Archive of Our Own

The night is still. It’s so still that Clint thinks he can feel the crickets rubbing their legs together, sending out tiny disturbances in the air just before the chirping sounds echo across the grass. It’s warm and still and quiet and beautiful, and everything else that’s at odds with how he feels in this very moment.

He’s been out here so long that he can feel the raised welts of the bites left behind by farm mosquitos from the late afternoon that’s since faded into dusk and now twilight, but he doesn’t bother to scratch at the accompanying itches. Years of sniper training have taught him to withstand discomfort; years of marriage have taught him that reflection is uncomfortable. And years of love have taught him that life is full of joy and pain, and that he must take them both in equal measures.

Although fuck if he can feel anything but hurt and worry right now.

At his back, he can make out the din of the post-supper energy burst, and he’s grateful for it. Grateful for the sounds of Cooper and Lila half-bickering, half-playing, and of Nat’s gurgle and Laura’s smooth voice. The sounds of the joy he has to cling to, even though, if he listens hard enough, he can hear that the bickering is outweighing the playing tonight, and Laura’s voice is a little frayed at the edges. Even Nat’s fussier than normal, but then again, babies are always more perceptive than they’re given credit for, and frankly, considering the kid’s lineage, it’s not surprising that he’s more perceptive than most.

To the unpracticed--or unfamilar--eye, everything is exactly as it should be on the Barton farm. The reality is that nothing is as it should be at all, and Clint’s lost his north heading in a way he hasn’t in more years than he can count.

“Thought you could use one of these,” Laura says softly, and the fact that Clint didn’t hear her until she was right behind him speaks volumes for where his head’s at.

He reaches up to take the beer bottle from her hand without turning his head, letting their fingers brush for just a moment against the cold glass.

“He’ll call,” she whispers.

He knows her too well, knows every inflection, every lilt in her voice. He knows that one means she doesn’t believe it, but she wants to, for herself and for the kids and for him, and he loves her for it.

And he wants to scream at her for it, but he doesn’t.

Family life has tamed Clint Barton, and he’ll kick anyone’s ass who says it’s not for the better, even and especially on nights like this.

“He won’t,” he says, instead of yelling or shaking her or walking away, because they don’t do those things, and he never wants to do any of them again. “Not until he’s ready, and this...he won’t…”

“He will,” she says, and leans down to kiss his cheek, and yeah, okay, he leans into it and closes his eyes and breathes in the remnants of her perfume--lilacs, because it’s one of the few scents they all love that doesn’t have anything to do with baled hay or kindling or any number of other farm-related smells--and tries not to lose his fucking mind.

“Love you,” he croaks as she walks back inside.

“I know.”

He smiles, just for a second, because I know means I love you, too, and I’m worrying just like you, but in a way that makes the world tilt back upright on its axis for a minute. It’s their joke, the three of them.

Clint and Laura have been Clint and Laura for ages. Years. More than a decade by a long shot, even. And Coulson and Barton have been S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best partnership since...well. Maybe ever. Not to diss Fury, but c’mon, the stats speak for themselves.

And then one day, a million dinners and late night drinks later, including more than a few that led to Phil spending the night on the couch at whatever address the Bartons held down at the time, Laura not-so-gently pointed out the writing on the wall to Clint. Once he came to terms with what she was saying, because wow, and recovered from the hangover from hell, he marched into Phil’s office and said--and okay, he’s paraphrasing, but this was the punchline--”I fucking love you, okay?”

And Phil--unflappable, unruffleable, immovable Phil--just smiled and looked him dead in the eye and said, “I know.”

It was among the best five moments of Clint’s life. Right next to it is the moment he told Laura the story, stomach twisted with dread and apprehension, and she’d looked at him for a moment and burst out laughing, not stopping until she was in Clint’s lap with her arms around his neck and he was confusedly--but oh-so-gratefully--kissing away the tears running down her face as she giggled. When she finally pulled herself together enough to form words, all she’d said was, “I told you so,” and he’s never been so happy to hear those words in his whole life.

Turns out everyone in Clint Barton’s life knew what was best for him before he did. He’s barely complained since. Not even when he couldn’t figure out if there was room his own marriage for him anymore, because there was something new and shiny in it--he snorts a little at calling Phil new and shiny, because Phil would kick his ass for it if he knew--and because as much as he knows now that their relationship hinges on his being a part of it, watching his wife fall in love with someone else was harder than Clint could have imagined.

Yeah, fine, he’s a hypocrite. Sue him, he’ll just shoot you in the kneecap. Or tell Phil. Or Laura. No one wants to deal with either of them, much less the both of them at once. Clint knows, he’s tried.

Just the once, though. He’s Hawkeye, for fuck’s sake. He’s not a moron.

He takes a pull from his beer bottle and watches the fireflies light up across the fields. It’s warm out, and the air is thick with humidity and heat and promise. Phil would love it. He loves the weight of the moments after spring and summer collide, when the air is heavy and sweet and the grasses move in the fields like waves on the ocean.

The phone rings from the kitchen--yes, fine, Hawkeye has a fucking landline, it’s a goddamn farmhouse and cell service out here sucks unless it’s a StarkPhone, and even Tony understands the need for a break sometimes--and Clint jumps up. He watches Laura grip the phone, knuckles a little whiter than usual before she speaks into the receiver, and he loves her for being as worried as he is, whether she’ll say so or not.

She shakes her head minutely, and Clint sighs and sits back down.

He knows better. He really does. Not because he’s blaming Phil; on the contrary, it’s because frankly, he wouldn’t call either. He loves Phil and Laura, can’t imagine his life without either of them. But the one thing he can never stand to be in his life is a burden, and he knows Phil is just the same. Different sides of the same coin, but the same coin nonetheless. And they have a farm and three kids, which are daunting enough with six fully-functioning adult hands.

Cut out one hand and add all the shit that comes with losing it, and he knows exactly where Phil’s head is and why he hasn’t called, and why they had to find out from May, who sounded as apologetic as he ever thought possible. ‘Course, he also knows she’s got a history of her own she doesn’t talk much about, so he can’t get too upset with her for bailing just after she made the call. This life can be shit, and more power to her for trying to figure some of that shit out.

But fuck if it means he has to like any of it. Because the thing is, the alternative to losing Phil’s hand was losing Phil, and they’re all pretty clear on that being as out of the question as possible.

As if on cue, the screen door opens again. This time it’s Lila, the spitting image of her daddy in every way, and Clint wants to laugh and cry all at once. Just like Phil, Lila always seems to appear at just the right moment when Clint’s mind tries to tip his world sideways. She’s calm and collected and too smart for her own damn good. He can’t resist her, just like he couldn’t resist her father. He knows it, Phil knows it, and she knows it.

“Hey, punkin,” he says as she climbs onto his knee. “‘Bout your bedtime, isn’t it?”

“When’s Daddy coming home?” she asks through a yawn, deliberately ignoring his question.

Just like her dad would. Figures.

His heart breaks a little, though, because he doesn’t know, and he wants Phil home just as much as she does, but he’s got perspective that’s not so easily gained by a little girl who’s been shielded as much as possible from all the bad shit that’s happened to both her fathers. Which hasn’t been easy, given who they are and what they do for a living.

“Soon, baby,” he says into her hair, closing his eyes and wishing the words to be true.

“He’s hurt again, huh?”

The thing no one ever told Clint was that as heartbreaking as it was not to have a family, it’s sometimes just as hard to have one. He can’t protect his kids--their kids--from what’s coming. He can’t even fucking protect himself, but he’s got little people to be brave for. So he just sighs.

“Yeah, he’s hurt again.”

“We can kiss it better,” she mumbles into his neck.

The sound Clint makes is half a choked sob, half a laugh. That’s another thing he’s learned since becoming a parent and a husband: it’s more than possible to laugh and cry at the same time. Lila’s absolute conviction is the reason he loves her most; she’s just like Phil. He can’t abide anyone who lacks conviction--Loki was just one in a long line. Still makes Clint and Laura chuckle that he somehow managed to pass that along through genetics. Scares them a little too. Nat’s too little to figure on yet, but Clint’s pretty sure that he’ll be just as hard-headed.

“I sure hope so,” he whispers, as much to himself as to Lila.

“But not ‘less he comes home. Can you make him come home?” Her little voice is sleepy and slow, and Clint can tell she’s about thirty seconds from sleep.

Still. She makes a good point. Clint curses himself, because if there’s one thing that’s been real and constant for more than half his life, it’s that Phil will come for him if he asks. It’s not like he hasn’t wanted to call. It’s not pride, at least not this time.

It’s just...when the fuck will he learn that marriage means not giving someone space all the time? You’d think after so many years with a wife and then a few more with a husband as well, he’d fucking know better.

Shut up, he’s still not a moron. He just...didn’t grow up with a family to learn from. And there’s not much in the way of role models for a family like theirs, anyway.

But, first things first.

He stands, slowly, cradling Lila’s limp body against his chest. He kicks the door open and snags it with his foot before it can slam, winking at Laura as he walks past her and up the stairs towards the kids’ rooms. He tucks Lila into her bed, smoothing her hair back and kissing her forehead, then stops into Coop’s room to tuck the covers under his son’s chin, and then to Nat’s to smile at the contorted way their youngest likes to sleep.

Takes after his aunt and namesake, that one.

He goes straight past Laura to the phone when he comes back downstairs.

“This is stupid,” he mutters as he punches the numbers--maybe a little harder than is strictly necessary.

Whatever. It’s a landline. Who the fuck has those in 2015, anyway, and so what if the damn thing doesn’t dial tomorrow as long as he can make this one call?

“I know,” she says, tucking her feet under her in the chair and looking at him, equal parts amused and knowing, even though he knows she’s anxious underneath.

This is a hell of a woman they’ve married, no fucking doubt about it.

“Why didn’t you just make me call him?”

He lifts the phone to his ear, and suddenly he’s all butterflies and clammy palms, like this isn’t Phil. Laura smiles at him softly and shakes her head.

“No one can make either of you do a damn thing you don’t want to do,” she says. “Except the other one of you.”

It pierces him a little, even as it warms him from the inside. It’s the truth. Even when it was just him and Laura, it was Phil who could get Clint to go the extra mile, think through the extra factors, stick it out just that one extra minute. It was a sticking point in their marriage, back when it was just the two of them. Clint hasn’t ever totally shed the guilt about it.

“You know I-” he starts, then bites his tongue when he hears the click of the other end of the line engaging.

Please don’t let it go to voicemail. Ring. Please don’t let it go to voicemail. Ring. Pick up the fucking phone, you stubborn bastard, c’mon.

And then click and “Clint,” and he slumps into the chair behind him.

Christ, he never stops missing that voice in his ear. At work, at home, on the road, working on the farm, in the bedroom, it doesn’t matter. He loves Phil’s voice in his ear.

Even when he’s mad as hell about not hearing it sooner.

“Hey.”

He only narrowly stops from smacking himself in the forehead. Hey? He can’t come up with anything better than hey?

Apparently Phil agrees. He huffs softly into the phone, a sound that only Clint and Laura--and probably Nat and Fury--would recognize as a laugh.

“Everything okay at home?”

That shakes an answering laugh out of Clint and a sharp look from Laura. He shrugs and she rolls her eyes, even through her worry. She’s learned to roll with the eccentricities of his relationship with Phil, right down to weak jokes during traumatic injury. It’s how they’ve always been.

Still, leave it to Phil to try to turn even this around so that it’s about anything but him and his injury. Clint ducks his head and rubs his face with his free hand. All of this is so far from okay, but not in a way he knows how to put into words. Everyone else in his life is so much better with words than he is; he just wants to tell Phil to come the fuck home and let them work this out, but that makes it about Clint, not about Phil, and that’s not what he’s going for.

“We’re hanging in there,” he says, opting for the most comforting version of the truth he can think of. “Little worried about you, though. Y’know, since we haven’t heard from you or anything...”

Phil sighs as Clint lets the words hang. He’s proud of himself for not saying anything else. Used to be he’d fill the silence just for the sake of it, because he hates it when Phil is uncomfortable. But this isn’t Clint the asset trying to please his handler, this is his husband. His family. They’re all hurting, but it’s on Phil to tell him what they do about it.

“I’m sorry,” Phil finally says. “I should have called.”

Now Clint sighs, and doesn’t say ya think? because what the fuck good does that do anyone right now?

“Yeah, you should have. Or at least you should have known Melinda would call us before she left, and you should have known we’d be freaked the fuck out until we heard from you. Jesus, babe, you had to know that, right?”

Laura’s shaking a little now, watching Clint with wide, tear-filled eyes. She’s been so strong, but he knew she’d start to fall apart when they finally heard anything out of Phil himself, rather than the snippets of information they were getting from his team. He can’t blame her. Both of the men in her life spend most of their time in harm’s way, and more often than not, harm does a number on them before they come home to her.

“It’s...I’m not…”

And wow, because the number of times Clint can remember Phil Coulson not being able to form a full, grammatically perfect sentence could be counted on one hand, and he’s not going to think too hard about the amount of bad taste in that thought right now. Because clearly, Phil’s at a loss. And for half Clint’s life, Phil’s guided Clint through all the times he’s been at a loss; it’s Clint’s turn.

“Come home, babe,” he says softly into the phone.

“I have to-”

“You don’t have to anything, so just don’t try that shit with me,” Clint says. “Don’t act like I don’t know what you’re doing, we’ve been in too many of these spots too many times for you to try to convince me this is about anything but you avoiding shit. The team is fine. The world is fine--or as fine as it ever is. You, though, you are not fine, and we aren’t fine because you’re not fine, and we need you to come home so we can figure out how we all get fine again. Together.”

Tears spill over Laura’s cheeks, which Clint figures means he’s said something right. Thank fuck for that. He supposes he’s the blind squirrel getting the nut in this situation. For the record, he’s so okay with that. She crosses the space between them and leans down to press her lips to his forehead, his cheek. Her lips are wet with tears, and he reaches up to brush them away from her cheeks when she pulls away. He puts an arm around her waist and holds her against him, leaning his head on her stomach and gripping her hip with his fingers, trying to pull strength from her closeness.

“Look, I-”

“No. Phil, I know that voice. I know you’re going to try to tell me you don’t want to be a burden. Damn it, don’t you understand you’re never our burden? We want to help you. We fucking miss the hell out of you. The kids miss you. Laura misses you. You fucking know I miss you, I’ve told you a thousand times I’ve been missing you every minute we haven’t been together since before I even knew you.”

He takes a deep, shaky breath, because he really didn’t mean for this to get quite that sappy, but the truth of that last sentence is more or less exactly what drove him to Phil’s office all those years ago.

“Don’t make me send Nat and Cap after you,” he finally chokes out.

Phil’s laugh is a little broken, but it’s a laugh.

“I’m not going to win this one, am I?” he asks.

“If coming home means you lose, we probably need to rethink this whole thing, babe.”

He’s serious, even though he knows Phil was going for levity. Phil sighs again.

“I only ever want to be at home with you guys,” he says quietly.

“Then come home. We won’t love you less, you know that, but if you don’t come home, we can’t figure this out.”

“What’d you tell the kids?” Phil asks.

Clint figures this might be a good sign. Now they’re getting into this. Not the team or S.H.I.E.L.D., but this. Them.

“The truth,” he says. “Same thing we always tell them.”

“How’d they take it?”

“Coop wants to know if Tony’s going to grow you a new hand in his lab or on Dum-E or something. Lila wants to kiss it better. Nat sort of gurgled at me, but I think he was more worried about where his next meal was going to come from.”

What the fuck, a little bit of a joke never hurt anyone. Besides, this is who Phil needs him to be. Himself. Concerned-but-hiding-it-in-goofy Clint Barton. Judging by the choked laugh he gets from the other end of the phone, he might have succeeded and failed all at once.

“Keep Stark away from me for now, but my guess is I ought to talk to him about something eventually. When I can stand to be in the same room with him long enough to ask for his help.” Clint laughs, because Phil’s exaggerating, he and Tony get along just fine now, in spite of everything. They’ll never be buddies, but tasers and repulsors aren’t bandied about on the regular when they’re in the same room anymore, so. Progress. Phil goes on. “And we’ll see if Lila still wants to do that when she sees it.”

So that’s what this is about. Well, fuck that.

“Jesus,” Clint says. “She’s your daughter. She’s exactly like you and you know it. You couldn’t scare that kid away if you tried, but she just wants to help you. Quit fucking stalling and come home and let her. Let us.”

There’s silence in the farmhouse kitchen and on the other end of the line, the only sound breaking it is Clint’s slightly jagged breathing, but goddamn it, he’ll wait this out.

Until finally, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Phil says, and Clint exhales with his whole body.

He nods at Laura, who covers her mouth with her hand to smother the sob he sees as much as hears, and then abruptly pulls away from him and walks out onto the porch. She runs her hand over his shoulder and across the back of his neck gently on the way, though, so he knows she’ll be okay. He’ll go to her in a moment; he knows she’s as relieved as she is upset, just like he is.

But first…

“We love you, Phil,” he barely-more-than-whispers into the phone and takes a deep, ragged breath. “I love you. No matter what. You know that, right?”

Phil’s intake of breath is just as uneven through the phone.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know. Clint, I know.”

“Okay,” Clint breathes, letting the familiar words wash over him. “Okay. We’ll see you tomorrow. For dinner, okay?”

“I’ll be there,” Phil says, then pauses. “And hey?”

“Yeah?”

It’s all he could do not to throw a sir in there, even after all this time and all these changes. It’s comforting, and fuck if Clint couldn’t use a little comfort right about now.

“I love you. Go kiss everyone for me.”

He gives in, but only because Phil made it sound like an order.

“Yessir.”

“Good night,” Phil says as he chuckles a little, and Clint figures that’s a good sign.

“G’night,” he says and disconnects the call.

He holds the phone to his forehead for a moment, eyes closed and neck bowed, but thank fuck, that’s mission accomplished. And that’s what he does, isn’t it? Makes shit happen, even when it’s not supposed to. Nice to know it’s not just when he’s got a bow and arrow and a team of superheroes around him that he can manage it.

He hears a harsh sob from outside and comes back to himself, rising and hanging up the phone before crossing the house. He pushes the door open and pull Laura into his arms, pressing his face into her hair.

“C’mon,” he whispers. “Let’s go to bed. He’ll be home tomorrow.”

She nods and sniffles, and he can feel the tears wetting his chest through his shirt. Fuck knows what tomorrow will bring, but hey, at least they’ll figure all this shit out together. That’s the whole point of this family thing, anyway, isn’t it?

They sleep wrapped around one another, neither willing to let the other go in spite of the summer heat that seeps in through the rickety old windows in their bedroom. Clint’s sworn to replace them every year, but every year one of them casually mentions in passing just how nice it is in the winter when the room is so cold that it forces the three of them to sleep just like Clint and Laura do tonight, tangled and touching from head to toe.

Funny thing, Clint always finds an excuse not to get around to fixing those windows, even though the rest of the house has brand new, double-panes that don’t leak even a breath.

The next day weighs heavy on all of them, dragging but never quite moving like it feels like it should. Clint’s never been so happy to have a real, working farm in all his life, and he throws himself into chores he’s been putting off for ages. Anything to pass the minutes that feel like hours until the afternoon sun turns soft on the fields and the telltale dust of an approaching car swirls from the top of the hill where their drive meets the main road.

It occurs to him as he all but runs across the yard towards the house--where Lila's clamoring for the door with cries of “Daddy’s home!” and Laura is smoothing her hair into a ponytail as though she’s ever anything but beautiful no matter what her hair looks like--that he should have stopped half an hour ago. Should have showered or changed his shirt or hell, washed the grease out from under his nails--fucking tractor is more temperamental than anything Tony Stark ever built in his life, and Clint’s pretty sure that’s got something to do with the few minutes Tony spent alone with it during the Ultron shit show. Anything would probably have been better than how he currently looks and smells, but he’s suddenly frozen in place at the edge of the drive, his sharp eyes picking up every nuance in Phil’s face as the car crosses the last of the distance up the drive.

He can see the pinch between Phil’s eyebrows that usually means Clint’s done something reckless and that always means Phil’s worried. He picks up the whiteness in the knuckles on Phil’s right hand where it grips the steering wheel, and it doesn’t take Hawkeye’s vision to notice the notable absence of a left hand next to his right one.

Clint clenches his own left hand into a fist, then has a moment of temporary panic, wondering where the fuck Phil’s wedding ring ended up. But this is Phil fucking Coulson, and if Clint knows anything, he knows that Phil would have pried the damn thing off his own no-longer-attached fingers, and fuck if that isn’t a creepy image. True though. It’ll be on Phil’s right hand, or around his neck, or sewn into the lining of that fucking suit he loves so much.

No need to panic about that when the look of guarded fear on Phil’s face as he puts the car in park is cause for infinitely more panic than any ring could ever bring on. But he didn’t spend half his life in the company of the best goddamn spies in the world for nothing, and Phil deserves better than a panicked husband.

He watches as Phil sucks in a deep breath, then reaches across himself to open the car door. Clint flinches at being reminded yet again why Phil’s home, what’s happened, but it’s there and gone in the span of time it takes their children to run down the porch steps, feet windmilling and voices raise in raucous shouts of “Daddy!”

Phil drops to a crouch and gathers them both against him at the same time that they collide with his body, arms wrapping around him from both sides. Clint chokes down a lump in his throat that’s part pride, part gratitude, part awe, because fuck if their kids--and all three of them are represented between Coop and Lila, so theirs really is the right word--haven’t just wiped the worry off Phil’s face in the space of a couple of hugs.

Laura’s barely behind them, Nat in her arms and a sweet smile on her face. Phil stands, Lila hanging from his neck and Coop carefully crowding the arm that’s still in a sling, and Laura presses her palm to Phil’s cheek and leans in to kiss him softly, then shifts Nat so Phil can kiss his cheek without dislodging the other two.

Clint can hear Lila babbling at Phil about their latest adventures on the farm and the bad words her papa said in the barn earlier--fucking tractor--while Coop asks questions that Phil somehow manages to answer about where he’s been and the team and how long he can stay. Phil’s smiling now, a real, open, honest smile that loosens the vice around Clint’s heart a little, but he still can’t make himself move.

At least until, after kissing Laura again, Phil looks around and spots Clint just far enough away to be out of the way, but just close enough to be obvious, and the worry starts to slide over his face again. His eyes flick down to his arm where it hangs in the sling, and Clint sees him swallow hard as they come back up to meet Clint’s.

Laura follows the whole exchange, all two seconds of it, and as usual, she knows what they both need before either of them manage to figure it out.

“C’mon, kids, let’s go finish up the table for Daddy. Lila, tell him what we made?”

“Meatloaf and ‘tatoes and beans and I picked ‘em from the garden myself!”

“Sounds like all my favorites,” Phil murmurs and he kisses Lila’s cheek before he puts her down. “I’ll be right in, sweetheart.”

“‘Kay!”

She skips up the steps after Laura and Cooper, waving at Clint as she goes. Christ, what a miracle she is.

“Quite the welcoming committee,” Phil says, voice quiet.

He hasn’t moved, and neither has Clint, and the handful of yards between them feels like miles.

“They missed you,” Clint says stupidly, then shakes his head at the flash of hurt that crosses Phil’s eyes when he realizes how that sounded.

Fuck.

He huffs, frustrated with himself, then shakes his head again and mutters, “Oh, fuck this,” because of course nothing is going how he’d imagined it might, and he’s fucking it all up.

But, he can fix it, too.

He crosses the gravel in long, quick strides and doesn’t stop until he’s crowded into Phil’s space, their faces close enough that Clint can feel Phil’s breath ghosting across his lips.

“Glad you’re home,” he whispers, and then closes the distance between their mouths.

It’s not soft or sweet, nothing like the kiss between Laura and Phil. It’s deep and wet and filthy, the kind of kiss that usually happens in the dark of night in their bedroom after they’ve wrangled three kids into bed and are near to exhaustion themselves. But it’s also the kind that’s never felt more right than right here in the middle of the driveway in the evening sunlight, because Clint’s not so great with words, but he’s pretty sure Phil can’t miss his meaning here.

When they finally pull apart, both gasping and a little red-faced, Clint grins a sheepishly before wrapping his arms around Phil and hugging him, too. Phil lets his head drop onto Clint’s shoulder.

“Thanks for that,” he mumbles.

Clint laughs.

“For kissing you? Seriously?”

Phil doesn’t move away, he just lets his arm slide around Clint’s waist and sighs.

“I’m not getting much right lately,” he says. “I didn’t want to not get this right too. Especially after it took me this long to come home.”

Clint squeezes a little tighter and turns his head so he’s talking into Phil’s temple, voice low.

“What, me? Us?”

Phil shrugs and Clint sighs. So like Phil--always the picture of confidence, but when he’s home, he’s learned to be vulnerable. It’s both terrifying and one of the most wonderful surprises of Clint’s life.

“We just wanted you home. Long as you’re here, you’ve got this part right.” He grins as he pulls back just far enough for Phil to see his face. “But if you need me to kiss you again so you know for sure…”

Phil shakes against him with near silent laughter.

“Daddy! Papa! Come in for dinner!”

Lila’s voice echoes from inside the doorway and they part, if not a little more slowly than normal. Clint holds Phil’s gaze for minute and slides his hand gently down Phil’s left shoulder and over the arm in the sling.

“We’ll figure it out, okay? All of it, we’ll figure it out.”

Phil nods and lets one side of his mouth twist up just a little. “I just want to feel normal for a day. Not have anyone tiptoeing around me, afraid I’m going to snap or something. I want to be treated like me, not like some invalid. I spent so much time worrying about what you guys would think that I didn’t consider that I’d just come home to my family, just like always. I’m a little overwhelmed, I suppose, but in a good way.”

“Okay,” Clint says, nodding back and cataloging all of that away for later, because this is so far from over. “We can do normal. And when you want to talk about it, we will, but for now, your daughter made you meatloaf, and I’d guess someone’s drawing a smiley face on it right now with sauce, so we’d best get inside.”

Phil kisses him again, soft and sweet this time before turning towards the house.

As they walk up the porch steps and through the door, the sounds of their family carrying through the house, Phil bumps Clint’s shoulder and says, “Might need you to remind me I’ve got this part right again later.”

Clint frowns and turns his head, ready to tell Phil again that they’ll get through this, ready to say anything to keep the worried frown off his face for just a little longer, but when he catches Phil’s eyes, they’re full of something else, and Phil’s corresponding grin is wicked. He winks and flicks his eyes up the stairs, and Clint has to grin right back.

“You got it, boss,” he says. “Lucky thing I’ve got reinforcement on that front.”

He walks up to Laura where she’s standing at the stove and puts an arm around her waist from behind and leans down to kiss the spot where her neck slopes into her shoulder. She smiles, and Phil’s smiling, and shit, maybe they can do normal tonight after all.

As it turns out, it’s not normal, despite everyone’s best--if uncoordinated--efforts. Phil can’t quite navigate silverware, and there’s a long, tense, silent few seconds while he turns red and Laura’s hands twitch to cut his food for him like she does the children’s. And Clint just watches and grinds his teeth and swears to everything he never thought holy that after he shakes Mack Mackenzie’s hand for saving Phil’s life, he’ll break his fucking jaw. Yes, okay, he’s glad to have Phil back and alive and mostly in one piece, but watching Phil fucking Coulson wrestle with a fucking butter knife until everyone at the table is nearly in tears is more than he can handle, and he’s handled a whole lot of shit in his life.

But the best he can do is slide his hand over Phil’s leg under the table and help Nat with his spoon when Phil can’t, and smile at Laura even when he wants to do anything other than smile. This is marriage. This is his life. This is the life he chose and loves and can’t imagine living without, and like he said, Phil’s picked him up from the brink more times in his life than he can count. He’ll do this if it kills him; he owes it to Phil and to Laura to be strong, and he wants to be this person for his children and his husband and his wife, even though what he really wants to do is curl up and cry.

They get through dinner, though, Lila picking up the silence and filling it with chatter about school and friends and whether or not the kids at her lunch table believe her when she says that Uncle Steve and Uncle Tony will be dads one day too. Clint has to cover his face to hide his laughter at Phil’s choked surprise, because he still turns redder than a summer beet at the notion that his precious childhood hero spends his downtime getting up to all sorts of filthy things with Tony Stark. Clint actually thought Phil would have a stroke the day Tony stopped them both in the kitchen at the Tower and professed his own (genuine, who’d have thought) shock at just how...inventive Steve could be, and did they think that was normal for a guy from the ‘40s?

Clint will never forget it. Phil wishes every day that he could. It’s glorious. Almost as glorious as the idea of any of their children explaining to a rapt audience of grade schoolers that IronMan and Captain America love each other very much and will be daddies someday.

Cooper is quiet, pitching in an answer when asked, but otherwise shuffling the food around on his plate. Fortunately, his sister is more than willing to keep the conversation going until they’ve had their fill.

Dishes are mercifully peaceful, because dishes are Cooper’s chore and Clint’s to oversee. Lila drags Phil upstairs with pleas for extra stories before bed, and if she’s dragging him by the sling, no one says a word. Not even when Phil gives Clint and Laura a bewildered look when those little fingers close around fabric where Phil's hand used to be. She's been dragging Phil to read to her every night he's home for as long as she could walk, and apparently tonight's no different. It seems she’s the only one who really can do normal. Clint loves her all the more for it.

Cooper’s still not saying much, handing Clint clean dishes to dry with a pensive look on his face. Clint watches him out of the corner of his eye; he’s waiting for the question or concern, but he knows better than to ask for it. Cooper’s his son, biologically and otherwise, and he comes out with what’s bothering him in his own time, just like Clint. Not a moment before, and asking will delay the inevitable just out of sheer stubbornness. Just like Clint.

Yes, okay, marriage and parenthood have made Clint a little bit self-aware. Doesn’t mean they’ve made him perfect.

“How come Dad doesn’t let Uncle Tony help him?” Coop finally asks as he sloshes soapy water around in the meatloaf pan.

Clint sucks in a deep breath. Christ, explaining the history of Phil and Tony, and Phil and IronMan, and Phil and Pepper, and Phil and Tony and Steve is more than he thinks he can get through with his son tonight. It’s complicated and a little stupid on all sides, and frankly kind of a sticking point within the Avengers.

Apparently telling Tony that he’d watch Super Nanny while Tony drooled on the carpet from a shot with Phil’s taser is something Tony isn’t quite done harassing Phil for. Never mind the whole “coming back to life” thing. Sure, they get along fine, but they're each a little like a splinter under the other's skin: mostly harmless but a little annoying and rarely worth the pain to dig out the root of the problem too soon. So they dance civilly around each other, almost-but-not-quite friends, and let everyone around them buddy up at every opportunity. Which is ironic, in a way, because Tony loves Phil’s new team--FitzSimmons are actually kept on time limits when they go to the Tower so as not to get recruited into Stark Industries, and if anyone thinks Tony hasn’t tried, well, they don’t know Tony. And that’s not even getting into the trouble that happens with Tony and Skye--Daisy, fuck, Clint’s going to have to get used to that--start talking computers.

Clint shudders just thinking about it, then sighs.

“Dad’s…” He doesn’t know where to go with this without sounding like he’s disparaging either his husband or his teammate, when his intention is to do neither. “Dad’s used to being in charge, right?”

Coop nods, looking intently at the pan.

“And you know we all help each other here at home, but you know how sometimes it’s hard to ask other people to help you because you’re afraid it’ll make you look like you can’t handle things?”

Coop nods again, chewing on his lip. Clint wishes he was better at this. He wishes Coop had asked Laura, who’s always so much better with words than he is. He wishes he wasn’t having this conversation with his son at all, goddamnit, but here they are.

“Mom says it’s best to ask for help, though, even when I don’t want to, because it’s not right to let pride get in the way.”

Coop’s voice is low and quiet, and oh, Clint sees what this is about. He reaches his hands out to cover his son’s where they’re scrubbing almost furiously over the pan and says, “Let’s just let this one soak for a while and go have a seat, okay?”

Cooper finally looks up at him, his big eyes shining with confusion and what Clint is sure are tears. Clint holds out a towel and they both dry their hands, and then Clint watches Coop hoist himself up onto one of the kitchen stools. He leans on the counter opposite his son and considers his next words carefully.

“Your mom’s right,” he says, because duh. “But the thing is, sometimes it’s hard to know what to ask for when a big thing happens.”

“But can’t Tony make him a new hand? Like the Arc Reactor or like he fixed Pepper when she had that glowing thing in her skin?”

“Well-”

“If Tony and Gemma and Leo can fix him a new hand--and they can, I know it, because they can do anything--then why doesn’t he let them? He should ask them to help, like Mom says, and not be too proud because then he could be like he was before!”

Tears spill over Coop’s cheeks and his voice cracks. Clint’s move around the counter is automatic, he’s never been able to stand seeing any of them cry, even after all these years and three kids. He wraps an arm around Coop’s shoulders and runs the other over his son’s head.

“Kiddo, just because they can give him something where his real hand used to be doesn’t mean he’ll be like he was before. He lost an actual, real part of himself. And maybe someday he’ll ask them to help him with something to try to replace it, but it’s still not the same as his real hand. He still won’t be able to pick things up or hold them or feel them the same way, so it isn’t really fair to think he’d want that just yet, is it?”

Coop sniffles and hiccups.

“He-he’s sad, though,” his son chokes out. “He’s sad and you and Mom are sad…”

Clint sighs again and ducks his head to rest his chin in his son’s hair.

“We’re sad because he’s hurt. And that’s okay, because it’s just like when Mom was upset last year when you broke your arm, remember? She didn’t like that you were hurt, but she helped you with your homework and putting on your coat and eventually you could do all that stuff yourself, but at first it was hard, right?”

Coop lets out another hushed sob into Clint’s shirt and nods. Truth be told, the broken arm had been a little traumatic for all of them, fresh off trying to figure out what the hell the world was supposed to look like after Ultron. But at the same time, it was the kind of distraction that reminded them what was really important in their own lives.

“So this is like that--we have to help Dad figure out how to do some things until he can work them out for himself, that’s all. We’re sad because he’s hurting, but we love him and we’ll help him because he needs us, won’t we?”

Another sob, another hiccup, another sniffle, a squeeze of the arms wrapped around his torso. And another nod, this one more emphatic.

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s my boy,” he whispers into Coop’s hair, because god, he really is.

He holds on for as long as Coop will let him, which is longer than usual tonight. So long, in fact, that even though the tears and the sniffles subside, Clint doesn’t hear the squeak in the floorboards that usually tell him when someone’s coming into the kitchen just before they appear.

“Everything okay in here?”

Phil’s voice is guarded and his face is wary when Clint turns his head at his words. Clint’s about to nod, to say something to smooth things over, to try to provide reassurance he isn’t sure he feels but knows is needed. But he doesn’t get the chance before Cooper all but shoves him away, catapults from the stool and across the kitchen and throws his arms around Phil with the kind of abandon they’re used to from Lila, but not from their oldest, who’s started to be too big for hugs, Dad, and who doesn’t want to be tucked in any longer.

Phil looks at Clint with bewildered eyes, but his arms come around Cooper in an instant, and Clint can see just how tightly he’s holding on with his hand, fingers nearly curled into Coop’s t-shirt. The best Clint can offer is a tired smile and a shrug, the kind that says hey, he’s my kid, what can you do?

“I’m sorry you’re hurt,” Coop says into Phil’s shirt, voice small but decidedly less teary. “And I’m sorry I said you should ask Tony for a new hand.”

Phil smiles down at the dark head that’s pressed against his chest.

“Oh, buddy,” he says, and he sighs. “You’re probably right, I probably should. I’m just-”

“I know, it’s a big thing that happened and you don’t know what to do yet, and we should help you until you do, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”

Clint ducks his head to hide his smile. You could tell Cooper the sky was green, and if he thought you were saying the right thing, he’d pick it up with the same certainty in a heartbeat. Phil always says it’s one of his favorite things about both generations of Barton boys--they’re both full of heart and hellbent on the right thing, no matter what it is.

Phil’s eyes are a little shiny when they meet Clint’s, but he’s smiling softly, too.

“I know you will,” he says, “and I know I can always count on you and your sister, and I love you for that, okay?”

Coop nods into Phil’s shirt front, undoubtedly smearing it with tears and snot like he did Clint’s. Parenthood so often has meant that some of their proudest moments are also some of the messiest. Oddly not different from their day jobs on that front.

Another round of hugs--and Clint is going to take as many of those from Coop as he can get as the teenage years loom in the near distance--and Phil shuffles Coop off to bed with a promise that they can call Tony together before he goes on his next mission that makes their son’s face light up.

“Think you just got yourself out of Christmas,” Clint says as he hands Phil an opened bottle of beer.

Phil sighs and jerks his head towards the porch. Clint nods at the unasked question, holds the screen door open for Phil, and sinks into one of the sturdy rockers. Phil takes his usual seat on the swing, and as if on cue, Laura slides out into the darkness, wine glass in hand, and curls up in the other side of the swing. She rests her feet in Phil’s lap like she always does, smiling at them both tiredly.

“Nat’s down,” she says. “Lila’s pretending I can’t see her reading under her blanket even though her flashlight could power most of the house.”

They all laugh. The flashlight had been a gift from her Uncle Nick, and she’d soon enough discover that it’s just like the ones her daddies got from S.H.I.E.L.D, meaning it’ll never burn out and one of its settings is stun. Tony had put a parental override on that feature, but he always says she’ll need it when she’s a teenager. Her fathers aren’t arguing.

“Cooper is…”

Phil trails off and ducks his head, sighing. It hurts Clint’s heart, especially because he knows exactly what’s going through his son’s head. He’s been there, been that kid who wants to be stoic and doesn’t want to rock the boat, but deep down he’s confused and a little mad and he always says the wrong damn thing.

Fine. Maybe some things haven’t changed much since he was a kid. He’s got two grown adults that love him to prove that’s not always a bad thing.

“He’ll be okay,” Clint says quietly, staring out into the night and taking a pull from the bottle in his hand. “Just, y’know. Give him a bit. He’s got a lot to figure out.”

“Don’t we all,” Phil says. It’s not a question.

Clint smiles faintly and looks at the pair of them in the swing. Christ, he loves them both. His weird, fucked up, perfect family. Leave it to a kid who grew up without much of a family to have one that’s too big to fit modern convention when he’s an adult. And that’s all there is to it, in the end. They survived Clint’s brush with mind control. They survived Phil’s rather prolonged brush with death. They survived parent-teacher conferences and playdates and prying eyes and raised eyebrows, and their children asking why they had more parents than anyone in their classes who all lived in the same house.

Hell, they survived Tony fucking Stark, who was so gleeful at the idea of “Agent” as part of a threesome that he nearly busted a gut.

They can sure as hell get through this, one way or the other, as long as they do it the same way they’ve done everything else--together.

He watches Phil’s hand slide over Laura’s shin softly, knows Phil probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it anymore than Laura probably knows she started smiling the second he touched her. Clint loves those little moments, loves the intimacy and the comfort they each take in the others, and how easy it’s become to find them. It’s simple and sweet and quiet.

And Clint isn’t going to pretend it isn’t a turn on, either. He knows what Phil’s hand feels like sliding over his own skin. Knows what Laura’s body feels like under his hands. Watching them is like the prologue to a story he gets to be a part of.

Preferably sooner than later, now that he thinks about it.

“Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow,” he says finally in response to Phil’s last statement.

He looks meaningfully at Phil, then Laura, then the door to the stairs, letting the side of his mouth curl up in a smile. “Might be a thing or two we can manage just fine.”

He takes the last swallow of his beer, lets his smile turn to a smirk and a wink, pushes himself out of his chair and stands. He pushes his arms above his head in a ridiculously exaggerated stretch and lets out an even more exaggerated yawn.

“‘m going to bed.” He turns and opens the screen door, then turns his head back around and smirks again.

It’s invitation enough, he figures. Still. Subtlety, thy name is not Barton.

“And so’re you,” he says. Phil snorts and Clint shrugs. “My farm, my rules.”

“Our farm, last I checked,” Phil says, but he’s sliding out from under Laura’s feet and taking her hand in his.

“Wouldn’t have been, ‘cept I grew up in the cornfields and had to convince you two it was a good idea for the kids to do the same. So. My idea. My rules.”

“At least I know where the kids get their lack of logic,” Laura says, sliding under Clint’s outstretched arm to put her own free arm around his waist and pulling Phil through the door behind them.

Clint huffs and Phil laughs softly.

“Got you both to come to bed with me, didn’t I?” Clint says as he brushes his lips over Laura’s temple as they walk. “Can’t be that flawed.”

Laura swats his shoulder and Phil chuckles again, but no one’s denying that they may pick up their pace just a touch as they climb the stairs.

It’s not until the door is closed securely behind them and they stand in the dim light of the bedroom that Phil starts to look uncertain again. He’d done this before, when he’d come home with matching scars on either side of his body. Ugly reminders of what Loki had done, but beautiful ones that remind Clint of what he still has in his life. Of what he didn’t lose. He’s not about to let Phil shut down on them now, not again. Not now that they’ve got him back home where he should be.

Laura seems to pick up on the same thing--of course she does, sometimes Clint doesn’t think he’s any match for his wife in the sight department. She reaches up gently, sliding her hand over Phil’s cheek to cup his jaw, then coming up on tiptoe to kiss him without saying a word. This isn’t the sweet, welcome home kiss from the driveway, and Clint feels Phil start to melt into it as he comes to press himself against Phil’s back. It’s heated and wet, the kind of kiss that makes you squirm in your seat when you overhear it, full of ragged breaths and soft moans.

It has a similar effect on Clint, and coupled with watching as their lips part and tongues skate softly together, he finds himself echoing their uneven breathing with his own. He slides his arms around Phil and begins to push the buttons of his shirt free of their buttonholes, sucking gently at the back of Phil’s neck as he lets his fingers slide from Phil’s chest down to the waistband of his slacks.

Laura’s hands come up to meet his, helping to pull Phil’s shirttails free and undoing the last of the buttons, then sliding both their hands up under his t-shirt to rest on his skin. Phil’s muscles contract under the soft brush of Laura’s fingertips; he lets out a moan at the harsher grip of Clint’s calloused hands on his hips.

Clint sees Phil’s hand bunching in the back of Laura’s shirt, sliding and pulling a bit to allow him his own access to her soft skin. Phil always was one for smart ideas. Clint lets his hand slide over Phil’s arm to tangle their fingers together at Laura’s back for a moment, squeezing reassurance with his grasp before pulling Laura in closer. He brings his other hand around them both and tugs at the hem of her shirt until she pulls away from Phil long enough to raise her arms and let him pull it over her head.

Clint skims his hands down her back, relishing the softness of it, the feel of the muscles in her back as she lowers her arms and begins to work on Phil’s belt as she kisses him again. The clinking of his belt buckle is followed by the nearly silent swish of Phil’s slacks sliding down his legs to the floor.

Phil whimpers into her mouth and pushes his hips back into Clint’s, then forward again as Laura pushes a hand under the elastic waist of his boxers.

“Wait,” Phil pants, and no, thank you, Clint doesn’t want to wait a goddamn second, but he knows what’s coming, so he sucks once more at Phil’s neck, smiling a little as he pulls away because he loves watching red blossom under Phil’s skin, knowing that mark will be under his perfectly pressed collars for days.

“It’s okay,” Laura whispers, and she doesn’t stop or wait or any of the things Phil’s trying to gasp out.

Clint feels the moment her hand wraps around Phil, feels Phil shudder and suck in a breath, feels the other muscles in his body go slack and his head fall back onto Clint’s shoulder. Laura flicks her eyes up to meet Clint’s for just a moment and nods, a tiny movement.

Go ahead, we’ve got him, her eyes and her gentle smile say, and they do, and so Clint reaches up with fingers that are only shaking a little to unhook the sling from around Phil’s shoulder and slide it off.

“Don’t have to,” Phil gasps as Clint pulls Phil’s shirt down off his shoulders and cradles his injured elbow so he can push the fabric over the bandages without hurting Phil.

“Shhhh,” Clint says, lets the shirt fall to the floor, turns Phil’s head so he can kiss the protests out of his mouth and oh fuck has he missed this.

Phil’s mouth is hot and pliant, and he kisses Clint back like his life depends on it, moaning as Clint sucks Phil’s tongue into his mouth and then again when Laura slides his t-shirt up and leans in to drag her lips over his chest, stopping to tease at his nipple with her teeth and tongue before she pushes the shirt up further and forces Clint to pull away and help Phil lift his arms so they can slide it over his head.

Clint takes the same moment to drag his own shirt over his head, because he suddenly has the overwhelming need to feel as much of Phil’s skin against his own as he can. It’s not new; every time one of them is injured, the others are that much more eager--or desperate--to feel the heat of living, healthy skin against their own. Phil’s back against his naked chest is just the balm Clint wanted it to be.

He sighs and drops his mouth back to Phil’s shoulder before tilting his chin to hook over it and meet Laura’s lips with his own. Phil turns his head to watch them kiss and brings his hand up to wrap around the back of Clint’s neck as though to press them all even closer together. His breath hitches as Laura’s hand slides back into his boxers and begins to stroke him. Clint pulls away from her just enough to let his eyes follow the movement of her hand, graceful and sure, and Clint very badly needs to see, so he pushes Phil’s boxers down over his hips with shaking hands, then runs them up and down Phil’s sides as he watches Phil’s cock sliding in and out of Laura’s fist.

And that would be enough, it really would, just to watch Phil come apart where he stands, but their wife isn’t one for enough, and Clint groans right along with Phil as Laura starts to kiss a slow, wet, deliberate path down Phil’s chest, over his ribs and belly. She lowers herself gracefully to her knees as she goes, stopping only long enough to smile up at Phil and let her hands trail over Clint’s where they’re gripping Phil’s waist. And then, Clint thinks, it’s a good thing he’s holding onto Phil as tightly as he is, because Phil’s knees all but give out when Laura opens her mouth and let’s Phil’s cock slide between her lips and over her tongue.

“Fuck, I…I can’t-” Phil gasps out, and he seems torn between letting his head fall back on Clint’s shoulder again and keeping his eyes on Laura’s mouth as she licks and sucks.

His breath is ragged and loud, and Clint could listen to the mingled sounds of Phil’s gasps and the wet, sucking noises coming from Laura forever, could probably get off on nothing else, if he’s honest. They agreed years ago that no one could hold back if this was going to work, and that agreement has been central to every part of their relationship ever since. Perhaps most especially here, in their bedroom, this space that’s truly theirs and no one else’s.

For just a moment, Phil’s gasps take on a different, harsher sound, one that registers at the same time Clint sees Phil lift his left arm as though to run his hand through Laura’s hair, and then just as quickly drop it to his side. Phil screws his eyes shut and Clint’s heart aches through the haze of arousal, but just like she’d done moments before, Laura throws him a look and keeps on sucking Phil down, and Clint knows just what she’s telling him.

It doesn’t matter. Make him see it doesn’t matter. Not here.

Clint slides his own left hand down Phil’s arm, now hanging at his side, letting his fingers play over the ends of the bandages, then running back up over Phil’s skin so lightly that Clint feels goosebumps springing up beneath his touch. With his right hand, he tangles their fingers together and lifts them to stroke over Laura’s cheek, into her hair, back down across her jaw. Their combined touch is featherlight, nothing more than redirection of Phil’s earlier impulse, but a reminder that Phil can still touch, just a little differently than before.

Laura pulls away from Phil’s cock and leans her cheek into their hands, kissing over Phil’s palm and sucking tangled fingers into her mouth. Clint groans and lets his hips press into Phil’s ass, and Phil hisses out a yes and pushes back into him, and wow does Clint suddenly need to be naked, because his jeans are definitely in the way.

“C’mon,” he whispers into Phil’s ear.

Phil nods and holds their still-entwined hands out to Laura, who rises as gracefully as she knelt moments before, and when she stands he keeps pulling until he’s kissing her again. Clint pulls his hand free, letting Phil wind his arms around her waist and pulling her flush against him, and steps back just far enough and long enough to strip the rest of his clothes off, and all he can think is that it’s too far and too long, and he can’t wait to touch them both all over again.

Intent on avoiding any more moments that take Phil out of the moment, he steps around so he’s at Laura’s back, slides her hair over her shoulder and kisses the back of her neck. He’s done wasting time with clothes, and he flicks the clasp of her bra loose and moves his hands down and around her waist to unbutton her jeans and slide them over her hips and to the floor, and finally there’s nothing separating any of them, and it’s fucking perfect.

Well. Not quite perfect. But they’re getting there, and that’s half the fun anyway.

“C’mon,” he says again, arms gently around both Phil and Laura, and the slightest flex of a muscle is all he needs to guide them both onto the bed.

He’d never understood dancing, really, before he found himself with both a wife and a husband. Someone told him once years ago that leading a dance is subtle, just a shift of a hand here, a twitch of a muscle there, but Clint wasn’t one for finesse back then unless it involved a bow.

But Phil and Laura are the consummate partners--dance, life, whatever--shifting and floating as if on a breeze. Clint never has to struggle to make his intentions--or his wishes--known, and he’s learned to be led just as easily in the years they’ve been together. So it’s not surprising that their organized tumble onto the bed is more graceful than not, with Clint climbing in just after Phil to resume their earlier arrangement. It seems important for Phil to feel surrounded tonight, for him not to have a blind side while they navigate through new waters.

Clint crowds right up behind Phil, lets his cock nudge gently at Phil’s ass just to hear him hiss and feel him push back into Clint’s hips. Clint smiles.

“What do you want?” Laura’s voice is soft and sweet, barely more than a whisper, just like the kiss she places on Phil’s lips after she asks.

Her eyes are wide and watchful, never straying from Phil’s face, looking for any sign of retreat. Clint knows from experience she’ll keep Phil grounded right here on this bed, no matter where his mind tries to take him. She’s had a lot of practice over the years with the both of them.

“Doesn’t matter,” Phil mumbles against her mouth, his hips moving back and forth now, alternating between pushing back against Clint’s cock--and fuck if that’s not just about driving Clint crazy--and then forward between Laura’s thighs.

“It always matters,” she whispers.

“Doesn’t.” Phil shakes his head and closes his eyes, sucking in a breath.

Clint can feel the instant Phil starts to close in on himself, the instant his brain overtakes his libido and starts to whisper doubts into his mind. He feels it in the tension in his shoulders and the sudden stillness in his hips, and he sees it in the furrow in Laura’s brow as she watches what Clint imagines are half a dozen different warring looks cross his face. He pulls away from Laura just far enough to turn his head so Clint can see his face, see desperation and lust and lingering fear all warring in his eyes when he opens them again.

“I need…” He gulps in another huge, jagged breath; his voice comes out a little bit broken, and he raises his left arm, then drops it, letting the aborted gesture say everything he can’t. “I can’t…”

“We can,” Clint says, voice low and fingers, because fuck this, he’s not about to let Phil lose sight of his part in them, to think he’s somehow less than the rest, or a burden. “Whatever it is, we can.”

He pushes up on one elbow and pulls at Phil’s shoulder until Phil rolls onto his back. Laura follows, resting her head on Phil’s other shoulder and burying her face in his neck. Phil’s eyes close again and his forehead is pinched, but his hand comes up to rest in her hair gently. He’s still with them, at least a little.

“Don’t go where you’re going.” Clint reaches up and smoothes at the wrinkle between Phil’s brows softly with his thumb. He leans down and brushes his lips across Phil’s mouth. “Don’t shut down on us, we need you, y’know.”

Phil huffs.

“Don’t know what for,” he barely whispers.

Clint wants to snap, or shake Phil, or cry, but again, he doesn’t do that shit anymore. Mostly. At least not with either of the two people currently crowded up against him, he loves them too much.

Instead, he drops his forehead down onto Phil’s and sighs. Laura’s lifted her head, hurt in her eyes, but she’s letting Clint take this one, it seems.

“I’ve needed you for most of my adult life and you know it,” he finally says. “I was too reckless or too stupid or too cocky not to fuck everything up and not get home to my wife, and I needed you to have my back so I didn’t get in my own way. Turns out she needed you for the same reason, even before you two met.”

He raises his head, watching carefully. He’ll have a moment to bring Phil back, he wants to make sure it happens. He kisses Laura’s forehead softly before he goes on.

“We need you now because we’re family, and you know that, and I’d like to punch you in the face for even asking why, but I also know you’re not asking because you don’t know.”

The corner of Phil’s mouth twitches ever so slightly, and Clint knows it’ll be okay. Leave it to Phil to find comfort in threats of violence. Then again, it’s a very Clint thing to say, and they’ve been each other’s longest-standing sources of sanity for half a lifetime.

“We’ll always need you, and we hope you’ll always need us, and we don’t care if you can’t cut your steak or tie your fucking shoes, we just care that you’re here.”

He huffs. How the fuck he went from so turned on he could barely stand it to nearly in tears in a matter of a minute is one of the great mysteries of love, apparently. He’s not even that upset by it.

“I feel...useless,” Phil says abruptly, cutting off Clint’s next long-winded rant.

Clint shrugs.

“Yeah, well, now you know how I feel every time I end up in Medical.”

“And every time you both go off to save the world and leave me here wondering if you’re coming back.”

Laura’s words are careful; she never likes to make them feel guilty about their work, but they both know how much it tears her apart when they go. Clint leans across Phil and kisses her softly. An apology, a thank you, maybe a bit of both, and maybe a little bit of residual lust, because really, she’s absolutely beautiful in the muted light, bright-eyed and smiling and naked. And if the kiss goes on a little longer than he’d initially intended, well, he’s human.

When he looks back down at Phil, he smiles at the renewed spark of interest he sees in Phil’s eyes. They’re all human, it turns out.

“What I want matters, hm?” Phil’s voice isn’t quite so broken this time.

“Always,” Laura says fiercely.

Phil smiles. He reaches up to trace her mouth with his fingers, pressing on her lower lip until she sucks one finger into her mouth for a moment.

“Do that again,” he says, eyes passing between their faces.

It’s almost his Agent Coulson voice, and if that doesn’t still wind Clint up after all this time, he doesn’t know what will.

Way back when the three of them first got together, Clint had needed a little prodding to be able to navigate through the idea of someone else with his wife, not to mention the idea of being with someone else in front of his wife. And that doesn’t even begin to take into account how much he short-circuited thinking about being with Phil at the time. Phil, who always has known what Clint needs in one way or another, had taken to using his Agent Coulson voice to shake Clint out of paralysis mode, and after a few rounds of really fucking mind-blowing sex among the three of them, Clint started having trouble not getting hard in the field with that same voice in his ear during an op.

He has no such hang-ups now, though, and his erection comes back with a speed that probably shouldn’t be possible at his age, even if he hasn’t come yet. Whatever. Has he mentioned how hot he still finds these two?

He grins. “Yes, sir,” he half-mutters against Laura’s lips, because he’s very good at following orders, especially when the order in question is to kiss his wife while his husband watches.

This time it isn’t soft, and it isn’t an apology. It’s wet and maybe a little filthier than normal, all open mouths and tangled tongues, because Phil is humming his approval from under and between them, and it really is about what he wants. Clint reaches down to stroke Phil’s cock, coaxing him back into the action. Phil moans and bucks his hips up, and Clint breaks away from Laura, panting, to lean down and lick into Phil’s mouth, chasing his moans back into his throat as he strokes.

He no more than pulls his lips away to breathe before Laura’s mouth is next to his, hovering over Phil’s and waiting for her own chance. She covers Phil’s mouth as soon as Clint moves away, pushing herself so she’s straddling one of Phil’s thighs, her hip brushing Clint’s hand where it’s wrapped around Phil. He can feel her rolling her hips, pushing into Phil’s leg, and he lets go of Phil long enough to reach his arm just a bit further, to slide his hand between her legs. She’s hot and wet and she moans and pushes down into his touch, and Clint has half a mind to tease her with his fingers, but this isn’t about him.

He sits up and kisses her again, then puts his hands on her waist and pulls until she’s straddling Phil fully. She knows where he’s going even as he moves her, and she kneels up gracefully, legs spread across Phil’s hips, head tipped back. Clint reaches down again, into the space between her legs, and strokes Phil’s cock once, twice, sure and smooth, then positions him at Laura’s entrance.

They all three moan as Laura sinks down on Phil’s cock. Her eyes are closed and her head is tilted back, mouth slightly open. Phil’s eyes are closed too, and his hand is clenched in the sheets with the effort of not moving and oh, this just won’t do at all.

“Thought you wanted to watch,” he says roughly, getting up on his knees at Phil’s side and leaning in to kiss Laura again, cutting off her breath with his lips and tongue and teeth. He can feel her moving, riding Phil with the kind of rhythm that will bring him almost to the edge, then slowing down again to drag things out. He lets his tongue push into her mouth with the same rhythm, and can feel his own hips rolling against nothing for a few moments before he hears Phil whisper, “fuck.’

And then Phil’s hand is wrapped around him, stroking and squeezing, and Clint whimpers into Laura’s mouth. She’s panting now, not so much kissing as just being kissed, and finally she pulls away and lets her head fall back, looking like there’s nothing in the world but the feeling of Phil inside her. Clint’s been there; for all she cares right now, there isn’t. She makes a beautiful picture, but then again, so does Phil, cheeks and neck dusted with red and the lightest sheen of sweat, eyes wide and watchful, darting between Laura’s rolling body and Clint’s cock sliding in and out of his fist.

“Oh god,” Clint whispers as Phil starts to twist his wrist at the end of each stroke. “Oh god, oh god, oh god, fuck.”

He leans down and kisses Phil, bordering on desperate because he’s not going to last much longer. Phil’s mouth opens for him instantly, sucking on his tongue and bobbing his head and if that isn’t just about enough, Clint doesn’t know what is, and he bucks his hips once, twice, and gasps his orgasm into Phil’s mouth, seeing stars and feeling every muscle in his body go rigid all at once, and it’s perfect.

Phil strokes him through it before he lets his hand drop to Clint’s thigh as Clint shakes against him. Clint hears Laura’s breathing getting louder, coming out in whispered ohs that match the rhythm of her hips, and of Phil’s hips as he fucks up into her, and oh god no, he isn’t missing this.

He pushes himself back up onto his knees, limbs shaking and heavy. He winds his fingers through Phil’s and squeezes, then brings their linked hands up to his mouth. He licks softly at Phil’s fingers, cleaning himself off each one. Laura moans and he locks eyes with her and sucks one of Phil’s fingers all the way into his mouth. He reaches out with his other hand and cups her breast, pinches lightly at her nipple, then looks back down at Phil, who’s watching both his hands raptly.

He only slides Phil’s finger out of his mouth long enough to whisper, “Come for me, c’mon,” not really aimed at one or the other in particular. He leans up and sucks Laura’s nipple into his mouth, rolling it in his teeth and licking over it and that’s enough, she sinks down onto Phil and lets out a long, ragged sigh that Clint knows means she’s coming.

That’s followed by a choked curse and a squeeze on Clint’s fingers from Phil. Clint pulls away from Laura to watch Phil’s hips buck up into her as she comes. She tips her head back again and lets him, mouthing yesyesyes as he does. Clint leans back down and sucks at Phil’s collarbone, bites gently at the skin, slides his tongue over it after, does it again.

Phil says, “Ngngh,” and goes rigid for a long moment, back arched up just a bit off the mattress and eyes squeezed shut, then collapses into the bed.

Laura’s right behind him, tipping forward to rest on Phil’s chest, her head next to Clint’s. Clint smiles at her, watching her try to catch her breath and feeling Phil doing the same under his head. He leans in and places a soft kiss on her mouth, then picks his head up so his chin rests on Phil’s chest and he can watch Phil’s face. Every wrinkle and worry line is gone, replaced with pleasure and haze, and probably a little bit of exhaustion that Phil hasn’t let show since any of this happened.

“For the record, sir?” Clint says, keeping his voice soft and light and teasing.

Phil lifts his head, and Clint does his best to try to smirk. His best is pretty shitty, considering he’s in a post-orgasm bliss place that doesn’t really let him do anything with his face except grin like a fucking lovesick lunatic. Which is completely fine, and he just keeps grinning at Phil, except...oh. Right. he was saying something.

“You’ve still got this part right.”

Phil’s smile just about lights the room, natural and brilliant in the darkness. He lifts his hand and runs it softly over Clint’s cheek, then lets it rest on the back of Laura’s head. He drops his own head back to the pillow and sighs.

“I love you.”

His voice is low, but it’s steady and sure and light, not an ounce of worry or fear in it.

“I know,” Laura and Clint say, just about in unison, and they all laugh.

Laura’s eyes drop closed almost right away, the all the worry of recent days taking their toll, but her face is smooth and almost smiling in sleep. It doesn’t take long before Clint feels Phil’s breaths start to even out and turn deep and steady beneath his cheek, too. Clint won’t lie, the rush of love and delight he feels knowing that Phil’s truly relaxed is...well, it’s nowhere near as good as the sex, he’s not an idiot, but it’s pretty fucking amazing.

“Love you, too, you know,” he whispers.

Phil lifts his arm and wraps it around Clint’s back, and the warmth and weight and trust of the movement goes a long way to counter the fact that there’s no hand resting on Clint’s skin at the end of it.

“I do know.” The pause is so long that Clint thinks that’s it, and he’s nearly asleep when Phil speaks again. “Need you to keep telling me anyway, though.”

Clint nods, sleepily. He gets it. Change is fucking hard in their jobs, and this is a big fucking change for Phil. He needs an anchor. It’s not needy or desperate. It’s just the way things are for them.

“You got it, babe,” he whispers. “Much as you need.”

Phil hums and tightens his arm around Clint’s back. The last thing Clint thinks before he falls asleep is that he’s pretty sure all three of them are going to sleep with smiles on their faces. And if that’s fucking sappy, well, what the fuck. Their lives are hard. Not much to smile about in their line of work. He’s absurdly grateful to have a life outside of his work that makes him--them--smile so often and so genuinely.

When he wakes, the light in their bedroom tells him the sun is higher than his usual waking hour. He stretches and puts out an arm, finding Laura still curled up around Phil’s pillow, sleeping softly.

What he doesn’t find is Phil, and he’s suddenly very awake, head spinning and full of images of Phil waking up and regretting coming home; of Phil curled up on the sofa downstairs, miserable and alone and exhausted after the dreams that always come after a shitshow in the field; and worst of all, of Phil being gone.

He slides out of bed, pulls on the closest pair of boxer shorts he can find, and pads quietly out of the room--no need to wake Laura until he’s assessed the situation--and down the stairs. But he stops short in the doorway to the kitchen, and if his throat maybe closes up a little and his eyes sting maybe a little more, well. That’s marriage. And fatherhood. And what happens when you love Phil Coulson, who, apparently, adapts to whatever life throws at him after one mind-blowing orgasm.

Cooper is standing at the stove, tongue poking out of his mouth with concentration as he slides a spatula under a pancake on the griddle. Phil’s watching over his shoulder, eyes sharp and watchful, but the instructions he’s giving are gentle, sounding more like a suggestion than an order, and that makes Clint smile, because it can’t be a surprise that his son responds to the same kind of guidance he always has.

Lila is carefully folding napkins at the dining room table, which is half-set, but every placemat is perfectly lined up on the table, and every plate is perfectly centered, and the smile on Clint’s face grows.

Christ, their children are so predictably theirs.

Phil’s super-spy sense must tingle, and he turns around to catch Clint’s eye. And as much as he loves the smile that blooms across his face, what he really loves is that there wasn’t a single worry line visible on his face before he smiles. He’s home.

“Mornin’,” Clint mumbles, suddenly realizing he’s mostly naked and still asleep, while Phil is calm and collected and caffeinated and oh, coffee, yes.

Because Phil’s nudged Cooper with his hip and Cooper’s flipped the last pancake off the griddle and smiling at Clint as he carefully carries a steaming mug over and holds it out.

“Dad said you’d need this,” Coop says, grinning at Phil, who winks at him.

Clint takes a sip and groans, then ruffles Coop’s hair and pulls him in for a one-armed hug.

“Knew I kept you around for a reason, kid,” he says.

Coop lets Clint hug him for longer than usual, and he smiles--all teeth and eyes--when Clint lets him go and ruffles his hair again.

“Morning, gorgeous,” Phil says, eyes darting up and behind Clint, and Clint knows Laura’s woken up.

And judging by the fact that she’s only wearing the button down shirt they stripped Phil out of the night before, she had the same fears Clint did, but damn, she pulls panicked off way better than Clint does.

She plucks Clint’s mug out of his hands and takes a sip, smiling as he mock-glares at her and then moving under his outstretched arm. She slides her arms around his waist and rests her head on his chest, watching their family operate perfectly under Phil’s careful guidance.

“You two lazybones sleep well?”

Phil’s voice is playful, and he only barely hides his smile by planting a kiss on Nat’s head.

“Daddy said if we waited for you to get up, we’d be waiting until lunch,” Lila says as she places napkins carefully beneath each plate.

Clint snorts into Laura’s hair. The little smart aleck never even cracked a smile. She never even looked up, but he knows that even at her age, she’s amused. Because she’s Phil’s daughter through and through, right down to that bland, dry humor that almost no one gets, but is beloved to everyone who does.

“We thought you could use the rest,” Phil says more quietly, so the kids don’t hear but he and Laura can’t mistake his words.

He leans into kiss Laura, then drops Nat into her open arms. He coos and grins and Clint leans over to kiss his little cheek.

“Mommy, come sit here!” Lila calls, patting a chair and beaming, and honestly she’s earned it, Clint’s not sure when their table last looked that good.

“Hope you’re serving,” she says to a smiling Phil, kissing his cheek as she and Nat slide past him and over to the table.

She stops at the counter long enough to steal a bit of the pancake Coop is nibbling on, smiling at his laughing protest about her stealing the chef’s bite without being the chef. He cuts off, though, beaming with pride, when she raises her eyebrows in surprise and telling him seriously what a good job he’s done.

As she makes her way to the table, hugging Lila and sitting in her designated chair, Clint turns to look at Phil, who’s beaming maybe as much as Coop. Maybe more.

“You did all this,” he says.

Phil nods, even though it was never a question.

“Why?”

Phil puts his arms around Clint’s waist and presses his lips to Clint’s temple.

“You say that like I don’t usually make breakfast while you two sleep the day away.”

Clint grins, because it’s true. Clint’s basically a teenager in a grown man’s body; he’d sleep the day away if he could. But three children and a farm usually mean he’s up with the sun. Or before it, in the winter. He fucking hates winter.

“And besides,” Phil goes on, “isn’t this what we do around here?”

“Make breakfast? Yeah, it usually keeps the monsters quieter if they’re fed.”

Phil laughs, and Clint squeezes his arms tighter around Phil’s torso. He loves the feeling of laughter.

“Smartass.”

“You love it.”

Phil huffs, but he also ducks his head and kisses Clint soundly on the lips.

“You know I do,” he says, still chuckling. “Wasn’t what I meant, but you know that.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, “but it’s fun to rile you up a little.”

“So you’re a smartass and a troublemaker. Hm. Tell me something I haven’t always known.”

They kiss again, a little longer this time, because Laura’s got the kids captivated, and because why the fuck not?

“We take care of each other,” Phil says when they break apart. He’s a little breathless, but he’s grinning and so is Clint, and so is Laura from her seat in the dining room. “Now go eat your pancakes.”

He laughs, and so does Phil, and it’s a fucking gorgeous sound. He makes his way over to the table and sits where he’s told--Lila can be scary if you don’t follow orders. He kisses her cheek and pulls her into his lap long enough to blow a raspberry on her cheek until she shrieks with laughter. He takes Laura’s offered hand on top of the table, thanks Coop for the mountain of pancakes that materialize in front of him, and looks around his chaotically-ordered house with a feeling of sublime contentment.

Only one thing left to do this morning, he figures, and then it’ll be perfect. He squeezes Laura’s hand to say silently what he’s about to put into words.

“Hey, babe?”

“Get your own juice, Barton, I can’t carry two glasses anymore.”

Phil is smiling and his voice is teasing and he’s making fun of himself and calling Clint Barton, which he only does when he’s in a hell of a good mood, and oh, this is good. No, this is fucking great.

“I’ve already got juice.” Clint raises the glass that Coop just put in front of him and grins cheekily, all Hawkeye-confident, because two can play this game. Clint fucking loves this game.

Phil just hums and smiles and sits down.

“Whatever you think, I don’t always need you to bring me something.”

Clint pretends to be insulted. He pretends badly. On purpose. And he’s rewarded with twin smiles from his husband and his wife and giggles from his older two children, which is even more perfect.

He stuffs a bite of pancakes in his mouth and basks in the perfection of the moment, watching Coop and Lila beam at his enjoyment of what they clearly put so much work into all morning. When he finishes that bite--and they might have to shift Coop into dinner duty instead of dishes, seriously--he looks around the table, then back at Phil.

It isn’t that he loves anyone else less, or that Phil is his favorite, to use the kids’ term. The conversation from the night before drifts through his mind and he smiles.

“I love you, Phil,” he says.

It’s a declaration, not just a statement. It’s big and loud and aimed, unlike usual, at one person at the table.

He’s still holding Laura’s hand, and he’s gratified to feel her squeeze his fingers, but for once he’s not worried about overstepping or leaving anyone out. It was the right thing to say, and he’s only grateful that she agrees.

But Phil’s face, god. If last night’s smile was electric, today’s could power a whole city block. The arc reactor would have looked like a speck in comparison, and Clint decides in this moment that he’ll do anything he can to keep that smile on Phil’s face whenever he can, in spite of all the weird shit he deals with when he leaves and goes back to May and Mack and FitzSimmons and Skye or Daisy or Quake or whatever they’re calling her now.

Phil stuffs a huge forkful of pancakes in his mouth--to Coop’s very great delight--grinning as he chews and never letting his eyes leave Clint’s. He swallows, lets his eyes flick over every head at the table for a moment. And Clint knows his thoughts as if they were his own.

Cooper, Clint’s son in every way, but better than Clint could ever hope to be because his mother and his other father love him in a way that Clint didn’t know until he was a grown man.

Lila, who is everything good about her daddy and her mother, but she’s probably the smartest of all of them in this house, and more perceptive even than that.

Now, Nat? Look, he’s a baby. This is easy. Babies are gorgeous, once their heads get un-smashed from all that time curled up in tiny balls, and this one’s particularly gorgeous. And no one can wait to see what surprises await them when this one gets old enough to really make his way in the world.

Laura...well. Phil’s probably got words for Laura. Clint hasn’t been able to put together enough words to convey just how much he owes this woman in his life. But he figures that’s okay, and maybe Phil’s not quite so good with words where she’s concerned either. They’re both good with showing, as much as telling.

When Phil’s eyes fall on him, though, his brain goes quiet. It isn’t that he has doubts; he doesn’t. It isn’t that he’s afraid Phil thinks less of him than the rest. Quite the opposite--he knows Phil’s here because of that day in his office, knows Phil loved him first, just like he loved Phil before Laura or Coop did. It’s a peaceful quiet in his head, and he loves Phil even more for giving him that.

Although…

“I know,” Phil says, and grins at him.

He grins back. It never hurts to be reminded one more time.

~*~