It started with Clint.
It itself, that wasn't much of a surprise. In Avengers Tower, everything started with either Clint or Tony. What was surprising was the fact that Clint somehow managed to drag in the one person who always succeeded in staying away from the chaos that the Avengers seemed to be constantly immersed in - Phil.
"Usually, I would ask, but here – quite honestly, I don't want to. Honestly, if I never find out how you managed this, I'll be fine with it."
Clint laughed, loud and uninhibited. "We both know that you're not going to be satisfied with that."
Phil glared at him, before taking a deep breath. Before he dealt with the madness in front of him, he needed to let some serenity wash over him and gather himself. Taking another deep breath, he laid his briefcase down and then took a look at the chaos surrounding everyone in the room.
"How exactly did you lot manage to create – and destroy – what is probably the bastard child of Loki and a normal blanket fort?"
And that immediately resulted in the cascade of muddled voices that he had been expecting from them for the last ten minutes. He sighed, raising a hand to calm them down. It honestly was like dealing with toddlers. "All of you – I can't listen to you all at once."
For some reason, Clint seemed to take that as indication to start wrestling Stark and ultimately sit himself on top of the other man, before appointing himself spokesman of the group.
Phil was starting to wonder why they couldn't just get Natasha to train a train a replacement for herself at SHIELD. She was perhaps the only person the other Avengers actually listened to – mainly because they were terrified that she would kill them in painful and unnatural ways if they didn't, true, but it was usually more than he got.
"Yes, Clint?" he asked, already resigned to getting an explanation that would make him want to tear his hair out.
"We were bored," Clint said, shrugging and using an arrow that he produced from – well, somewhere – to poke Stark in the butt as he started to protest at his position.
He had been right – those three words were enough to cause the start of what was undoubtedly a major migraine. The truly sad thing, as far as he was concerned, was that those three words were also really all the explanation that he needed regarding the Avengers' current predicament.
It was at times like this that he had to remind himself that the reason he had joined SHIELD was to protect the world against dangers they didn't know existed, not babysit a group of unruly superheroes.
"You know what?" Stark piped up suddenly from below Clint, breaking through the safe haven of his thoughts. "I have the best idea."
And immediately, all he could feel was an all-encompassing fear unlike anything that he had ever felt before. Not even facing Loki head-on had had the power to make him shiver as much as those words out of Stark's mouth did. Before he could say anything – before he could stop the trainwreck that was undoubtedly going to result –
"We would be honoured to hear your thoughts, Friend Stark."
Thor's words were enough to make him groan audibly. Of course the thunder god would enable Tony in whatever crazy scheme the inventor had dreamed up.
"We should have an impromptu party, me-style! Get drunk, see how much Midgardian alcohol it takes to get Thor drunk – or how long it is before he starts making a dent on my collection, whichever comes first – hire a few strippers to take care of our fearless leader's virginity-"
"TONY!"
"As we can all the see, the good Captain is a bit uptight at the moment-"
"TONY!"
"Yeah, yeah. You get my point. We should have a party!"
"As much as I hate the idea of – of what you suggested," Steve said, blushing wildly at the mere thought of Tony's words, "I'm almost horrified to say that you have a point. We need to have some form of team bonding apart from going and destroying poor Mr Singh's restaurant every week-"
"I always build him a better one, and he's not refused to serve us shawrma yet, has he?" Tony said, waiving away Steve's disappointed look.
Steve sighed, burying his face in his hands. "That's not the point, Tony! The point is I approve of your idea. You're right, a party will do all of us some good."
The inventor clapped his hands, smiling brightly and looking for all the world like a five-year old child at his birthday party. "Perfect!" he exclaimed loudly. "The rest of you go and clean up – and Barton, get your fat ass off of me, you're not exactly light, and you're neither Natasha nor Pepper – and I'll arrange everything for the party. Be here in an hour-"
"Are you sure that will be enough, Tony?"
"I'm affronted, I tell you, affronted! I expected doubt from Captain Virgin, but not from you Brucie! I'm betrayed, deceived, made a fool of!"
"You don't need me to do that, Tony, you manage to make a fool of yourself without anyone's help." The giggles that were coming from Clint and the smile that Steve was trying to hide only helped to further that make point.
"Yes, well, that aside, all of you move! Shoo!" Tony said, a pout starting to form on his face.
All he needed to hear was that there was going to be a party, and Clint leaped up from Tony's back, causing the other man to groan in pain at the sudden lack of pressure on spinal cord.
Before Coulson could start protesting the complete disaster that the idea of letting the Avengers loose in Tony Stark's alcohol supply was, Clint bounded over to him and grabbed his arm, dragging him along as he practically ran towards his room. "You're not getting out of this one, Sir," he said cheerfully. "Besides. I'm sure Tony and Thor will need you to rein them in before the night's over."
"Whereas you need me to rein you in right now," he grumbled, for some reason allowing himself to be led by the archer.
Clint simply laughed.
Loathe as he was to admit it, Clint had been right. The party had been a good idea – the battle in New York may have united the Avengers for that moment in time, but even after a few months of living together, there had still been an obvious sense of unease between them.
The party not only gave Stark and Thor a chance to bond while drunk – and watching Thor drink enough to actually get drunk was simultaneously astonishing and traumatic for any onlooker – but watching the two of them go insane while under the influence meant that Steve and Banner had something to talk about even though they couldn't – or wouldn't – get drunk.
Clint, of course, divided his time between drinking with Tony and Thor and videotaping everything for use as blackmail that Tony couldn't get his hands on, unlike JARVIS's surveillance tapes.
He, on the other hand, did the sensible thing. Even Tony had had better sense than to break open his vintage alcohol for his and Thor's little drinking fest, but that didn't mean that he didn't know where Stark kept it – or how to get into it. A glass of Stark's best scotch was more than enough to keep him satisfied, and he already had SHIELD's number punched in on his cell phone, ready to call for backup in the extremely likely situation of something going disastrously wrong.
The party may have ultimately had more positives than negatives, but that did not mean that Phil actually trusted the Avengers, especially with Natasha missing from their number.
Surprisingly, things seem to go relatively well – until he notices that Clint is missing, an occurrence that never ends well. The last time Clint Barton had gone missing - well, Budapest had happened. That had been forgiven because, well, SHIELD had been planning on doing basically the same thing, even if they were still in midst of planning their attack. This time, in the middle of superpowered individuals – Phil really didn't want to think about what could happen.
Thankfully, Clint was the one member of the Avengers team on whom he had managed to get a tracer to stick. Thor and Steve kept on destroying them by mistake, Banner destroyed all of his when he Hulked out, Natasha always managed to get rid of hers whenever she was going on a mission – her paranoia was extreme even in a world full of spies – and no one was insane enough to try and stick something mechanical on Stark unless he wanted it on him.
Clint, on the other hand, was relatively trouble-free when it came to that matter. Sure, he'd had Stark design something that made sure that only Phil could keep an eye on him – he took a close second to Natasha when it came to paranoia – but at least it left him with a way to track the archer.
The archer who, apparently, had only disappeared to the room in which the Avengers had built their now-destroyed blanket fort. It was at times like this when he remembered why he had never tried to understand Clint.
"Dare I ask?"
It was the sound of the familiar dry voice that made Clint glance up from leather-bound book he was scribbling in. He grinned, quickly closing the book and tucking the pen behind his ear. "You know me well enough not to ask, you know that right?" he asked dryly.
"True. Though, I must admit that I'm surprised that you decided to vanish from the party – I though you were aiming on getting as much blackmail material as possible from it."
He smirked, curling up into pillows that were still strewn around the room. "Just because I'm here doesn't mean that I'm not getting everything I need, you know," he chided. Honestly, Phil should really have known better, considering how long he had known him. "I have the video recorder set up in the walls, far enough away from any wiring so that JARVIS won't be able to mess with it."
Phil sighed. Clint had had a habit of wandering off to write in his ever-present journal (never a diary) ever since he had known him, and he knew him well enough to know that he was probably never going to change.
He had learned a long time ago that if he couldn't defeat one of his charges, it was best just to join them, so he allowed himself to sit down next to Clint. He was never going to be as messy and able to let himself go when relaxing as the archer, but he still allows the stress to drain out from him, letting all the worry about the Avengers go as he allows the pillows to pull him into the orbit of comfort.
As soon he started to rest, Clint freed himself slightly from the pillows and moved enough so that he was curled up at his side. He hadn't realised it at first – Clint was very good at pretending to be things he wasn't – but that loosening was the tell-tale sign that he was very familiar with.
"You're drunk," he observed blandly.
"Not completely," Clint murmured in reply, starting to sound just a little wobblier now that he was sure that it was only Phil in the room with him.
Phil threw him an amused look. For Clint to be showing even that much of inebriation in his voice meant that there was almost no chance that he would actually remember what had happened tonight tomorrow morning – which was probably why he was busy scribbling in his book, to make sure he wouldn't completely forget anything important.
"Come on Barton," he said, nudging at Clint. "You need to get up before you fall asleep here."
"Don't care," Clint grunted back in reply. "It's comfortable, and it's not like Stark's in state to protest me taking over this room for the night."
Phil started to open his mouth to argue, before suddenly snapping it shut. He tilted his head, looking at the dark head of hair on his shoulder thoughtfully. Clint was right – Stark wouldn't notice, and even if he would, it was almost certain that he wouldn't care. The man had made sure that there were more rooms to occupy him in the tower than most city blocks had.
Before he could concede Clint's point, however, the archer groaned his eyes starting to slip in an undeniable sign of imminent sleep.
Of course, being as it was Clint, he wasn't one to go to sleep quietly.
"Did you know I'm kind of you in love with you, Phil?" he murmured sleepily, before finally dozing off.
For a moment, Phil started down at him, unable to speak for his shock. He had thought he knew everything about Clint – except, apparently, for this. For all that the other man would not remember this the next morning, he would, and he was well aware that they would need to address the issue as soon as possible.
And then there was the added complication of his feelings for Clint, which were decidedly not platonic. Had they been, the conversation would have been easy – but they weren't, and he couldn't find it in himself to lie to the archer, which meant that they would have to find a way to figure their feelings out without it adversely affecting their work relationship. There was a part of him that was thrilled to find out that his feelings were returned, of course, but there was also the part of him that was utterly dreading the conversation that they were going to have – it was highly probable that it would not go well.
To think, he had been so sure just moments ago that all of his panicking had been for nothing. He should have known better than to go off in search for Clint – he might have gotten some of the most thrilling news of his life, but it was news that happened to double as something with a high possibility to cause trouble.
He should have known better – or he shouldn't have, depending on which part of himself he listened to. After all, with Stark drowning in alcohol, it definitely always started with Clint.
A/N: Basically, I just liked the idea of Clint and a blanket fort. I might do a prequel about just how the Avengers came to create and destroy their blanket fort, but I hope you guys liked this till then! This is the first time that I've tried to write this pairing, so I hope I've pulled it off!
Please don't forget to drop a review on your way out - I'd love to hear what you guys think :)