This story takes place during the hiatus between season one and season two of Agents of SHIELD. The premise is that Clint and Coulson have been in a long-distance on-again off-again it's complicated relationship for a very long while now, which was cut short by Coulson dying. It then continued to be cut short by Coulson not telling Clint he was alive. I wrote this for itsthequietones' prompt which they won on the Big24 Fanathon's auction, and I gave it a title that references 'As Time Goes By', the song in Casablanca. Yes, I am that cheesy.

There is a singularly unpleasant feeling unique to realising you are being followed, but Phil Coulson was used to it. Getting tailed was an occupational hazard, and no matter how exhausted he was, he knew he had to stick to his training. He didn't speed up or slow down, he didn't look behind him, he didn't in any way react to the consistent patter of feet that have been following him for the past three blocks. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pretended to read a text, scanning the street behind him – and there he was. The man was wearing trainers, sweatpants and a hoodie pulled over his head against the unpleasant drizzling rain. It could have been just a runner, but Phil knew better.

It was two in the morning on the outskirts of Oxford, just after a tense discussion with the head librarian of the extra-terrestrial section of the Bodleian Restricted Archives, and Phil knew that life wasn't kind enough to allow him a coincidence like that. Especially since he was alone. Agent Triplett and him split up back in London, both of them going off to run different errands – Phil hated being this short on funds and manpower. Especially since the runner was still following him.

He frantically wondered if the runner was sent to kill, to capture or to just follow him to wherever he was going. He wondered if it would be easier to confront the runner on a well-lit street with plenty of potential witnesses or to lead him back to the room he was renting for the night. It all depended on what the runner's orders were, and if he cared about witnesses. He knew running wouldn't work – he knew he had no chance of outrunning the other man, not dead tired in dress shoes on a rain-slick street. And he didn't want to lead him back to his rented room – not that he was careless enough to leave any valuable intel there. He just didn't want to get the utterly harmless civilian landlady involved.

So he took a right turn, away from the long row of houses and into a small park. The whole park was nothing more than a handful of trees and a bench in the middle of a square, but the open space would make ambush impossible, and force the runner to reveal himself.

The runner ran a leisurely circle around the park, most likely checking for witnesses, the late dog-walkers, early drunks and insomniac students. When he ascertained that there was nobody around, he deliberately stood under a street lamp. Coulson reached for his gun. The runner did not raise a weapon – instead he reached up and pushed back his hood.

It was Clint. Older and more tired and with a fresh bruise under his left eye, but it was Clint. He was raising his hands above his shoulders with a sheepish smile.

Phil had so many things to say he didn't know what to say first. Fortunately his training made the decision for him, again.

'Get out of the light!' he snapped.

Clint nodded and jogged to where Coulson was standing, under a misshapen fir tree. Now that Phil could see him up close, the expression on his face seemed… strange. Not glad, not unhappy, just – closed off.

'How did you find me?' asked Phil, since that seemed to be the most urgent of his questions.

'Still got some friends at whatever's left of SHIELD.' Shrugged Clint. 'They told me you were coming to the UK, and I've been tailing you since Luton. Wanted to talk.'

'So let's talk.' Said Phil, and his voice sounded a lot calmer than he felt.

'You were alive.' Said Clint. 'You were alive and I didn't know.'

'It was classified.'

'I went to you funeral.' Continued Clint. 'I had to watch your mother break down, knowing that she thought you died in a fucking car accident. Then they asked why I was there and I couldn't tell them about SHIELD because it's classified and I couldn't tell them about us because fraternisation, so I said we worked together, and you were dead and to your family I was just some IT guy who knew you.'

'I'm sorry.' Said Phil. 'But I didn't have a choice.'

'You didn't have a choice?' asked Clint flatly. 'Half of SHIELD turned out to be literal Nazis, so it's high time you started questioning your orders.'

'The Avengers initiative-'

'I know, I know, it was vital to Fury's mindfuck masterplan that we all thought you were dead. But that was two years ago, Phil!'

Phil nodded. He was torn between the need to stare at Clint, drinking in the features he hasn't allowed himself to see in years, and the fear that he would be unable to look away if he did.

'Yes.' Admitted Phil. 'Two years. But you don't know about what happened in those two years.'

'So why don't you fucking enlighten me?' asked Clint, but his voice sounded more tired than angry.

'You know about Hydra, and about SHIELD being compromised. It is a great asset to the new, secret SHIELD that its director is someone who is well-known to be long dead.'

'Phil, I'm not an idiot.' Sighed Clint. 'I'm not asking you to walk into Hydra headquarters and inform them of your continuing good health. I'm not even telling you to tell your family. But why didn't you tell me?'

'It was classified-'

'Classified my ass.' Snapped Clint, 'I don't know how many times you trusted me or Nat with info even you weren't supposed to have, so this excuse is dead on arrival. Tell me a new one.'

Phil could not say anything. He really wishes he could have but he couldn't.

'Come on, Phil.' Said Clint, in a low voice, a kind voice. 'Tell me.'

He was standing way too close to Phil, dangerously close – Phil could feel the heat of his body through his ratty mud-spattered sweatpants, Phil could feel his breath on his face, and it was just – too much.

'Tell me.' Clint repeated, and his hand, his right hand was on Phil's arm and Phil tried to meet his eyes and he couldn't, and the silence dragged on, unbearable.

'I was dead.' Said Phil finally.

'I know, but then you got resuscitated.'

'No, Clint.' Continued Phil. 'I was really dead. For days. I don't think you can call it resuscitation if it happens after the patient's brain functions have completely ceased.'

'So?' asked Clint, impatiently.

'So I wasn't resuscitated, I was brought from the dead. And at first I didn't know, Fury kept it from me, so I thought I survived though sheer luck. And I thought that after the lose ends form the Avengers project were tied up and we've finished running damage control on Project Centipede, things will settle down enough so that I don't upset anything vital by telling you – by telling you I'm back.'

'And then?' prompted Clint.

'And then I started seeing the gaps in my own story, and I found out what has happened to me.' Said Phil. He knew that telling this part of the story was going to hurt – that was why he avoided Clint so far, rather then tell it to him. He clenched his fist and forced himself to keep talking. 'I had weeks worth of implanted memories about a holiday in Tahiti instead of the truth – the truth that I spent days dead and weeks on an operating table. There was a project I developed myself, and then scratched when it spectacularly failed to work. We used one of the extra-terrestrial cadavers retrieved from the Tunguska storage site to manufacture a serum that could cure lethal injuries and restore the recently dead to life. Unfortunately the effects were not long-lasting, and the test subjects all showed signs of rapid mental deterioration until they reached a state where unless chemically or physically restrained, they were a threat to themselves and others.'

'And you were revived using the same serum.' Concluded Clint. It seemed like he wanted to say something else, but then he gave up and sat down on the back of a nearby bench with a heavy thump.

'Yes.' Admitted Phil. 'And I have started showing the first signs of deterioration.'

'Which are?' asked Clint, staring at the ground.

'Recurring episodes of compulsive writing in a language that I don't know, or even know of. You see, I don't know the exact effects of the alien serum on my body, and I don't know if the deterioration process will last months or years, but based on the other test subjects, it seems inevitable.'

Clint didn't answer, just shook his head silently.

'And that is why I didn't contact you.' Added Phil awkwardly.

'You don't think you're safe enough to talk to me.' Mumbled Clint, with a strange thread of amusement in his voice. 'But you think you are entirely equipped to rebuild and lead a global intelligence organisation that deals with the most dangerous objects and individuals on the planet Earth. I don't really follow your logic.'

'I am lucid enough to lead SHIELD.' Snapped Phil. 'At least for the moment.'

'Well then you are lucid enough to talk to me.'

'I didn't want you to – to have to deal with this.' – Phil murmured, sinking down on the bench.

'With what?' asked Clint, still in that quiet, colourless voice. 'With you having an alien presence in your head that has a decent chance of driving you insane?'

Phil nodded.

'You know, I may not be very smart, but that one thing I have some experience with. Maybe more than anyone in SHIELD. I was mind-controlled by Loki, remember?'

'It's not the same-' argued Phil, but Clint cut him off fiercely.

'I murdered people. Twenty-five people, plus the twelve wounded who ended up with permanent damage. And when Nat snapped me out of it I got up and went right on to killing aliens, forty-three of them if I counted correctly. And then I thought things were back to normal for five hours or so, until I… freaked out. Had to be put in isolation.'

'I didn't know about that.' Exclaimed Phil, more with surprise than empathy.

'Nat kept it out of my record. If it ended up in my file, I would fail all my subsequent psych evals before I even showed up. An agent who randomly questions whether he is controlled by aliens is not much more useful than an agent who is actually being controlled by aliens.'

'Sorry.' Said Phil, still unable to look at Clint.

'Don't be.' Answered Clint, and his voice seemed a little lighter. 'You were out of it when this happened. It's just that… you could have come to me.'

Clint slid down from the back of the bench to sit next to Phil, keeping a respectful distance between them, and Phil suddenly wanted nothing more than to hold him – just to hold him. He was tired and everything was terrible and he let Clint down when Clint needed him the most and then it didn't even occur to him to ask Clint for help when he needed it, which in a completely different way was also letting him down. But he couldn't ask Clint to get over his grief and see him alive again just to face the possibility of him dying an ugly death as someone other than himself. He couldn't go to Clint, but Clint came to him, and accepting that, accepting that was an unkind selfish thing, but just for the moment he didn't have it in him to be selfless.

Carefully, quietly he leaned his shoulders against Clint. Clint made a strange sound, as if he meant to say something but realised halfway that it was the wrong thing to say and just mumbled something incomprehensible instead. Phil probably would have smiled at that, three years ago. There he sat, on a wooden bench in a tiny waterlogged park in the middle of Oxford town in the small hours of the morning, feeling the heat of Clint's body through his ratty hoodie, not daring to move. The rain in the leaves made lazy unmusical plinking sounds.

'Thank you.' He finally said, just as Clint opened his mouth to blurt out 'sorry.'

'Everything is fucked and I know we probably can't fix it and I can't let myself think about it because then it will have already fallen apart.' Said Phil, surprising even himself.

'Welcome to SHIELD.' Said Clint, and when Phil managed to raise his head to look at him, his smile was almost real. So Phil kissed him. Because he liked kissing him and because he hasn't kissed him in two years and because he knew he was supposed to be Clint's safe harbour and he knew the trust he placed in Clint always coming back on home, and he loved Clint with a quiet love kept under wraps and outside missions and out of paperwork, and they were adults and they were professionals and they were sitting in a bench in the middle of the night soaking wet and they both knew enough to tell that things were bad and getting worse and Phil just wanted everything to stop. Just for a minute – stop.

Clint sighed into his mouth and kissed him back, slowly and as thoroughly as if he was trying to memorise him. He probably was, realised Phil with a pang of guilt. There was nothing he could say to Clint, there was no promise he could make and surely keep, so they kissed, and kissed, and kissed.

'Will you come with me?' asked Phil when they finally broke apart.

'Come where?' Clint asked, his hand still on the back of Phil's neck.

'I have a room.' Answered Phil, but of course that was not what he had meant to say at all. He wished he could have been the sort of person who can say 'will you come home with me?' He wished he still had a place he called home, and he knew Clint probably didn't even understand the concept of being home somewhere, not really. He wished their relationship, back when they had one, wouldn't have stopped at Clint flying around the world and sometimes stopping by at whichever hotel or SHIELD safehouse or office room Phil was living in. He didn't dare make demands on the future, but he wished there had been some point in the past where they were together for longer than a weekend, where they had a single place they called their own, where he could look back and say – this was us and this was good.

'Sure.' Said Clint, not moving. There were raindrops on his eyebrows, his eyelashes. He brushed a rain-cold kiss against Phil neck, and Phil thought that maybe, maybe this would be enough.

Back in Phil's room, a tiny bedsit that must have been the maid's room in one of the old Woodstock road mansions, they took one long moment to just look at each other. They didn't bother to turn on the light – they could see each other's silhouette by the yellowish light of the streetlamps and the sickly glow of the plastic stars a former occupant of the room deposited on the ceiling.

'I'm still mad at you.' Said Clint, and he sounded like he meant it, or at least really wanted to mean it.

'I know.' Said Phil. He didn't apologise.

It was impossible to tell which one of them took the first step forward, but a second later they were standing in each other's arms. But Phil knew it was him who tilted Clint's face down into a kiss that tasted like rainwater and panic.

'This okay?' he asked, breathlessly, his hand on the zipper of Clint's hoodie.

'This is okay.' Echoed Clint, 'Not much else is.'

There was no right answer, no good answer to that. So Phil stripped him of his hoodie and his shirt and his shoes and his sweatpants and laughed obediently when Clint pointed out he was still wearing a tie. He was grateful for the darkness when Clint finally unbuttoned his shirt – not that Clint didn't know the extent of the damage, it was just that he didn't want to face that conversation, not now, not with a half-naked and more than a little desperate Clint in his lap. So he let Clint kiss him deep and filthy as his clever fingers untangled his tie. He let Clint bear him down and pin him against the mattress. He held on too tight, he knew it was too tight, but he didn't dare let go for a second. He had to convince Clint that for the moment, for the brief shaky moment they were both alive.

He must have fallen asleep. He couldn't remember the last time he felt safe enough to fall asleep in front of another person. Well, not unless he counted the times he passed out due to pain or injury or death – no, no use thinking about that now. He was still in the small bed in the small rented room in almost complete darkness, with Clint sprawled half on top of him, warm and relaxed.

'What's the time?' he mumbled.

'Six fifty.' Clint answered in a low voice. 'When do you have to go?'

When do you have to go. Not 'do you have to go.' Clint knew him and knew the life he was living, and that should have been a comfort, but it really wasn't.

'I'll get on the eight o'clock bus up to Stanstead, take a commercial flight back to the States.'

'Okay.' Said Clint thoughtfully, still draped across Phil's chest.

Phil wanted to ask if Clint was going to be okay, if they were going to be okay, but it seemed like too large a question to answer, too large a question to even ask.

'Where are you off to?' he asked instead.

'Shit's going down in Ukraine, and Nat needs me for backup. We'll drop off the grid for a few months.'

'Good luck.' Said Phil. He knew well enough not to say 'stay safe', because he knew that none of them were safe, they never have been.

'Good luck.' Echoed Clint. Then he sat up in the bed, and turned to Phil with a suddenly serious expression.

'I know you can't deal with this right now and I know I can't help you, not really. But I don't want you to give up.'

'I'm not going to – ' argued Phil.

'You already gave up when you chose not to tell me you were alive.' Said Clint, without anger. 'You did that because you didn't expect to stay alive. Didn't you?'

Phil lowered his eyes, and waited in a silence that dragged on too long. Finally he gave a little nod.

'Well I want that to stop.' Said Clint, resolute. 'You've got to promise me you'll try to find a way.'

'I can't just –'

'Promise me.' Repeated Clint, his hand on Phil's chin, tilting his head up.

'I promise.' Conceded Phil. 'But I have to tell you that I really don't know how.'

'You will.' Smiled Clint. 'You always do.'

He just shook his head at Phil's disbelieving look.

'You already died once. And now I have you back. And you were the one to figure out the way.' And then, before Phil could come up with a logical and well-founded counterargument, Clint kissed him, softly, slowly and very thoroughly.

Finally he pulled away.

'Get a good team, have them watch your back, and you'll be alive to be a nervous wreck at me again.' He said, and the reassurance didn't feel any less good for being more than a little false.

'I've got May.' Said Phil, a fresh shirt out of his suitcase. 'I've got Agent Triplett. And Skye, she's a rookie but the best hacker I could wish for.

'Not bad.' Hummed Clint, leaning in to do up the shirt buttons before Phil could get to them. 'If I trust anyone to take care of you, I trust the Cavalry. And I've heard of Triplett. And excellent agent, even without his legacy.'

'Any recommendations?' asked Phil, pulling on his trousers and casting a wary eye around the room for his shoes.

'If you need engineers, you should definitely get Mackenzie. The guy fixed a faulty recurve bow in under five minutes.'

'I'll get him.'

'Oh, and call Bobbi.'

'Are you guys still in touch?'

'Not really. But I know she's still alive, that she's trustworthy, and that anyone she vouches for is trustworthy as well.'

Phil was completely dressed, and Clint was still lying on the bed, wearing only the bedsheets.

'You know, I paid for the room in advance and I can hand in the keys at the front desk, but you'll have to leave before they come in to clean up.'

'I know.' Clint smiled ruefully. 'No big deal, I'll just get out the window.'

Phil wanted to say sorry. He wanted to say good luck. He wanted to saw I love you. He wanted to ask Clint to stay with him, knowing that Clint wouldn't. He wanted to stay with Clint, knowing that he couldn't. There was too much at stake in both their lives, far more than this fragile stolen moment between two almost-dead men with alien handprints in their minds.

'Thank you.' He said finally.

'I'm glad you're not dead.' Replied Clint, and stood up to give Phil a kiss. It was hard and firm and far too short to be a proper goodbye kiss.

'I'll see you.' Clint said, deceptively hopeful.

'I'll see you.' Echoed Phil, and gave Clint one last kiss, just above the bruise on his cheekbone, before he turned on his heels and walked out into the yellowish early-morning fog.

THE END