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James Barnes is planning to ask Steve Rogers to marry him, and it’s not going to work.
It’s not going to work, because Steve Rogers is going to ask him first.
Phil may not be a Black-Widow level spy, but he’s worked with Black Widow level spies, for arguably the most clandestine of intelligence agencies in the country for enough decades that even he can read the signs.
The pair of them are currently chatting with Natasha and her sister, Yelena, who Natasha found outside Odessa and has not only been near-joined at the hip with since, but they’ve also been working together to recover as many Widows from their programming as possible—and offer them sanctuary, or a job, or both under S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s protection should they want it, no strings attached and no expectations, Phil had been firm on that and Nat, who’d been annoyed at how many times he’d repeated the point to be sure he was clear, had also looked almost touched, and that had been more than worth her frustration.
Phil suspects that’s what they’re chatting about now, but the content of the exchange isn’t important: what’s important is how Steve is standing behind Bucky, arms wrapped around his waist and chin propped on his shoulder in such a way that Phil can see his face. Bucky’s own expression is quiet, content and warm as his fingers dance along Steve’s wrists idly, endeared and protective, but Steve is the one wrapped around him like a limpet, smiling like an idiot and watching him like he hung the moon, like he is the sun and Steve makes no attempt to dull the way he clearly orbits this man, and loves every second.
Which: Phil was pretty sure Steve was going to beat Bucky to the punch before this evening, and this display—they’ve both been at the alien liquor Phil brought for their enjoyment, and probably some of what Thor carted in too, and they’re loose, they’re just that extra bit freer—but Phil had been judging by their tactics. Bucky could play a long game and meet a planned goal even when emotions were the driving force better than Steve could, or else, could weather the wait smoother. But after tonight, anyone with eyes would be able to tell that these punch-drunk fools were equally crazy for one another, which was a given, just common knowledge, but Steve Rogers was about to go Icarus on this whole thing and plummet into the ocean calling out his proposal through the fall. His restraint was running thin, so yeah.
Steve is going to propose first. And Bucky is going to say yes and grouse about his intricate plans being ruined by his impatient punk of a fiancé.
Phil honestly can’t wait to hear it, either. Because he’s pretty damned thrilled for them both: a man he’d found in the wilderness who’d become something like a brother, and that brother’s soulmate who’d moved firmly from idol to friend.
“I’m just gonna borrow this,” are the words that knock Phil out of his romanticized musings, and from his blatant staring, as Phil watches a familiar hand dart forward in his peripherals.
“Nice,” Phil huffs as he sees Clint gulping at Phil’s mulled wine
“They’re a fuckin’ workout,” Clint hooks a thumb over his shoulder toward Kate and Daisy on the edge of the dance floor, seeming to have given up the dance-off they’d embroiled Clint in—and that Phil had snapped a few photos of, so sue him—and have instead co-opted a shaker and a few bottles from the nearest bar setup to apparently try mixing cocktails with Daisy’s powers alone, all while not causing any disastrous outcomes.
So far, they have three glasses full with a milky chocolate concoction and nothing appears broken: mission accomplished.
Phil doesn’t even pretend not to swell with pride at this latest display of how far Daisy has come, considering where they all started.
“Lucky for you, I like my men sweaty,” Phil turns his attention properly to Clint who beams, and leans in for a sloppy, breathy kiss.
“Where are Spidey-boy and friends?” he asks as he takes a seat next to Phil.
“MJ’s hosting a party for their school friends, they’ll be here tomorrow,” and it’s probably for the best they spend the night with their own peers—not least because this is a Stark New Year’s party, and adding in some underage attendees from a tech nerd school would almost certainly result in said nerds finding a way to override the age-relation tech—or corrupt it at least—and succeed either way in getting shitfaced. Phil isn’t personally interested in finding out if Peter’s spider DNA altered his alcohol tolerance.
“Good,” Clint says with a smile; he loves the kids. They all do, but maybe it’s been Lucky that’d sparked the bond first or just Clint’s ability to treat people of all ages with the wide-eyed wonder of a kid and the solemnity of an adult all at once, but whatever it’d been, those kids love Clint in kind, just as much.
“You’re okay with Kate coming to our place tomorrow, right?” Clint asks, sipping at what’s clearly just the dregs of the wine.
“Aren’t we all coming back here in the morning?” Phil counters, a little confused; he’s pretty sure he nixed staying over by using the promise of returning before noon for the New Year’s Day festivities at the Tower.
“Yeah, but you know,” Clint puts the glass down with a clunk, giving up on pretending he didn’t suck it all down. “For first breakfast.”
Phil fights a smile, because he’s in love with a damned hobbit.
“She’s always welcome, you know that,” Phil says, leaning in to be heard and maybe a little to get closer to the abandoned and untouched goblets of glühwein at all the unoccupied place settings; “she knows that.”
And she does. Kate’s become a fixture in their home, in their lives, particularly after her mother ended up in prison. She sees her mother’s ex-fiancé now and again, and she keeps her own apartment in the city which is shared with Yelena of all people, and both of them come to Phil and Clint’s sometimes together, which increases instances of Natasha stopping by. Daisy’s been in and out for years, now, and Phil used Clint’s Avengers salary from Stark one year to carve out guest rooms for everyone. It’s a veritable homestead, now, in the middle of the city: not quite what he’d have ever envisioned for himself, and certainly not the farm Clint used to dream about loudly, but it’s kind of perfect.
“You know,” Clint says, and Phil’s eyes narrow when he notices Clint’s somehow nabbed one of the full glasses already and is swirling the contents as he speaks: “never thought I’d get to have kids.” Then his expression melts even further as he leans in to peck at Phil’s top lip: “That we’d get to have kids.”
“Right,” Phil says, a little dazed. He’s called them the kids. He thinks of them, in his heart of hearts, as his. At least a little.
Hearing it out loud, though. Jesus, but the warmth in his chest.
“Kinda feels like we skipped all the hard parts though,” Clint bites his lip, watching everyone across the room.
“Doesn’t get easier, just gets different.” Not that Phil knows from experience, obviously. But he worked in the Triskelion long enough to hear the water-cooler talk about so-and-so’s adult children weathering plenty of things in need of a parent, from hanging frames in a new apartment to bad breakups to alien invasions breaking their sense of reality.
You know. The usual.
Clint hums, and then slowly gets a dopey sort of look on his face as he stares.
“They’re stupid cute, aren’t they?” And Phil doesn’t need to follow the exact trajectory of Clint’s gaze to know exactly who he’s taking about. “Like, if they hadn’t both been frozen for decades and one of them brainwashed and stuff, it’d be nauseating. But they stand there getting off scott-free for being sappy grandpas because they’re just so…” Clint makes a bit of a spastic flapping motion with his hands before he rests his chin on his hands and just makes heart-eyes at their friends, a high pitched muted squeal escaping him, the dork.
Phil loves his stupidly cute asshole, as it happens—quite a stupid amount.
“They really are,” Phil agrees, because damnit all, Steve and Bucky are probably the closest thing the real world has to soulmates, what with all the dying and the freezing and the kidnapping and the memory erasure and the like, and it’d take someone with far less of a soft heart than Phil to deny it.
And really: Phil can get pretty mushy when he thinks about true love conquering all and all that.
“You want to be sappy not-grandpas?” Phil’s eyes dart to Clint who’s standing now, and it takes a moment to put two and two together: the supersoldiers are standing and talking but swaying to the music the whole time through. Phil still waits for Clint to offer a hand before he accepts.
“Love to.”
“Fair warning,” Clint starts as he pulls Phil up; “the kiddos might ask you to dance if you deign to show you’re willing to get out there.”
“Oh, poor me,” Phil says dryly; it’s fine.
“Also Natasha.”
“Firm no.” That’s less fine. Phil can dance well enough, but dancing with Natasha even when he’s stone-cold sober is always an exercise in humiliation.
“How about a flexible no,” Clint hedges, leading Phil out. “it’s a holiday.”
Phil gives him a flat stare, and Clint just huffs a laugh.
“Also she snuck some of the Asgardian mead,” he adds, and oh. Well.
“Flexible no it is, then,” Phil concedes, and lets Clint lead because why not.
It’s smart, for all three minutes it lasts, because then someone’s cutting in and looking to be led, probably only because her hands are full already.
“Have you tried these?” Yelena asks Phil as she eyes the appetizers she’s holding excitedly; “Pepper Potts is an excellent hostess, orders the best appetizers.”
She holds one up to him, looks ready to feed him but he shakes his head.
“No?” Her jaw’s even properly dropped as she looks at him in horrified disbelief.
“Not the biggest caviar fan,” he tries very hard not to laugh.
“Hmm,” she considers him skeptically before tossing one of the bites into her mouth and humming in satisfaction: “you are missing out, I have to say.”
Phil lets himself laugh, then.
“This will be more fun if she has to steal you, I think,” Yelena says through another bite of her blini, cocking her head toward where Natasha’s sitting as Phil leads them in a vague kind of waltz; “we will laugh much more.”
“смех предпочтительнее, да,” Phil says, a little deadpan but a little wry too—he’d have liked Natasha’s beloved younger sister on principle, but he’s become very fond of her in her own right as he’s grown to know her, and he grins when she cackles loud and boisterous.
“You are improving, Phil Coulson!” she claps, letting go of his hands but still keeping up the footwork. “You are still very bad but not very very bad,” she leans in to kiss his cheek.
“And you have shown the capacity for improvement, this is very promising.”
“Enough,” and Phil looks up to see Natasha sauntering forward; “stop buttering our language.”
Phil snorts, and Yelena laughs as she lets Natasha take her place, and Phil notices she doesn’t go back to their seats but back to the serving table while Natasha moves to take the lead.
“Dip me,” she demands less than a minute into their dance so Phil obliges; she’s perfectly graceful but her limbs are languid—she’s a piece of art in motion, and interpretive dance, which is how Phil can read the booze on her. She’d still complete a mission better than most of the people in this room, he’d bet money on it.
“Dip me again,” she demands once more, imperious, and Phil swallows a grin as he concedes and tips her back, eases her up.
“Good,” she says, but it’s Russian and it’s the phrasing that means very good—Phil knows that because it sounds like ‘ocean horror show’ and it’s usually said sarcastically at him specifically; the fact that she sounds genuine, and that Phil knows all her tells well enough to pick out a fake, means she’s probably plastered.
He’s going to remember this for the rest of his goddamn life, just in case it never happens again.
“Mind if I cut in?”
“Knock yourself out,” Phil smiles at Bucky who’s coming in to leas Nat away with finesse.
“Don’t worry,” he winks at Phil as he shuffles them closer to their seats; “I’m comin’ back for you.”
Phil snorts and returns Natasha’s tipsy wave, planning to make his own way back to his seat when—
“Fancy meeting you here,” Kate’s hands are already in his to position them appropriately before Phil can even blink; he hadn’t even noticed her approach, but that’s not surprising. Not with Kate.
“Absolutely improbable, isn’t it,”
Phil’s lip curls up, she’s so intent and determined, like she thinks she has to sell him on dancing with her. But also because it’s Kate, and all the things she does, she does with determination and intent. “Must be fate.”
She smiles wide and falls into the dance, lets herself be lead which says more with her than it would with most people.
“Any New Year’s resolutions?” she asks idly, but curiously still.
“Not a big believer in those,” Phil says with a scrunched brow.
“Me neither,” Kate agrees enthusiastically. “Kind of a cop out, right? If you want to try a new thing, make a life change, imaginary calendar numbers shouldn’t be what dictates the move.”
Phil nods. “Exactly.” The whole dying-and-resurrection thing had probably soured him too, in honesty. But still.
They’re quiet for a few beats, a few turns, when Kate blurts out:
“I was thinking of trying LARPing.”
“Really?” Phil says, and Kate’s expression goes wry.
“No?” she asks, pushing him on the point, and Phil shakes his head quickly.
“I think it’s fun,” he says, because he honestly does.
“You’ve done it?” Kate asks, brightening like a million lamps.
“I’ve lived a lot of lives.” Philip, son of Coul, had lead armies, after all.
“Oh,” she stops for a second, pauses the dancing as she hears his dark humor and picks it apart between one breath and another before she snorts and snarks at him: “cute.”
“If you try it, and you like it,” Phil finds himself telling her; “let’s just say you can always call me up if you ever need an extra countryman.”
“Oh!” she brightens right back up before tilting her head. “I have to learn to sew first, though,” she bites her lip; “don’t want to go in like a total noob, need to earn some cred.”
“You know who already has some needlework cred and could probably help you out?” Phil asks before cocking his head toward Steve and Bucky, who are sitting now on the sofa and leaning contentedly into each other, feeding one another what looks like tiny toasts with some overly expensive seafood salad on top.
“No way,” Kate says quietly, marveling a little, eyes sparkling.
“Wanna go ask them?” Phil prompts and that all it takes before she’s off, squeezing his hand before she lets go and makes for the couple on the couch.
And now Phil figures he’s headed back to his wine, but then he’s been redirected from behind, and a voice is whispering in his ear:
“We meet again,” Clint teases, then spins him around and they’re off, and Phil leads because Clint’s good but Phil’s better, and Tony’s coming back in to announce that dinner’ll be ready in the hour, after Thor contributed the main beast of burden for their table, which Phil resolves not to think about in too much detail, and that he and Bruce would have it plated by the top of the hour; Pepper’s recruited Sam to help her restock the snacks, while Natasha and Yelena are sitting with Daisy sipping milkshake things that have to be absolutely dripping with liquor; Kate’s leaning in to listen to Bucky talk, and given his expression, it’s probably about how to crochet chainmail—he always looks so invested and amazed when the crafts of his youth, of his mother’s lap and hearth can be used for something so fuckin’ cool, just for fun and not necessity to keep skinny punks from freezing to death with holey socks.
And Steve: Steve, the not-so-skinny punk is currently staring at Bucky with stars in his eyes only half the wattage of the heart living there and goddamn glowing for it, and yeah.
Yeah, James Barnes is planning to ask Steve Rogers to marry him, and it’s not going to work, because Steve Rogers is going to ask him first.
Phil, though.
Phil is warm in his lover’s arms as they sway alone, as everyone else is occupied but rendered so with some clear degree of joy, and hell. He doesn’t even have a ring, if he’s honest, but maybe soon.
Maybe soon.