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If you'd asked Clint two days ago, he'd have said that hell would freeze over before all six Avengers, plus Pepper, Jane, Darcy, Tony's buddy Rhodey, Coulson, and Sitwell and Hill would end up sitting on the floor of Stark's giant living room, drinking and playing Never Have I Ever.
God bless Tony Stark.
Okay, really, it probably had more to do with the fact that all of them had been up for nearly forty-eight hours containing a swarm of over a thousand insectoid baby aliens while Jane found their home so that Thor could go fetch their parents. Thank God Thor had recognized the race immediately, because the thought of what could have happened if they hadn't known the swarm was just a bunch of panicked kids turns Clint's stomach. But Thor had recognized them, and though containing the swarm had been a challenge that called for every available SHIELD agent and every favor they could call in (hence Rhodey and Pepper, who had helped with containment and logistical support, respectively), they'd managed it without injury to either alien babies or freaked out regular law enforcement.
Clint has money on the NYPD instituting an alien-slash-metahuman orientation session for all recruits inside of a year. Coulson's holding out for three years, on the grounds of bureaucracy.
Anyway, after that they're all feeling pretty punchy. The kids' parents had closed their portal, and silence had fallen over the street. Then Sitwell had said, with feeling, "I need a fucking drink."
"I'm not letting you lot destroy a bar," Hill had returned.
And Tony had said, "So we'll go to my place."
And here they are.
Clint blames Darcy for the Never Have I Ever. Really, what else was going to follow a comment about this being suspiciously like a slumber party?
Maybe 'blame' is the wrong word. Maybe he should say 'credit' because fuck, Coulson's jacket and tie and shoes have been discarded, and he's got his sleeves rolled up. Hill is in a pair of Pepper's sweats, and Sitwell had produced a go bag with a smirk and changed into a t-shirt and track pants. Seeing the three of them in civvies at the same time ought to be a sign of the apocalypse, but Clint's had a couple of beers and everyone is sitting on the floor and laughing and he thinks if the world ends right now, that's fine with him.
"Never have I ever," Rhodey announces, raising his beer and looking around the room, "had sex while flying."
"That's targeted!" Tony accuses, but he takes his drink. Thor asks if 'while flying' requires an airplane and when they agree it doesn't, he drinks, along with Natasha, Clint himself, Darcy, and, to Clint's surprise, Hill.
"Do tell, Hill," Clint says, pointing at her with the neck of his beer bottle.
She rolls her eyes. "I was a field agent before I became Deputy Director," she says. "I've got a few stories. This one time--"
"Ah, ah, ah!" Sitwell chides. "My turn. Never have I ever..." he grins at Coulson "...jerked it thinking about Captain America."
Steve groans as Tony, Pepper, Clint, Natasha, Jane, Darcy, Rhodey, and Hill all drink. "Why me?" he demands.
"Face it, Steve, your propaganda was tailor made for sidekick and rescue fantasies," Rhodey says, laughing. "You wanna get your own back, your turn is coming up soon."
Tony raises both hands. "Hang on, hang on." He waves for them all to shut up, then stabs a finger at Coulson. "You didn't drink, Agent. Bottoms up, we all know it's true."
Clint sighs and picks at the label on his beer bottle. Of course Steve is Coulson's dream man. He's so goddamned perfect that Clint can't help but like him even though the shining light of all that fucking goodness casts Clint's shadows too long to overlook. He just wishes the others didn't enjoy pointing it out so much.
But Coulson laughs. "Sorry, Tony, but you've got it wrong this time."
"Phil," Sitwell says, as serious as he can get with a few shots in him. "You remember that time you dragged me home for Christmas because my family was all on a fucking cruise? I snuck into your childhood bedroom. I have seen the posters. You cannot lie to me. Drink."
Coulson rolls his eyes. "I didn't want to have sex with him, Jasper, I wanted to be him. Cap's really not my type." He catches Steve's eye and shrugs, a little sheepishly, but Steve waves it off.
Rhodey shakes his head in disbelief. "I thought Steve was everyone's type, if you're even remotely attracted to men."
"Not mine," Coulson says easily.
"So what is your type?" Tony asks, leaning forward intently.
"Isn't it Thor's turn?" Coulson casts Thor a hopeful look.
In vain. "I would know what sort of man stirs your imagination," Thor declares.
Coulson lets his head fall back to rest on the edge of the couch. "Oh my god, why is my sex life so interesting to you people?"
"In my experience," Bruce offers, "the best way to make people curious is to refuse to talk about something. Drop a few casual details and they'll make their own assumptions; clam up and it drives them crazy wondering."
Hill snorts. "That explains it. Spill. It's for your own good."
Coulson covers his face with both hands and groans.
"Phil, you're with friends," Pepper wheedles.
"Maybe something will come of it," Natasha murmurs, but she's so quiet that Clint almost didn't hear her, and he's sitting right next to her. He starts to lean in to ask what she meant, but then Coulson sits up and spreads his hands in concession.
"Fine," he says. "You know those--" He glances at Steve and Thor and starts over. "In the '90's, there was this trope that got really popular in the movies. A girl would be torn, romantically, between the clean cut, respectable boy and the, ah--" Is Coulson blushing? "Sexy, rough boy from the wrong side of the tracks."
Jane nods enthusiastically. "And the respectable boy would turn out to be a total asshole," she says, "and the rough boy would turn out to be an honest, stand up guy who is secretly really sweet with his girl."
Clint remembers sneaking into those movies. He never had the cash to waste on a movie ticket, but it had been easy to slip in a side door when the previous show was getting out so that he could sit in the back and imagine that, one day, someone would look past the worn clothes and the smell of sawdust and the lack of a fixed address and see him.
"Oh my god," Darcy cackles. "You totally want a hot piece of rough!"
"Darcy!" Jane smacks her on the arm. "Don't talk like that."
"What?" Darcy shoves her back. "There's nothing wrong with being a bit of rough. Or liking it."
"Somehow, I think there's more to the attraction than a leather jacket and a pair of ripped jeans," Pepper jumps in, making an encouraging motion at Phil.
Coulson swallows awkwardly. "Yes. I mean, not that I don't like the ripped jeans." Clint is suddenly, painfully aware that the jeans he's wearing right now are worn through at the knees. "But the fantasy...it was as much about being the one he trusted, the one who had faith in him, the one who gave him the strength to stand up for what he wanted."
Clint is frozen, gaze fixed on the beer bottle in his hand, because it had taken years, and Clint had moved on from worn clothes and sawdust to a mercenary's reputation and the tang of blood by then, but Coulson had done that for him. Had looked him in the eye and said, "Tell me what you want. I can make it happen," like he already knew what Clint's answer would be. It had taken three tries for Clint to get the words out, but Coulson had just waited, so sure, until Clint said it. "I want to help people."
He'd made Clint's fantasy come true, but Clint had never, not once in all the time they'd known each other, thought he'd done the same for Coulson.
"But life isn't a teen movie," Coulson goes on, wistful. "And the bad boy with the heart of gold doesn't always want you back."
Clint's head snaps up and he realizes: He hasn't made Coulson's fantasy come true.
Phil isn't looking at Clint--he's studying the bottle in his own hands with a rueful twist to his mouth--but Hill and Sitwell both are. Jasper rolls his eyes at Clint and jerks his head toward Phil.
The room seems to be holding its breath, and that's when Clint realizes that none of the others have missed this bit of byplay. They're all looking at him with curious eyes, now, everyone but Phil. Clint sets his bottle aside and crawls across the circle of their friends, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart.
He crawls right into Phil's lap because Clint has never done anything by halves, and takes Phil's drink out of his hands. "Clint?" Phil says, startled and, oh yes, hopeful. Clint kisses him.
It's awkward for a second, but then Phil starts kissing back, his hands landing on Clint's hips and pulling him close, and it goes from awkward to pretty damned perfect fast enough to make Clint's head spin. Clint braces himself with his hands on the sofa behind Phil and kisses him and kisses him and he doesn't ever want to stop, but Tony is cat calling and Thor is demanding a toast and Rhodey is asking someone what that was all about and Hill is arguing that Jasper's head jerk voids their bet and Darcy is never without her iPhone, which means that there's probably pictures of this, if not video. So Clint does stop, eventually, and his heart turns over in his chest when he sees the way Phil is looking at him, a little stunned but mostly just happy, happier than Clint's ever seen him. He's practically glowing. Clint smiles back helplessly and kisses him again, just a quick one, before sliding out of Phil's lap to land on the floor next to him, instead.
They surrender to Thor's demand for a toast, mostly because they're all drinking already, so why not? And then Tony demands a toast to himself, for getting the conversation started. And once they've drunk that one Jasper wants another, because no, actually, Tony, it was him who got the conversation started. Nat jumps in next, because she's had to put up with them pining after each other for years, and then everyone wants a toast, for one reason or another. No one seems to notice that Clint and Phil have stopped drinking...or maybe they've just decided that kisses count.
~!~