#philindafanfiction | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

philindaforlife · 7 years ago

Text

Not Broken, Just Bent

Post 5x06. Title inspired by “Just Give Me A Reason” by P!nk

As a trainee in S.H.I.E.L.D. academy, Melinda May had wanted to experience it all. From complicated infiltration missions (but not undercover, ugh) to traveling to exotic locales, she’d had a fairly long bucket list.

It was safe to say she’d fulfilled that…and then some.

First there was surviving the whole Hydra thing, and then helping to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. And then came Inhumans (and who could forget about Andrew, of course). Of course, who could forget about being infected by a ghost, dying and being brought to life, being replaced by a murderous LMD and oh yeah, finding herself trapped in a simulation straight from hell? That didn’t even include time travel.

And her current predicament—hiding on a deserted and glorified rock, hours away from bleeding out, and hunted by giant roaches.

So yes, if she ever made it out alive, and it was looking less and less unlikely, May swore she would take a long, long vacation (alone this time, although a little company from her best friend/maybe something more wouldn’t hurt) and do nothing but lie on a beach, drink in hand.

But that depended on whether or not she survived.

For the millionth time since the monolith had sent her straight into that damn pipe, May cursed under her breath as she dragged her bad leg behind her, her right leg strained from leaning all of her weight onto it. She could hear growls in the air—the roaches were not far behind by the sound of it, and for every limping step she took the faster they were gaining on her.

Goddamnit.

And then she was running, well technically limping, her left leg screaming at her to stop, her right leg groaning with exhaustion, the shallow yet still bleeding cut in her side throbbing as she dragged her body as rapidly as she could, away from the roaches. Her hair whipped across her face in sweaty chunks, and she dug her nails into her palms.

Suddenly May’s leg twisted, and she found herself airborne for a brief moment, before the ground started to rise up around her. She landed on her back, all the air completely gone from her lungs as she struggled to comprehend what had just happened. It took her a full four, long, tension filled seconds to realize she’d tripped. Like a clumsy, S.H.I.E.L.D. trainee during her first try in a training course. Idiot.

Get up, go, move!

May instinctively sat up, and instantly regretted it—her side screamed, no, cried mercy, the searing pain second only to the incessant throbbing of her leg that she’d almost grown accustomed to. It felt oddly wet and kind of sticky. From sweat, maybe? She gingerly reached out to touch the cut at her side and brought her hand up to her face. The air was dark around her, but unless her eyes were fooling her, her hand had come back smeared with blood.

Great. She’d thought all along that her leg would’ve been the one to kill her, but it turned out it would be that damn cut from that damn telepath.

A sharp, piercing growl caused her to jump, and May curled her right leg under her, trying to put her weight on it, gritting her teeth, trying in vain to stand up, to run, to survive. But the second she did it buckled and she fell back down again.

Her vision swam before her, the dark landscape not helping as her eyes watered and stung. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a gigantic mass approaching. The roaches. She had to get up. Now. Yet her legs refused to obey. Her limbs seemed to grow heavier too, and the ground started to feel less and less like a hard wasteland and more like her comfy mattress back in the now destroyed base.

It was growing darker—May realized a few seconds too late that no, the landscape wasn’t changing color. She was losing consciousness.

No.

In the back of her mind, she knew what that meant. She’d lost.

No. I don’t lose. I never lose.

But the darkness was so irresistible, almost soothing, inexplicably reminding her of a bowl of Phil’s chicken noodle soup, the special one he made from scratch the handful of times she’d been sick.

As she surrendered, her head slipping to one side, her eyes closing, she thought she saw a human shaped figure in the distance shooting something at the roaches, making them disintegrate upon contact. The figure approached rapidly, and in the dim light May could see he had blue skin. Oh, God, it was one of the Kree.

His face looked oddly familiar, and reminded her of…the diner?

But then the darkness took its hold, and she saw nothing more.

She wasn’t moving.

That was the first thing Phil registered as he stumbled his away into the makeshift shelter Enoch had constructed out of a pile of larger and smaller rocks. Enoch had removed her jacket, using it instead as a pillow, and was busy creating a bandage out of what appeared to be a pile of dried leaves.

Enoch barely glanced up. “I see you managed to follow the path I left.”

“Yeah, thanks for that.” Just the sight of his infuriatingly calm face made Phil want to use his robotic hand (newly re-implemented, thanks to Fitz’s planning ahead), and punch him so hard he’d bounce off the Lighthouse. If it hadn’t been for him the group would’ve still happily (or somewhat, given the circumstances they’d left behind back home) lived in their time, rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D. or whatever. But a larger part of him was just purely grateful for Enoch’s help. Without him Fitz would’ve never made it here.

“And the others are?”

“Daisy, Mack and YoYo are scouting the area. Fitzsimmons stayed behind in the trawler with Flint. How is she?” Phil nodded her head towards May. Her face was flushed and tense as she slept, but she still looked more peaceful than he’d seen in a long time.

“She’s running a fever.” Enoch answered simply. “Her leg has been infected.”

“I kind of figured.” Phil made his way fully into the little shelter and crouched down. Her touched Melinda’s hand softly, and winced at the contact. “Wow. She’s really burning up.”

“Did you bring the supplies?”

In response, he pulled out a syringe out of his jacket’s inner pocket. Inside the crate of weapons Fitz had thought to include a basic version of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s first aid kit, complete with a few simple yet highly effective medications that would cure or at least help soothe many ailments.

Phil handed them to Enoch, who inserted the needle into Melinda’s arm. Her expression did not change, although she stirred a little. Seemingly satisfied, Enoch stood up. “I believe that will help a bit with the infection, although only time and rest will help her leg heal.”

Of course it required rest, the one luxury they could not afford. He looked down at her sleeping form. Still, maybe a few short hours would do her some good. “I know our plan was to make it back to the trawler so we could get the hell out of here, but I think it would be better to stay here until she wakes up.”

“Agreed.” Enoch said. “I trust you can stay while I go keep watch?”

Seeing as he had zero intention to face those roaches and leave Melinda’s side (ever again), Phil nodded. He took Enoch’s place on the hard rock, and slipped his hand into hers as the alien drew his weapon and walked out.

“When you told me you had it, that you could handle Sinara, I don’t think this is what either of us had in mind.” He joked softly. “I could’ve stayed behind, you know. I know I’m not as good as you. But I could’ve helped.

“You didn’t need to face her alone, May.” He continued. “You could’ve died. Hell, you did die last year. You don’t need to take risks like that. That’s why we’re a team. Especially here…I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d lost you. You know, for a second I actually thought…”

Phil paused. In his head he could almost hear May berating him, calling him a dork and a sap, rolling her eyes at the notion that she’d actually lose a fight.

“Laugh all you want.” He said. “But there was a moment, when you didn’t come back, I thought you were gone.” Phil shook his head. “This is my fault. I should’ve stayed with you. And I know what you’re going to say, that I wasn’t the one who caused you to materialize into that pipe. But I shouldn’t have left you there, not when I knew you couldn’t handle it.”

Melinda’s brow furrowed, soft whimpers escaping, though she stayed asleep. Her hand tightened around Phil’s, and her chest rose and fell rapidly as she experienced whatever terror was playing out behind her eyelids.

“It’s okay. I’m right here.” He said. “I’m not going anywhere.” Using his thumb, he gently rubbed circles around her hand. “I’m not leaving you, Melinda. Not ever again.”

Gradually, her whimpers quieted, and her expression became calm once more as her breathing evened out. Although it wasn’t exactly cold in this dank, dirty atmosphere, her body seemed to be wracked by subtle shivers, and Phil immediately shed his jacket and used it to cover her chest and shoulders.

“I don’t know how much of this you can hear.” He said softly. “Probably not at all, since you’re asleep. Well, if we ever get out of this…no, that’s not it. That’s what we said last time. I’m done with this whole taking a step back thing. If that’s not what you want, then I can live with that. But I need you to know…I love you. I know what you think, that you don’t deserve that after Bahrain. Except you’re not always right, no matter what you say.”

He watched as Melinda slept on, blissfully unaware to their hellish surroundings. “Now I just need to have the guts to say this to you while you’re conscious. You mean everything to me, and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to give this, us, a try.”

Melinda gradually became aware of several things.

One, she was lying flat on her back again, but the air felt a bit different in here. She felt…less exposed.

Two, there was something soft under her head, and something soft covering her chest and shoulders. It smelled like home.

Three, her leg throbbed, but not as much or painfully as it had before. And she could barely feel the stab wound on her side anymore.

And finally, someone’s hand was curled around hers, rubbing gentle circles. She’d had her fair share of massages and spa days, but this felt more blissful than anything she’d ever experienced.

“…I’m done with this whole taking a step back thing…” A low voice said. It sounded like the person was sitting right next to her, although his voice echoed for some reason. Melinda’s eyes felt too heavy to open, so she settled for simply listening.

“If that’s not what you want, then I can live with that.”

Her blood nearly froze as she realized it was Phil. What in the hell was he doing here? Yet she was too curious about what he was saying to bother trying to shake herself fully awake.

“But I need you to know…I love you….”

With the tight grip he maintained around her hand, how could he not feel her heartbeat? Surely it had picked up like crazy, alerting him to the fact that she’d woken up.

But he didn’t seem to notice. “Now I just need to have the guts to say this to you while you’re conscious,” Phil said, confirming to May that he was pretty much the biggest idiot she’d ever met. An adorable idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.

“You mean everything to me, and if it’s okay with you, I’d like to give this, us, a try.” Phil finished. “Okay.” He chuckled awkwardly to himself. “I guess I’ll let you sleep in peace now.”

Although her mind had felt foggy and only half awake moments ago, now her thoughts raced as she replayed Phil’s words over and over. I love you. You mean everything to me. I love you. You mean everything to me.

You mean everything to me too, Melinda replied in her head. And she couldn’t wait to show (not tell, because she wasn’t exactly the most verbose person) how much.

#Philinda #philindafanfiction #melinda may #Phil Coulson #Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.#aos #philinda fanfiction #aos fic

95 notes · View notes

philindaforlife · 7 years ago

Text

I Stay When You’re Lost

Post 5x01 and 5x02. Basically tooth rotting Philinda fluff and cuddling, which I think we all needed after that premiere.

Note: Title inspired by New Years Day by Taylor Swift

"I guess we'll need to figure out where you can all go tonight." Tess said, scratching her head.

"Technically night doesn't exist." Mack quipped, crossing his arms. "Seeing as we're..."

"It's just a figure of speech, Mack." Coulson interrupted. "Chill out."

"Chill out?! In case you don't remember, Simmons has been captured by those smurf on steroids and Daisy disappeared to god knows where on this godforsaken...I don't even know what to call it!"

May raised an eyebrow. "Tell us how you really feel."

Tess looked around for a beat. "Look, I get that this is...an adjustment. But you have to keep it down. We'll work on finding your friends in the morning. But it's getting late and we've all had a long day." She turned and started walking down the dimly lit hall. "Everyone here is basically assigned a room, based on where they're from. Now of course for you..well luckily there are usually some spares, because..."

"We get it." May responded, the memory of the glorified murder spree coming back to mind.

Tess nodded. "Come on."

Mack and Yo-Yo followed her, falling into a comfortable pace. Their hands brushed every so often as they walked, and finally Yo-Yo grabbed Mack’s.

The sound of uneven footsteps to his left caused Coulson to pause for a moment. Next to him, May was limping, miraculously managing to keep up with Tess's rapid pace. He frowned. In the back of his mind he'd been meaning to ask about the talk day, but other events (their survival) had taken precedent. "How's the leg?"

"How do you think?" May responded curtly. He didn't need to turn his head to know that, judging by her tight voice, her jaw was clenched, and her shoulders likely tight with tension.

"What happened?"

"Pipe went through my leg."

He winced. "I can't believe you're still walking."

"Not like I have a choice."

Before he could counter that (not that he really could), Tess stopped in front of a pair of doors. “And here we are. So I guess you two,” she nodded at Mack and Yo-Yo, and then the door on the right. “You can go here, while you two can take that room?”

Yo-Yo paused, her gaze lingering on Coulson and May. “Are you okay with that?” There was a hint of a teasing lilt in her voice. “Or maybe May and I can take one and Coulson can go with Mack.”

“I thought…” Tess started, looking from Mack and Yo-Yo’s entwined hands, to May and Coulson, who stood close together, but without the same contact. She shook her head. “Sorry, never mind.”

Cue the awkward silence. Coulson could feel Tess’s stare on him and May, and honestly he had no idea what to say. He knew Mack and Yo-Yo would prefer to bunk together, but after the day she’d had, all he wanted was to make sure May was comfortable (as comfortable as she could be in this dystopian nightmare, that is).

“It’s fine.” May spoke up after a moment, surprising all parties involved. “You and Mack can take that room.”

Mack nodded, clearly not about to argue. “Well, goodnight then.”

Tess and Yo-Yo murmured their replies, with Tess adding that she would come to find them the next morning. Coulson followed May into their room, a narrow, cramped bunk sparsely outfitted with a basin in the corner and a chair.

And a thin cot.

“Oh. Y-you can take the bed.” Coulson said automatically, but somewhat reluctantly. The floor did not look particularly inviting, what with the cold metal floor and lack of any carpet or anything soft.

May tossed her jacket onto the chair, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be silly, Phil. You wouldn’t last five minutes on the floor.”

Well, he couldn’t disagree with that. “If you’re sure.”

She just snorted as she limped over five steps to the cot, grimacing as she sat down gingerly on its edge. "Which side do you want? Let me guess, the left as always?"

"How did you guess?" Coulson joked. "Although I gotta say, I'm starting to miss those caves and crappy safe houses."

May slid over to the side closest to the wall. "I dunno. Freezing to death in an abandoned shack in the woods versus the end of the world? Tough choice."

But although her words were light, Phil didn't need to look over at his partner to notice her weariness and frustration.

He sat down, careful to keep a distance (however minuscule it was, seeing as the cot was built for one, maybe two small adults) between them. It was a distance they'd barely paid attention to in the past, but a distance necessitated by events as of late. Phil’s fingers itched to reach out and touch hers, to comfort here, to hold her smaller hand in the same way he'd seen Mack do with Yo-Yo earlier. But the maybe inch of space between them suddenly felt endless.

Melinda reached up to pull her hair back, and the metric on her wrist caught the light, drawing Phil's attention to the dried blood caked on her arm. He'd thought it was from her leg, but....

Her words from earlier came back to him. You think I’d let you do that to anyone else, she'd said.

He grabbed her arm, turning her wrist up to the light.

"What the hell?" She scoffed, pulling her arm out of his grip.

“What did you mean earlier, when Deke mentioned the metrics?” He grabbed her arm again, examining her wrist. Although shiny black metrics had been installed for both of them, he could see an angry red line surrounding the black circle, and dried blood matted around it. Whereas for him, there wasn’t much of a scar.

“How do you think he installed that damn thing?” Melinda scoffed. But she’d relaxed her arm, allowing Phil to continue holding onto it.

Oh. Oh, no. “My God. T-hat must’ve hurt,” he responded, from lack of anything better to say.

“Yes, someone stabbing your arm with a knife tends to.”

“I can’t believe…I’m so sorry.” An image of her being pulled along by Deke to negotiate with those Kree guards flashed before his mind. Melinda looking tired, weak and worn out, and bent at the waist from pain.

“It’s fine. No need to overreact.” Melinda said. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“You could’ve bled out!” Phil protested. “And along with your leg? You can’t keep pretending like everything’s okay, May! You don’t need to.”

“I’m not the one you need to worry about!” Melinda argued, her eyes flashing with one parts frustration and two parts fear. “Simmons…” She sighed, her nostrils flaring. "And Daisy..."

"Hey. I'm sure Daisy's fine. She can take care of herself. And don't forget Simmons spent six months-"

"Alone on an alien planet, I know." Melinda finished. "But still..she was right there. And I just let her go."

"Because that what she wanted you to do. But you can't save them all." He argued. "They'll be fine. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out."

Melinda didn’t answer. Instead, she sighed deeply, shuffling around on the narrow cot to try and find a more comfortable position. She landed on her wounded thigh, hissing with pain in response.

Phil looked at her sympathetically. He could only imagine how much pain she was in—being impaled sounded like the most excruciating thing ever, and this was coming from someone who had literally been stabbed in the chest.

He paused for a moment. Should he reach out and offer? He knew how squirrelly May was about physical contact, and always tried hard to give her the chance to reach out first. But one look at her resigned expression and he knew he had to at least try.

“May I?” He asked gently.

Without even asking, Melinda seemed to know what he was trying to say. She nodded.

Phil reached out and gently started to massage her thigh, careful to avoid the area covered by the bandage. Melinda sighed with relief, her face and posture relaxing as the pressure was eased.

“Better?” He asked after a moment.

“Mmhm.” She responded. Her head came down to rest on his shoulder, and his heart nearly stopped. It was almost wrong, the way her hair smelled nearly exactly the same way her LMD counterpart had, and his mind flashed back to the one brief moment of bliss and euphoria in the library before it had all come crashing down.

Keeping one hand on her leg, repeating his motions in a slow, soothing manner, he reached up with the other and wrapped it gingerly around her shoulders. He half expected Melinda to protest or push him away, suddenly realizing how close they’d literally gotten, but she remained silent, her eyes closed with relief.

“We’re going to be okay.” He whispered. A huge part of him knew that no matter how brave Melinda appeared, even she felt defeated and hopeless. He hugged her tighter, hoping that admittedly small action would bring her the comfort she so desperately needed.

Even The Calvary was only human.

“I hope so.” Melinda murmured. She straightened her head and looked up at him, her eyes more vulnerable than he’d ever seen.

“No, I know.” Phil insisted. “We just have to have faith.”

“You’re starting to sound like Mack.”

“But you know I’m right.”

“For once.” Melinda quipped. But a brief hint of a smile appeared on her face. “Since when do not we kick ass?”

Before he knew what was happening, he felt her lips on hers. He froze for a split second, completely shocked. But then it all came rushing at him. Melinda. Her unique scent, unmistakable even in this dank, dirty ship, the feeling of her, it all overtook his senses so that for a moment they nearly forgot where they were.

He’d been wrong. This was nothing like the LMD. This was real.

She pulled away, her lips wonderfully red and her cheeks flushed. “I-I know we said we wanted to take a step back, but…” Melinda looked away. “Well…we’re probably going to die tomorrow so…”

“You read my mind.” He responded, feeling perfectly, wonderfully, purely gleeful for the first time since her LMD had stepped back and raised her gun to his head. “I swear you have your own inhuman powers.”

“Dork.” She teased.

“You know you love it.”

“Yeah,” Melinda said softly. “I do.” She leaned in to kiss him chastely, and then pulled away again. “Phil?”

“Yes?” He said almost eagerly.

“Turn off the damn light.”

Holding back a chuckle, he reached up to flick the switch, leaving the room flooded in darkness. Melinda fell back onto the bed, pulling him with her, snuggling into him and resting her head onto his chest. His arm came up to bring her closer, and she sighed with contentment.

And for the first time that day he felt something he thought he never would again.

Hopeful. They would be okay.

#philinda #melinda may #phil coulson #agents of shield #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.#aos #philindafanfiction #aos fic

84 notes · View notes

cateliot · 8 years ago

Text

“tragic”

Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Characters: Melinda May, Phil Coulson, Jemma Simmons, Daisy Johnson, Grant Ward, and Leo Fitz.

Pairing: Phil Coulson/Melinda May

Summary: The first time he sent her in out of necessity. The second time, he had been selfish. He missed the old Melinda. The Melinda that would engage dozens of knife-wielding assassins in a duel because it was fun, because she was best, because she was fearless. In the end, it was his selfishness that broke her.

Length: 1700 words

Warnings: No Archive Warnings, some mildly graphic blood/gun shot wound descriptions

"behind every exquisite thing that existed there was something tragic"

The operation had been a blood bath.

Coulson turned the thick deadbolt on the safe house’s door and turned to look at his team. Simmons was being supported by Ward, a thick head lac seeping with blood down the left side of her face. Fitz was shaking profusely next to Skye whose face was pale and bloodless. Blood spattered over their clothes and sweat clung to their bodies.

He turned to look for May and found her at the other door, back pressed up against the wood. She looked the worst of the group, blood marring half of her body, but he wasn’t sure if it was hers or her opponents. His heart leapt into his throat. This was all his fault. How had he not anticipated an assault of this magnitude?

Without May, they’d all be dead right now.

“What is this place, sir?”

Coulson jumped slightly at the sound of Fitz’s voice. The sound seemed to break the unmoving spell and they moved tentatively into the kitchen space. Ward gently deposited Simmons into a wooden chair around the plain table. No electronics were featured in the kitchen other than a touch screen panel near the window.

“It’s a STRIKE team safe house,” he said.

The back of his throat felt gravelly and hoarse.

Skye moved clumsily to the sink. Her grip was iron clad and even from across the room, Coulson could see her white knuckles. Her body convulsed violently as she threw up. Without another thought, Ward moved to help his Rookie. One hand held back her hair while the other rubbed in soothing circles on her back.

“Try to relax,” Ward said gently, wincing as he supported her as she wretched again, “you’re going through adrenaline withdraw. It’s all right. Just try to breathe.”

When she stood up again she looked exhausted and fell into a chair next to Simmons. “What do we do now?” she asked, voice trembling.

“We send out a distress call and wait for an extraction.”

His fingers were cold on the tablet as he typed away the keys, the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo bright on the screen. There was little noise as he finished the code and message. ‘616 in need of extraction. Wounded none critical. Trap at rendezvous, but threat crossed off.’

Ward was quiet and quick as he moved around the table with the first aid kit. Coulson’s hand didn’t shake as he applied the butterfly band aid to Simmons’ forehead. She was mumbling; a long list of protocol, symptoms, procedures that could result from a head laceration. It filled up the silence around the kitchen, but did nothing to touch the coldness in the air around them.

Coulson wasn’t sure if she even knew she was doing it.

“There should be warm water and extra clothes in the bedrooms. The cabin has a cloaking technology that should keep us hidden, but that said, we can’t risk moving again until the extraction team comes.”

We have two kids on this bus who aren’t cleared for combat. You’re adding a third.

He swallowed thickly and watched as Simmons helped Fitz out of the chair and pushed him gently towards one of the bedrooms. Why didn’t he ever listen?

Skye followed them shortly after FitzSimmons, moving towards the other door and moving inside it. The normally chatty, sarcastic hacker was silent. He hated it.

“How much damage are we dealing with, Ward?”

“Banged up mostly for Skye and Fitz. Possible concussion for Skye from hitting the wall. Head lac for Simmons, but it shouldn’t need stitches. Fitz is definitely in shock and the girls should crash in the next few hours too.”

“And you?”

“I’m fine, sir,” he said smoothly, crumbling up the first aid wrappings for the trash can. His back was facing his commanding officer.

“Don’t lie to me, Grant.”

“A few broken ribs, nothing that won’t heal itself in time. We were lucky, nothing that critical. It should have been a lot worse with an assault like that.” Coulson didn’t acknowledge the fact they both knew, but his stomach turned uncomfortably. “She okay?” Ward nodded towards May.

Coulson’s eyes found the woman he had known for over 15 years.

She hadn’t moved from the spot she had chosen when they first walked in. There was a blankness growing in her eyes that he recognized from months that followed their operation in Bahrain. The knot in his stomach got heavier.

“She’s fine.”

The words tasted sour in his mouth.

“Sir?” There was a change in Ward’s voice. “My threat assessment—”

“You didn’t know. None of us did. There wasn’t a way to know that the op would go sideways. You helped get our people out. You did your job.” His hand was warm on Ward’s cold shoulder, though the younger agent didn’t look convinced. Ward nodded and moved to get up from the chair.

“It was a good call, getting May out of retirement.”

The smile he put on his face was forced and hurt down to his core.

I’m not going back in the field. This isn’t a combat op. Then you don’t need me.

He felt a heaviness on his chest as he turned again to look at May. He was quiet as he got up and with every step he took closer to his friend, he prayed to the God he had long since stopped believing in, that, please, this would not be like last time.

“May?”

His voice was barely above a whisper, but she didn’t respond. There was no indication she heard him at all. Her face was facing away from him and she didn’t move from her defensive pose in the kitchen alcove.

“Melinda?”

He reached out gently to put a hand on her forearm, but the moment his skin made contact with hers--she jerked away as if burned. He swallowed hard before trying again.

“Melinda, you’re bleeding.”

There was a persistent drip, drip, drip coming from somewhere on her body, creating a growing pool of scarlet blood on the tiled floor.

“It’ll stop.”

A flood of happy adrenaline flood his veins at the sound of her voice; the first indication she was still in there somewhere. His hand barely making contact at all, a test to see if she would allow the contact. She didn’t move away and he took that as a cue to not let go of the captured hand.

“Either I can look at it or I can go get Simmons and she can take care of it.”

She didn’t react. He pulled gently her hand towards the table and Melinda allowed herself to be pulled with him. It took a few moments for him to shed her outer combat jacket, revealing a soft tank top underneath. Blood spiraled down her shoulder, dropping off her arm like rain drops, leaving faint red rivers behind on her porcelain skin.

Early in their S.H.I.E.L.D. careers each wound he tried to treat on Melinda was a small battle, where it be a GSW or a scratch. The fact she hadn’t protested at all to him poking at her willy-nilly felt like ice water in his veins.

When he finally found what was bleeding, the gunshot was already leaking handfuls of blood.

“Jesus, Mel—”

The nickname made her blink once, slowly, and turn to glance at the scarlet wound. His breath was baited, but no response followed from the Chinese woman. He wasn’t sure if she really saw it at all before turning her head back and analyzing every corner of the room, sweeping it over and over again.

Each time her eyes got a little more far away.

I’m not going back in the field.

He tried to be as gentle as he could. His fingers barely pressed into her skin as he stitched her flesh together. There was no change in her face as the alcohol bubbled and he knew if it was him sitting there, he would be loudly cursing in pain.

Coulson’s hand slipped under the sweatshirt to try and ease it over her shoulder without disrupting the bandaged wound. He was pretty sure he just made the movement even more clumsy and when it was on her body Melinda seemed to shrink, taking up even less space than before.

I’m not going back in the field.

She had saved them, but at what cost? He didn’t object when she moved, slowly and unsure, back to her more defensive position in one of the corners of the house. He watched from the table, his fingers tips still stained in her scarlet blood.

It wasn’t an uncommon feeling to him after all their years as partners. That thought made the guilt in his chest ten times as heavy. This time had he truly been responsible for breaking his closest friend.

The first time he had sent her out of necessity. She was the only one left with the skills, with any chance to save them…and she had, saved them. She just couldn’t save herself in the weeks, months that followed.

This time.

The bile at the back of his throat was fiery and he felt the nausea in his stomach flare painfully. This time there had been no necessity. She had found a way to keep breathing. She had found a way and then he had been selfish.

He wanted her back. The old Melinda. The Melinda that would engage dozens of knife-wielding assassins in a duel because it was fun, because she was best, because she was fearless.

He had missed his best friend.

You’re really just asking me to drive the Bus?

A tear escaped and trickled down his face. He didn’t bother brushing it away. Melinda’s eyes were far away when he looked back at her. Coulson knew she was looking through him. Wherever May was, she wasn’t here, with him.

She had always been quiet, even when he had first met her in the Academy; quiet and observant, but after Bahrain her quiet turned into something poisoned, like she was trapped, drowning inside her head.

And nothing he ever did could help her float.

I’m not going back in the field.

#melindamayedit #melindamay #Phil Coulson #philcoulson #Philinda #fuckyeahphilinda #philindafanfiction #oldfic #ao3 #gunshot wound #season1 #fanfiction #fanfic #agents of shield #Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

12 notes · View notes

cateliot · 8 years ago

Text

stitched up organs

Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Characters: Melinda may, Lincoln Campbell, Phil Coulson, Jemma Simmons, (mentioned) Maria Hill, and (mentioned) Daisy Johnson

Pairing: Melinda May&Lincoln Campbell, slight Phil Coulson/Melinda May

Summary: When operating on May after a gunshot wound, Lincoln finds something in her medical file that he shouldn't.

Length: 1000 words

Warnings: No Archive Warnings, surgery mentioned (non-graphic)

The bullets had torn through her ribs and into her left lung. She had still been awake and talking by the time they had come back in from the mission. Two bullets center mass and she was still conscious.

He shook his head, even thinking about it now.

He didn’t understand, medically, how she was so calm. Nothing seemed to phase her, not even the fact that she was bleeding out in seat of a Quinjet. May had even flown the rest of the team home before the blood had started to seep into her lungs.

Lincoln leaned over to check the exit wound. Coulson accidentally startled awake. He was still holding onto one of his Deputy’s hands, their fingers intertwined.

“Sorry,” Lincoln murmured, his voice was quiet, apologetic.

He shook his head and ran a hand over his face before asking, “how is she?”

“She’s holding steady. Still unconscious as you can see. But she’s breathing on her own again which is pretty good news for these kinds of injuries.” His eyes found the monitor. His gaze held on her resting heartbeat of 40, still of unnaturally low.

He could venture why, of course—he had seen her work before. The way she was able to move at an almost impossible speed. The range of her flexibility. The precision of her attacks.

“Director Coulson?”

He looked exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot and ugly, dark circles made his skin look even paler in the midnight. Lincoln hesitated before continuing. He was surprised when they asked him onto her surgery at all. He and Agent May didn’t have the best track record, but Coulson had quieted her protest with words he didn’t catch.

“You’re listed as one of her next-of-kin…”

“We were partners out of the Academy.” Coulson sounded confused and Lincoln rushed to continue.

“Do you think Agent May would mind if I took an ultrasound of her heart?”

Coulson eyebrows contracted immediately. “Do you think there’s something wrong with her heart?” The panic was clear in his eyes.

“Oh—no, I just have never seen someone…” oh this was going to sound stupid, “someone with such a low resting heart rate.”

He hesitated for the briefest of a moment.

“No, I think it’d be okay.”

He was swift and silent with the equipment. As he ran the ultrasound wand over her skin, he was surprised by what he found. The organ was slightly larger than he expected. There were medical studies that supported the theory that Olympic athletes exhibited slightly larger than normal hearts with low resting heart rates, but Agent May was tiny to begin with and her heart was exquisite.

He watched the heart beat and pause on the monitor. Focusing on his own pulse, he could feel his beating almost twice as fast as the injured woman’s.

“What are you looking for?” There was a curiosity in Coulson’s voice that he hadn’t heard from the man before.

Lincoln’s eyes jumped up to meet his face. “I just wanted to see her heart beat. Agent May has a very low average heart rate.”

He turned to look at his boss only to find him as mesmerized by the organ as he was.

“Is that bad?”

His head began to shake before the question had finished coming from the Director’s mouth. “No it’s actually a good thing in theory. It’s just a sign of her athleticism. It’s common in Olympic swimmers, gymnasts, that sort of thing. I picked it up on the monitor.”

It was like each heartbeat she gave could be her last. As if she was somehow convincing her heart to beat again and again in the time between contractions. He understood the type of dedication, pain, endurance that it took to train a body, an organ to be in that pristine of shape.

But what about the pain that stayed?

Would there be evidence of all that heartbreak on the inside if he opened her up to prying eyes?

Daisy had mentioned parts of her training with May before Afterlife. Of her quiet and beautiful S.O. who was always fearlessly present for their team. He had been surprised to hear of someone else, most especially a non-Inhuman, working as an impromptu-transitioner. It was the closest any human had come to understanding how to control the change, the pain, the fear.

Coulson had excused himself to take a phone call; someone called ‘Maria’ as he was putting away the equipment and logging back onto the computer.

Lincoln’s eyebrows contracted slightly as he clicked on the document flagged in May's file. The document was clear, filed about six years ago; signed off by one of the SHIELD medical officers. He wasn’t entirely surprised to find their name censored out.

A DNR.

He swallowed thickly feeling the bile at the back of his throat rise uncomfortably and glanced back at the woman lying in the bed.

He had just saved the life of a woman who didn’t want to be saved.

He didn’t mention the document to anyone else until the next day when Simmons fluttered into the room to check on May’s status. She was chattering about something he couldn’t really focus on, not with the DNR weighing on his mind.

“Agent Simmons?”

“Lincoln?”

He hesitated before, “did you know that Agent May has a Do-Not-Resuscitate form on file?”

Simmons immediately avoided his gaze. The air of cheerful chattering was suddenly gone and her pleasant smile dissipated.

“Yes…I came across it while we were on the Bus.” She sighed heavily and busied herself by checking the tubes connected to May’s IV. “But when I asked Coulson about it, he ordered me to ignore it.”

Lincoln’s eyes narrowed.

“You do know that if we were in a real hospital that you wouldn’t be allowed to operate on her.”

“Yes, but here,” she hesitated, before turning to face him with iron in her gaze, “here we need her too much.”

#melindamay #philcoulson #philindafanfiction #lincoln campbell #Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.#agents of shield #fanfiction #ao3fic #DNR #fuckyeahphilinda #cateliot

22 notes · View notes

philindaforlife · 7 years ago

Text

I Wanna Be Your Endgame

So the finale absolutely destroyed me so naturally I had to write about it.

Note: title is inspired by "Endgame" by Taylor Swift. Spoilers for the season 5 finale.

Summary: Melinda May had been proposed to before. But this was one she’d never forget.

Not counting the birth of their children, most people considered their wedding day to be one of the best days of their lives, with the day they proposed (or were proposed to) a close second.

Melinda May was an exception.

She was not overly sentimental about, well, anything, instead preferring to look and move forward. Of course she had a hard time letting go of some things, or more specifically Bahrain and losing Andrew (both to divorce and to Lash). But in general, May lived in the moment, knowing full well that it was better to enjoy what she had, as it could all easily be taken away in the blink of an eye.

If she had to choose, though, she’d probably say the days she’d joined and then graduated from the Academy and became a full-fledged SHIELD agent were among the happiest days of her life, as that had been the start of 30 long, challenging, yet thrilling years. And, of course, the Academy was where she’d met the best friend she’d ever had, someone who rounded out her life perfectly, who completed her in ways she’d never thought possible.

Which was what made leaving SHIELD both the hardest and the easiest thing she’d ever do.

Read the rest on AO3.

#philinda fanfiction #philindafanfiction #melinda may #agents of shield #Phil Coulson #Philinda #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.#aos fic #aos spoilers #season 5

20 notes · View notes

cateliot · 8 years ago

Text

“iron loyalty”

Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Characters: Melinda May, Phil Coulson, Robert Gonzales, Jemma Simmons, Bobbi Morse, Clint Barton, and (mentioned) Natasha Romanoff.

Pairing: Phil Coulson/Melinda May

Summary: Gonzales finds that trying to break Melinda May is harder than it looks, especially when she’s protecting Phil Coulson.

Length: 4100 words

“They say you can’t love someone unless you love yourself first. Lies. I have never loved myself, but you…oh god, I loved you so much I forgot what hating myself felt like.”

She hadn’t moved since they had thrown her in the box. Her blood had boiled over at the sight of being contained in the same cell Ward had. The traitor’s cell. She refused to touch the bed—his bed—and moved to the far corner of the cell where she had calmly folded herself into a meditative pose where she could see any oncoming attack.

The hard wall was cold against her back, but she didn’t mind as it kept her alert. Dozens of people walked by, some nervously watching her from behind the clear electric glass, others focused on an inventory of the base.

“Ah, Agent May, I see you’ve woken up.”

She bit her tongue sharply to calm her angry heart rate at the sight of plump and overdressed Gonzales. She had never liked the man, even back when she had graduated from the Academy and they met on a mission briefing in Naples.

He was seated in a chair in front of her, fingers twiddling with his cane, watching her with his head tilted slightly to left like she was a curiosity and he was an observer at the zoo.

May gave no indication she heard him.

He sighed and leaned back in the plastic chair he had plopped down in front of her cell. “Agent May, you know how this goes. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”

It took a great amount of self-control not to roll her eyes at that.

He droned on about Coulson and his plans. In the days following, she couldn’t distinguish the different conversations from each other; in the end they were all the same. She tuned him out, a skill she had learned early on from her S.O. in the Academy.

Instead she focused on something else with his every visit: doing every move in the series of her morning tai chi in her head, replaying conversations she and Coulson had during their long nights out on their first missions, collecting ingredients for Chinese recipes her mother used to make around the holidays, anything but the fact Coulson was out there alone without backup.

So she kept still.

And she kept quiet.

After a week of her barely moving an inch, they send Jemma inside. She didn’t move when they pushed her through the perimeter of the cell, armed guards pointing automatic guns at her as she blankly looked over at the tiny scientist.

She supposed she should feel honored that they thought she was that much of a threat.

Melinda turned her attention to Jemma who seemed like a quaking, tiny mouse. She seemed ruffled by the excessive force, May didn’t move from her corner as Simmons straightened her polka dotted blouse and moved to come and kneel next to her.

“May, oh my god.”

Over Simmons’ shoulder, May saw Bobbi and Gonzales watching carefully from the corner of the room. Gonzales leaning on his cane, intently watching their interaction behind his glasses.

“Simmons,” May grabbed her wrist to stop her and felt a wave of dizziness wash over her as the sudden motion. “Jemma, stop.”

The girl’s eyes got wider. “May, you’re sick,” she shuffled through the large doctor’s bag she had been thrown inside with. “Here, let me help. You’re heart’s metabolic rate is entirely too slow, even for your normal, relaxed levels. And this certainly isn’t relaxed. When was the last time you ingested anything?”

May’s head spun trying to keep up with woman’s quick English. It was getting harder to convert from English and her native Cantonese and back at her normal speed. Her chest burned as she forced herself to try and breathe, to move. She managed to grab Simmons’ hand before it reached her skin with needle.

“Simmons—no, stop.”

“No, really, it’ll make a big difference in your ability to—”

“Jemma, if you don’t stop, I’m going to have to hurt you.”

The girl reeled back immediately.

Shock and fear echoed off her face as she sat back on her heels. May could see tears pricking the backs of her brown eyes. Somewhere in her chest, she felt bad, but if it kept Coulson safe, she could handle it.

“You helped Coulson escape.”

May inclined her head at the confirmation of facts both women already knew. “I have details about Fury’s toolbox, if you have some way of contacting him, I could brief him about the situation, about you. I—I promise I won’t tell.”

Her eyes anxiously locked onto May’s face.

“You’re a bad liar, Simmons,” May said gently.

“The room’s bugged,” she revealed, her voice wavering terribly.

“I know.”

“They said they would let you out if I got you to tell me where you sent Coulson.” She looked miserable, May observed. Her hair lacked its normal youthful bounce in its curls, her face looked more washed out, and her eyes drooped.

“Fitz left.”

“You should have gone with him.” May was careful to keep her voice gentle and soft as fatigue overwhelmed her.

“I can’t just leave,” she said, “someone needs to stay here for when everything goes back to normal.”

May smiled inwardly at her innocence even after everything that had happened, the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D., Fitz’s accident, her uncover stint at HYDRA, Ward. Another dizzy spell made her close her eyes and rest her head back on the cold wall supporting her.

“May, you have to eat something.”

She had found tiny puncture marks on the first day they tried to feed her, both on the water bottle’s lid and the underside of the granola bar wrapper. After that she knew it wasn’t safe.

“Sodium thiopental.”

“What?”

“Sodium amytal. Scopolamine.”

May’s eyes flickered open to see confusion on the young scientist’s face. “All are barbiturates, sometimes used in third world countries for anesthesia, but have been replaced in the United States. I don’t understand. What do they have to do with…”

Understanding dawned on her face and her cheeks flamed red with anger.

May glanced up to meet the eyes Gonzales.

“They forget who they’re dealing with.”

“You’re handling her wrong,” Bobbi snapped as the Director entered. He didn’t seemed fazed as he calmly sat down to the monitor and took a large gulp of water from the glass on the table. “You can’t force Melinda May to talk. She’s going to die of malnutrition if you leave her in there. She caught on to your sly plan of trying to dose her.”

He turned towards her finally. “If she’s going to die, it’s of her own accord. S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn’t touched her.”

“She is S.H.I.E.L.D.!” Bobbi snapped harshly.

Then they sent Bobbi.

The deception expert and interrogation master looked nervous as she approached cell and a foot away from the rectangular box. May was sure she looked bad. She was silent and there seemed to be a silent struggle for power.

Finally, Melinda won and Bobbi spoke.

“We can help you, May, just give me something, anything.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“May…”

“Don’t come here looking for absolution,” May hissed, moving into a standing position to face the blonde agent, “you feel guilty for betraying us, deal with it.”

“You know nothing about the situation here, or what happened on that boat with HYDRA,” Bobbi fired off loudly. She stalked outside the cell angrily like a lioness.

“I know everything about loyalty.”

May’s dark eyes bore into her blue ones.

Bobbi gritted her teeth. “You let him escape,” she refocused. May said nothing, just watched her impassively. There hadn’t been a question.

“Where did you send him? One of your safe houses? I know you have safe holds on every continent. We could have resolved this peacefully. They’re going to try and take him in with deadly force now.”

“Don’t pretend to have a stake in this game, Agent Morse, you are no longer a part of this team. You’re just a chess piece for the other team to conduct. And when the time comes for us to face off, Hunter will join us and we will protect him against you.”

The blonde recoiled as if May had struck her.

“We know you know everything about his operation, May. You’ve worked together since the Academy, you’ve been his second in command since S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fall. You were his secret keeper.”

May felt her heart spin and she stepped back from the fizzling glass. “Back at the Academy, they say the only person you couldn’t read in interrogation is Natasha Romanoff,” May said conversationally as she folded herself back into her corner. Bobbi’s eyebrows contracted, confused.

“I was her S.O.”

Another week later, all her energy was focused on trying to stay upright. She was no longer sure the cycles of days and nights. Her head almost always felt like it was spinning. The nausea was almost constant now. Her chest felt like it was on fire.

“Agent Simmons says she thinks you have a collapsing lung,” Gonzales said casually, “probably damaged in a previous fight and now doesn’t have enough energy to continue healing itself. She estimates you have about 24 hours before you lose it.”

“I’m pretty sure you can live with only one,” she replied coolly.

The man growled in frustration. “Agent May, I have never met anyone with a smaller sense of self-preservation than you,” he thundered. She smirked, but he continued, “so I’ve come with a peace offering.”

He held up a standard S.H.I.E.L.D. operation summary folder and May felt the floor fall out from under her. Her world spun and her stomach plummeted to her toes.

“Where did you get that?”

A cruel smile snaked onto his face and he sat down in the same chair he had occupied over and over again. The thick, heavy folder was worn. In large, bold letters it read:

MANAMA, BAHRAIN 2007

CLASSIFIED: LEVEL 10

May felt her stomach knot and her chest feel like someone had sliced it open. She knew it had nothing to do with malnutrition or her dying lung and everything to do what was in that text.

“I called in an old, old favor from an equally old friend. I’m tired of this song and dance, Agent May, and I’m sure you are too. I have dozens of agents upstairs vouching for you upstairs, furious that I’m keeping The Calvary in a tiny twelve by twelve box.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Her voice had lost most of its conviction as and she struggled to breathe and Gonzales only seemed amused.

“So here’s how this is going to work, you tell me where you sent Coulson and the location of your safe houses and his, then I will give you this,” he tapped the folder for sharp emphasis, “to do whatever you please with.”

Coulson’s dead body surrounded by the debris of the Battle of New York flashed to the forefront of her mind and the shards of her heart clenched painfully, slicing the insides of her chest.

“Go to hell.”

He looked less than impressed.

“Not the correct answer, Agent May.”

May leaned back against the wall feeling the black dots around her eyes dance. Breathe Melinda, breathe, she told herself. Focus on the movement. In and out. In and out. Push everything else away. As long as you’re silent, Coulson and the others are safe.

“If you continue to ignore me, Agent, I’m going to sit here and read it to you.”

Her escape party startled her out of an unconscious haze of Bahrain nightmares.

The assault of gunfight hotwired her body’s natural response to danger and her eyes shot opened. Her muscles tensed as she tried to move to a standing position, feeling her chest burn more than ever before. “Damn it, Melinda, focus,” she growled under her breath. She couldn’t recognize either side fighting there was such chaos. Gun fire recoiled off her cell wall and she jerked back.

The edges of her blurred and by the time it cleared, a face was peering down at her. One she recognized.

“What’s up, Mels.”

Clint.

She released the breath she didn’t know she could even be holding. “Clint,” she coughed, “what are you doing here?”

He smiled charmingly, turning slightly to the left to fire three shots through the hole he had puncture in the cell. “One of your duckling sent out the SOS,” he said, “and it’s time for our exit plan.”

He pulled her up with one hand, keeping a gun trained on the opening. The second he let go and her standing support and she crumpled, her feet failing under her.

Concern lit up the archer’s features and his eyes coursed over her.

“Whoa there. Easy, easy—Melinda? Hey, focus for me,” he said as he caught her before she hit the floor. May’s eyes went in and out of focus and for a moment the sound of gunfire seemed to fade. “All right, time to go, you are going to kill me for this later but,” he murmured as he easily hoisted her into his arms in the traditional bridal pose.

“You’re in charge of this.” He thrusted something metal into her unsteady hands and her reflexes cocked the gun without her mind even registering Clint shoving the Glock into her hands.

“There’s the girl we know and love,” he said, soothingly. “MARIA!” Out of the corner of her eye, May saw Maria Hill turn at the sound of her name. “I have the package. Time to go.”

As Hawkeye turned the stairs, May jerked back at the gun’s sudden recoil in her hand. Her eyes caught the sight of a man’s body dropping to the ground behind them. Clint stopped short, glancing back at the now dead operative, his automatic weapon not far from his side. The stray bullet that had been aiming from May and Clint’s backs missed and hit one of the computers.

“I forgot how much I like having you on my six, Mels.”

Simmons screamed as one of Hill’s guard grabbed her from where she had ducked under an overturned table and flung her over his shoulder. The gunfire exploded overhead was the last thing she remembered.

May was aware of someone’s presence in the room with her as soon as her eyes began to flutter.

“Easy, Mels. Go slow.”

The voice came from as the light stung at her eyes her vision took in the soft image of a spare bedroom, light purple walls, the beeping of machines, and a white bed comforter.

Clint was in hospital bed next to her. His soft blue flannel shirt rubbed up against shoulder. He looked slightly scruffier than the last time she had seen him, a few months after Coulson’s death with Nat.

“You attacked two guards and one of the nurses. I told them not to try and wake you, but they didn’t listen.” She relaxed against the pillow and felt her body leech the warm that the archer was giving off. The man she considered the brother gave her a half smile.

“So I convinced that biochem girl of yours to let me stay in with you in case you went nuts again. Maria wanted to try and minimize the causalities.”

“Simmons?”

Her voice cracked and he eased the cup on the end table next to him up to her lips. The water was cool against the back of her throat.

“Fine. You’ve been out about five days, but we’ve been watching out for her. She’s downstairs with JARVIS. Those two should get a room with all the physics mumbo jumbo they’ve been spouting the last few days. I think Maria’s only staying to play chaperone.”

She hummed and felt the blowtorch in her chest intensify. She burrowed in the pile of blankets next to him, unable to shake off the feeling of ice on all of her limbs.

“Why didn’t you call us after S.H.I.E.L.D. fell? We could have been allies? What happened that you two went from being the leaders of an organization to being on the run and captives?” There was an undertone of betrayal in his voice and Melinda’s heart jerked painfully.

“We were betrayed.”

Her voice was quiet. And there was a the soft hum of machines in the background as May ran her fingers up and down the IV and god knew how many other tubes Simmons had connected her to.

“How long til—”

“Don’t even think about it. You did a really nice job breaking yourself this time. Luckily Banner and your duckling could repair most of the damage.”

The side of her vision began to blur with blackness and jerked up in the bed, her pulsing racing with the anxiety of not being about to control her body. One of the monitors went crazy with a screeching hiss.

“Just relax,” Barton’s voice was soothing, but not the same comfort as Coulson’s. His hand eased her back against the pillows and a hurricane of dizziness and hot pain assaulted her as she fought against the darkness stealing her into unconscious.

“If you don’t relax the machines are going to make your ducking come up here and yell at us. Melinda, try to breathe…”

“Phil.”

The intent of the word was clear because he just gave her his usual dazzling smile. “No idea, you won’t tell anyone of us his location and we’ve asked, several times. Pretty sure that’s why you took out Happy. It means you didn’t tell them.”

He put his hand over hers, the smaller one disappearing into the folds of the blanket under his larger one.

“He’s safe for now. You did good, Mels.”

She blacked out.

Carrying May’s latest test results she moved into the kitchen to find Agents Barton and Hill only to stumble upon an argument in the tiled room of one of Stark’s safe houses.

“—never wanted to go back into the field in the first place,” Barton was saying and as she rounded the corner she jumped at the sight of her boss standing in the kitchen light, sleep deprived, slightly crumpled, but very much there.

“SIR?”

The two men jumped apart and Barton stuffed his hands in his pants pockets dejectedly. “Simmons, good to see you.” The greeting rang weird in their current situation. “Are you all right?”

Her tongue felt slightly thick in her mouth as she responded. “I’m not the one who almost died. Is Fitz with you?”

The agent shook his head. “No, he’s back at another safe house with Tripp.”

"Where she should have been," Barton hissed under his breath. Coulson jerked around to face him, but before he could get any words out, they were cut off.

“I think we all need to cool down,” Maria Hill barked, appearing on the other side of Jemma. “Arguing is only going to upset her more. We’re all here for the same reason…Melinda.”

Hearing the Chinese woman’s first name spoken was so strange that she almost missed the Commander’s next statement.

“Are those her latest labs?”

Simmons blinked. “Err, yes. Her protein and glucose levels have plateaued since yesterday. I’m going to up the dose of antibiotics just to make sure she doesn’t get an infection in the lung…sir, have you seen her yet?”

Coulson’s eyes were scanning the lab paper that Hill had handed him and glanced up for the briefest of moments. “No, not yet.”

Her eyes brows quirked.

“She needs you.”

Barton’s growl was low.

Coulson sighed and ran a hand over his face.

“She needs to get better.”

Barton threw up his hands and scoffed. “Please, she hasn’t been your priority since Fury handed you the keys to the kingdom. You know it, I know it, and she knows it. The problem is she’s the same as Melinda she was when we got out of the Academy. She doesn’t know how to look out for herself and then things like this happen.”

“This isn’t like before. You don’t know what happened in ther—”

Maria put her hand on Coulson’s shoulder and the man quieted softly. “We all just need to whatever is going to help Melinda. If that’s waiting until Natasha gets here or calling Andrew, then we need to do that. If that’s waiting until she is past the rough points before Phil goes up then we do that.”

Simmons realized in that moment that she knew almost nothing about the woman on the floor above her. Two years together and the names being thrown around so casually were unknown to her. She didn’t know a thing that would help her heal.

But she did know one thing…

“Sir, I think she’d like to see you.”

“Despite your expanded knowledge of the world, Simmons, there are still some things that you don’t understand, Simmons, and Melinda May is one of them.”

Simmons jerked back at the terse tone growled from her boss’ throat. Up close she could see the dark bags standing out on his skin, the more defined wrinkles along the corners of his mouth, and a redness in his eyes.

“She was going to die in there for you…” Simmons flushed slightly and cleared her throat to raise her voice, “Gonzales wanted to know where you and the box were and the only one who knew was May. But she wasn’t going to tell him. She would have died instead of betraying you.”

May’s eyes fluttered to find the moon at its full glory in the window and a hand holding her own. She immediately knew who it was even before their eyes met.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said breathily.

Coulson smiled and straightened in the chair beside her bed. “Clint called,” he said simply and she nodded in understanding. “I had to see you for myself.”

“I’m fine,” she brushed his off concern with an eye roll, agitated with just how rusted her voice was. She was suddenly happy for the puddle of blankets on the bed, covering her form from his concerned gaze.

“Simmons said you almost died,” he said quietly, his hand rubbing small circles mindlessly on the inside of her wrist. The intimacy of the movement couldn’t be missed but May wasn’t even sure he consciously knew he was doing it.

His eyes searched her face for an answer to the question he didn’t ask and her voice was still cracked when she answered.

“I promised you it wouldn’t happen again.”

His eyes melted into hers and the unspoken part of the conversation was much louder than the silence that followed. Remnants of the weeks following Bahrain scrambled through both of their minds, her failed suicide missions, razor blades, and her attempts to disappear.

“I can’t do this by myself, you know,” Phil said, carefully interlocking their fingers. The light from the window glinted off their clasped fingers, melting shadows onto their faces.

He was wearing her favorite suit she noticed, how he managed to find it from the mess he had left for her after his death she didn’t know, but the smooth slate grey highlighted his blue eyes even in the darkness.

“We had an agreement you know,” his voice rolled like waves and Melinda felt the overwhelming sense of sleepiness overcome her, “no one gets to die alone.”

She had bled all over the jacket once, in Tibet after a shootout that left her with two bullets to the side after she had pushed her partner out of the way of oncoming fire. The crimson had bled through the grey fabric in a stain that spread over almost all the jacket.

“You died first,” her voice was barely above a whisper.

She had secretly been pleased when he sent it to the dry cleaner in Bangkok who managed to clean it as good as knew but she would never admit it.

From right outside the door, Jemma was biting her lip to be quiet. “Is anyone else’s heart breaking right now?” she whispered to immediately be “sshhed” by the ex-Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avenger.

“You guys know we can hear you, right?” Coulson called out.

He glanced back down at Melinda with a jovial glint in his eyes as squeezed her hand. In that moment, their look conveying the words that both of them were unable to speak.

#Philinda #philindafanfiction #philcoulson #fuckyeahphilinda #fanfiction #4k #torture #PTSD #melindamay #phil coulson #season2 #loyalty

30 notes · View notes

cateliot · 8 years ago

Text

“like you’ll always make it home”

Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Characters: Melinda May, Phil Coulson, Phil Coulson’s Mom, (minor) Nick Fury, and (minor) Jasper Sitwell.

Pairing: Melinda May/Phil Coulson

Length: 4200 words

Summary: The last time Julie Coulson saw her son, he was graduating from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Operations Academy, but now he’s all grown up with an apartment, a gun, and a partner…who just happens to be a woman.

Phillip Coulson had been pacing around for the last half an hour trying to find something else to clean in the apartment he shared with his partner and teammate. It didn’t help that his best friend was a frustratingly clean person in general which left him with nothing to be able to mop, dust, or polish.

So he settled for the next best thing and picked up his cell from the coffee table and dialed the second number listed. She answered on the first ring with an amused:

“Phil, you need to breathe.”

“I can’t,” he gushed, “she’s going to be here in less than ten minutes. What if she doesn’t like the apartment? Oh god, what if she thinks that I’ve wasted by entire life by not going to college and doesn’t see how dedicated I really am to the greater good?”

There was silence on the other line until he ran out of breath and then Melinda May spoke again.

“You need to calm down. Your mother adores you and she’s going to be proud of you whether you can eat off the apartment’s floor or not.”

“You’re right,” he said, deflating slightly and dropping like a dead weight onto their leather couch.

“Always am. Now go channel your inner Captain America on the way to the airport. Agent Blake keeps glaring at me for talking on the phone during his debriefing.”

He forced himself to exhale.

“’kay. Meet you at the restaurant at seven.”

“See you.”

He felt marginally better after hanging up and calmly walked to get his keys.

His mother was coming.

Julie Coulson was a gentle woman by nature.

She was humble and a homemaker. She had wanted to be a mother since the first moment she had met her husband. Self-reliant and an excellent baker, she had raised her son alone from the time he was ten after his father died to a drunk driver.

So when Phil sat her down after his freshman year of college saying that he was leaving to become a spy, she was not impressed. He spoke about S.H.I.E.L.D. (“It stands for Strategic, Homeland, Intervention and Logistics Division, mom—it’s for the greater good!”) this government agency known for their international espionage and guns and violence and—she still got chills thinking about the danger.

But she had adapted, just as she had when her husband died, to only seeing her child on holidays and hushed phone calls on the weekends.

He picked her up at the airport, carrying her luggage to a black SUV that she knew he’d never pick out himself. Phil chattered the entire way to his apartment; about his new assignment, about the new house she bought, about the weather in DC, and she chimed in appropriately, happy to just get a look at the son she hadn’t seen since graduation.

He was taller, more muscled than she remembered. Older. In a way she couldn’t quantify. His hair was in a shorter, new style and he was in a suit she had never seen, but was classic and oddly reminiscent of his father’s teaching suits.

“So this is me,” Phil said, rushing forward to unlock the door. “My partner and I are roommates, but she’s still at a briefing.”

She?

Julie forced herself to not remark on that fact just yet and take in her son’s new home.

The apartment was nicer than she expected for his first place; a two bedroom with huge windows and a tiny balcony in a large bricked building. It was located on near one of the more historic districts of D.C and their apartment was on the fourth floor, overlooking part of the city. There was a kitchen that opened out to the living area and a beautiful spacious living room.

“It’s lovely, Phil.”

His cheeks flushed red and she could tell her son was jumping up and down on the inside. Something things never changed.

“You think so?”

She nodded with a smile, her fingers brushed the bookshelf (she recognized the comics from her son’s room, all in alphabetical order and recently dusted) and the blanket on the couch was old and worn and nothing she recognized.

“I mean, she picked it out and we spend so much time together anyways that it’s not like we don’t work well together, so we just thought, what the heck. I thought it was a pretty sweet set up.”

“You learned Chinese?” She held up one of the thick books on the coffee table. Phil turned around quickly and his eyes widened. “Wha—oh no. That’s Melinda’s.”

Melinda’s.

The girl her son had been living with had a name.

“And how long have you two lived together?”

“Me and Melinda? Uh—since after graduation. She came to D.C. right from the Academy and I came after I spent the summer back home.”

Scanning through the kitchen, she turned back to face her down twenty-three-year-old son. His hands were wringing slightly in front of him, nervous as the day she had dropped him off in the first grade.

“So tell me what you’ve been up to.”

And he did.

Without giving away too many details of his assignment or his missions or even his job in general, he spoke of his travels, of his supervising officer, of the stress of his job, and his adventures.

“…but Melinda’s much better at the whole transient thing than I am thought.”

“But you two aren’t—”

“Mom!”

On the way to dinner back at her hotel, she couldn’t contain her interest any more.

“So tell me about her.”

“Mom—” Phil began, but Julie leaned forward in her seat, adjusting her purse and seat belt to look at him better before cutting him off.

“Before prom you had never brought a girl home, Phillip, and now you just casually drop the bomb that you live with one now. I’m entitled to be a little nosy. We’re going to meet her after all.”

Phil sighed and looked straight through the windshield for several minutes. The lights from traffic and the lit up city bounced off his face, making him look older than she had ever seen him.

“What do you want to know about her?”

“Anything you want to tell me.”

Phil let out a lengthy breath. “Uh, she’s quiet and fast and really, really good at her job.” He hesitated for another moment before continuing, “And she’s got all these boundaries that makes it really hard to get to know her. It’s really frustrating except she’s funny and kind…and she makes you feel like you’re always going to make it home.”

Was that a little more than admiration she heard in her son’s voice?

“She sounds like quite the young lady.”

“She is.”

Julie smiled and was quiet the rest of the way.

She was beautiful.

That was the first thing she noticed about her son’s partner. She was Chinese, the very epitome of Asian elegance and grace. Her skin porcelain and fine and she had a head full of long dark hair that was sleek in the dimmed lights of the restaurant.

And she was tiny. That was the second thing Julie noticed. How small she stood next to Phil, how little the structure of her bones were. Especially when he went to put a hand on the small of her back to usher her to the table after greeting her at the door of the restaurant.

As Melinda drew closer however, she noticed her large, captivatingly dark eyes and she knew that it wasn’t her statue, but the absolutely mesmerizing way she held herself when she walked that attracted everyone’s eyes in the room to her.

And Julie Coulson had the sudden realization that this girl was so very out of her son’s league.

“Mom this is my partner, Melinda May. Mel, this is my mom, Julie Coulson.”

She smiled softly and reached out a delicate hand towards Julie before the older woman closed the space between them with a bone crushing hug. The smaller woman jumped slightly at the unexpected gesture before relaxing a fraction of a moment under her touch.

When she released the tiny crane of a girl, she caught Phil wincing slightly at the gesture before planting a forced smile on his face. She matched it with one of her own.

“It’s lovely to meet you, dear. Shall we?”

Dinner was a surprisingly gentle affair. Between the white wine and the appetizer of cheeses and grapes, Julie was successfully wooed by the quiet, intelligent girl in front of her.

“And where did you attend college, Melinda?”

“I attended a private school in China when I was a child with a focus on geopolitics and Asian-Middle Eastern languages,” Phil straightened slightly next to Julie, “but I was recruited for S.H.I.E.L.D. at seventeen, so I didn’t have a chance to attend to proper university in the States.”

Melinda’s eyes downcast slightly as the revelation came from her lips, like she wasn’t sure about sharing so much in a single sentence.

Julie opened her mouth in surprise and struggled to properly respond when Phil’s phone rang and shattered the peaceful mood. He excused himself, standing up from the chair and slipping towards the edges of the room, intently listening to the person on the other side of the line.

“How long have you known Phil?”

Melinda’s eyes turned back instantly on Julie from watching Phil talk on the phone. They were brighter up close, she noticed, just as large and captivating as they had been from far away, but more intense and intelligent up close, as if she was seeing so much more than everyone else at the table.

“We met in the Academy our first year,” Melinda said with a small smile, “we had hand to hand combat together.”

She took a sip of wine as Phil returned, sliding into the seat next to her.

(Was the girl even old enough to drink? Up close, she seemed deceivingly young in appearance and misleadingly adult in her aura.)

“You have to work?” Julie couldn’t let the disappointment seep from her voice when he returned, but Phil shook his head and handed the phone over to Melinda who gracefully rose up from her chair.

“I thought you and Melinda were partners? Don’t you both have to go together?”

“Not always. Melinda’s a specialist so sometimes they need her for stuff them don’t need me on.”

“Oh.”

She noted the way he watched Melinda walk with interest; how his gaze followed her form with concern, and his eyes lingered on her lips as she talked.

“They need a combat pilot,” Melinda’s voice was low as she passed the phone back to Phil and reseated herself at the table and taking a sip of water next to her wine.

“For Hand?”

“No with Harding and his team.”

“You can fly planes?”

Both Phil and Melinda turned to look at Julie in surprise as if they had both forgotten she was there, intruding on their private moment.

“I have a pilot’s license.”

Their eyes met again for the briefest of moments before Phil spoke.

“Uh, do you want to take the car?”

She shook her head before the offer had finished coming out of Phil’s mouth, “Fury is swinging by to grab me.”

Phil groaned and scrubbed his hands with his face, making Melinda smirk brightly.

Fury turned out to be a very tall, black leather clad, imposing man, in his early thirties, who got quite a bit of attention as he strutted through the dimmed dining hall towards them. He threw Melinda a black small duffle bag, and called over, “Suit up. We gotta roll out of here in 15. Nice tie there, Coulson.”

Phil had worn his tie with the tiny Captain American shields on it and had been fidgeting with it all night. Julie wasn’t sure if it was because she was here or because Melinda was.

However before her son could pipe up, Melinda tilt her head back with a casual, “Hi, Nick. It’s nice to see you too. My evening’s been lovely, thanks for asking.”

The man let out a gruff laugh.

“Hello May.”

His growl was affectionate and she smirked up at him before gracefully twirled towards the women’s restroom with the bag he had delivered. Fury rolled his eyes and took Melinda’s vacant chair, watching her retreating form with interest.

It seemed her son wasn’t the only one interested in this young lady’s backside.

Phil cleared his throat. “Uh, Boss, this is my mom, Julie. She’s visiting from Wisconsin. Mom, this is my supervising officer, Nick Fury.”

The man straightened up in his chair and leaned over the table to firmly shake her hand. His eyes seemed to stare straight through her. Phil had spoken about him before; his unflappable calm, imposing nature in the field, and unique ability to reduce groups of cadets to tears.

“It’s good to meet you, Mister Fury. I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

“Pleasure, Mrs. Coulson.” He turned back to focus on Phil. “Cheese, can you help hook May up to her comms?”

Julie raised her eyebrow at the nickname, but didn’t remark on it. (Perhaps it was a spy thing, some sort of code word, and the silly pet name that it sounded like.) As Phil went to help his partner, she leaned forward and patted the younger man arm, “so tell me, Mister Fury, how my son doing?”

She must have made the man slightly uncomfortable with the sudden moment and touch because the man’s eyes darted around the room for a moment looking for an escape before he spoke.

“Phil’s a good man, a good agent. He’ll go far.”

“And his partner?”

Fury smirked then and leaned back in his chair, suddenly comfortable, and took a large mouthful of white wine from Melinda’s glass.

“Melinda May, specialist.”

There was that word again, specialist. Julie wasn’t sure if she wanted to know just what areas the girl his son was living with was so elite at.

“Phil’s my only child. A mother worries, you know.”

Something about that made the man’s smirk broaden, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Coulson, the safest place for your son is with Melinda May.”

Phil was supposed to taking her sightseeing to all the major parts of D.C. The usual place: the White House, Smithsonian, Washington Monument, to introduce her to the city that he was a part of now. Being from a small town in Wisconsin, she had never traveled to the east coast, let alone D.C. before.

They had spent the rest of the week since dinner talking on the phone or shopping near her hotel. He had made her dinner in his apartment and enjoyed just being reunited after the months they had spent apart.

Julie sat on the patio outside her hotel, relaxing in the sunlight when a voice caught her attention.

“Mrs. Coulson?”

She turned to see Melinda approaching her with a small, somewhat unsure smile. She was just as pretty as she was just a few nights ago, only instead of a black lace, she wore a silk white halter top underneath a creased black leather jacket that looked one size too big, dark jeans, and dark boots.

“Phil mentioned that he was supposed to take you sightseeing around the city…”

“He got called in.”

There wasn’t a question in her voice.

Melinda nodded. “I could still take you if you wanted. I don’t know as much about all the historical aspects of the city as him, but…” The offer hung in the air, gentle and unassuming.

Julie smiled before she could help it.

“Call me Julie, dear.”

Melinda flashed her badge discretely as they entered the White House and they were ushered through a side door to the quieter halls, away from the school groups and gaggles of tourists. Everything in the building was mopped up and clean to an almost sparkling degree. The crown molding and details were shining and Julie wondered how many hours of polishing it took to get a place looking so spotless.

They passed groups of well-dressed businessmen and people she assumed were politicians. Back in Manitowoc, no one focused much on the bigger politics more than the usual neighborhood gossip and the sheriff reelection.

Melinda stopped short at one of the double doors on their right and turned to look at Julie. “Would you like to see inside?” Melinda’s voice was still quiet.

Julie turned around to face her with a slightly confused look as Melinda gracefully nodded to the man outside the doors to the office. Julie pretended not to notice how Melinda flashed her badge.

The man’s eyes coursed over her for one second before moving back to Melinda and opening the door and allowing them to pass swiftly into the room.

“He’s not here,” Melinda said smoothly, closing the door behind them. “The president and his wife are in China trying to work on an anti-intelligence bill.”

“Are you going to get in trouble for that?”

She snorted and her eyes sparkled.

“We worked a black tie event for them a few weeks ago and I shot the assassin with a sniper rifle on the roof, so probably not…unless they tell Fury.”

Julie felt her heart leap a little at her words.

She could imagine that her son was marching around these very halls in his new suit. It was a startling reality, so real she could also touch it front of her (she was good at imagining that worst case scenarios, after all, her husband’s car being smashed by a drunk driver had never been something she thought to worry about) but far enough away that she could tell herself that he was just a boy. Nothing bad was going to happen. After all, how much danger could a government agency really let him get into at twenty-three years old?

Melinda was doing a very good job of shattering her securely wrapped reality.

They toured the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial before having tea in a beautiful hole in the wall tea shop which serve the sweetest of green teas that Julie had ever tried. Melinda was a model tour guide; quiet and intelligent, not intrusive as she pointed out different spots of the city, but the more she learned about the city, the less she learned about the woman herself.

She decided on a more direct approach.

“Did you always want to work for S.H.I.E.L.D., Melinda?”

It was the most direct question Julie had managed to wrangle towards her all day. Melinda seemed to have the gift to talking about everything and nothing, allowing Julie to learn absolutely nothing of substance about the woman her son was living with.

The girl’s lips were hidden behind her teacup and she didn’t speak for a moment.

“I grew up with a single mother in the intelligence business,” she said, wrapping her hands around the cup and setting it on the table with an almost soundless clink, “and I was always meant to be a spy.”

“Why not stay with your mother?”

The quirk in Melinda’s lips told her there was a story behind her choosing S.H.I.E.L.D. and not her mother’s agency, but Julie could tell even now that she wasn’t going to be privy to it.

“Better dental plan.”

Julie smiled.

They were supposed to be taking a short cut back to her hotel back between Elwood and Marion Street when a group of three hoodie men started walking behind them. The alley was dark, but wasn’t frightening, until she realized they were being followed. Julie knew she noticed them long after Melinda did.

Her hand automatically wrapped a little tighter around her purse. This was nothing like Manitowoc.

Glancing over, Melinda seemed completely at ease, calm, as if she didn’t even notice the men.

There was a loud and foul clank like metal pounding concrete and Julie forced herself to not turn around to see what had caused it.

“Julie, move over towards my right side, please.” Melinda’s voice changed from her previous unassuming tone to a strong, direct order and Julie felt herself obey it without question.

The fight was short lived and the three robbers was woefully short lived. Melinda moved with the grace of ripping water in a speed that was almost inhuman. Julie’s eyes couldn’t catch the individual moves she made, each was a part of the next.

The violence of it was startling and ugly.

And at the sound of the single gunshot that rang out, Julie jolted forward, her feet catching in the concrete in front of her. Her arms came out to catch her, and she could feel her heart beating quickly, almost racing out of her chest.

Just as suddenly as the fight has begun, a hand sat her up. Melinda turned from the side of the houses at the mouth of the alley and her hand came to rest on Julie’s shoulder, tilting her back in the moonlight.

“Mrs. Coulson? You’re all right. Just try to relax.”

Her tone was soothing, peaceful almost and Julie latched onto. As her surrounding came more into focus, she adjusted to the scraps on her hands and elbow from where she had fell and looked up at Melinda who looked as prim and proper as she had standing in the Oval Office hours ago.

A specialist indeed.

“I-I thought I told you to call me Julie, dear.”

Melinda’s large, dark eyes didn’t waver from her face, checking over her, Julie presumed for medical inventory, and there was a safety in that that lowered Julie’s heart-rate.

She broke off eye contact first, turning her head to glance over at the three unconscious men that the little girl in front of her had just taken down with such ease.

“May, Melinda Q. Code Alpha 078634.” Melinda spoke rapid fire into the phone that suddenly materialized from her back pocket, her eyes coursing over the scene. Julie recognized Chinese when she heard it and the phone call was short. Without a second glance towards the unconscious, now tied up, vagrants, Melinda’s hand tilted her arm up to the fading sunlight.

The blood shone in the light like a red-black jewel.

“Just try to breathe.”

The cars that arrived post her phone call arrived quickly in a flurry of movement.

“Mom!”

She felt silly then, about all the fright she had felt, as Phil ran towards her in his suit and tie. He kneeled down with her in the alley.

“Three assailants. One shot. It hit the back wall. We need to get a clean-up team on standby.”

“Phil, don’t make such a fuss. You’ll get your suit all crinkled and dirty.”

God knows how long it would take to get the alley dirt out of his favorite suit.

“What the hell happened?”

Agent Fury was there, behind them with another agent at his side and Melinda eased back from Phil and Julie to speak with them. Julie could only hear part of Fury’s later comment over Phil’s fussing.

“…idiots chose the wrong people to try and rob…”

“I really am fine, dear. You’re overreacting.” Her hand came to gently hold both sides of his face. His eyes coursed over his body in a similar fashion that Melinda’s had only minutes earlier.

The other agent, bald and more form filled, came to kneel next to Phil and put a large first aid kit at her feet.

“Be gentle, Blake.”

There was an even threat in Phil’s voice that the bald agent didn’t seem to want to fight over with in the present circumstances.

“Copy that.”

Phil stood then, turning back to Fury and Melinda standing a respectful distance away. Without hesitation, his arms came to wrap around Melinda’s waist in such an affectionate manner that Julie knew, without a doubt, that she would be seeing more of this girl in the future.

Julie hissed slightly as Blake applied the cleaning antiseptic to her scrapes, and she forced herself to not stare at her son and his partner.

“Thank you for looking after her.”

His whisper was so quiet that she almost missed it over the crinkling of bandages being unwrapped.

“Of course.”

She knew that kiss on the cheek definitely wasn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. standard protocol, but it was the most at ease she had seen the Chinese girl all week.

Julie forced herself to look down at her scabbing elbow and not the contentment on her son’s face. There was gravel matted into the blood as the other agent wiped it gently with gauze. “This should just take another minute, ma’am.”

She felt herself smile and respond in the affirmative, but her mind was elsewhere. On tiny babies with porcelain skin, white cribs and knitting patterns for baby blankets, on a firecracker of a little girl with dark hair and Phil’s blue eyes. She even had a spare bedroom on the first floor that would make an excellent nursery.

#philindafanfiction #philinda #fuckyeahphilinda #melindamay #philcoulson #writing #fanfiction #lengthy #pre-bahrain #post-academy #my babies #Phil's mom ships Philinda

36 notes · View notes

cateliot · 8 years ago

Text

“Sentimentality”

Title: “sentimentality”

Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Summary: Coulson has always been sentimental. May has always been practical. In the face of death, both adjectives reveal the same truth.

Characters: Melinda May, Phil Coulson, (phone) Nick Fury, (mentioned) Lian May, (mentioned) Mr. Coulson, and (mentioned) John Garrett

Pairing: Phil Coulson/Melinda May

Giftee: @marvelelle

Length: 2400 words

Prompt: "is this the end?"!

Phil Coulson was a sentimental man.

He had grown up with a mother who loved to keep his trinkets, things he made during art class, old grades he got during high school. Anything that reminded her of a good day, a beautiful moment, fleeting smiles. She even had locks of hair from when he was a baby tucked into a picture frame in her room.

And that rubbed off on Phil.

When he moved away to follow Nick Fury to the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy, he had taken a box full of photographs and old trophies, a lifeline to his last identity. He hid it from the rest of his classmates at the base of his bed.

“I was surprised to see you at the -uh- home office.”

He was surprised she wasn’t already on a strike team far away from any paperwork and suits of the Triskelion.

The bar in Sausalito was loud and dingy. Phil was a little worried about the germ contact they were getting from the bar seats. They were supposed to be waiting for a contact in a navy jumper, but they had been there nearly an hour and making conversation with his new partner was a challenge.

“Melinda?”

She made a face before taking a tantalizing sip of alcohol. She seemed oblivious to the leering male glances at her very short white dress that Fury had tossed at her earlier that morning.

“Don’t call me that.”

“You let Clint call you ‘Melinda’,” Coulson observed, taking a sip of vodka and allowing the liquid to burn the back of his throat.

Mel—May just raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

“Clint and I are friends.”

Coulson forced throat to shallow and his eyes to glance around for their target. Anything to distract him from tight fist currently attempting to crush his chest.

“So…what does that make us?”

May seemed mildly confused by this line of questioning, but her eyes were moving around the club, taking in every element of dingy bar.

“I don’t know—partners? I have eyes on the package.”

“A group of dark clothed groups of men—four, entering in from the two o’clock. We need to wrap this up.”

May’s head tilt was the only indication that she heard him. She rose up from her place at the bar giving Phil a spectacular glance right now her dress. “I’ll be back, darling, I’m going to the ladies’ room.”

The girl in the hoodie seemed to watch Melinda and watched two minutes before following her into the back.

Three sips of beer and twelve minutes later, the girls hadn’t materialized from the backroom. Phil felt his legs begin to twitch.

Stay calm. She’s Melinda May.

She doesn’t need your help.

Eighteen minutes later, Phil knew something had gone wrong. He threw a couple of bill down on their place at the bar and slipped into the crowd. The pounding music made it hard for him to focus on the fear coursing through his veins.

He paused outside the door of the women’s room for a moment--he could totally be arrested for this--before pushing the door open revealing an empty room.

No Melinda. No contact. No disk drive.

Shit.

They were screwed.

Desperate and out of options, Coulson stepped into the alley behind the club and dialed the only number on his phone. His S.O. picked up on the second ring.

“Done already?” Nick Fury’s voice was skeptical.

“Umm Sir?”

“What’s the problem, Coulson?”

“Err—I lost May, sir.”

“Lost her? She’s not some stray ass kitten you picked up off the side of the road, Coulson! What do you mean lost her?”

There was a rustle behind him and Phil turned to see one of the very large, very threatening men walking towards him.

Abort the mission.

“Uh, yeah mom, sorry I think John must have taken the dog out before you got home.”

His words did nothing to stop the man’s walk towards. He glanced around the edges of the dirty alley. Brick. One way. Dirty. No exit.

The only things that could even pass for a weapon would be the tiny pieces of bottle scattered on the ground and the crumpled-up napkins at his feet. Combatant death by napkin wouldn’t look great on his mission report.

The man’s hand flew to the back of his shirt and a gun materialized from his waist band. Phil dropped the phone to the ground and felt his hands spread to either side of his head. The gun pointed at him was threateningly close to his forehead. Any thoughts of protocol, of his perfectly planned cover flew from his mind.

“Where’s the disk?”

Phil licked at his bottom lip, desperate for something—anything—to come out of his mouth.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The gun didn’t disappear from his face and the hand waving it just got angrier.

Where the hell was May when he needed her?

“Please—I’m telling you. I have no idea what you’re talking about. You have to believe me.”

“No—you believe me. You’re going to tell me where it is. Now.”

And give up May, hell no.

The gun came to press metallic, cold, and heavy between his eyes.

Was this the end?

Killed in action on his first mission: Garrett would spend the weekend making fun of him to the other cadets in the bar. His mother would be devastated. It would take her years to bury him. And May—oh God, Fury was going to kill May. She was perfect at this job and he was going to get her screwed over by being the lame ass rookie who got shot in the forehead on his first mission.

Was this what his father’s last moments were like before the drunk driver hit his car just outside their neighborhood on Christmas Eve?

(Phil hoped not; if there was a God he prayed for mercy in those moments for his father instead of his terrible fear in the pit of his stomach.)

Between two out of control heartbeats, Phil felt his body twist into a perfectly arched roundhouse kick. He had seen Melinda do it a thousand times in advanced combat. He just didn’t realize that he was capable of such a move.

The gun hit the asphalt with a slap and he ran.

It was against protocol. He should have gone for the gun—Melinda would have gone for the gun—but it was the only instinct left on his mind.

Three blocks over he crossed into an empty alley and collapsed against the bricked wall, exhausted, sweaty, terrified. His hand came to clasp the chain at his neck and he pulled it out of his shirt. The dirty and dinged wedding band was cold in his slick, shaking hand.

Where the hell was May?

Decades later in his life, it was surprising then that when he was slumped up against a wall of a helicarrier that his first thoughts weren’t of the trading cards in his locker or the ring that belonged his father that was still around his neck. They had nothing to do with a material in the base of his academy bunk or the photographs of him and Audrey in his apartment.

None of those things held his home. Not really.

“I’m clocking out here, Boss.”

He could feel the blood running down his shirt and could hear the drip, drip, drip of it onto the floor. Loki was nowhere to be found and Nick’s hands on his shoulders were almost nothing next to the gaping pain in his chest.

“You’ll be the one to tell her?”

“I’m not telling her anything ‘cause you’re not dying. You hear me, Coulson?”

It was hard to swallow and Phil focused on holding his S.O.’s attention.

“P-promise me. She can’t t-take another hit.”

Nick’s hands on his chest caused a wave of pain to hit him and tears stung his eyes. Phil’s lips felt desperately dry and his arms and legs were beginning to feel strangely numb. He had watched Melinda flatline in Bahrain before the doctors revived her. Was this what it felt like to die from blood loss? Drip, drip, drip until nothing was left?

Was this the end?

Phil had thought that he was going to die numerous times in his career: his first mission in Sausalito, once in the snow with Melinda when he thought we’d freeze before extraction found them, once in a shootout with Strike Team Delta in Berlin, later again in Brussels where he almost was elocuted to death before May and Natasha showed up to the party.

This was the first time he was partner-less.

“Sir, I need…to know that you’ll…”

Fury’s eyes were dark, but serious.

“I’ll look after her.”

There was no talk of which ‘her’ they were referring to.

Melinda May was a practical woman.

She grew up with a mother in intelligence and a father who couldn’t handle that commitment. She knew the way the system worked: good men fall, good men suffer, and there’s nothing you can do about it other than to be better, faster, and smarter. That’s the only way to stay alive.

Handcuffed to a boat in the middle of the bay with a gunshot to the shoulder made her wonder if she should have taken the job the CIA had offered her a year previous.

The water was cold and seeping and her flimsy white dress did nothing to combat the hypothermia she was no doubt contracting the fall temperatures. She felt her body shaking under the waves that constantly lapped around her.

She knew it was the beginning of massive hypothermia and blood loss. It had been hours--three maybe four--since she and her contact had made the trade off. And while May had hidden the disk in a potted plant four streets over from the bar, their contact hadn’t been so lucky.

Melinda felt her fingers go numb and panic ran like cocaine in her veins.

Was this the end?

Her mother would be so disappointed and so would Peggy. Dead on her first mission: she knew better than to be so cocky. She knew to check the docks before choosing them as a hiding place.

And poor Coulson, her nervous classmate would make such a good agent, but Peggy would personally sink his career if he let her freeze to death in the bay on their first solo outing.

Melinda forced herself to keep shivering and jerked again at the handcuffs tying her to the boat. She wasn’t going down without a fight.

She could barely see the docks or the two dead bodies (crossed off by broken necks) or wherever her partner had gone.

“May?”

The breath she released was heavy and desperate.

“I’m here,” she called to him.

There was scuffling on the dock and it only took seconds for a frazzled, red-faced Coulson to appear. His eyes were large as he took in her current scenario.

“Decided to come back for me?”

“Well I didn’t want to do all the paperwork on the case myself,” he quipped, shedding his outer layers before splashing into the water next to her.

“That kind of sentimentality will kill you someday, you know.”

Coulson gave her a dazzling smile.

“Your lips are blue.”

He did look quite concerned. His blue eyes sweeping over her shaking form in the water. The white dress sticking to her equally white skin.

“God, Melinda, you’re shot!”

The blood had stopped staining the water a half hour before. Melinda was pretty sure it was only flesh wound.

“Ww-hat did I ss-ay about that?” she snapped. Her teeth chattering took away some of the sting of her usual rhetoric.

Phil was still smiling as he wadded towards her. The tint in his eyes conveyed his anxiety despite the smile.

“Yeah, yeah. We’re not friends. I’m going to put my arm around you now, partner.”

Melinda smirked and soaked up the warmth Phil’s arms provided. Perhaps having a partner wasn’t such a terrible thing after all.

Decades later in her life, it wasn’t surprising that when she realized she was going insane after being blasted by a ghost, that her first thoughts were of Natasha.

It was out necessity. Natasha was one of the only people in the world who could take her out. Despite their shared history of combat, and Melinda really was an equally matched partner for the Russian assassin, she would take out Melinda if she asked.

Natasha understood practicality like that.

But if her first thoughts were of her friend, her last thoughts were of Phil.

The darkness that surrounded her after Simmons’ voice faded was suffocating. It was cold and heavy, just like the bay water. And it frightened her.

She had flatlined before. Once after a knife fight in Egypt with Clint and Fury. The boss man had resuscitated her after three minutes of CPR in the sand. The second in a tiny field hospital in Manama from blood loss. She woke up from a coma ten days later back in D.C. And she remembered both vividly.

They were nothing like this.

“May?”

Coulson.

“Melinda, I need to come back.”

Phil’s image seemed to cut through the darkness around her, permeating through the black clinging to her. If she hadn’t already recognized she was insane, Melinda would have thought she was crazy.

He looked like he always did. Dorky, professional, and kind. The tiny worry lines around his eyes seemed deeper as he met her gaze.

“May. Take my hand.”

On instinct, May stepped back. Fragments of images of a little girl in a flower shirt, the sound of Andrew’s voice over the phone, and the smell of scorching sand cut into her. She felt her breathing go—ragged and out of control and the blackness seem to close in around her.

Was this the end?

Perhaps she deserved a place in hell, destroyed by her own mind. The blood in her ledger certainly saved her spot in the fire.

But Phil’s image was clear in front of her still and his hand cut through the sticky air of Bahrain to breach the space right in front of her.

“Melinda, do you trust me?”

Yes.

She extended her hand towards her partner.

#philinda secret santa #philindafanfiction #philinda #fanfiction #gift #marvelelle #cateliot #fuckyeahphilinda #philcoulson #melindamay

25 notes · View notes