Chapter Text
The first time Phil notices Clint Barton, the man is - there is no other word for it - swaggering across the east courtyard in a set of tight fitting standard-issue first year workout clothes. Phil is on his way to his fourth-year strategic command initiatives lab and he doesn’t pause to watch the man stride across campus.
But he does slow down a little.
He is watching carefully enough to note the honest-to-goodness bow slung over the man's shoulder and the quiver of arrows with bright red fletching and has time to think: really? Before the sliding doors whisper open and he steps into the command lab.
The second time is one evening later that same semester. Phil is going quietly out of his mind trying to finish three separate projects on time and his steps are unusually hurried as he walks past Commander Chow's office. The raised voices catch his attention, though, and Phil finds his steps slowing. He doesn’t gossip himself, but he does like to know things.
"You disobeyed a directed order!"
Starfleet offices are sound dampened, but it would take warp shielding to keep Chow's voice from ringing clear when he's angry. He sounds furious now.
Phil can almost hear the shrug in the slight pause before the other person speaks.
"I got the job done. And -" the male voice rises slightly, overriding the angry splutter, "I showed initiative."
"You showed you have a problem with authority."
"We won the exercise."
"This is Starfleet, Barton. Not the circus. The point isn't to -"
"Finish the objective? In record time?"
Phil has to stifle a smile. He can practically hear Chow's teeth grinding.
"There will be an official record made of this incident and you will report to Lt. Riarow in the morning for janitorial duty. And you WILL correct that mouth of yours before you end up in this office again or I swear on the Holy Rings I will have you drummed out of Starfleet so fast your knees will be shaking. And I no I DON'T care how many Admirals swoon over your target scores as you go."
Phil hears the sound of a chair scraping back and hightails it back to the engineering lab. But he pauses at the corner to watch the man coming out of Chow's office.
It’s the archer with the cocky smile, and despite his words the man's shoulders are stiff as he walks back along the corridor.
Barton, Phil thinks. And leaves.
After graduation Phil spends a year aboard the USS Endeavour and another on the USS Hiro. He practices his mask of quiet efficiency and receives a recommendation for clear-headedness in the face of danger when a routine mission to Vega 6 exposes a hidden piracy group. Phil takes over the conn when Lt Niral is injured and takes out one of the pirates who beams onto the small starship's bridge before having his face smashed into the engineering console and waking up thirteen hours later in the infirmary.
"I think we should work on your hand-to-hand," Lt Commander Fury says when Phil opens his eyes in medical.
"Ow," says Phil.
Phil begins working out in the mornings with Fury and his group of 'volunteers'. The lieutenant commander has gathered together a select group of officers who, as he puts it, 'distinguished themselves in unexpected situations'. They each get a commendation and chance to beat each other up on the practice mats at 0600.
Mostly Phil earns himself bruises. He had taken the hand-to-hand requirements needed at the Academy, but he hadn't been prepared for Fury's level of training. The man knows tricks Phil has never heard of before.
"Got that one from a Romulan," Fury says one morning after flipping both Phil and Ensign Sitwell on their asses.
"Yes, sir." Phil agrees from the floor.
Fury grins.
He finishes his tour on the Hiro six months later. Phil is debating his next choice of assignment when Fury informs him he's been accepted into an advanced training course in Coercion Resistance and Strategic Initiative back at the Academy and promptly escorts him to the transporter room. Phil's bag has already been delivered to San Francisco.
"Enjoy yourself, Ensign."
Phil raises an eyebrow. He'd spent time in the morning practicing the move. "I'm going to spend six months with my head being held under water, sir."
Fury grins again. It’s getting eerie. "Exactly."
Phil does spent an inordinate amount of time with his head being held under water. He also learns how to withstand extreme temperature variations and has one particularly heart-pounding encounter with vacuum, throughout which he tells himself Starfleet isn’t actually trying to kill him. The calm look he has been perfecting becomes less a mask and more a part of him, but he is hardly unflappable.
"You want me to what?!"
Commander Hein smiles politely at him. "Teach third-year strategic initiative planning. Second semester."
Phil tries to rein in his reaction. "I'm here to learn strategic initiative planning."
Hein smiles again. "Which is why you will teach it." She raises an eyebrow. It's better than his.
"Yes, sir." Phil says.
Phil spends the four month semester alternating between wanting to bang his head against a wall and actually doing it. The cadets in his class have been told they'd been volunteered for remedial logic studies, which would have been appropriate. Phil likes to fantasize about how long it would take them to make a Vulcan start bleeding from its eyes.
"I don't need to disable the secondary power coupling if I'm going to blow up the console from the next building."
Phil would give Barton seven minutes. Four if he were trying.
"Barton, you realize not every scenario can be fixed with an exploding arrow?"
Barton grins. "Most can, sir."
Phil takes his class on field-trips to demonstrate via example that Barton is wrong, wrong, oh so very wrong. Which works out pretty well until he proves that he’s right.
Phil shakes still burning bits of Douglas Fir out of his hair. "I would have thought that shot was too far for you."
Barton looks wounded. Phil is forced to hide a smile. "Yes, yes, my mistake."
His students all pass his class with honours but Phil only forwards three names to Fury's inbox. The Hiro is in space dock after an incident with a Cardassian destroyer. Fury has been promoted again.
They meet for drinks the day after class ended. "You're shipping out tomorrow on the Lexington," Fury tells him.
Phil reaches for his steak sandwich. "Deep space mission?"
Fury gives him a blank expression, "That's what it says on the tin."
Phil nods and takes a bite of his sandwich. He'll pack extra phasers.
He makes it back to San Francisco to watch his students graduate. Barton’s got a recommendation for outstanding achievements best left unspecified, and his grin when he looks over the crowd and sees Phil is blinding.
Phil smiles back. It hurts his still-healing jaw, but it’s worth it.
After graduation Barton disappears into a Starfleet black box and Phil worries Starfleet is focusing too much on the man's aim.
"He's a brilliant tactician", Phil argues with Fury when he sees Barton's name beside Specialist on an undercover op. Fury's eyebrow lifts, the new eye patch leans the old look a new menace.
"I did read your reports, Lieutenant."
"He needs a structured team setting or Starfleet's going to burn him out."
"I'll see what I can do," Fury promises.
Seven months later Phil gets the call.
"Barton's gone rogue," Fury announces when he thumbs on the comm at 0330.
"Where?" Phil askes, instantly awake.
"Romulus," Fury tells him.
Phil is on the Remington on an actual deep space mission this time.
"I'll need a ride," Phil tells him.
"I'm on it," Fury promises. "Starfleet owes me for not listening when I put in his request for transfer."
Phil spends four weeks on Romulus tracking Barton down. When he finally finds him the archer is waiting for him in a Remus building block with a drawn arrow and a brilliant smile.
"Coulson!" he grins, then dips his head to indicate the half-Romulan woman sitting with narrowed eyes at his side. Phil has never once seen her during his surveillance. "Can we keep her?"
The woman's name is Natasha Romulos and she doesn’t say a single word to Phil until they are sitting alone in Fury's office and she has a knife pressed to his belly.
"I work with Barton," she tells him, her accent a remarkably perfect Brooklyn.
"You will work with anyone we say you work with," Phil counters calmly.
Romulos frowns at him. "Who is 'we'?" she askes. "I don't trust Admirals."
"Me," Fury says. He walks into the office wearing his captain's pips.
Natasha sizes him up. Then she lets go of Phil's shirt. "Okay," she says.
Romulos spends two months being debriefed by Starfleet and Barton spends three weeks in the brig for dereliction of duty. Phil finishes his tour on the Remington and gets promoted before spending the next five months as their handler
"I'm not sure who I pissed off in a past life to get this assignment," Phil tells Clint seriously during an incident with a Klingon and a Romulan commander. "But I sincerely regret it."
"You'd miss us if we were gone," Barton tells him. Natasha smiles and stabs someone in the face.
"I would," Phil agrees.
"I'm thinking of asking Starfleet for a ship," Fury tells him one morning when Phil is recovering in medical on the Lien.
"What kind of a ship?" Phil asks, and grimaces. Phaser burns are a bitch.
"A small ship," Fury assures him. "Nothing galaxy-class. We aren't that fancy."
Phil tries to ignore the tingle of the skin regenerator. "If you say so, sir.”
Three weeks into a solo mission on Rigel 5 Phil is captured by the Obsidian Order. After meeting their head agent Phil gives himself twenty-seven days before he'll be forced to find an inventive way of killing himself, considering his captors have cut away his clothing with the suicide pill sewn into the lapel.
Barton comes for him in twenty-three.
"Where's Natasha?" he asks, dizzy with blood loss and strange Cardassian chemicals.
"Outside," Clint tells him, peeling away the electrodes. "She's guarding our exit."
"Glad to hear it," Phil says seriously, before passing out.
"How did you find me?" he wakes up once, to ask.
"Fury's got a new toy," Clint tells him instead of answering. "He says she likes him best, but Nat and I are working on it."
"I'll introduce you once you're on your feet," Fury says to him, smiling in a way he doesn’t any more. "She's a beauty."
"What's her name?" Phil asks, still high on whatever they gave him.
"The USS Shield," Fury tells him, pride in his voice. "And when Barton asks you - no, he's not allowed to drive."