I literally wrote this at like 3:30 AM because I was bored and Phil's shitty sense of humor will never stop amusing me.
Word Count: 500
Title: Phil Coulson Has a Terrible Sense of Humor
When Phil made it in, it was clear Isabel was asleep.
She was lying out on the couch, her hand holding a book flat across her blanket-covered stomach, and even though her face was tilted away from him he could see the steady rise and fall of her chest.
He smiled. He hadn’t really expected her to be awake when he’d come in, it being so late, but seeing that she’d tried to wait up anyway warmed his chest a little. God knew he could stand for feeling warmer – while the seasons hadn’t started changing yet, the night air had been brisk. He started taking off his coat, using special care to make sure he didn’t make too much noise, and stopped in the middle of taking his arm out of a sleeve when he heard a soft note coming from her.
As he turned to look, he saw her move slightly (the angle her neck was at was probably killing her), and she turned her head towards him. There was one blink, then two, and she yawned as she sat up.
“What – what time is it?” Isabel asked, scrubbing at her eyes.
“Past two,” was the reply, and Phil looked a little guilty as he said it. “You didn’t need to stay out here for me. I said I’d be home late tonight.”
“I know. I just – ah – decided to catch up on some light reading. And some sleep, apparently.”
And Phil could tell that she wasn’t really saying all of the reason, but he took his arm out of the rest of the sleeve and hung his coat up on the rack so that he could go over and sit down beside her.
“You’re cool,” Isabel mumbled when he sat down, and scrunched her nose. “Really cool.”
“Why, thank you.”
Isabel blinked twice more, and then smacked him on the arm.
“Phillip James Coulson, that is not what I meant and you know it.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, smiling, and the smile got wider as she glared at him and smacked again.
“No fair using wordplay when I’m tired. I’m actually still tired. How are you not exhausted?”
“It’s entirely fair, darling. And I’m still going off a cup of coffee I got to keep me awake on the way home, but I’ll be crashing soon enough.”
“Good,” she stated, and wrapped the blanket around her bare shoulders. Isabel put a bookmark in the book before putting it down and then stood up. “I’m going to actually go sleep in our bed. Do you need to shower tonight, or…?”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Phil assured her. “To think, though, you could have had the entire bed to yourself for hours before I’d gotten home.”
“The sacrifices we make for love,” Isabel said simply, walking back to their room, and Phil chuckled lightly.
He wasn’t entirely convinced she’d actually thought about it from that angle before she’d relaxed on the couch. And he was right.
(Warning: Heavy Winter Soldier spoilers under the read more!)
Isabel was in the Washington office of SHIELD when things started going haywire.
She believed Fury’s death about as much as she could throw a Quinjet, but that wasn’t based on any solid evidence that she had – rather, just the personal experience with ‘death’ in SHIELD that loving Phil had given her.
The Brit been aware of the concentrated manhunt for Captain America, and she’d sent Phil a head’s up on that, but she didn’t know if the message had made it through. For the most part, though, she hadn’t been enlisted in the search for the first Avenger, so she kept her head low to the ground and watched.
Because if they were doing a manhunt for Rogers, even if Fury wasn’t dead, it meant that nothing good was about to happen.
When Rogers’ announcement broke through the PA system, Isabel personally killed one of the members of her team. His body language gave him away, the wariness that had set in with the announcement, and he’d been trying to take a shot at Miles.
He died with spit on his face and the words ‘Hail Hydra’ falling from his lips.
During the immediate fray that happened after, Isabel’s only priority was in getting out. She took down a few others who got in her way, and lost Miles to a stray gunshot. Everything was locked down, everywhere was chaos, and Isabel focused on the idea of Phil’s plane. If she could just get out of the compound, she could make it to New York, and if she got there she could get to the Avengers Tower and maybe, just maybe, she could see Phil again.
The air was out – even if she could fly one of those things, it was under heavy fire. The land was out – the compound had been shut down, and the road was still under heavy fire.
There was water nearby, if she could get to the windows and judge the dive.
Isabel fought her way to a side, and found trees instead of waves. Then again, there was also cannon fire, and the nearest tree was close enough where she could jump.
As she prepared to leap, a shockwave caught her wrong. Not a jump but a fall. The tree still caught her, but it was lower than she’d planned to be, and now she had a few more injuries – namely, a wrist that felt broken and a couple bruises that made moving hurt, decorated by scratches here and there.
The Cellist climbed down the rest of the way. The way the building was exploding, if she didn’t get a move on, she wouldn’t be able to get out of the city before the President was able to mobilize the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines to shut the place down, and all the city hospitals would be filled with the dead and dying of SHIELD/HYDRA.
Isabel made a makeshift sling out of her (now bloody and torn) jacket for her wrist and started the walk to finding wheels. New York. If she could steal a car and get to New York, she’d be fine.
Prompt: Isabel's in trouble. Phil has to go bring her back.
Phil was watching in Mission Control when it happened. Isabel was on an op, done up to the point where he almost didn’t recognize the woman he loved, and she was acting as the way in for the others. Her reputation as a first-class cellist occasionally did come in handy.
Everything had gone smoothly to that point. He wasn’t relaxed, not when she was out, but at the same time, he wasn’t expecting to hear her whispered curse and then see the camera angle spin as she turned and began walking away very quickly.
“Abort! Miles, we have to abort.”
There was a gruff reply. “This had better be damned good, Thompson.”
“Is ‘I’m about to be made’ good enough for you?” Isabel kept walking, approaching a servant with a tray and asking where the ladies’ room was. She was pointed to a door on the other side of the room, and Isabel nodded, making short work of the distance. The former Brit heard a security guard’s radio go off, and she almost jogged the last few steps.
Fortunately, the bathroom door locked from the inside. Isabel did a quick check – no one inside but her.
Phil had ‘borrowed’ a comm in the time she was getting to relative safety and it came online as he watched her root through her bag for a few gadgets. “Isabel, talk to me. Were you made? By who?”
“Fairly certain I was, yeah. If I wasn’t, I likely came damn close.” Isabel activated a tracker and carefully pinned it to her hair, making sure it was thoroughly hidden by her dark curls. “I was on a team to take down Gahiji Nassar back when I still worked with SIS in Cairo – I collected a good amount of intel by just being near him, and now he's here. Why the hell didn’t we know that he was out of prison?”
“Because we don’t keep track of every single asshole with an agenda, just those with one against the States or the world at large,” Miles said, sounding annoyed. “Where are you at now? Is it safe?”
“Bathroom. I’m not sure how long I can stay in here, though.”
Phil growled, and Isabel checked her disguise in the mirror. Her hair color was much different now than it had been when she’d been in prison, and she wasn’t as tan as she had been when the Egyptian sun had kissed her skin daily. She was also wearing a considerable amount of makeup, especially around her eyes. Would it hold?
“Don’t even think about it, Isabel. Just stay in there. Hide. Get up on a toilet seat and – and use it to crawl into the vent or something! We’ll get you out of there.”
Isabel snorted in spite of herself. “Darling, do I look like Clint? Besides, that vent is a) too small, and b) not near anything I could stand on. If they have to come in here, it ends in blood. If I can find the host and excuse myself, maybe not.”
Phil didn’t like it. They could both hear over the comms that Miles didn’t like it either, and the man actually said so himself. “Keep yourself outta trouble, Thompson. Can’t promise I won’t let Wilson at the stash of chocolate in your desk if you don’t come back with us.”
Isabel huffed, and quickly reapplied a few touches of makeup that had worn off in the hours she’d been there already. “Tell Sam that if he eats it, he’ll get too fat for that Falcon suit. Going silent as soon as I leave until I’m clear. If tech gets spotted now, that might just make me anyway. You guys are getting the tracker signal, right?”
“Yes.” And Phil really didn’t like where this was going. It set every last one of his instincts on edge, and he knew better than to think it was just worrying. “Bella…”
Isabel took a single steadying breath, and looked into the mirror so that she could see her own reflection. There was a small, beautiful smile, and then the words “I love you too”, and that was the last time he heard her before the comm went silent.
Phil watched as Isabel shifted into a cheery, carefree countenance more in line with her character, and he gripped a metal bar in front of him hard as she walked out the door and past security. He kept gripping as the host came up to her and asked her to come with him, and his knuckles were white as Isabel came face-to-face with the man she’d identified as Nassar – he was in SHIELD’s database, but under a different name.
“Talk to me, Coulson, tell me what’s happening!”
Phil’s grip on the metal bar was almost painful as he watched the view point of the camera attached to Isabel’s dress fall. The metal bar, being somewhat on the thinner side, cracked in his grasp.
“They’ve got her.”
Techs were busy grabbing pictures of every person that the camera had caught, but Phil already had his phone out, calling his people. Nat and Clint were out in a different continent, but his current team was also available.
They were in the Bus and in the air faster than others – including Fury – would have thought physically possible. Isabel’s coordinates had stopped moving, and they were going to go as quickly and as quietly as possible. No gunshots if it could be avoided. They didn’t want anyone knowing where they were.
Until they had Isabel, that was. After they were all out, they were gonna blow the place to the moon.
Skye, Fitz, and Simmons were all in the Bus, watching the tracker’s signal to make sure it never went away and ensuring that the compound stayed off the grid as May, Ward, and Phil infiltrated it.
They found Isabel quickly. She was fighting a drug-induced haze, and fighting it rather well – even though her eyelids were still threatening to droop, she’d mostly gotten out of her restraints. His expression turned a few degrees deadlier when he saw the large shiner that was starting to form on her skin. Phil helped her out of the rest of the entrapments and started to pick her up, but Isabel shook it off as she tried to get to her feet. The dress swayed as she fought off a spell of dizziness.
“You need to be able to use a gun quickly if you have to. I can walk.”
Agent May gave her one good glance. “Bull.”
Isabel would have responded, but she was a little busy trying to glare at Phil’s ‘I told you so’ smirk.
In the end, Isabel was half-supported by Phil, not truly walking on her own but not being carried either, which allowed Phil the use of one of his hands in case of an emergency. Ward radioed ahead and told Simmons to have the first aid kit ready.
They made it out through the same way they’d come in, with Isabel making it just to the inside of the lab/med-bay/whatever they needed it to be before she had to sit down. Simmons immediately started dabbing the visible scraps with antiseptic as May went to the front of the plane to get them off the ground.
Fitz set off the explosion, and Isabel watched it on the monitor with a quiet smirk. The adrenaline quickly left her system, though, and soon she was back to fighting the drugs with just her own power – and losing the battle. Phil held her as Simmons inspected Isabel for damage, and when Simmons was done he gently shook his lover.
“Mmm. ‘m awake. Swear I am.”
Phil chuckled, and Skye smiled as she quietly filmed the scene in the background. He really did pick up Isabel then, and took her back to the suite that was his on the Bus.
“Sure you are. Then you won’t care for a pillow or a blanket or anything like that.”
“Didn’t say that.”
Phil laid her out on the bed, tucking her in, and then stepped out of the room just enough where he could make a call and still keep an eye on her. Miles picked up at the first ring.
“You got her?”
Her breathing was already evening out, and Phil could feel himself relax just a little bit more. He wasn’t completely there yet – spending a few hours trying to keep himself from imagining her in every bad ending to the situation he could think of had him more than slightly keyed up – but holding her, watching her, and guarding her would definitely help with that.
“Yeah, she’s safe.” The ‘no thanks to you’ was left hanging as Phil hung up and took off his jacket, crawling into bed behind Isabel. There was a soft note of appreciation that he was even sure she knew she’d made and then she curled into him and fallen back to sleep.
She was safe, and eventually he followed her to sleep.
Third in a series: The Five Times Isabel Meets the Avengers and the One Time One Meets Her.
First one here, second one here.
Word count: 750.
The first time Isabel met Bruce Banner, it was also at something that was sponsored by Stark Industries, but a couple months had gone by since she’d met Tony and Pepper, and she was getting to know the two reasonably well. Well enough, certainly, that when it was decided that Stark Industries would host a conference for the American Physical Society, Pepper asked for her and her cello to be there as an entertainer between the different panels. At the Brit’s raised eyebrows, Pepper explained her reasoning.
“Music soothes the savage beast that is the scientist pursuing more science. Of course, we’d pay you for your time…”
Isabel and Phil, at their respective levels of danger, were well compensated by SHIELD, but she knew the value of the twenty plus years she’d put into learning and practicing and playing the cello. So she was there that night on Pepper’s dime, and when she was done giving her performance she took care of her equipment and then stowed it in a room Pepper had showed her earlier. Isabel then went back to the party, and went to grab herself a snack from the buffet table that was still somewhat decently stocked when she saw Dr. Banner almost hiding off to the side of the table.
Her eyes searched for Phil’s – because she knew he was there, nothing had blown up to distract him, and even if something did, the times he missed her playing were few and very far between – and when she found them, she tilted her head in the good doctor’s direction.
The signal was picked up, and Phil nodded. That was indeed the man she thought he was. He raised his eyebrows, and in response Isabel smiled and walked over to where Bruce was standing and doing his best to blend into the walls.
Isabel came as close to the man as she could while still being at the table. “Do you think Stark spiked anything?”
The question caught him off guard, and Bruce smiled. “Knowing him? Probably. Though Pepper took care of making sure the drinks were individual, so at least those are okay. Nice concert.”
Isabel chuckled. “Yes, I rather thought it was. My name’s Isabel.”
“Bruce, but you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.” Isabel was now honestly curious about him. “Who told you that?”
“Tony talks a lot.” Bruce shrugged, and went to grab a few veggies from the table, carefully avoiding the open dip.
Isabel rolled her eyes at his explanation. “What else did he say?”
Bruce munched off the top of a head of miniature broccoli. “That there was a surprise that I’d like. That hopefully wouldn’t trigger The Other Guy. I’m thinking it was the concert…? International physics conferences don’t usually have them. Though with Tony, anything’s possible.”
There was the sound of heels getting nearer, and out of reflex Isabel and Bruce both turned to see a rather attractive brunette scientist just stop and stare at Bruce. Bruce dropped his plate of veggies, and the brunette scientist almost ran to him. Isabel could piece together enough that she quietly walked away (though she could have made all the noise in the world and neither of the two would have noticed) and went over to where Phil was still standing and still smirking.
“I take it you knew?” She offered him a few tidbits off her plate, and he popped one in his mouth.
“Naturally.”
“Then who is she?”
The couple seemed to be talking – actually, suddenly, they were doing a lot more than talking, and then Bruce broke away – and Isabel nibbled on a carrot.
“She’s Elizabeth Ross.”
Isabel raised an eyebrow. “Any relation to General Thunderbolt?”
“His daughter.”
She looked back to the scientists, who seemed to be having an argument. At least, Elizabeth was. Bruce was massaging the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger.
“No wonder we rarely go to the movies. Your friends provide all the drama anyone could ever need to watch.”
Phil chuckled at that, and pulled Isabel close to him. “Like we’d be able to sit through an ‘action’ movie. And SIS was so much saner?”
Isabel leaned up to kiss him. “We didn’t have this. We had different dramas. Like the royal family. Oh, that was always fun to hear about! I never worked that side, but it made for good scotch stories.”
He shook his head imagining it. “Well, Thor’s a prince, so there is that.”
The assignment now stretched into months, due to some things that Phil needed to oversee in places that weren’t the Portland office, and tonight was their first real Date Night since he’d been back. He’d suggested a somewhat-formal restaurant to eat at, and she’d agreed without looking the place up – she more than trusted Phil’s recommendations by now.
Perhaps, if she had, she’d have seen that there was a live band.
The music was fitting in that it was a muted jazz, low and slow and added to the general ambience, and the meal was delicious, but Isabel wasn’t expecting the lead brass man to approach a microphone and announce that that dance floor was open for anyone.
Phil tilted his head to the dance floor, and Isabel shook her head with something of a laugh.
“No. I have absolutely no idea how to dance!”
His eyes lit up as he saw a chance to convince her, and with the way he was looking at her, Isabel knew that it wouldn’t be too long before she gave in anyway.
“No one does to start out. Besides, it’s just following a rhythm. You would know how to do that better than most of the others on the floor, wouldn’t you?”
He had a valid point. She couldn’t excuse herself away with clumsiness, either. They both knew how graceful she was.
“Fine, I’ll dance. But I’ll step on your toes at least once, I know I will, and I apologize in advance.”
Phil chuckled, and he led her out to the floor, where a few other couples were already dancing. The light beat sped up to a fun swing, and there were several laughs between the two of them as the dance led them through dips and twirls. Isabel became very glad she’d worn a dress with a full skirt, and Phil enjoyed the visual as well, but he preferred the way that he cheeks colored as they kept dancing, and the way that warmth lit her eyes, and the shine of her hair under the house lights. All things that added up to one very attractive woman clearly enjoying herself.
And if that wasn’t breathtakingly gorgeous, Phil didn’t know what was.
Isabel, for her part, was rather fond of the weight of his hand on her waist and the quiet, firm strength of his arms when he pulled her against him in the course of the dance. She liked the look of his smile best, though, and tonight it was very much present.
Eventually the dance hour ended, and the couples on the floor were left holding each other and swaying in place to the last song. It was slow and sweet and entirely instrumental, despite it being a crooner’s song.
Phil fixed that by singing along in a soft, clear voice in Isabel’s ear, and the look she gave him as she rested her head on his chest made every bit of teasing he’d gotten as a child worth it.
Isabel decided that she’d wear her full-length flannel pajamas for the rest of the season. Even with the extra blanket on top, it was still getting much colder than she liked. Granted, it was Portland in November, which meant that they were starting to get the snow that stuck to the ground and contributed to the clogging of the roads, and she’d lived much of her life in places where it regularly received snow, but she did not like the cold. She did not like being exposed to the cold. Above all else, she did not like being cold.
And while her flannels were far from what she’d ever call sexy, Phil would just have to deal with it. She’d bring out the silk nightie again when she could have wet hair again without shivering.
If Phil noticed her reactions to the chill, he didn’t say too much until later that night, when she had approximately 75% of the blankets on her side of the bed. He chuckled, and slid in beside her. She curled into a tight ball at the feeling of the much cooler arm against the skin that was left exposed despite the best efforts of her night clothes. When he’d left on his ‘business trip’, the cold hadn’t been so drastic, so he hadn’t seen her rather spirited reactions to the chill. There was even a well-justified electric blanket on the bed now.
“Not a fan of lower temperatures?”
Isabel grumbled something unintelligible from beneath the pile of sheets, comforter, and over-blankets, and then spoke up. “You could say that.”
His arms pressed her flush against his body, and Isabel loosened at the feeling of his heat and strength. Warmth flooded her core, and then as he breathed gently against her neck, other parts of her anatomy began to heat up as well. She wasn’t the only one.
“I can think of a few ways to keep things toasty.”
Phil’s voice was slightly husky and deep, and Isabel smiled, turning over to face him. He pulled her just as close as he had held her before, and (underneath the covers) her hands slid to tug his pants down. His entire face lit up, and she kissed him as she got the material down past his hips.
“I think I’d be willing to hear whatever ideas you had, darling.”
There was the soft rumble of laugh, and when they did finally sleep that night, Isabel was definitely much warmer than she had been. Phil had an arm thrown around her waist and another next to her cheek and she had both arms in the small space between them. He was warmth and strength and loyalty and even if there were a few things about him that absolutely infuriated her (like his tendency to play the devil's advocate from time to time, or his long absences), he was quickly becoming her home. And now he was home.
