Tonight, Marvel finally unleashes the climactic Avengers: Endgame upon the world. Spoiler alert: it's really, really good. Endgame is the culmination of a story over a decade in the making, one that has irrevocably altered the cinematic landscape and created a passionate fanbase. And one thing those fans love to do more than almost anything is imagine their favorite Avengers having gay sex.
Fanfiction is the cornerstone of any fandom, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is no different. On popular fanwork website Archive of Our Own (AO3), there are currently 269,849 works in the MCU tag, most of which center on queer relationships between male characters. These stories range from porny one-shots that take place between canon scenes to sprawling, novel-length (and quality) epics that set characters in alternate universes.
But who are the most popular pairings in Marvel slash fanfiction? In honor of Avengers: Endgame, I did some digging -- and yes, I may have stopped to read a little porn during my research.
Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes
Captain America and the Winter Soldier have a friendship that dates back to pre-WWII, one chronicled in Captain America: The First Avenger and expanded in the gayest Marvel movie (besides Endgame), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is literally a movie about Steve Rogers trying to get his brainwashed ex-boyfriend back. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes have proved time and again in canon that they will do anything for each other, and fanfiction authors have simply taken that bond to its obvious conclusion. Of the 37,326 Steve/Bucky stories on Ao3, many take place in canon, imagining Steve and Bucky falling in love before the war and finding each other again in the present, post-superpowers. The most pressing question of this ship is: who is the bottom? My money is on Cap.
Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
When Captain America and Iron Man first met in The Avengers, sparks flew. These two did not like each other, and fans immediately decided that friction would inevitably lead to ... a different kind of friction. Steve/Tony stories, of which there are currently 22, 390, tend to be more sexy than romantic, although Captain America: Civil War, in which the former teammates became enemies, gave authors some juicy scorned lover drama to work with.
Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Hawkeye and SHIELD's Agent Coulson first appeared together in Thor, and their few interactions were apparently full of enough chemistry that fans decided they were boning on the sly. This one is honestly kind of baffling to me considering Barton and Coulson are two of the most interesting characters in any given Marvel movie, but no shade! With 9,600 works on AO3, stans clearly don't share my skepticism.
Loki/Tony Stark
Why wouldn't an alien sorcerer god and a billionaire playboy genius fall in love after becoming bitter enemies during an attempt at world domination? Iron Man and Loki share a similar snarky, pessimistic attitude, cunning wit, and ferocious intelligence, making them the perfect fanfiction fuck buddies, according to 7,653 works on AO3.
Peter Parker/Tony Stark
If you haven't seen Spider-Man: Homecoming, you may not understand the powerful daddy/twink energy Peter Parker and his mentor share -- after we'd both seen Endgame, fellow Out staff writer Mathew Rodriguez gushed about all the "Family Dick moments with Tony and Peter," which really says it all. But the Peter/Tony ship isn't just about May/December superhero sex. Thanks to Spider-Man's emotional disintegration in Infinity War ("Mr. Stark ... I don't feel so good..."), this pairing now has some serious emotional resonance for fans ... who want to imagine Tony Stark's goatee getting very familiar with Peter's parts at least 7,314 ways.
Loki/Thor
Thor is the most obviously Game of Thrones-adjacent of the Avengers, so it makes sense that his most popular love interest in fanfiction would be his adoptive brother, the half Frost Giant sorcerer Loki. In the MCU, Thor and Loki were raised as brothers for literally thousands of years before the events of Thor, in which Loki discovers that Odin found him as a baby and raised him as his own son. So, technically Thor and Loki aren't related, making the 6,152 stories about them less cringey than they could be ... but fanfiction writers sure do love having them call each other "brother" while they bone.
