A little one-shot in honor of Coulson, because who didn't love that crack in Thor about how Stark never tells him anything? Actually, a good chunk of this was equally inspired by a particular rant about filing, courtesy of one Albert Eberts, of Invisible Man un-fame ("Why do we file, Robert? One word… freedom!")***. I just kind of love the idea of Coulson throwing an epic bureaucratic hissy fit.
I guess this isn't specifically a Thor story… I just wasn't sure where to put it, as there isn't an Avengers movie category (or at least there wasn't the last time I checked…). But since it was a quote from Thor that inspired it…
And now for the usual disclaimers… nope, don't own Coulson or any other Marvel copyrights… or the title, which should need no introduction, but for all the young'uns out there, that would be from the Aretha Franklin hit "Respect" (I assume this belongs to her… or to whoever wrote it if she didn't… or who or whatever currently holds the rights)
***If you know what I'm talking about, you are officially the most awesome person on the planet for the next ten minutes. Assuming the Doctor is not on the planet at the moment. In the event that he is, you are the second most awesome person on the planet, which isn't too bad all things considered. At least you don't have to save humanity and/or the known universe every other day.
And now that I'm done rambling…
Agent Phil Coulson was very good at his job, as insane and frustrating as it could be sometimes. He regularly dealt with people he didn't necessarily like, people who didn't respect him or the duties he was entrusted to fulfill.
It drove him to distraction at times, the way these people acted as if they had no one and nothing to answer to. And how they treated him like a petty bureaucratic grunt. He was not a petty bureaucratic grunt. He just had a job to do. It wasn't his fault that his job often dealt with things that these superheroes considered oh-so-boring.
It wasn't as if he liked all of the rules and regulations he had to impose; who could possibly like them when one considered the sheer amount of paperwork he was forced to do whenever someone decided they were above rules and regulations, as someone always did, usually Stark, the arrogant son of a…
He was getting carried away, but his point still stood.
He was important to the Avengers operation. He was the essential cog in the machine; the one who did the grunt work, who spent much of their time holed up in offices filling out paperwork and writing reports, and filing that paperwork, and trying to come up with cover stories, and doing all of the things you would never see Stark or Rogers, or that thunderhead Thor, or any of the others for that matter, doing.
They swooped in and out, above expenditure and accident reports, above writing enormous checks to cover up research that the public was not ready for, above being shouted at and having heavy objects thrown at their heads by angry scientists, above all of the filing they found so tedious. As if anything in the modern would could possibly exist without someone in an office somewhere organizing paperwork. Otherwise, how would anyone know where anything was, or what they were supposed to be doing, or where they lived, or what school their children were supposed to attend, or any of the other millions of questions whose answers could be found in a file somewhere? Society would fall apart!
Who really needed a superhero when their identity was stolen, or they needed a new driver's license, or medical insurance, or they needed to file a claim, or find a lawyer, or sell their house, or… well, there were a multitude of things that a petty bureaucratic grunt could do that a superhero would be useless at.
The plain truth of the matter was that it was not the hero, but the humble file clerk that made the world go 'round.
And what was he, if not a glorified file clerk, and a babysitter, and a personal assistant, and an enforcer, all rolled into one?
His job was just as, if not more difficult than fighting costumed idiots with delusions of grandeur. He got stuck with the hard tasks; it was left to him to ensure that they behaved themselves, and didn't go blabbing sensitive information, or doing something else unforeseeable and idiotic that would compromise the project.
As if he could predict their behavior; how the hell was he supposed to predict the behavior of a crazed monster, or an arrogant, self-indulging millionaire who didn't know how to play nice with others, or a relic from World War II (alright, Rogers was pretty mild-mannered and predictable, so long as you kept him away from the computers), or the damned Norse god of thunder? It wasn't as if he was trained for this sort of thing. It wasn't as if anyone was trained for this sort of thing. But that never mattered, not to Fury and the other higher-ups; and someone had to do the dirty work, didn't they?
Someone had to be the clichéd black-suited government agent, swaggering around with all the secrets in their back pocket. Someone had to be the one who at least attempted to enforce the rules. Someone had to be there to clean up the messes the heroes left in their wake.
That someone was him. And he was good at it.
But really, was it too much to ask for just a little respect?
Reviews are muchly appreciated (yes, I know 'muchly' isn't a word…). While I'm on the subject, thank you thank you thank you to the reviewers of my previous stories! Especially darkknightress337, memorable for her (I assume, my apologies if I've assumed wrong) near-paragraph of outright praise. I'm glad I haven't horribly, unforgivably butchered any characters thus far.