The next chapter of "Tendrils" is in progress but then last night happened and there was too much and my heart hurt and so I had to stop and write this.
I own nothing. If I did, May and Coulson would have totally ended up in bed together last night.
He slips his jacket around her shoulders as she pops the lock on the car they're stealing to get back to the Bus, and Phil feels May shudder. He isn't sure if she's cold or if it's from the burn on her shoulder or just leftover adrenaline from how furious her battle against Fake May was, but after a moment she turns to him and gives him a half smile as she moves to slip her arms into the warm, waiting fabric.
"I'll drive," he offers, and Melinda nods and goes around to the passenger seat. He knows she's in pain because she doesn't argue, but he also knows better than to mention it now. She just wants him somewhere safe, so he climbs in and drives so that he can take some of the burden off her for just a moment.
When they get back to the Bus, the team is rattled from their own close call and while Tripp, Lance, Mack, and even Fitz try not to ogle May's bare legs, Skye can't get to her fast enough, a worried hug enveloping Melinda before she can prepare for it. When May flinches and Skye pulls back, Phil doesn't hesitate to step in and clear up any misunderstandings before they start.
"Burn on her shoulder," he explains, and Skye looks at Melinda apologetically before slipping to her S.O.'s side.
"We need to get you to medical."
"After we're in the air."
Tripp steps up and heads for the cockpit.
"I'll get us in the air. You go let them take care of you."
Coulson doesn't let her protest because she never wants to stop and let them take care of her, but she got tortured tonight, fought a mirror image of herself, and she's hurting. He'll be damned if he lets her stubbornness win out when he's this worried about her. So he sends Tripp on his way and puts an arm around Melinda's back to guide her toward the med bays.
He holds her hand through the entire scan and breathes a sigh of relief when the doctor is able to let her go back to her own room after he treats the burn and orders Melinda to rest.
Coulson doesn't walk her to her quarters, though, he walks her to his, because he knows she's just as worried about him, and they only get through this when they do it together.
She pulls on an old shirt of his and lies down while he gets into his sweats and a t-shirt. Melinda's already worn down and fading when Phil climbs into bed and props himself up on with one hand so he can look at her.
Her hand eases up and glances over his face, and he lifts his own, their fingers twining together in a way that feels too natural to be anything but organic.
"You'll sleep?" she asks, and Phil nods.
"When I know you will."
Her ability to put herself to sleep in any situation has always amazed him… the discipline it takes, the sheer force of her own will. She can't always stay asleep, of course… life has stripped her of that comfort. But it always calms him a bit to see her breathing even out and deepen before she drops off.
They'll sleep and debrief and deal with Talbot and make sure the plane is in working order top to bottom, and then Phil knows he has to make her have the conversation once and for all. It's time. For her sake as much as his, they can't put it off any longer.
He knows what he's asking her to do is like asking her to rip out her own heart. It would be the same for him in reverse. But when Phil thinks about how bad it could get, remembers how insane and dangerous Garrett was… he needs to know he can't turn into that. He can never, ever be that monster… to her or to their team.
"I hope you let someone love you when I'm gone," he whispers, hoping if she hears him, she thinks his words are part of a dream. But he worries about it constantly. He can't stand the thought of Melinda being alone for the rest of her life, and yet he knows her… knows what his loss will do to her world.
But he wants better for her, especially given what he's asking her to do. He wants her to laugh again, to feel again… he wants to know someone will walk her to medical and lay down with her and make sure she sleeps.
Phil wants someone to love Melinda even when it can't be him.
He hasn't spoken in weeks.
Phil stands in front of the wall that Melinda May keeps covering in new paper, drawing the same marks over and over again. He hasn't slept in so long, she can't even remember when the last time was. Melinda's only slept because Skye and Tripp finally cornered her and said they were a team – in this together – and she was going to let them help, damn it.
So when he's calm and focused and too busy drawing to even glance around the room, she sleeps… and the others keep watch. But Melinda knows that the hope they try to show for her sake is fading.
Hers is dying one small line and circle at a time, the weight of his silence doing more to convince her Phil Coulson is gone than anything else ever could.
She finally had no choice but to tell Skye… not after the day she saw the girl doodling and snapped from worry, interrogating Skye about the how and why until the young agent admitted she was copying the carvings from the photos of Garrett's work and the painting in an effort to understand them. And despite the sense that Melinda felt like she'd let Phil down by revealing the truth, it turned out to be a good thing. Skye found a pattern within the pattern… and now they had Hill and Stark and Bruce Banner pushing forward on deciphering the meaning of the alien writing in hopes that it would save the man they all cared for so much.
They were all convinced they could find the answer. But they hadn't watched him disappear a fragment at a time, and hope was becoming something she could no longer grasp… a faded memory May had no time for because all of her energy is spent running S.H.I.E.L.D. and trying to hold on to Phil.
Melinda almost defied his orders the day he started carving into objects in his office because the wall was too full. She almost took him and ran to that cabin in Australia and told S.H.I.E.L.D. to save itself.
But he was still Phil then, still talking, and he must have seen it in her face.
"You promised."
Her heart ached with the darkness of that promise.
So now she organizes missions and runs them from his office while he draws nonstop, and whoever is on comms handles them from elsewhere.
The gun is always within reach because she promised that, too. But she can't make herself pick it up, even when he scares her.
She's waiting on Simmons, who rejoined them only to find Fitz on the mend and Coulson falling apart, to report from Stark Tower on their progress when Melinda realizes the faint scratching sound from the wall has stopped. She looks up to see Phil staring at her, his face relaxed.
"Phil?"
"I hope someone loves you," he says, voice steady and familiar, but empty of the ages-old bond between them.
She stands and moves toward him, the gun behind her because she still can't bring herself to imagine using it.
"Someone does," Melinda replies, because she knows Phil loves her even if he can't remember.
"Good. You need someone to love you."
Their eyes hold a beat longer, and then Phil turns back to his work, and Melinda can barely make it out of the door, gun in hand, because she never leaves it in his reach, before she collapses in the hallway.
He's saying good-bye to her. She can feel it in her soul, and it's too much. She can't do this. She can't…
"May?"
Skye's voice barely registers because Melinda is breaking open, and she can't fight it. She can feel the wet on her cheeks, the pain in her chest from her erratic breaths, and the pounding in her head from her own internal screams of protest against what's happening.
The only other thing she can feel besides heartache and panic are Skye's arms wrapping around her.
"I'm here, May. All right? I'm here. I won't leave, I promise. I won't leave."
Melinda hears the words and stops any pretense of fighting her breakdown. She gives in the way she always told Phil too when the urges to carve got too strong. She turns into Skye and dissolves because it's the only thing she can do in the face of what's coming.
Phil is saying good-bye. He's asking her to let him go. And somehow she has to find the strength to do it.
She tries to take comfort in the fact that this time she can say her farewell, kiss him, send him off with her love even if he doesn't recognize it. But Melinda remembers the way her whole world dimmed during the long days after the helicarrier, before Fury summoned her to the secret lab to reveal the truth about T.A.H.I.T.I.
Melinda May survived Bahrain. She kept breathing through Phil Coulson's death, though just barely. But killing him, even out of mercy, is more than she can endure.
She'll live because he made her swear she would, but she'll never recover.
She takes him for a drive in Lola, the pad of paper in Phil's lap and pen in his hand enough to occupy his unending urge to recreate the symbols as they move.
Melinda cries the whole way, but Phil doesn't notice, and for the first time, she's grateful for how completely the GH-325 has taken him over. At least he can't see how much keeping this promise is killing her.
They stop on a bluff that overlooks the ocean and she leads him out. The team fought like hell not to let her do this alone, but she has to. This is just them, and she's the only one who should have to live with what comes next.
Phil stands in front of her, his hands drawing the symbols in the air and on the horizon, and Melinda pulls out her gun, preps it for the grim task at hand.
The roar of the jet above her startles her, and for a moment she wonders if they're under attack. She could live with that easier… if HYDRA found them here and cut them both down.
But Maria Hill's voice booms over the P.A. and tells her to stop, and then her former commander is standing in front of her with Simmons, who is holding a syringe and telling her there's hope again. Words about proteins and enzymes and genetic bonding float past her, but all she really hears is "it might save him."
Melinda hands Maria the gun and takes the syringe and walks to Phil, administering the injection without so much as a flinch from him. But a beat or two later, he falls, body writhing, and she wonders if this is fair or better. He's already been through hell to come back from the dead. Is she wrong for asking him to do it again?
She wakes four days later to the sound of monitors beeping and glances as she always does toward the man in the bed. But today Melinda finds Phil Coulson awake, staring back at her, eyes familiar in a way they haven't been in days.
"You saved me."
Melinda's breath stutters because it's him and she really had already given up hope, but he's there and talking to her and she can't believe how close she came to having to pull that trigger.
"Skye, Simmons, Banner, and Stark saved you. And Maria because she flies faster than anyone on earth except for me."
His hand reaches for hers and she takes it, the warmth of his skin against her own a gift she'd thought to never feel again.
"You refused to give up. You bought them time to save me. I think that makes it your win."
She doesn't want to argue, doesn't need to. Melinda just wants to sit here and stare at him and make herself believe that Phil has survived, somehow, and they've been given a second miracle.
Melinda moves closer and sinks down, her head pressed against his chest so she can hear his heart beating beneath the scar of his first death. She doesn't cry because she still has him, but needing him close doesn't feel like too much to ask after everything that's happened.
"Please don't ever ask me to do anything like that again," she says finally, and Phil's arms wrap around her so tightly she has no choice but to lay herself out beside him, the steady rhythm beneath her ear a constant she can't give up.
"I'll try to avoid any other exposures to alien DNA," he answers, his voice far too light for all the hell that's barely in their wake.
His fingers slip through her hair and rub gently at the base of her neck in a gesture of comfort that is solely theirs, born from too many near misses when they were young enough to think surviving them was a given.
"I was terrified, Melinda. Even bleeding out on that floor seemed less scary than what was happening to me this last year. You were the only person I could trust to know how awful it was. But I'm sorry for what it cost you."
His heart beats steadily beneath her and she can feel the movement of air through his body as his lungs work… in and out, in and out.
"You're still here," she offers. "It was worth it."
His hand moves against her skin, lulling her, the exhaustion of everything that's been since… since Natasha called to tell her Phil had been killed by Loki… crashing in on her, and Melinda hears his voice, low and soft, as he keeps sweeping his fingers against her in that way that only Phil can.
"I get to take care of you now, okay?"
She's drifting off, too tired to put up any fight, but Melinda hears him and nods against his chest.
"For a little while."
He chuckles softly, trying not to jar her, and repeats her words.
"For a little while, sure."
Sleep pulls Melinda under, and she finally succumbs, dreams forming where nightmares have lived for too long to think about.
Someone loves her, and he lived.