Phil Coulson Fic

[icarus_chained]

For gryphonrhi, for the five sentence meme. I suspect there have been any number of fics on this theme, but hey, what's one more? *smiles sheepishly*

Title: All Weather Friends
Rating: PG
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Characters/Pairings: Phil, Natasha, Steve, Pepper, Thor, Nick, Tony. Phil & everybody, basically
Summary: Five people who reacted to the knowledge that Phil Coulson isn't dead
Wordcount: 1358
Warnings/Notes: Coming back from the dead
Disclaimer: Not mine

All Weather Friends

Fog

There was someone in the room with him. Even through the fog of opiates, Phil could sense them, a presence waiting silently beside him. He struggled towards full consciousness, careful to remain as still and as calm as possible. Old instincts died hard.

So, apparently, did he.

"You're awake," Natasha said softly, before he ever opened his eyes. Phil relaxed, muscles he'd been struggling to tense falling slack, and managed to pry his eyelids open to look at her.

"Hrgh," he said. Not his most polite greeting ever, but a mouthful of what seemed like foul-tasting cottonballs would do that. Her lip quirked, and she slid an ice-chip gently between his lips without being asked. For a few minutes, while he blinked blearily and tried to reconnect with his body, they said nothing.

"... I dislike being misinformed of deaths," she said, interrupting the silence with apparent dispassion, her fingers still gentle at his mouth. Phil stilled, eyeing her carefully. "I understand the necessity, in this case. I understand that it was very close. But I ... do not like being lied to. Not about things like this."

Phil blinked once, slowly, and then carefully moved his arm, struggling a little, and touched his fingers to her wrist. "F-- Fog of war," he rasped softly. "But I ... apologise."

She stared at him for a moment, the stillness of a preying creature as she examined him, and then ... then she smiled, soft and rueful, and leaned down to press a soft kiss to his forehead.

"It is forgiven," she told him, and Phil sighed contentedly back into the world of the living.


Wind

The only excuse Phil could offer for the fact that he hadn't seen him until he'd walked straight into him was that footing on the deck of the Helicarrier was treacherous on the best of days, and in middling-to-high winds required every last scrap of attention. Which was why, of course, he'd walked right through the stairway door and smack into Captain America's chest.

For a second, the pain of the impact slammed through his still-healing chest and Phil almost went to his knees, vision greying out while he struggled to remember how to breathe. Powerful hands caught him immediately, a startled voice instinctively starting an apology, and then ...

Then Rogers realised who he held, in the same moment Phil's vision returned enough to realise who was doing the holding.

"... You're alive," Steve stuttered, staring down at him in blind shock and a truly startling amount of pain. "You ... Coulson? Phil Coulson? I thought you were ..."

Phil blinked up at him, a wry smile carving its way through the now-deeper lines of his face. He raised one shoulder in a half-shrug, pushing through the molten weight in his chest to speak. "Welcome ... Welcome to SHIELD, Captain Rogers," he managed. "Reports of one's death may be ... subject to change."

And for a second, he saw anger in those blue eyes, the pain of another person who disliked being lied to, but then ... then the frown softened, and something light and young and a little rueful crept in behind it.

"Yeah," said Steve Rogers, a man out of time. "Tell me about it."


Sun

He had carefully arranged this appointment for a time when Stark himself was almost guaranteed to be absent. He owed Stark an explanation too, at some point, but while he was still recuperating to some extent, Phil really couldn't deal with the man's histrionics.

Not, he thought, hearing the angry clack of heels march towards him down the hall, that Miss Potts wasn't perfectly capable of histrionics herself, given cause. But she was usually a little gentler about it.

He hoped, anyway.

And then, she'd rounded the corner from her new office, the memo from her secretary in her hand telling her that a 'Phil Coulson' was there to see her, an expression remarkably like Fury's best killing face on her features. She stormed around the corner, her face a mask of pain and anger and then ...

She stopped short, and she stared at him, a flurry of expressions passing through her eyes, pain and grief and shock and anger, and then she smiled, she smiled like the sun coming up, and burst into tears at the same time. Phil flinched, startled into motion, darting towards her with an apology already written on his lips, but Pepper Potts was having none of that. She half-ran the two steps necessary, flung her arms around his neck, and proceeded to throttle him in stunned, grieving delight.

Phil, quickly masking the wince as his chest twanged a protest, gingerly wrapped his arms around her in return. "I ... apologise for the delay in informing you," he said softly, regretfully, and she hiccuped into his shoulder.

"Right now," she whispered determinedly, "I really don't care."


Thunder

"AGENT COULSON!"

The voice roared down the corridors of the Helicarrier like an honest-to-god clap of thunder, and only years of experience in SHIELD and elsewhere kept Phil from jumping five feet in the air. As it was, he thought, with some degree of pride, not even his usual impassive expression had shown the flinch. He turned, carefully, to face the figure storming down the hall towards him.

"Mr Thor," he said, holding out one hand in a possibly optimistic gesture of greeting. "It's good to see you again?"

The Asgardian stopped, looming over Phil with all of his considerable height, blue eyes sharp and fierce as they scanned him head to toe. Looking for missing wounds, perhaps, or signs of necromantic magic. Difficult to tell, with Asgardians. Phil smiled blandly and carefully up at him, and waited for whatever conclusion the alien felt like coming to.

Which was, apparently, that an alive Coulson was a good Coulson, or at least good enough to be going on with, because the next thing that happened was a pair of massive hands wrapping firmly and gently around his extended one, and an earnest rumble addressed to him.

"I mourned for you," Thor told him solemnly. "I thought you had died in my defense, and mourned you as a brother in arms."

And then, while Phil was blinking at that, an odd pain in his chest that didn't seem to have anything to do with the mostly-healed wound, Thor smiled, rich and true.

"I am glad," he said, "that it proved unnecessary."


Rain

They really should have anticipated, once Miss Potts had been informed, that Stark would catch up with them sooner or later. Nick had told him, with something between rueful humour and old weariness, what he'd told Stark and Rogers in the aftermath of Phil's 'death'. How he'd used it, how he'd forced heroes back on their feet with it. And Phil had wanted that, had intended that to some extent, when he'd told Nick it was okay, that they'd need something to avenge, but he hadn't quite anticipated just how ... how vehemently they would pursue it.

He hadn't anticipated being worth the vengeance of heroes. Not like that. Not to that extent.

So they should have realised Stark would catch up with them, and Stark would not be happy, and Stark would probably make them pay, in ways petty and large, for the pain they'd put him through. They had realised.

They just hadn't reckoned on this being the opening salvo.

"Why does it always rain on me?" the tac-computer warbled mournfully, ignoring the baleful stare Nick sent it or the startled, hurriedly stifled grins on the faces of the bridge staff. "Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?"

"Why does it always rain on me?" the command console took up the refrain, the conference cam winking ominously up at them. "Even when the sun is shining, I can't avoid the lightning ..."

Phil carefully straightened his face. Carefully, very carefully, utterly impassive as Nick turned to glare at him, holding it for the long seconds until his boss' glare cracked reluctantly into exasperated, pained amusement.

"Well sir," Phil offered. "It could be worse?" And knowing Stark, it probably still would be.

But hey. At least he was alive to enjoy it, right?