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One of the unexpected developments of forming a team of superheroes had been their explosion (literally and figuratively, following a mutated giant sea turtle attack that had unfortunately coincided with the New York Comic Con) into the fandom sphere. SHIELD’s Avengers staff, which had until this point consisted of Phil Coulson (Avengers Liaison) and Darcy Lewis (Phil’s assistant while he recovered from Loki’s attack) was now transformed into a larger operation. Darcy was promoted from temporary assistant into an entirely new role: scouring the web for any Avengers fan content that might serve as a danger.

Privately, Phil thought that he would rather the Avengers be attacked by a villain enterprising enough to find compromising information about them via fan edits than be subjected to any more of Darcy’s findings.

Of course, Phil wasn’t a stranger to fandom. He’d picked up quite a few zines before he started working with Captain America. He’d seen any and all movies inspired by the captain’s bravery. He had seen (and, yes, read) his share of Captain America fanfiction. He’d written a paper in high school dissecting whether anything was actually going on between Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter and if Bucky Barnes had been anything more than Rogers’ best friend. He’d been to the New York Comic Con and had, in his teens, engaged in a now regrettable cosplay, the pictures of which had been locked away as soon as Phil began interacting on a near daily basis with Tony Stark.

So, yes. Phil was well aware of the intense, and to an outsider, crazy, things that went on in fan spaces. And while Phil was not ashamed of when he had been Captain America for Halloween three years in a row or the Cap cosplay he had donned with a group of friends at the age of seventeen, he had long since put those years past him. It was bad enough that he had said what he had said to the man when they had first met. He couldn’t imagine what Stark would say if he knew the extent of Phil’s childhood obsession. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if SHIELD’s rumor mill found out.

All that to say: Phil was not all that keen to look at Avengers cosplay, fanfiction, drawings, and edits. He did not mention, when Stark guffawed at a fan’s Twitter post of her new tattoo of Iron Man’s arc reactor, that he had considered a shield tattoo himself around the age of fifteen. When Bruce tentatively mentioned that he had seen Instagram and Twitter pages dedicated to the Avengers, or single Avengers, Phil carefully did not react.

The Avengers, of course, were not as subtle in their reactions.

Tony Stark, of course, was immensely pleased. He’d already been “stanned” by fans for a while back when he was just the head of Stark Industries. His Ao3 page had already had a few thousand works on it before the Avengers were formed, and he had gleefully enjoyed skimming the site for Pepper Potts/Tony Stark works. When his Ao3 tag gained several thousand works in the first few months since the Avengers had been formed, he didn’t falter. Phil was fairly certain Tony had created an Ao3 account for the sole purpose of following his tag. He was very certain that Tony followed some of his own fan pages on Instagram, having been called into a meeting with Fury to discuss the fervor that had broken out when eagle eye fans had spotted it. At breakfasts, Tony showed edits of himself and Pepper to the less enthusiastic Avengers. He’d even started speaking some fandom slang: “ship”, “OTP”, “lemon”. Phil was just glad that Tony had gotten his message when Phil didn’t open the last five Instagram posts he had sent him with a phone number Phil only remembered giving to Pepper.

Steve Rogers, on the other hand, was fairly reticent. He didn’t understand the frenzy or the desire to imagine him in various scenarios. He was a little more than freaked out by the vast amount of reader insert fics that had spawned on the internet. He didn’t spend much time on social media at all, which made him the polar opposite of Tony Stark in almost every way when it came to the fandom situation. Phil was grateful for Steve. He wasn’t sure he could handle it if there were two Avengers that were searching the web for content of themselves to share with everyone.

Bruce Banner shared Steve’s aversion to the fan content. He had no social media presence, only looked at fan creations when Tony shoved a phone into his face, and didn’t have much to say on the phenomenon at all. If anything, he was perturbed by it. He wasn’t wrong to be, considering his Ao3 tag was predominantly shipped with one Betty Ross, and Bruce hadn’t exactly shared that relationship with the world. Bruce found the whole thing rather embarrassing. In that way he and Phil were kindred spirits.

Thor was confused by fandom in the way he was confused by most everything on Earth. Aside from Tony, Thor was perhaps the most comfortable with it all. After all, growing up on Asgard meant there had been obsessive eyes on him from birth, probably. There were probably statues and paintings of Thor dating back to his early childhood, and he’d heard him say something about plays once or twice. Thor probably considered the fandom thing no different from the worship he would have received as a prince. At the same time, fan culture on Earth was very different from the respect and scrutiny given to an Asgardian prince, so while Thor appreciated the attentions, he didn’t understand it. Phil was not going to be the one to explain, and luckily Darcy had been too busy recently to clue him in. Though Phil was sure that would change soon.

Natasha Romanoff despised fandom. She understood it, as Phil was sure she had spent a good deal of time researching as soon as the first wave of fan works became visible. But an international spy would of course not take kindly to strangers making up stories about her life: childhood, getting out of the Red Room and into SHIELD (though of course they didn’t have any idea about the Red Room and so invented several fantastical origin stories) and her relationships. Mainly, on Ao3, the Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov relationship, though Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov was becoming rather popular too. After Natasha had threatened Stark with disembowelment, he had refrained from showing her Avengers content, and Natasha now lived a blessedly fandom free life. Phil wished he could be so lucky.

Clint Barton’s reaction had been the most shocking. Phil had expected his boyfriend to react similarly to Natasha- suspicious, defensive, annoyed. He hadn’t expected an enthusiasm more similar to Tony’s than anything else. Clint was new to the fan scene and regarded it all with a childlike curiosity. He listened intently while Tony explained the concepts of fanfiction, edits, and cosplay to him, before going into a deeper dive on tropes and ships and AUs. And after that initial lesson from Tony, Clint had, to Phil’s horror, signed up for an Ao3 account of his own. They never talked about Clint’s new interest in reading: Phil would see the red and white website on his boyfriend’s phone screen when he glanced over, would sometimes hear music and look over to find it overlaid with images of Natasha, cheek smudged with dirt following a battle. But Clint didn’t try to talk to him about it, and Phil didn’t talk to him. Not until a few months after the fandom explosion had happened.

~

“Babe, have you seen these?”

Phil blinked and rubbed at the grit in his eyes. He’d gotten back from a SHIELD mission only an hour earlier and hadn’t slept for at least 19 before that. “Hmm?” He mumbled.

He squinted at the phone screen Clint unceremoniously placed in his face.

“There’s already been 2000 stories written about me,” Clint said. “1200 of them are about me dating Natasha.” The momentary warmth that had been caused by Clint’s obvious opinion that he wouldn’t be dating Natasha was squashed by Clint’s next words. “There’s even a whole subset of them dedicated to how I was recruited to SHIELD. Most of them seem to think that I was recruited by Fury himself. Pretty cool, right?”

“Right,” Phil muttered. He looked at the first fic on the list. 18,000 words, 4 chapters, and no end in sight.

“Look at this one,” Clint said, tapping on the screen and scrolling down. He clicked on a fic. “Barton had always considered relationships to be a drain on one’s psyche. But it only took meeting a pair of mossy green eyes to-” Clint had to cut himself off, he was laughing so hard.

“Can you believe it? All these people dedicating their time to writing stories about me.”

Phil shrugged. “It’s been a fan thing long before half of New York got obsessed with the Avengers. I just wish we hadn’t had to hire a team to check the stuff for any security risks.”

“Darcy’s been sending me some pretty cool stuff,” Clint smirked. “The fans have even started branching out. The other day Tony sent me a fanfiction about Fury.”

It took a minute to process. “What?”

“Yep. Fury’s the main character. Some guest appearances from Maria Hill and Alexander Pierce. And even you.”

“…me?”

“Yep. Not sure how they found out about you and Hill, really. I knew Fury was kind of public since SHIELD is out in the open now, and of course Pierce is the Secretary. I suppose one of your old Rangers buddies must have talked.”

Phil could feel a developing headache. He was going to have to report this, wasn’t he? Darcy was going to start gleefully showing him fanfiction about him and Maria Hill. “That’s not good,” he said eventually.

“Well, yeah. But what harm is it going to do, really? They don’t get any details right, except your middle initial starting with J. I don’t think that story even had your eye color right. It’s not like there’s going to be anything identifying in there.”

“It’s bad enough that there’s fan work being made about all of you,” Phil said. “Without dragging me into the mix too.”

Clint was silent for a moment. “You don’t think any of it’s funny?”

“I mean, sure. On some level it’s funny. But it’s all very strange.”

“Yeah,” Clint said after a beat. “That’s true, I guess. Come on, you look like you’ll fall asleep at any moment.”

And that was that. Phil didn’t hear anything else about fanfiction and Fury in fanfiction and himself in fanfiction. He did have to suffer through an uncomfortable meeting with Fury and Darcy Lewis, in which Darcy explained to Fury how the team wasn’t sure how civilians had found out about Maria and Phil and their work for SHIELD, but that it was likely some sort of hack (not a good sign) or a SHIELD agent with loose lips (also not a good sign) or that someone from Phil and Nick’s old Rangers team really had blabbed (least likely, since Phil hadn’t told any of them that he would be joining a shadowy government agency after leaving the military).

Unfortunately, now that the secret, for lack of a better word, was out, it was impossible to rein it in. Fanfiction starring Nicholas J. Fury, Director of SHIELD, was growing at a rate that was somehow higher than Thor stories. And with the Fury-centric (Phil did not like how these terms were becoming a daily part of his vocabulary) fics came increased interest in fics about SHIELD itself. And that meant that Maria Hill, Deputy Director of SHIELD, and Phil Coulson, Avengers Liaison, were becoming prominent characters on Ao3.

Darcy popped a bottle of champagne the day Phil’s Ao3 tag was added to 100 works. Phil was almost certain that she would have told Clint about it, or that Clint would have found out some way or another, but Clint didn’t mention it that night.

In fact, Clint had been uncharacteristically quiet in the week and a half since their first discussion about fandom. Phil had still seen him poking around on the site, but Clint hadn’t attempted to show him anything since.

Phil hadn’t put too much thought into it. It wasn’t as though Clint had become actually quiet- he was almost as chatty as ever, acted normally. But there was some sort of tension that had settled in that night when Clint had brought the fanfiction up. Clint wasn’t brooding, exactly. Just thinking.

Phil was sure he’d hear about it eventually.

~

“They’ve started writing Phil Coulson-centric fiction now.” Clint’s voice is low next to his ear; one arm wrapped around Phil’s waist while the other is holding up his phone.

“What’s in it,” Phil says back.

“Mostly stuff about you and Fury being bros. People seem to think you’d be annoyed at Stark but like Banner and Rogers.”

“They’ve got that right.” Clint snickers. It vibrates in his chest and Phil can feel it in his own.

“They’re shipping you with Fury. And Hill. Depends whether or not they think you’re gay.”

Phil swallows back his knee jerk reaction but can’t hold back a shudder of disgust. Clint laughs fully now. “Yeah, it’s pretty weird.”

“Fury. And Hill. The fanfiction about me says that I’m dating Nick or Maria.”

“Well, usually you’re married to Maria. Not Fury, since gay marriage only just became legal, but you guys have been engaged for six years.”

“Six years,” Phil repeats.

“Yeah. The widely accepted timeline is that you and Fury met in the Rangers and fell in love instantly. And then you went to your shadowy government agency together. Your relationship is an open secret.”

“Well,” Phil says. “The last part is kind of right.” Phil and Nick did not fall in love in the Rangers. Their close friendship is something they keep slightly under wraps. It usually freaks newbie agents out to find out that Agent Coulson, who many of them are well acquainted with and complain about in the cafeteria, is best buds with the guy who can fire them.

Another open secret is Phil’s relationship with Clint. There’s a fair amount of gossip about them from newbies too, but when those newbies eventually get to senior status they tend to know about Clint and Phil. They also tend to not say anything once that happens, and the rumors continue to swirl.

“I’m surprised whoever found out all the info about Maria and I didn’t find out about us,” he remarks wryly. Tempting fate, maybe. He doesn’t want to think about the PR headache it would be for the press to find out that one of the Avengers members was gay.

Nor does he want to think about the years of tugging Clint into his office with a quiet locking of the door during lunchtime, subtle brushes past him in the meeting rooms, and a rumor mill that always watches them, all destroyed by a rabid teenager with 12 hours of screen time per day and a stalkerish obsession with the Avengers.

Clint, however, stays silent.

“Clint?”

“Well,” Clint says. He pauses again, and Phil groans.

“Don’t tell me they are writing fanfiction about the two of us.”

“They’re not,” Clint says. “They definitely aren’t.”

Phil turns around and frowns at him. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”

“I’m not being sarcastic,” Clint says. “There’s no fanfiction being written about us. Actually, there’s not been a single one. 1400 stories and counting about me making out and shacking up with Nat and not a single one where I make out and shack up with you.” There’s something dark and painful in his voice.

“And I’m not making out and shacking up with Nat,” Clint continues. “I’m making out and shacking up with you.”

“Can you stop referring to our relationship as ‘making out and shacking up’?” Phil asks. It’s mostly to bide time to process the fact that Clint is, apparently, upset that there isn’t any fanfiction being written about their relationship. The one that the public doesn’t know exists.

“Well, apparently it’s not fanfiction worthy, so.”

“Clint. That’s probably because they don’t know we’re together.”

“Technically, all the SHIELD junior agents don’t know we’re together. And at the same time, they always have some sort of betting pool going around on whether or not we’re together. Which means that most people look at us and see that there’s potential there.”

“Potential,” Phil repeats. This was not how he had expected to spend his night.

Clint flushes and scowls. “You know what I mean. There’re probably thousands of these people reading and writing and making this stuff, and not a single person has looked at the two of us and thought, ‘Hey, they’d be great together’.”

“I can’t imagine much of my personality has shown through in the fanfiction written by people who have never met me,” Phil says. “Besides, it’s not like they know that you’re not straight.”

“There’s fanfiction about me and Steve,” Clint protests. “Doesn’t that sound wrong to you? How can people say I’d be good with Steve and not you?”

Phil takes a moment to consider the image of Clint with Steve and the warring emotions of jealousy and lust that it brings. “I think,” he says, “you’re putting a lot of stock into the writings of citizens who have never met either of us and probably never will. Do you really trust the beliefs of people who have collectively written 1300 stories about you dating Natasha?”

“It’s 1400 now,” Clint says. “Some of them are actually pretty well written. They never get me or Nat right though.”

“Well,” Phil says, “it would be hard to capture either yours or Natasha’s brilliance with a pen.”

“Aww,” Clint practically beams. “You do love me.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “If the absence of fanfiction about me loving you is enough to make you doubt that then I obviously haven’t shown it enough.”

Clint deflates. “It’s not you,” he says. “I dunno. It’s just, I’ve seen a lot of it, and there’s some stuff about Tony and Pepper that Tony really likes and it is pretty sweet, a little nauseating really, and it’s not like all of the fanfiction is totally off from how our lives really are, you know? The other day at breakfast Tony was reading off this one about the Avengers making pancakes for breakfast and it was scarily accurate.”

“I may need to report that to Darcy,” Phil muses.

Clint rolls his eyes. “It was like 500 words. If you replaced our names with the names of the characters in some sitcom it would probably be just as believable. But- I guess I just thought that if no one in the fanfic world was seeing it then maybe it wasn’t as natural as I always thought it was. And no one’s ever paid so much attention to my life before.” He’s mumbling now. It makes sense, even as it makes Phil’s heart ache.

It wasn’t really a surprise that a guy who had grown up without anyone taking much of an interest in him would now be overly attentive to the opinions of the masses now taking notice. Sure, it was an irrational worry, but Phil wasn’t going to mention that.

“I know it’s stupid,” Clint continues.

“It’s not stupid,” Phil says. He holds up a hand to stop what he knew would be Clint’s knee jerk response. “Being in the public eye is a lot of pressure,” he continues, “especially when part of that is having your name and image used in fiction. I’m sure it’s troubling when some of the things that end up in there aren’t indicative of the real you.”

“Yeah,” Clint says. His voice is quiet.

“Do you want to come out?” Phil is afraid of what the answer will be. Sure, it’s 2012, but even without lurking in fan spaces he’s seen plenty of Twitter posts about how Captain America surely stands for conservative values. Selfishly, he’s not the biggest fan of the idea of having his identity put on display to the world the way Clint’s is now.

It’s not fair of him to think, seeing as Clint had never asked for it either. And by the looks of it he hasn’t coped quite as well as he had been letting on. But at least Clint is Clint. Phil knows why all the fanfiction writers are enamored with him. He’s sure they look at the videos of the battles and see all the things that Phil sees when he looks at his boyfriend, though in a less familiar light. Phil knows exactly why all the fans love him; remembers being six years old and looking at his very first Captain America comic book and instantly being starstruck by the guy on the pages. Clint is just as much of a superhero now, on the same team as Phil’s childhood idol. Of course, he’s going to become the childhood idol of a new generation of children. But Phil isn’t like that.

Phil is ordinary, and older, and he has always faded into the background exceptionally well. He’s sure if the word were to get out that Hawkeye was dating him, there would never be a stop to scathing opinion essays and tabloids questioning why someone like Clint was with someone like Phil. Phil wouldn’t be an interesting character in fanfiction. He’s not really sure why there’s anything written about him at all, though he’s sure that the only thing he shares with the character in the fiction is a name. Fanfiction writers wouldn’t want to write someone as dynamic and alive and heroic as Clint with someone like Phil.

He's pulled back into the present by Clint’s voice. “…I just don’t think I want that kind of scrutiny, you know?” He’s saying. “Maybe someday. And if I did, everyone would start asking if I had a boyfriend, and I probably wouldn’t be allowed to tell them about you, because of SHIELD and everything.”

“True,” Phil allows. “But if you ever want to. SHIELD and Stark’s PR team would help you.” I’d help you.

He can see Clint’s reflection smiling in the phone screen, now gone dark. “I know.”

~

After that’s resolved, Phil thinks that maybe that is the end of it. That, maybe now that Clint has that part off his chest and insecurities have been aired, the whole fanfiction topic will cease. It’s not even that Phil has something against fanfiction, it took him back to a time when he was younger and lonely, and turned to fictional heroes to help him. Now that he’s got his own real-life hero in his bed, it doesn’t have the same kick that it used to.

He tells Clint, eventually, in a moment of self-inflicted foolishness. Clint’s still been reading it, he shows Phil a few and Tony a few more, though it’s not the same avid fixation it had been before. When Phil tells him, it’s because Clint had found one about the Avengers finding fanfiction of himself. Phil had bitten back his comment about irony and instead, what had come out was:

“I used to be really into that sort of thing.”

Clint looks shocked. “You?”

“Me,” Phil says.

“Let me guess,” Clint says, smirking now. “Captain America?” He laughs openly when Phil can’t quite hold back the grimace. “You wrote Captain America fanfiction,” he says. “And now you work with him,” he laughs. Phil rolls his eyes and Clint recovers.

“Can I read what you wrote?”

“Even if I still had it, which I don’t,” Phil says with a shudder, “no one in this tower would get their eyes on it.”

Clint pouts at him. “So, what did you write? Fix-its? Stucky romance?” He pauses for dramatics. “Smut?”

“No,” Phil says, a beat too late. Clint’s eyes widen again and underneath burning humiliation, Phil can appreciate his efforts to bite back a smile. “Mostly explorations of the Captain’s time in the war.”

“This is amazing,” Clint says. “How old were you?”

“I think I stopped around the age of twenty.”

“Shame,” Clint says. “Did you publish it anywhere?”

“They didn’t have those sorts of websites back then. Or websites at all. And I didn’t send anything to the zines.”

“Shame,” Clint repeats. “Were you any good?”

It takes a moment for the meaning to sink in. “I’m sure it could have been worse. It could have been better.”

“Huh,” Clint says. It’s contemplative. “…have you been keeping up with the Captain America fanfiction of the modern age?”

Phil tickles him until he cries uncle and they don’t bring it up again.

Of course, as Phil should have known since the beginning of this whole thing, that still wasn’t the end.

~

Of course, Phil notices that Clint’s been on his phone, typing a lot more. At first, he assumes it’s a conversation with Nat that sparks it: Clint staring intently at the screen, thumbs hovering over the keyboard, before a burst of energy sets them typing. After this goes on several nights in a row, Phil chalks it up to some new quirk. Probably Clint trying to search for something and not having the right words to find it on the internet.

“Hey, come look at this,” Clint says. It’s been a week since the typing began. Phil leans over and sees familiar red and white.

He sees the title first, something cheesy and stereotypical, and then the tags.

No Archive Warnings Apply, Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Phil Coulson, Fluff, Established Relationship

"Clint, what-"

“No, keep reading,” Clint says. He all but shoves his phone into Phil’s hand and then nudges his head onto Phil’s shoulder. Phil turns his focus back to the screen.

Clint was staring.

Watching Phil was one of his favorite pastimes, and he loved having the free reign to do it. Even though their relationship wasn’t seen as something that made sense by most of the general public

Phil stops reading. “Clint,” he says carefully.

“Yes?” Clint turns his face into the side of Phil’s neck, muffling the word.

Phil scrolls back to look at the username of the writer. Hawkguy. “…did you write this?”

“…maybe.”

Phil skims the rest of the work. It’s not long, a few hundred words ruminating on his and Clint’s relationship. Clint, made anxious by the silence, starts to talk as he reads.

“I know you said I shouldn’t be bothered, and I’m not, anymore, but I thought it might be fun. It’s probably not very good, but it was surprisingly easy, and I think this is the most I’ve written on something that wasn’t a mission report since… well, since ever.”

“It is good,” Phil says.

“Really?” Clint’s voice is soft and unsure.

“I’m not sure you would be able to get it published in a book, but you wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen people write.”

“Been reading, have you,” Phil feels Clint’s mouth curving into a smirk.

“Well, Darcy has. She thinks it’s all hilarious.”

Clint pulls back and wraps his arms around Phil’s neck. “Me too.”

The Clint Barton/Phil Coulson tag on Ao3 doesn’t necessarily take off, and for a while Clint’s the only one writing it. He publishes a couple more short stories sporadically, mostly detailing soft domestic moments between the two of them that Phil knows are heavily inspired by real life. But it gets views, and a few comments, and the first story not written by Clint appears after a couple of months. Clint wakes him up from a nap to show it to him: a couple thousand words about their time in SHIELD that culminates in them getting together.

It's not very accurate to their real story, but Phil can appreciate the effort. Clint fuels the fire when he shares the link on his verified Twitter account. Nick calls several times, and when that is unsuccessful sends several texts while Clint and Phil sit together on their couch.

Phil turns his phone off and leans in closer.