Note: This is the chapter that earns the "implied past child abuse" tag. If you're worried that you might be triggered, please see the notes at the end of the chapter. (See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Those first few days pretty much set the pace for Clint's time as Coulson's "caretaker," a term Clint really couldn't take seriously with regard to Coulson. They had breakfast, most days with Natasha, some days with more members of the Avengers team. Mornings were spent in some sort of physical training for Clint with Coulson exercising for part of the time and simply hanging out for the rest. There was almost always an hour or so of occupational therapy with Nancy followed by lunch.
It wasn't enough, though, to just throw about an hour of being a kid at Coulson every day and hope against hope that it was sufficient. If there was a chance that he was going to stay this way, that these were the formative days and months for his neural wiring (and, yeah, Clint had been doing some child development reading, too; sue him), he needed to be a kid all the time. And lockdown at SHIELD HQ was just not conducive to that process.
Some afternoons they were able to drop in on the day care for some extended "kid therapy" time, but sometimes Clint needed to burn off some energy at the shooting range. After dinner, Coulson usually showered — and who knew that pre-bed bathing was such a kid thing? It made sense, though, because after a day, even inside at SHIELD HQ, Coulson was always a bit sticky. Then they read together, sometimes with Clint reading to Coulson, and went to sleep.
Sometimes other members of the team dropped by, if the Avengers weren't called out, and Clint might have a hour or two to himself, if he chose to take it. Usually that translated into extra range time, or sometimes sparring with Natasha, if she was on-base but not with Coulson. After about a week, though, his frustration with the situation got the better of him, and he sought Fury out in his office.
"Sir," he called, tapping lightly on the door as he opened it.
Director Fury looked up from his desk and glared at the distraction. "Agent Barton, I trust you have a good reason for barging into my office?"
"Sir," Clint acknowledged. "It's about Agent Coulson."
Fury's gaze sharpened. "What about him, Barton?"
Clint sat, uninvited, as he tried to put his words together. After a moment, he shook his head and decided to just bull his way through. "This isn't working, sir."
"Explain," Fury demanded.
"Sir, he's showing no signs of reverting to adult form, and our intel from Sir Senescence is getting us nowhere." Clint leaned forward, spreading his hands as if to urge Fury to understand. "So basically, one of two things is happening here. Either we have a child incarcerated, for no crime, or we have Agent Coulson incarcerated, for doing his job."
Fury's expression grew progressively darker, but Clint continued undeterred. "Agent Coulson deserves better, sir. If nothing else, you could be making use of some of the information he's acquired over the years.
"And if Phil Coulson is a child, growing into an adult, he can't do that here!" He thumped his palm on Fury's desk emphatically. "SHIELD has no right to... to prevent him from developing as a human being!"
"You want to re-think your tone, here, Agent?" Fury growled. "SHIELD is doing what we can for him. He has his therapy every day, just as the doctor mandated."
"Are you joking, sir? Dr. Martinez objected strongly to Coulson being confined to HQ. Being a kid, growing into an adult, is a 24-hour-a-day job, and Coulson gets about an hour of kid time a day!"
"Don't you shout at me, Agent Barton!" Fury leaned forward menacingly, giving the impression that it was only the presence of the desk that prevented him from lunging forward to bury his teeth in Clint's throat. "Phil Coulson is one of my oldest friends, but I have larger responsibilities than just one man. SHIELD does not have infinite resources, and our priority is protecting the world from larger threats, not hiring nannies for our employees."
"Can't you let him be a child somewhere else, then, sir?" Clint recognized that he was close to pleading, but he desperately wanted Fury to understand.
Fury deflated somewhat, and rubbed a hand across the creases between his brows. "Barton, I just can't. He's got a brain stuffed full of Level 7 clearance information and no inhibitions to prevent him from sharing it. Hydra could have our personnel roster for a lollipop at this point."
Clint disagreed, having been a child who had kept secrets, from his mother, from the schools, from his brother. With appropriate motivation, a child could be more close-lipped than adults might believe. But Fury was already moving on.
"And Coulson is still a high-value target. If he was out from under SHIELD's protection, it would be open season on him, no matter his age. And he can't exactly protect himself at the moment." Fury sighed deeply. "I'm sorry, Barton. You can't know how sorry. But this is the best we can do right now."
Clint knew, intellectually, that the calm and acceptance of his situation that Coulson was demonstrating was learned behavior. Coulson had actually been a child the first time around, and had probably had his share of tantrums and screaming fits. But when Coulson stubbornly insisted on doing things his way, nine times out of ten Clint didn't see "spoiled child" but "experienced handler* (*currently smaller than standard size)" , and Clint was inclined to go along with him.
That tenth time, though... That tenth time was probably going to have Clint waking up in cold sweats for a while to come.
Clint hadn't slept well the night before. That wasn't an excuse. That wasn't even a reason. It was just a ... thing. Just another fact to add to the analysis. And he hadn't been spending nearly the amount of time at the gym or at the range that he was used to. So, yeah, maybe he had some extra energy to burn off, or maybe he was strung a little tight, but that was no excuse.
And, OK, he and Coulson had been joined at the hip for going on two weeks. The other Avengers relieved him for short breaks, or sometimes Hill did, or sometimes Fury, but that was the exception, not the rule. Coulson still had no security clearance to speak of, so Fury and Hill always had to come to him, and the tiny room Coulson had been allotted got pretty cramped with any two of those personalities crammed into it. It was the most concentrated time Clint had spent with Coulson since a tiny safe house in Bogota where the enforced togetherness, constant fog, and torrential rain had conspired to reduce visibility to nada and give Clint a monumental case of cabin fever.
Which, again, not an excuse, not an acceptable reason, but it hadn't stabbed like a knife to his chest when he'd snapped at Coulson-the-adult to get off his case and stop breathing all his air and stormed away from him (even if it could only be to the tiny bathroom).
When, on the twelfth day of his confinement at SHIELD, four-year-old Phil was unable or unwilling to Just. Get. Your Teeth. Brushed. and fumbled with the toothpaste for like the 80th time and lost the cap and spread toothpaste on the sink and just Took. So. Long Clint felt his hands clenching involuntarily. The desire to just make it work rose up like carbonation in a shaken two-liter bottle, along with the strongest urge to just knock the problem out of the way.
He felt the snarl forming on his face, the words of mockery bubbling up from the back of his mind, seeking an outlet. He had a moment of dissociation, watching his behavior from just over his shoulder, and a moment of clarity when he thought, You are seriously out of control, man. His vision fuzzed out at the edges and the sound of the running water was muffled. He loomed up over Coulson, fists cocked, and shouted, "What is wrong with you? Why can't you just brush your teeth like a normal–" He got that far before the sight of his face in the mirror, contorted so like his father's had always been, stopped him like all the air had been sucked out of the room.
Phil just looked up at him, toothbrush frozen half out of his mouth, blue eyes wide and starting to well with tears.
Clint dropped to a crouch, putting his eyes level with Phil's. "Coulson. Phil," he choked out. "I'm so sorry. I wouldn't..." But the imprints where his nails had dug into his palms was clear. He would. He might. He would.
Mayday, mayday, Clint thought, fleeing the room.
He closed the door to Phil's quarters and leaned against it, waiting for the call to connect. "Tasha?" His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Natasha? I need..."
"Clint, what's wrong?" Her low voice was tight with concern. "Is Coulson OK?"
"He's not hurt, but I..." His eyes burned. He swallowed against the dryness of his throat and thumped his head back on the door. "I lost it, Tasha. I just completely lost it. It was nothing, but I just got so mad and suddenly I was just towering over him with that face..."
And Natasha, bless her, understood, the result of long, dark nights and darker secrets. When it came to anger, there was only one face that Clint truly feared. "Mой Малыш," she said gently, "what do you need?"
"I don't know who I— who he might need." He laughed humorlessly. "Send everyone. Avengers assemble, Tasha."
He hung up the phone and had to resist the desire to vomit. The foulness he wanted to purge out of himself wasn't in his stomach; it was in his mind, his memories, his thoughts, his psyche — his soul, he sometimes feared — making him a completely defective human being.
He didn't even know what he would do when the team arrived. He didn't think he could stomach Cap's unshakable confidence that Clint was a good man, and that of course he wouldn't hurt a child, in the face of Clint's own concerns to the contrary.
He didn't think he could take Bruce's quiet empathy for a man with a temper, when Clint had so much less provocation or excuse for his behavior.
Because the thing was, there was this huge disconnect. Like, if he said that he was worried about losing his temper, it would be pooh-pooh'd away. There would be well-meaning comments of "There, there, you're worrying for nothing. You would never do that. You are a good person." They wouldn't understand that each reassurance was like salt on the open wound of his conscience.
Then on the other side would be the grave murmurs that "shouting at a child is just the same as hitting, really," because, yeah, he really needed to be convinced that he hadn't won anything, hadn't succeeded in anything by preventing himself from hitting? Great, he'd already failed, so, really, could he sink any lower?
Two distinct sets of footfalls approached, taking him by surprise. He hadn't thought Cap and Natasha were in SHIELD HQ this early in the morning. Natasha reached up to grab him by the shoulders, staring narrowly into his eyes. "Clint," she said, flexing her fingers almost to the point of pain. "We will fix this. It will be all right."
He leaned his head down into hers, trying to absorb her confidence. "Just..." He swallowed thickly. "Just make sure he's OK, Tasha?"
She released his shoulders and cuffed him lightly on the back of his head. He huffed a slightly hysterical laugh and stepped away from the door to let her enter. He collapsed back against it when she shut it behind her and braced for Captain America's inevitable unintentional criticism.
Clint could feel Rogers' gaze on him even as he focused sightlessly at the institutional flooring under his feet. After a moment, Steve shifted and said, "Can we sit, do you think?"
Clint felt his mouth twist up in a parody of a smile and he let himself slide down the door to a seated position. He crossed his legs, propped his elbows on his knees, and dropped his forehead into his hands. He sensed more than heard Steve take a seat beside him.
"Y'know I, uh," Steve began, "I guess I had the most, um, normal... upbringing of all the Avengers." Clint felt him shrug. "I mean, you could make a case for Stark..." And that brought Clint's head up to stare at his team leader disbelievingly. Steve held up a temporizing hand. "I mean, two parents, and all. But then there's the engineering prodigy thing, and Howard being distracted with..." He made a vague, waving hand-gesture.
"But, he had a home, you know?" Steve continued. "Anyway, not really the point. The point is more..." He sighed.
"My mother was... well, she was a saint," Steve said. "Lost her husband in The War — uh, World War I — worked like a Trojan to provide for herself and her constantly ailing son. I wasn't always..." Steve smiled self-deprecatingly. "I was a challenge.
"She did her best, and she was great. Sometimes, though, sometimes it was all just too much. Sometimes something would go wrong and she would just," he shrugged, "fly off the handle. She would yell for maybe a couple of minutes. It wasn't really anything I'd done. I had just been the last thing on a long list of things that day, I guess.
"What I'm trying to say is," he turned and looked directly at Clint, who glanced up at his intent blue gaze before he had to look away. "She didn't love me any less. She was just a human being. And, Clint." He grasped Clint's forearm to make sure he had his complete attention. "I didn't love her any less, either. And I even turned out pretty OK," he said wryly.
Clint was quiet when Steve finished, but after a moment said simply, "Thanks, Cap." And, yeah, this was probably why Coulson had idolized this man from a young age. Seriously, how was this guy even real?
The knock on the door behind thrummed through Clint's back, making him jump. Coulson opened the door and peered out at Clint, all enormous blue eyes and trepidation.
"Clint, are you OK?" he asked.
Clint wished for a moment he could laugh, he really did. "I should be asking you that, sir."
Natasha's black-clad arm appeared behind Coulson, prodding him forward, and he took two quick steps and threw himself into Clint's lap. Clint's arms closed around him reflexively, holding him close and soaking in the warm child-smell. "I'm sorry," he said, rocking Coulson slightly. "I am so, so sorry."
"I'm OK, I'm fine," Coulson said, "but I was worried about you." And could Clint feel any lower? Because that was classic abused child behavior, right there: concern for the scary adult. Tasha didn't seem worried, though, because she gave Steve a significant nod and they both took off together.
"Sir, you shouldn't have to be worried about me. I'm supposed to be the adult, and—"
Coulson cut him off. "Barton, I'm an adult, too, in case you'd forgotten. You startled me, that's all. You know how this kid-body reacts to being surprised. It's all freeze, followed by fight-or-flight response. You were gone before I could even say anything or do anything..."
"I couldn't stick around in case I did something," Clint said shakily.
"Barton, I know you," Coulson said intently. "I know you have a temper. And issues, and worries, and history. And, yes, maybe you should start working through some of them, and maybe now when you seem to be stuck at HQ would be a good time to start."
Clint's eyes felt hot and his nose was beginning to prickle in a way that meant kleenex was soon going to be a necessity. "Sir," he said to Coulson's hair, "is it OK if we just cancel today and go back to quarters?"
"That sounds good to me, Barton."
They retired to Coulson's mattress and Clint pulled Coulson's back in to his own belly, wrapping his arms over Coulson's so that the whole of their arms were pressed skin-to-skin. They spent the next several hours snuggled together on Coulson's mattress, trying to comfort each other and soak up some oxytocin as Nancy had recommended.
End Notes: Clint has been implying that his father was abusive, and that he fears he will be the same. In this chapter, Clint loses his temper with Phil and shouts, fists his hands, and looms over Phil, and then immediately removes himself from the situation.