Archive of Our Own

Phil sighed, rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses. When was he going to learn to stop giving essay tests to his sophomores? If he had to read one more painfully superficial essay on Captain America, he was going to throw something out the window. Well, not his window. He didn’t have a window, he’d have to use someone else’s, but the point stood. He didn’t know which was worse, the ones who had obviously gotten all their information from the cartoon or the ones that looked up the title of Phil’s dissertation on the department website (Star-Spangled Man With A Plan: Exceptionalism, Hegemony, and the Reconstruction of Captain America) but clearly didn’t read it (or even the abstract) and tried to shoehorn in references in attempts to… Phil wasn’t even sure. Curry favor by misrepresenting his work? They all had such terrible handwriting, too. It was starting to blur together… wait, no. He needed to clean his glasses. He held them up to the light, making a face at the smears. Hadn’t he bought another box of cleaning wipes at the start of the semester? He rummaged around in his desk drawers with no luck. It had been a long day; his forearm was starting to ache where the nerves still weren’t quite healed from the surgery to install the hardware that allowed him to control his prosthetic hand.

“PC?”

He looked across the tiny office to where his TA sat at the other desk working through a stack of tests. “Yeah?”

“Second to last drawer in the file cabinet,” she said. “Remember, you hid them from Dr. Sitwell?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, standing up and wincing as his back popped. “Thanks, Daisy.”

“No problem,” she said breezily, waving her pink grading pen at him. “Consider it an early Christmas present.”

“That I bought myself?” Phil pulled out one of the wipes and started working on his glasses.

“That’s the best kind; always guaranteed to be exactly what you wanted.”

He grinned at her as he put his newly-clean glasses back on. So much better.

Daisy gave him a thumbs-up. “So, got any big plans for the weekend?”

He waved his hand at the stack of essays on his desk. “History 2301 needs their essays back by next week so that they can integrate the feedback into their final papers. At least, I sincerely hope they integrate it, or my winter break is going to be even more painful than I think it will.” A few of them would, he knew. A precious few.

She sighed. “Coulson, come on. We’ve been over this. You aren’t allowed to make me depressed about your life until after I defend my thesis. I don’t have the emotional energy to cope with more than one crisis at the same time.”

“My social life, however limited you find it, is not a crisis, Daisy.”

“That’s debatable—” she began, but was interrupted by a knock on the half-open door.

“Good afternoon, historians!”

Phil looked over at the overly-cheerful greeting to see John Garrett standing in the doorway. They’d known each other slightly in the service, and had met again several years before. Garrett, who had left the Army a year or so before Phil had, was working for the Maria Stark Foundation. Phil, whose career-ending injury had occurred in the course of rescuing Tony Stark from terrorists—or, more accurately, assisting him in rescuing himself—had woken up in the hospital to find himself minus his left hand, in the process of being medically discharged from the Army, and enrolled in an MSF-sponsored initiative to outfit veterans with robotic prosthetic limbs that had not previously, as far as Phil had been able to find out, existed. It had been a relief, at the time, to see a familiar face. He and Garrett had gone out for beers occasionally, until Phil had gotten sucked into the tricky part of his dissertation and essentially vanished from everywhere except the archives and the good hiding spot on the fifth floor of the language arts building where nobody ever found him and he could revise undisturbed.

“Garrett,” he said. “Hi. What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“Oh, you know,” Garrett said. “Meetings. Was over in the administration building and got done early, so I thought I’d come by.”

Phil’s office was clear the other side of campus from the admin building. And on the fifth floor. And the elevator was broken (again) today. “Well, it’s nice to see you,” he said, at something of a loss.

“I’m glad,” Garrett said, stepping into the room and coming over to lean his hip against Phil’s desk, narrowly escaping knocking over Phil’s half-empty coffee. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”

“Oh?” Phil moved his coffee to a safer spot.

“I know we were never able to connect as much as we’d have liked to, when we knew each other in the Army,” Garrett said.

“Well, we were in different units,” Phil said, hopefully succeeding in keeping his confusion out of his tone. Where was Garrett going with this?

“And then, of course, you had to deal with—” he waved his hand at Phil’s stack of essays— “professional pursuits. But now we’re free of all that,” Garrett said, “and I’d really like to get to know you better, Phil.”

Well. That was nice, Phil supposed. It was good that he wasn’t holding a grudge about being ghosted while Phil finished his degree. “Thank you,” he said. Wait, did Garrett mean he wanted to resume their occasional-beer-and-the-game acquaintanceship, or was he angling for something different?

“My office holiday party is Thursday night,” Garrett said. “I’d like it very much if you’d go with me, Phil. I know office parties aren’t the most entertaining occasions, but at least the food is usually good.”

“Huh.” Apparently it was “something different,” then. That hadn’t been what he was expecting; honestly, as far as he’d previously thought about it, he’d thought Garrett was straight, though likely that was just reflexive heteronormative thought patterns and/or some kind of holdover from Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He thought about it; he hadn’t been pining for Garrett since the Army, or anything, but he’d always liked him pretty well. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, he was gainfully employed, he and Phil had a fair amount in common; Phil had gone on first dates with less promising candidates before.

Besides, Daisy might have been a little bit right about the state of Phil’s social life.

“Sure, why not?” he said. He scribbled his number on a post-it. “Here, text me the details?”

Garrett took the note, grinning. “Awesome. I’ll pick you up at seven on Thursday,” he said. He took a candy cane out of his breast pocket and handed it to Phil with a flourish. “Sweets to the sweet,” he said, then swept out of the room, knocking over a stack of Daisy’s graded papers with his elbow on the way out.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Daisy said. “Seriously, Phil?”

Phil sighed, going to help her pick up the papers. “I thought my howling wasteland of a love life was giving you a crisis.”

“Well yeah, but I didn’t mean you should just go out with the first weirdo that asks,” she said. “That guy’s such a douche.”

“I think he’s having trouble readjusting to civilian life,” Phil said. “It takes some people a while to get used to the relative lack of structure. Besides, the food will probably be good. I can’t imagine Stark going chintzy on the nonprofit he named after his mom.”

“Now that’s a good reason,” Daisy said. “I wonder if there’ll be an open bar.”

“I guess I’ll find out on Thursday,” Phil said. He unwrapped the candy cane and used it to stir his coffee.

“Just promise me you won’t sleep with him,” Daisy said, uncapping her grading pen again. “I’m proctoring three exams for you on Friday so you have time to give me comments on chapter four, I need you sharp.”

Phil shook his head at her in mock-disappointment. “Such language, young lady,” he said. “I’m hardly going to hook up with Garrett after an office party on a weeknight. On the first date, no less.”

“You forget, Phil, I was around for the Great Grindr Fiasco,” she said.

Phil shrugged. “Like I said, sometimes it takes awhile to readjust to civilian life,” he said. “Sometimes that manifests in…”

“Whatever Garrett’s deal is,” Daisy contributed.

“And sometimes it results in someone trying to make up for a few decades in the military closet by—”

“Hooking up with every thirsty twink with a hot prof or sexy librarian fetish in the tristate area?”

“—taking advantage of whatever social opportunities present themselves,” Phil said, ignoring her. “Though in my case, I was also trying to get used to this”—he waved at her with his prosthetic hand—“ and sometimes I just needed to feel… normal, you know? Functional.”

Her face softened. “Yeah, I guess I see that,” she said. “Still, though. Garrett seems the clingy type, don’t give him too much encouragement too fast.”

He rolled his eyes. “I was practicing evasive maneuvers when you were still in diapers,” he said. “I think I can manage.”

“If you say so, PC,” she said. “Still, though, let me know if he gives you any trouble. I have ways of dealing with harassers.”

He shook his head fondly. “I know you do,” he said. “And I appreciate it. Remind me why you aren’t a computer science major again?”

“The element of surprise,” she said, striking a dramatic pose.

He laughed, toasting her with his coffee cup. “Well I for one am glad,” he said. “I’d hate to face the freshman survey classes without backup.”

“You and me against the hordes,” she agreed. “Now finish that batch so we can go, it’s two-for-one early bird day at the diner and I’m craving something greasy and delicious.”

“You know,” Phil said, pulling the next essay off the pile, “You don’t actually have to have two people there to get the deal. You could just go by yourself and take half of it home.”

“It’s not as good when you reheat it,” she said. “Plus this way I don’t feel judged when they call out my table for one. That one server with the perm always gives me side-eye.”

“Fine,” he said. “Two-for-one heart attack on a plate it is.”

He ordered more than he wanted at dinner anyway, and made her take the leftovers. TA stipends didn’t go far these days, and Phil had his disability pension to fall back on; she needed it more than he did.

He couldn’t deny that it was nice sometimes to have an excuse to do something after work that was neither physical therapy nor his DVR queue. Most of his day-to-day interpersonal interaction—at least since he’d realized that his Grindr hookups had become more tiring than fun—was with people from work (and mostly about history and administrivia), or with students (and mostly about homework or how nobody ever read the syllabus), or with medical professionals of one kind or another. Or they were Daisy, who was kind of a co-worker and kind of a protegé and kind of a cross between an XO and a little sister.

She’d actually been assigned to him initially from the Office of Disability Services, when his injury was still fresh enough that he needed physical help with his classes. After he didn’t need that kind of help anymore, she’d showed up the very next term as his TA and had followed him around ever since. He wasn’t sure if she was hacking the assignments—Phil wasn’t nearly senior enough to get a dedicated assistant, usually—or if Tony had somehow weaseled it out of the department on Phil’s behalf. He kept trying to endow a professorship for Phil out of gratitude for the whole life-saving thing, but Phil wouldn’t let him, at least not until he’d built up his reputation a bit more. He’d give in eventually—he wasn’t stupid, he knew how rare those sorts of opportunities were in academia, and the benefit of endowing something is that it would continue to help the field even after Phil was gone—but he did have enough pride to want to at least get established in his career a bit first. Anyway, it would be just like Tony to try to do an end run around Phil by endowing him a research assistant if he couldn’t give him a job yet, but Phil had purposefully not looked into it. Sometimes it was better to neither confirm nor deny.

Anyway, however she came to be there, Daisy seemed happy to stay something of a fixture in Phil’s life, at least until she finished her degree. He sometimes felt a little bad that she seemed to have decided that Phil’s personal life was as much her responsibility to manage as his professional one, though. He had a vague feeling he should be encouraging her to socialize more with her peers or something, but any time he tried she gave him such a withering look that he just… dropped it. Seriously, she’d have made a great CO, if she weren’t allergic to institutional authority.

She would be the head of a department some day, probably. It would be glorious. Phil would totally rather work for her than a lot of the bosses he’d had over the years.

Still, though. Daisy worried about him, and he didn’t like to add to her stress. The ABD period was a very delicate one in the life of a historian; she didn’t need any more on her plate than she already had. Phil could make a bit more of an effort, socially speaking. Maybe he’d end up really hitting it off with Garrett, too, and then he’d have something else to fill his time. Stranger things had happened.

>>>———-> <———<<<

Thursday came, and Phil left work earlier than normal, so he’d have time to do his PT exercises and shower before Garrett arrived to pick him up. His nerve pain had been acting up a little that day, but he hoped the exercises would help settle it down; he didn’t want to have to take his pain pills before a first date.

Especially if Stark was indeed springing for an open bar; it had been a long time since Phil had indulged in really good wine. Phil might not be a starving grad student, but he wasn’t so flush he could afford that sort of consumable luxury very often. Fortunately, he had time to do a little extra stretching and some mirror exercises along with his PT, and by the time he was done with his shower, he felt much better.

While he got ready, he thought that he really should send something nice to his physical and occupational therapists; one of his main goals during his recovery had been to regain the ability to maintain his personal appearance the way he preferred to. It might seem shallow to some, but for Phil, being able to do things like shave himself properly again, or button a shirt, or tie a tie, had gone a long way to making him feel more like himself.

It was actually nice to have an excuse to wear his best suit; he’d bought it as a combination interview-suit-and-confidence-booster, but he couldn’t exactly wear it to Daisy’s diner or the history department receptions without looking almost comically overdressed, and he didn’t really get out much otherwise. Once he’d exhausted the charms of what Daisy persisted in calling his “himbo phase,” he’d gotten somewhat stalled out, socially speaking.

He knew what he wanted to find: not just sex, but someone with potential to be a real partner, someone who would understand Phil’s experiences, who’d be just as happy to curl up on the couch watching TV of an evening as to go out clubbing. Hopefully someone who’d tolerate a certain amount of historical nerdery and who wouldn’t find the occasional injury-related bad day a dealbreaker.

Grindr wasn’t really set up to filter for that, though, and all the other options for looking for someone to date just felt overwhelming. Phil had done a lot of starting over in the last several years, and the prospect of doing it again in a romantic context just seemed like… a lot.

Was it possible that John Garrett could turn out to be what Phil was looking for? Hard to say, really, but they at least had enough in common that Phil thought it was worth at least giving things a try. Chemistry wasn’t everything, after all, plus sometimes it took longer to develop than others.

His doorbell rang, and Phil smoothed over his tie and went to answer.

“Phil! You look very dashing.” Garrett beamed at him; his teeth were very white. Phil vaguely wondered if they were implants; hadn’t Garrett taken some kind of facial injury in the Army?

“Thanks, Garrett,” he said. “You too.” Garrett did look nice, though Phil had never really been the biggest fan of seasonally-themed accessories. Still, Garrett’s tie was a relatively subdued holly print rather than anything with flashing lights or (God forbid) music, so Phil would allow it on festive grounds.

“Call me John,” Garrett said. “After all, we’re about to have a magical evening—” he did a flourish with his hands, and produced a red rose, which he held up in front of Phil’s face before taking it back and making it disappear again, “that I hope will lead to a magical relationship!” He reproduced the rose triumphantly, holding it out to Phil with a grin.

Phil just stared at him for a long moment before reaching out and taking the rose. Its stem was only a few inches long—to facilitate the sleight of hand, Phil imagined—and it was looking a little crumpled, probably from being kept up Garrett’s sleeve or in his pocket or wherever it had begun. Was he supposed to wear it? It was just a bare stem, no pin or wrapping like a boutonniere, and Phil was reluctant to put a naked pocket-rose on his best suit anyway.

“Thank you,” he said politely. “I’ll, er, just… put this in some water. Would you like to step inside?”

He took the rose to the kitchen. He didn’t have any vases, so he half-filled a lowball glass with water and put the rose inside. Of course, the glass was too wide to hold up a single stem, so the rose ended up leaning against the edge like an unusual swizzle stick, but Phil figured that was good enough.

He felt more than a little wrong-footed; he’d gone on a lot of first dates over the years (especially if you counted ones that were mainly serving as a serial-killer screening prior to a hookup), but none of them had ever led with a magic trick.

Maybe it would be a cute story someday, he thought. They could tell people about it at their silver anniversary, and everyone would laugh and find it charming.

“Ready to go, Phil? Your carriage awaits,” Garrett said.

“Sure,” Phil said. “Let me just get my coat.”

After all, he reminded himself, he could always text Daisy and request an emergency extraction. She was good for anything from a fake family emergency to (on one notable occasion) remotely setting off a security alarm, resulting in the evacuation of the entire event space.

All the same, he found himself really hoping Stark was springing for the open bar.

>>>———-> <———<<<

The party was at a country club a few miles outside of town. The sweeping drive up to the clubhouse was attractively decorated with twinkling white lights, and Phil found himself getting charmed by the atmosphere and a little excited for the event, until Garrett drove right by the valet stand and started driving past the blocked-off lanes of cars beyond. Had he not seen it? Surely he had. The valet had been wearing a Santa hat.

He gave it a minute in case Garrett was looking for a place to turn around, then cleared his throat. “I think the valet stand was back the other way,” he said.

“I got it,” Garrett said, and turned down another line of clearly-full spaces.

“I’m pretty sure they only have valet,” Phil tried again, two rows later.

“Nah, there’ll be something,” Garrett said. “There always is.”

Phil let him go through every (full) aisle of the parking lot before he spoke up again. Maybe Garrett had control issues about his car? “I wouldn’t want us to miss the party,” he tried. “I’m sure they vet their staff appropriately.”

Garrett insisted on driving past every single space again before he begrudgingly pulled up at the valet stand. All the valets were openly staring at them, and Phil opened the door and got out as soon as the car stopped moving. Garrett practically flung his keys at the attendant and stomped off toward the entrance in a huff. Phil looked closer and groaned quietly; she was one of his best seminar students, and was looking at him with big, startled eyes, like she wasn’t sure if she should pretend not to recognize him.

“Hi, Jemma,” Phil said. “I’m very sorry about that.” She handed Phil Garrett’s valet ticket; he took it, and gave her ten bucks.

“Hi, Dr. Coulson,” she said, tucking the money into her pocket with a sympathetic smile. “Blind date?”

“Something like that.” Phil smiled back, a little weakly. “Well, wish me luck, I guess.”

She winked at him. “Hey, you have the ticket,” she said. “If it goes too badly, you could always just take his car and leave him here.”

He found himself laughing. “You know, I’ll bear that in mind,” he said. “Have a good evening, Jemma.”

“You too, sir!” She waved him off cheerfully. Well, at least Phil’s embarrassment would give his seminar students something to laugh over while they worked on their final papers.

He caught up with Garrett at the coat check, arguing with the attendant; apparently he didn’t want to leave his overcoat. Phil wondered, a little sourly, if he had more roses hidden in its pockets. He stepped forward and handed his own coat and scarf to the attendant, a large man who beamed at him over an impressive gray mustache.

“Thank you, bro,” he said, carefully hanging up Phil’s things and giving him a claim ticket before folding his meaty arms over his chest and shooting Garrett an unimpressed glare. Seriously, was Garrett trying to alienate every member of staff at the party?

“Why don’t we go on in,” Phil suggested, giving the attendant an apologetic look as Garrett stalked toward the ballroom.

“Say the word, bro, I smuggle you out the back,” the attendant told him, with an exaggerated wink.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Phil promised, and went after his date. Maybe Garrett’s company would improve once he’d eaten something? Low blood sugar took some people in odd ways.

He was aware that he was reaching. But he’d found he worked better when he kept up an optimistic outlook for as long as possible.

Garrett led the way to their assigned table, over to one side of the ballroom. He seemed happy enough with the assignment; by the time they reached the table he’d shed the surly expression, which was a relief. Phil spent enough time dealing with assholes professionally; he was in no hurry to do so in his precious and limited leisure time.

They were the last to arrive; all but two of the places at the table were already full. Garrett pulled Phil’s chair back for him, a bit more ostentatiously than Phil would really have preferred, before settling his unchecked overcoat over the back of his own chair and sitting down, hitching his seat a bit closer to Phil.

The man on Phil’s other side gave them a friendly half-wave. “Hi, John,” he said with a smile. “Glad you made it. Traffic?”

Garrett waved a dismissive hand. “Something like that,” he said. “Everyone, this is Dr. Phil Coulson, who has done me the honor of accompanying me this evening.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Coulson,” said Phil’s friendly neighbor. “I’m Jimmy Woo.”

“Please, it’s just Phil.” He looked around, trying to include everyone in the invitation. Garrett, infuriatingly, was fiddling with something in one of his coat pockets and didn’t seem inclined to introduce anyone else; fortunately, Jimmy stepped into the gap, and Phil was quickly introduced to their tablemates. He’d actually met a few of them before through the prosthetics program, so at least there would be shop talk to fall back on if necessary. Looking around and trying to fix names to faces, Phil was glad he’d worn his best suit; you could have done some kind of magazine cover shoot with the people at this table. He wondered if the Maria Stark Foundation deliberately recruited people who were unusually good-looking, or if Phil had just coincidentally ended up at the Hot Table.

Of course, he was there on a date, so he wasn’t going to let on that he’d noticed, but he was professionally trained to be observant, and it wasn’t as though it was hard to see. There was a couple seated across from Phil who looked more like movie stars than non-profit employees.

He looked away from tracing the clear curve of bicep through the movie-star looking guy’s teal sweater—Phil would bet twenty bucks it was a silk/cashmere blend, and it was clingy—and saw the woman—a stunning redhead—looking straight at him, eyebrow raised in apparent amusement. He didn’t jerk his gaze away—that was just admitting guilt—but his ears did go hot as he gave her a tiny, apologetic shrug. The arm in question was draped across the back of her chair, after all; could she really blame him for appreciating it? She grinned at him, revealing really quite adorable dimples; apparently she understood that some things were just too impressive not to admire. He smiled back, relieved. Mr. Biceps—his name was Clint, like Clint Eastwood—kept talking to the woman on his other side about flying helicopters, apparently oblivious to the whole exchange.

“Phil.” Garrett touched his shoulder, pulling his attention back. Phil felt a little bad; he didn’t think Garrett had noticed him eyeing up his co-workers, but Phil usually had better manners than to do that while actively on a date with somebody else.

“Yes?”

“Let me get you a drink,” Garrett said.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” Phil told him. That sounded like an excellent idea. “I’ll have a red wine, please. Whatever they have is fine.”

“Back in a jiffy!” He strode off towards the bar.

A server came by to refresh the water jug at the center of the table and hand out the salads; they were honestly a lot better than Phil would have expected, crisp and fresh and well-balanced with a lovely house-made cranberry-orange dressing. Hopefully this meant that at least the food would be as good as Garrett had claimed. Add in a nice red—and if the food was this good, surely the bar would be serving something decent—and it would compensate for the ribbing Phil would surely take from his seminar for the rest of term.

“Here you go!” Garrett set a glass down in front of Phil with a flourish.

Phil stared. The drink he was being presented with was very much not a nice red. It was… green. Lurid, almost neon green. In a sugar-rimmed martini glass. With a rainbow-striped candy cane sticking out of the top.

“They spring for the good stuff here, Phil,” Garrett was saying. “No need to stick with something boring like wine, so I got you…” he waved at the glass dramatically. “A Garrett-ini! I developed the recipe myself. It’s my signature cocktail—John Garrett in drinkable form!” He winked.

Phil eyed the glass dubiously. “Wow, John,” he said. “You shouldn’t have.”

Across the table, someone hurriedly turned a laugh into a cough. Phil didn’t see who; he felt almost hypnotized by the beverage in front of him. Was he… was he really going to have to drink it? Oh god. He had to at least try it, didn’t he? Garrett was watching him eagerly. It was his signature cocktail that he named after himself.

“Go ahead, Phil, bottoms up!” Garrett said.

Phil took a deep breath and solidified his control over his expression. It was hard to tell what to expect, really. The green was too bright to be from chartreuse or absinthe, and the drink was too clear to have crème de menthe in it, so he was guessing the color was down to either Midori or possibly sour apple schnapps.

He decided against trying to smell it and just took a sip, holding the candy cane back with one finger so it wouldn’t slide forward and hit his glasses. As soon as the liquid hit his tongue, he felt his eyes go wide, and froze, desperately trying not to spit it out. He swallowed the mouthful through sheer force of will and set the glass down.

Garrett grinned at him eagerly. “So?” he demanded. “What d’you think?”

“My goodness,” Phil said. How soon could he go for his water glass without being horribly rude? “That’s certainly. Unusual.” The taste seemed to coat his tongue. “I could taste the…” he trailed off, trying to think of a diplomatic way to say “Robitussin and self-loathing.”

“Midori and Goldschlager,” Garrett said proudly. “And vodka. With a pomegranate sugar rim, and a rainbow cherry candy cane.” He waggled his eyebrows lasciviously.

“Oh,” Phil said. “Well. I guess nobody else is likely to come up with that.” He grabbed a roll out of the bread basket, tore off a chunk, and stuck it in his mouth, trying to sort of smoosh it around as he chewed under the theory that it might absorb some of the flavors. It helped somewhat, and he followed it up with a long drink from his water glass. As soon as he was done, Jimmy picked up the pitcher from the middle of the table and refilled Phil’s glass. “The bar must be well-stocked, to have all that available.”

“I brought the candy cane from home,” Garrett grinned, looking proud of himself.

“Oh,” Phil said again. “Wow.”

“Nothing’s too good for you, Phil,” Garrett said loudly.

Everyone else at the table was pretending to be very interested in their salads, except for Jimmy, who was eyeing the martini glass like it might decide to launch an attack.

Jimmy, Phil decided, was a Good Egg.

“So Phil.” Garrett held up a black plastic drinking straw (there weren’t any at the table—had he brought that with him from home too?) and a length of red and white string. “Check it out. I can cut this string in half and then join it back together again.”

Phil blinked. “Um,” he said, trying very hard not to say what he was thinking, which was are you fucking kidding me. “Wow.”

“Watch!” Garrett raised his voice, and several conversations stopped as all eight other people at the table looked over curiously.

Phil tried to look like he had no idea what was about to happen.

Garrett threaded the string through the straw. “See, right through, here, do you want to pull on it? Here, Phil, pull on the string,” he insisted, and Phil gave it a halfhearted pull, figuring rapid compliance would make this all be over faster.

“Now,” Garrett said. He pulled a small pair of scissors out of his pocket and handed them to Phil. They were child’s safety scissors, blunt-edged and flimsy. Garrett folded the straw in half and held it in one hand, with the bent part showing above his hand and the dangling string ends below. “Nice and tight, still, see?” He gave the strings a sharp tug, and Phil thought he heard someone stifling a snort.

“Here, Phil, cut the straw,” Garrett said. Phil carefully did not sigh and obliged him, though he had to saw a little to get through it with the dull scissors. The pressure spread the straw out a bit, and Phil noticed that it had been slit down one side. He didn’t say anything, though, just finished his assigned task and set the scissors back on the table in front of Garrett.

“And now,” Garrett announced, “I will rejoin the string!” He made some dramatic gestures over his hand and then pulled the string out of his hand, in one piece. He looked around the table eagerly. Was he waiting for applause? Please let him not be waiting for applause.

Phil, feeling obligated to at least acknowledge the effort, smiled weakly at him. “Very nice, Ga—John,” he said. “I didn’t realize you’d taken up a new hobby.” A few others around the table made little murmurs of polite agreement, though the redhead across from him—Natasha—was obviously biting her lip and her hot boyfriend was staring at Garrett in apparent bewilderment.

“Neither did I,” said Jimmy on Phil’s other side, sounding a little annoyed.

“Oh, well, Jimmy, you can’t have a monopoly on magic!” Garrett said.

Oh sweet fuck. Et tu, Jimmy Woo? If Phil had to spend this evening trapped between dueling amateur magicians he would not be responsible for his actions.

“I’m not worried,” Jimmy said, his voice noticeably cooler than it had been when he was talking to Phil. “I’m not here to put on a performance, don’t worry. I get enough of that at work.” He turned to Phil, obviously making an effort not to sound pissed. “I mainly work with our youth programs,” he explained. “Sometimes we need someone to fill-in on entertainment.”

“I’d love to hear more about your work,” Phil said, seizing on the opportunity to steer the conversation away from… whatever the hell that had been about. “I think I’ve heard… is this the thing for terminally ill kids, or the program for homeless LGBT youth?”

Jimmy beamed, and launched into an excited account of the work they were currently doing to help kids who were kicked out of their homes for not being straight and/or cis; it was great work, well-needed work, and Phil quickly got absorbed in the conversation. The young woman on Jimmy’s other side—Darcy, she had dark wavy hair like Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice—worked with him, and within a few minutes they were all three rather absorbed in conversation.

“You know, I should really introduce you to my TA, Daisy,” Phil was saying. “She does a lot of volunteer work, I bet she’d have some ideas for your computer training program—”

“Phil!” Garrett poked his upper arm, and Phil turned to look at him, startled.

It was probably time to admit to himself that Garrett was not going to be the solution to Phil’s romantic troubles, given that they were only partway through the salad course and Phil already preferred people he’d literally just met for both conversation and eye candy.

That was no excuse to be rude, of course. Garrett was obviously trying very hard to impress. He just… seemed to have a rare gift for going about it in entirely the wrong way.

“Sorry, John,” Phil said. “What did you need?”

“I can phase this coin into this sealed can of Coke,” Garrett said, holding up the two items.

“What? Garrett, that’s street magic,” Jimmy said, looking appalled. “You can’t do that inside, you’ll get Coke all over the table. Geez.”

“I have a glass,” Garrett said, glaring at him.

“Good, bro,” someone said from behind Phil’s shoulder, and he half-turned to see the mustachioed man from the coat check looming behind them. He plucked the soda can from Garrett’s hand, popped the tab, and poured it out into the empty glass on the table. “Here,” he said. “Appetizer, bros. Baked brie and artisan bread with house chutney: apple and mulling spices. Very festive.” He set a platter of bread and cheese and dishes of butter and chutney on the table with a series of thumps, patted Phil’s shoulder, and vanished behind the double swinging doors that led into the kitchen.

Phil blinked. “Wasn’t that the coat check guy?”

“Nah, that’s Basil,” Mr. Biceps—Clint, dammit, don’t tempt fate—said. “He owns the catering company, we get him every year. He’s awesome. Makes the chutney himself, you should totally try some.”

Garrett was scowling at his plain glass of warm Coke, still holding the quarter in his other hand. Phil decided to leave well enough alone and busied himself passing the appetizers around and then making himself a serving.

The chutney was delicious, and Phil’s obvious appreciation led the table into a spirited conversation about fruit spreads, which led to the woman with the magenta streak in her hair (Veronica? No, Victoria, like the queen) telling a funny anecdote about the time her wife decided to try home canning but made some sort of miscalculation in the recipe that resulted in the two of them getting stuck with massive amounts of strawberry jam and having to engage in a years-long campaign to push it off onto unsuspecting friends and neighbors. Phil was about to reply with a story of his own about the time Daisy had tried to grow zucchini and overplanted, resulting in what the History department still referred to as “The Zoodle Year,” when Garrett jostled his arm. He hadn’t pushed that hard, but the pressure landed right on the spot where Phil’s stump was still over-sensitive from his most recent surgery and sent a flash of nerve pain over Phil that made his stomach heave. He might have gasped a little; he definitely dropped the bite of toast and brie he’d been holding as he tried to ride out the surge, the fingers of his prosthetic twitching randomly as he focused on taking deep, regular breaths and letting the pain wash over him.

When he felt like he could speak again without blistering paint, he turned. “Please be careful,” he said, his jaw set. “That’s my bad arm; it’s still sensitive.”

“Oh,” Garrett said, looking taken aback. “Sorry, Phil. Here, this’ll get your mind off things.” He held up a deck of cards. “Pick a card.”

Phil stopped himself from saying the first, second, third, and fourth things that came to mind. “Would you mind terribly,” he said at last, trying very hard to keep his tone civil, “keeping those until after dinner? I’d like to hear more about how Victoria and Isabelle finally got rid of the last of the jam, wouldn’t you?”

Garrett gave him a wounded look. “Really, Phil? After everything we’ve been through?”

Phil blinked, wondering for a moment if Garrett had thought Phil was someone else this whole time. The only thing he could think of that they’d been through together was a mildly disappointing baseball game and a subpar platter of nachos (which they had still eaten, because even subpar nachos were still nachos.) “I’m sorry, what?”

“I guess I see where I stand after all,” Garrett said. He shoved his chair back with a screech, thereby ensuring the attention of anyone at the table who hadn’t already been looking, and stood. “I’ll just go, seeing as how I’m not wanted here.” He started to walk away, then turned, came back to the table, and grabbed the Garrett-ini.

“You don’t deserve this!” he hissed, and stalked away across the ballroom, drink in hand.

Despite the soft instrumental holiday music that was playing in the background, the silence he left behind seemed to ring.

Phil had half-formed and rejected five or six different things to say (he had a horrible suspicion his mouth was hanging open like a landed trout) when Andrew Garner leaned over across Garrett’s now-empty chair.

“Hey, Phil, you okay?” he asked softly. “That looked like it hurt.”

Andrew was a therapist—though thankfully not Phil’s therapist, this evening was awkward enough—who worked with the prosthetics program. Phil had always liked both him and his wife Melinda, who was currently giving Garrett’s retreating back the evil eye.

“I’ll be all right,” Phil said, seizing the opportunity to move the conversation into safer waters. If there was any justice in the world, everyone would just tacitly agree not to mention what had just happened and Phil might not have to get Basil the caterer to spirit him out of the party so he could steal Garrett’s car and vanish into the night. “It’s basically healed over, it’s just the nerve pain. Sometimes, if you hit it just right…”

“Yeah,” Andrew said sympathetically. “Sucks.”

There were murmurs of agreement around the table, and Phil felt himself relaxing. “So, Victoria,” he said. “About that jam.”

“Well, we’d already saturated both our offices and all our family and friends,” Victoria said, “and we still had two cabinets full. The food bank wouldn’t take something homemade—which is understandable, you don’t know what kind of shit people might try to pass off—so we were having to really get creative—”

Two loud piano chords crashed over the room, and they all turned as one toward the side of the dance floor, where a piano had been pushed out of the way of the banquet tables. Garrett was sitting there, apparently having maneuvered the piano around so he could stare straight at Phil while seated at the keys. The empty Garrett-ini glass was sitting on the music stand, its rainbow candy cane leaning sadly against the edge.

“Oh my fucking god,” said the woman on Darcy’s other side (M-something, she’d been in the Air Force, she’d been talking about helicopters with Clint earlier—Monica, that was it). “Is he high?”

“Honestly, I think that makes more sense than any other theory,” Melinda said.

“I know my hearing’s for shit,” Clint said, “but isn’t there already music playing?” He’d turned to squint at Garrett, and Phil noticed that he had a purple hearing aid tucked behind one ear; he’d spent most of the meal so far with his body angled toward Natasha, which Phil had put down to couple-y cuteness but also seemed to have the effect of keeping his good ear turned toward the rest of the table.

“Yes,” Natasha said, eyes narrow. “There is. I believe it’s Mannheim Steamroller.”

They listened in fascinated horror as Garrett plunked his way through the introduction to “Tainted Love,” faintly underlaid by “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”

“Do you think he’s gonna—“ Darcy started to say.

“SomeTIMES I feel I’ve got to—“ plonk plonk, went the piano, “RUN a-WAY, I’ve got to” plonk plonk “GET a-WAY—”

“…sing,” she finished, weakly.

Phil gave in and buried his face in his hands. Daisy was never, ever letting him live this down.

Garrett was singing that he’d given all a boy could give when Phil felt a gentle, fleeting touch on his shoulder.

“Um, doc?”

He looked up and saw a broad expanse of muscular chest, lovingly wrapped in teal cashmere. He forcibly dragged his eyes higher to look Clint in the eye. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes?”

Clint held out a wine glass. “Red wine, right?”

Phil kind of wanted to hug him, and not just because that sweater looked extremely soft. “Bless you. Yes. Thank you.” He accepted the glass and took a fortifying swallow. Honestly, he’d have been happy for just about anything at that moment, but it was actually really good wine. “Thank you,” he said again. “It’s great.”

Clint grinned at him. “De nada,” he said, making his way back around the table to his seat. “Least we can do, really, if you’ve put up with Garrett all this time. Are all his cocktails that bad? The first one smelled like mouthwash and hatred.”

Phil looked up from having a minor religious moment with his wine. “What do you mean, ‘all this time’?” he said, puzzled.

“All the time you’ve been… together?” Clint said slowly, and Phil became aware that all other conversations at the table had died down again.

“Don’t TOUCH ME PLEASE,” Garrett sang, staring at Phil as he pounded the piano keys. “I cannot STAND the way you TEASE!”

“This was our first date,” Phil said helplessly.

There was silence at the table while Garrett sang that he was gonna pack his things and go.

“Holy macaroni,” Jimmy said at last.

Phil looked around the table at their shocked faces. “I’m almost afraid to ask,” he said. “But… why did you think that we…”

“I mean,” Darcy said thoughtfully. “I guess he’s never really actually said you were dating? But…”

“He talks about you a lot,” Victoria said.

“Like, ‘oh yeah, I thought about taking Phil to see that movie, but decided it looked dumb,’” Darcy added.

“Last year I asked him if you were coming to the holiday party,” Monica added. “He said you weren’t comfortable being out in a professional context yet because of the Army.”

“He what?” Phil stared at her, appalled. “Why would he—I’m the president of the LGBT Faculty Network! My picture is on the website! I ride the university float at Pride!”

“Do you throw out candy?” Clint asked.

“Um,” Phil said. “Yes?”

Clint nodded solemnly. “Good. Beads are bad for the environment.”

“Wow,” Darcy said, while Phil was still parsing that. “That’s… wild. I mean… do you guys maybe hang out a lot as friends or whatever?”

“We really don’t,” Phil said. “I mean, we’ve known each other casually for a while, but… I don’t know what could have given him the impression that…” He trailed off and took another swig of his wine.

“Ugh,” Darcy said. “I know the type. Build up all these fantasies about you and never bother asking you if you want to play the role of the girlfriend in the rom-com they’re writing about themselves in their heads. You let them hold the door for you one time and they start accusing you of cheating on them with your TA. Like you’re a prop instead of a person.” She shook her head, frowning. “I’m gonna get you more wine, Phil. You deserve it.” She got up and flounced over toward the bar.

Garrett started another song. Phil stole a glance his way; he was staring mournfully at Phil while he played the plaintive introduction. Phil hurriedly looked away again.

“Is that Air Supply?” Melinda said, looking disgusted.

It was.

“Nat, how rude would it be to turn off my hearing aid?” Clint asked his companion.

She poked him in the side. “Very. If we must endure, you must also.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

Darcy set another glass of wine in front of Phil. He looked at his existing glass, which was still about a quarter full.

Garrett’s voice cracked on a high note, and Phil tossed back the rest of the first glass and reached for the second.

“Right after I left the service, I had a blind date with a guy my housemate knew,” Monica said. “He tried to explain to me how supersonic jets worked, because he’d minored in mechanical engineering in college. I told him I got my master’s degree in aerospace engineering and reminded him I’d spent ten years as a test pilot in the Air Force and he said ‘well, maybe you can keep up with me then.’”

That opened the floodgates: everyone at the table seemed to have a bad date story to share. By the time the main course (“boeuf bourguignon, caramelized sprouts, and roasted new potatoes, bro”) arrived, Garrett had played “Love Stinks,” “Ain’t No Sunshine” (with all the pronouns altered), and “The Tracks of My Tears,” Phil had heard about the Bad Date Greatest Hits of nearly everyone there, and the wine bottle—and several of its siblings—had somehow appeared in front of him.

It paired really well with the boeuf bourguignon.

By the time they were mostly through the main course, Phil was feeling decidedly better; the food was excellent, the wine was superb, and the company was great. The Maria Stark Foundation was full of good people who did great work. They’d even let him talk about his research for a while—apparently Garrett had given them the impression that Phil was a medical doctor, so he’d felt honor-bound to clear up the misunderstanding—and they’d listened with every appearance of interest. A few of them had even asked good questions!

Honestly, as long as he avoided catching Garrett’s eye and pretended the dueling musical tracks were due to some sort of sound system malfunction, he was having a good time.

He eyed Garrett’s untouched plate. “I don’t think John’s coming back to eat this,” he decided. “Anyone want some?”

“Ooh, me!” Clint waved his hand eagerly from across the table. It was very cute. “Basil gets the vegetables so nice and crunchy.”

“You should take the beef, Phil,” Jimmy said. “You need extra protein while you’re healing from surgery.”

They divided up Garrett’s dinner as he transitioned into playing a very slow, mournful cover of “Blue Monday.”

“How does it feel,” Garrett sang, “to treat me like you do?”

Phil toasted him with his wine glass. Clint busted out laughing, and Phil felt like he’d won some kind of prize. Natasha was a very lucky woman.

Dessert was cheesecake with cherry-almond compote, and when Basil brought it by he just straight up skipped over Garrett’s seat and gave Phil a plate with two slices on, and a snifter of brandy “to bring out the flavors, bro.”

Nobody else got any brandy. Basil was the best.

“You’re the best caterer I ever met, Basil,” Phil told him. This was an amazing party. Why hadn’t Phil wanted to come? It had obviously been a great idea. “Your food is really, really good. And I loved your chutney. And you’re really nice. I’m sorry Garrett was a dick to you earlier about the coat check.” He had a sudden idea. “Oh! It’s right here,” he told Basil, pointing at Garrett’s abandoned overcoat on the seat next to him. “You could go check it now, if you wanted.”

Basil laughed. “Thanks, bro,” he said. “You know what, I have more chutney in back. I’ll bring you some. Doggie bag, yes?”

“That would be amazing,” Phil said, meaning it with all his heart. “Thank you so much.”

There were a few minutes where everyone was fairly preoccupied with their cheesecake. It was really good cheesecake.

Garrett finished up with “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” and launched into the introduction to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

“Aw, Bonnie Tyler,” Clint said sadly. “No.”

“Dammit,” Phil said. He liked that song. No fair Garrett ruining it. “I promise, I have no idea why he’s acting like this. He always seemed normal before. I mean, mostly normal. Kind of intense, and Daisy said he was a douche, but I just thought he was having trouble getting used to viv—civlin—to not being in the Army anymore.” His face was hot. They probably had the heat turned up too high. “But it’s not fair of him to spoil your party for being mad at me for not liking his stupid magic tricks! I mean he cut that straw, I could see it. And he’s not even very good at sleight of hand.”

“He doesn’t watch his angles carefully enough,” Clint agreed.

“Not to mention being pushy like that,” Jimmy added. “That’s like… against the magician’s code, or something. Gives us all a bad name.”

“I mean, ordinarily I like magic,” Phil continued. “It takes a lot of skill and… hand… stuff. Good hands. One time I went out with a professional poker player, you wouldn’t believe what he could do with his fingers.”

“Oh really,” Clint said.

“Yeah.” Phil sighed happily at the memory. “I mean, not that poker is the same thing, just, you know. Shuffling and all.”

They all nodded.

“But what I mean,” Phil said, gesturing with his fork, “what I mean is, you guys are so great. You deserve a really nice party. Because you help people! Like, with the kids, and their computers and your magic show that they actually want to see. And for people like me, so we can be cyborgs like on Star Trek and feel cool even when we’re trying to learn how to, to button our shirts again.” He waved his prosthetic. “I mean, look! It’s really cool!”

He shot Garrett the bird. Everyone at the table laughed, this time. Awesome. Take that, Daisy, Phil could so make friends.

“So yeah,” he continued. “At first I was wishing I hadn’t come because Garrett was rude to Jemma at the valet stand, and she’s my favorite because she always comes to office hours when she has a question instead of calling me the day before her paper’s due. And then he was rude to Basil, and… everything. But it’s all okay now, because I got to meet all of you. And you’re, you’re heroes, you know?” He blinked at them, mistily. They were just… really great. He was going to toast them with his brandy, but it was all gone. That was sad.

“You walked in to the party like you were walking onto a yacht,” Garrett sang loudly.

“Oh, fuck that guy,” Phil said. “Do I look like Warren Beatty?”

“I thought that song was about Kris Kristofferson,” Melinda said.

“You’re hotter than Warren Beatty,” Clint said. “Or Kris Kristofferson.”

Natasha poked him in the side.

“Ow!” Clint glared at her. “He is! Tell me he isn’t!”

“That’s beside the point,” Natasha said. “I mean, yes. But still.”

Phil was blushing. “Thank you,” he said, “You, too. I mean. Both of you. All of you really. I thought when we sat down we got put at the Hot Table. Oh, wait. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry, Phil,” Darcy said, grinning at him. “We know you meant it in a good way.”

“I really do,” he promised. “With respect.”

“You’re so vain,” Garrett belted from the piano. “You probably think this song is about you! Don’t you? Don’t you?”

“I’m going to the bar for a refill. Do you want some more brandy, Phil?” Melinda asked.

“I really, really do,” Phil told her.

Melinda brought him another brandy. It went really well with the rest of his second piece of cheesecake.

Over the sound system, Mannheim Steamroller was playing “Good King Wenceslas.” Over at the piano, Garrett was playing “Wonderwall.”

Jimmy gave Phil a glass of ice water. Jimmy was so considerate. Phil told him so.

“I don’t usually drink much,” he confided. “Because of meds, you know. From my hand. But I didn’t take them today in case there was good wine.”

Andrew nodded seriously. “You have to balance your regimen so that it works with your routines,” he said.

“Plus I have to look at Daisy’s thesis tomorrow, I promised,” he said. “It’s really good. She’s very smart, I’m really proud of her.”

He suddenly realized that the piano had stopped, and looked over.

“Oh!” he said, happily. “Pepper’s here!” Pepper Potts, resplendent in an ice-blue cocktail dress, was standing next to the piano, talking to Garrett with a very serious expression. Everyone at the table turned to look, probably because they all liked Pepper too. Pepper was awesome. “Oh, I think she’s mad at him. Serves him right. I won’t go say hi right now, then.”

“You know Ms. Potts?” He wasn’t sure who had asked. One of the women. He’d been distracted trying to figure out what she was saying to Garrett; nobody could deliver a dressing-down like Pepper could.

“Yeah,” Phil said absently. “From when she came to see Tony, when we were at Landstuhl, after the thing.” He waved his hand illustratively. “They were treating us together for a while, so we made friends. She’s really nice.”

“Oh,” Natasha said. She sounded like she had discovered something important. “You’re that Phil.”

“Which Phil? Oh, hang on, I think she made him stop playing the piano. Thank goodness.” He waited until Pepper had turned around, then waved at her. She looked surprised for a moment, then came over, smiling.

“Phil! What a lovely surprise.”

He stood up so she could hug him. She always did. It made Phil feel all kind of happy and glow-y. He really liked her. “Hi, Pepper. This is a really nice party. I’m sorry I made Garrett rage-piano.”

“You… what?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Natasha said.

“And how is the—”

Garrett came stomping up to the table. “Come on, Phil,” he said, cutting Pepper off. “We’re leaving.”

Pepper’s eyes widened, and then narrowed.

“You see,” Natasha said mysteriously.

“I don’t want to leave with you,” Phil told him. “You embarrassed me in front of Jemma. And Basil. And all your nice friends. And you should apologize for interrupting Pepper, that was rude.”

“Who the fuck are Jemma and Basil?”

“None of your business, bro,” Basil said, appearing as if by magic with a huge paper bag in his hands. He handed it to Phil. It was really heavy; that was awesome. “Here. Doggie bag.”

“Thank you!” Phil beamed at him. “I’m going to share it with Daisy for lunch tomorrow. She has to proctor three exams.”

“That’s great, Phil,” Pepper said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.” She patted his shoulder. “You should probably have some water before you go to sleep, though.”

Phil nodded. “I know,” he said. “Jimmy gave me some. He’s a very giving and selfless person.”

Pepper smiled at Jimmy, whose ears went bright red. Aww.

“That’s good to hear,” she said. “Listen, I need to circulate a little. But I’ll give you a call next week, Phil; we’re overdue for a lunch date.”

“Anytime,” Phil told her. “I really value your friendship, Pepper. And Tony, too, but don’t tell him. He gets all weird when I try to be nice.”

She laughed. “He does, at that. You’ve got his number,” she said. “Take care, everyone. Happy holidays.” She went off to the next table to smile at them and make them feel good about themselves.

“Phil,” Garrett said. He had his coat on and his arms crossed in front of him.

“Ugh,” Phil said.

Clint and Natasha exchanged a look. “Hey, Phil,” Natasha said. “We have to go right by your place on our way home; why don’t we drive you?”

“Yes, please,” Phil said at once, ignoring Garrett’s indignant sputtering. He followed them to the coat check, taking perverse pleasure in stuffing the last twenty bucks in his wallet into the tip jar.

The attendant—someone different this time—handed Phil his coat. It took him a minute to remember that he needed to put the doggie bag down before he could put his coat on. He set it down very carefully.

“Hey, need a hand?” Clint was just finishing helping Natasha into her coat.

Phil considered this. “I’ve got one, thanks,” he said, waving his prosthetic. “But you can help me put my coat on. I think I might be a little tupsy. No. I mean. Tipsy.” He held up his fingers about a half-inch apart to demonstrate. “I had a lot of wine. It was good wine. Also some brandy. That was good too. Everything was good. I had a nice time.”

Clint laughed. “Okay, Phil, I’m glad to hear it,” he said, helping Phil expertly on with his coat. “You ready to go?”

“Don’t forget your bag,” Natasha added.

“Oh! Thank you.” Phil backed up a step and picked up his bag. “You’re both so nice. And you seem really happy. I wish I had that. You’re…” he struggled to think of the right words for what they were. Hot, sure, but he didn’t mean that right now. What would Daisy call them?

“Hashtag relationship goals,” he said triumphantly. Daisy had said that about Anne and Wentworth that time Phil had the flu and she brought him soup from the diner and watched Persuasion with him. He set down his bag again and made a hashtag with his fingers, so they’d know what he meant.

Natasha said something in Russian. Clint had a weird look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Phil told her. “I don’t speak Russian.”

“Why don’t you let me get your bag?” she asked, picking it back up off the ground. “Clint—”

“On it,” Clint said. He put his arm around Phil’s shoulders and started steering him toward the exit. He was very strong. And warm. Natasha was lucky. He told Clint so.

“I think you’ve got the wrong impression about Nat and me,” Clint said as they went outside. “We’re not together like that.”

“Yes, you are,” Phil said. “You put her arm around her and all.”

“I’ve got my arm around you right now,” Clint pointed out.

Really, that was a very good point.

“Huh,” Phil said. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Hello, sir,” Jemma said, grinning at him from under her Santa hat as they approached the valet stand. “Looks like you traded up.”

“Hell yes he did,” Clint told her. “Hey, Phil, is this your awesome student you were telling me about?”

“You remembered!” That made Phil really happy. “Yes, she’s great. Her citations are a work of art. I’m kind of bummed she’s a biology major, she’d be a real asset to the department.”

“Oh.” Jemma’s face scrunched up, and her voice went wobbly. “Dr. Coulson, that’s so nice to hear. Thank you.” She sniffled.

“Don’t cry,” Phil said, alarmed. “It’s okay that you’re a biology major, I promise. We still love you in the history department even if you are a scientist.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” she said, sniffing again. “Please don’t mind me, it’s just… Stress, you know. Finals are coming up.”

“You’ll do great,” Phil told her. “You work really hard as well as being smart.”

“That’s important,” Clint said, nodding. Clint agreed with him! That meant he was totally right.

“See, Jemma, Clint says,” Phil told her.

“Is he like this when he’s sober?” Clint asked Jemma quietly. Phil still heard him, though. He was right there. Clint still hadn’t moved his arm, and it wasn’t like Phil was in a hurry to go anywhere.

She laughed a little. “Oh, well, he’s not usually so effusive,” she said. “But he’s always very supportive and encouraging.”

“Positive reinforcement is important,” Phil told them. “Can I touch your sweater, Clint? It looks really soft.”

Jemma made a funny little squeaky noise.

“It is really soft,” Clint told him. “Natasha got it for me. Go ahead and touch it if you want.”

“See, you said you weren’t together,” Phil told him. “But she gets you sexy sweaters and all. You can see why I thought that.” Clint had a coat on, so the sweater was really only accessible in the front. Phil considered what would be the least creepy, then reached out and ran his fingers over Clint’s torso, just below his ribcage. The sweater was extremely soft, and Clint’s body beneath it was firm with muscle. “Wow,” Phil said. “That’s really nice.” He meant about both things, really, but he didn’t say that part out loud.

“Thanks,” Natasha said. Wait, where had she come from? She was really sneaky. Like a beautiful ninja. Did Russia have ninjas? “Come on, boys, our car is ready.”

“I was just telling Phil here that you and I aren’t dating,” Clint said.

“We aren’t dating,” Natasha confirmed, as they started toward the car. Phil waved goodbye to Jemma, who gave him a grin and a thumbs-up. “We aren’t romantically compatible.”

“I mean, we love each other,” Clint said. “But not like that. More like siblings, really. We’ve been through a lot together.”

“Oh,” Phil said. “Like me and Marcus. That’s good! I mean, I’m glad for you. It’s good. To have that kind of a friend.”

“Marcus?”

“We served together,” Phil explained. “He’s still active. I—well. I retired early.” He held up his hand.

“You’ll have to tell me about him later,” Clint said. “Here, this is us. Can you ride in the back, or will it make you hurl?”

“I don’t think so?” Phil said. “It doesn’t usually.”

“Well, let me know if you need me to pull over,” Natasha said.

“I will,” Phil promised.

“I’ll sit with you,” Clint offered. “In case you, ah, need something.”

“You’re a good person,” Phil told him sincerely. He patted Clint’s stomach. Oops, he forgot to move his hand before. Wow, Clint had abs.

“I’m really, really not,” Clint muttered. “Okay, here, I’m gonna move your doggie bag to the front so I can sit with you. Watch your head.”

They settled in the back seat of the car. It only took Phil two tries to get his seat belt fastened; he didn’t think Clint had noticed the first time. He’d been paying close attention to something out the window.

“So,” Natasha said, as she pulled out of the drive. “Where are we taking you, Phil?”

“Home, please,” Phil told her. Ordinarily he’d want some food to soak up some of the alcohol, but he was still pleasantly full from dinner.

“And where is that?”

Phil frowned, puzzled. “I thought you said my place was on your way,” he said.

“Phil,” Clint said. “We said that so you wouldn’t have to ride home with Garrett. We don’t actually know where you live.”

“Oh!” Phil turned in his seat to face Clint, at least as far as the seat belt would let him, which wasn’t far. Natasha’s car was very small. “Thank you. That was really nice of you. I really didn’t want to ride with him after he sang at me all night.”

“And he was rude to Jemma and Basil,” Clint said seriously. His shoulder was only like two inches away from Phil’s.

“Exactly!” Phil said. Clint was very smart.

“So, your address…”

“Oh! I should probably text it to you,” Phil said. “For directions. Also then you can have my number. If you want it. You don’t have to have it. No means no.”

“I would love to have your number,” Clint said, smiling at him.

“Awesome,” Phil said. He took out his phone, then realized an issue. “I don’t have yours to text it to,” he said sadly. There was something in his pocket with his phone. What was it? A paper? He pulled it out and held it up to the faint light coming in the window as they drove through the city.

“Oops,” he said. “I still have Garrett’s valet claim ticket. I bet Jemma won’t give him his car back without it.”

From the front seat, Natasha coughed quite loudly.

“Are you okay, Natasha?” Phil asked. “I have a hanky if you need it.”

“No thanks, Phil,” she said, though her voice sounded kind of funny. Probably she had allergies or something. “I’m fine.”

“Here,” Clint said. “Hand me your phone and I’ll put my number in.”

“You’re smart,” Phil told him, handing it over. He shrugged and stuck the claim ticket back in his pocket. Served Garrett right, anyway.

“Thanks, doc.” Clint winked at him, then typed away at his phone. “Should I just send myself your contact card?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Phil said. Clint hit a few buttons, then handed his phone back. He pulled his own phone out of his pocket and checked. “Yup, came through fine. Hey, Nat, you’re gonna want to get off at the next exit, lemme send you the address.”

Phil watched happily as Clint and Natasha programmed his address into the car’s nav system.

“I think you’re both great,” he told them. “Like. Maybe you aren’t hashtag relationship goals, because you aren’t dating. But you’re, um. Friend goals. Or something.”

“We think you’re great too, Phil,” Natasha said. “If I could, I’d swap you for Garrett as a co-worker in a heartbeat.”

“I’d like to work with you,” Phil said. “But then I wouldn’t be able to finish my book. And also I think Daisy would be sad.”

“Maybe sometime in the future, then,” Natasha said.

“But we can still be friends in the meantime,” Phil promised. “Clint has my number now. He can give it to you.”

“Thanks,” Natasha said. She sounded like she meant it.

“Oh! I remembered something I wanted to know.” He turned back toward Clint again. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Anytime, doc,” Clint told him.

“I like that you call me that,” Phil said. “Do you like men? To date, I mean, not in general. Only when we were all talking about bad dates earlier, you talked about, um, Candy? So I didn’t know.” Clint was looking out the window again, and his shoulder was shaking a little. Had Phil hurt his feelings? A thought occurred. “I’ll still like you if you’re straight,” he promised. He patted Clint’s arm reassuringly. “I mean, I’ll be disappointed, but I’ll still be your friend. I just won’t ask you out.”

Natasha coughed again.

“No,” Clint said. “I mean, yes. I mean, yes, I do like to date men too, and no, I’m not straight.”

“Yay,” Phil said happily. “Um, are you sure you’re okay, Natasha? Do you need some water?”

“No thanks,” she said, her voice sounding a little strangled. “Don’t worry, Phil, just a frog in my throat.”

“When we get to my place I’ll get you some water,” Phil said. “Don’t let me forget, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. He couldn’t see her—she was in front of him and driving and also it was nighttime—but she sounded like she was smiling.

“So, Clint, since you aren’t straight,” Phil said. “I just wanted to say. I like you. Do you want to go out with me sometime? It’s okay if you don’t, I just wanted to ask, because you are very kind and smart and funny and also really, really, really good-looking.”

Clint rubbed his hand over his face, looking pained.

“Do you not want to?” Phil drooped. “Okay. I won’t be creepy about it, promise. Let me know if you ever change your mind.”

“That’s not—Phil. You are blitzed off your ass right now.”

“I’m not that drunk,” Phil said.

“You really are,” Natasha said. “I mean, you’re a sweet drunk, and I get the feeling you don’t make it a habit, but I believe the technical term for your current condition is shitfaced.”

“And because you are drunk,” Clint said, raising his voice a little, “you can’t consent to… dating stuff.”

“Oh.” Phil thought about that. “I didn’t ask you to have sex with me, though,” he pointed out. “I mean, I’d like to, but Natasha is right here. That would be really rude.”

“I know that,” Clint said. His voice sounded weird. “But I like you, too, and I don’t want to start anything between us when anyone isn’t in complete control of their… impulses. What I’m trying to say is, ask me again when you’re sober, okay?”

“That’s fair,” Phil decided. “Okay.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll set a reminder so I don’t forget.” He set it up, then caught himself yawning.

“Getting sleepy?” Clint’s voice was soft. Like his sweater.

“Yeah,” Phil said.

“You can lean on my shoulder if you want, I don’t mind,” Clint told him.

“Thanks,” Phil said. Clint was really really great. Phil hoped he said yes when Sober Phil asked him out again later. He leaned against Clint’s broad shoulder and let himself drift.

He was almost asleep when they got to his apartment complex. They parked in one of the visitor spaces and came up, Natasha holding his doggie bag and Clint with his arm around Phil’s shoulders again. It was a very nice arm. They should model prosthetics after it, so other people could have nice arms too.

Natasha helped him put the contents of his doggie bag away. Phil took the opportunity to take Garrett’s rose out of the sad water glass and throw it away. It was wilted, anyway. Garrett probably got it at a gas station.

He made Natasha have some water for her cough before she and Clint left. They made him drink some more water before they left and put a bottle of Gatorade on his nightstand.

He stripped out of his suit, hung it up, and stumbled into bed in his underwear.

>>>———><———<<<

“Please let me die,” Phil moaned.

“Let me think about it,” Daisy said. “No.” She sounded much, much too chipper for six-fifteen in the morning. “You knew we had shit to do today when you made your choices.” Her voice was. Loud.

Phil hunched lower over his coffee. Daisy had shown up before six and called his phone until he’d answered out of sheer self-defense, and he’d somehow found himself putting on clothes—well, sweats—and getting in her van and allowing himself to be driven to the diner, where she had shoved him into a booth and made coffee appear while he kept his eyes shut behind his sunglasses and tried not to barf.

His head was fucking killing him.

“Seriously, Phil,” Daisy said. “Did that douchebag do something to you? Because I will fuck him up, don’t think I won’t.”

“Not like you’re thinking,” Phil said, taking a cautious sip of his coffee without opening his eyes. “Just embarrassed the hell out of me. Everyone else at the table kept giving me sympathy wine.”

“Wow,” she said. “I need to hear this—oh, hang on. Yeah, hi, good morning! I’ll have the French toast special with bacon, and he’ll have a spinach and cheese omelette, home fries, and a glass of OJ. Oh, and can we get, like, a pitcher of ice water too? Thanks!”

“I don’t want an omelette,” Phil told her. “I never want to eat again.”

“You do, trust me,” she said. “That meal is scientifically calculated to help you get over your hangover faster, it has, like, nutrients and stuff. I read an article about it in Cosmo. How much sympathy wine did you drink, anyway?”

He thought about that. There was the first bottle. And then some other bottles. Other people had some too, though. Also Phil wasn’t sure if the first bottle had been the same one the first two glasses of wine had come from. “…Lots?” he said. “And also brandy. Like, two snifters of brandy.”

“Was the wine red or white?”

“Red.”

“Shit, no wonder you look like the walking dead,” she said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been that embarrassed.”

“I really hope not,” Phil said. Daisy was too nice to have to endure an ordeal like that.

“So? Don’t keep me in suspense, Phil. You owe me; if it weren’t for me you would be proctoring a freshman survey final at eight AM. Instead, you’ll get to hole up in that weird cubby you like and have a nice quiet morning of reading my chapter. You can even turn the lights out if you want to.”

He winced at the thought of the cavernous, echo-y lecture hall where the freshman history class was held. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “I warn you, though, you probably won’t believe it.”

He told her the whole sad story, starting with the “magical relationship” rose and going all the way to him leaving with someone else, Garrett’s valet ticket still in his pocket. Daisy had started laughing about three sentences in, and by the time he got to the part where Garrett started playing the piano, she’d actually given herself the hiccups; he slit one eye very slightly open and saw that she was mopping at her face with a napkin, her face wet with tears of laughter.

“Oh god,” she wheezed. “Oh fuck, Phil, that. That is. That is the best thing I have literally ever heard in my life.”

He sighed. “At least something good came out of my pain,” he said morosely. “I can never show my face at the Maria Stark Foundation ever again. I wonder if they’d let me come in for my maintenance appointments wearing a bag over my head.” Phil’s face itched. Also the rest of him. He had a sinking feeling he smelled like wine sweats and bad decisions.

“Sounds to me like you were the life of the party,” Daisy said. “Plus, don’t think you’re getting away without—oh, food’s here. You’re gonna have to open your eyes.”

“Make me.”

She kicked him gently under the table. “I won’t have to,” she said. “The siren call of home fries will do it all for me.”

Surprisingly, the home fries did smell very good. Phil took a small bite, and suddenly he was starving.

“You see,” Daisy said. “Eat all that and I’ll get you some bacon.” She poured a small lake of syrup over her French toast. “Anyway, you need to tell me more about this hottie who drove you home.”

Phil groaned. “Please no.”

“What? It sounds like you hit it off!”

“Daisy,” Phil said. “He met me for the first time yesterday, at a work event, and in the course of about five hours I got extremely drunk, was aggressively serenaded by my date to the detriment of the entire party, had to be rescued from said date, overshared about everything that crossed my mind, talked about the postwar SSR for half an hour, demonstrated that I could make a vulgar gesture with my prosthetic, went to sleep on his shoulder, and patted his belly. And that’s just what I remember. He’s probably getting a restraining order against me even as we speak.”

“I think you’re underestimating what a cute drunk you are,” Daisy said. “People notice what you do when your inhibitions are lowered, and your first impulse is always to be nice to people. I mean, do you know how I knew to pick you up this morning?”

“I thought you were just making sure I wouldn’t oversleep,” Phil said. “Because of your thesis.”

“Well, yes,” she said. “But I came prepared to haul your ass out for hangover breakfast because you texted me at midnight.”

“…I did?” Phil did not remember that at all.

“Yup.” She pulled out her phone. “And I quote: ‘Daisy u r’—that’s the letters ‘u’ and ‘r’—‘the best TA ever.’ Damn straight. Then another one, two minutes later, ‘beads are bad for the environment’. I have no idea what that’s about. Next up you sent one that said ‘hey in chapter 3 you should talk about ENIAC,’ which is actually a really good idea, so thanks for that. Then ten minutes after that you send one that just said ‘sweater arrrrrrrrms,’ with one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight R’s in ‘arms.’”

Phil let his head drop onto the table. Right into a sticky spot, naturally. “I am so sorry,” he said, his voice muffled.

She laughed. “I’m not mad about it. This is hilarious. Remember that time I came in with a hangover after New Years and you made me take that webinar on binge drinking? Revenge is sweet.”

“You are completely justified,” Phil told the table.

“Still, hey, at least you seem to be feeling better now, if you can use words like ‘detriment.’”

“I don’t have to feel well to use words,” Phil said. He peeled his forehead off the table—ugh—and took a sullen bite of his omelette. He felt the table rattle as Daisy’s phone buzzed.

“If this is someone wanting a makeup exam already…” she sighed, looking at the message. “Oh, wait, no. Oh! This is amazing. Phil, you have to see this, scoot over.”

“I’m too old for memes,” he told her. He still scooted over, though, and she slid into the bench seat next to him, holding up her phone so she could see.

Jemma Simmons: If Dr. C is having a rough day show him this ;-)

There was a video attached.

Daisy clicked on it. The video looked like it had been taken by someone trying not to be noticed, so the framing was a little off, but they could clearly see Jemma, in her Santa hat with a uniform vest over a puffy jacket, standing at the valet stand. Garrett was standing in front of her, and the video started mid-sentence.

“—mean, you can’t give me the keys? That’s my car!”

“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Jemma said, innocently. “But I’m afraid I can’t release any vehicles to you without a claim ticket. It’s company policy, to prevent theft.”

“I’m not trying to steal my own car!” Garrett gestured wildly toward the parking lot. “I just want to leave!”

“Perhaps you dropped your claim ticket somewhere inside, sir?” Jemma said helpfully. “I’m sure the catering staff would be happy to let you know if anyone turned it in.”

“I didn’t—I never—oh, fuck. Listen, um—” he glanced down toward her name tag—“Jamie. I think maybe my date had the claim ticket? And he, ah, he had to leave early. He was. He had a thing. But he forgot to give it back? So can we maybe just, just make an exception? This once? I can show you my registration, it’s in my glove box, if you’ll just go get my car.”

She looked up at him for a long moment.

“…please?”

“Well,” she said, with the air of someone preparing to do a great favor. “I suppose I could call my manager.”

The video stopped on a freeze-frame of Garrett’s horrified face.

“Oh my god,” Phil said. “Jemma. Oh my god.”

“I had no idea she could be that evil,” Daisy said, admiringly. “Can we give her an A for this?”

“She’s already got an A,” Phil said. “I can’t believe she pretended she didn’t know who he was.”

“It’s beautiful,” Daisy said, texting Jemma back a string of emojis.

“I should probably feel bad about this,” Phil said, eating another home fry. He was really feeling remarkably more human all of a sudden. “But I don’t. Does that mean I’m a bad person?”

“I think it just means you’re a normal person,” Daisy told him. “I mean, he brought it on himself.”

They watched the video three more times while they finished their breakfasts, and then Daisy dropped Phil off at the language arts building with his laptop and a bottle of Gatorade before continuing on to the big lecture hall to do the exam. He went upstairs and staked out his favorite spot, and was soon absorbed in reading Daisy’s chapter, making notes as he went.

He was just finishing up a thought on the chapter conclusion when his stomach growled; surprised, he checked the time and saw that it was past noon. Daisy’s second exam ran until one, and then she had a break until the third one started at four; plenty of time for lunch. Also, he kind of wanted to shower and change into real pants before anyone recognized him.

He sent Daisy a text, offering her lunch and her chapter notes in exchange for a lift home, and she sent back a thumbs-up emoji.

He walked over to meet her in front of the History building, and they walked to her van together. Phil was still wearing his sunglasses—it was bright outside—but he no longer wanted to stab his own eyes out every time he opened them: progress.

“So what’s for lunch?” she asked, trailing him up the stairs to his apartment.

“Leftovers from the party,” Phil told her. “The caterer felt sorry for me, I think, he gave me enough food for a week.”

“Oooh, was it as good as Garrett said?”

“Better,” he promised. He started pulling containers out of the fridge. “Least I can do. Seriously, thank you for handling the exams today. I appreciate it.”

“Here, why don’t I heat this up while you go shower?” Daisy suggested. “No offense, but you’ve scratched your face so much today I’m starting to sympathy-itch.”

“I hate stubble,” Phil said, setting down a foil pan obediently and heading back toward his bathroom. “It reminds me of being in the hospital.”

“I know,” Daisy said, her voice kind. “So go get rid of it already and put on clothes that don’t make you look like finals week at the computer science lab. You wanna know the real reason I didn’t stay comp sci? Showers, Phil. Showers.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he called, laughing a little as he grabbed some real clothes to take into the bathroom.

It was almost miraculous how much good a hot shower, clean clothes, and a shave did for him; he didn’t even feel like he needed his sunglasses anymore. He emerged from the bathroom looking very nearly respectable, and was greeted by the heavenly smell of beef.

“Good thing you hurried,” Daisy told him, scooping the food onto two plates. “If you hadn’t gotten out in two more minutes I was gonna eat your lunch, this stuff smells amazing.”

“I can’t really blame you, honestly,” Phil admitted. “So, what was the score so far today?”

“Six obvious pajamas, two wrong-roomers, three unexplained absences, one nervous barfer and one person we haven’t seen since the first week of classes,” she said, “So not bad.” She took a bite of her lunch, and her eyes widened. “Wow, this is really good. I’m not saying that the food alone was worth everything you went through last night, but I am saying that it narrows the deficit by a lot.”

He laughed. “If it had just been the magic tricks and not the piano, I’d have probably considered it a wash,” he agreed. “We have got to get the Department to use that caterer.”

“If they’ll even spring for them,” Daisy agreed. “I mean, the elevator in the Davidson parking deck has been down for like a month, so.”

“Ugh,” Phil agreed. “Yeah, good point. Cheap bastards. Still, can’t hurt to try.”

They chatted idly over lunch: Phil’s high-level thoughts on Daisy’s latest thesis chapter, an article she’d seen that she thought he would like, the latest developments in the bitter rivalry that had developed between the Ultimate Frisbee team and the Digital Photography Club. They were debating whether to bring out the cheesecake or save it for later when Phil’s phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.

“What are the odds that’s one of our absentees calling in a panic to ask for a makeup exam?” He sighed. “I mean, I’m sympathetic. I am. But still. It’s not like the exam dates are a surprise.”

“I’ll get it,” Daisy offered. “I’ve got a heart of stone, I won’t be swayed by any excuse that doesn’t come with concrete evidence.” She grinned at him, taking her empty plate with her into the kitchen and glancing down at his phone as she rinsed it off.

“False alarm, it’s a calendar alert,” she said. “Though I think maybe you drunk-texted yourself this time, which is kind of impressive, honestly.”

Phil groaned. “Who even knows at this point,” he said. “What does it say?”

She opened his phone—he had no idea how she knew his PIN, but he didn’t particularly care; he trusted her not to do anything too nefarious—and looked at the notification. “Wow,” she said. “Okay, it says: ‘SOBER PHIL WHEN YOU ARE SOBER’—that part’s in all caps—‘remeberb Clint’—east-ee-ood? Easteood? I’m guessing you meant ‘Eastwood’ there—‘not straight do you feel l-y-c-k-y.’ I’m guessing that was supposed to be ‘lucky.’ So, what, was Drunk You in the mood for a Dirty Harry marathon or something? Or like.” She tilted her head, looking at the phone thoughtfully. “With the ‘not straight’ part—is there like, a gay porn version of Dirty Harry? I mean, now that I think about it, it seems like there really should be. They wouldn’t even have to change the title.”

“How should I know? Don’t answer that.” Phil scrubbed his good hand over his face. At least he wasn’t itchy and stubbly anymore. “I have no idea why I would have been thinking about Dirty—oh. Oh, shit. Clint.”

Daisy’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit,” she echoed. “Clint Clint, not Clint Eastwood? Biceps Hottie Clint?”

Now that Phil was awake and mostly not praying for death, his memories of the previous evening were a lot clearer.

“Daisy,” he said. “Daisy. I asked him flat out if he was straight.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” she said loyally. “I mean, transparency, right?”

“He said he wasn’t—

“Awesome!”

“—and then I asked him out,” Phil said, with slowly growing horror. “And he tried to let me down gently, because I was effusively drunk, and I told him that I wanted to sleep with him but wouldn’t right then because his best friend was there and it would be rude. And then I set an alarm to ask him out again once I was sober.” He buried his face in his hands. “That’s it,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch like this but I have to change my name. And move to, like… Palau. Stop laughing, it isn’t funny! I was so inappropriate to this extremely nice—”

“And hot,” Daisy added through her giggles.

“…and hot man, and his best friend, who was also incidentally very nice and very hot, who were very kindly giving me a ride home so I didn’t get stuck in a car for half an hour with the man who’d just spent the whole evening singing passive-aggressive breakup songs in my general direction. I can’t believe I did that. He must be so offended. Should I sign myself up for a sexual harassment seminar? I mean, I know I wouldn’t have meant to cross any boundaries, but intentions don’t change the impact of your actions—”

“Phil!” Daisy said sharply, cutting off his spiral. “He’s not offended and he’s not mad at you.”

“You can’t know that! Just because you like me—”

“I can know that,” she said. “I can absolutely know that, because he just texted you.”

Phil froze, his heart giving a great thump in his chest. “He did?”

“He said: ‘hey Phil, it’s Clint from the party. Just wanted to check in and make sure you were doing okay after last night. It was really nice meeting you! Let me know if you want to grab coffee sometime, I’d love to hear more about your book.’ Phil! This is awesome, he’s totally into you!”

“No, he’s not,” Phil protested. He couldn’t be. Not after Wonderwall. “He’s just being kind, because I was all pathetic and sad.”

“Did you put his number in his phone yourself, or did he do it?”

“He did it,” Phil said. “Probably because he could tell I couldn’t be trusted to type. But he just needed to get my address so they could take me home, he wasn’t asking for my number in a significant way.”

“He put his contact in as ‘Clint from the MSF party - call me, exclamation point, winky face emoji, purple heart emoji.’”

“But that—” Phil felt like a computer with too many tabs open. “But I—”

“I’mma call him back,” Daisy said, and sidestepped nimbly out of the way of Phil’s desperate lunge for his phone, hitting the button and putting the call on speaker.

It connected after one ring.

“Hey there, man, how you doing?”

“Hi,” Daisy said, ignoring Phil’s frantic pantomime begging her to hang up. “This is Daisy Johnson calling from Dr. Coulson’s phone.”

“Oh!” Clint’s voice got sharper, sounding almost… worried? Was Phil reading too much into this? “Daisy, hi. Is Phil okay? Did something happen? Shit, I knew I should’ve—”

“Phil’s fine!” she said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure he’s not gonna be drinking red wine with a brandy chaser again for a while, but the only other thing wrong with him is he’s convinced that he was horribly inappropriate to you yesterday and you hate him now so he has to change his whole identity and go be a hermit in a yurt somewhere.”

Phil cringed with his entire body. So much for plausible deniability.

“Oh,” Clint said. “That’s a relief. I mean, not the… yurt hermit thing. The other thing. Could you please let him know that it’s really fine? He didn’t do anything offensive or whatever. Honestly he was kind of adorable. Nobody’s ever set themselves a calendar reminder to ask me out before.”

Daisy shot Phil a triumphant look. “You liked that? He thought he was missing signals that you were trying to let him down easy.”

“Dude, what? No way,” Clint said. “I just didn’t want him to sober up and realize that he’d committed to something he didn’t want to do. I mean, he’s kind of out of my league, you know? I didn’t want it to be a whole awkward thing where he felt, like, obligated.”

Phil, who had been more or less frozen on the spot, stuttered back to life at the sheer absurdity of that sentiment. He strode over to Daisy and grabbed the phone, taking it back off speaker and moving back toward his bedroom, for whatever good it would do to seek privacy now.

“I am not out of your league, don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “If anything, it’s the other way around.”

Clint made a startled urk sound. “Um,” he said, after a long moment. “Hi, Phil.”

“Hi.” He closed his bedroom door behind him and sat on the end of his bed. “Sorry about Daisy,” he said. “She gets a little over-invested sometimes, but she means well.”

“It’s fine,” Clint said. “I like her. She seems like she’s a good friend.”

“She is,” Phil said. “We met when I was first recovering from my injury, and… well. She stuck with me through some pretty rough times.”

“Good,” Clint said. “I’m glad you have her. Um. So…”

“Did you mean what you told her?” Phil asked, abruptly. “About me, I mean?”

“Absolutely,” Clint said. “I, ah. I feel like… I thought we had a spark, you know? But I mean, anyone would have looked like an upgrade after Garrett. I didn’t want to take advantage if you’re just, like, a really flirty drunk, or you got carried away with the euphoria of ditching him, or whatever.”

“I didn’t,” Phil said. “I mean, it was definitely euphoric, but I think that was as least as much about spending more time with you as it was getting away from him.”

“Yeah?” Clint’s voice was soft and sweet, hopeful. Phil’s pulse sped up again, but from good excitement this time.

“Yeah.” Phil cleared his throat. “So do I need to get Daisy to give you an independent verification of my sobriety before I ask you out again?”

“Nah,” Clint said. “I trust you.”

It felt a lot more significant than it probably should have, but Phil couldn’t bring himself to care. “In that case,” he said, “would you like to go out for coffee with me? Maybe this weekend?”

“I’m free Sunday,” Clint said. “Just name the time and place and I’ll be there.”

They worked out the details, and said goodbye; Phil managed to only spend a very small amount of time trying to think of extra things to say so they could talk longer. He was still sitting on his bed, looking down at his phone and trying to process everything, when another text came through.

Clint from the MSF party-call me! 😉💜: Looking forward to it!

Likewise, Phil sent back, and went out to rejoin Daisy, smiling so widely his cheeks hurt.

>>>———-> <———<<<

Several Years Later

“…to present the inaugural Margaret Carter Prize for American History is the man whose steadfast support has made it all possible: Tony Stark!”

Tony grinned at Phil. “See you in a minute,” he mouthed, then walked out onto the stage.

“Thank you!” he said, as cameras flashed. “Yeah, yeah, settle down, I’m not the one you’re here to see. Thank you.

“Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, ‘hey, what does this guy have to do with history?’ and it’s true, I’ve always considered myself a futurist. But one thing that’s become abundantly clear to me over my life is that you can’t arrive at a worthwhile future by attempting to ignore the past.

“Margaret Carter was many things: a war hero, a public servant, an unparalleled intelligence agent, the driving force behind the rise of SHIELD… and yes, Captain America was her boyfriend. But to me, she was always the woman who helped me name my first robot, taught me how to throw a punch without breaking my hand, read my long letters full of teenage angst and actually answered them: my Aunt Peggy. She was stubborn and brave and principled. She had a soft heart and a hard head. At a time when the men she worked with were more likely to give her their coffee orders than to give her a chance, she forged a legendary career and served as an inspiration for generations to come.

“The Carter Prize is awarded in honor of Aunt Peggy, to an outstanding scholarly work that showcases the contributions of historically marginalized people to government, politics, or international affairs. And, really, I don’t think there’s any better way to kick this off than by honoring a book that provides an unprecedented look at a lesser-known period of her own career. Honestly, I’m just glad the timing worked out.” He paused to let the laughter die down.

“So without further ado, I am happy to present the first-ever Margaret Carter Prize for American History to Dr. Phillip J. Coulson, for his book Carter and Carter: SHIELD and the Office of the President, 1977-1981.”

The applause was… a lot louder than Phil had thought it would be. He adjusted his tie, suddenly a little nervous. He hadn’t thought this would be such a big deal. Of course, he likely should have taken Tony’s involvement into account.

“Come on, Phil,” Tony said, looking into the wings with a grin. “I had to make a speech, so do you.”

Phil took a deep breath and walked out onto the stage, blinded for a moment by camera flashes as he accepted the award, shook Tony’s hand, and took his place behind the podium. As his vision adjusted, he couldn’t help but look at the banquet table right below the stage, where Clint, Daisy, Jemma, Marcus, Natasha, and Pepper were all standing up, applauding. Everyone looked so happy for him—Daisy especially looked like she was about to start cheering and whistling like she was at a concert—but Clint’s face was radiant, beautiful in his happiness and pride.

“Thank you,” he said, and waited for everyone to stop clapping and resume their seats.

“I’ll keep this short,” he said, “because I know I’m the last thing between you and dinner.” The audience laughed, friendly and easy. Phil smiled out at them, students and colleagues, friends and family. His people.

“I never intended to be a historian,” he said. “I went into the Army right out of high school, and I thought that I would spend my entire career there. But there came a day where my luck ran out, and I woke up in a hospital to learn that a single injury had cost me both my hand and my job. To be honest, there were times when I wasn’t sure which one I missed the most.” He looked down at his note cards, wanting to make sure he didn’t miss anything he’d planned to say.

“The road from that day to this one held many surprises, and many challenges. This book would never have been possible if it weren’t for the unfailing support of many people. My students, who remind me why I first got excited about history. My friends and family, who put up with far too many all-night research binges and long-winded discussions of nuclear nonproliferation or the 1970s energy crisis. My editor, Jasper Sitwell, who wouldn’t let me stop until this book was as good as I could possibly make it. My research assistant, Daisy Johnson, who’s never met an archive she couldn’t conquer. And my partner, Clint Barton, who has lived with this book for the last several years almost as much as I have and yet somehow has never given in to what I’m sure is the immense temptation to throw something at my head unless I stop talking about SALT II.” He met Clint’s eyes, beautiful and bright. He was actually tearing up a little. Phil loved him so much his chest ached with it.

“I would like to close with a quote from Peggy Carter herself. ‘When you have struggled against a system that insists you stay silent, it is not enough to insist that you, yourself, be heard: your work is not complete until all the silenced regain their voices.’ Thank you.”

He felt almost dizzy as he left the stage, partially adrenaline and partially elation. His hands were shaking a little, and he forced himself to take three long breaths, calming himself down.

“It’s always like this with you, doc.”

Phil looked up and saw Clint coming around the curtain, beaming at him.

“Cool as a cucumber all the way through,” Clint continued, “then you do all your freaking out after the fact.” He slipped his arms around Phil’s waist, nuzzling at the hinge of his jaw. “I am so proud of you, babe,” he said. “You did amazing up there.”

Phil hugged him back, leaning against his broad chest, letting himself settle.”Thanks,” he said softly, brushing a kiss over the corner of Clint’s smile. “I mean, for what you said but also for just… everything.” He squeezed Clint a little tighter. “I love you so much,” he said. “You make my life better, every day since we met.”

“Surely not every day,” Clint said. “I mean, I have to have pissed you off at least a couple of those.”

“Even when you did,” Phil insisted. “Even the day Lucky ate my proofs two days before my deadline.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Clint said. “And perfect. Marry me.”

Phil froze. “What?” Surely he must have heard that wrong.

Clint took a half step back so he could meet Phil’s eyes. “Pay attention,” he said, and then with a flick of his graceful fingers he pulled a gold ring out of… somewhere. Phil could never tell where; Clint was too good. He picked up Phil’s right hand.

“Marry me, Phil,” he said again. “Please?”

“Of course I will,” Phil said. “You asshole, I was going to ask you! Next week! I had it all planned out! Did Daisy give it away?”

Clint just looked at him, misty-eyed. “Nope,” he said. “I guess we’re just really in synch. Seems like a good sign, yeah?” He slid the ring onto Phil’s right ring finger. “I talked to Tony,” he said. “He says we can incorporate a ring into your robot hand, if you want. But for now I got it sized for this one.” He raised Phil’s hand to his lips and kissed the ring. “Now c’mon, let’s go eat your celebration dinner. Basil said he made your favorite chutney all special.”

Phil kissed him, long and tender but not deep. “Just to tide me over until we get home,” he said, when he finally pulled back to breathe, and Clint winked at him and held his hand all the way back to the table.

They were halfway through the appetizers before Daisy spotted the ring and squealed with glee, and then of course everyone at the table had to inspect the ring and hear the story and say how happy they were and offer congratulations, until Phil was fizzy with euphoria even before Tony somehow made champagne appear.

“You better slow down, PC,” Daisy said teasingly, as Phil finished his second glass. “Wouldn’t want to ruin any post-proposal plans you have for later.”

Clint chuckled, and Phil blushed, though that was probably mostly down to just how high Clint’s hand was on his thigh under the tablecloth.

“Oh!” Tony said. “That reminds me of a hilarious story I heard the other day.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I was having a lunch meeting with some people from the Foundation, and they told me about this legendary holiday party they had a couple years ago.”

Phil froze. Clint’s hand stopped moving on his leg. Phil kept his eyes firmly on the piece of bread he was buttering, very much not making eye contact with Clint, or Natasha, or Daisy, or Pepper, or Jemma.

“So what happened?” It was Marcus. He knew the story, of course, he was just being a shit because that’s what brothers are for.

“So apparently, some guy nobody knew broke up with his boyfriend at the party,” Tony said. “There was a piano in the event space, and the boyfriend went over to it and all through dinner he kept playing, like, cheesy breakup songs? Like Chicago and shit. AND singing them, even though there was already music playing. Like, drowning out the Christmas music with Air Supply ballads and whatever. And at the same time the other guy got completely plastered at the open bar—which, I mean, if someone was playing Peter Cetera at me I’d probably feel the same way—and then told everyone there that he loved and appreciated them and they were like heroic angels of mercy and human kindness and the power of universal brother-and-sisterhood, or something. And then apparently the drunk guy stole the boyfriend’s car!”

The table fell silent, like the pause before a storm breaks.

“What?” Tony looked around, puzzled. “Come on, that’s hysterical! Can you imagine?”

“In retrospect,” Phil said, “It really was funny. Although Garrett wasn’t my boyfriend; that was the only date we ever went on, for obvious reasons. Also I didn’t steal his car, I just forgot I had his valet claim ticket. I don’t drive under the influence. Actually, Clint and Natasha drove me home. That was the first time we met.” He had to struggle to keep his composure; the face Tony was making was hilarious.

Clint smiled at him, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “That was a good day, even after Bonnie Tyler got involved,” he said. “And the first time you asked me out, even if I wasn’t sure you really meant it until the next day.” He glanced around the table, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Really,” he said. “All in all, it was a magical evening.”

Natasha started laughing, after that, and Daisy next, and soon even the people who didn’t understand the reference had joined in, catching the mood.

Phil leaned against Clint’s shoulder, both of them shaking with laughter. They had made it here, together, despite everything: they would have dinner with their family, and celebrate Phil’s award and their engagement; they would go home and walk the dog and go to bed together; they would make love, and fall asleep in each other’s arms, and then the next day they would wake up and start on the rest of their lives, side by side.

The route he’d taken was a convoluted one. But Phil knew, in that moment, that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.