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The first time Clint dreamed about his soulmate was his first night in foster care. A good Samaritan had found him in the alley where Barney and Trickshot had left him to bleed to death, and called an ambulance. After two weeks in hospital, a social worker had collected him, given him some clothes that mostly fit, and driven him to his first foster home. When he finally managed to fall asleep in the top bunk of a dilapidated set of bunkbeds (there was an eight-year-old named ‘Sammy’ in the lower bunk), Clint dreamed about a boy a few years older than him, sitting up in bed, reading comic books.
At the time Clint didn’t realize he was dreaming about his soulmate. He hadn’t spent much time in school and no one had taken the time to explain the facts of life to him. All he knew was what he’d seen on TV and overheard in conversations, which wasn’t accurate or helpful. Over the next few months he only dreamed about the comic-reading boy a couple more times, and he was miserable enough to figure that it was just some kind of wish fulfillment thing. The boy had his own bed in his own room, and his own stuff: comics, a baseball mitt, and in pride of place next to some action figures, a model of a bright red Corvette. Clint didn’t know enough to think the details of the dream were strange. He couldn’t see the boy’s face, of course, just his hands holding the comic, but Clint knew it was a boy, and knew, somehow, that he was a bit older than Clint’s own thirteen years.
It wasn’t until almost a year, and two more foster homes, later, that Clint’s words came in. Or rather his soulmate’s words. Talk to me appeared in neat, even, cursive on the inside of his left thigh. “Well, at least it will be pretty easy to hide,” was Clint’s first thought. His second one was, of course, “I wonder who…” followed by an image of the comic-book reading boy from his dreams. Suddenly, things clicked into place and made sense. The fact that his soulmate was out there somewhere, was someone older than him, someone who had a good home and neat handwriting, somehow made Clint bolder. Also the fact that his words had finally appeared made him feel more mature. Both things combined to encourage him to make the decision to run away from the foster home he was currently in. It wasn’t a bad place, but they had their hands full with the younger kids, and Clint knew he was falling further and further behind in school because no one had time to help him with his homework. He figured he’d be better off on his own, and besides, he wasn’t going to find his soulmate sitting in his remedial middle school classes.
The next couple of decades of Clint’s life put him off the idea of soulmates entirely. By then he’d seen enough ugliness, jealousy, and greed between people who were supposed to be mystically bound to each other, that he was convinced the whole thing was a big sick joke. He didn’t dream about the boy reading comic books any more, instead he dreamed of a shadowy man in a dark suit chasing him. Coming to arrest him for his crimes, Clint figured. And once again, he didn’t realize he was dreaming about his soulmate. Until one day on a rooftop, when he’d lost his bow, and broken his ankle jumping down from a fire escape, and couldn’t move fast enough to run from a government agent in a navy blue suit who totally cheated by shooting him with a taser.
The first thing Clint saw when he came to was his soulmate’s face peering down at him, concerned, and the first thing he heard was, “Talk to me.” Clint clenched his jaw tight shut against the words that were trying to force themselves out, knowing that his own instinctive answer was inscribed somewhere on this man’s body in his still messy middle-grade scrawl. The man waited another moment, a sad frown of disappointment on his face. Then he shook his head as if to clear out the cobwebs and said, “My name is Agent Phil Coulson, and I’m here to recruit you to SHIELD.”
The first problem, Clint quickly discovered, with not wanting to fall for his soulmate, was that Phil was cute and smart and funny and kind. Not to mention sexy as hell. Not that any of this was obvious to Clint in the first few weeks or even first few months of his time in SHIELD. Initially, Clint believed in the ‘Robot Agent Coulson’ façade that fooled most people. And Clint figured that he had dodged a bullet and congratulated himself on his certainty that soulmates were some kind of dumb romantic ideal that didn’t really work out in real life, especially not for people like him. The other problem was that Phil never gave up.
“Talk to me, Barton.” The command over the comms made Clint’s jaw clench in what was by now an instinctive reaction. Clint swallowed and took a breath before he answered. “Three bogeys coming in from the northwest, and tell Nat that there’s a whole platoon of ninjas headed her way from the loading dock.”
“Understood,” came Phil’s clipped tones, and even now, in the middle of a firefight, Clint spared a fraction of a second to wonder if he’d made the wrong call in refusing to acknowledge that Phil’s words were inscribed on his skin. They’d grown closer, over the last few years, having saved each other’s lives more than once, and they even spent social time together as a team sometimes. Not too often, because there were only so many slightly sad, longing looks from Phil that Clint could handle before he had to go and spend a few hours shooting things to clear his head.
Then came a mission that went sideways almost before it had started, and Clint had to pull a truly spectacular move to keep Phil and Nat from getting killed. Which worked, mostly. Except for the ending up almost getting killed himself part. Clint woke up in SHIELD medical feeling like he’d been hit by a truck. He blinked and swallowed a couple of times, and then wiggled his fingers and toes to make sure that they were all still there, under the bandages. Maybe blowing up the tanker he was perched on top of as a distraction hadn’t been the best move. It had obviously worked though, because there was Phil, asleep in the chair next to his bed, looking adorably rumpled, and… well, looking kinda like shit actually.
Clint was about to start looking for the call button so that he could get the bad news from the doctor about how long he was going to be laid up, when Phil stirred, and woke. The wide smile that broke across Phil’s face when he saw that Clint was awake nearly broke his heart. So of course Phil had to follow up by pushing himself tiredly out of his chair, coming to stand by the side of Clint’s bed, and taking his hand.
“Talk to me,” Phil said in a quiet, hopeful voice.
Clint’s jaw clenched, like it always did. He swallowed, like he always did. Then he let himself relax back into the pillow and turned his head to look directly into Phil’s worried eyes.
“And say what?” Clint said, his voice still rough from disuse. He felt the inside of his thigh itch as the bond was triggered, and then solidified. From the joyful expression on Phil’s face, his words were itching too. Phil kissed the unbandaged tips of Clint’s fingers.
“Anything. Say anything.”