What was "that one scene" for Track This Thread? Actually, I think that at this point you could do a master post of the one-scenes because I bet you're getting a flood of asks about them anyways.
Hah -- how about I just answer them as they come? For Track This Thread:
Clint thinks that one time, Coulson did — love him.
He goes over that moment at night sometimes, the way he presses his thumbs down on green and purple bruises, is forever running his tongue over the cuts inside his mouth after one bullshit brawl or another. It hurts, it fucking hurts, but he thinks about it with the religious fervor of the converted — this is his tent in middle America, this is that sermon he can't stop hearing echo inside his head.
It had been late, ish, night sweeping over Varanasi and all the lights of Diwali scraping back against it, gleaming in the orange burn of tempered darkness. Clint remembers the sudden drop in the temperature, the way it had been a steady 85 degrees all God damn day, and how the heat had vanished like the continental shelf underfoot, and the chill had seeped in where it could between the huddled gush of people around the banks of the Ganges — lanterns floating in the water, in between the golden slivers of light.
Clint remembers so perfectly, the steps down to the water, the thousands of candles lit in perfect ordered rows down them, the fireworks, the the lights strung up everywhere, and how he'd felt like the entire city was gilded — golden.
The next part's not clear, the next bit, Clint's not sure about, because it feels like he was swimming in honey when he saw it, all the noises gone wobbly under water.
But he thinks he turned, and saw — for too long, for eons, a year, maybe 15 eternal seconds — Coulson looking at him like people look at women in black and white movies, like Clint had looked at the orange-warm windows of houses in suburban neighborhoods, miles away from the cold dirt of the circus tents. Backlit against the corona of lights gone up, Coulson's eyes had been dark and darkly sweet, and anybody else Clint's autonomic bodily responses would have moved his legs and hands, and he would have pressed his palms to the line of Coulson's jaw and drawn him in.
Coulson was a man who was ruthlessly kind, whose fury and forgiveness came at once. Over the years he'd let Clint sleep in his office, take his stuff, steal his clothes, occupy his time with complete disregard for how every incursion he didn't fight was getting Clint a little deeper — and he'd done it with that fucking look: patient, unhurried, like he would be there still waiting when Clint was ready to come in from the cold.
So Clint can feel the horrible swoop of his stomach, the disbelief that makes his throat hurt. Coulson wouldn't do this. He wouldn't be this cruel.
Because even if it was only that once, for that accidental, infinite moment by the river while one million lights had been scraping away at the darkness, it had been real to Clint, and to let them — fuck it, to let him grieve like is this is too awful, and the hope for what this might mean goes down like a coal in Clint's belly, so that the harder he clutches at it the worse it hurts.
