[fic] doesn't matter if i bleed, avengers, clint/coulson, explicit

[topaz119]

Title: doesn't matter if i bleed
Fandom: The Avengers (movie-verse)
Pairing: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Rating: Explicit
Length: ~19,300 words
Notes/Warnings: Post-movie fix-it--spoilers for everything, plus trigger warnings for the events of the movie and PTSD related to those events. Thanks to clarkward for reading in flight; withdiamonds for the medical consults; and without_me for cleaning everything up and poking my run-ons into readable shape.

Summary: Clint's never pretended to be deep. He's just the guy who sits back and watches, the guy who makes the shot when he needs to. He's seen a lot of crap in his time, sat through a lot of fucked-up scenes to get to where he needs to be, but this, now--he can't stand another second of it.

Links: LJ | AO3

Comments

[without_me]

Yay! Glad I could help.

[topaz119]

You deserve all the hearts for fixing yet another BB-sized ramble in a fandom you don't follow. *mwhah*

[withdiamonds.livejournal.com]

\o/!

[topaz119.livejournal.com]

I still haven't finished with the curtain fic part, D! They will not leave me alone!!

[eretria.livejournal.com]

I will have to preface this with saying that I came late to the party and could not figure out for the life of me what made Coulson so interesting (I saw Avengers first and the other movies later). But even without the other movies, your story would have completely sold me on the pairing.

This is fantastic writing. I love how brittle Clint is, how absolutely in character. You don't see much on the surface, but everything underneath is a complete mess. I love that he barely trusts himself. The fear of stronger painkillers is so very poignant, the attempt not to sleep, the hypervigilance. His PTSD is quiet and all the more effective for it.
I have no idea how you managed it, but you bring the elegance of the archer to the way you write his character. The stillness combined with the ability to just flow into action. It's a beautiful thing to behold.

I love the team rallying (Shakespeare!) to get him to move. I am head-over-heels for the friendship with Natasha. (To be very honest, that bit was what started me reading in the first place, the refreshing statement of non-shippiness there).
It's so lovely to see how imperfect Clint and Phil are together, and yet how through all their baggage, they just work.

Wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it with us. It may sound silly, but I feel enriched now.

[topaz119.livejournal.com]

wow, thank you so very much! I struggled a lot with this (even though I usually end up writing characters who don't really express their feelings (hellloooo, Winchester brothers), Clint took it the whole actions-not-words to a new level) so I am incredibly thrilled that this worked for you.

I'm also thrilled to be an enabling gateway into the love of Coulson, because I really adore Clark Gregg and his interactions with the fans and how much fun he's always seemed to have in playing the secret BAMF that Phil Coulson is. (If you haven't seen the extra scenes and the two short videos Marvel released featuring our favorite SHIELD agent, give me a shout and I will hook you up with online versions.)

I started this with the idea of the death story being Coulson's idea rather than Fury's, but it always presented itself as being from Clint's point of view so I had to figure out how all that would affect him. And being that he doesn't strike me as the verbal type, that meant how he was acting and how everything would have affected him. I always saw the rest of the team as having much more confidence in him than he would have in himself (confidence that was backed up by him having clawed his way back to being rock solid in the field even if he felt like he was only barely holding onto that.) And then, borrowing a little from comics canon, the edge of uncertainty about how and where he fit in seemed to work really well with his lack of trust in himself.

And I have to say I can ship Clint/Natasha (and Clint/Phil/Natasha) like nobody else, but for this story I shifted that hard over into partners territory. Still pretty much inseparable, but family rather than lovers.

Again, thank you so so very much for this comment--it was an amazing email to wake up to. ♥ ♥