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Maria meets Phil on her third day at SHIELD. He is tired, yelling, and on what she's been told is his seventh cup of coffee. That he hasn't had a stroke is a medical miracle. He tells her he doesn't have time to show her around, she'll have to figure it out -- and it won't matter if she's read the maps. "This place is a fucking circus," he says, and hands her his empty mug. There is no instruction to fill it, but Maria worries what might happen if she doesn't.
Later, she brings it to the small desk he has in some corner office that looks more like a storage shed. It's quiet and he's scribbling something down, sifting through memos.
"Coffee, sir." He looks at her and she sees him smile for the first time.
"It's Coulson," he says, and takes the mug.
Phil's been with SHIELD since college, when it was a little government agency and Nick Fury wasn't so....Nick Fury yet. He was just Mr. Fury, but-call-me-Nick and he had two eyes and a better sense of humor. He smiled more, about smaller things. Phil tells Maria this over coffee, in a small shop in Hong Kong, where they are recruiting new members. Maria doesn't understand their methods. She thinks it's wrong, to bring kids into the CIA and then hand them over to SHIELD.
"But that's not what happened to you." He says it like it's something he doesn't know, but he does, and Maria hates playing this game.
"No. It's not."
"Not what happened to me either."
"What happened to you?" Phil looks at her, finishes his coffee, and stands.
"The recruiters should be finished up. I'd like to go home, if it's all the same to you."
It is and it isn't. Maria wonders where Phil lives. If he ever goes home -- to a wife? Kids? Boyfriend? She can't get a read on him and he's never tried to talk to her about it, never asked her to open up about her own personal life. She could, there've been opportunities. Open-ended questions that she could answer with, "I don't have anyone."
Stupid answer. The worst answer. She avoids it when she can.
"You wanna go dancing?" Phil leans over her workstation. Maria waves him off. "It's a serious question."
"You actually leave this place? You do things other than work?"
"Well, technically it's for work. Stark's having a charity ball for firefighters or something obnoxious. Fury says to go."
"Sounds fun."
"Come with me." Maria looks up from her screen. He's smiling, and it's an honest one. Rare, for him. She knows he hates this Stark detail work. Tony Stark's ego can be seen from deep space and his assistant might as well be invisible. Coulson is a minor joke around HQ. That Stark has managed to give him the slip no less than three times already is fucking embarrassing. But men like Tony are hard to hold onto. They're volatile and made like eels. Hard to handle. Coulson's a brave man, going back into infested waters.
"I don't have a dress."
"Buy one. SHIELD has a card. Probably. I don't buy a lot of things." He heads back to his office. "I'll pick you up. Eight o'clock."
Maria's not sure what she's getting into. SHIELD has accounts for its employees. The harpy at HR wants to know what it's for and Maria has to tell her that it is, quite literally, a secret mission before managing to get approval on a hundred dollars cash to blow wherever she wants. She hasn't bought a dress since prom and that was a disaster and a half. But she's taller, now, with better legs. She spends the hundred on a dress, shoes, and lunch at a bistro she's been eyeing since she came to town. Coulson's right on time, babbling into his earpiece about things Maria's never heard of. Her presence doesn't quiet him. The car feels very small.
"What's all that about?" He pulls the bluetooth out of his ear.
"Things no one will ever really agree on. Probably. An old idea. Old names, not around anymore. Old men, you know, they have ideas, and they die and they leave them around for everyone to pick up. But no one ever really sees them the way they need to be seen. No one ever looks at them the right way. Like the way they were made. You can't...you can't look at, like, Renaissance art and wonder how it fits in with contemporary expressionism or something."
"Contemporary expressionism is not a real thing, you made that up."
"I majored in American history, not art history."
"That's not actually surprising."
"Well, I minored in French. And Latin, actually. I forget about that one sometimes." He pulls up to the valet and carefully hands the keys over. "I don't actually own a car," he mutters. "Useless things."
Maria doesn't find this very shocking either.
Phil wanders off to pester Stark about a time, but he isn't there. Maria overhears someone talking about Tony not showing, something about PTSD and, yeah, Stark went through hell and back, but she's seen the man -- he's a tough piece of work. He is a piece of work -- his preliminary psych evaluation is dripping in daddy issues and prolonged exposure to his own ego. He's a mess and a little bit more. The most stable thing about him is his assistant, and she can't stay in one place long enough to keep her boss under control.
Infested waters, these are. Maria is surrounded by eels.
The cameras outside go crazy and Maria can hear Tony's name being tossed around. He brushes past her, doesn't give her another glance as she stumbles. She can't blame him, really, though she instinctively gives him the finger because men do not touch her and that is the rule. Men who aren't trying to dance with her, anyway.
Fifteen minutes later, Phil has his hand on her waist and he's bitching about Stark and the shit they're going to give him back at HQ. Maria looks around, catches Tony Stark disappearing with his assistant up a flight of stairs, and tells Phil to shove it.
"I think your shift is over," she says.
"My shift is never over."
"Then you're on break." He purses his lips.
"Is this a new dress?" Phil looks at the sleeves -- or lack thereof. He smiles. "I knew you'd figure it out." He groans. "Fine. A break. Just for a while."
"Here." He leaves a box on her workstation.
"You--"
"Someone said it was your birthday." Coulson checks his watch. "Sorry. Stark duty. Shit's about to hit the fan." Maria watches him go, snapping at a couple of agents to follow him.
Maria unwraps it in the bathroom because people are starting to talk and she hates talk, she really does. Talk about her, talk about Coulson. All of it speculatory and nasty. She thought she'd given up this bullshit when she joined the army, when SHIELD took her in. People are always the same.
Maria opens the box, and finds a set of keys in it.
Jeep's yours. Happy birthday.
The jeep. The god damned jeep that Coulson had claimed as his own on his first day here, he told her. She wanted that jeep. She tried every time she could to take it from him. But he'd "lost" the spare keys and kept the only set with him constantly. She'd tried to take them while he was sleeping, while he wasn't looking, while his jacket was off. And he always caught her. Like he had a sixth sense for them. Or for her. She couldn't tell which.
Jeep's yours.
Coulson comes back after wrestling with this Stark shit, annoyed and grumbling. His frustration is subtle. Maria waits until he's alone in the locker room. "You going home?"
"After that? Sure. Then I thought I'd drive myself off a cliff."
"With what?" He looks up. She dangles the keys in his face. "You didn't have to do that."
"It's your birthday."
"It was my birthday last year."
"We weren't friends last year," he says quietly.
"So we're friends now?" She slips the keys in her pocket. Phil shrugs. "Thank you," she says, quietly. She sits on the bench next to him, covering his hand with hers. "It was very sweet."
They kiss for a long time. Maria is distantly aware of someone opening the door and leaving abruptly. Phil clears his throat.
"That was inappropriate. On my part. I--"
"Please." Maria stands and shuts his locker. "Just shut up and take me home."
He takes her home. Lets her strip him down, slowly. It's strange to him, now, that he has never quite thought about it this far. That his fantasies extended only to a kiss and stopped. Maybe because they only went farther when he couldn't remember them, or because he was subconsciously being incredibly and characteristically respectful.
Either way, he's certain that the actual thing beats the fantasy by a long shot.
She lowers herself onto him, dragging a noise from his chest he didn't know he could make. And he realizes how much he has wanted her, and for how long, and he lets her take this out of him, drawn out slow and careful. She comes, trembling against him, teeth on his ear, name on her tongue and she might be the most graceful thing he's ever held. She is by far the most beautiful. He has that to say, at least.
Because he doesn't often hold beautiful things. He holds guns and blood and anyone who told him SHIELD was good way to get government jobs was fucking stupid. Phil never had those kinds of aspirations -- he didn't want power grabs and he didn't want to play that game.
He likes it here. Here, it isn't so bad.
They do this for a while. It might be a secret, it might not. Fury doesn't say anything and Phil's too much of a professional to make it into something public and obvious.
But when they're away, and Maria can peel the work from him, layer by layer, the hours spent dealing with Tony Stark and this Avengers bullshit -- he is vocal and he is vibrant and there is a quivering layer beneath the almost-deepest one where something raw has settled. Something untouched and not so irrelevant to her. Something she can't recognize, even after all this time.
He hikes her leg up, hooks it around his waist, and rolls his hips, pushing into her. His lips are at her collar bone, tongue sweeping over the sweat pooled there. He is shockingly good at this -- Maria doesn't know why she ever thought he wouldn't be.
Later, she curls into him, swatting his hand away when he plays with her hair too close to her scalp.
"Fury's promoting a Deputy Director. From within." Phil draws his fingers through her hair.
"You think you'll get it?"
"No." He looks down at her. "I don't really want it."
"Liar." She kisses him. "Admit it, you'd be happy at the helm."
"It'd be refreshing."
"Why don't you think you'll get it?" She sits up on her elbow. His hand slips down her back and he's touching her, and he's looking at her, but he's not really looking at her. It's unsettling.
"I think you're going to get it." Phil slides his arm out from under her and swings his legs over the bed. "You're a better candidate. You're happier with your work--"
"I haven't been here as long--"
"Fury likes your attitude."
"He fucking loves you, what are you--"
"I'm a field agent, Maria. It's what I do best. I push the blocks, I baby-sit Tony Stark, I shoot things, I put people in the crosshairs, I--" Maria sits up after him, wraps her arms around him. His hands are shaking. "I cannot do the job that Fury is going to ask you to do." They sit like that for a while, until his hands stop shaking and she can hold them without losing her grip.
"Come back to bed," she murmurs into the nape of his neck. "Go to sleep. It's okay."
It feels good to lie to him about that. Because it sounds true to her, and she thinks she could make it sound true enough for Phil, too. If she tries hard enough, she can make them both believe that it's going to be okay, even when everything else seems to be falling apart just behind them.
Fury promotes her. Someone's made a show of it, brought in a cake. There's sparkling cider, but Manny from engineering has a bottle of Smirnoff and everyone is a little tipsy, read: smashed, by the time the party is over. Phil takes one look at her and shakes his head.
"You didn't drink?" Maria's head feels like it's going to come off. "Should've. Should've drunk."
"Let's get you home."
"I got promoted. Can you believe that?"
"I can."
"Are you upset?"
"No. I'm not."
"You sound upset."
"I always sound upset." Maria realizes that this is actually true. "I already told you, I knew you were going to get it."
"What's wrong, then? Hmm?" She leans over and presses her lips to his neck. "You're tense."
"You need to go to bed." He draws away from her. "Like, an hour ago. You needed to be in bed."
"I don't know why you're so upset with me."
"I'm not upset with you. It isn't you. I'm sorry."
He manages to get her home and into her room. Maria kicks her shoes off. She had more to drink than she really remembers, is what she's thinking. And she knows Phil is thinking that she's an idiot and he's thinking about something far away, something like that last layer she just can't touch. It's driving her crazy. Phil is driving her crazy. He pulls her shirt over her head and looks around for one she can sleep in.
"Hey."
"You're drunk. We'll do this--"
"No, I just...I wanted to tell you something." Phil looks at her and he looks so tired, so worn out, beaten down and walked on. Maria thinks the only reason he even sleeps anymore is because they're fucking. "I love you," she murmurs. "And don't get, like, mad because I'm saying it while I'm drunk. Because...because I've been wanting to say it for a little while. It's been true for a lot longer, I think. You know? You know how I feel?"
"I do," he says quietly. He lifts her legs up and pulls the blanket over her.
"But you--"
"I do," he says, firmer this time, lips against her ear. "I really do."
Somehow, that sounds so much better than the other thing. The thing she worried she wouldn't hear. It just sounds so much better.
It is inevitable that she tells him they can't see each other anymore, after that. The words come out at dinner, without much of a warning -- though someday she'll realize that all the warning signs came from him, that he was always going to say it first, but she had to beat him to it, she had to shove him away before he could shove her because that is the rule, that's how this game is played, and you're fucked if you can't figure that out.
"I'm going to New Mexico," he says, waiting a few beats.
"Phil--"
"It's probably better that we do stop. You're Deputy Director now. You have work to do."
"New Mexico--"
"On Friday. I found out this morning." He chews on a bite of beet salad. Maria wonders how he can eat beets at a time like this. "There's something happening out there."
"More Avengers crap?"
"It isn't crap," he says. Phil is fiercely protective over the Avengers Initiative. It was just a suggestion, something he found in Howard Stark's notes, something he and Fury have been fumbling with for months now. Maria thinks it won't work. So many volatile people, trying to form something cohesive, something even resembling a team. She's seen the potential roster. Any list with Bruce Banner on it is a bad fucking idea. Bad by a mile.
"Right. Your baby." Maria sucks on her soda until it's dry. "So you're going then?" Phil nods. "I guess this is good. No more...no more of this."
"I can still buy you dinner."
"Probably not."
"Yeah..." He finishes his salad. "Yeah, probably not."
Maria takes her job seriously. She takes her break up with Phil less so.
"You said--"
"It's been a long day," she says into his mouth, pushing him against the car. "How was New Mexico?"
"Productive."
"Good. I would really like you to fuck me."
"I can do that."
It is the last time she touches him. The last time she kisses him and straddles his waist and the last time they stay up till dawn, and she will go so far as to say it is the last time they make love because she is in love with him.
It is the last time she tells him this.
It is the first time he says it out loud. The first time she wonders how many more times she'll hear it. The first time she's sorry about ending it.
"Don't...don't leave me," she says into his ear. He nods and he comes, pushing her onto her back and thrusting his hips, shuddering into the end. "Coulson, I'm serious. Don't--"
"I won't." He drags his teeth over her stomach, kisses her hip. Maria cups his face in her hands and pulls him back to her, kissing him hard and long. There is something fleeting about Phil Coulson, like he is smoke in her hands, sand sifting through her fingers. Like she will never be able to hold onto him.
It scares her.
"I won't," he murmurs. "I promise."
Maria thinks she should have just kept him away. Maria thinks she should have told him to keep the Jeep. She think she should have taken his coffee mug and left it in the sink.
Maria thinks she shouldn't have made him promise.
Fury gives her a look and it means don't you fucking dare so she doesn't. She doesn't completely lose it. She does her fucking job, is what she does, because she has it for a reason and if she can't survive this, then she doesn't deserve it.
But when it's all said and done, and New York is in ruins and there is no where for her to go, she shuts the deadbolt to the bathroom stall and she cries. She screams and she kicks the door so hard she dents it, loosens the hinges. She is a raging, awful mess for fifteen minutes before the call comes on her walkie that she's needed on the bridge.
Later, when it's over and Fury tells her she can go home, she takes Tony up on his offer to stay in the tower. She's the only one, and maybe it's because Phil knew Tony and somehow this makes her feel like she can cry and no one will wonder if she's going to lose it.
"I guess there was never a cellist in Oregon," Tony says over breakfast.
"We went to a cello concert once. Something by Bach. Phil liked it. He likes...he liked things like that."
Tony stands and puts a hand on her shoulder.
"Phil's a good man," he says quietly. Sincerely.
And maybe he doesn't mean to make her cry, but she does. She leans against Tony and she cries for a long time, until she realizes she's being carried to her room and set on her bed.
"Go to sleep," he murmurs. "Pepper knows you're here. She'll check on you later."
There is a kiss, at her temple. She thinks Tony might be a good father, if someone would give him the chance.
"Thanks," she manages.
"If there's any...if you..."
If there's anything you need, if you need something at all, if there is one thing you want most in this world right now--
He doesn't say it. And Maria is thankful. Tony closes the door.
"Don't you leave me," she says.
"I won't," he lies. "I promise."