Author Note: originally written for the comment_fic prompt "Your followed around a SHIELD agent? Who was she?" "Who said it was a she?" Of course it was Coulson.


More Awesome Than You Let On

one
It was Coulson, because of everyone at SHIELD he's always been the best at getting rid of curious or journalistic types. Castle manages to last a full day watching Coulson do nothing but type reports, file reports, design reports, chase people down to fill in reports, and, for a change, eat lunch whilst working on reports. Castle decides that SHIELD is nowhere near as exciting as he'd thought it would be. Not much later he ends up shadowing someone in the police and, thankfully, they don't hear from him again.

(That evening, a few minutes after Castle has finally left, another curious type of person shows up at Coulson's office with a few friends and some guns. Coulson demonstrates another use for reports, slicing open a man's neck with the shape edge of a plastic folder, and ramming paper down another's throat. Castle, he thinks, would have loved to have watched that.)

two
Agent Coulson had read Castle's books for research when the author had been assigned to him and he finds himself keeping up with them. He also finds himself keeping up with the man himself. Richard Castle leads an interesting life and has a knack for getting involved with dangerous people. Coulson phones a few of them and visits a few more, just to make sure people know that Richard Castle may be a perfectly friendly guy, but there are other people in the world who really aren't. It gets more difficult when Castle starts shadowing a police officer, but he does what he can.

Then there's the day that Castle spots him.

"I absolutely knew you were more awesome than you let on," the man says, his eyes wide and a huge grin on his face as Coulson secures his gun and phones for the three dead bodies and one live to be collected with interrogation to be conducted on the latter.

"You weren't meant to get fond of him," Fury says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Yes, sir," says Coulson. "Sorry sir."