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It was dark, and bitterly cold, and in 22 hours, it would be Christmas Day.
For some reason, they rarely had work in Denmark in the winter. Clint thought it might be because even megalomaniacs bent on world domination were holed up with hot chocolate and warm slippers at these arctic temperatures, but that probably wasn’t the reason: they’d had a mission in northern Alberta last January, and he fervently hoped never to be that cold again.
Still, apart from the cold, the op had gone smoothly, and they were just waiting out the last few hours before exfil. With luck, they would be back in time for Phil to catch a commercial flight to his parents’ place in Florida, in time for Christmas dinner. Phil had mixed feelings about going home, but he’d ditched the holidays two years in a row, and he couldn’t do it again this year. He’d entertained Clint over comms while they’d been waiting for their mark with a graphic description of his mother’s traditional three-bean casserole (and the lengths to which he and his sisters had gone, to avoid eating it) that almost made Clint glad he wasn’t going along.
On the other hand, a little three-bean casserole would be a small price to pay when the alternative was Christmas in quarters, which was what Clint was looking forward to. The commissary staff would hang some tarnished tinsel around the serving hatch, and somebody would suspend a bunch of none-too-clean plastic mistletoe above the door, and there would be a group of leftovers, like Clint, who would probably gather in the third-floor lounge and watch It’s A Wonderful Life. It wouldn’t be the worst Christmas Clint had ever spent, but it wasn’t exactly a heartwarming prospect, either.
Phil was working hard to convince him that he wasn’t missing anything by not coming home with him, and Clint didn’t want him to feel too badly about leaving him behind, so he was playing along. They had packed up ‘way earlier than they needed to, though, so Clint thought maybe Phil was more eager to be gone than he’d been letting on. It was two in the morning, they weren’t due for pickup until eight, and Clint had hoped they could spend four or five of those six hours keeping each other warm, but it looked like Phil had other plans. Not that Clint was exactly surprised: technically, the op wasn’t over until they were back home, and Phil was fairly strict about not mixing work with personal time. But still – Christmas. Clint crammed his self-pity down deep, hitched his duffle higher on his shoulder, and pasted on a smile.
“So – you want to find a coffee shop, or something?” he asked, watching a few snowflakes start to drift down through the wisps of his steamy breath. Phil was looking at him oddly, and Clint started to feel a little hollow forming around the place where his heart lived. Fucking Christmas. Families. Too many feelings. He kind-of wished Phil had just gone ahead and gone home and let Jimmy Woo run this op, after all.
“You know I would take you with me if I could, right?” Phil said. Clint ducked his head.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, the smile still in place. “I get it, it’s family.”
“But that doesn’t mean you don’t matter,” Phil said gently. “I didn’t – I wasn’t sure –“ He broke off, and Clint looked at him closely. Phil wasn’t usually unsure of himself, and Clint didn’t like it. Phil took a deep breath. “The thing is,” he said, “I arranged a surprise for you.”
Surprises, in Clint’s experience, were right up there with three-bean casseroles as things to be avoided. Still, it was Phil, so…
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He reached out and took Clint’s gloved hand. “C’mon – in here.”
‘Here’ was a massive brick wall, looming black against the starlit sky. There was a lone light showing through an amber-paned window near a small door in the side of the structure; Clint was startled when Phil produced a key and opened the door.
“Phil – what –“
“Welcome,” Phil said breathlessly, “to Roskilde Cathedral.”
They stepped inside, a shadowy hall before them, lit with a single, low-wattage fixture about halfway down. The air had the thick, indefinable smell of a very old building: stone dust, old varnish, ancient wood and paste wax. They stamped snow from their boots on a rubber-backed mat, then Phil led the way to a stone-floored passage leading off to the right. Ten paces down it, they stepped out into the nave of the cathedral, its soaring ceiling deeply shadowed. There were puddles of light here and there from spotlights above the pews, faint light from the street showing just a hint of jewel colours at the stained glass windows above the aisles, and a series of spotlights washing down over the altar and the pipes of a massive organ looming above it. Clint blinked in bewilderment.
“Phil?” he asked, unsure. The tips of Coulson’s ears were pink, and he seemed slightly breathless.
“We came through a back entrance, of course,” he said apologetically. “It’s more impressive from the front. I arranged for you to play the organ,” he said, all in a rush. “There’s nobody here. The janitor is a friend of a friend. Of a friend. He lent me a key. The organ here is famous – it was built in 1554. I thought – I know you play, and I thought you might like to try it out.” He searched Clint’s face. “I thought I could go and come back for you in a couple of hours. I know you don’t like to play for an audience.”
“Phil, I – Jesus, Phil.” Clint was feeling a little breathless himself. It wasn’t like Phil to babble. “Where is it?”
Phil led the way to a stone alcove, turning on a switch that cast light on a three-tiered keyboard. Clint, more than a little intimidated by the beauty and complexity of the thing, gently reached out to touch the keys as Phil ducked behind the keyboard and threw some switches.
“Electric air pumps,” he explained as Clint gave him a questioning look. “They replaced the bellows about a hundred years ago.” He reached back again and pulled out a sheaf of music. “I found some things for you to try, if you want. Just if you want.” Fidgeting, he looked carefully at Clint, who was staring blankly at the console, so much more complex and ornate than the old fairground organ he’d been allowed to play once upon a time. “Or we can just go get some coffee and strudel, if this is a stupid idea.”
“Stup – no, this is a great idea,” Clint said, startled out of his shock. He took the music from Phil’s hands and started paging through it. “I’ve never even thought about – only it’s going to take me a little while to figure out – I mean, this is pretty –“ he faltered. “Big,” he finished.
“But you like it?” Phil asked. “I mean, I don’t want you to feel like you have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“Jesus, Phil, I love it. But just – go walk around the block or something while I figure out how this works, okay? And then come back. If you want. And I’ll play something.” He took his seat at the vast tiered keyboard, touched the pedals experimentally, fondled the top, the centre and the lower tier of keys, and then lost track of Phil, the time, the cold, the mountain of brick hanging over his head – everything, except the voice of the pipes echoing in the dark vault.
He hated to be predictable, but it had to be Bach, much as he’d have liked to make Phil laugh with some smooth jazz on the medieval pipe organ. It had to be Bach, and it had to be the Prelude in C Minor, and bits of the Brandenburg Concertos, and then, just to make sure he and the keyboard had figured each other out properly, he played Orff’s O Fortuna, not even missing the kettle drums like a fusillade of artillery because he had the great bawling pipes instead. And then, in honour of Christmas, he played Schubert’s Ave Maria and Parry’s Jerusalem. And because he just couldn’t help himself, he played Beethoven’s Ode To Joy. And then, from memory, the Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah; he’d never heard it done except by a choir, but it seemed worthy of the instrument. But the pipes wanted Bach, and so he offered them Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, hands weaving the intricacies of the melody on the rippled ivory keys, the great crescendos shaking his bones and raising his hackles. It had always been one of his favourites, and he’d played it last two years ago on a beautiful Bӧsendorfer Imperial concert grand piano in a university hall in Cambridge at three in the morning, his ribs taped, one eye swollen shut and his nose still bleeding off and on, but of course it had really needed the pipes to do it justice. And he loved that one so much that he played it again, and when the last notes had ceased to echo through the cavern of the vault, he stretched his arms out to encompass the keyboard and sat for a long moment with his head bowed over the keys, heart pounding and breath hitching with the effort of holding that much music in his rough and bloodstained hands. He lifted them to his face to wipe his wet cheeks and startled as Phil’s hand came over his shoulder to offer him a clean handkerchief.
“Jesus, Phil,” he said with a forced laugh, taking the handkerchief and making use of it. “Some stealthy assassin. Good thing you’re on my team.”
“Some musician,” Phil countered, smiling warmly at him. “That was beautiful, Clint.”
“Some instrument,” Clint replied, stroking the keys affectionately as he rose reluctantly from the bench.
“So it was a good present?” Phil asked hopefully. Clint smiled, remembering the notes fluttering in his palms like tiny lives.
“It was an awesome present.” He ducked his head. “I wish I had a present for you.”
Phil smiled and pulled him into a hard hug, cradling the back of his head as Clint turned his face against Phil’s neck.
“You played for me,” he replied. “That’s my present.”
Feeling emotional, shaken and wrung out the way he sometimes did after seriously amazing sex, Clint followed Phil out of the cathedral and into the brittle chill of early morning, Christmas Eve, watching as Phil carefully locked the door and pushed the key back through a mail slot. He took a deep, shuddering breath, caught Phil’s coat collar and pulled him in for another, longer hug.
“I love you,” Phil said, face muffled in Clint’s coat. Clint buried his nose in Phil’s hair, inhaling the scent of shampoo and Phil.
“I love you, too,” he said. “You going to bring me back some three-bean casserole?”
“Hell, no,” Phil replied, hitching his bag up to a more comfortable spot. “I said I love you. I might bring some back for Stark, though.”
Clint grinned, still feeling the music chasing around in his chest. He took a deep breath, pushing it down deep, where he could hold it safely and take it out later, in the dark, when Phil was far away in Florida. He would take it out again, long after, crouched in the rubble of a broken shawarma joint in the heart of Manhattan, and later again, perched on the rim of the roof of the tallest tower in the city, listening to distant raised voices and recriminations and Phil sounding defensive. But for now, he tucked it away under his heart and smiled at Phil, who had given him this beautiful gift, and said only, “Merry Christmas, boss.”