When he walks into Nick's office after the nearly yearlong break, it's like nothing has changed at all.
"It's good to have you back," is all Nick says to acknowledge the months when he wasn't around. And then he hands him a file. "That's Grant Ward's file," he says, "I want him on your team."
"Since when did Ward develop superpowers?"
"He didn't," Nick replies. "The Avengers don't need you as a handler at the moment, especially not when they're currently under the impression that you're dead. You're being moved to deal with other superhuman threats – just because the Tesseract is gone doesn't mean it didn't leave an impact. Look at Ward's file, and let me know if I should promote him to level 7 clearance or not."
There's no mention of the events of his death or anything that followed, not even the Battle of Manhattan, and he's grateful for that. It's going to take him a bit of time to come to terms with what happened to him, and Nick trying to discuss it would not have helped at all.
He knows Nick. He's well aware that he's not going to be free of handling superhumans who act like twelve-year olds for the rest of his life – he knows how to deal with the Avengers without going crazy, and none of the other handlers were able to deal with Clint and Natasha together, let alone all six of them.
He'll be back to his old duties soon enough, but in the meantime – well, whatever it was that Nick was going to have him do was definitely going to be easier than babysitting the Avengers.
I hope you guys liked it! It's my first time writing for this fandom, so please drop a review and let me know how I did! :)