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Aliens attacked New York.
I was, at that point, seriously considering just having New York declared a danger zone and being done with it because the number of times it had become embroiled in alien wars or attacked by various evil entities...of course that might have had something to do with us being based there but that couldn’t be all there was to it.
The Avengers were scrambled. We managed to set up a containment zone, got as many civilians out as quickly as we could and kept the fighting localised - standard procedure. Tony found and disabled the source of the invasion. Steve carried injured children out of buildings looking like a PR man’s wet dream. Natasha was well out of it, on assignment in Iran. Hulk had successfully smashed and once Tony had done with the shutting down of the portal he took over Hulk containment duty, something he got stuck with a lot as the Hulk seemed to like him. Thor arrived late due to being summoned from Asgard but seemed to take great delight in mopping up the remaining aliens. We’d even had a chance to try out our new members, Wasp and Ant Man, who’d seemed to hold their own.
Of course, since everything else seemed to have gone to plan for once, Clint was injured. He’d been closer to the fighting than either of us liked him. It wasn’t that he didn’t like getting his hands dirty, he just didn’t have the super-strength he’d need to fight up close so it was always worse for him. Injuries anyone else on the team could walk away from would bring him down and that’s what happened that day.
As soon as Steve called it clear for backup to enter I was on the scene, digging my fiance out of a pile of rubble. It had been a while since he’d let himself get drawn in like that and I didn’t like it at all, it’s possible I wasn’t thinking from all angles like I usually do.
I got him out and found him blessedly conscious, though only just, the back of his head a mess of blood. The paramedics joined us and I let them take him away then redirected my efforts to the clean up. I was on the street for six hours before I felt the situation suitably managed to head back to SHIELD. Steve had stayed with me, though the other Avengers had been dismissed earlier, and he came back with me to the base to check that, yes, Clint was fine and was sleeping it of. Possible concussion but no signs of major damage. Apparently he’d been coherent so nobody was worried.
Steve drove me back home. I’d have stayed with Clint but, well, there wasn’t anything I could do there and we’d made a pact with each other years before that bedside vigils were only appropriate if someone’s life was in danger. It was still hell to walk away and leave him lying there injured.
I get home, I showered, I collapsed into bed.
It was then I thought to check my phone, and once the idea had got into my head I couldn’t let it go even with fatigue pulling at my limbs. I have two phones, one for me and one for the office. The office one I did obviously carry with me everywhere, my personal phone I tended to leave at home, not carrying it into the field least it distract me. I’d left it in the flat that morning and I dragged myself out of bed to retrieve it from the computer desk.
It wasn’t surprised to see the message light blinking, there would probably (hopefully) be chapter update notifications, the general e-mail spam, maybe a few texts from Rosa about wedding things (one month to go, she was panicking about, well, everyone. I wasn’t, at that point. I think I thought it was going to fall together like a mission. Or, well, maybe I was just putting of the inevitable.
I unlocked the phone and, well, let’s say it wasn’t what I’d expected. I can’t remember the exact numbers but there were texts, so many texts from people I hadn’t spoken to in years, my twitter had exploded, missed calls (a lot of them from Rosa), hundreds of e-mail notifications.
My first thought was that someone was dead so without even thinking I hit return call on one of Rosa’s missed calls. It was too late to be doing that, really, but she picked up in two rings.
“Where the hell have you been?” she snapped at me, “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all afternoon. The internet’s going mad! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t I tell you what?” I asked, frowning and hitting the power on my laptop. “I’ve only just got in, Rosa. I just saw all the missed calls and rang you...”
“Jesus, Phil,” she breathed. “You were photographed. This afternoon, in town. Someone was photographing the clean up and posting it to twitter and...why didn’t you tell me?”
“Damn,” I breathed, sagging back in to my desk chair. The explained it. I was well enough known in the convention world to get this kind of reaction. “I didn’t...I haven’t told anyone, Rosa. I was actually working up to telling you with the wedding coming up and all but, well...”
“Is Clint alright?” she asked. The computer had finally loaded and I launched my browser. “He looked pretty beaten up...”
“Yeah, he’s fine,” I said. “Concussion, they’re keeping him in overnight but he’ll be fine. Oh shit...” I trailed of. Fandom being what it was, I had tumblr set as my homepage and, well, the first post on my dash was a badly framed image of my kneeling in the rubble talking to Clint. Clearly me, clearly Clint. Below it was a link to the fanfiction I wrote, the one about Hawkeye and his SHIELD agent boyfriend.
“You see it?” Rosa asked, sounding tired.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “One of me and Clint...he actually doesn’t look too bad there. Are there others?”
“Phil, he’s lying on a pile of rubble.”
“Again, not too bad,” I said, scrolling down. There were others, there was one of my stood there, Steve’s hand on my shoulder. Brilliant.
“There are four shots with you on,” Rosa replied. “Or four I’ve seen anyway. One of you with Clint, a couple with Steve, fuck Phil, and one with Stark.”
“I’ve seen one of the Steve ones,” I confirmed. “I know this was going to happen but...this is going to compromise some operations if it gets over the press. I need to make some calls.”
“Alright,” Rosa said, and she sounded calm now at least. “I just...I kind of wish you’d told me, Phil. I thought I knew you better than this.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing a hand through my hair. “Look, go to sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow, I think we need to talk about this in person.”
She agreed and hung up the phone. I called Fury and let him know exactly what had been photographed and what connections were being made. He swore and in thirty minutes I was back at HQ going over things with the PR department. They were liaising with the mainstream news, trying to see what had been picked up. I was sincerely hoping that none of them would pick it up, it wasn’t like I was anyone really.
Maybe I was naive.
I got a few hours sleep in my office and by the time I woke up the papers were out. Two of them identified me and Clint, one of them seemed to think my fanfiction was autobiographical and outed me for the Steve porn too. Wonderful.
I wondered if ritual suicide would be a viable option but knowing my luck Fury would just find a way to bring me back anyway. I went down to medical instead. Clint was awake so that was a good thing at least, though he still seemed a little off. He took one look at me and frowned.
“Clean up that bad?” he asked, reaching for me. I stepped closer and took his hand, reassuring myself with his touch.
“In a way,” I agreed, dropping the paper on his stomach. He let go of my hand to pick it up, open on the page about me, and winced.
“Not the best way for that to have come out,” he said, dropping it back on the bed. “You spoken to Steve yet?”
“No,” I sighed, rubbing at my hair again. “I still have that pleasure to look forward too. I spoke to Rosa though, she’s angry at me. The pictures came out via twitter so they’re all over the internet now. I alerted Fury as soon as I knew.”
“Sucks,” Clint agreed, picking up the paper again. “Doctor came by earlier, says I need to stay in until the afternoon.”
“Alright,” I said, reaching over to stroke his face gently. He smiled at me and I remembered why I put up with all this. “I’m going to go and see if there’s anything useful I can do. I’ll come back and get you later, are you going to be up for dinner with Rosa tonight?”
“Only if it’s in the flat,” Clint replied with a shrug, that as much as anything a warning bell that he wasn’t half as well as he was letting on. I lent in and kissed his forehead then got out of there as fast as I could.
I’d be lying if I said the day was pleasant. About the only good thing was I didn’t run in to Steve. Maybe I was being a coward but I did at least want to sort out the things I had some control over before I had to face Steve and open whatever trouble that caused. There was always the chance he wouldn’t want to work with me any more, even to be my friend any more. I’d told myself I’d come to terms with that long ago but, of course, I realized that day I hadn’t. I don’t know why I’d thought I could.
I phoned Rosa and arranged dinner. She just about fainted when I told her she’d have to come to Stark tower and I’d meet her in the foyer. Maybe it was a lot to expect her to process at once. I phoned PR and they told me there was nothing I could do so I went about my day as usual. A place like SHIELD doesn’t stop because of a little scandal and after a few well-placed glared most people didn’t mention the article to me.
I picked Clint up at around 3 and didn’t feel too guilty about clocking out given how many hours I’d put in the day before and overnight. We quickly decided that takeout would do for dinner and both collapsed in to bed to try and sleep the day before off a little before Rosa arrived.
It was a bit worrying that Clint slept. He tended to run on only a little sleep, often being out of bed before I was in the morning since we made a habit of going to bed together. I found it harder to drift of. Honestly, I was dwelling. I didn’t want to talk to Steve, didn’t want to face up to what he might have to say. I didn’t want to talk to Rosa and admit how much I’d lied to her, if only by omission and for good reasons. I was even worried about Clint, though I was used to him masking the extent of his injuries where he could I didn’t have to like it.
I managed an hour, anyway, and a shower then I woke Clint and waited for reception to call me down.
Rosa was exactly on time and I knew when I went down to collect her that I wasn’t forgiven. She looked angry. She didn’t even have a smile for me when she saw how tired I was which was unusual for her.
At the top of the tower, each floor was divided into two apartments other than for Tony, he got an entire floor and a bit though his floor did function as a kind of impromptu communal room. They shared their floor with Natasha and he was glad she was in France right now, he didn’t want to do anything to upset Rosa more than she obviously already was.
Clint was settled on the couch when we got up, still only the barest words exchanged, and Rosa headed straight to him and pulled him into a hug.
“Are you alright?” she asked and he just laughed and hugged her back.
“Of course I am,” he said, finally. “Takes more than that to really hurt me! How are you? How’s Daisy?”
“She’s fine,” Rosa said, pulling away. “We’re both fine, but don’t think you’re distracting me like that. I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on me so long!”
She looked over at me as she said that but before I could say anything Hawkeye reached out, squeezing her arm.
“Hey, secret identities. We are meant to be covert agents, we were kind of hoping to maintain that status a little longer to mop up a few more long term operations but I guess that’s all blown out of the water now, right?”
“Yes,” I agreed, walking over and dropping in to a chair. “Though I should have told you anyway, I’m sorry.”
“You bet you should,” Rosa said with a sigh, though she seemed less annoyed now she’s seen Clint, confirmed for herself that he was alright. “Though you do realise you need to tell me everything now.”
“Sure,” I agreed easily. “We’re getting takeout, shall we call for food first?”
I called the Thai place down the road while Clint entertained Rosa with stories about yesterday’s invasion. It seemed odd to think it was only yesterday, seemed like a lifetime ago already.
While we waited for the food I talked. Explained things, though there wasn’t much I’d hidden other than by omission. It was a little awkward since, well, she wanted to know about Steve. In my head there’s Steve who lives on the next floor up and happens to be Captain America and Captain America who I write about. Rosa didn’t seem to have that divide, it was all the same for her and she wanted to know what he was really like, which was beyond odd. Once I got into talking to her, though, it wasn’t so bad. I told her about some of the missions we’d been on together, the declassified ones, and we somehow got lost in the stories. It was strange telling them to her, blurring the lines between my two lives again though I guessed the line was probably officially gone by now.
I also managed to confirm that the fic I wrote was NOT a true reflection of my and Clint’s relationship, whatever the paper speculated. It was a bit messed up and Clint and I aren’t perfect but we’re not that messed up.
We were starting to relax again, anyway. She’s eased off a little on the questions, I’d talked a little. It was looking positive, then the food arrived.
I knew something was up when someone knocked on the door as I should have got a call from reception, I was still caught off guard to find Steve on my doorstep handing me my takeaway.
“He,” he said, and he looked about as awkward as I felt but then the guy did tend to wear his heart on his sleeve. “I was coming in as this arrived. Can we talk for a minute?”
“In the hallway,” I said with a nod. “I have a guest.” I set the food down in our hall and followed Steve back out of the flat properly.
“Look,” he said, sitting down against the wall. “The things the paper was saying...I don’t...is it true?”
“Some of what they said is true,” I edged, but I knew that was going to cut it. I sat down with a sigh, across the hall and a little down from Steve so I didn’t have to look him in the eye. “The bits about, well, you...” the one article so far in the physical press that had picked up on it had it mostly right, though oversimplified. There were a few online articles that got closer, and some which were atrocious.”
“Yeah,” Steve said with a dry chuckle. “I kind of looked up it, this fanfiction thing. I’d never...I mean, I searched the internet for myself before but I’d never found that. How did you even find it?”
“Oh, way back before the internet,” I said with a dismissive hand wave. “I mean, when I first started reading Captain America comics it was before all that. People used to print stories up in zines and publish them as cons, but you probably don’t want to hear about that.”
“No, it’s fine,” Steve said, though there was a hint of something else in his voice. “I don’t...I didn’t even know people did this? Why do you....I mean...”
“Back when I first found fandom,” I said, shifting. “It opened up a lot of doors for me. I know it’s not something you asked for but when I found the people who wrote those zines...” I trail off, uncertain. I know Steve hates talking about Bucky but I’m not sure how to go on without mentioning him.
“The ones about me and Bucky?” Steve prompts, giving me permission, and I sigh.
“Yes, those. Everything I’d heard about homosexuality before I met those people was negative. Every idea I’d been given about what a gay man could be was a bad one. When I found them, well, for the first time I felt like I didn’t need to hide what I was. It was a revelation to me, Steve. Opened up a lot of doors to me accepting myself. I’ve made some of the best friends I have through fandom. In fact, we’re out here because one of them’s in the apartment right now. I was going to have to introduce you to her anyway, she’s going to be in the wedding party.”
“It’s not just writing stories, is kind of what I’m trying to say,” I said, gesturing vaguely as though that would make my point somehow more valid and staring determined at the wall. “It’s not even about you, not really. I mean, it is in some senses but I don’t mean to imply anything about you by it...this is worse than the time I told you I’d watched you sleeping.”
“YEah,” Steve agreed, but he sounded amused and not horrified and that was a start. “I guess that makes sense...I mean, I’m not going to say stop doing it or anything, what you do it your business. I just...why me and Bucky? What made you think that?”
“It was just...”I trail off. I’ve argued this a million times with different people on the internet but it’s different justifying myself to the man himself. “In the comics, they always made you very close. The closest people in each other’s lives, and it was that kind of bond. That friendship. I think that’s where it started.”
“Oh,” Steve said, a small sound almost like an apology. “I just, I kind of panicked a little this morning when I saw the papers.”
“I should have told you last night,” I say by way of apology but Steve waved at me and I stopped.
“No, not that. I just...I think I was in love with Bucky. It’s not something I thought about at the time, it wasn’t. Sometimes I looked at men and sometimes I looked at women and I didn’t think about it because as long as I was looking at women it was alright. But since I woke up and realized the world’s changed around me it is something I thought about. What I’d think and feel and do if Bucky were here with me now, like he was back then, and I think I would. I think I did. So I panicked a little because I thought people had realized, had seen through me somehow but it’s not...it’s not a bad thing. I’m alright.”
I didn’t really know what to with that. I did chance a look at Steve and he was staring at the far wall almost as hard as I had been, clearly not comfortable. I didn’t blame him, if I was reading this right then he’d possibly just come out of the first time, and to me of all people. It’s certainly not every day something like this happens.
“You’ll be fine,” I say, softly. “The news won’t believe it, and even if they do they’re not as bad as they used to be. The world’s come on a lot, though I guess you’ve seen that.”
“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “I’m sorry to dump this on you...”
“No, it’s alright,” I said, leaning over to squeeze his shoulder. He smiles at me and I try not to store it away for a future fanfiction. I don’t think I’m going to be writing any more Cap/Bucky, not with this on my shoulders. It would be a little too much like art imitating life. “I’m sorry.”
Steve laughs a little and I wince. I’m not sure if I’m apologizing for writing the fic, for being discovered, or just for the fact that I apparently knew Steve was in love with Bucky before he properly admitted it to himself.
“Don’t apologize,” he said, reaching up to pat my arm. “Life’s just like this sometimes. You should go on, your food’ll be getting cold.”
“Do you want to join us?” I ask. It doesn’t seem right to leave him here alone after this. “There’s plenty of food and, well, you need to meet Rosa anyway if you’re still in the wedding party. Are you?”
“Of course I am,” he said, meeting me eyes for the first time. I smiled at that, leaning forward and using my hand on his shoulder to push myself up.
“Come on then,” I said. “Though I should warn you that she’s a fan too and, well, she might be a little excitable.”
“At least she’s never watched me sleep,” Steve said with a little philosophical shrug, then pulled himself off the floor and followed me back in.
Rosa almost had some kind of spasm when I introduced her to Steve and it was amusing as well watching her try to cover it. I managed to let Clint know we were okay as we fetched plates and chopsticks and somehow once I told them that Rosa was going to be maid of honour and Steve best man (of close approximations to, but the people standing with us anyway) for this wedding the conversation got turned round to wedding planning and colour pallets and apparently while Clint and I didn’t have a particular opinion on that, both Steve and Rosa did and that was a little frightening.
We talked for an hour about wedding arrangements and the fact that there was only a month to sort everything out (which I didn’t care about too much. Tony had already offered to pay, I’d thought we’d just throw some money at it and be done. Clint told them this plan and they both looked shocked though probably for different reasons. I don’t think it had occurred to Rosa that Tony Stark might be playing for this and budget might not be that bit of an issue.
An hour later I took her back down to the lobby, Steve having already retreated to his own apartment for the night. She kept pulling out her phone and flipping through to where’s she’d programmed his number in (for planning reasons).
“Are you still angry at me?” I asked. She looked at me like I was an idiot and then pulled me in to a bone crushing hug.
“Of course not,” she said, digging her chin into my shoulder. “I have Captain America’s number, a legitimate reason to call him, and a Tony Stark budget to plan a wedding. I’m still a little concerned, though. I mean, you never said you job was so dangerous.”
“I was in the army,” I said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m well trained for what I do and I have an entire team of superheroes for backup, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Alright,” she said, stepping back. “But the next time you get engaged to a superhero you tell me straight away.”
“Don’t worry, I will,” I replied with a laugh, and then the lift doors were opening and she was gone.
It is, maybe, just possible that Clint and I underestimated the wedding planning stress. The next month quickly disappeared into choices about place settings and color schemes and within a week I told Rosa to just do what she liked so I could get back to my own job. It was disconcerting the first time I headed up to the communal area to find Steve and Rosa sat together finalizing the seating plan but I got used to it.
Clint and I got married in the summer, two weeks before the summer con. It became more of a media spectacle then I might have liked because of the photos and that damn fanfiction that sections of the pres insisted on taking as fact though it was clearly no such thing. Rosa cried during the ceremony and then again when she got to dance with Steve at the reception, much to the despair of her husband.
The strangest thing for me was seeing the fandom people and the non-fandom people mix. They were easily differentiated as the fandom people tended to group together and look at the various Avengers scattered about as though they couldn’t quite believe they were real. Watching them interact with Clint was even more fun as, well, quite a few of them had interacted with him before not knowing who exactly he was. Clint seemed to take it all in his stride, wandering about the room and chatting to everyone.
I had the next to last Dance with Rosa. She lent on my shoulder and laughed about it all, which was reassuring. Across the room Clint was dancing with Natasha and Steve was dancing with Rosa’s daughter, still decked out in her flower girl costume.
I had the last dance with my husband.