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Phil knew his agents kept secrets. It was a given when you worked for a vague yet menacing government agency. Secret agents were creatures of habit, and that meant they had to have secrets in order to survive. Now, Phil knew most of them, and his agents knew that he knew most of them, but they all politely ignored that fact. Phil didn't bring up the birthday cards Clint got every year from his brother, and he definitely didn't mention it when the cards came from prison. Phil pretended not to know where Natasha disappeared to half the time. If she wanted company, she would have said so.
If his agents didn't want to tell him something, Phil wouldn't pry. He knew how to respect other people's privacy. Unlike a certain bow-wielding Avenger who may or may not have made a nest in the vents above Phil's office. That being said, Phil was still a highly trained secret agent. He didn't need to be actively sleuthing to be observant. It wasn't his fault he was good at pattern recognition and putting pieces together.
It wasn't that Clint's behavior was unusual, at least not for him. Clint had always been a bit of an odd duck, which Phil found endearing. It wasn't even that Clint had any new habits. No, it was more like if Clint's quirks were normally at a five, ever since Loki and New York, they were dialed all the way up to ten. Phil thought it would have died down after a while, but Clint was still acting off. Instead of disappearing for a few hours every other month or so, Clint disappeared almost every week. Clint's diet, which had constantly been a battle fought between him and the nutritionists of SHIELD, had become even stranger with Clint constantly eating meat. Jerky sticks, wings, anything high protein and chewy, Clint was eating it.
Phil wasn't sure if it was some sort of mental hang up leftover from Loki. He tried to broach the subject. Letting Clint know that Phil was here for him, that if he needed some time off, no one would blame him. Clint stared at him like a cornered animal, then walked away and disappeared for a few hours without a word.
Phil was starting to get capital 'C' Concerned, and when he was Concerned, he kept notes. Not in any official SHIELD documents. No, Clint didn't need that. Phil worried that would do more harm than good. Phil kept them in a physical notebook. No digital signature and also in code. Any random person who picked it up would just read what appeared to be pages of recipes.
It wasn't overkill if you were literally a government spy.
Phil was currently sitting in a comfy armchair in the living room of the apartment suits in Avengers Tower that Tony Stark all but forced him to move into. First it was "Our med bay is better than SHIELD's" then "it's just temporary so we can help with your recovery" then finally "please don't move out, you'll make the bots cry" which is as close to admitting emotional vulnerability as Tony could get.
It was a quiet night, no major emergencies, and Clint had disappeared hours before. Which meant Phil was adding to his notebook when he heard a loud THUNK.
Phil was a seasoned SHIELD agent. He did not jump. He did, however, have his hand on his sidearm as he investigated the noise. You could never be too prepared.
On the balcony was a large bird, a red tailed hawk based on the coloring. It was on its back, feet up, talons curled, wings splayed out, beak open, eyes closed. It must have flown into the sliding glass door.
"Please don't be dead," Phil nudged the bird with his foot.
The bird twitched, but its eyes remained closed.
Phil let out a sigh of relief. "Not dead," he muttered. "Just stunned."
Phil didn't know what to do with the stunned bird. He couldn't just leave it out here, could he? What if it was injured? Should he call a wildlife rescue? Clint would know. Clint had uncanny knowledge about birds.
Making up his mind, Phil grabbed a towel from inside, wrapped it around the unconscious hawk, and picked it up, bringing it inside.
He was pretty sure this was frowned upon, but he couldn't think of anything else to do, and this way he could keep an eye on the bird. If it woke up and was alert, he would open the door and let it fly out. If something seemed off, he was already looking up wildlife rehab centers in the city.
He had set the hawk down on the middle of the floor and surrounded it in a few towels and a blanket Tony had probably paid too much money for, making a sort of nest-like structure.
"Hope that's comfortable, buddy. Wake up soon," Phil said.
Phil watched the hawk for a few minutes. He had no clue how long it would take the bird to wake. He was used to dealing with unconscious agents, not wildlife.
Phil took a closer look. Even asleep, the hawk was beautiful. Its feathers were magnificent and looked to be in good shape. A strong beak, sharp talons. Phil wasn't sure what made a healthy bird, but it sure looked like this hawk was in good condition. He bet Clint would know more.
"I'll be right back, just need to grab my phone," Phil told the bird. "My friend knows more about you than I do. I just hope he picks up."
It was hit or miss if Clint responded when he was gone. It didn't matter as much when his disappearances were few and far between, but now that he was gone every couple of days, it was starting to become a problem.
Phil found his phone in the bedroom, but before he could call Clint, he heard a noise, like something shifting. Something much larger than a bird.
Phil groaned. "I can't catch a break, can I?"
Instead of a hawk on the floor of the living room, inexplicably, there was Clint Barton sprawled face down in the nest of towels and blankets Phil made, completely passed out, and to top it off, stark naked.
There wasn't much that made Phil go speechless, but a naked Clint on his floor would do it.
Not that Phil minded the sight, it's just not how he imagined it would have happened.
Phil had to sit down. This didn't make any sense. A bird hit his window. He brought it inside. He turned his back. The bird is gone and Clint is in its place.
"What?" Phil said out loud.
Clint shifted, rolling over to his side.
With his face burning, Phil quickly moved to cover Clint with blankets.
This didn't make sense. Unless…
"Clint is the bird?" Phil scoffed. That was ridiculous. Or was it?
People with powers wasn't an unknown. Look at the Avengers for one. Then there's the rising population of mutants. And all sorts of powered people that SHIELD located and Indexed on a daily basis.
Clint could be a mutant. Phil thought, but quickly brushed the thought off. That didn't make sense, SHIELD tested for the x-gene.
It could be the result of experimentation. Clint had been captured by evil scientists a non-zero amount of times. One of them might have worked on animal transformation. Phil didn't know. He racked his brain trying to recall every time Clint had been captured since coming to SHIELD, but the organizations and goals blurred together.
Maybe it was a remnant of Loki. Phil's brain unhelpfully supplied. No. Phil refused to believe that something as beautiful as the hawk had come from Loki. Whatever this is, it's all Clint.
Phil would just have to wait for Clint to wake up and explain. Luckily, Phil didn't have to wait long, just a little under an hour before Clint's eyes slowly blinked open.
Clint yawned and his body shuddered through a full body stretch. It took a minute before he became aware of his surroundings.
Phil saw the exact moment Clint realized where he was.
Clint's eyes widened and his face blanched. He sat up, paying no mind to how the blanket crumpled at his waist.
"Hey, Sir. Nice night, is it?" Clint said nervously. "Mind telling me how I ended up here?"
Phil raised an eyebrow. So this is how you want to play it. "I'm still not sure myself. Would you mind explaining?"
Clint laughed nervously. "I'm not sure how much you saw, but-"
"Would how much I saw affect what answer you tell me?"
"…no," Clint lied.
Phil would have to work on withstanding interrogation techniques if that was truly how Clint reacted. It was unbecoming of a SHIELD agent.
"I'll start. A bird hit my window and I brought it inside," Phil said. "Care to fill in the rest?"
"Not really, no."
"Fine. The falcon-"
"Hawk."
Phil smirked. Got him. "And how do you know it was a hawk, Agent Barton?"
Clint realized his mistake. "Futz."
Clint shifted uncomfortably, his eyes shifting around the room, never quite landing on one thing. His mouth would open, like he was about to offer an explanation, then freeze and close.
Phil didn't remember the last time he saw Clint look so disturbed.
Clint's shoulders steadily crept up towards his ears like he was trying to fluff up and make himself look bigger.
Phil's face softened, going from interrogation mode to friend mode. Whatever this was, it was a big deal to Clint, and he didn't want to cause any harm.
"It's okay, take your time," Phil said, keeping his voice even and controlled. "We are talking about this, but how about we take a break first. Have some tea, you're probably dehydrated. Get some clothes on," Phil said pointedly.
"Oh." Clint looked down, just now realizing that only a blanket kept him from being completely nude. He didn't seem too bothered about that.
"I'll grab you something to wear." Phil got up and found a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that should fit Clint.
Clint eyed the pants with a playful grin. "Didn't know you owned anything other than suits, Sir."
"We've been in the field together, you've seen me wear all sorts of things undercover," Phil said. "And enough with the 'Sir'. You're naked on my living room floor. I think we're past formalities by now."
Clint stood up and Phil looked away as the blanket fell to the floor. Just because Clint didn't seem to have a care for nudity didn't mean Phil had permission to look.
"Those are for missions, Sir-Phil, even if that outfit in Rio was spectacular," Clint said.
Phil slowly turned around, trying to judge if it was safe to look yet.
Clint was fully dressed, even if he was still tying the strings of the sweatpants.
Safe. Maybe now my heart will stop pounding so much. It was wishful thinking. Phil cleared his throat. "Ready?"
Clint's posture returned to its defensive position. "No, but this is as close as I'll get."
Clint paced around the room, unable to settle. "I mean. I've never actually told anyone. We had freaks in the circus sure, but not those kind of freaks. Ringmaster figuring that out would have been a one way ticket to a lab. Or a private collection. "Clint shuddered. "Whichever one would have paid more."
Phil nodded. So not experimentation or Loki. Good to know. He decided to help Clint out a bit.
"Are you a mutant?" Coulson asked.
Clint shook his head. "No, tested negative for the x-gene. This is just something I could do since I was a kid. Always have been. Our fortune teller at the circus said it was some form of magic. A gift I should nurture."
Phil was successfully distracted from his line of questioning. "Your fortune teller could actually see the future?"
Clint shook his head. "No, but she could do curses. One time I knocked over a candle of hers and she cursed me to speak backwards for a week. She liked me though, magical folk have to stick together."
"Magical folk?" Phil leaned forward. "What exactly are you?" Phil didn't mean to sound rude, but he had to know.
Clint paused in his pacing, frozen facing away from Phil. His back was tense and his arms were half extended at his sides.
Once again, Phil couldn't help but to compare him to a cornered animal.
"I'm human." Clint's voice was raw, like this was something he repeated a lot. "I'm human, I'm just also, I'm also a hawk."
Phil leaned back in his chair. He had gathered that much. It didn't take a genius to connect missing bird and suddenly appearing Clint. "Anything else?"
Clint's head whipped around, momentarily forgetting to be nervous. "Anything else? What else do you want? A futzing elephant? A hyena? Let's get a whole futzing safari in here!"
Phil held up his hands in defense. "I'm just asking. I've never met anyone like you. I want to understand, that's all," Phil reassured Clint.
Clint deflated, agitation leaving his body. "I know. I just-" Clint shrugged. "Don't know how to talk about it."
Phil reached out, grabbing Clint's hand in what he hoped was a grounding motion. Nothing else. Phil lied to himself.
"Why don't you start from the beginning," Phil suggested.
Clint sat down nest to Phil, feeding off of Phil's calm demeanor. He nodded. "I'm human and a hawk. A red tailed hawk specifically."
Phil nodded along, encouraging Clint to continue.
"Basically, I can shapeshift into a hawk, but I'm not a shapeshifter." Clint looked at Phil for understanding.
Phil didn't get it, but he wanted to.
"I'm not just some guy who can look like a hawk sometimes, and I'm not half human, half hawk. I'm fully Human And Hawk. 100% of both," Clint emphasized. "It doesn't make sense mathematically, I know. I'm just like that."
"It doesn't have to make sense mathematically, it just has to make sense to you," Phil said.
Clint looked relieved. "I can shapeshift into a hawk, but I'm not a human in a hawk's body, or a hawk in a human body. I'm both."
Clint locked eyes with Phil. "It's always me. Sometimes I'm in a human body, sometimes in a hawk's. Please tell me you get it?" Clint pleaded.
Phil nodded. "You're always you, you're just a part-time hawk."
"Part-time hawk, Clint repeated. "I like that."
"What about your family, could any of them shift? Phil asked. Or did you have to figure all of this out alone?
Clint turned somber. "Barney can't. I know that for sure. He never let me forget it. My parents, I don't know. No way my asshole of a father would have. My mom-" Clint sucked in a deep breath. "I don't know. Maybe. I used to think so. I was too young when she died, I can't remember. But it seemed like someone clipped her wings." Clint shrugged. "Who knows, that could just be a side effect of being married to daddy dearest."
"You must have been lonely," Phil said. "That sounds hard."
Clint shrugged. "I was already different from most of the kids I knew. Foster care, circus brat, I just had feathers sometimes."
Clint looked out the window, fingers twitching. "I was a weird kid, it was one more reason Barney was always frustrated with me. I was more interested in flying than walking half the time, and he got tired of reminding me to put the feathers away unless I wanted to get caught."
"You still are, aren't you? That's why you keep disappearing. You're going flying," Phil said, putting the behavior together.
"Yeah, sorry, I'll cut back. I know it's taking out of mission time-"
Phil cut him off. "No, don't stop. I'm not asking you to stop. I'm just figuring you out. I'd never ask you to change."
Clint looked at him suspiciously, but didn't argue.
Phil knew he had a lot of work to do before Clint believed that there was nothing about him that Phil would change. Phil was completely enamored with him as he was. Platonically, of course. A handler can't have feelings for their asset. That's an abuse of power.
Phil would just have to keep convincing himself of that.
"How's your head? Do you run- I mean fly into windows often?" Phil changed the subject.
Clint's face colored in embarrassment. "I'm great at flying," Clint said defensively. "I know what windows are, I don't hit them. I know better."
"So that was a one time occurrence, right?" Phil teased.
Clint huffed. "It was a stupid mistake. I was flying too close around the tower and I saw your balcony and momentarily forgot glass existed."
Phil raised an eyebrow. "Momentarily forgot glass existed."
Clint blushed harder. "It's hard to see clear things when you're flying at 40 miles per hour. You try seeing a pane of glass in the sky when you're flying a jet."
"I thought you know what windows are. You know the building is covered in them," Phil continued teasing.
"I was kind of preoccupied," Clint said.
"Preoccupied with what?"
Clint mumbled a response.
"What was that?" Phil asked. "Couldn't hear you."
"I said I was protecting my territory! There was a pigeon strutting on your balcony. It was taunting me, so I was going to… chase it off, but I was so focused on the pigeon I forgot about the glass door."
If Phil thought Clint was red before, this was another level. Phil had never seen Clint so embarrassed before. Not even in some moments where he probably should have had some shame, like showing up to a briefing from Director Fury in just his boxers. Maria Hill had immediately taken a shot out of the bottle in the bottom of her desk when Clint dropped from the ceiling. A twitch had appeared in Fury's eyebrow, but he continued on like there was nothing unusual about the situation. Seeing Clint's embarrassment now, it was endearing the way he huffed and pouted over the pigeon.
"Your territory, huh?" Phil said.
Clint grimaced. "Sometimes, I think of places in as territory. I live here, you live here, all the Avengers do. It's my job to keep this place safe. Keep other birds out of my territory. Stupid bird brain, I know," Clint muttered.
"Not stupid, sweet," Phil said. "You have instincts, it's only natural you want to protect us. It's what makes you an Avenger."
Clint muttered something about 'stupid bird instincts.'
"Hey, look at me," Phil said.
Clint's gaze snapped to Phil.
Phil had always noticed the intensity in Clint's stare. It was something he had noted since the first time he saw blurry CCTV footage of the mysterious Hawkeye, an assassin he was tasked by Fury to hunt down. The piercing gaze had caught his attention, something that would later translate to Phil falling head over heels for the man. Now Phil knew it wasn't just the intense stare of a legendary sniper, but also the gaze of an apex predator looking for prey.
But Phil didn't feel hunted, quite the opposite. He knew Clint wouldn't hurt him.
"How many times have your 'stupid birds instincts' saved me? Or Natasha? Or any of your teammates? They're a part of you, and you are anything but stupid," Phil said.
Clint was quiet, but he looked away and tapped nervously. He repetitively rolled his shoulders in a way that Phil imagined was like a bird ruffling its wings. He was restless.
"You want to fly, don't you," Phil said. It wasn't a question.
"I don't want to. I need to," Clint said. "I need to stretch my wings or-"
"Or you feel trapped. You need the sky," Phil finished for him.
Clint's behavior made sense. How in the moments before he disappeared, he was always antsy.
"Don't let me stop you." Phil opened the door to the balcony.
Clint blinked in confusion. "You don't want to talk about this more? Need more of an explanation before you let me go? Blood sample? Stall for the lab techs to get here?"
"I want to talk more, but only as much as you're willing to share," Phil said. "I'm not about to spill your secrets. I'm a SHIELD agent, yes, but I'm first and foremost your handler. You always come first."
"You're going to think the bird is weird," Clint muttered.
Phil shot him a look. "I work with a team that has a literal God, a giant green rage monster, a super soldier from the 1940s, and Tony Stark. I promise you, I've seen weirder."
Clint got up and stretched out a bit. "Can you, you know."
Phil turned around. Clint was being awfully modest for someone who was naked on his floor not even thirty minutes ago, but Phil wouldn't deny him this.
Phil heard a soft thud, then a hawk, Clint, Phil corrected in his mind, flew by.
Clint landed on the railing. He kept a stunningly gold eye on Phil, preened a few feathers, then took off flying over the city.
Phil saw Clint circle overhead and heard the telltale screech of a hawk.
"Magnificent," Phil said just barely over his breath.
He looked inside at the pile of clothes left behind, then back up at the circling hawk.
"I'm going to have to do more research," Phil said. He had a pile of ornithology books waiting for him at the library.