The first time Clint meets Nick Fury, one of the student directors of resident life in the SHIELD Tower dorms, he's a little terrified. It's not his fault.
Phil is the one who introduces him, roping him into a "Meet and Greet" event during the first week. It's a way to, well, meet the university faculty who live in the building (why anyone would want to live at school forever, Clint doesn't know) and the students who work for the dorms. Phil gets Clint to come by telling him he doesn't want to go alone, and Clint is absolutely sure that he's lying, except he feels like a dick being distrustful, so he goes, and he mingles. Sort of.
Mostly, he stands off to the side of the room and watches people. Introductions aren't his strong suit, not really - people speaking too quietly and too quickly for him to pick up on it sometimes, and it's impolite to ask them to repeat their names. Really, it isn't his favorite place to be, but he's there for moral support. At the very least, Phil will know that he isn't the most embarrassing person at the event.
Phil's not the most talkative or bouncy of people, but he's moving around between all the different people rather comfortably. Not that he doesn't notice what Clint's been doing, he knows exactly where he is, but he knows better than to force Clint too much out of his comfort zone. At the very least, though, Phil decides that Clint should meet at least one person. So he picks the scariest person in the room, of course.
Nick Fury is tall, he has an imposing eye-patch, and he's a military veteran who's finishing up his last year as a political science and history double major. He also wears a giant black trench coat all the time that fucking billows behind him when he walks, and he can probably break Clint in half, so yeah, he's scary. It takes him a while to warm up to him, and then they get along. It's not very easy, and it's tense at times (Clint's tendency of flicking paper balls at people has annoyed some of his floormates, the ones who end up as collateral damage when his friends duck out of the way, who of course complain to Fury), especially when Clint refuses to obey rules. But overall, it's not as bad as it could be.
Clint's not 100% sure, but he kind of knows that Fury puts on a really strict front. Part of the reason why Fury is so scary, besides being so tall and eye-patched, is how he handles dorm rules violations. He pulls himself up to his full height and glares the fuck out of you, and you can just tell where all the expletives are supposed to be when he's yelling at you. Not that it happened to him personally, Clint tells Phil, but he watched Fury tear Tony a new one for building some physics thing in his room and blasting AC/DC at 3 in the morning on a weekday, when Quiet Hours start at 10PM.
Phil, being Phil, doesn't change his facial expression at all, except for a tiny crack of a smile. Clint swears that he probably would have rolled his eyes, though, or maybe smirked if he wanted to. Instead, he gets a "Fury's perfectly within his rights to document Tony for violating the rules."
But then again, Phil and Fury get along almost ridiculously well. Phil, Clint has learned, likes to at least appear simple and bland, and he's nothing if not professional. That isn't to say that he's conservative or inflexible, far from it. Phil can be super innovative, he probably is all the time, but he prefers for people to underestimate him. Fury, Clint would guess, understands that, but in a different way. Phil pushes people's buttons by being so to-the-line, he can get a good measure of what they like, and once he knows what he needs he starts improvising. Fury does the same thing (otherwise Tony Stark would have about 50 more disciplinary meetings with the Council, the actual directors of the dorms). Not to mention, they have the same majors, so Phil goes to Fury for advice, although he's said it's not a one-way channel. Clint doesn't know what exactly Phil helps Fury with, but he trusts his word.
Natasha, too, gets along with Fury almost too well. From the moment Clint introduced the two (during a pretty awkward "waiting for the elevator" period), she's thought that he's adorable. She spends a lot of time in Fury's office, chatting with him about the effect of Cold War politics on modern-day policies, and heckling him to work on getting more healthy food options in the cafeteria. Somehow, it works (the salad bar almost doubles in size). She also drags Clint down to the office with her, plopping next to him on Nick's super comfy couch to do her homework in relative calm and comfort. It's weird, Clint thinks, especially considering how little Natasha likes being around people. But she seems comfortable with him.
They're not dating or anything ("yet," Sam says, as Tony waggles his eyebrows with an exaggeratedly creepy grin) but she seems alright with quick hugs sometimes, if they're not surprise attack hugs, which they're not even close enough for. In front of Fury, though, she seems almost like she's at home. And as the student life director, Nick had to make the "come to my office anytime for anything, I'll even read your papers for you" speech, and Natasha holds him to it. It helps that Natasha's such a good writer, so Fury barely even marks her paper. But he doesn't let her off easy, either. He challenges her ideas, argues with her over sentence length, and Natasha grows more comfortable and confident in her own skin.
Seeing her content makes Clint smile. He remembers meeting her, the impossibly pretty girl with the dangerous aura, like someone who you shouldn't push too far. She wanted everything to be too perfect, impossibly so, and she'd punished herself for her perceived misgivings. Only a week or two ago, she had been too serious. Not that she was giant goofball now. She definitely doesn't crack jokes 24/7, or poke fun at everyone around her. No, Clint thinks, her actions, her demeanor aren't so different from before. But she's less tense, now, she doesn't freeze up when people look at her for a just a bit longer than she likes. She takes dance classes again, slowly immersing herself in an old pastime that used to make her happy. The look on her face when she gets back from lessons makes the worry and phone-clutching Clint does worth it. Even as Bucky laughs at him (again, but Bucky always laughs at him over his behaviors concerning Natasha), he wouldn't change it for the world. Natasha is so much healthier than before, so much more comfortable with people than she used to be.
She hugs her friends, Maria and Pepper and Clint and Steve, even. She's not physically clingy, she doesn't crave touch, but she seems to love hugs. Hugs, she tells him, are something she never got while a student at Vaganova, because she never really bonded with any of her peers. But she smiles more readily now, tiny little smirks that Stark says "don't count" as real smiles. Natasha would deck him for saying that, if it wasn't for the nervous laughs he gives off whenever he tries to make a joke.
Tony Stark, Clint's learned, is not as much of a douche as he thought. Sure, he can be thoughtless and selfish, but he's there for his friends when they need him. If he counts you as a friend, that is, and Tony's quick to judge and cast off people who he thinks have wronged him. He has this annoying tendency of thinking that everything can be bought with money, but he's only Tony fucking Stark, after all. Rich as fucking Croesus, so he's mostly only ever had people cater to his every whim, rather than challenge and teach him about proper behavior.
It's no wonder that Fury can't stand him. While Clint often toes the line when it comes to "accidentally" breaking the rules, and outright challenging them, Tony really doesn't give a fuck. He chafes at the idea of listening to other people, and talks constantly about how he doesn't really need to go to school. "I'm a genius, remember that," he'll tell everyone. It's fucking annoying, and Clint isn't sure how Rhodey puts up with him. Loki sort of jokes that Rhodey's probably his keeper and throws a nasty look at Thor that everyone notices, because Loki doesn't even try to be subtle. But it's a lot more than that. There's no fucking way Rhodey would hang out with Tony if he just babysat him all day. Rhodey's a good guy, but he's smart enough to not subject himself to some weird kind of emotionally manipulative relationship. Not to mention those kinds of friendship dynamics, as Bucky so eloquently put it, are "fucked up."
Clint can't say he understands them at all, but it's not even his place. As long as nothing weird is going on - no fighting, no bruises, no cuts - platonic or romantic, he really doesn't give a fuck. But once someone gets hurt, Clint's not going to just stand by. He's not going to watch that happen again.
Of course, that's exactly what gets him into trouble.