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When Clint Barton first joined SHIELD he thought that he’d made a big mistake. No one seemed to understand why he had Rooks or Row out all the time. It wasn’t like it wasn’t allowed while he was on base. But when he ended up underneath Agent Coulson he seemed to understand. He started to let Cap out of his Pokeball around him. This made other people stop questioning things.
On missions Clint knew only to have the pokemon out that he needed. It was often that Row was out beside him taking aim at partner Pokemon, not just with his natural arrows, but arrows out of Clint’s quiver. Rooks was used to get him and sometimes Coulson and Cap into position to take aim before being recalled.
But Coulson never bothered him about it, allowing for Clint to manage his Pokemon on missions. Coulson was why Clint didn’t just leave SHIELD not long after joining.
Phil Coulson noticed the changes as Barton got more settled in SHIELD. He stopped constantly having his Pokemon out with him. It also helped that they got him fitted with hearing aids. Allowing him to have some idea of when people were behind him. Clint also started to spend a lot of time in Phil’s office, which should have unsettled him, but it didn’t. No instead he started to learn sign language.
Then Barton started to become Clint from time to time in conversion. And that should have scared him, but it didn’t. Their Pokemon even started to hang around together without fighting, which only used to happen on missions. But everything truly changed one day in the middle of a mission, at least for Phil.
This mission wasn’t all that different from missions that they’d had before. It wasn’t even as bad as Budapest had been. But it was before Romanoff was cleared to go on missions, so maybe that was it, maybe had Romanoff been there it would have been different, maybe just maybe he wouldn’t have ended up kissing Clint in the middle of the hotel lobby. But you can’t go back and change things no matter what you want to do. And really the mission needed it. They weren’t convincing anyone any way else to be truthful.
Neither of them talked about it after the mission, going so far to leave it out of their reports. It wasn’t for over a year that they addressed it, but things started to change there. The next mission that changed things didn’t even include both of them. But it did change how they saw themselves and for Phil it made him wish for something that he knew he wanted but didn’t think he deserved.
The mission that changed them the most after that was one that went into a tailspin the moment that they landed to start it.
Clint would agree with Phil that things started to change with their first kiss, and even agree that the disaster that was Bahrain made them rethink not talking about it. They wouldn’t not at first, not until Lena shoved them both into the same tiny room.
The mission had gone south and Lena had come running down the hall and shoved them into the maintenance room to get them out of the way. Clint ended up face to face and could feel Phil’s breath on his lips. Clint leaned forward and let their lips meet in a chaste kiss. Phil’s hands landed on Clint’s hips and Clint let his hands rest on Phil’s arms. When they separated both were blushing hard. They heard people pass them and they both giggled.
“Clint? Do you like me?”
“I think that was obvious, Coulson.” Clint whispered. He felt Coulson nod and then Phil was kissing him again. When Natasha pulled the door open to the hiding spot she had spots of blood covering her. But she was smiling at the two of them. “Knew leaving you two here would work. Missions done.” Natasha held up a flash drive.
That mission got them to get their heads out of their asses and actually talk about the feelings that had been growing for years. Everything fell into place after that. They were an even closer team after that and it wasn’t all that odd to see Rooks with Coulson and Cap with Clint, even on missions.