Work Text:
Adapting to the avian side of Clint was easier said than done. Phil might have gone overboard and bought several perches for Clint to use.
Clint had eyed them suspiciously the next time he came over.
Phil just shrugged and said they were on sale, a blatant lie, but Clint used them anyway while he preened his feathers.
Clint was spending more time at Phil's apartment, both in and out of human form. It was getting more and more common for Phil to return to his apartment floor in the tower to find Clint in his hawk form or the telltale sign of a pile of clothes abandoned on the floor.
Clint still hadn't let Phil actually see him shift back and forth, but Phil wasn't pushing, he was already learning more about Clint than he ever thought he would.
Not that he was complaining, quite the opposite, he enjoyed every tidbit of information he got.
Like the fact that Clint's coffee addiction didn't stop when he was feathery.
Phil hadn't completely understood Clint's explanation of being both fully human and fully bird, he had just trusted it made sense to Clint himself. After the coffee interaction, he was starting to understand what Clint meant.
It started when Phil woke up one morning, started his coffee so it'd be ready by the time he was dressed. His normal morning routine.
When he returned, he was surprised to find a familiar hawk perched on the coffee machine, wings spread to shield the coffee pot from sight.
Phil sighed. Mantling, a behavior in hawks to conceal prey to prevent theft.
"Clint, that's my coffee." Phil moved his hand closer.
Clint screeched, and if possible, mantled harder.
Phil was tired and wanted his coffee.
"You did a great job hunting, if you let me have the coffee pot, I'll pour you a cup," Phil tried to reason. "Can you even have coffee in your bird form?"
Clint screeched again, as if offended, but did not move away from the coffee pot.
"Okay, that's fair. I need to trade for it." Phil grabbed an extra mug and placed it on the counter. "There, all for you."
Clint left the coffee pot to investigate the mug. Sticking his beak in it and knocking it over with the beating of his wings in indignation when he found it was empty.
Phil filled up his own coffee mug, then Clint's discarded mug.
"See? Give me a second and I can get you coffee," Phil said.
Clint stuck his beak into the coffee mug and took a long drink. He dramatically threw his head back to swallow.
Clint chirped in approval and shifted his wings to not mantle so aggressively.
"Glad you like it," Phil said.
They stood like that for a while, man and bird, drinking coffee together.
A little while later, Phil had left to grab some paperwork and he heard a soft thud.
"Phil, do you have any extra pants?" Clint's voice came from the kitchen.
Phil pulled out the designated set of clothes he kept set aside for Clint.
He respectfully averted his eyes as he passed the bundle of clothes, but one thing he learned about Clint since the bird reveal was that he didn't have the same inhibitions regarding nudity that most full humans had. It made a lot of their earlier interactions make a lot more sense.
Phil remembered one of their first missions together. Phil had nearly lost his calm demeanor and any respect people carried for him when Clint had stripped down and changed in the middle of the safe house. In front of everyone.
Phil was lucky that everyone's eyes were on Clint's expansive muscle and not Phil as he nearly ran into a doorway.
Knowing what he did now, Phil was glad he had a talk with Clint and intercepted the report before it could reach HR.
"You might as well take over a drawer. You're over here enough, and you could keep some of your own things here," Phil said. Not that he minded letting Clint borrow his clothes. Clint brought them back, most of the time. Phil was still missing at least one of his college sweatshirts.
Clint's attention piqued at that, his head tilting in a very birdlike manner.
"For practical reasons of course," Phil added on.
Clint nodded. "For practical reasons."
By the end of the week, Clint had a drawer in Phil's apartment.
Was it a bit overkill when Clint's own apartment was only a few floors up? Maybe. But it cut down on the instances of Clint walking through the halls wearing only Phil's sweatpants, which did something to his heart that he was sure his cardiologist would complain about.
The next time Phil was caught off guard by Clint's avian habits was late in the afternoon.
After a long day of convincing the World Security Council that the Avengers were Not loose cannons, Phil came home to a pile of Clint's clothes in his kitchen. He didn't have to look far to find Clint himself.
The tap was running and he was enjoying the spray of the faucet in his feathers.
Clint screeched at Phil and spread his wings. Not out of territorial behavior, but to evenly clean his feathers.
"I'm not complaining, but why my sink?" Phil asked. "You have a sink of your own."
Clint screeched again, then preened a feather.
Phil was not going to get a straight answer, at least not while Clint had wings.
Clint spent a good half hour in the sink. Chirping happily as he put his head under the stream, shaking his damp wings and tail, taking sips of water from the faucet. He even stomped around like a kid jumping in puddles.
Phil meant to leave to give him privacy, but found himself enraptured by Clint's carefree behavior.
He stood there until Clint hopped onto the counter, turned off the faucet with a careful stretch of his talons, shook himself one last lime before hopping to the floor and transforming mid fall.
Clint landed gracefully on his feet and Phil respectfully averted his eyes as he pulled his clothes back on.
"Sorry." Clint blushed. "I was here, and the tap was running, and it looked nice, so I hopped in."
Phil didn't ask why Clint was here in the first place or why he was using his sink when he had a perfectly functional sink of his own.
Phil did buy a birdbath for his balcony.
Another worthwhile purchase. He saw Clint splash in it after flights, long days of Avengering, or just a random Sunday.
It's not creepy to watch your coworker/friend bathe if they're a bird while they're doing it. Phil justified it to himself. And he's aware I'm watching him.
Phil wasn't sure that made it less creepy.
Phil knew Clint hung out in his apartment when he wasn't there. Why he did, Phil didn't know. There wasn't anything special about Phil's apartment that Clint couldn't have in his own just a few floors up, but Phil left the window open for him anyway.
When Phil returned to his own apartment occasionally there would be object waiting for him on the kitchen table. At first Phil had been confused, not understanding where the clutter on the table was coming from. Then, one afternoon, Phil spotted a soft down feather and the puzzle pieces clicked together.
Clint had been sneaking into his apartment and leaving behind gifts. Nice looking sticks, scraps of soft fabric, a few pieces of frayed rope, a USB drive. Phil kept all of it.
Phil wasn't sure why Clint was leaving him nest building supplies. Phil slept in a bed, but he kept them in the drawer next to his bed nonetheless. Bird and human wires were getting crossed and it was a nice gesture. Entirely harmless.
What gave Phil pause was the kitchen incident.
Phil was supposed to be in a meeting. Given that the meeting could have been an email, he was glad it had ended early.
His apartment was supposed to be empty, but Phil could tell immediately by the angle of the door that someone else was here. And based on the down feather on the threshold floor, Phil could reasonably guess it was Clint.
Phil was expecting to be greeted by the hawk relaxing on one of the many perches around the apartment, or even Clint in his human form, stealing Phil's coffee.
He was not expecting to see a very human Clint in his kitchen.
Okay, Clint in his kitchen was not unusual. Clint in his kitchen, hyperfocused on a mouse, was a new one.
Mice in Phil's kitchen was a new one. He would be having a word with pest control.
Before Phil could say a word, Clint snatched the mouse with the speed of the raptor he is, and without hesitation, swallowed it whole.
Phil's eyebrows shot up.
Clint froze, finally seeing Phil.
He looked kind of ridiculous, the last inch or so of mouse tail hung out past his lips before he swallowed hard.
"Hey, Phil," Clint said with a shaky voice and a nervous smile. "You're back early."
"Clint," Phil kept his voice perfectly even. "Is this… normal for you?"
Phil didn't waste his time asking questions like 'did you just eat a mouse?' or 'what's going on?' They were obvious questions with obvious answers. What's going on is Clint just ate a mouse in his kitchen. Phil's kitchen which is not supposed to have mice. Phil knows this. He saw it himself. He needs to focus on what he doesn't know.
"I can explain," Clint said.
A moment of silence passed between them.
"This is the part where you start explaining," Phil said.
Clint cursed. "I was kind of hoping you'd just ignore it and move on."
"I am not 'moving on' from mice in my kitchen," Phil said. "We're going to have this conversation, and then I am going to call Tony and put mouse traps in here."
Clint looked offended at the suggestion. "Mouse traps? You can't do that."
"Why not? You just ate a mouse. Clearly you don't have a problem with killing them," Phil pointed out.
"But they're my lunch!" Clint protested.
Phil closed his eyes for a second. "Did you… bring live mice into my kitchen… to eat for lunch?"
Clint made a suspiciously avian sounding chirp. "Oh God no." He shook his head. "The mice were already there."
Phil felt like he could properly breath again. He would have had to re-evaluate his friendship with Clint if he had purposefully brought mice into his kitchen.
Clint stood up. "So, I'll get going. Have to stretch the wings, y'know."
"Clint. Explain."
Clint sat back down. "So you know how I drink coffee as a bird sometimes?"
He started into a fast paced rant that despite his best efforts, Phil was unable to keep up with.
Clint stood up, paced around, and sat back down twice.
"And eating chicken nuggets is not cannibalism no matter what anyone else says. Hawks eat chickens. Bird on bird violence is a thing, Phil. The pigeons deserved what happened to them."
Phil held up a hand to quiet Clint down. "Clint, you're talking too fast. Take a breath, start from the beginning."
Clint huffed again. "The short story is I can eat a human diet or a hawk diet in either form. It doesn't make me sick or anything bad, I just can."
Phil nodded. He had noticed this. The aforementioned coffee, the way Clint inhaled meat and avoided vegetables, how Clint treated every wings night like it was an eating competition. He would methodically strip the meat from the bone with his teeth, leaving no morsel of food behind. Phil could have swore he ate a few of the bones too.
Most people, including the SHIELD nutritionists, just thought he was a picky eater. Phil knew better.
Clint winced. "My cravings can get mixed up. Sometimes I want pizza, sometimes I want a vole. Chicken is good pretty much all the time. Can't go wrong with that. And hawks, we're pretty single minded when it comes to food, so I can get a little hyperfixated when I'm" Clint paused, looking guilty. "…hunting."
Phil nodded again, encouraging Clint to continue. Phil had no qualms with Clint hunting. It was a natural process for raptors. They had to eat. And besides, was that so dissimilar from what they did for SHIELD?
"Sometimes the hawk instincts cross over when I'm human. So if a mouse runs past me, I lock onto it. Easier when I'm in hawk form, talons work better than hands for this, and bye bye mouse." Clint shrugged. "It's free lunch. Better than what they serve in the cafeteria."
Phil took a breath. "Okay."
Clint looked at him like he was the one who ate a mouse. "Okay? That's it?"
Phil wasn't sure what to say. He didn't exactly have a SHIELD manual for this. One didn't exist. At least as far as he was aware.
"What would you like me to say?" Phil asked.
"Uh, that I'm being disgusting?" Clint says.
Phil's eyebrows shot up. He was not expecting Clint to say that.
"That it's gross, that I need to stop doing weird bird shit," Clint listed off. "Act like a human for once, Clint. Stop being such a freak, Clint."
Phil's face carefully returned to neutral. In that moment he understands this is not about him. He's done this before, and it hasn't gone well.
Phil had a guess as to who convinced all those things were the truth. If it was up to Phil, he would make sure Clint never had to see that man again. If Clint wanted, Phil would bury him under so much red tape. it might as well be a grave. But revenge was not what Clint needed right now.
"Do hawks not eat rodents in the wild?" Phil asked.
"…yes? I mean, they do," Clint said, unsure of where Phil was going with this.
"And have you not assured me that you are a hawk? At least part-time," Phil said,
"I am." Clint shifted.
Phil knew him well enough by now to tell that if he were in his hawk body, he would be ruffling his feathers right now.
"Then why would I have a problem with something that's natural?" Phil asked.
Clint was quiet, defeated by logic.
"I don't fault raptors for eating rodents more than I fault rodents for eating grain or humans for eating hamburgers. Or even myself for eating gas station donuts," Phil joked. "Why would I fault you for following your natural behaviors?"
"Because it's gross?" Clint suggested.
"Would I eat it? No," Phil admitted. "But it's no worse than the concoctions you make on ops."
Clint had a habit of experimenting with food on missions. He'd combine the MREs they'd receive from SHIELD with anything he could get his hands on.
"It's a lot less mess than that skittle burrito you made in Bogota," Phil tried to lighten the air.
Clint looked at him suspiciously.
His voice was thin as he spoke, as if he was speaking a truth he had long since resigned himself to. "If you think I'm a freak, that that's," he gestured to the general area where the mouse used to be, "is disgusting, tell me now. I can take it. Just… just don't get my hopes up."
Phil really wanted to pay a certain archer's brother a visit, wherever he was this week, but that wouldn't help the current conversation.
"Agent Barton."
The formality caused Clint to snap to attention.
"As your supervising officer and handler, would I lie to you?"
Clint nodded. "If you needed to for the mission."
That wasn't untrue, but Phil did try to avoid lying to Clint as much as he could.
Phil's voice softened. "As your friend, would I lie to you about something as important as this?"
Clint said a weak, "No?"
"Clint, I promise you I take no issue with your diet. You eat what you want to eat, and as long as you're getting all the nutrients you need, don't let anyone, including myself, stand in your way," Phil said. "Although I hope you forgive me if I don't share."
Although he quickly recovered, Phil caught Clint's face fall.
Phil wasn't sure why. It was a joke. Phil had researched hawk behaviors and knew they didn't share food the way cats or dogs would drop a kill for their owners. Hawks only shared food with their offspring or mates.
Phil guessed it wasn't as funny as he thought.
"Clint, have you seen my apartment recently?" Phil gestured around to the perches and the bird bath he had methodically acquired. "Would I have gone through all this trouble if I thought you were weird or if I wanted you to be more human?"
Clint hesitated. "No?"
Phil took a seat on the ground next to Clint. This conversation was worth wrinkling his dress slacks. "All I want is for you to have the opportunity to be yourself. If that's not in front of all the Avengers-"
Clint aggressively shook his head 'no'.
Phil disagreed. He knew the Avengers wouldn't have any issues with Clint's shapeshifting abilities. If anything, only Natasha would be mad at Clint for keeping it from her for so long.
Or maybe she would be impressed. It was a toss up.
But who he wanted to tell was Clint's choice, and Clint's choice alone. Phil wouldn't push him until he was ready.
"-then it can be here."
"Even if that includes eating mice?"
"Even if that includes eating mice," Phil promised. "You'd be doing me a favor, helping out with pest control.
Clint snorted. "Don't bother with sticky traps or anything, I've got it handled."
Clint thought for a moment. "And can you tell Tony to lay off the rat poison? I almost had to call poison control a few weeks ago."
Clint shuddered. "I had to eat so much activated charcoal. That stuff tastes nasty."
Phil took a deep breath, counted to five, then spoke. "Clint, you ate rat poison?" He tried to keep his voice light.
Tried.
"Don't look at me like that!" Clint squawked.
"It's not like I was like 'mmh, rat poison, yummy'. There was a rat, it was acting funny, but I didn't think anything of it because I was focused on lunch. I ate it. I started feeling weird. Not quite concussion level weird, but pretty similar. I recognized what it was from the last time I had rat poison, and did all things," Clint said offhandedly. "I have treatment in my room just in case."
Phil had even more questions.
"Do you know how many birds die from secondary poisoning?" Clint said. "People use insecticide or rodenticide, the mice and bugs eat it and are poisoned, then we eat the poisoned animals, then we die! It's not fair. If it weren't for my human form, I probably would have died from rat poison by now. It takes a bit more to kill a human than a hawk."
Phil let Clint finish his rant. He was too busy thinking about all the hidden dangers birds faced. Phil was a handler, he was used to handling the logistics of sending a human asset into the field. He had contingency plans for contingency plans for the threats humans faced. This was the moment he realized he needed to think about the threats hawks faced.
Clint had warned him, he's a human and a hawk. Phil had listened, but he hadn't understood. At least not fully. It wasn't just an aesthetic surface change, it ran deep. It guided Clint's instincts, behavior, even his lifespan if Clint wasn't vigilant.
Phil had to do better.
"I'll talk to Tony about pest management and using more natural methods," Phil promised.
There was one boundary Phil had to set. One hard line he had to establish.
"I do have one rule."
Clint looked at him suspiciously, his fears from earlier still in the back of his head. Phil could tell he was wondering exactly what this rule would entail.
"Please keep human food and hawk food separate," Phil asked.
"What?"
"I don't want to walk in the kitchen and find a mouse on my countertop or open the fridge and see a rat in my tupperware," Phil said. "If possible, could you keep hawk food out of the kitchen entirely?"
Phil's inner clean freak was screaming about mouse guts in his kitchen. "Or at least just disinfect the area when you're done?"
Clint's jaw dropped. "That's it? You see me swallow a mouse whole on your kitchen floor and your only rule is 'please clean up after yourself'?"
"I think it's a fair ask," Phil said.
Clint's face split into a grin and he shook his head in bewilderment. "You really are something, Sir."
"You ate a live mouse off my kitchen floor. You can call me Phil. In private," Phil amended.
"It wasn't alive when I ate it. I caught and killed it fair and square." Clint's chest puffed out and if he was in his avian form, he'd look like a very smug bird.
"You're a great hunter," Phil complimented him.
A strange look crossed Clint's face.
Phil turned his back for a brief second, and suddenly there was a pile of empty clothing, and just like Phil predicted, a smug looking hawk.
Phil opened the window and Clint took off without hesitation, taking to the air with grace.
Clint danced in the thermals and performed intricate dives right in Phil's line of sight. Occasionally he took a breather on the railing, staring at Phil with his piercing gold eyes, as if asking 'did you see that?' before taking off again.
Phil was utterly transfixed. he could stay there for hours, watching Clint perform in the wind.