I've attempted to write this chapter so many times, mostly because I want it to be an adequate finale for this story. It turned out shorter than I expected, but I hope it gives you a bit of the enjoyment I had in writing it.
In another life, Phil would maybe have had a wife and a house full of kids. A big house, in some non-descript suburb of a big old city with flowerbeds at the front door and a patio at the back and a huge yard where he could plant a vegetable patch. Tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, pumpkin shoots spilling over the neat wooden edges. Large trees full of shade and a river somewhere past the back fence where you could just hear it on a quiet day. He'd work a nine-to-five and come home to food and laughter and music. To bed-time stories and late nights burping babies and going to church on a Sunday in a station wagon.
But that's not his life, and mostly Phil's okay with that.
He made a choice a long time ago. Phil Coulson, on the one hand. Duty, on the other. And he knew, paradoxically, that he could not choose the first option and continue to be Phil Coulson. He knew that even as a scrawny kid, all those years ago, when a stranger in a long leather jacket slid onto the barstool next to his and offered him a job.
So, he chose duty, and shut the door on that bright dream of love and family.
Maybe the lock grows rusty and flimsy over the years. Maybe Phil never really does stop wanting something more.
Because when a mouthy-as-all-heck mercenary shows up in a SHIELD holding cell, one rainy Sunday, and lights up every parental instinct Phil has like it's the 4th of July, Phil opens that door right up and invites the kid in for coffee and a nutritious breakfast. Metaphorically, but also literally.
It doesn't take long before said mouthy mercenary returns from Budapest with a Russian spy that he was actually supposed to kill. She's on every most-wanted list there is, but Phil just sees a scared young woman with hope flickering in her eyes every time she looks at Clint. And Phil can't shut the door on her either.
Then New York happens and the Avengers gets assembled and before Phil quite knows what's happening, he's the de facto dad of Earth's mightiest heroes.
"You collect 'em like damned stray puppies," Nick grouses, one evening while they're having a late-night bourbon. "I've been in the business longer than you have and I've never, not even once, accidentally adopted a barely housetrained assassin or a damned superhero. Get your shit together, Phil."
Phil declines to comment that his shit is perfectly together, thank you very much. On the one hand because you can't argue with Nick when he's sober, much less when he's three sheets to the wind. On the other hand, because he's mostly not a hypocrite.
He'd washed out Steve's mouth for swearing, after all, just the other day.
"Hang back a minute, will you, Steve?"
Steve nods and dutifully remains seated, but Tony pauses, half out of his chair, and gives Phil a hard look.
"He didn't do anything!"
As much as Phil finds his protectiveness endearing, he can't really allow it to show on his face. He returns the stare with equal hardness.
"That's for me and Steve to discuss. You're excused, Tony."
Tony seems to share a look with Clint over the table, and Natasha frowns at the both of them, and finally they file out of the room, leaving him alone with Steve.
Who is giving him a wary look. "It's about the swearing, isn't it?"
Phil leans against the table, close to Steve, giving him a encouraging look that serves to marginally lift the worried look from the kid's face.
"Yep. It's about the swearing."
Steve sighs and looks down at his hands. "I'm real sorry. I'm trying to stop, but it just...slips out. Before – "
He's been going to a therapist, twice a week at first but petering out to only twice a month now. And he's better, much better. The mere fact that he mentions that Before of his own volition shows it. But Phil knows how hard it still is.
"I bet you swore a lot in the army," he says lightly.
"Yeah." Steve swallows. "Yeah, in basic training – you know how that is. And the Commandos, of course. We used to swear a blue streak."
"I get that. It's pretty much common practice, wherever you go in the armed forces. Even today. But you get why I can't have you guys swearing out in the field, right? It's just part of the whole superhero bit. At home, I don't care if you want to cuss like sailor. I know that it's how young people talk, these days. But out there you need to be professional."
"I'm sorry," Steve says wholeheartedly earnest, in the way only he can manage. "I really am trying to stop, but I can't seem to."
"We'll see if this helps," Phil says.
He gets up and walks over to the kitchenette at the far end of the conference room, rummages around under the basin until he finds a piece of soap still in its wrapper. Steve is giving him a deer-in-headlights look, but he obeys instantly when Phil crooks a finger at him.
"Hopefully this will help those words from slipping out next time," Phil says firmly. He runs the soap beneath the tap, working up a nice lather before he turns to Steve.
Steve grimaces, but he opens his jaw and closes his teeth on the slippery surface of the soap. A shudder goes through his body, and he gives Phil a look that's somehow between pitiful and disgusted.
"Don't spit it out until I tell you."
Steve nods minutely, breathing heavily through his nose.
Phil keeps an eye on the clock on the wall. At the one minute mark, Steve shudders again. The bar of soap gives a pitiful crack beneath the strength of his jaw. It splits clean in two, one half hitting the floor between Steve's boots and immediately shooting off to God knows where.
For a moment, Phil fears that Steve's going to swallow the piece still left in his mouth from sheer surprise.
"Forry," Steve says then, with some difficulty around the piece of soap. There is something suspiciously close to laughter lurking in the corners of his eyes.
"Oh, go on," Phil says. "Spit it out."
Steve does, making unashamedly disgusted noises as he spits and gargles over the sink.
"That was vile," he says, when he's finally wiping at his mouth with the dishcloth that Phil's handed him. "Horrible."
"Next time try not to actually eat the soap," Phil says. "Going to be more careful from now on?"
"I will be a perfect saint," Steve says. "I'll only say fuck when Tony really bothers me, or if Thor steps on my toes again, I promise."
Phil aims a whack at the back of his head. "Off you go, mister."
Steve ducks easily, giving him a grin that only seems to have been brightened by his soapy ordeal. "We seeing you for dinner, old man?"
"You will, and if you want, we can go down to the gym beforehand and I'll show you who's an old man."
"It's a deal."
He fairly bounces out the door, but Phil stays behind, getting down on all fours to hunt for the other piece of soap. The teeth marks might raise all sorts of funny questions, if the wrong person were to find it.
"What'd he do to you?" That's Tony, just outside the door. "Did you get whacked?"
"You can't just ask him that," Clint grumbles.
"How else are we to know?" Thor sounds genuinely interested, as he always is. "What happened, son of Roger?"
Phil can't quite hear what Steve says, but he hears Tony's incredulous reply.
"He made you eat soap?"
"Oh, come on, Stark." He can practically hear Natasha rolling her eyes. "He's threatened you with that a bazillion times before."
"Threatened, yeah! But now he's actually done it. It's gone to far, my esteemed comrades. Too far, I say. I vote we make him rue the day he ever waved a piece of soap at poor Stevie here."
"Oh, shut up," Steve says. "It's not that bad. And you don't think it's bad either. You just want an excuse to test out that new contraption of yours on Coulson."
"That is a capital plan," Thor says. "I have long desired to attempt what you Midgardians call a prank on the son of Coul. Would we..."
"You do realise he can probably hear us," Bruce says gently. "If we are going to take on Coulson, we at least need to plan it where he can't hear the whole thing."
Their voices die down in the hum of the Helicarrier and Phil listens to them go with a small grin itching at the corners of his mouth.
His hair still has a faint purple tinge to it, thanks to Tony's 'contraption'. But Phil is already in the end stages of planning out his revenge campaign. It's not going to be pretty, but it's going to be pretty darn sweet and more than ample revenge for his paint-ruined suit.
And maybe he doesn't get to have a vegetable patch in suburbia, but he does get to have a family of certifiably insane superheroes to call his own.
And Phil's more than okay with that.
Friends, thank you so much for sticking with this story! Let me know what you thought of this last chapter (did you enjoy getting Coulson's POV?) and also any other stories you'd like to see me explore.
Also, a great big THANK YOU to everyone who left a review and especially to those of you whom I haven't replied to personally. I really appreciate your support and feedback, but I do sometimes get quite overwhelmed with replying to messages. I try my best to answer reviews, but I can't always quite manage it. But I see and appreciate each and every one of them!
Tremulous x