NOTES: A friend of mine wrote to me in an email and wanted me to explain how I thought everyone's favorite SHIELD trio came together as a team, and why in my head Clint and Phil are together. What was meant to be a simple answer became a nearly 3400 word brain dump.

Since this is a brain dump, it's written with a very messy style. Forgive me for that.

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. Don't sue, please.

Clint was first. He's recruited after leaving the circus and being on the run from authorities. SHIELD brings him in as a sniper, and despite being the best shot they have, he's a nightmare to his handlers. None of them stick around too long and they continually pass him off to someone else as soon as possible. This does not help Barton's already messed up psyche after dealing with an abusive father who was killed, being raised by his brother (who got him into trouble and left him) and carnies (never staying put, not seeing why you should trust others).

Then comes this new handler. Clint doesn't pay too close attention to his name because it's only a matter of weeks before he dumps him onto someone else, too.

Their first mission out, Clint ends up in medical, which is not an uncommon occurrence. Barton comes back into the world of the living to hear the new handler yelling. He figures it's directed at him, which is also nothing new, but it takes a second (stupid pain meds) to realize it's directed at a doctor for missing a hairline fracture in his asset's right leg.

This is new.

Barton feels grateful for a second, but the rational part of his brain reminds him that the new guy just wants to make sure whether or not he's field-eligible.

He learns the handler's name-Coulson-and at first they clash a little bit, but Barton clashes with everyone. Coulson isn't fazed by it. Clint learns he used to be an Army Ranger. He expects to be put on some kind of regiment, but isn't. Coulson makes it aware when Barton screws up, but seems content to ignore Clint's little quirks (crawling in air ducts, chatting on comms, preference for his bow and arrow on missions) that drives everyone else a little crazy.

They make it two weeks together, then a month, then two. Coulson's voice in his ear saves him three times in those two months. Coulson is never smug about, never holds it over his head, just does his job and gets Clint home in (relatively) one piece.

A shift happens, trust starts to form. Small changes happen. Clint even acknowledges when he's over his limit of weekly allotted hours on the shooting range and heeds Coulson's words to put the bow down and get some sleep. Sleep has never been easy for Barton to find; it leaves him too vulnerable.

Four months in, orders come down for Barton to take out a Russian spy who has caused nine kinds of hell. Clint doesn't think anything about it really when he studies her file and photo to ensure he shoots the correct person. But when things go live and he sees her in action, his resolve starts to falter.

No doubt she is deadly. Her moves in taking down six large, heavily armed men are graceful, effortless, efficient, and entirely lethal. Since the men were mutual enemies of SHIELD, Coulson holds the kill order until this Widow has taken care of their problem for them, and then Phil gives him the go ahead. Barton has an arrow notched, but his fingers keep their grip tight of their own volition.

It takes a second to understand what his brain has quickly recognized in his target. It's the emptiness. She's an empty shell moving through life. It appears on her face for a split second, but long enough for Barton to see it and recognize it in his own past. He puts his arrow back in the quiver and draws another. This one will only knock her unconsciousness with some electric current.

Coulson starts asking him what's wrong as soon as Clint moves to switch arrows. Barton replies with only two words: "Trust me." And to Coulson's credit, he does. He's furious about it, but he does.

Barton gets off his roof, and moves to the building next door. He climbs the nine floors to retrieve the petite limp form on the ground. She's started to wake by then. He holds out his left hand and says "Come with me if you want to live" because he's cheesy like that. She's confused, but sees his quiver, knows who he is (he's made a name for himself in the last couple of years using a trademark weapon for his work), and decides that taking hold of his hand is slightly less lethal than having an arrow buried in her eye.

She doesn't say anything on the way back to headquarters, neither do Clint nor Coulson (at least not after Coulson hotly whispered in the archer's ear that they will be discussing breaches in protocol later. In great detail). Barton does feel a little guilty about putting his handler in the situation, but in his gut he knows he made the right call. Coulson must see Barton's reasoning in his eyes (the man is scary good at reading people) because he hides Barton away when they get back to base and sets him up with a closed-circuit feed of the interrogation room where she is being kept.

Coulson is about to walk in and start asking questions when Fury arrives, living fully up to his name. Coulson takes the fall for Clint. He says he's the one who made the call (although recordings of their comms obviously show he's lying). Coulson talks fast and gets Fury to agree to try and turn her for their advantage. The Director chews on the idea for a few minutes before reluctantly agreeing but makes it clear that if things go south, he'll personally be the one to put a bullet in her skull.

Natasha is smart, brilliant really, and she can recognize when to close one door and walk through a different one that has opened before her. It takes a couple of weeks for the three of them to find their footing. Natasha doesn't say much at the beginning, and what she does say (that isn't intelligence that she's giving away-not all of it because she needs them to need her) is obviously a lie.

Barton is sent out on a mission a month after they take Natasha in. Coulson and Romanoff are tasked last minute to do recon work in Germany. She waits quietly for her orders from her handler. She follows them to the letter. Coulson can read a tightness in her neck and shoulders. She probably thinks she knows a better way to get things done, and maybe she does, but she doesn't say anything. The contact she was to meet falls through, but not because of anything they've done. They go back to the safehouse that night. It's dark and quiet. Coulson wants nothing more to finish his paperwork and get some sleep. Romanoff sits quietly at his side telling her version of events while he writes her words. He pushes the paperwork away from him. Natasha lightly rests her hand on his arm and starts to talk to him in a soft, feminine voice, apologizing for the op not working out. Coulson shakes his head a bit and quietly commanders her, "Don't."

"But—"

His eyes snap open and fix on her. "That is not how I treat my agents. Ever."

Confusion passes over her face and she withdraws her touch from him. She moves off to her bedroom and he does the same. They don't speak to each other for the rest of the day nor trip home.

Natasha and Clint gel well together as a team. They are ruthless and efficient. With Coulson's voice in their ears they are nearly unstoppable. Of course some things go bad and not every mission is a success. Barton can't stay out of medical forever.

Eight months after Natasha is brought in, she and Clint start sleeping together. Their relationship is tempestuous, heady, and heated. It lasts for four months before they decide they're better off as friends and co-workers. It doesn't mean that they don't fall into bed with each other on occasion over the next year, but for the most part they mutually agree (much to Coulson's relief on many levels) that they are better off as bros instead of hos.

For the next four years they operate as Strike Team Delta. The three of them are sent all over the country and the world to take care of SHIELD business. Then the world starts to get a sense of humor. Billionaires start making suits of armor, old war heroes are found in ice, and alien hammers form craters in the desert.

Coulson calls Barton on the helicarrier floating over the east coast in the middle of the night as he drives from LA to New Mexico. "You should probably get out here."

"Where's Tasha?" he asks sleepily.

"Staying in Los Angeles to keep an eye on Stark with Director Fury."

"If we end up fighting aliens without her, you know she's going to be pissed at us for the rest of her life."

They meet up in New Mexico. Barton first meets Thor through the scope of his bow. He warns Coulson in pre-agreed code, per agreement after Natasha's spur of the moment recruitment, that he is once again faltering on feeling okay with releasing a kill shot if ordered. Thankfully the order doesn't come.

Once the Norse god returns to wherever he came from, SHIELD decides to team up with Selvig and tries putting the Tesseract to use in New Mexico. Barton is put in charge of babysitting the scientists. Part of him wonders what he did to piss Fury off this time, but there is a small part of him that is grateful that he isn't flying all over the world eating questionable food and sleeping in bug-infested safehouses.

They spend six months there. Natasha is sent off on missions from time to time, about half of them involve Coulson being tasked with her. Clint spends his days up in his perch keeping an eye on the scientists who spend endless hours scanning and staring at a glowing cube.

It gets boring some days, but it's almost a nice kind of boring. Clint hasn't really stayed in one place this long since he was a child. He starts to make friends with Jane Foster and her assistant, Darcy.

He sleeps regularly for the first time in a while, too. Still not a lot, but as long as it's on the couch in Coulson's office, he's fine. Nat rolls her eyes at both Clint and their handler for it. Coulson gives a minute glare in return and Clint is puzzled. She's exhausted and cranky one day while the three review an op and listen to playback from the comms where Barton and Coulson are bickering with each other, and she slips (although Natasha really never slips anytime she doesn't want to, Clint realizes when he goes back and thinks about what happened) and says, "Can you two just screw and get it over with?"

Coulson immediately dismisses Clint from the room. Barton is too thrown by why Coulson is visibly upset (to those who have known and watched him for years, anyway) at the remark to put two and two together. He thinks about quickly sneaking up into the air ducts because Natasha is the golden child of this ninja assassin duo, and rarely does she get an all-out tongue lashing from their handler. Clint thinks he should videotape it and use it for blackmail before quickly coming to his senses and realizing that both Coulson and Natasha would kill him (slowly) if they found out.

His body leads him to the shooting range before his brain catches up on why he's here. This is his place to drain his mind of crowding thoughts. A place to calm himself and focus. It's there where he realizes why Coulson reacted the way he did. Clint's slow like that when it comes to social interactions and relationships.

His handler has the hots for him. Part of him wants to be smug; shrug and say that it's difficult for anyone not to be attracted to him. But there's nagging going on his brain. He spends another quiver's worth of arrows trying to parse things out.

Clint is used to attraction. He's wired for visual and tactile learning. So how did he miss this? Memories start filtering through his mind. All the hours he spent sleeping on Coulson's couch. The numerous times he'd woken up with a post-it stuck to his forehead (without waking up when they were placed there, which speaks more to the situation than he may be ready for right now) reminding him to eat or telling him how many hours he was over on the range and that he'd better not go there unless he wants his bows broken. Every time he's woken up in medical, Coulson was there sitting at his bedside sleeping, harassing the medical staff, or filling out paperwork.

But aren't these just the signs of a good handler? Someone who keeps his agents in line and healthy so they can complete their missions to the best of their abilities?

He begins to compare Coulson's actions with him to those of Natasha. Coulson, of course, keeps close tabs on her, too. He waits at her bedside in medical when she's injured. She doesn't sleep on his couch because she's fine with her own bed, but Barton's sure Coulson would let her if she wanted to.

His mind flitters back to a story Tasha told him years ago about when she first joined. About how she tried to seduce their handler as a means of apologizing for an op gone wrong and how Coulson didn't want any part of it. Clint has a better understanding now of why any human with two neurons to rub together could even think about turning down an offer like that from a woman like that, but then he remembers the words Natasha told him.

"That is not how I treat my agents. Ever."

That leads Clint's brain down the next path—how long has this been going on? He's considered Coulson to be on his short list of friends for years now. They've hung out from time to time. Granted, it's not very often and most of those times are on missions where they have to wait a day or two before they can get be evac'ed. But those still count right?

And then it hits him—he's not really freaking out about this. It wouldn't be the first time that Clint's paired himself off with guy. He's been through enough mandatory SHIELD psych sessions to know that emotional damage from his childhood inclines him to fall into bed with anyone who is willing to show him some sort of affection. He never stays around for long. Takes what he can get and then leaves as soon as possible.

He can't do that with this. He makes the decision then and there to let this be different. Because he does want this. He thinks anyway; knows deep down. He wants someone to sit by his bedside and fuss over him when he's in medical. Someone to remind him to eat his vegetables. Someone who will let him sleep on their couch and not make fun of his snoring that happens only when he feels safe enough to sleep deeply (not even Natasha does that).

He trusts Coulson. That is not a verb he uses often or lightly. Shouldn't you be with someone you trust? Shouldn't you be with someone who wants to take care of you? Clint thinks the answer is yes, but he's never a) had that kind of relationship afforded to him or b) never thought to seek out something like that. He doesn't know how to handle that, how to reciprocate. So he can't really answer the question.

He pauses in his firing to freeze and really analyze how he's feeling. Was he expecting this? Hell, no. Would he fight it? The ease with which his mind answers, "No," unnerves him slightly. There's a lot at risk in this. Barton couldn't work with any other handler. Maybe Sitwell, but even that wouldn't last forever. And Clint is also notorious at screwing things up with relationships. Probably doesn't help matters that there were only a few times where he did care if things were screwed up.

He hears the measured footsteps approach from behind. Loud enough to make Clint aware of the presence, but not so noisy to distract him from his target practice or be showy. Coulson.

The handler waits for Clint to empty his quiver before he speaks. "I should apologize for how that briefing ended."

"No, you shouldn't," Clint responds. "Natasha is a big enough girl to make her own apologies. Or at least that's the line you give me whenever I have to go off and apologize to people instead of you doing it for me."

"Your bribes don't give me enough motivation to cover for you any more than I already do."

Clint feels it on his lips, the sexually-charged quip. He has to literally bite his tongue to keep the joke from falling out of his mouth uncontrollably. Coulson must notice because he hears the agent suck in a breath to speak, but Clint beats him to it. Without taking his eyes off his target down range to analyze the pattern of arrows he's left there, he says, "We could give it a try. If you wanted. You know, us."

Coulson's pause is so long Clint wonders if he's ninja-ed himself out of the room. Again. But it eventually comes. "Barton… Clint," Coulson corrects himself in what sounds like a practiced exhale of his name. "I don't want to put an agent in that kind of situation. Especially one under my supervision."

"No one is going to believe that you ordered me into dating you. Everyone knows how badly I follow instructions."

"Actually," Coulson responds, and Clint can hear the faint air of amusement in his voice, "most people think we already are dating. It seems Natasha isn't the only one who thinks we sound like an old married couple on the comms."

That makes Clint turn with his usual smirk. "Oh, really?"

Coulson shrugs in response.

"Well if they're already thinking it, and you haven't gotten fired over it, then why not?"

They schedule a dinner for the following evening. Nothing fancy, but still different enough from the usual eating take-out in Coulson's office to feel special. It's delayed. Clint is sent out for a mission and is gone for three days. When he gets back it's late, but he finds Coulson's office light on, so like a moth he heads toward it. Coulson looks him up and down, expert eyes taking in everything to make sure no one was lying when they said Barton had returned safe and sound.

They skip the dinner out and go to Phil's apartment. Since the night is halfway over, they settle on pancakes and bacon. They talk about the mission, the state of the world, and other safe topics. That night Clint trades the couch in Phil's office for the couch in Phil's apartment. He sleeps more comfortably than he can remember until he's awoken by the smell of coffee. Neither man says much to the other, both having been around each other long enough to know not to bother with conversation until at least two cups of coffee is in their system. (Natasha requires four.)

They go back to SHIELD's temporary headquarters and go about their day. On the surface, it doesn't look like much has changed. Natasha shoots them each looks and smirks the whole day; she receives glares from Coulson and playful shoves from Clint, but no one actually says anything. The three have their usual morning briefing. Natasha is tasked to retrieve some information from Mother Russia while Clint spends another day of babysitting scientists.

Two nights of easy talk, simple meals, crappy reality television, and hours of restful sleep on Phil's couch (Clint feels weird having to start to call him that when they're not in the office) later, Clint wakes up on a day that feels like a regular Tuesday. They go to the office, the two of them have a briefing, Clint heads off to babysit. But it's not a regular Tuesday. The Tesseract has decided to play today.