Borkou Region, Chad

This mission hadn't felt right since the Director had given it to them and the fact that Clint seemed out of sorts on the flight over had just intensified that feeling. Phil tried not to be hurt by the fact that Clint had spent most of the flight pretending to be asleep rather than talking to him like they usually do, be it about the mission at hand or just life in general. He debated saying something to Clint about it when the man 'woke up' but Clint had excellent timing and they landed quickly thereafter. They were now going on day four of the mission with still no sight of the target and as each day passed, the feeling that something was going to go wrong grew and Phil spent his day's pacing around in the safe house checking in with Clint every fifteen to twenty minutes. Then he would spend his night's wide awake holding Clint close to him. It was going on day eight that they finally spotted their target and at this point Phil's nerves were so shot that he wasn't sure how much longer he could last on this mission. "What's the situation Barton?"

"There's a seven vehicle caravan and our guy is located in the Humvee in the middle. These guys are heavily armed Coulson, I'm not equipped with the proper weapon to take the target down when the party is moving. I need him out of the vehicle to take him."

"Intel said there would be our target plus twelve or more bodyguards."

"Well we can defiantly go with more because so far I'm up to eighteen and counting."

"Fuck."

"That's well put Coulson. How should we proceed?"

"You can't take on that many without proper back up and since the intel we got was clearly wrong I'm pulling the plug on this mission for today. Are you able to safely leave your perch?"

"Yes, I'll be at the safe house in twenty, Barton out."

Phil put his radio down and turned to the file they had received before they had left for the mission. If this is what all the other agents had been working on no wonder they had all failed to get the job done. Their target was just too heavily armed while he was in this region and unless they had a larger team there was no way one man could take him down no matter how good his aim was. Phil glanced down at his watch and frowned, it was almost coming up on the twenty minute mark. When the urge to go wait by the door hit him Phil sat down and read some of the previous mission debriefs to see what had gone wrong in those ones and how they could avoid making the same mistakes. When twenty had turned to thirty then to forty minutes Phil was up and pacing. He eyed the radio a few times but knew he couldn't risk anything by calling Clint on it. When an hour had gone by then three, Phil was seriously considering grabbing a gun and going out to search for Clint, but just as he was getting ready to do that he heard a sound on the roof. Relived he quickly rushed towards the window in the bedroom and threw it open. He had Clint in his arms before the man's feet could even touch the floor. "What took so long to get back?" Phil asked, even as he pulled back to start checking for any injuries.

"I'm fine Phil, just couldn't clear out as fast as I thought I could and of course they would decide to stop for a short break right where I'm at." Clint frowned. "I couldn't risk calling you on the radio, I'm sorry if I worried you."

Phil took a step back as he realized that he was acting like a concerned lover and not as an agent like he should in situations like this. "Go take a shower Barton, you stink. Then when you're done we'll see what our next course of action will be."

Hurt flashed through Clint's eyes at the dismissive tone in Phil's voice and the man only called him Barton over the radio or in the presence of other agents. "Will do Sir."

Phil flinched as the bathroom door was slammed closed harder than it needed to be. He then turned back to what he was working on to distract himself from thinking of Clint. After re-reading the same sentence several times without actually taking in what he was reading he put his work to the side and sat down on the bed to wait for Clint to get out of the shower. He realized that he had crossed a line in Italy, one he had no right to cross but Phil couldn't bring himself to regret the choice he made.

It was silently agreed upon that they would snap up every mission that came their way and spent the time on said missions dancing back from agents to lovers and back again. The last mission before the mandatory down time had been a rough one and it had also made Phil take a step back to try and revaluate what he was doing and no matter how good it felt to be with the other man he knew it was still wrong. So for the first two weeks off he tried his best to not think of Clint but of course the more he tried not to think of him the more the man had consumed his mind. In the end, he had all but sneaked out of his own home like a thief and had gone to Clint.

He told himself that he was going there to end things and to make everything right again they needed to be handler and asset only. But when Clint had opened the door to him, Phil realized that he would be a fool to let this man go and Phil Coulson was no fool. Something changed after that day, he wasn't sure what it was but he did know one thing, he wasn't the only one to notice the change. When the bathroom door opened he looked up to study Clint, who for his part ignored him completely and walked over to his bag for a change of clothes. Getting up, Phil walked over to his side and laid a hand on the other man's shoulder and turned him around. "Clint, I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for Coulson." Clint told him, copying the dismissive tone that Phil had used earlier perfectly. "Now, if you'll excuse me I want to get dressed and then we can go over the new mission plan."

For his part, all Phil could do was drop his hand from Clint's shoulder and back out of the way. Just when he thought this mission couldn't get worse. Phil ran his hands through his hair and debating on just letting this slide, they could deal with this when they got state side but that would only make matters worse, they needed to deal with this now. With that, Phil crossed the room and pulled open the bathroom door. Clint stood there with the towel in his hand and his clothes still on the counter. He looked up and met Phil's eyes in the mirror. "I do have something to be sorry for, I forgot for a moment that while we are lovers we are agents first and that is my problem and I shouldn't have dismissed you like I did because I lost my professional heading so I'm sorry."

Clint turned around and leaned back against the counter. "I'm sorry that I acted as a hurt lover instead of a professional agent. You had the right idea to step back and act as my handler."

"I could have handled it a little better." Phil said as he took a step forward.

Clint put his hand up to Phil's chest to stop him. "Maybe we should take a step back until we've completed this mission? The last thing either one of us wants is to be distracted on the field."

"You're completely right." Phil took a step back and that was one of the hardest things he'd done in a long time. "I'm going to go make coffee, want any?"

"Please." Clint stood there staring at the closed bathroom for the longest time before finally turning and getting dressed. Chad was most defiantly not going on to his list of favorite destinations, he thought as he finally headed out to join Phil.

48 hours later

The blood was flowing past his fingers at an alarming rate and nothing he did was slowing it down. He had called in an emergency extraction team nearly an hour ago and he feared that they wouldn't get here in time. He struggled to remain calm while inside the panic threatened to sweep him up. For the first time in their partnership they had failed and their target remained a free man while his lover's life hung in the balance. The sound of the helicopter had him crying in relief, they were getting the hell out of here and he swore on his life they would never return to this region. When the medics approached him, he quickly remembered that he was an agent first and a lover second and backed up to let the men work on his partner. When the paddles came out to bring the other man back from the brink of death he stood frozen and couldn't move even if he wanted to. Once they had him stable the medics moved their patient onto the helicopter and he quickly followed and sat in the back as the lover told the agent in him to take the back seat until they reached a hospital.