Thinking Out Loud

Bucky left with little fanfare to go and explore the current world. He wanted to see New York for himself, to find out what changes had happened over the years for himself. Clint called Kase up and asked him to look after the farm for a week as he booked a flight to Portland and made a reservation at a classy restaurant Phil often mentioned. It had been his favorite date that the two of them had ever been on. The restaurant served fancy, expensive food and came with a ballroom open for couples to dance along. Professional instructors were there to help, if anyone wanted. Phil loved it.

Clint turned the slim box over in his head as he tapped Phil's name on his contact list. "Hey, so… I've got a week off. Let's hit up Portland?"

"A –Portland?" Phil asked.

"Yeah. Like a date. Just for a couple of days." Clint fidgeted.

"I can be there. Tomorrow?"

"I've got a room booked in the same hotel we used last time."

Phil chuckled softly. "Alright, I'll meet you there?"

"Great," Clint agreed enthusiastically.

Clint grabbed his carry-on bag and got onto the plane. A few short hours later, he was in the hotel where he would be proposing to Phil. The ballroom restaurant was down below. Clint wasn't even sure if it was going to be obvious to Phil what he was planning. More than that, they hadn't had much opportunity to discuss their relationship but Clint knew what he wanted to be doing. He had a unique skill set that he could use to help people –whether it was S.H.I.E.L.D or his neighbors. Or even friends of the Avengers. Piece of paper or not, Clint wasn't going to waste what little time he had left with Phil.

He transferred the ring from his jeans into his suit pocket as he changed out of his casual clothes and into a suit. He fastened the tie on easily, checking it over in the mirror. He didn't need Phil fussing over his imperfect skills –life was better the longer Clint could go without having to wear a suit and tie in the first place. He hated getting dressed up. But Phil always appreciated when he did and today was about them. Clint turned the box over in his pocket anxiously as he combed his hair into order.

What if Phil had changed his mind? It wasn't impossible. Phil was a busy man. Clint sighed heavily. This was ridiculous. He was going to sit through dinner and several dances with Phil before they could get back to their room and he could propose. At this rate, he would end up tripping over Phil's feet, breaking the fine china and making a public spectacle of his clumsiness. It was just a ring. It didn't mean much. Except it did. It meant a lot. There wasn't anyone alive Clint had known longer than Phil. Natasha was close, but… Phil and Natasha were both family. And if Phil said no? If Phil said no, Clint wasn't sure where that would leave him.

His phone buzzed. "I can hear you panicking from here," Natasha had written. "I'm in the middle of New York and I know you're burning a hole through the carpet. Stop. Breathe."

Clint's lips twitched into a smile. "Stop or breathe? I can't do both."

"For that, you know exactly which one to pick."

"What if he says no?" Clint texted, trying to ignore the way his hands were shaking.

"Then he says no," Natasha replied. "It's not like he'll leave you if he isn't ready for more."

That was a good point, really. "Thanks," he sent her nervously, adjusting his suit and tie again before sitting down on the elaborate bed.

Everything in this place was either over-the-top –like the twenty throw pillows spread over the bed –or unnecessarily expensive. Those pillows were just unnecessary unless people rented out hotel rooms like these for pillow fights. Clint snagged one of the cushions, and sure enough, they were made of some sort of expensive downy feather. No doubt pillow fights would ruin these puny things and then whoever rented out the room would get charged for the destruction. But really, why twenty throw pillows?

It didn't feel like five minutes had passed before there was a knock at the door and Phil slid the key card in, letting himself in. He must have gotten ready at the airport or before coming up to the room, Clint realized belatedly. He was wearing a three piece suit, perfectly pressed, not a wrinkle in sight. Phil was stunning, as always, his hair neatly combed. And –Clint sat up casually, sniffing –he was wearing his cologne.

"Aw, I feel under dressed now," Clint teased; shoving his hands into his pockets as he got up, feeling his heart beat kick up another notch. It was going to be hours before he could ask Phil. Hours.

"You look great," Phil said smoothly, kissing Clint warmly.

Clint melted into his touch, kissing him back as he slid an arm around Phil's waist, intent on pulling him closer. Phil chuckled and caught Clint's hand in his, pulling back. "No need to wreck the suits this time, we have all night to get around to that," Phil said, his blue eyes dancing bemusedly. "No repeats of last time, we nearly scarred the whole place."

"Good thing I have an alias now, huh?" Clint joked. "They wouldn't have let us in otherwise."

Phil shook his head, not bothering to hide his smile. "We can be presentable for dinner tonight."

"Does this mean tomorrow we don't have to?" Clint chuckled.

"I didn't think you'd reserved us here for the weekend," Phil said, his brows lifting in surprise.

"I… didn't think that far ahead," Clint admitted with a nervous laugh, suddenly all-too aware of the weight of the box in his pocket. He'd had other things to think about. "I got a table for us tonight though, that's for sure."

"Well that's good," Phil said, amused.

Clint blushed. "Y-yeah. It's reserved at five."

"Is there a special occasion I'm not aware of?" Phil teased. "Some big day I'm missing?"

"Just missed you," Clint answered quickly, to keep from saying anything thing else. Like the fact that this day would hopefully come to have a bigger meaning than it currently had.

Phil smiled warmly, "I missed you too," he said. "And I thought you might like to know, but Scarlotti? We have him in custody now. Melinda took him down."

"Wish I'd been there for that," Clint sighed. "I hope she gave him a good beating." Scarlotti had never been kind. Where Clint had been patient and only taken a shot he knew would cause nearly instant death, Scarlotti liked drawing his victims' pain out.

"She did a good number on him," Phil explained.

Silence drifted between them as Phil set his stuff aside. It was familiar silence between them and Clint knew it was his nerves that were setting off every alarm in his head but he couldn't stand the silence. Each passing second of it, it felt like the box in his pocket was burning hot. No matter what situation Clint ran through, he wasn't sure how Phil would respond.

He moved without thinking about it, kneeling down to Phil's left as he drew out the box. "Will you marry me?" Clint blurted, his heart pounding furiously. "I-I love you, and I – I don't want to lose any more time with you." Clint paused, glancing up at Phil worried. He wasn't speaking, shit, that was bad wasn't it? His eyes were wide as he stared down at Clint. "I uh, I meant to ask you this back in New York before things…" He shrugged, keeping his balance despite the precarious wobble he performed. "Um, if you, if you don't wanna marry me, I guess that'd be… I, uh," he stuttered, staring at his feet, unwilling to meet Phil's eyes again for fear of the sympathy he would see there.

"You meant to ask after dinner and dancing didn't you?" Phil asked, his voice strangled.

"I, yeah…"

"You – you planned this all out…"

"And totally fucked it up," Clint said, wincing. "Look we, we can just pretend this never happened, alright? I can ask, later, or not," he muttered, about to get to his feet.

This had been such a bad idea. Such a monumental bad idea, of course Phil wasn't gonna say yes, when Clint hadn't even gotten the proposal right. But it wasn't like it was the first time he'd thrown his plans out the window. It was nowhere near the first time really. Actually, considering how long they had worked together –Clint glanced at Phil hesitantly, holding his position. Phil didn't look sad or apologetic, he just looked awestruck. A lot awestruck.

"Of course I'll marry you," Phil breathed out, still staring at Clint like he couldn't believe this was really happening. Clint was having some difficulty with accepting that too, honestly.

Phil opened the box with a shaky hand, helping Clint up with his other hand. He still hadn't put the ring on but Clint found it hard to care when Phil kissed him. "I love you," he murmured, smiling tenderly as he slid the ring on.

Clint flushed. "I uh, was going to ask after the whole romancing part of the evening had happened…"

Phil chuckled softly. "It's more us this way," he said patiently. "And now the romancing will be more like a celebration." He pecked him sweetly, squeezing his hand lightly.

They weren't big on PDA. It was mostly habit at this point, after so many years of dating in the workplace. Neither of them had been in the mood to deal with accusations of favoritism or worse.

"We could probably head down to dinner, if you wanted?" Clint offered.

"In a minute," Phil murmured, leaning in to kiss Clint thoroughly.

They were nearly fifteen minutes late to their dinner reservation, but neither of them really cared. Phil was proud of the fact that he had managed to keep their suits un-rumpled despite their distraction upstairs in the hotel room. Clint grinned at his fiancé helplessly, taking a discrete picture and sending it to Nat.

Her reply was almost instantaneous. "You couldn't wait could you?"

"No," he texted back, without looking away from Phil.

"Congrats," she replied.

"Natasha?" Phil guessed.

"She sends her congratulations."

Phil smiled softly and they chatted a little about unimportant things in their lives. Clint talked about how mope-y Lucky had been since Phil had left and how Bucky had settled in at his place before heading out to see New York and find himself. Hopefully that went well for him. And then, before he even knew it, they were finished dinner and Phil was watching Clint amusedly, his eyes twinkling as he got up.

"May I have this dance, fiancé?" he asked, offering his hand to Clint.

"I'll try not to crush your toes," Clint said, accepting his hand and letting Phil lead him out to the dance floor.

There were some other couples out there already; some of them looked like they were professionals practically with the elaborate moves they were exhibiting. Dancing with Phil was easy. It was something Clint had never done before and, for the most part, didn't like doing it. He was clumsy and as likely to step on Phil's feet as not. But Phil was patient. Last time they were here, Phil had made sure Clint knew how to dance a waltz. He stumbled through the first half a dozen steps, following Phil's impeccable lead (honestly, Phil was the one who did all the work and somehow made it look like Clint was a halfway decent dancer –he was not). But Phil was patient and with a few reminders, soon they were waltzing comfortably around the dance floor with the other couples twirling around them.

They danced a few more times, surrounded by the other couples and the professional dancer before they headed back to their room. It was too much physical contact and yet not enough at all. They headed up to their room, practically pressed together in the elevator before hurrying out and back into their room. They spent the week tangled up in each other, their phones out of the way and thankfully undisturbed as they made love.

The third day of their weeklong vacation, Clint woke up to find Phil carving unintelligible signs onto the dining room table. Phil didn't seem to be aware that he was doing it at all, as he focused on making each individual notch just right. Which, well, Phil could probably cover the bill for that. Hopefully. Clint got out of bed, grabbing some scrap paper from the nightstand and a pen. Phil didn't protest as Clint plucked the knife from his grasp and set the pen into his hand, shoving the papers under his hand. Phil didn't seem to be aware of any difference as he started to continue on the papers.

Clint crouched on the end of their bed, watching Phil. Of course there had to be a cost for Phil to return to life. If this was it? If his boyfriend –fiancé –was going to have to wake up in the middle of the night and start wood carving, Clint didn't care. Phil probably hated it, Clint knew. It was a loss of control and centered on the unknown origins of Phil's revival. Neither of them had really discussed it. Clint didn't really care how Phil had come back to life –he just cared that Phil had. Because some damaged wood was repairable, replaceable. But Phil wasn't. And it wasn't like Phil was going to kill himself doing this either, it was just a compulsion. But where had the compulsion come from? And had Phil been hiding it this whole time? Because it wasn't necessary. Clint didn't care. He had Phil.

Phil kept at it all night, drawing lines and circles on the papers spread across the table in front of him. Some of his pen strokes were so hard they nearly went through the paper; in a few spots the paper was actually ripped, but at least the table hadn't taken any more damage. Phil seemed to come back to himself abruptly around mid-morning, the pen dropping from his hand and clattering loudly as it rolled across the table. Clint caught it before it fell to the floor, glancing at Phil.

"I –Clint –I'm so sorry."

"For what?" Clint interrupted. "I don't care why. I can get you paper and pens and stop you from damaging property. I just. You're alive, right? That's the important thing here."

Phil seemed to hesitate, nodding slowly. "Yes…"

"And this drawing isn't killing you? Or leading you to your death?"

"Well, no," Phil admitted. "It just. I might physically live but… it, the medicine they gave me; this is a sign that I'm slowly going insane."

Clint frowned. "I dunno Phil," he said, making an effort to keep his voice lighthearted, "doodling like a five year old… there's worse ways to go insane. Just imagine having to work with Tony all the time. I thought for sure he would have driven you to madness."

Phil chuckled despite himself. "It's a bit more complicated than that."

"Nah," Clint said confidently, pressing a kiss to his temple. "You survived Tony's insanity and you even survived dying. I think you can beat this, whatever's going on. I know your team is good; you've got Melinda and all the resources at S.H.I.E.L.D plus the Avengers. If it gets bad, we can try Tony or Bruce or something. There's time, right? Hope?"

Phil paused, sinking back into the chair. "I suppose there is that."

Clint grinned, kissing him playfully. "Good. Remember that. Now come back to bed."

Phil explained in detail what he knew about his survival as they cuddled up on the bed. It still hadn't changed Clint's mind and he said as much. Phil was alive. He was going to be alive for a while. They could deal with his insanity as it came, if it came. The compulsion to start carving into things wasn't exactly that threatening to his sanity at this time, as far as Clint was concerned. Phil was going to be just fine. If he wasn't, they could deal with it as the problem came up.

The rest of their holiday was spectacular and happily uninterrupted. Clint did his best to convince Phil to stay in bed, tangled up with him but Phil had other plans. Sightseeing plans and the like of which Clint was sadly unable to keep him in bed, so he walked with Phil from each local tourist spot to the next. They weren't really impressive. But then it was hard to find much about his home country impressive when he had spent half his life traveling the world –Clint had seen the pyramids and even Stonehenge. Not up close but from the corner of his eye while on a mission in Egypt and England respectively. Things in the States didn't really compare and he knew Phil mostly felt the same. Phil was just more open to trying to see if anything could impress him. The Grand Canyon would've been a good one, but neither of them had the time to drive to see it. Instead they bought their lunches at a nearby food stand, chatted about inane things before they headed back to the hotel for their last night.

This time, when Clint dragged Phil back to bed, Phil didn't argue. He didn't even try to. Instead they fell onto the bed, naked and wrapped up in each other. Clint almost regretted the fact of how long it had taken them to get together because if they had known earlier, had realized it sooner, they would have had a few years more at doing this. But really, it was perfect just the way it was. They were going to get married one day. Clint was perfectly happy with that, with having Phil.