Quietly slips this in, and there will be 4 chapters instead of 2. Love you guys? Beta'd by Viralguardian(Ao3)

No one ever told Phil Coulson how much paperwork is involved in coming back from the dead. Sure, pain or adjusting to feelings of something being a little off sometimes or even occasional bouts of insomnia...those had all been brought to his attention. But the sheer amount of paper and forms and typing and writing and good grief...He'd be dead again before he was fully 'alive' by other people's standards.

While it was a relief to be out of the hospital, he now found himself stuck in a board room with Hill going over all the forms he had to fill out. A week passed with nothing much to do but write and type with a heavily put upon Hill who seemed so angry at the whole process that Coulson had to check the reflex that told him to apologize every five seconds for the inconvenience.

Even if he did say something about her having more important things to do, she would just look at him and say,

"Coulson, right now there is nothing as important as getting you back where you belong."

Well, now he had to check the reflex to tear up a little.

Finally, when the last of the paperwork passed inspection, Hill had dragged Fury into a closed door meeting of which Coulson had sat outside waiting for his last clearance. He couldn't hear much, but every now and then Hill's voice would get really loud and Phil had to stop himself from putting his ear to the door.

The door being ripped open wouldn't have been a surprise, but when Maria finally left, she did so quietly, calmly, and with the poise of an AD. Coulson could still see the tension in her shoulders as she walked very carefully from the office of the Director.

Just as unsurprising was the quiet way Fury said, "Go ahead back to your office, Phil. I'm sure there's lots of paperwork that needs your attention."

A dismissal like that sent chills down Phil's back, and he hurried to comply, even though technically it was nearly six o'clock at night, he knew that being inside his office would help calm some of the still itching nerves he'd been trying to suppress.

Well, it would have helped had his office not look like some sort of paper and box display at an office supply store.

Sighing, Phil loosened his tie and made his way behind his desk. Sitting in his old chair felt more like coming home than returning to his stupid room on the Helicarrier or his lonely apartment in NYC.

The stacks on his desk had color coding that looked like Hill had all ready sorted most into piles in order of most importance. The most important stack were reports of anomalies that would be reviewed by as many senior SHIELD agents as possible. Several had highlights and notes made on them, telling him that at least Hill had reviewed them and tried to give him insights into what they were currently dealing with.

By the time he made space to even find his computer it was almost nine o'clock and his stomach growled angrily at him.

Leaning back in his chair, Phil pulled at his tie again, noting with some annoyance he had all ready loosened it. Absently he rubbed at the scar under his shirt and wondered why it was trying to ache now.

Then he remembered that nine o'clock was Barton's hour. For as far back as he could remember, Phil would work late, nearly to ten most nights. When Clint had figured this out, he made a habit of showing up just before nine with some type of food or complaint or heaven forbid-an injury that pulled Coulson away from his desk.

He'd be a sentimental fool to admit that he missed it, but maybe inside his head, there was a tiny chance that seeing Barton, in jeans and a t-shirt, holding a bag of take-out would have given him more relief and peace of mind than anything else in the world.

Unfortunately, the Avengers were still in the dark about his non-death. All of them. Some part of Coulson's mind raged at the thought that they had grieved...had buried him and remained unaware that he had pulled through.

Fury had given him all kinds of reasons, 'it's for your own health', 'you've just gotten back on your feet', 'we should wait until we won't overwhelm them' and Coulson personal favorite, 'when the time's right'. They were platitudes that Coulson couldn't help despising, but he understood what his best friend had been doing.

At first it would have been giving them false hope. Coulson had died, that didn't change until nearly eight minute of intense CPR and adrenaline injections plus one or two shocks to the chest. Then he was in surgery then intensive care then back into surgery. The doctors didn't give Coulson good odds for survival until nearly a week after that.

Once that week was over, Coulson still had a high chance of infection, of blood clots, of stressing the repaired muscle tissue...of doing any number of things that could have resulted with him back under the knife or just plain dead.

So Fury had hid his recovery...given him a chance to recover completely before jumping back into the madness of their jobs. Slowly whatever had been keeping him alive up to that point seemed strong enough to get him back to reasonable strength and able to walk under his own care.

The doctors called it all amazing. Luck. A miracle...whatever thread had been keeping him tethered to this world had astounded even their best guesses. One doc had told Fury that Phil must have one powerful reason to live.

In his head that sounded overly romanticized, but a big part wanted to attribute it to Clint...to wanting to know if Clint was okay. Maybe it was his 'handler-mode' as Barton called it. The focus and determination of making sure his asset was still alive, still going. Once he had driven an SUV through a minefield to make sure Barton got out of his nest before the opposing forces blew it up.

Barton told the story countless times, smiling and joking about how Coulson was just worried about all that damn paperwork it would take to explain how his asset had ended up that tree in a fucking minefield in the first place.

If only that was the real reason.

So, maybe his little crush had gotten out of hand that day. All Phil had known was that some asshole had figured out Clint's position and was prepping a rocket launcher and then suddenly the next thing Phil knew he was commandeering Agent May's SUV and was speeding through a minefield.

He wasn't sure who had been more amused, Barton or Fury when Coulson had come to the debrief. He was honestly lucky May hadn't skinned him for that stunt, but after Fury had chuckled very deranged-like and waved them off, she had told them that if he ever pulled a stunt like that with her SUV again she would kick his ass. She also mentioned that he had ruined her plan to shoot the man trying to blow up Barton.

All of that was derailing his train of thought. He turned back to his computer and reluctantly turned the damn thing on. The booting up process was slow and Coulson used the time to 'file' some more useless memos in the recycling bin.

Once booted up, Coulson had to input two passwords and login with SHIELD number and his stomach grumbled again.

"I hear you, I hear you, just a little more," he muttered. If he left now, the paper stack would be twice as high tomorrow.

His emails were up in the triple digits and reports came up in several sections depending on what they were and who had filed them. Starting with the emails, he flagged ones that looked important and deleted any that were obviously some interoffice bullshit.

Reports were next, most were sent to him because he was a Senior Agent and those could be easily sorted in order of importance. More than likely several were redundant to the ones he had all ready looked over in paper form.

But a small icon appeared in the top left corner of the screen that was his Handler section. Suddenly it popped up a "42 New" icon in the corner of the other. Swearing, he felt like banging his head on the desk. Tech must have screwed up again and sent him reports that were meant to be sent to a current Handler. After the Battle of New York, Phil had been classified an 'offline' Handler. Any reports from his agents would have been redirected to a current Handler until those agents were notified of the change in Handlers.

Phil right clicked on the section and selected 'print all'...then promptly swore as he remembered his printer was out of paper and was buried under several piles of reports. He had to shove things out of the way to get to before it started flipping out that there was no paper. At the last second he got a piece of paper in and it started printing.

Sitting back down, he pinched the bridge of his nose. His body felt tired and overworked, which was ridiculous since all he had done was paperwork, but everything was starting to protest and he could hear Barton's voice say, 'You'll kill yourself all over again at this rate, sir'.

After a moment, that felt much too short, the printer beeped that the printing was done. Coulson looked over at the amount of paper sitting there waiting to be read, and he thought fuck this. It was late and he was tired. No one was dying to have their Status Updates filed. Plus more than likely these were copies and the agents in question had all ready re-filed with their current Handler.

It could wait until morning.