/ A Lot of Speculation \\\ 03 – Photos and a Story
The next week there was a photo, and a gifset – sometimes Phil really did dislike social media – of Phil standing between Clint and Loki and all but yelling at the Asgardian. It apparently showed how protective he was of Clint and that he was BAMF…Phil had been forced to get up and iron his washing after reading that.
Then three days later, there was a picture of them standing next to one another at a coffee shop. They had been collecting an order for the whole team – there was a roster, and there had been photos of every other visit to the place but apparently the way that Clint was looking at him was something called…eye-fucking. Phil had spent the night doing his budget projections for the next year.
Fury had had something to say about the time stamps on his projections but Phil hadn't risen to the comments.
There was nothing more for another month, there had been an Avengers mission but Phil had been in the StarkJet for the whole thing so there were no photos.
He wasn't visible during the mission after that either but this time there was a…story? Phil hadn't wanted to read it but he couldn't resist even if he'd spent the afternoon cleaning every line of grout in his bathroom once he was done. Apparently AgentHawkisREAL was of the belief that Phil had been stuck at S.H.I.E.L.D. and hadn't been able to be there on the ground with the Avengers and he'd been distracted from his paperwork by his worry for Clint. The problem was that it was well written. He could understand the motivations of this fake 'Agent' who was in love with Hawkeye and couldn't focus on his paperwork but none of it was real. Phil was very competent and had always been able to compartmentalise and focus. When they had lost Clint to Loki he'd been worried because Clint was a friend as well as a colleague but he, and Natasha both, had got on with the business of saving the world and then doing the paperwork. Well, Phil had been recovering but eventually he'd dictated his paperwork to his PA. When the grout was clean he reminded himself that his life being open to the public was unavoidable because he believed in everything that the Avengers were and he believed in what they would be able to do. He didn't get a costume and he didn't get a secret identity but none of the Avengers did and if what Steve kept telling him, that he was an Avenger, was true then it was only fair that he didn't have one either.
/
