Two; Clint
The next pet incident happened a week later, and Coulson had the sinking feeling that it wasn't something that was going to go away on its own. He was reminded of Fury telling him that he was going to be a super nanny, dealing with adult children. He'd laughed him off, at the time.
Now, staring at his favorite agent and his…pet…he regretted laughing.
"Why, Barton?" Coulson couldn't help the exasperation that leaked into his voice, and Clint looked appropriately sheepish.
Unlike Thor's lion cub incident a week prior, the entire team happened to be present. They'd just gotten back from a mission, and Coulson was ready to congratulate his team on a job well done when he'd turned and found a small, brown, fur covered eighth member.
Tony was smirking, though tiredly, with Bruce passed out on his shoulder. Natasha was staring and looking bored, which she might well have been. Thor was looking very firmly at the ground, managing to look like a giant scolded child, still, and Steve was watching Barton's pet with rapt interest.
"Well, sir…there were all those animals they set loose. And this little one got trampled." He gently petted the side of the baby kangaroo's neck, and Phil sighed. The rampaging animals had been a mild surprise—mild, because they were in a zoo, of all things, fighting some eco-group that had managed to get some Chitauri tech on their sides.
"Why did you bring it home?" He really should have expected it, though. Barton grew up in a circus, and Coulson knew he'd taken care of the animals as a child. He should have expected it. But at the same time, he thought that a grown man would know better.
He was so tired of being wrong.
"I couldn't leave her there, sir. She's so little, and they'd corralled most of the animals already," Most, because some where still running loose on busy streets, "so I had no idea where her mother was. Her leg is broken." He pointed out the obviously hastily done cast as if that made it all right.
Coulson really wished he could just smack a palm to his forehead, but knew that the team would, somehow, take that the wrong way, and God only knew what they'd bring home next time.
He blamed himself, a bit, for assuming that the team could make it home unsupervised. He'd stayed behind to talk to a few SHIELD agents about the tech, and had let the team take the QuinJet without him. It wasn't a terribly long ride back to the Mansion, after all.
He regretted that, now.
"You're not a vet, Barton." He was careful to keep calling Clint by his surname so that he knew how upset Coulson was. And just as Coulson hoped, Clint's eyes fell to the animal in his lap.
"I know, sir. I just…there was a 'roo at the circus when I was younger and I helped raise it and…I'm not going to get to keep her, am I?" He sounded so pitiful that Coulson had to close his eyes when he pinched the bridge of his nose to keep from looking at him.
"No, Barton. You're not. I'm going to call the zoo's management and have them come and pick her up. Tonight." He heard Clint sigh but when he looked he was nodding, if sadly, so Coulson knew he'd won.
He turned to leave the room to place the call—and contemplate his life choices just a bit—when he heard Tony, with a horrible Australian accent, say, "Crickey, Barton. A 'roo?"
The sound of someone—Natasha most likely—hitting him and the indignant noise of pain that followed made Phil give a hopeless headshake.
Super nanny indeed.
