Phil had, of course, chosen a night when the boys had band practice and wouldn’t be home for awhile to have Yelena over for dinner with him and Matt. They’d moved to the couches after dinner (because having two teenage boys required a living room with multiple couches). Once everyone was settled with drinks, Phil went to the kitchen to fetch dessert and came back, setting it down on the coffee table.
He took a seat, but his gaze didn’t leave the younger pair. “There’s something I want to talk to you two about.”
Midway to reaching for a fudgy brownie—something of a specialty for Phil—Matt stopped and twitched his face toward Yelena. It was more a gesture of habit than one that would bring him any gain in finding out where this might be going. Nothing about Phil's biorhythms told him anything, that was for sure. Matt found it as refreshing as he did mystifying (and sort of tantalizing at times). He fought to keep a wriggle of guilt out of his stomach as he sat back again, plate in hand. "If you're about to give us The Talk, I'm afraid that ship sailed roughly a millenia and a couple thousand sins ago."
"And I don't even have a uterus," Yelena said drily as she snatched the very brownie Matt had been wanting, all without breaking eye contact with Phil. "So half that talk is unnecessary. I'm uninterested in the other half," she added before cramming a good amount of the brownie into her mouth. "Did the boys ask you about The Talk?" she asked, mouth still full, though she looked at Matt. "I'll bet the boys asked him about The Talk." Hey, Matt had started it; she was just running with it.
“Trust me, if this was the talk, then I probably should have had it before I started sleeping with Matt.” There was a fond eye roll, because really, these two were double trouble when they got together.
“This isn’t about sex, more about your other nighttime activities.” He held up a hand before either of them could say anything. “I’m not telling you to stop, but I have a proposition.”
The tiniest wounded noise left Matt at the theft of his dessert, but it was mostly theatrics. He made an exasperated face at Yelena and leaned forward again to grab a coveted corner piece. Warmth bled through the plate; it felt nice against his fingertips. An odd observation to have, but it gave him a strange sense of comfort. Just like the teasing tug of war between two people he loved. (Nope, not even going to unpack any of that. There was time enough for it later. Probably.)
He leaned back on the couch and raised a brow slightly at Phil, leg crooked so his knee brushed against the other man's thigh. "I can't say I'm not relieved to get out of an awkward sex discussion—tabling bringing it up with Luke and Alex for now…and Julie—but you've got my attention at any rate."
“I’m not telling you to stop - that would be as futile as telling the sun not to shine or the sky not to rain. But-” Coulson paused, making sure he had their full attention. “But I have no desire to see the two of you continue to get hurt and drip blood everywhere.”
He raised an eyebrow at them. “So I propose a bit of a collaboration. I know both of you prefer to work alone, but you already work together occasionally, so consider this the next step.”
Yelena's poker face was of epic proportions. She chewed, swallowed, and watched Phil as he spoke. The instinct to scoff and refute the dripping of blood everywhere was strong. If anyone was dripping blood where Phil could find it, it was Matt. Nosebleeds could be hard to stop sometimes. But if she opened her mouth to continue the snark, Yelena was bound to sass herself right into a corner.
And yet… she was Yelena Belova.
"Hurt is relative and I don't drop blood everywhere. I am much better than that," she said, sounding insulted. But Yelena leaned forward and pressed her knee against Matt's in the process. There was a pressure there that was subtle and not by accident or sheer proximity. She needed support for a moment. Her eyes were serious. "I have had handlers in the past, Coulson," Yelena said quietly, not bothering to full-name him even just his given name. "And I am not my sister. I am not SHIELD. Explain your collaboration because all I know is ownership and I would kill you first." It was not a threat or even a promise. It was stated fact so that he understood what she did know. Valentina was not a handler; she was a client. Her contacts in this city and abroad were the same: clients.
Matt's hand might have seemed to drift onto Yelena's leg if they were literally anyone else. Phil's offer came from a good place, he knew, but it was never going to go over like gang busters when it came to Yelena. He took a breath, and then another one, willing the tightness out of his jaw like that actually worked. (It didn't. Not for long.) "At the very least, let's hear him out. What kind of collaboration are you talking about? How exactly would this work?"
“I’ll admit the dripping blood everywhere was maybe a bit of exaggeration,” Phil teased, unable to hide the hint of a smile before getting serious again.
“I’m familiar with your history, Yelena. I’m not sure how much you know of mine, but Natasha and Clint were… not always the best at following orders. But this isn’t about them. This is about the two of you and the fact that I don’t like seeing either of you hurt. Especially when it’s potentially preventable.”
He had lost too many people he cared about and he wasn’t going to stand aside and let that happen here. But this could only work if they agreed to it. “But a handler of some sort. Bare minimum, you tell me where, when, what you’re doing so that I can be support for you. Get away car, distraction, whatever. Ideally, you let me help you in planning ops.” And deciding which are too dangerous.
Yelena's expression didn't soften, even though it was still a little too Widow-blank, but she did lean back fully into the couch and folded her arms against herself. It was a calculated slouch, petulant and challenging instead of defensive. "We aren't doing the same things. Our intel is coming from different places and I will take jobs for money. Matt is above that." Her lips pursed just slightly, the only break she'd given thus far in the last few serious minutes.
"I have the money for anything we need," she admitted after a moment of internal argument. "This place. I wished for it. I could afford, pun intended, to be picky about the jobs I was offered." Which was why the last one with Matt involved had been pro bono, as she'd said. "You could coordinate," Yelena relented. "I was trying to sort that idea out. Emoji system with a burner phone that he kept off until the right emoji came through."
Without turning her head toward Matt, her question was directed at him nonetheless. "How would this work for you and your job and keeping plausible deniability?"
He wasn't tense in any outside sense of the word, but inside his head, Matt's lists were compounding on each other as to how this could all go terribly wrong. And yet again he was faced with the enormity of his hypocrisy, and just much his reluctance would probably be taken as his lack of faith in Phil's inestimable and exhaustive abilities. It harkened back to before Matt and Yelena had come to the understanding they had now. He let out a low chuckle and shook his head.
"He's already an accessory. Plausible deniability would only have been in play if I didn't tell you where I was." This was directed at Phil as he reached for and took his hand, fingers threading. It was Phil's left one; Matt didn't hesitate. His other hand remained on Yelena's leg, brownie plate balanced on his own.
He sighed. "I don't really know how it would work with everything. I've coordinated with other people before, but it's been years. What I keep coming back to is how. Because it's exceedingly rare that I know what I'm going to be up against unless I've got advanced intel. Otherwise, it's just literally whatever pops up when I'm in the field. I'm not saying no, I'm saying I don't really see how you could be anything other than reactionary except with Yelena in the mix of whatever mission we find ourselves embarking on."
Phil squeezed back, grateful that Fitz’s latest version of the hand let him feel sensations as much as he would normally, or almost. The logistics would take some working out, he was sure of that. But it wasn’t a no, and he could work with that. “Even being informed and being at the ready and nearby would be a step up from the current arrangement,” he said quietly.
“Could help with advance intel, making sure you each have back up when needed.”
"That is a rude thing to call him," Yelena admonished, breaking the moment with the hammer that was her dry humor. She went quiet as Matt went on, listened to Phil, and finally rolled her eyes. A muttered phrase in Russian. "В тесноте́, да не в оби́де." Yelena tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. "If I gave you my contacts and you worked better with them than I do, would that help?" Because Yelena could admit to being standoffish and not being charming at all times. "I would also recommend trying to reach out to really old contacts. Anyone you had in your black books before twenty-seventeen. They probably exist here."
Matt thought, not for the first time, that he really should look into language lessons. It was fine when he had translation apps, and sometimes he used them in the field, but it would be better if he knew what Yelena (and any other Russian speakers) was saying in real time. Setting that aside, he sat further with the idea of Phil being involved in all this. Yelena had a good point about his contacts. Matt himself was only just crafting a network in a city that was still relatively new to him. He'd never thought he would be starting over anywhere else in his adult life.
An errant thought made him chuckle on top of Yelena's teasing. "Why is this starting to feel like the West Coast Defenders?" Matt rolled his head onto the back of the couch with a quiet sigh. "Okay, I'm not turning this down, I'm really not, but I think we need a trial run, just to see how it could work. Any ideas as to what that might look like?"
Phil snorted at the Russian, having picked up enough working with Natasha for years. Phil nodded thoughtfully. “I think that’d be a good first step, Yelena. Not that your customer service voice isn’t amazing, but I’m happy to give it a try. And I can see who I know who’s still around. At least the sort that might have jobs for the two of you. If you don’t mind working together.”
He nodded at Matt, squeezing the other man’s thigh. “Trial run makes sense. It can look a variety of ways. You give me a heads up next time you go out and I provide back up / getaway car - not Lola, because no one is getting blood on Lola. Or I see if I can set up a job for the two of you. What do you prefer?”
Yelena let out a dramatic sounding sigh. "Does this mean I'm not allowed to kill people now? Because it sounds like I'm not allowed to kill people if I have to work with Matt."
She leveled a look at Coulson, considering. "Set up a job for us. We can see how it goes," Yelena finally said. "We-" and she gestured between herself and Matt "-haven't purposely worked together yet. For all we know, this is a terrible idea from the start." Yelena leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "I don't know if you know this about me but I can be a little chaotic. What was it, Matthew? Could go feral at a moment's notice?" Which was all said in her dry, deadpan voice.
“I’d prefer no dead bodies - harder to clean up - but sometimes it’s unavoidable. That’s between you and Matt though,” Phil said. He couldn’t help the chuckle at the thought of Yelena going feral. He passed her another piece of brownie and leaned over , kissing the top of her head. "наш дикий котёнок." He glanced over at Matt. “Does that work for you?”
"You make an astute observation one time," Matt grumbled mostly to himself, knowing full well both of them would hear him. He'd been mulling the proposal over while the other two bantered and sniped. His misgivings were many, but not insurmountable. His fingers tightened around Phil's hand, while at the same time squeezing gently at Yelena's leg. "A trial run, and then we reconvene after to see what worked, what didn't, what could be tweaked, or if we should abandon the endeavor in its nascency."
He lifted his chin toward Phil, mouth set in a determined sort of half-smile. "Find us something to do, something we can agree on, and we go from there. All right, Yelena?"
The look Yelena gave Coulson could have melted faces off. But she didn't attempt to stab him and that was, hopefully, a promising improvement. She took the offered brownie and the expression turned into narrowing of her eyes before looking at Matt without moving her head too much.
"Fine," she relented. "But it better not be boring." And with that, Yelena took a too-large bite of the brownie, clearly done with her verbal response.
Phil considered the lack of stabbing a victory and managed not to smile like the cat who caught the canary. He brushed his lips against Matt in a quick kiss before taking his seat again. “Not boring. Not sure anyone who’s ever worked with me has called it boring,” he teased.
He glanced between them. “What sorts of jobs have you done so far? And for who?”