaky breath, two, and then
he’s pushing hard and screaming and arching his back so much that his hips buck
and Coulson has to cage Clint ’s torso with both arms lest Clint tumbles off
the birthing bed. Coulson presses his cheek against Clint’s sweaty forehead
while Clint clutches at his arms with trembling hands. No, it isn’t the head
that’s widest, it’s the shoulders that have to pass through such a small and
delicate opening that can so easily rip and Clint’s scream is no sign of
weakness, it’s the battle roar of a warrior and suddenly, suddenly, there’s a
sluicing noise and Clint’s voice breaks and Clint’s entire body just goes limp
in Coulson’s arms, shivering from head to toe and … Dr. Chiew is holding a baby
in her gloved hands, all wet and pink and limbs flailing in the air.
Coulson’s heart shoots up into his throat even as he crushes a panting, wearied
Clint to his chest.
Oh, god. Oh, wow. Oh, wow, their baby is here. Their baby is finally here.
And as a baby born of an Omega mate like Clint Barton is destined to do, their
baby comes out fighting with no holds barred, no qualm. Their baby’s (sweet,
lovely, perfect) face scrunches up with an ear-piercing howl that puts their
daddy’s earlier screams to shame. It rouses Clint from his stupor, who stares
at their wailing baby with wide, glistening eyes of amazement and infatuation
and love, so much of it, more than the universe can embody in all its stars and
planets and supernovas.
“Holy shit. I did it,” Clint whispers, grinning a grin that surpasses even the
sun in its radiance. “I did it!”
Dr. Chiew is grinning too as she tells Coulson and Clint, “It’s a girl,” and
then says to the still crying baby, “Sweetie, you got to be at least nine
pounds!”
Coulson feels like bawling like his baby - his daughter! - too, his lower jaw
threatening to tremor and release what would be humiliating sounds coming from
a grown man, his eyes going wet and hot. After everything that’s happened to
him and Clint, after almost losing this path in life to the violent insanity of
a psychotic serial killer … he and Clint are parents. He and Clint have a baby
girl who’s theirs, all theirs and alive and safe and well. Listen to her cry
with such vitality and indignation!
Clint doesn’t seem to mind at all as he burrows his face into Clint’s hair and
crushes Clint in a breath-stealing embrace. Clint is stroking his arm with both
hands, consoling his Alpha mate, knowing exactly how he’s feeling right now
from his scent and the new dampness trickling into Clint’s hair.
I love you, Coulson thinks with every cell in his being, I love you so damn
much.
“Love you,” Clint whispers, just enough for him to hear.
He regains his composure swiftly after that. He stands straighter, his head
held high, his arms still around Clint as they gaze at their baby girl again
who’s being inspected by Dr. Chiew and Clint says with a voice still rough,
“Nine freaking pounds? That’ll explain why I’m gonna walk bow-legged for the
rest of my life.”
“As if you already don’t,” Coulson says, and oh, oh yes, there’s that jubilant,
full-bodied laugh once more, that laugh that he’ll never tire of, that he
always wants to hear.
Dr. Chiew places their baby on Clint’s now flatter abdomen. She hands Clint and
Coulson a white, fluffy towel to clean and dry the baby with, but it’s Coulson
who does most of the work one-handed while Clint, enervated and sluggish, coos
and smiles at her and caresses her round head with feather-light touches.
“Hi, baby,” Clint rasps, his eyes glistening again. “Hi, beautiful. Welcome to
the world.”
Their daughter immediately stops crying when she hears Clint’s voice. They
touch and stroke her with their bare hands, scenting her with their mingled
scents so she’ll recognize them long before she can see them clearly or speak.
It’s also their mark of protection and claim upon her, an unmistakable beacon
to everyone else that she’s theirs, that they’ll love her and shield her and
hunt down anyone who dares hurt a hair on her head to the end of the world and
make them pay with blood.
Coulson is in something of an euphoric trance as he’s guided by Dr. Chiew to
clamp the umbilical cord and cut it. He vaguely recalls asking her about the
placenta and if Clint will be in pain again pushing it out. Clint ends up
pushing it out without even knowing it, so enchanted as he is by their baby.
“Sshh, baby, it’s okay, I know,” Clint murmurs to their gurgling, squirming
daughter, smiling to himself. “You didn’t enjoy that very much, huh? I didn’t
either.”
Coulson returns to Clint’s side as their baby’s eyes begin to open. He watches
Clint reverently pick her up with both hands and swaddle her close to his chest
within the thick, fuzzy warmth of the cable knit sweater. He watches Clint kiss
her on the forehead, then on her cheek, and now he is the one smiling to
himself, wondering how Clint could have believed for even a moment that he
would be a bad father.
Dr. Chiew hands him a light blue blanket that he tugs over Clint’s lower body,
after she’s examined Clint and ascertained that Clint (miraculously) didn’t
tear at all and just needs lots of rest. He watches Clint bond with their baby
with an emotion that’s too monumental to be described as ecstatic, and he
smiles, he smiles.
“My baby. My baby.” Clint nuzzles their now serene and drowsy daughter’s plump
cheek, then kisses it again. Then, Clint raises his head and gazes up at him
with eyes as luminous as expanding stars, as if Clint still can’t quite believe
that they’re really here in this place and time, that Coulson is his mate and
the father of their baby. “Our baby.”
Coulson climbs onto the birthing bed and rolls onto his side to face Clint. He
shuts his eyes and bunts his forehead against Clint’s, smiling even broader as
Clint bunts his forehead right back and rubs them together, both of them
grateful to have this dream come true. Clint slides easily (perfectly) into his
arms with their daughter snuggled between them.
Coulson touches her chubby, smooth cheek. He marvels at its incomparable
silkiness, at its sacred warmth under his fingertips.
“Ours,” he murmurs, and he leans down to press his first kiss upon her
forehead, the first of a million more to come.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Since they didn’t know the sex of their baby until she was born, Coulson and
Clint hadn’t really bothered to make a list of potential names. Just a couple
of names, mostly those of close relatives from Coulson’s side of the family,
like his father’s name if the baby’s a boy or his mother’s if the baby’s a
girl. He could tell, however, that Clint wasn’t serious about them, that Clint
wanted a name that doesn’t belong to somebody they already know. Clint had been
certain that the name will come to them after the birth, that maybe the baby
will choose one for themselves.
“How?” he’d asked Clint with a deadpan face. “Do we put the baby name book in
front of the baby and let them point at one?”
“Yes! That’s a great idea!” Clint had replied enthusiastically, grinning and
pointing both forefingers at him in emphasis. “I bought another one today: The
Worst Baby Name Book Ever! It’s funny! We gotta use that one, okay? It’ll be
great!”
Really, he loves his beloved mate very much but nobody can blame him for hiding
all the baby name books after that, can they?
Of course, that was before their baby girl was born. Once she arrived into the
world, Clint was absolutely dead set on letting the name ‘come naturally’ to
them, refusing to glance at even one baby name book, much less let the baby
near one. (Thank goodness.)
The only problem now is, without the books as a jumping-off point, Clint is on
a roll generating all kinds of names that are making Coulson genuinely regret
burning that Worst Baby Name Book Ever book.
“Fifi Barton-Coulson.”
“No.”
“Arrowana Barton-Coulson.”
“No!”
“Hermajesty Barton-Coulson.”
“Good lord, no.”
“Quinjetta Barton-Coulson.”
“Really, Clint?”
“She sure felt like a quinjet coming out my cooch!”
Okay, Coulson doesn’t have much of a comeback to that, since he’d been there
when Clint pushed out their baby and screamed from the hours of pain of it. But
there is no way, no way he is going to accept the name Clint comes up with
next.
“Whoopie Cushion Barton-Coulson, because she farts so much.”
This, after Clint has finally stopped laughing his ass off at their almost two-
month-old baby girl and her flatulent symphony while Clint’s changing her
diapers. (Not that Coulson didn’t laugh either, but it had been more Clint’s
uproarious laughter and flailing of those ever muscular arms like a beached
Tyrannosaurus Rex that made him lose it.)
“No,” he replies vehemently, his arms akimbo, his lips sucked in to keep them
from arching up into a traitorous smile.
Their baby girl concludes that naming attempt with a bottom burp that sends
Clint into another fit of laughter and a gasped out, “That’s my little Bumsen
burner!”
Coulson vetoes that name as well.
The one time Clint permits someone outside of their small family to suggest
baby names is when Nick pays them a visit the following weekend and sticks
around for dinner. As intimidating as Nick appears to everyone else with his
glaring eye, ominous eye patch and menacing leather jacket, their baby girl is
enamored with him at first sight, staring at Nick’s face with humongous,
unblinking blue eyes, her rosy and chubby face brightening with a toothless
smile whenever Nick leans forward to gaze at her with a twinkling, brown eye.
(Clint manages to snap one photo of Nick clasping their baby before Nick coolly
says, “If that picture ever leaves this apartment, I will ship you to our base
in Antarctica to huddle with Emperor penguins in the dead of winter.” Clint
takes the threat seriously. Although he doesn’t quite see what’s so bad about
hanging around Emperor penguins and their downy, adorable babies.)
“Marcus,” Nick says at the dinner table, utterly, completely straight-faced.
“Or Johnson.”
Coulson, sitting opposite Nick and to Clint’s left, crosses his arms over his
chest and says with a glower, “Our baby is a girl.”
“It’s the 21st century. Get with the times, Cheese,” Nick says, still utterly,
completely straight-faced.
Clint, who’s cuddling the baby upright and face out to his chest, says with an
also utterly, completely straight face, “If I call the baby Marcus Johnson, do
I get promoted to Deputy Director?”
“No,” Coulson growls, his fangs out.
His intelligent, rational, brainy daughter obviously gurgles in protest because
she is intelligent and rational and brainy unlike these two dumbasses at the
table. Clint takes it to mean their little girl is getting fussy and needs a
burp, which is fine too.
Eventually, eventually, Clint does make a thoughtful endeavor of naming their
baby. Clint reveals this to him several nights after the dinner with Nick,
while they’re snuggled in bed with the baby lying chest down on Clint’s chest
and draped with a light purple, fleece baby blanket stitched with cartoon
yellow chicks (that he bought on a whim after bringing Clint and baby home from
the Helicarrier). The stubble on Clint’s cheek and lower jaw tickles his
forehead (and oh, how he’d missed the sensation of it throughout Clint’s
pregnancy).
“Tell me it has nothing to do with flatulence,” he mutters against Clint’s
right shoulder while he repeatedly strokes their calm, quiet baby from nape to
lower back with his right hand.
He and the baby shake along with Clint as Clint snickers.
“Nah. I’m serious, okay? I thought of a real name for her. But …” Clint
wrinkles his nose in genuine self-deprecation. “I dunno, maybe you’ll think
it’s weird. Or it sounds funny -”
“Clint. She’s your baby too, you know.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
Clint rolls his eyes but it’s softened seconds later by the slight smile that
casts a warm glow across Clint’s face. Coulson patiently waits, stilling his
hand upon their baby’s back when Clint tightens his embrace around her and
kisses her on the crown of her dark-haired head.
“Imogen,” Clint murmurs, gazing down at the baby whose eyes are half-open.
“It’s Greek for ‘beloved child’.”
“Imogen,” Coulson murmurs too, immediately taking a liking to it.
“It’s got a nice ring to it, right?”
Coulson raises himself up on one elbow. Clint gazes at his face all the while,
and when he returns the gaze, he sees Clint’s buoyant expression. He caresses
Clint’s cheek with the back of his fingers. He glances down at their baby in
Clint’s arms, at her blinking her eyes owlishly up at him.
“Imogen,” he murmurs again.
His lips quirk up as their baby’s pouting lips twitch and then bow up in an
angelic smile. He dips down, kisses her on her tender temple, then her chunky,
silken cheek. Snuffles her gossamer hair and breathes in her fresh, sweet and
immensely gratifying scent that reminds him of baked apple pie and evergreen
leaves and honeyed giggles.
“Hello, Imogen Barton-Coulson,” he says against his daughter’s forehead,
feeling Clint’s lips part against his own stubbly cheek into a grin of
contentment.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
Clint is pretty certain that what’s in his stomach as he strides to Director
Fury’s office is not the fluttering of moth wings. It’s just gas. That’s it,
that’s what he gets for eating ground beef tacos for lunch. He is Clint goddamn
Barton AKA Hawkeye, one of the best specialist agents in the organization (it’s
true, he’s not bragging, man, he’s earned it despite the crap his last four
handlers say about his attitude) and he is not scared of Fury. No. Non. Nein.
Nyet. Nuh uh.
The only reason he halts in front of the door of Fury’s office for several
seconds (one, two at most!) is that it’s good form to check whether he’s
presentable or not before confronting his Alpha boss (the scariest motherfucker
on the planet). That’s it.
He’s about to meet his fifth handler too, and for some reason Fury will be
introducing them to each other instead of letting the agent introduce himself.
He’d heard rumors for weeks now that his new handler is some guy who’s really
tight with Fury. Like, ultimate bros for life-level of tight. The guy’s also
got one hell of a badass rep as a top-level agent, with zero failed missions on
his record so far (just like him) after working for SHIELD for over fifteen
years. And any man who can gain Fury’s respect and friendship?
He must be … an even scarier motherfucker. An Alpha one, at that. An Alpha
handler who won’t know he’s an Omega, that he’s been masquerading as a Beta all
this time.
Shit.
Oh, shit.
Unlike his former handlers, this guy may just be the one to step up to the
plate of … handling him for real. This guy can kick his ass for real, even when
he’s armed with his bow and arrows, if a fraction of the gossip about him are
true. (The one about the guy taking down a horde of ninjas in Okinawa with a
tie clip did impress him, he has to admit that.) This guy can probably kill him
and simply tell Fury about it and get Fury to help bury his corpse and make him
disappear forever.
Oh, shit. This is what he gets for not playing nice with his former handlers,
for pushing Fury too far until Fury has to relegate him to an agent like that.
He knocks on the door of Fury’s office and marches in anyway.
In the years to follow, he’ll realize that he doesn’t remember much of Fury’s
response to his entrance. He doesn’t remember much of anything except the
supremely hot, handsome, smartly dressed, divine Alpha man sitting in an
armchair in front of Fury’s desk, watching him raptly with sharp, blue eyes as
he approaches with (what he hopes are) bold, determined steps and a head held
high and assuredly.
Okay, correction, ‘hot’ and ‘handsome’ don’t even come close to portraying the
guy’s looks, the nearer he gets to Fury’s desk. There’s just something about
the combination of that thin yet styled, dark hair and slightly crooked nose
and pink, supple lips and those eyes, those big blue eyes under dark, shapely
eyebrows that’s just … doing really, really funny things to his insides (to
that thumping thing in the left side of his chest).
But most of all, it’s the Alpha’s unadulterated scent that sends his blood
rushing through his veins and straight down to his loins, this rich, earthy,
clean and virile scent that he’s never smelled from anyone else before. It’s
distinctive. Delicious. It makes him want to eat this guy up, swallow the guy’s
cock down his throat, swallow whatever he can get. He wants to go down on his
hands and knees right now and present his ass and slick hole and beg to be
fucked until his brains are mush and holy fuck, he’s never, ever thought about
doing that for anyone, regardless of their gender. He’d rather be dead than
submit to an Alpha that way, after what happened in Waverly all those years ago
(although in his goddamn nightmares it feels like it happened only moments
ago). And yet … and yet.
He wants to. He wants to, for this Alpha.
Oh, he thinks as the Alpha agent stands up in one smooth move, buttoning the
tailored jacket of his pinstriped, navy suit, it’s you, the one I never thought
I’d find and found anyway.
The Alpha offers a large, long-fingered hand for a shake.
“I’m Agent Phil Coulson,” he says in the most sublime, low voice Clint has ever
heard. “I will be your handler from now on.”
And forever and ever, Clint thinks, still staring at the most delectable,
dashing Alpha man he’s ever met, if I have it my way.
“Barton. Clint Barton.” He reaches out and grasps Coulson’s hand and oh damn,
it’s so warm and strong and it fits just nice in his, like they were meant to
be. “But maybe you know me better as Hawkeye, sir.”
Coulson nods and says, “You have excellent marksmanship with a variety of bows
and arrows. You also hold numerous world records for archery that have yet to
be defeated, mastered over half a dozen martial arts, and so far succeeded in
every mission you’ve been assigned to.”
Clint has to consciously stop his tongue from licking his lower lip. From
licking Coulson’s lower lip. Holy fuck, who would have thought that listening
to Coulson say all those good things about him would be so arousing?
If he didn’t know better, he’d swear that Coulson sounds proud of him. Which
can’t be, seeing as they met each other minutes ago. This is the first time
Clint’s seen and met Coulson. But what if … this isn’t the first time Coulson’s
seen him?
“You should come by the range some time,” he replies, arranging his features
into (what he hopes is) an intrepid smile, “and see how I really perform in
person.”
Arrows aren’t the only phallic things I’m good at handling, ya know, he also
wants to say, except he’s definitely not that crazy. He hasn’t heard anything
about Coulson being sexually attracted to men (but he’s going to find out, oh
yes, he will).
“I already have,” Coulson says, and oh man, the thought of Coulson watching him
working his magic with his bow and arrows at the range, watching him in secret
and liking what he sees is just … hot. Exploding hydrogen bomb-hot.
“You like what you saw, sir?”
“You certainly left an … impression.”
Clint sees Coulson’s (sexy, kissable) lips quirk up in a not-smile that makes
his toes tingle. He smiles back, his whole face joining in on the action with
bunched cheeks and crinkled, twinkling eyes.
And that’s when he realizes that he’s still holding onto Coulson’s hand.
And that Coulson is still holding onto his hand.
And that Nick goddamn Fury has been watching them holding hands like a pair of
teenagers in puppy love flirting with each other.
“Is this the part where I whip out a hose and spray you both with cold water?”
Fury says from behind his desk and ah, shit, Clint can tell that Fury is
smirking at the both of them without looking at the guy. If his face is flaming
red like he thinksit is, he is going to jump off the Helicarrier once he leaves
the room. Yes. Da. Si. Oui. Hai. Yep.
Coulson is the first to let go, releasing his hand with a slide of fingers
across the length of his palm, leaving scorching trails in their wake. He is so
glad that he isn’t wearing his gloves today, that he was able to feel every
crease and callus of Coulson’s hand pressed against his. He is never going to
wash his hand again. Never. Ever. (Obviously he has to sooner or later, but
it’s the thought that counts, all right?)
He deliberately keeps his hands open and loose at his sides. He inhales long
and deep through his nose, and savors that rich, earthy, clean Alpha scent like
the finest wine. (God, he wishes he wasn’t wearing the Beta scent cologne. He
wishes Coulson can smell his true scent and realize he’s an Omega. An unclaimed
one.)
“I think this is gonna be the start of a beautiful relationship, sir,” he says,
smiling that intrepid smile again while wishing his face will stop being so
warm already.
And yeah, in retrospect, he should have known just how fucking amazing and
unbelievable his future’s going to be (with this amazing, unbelievable,
exquisite Alpha man), when Coulson - Phil gazes into his eyes with bright, blue
ones and murmurs softly, “Yes. I know,” those large, long-fingered hands
clenching and unclenching as if Phil is trying to catch and keep the scorching
trails upon his palm too.
 
                                    <<< >>>
 
At the end of another long day on board the Helicarrier, Coulson finds Clint
and their six-month-old baby girl in her room in their apartment. With his
light blue tie unfastened around his neck, with a fond smile, he leans against
the frame of the open door and listens to his beloved mate and Imogen having a
tête-à-tête on the adult-sized bed (that they decided to add in after too many
exhausting nights of staggering between the baby’s room and their bedroom in
the middle of the night) that’s next to the crib.
“Hey, sweetpea, you wanna hear a super duper awesome bedtime story about a
super duper awesome guy, hm?”
Clint is sprawled on his right side and propped up on one elbow while Imogen is
on her back beside him, dressed in a black-and-purple onesie with exposed arms
and feet. Coulson’s smile broadens when he sees it on his daughter. As he
promised Clint during her birth, he had assigned R&D to produce a comfy, baby
version of Clint’s Hawkeye costume that can stretch as she grows bigger. She
looks absolutely endearing in it, the colors complementing her pink roses-upon-
cream complexion and dark, fluffy hair and sparkling, blue eyes, just like they
do for her blond daddy.
She gurgles and kicks her legs excitably, suckling one chubby fist as she
stares up at Clint. Clint chuckles and grasps one of her chunky legs. He
playfully pinches her little feet and tiny toes, chuckling again when she
smiles and giggles.
“Okay, I’m gonna take that as a yes.” Clint shifts so that his burly upper arm
is now resting on the bed and his head is propped up by his hand. “So once upon
a time, a super duper awesome baby was born in a place called Waverly, Iowa.
This super duper awesome baby had a mom and dad and a big brother, and for a
little while, he was happy and everything was wonderful and fun because he
didn’t know what the world was like then.”
Although the warmth in his eyes linger, Coulson’s smile wanes into something a
little melancholy, like the last ray of sunshine before night falls. He knows
Clint’s life story in visceral detail by now, most of it straight from Clint
himself after they were bonded (and sometimes, he still feels like scraping up
the remains of two certain Alpha bastards and bringing them back to life just
to slay them again). But, to hear Clint tell it to their daughter like this is
something different, something even more … fragile. Something that makes him
want to scoop up Clint and their baby in his arms and never let them go.
“Then he grew older, and he found out that having a mom and dad doesn’t mean
that everything’s always going to be okay. He found out that moms and dads can
go away and never come back, and he found out that big brothers can do the same
thing too.” Clint grasps one of Imogen’s legs again and strokes her shin with
his fingers while she continues to stare up at him with captivated eyes. “But
then he joined a circus!” He gently shakes her leg. “Yeah, he joined a circus
that had pretty horses and funny clowns and a really nice, old Russian lady who
could tell the future! Isn’t that cool?”
Coulson stays silent where he is, his eyes honed on Clint’s appealing face.
Clint is clean-shaven today, a facial state that Clint favors much more since
giving birth to Imogen despite being able to grow facial hair again. Clint
loves to nuzzle Imogen’s face and blow raspberries on her roly-poly arms and
soft belly. Beard stubble, he thinks, will be too coarse for her baby skin.
“And do ya know who the star of the circus was?” Clint pastes on an exaggerated
vainglorious expression and strokes the blond spikes of his lush hair. “That’s
right, that super duper awesome baby who grew up into a super duper awesome guy
with golden, perfect hair and a fit, muscular, perfect body - sshh, it’s not
bragging, stop laughing. You got my genes, ya know, so I’m just telling you
what you got too, that’s all!”
Coulson presses a fist to his pursed lips in order to suppress his own laugh.
Imogen’s laughter is infectious, a hiccup-like, sprightly sound from the belly
that only amplifies as Clint laughs too and places a hand on her torso and rubs
it briskly just the way she enjoys it.
“Anyway, for a while, the guy - let’s call him Hawkeye, although he wasn’t
called that until he joined SHIELD, which is where Daddy and Papa work for
Uncle Nick - was a star who had this fabulous, purple masked costume and could
shoot arrows in really cool, mind-blowing ways and he never, ever missed. He
made the crowds go wild! The circus was always packed whenever his act was on,
and because of that, the other stars in the circus wanted to be his friends
too.”
At this, Coulson sees the gleam in Clint’s eyes cloud over. Clint rubs their
baby girl’s torso with slower, lighter strokes.
“And for a while, a little while, he thought he found a real family. He thought
he’d finally found a place where he belonged, where people would be good to him
and not leave him. But, well … there are lotsa bad people out there in the
world too, sweetpea. Bad people who do bad things to other people.”
Coulson, knowing that Clint knows he’s there (what with that tingle in the back
of their heads before he even showed up in sight), is tempted to say something.
He doesn’t, though. This is Clint’s story to tell to their daughter.
“So Hawkeye ran away after those bad people did bad things to him and tried to
do more bad things. Now, some people are gonna say that running away isn’t a
brave thing to do, but I think that’s bullsh-” Clint sucks in his lower lip and
then says, “Bulldung.”
Coulson almost snorts aloud. Yeah, he and Clint have had to subdue their
cussing once Imogen started to babble at three months and make sounds in return
when they spoke to her, Clint way more so. At six months, she is beginning to
say specific sounds and no, neither he or Clint are keen on her first word
being an expletive. (Clint has his money on her first word being
‘mothertrucker’ if Nick hangs around her any more than he already does.)
“Yeah, sometimes it’s the only thing you can do, baby. Sometimes you gotta do
things that make ya feel bad but will save you. And ya know, things got better
for Hawkeye after that. Sure, he had to resort to petty crime to survive. Sure,
he didn’t have a mate or 2.5 kids or a house with a picket fence, but see, he
always knew that wasn’t what he was destined to have and that was okay. He
didn’t want those things in the first place.” Clint shrugs, his eyes gleaming
bright once more as he rubs Imogen’s belly and lets Imogen cling to his
fingers. “Well, until he joined SHIELD and met a really, really super duper
awesome guy who makes the world a better place every day just by turning up for
work.”
Coulson’s affectionate, closed-lipped smile returns in full force, his eyes
crinkling, his chest expanding with something hot and sweet and nourishing.
“But! But before Hawkeye met this really, really super duper awesome guy,
SHIELD had to catch him first, see? Hawkeye had caught the eye of the Big Bad
Boss of SHIELD with the things he was doing, and the Big Bad Boss wanted
Hawkeye to work for him.” Clint shakes his head and makes a tsk-tsk noise with
his tongue. “Did you know it took ten guys to catch him? And only after he got
a big boo-boo to his leg? Even then, he still took down six guys on his own
before they dragged him up to this gigantic ship in the sky.” Clint tickles
Imogen’s belly, making her smile again. “Yeah, it’s the Helicarrier! You really
liked being there, remember? In Papa’s office, watching the clouds go by?”
Coulson recalls being in Guatemala at the time of Clint’s capture, on an
undercover mission with a couple of other agents, ignorant of Clint’s
existence. Clint had been a SHIELD agent for at least three years before they
were introduced to each other by Nick. It’s astonishing, now that he thinks
about it, how he and Clint hadn’t crossed paths before then, how fate had kept
them apart while they were so close to meeting each other (and falling in love
and mating and bonding, getting married, even).
“But anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah.” Clint rests his hand on their baby girl’s
belly for her to cling onto once more. “Now at first, Hawkeye didn’t like being
caught. He was a hawk, sweetpea, that’s a big bird and big birds like being
free to fly. He didn’t like that he had to take orders from other people and
write stupid reports, but he loved the archery range on the Helicarrier and
that he got to use it any time he liked to test all kinds of cool arrows. So
for a few years, he tried to behave himself. He really did. He’d found a place
where he really belonged, a place where people respected him and were good,
loyal people.”
Coulson’s smile softens like Clint’s eyes do as Clint continues to gaze down at
their baby who is utterly mesmerized by her daddy’s story.
“But the handlers he had? He just couldn’t get along with any of them. They
said he had an attitude problem and that he was reckless and a danger to other
people, and ya know, Hawkeye didn’t like that. The last thing he wants is for
other people to be hurt because of him. He wants to help people and do things
to make the world a better place too, and he was really, really loud about it.
So one day, after his fourth handler couldn’t handle his fabulousness anymore,
the Big Bad Boss ordered him to meet him in his office. The Big Bad Boss wanted
him to meet somebody, and this guy was gonna be his new handler, some dude who
was apparently so awesome that he’s got a mountain named after him somewhere in
Mongolia for saving a village full of kids and little old ladies.”
Coulson almost interjects at this point, his mouth opening halfway before
closing again. Okay, the part about him saving that village on the outskirts of
Ulaanbaatar from being blown to hell by half a dozen oil-drum IEDs is true, but
it’s not a mountain that’s his namesake. It’s a hill. Well, a very, very big
one behind the chieftain’s house, but still -
“So Hawkeye went to the Big Bad Boss’ office and he was all ready to meet this
guy and he walked in like he owned the place and … there he was. This really,
really super duper awesome guy in a navy, pinstriped suit, standing up to shake
his hand. He was, like, the hottest guy Hawkeye had ever seen in his wholelife.
He was like the yummiest, juiciest steak on two legs with a giant helping of
‘oh my god, claim me now’ and ‘I want you to be my baby daddy’.”
Coulson presses a fist to his mouth again, grinning behind it even as his face
sears. Oh, he remembers that moment very well, that moment when Clint swaggered
in as if it was his office instead of Nick’s, loose-limbed and wicked in that
skintight Hawkeye outfit and everything Coulson had ever desired in a man and
no, he hadn’t given a damn that Clint smelled like a Beta. (But jesus, the joy
he felt when he discovered later that Clint’s an Omega instead, the joy.) He’d
laid eyes on Clint and boom, just like that, just like that, he was a goner.
He knew even then that Clint was the one he wanted to be with for the rest of
his life. The one he would love and cherish and hold for all of that life, no
matter who or what he became.
“And when he opened his mouth, oh my god, he had the sexiest voice Hawkeye ever
heard and he said, ‘I’m Agent Phil Coulson. I will be your handler from now
on,’” Clint says, waggling his eyebrows on the word ‘handler’. “Then Hawkeye
shook his hand and, bing bang boom! Hawkeye was gone, babe. He knew there would
never be anyone else for him, ever. He knew he had found the one.”
Coulson chuckles aloud at last, pushing himself off the door frame to stand
upright with his hands in the side pockets of his suit pants. He has to admit
that was a rather good impression of him, and Imogen seems to find it
hilarious, giggling like she is while kicking her legs.
“And guess what, sweetpea?” Clint says, dipping down until his face is just
inches away from Imogen’s rosy one. “He’s your Papa! Can you believe that?
Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m so lucky that he’s mine.”
Imogen giggles again and stretches her chubby hands up to Clint’s face.
“Bah-boom!” Clint exclaims, nuzzling her face, and she giggles even more, her
tiny fingers squeezing Clint’s cheek and tugging at Clint’s hair.
Coulson ambles towards the bed as Clint rises up on his elbows and murmurs to
their baby, “I can’t wait to teach you how to shoot arrows and make things go
bah-boom.”
“As long as it’s within a safe, secure environment, of course,” Coulson says,
halting at the side of the bed and removing his tie and suit jacket. “And only
when she’s at least sixteen years old.”
Clint gazes up at him with a deadpan face ruined by twinkling eyes, eyes that
say everything Coulson’s yearned to since alighting at the door frame to watch
his Omega mate and baby bond.
“You’re no fun at all,” Clint mutters, but Imogen, finally seeing Coulson,
flails her chunky limbs with renewed vigor, an euphoric smile flashing across
her round, sweet face.
Coulson smiles back at his little girl as he climbs onto the bed and lies on
his side facing her and Clint. Imogen lets out a little squeal when he kisses
her on the cheek and forehead. He snuffles her hair, inhaling her honeyed,
gratifying scent and then kisses her on the cheek again. Clint laughs along
with her when Coulson launches a rapid kiss attack along her bare, plump arm
and on her chubby hand and clutching fingers. She kicks at the air as he
nibbles on her fingers with his lips over his teeth. He nibbles her toes and
soles next the same way and she laughs, she laughs and smiles and she is the
most beautiful, charming, perfect baby he has ever seen in the whole universe.
“Papa’s cute aggression is flaring up again, sweetpea,” Clint says to Imogen,
gazing at Coulson with amused eyes.
Imogen grabs Coulson’s nose with her right hand and squeezes it with a strength
that belies its teeny size. He snorts, which prompts her to babble random
sounds and touch his cheek with her other hand. After she lets go of his nose,
he kisses both her hands and then lies fully down on his side with his head on
a pillow. Clint has done the same, gazing at him over Imogen’s head.
“Hi, really, really super duper awesome guy,” Clint murmurs, his eyes still
crinkled and shining. “How was your day?”
Coulson reaches over and across their quietening baby girl to caress Clint’s
smooth lower jaw.
“It was all right. The usual staff meetings and rookie culling and endless
paperwork.”
“Why, if I didn’t know better, honey, I’d swear you sound like you’re bored
with work.”
Coulson’s lips quirk at the sarcasm of Clint’s voice. At how close Clint may be
to hitting the truth. But it’s something he’ll ruminate about later, not now
when he’s here with the two most important beings in his existence.
“Who knows. Maybe I am.” Coulson shifts his hand down to the side of Clint’s
neck, feeling the stable pulse within it. “And you? Are you bored out of your
mind yet?”
Coulson had resumed working four months ago, but to his (and practically
everyone else’s) surprise, Clint had extended his parental leave for many more
months, citing the reason as ‘wishing to spend as much time as possible with
his daughter in her first year of life’. Clint hadn’t cared that some of those
months will be unpaid leave. (Not that Clint has anything to worry about, since
Coulson will gladly support him and their baby even if Clint had no funds
whatsoever.)
“Nope,” Clint replies, squirming nearer to Imogen who’s now motionless and
drowsy, her arms stretched up along the sides of her head, her dewy eyes half-
shut. “I’m too preoccupied with the grand canyon between my legs.”
Coulson and Clint share a facetious look, then break into low snickering in
unison. Since Imogen’s birth, Clint has often jested about how he really has to
walk bow-legged now and worry about his innards falling out through his birth
canal (which is something Coulson hopes he never witnesses happening to
anybody). The thing is, not only has Clint’s hole healed to become even
tighter, Clint’s genitals have come back down and grown back to their original
sizes (an event that made Clint almost cry) and Clint’s recent ability to
swiftly come multiple times in a row seems to be here to stay regardless of
heat or not (a revelation that did make Clint cry from the devastating,
unexpected tides of pleasure).
The (shaky) high-five they gave each other after an entire day of fucking was
justified. Totally.
But they do miss Clint’s vir labia sometimes, it’s true.
“Everything’s fine, babe,” Clint murmurs here and now, clasping his forearm and
stroking its length with one hand. “Really.”
“Once upon a time, staying indoors like this, you would have been bored out of
your mind and climbing the walls in a day,” Coulson says with a slight smile.
“Yeah, well.” Clint’s gaze flits down to their baby girl, whose eyes are now
fluttering shut. “That was before her.”
When Clint glances up at him again, they smile at each other tenderly. They
watch Imogen yawn and tumble into a deep sleep, her lips moving in a suckling
motion now and then, her eyelids trembling as her eyes shift underneath them.
Clint places his hand upon her torso again, feeling her little heart (that will
grow so big like her Papa’s) beat under his fingers. Coulson watches Clint’s
eyelids flutter with somnolence too. Watches Clint’s eyes shut, and feels
Clint’s body go limp under his hand.
Oh, Coulson thinks as he rests his hand upon Clint’s over their beloved baby’s
rising and falling chest, as he gazes on at his slumbering mate’s face
exquisite in its peace, I’m home. I’m home.
 
 
 
 
Fin.
 
Chapter End Notes
     I may post 'sections' of the story that I discarded / removed out of
     the final version, like more pregnant!sex and poor Clint suffering a
     hemorrhage after giving birth. We'll see!
     And okay, two things: 
     "Hey, did you turn Clint into a woman / trans character with the
     whole vir labia thing?!" 
     Ah, no. Clint is definitely male and Omega throughout the entire
     story. I just added the vir labia thing as a twist to the pregnant
     male Omega trope.  
     "Since Clint is a badass SHIELD specialist agent who's already
     experienced so much physical suffering, shouldn't he just power
     through the childbirth and crack jokes and not even feel the pain?" 
     Pain's kind of a funny thing (unless you're the one suffering it,
     that is). Different people react differently to a variety of pain and
     their levels. I know a woman who's naturally given birth to five kids
     and yet felt that a deep, small cut to her finger was 'just as
     painful as childbirth'. I know another woman who can sit through
     being tattooed in the most sensitive areas without a peep and yet
     cried her eyes out during labor before getting an epidural.
     So as to whether Clint would scream or not during natural childbirth,
     I think that someone can be genuinely badass and tough and experience
     getting shot, stabbed, eviscerated, etc. and still find pushing out a
     9-pound baby to be an excruciating endeavor. Ouch!
     And yep, this is what Clint's and Coulson's baby looks like, at least
     to me:
      [http://cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/503271401-cute-2-month-old-baby-
                              girl-on-a-blanket-
     gettyimages.jpg?v=1&amp;c=IWSAsset&amp;k=2&amp;d=0IQd4JLRMGjWxIhAEOZ4%2BVGomlnT%2BdNlUx%2FaO2mQTsyy5J4o4opqIza%2BOtMaYoz5Ufgk3hpwBDhr5Vqt9E%2BzTQ%3D%3D]
Thank you so much for reading and for your comments and kudos! Much
appreciated!
End Notes
     Don't read further if you don't want to be spoiled of major events /
     scenes in the story!
      
      
     - A few times in the story, a past attempted rape and assault by
     Duquesne and Chisholm on Clint is briefly alluded to by a SHIELD
     agent and Clint himself. The details are far more about what Clint
     does in defense of himself to Duquesne and Chisholm.
     - During a one-on-one knife fight, Duquesne stabs Clint in the lower
     belly and mutilates Clint. Clint ends up needing an organ removed and
     receives damage to other organs too. There is discussion of
     infertility as a result.
     - Coulson kidnaps Duquesne while Duquesne is being transfered from
     one SHIELD detainment center to another, and then tortures Duquesne
     in revenge for seriously harming and almost killing Clint. Coulson
     eventually decapitates Duquesne and serves Duquesne's head to Clint
     on a silver platter.
     - There is a natural childbirth scene in the fourth last 'section' of
     Act III. If you're squeamish about descriptions of labor, screaming,
     the birth itself, etc. then just skip it to get to the Clint-and-
     Coulson-bond-with-baby part.
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