Chapter Text
Phil and Clint had known from the beginning of their professional relationship that Clint had a very high chance of being injured on the job. He never left a mission without bumps and scrapes and he came back with more serious injuries more often than Phil liked as his handler, and far more often than Phil later felt was necessary after the two of them had bucked up and talked about their feelings. Being with the Avengers was even more of a strain on Clint’s body - especially with his pathological need to be just as good as everyone else, even when everyone else happened to be a team made up of entirely enhanced beings; except for Clint, the “human element.” Fury’s words.
And it hadn’t helped that Clint was also nearly the oldest on the team, beaten out by Stark by a full eight months, and Rogers didn’t count. There was a time when the human body wasn’t supposed to take that much damage any more and that time had come three years into working with the Avengers, when a particularly vicious array of supersized rabid wolves had taken on New York yet again, and Clint hadn’t managed to move in time. Clint had gone down under one wolf’s claws, taking a more serious injury than he could recover from. He’d writhed on the rooftop in silent agony, too proud and too trained to take anyone from the battle while he tried to hold himself together with his own hands. It wasn’t until Stark mentioned that it looked like the wolf ranks were thinning out and started congratulating the team before the battle was over as usual that Clint had gasped for help into his comm.
Natasha had been the first one there and she had refused to go back to the battle while she screamed for medical into her comm - screamed in a way that Phil had never heard before and he knew at that point that his partner wasn’t going to be going on any more missions. He was on the medical chopper that landed on the rooftop to pick up the downed agent and Phil hadn’t been able to look away from the puddle of blood around Clint’s body and his white, blood covered hands trapped under Natasha’s. He was still awake at that point and he tried to give Phil a smile but there was blood in his teeth and it came out as a grimace.
Clint had survived, barely, and had been told that he wouldn’t be going on missions anymore. He was officially retired at that point and Phil wasn’t long behind him, not when Clint spent hours in physical therapy and then any left over in their apartment, trying to keep himself from doing anything to open the hideous wounds back up even months after the mission. An inactive Clint was a depressed Clint and Phil found himself taking more and more time away from work just to make sure that his partner didn’t fall apart until he finally just retired quietly and Sitwell stepped forward to take his place as “Avenger Babysitter.” Stark’s words. By then the team wasn’t much like the original, there was more members of the team, a whole team of just handlers to keep watch on them, and Phil had known that before Clint was injured he had been starting to feel a bit out of place with all of the superhumans he lived with.
Phil had politely asked that the Avengers not try to visit Clint and remind him of what he used to be able to do and that polite request was enough to slowly remove the Avengers from their lives until a year after the injury, it was like neither Clint nor Phil had been part of the Avengers at all. Only Natasha continued to visit and Clint accepted her with a smile and laughter but there was an edge of longing too it when he looked at her, as young as ever thanks to Red Room experimentation, and remembered all the missions that they’d gone on together - good or bad. Eventually even Natasha stopped visiting as often until she rarely came by at all. It was just as painful for her to see her long time partner unable to do much more than sit on the couch and shout abuse at the television.
A year and a half into their retirement, Clint had glanced over at Phil with the look in his eye that meant nothing good, and said quietly, with an almost teasing smirk on his face, “What do you think about starting a family?”
Phil hadn’t been stupid enough to think that it was just a joke. Clint didn’t joke about things like family. “We are a family,” he had said carefully.
Clint had shrugged. “What do you think about expanding our family to include a rugrat?” he had amended.
And that thought had been enough to start the both of them in the adoption process, while Phil got a job as an accountant, something that Clint never stopped finding hilarious, and Clint had just been the stay-at-home guy that joked with the neighbors and dragged Phil to neighborhood cookouts that Clint secretly loved because they gave him a life that he’d never had. And even though it seemed boring, this normal life was as new and strange to Clint as being a secret agent would be to Ted and Barbara down the street.
Phil knew that Fury had some hand in speeding up the adoption process because it wasn’t six months later that Phil and Clint went to pick up their new son from his foster family, a young Peter Parker whose parents had died young, whose uncle had been killed in a drive by shooting, and whose aunt had followed soon after from old age and grief. Peter was four when they adopted him, just old enough that he wasn’t sure about having a new dad, much less two.
Clint had just giving the kid his most blinding smile and asked him what his favorite sport was though and Peter had opened up like a flower to the sun and in that moment, when Phil saw the brightest smile on his partner’s face, he knew that this giant change in their lives was worth it - if only to see that smile on Clint’s face again.