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Clint and Phil sit alone at their table, quiet as they watch the band. All three band members are SHIELD folks -- getting clearance for anyone else was too much trouble -- but they're surprisingly good.
Everyone else at their table left awhile ago, dancing and then trickling out to head home. Jasper is still in the room, chatting with some people from R&D in the far corner. Clint vaguely recognizes them, but he doesn't think he knows their names. Most of the others still at the wedding are junior agents. Clint closes his eyes, listening to the sax solo, and shifts a little in his seat. He can feel Coulson turn to look at him, but the older man doesn't say anything.
The song ends, and Clint hears the shuffle of sheet music before the band starts in on the next one. He opens his eyes and grabs Coulson's hand, pulling him up. Phil doesn't resist and follows Clint away from the table, just to the edge of the dance floor. Clint loses momentum a little there, not quite sure what to do, but he shakes it off, puts one hand on Phil's shoulder blade and grabs Phil's hand with the other. Phil stays silent through this, an eyebrow ever so slightly quirked.
"We're dancing," Clint tells him.
Phil puts his other hand on Clint's upper arm. "Okay."
Clint just... moves, from there, listening to the music, doing whatever comes to mind. He hasn't been trained in any formal kind of social dance. At some points he suspects Coulson of backleading, but -- of course -- Coulson's face gives nothing away. It's fun, though. They move around their little corner of the carpet, just off the dance floor, turning and twirling and pushing and pulling. Clint knows people are looking at them, and Jasper will ask them later what the hell they were doing, but Clint doesn't care, and Phil doesn't seem to, either.
It becomes a habit after that. They go dancing. They take a couple of salsa lessons and manage to not embarrass themselves at a salsa club. They take swing lessons, and then they go to a swing dance and people are doing a completely different style. Clint had no idea just how many kinds of swing existed. He and Phil try to hang off to the side to start, planning to watch because it can't be too hard to pick up the steps, but then the more experienced dancers coax them into following. The pattern isn't hard, and they surprise the other dancers with how quickly they improve. After swing, Clint suggests Argentine tango, and Coulson looks at him like he should know better. Clint looks right back. Phil gives in.
This continues for years. They branch out from social dance, trying ballet and a couple styles of modern dance. Clint and Phil have favorite dances, favorite classes, that they go back to again and again, becoming regulars. Clint isn't sure what to call their non-professional relationship; they never talk about it. He sticks to dance partners, when people ask.
But then the world gets stranger, and they get busier. They're apart more, and even when they are in the same place, they don't have the time or energy to go dancing. They collapse on Phil's couch or Clint's or in a safe house and watch Dancing with the Stars, but even that becomes rare.
**********
Natasha is the one who tells Clint about Phil after the Battle of New York. The others overhear; it's Bruce who asks Clint whether he knew Agent Coulson well.
Clint pauses, waits to see if Natasha will answer. She doesn't. Nat will let him say as much or as little as he wants to, as he can. "The three of us were a team, sometimes," he says, gesturing between himself and Natasha. He doesn't mention the rest. He wouldn't know how to answer the questions.
After the battle, though, he gains free time like he hasn't had in years. There's still a lot of work; he has to trust himself again, and SHIELD has to trust him, and he's an Avenger now. But he finds himself looking up the dances and classes he and Phil used to go to, wondering how it would feel to go alone.
Steve finds Clint one day in a Tower common area, humming and doing the basic step of the Lindy hop. Steve, as it turns out, knows a couple of swing styles. So that's where Clint starts: dancing with Steve in the living room. Soon, he goes back to dances in the city, sometimes with Steve tagging along. People do ask about Phil, but once the question is out of the way, it doesn't hurt too much. He can still get lost in the music and the movement, can still find the fun. It's not like it was with Phil, but it's something.
A couple of months after Clint starts going dancing again, his phone buzzes twice in quick succession while he's eating breakfast with Natasha. Natasha looks up, curious, as Clint checks his phone.
He should be more surprised than he is, he thinks, but this is SHIELD, and Fury lies. Clint doesn't know the number, but "I'm sorry" followed by the next date and time of their favorite tango event? Pretty unambiguous. Clint passes the phone to Natasha, whose mouth tightens slightly when she reads the texts. "So?" she asks.
Clint shrugs and takes the phone from her, texts "OK" back. Tango isn't one of the dances he's picked up again yet, but he goes on the indicated day anyway. It won't take more than a couple of dances for his body to remember, Clint reasons, and he's right.
It's late enough that he's wondering whether he misunderstood the message when he hears a familiar voice behind him. "Would you like to dance?"
Clint turns, and there's Phil, very much alive, with his hand outstreched. Clint takes it.