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Every morning he wakes up thinking, Maybe today it didn't happen.
Reality has become a pretty damned flexible thing these days, who knew was was possible, right? So every morning he wakes up and stays perfectly still, his eyes closed and breath soft and soundless, and he listens. Phil was a quiet man usually, but asleep he shifted and hummed thoughtfully at his dreams and sometimes, after a long mission or a particularly frustrating encounter with Tony Stark, he gave soft breathy little snores that Clint used as proof that he was really completely in love with Phil, because he would never have found them endearing otherwise.
And every morning the bed next to him is quiet, so he listens further out, because sometimes, rarely, Phil woke up before him and would go and make coffee and watch the news. Clint could picture him, leaning against the kitchen doorway sipping coffee with the tv remote held in the same loose and ready grip he used on his firearm, faded SHIELD t-shirt too tight over his chest showing that he'd put Clint's on by mistake again. Phil had some strange prohibition against drinking coffee in the living room, though God knew they'd done just about everything else in there, and more than once Clint had wandered out to turn the unattended TV off to find Phil raising an eyebrow at him from the kitchen like he was the one being unreasonable about caffeinated beverages.
But the rest of the apartment is as silent as the bed and Clint thinks, He went in. Somehow I just slept through him leaving and I'll have a voice mail telling me that I had better show up on time and have that report or he's going to make me cook again... So Clint finally moves, reaching out and blindly locating his phone, dialing his voice mail without opening his eyes and pressing it to his ear, expecting... "You have... no new messages. To hear your old messages, please press..." The rest of the recording fades away to static in Clint's ear, a pleasant female voice sending reality crashing back down on him, because Phil would always leave a message. Always.
Opening his eyes is a struggle; Clint always saw true, no matter how little he wanted to believe what was in front of his eyes, and he couldn't stand the thought of seeing the apartment empty of Phil again. But finally he does, and his heart nearly stops, because the apartment isn't empty. Phil is standing in the doorway, leaning on a cane and looking awful and beautiful and smiling the tiny little smile he reserved for Clint alone. "You'd better get up, I know for a fact you haven't finished that debrief report and the Director wants it first thing."
Phil's voice is weak and strained and cracking, but it is the most perfect thing Clint has ever heard in his life.