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Undercover
James knew full well that if the mission went wrong today, it would backfire badly on Steve, not him. Luckily, Steve knew that too.
Even so, even with the knowledge of his friend's permission to do this, James felt very conspicuous wearing the Captain America colors, carefully tailored to look like a costume. Natasha of course was wearing her own outfit, pleased that she didn't have to do much for this mission in way of disguise.
The target in question sold state secrets cleverly disguised as fan art, and always conducted business at fan conventions such as this one. So far, Natasha and James had been stopped several times by other individuals dressed in the costumes of the other Avengers for group photos, and there had even been a pack of teens dressed as the self-dubbed 'Young Avengers'. It was disconcerting, honestly, to see different, sometimes very revealing, variations of the Black Widow costume on other girls though, and James kept close to Natasha to send the clear message that she wasn't alone.
That still didn't stop other convention goers, one of whom complained that Natasha's costume covered up too much. She'd politely asked if his entire day was ruined because of that, and he'd said yes. Instead of doing whatever it was that he hoped her to do next, she merely smiled, and said, "I believe my work here is done. Have a nice day." Then she'd kept walking.
Even more awkward had to be the Avenger fan atmosphere. Costumes (or lack of) aside, James caught snatches of conversations about 'ships' and 'OTPs' and 'Tumblr', which all came up several times. Two girls were bickering about 'ships' as he and Natasha walked by, and it only occurred to him about what 'ships' were in that particular context when a pair of teens asked for a photograph of him and Natasha together, and were rather… giggly about the whole thing.
He waited until the girls had moved away before he turned to Natasha. "What was that all about?" he asked warily.
"Something that Fury has been suing popular blogging sites for years about, ever since New York happened. Just ignore it, and move on," she said curtly.
" 'Ships'?" he repeated, hoping that whatever the assumption he'd come to was incorrect.
"Like I said, Fury's been suing websites for it. PR's got their hands full with maintaining S.H.I.E.L.D.'s good relationship with the press while somehow handling Fury's suing spree," she whispered back. "It's not threatening the state of the world, so it's nothing you have to worry about. It's just another aspect of the fan world, such as the cosplaying and the fan art, which is what the seller we're supposed to be looking for does as a hobby."
"Cosplay?"
"When you dress up as someone you're not, and you're doing it for fun. After New York, we attracted enough fans in order to be the next 'thing'. Fury's already threatened to sue movie studios that attempt to make films based off this, and given how he's acting towards websites, no one has quite dared yet. He claims is that it's because it's distracting for us, but I think he doesn't want to be responsible for anyone who gets targeted by villains just because they claimed to be one of us," Natasha replied, rolling her eyes. "But let's go, we still have to find that man."
A/N: Prompt: Cosplaying