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All Coulson wants is a drink. It's a Tuesday night, and he's had a long day at work, and he just wants to sit down somewhere dark and anonymous and not too busy, with a glass of scotch and a bowl of pretzels, and have a quiet drink. He's done that for the last four years, every Tuesday, and the routine, the ritual of it is oddly soothing. It's only ever one drink, and he doesn't read a book or go through case files or try to pick anyone up. It's simple. Scotch, quiet bar, the slow unwinding of his thoughts.
The problem is, he's gotten to the door of his local, and he's pulling it open when the noise hits him. He glances up, appalled. Somehow, in a week, the bar that's a central component of his Tuesday evenings has been redeveloped into a karaoke bar. This is terrible, he thinks, and briefly considers diverting some SHIELD resources to buy the bar, convert it back. Fury would probably yell at him. Or turn it into a SHIELD bar and reassign him to run it for the next ten years.
He could go to the SHIELD bar in Midtown, he considers dismally, but that route means running into people he works with, for sure, and the thing about Tuesday evening is that it blessedly involves no work talk of any kind. Shooting the shit with Hill and Sitwell is excellent, when he wants a beer and to hear about the latest bugfuck thing R&D has come up with, but not on Tuesday evenings.
Time to find a new bar then, he thinks, and sighs, because this is more difficult than it should be. He's in Brooklyn, and he can't be fucked catching the Metro to go elsewhere, so he Googles 'quiet Brooklyn bar' on his phone, sighs again at the eleven point nine million search results, and just walks down the street, thinking it can't be that hard to find something semi-okay.
He mentally turns down the first for being too seedy, the second for being too upmarket, and the third for being an Irish pub. The fourth is so hipster his teeth ache, the fifth has a gaggle of people who look all of sixteen smoking outside the entrance. The sixth, he walks into and immediately walks back out of, because something about it just feels a bit off.
The seventh, he thinks, is okay, even though it's got a terrible name, seriously, who names a bar Afterlife. It's got carnival-style string lights but otherwise dim lighting, colorful wooden tables, a long, curved bar and comfortable-looking bar stools, and the music's quiet enough that he can hear himself think but loud enough that he won't have to listen to fifteen Tinder dates happening around him. Fine, he thinks, this is fine.
"Hey, what up," the bartender greets him with a smile. "What can I get you?"
"Just, uh, a scotch, double on the rocks, and a bag of pretzels, if you have them."
"Sure thing," she says, scoops ice and pours his drink with quick efficiency. She's cute, he thinks abstractly, all cheekbones and jawline and dark hair in waves around her face. It's not that he's looking - working with Romanoff and Hill and Bishop, you don't get far if you're looking, and Coulson has too much respect for them to ever try - but nevertheless. She's cute.
"Twelve bucks," she interrupts, sets his drink down on a cardboard coaster and tosses a bag of pretzels next to it, and he blinks, pulls out his wallet and hands her a five and a ten.
"Keep the change," he tells her, gives her the kind of smile he uses when he's trying without trying to be blandly charming, and she raises one eyebrow, smiles at him.
"Hey, thanks," she says, turns to the next customer, and he picks up his scotch and his pretzels, slides onto a stool at the end of the bar, commences with his Tuesday evening routine.
He can't help but watch her, as he sips his drink, and he doesn't really know why. She's cheerful, outgoing, chats with customers who are clearly regulars, teasingly jostles the other bartender. Tattoos curl around her upper arms, peek out from under the sleeves of her plain black t-shirt, and the way she lifts the empty kegs, carries stacks of glasses, he can see that she's got enough muscle she could hold her own against at least a rookie agent. When he finishes, he pulls his jacket back on, and she grabs his glass, gives him another smile in goodbye. She's just being friendly, Coulson thinks to himself, and anyway, she's like twenty.
+
He's back again the next Tuesday, because it was as good a bar as any. It's totally not about the bartender.
When he walks in, she's not behind the bar, and he's momentarily disappointed. Okay, maybe it's a little about the bartender, which is totally ridiculous, because she's like twenty, but he liked that she didn't give him a too-cool scowl. He knows he looks like a mid-level career bureaucrat in a nice but unassuming suit. He is a mid-level career bureaucrat in a nice but unassuming suit. He orders a scotch anyway, from the other bartender (white, late 20s, Cincinnati accent overlaid with Brooklyn, previous substance abuse issues, working in a bar to prove to himself that he's in control, Coulson's profiler brain provides on autopilot) and takes up his seat at the end of the bar.
"Hey, Lincoln, have you seen that new keg we had delivered?" she asks, coming out of the back room, and Coulson's heart definitely does not beat a little faster, because he is a serious professional here and has been working in SHIELD for twenty years. The other bartender - Lincoln - ducks out back and she takes his spot, pours a pitcher of beer, wipes down the bar. "Oh hey," she says, noticing him. "No pretzels this week?"
"Oh," Coulson says. "I, uh... no, not this week."
"Okay," she replies, raises an eyebrow the same way she did before. It's weirdly endearing. "Just hit me up if you change your mind."
Ridiculous, Coulson thinks to himself, finishes his whisky and leaves faster than usual, and totally does not regret the lack of pretzels at all.
+
The third week, he considers going somewhere else, starts walking there and then changes his mind four times, pulls himself together. It's a nice bar. He's being stupid.
"Oh hey," she says as soon as he comes in. "Scotch and pretzels, yeah?"
"Yeah, I... please," he replies, a little confused, and she nods at the empty corner seat.
"I'll bring it over," she tells him, and Coulson wonders if his routine is so very obvious, but he takes a seat anyway. "Here you are, Tuesday," she says, sliding his drink and a bowl of pretzels across the bar, and Coulson feels himself blush at the nickname.
"You're nicknaming me," he says, sips his whisky. "Already."
"You're always here on Tuesday nights, same time, same order," she says with a smirk. "I could call you Scotch and Pretzels, but 'Tuesday' is a little simpler."
"Or you could use my actual name," he counters with a smirk of his own.
"I could," she says evaluatively. "But where's the fun in that?"
"Oh come on, you can even be on first name basis, that's a privilege not everyone gets," he tells her, and a small part of himself is aghast, because what even, Phil Coulson, are you flirting. She just gives him another considering look, tilts her head to the side, and he holds his hand out. "Phil," he says, and she grins.
"Daisy," she says in response, shaking his hand.
"Oh, so that makes a lot more sense," Coulson says, raising his eyebrows at the flowers tattooed on her inner bicep. Daisy laughs, grins harder, cheekily steals one of his pretzels and moves away, and uh oh, Coulson thinks. Uh oh.
+
"So, Phil," Daisy asks the next Tuesday, leaning over the bar. Coulson very carefully doesn't look at her cleavage. "What do you do?"
"That's classified," Coulson says, deadpan, and takes a mouthful of his drink.
"Oh, come on. Classified? Like you're some kind of secret agent? Don't bullshit me."
"Yeah," he says, "you got me. I'm a data analyst. It's terrifically boring."
"Hmm," Daisy says, gives him an up-and-down. "I doubt you could be that boring, Phil." He doesn't know what she means. Coulson has always been boring, and precise, and easily, neatly compartmentalized. He collects Captain America merchandise, for god's sake, spends all his discretionary income on impeccably tailored, carefully neutral suits.
"You don't know me," he says, harsher than he intends, but Daisy just laughs, eats another one of his pretzels.
"I'm getting to know you, aren't I?" she asks, and he should be annoyed by this. His Tuesday evening ritual involves peace and quiet, not making conversation with a bartender, no matter how attractive she is. Instead, he's charmed.
"Well, what do you do?" he replies.
"You're looking at it," she says, shrugs. He's surprised.
"You're not... in college, or something?" Daisy laughs again.
"Jeez, Phil, how old do you think I am?"
"Twenty-two," he guesses, sips his whisky and looks at her over the rim of the glass. "Twenty-three?"
"Okay, so my birth certificate said my mom's Chinese, and all, I guess maybe she's passed down some great genetics, but shit, Phil, I don't know whether to be offended. I'm twenty-six."
"You could be one of those students who's perpetually undeclared?" Coulson suggests. Daisy shakes her head.
"No, I... School wasn't for me, let's put it this way. Actually," she drops her voice to a stage whisper. "I dropped out."
"Of college?"
"High school," Daisy tells him, a challenging note in her voice. "Never mind. You don't need a GED to sling liquor, luckily enough. Lincoln, on the other hand, is working his way through medical school, so we're a real cross-section of humanity right here."
"Well," Coulson says, pauses, and offers her another pretzel.
+
He has to admit, he likes being a regular. Daisy can't always talk; even on a Tuesday night, sometimes they're busy pouring pitchers of beer and glasses of wine and a million vodka tonics. But sometimes it's quiet, and Daisy leans her hip up against the bar, polishes glassware, talks to him easy and comfortable and teasing like she's known him for years.
"How was work today?" she asks one evening.
"Uh," Coulson says, pauses, because work was ten hours of documenting every artefact recovered in Greenwich. He's not sure whether to feel jealous of Agent Weaver, who was in charge of actually recovering the artefacts, given that Fitz and Simmons were on the ground in their first field excursion, but god, ten hours of filing on every fragment of Dark Elf ship. "Lots of paperwork," he says in the end, honestly. "I've got this coworker. Well, I mean, he's in, uh, another department, but we work for the same firm, and he's a great guy and all, real earnest, but he has a habit of leaving a bit of a trail of destruction."
"What a jerk," Daisy says, scowling in sympathy.
"Ah, no, it's not like that, really. Cultural differences, I guess. He's from overseas. They do things differently there. I just hate feeling like the clean-up crew."
"Yeah, that sucks," she agrees. "Hey, you want another?"
"Oh," Coulson replies, realizes his glass is empty. "Sure. Why not."
+
He comes in one evening and Daisy's eyes widen when she sees him. "Holy hell, Phil, what happened?" she asks, and he cringes internally. Why'd he choose a desk job cover. Fuck.
"I do jiu jitsu," he deflects, "took a hit in my last training session," and she gives him a look like she doesn't quite believe him. Okay, maybe he could have gone with "I tripped and fell down the stairs of my apartment", but come on, jiu jitsu sounds more impressive, and it's not like Nat hasn't trained him. (I took down a bad guy today, he wants to say, did you know I'm kind of a hero, and internally sighs.)
"Okay, well, let me know if you need a bag of frozen peas, or something. That's an impressive bruise."
"Thanks," he says wryly. "I'll be fine."
The next time it happens, he's got butterfly stitches on his eyebrow, and his lip's split and swollen and unpleasantly sore, but he can't help it. He wants to keep up with his Tuesday nights. Daisy gives him another look, longer this time, and when she catches him wincing at the way the whisky stings his lip, she just silently folds up ice in a clean dishtowel, hands it to him across the bar, raises one eyebrow.
When he leaves to go home, Daisy's outside on her break, smoking a cigarette, and he can't help it; he pauses next to her, raises his eyebrow at her right back even though it pulls the stitches. "It's bad for you, you know," he says, his voice low, and Daisy rolls her eyes, crosses her arms. She's pulled a leather jacket on over her t-shirt and jeans; it's impossibly attractive.
"Yeah, okay, Phil, like you can talk. I don't know what you're doing in your jiu jitsu training sessions but it looks pretty reckless."
"What can I say," Coulson shrugs, "sometimes I'm reckless." Daisy laughs, blows out smoke, offers him a cigarette, and he does, he feels reckless, and that's how he finds himself standing outside a Brooklyn bar smoking cigarettes with Daisy on an April evening. The smoke burns his lungs and it tastes so good and he just wants to lean in and kiss her, lick smoke from her mouth. She leans back against the wall, presses her shoulder against his companionably.
"You ever feel like you're looking for something you're not going to find?" she asks out of the blue, and Coulson's too startled to reply.
"Hey," Lincoln calls from the doorway, "break's over, Daisy, get your ass back in here," and she flicks away her cigarette butt, touches her palm lightly to his cheek.
"Don't get in any more trouble," she tells him, brushes her thumb over his lower lip, and it stings and feels incredible at the same time.
+
The night SHIELD almost falls, he doesn't go to the bar, can't face anyone. He goes home instead, pulls out the bottle of vodka Nat brought back from her last mission. He'd shoved it in his freezer, untouched, because he hates vodka and she knows it and she's a total troll. Now he pours himself a glass, tosses it back neat, winces at the burn. He proceeds to get very, very drunk.
HYDRA's infiltration was apparently not quite ready to move to the end phase, especially once Bucky Barnes threw off his brainwashing, defected back to SHIELD instead of following through on Fury's assassination. Without their best weapon, Pierce panicked, pushed things into gear too fast, and the uprising was squashed fairly simply. SHIELD is shocked but handles it neatly, covers up the HYDRA angle and spins a story of of major mechanical failure in the helicarriers that the media seems to accept. Coulson thinks maybe they just want to believe; the fall of a major security agency is too damaging, too much, too hard. The New York office is safe, only a few people turning on colleagues who've been friends for years. Fury's not dead, and Sitwell is, and Coulson's horribly relieved that he wasn't stationed at the Triskelion, which is now in smoking ruins thanks to a helicarrier through its center.
He flies out to the Hub the next day, through a blinding hangover that's only half remedied with a pair of aviator sunglasses and the strongest black coffee the airport can offer. He's in meetings for days with Fury, Hill, Blake and Hand, grits his teeth through it because endless meetings have never been his style (and he fucking hates Blake, he's not afraid to admit it), and when he comes out of it, it's with a promotion. He's in charge of the New York division. More paperwork, he thinks wryly, and has never been so glad to fly home.
Daisy gives him a surprised look when he's back the next Tuesday, a little later than usual. Paperwork is already kicking his ass. He never wanted that promotion.
"Hey, Phil," she says, already pouring his drink. "Missed you last week."
"I was out of town," he tells her. "On business."
"Right," she says, "well. Glad you're back safe. Crazy about DC, huh? I hope you weren't anywhere near there."
"Oh," Coulson says, vaguely surprised. "No. I was visiting the H- headquarters. Urgent meetings with the boss."
"Right," Daisy says again. "Lots of data to analyse?"
"You have no idea," Coulson says honestly, and when she pours him another drink, he doesn't say no.
+
Coulson really didn't want that promotion, but that doesn't stop the work piling up, and instead of going in at seven, he's there at five, leaving at nine, ten every night except Tuesdays. Tuesdays, he leaves at six on the dot, same as always, until there's a week when he doesn't. He's been going through HYDRA files for hours, trying to figure out how deep the infiltration goes, because something feels- not quite right, about how easy they'd gone down. Cut off one head, two more will grow back, yadda yadda. He's afraid they've just burrowed deeper within SHIELD. The lights go out around him, and he can feel a headache growing behind his eyes, and before he realizes, it's 9.30 and he's still in his desk chair, his back one long cramp of tensed-up muscles and pain.
He doesn't want to go home. Home is an apartment that's stopped feeling like he lives there, and he just wants to feel like he's a person for half an hour, to spend time with people who don't know anything about power struggles or Nazi organizations or the possibility that there are many, many more dangers out there than the world will ever know. He gets to the bar at quarter past ten, hopes he hasn't imagined the relief on Daisy's face.
"I was beginning to think you'd stood me up," she cracks, pours him his scotch. "Have you been at work all this time?"
"Yeah," he groans, stretches out, cracks his back. "It's kicking my ass."
"I can tell," she says. "Did you have dinner, at least?" Coulson contemplates for a second. No, he thinks, he doesn't remember dinner. "Phil," she says, softer. "Did you eat lunch?"
"I was just really busy!" he says defensively, eats a pretzel, and Daisy gets a look on her face that he can't quite interpret.
"Hey Lincoln, is it alright if I take my break?" she asks, and he nods. "Thanks, man," she says, disappears into the back room and comes back out carrying a ragged-edged paperback and a paper deli bag. She jumps up onto the stool next to him, pulls a sandwich out of the bag, opens her book to her folded page and quietly slides half her sandwich across to him.
"What- no, Daisy, come on, I can't eat your dinner," Coulson protests, and she frowns at him.
"Eat the damn sandwich, Phil, it's pastrami." His stomach growls traitorously and she says, again, more gently, "Phil, come on, just let me do something nice for you, okay?"
"You're always doing something nice for me," he mutters, but he eats the sandwich, gives her careful sideways glances as he does so. She's wrapped up in her book, her lips occasionally shaping the words as she reads.
"It's Pride and Prejudice," she says eventually, and he blushes to realize he's been staring. "I've read it, like, a million times. I had a foster mom who was really into Jane Austen, and not much else stuck, but that did."
"You were in foster care?" Coulson asks, and she nods, her eyes still on the page.
"My parents died when I was a baby. Some kind of accident, I don't really know the details. There wasn't a lot of paperwork. All I've got is my birth certificate and the admission papers to the orphanage. I was in and out of the system until I opted myself out at seventeen."
"I'm sorry," Coulson says, and she shrugs.
"It's not so bad. I'm mostly happy with my life, where I'm at. I still have questions, things I'm looking for, but don't we all?"
"Yeah," Coulson agrees, "I guess you're right." There's a pause, and Daisy turns the page, and then she smiles.
“Oh," she murmurs, "this is my favorite bit, listen. I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. Pretty good, right?"
"Yes," Coulson agrees again, and he has to look down because he can't look at her anymore. "Yes."
+
"Hey so," Daisy says on a sticky June evening, fanning herself with a laminated drinks menu. The aircon is broken and they've got both doors open, trying to get a cross-breeze, but it's still sultry and hot. She's pulled her hair up in a bun, and strands have fallen loose, are stuck damply to her neck. Coulson sips his whisky, resists the urge to press the cool glass to his cheek.
"Hey so?" he says, looking up.
"Fourth of July on Friday," she says. "We're gonna shut the bar, have a party out back. Just a barbecue, some beers, maybe some, uh, illegal fireworks, I dunno, I think it'll be fun."
"Sounds fun," Coulson agrees. He'd forgotten it was coming up. SHIELD never closes, of course, but he still remembers cook-outs with Nick, Melinda and Andrew, Hill and Sitwell and Yang. Clint and Laura and Nat tended to drop in, sometimes dragging Kate along, and it was always a weird party but it was always a fun weird party. This year he'll be working, probably, trying to get on top of HYDRA, ahead of the hacker group that seems to be chasing at SHIELD's heels. Drinking beer and eating barbecue sounds a lot better.
"Yeah, I think so. We'll go all afternoon, probably from like, one? You should come," Daisy tells him casually, fishes an ice cube out of the ice bucket and presses it to her throat. "Ugh, I wish we'd get this aircon fixed, or this heat wave would pass, it's only June," she groans, slides the melting ice down the side of her neck and across her collarbones. Beads of water pool in the hollow of her throat, roll down her chest, and she squeaks as they hit her cleavage. Coulson can't handle this. What is she even doing.
"I probably have work," he says, and she narrows her eyes.
"Phil, live a little. The data can survive one day without being analysed to within an inch of its life. Besides, it's not just the Fourth. It's also kind of, uh, a birthday party. For me."
"It's your birthday?" he says curiously, and she nods, pops an ice cube in her mouth.
"Tomorrow," she says around the ice. Okay. That doesn't change anything, except that it totally changes everything.
"I'll try and make it," he says, very casual, and Daisy grins, crunches ice, reaches out and high-fives him.
Coulson doesn't want to say that he nearly chickens out, because that's extremely embarrassing, but it's true. He almost chickens out. He's only going to know Daisy, and all her friends will be really cool, and apparently he's fifteen again, going to a high school party, and come on, Phil, get it together.
He gets to the bar around two, and it feels strange to be there during the day, stranger that it's closed. Daisy spots him from where she's standing in the back doorway, does just a little double-take (and that's kind of satisfying, he thinks), saunters over to greet him.
"You made it!" she says, "I'm glad. Working on a holiday is the worst. And... apparently you are not actually grafted into a suit. I gotta tell you, Phil, that's deeply weird for me."
"They let me out of them one day a year," he jokes. Surely he's not imagining Daisy's eyes lingering on his open collar, the way his dark blue shirt is just a little more fitted than usual? "Oh, I, uh," he says, suddenly tongue-tied, and just hands her the flowers. They're chamomile daisies. He's kind of the worst.
"You brought me flowers?" Daisy asks, a note of wonder in her voice.
"Well, you said it was your birthday, so... happy birthday," he says quietly. "Sorry, it's - it's weird."
"No," Daisy says, "Phil, it's not weird, oh my god." She ducks behind the bar, grabs an empty pitcher and fills it up with water, arranges the flowers. "Nobody's ever brought me flowers before," she tells him. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," he says, and she smiles, takes his hand.
"Come on," she says, "come meet my friends."
It's not as awkward as Coulson expected; he knows Lincoln a little, and his wife Alisha chats easily with Daisy. Raina is quiet but friendly, all curls and big eyes. Mike asks about his jiu jitsu training, and Coulson realizes that means Daisy's told Mike about his jiu jitsu training, but he's genuinely interested, is training too, and they talk mixed martial arts, the merits of jiu versus krav maga versus taekwon-do. Daisy sits down next to him, hands him a beer, and this is nice, this is easy, sitting in the sun in a courtyard the size of a postage stamp, drinking beer, Daisy's shoulder brushing against his. They eat hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob, and butter drips down Coulson's chin, and Daisy swipes her thumb across it, laughing.
Raina's girlfriend passes around slices of sheet cake and watermelon, afterwards, and Daisy pokes Coulson in the ribs. "Take care with that," she warns him, "we filled it with vodka." Coulson hates vodka, but the watermelon is ice cold and sweet and crisp, and he gets a little drunk, and he doesn't care. The sky turns luminous twilight, and Lincoln pulls out the firecrackers.
"I'm doing this, because I'm the only one who's not buzzed, and I'm not doing first aid on you all," he tells them, and Alisha laughs and laughs.
"Okay, Doctor Campbell, nobody mention last year," she teases, and Daisy smirks, presses her thigh against Coulson's. She's in a red gingham dress, sleeves rolled up, and as she leans back to watch the fireworks, her skirt slides up until all Coulson can think about is her bare thigh warm against his. She rests her head on his shoulder, comfortable and easy, and this is what happiness feels like, he thinks.
"Thanks for coming to my birthday party," she murmurs, and Coulson doesn't tell her, but he wouldn't have missed it for the world. He doesn't do anything for his own birthday, four days later, doesn't even tell her it's a thing, but it's a Tuesday, and his Tuesday tradition, Daisy's smile when she sees him, that's enough.
+
In late September, he goes in and Daisy's not there, it's just Lincoln. "Oh jeez, sorry, Phil, Daisy called in. She's super sick right now, that flu that's going around." He gives Coulson a weird look, a little sympathetic and a little confused, and Phil nods, doesn't stay.
He makes chicken soup, following his mom's recipe, ladles it into a big Tupperware container and puts it in the fridge. The next day, he leaves work a little early, goes in, and Raina's in the bar, singing along to torch songs.
"Hey," she says, "Phil, right? Daisy's friend? You want a drink?"
"No, I just," he says, hesitates. "This is stupid, it's just, I heard Daisy was sick, and I was wondering if maybe you could do me a favor and drop this off to her? If it's not too much trouble." Raina considers him thoughtfully for a moment.
"Actually," she says, "Phil, I wouldn't usually, but I figure, Daisy talks about you all the time, so it's probably okay to make an exception. Her apartment's right near here, I'll give you her address, you can drop it off yourself."
"Thanks," Coulson says, "that's - thanks."
Daisy's apartment is a walk-up tenement, and she's on the sixth floor, and by the fourth flight Coulson's really glad he hasn't let up on his work-outs even with the promotion. He hesitates again when he reaches her door, knocks cautiously and hears her shuffle across to the door.
"Phil," she says, surprised, and Coulson's never seen her so pale, dark circles under her eyes.
"Hey, so, Raina gave me your address, I hope that's okay, I just. I heard you were sick, and I made you some chicken soup."
"You made me soup?" Daisy asks, her voice hoarse, and then she's caught with a bout of hacking coughs, sighs, hunches into her ratty gray sweatshirt. "Sorry, ugh, this bug is awful, but seriously, you made me soup?"
"Yeah, it's just chicken noodle, it's nothing special," he says, and then, "but are you sure you're okay? Do you have someone looking after you?"
"No," Daisy says, shakes her head. "It's fine. I'll be on my feet in no time. You want to come in? I'm not, like, super great company right now, but it's really nice to see you." It's not fine, Coulson thinks, everyone should have someone to take care of them, but he steps inside, smiles at her.
"Coffee?" she asks, and before he can stop himself, he gives her a look.
"No offense," he says, "but you really don't look up to making coffee. Why don't you lie down on the couch, and I'll heat up this soup, and maybe make you a cup of tea?"
"It's fine," Daisy argues, "I'm fine," and then she coughs again, shivers violently, and Coulson frowns.
"Hey," he tells her, "Daisy, come on, just let me do something nice for you, okay?"
"Okay," she says, shivers again, curls up on the couch. He looks around the small studio apartment, grabs a quilt off her bed and tucks it over her.
"Have you taken any medicine?" he asks, and she shakes her head, so he grabs a couple of Tylenol, pours her a big glass of cold water. Then he heats the soup up, feeling strangely comfortable in her tiny kitchen.
"Hey Phil," she says quietly from the couch. "If you haven't had dinner, heat some up for yourself too, okay?" That's fine, that's easy, and he spoons the soup into two bowls, brings them over, passes her one and sits down at the other end of the couch. "Oh," she says after her first bite, "oh man, this is so good, Phil, thank you." It is. His mom's recipe is great.
They eat in companionable silence until she asks for the recipe, and then he tells her about his mom, doesn't mean to but finds himself talking about his dad's death and his life with his mom after that, and what it was like when she died, and she listens, touches his hand, writes down the recipe. Then he makes her hot tea sweet with lemon and honey, lets her tuck her cold feet under his thigh, finds her copy of Persuasion and reads aloud until she's fast asleep. He gets up to leave, rearranges the quilt around her more cosily, strokes her hair very lightly and softly, softly closes her door behind him.
A week later, she's back in the bar, still coughing occasionally but nowhere near as bad as she had been, and when he comes in, she beams at him.
"Here's your Tupperware back," she says, passing it over. "I ate it all. It was amazing."
"No problem," he says lightly, "I'm glad you're feeling better."
"Yeah," she says, "I am, Phil, thanks." She gives him a very soft look, reaches out and touches his hand, opens her mouth as if she's about to say more, but it's a busy night, and Lincoln clears his throat, and she steps away, doesn't get a chance to say anything.
+
Halloween falls on a Tuesday, and Coulson doesn't really think about it until he reaches Afterlife and it's decked out in crepe paper streamers and cobwebs and pumpkins everywhere. Lincoln's in a surprisingly impressive Iron Man suit, and Coulson doesn't see Daisy at first, but when he does, he feels like he's experiencing a full-body blush.
"Aw, no costume, Phil?" she asks, looking disappointed, and he shakes his head.
"It's not really... a thing, in my office," he says. "Seriously, though? Pin-up Captain America? Jesus Christ, Daisy."
"Come on, I look great."
"Oh, no arguments there," he agrees, tries to look anywhere but at her bare shoulders or the way the striped corset is... accentuating every curve. Daisy raises one eyebrow, leans over the bar to pass him his drink, and he swears she's doing it on purpose. She doesn't know about his collection. How can she. This is just a terrible, beautiful coincidence. "Can I, uh, take a selfie?" he asks. "I've got a friend who'd get a real kick out of it."
"Sure," Daisy says, sounding pleased, and she jumps up, climbs over the bar. Oh god, Coulson thinks, she's wearing thigh-high tights, Daisy, no. She steps in close, puts her arm around his waist, presses her face against his and pouts for the camera, and Coulson holds his breath, desperately thinks about truth, justice and the American way. He texts the picture to Steve, adds the message FYI, we're redesigning your suit, and within minutes gets back a shot of Steve's face, scrunched in concern. So help me, Agent Coulson, I'm not sure I'd look that good in a corset, he's said, and Coulson wishes, wishes, he could show Daisy, because she would laugh and laugh and her face would be a beautiful thing.
"Hey," she teases, "if you stay for the band I'll let you hold my shield."
"What makes you think I even want to hold your shield?" he counters, and is rewarded with a smirk so glorious he thinks she must have practised in the mirror.
"Go on," she says, "stay for the band, it'll be fun."
He doesn't intend to. He intends to have one drink and leave, same as always, but when he finishes, Daisy surreptitiously slides a plastic cup of punch over to him, presses a finger to her lips, and he just feels like it'd be rude not to drink it.
In hindsight, perhaps that was a mistake.
"What the hell did you put in that punch?" he yells an hour later, over the noise of the swing band starting up, and Daisy frowns, considers thoughtfully, leans closer.
"That was the batch with the cinnamon-infused vodka and hard apple cider," she tells him, her mouth pressed up against his ear. "You want another?"
"You know you're supposed to be selling it, right? Collecting money for goods? You can't just give me free drinks all night."
"Don't be silly, Phil. And I figure, if I give you another drink, you'll be more likely to dance with me."
"I'm not going to dance with you," Phil says, and she rolls her eyes, refills his cup and hands it back. Coulson loosens his tie, sips his punch. This batch is pumpkin spice. It's pretty tasty, actually, and the band's not bad. He should have seen this coming.
Daisy drags him out on the dance floor half an hour later, against his half-hearted protest. "Phil," she says, looking serious and pulling off her shield where it's been slung over her back, setting it down behind the bar. "I've got a twenty minute break tonight and I want to spend fifteen minutes dancing my heart out and five minutes drinking a red bull before I work another ten hours, so help me live my dreams, okay?"
"Okay, okay," he laughs, takes her hand and lets her pull him into the small crowd. He hasn't danced to swing in years, but Daisy's quick on her feet, and after a moment to catch the beat, Coulson even tries a little fancy footwork. Daisy laughs, looks impressed, steps in closer and catches his shoulder.
"Spin me," she shouts, and he grabs her waist, twirls her once, twice, spins her out and then back in. Her body's warm against his; she's breathing fast, her eyes sparkling, and god, Coulson just wants to lean down and kiss her. "See?" she says, "I told you it'd be fun," spins herself back out. "That's my fifteen minutes," she yells, and Coulson thinks, time to leave.
+
All through November, he catches Daisy giving him glances he can't interpret, and he wants to ask but he knows how this goes. They're friends, and that's weird, he doesn't know how that happened, but he loves that they're friends. He wishes he could tell her more about his life. He wishes he could tell her anything about his life.
He pulls on his coat, because New York is getting cold now, waves to Lincoln, smiles goodbye to Daisy. He heads out the door, shoves his hands in his pockets, considers just giving up with SHIELD and lying on the beach in Tahiti instead. It'll never happen. He's a career agent, and the Rising Tide investigation is gaining traction, and he's dedicated to SHIELD in a way that he thinks he doesn't even fully understand.
"Hey, Phil," Daisy calls, tugging on her jacket. He turns around, pauses, waits for her to catch up.
"So I have Friday off," she says. "Raina needed to swap a shift. And I just... I really like you, Phil, you're smart and sexy and funny and I'm so into you, and I was just wondering if, uh, you'd like to go out. For dinner, maybe?"
"Dinner," Coulson says, stunned, and Daisy scuffs her toe on the ground, gives him a shy look. "You're asking me to dinner."
"You don't have to say yes," Daisy says quickly, "if you don't want to, I mean, um, that's fine, I just thought that maybe-"
"Daisy," Coulson says. "I would really like to go to dinner with you."
"Oh," she says. "Okay. Well, uh. Cool." She grabs his hand, turns it wrist-up and carefully writes her cell number on his wrist with a ballpoint pen, and all Coulson can think is that Daisy is touching him, holding his hand, touching his wrist, and that Daisy thinks he's sexy, holy shit. "So, uh, you have my number, text me, we'll work something out," she tells him, stretches up on tiptoe, presses a light kiss to the corner of his mouth, and then she's gone, running back into the bar before Lincoln can come yell about her break being over. Coulson maybe can't breathe. He's a totally professional secret agent, and Daisy has just destroyed him with one small kiss.
+
Friday morning, he's distracted, catches himself staring into space a half-dozen times, tries to pull it together. Agent Ward interrupts a long daydream, knocks at his office door and steps in. "Sir, we've got a lead on the Rising Tide," he says, and Coulson takes the tablet, flicks through the information.
"Miles Lydon. Any intel on how high up the food chain he is?"
"Mid-level," Ward says. "Not a great target, but he could lead us higher up. Give us names, aliases."
"Prepare a team," Coulson orders, "we'll go in, see if we can bring him in. Not a strike force. Just you and a couple more agents."
"Sir," Ward says, steps away, and Coulson hides a grimace, because for some reason, he's never liked Specialist Agent Grant Ward.
Lydon's apartment is over in Williamsburg, and Coulson thinks, looking at the building, that this is just a trust fund kid playing around with computers. He's not going to give them much useful information on the Rising Tide. Still, they might as well bring him in.
Ward kicks in the door, and Coulson thinks, come on, you could have knocked, but apparently this is how specialists do it. Lydon's immediately panicky, shoving his hands up in the air and alternating between tearfully proclaiming he didn't do anything wrong and snottily demanding a lawyer. A standard bust, Coulson thinks, nothing to write home about, and then he hears the toilet flush, the tap turn on briefly and then off.
"I can't believe you called me over for this, seriously, dude, you can't even get into Bank of America by yourself? That's weak," Daisy says grumpily as she opens the bathroom door, looks up, blinks, blinks again. "I... wow. Uh, hey, Phil, what up, please could you stop pointing a gun at me now?"
"Hands where I can see them," Ward grits out, and Daisy raises her hands, her eyes wide and still fixed on Coulson's face. Ward grabs her, pulls her hands in front of her and snaps on cuffs, and an agent holds up a backpack Coulson recognizes.
"Laptop," the agent says, "you want to get it analyzed?"
"Yeah," Coulson says, "yes, take it all. Bring in the suspects for questioning."
"Phil," Daisy says, and he ignores it. "Phil," she says again, louder, and he looks at her, looks away, because he feels like every ounce of betrayal is written on his face. Daisy blinks away tears, and Ward pulls a bag over her head, and Coulson wants to say, stop, let her go, but he's compromised here. She's compromised him.
+
"She's not in the system," Agent Yang tells him. "We've run her through every database, and she's not in the system. Pretty face, no name, no birth record, no social security. She doesn't exist, sir."
"Of course she exists," Coulson snaps, walks away. He waits an hour before going into the interrogation room, takes deep breaths, tries to calm down. He brings up the photo he has of her, the picture of them together on Halloween, thinks about deleting it the way he's pretty sure she's deleted herself from the system, then pulls himself together. He walks in, playing Bland Career Agent Phil Coulson as hard as he can, undoes her cuffs and steps back, just looks at her for a moment.
"So this really isn't how I saw this evening going," Daisy says ruefully, rubbing her wrists, and Coulson frowns at her.
"Stop flirting with me, I'm trying to interrogate you," he tells her, and she sits back in her chair, lounges in a way that he knows is deliberately challenging.
"You've got nothing on me," she says, and Coulson sees for the first time the Daisy that dropped out of high school, the Daisy that he knows from her occasional stories was in and out of juvie. "I was just visiting my friend. I didn't know he was some kind of hacker criminal."
"Right," Coulson says. "Okay. And the laptop we found in your backpack, you were just holding it for a friend."
"Yeah," Daisy says, raises her eyebrow. "Definitely not mine. And I'm just his totally innocent girlfriend, I had no idea."
"Daisy," he says softly, "come on." She grins, tilts her head as if this is all just playful banter, and Coulson really shouldn't be enjoying it. He sits down, shows her the voice recorder, hits play. So tell me about Daisy, his voice plays. Daisy? Who the fuck is Daisy? You mean Skye? Miles asks in response, and Coulson's watching her face close enough that he catches Daisy's eyes widen fractionally.
"Skye's my middle name," she says, "when I met Miles I was looking at reinventing myself. Trying out something different."
"See, here I was thinking he meant Skye, one of the top members of Rising Tide. The Skye who hacked the NSA."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she shrugs, clenches her jaw. "I guess when you said your job was classified, you weren't kidding. What are you, Phil? FBI? NSA? You can't hold me. I know my rights. You drag me in here in cuffs with a bag over my head, you think that's going to intimidate me?"
"That's not how I wanted to do it," Coulson says. "Daisy, that's not how I-"
"Yeah," she says. "I know. But come on."
"We'll crack your laptop encryption," he tells her. "I've got my best people on it." Daisy smiles, slow and lazy and easy, all heat and challenge, and Coulson is so fucked because it's possibly the sexiest look she's ever given him.
+
"We can't crack her encryption," Fitz tells him bluntly, and Coulson is reluctantly, irritatedly impressed. He doesn't know why he expected anything less.
"I brought you a coffee," he says, walking back into the interrogation room carrying two mugs. "Fair warning, it's government coffee, so don't blame me if it's terrible." Daisy rolls her eyes, takes one of the mugs from him, and her fingers brush his in a way that can only be deliberate.
"Hey, you remembered how I like my coffee," she says after a sip.
"Of course I did," Coulson says, because he remembers everything about her, even if none of it is real. "Daisy, look. I don't work for the NSA. Or the FBI."
"But you do work for the government," she guesses, looking down at the mug she's got held in both hands.
"Yeah, I do. I work for SHIELD."
"Seriously?" Daisy says, puts the mug down and stares at him for a long moment. "Huh," she says eventually. "You know, I never really thought you were a data analyst. I mean, what analyst knows jiu jitsu."
"I am an analyst," Coulson argues. "Just... one who is also a secret agent. Who has to fight supervillains occasionally. And I do know jiu jitsu."
"Hmmmm," Daisy muses. "No wonder you were always coming in looking all heroically beat up. You know Lincoln and Raina and I had a bet going about whether you were a Daredevil-style vigilante or running a secret fight club?" Coulson laughs at that, sips his own coffee, and they share a moment of oddly companionable silence. "Why are you telling me the truth, Phil?" she asks, looks up at him and her face is open and curious. "Why are you letting me in on this?"
"I'm not looking for Rising Tide just to eliminate them. I was serious about not being NSA. I don't care about hacking Bank of America. The Rising Tide is looking for something. You're looking for something. I need your help finding what it is you're looking for."
"People with powers," Daisy says, wary. "SHIELD's trying to contain them. Contain the threat."
"Actually," Coulson says, and he's going off-script a little here. "I was hoping we could build a team."
+
Coulson's coffee has gone cold, and Daisy's still staring into her mug, but he can tell she's listening.
"I've been up close with superheroes," he tells her. "You remember the Battle of New York, right. I don't. I was in a hospital recovering from a stab wound to the chest. Two inches from my heart, apparently. I only survived thanks to some really quick paramedics and a whole lot of blood transfusions." Daisy looks up, her mouth falling open, and the shock and horror on her face makes him want to pull her into a hug, stroke her hair. "Anyway. Once I got out of the hospital, I got reassigned back to desk work. Mostly. I don't think my boss wanted me in the field while I was recovering. Processing Index reports, putting together patterns. The way SHIELD treats people with powers - well, if you're an Avenger, that's one thing, you're a very public superhero, but SHIELD's got to reevaluate its stance on Indexing, on the way the people who aren't Avengers are treated. I've been arguing that with my boss for months now. He finally assigned me to it, to investigating the potential for putting together another team."
"A team off the radar," Daisy says. "A secret team. Not like the Avengers. Not out in the open."
"Exactly," Coulson agrees. "The Avengers are public figures now. That's fine - they're supersoldiers, spies. Banner can transform, and Stark's used to the spotlight. People with powers, the world's not ready for that."
"Okay," Daisy says, taking a breath. "Phil - that sounds okay, but where do I fit in?"
"I know the Rising Tide has been trying to hack SHIELD," Coulson says. "I also know the Rising Tide is investigating superhero stories, trying to bring these secrets, the things SHIELD is covering up, to light. I'm pretty sure I've listened to a few of your podcasts, which, frankly, would have been much more pleasant to listen to if you'd used your own voice instead of that anonymising filter." Daisy smiles, at that, reaches out and touches her pinky finger to his. "What are you looking for, Daisy? There's more to it than just wanting to make information public. Skye's been doing more investigation than that."
"You're looking for people with powers," Daisy says, pauses, takes a deep breath. "I think I might be one."
+
Coulson brings in her laptop, and she pauses again, her hands on the keys. "You want to do the honors?" she asks. "You were so about decrypting it, it feels a little mean not to let you."
"Sure," Coulson agrees, amused, raises an eyebrow, and she swivels the laptop around to him.
"Passcode is TGAH-H3I2T5I, all caps," she says, and he types it in. Two-step decryption passcode required, the screen flashes, and he looks up questioningly at her. She gets up, drags her chair round to the other side of the table, puts a hand on his shoulder and leans in. "Daisy Johnson. Disengage encryption," she says clearly, and the computer unlocks.
"Oh, come on," Coulson says, exasperated, and she grins.
"I thought you'd like that," she tells him, squeezes his shoulder and sits down. "Let me show you the files I have, okay?" She pulls her chair in closer, starts pulling up documents, and Coulson just looks for a moment at the curve of her cheek and her jaw and the long sweep of her hair.
"This is what I have on my family," she says. "It's nothing, Phil, it's a birth certificate and a file putting me in St Agnes, redacted, by SHIELD, but the birth certificate, I looked, I got good at this just so I could keep looking, and eventually, I got somewhere. Hunan province, 1989. I don't know what happened, I keep hitting walls, SHIELD redaction, but I know it involves powers. I know it involves experimentation. My family's gone, and I know someone in SHIELD knows what happened, and I knew I'd never stop looking." She looks away, blinks, lets her tears fall, and Coulson reaches out, touches his hand to her cheek and brushes away a tear with his thumb.
"Let me help," he breathes. "Daisy, let me help."
"Yeah," Daisy sighs. "Yeah, Phil, okay." She lifts her hand to his, holds it against her face, presses a kiss to his palm. "Anyway," she says after a moment. "That's one side of it. Now you want the other side, right? The other people I've found."
"Yes," Coulson says. "Will you show me?" and she nods, closes her eyes for a second, takes a breath and gives him a very intent look like she's cataloguing his face to memory.
"So," she says in the end. "Am I going to SHIELD jail now?"
"I was thinking you could join the team," Coulson suggests. "As a consultant. Unless you'd really like to go to SHIELD jail, that is."
"No, I- Can I? Won't you get in trouble, if you recruit someone that's been trying to hack SHIELD?"
"Yeah, my boss will probably yell at me a bit. But he owes me, for not dying, and all. Also it's kind of a thing I do, bringing in waifs and strays. You're part of a tradition."
"Hmmm," Daisy says seriously. "You know, I don't even know your last name?"
"Agent Phil Coulson," he says, offers her his hand, and she pauses for a moment, then shakes.
"Hi, AC," she says, and he rolls his eyes, because apparently Daisy is incapable of not immediately nicknaming him. "It's nice to meet you. I'm hacktivist genius Skye."
"You know most SHIELD agents think 'Skye' is an alias for a guy?"
"Yeah, most guys do," Daisy smirks, and Coulson realizes she's still holding his hand. "So, uh, Phil, if I'm not going to SHIELD jail, you want to give me a ride home?"
+
Coulson remembers her address, and the drive back to her apartment is definitely weird, a space between them that hadn't existed a week ago. There's the truth they've just learned, and the moments they've shared, and underlying it all, the friendship they've built, the year they've known each other. She's taken care of him and he's taken care of her and they've eaten watermelon and danced to swing bands and gotten drunk and watched fireworks together. He knows her friends. She knows his mother's soup recipe. He's not sure where they go from here.
"So, uh, you want to come in?" she asks at her door. "We could have a drink. I feel like I need a drink."
"Yeah," he says, "okay." He doesn't want to leave, yet. He doesn't ever want to leave. Coulson leans against her fridge, watches her pull out a bottle of bourbon and two glasses. She puts them down on her counter but doesn't pour the drinks, just pauses for a moment, looks over at him.
"So," she says. "What's SHIELD's policy on internal relationships?"
"Fraternization is against policy," Coulson says, "especially for superior-subordinate relationships, but there are no strict rules about consultants."
"Oh, thank fuck," Daisy says, crowds him up against the fridge, "because, Phil, I'm crazy about you." She kisses him, hard and fierce, and oh, this is what they were building, this is the culmination of their year of dancing around each other, and he hates that he arrested her but he's weirdly grateful that they're doing this now when they know the truth about each other. He can tell her about his life, about how he's kind of a hero sometimes. She can tell him about being a hacker genius, can be a hero herself. They're on the same side, finally, and they're together, and this is everything he's wanted for such, such a long time.
They fall into her bed, tripping over each other as they tug off clothes, and the reality of it all, the reality of Daisy's skin hot against his and her mouth on his jaw and her hands sliding up his back, it's so good. This is happiness, too, even more than the sweet grittiness of buttercream icing and Daisy's head resting on his shoulder and a final firework exploding in the July night sky, and Coulson feels like he might burst with it.
"I'm starving," she says afterwards, propping herself up on one arm, "you wanna order in some Chinese with me?"
"We never did go out for dinner," he agrees, stretched out next to her on his stomach, and she laughs, kisses his shoulder and the nape of his neck, trails her fingers down his spine.
"Pretty weird first date," she says lightly, and Coulson rolls over, pulls her in for another kiss. She settles with her head in the hollow of his shoulder, traces his scar lightly with her fingertips, shivers a little. "I'm glad you didn't die," she says, "I'm glad you didn't die before I met you, and this is where your life wound up," and Coulson's glad too, because his life wound up with Daisy, in Daisy's bed, feeling all their possibilities expand before them, and there are probably thousands of universes where it didn't.
+
Fury does yell at him, loudly and at length, and Coulson submits to it, waits patiently for fifteen minutes before looking up, rolling his eyes in a way he knows he wouldn't have six months ago. Daisy's rubbing off on him. It's a good influence.
"You can keep going," he says blandly, "or you can trust my judgment, and trust that this isn't something I'm going to neatly compartmentalize. We build the team with Daisy, or I walk away." Fury considers him for a lengthy moment, scowls.
"You've changed, Coulson," he snaps, and Phil thinks, for the better. "Get the fuck out of my office. Congratulations on finding a girlfriend. Build your damn team."
+
Daisy throws herself into reading up on all the SHIELD intel, to the point where Coulson sees yet another side of her. She's obsessive, precise, meticulous, and this is how she found her secrets. This is how she put together what few answers she has about her life. He loves it about her, but-
"Put those files down," he says lazily, "and come back to bed. I should never have brought you on board."
"That's such a lie," Daisy says, casts a cheeky look over her shoulder. "Come on, now I'm your hot secret agent girlfriend, that's way better. Anyway, Phil, that HYDRA uprising, how sure are you that it was actually contained?"
"About forty percent," Coulson admits, and Daisy chews her lip. "Why do you ask?"
"It's just... there's a lot of chatter in the files, if you know what you're looking for. I'm pretty sure HYDRA's using the spaces in SHIELD's secure broadcasts to send their own messages." Phil sits up, looks at the tablet, and she's not wrong.
"Why didn't we pick this up?" he asks, and she shrugs.
"Your analysts didn't know what they were looking for, or what they were looking at. They were used to the shape of the data. But if HYDRA's been doing this for decades, then-"
"We were always staring it right in the face," Coulson realizes. "Fuck. I've got to take this to Fury."
"That's not all," Daisy says. "SHIELD's looking for powered people, I know, but Phil... I think HYDRA is too." That's worse, that's way worse, and Coulson's hand stills where he's stroking her back. "That guy," Daisy tells him. "What's his name, Tall and Scowly. The one who cuffed me. Do you trust him?"
"Grant Ward? Not overly, why?"
"John Garrett. He's been deep in these coded messages, passing on intel. I'm pretty sure he's what HYDRA's messages are calling the Clairvoyant. Based on what he's gathering, what he's sending, my gut feel is he's in SHIELD personnel files. He's not the only one, though. There are similar messages from Ward to Garrett, and travel records show they've been on mission in the same location at least five times in the past year."
"Garrett was the agent who recruited Ward to SHIELD," Coulson says, and Daisy looks over at him with a troubled look on her face.
"And Ward was in your files last night," she tells him. "The Caterpillar intel, things he shouldn't have had access too. There was a file transfer at two am."
+
Fury sighs heavily when Coulson steps back into his office. He pulls out a folder stamped CONFIDENTIAL, DIRECTOR'S EYES ONLY, hands it to Coulson, and when Phil opens it, it's not at all, not in the least, what he expects.
"If you're building a secret team," Fury says, "it can't be in SHIELD, Phil, not within the main structure like you are," and that makes a certain amount of sense.
"So how committed are you to New York as a living situation?" Coulson asks that night over dinner, tentative, and Daisy considers, shrugs.
"Not majorly? I like the bar, and my friends there, but my apartment's a sublet, and it's not like I've got any family here, why? Ooh, are we being sent on assignment? Are we being sent on assignment to a secret SHIELD base?"
"Not... a base, exactly," Coulson says, and when Daisy walks into the Bus for the first time, her fingers twined in his, he thinks, for the millionth time, how did he get so lucky.
"Ready to face the much weirder world?" he asks, and she rolls her eyes, grins, plants a quick kiss on him.
"Phil," she says, "I've been ready for so long."