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Leo heads to his bunk on the Bus, already compiling a mental list of mission supplies he needs to grab from the lab, when his phone starts to trill out, “Put up your dukes, let’s get down to it! Hit me with your bes—”
“Busy,” Leo answers with a huff.
There’s the rhythmic thump of dance music over the line, and then a door slides shut and the background noise is muted. “Don’t forget duct tape.”
Leo pauses in pulling his backpack from the shelf in his closet and tilts his head. “What would I need duct tape for? And where are you?”
“That’s classified. But you never know when duct tape might come in handy in the field. Thousand and one uses, and all that shit.”
Leo doesn’t bother asking how anyone outside of the op command and agents directly involved would know he’s about to head into the field, much less Clint whose clearance level has suffered a major downgrade as of late. Clint’s a good deal sneakier than anyone gives him credit for, even after the fallout of the Battle of New York. So Leo only shrugs and tacks on duct tape at the bottom of his mental list. “Anything else, oh Wise One?”
“Ward’s people-skills are shit.”
Leo rolls his eyes and trots down the staircase to swing by the lab. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“If he tries to pull any of that Shut your cakehole and let me do the talking bull, just nod along and then forget he said anything.”
“Right,” Leo agrees. He pulls open his desk drawers and rifles through them for the tech projects he’s been working on upgrading. “But then who’s going to do the talking?”
“That’d be you, buddy.”
Leo jerks upright and raises his hand, pointer finger extended by habit even though he’s talking on the phone and Clint can’t see him. “I don’t think I’m entirely qualified—”
“Just be you, Fitz,” Clint instructs sagely. “You’ll charm the pants right off the baddies.”
Leo snorts and rubs at the back of his neck. “Pretty sure it’s not that type of mission.”
“Rule #1 of Field Ops: Any mission can become that type of mission given enough ambiance.”
“Fingers crossed then, eh?” Dumping the tech into his backpack, Leo heads back upstairs. Jemma’s waiting in the common area, wringing her hands together nervously. “Ah, Jemma’s here. I need to go.”
“Yeah, go talk her down before she jumps ship after you.”
Leo sets his jaw and wishes there was someone around to glare at other than Jemma as he walks over to his bunk. “That’s not at all funny, and it never will be again.”
“You’re heading into the field, Simba. Gotta learn to embrace the near death experience.”
“Thanks, but no thanks, Rafiki.” Leo pours out the contents of his bag onto his bed and starts carefully arranging it all to check he has everything he might need.
“Fitz. Be careful out there.”
“Yeah. You too,” he mutters. Leo shuts his phone off—no personal communications devices allowed in the field—and sets it aside to start packing his supplies as efficiently as possible while he waits for Jemma to work out what it is she wants to say.
She hasn’t managed to look him in the eye yet when she starts to ramble, “I just can’t believe you’re going in. Dark. In hostile territory. Without comms, lacking any real physical strength.”
“I’ll be fine,” Leo assures her. And he’s sort of starting to believe it himself now, if only because Clint seems to think he can handle it.
---
Leo’s in his bunk again and the Bus is back over the Atlantic when he powers his phone on. Barely a second after his background wallpaper loads, it starts ringing. “Put up your dukes—”
“Hi,” he answers lowly, leaning back on his bed to slump against the wall of the plane.
“Answering the phone’s a good sign you’re still alive, but I’m gonna need a better voice recognition sample to verify.”
Leo sighs and looks up to the blank ceiling, fidgeting with the zip on his jacket. “Did you know?” he asks quietly.
Clint pauses noticeably before answering. “I know a lot of shit, act like I know even more, so you’re gonna have to be a bit more specific, Fitzler.”
“Skye said—” Leo chokes off and has to clear his throat twice before he can continue. “There was no extraction planned. They were going to—”
“Your team had your back, right? They got you out safe and sound?”
“Well, yeah, I’m working with the damn Cavalry these days,” Leo admits with an exasperated sigh. “But I’m asking if you still have my back.”
“I was just off-site with Iron Man. You know me, always waiting in the wings, missing out on all the action.”
"Iron Man!?" Leo sits up and bounces in place, mindful to keep his excited shriek to a respectable indoor level. “As in, the Tony Stark?”
“Yup. Bet you’re wishing we’d had a reason to bust in now, how?”
“I got shot at today. Multiple times,” Leo points out. “You owe me!”
Clint scoffs. “Not like I was the one shooting at you.”
“I should never have been in a position to get shot at! We’re only here because you asked us—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Clint interrupts. “Stark’s going to be chilling in Malibu for a while. Next time you’ve got downtime near Cali, I’ll hook you up. I can probably even sneak you into his workshop if you’ve got some new trick arrows to trade me for it.”
Leo pumps his fist in victory. “Pinky promise!”
“The hell, Leo?”
“Pinky promise me right now. Raise your pinky and swear it,” Leo insists.
Clint groans. “The shit I do for you, man. Fine, pinky’s up, I promise.”
“Thank you. And don’t forget! Because if you break your pinky promise—”
“You’ll break my pinky. Got it, pipsqueak.”
Leo smiles to himself, and well, the small room in general. There’s a few moments of silence, and there’s nothing awkward about it, but if he doesn’t say something then Clint’ll go back to whatever it is he does, which is probably lurking in air vents looking for people to scare. “Jemma shot a superior officer at the Hub,” he blurts out.
“What!?” Clint exclaims. There’re the sounds of things crashing and what Leo thinks is the click of Clint snapping his bow case shut. “The fuck, that’s the kind of shit you lead with, Leo!”
“It was only with the Night-Night pistol!” Leo rushes to explain. “He was knocked unconscious for a bit. No harm done, really.”
“Who'd she shoot with your damn Night-Night pistol?” Clint demands.
“Agent Sitwell, as I understand it.”
“Are you shitting me right now?” Clint’s voice is laced with an undercurrent of amusement, and it’s muffled when he continues, like he’s tilted the phone away from his mouth. “Hey J? Think you can dig up some security footage from the Hub?”
Leo can just make out a cultured, accented voice responding. “Certainly. Shall I pull up anything in particular?”
“Track back Sitwell to where he got himself shot!” Clint requests with a laugh.
Another voice butts in then. “You sound awfully chipper about some agent getting shot. I thought we tolerated that one?”
“S’only a tranq gun.”
Leo sputters, “It’s a good deal more complicated than a tranq gun.”
“Course it is,” Clint agrees easily, moving the phone back so that the mic picks up his voice fully. “My favorite little geniuses designed it, so it’s some kind of mad-awesome, upgraded tranq gun.”
Leo grins and ducks his head down bashfully, never mind that there’s no one around to notice the pleased blush spreading across his cheeks. “That’s a tad more accurate description, at least.”
“HOLY—” Clint suddenly bursts out.
“What? Clint, is everything all right?” Leo’s head whips from side to side, looking for his tablet since that’s his standard response to being informed of an immediate crisis.
“Huh? Yeah. Watching the footage, is all,” Clint answers. “I taught you guys how to shoot right? Like, I distinctly remember multiple lessons on the firing range.”
“You did. Though even afterward, neither of us managed to pass that particular section of the field qualification exam.”
Clint’s tone switches to what Leo and Jemma fondly refer to as Big Brother Knows Best. “Well, you can look forward to another lesson when you pop down to meet Tony. Now I gotta call Jem. She’s due for a lecture on how to properly handle a firearm. Jesus, she’s lucky you built the thing. If that was a regular handgun—”
“Jemma’s the one you want to lecture, not me. I was good today; I saved Ward. More than once,” Leo reminds him.
“Yeah, I hear you. You did great today. I’m proud of you.” Clint’s voice is warm and sounds distinctly like he’s smiling.
Leo happily swings his legs back and forth, glad for the open praise. “Thanks.”
“Go to sleep, Fitz,” Clint orders.
“You’re the one who keeps talk—” The line cuts off abruptly, and Leo pulls his phone back from his ear to grin at it. He falls over to his side and snuggles into his pillow, his worries set to ease with the knowledge that he’s surrounded by a team who looks out for him and that he’s got a superhero on call.