"Well," Stark began expansively, clapping his hands together before his arc reactor, "we've got good news and we've got bad news."
"Bad news first," Clint instructed. Natasha, still dusty from the fight, leaned into him, pressing a gritty shoulder into his bicep.
"It's a de-aging ray for sure, and working pretty much as designed," Stark said. "No idea yet if or when it will reverse itself, and Senor Senility ain't talkin'."
"He will," Natasha promised ominously.
Clint touched his cheek to the top of her hair in thanks, then asked Stark, "We knew that already, didn't we?"
"Uh, no, actually," Bruce inserted, drawing Clint's attention. "During the fight, it seemed to be actually disintegrating things. Buildings, buses, cars..."
"Trees, yeah I got that," Clint interrupted, impatient.
"Bazzzzt! Wrong answer!" Stark overrode him. "Lookie what we got here," he said, gesturing to a tiny sapling of a tree, root ball and all, sitting on a lab bench.
"Yeah, you said something about a baby– Oh. Baby tree," Clint said, catching up.
"Ding-ding-ding! Give the man a Kewpie doll!" Stark said. "With all the dust and damage and chaos, nobody noticed at first that there was still a tree there." He shrugged. "We assumed it had disintegrated like the buildings and whatever. JARVIS is working with footage of the battle to determine the original height of the tree to see if it took as many years off of it as it seems to have taken off Coulson."
"Forty-five or forty-six, it looks like."
"Man, no wonder it looked like he just disappeared. He must be tiny!" Stark shook his head again. "Is he cute? I'll bet little baby Coulson is the most adorable thing ever."
Clint gritted his teeth at Stark's flippant attitude. "And the good news?"
"Ah, good news is that it seems to be very specific. As in, it de-aged everything the same amount, probably even Thor, though we have no way of knowing. The older fixtures from the townhouse renovations? Those are still there. Tree? Still there. Bus? Nope. But," Stark paused for effect, "the effects seem to be stable. And we have the scientist, and Steve is currently giving him the patented Captain America Disapproves look, and SHIELD is gathering all his wacky notes and research. And did I mention that it's not a disintegration ray?"
Seeing the set of Clint's jaw, Natasha tugged at his arm. "Come on, get cleaned up while you have the chance." She pushed him toward the locker room. "I'll have a few words with our crazed scientist." She shrugged delicately. "And then maybe again after he's been allowed to marinate in holding a bit."
With Fury looking after Coulson, Clint took the time to wash off the dust and grime from the battle and get his head together. Coulson wasn't in any immediate danger. SHIELD medical and science and the Avengers were working to return him to his adult state. Clint just wished the shower spray could pound that into his head with every drop of water. He changed into casual clothes and shoved his feet into half-laced combat boots before he returned to medical (and his own quick once-over). When he checked in with Dr. Martinez, she caught him up on all the other tests he'd missed — x-rays and imaging and a whole alphabet soup of scans. He quietly let himself in to Coulson's room and waited until he could get a feel for how things had progressed in his absence.
"You need me to help you to the potty, Phil?" Fury looked like he was fighting to keep a grin off his face, and Clint saw that Coulson's freezing stare was in fact a built-in feature, not one that had developed with adulthood.
"No," Coulson said unequivocally. "I don't." He rubbed his palms down his thighs to push up his overlong sleeves and gathered just enough of his button-up shirt in his hands to avoid stepping on it. Then he wrapped his (reduced) dignity around himself and walked to the small bathroom just off of the exam room, shutting the door behind him.
"Good thing there are automatic lights in those rooms," Fury muttered under his breath. "I don't think you're tall enough to reach light switches."
"Tile echoes," Phil called from the other room. "And besides, there's a step-stool."
"Sonova—" Fury cut himself off, then cursed at his reflexive need to not curse in front of a child.
The toilet flushed, followed by the sound of running water in the sink for a moment before the door opened. Coulson had gathered his shirt up in front of him again, and his impossibly small, bare toes were exposed as he walked across the cold linoleum back to the exam table.
Fury rubbed his eyebrow right where it met his patch. "Coulson, you're going to have to stay here for a while. An S-99X incident makes you a security risk, and we can't have you running around outside of SHIELD until we get this resolved."
The ensuing pause wasn't just pregnant: it was three weeks overdue and about to have labor induced. Clint bit back the words he wanted to use to fill the exam room. That wasn't a plan, that was incarceration. Even with as little experience as he had with children, he knew better than to keep one in a cage.
"I am not a s'kur-ritty rist!" Coulson insisted mulishly, brows drawn down to meet at the top of the frown wrinkles on his unbroken button nose.
Fury squatted down, black coat flaring around his boots, until he could meet the blue eyes of his best friend. "Phil," he said, taking one sleeve — 34 inches, now ridiculously overlong — and pushing it up until the soft, uncallused hand was exposed, "you just told me lunch reminded you of your favorite safe house, the one in Bethesda—" The sleeve slipped back down and Fury rolled it over and over and over again until it left Phil's hand free. "—the one that's your favorite because it smells so nice because of the Vietnamese restaurant downstairs and it has such a nice view of the park." Fury repeated the process with the other sleeve. "Your personal safe house, Cheese. The director of SHIELD doesn't need to know about that."
Phil's eyes grew comically large in his smooth young face, and he clasped his now-exposed hands together. "Oh," he said in his piping tenor. "Then what do we do now?"
"We'll make you as comfortable as we can. Modify some on-site housing to make it more accessible for you, less hazardous." Coulson's gaze sharpened on his. "Phil, your body is a child's. Forget strength and height, your gross motor skills are all shot to he— hell," he said emphatically, "to say nothing of fine motor. Dammit, Phil, you can't even say 'security risk' properly!"
"It's called velar fronting," Clint said from his position near the door, "and it's extremely common in young children. Most develop beyond it by about four years old."
He crossed to where Coulson was standing by the exam table. "When you consider that this is probably the first time that Coulson's mouth has made that combination of sounds at this size," Clint continued, "he's actually doing very well." He nodded to Coulson. "Hey, boss. Told you I wouldn't be gone long."
Coulson's tiny, rosebud lips turned up in a slight smile.
"'Velar fronting' Barton? Are you kidding me right now?" Fury demanded.
"You signed off on my continuing language studies, sir," Clint responded. "Did you think I wouldn't learn something about English along the way?"
Fury snorted. "That would explain your stellar grammatical skills, would it, Barton?" He nodded to Coulson and strode to the door. "I've got an agency to run, gentlemen." He fixed Clint with a parting glare. "Keep me posted, Barton. Debrief tomorrow at nine."
Clint watched him go, then turned to Coulson. "How're you doing, boss?"
"Cold," Coulson returned succinctly in his boys choir tenor.
Clint grinned at him and plunked himself down on a hard plastic visitor's chair. "I have just the fix for that, sir." He lifted a shopping bag he had retrieved from reception. "Clothes, socks, shoes..." He fished one specific item out of the sack and his smile broadened. JARVIS and Joanne had definitely come through for him to find those in such a short period of time. "And underwear," he concluded, brandishing a package of 4T Captain America-themed briefs.
Coulson's eyes lit with delight, and he made a brief, abortive movement toward the underwear, and then looked as if he couldn't understand why he'd stopped.
"C'mon sir," Clint coaxed. "You know you want to." He dangled the package before Coulson's face. "And you'll never have a better excuse." He retrieved one more item from the bag and held it up for Coulson's approval. "I got some for me for solidarity, sir," he said, holding up a pair of Captain America boxer briefs and waggling them from side to side.
"You're m'poss'ble," Coulson returned, smiling, and Clint couldn't resist smiling at the dropped syllables.
"It's one of my best features," Clint agreed, digging for more clothes to allow Coulson a moment of privacy. By the time he had unearthed a pair of sweatpants, Coulson was wearing a pint-sized pair of briefs that sported Captain America's shield (but not his likeness) and had pulled the tie and dress shirt off over his head.
Clint knew, intellectually, that children weren't just cut-down adults, but it had been a while since he'd spent time with any, much less been one. Apparently he'd started thinking of them as just uniformly squishy. Instead, four-year-old Phil had the defined muscles and visible bones that Clint now remembered as belonging to active children.
As he traded Coulson the pants for the shirt and tie, Clint had a moment to be grateful that Joanne hadn't gone the extremely-literal route and bought Coulson a miniature suit. Those round child-hands pulling a pair of dress slacks up to his ridiculously small waist might've been too much cuteness for the exam room to hold. Instead, the sweat pants were followed by a t-shirt and socks, and a pair of tennis shoes with velcro fastenings.
"I could've tied my own shoes," Coulson grumbled.
"Hey, give her a break, boss," Clint protested, tucking the adult clothes into the shopping bag. "It's almost impossible to find kids' shoes with laces nowadays." At Coulson's narrow look, Clint defended, "So I hear."
When the shoes were on Coulson's feet, Clint gave him an assessing once-over, from straight, baby-fine hair to light-up shoes, and back up to the slightly purplish fingernails. "Still cold?" At Coulson's nod, Clint opened up a zip-front sweatshirt and held it out. Once Coulson had turned his back and thrust his arms into the sleeves, Clint hooked his chin over Coulson's narrow shoulder so he could see what he was doing and quickly did up the zipper.
He turned Coulson to face him and patted his shoulder twice. "There you go."
Coulson reached out and patted Clint's shoulder, too, in what looked almost like reflex, after which his eyes rounded comically.
Clint broke the embarrassed pause with a drawn out, "Soooo," and then cast about for how to continue. "Uh, Fury's got plans for you?"
Coulson nodded solemnly. In his light voice, he said, "Ton— confined to headquarters until further notice. Or until the situation can be reversed."
Yeah, he'd just heard that and he still couldn't believe that SHIELD, that Fury, would do that to Coulson, of all people. He needed to get out of that small exam room before the urge to hit something grew any stronger. He grabbed the shopping bag and stood. "Lunch settled OK? Let's head to the gym for a bit until they get your quarters squared away."