Yay! Two chapters in a day! This story is becoming obnoxiously long...eh, I don't care.

*random Gru from Despicable Me accent* I like to make Steve take care of children for no apparent reason. I also like to write Phil for no reason.

Boy's fourteen.

Steve sighed in sadness when he heard the retching noise coming from the training room's bathroom.

Clint had been in North Korea for almost three days already, not the most secure place, but he's ran missions down there before. Steve just wanted to check on the kids, Amelia was out somewhere with Abby ("We're going thrifting and to Starbucks to look for hipsters". Steve wasn't quite sure what a hipster was, but he let them go anyway.) as usual. Phillip, had other methods of passing the time.

He'd lock himself in that gymnastics room with a tennis ball, chucking it against the walls, sprinting over the obstacles and catch it. He'd do it over and over again, different angles and over different bars all the time. He'd get that little ball stuck in the rafters and see how long it would take him to get up there and find it, all while doing little flips and tricks off the bars. The sound would always echo off the walls but the kid wouldn't make a peep while moving to catch it. It was quite a sight to see. If he didn't work himself too hard.

"Jarvis?" Steve asked the unspoken question.

"Four hours and thirty eight minutes." The AI almost sounded worried when he spoke again. "Sir, young Mr. Barton's vitals such as temperature and heart rate have become unhealthily high."

Steve kept walking towards the bathroom. "Great." He sighed, pushing the door open to one of the stalls.

The captain was greeted with the sight of his nephew hunched over the toilet, and expelling all contents of his stomach. His white shirt was soaked in sweat, more glistened off his neck and face. Steve knew it wasn't just from his workout, he could almost see the heat emitting from his nephew. He suddenly felt a surge of guilt that he didn't come down here sooner, Phillip never really knew when to quit.

He felt like shit. Phil always felt like shit when he was sick, which was often enough. It was like a ripple in the gene pool, Phillip never saw his mother get sick in all the years he remembered, and whenever Clint to sick it was just a cold, no bother to him. Amelia was average. Got ill maybe once around flu season or something but got over it quickly. Not Phillip. No, he had once ran a fever of 108.2 for six days straight when he was only four years old. That was the worst, Natasha was scared to death the whole time and no one could really do anything to help the boy all that much. Almost died right in the hospital from Pneumonia of all things.

The illness the teen was experiencing now was not as awful, but definitely bad. He laid his sweaty forehead down on the rim of the toilet and shuddered when Steve put a hand on his back.

"Not feeling so hot?" The captain asked.

"I think I just threw up my intestines." Phillip groaned, voice raspy. He clutched his stomach when it started gurgling, threatening to expel its contents-which there was none anyway-and just force Phil to wait there gagging up nothing. His body was weird that way.

Steve sighed and flushed the sick down. "Maybe if you didn't work yourself..."

"Maybe if he wouldn't leave all the time.." Phillip mocked, his tone on offense. It wasn't a secret that the teen did not approve of his father leaving them at least once a month.

"All right, truce." He held his hands up in surrender, not wanting to start anything. The red head had a shot temper when he was feeling under the weather, and Steve really needed him to cooperate if there was a chance he'd be okay before Clint got back. Steve for some reason felt responsible for the kids when Clint was gone. Yes, they were older and could be left alone, but that doesn't necessarily mean Steve's just going to let them be. "Why don't you just take shower and meet me back upstairs?"

"Fine." The teen grumbled and staggered out of the bathroom.

Phillip drew out a breath of relief when he stepped out of the shower. He never understood how people actually thought showers made them feel better. It's basically work. You stand here for half an hour under either boiling hot or freezing cold water, squeezing a bottle until you are able to get at least a tiny drop of soap, then it's like a race against time to wash yourself fast enough before the water gets too cold again. Don't even start about getting soap in his bad eye, it was only a few months after the incident that almost ended in Phil being blinded. His left eye still had temper tantrums when an eyelash decided to get caught it.

So the so called 'relaxing' shower only made him more exhausted. The teenager donned some thin pajama pants with one of Clint's old T Shirts that he may, or may not have stolen from him. He climbed up the small ladder to loft bed, and flopped down onto the brown sheets. Steve entered a few minutes later.

"Feel better?" The captain asked sympathetically.

"No." Phil groaned into the mattress. "Showers are annoying." He curled into his stomach and nuzzled his head into the pillow.

Steve smiled at the childish action. Phillip was always carrying a bit too much on his shoulders most of the time, he acted like his father when it came to that. Like taking care of Amy or trying to keep his grades at least average and unnecessarily watching out for everyone was no big deal. It was nice to see him let the walls down. "Well just take it easy. That, March Mania or whatever you call it is on. Should I put that on?"

The teen chuckled. "Madness."

"What?"

"It's called March Madness." And Phillip would know, he loved basketball. Him and Clint used to watch it all the time.

"Ah." Steve nodded and clicked on the TV, after flicking a few cans of pop off of the nightstand attached to the wall to find the remote.

The television was at the corner of the wall above the door. Phillip's room was small compared to the other's, a desk with his laptop underneath the loft bed. Which really wasn't even a bed, more like a nest of green and brown and a rusty red colored pillows and blankets, Clint got him hooked on that. An old couch him and Clint found at a garage sale a few years ago sat on the opposite wall from his bed next to the bathroom door. The bottom half of his walls were exposed bricks, the same rusty red color, the top half a dark green regular plaster with a stripe of brown separating the colors. Half a wall, above the brick was just a window that could be dimmed, as it was now. The ceiling was the best, a railway of bars (colored like the red, but were actually rusting now) scaled the entire ceiling, leading to the bathroom, over the couch, to the door, across the window. Some days Phillip didn't even touch the ground.

Steve made sure Phil was all good and comfortable with only the sheet over him instead of the comforter. Kid was still emitting heat, Steve wouldn't be surprised if the controlled-for-right-now fever eventually turned into some kind of flu or infection.

The soldier went into and came out of the bathroom and nudged Phil's shoulder with a glass of water. The teen stared at it like Steve was asking him to drink gasoline. "No." He groaned shaking his head and laying it back down on the pillows. "Anything in my stomach isn't working out."

"C'mon," Steve nagged him. Phillip didn't move. "Don't deal with dehydration too. Jarvis already told me you were down there four hours."

"Well, Jarvis is stupid." He grumbled. Just then the AI spoke up.

"I'm sorry sir, but who's idea was it to take shots of pure-caffeinated drinks at eleven pm?" Damn that computer and his smartass-ery.

"Mute." Steve ordered the machine, eyeing the ceiling accusingly. Jarvis would be the only machine who could have the capability to create banter. He sighed and held out the glass again. "And drink." He shot him one of his Captain America glares. The glare that got it's power from freedom itself. And the fact that the conversation got to a point where Steve just wanted to say 'do what I tell you or shit will go down' and was just too polite to say it.

"Whatever," Phillip groaned and took sips of the water. "you're down there way longer and way more often than I am anyway."

"You are not genetically altered." Steve told him nonchalantly. "I was made to handle more. Metabolism and stuff like that. Plus, being sick as a dog doesn't really help."

"Yeah well, whatever." Phillip grumbled and slid his arms underneath the pillows, flipping onto his stomach. "And I'm not a dog." He said, more light heartedly, with a bit of a sleepy tone.

The blonde had a small smile on his face. "No Phil, no you're not." He set the water on the nightstand and dropped two pills next to the glass. "That's something to help you sleep, take it when you're ready. I'll be right upstairs if you need anything, ask Jarvis to get me."

"Okay." Phil mumbled and turned his attention back to the basketball game. Steve nodded a 'good' and started to walk out the door, flicking the lights off so only the TV was lit. "Hey Steve?" The teenager called out for him, he turned around.

"Yeah son?"

"Thanks." The red head whispered.

Steve smiled again. It was a thanks that would never be necessary. He loved that stubborn ass kid almost as much as Clint did. And as much as the old war hero knew that Clint would do anything if he could be able to drop everything and come home when he was needed, Steve would gladly fill in when the archer realized that he couldn't. Steve didn't mind one bit.

"No problem."