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Sweet Connections

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The clock ticks over to 3 AM and Phil scrubs a hand over his face. It is far too late to still be awake but the paperwork from Tony Stark's latest potential press debacle won't write itself. He pushes back from his desk, deciding that coffee would help since it looks like he's in for another all-nighter. Phil curses Stark and whoever made S.H.I.E.L.D. paperwork be required in triplicate soundly in the privacy of the elevator that takes him to the cafeteria.

On the way back, Phil takes the lid off the styrofoam cup and inhales the smell. It may taste like burned rubber but the smell is decadent. He looks up at the ceiling through the wafting steam, the bags under his eyes impossible to miss. His face suddenly swirls and shifts to the face of the Avengers' most frequent villain and Thor's brother. Phil blinks at what must be a hallucination, but Loki's face twitches into a frown and then disappears. The agent groans as the elevator comes to a stop and he walks back to his office, sipping the caffeine-laden hot drink.

He rolls his chair back to the desk, picks up his pen to continue filling in boxes and stops short. There is a doughnut on his desk, just to the right of his stack of completed forms. Phil leans over it, and inhales. Sugar, chocolate, no poison that he can smell. Then Phil remembers from the training course years ago that some are undetectable and breaks the pastry in half. Nothing is inside besides fluffy dough and it's still warm! Phil throws it in the trashcan when he sees the note underneath.

You look tired, Son of Coul. This should give you enough energy to finish.

The note, written in a neat all-capital scrawl on a green sticky note, is unsigned. Phil thinks about the hallucination in the elevator and decides not to take his chances. He turns back to the paperwork.

**

The doughnut is the first of many food-related presents. Phil receives a dozen more pastries, a coffee mug with an outline of green flame when it's heated, a fruit basket of only granny smith apples, a tray of cheeses when he returns from a debriefing with Fury about Steve being caught on CNN unawares, and multiple sandwiches. He keeps the coffee mug; the note I wouldn't work you this hard. Come join my side of things. joins the slowly-growing stack of similar missives in the locked drawer of his desk.

It seems the god of mischief has developed a liking for him. Phil has no intention of leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers Initiative (frankly, they'd fall apart without him), but the presents are nice. Sometimes he even does as the scrawled handwriting suggests and puts his pen down to get some sleep on the couch. He'd learned early on that catching the god was impossible but Phil left a return note of thanks once. The next present from Loki had been a set of lips made from green spun sugar – Phil refuses to think about them any more than necessary and gets back to his paperwork.