Chapter Text
Officially, Phil still had a small apartment in downtown New York, and that was the address on all of his SHIELD files. Unofficially, he spent most of his nights in Avengers Tower with Clint. He hadn't moved in (though according to Clint, it was only a matter of time until they returned from a mission and found out that Tony had just gone ahead and moved his things without permission), but he had a standing invitation to sleep over anytime he wanted. That was his explanation for being at the breakfast table that morning.
Tony was already there when Phil walked in, the sole occupant of the enormous table in the communal kitchen. There was a full mug of hot coffee and a bowl of cereal right in front of him, but Tony didn't seem to be interested in either one. Which wasn't surprising in the context of the cereal, but was very unusual in terms of the coffee: caffeine in liquid form didn't tend to last long around Tony Stark, particularly when it was only 7am.
Phil poured himself a cup and sat down with the newspaper, watching him out of the corner of his eye. Tony was awake, sort of, though there was a glazed look in his eyes that suggested he wasn't all there. It was becoming an increasingly familiar look, though it was the first time Phil had even seen Tony looking so... lost. Like he genuinely did not know what to do with the food and drink in front of him.
It didn't change, either, as one by one the other Avengers except for Steve and Natasha wandered in. Even when Clint leaned across the table and stole Tony's coffee, Tony didn't react. That earned him more than a few raised eyebrows, if only because the last time Clint had tried that, he'd been stabbed in the arm with a fork for his trouble. Tony was notoriously possessive over his coffee and wasn't afraid to get violent defending it.
"Tony, are you okay?" Bruce asked, breaking the quiet that, by unspoken consensus, usually dominated the kitchen before ten.
Slowly, Tony blinked and made a soft sound in the back of his throat. He didn't get the chance to say more, not that Phil thought he would have. Steve chose that moment to walk in, already fully dressed for the day in boots, jeans, a t-shirt with a plaid shirt layered over it, and a backpack. He went straight over to the cupboard and picked out several of the little travel packs JARVIS kept stocked, which were crammed with high protein snacks for when Bruce or Steve needed a boost.
"JARVIS reported that Bucky's been spotted in Canada," he announced to the room at large, managing to sound both excited and weary about the news. "Nat and I are heading out to see if we can track him down. It's the closest he's ever been to us."
"Do you think it means something?" Clint asked, sitting back with Tony's stolen coffee. He drank from the mug, made a face and reached for the sugar.
"I don't know. I hope so." Steve put a hand to the back of Tony's head, leaning down to press a brief, distracted kiss to Tony's mouth. "Bye, babe," he muttered into the kiss. "I'll keep you updated."
He walked out, leaving Tony watching after him with that vacant, lost expression that was starting to make alarm bells ring in the back of Phil's head. There was almost something childlike about Tony right then. It was really something that Phil, with all of his experience, should have pursued further, before Steve left the Tower and the country. But his cell phone rang at that moment and it was Maria, and all thoughts of Tony Stark were swept away in another day at SHIELD.
Despite that, it was a relatively quiet day, and Phil was glad to crawl into bed with Clint that night. As he settled down, pulling Clint into his arms, he vaguely wondered when Steve and Tony had last slept in the same bed. If he had to guess, he would've said that it had been a very long time. If he had to make an exact guess, he would've said nine months and twenty-one days: the length of time it had been since Bucky Barnes was first identified as the Winter Soldier.
But it wasn't his business, and that was exactly why wasn't interested in making those kinds of guesses. Instead, he pressed his face into Clint's hair and sighed as Clint mumbled something about flying bananas. Sleep overcame him quickly, until he woke up to the sound of a voice in the bedroom. It was a familiar voice, albeit muddled, and Phil struggled to shake off the clinginess of a good night's rest.
"JARVIS?" he asked with just a hint of a slur, his mind rapidly coming together. It was one of the few lingering effects of his brush with death: he didn't snap instantly awake anymore, the way he used to.
"My apologies for waking you, Agent Coulson," JARVIS said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "But your presence is needed in Captain Rogers's room."
"Steve?" Clint slurred, still half asleep. "Steve's gone."
"Go back to sleep, baby," Phil told him, smoothing a hand over Clint's forehead. He slipped out of the bed, not surprised when Clint grumbled and sat up. "Is it okay if Clint comes too, JARVIS?"
"Yes, but please hurry."
Phil pulled on his robe and hurried to the door in his slippers. Clint followed. They took the elevator up to Steve's floor. It was quiet, but not empty. Even though there was no one in sight, Phil could tell that much. He walked silently towards the door to Steve's bedroom, which was wide open. What he saw was not what he was expecting to see, though there was a very tiny part of him that was not surprised.
Tony was curled up in the middle of Steve's bed. His eyes were shut, though they opened briefly when Phil stepped into the room before slipping closed again. For a moment, Phil wasn't sure why JARVIS had summoned him to the room. It was a little unusual for Tony to be sleeping alone in Steve's bed, but it wasn't like Steve would mind. The two of them had been dating for the better part of two years now.
Then Clint brushed by him, yawning widely, and started to reach out for Tony, saying, "Come on, man, it's too late for this -"
Flinching back like Clint had raised a hand to slap him, Tony whimpered and then quietly started to cry.
Clint froze.
Phil sighed. "He's like you," he said softly. "Isn't he, JARVIS?"
"Yes, Agent Coulson," JARVIS confirmed. "Captain Rogers and Sir have been age playing for at least once a week over the past two years."
Phil nodded as Clint sucked in a sharp breath, looking at the little boy in the very large bed. It made sense so long as he didn't think about it too closely, too intimately. Steve had been preoccupied for the better part of a year now. He could only imagine how Clint would fall apart if they didn't play go for that long, and he and Clint weren't exactly regular at playing thanks to their often hectic schedules. It would be so much worse for someone who was used to it.
Worse yet, an obnoxious voice in the back of his head pointed out, this was Tony, who would never come right out and tell someone he cared about that they weren't giving him what he needed, whether that was romantically or platonically or paternally. Not if it meant that Steve might be inconvenienced in some way. Even if it meant that Tony had been slowly sliding down a destructive slope that had ended up here, with a confused, hysterical toddler.
"I am going to kill Steve," Clint said very slowly.
"That won't help right now," Phil said, even though he shared the sentiment.
"I think he wet himself," Clint added, like that was explanation enough, and there was a note of distress in his voice that hadn't been there before.
"Help me get him into the bathroom and then go see if you can contact Steve or Natasha. I don't care about Barnes right now. Steve has responsibilities here." The words came out sharper than he intended, revealing the anger he couldn't conceal in spite of his best efforts, but they seemed to bolster Clint.
Tony's soft sobs grew marginally louder when Clint pulled the sodden sheets down, revealing his soaked boxers and t-shirt, and he buried his face in his hands. Clint scooped him up with an ease Phil envied, and he rubbed automatically at the place on his chest where Loki had stabbed him. He'd never possessed the strength necessary to pick Clint - or Tony - up, but there were some things that were exponentially easier before he'd been stabbed.
Clint carried Tony into the bathroom and set him down on the toilet at Phil's request. Phil switched the tub on, letting only a few inches of water in before he switched it off. SHIELD records in regards to Tony were sketchy at best, but he knew about the torture Tony had suffered in Afghanistan. As far as Tony was concerned, he was already with two people who had never been around him like this. Putting him in a tub full of water was just asking for a panic attack.
Briskly, well used to this part, he stripped off Tony's t-shirt and boxers with Clint's help and then nodded for Clint to set him down in the tub. Tony cried harder when he felt the water, but he didn't try to struggle. It was hard to decide whether that was a bad sign or not, but, seeing the worry he felt reflected in Clint's face, Phil was going with the former. He paused just long enough to clasp Clint's shoulder, squeezing warmly, before he let Clint leave the bathroom.
"Hey now, Tony, it's okay. I understand. Clint and I do the same thing," Phil whispered, softening his voice into a tone he only used with Clint. He knelt down by the side of the tub and ran a hand through Tony's greasy hair. "It's okay, honey. I'm just going to give you a bath, and it will make you feel so much better. And then Daddy will be home, alright?"
He didn't get an answer from Tony, not that he was expecting much of one. Tony was probably confused and humiliated, but so exhausted and emotionally and mentally overwrought that he couldn't do anything but cry. Phil rolled up the sleeves of his robe and reached for the bottle of children's body wash on the side of the tub, presumably put there for occasions just like this. As he squirted some of the body wash onto a loofah, he wondered how he'd missed this. Steve and Tony must have gone to lengths to hide it, which wasn't surprising - but if someone had known, they could have intervened long before Tony broke down.
He kept talking as he placed the loofah against Tony's shoulder, hoping that the sound of his voice might be enough to ground Tony in the present. The blank look in Tony's eyes was worrying, and he had yet to stop crying: tears were still silently sliding down his cheeks, the only sounds the occasional hitch in his breathing. Phil rambled on about his day at SHIELD as he gently scrubbed down Tony's arms and then across his shoulders and back, telling him about the new agents and how much Clint liked scaring them, and about how HR was trying to come down on Fury for not taking vacation days, something which was going over about as well as Phil had expected.
A little more cautiously, he took hold of Tony's left leg and started to clean there. As he got higher Tony didn't react, though when Phil glanced up at his face he realized that Tony was blushing a little as he watched the progress of loofah. He dredged up as much of his ironclad agent composure as he could and briskly cleaned around Tony's genitals, not wanting to leave any urine on the boy's skin. The only part of Tony's body he left untouched was his chest. No one touched the arc reactor unless they had Tony's express permission (or unless he was unconscious and at risk of dying because of said reactor) because the chance of sending Tony into a full scale panic attack was just too high.
Once Tony was clean, Phil set the loofah aside and sighed as he straightened his back. It was a little easier with Clint, if only because he had a stool he sat on instead of having to kneel. But no matter how bad his knees ached, there was no way he was leaving Tony alone. He grabbed some shampoo and a cup and started to wet Tony's hair, a little surprised when Tony started to cry again at the feel of the water running over his hair. Phil shushed him, putting the cup aside and squeezing some shampoo onto his hands. He put his fingers into Tony's hair and started to rub.
"JARVIS," he said, because there was a suspicion building in the back of his mind that he needed to have confirmed. "How old is Tony right now?"
"Sir has never expressed an exact age," JARVIS replied instantly. "But to give you my best estimate, Agent Coulson, Sir is around twenty months old."
Phil exhaled through his teeth, looking down at the white lather he'd generated. That was pretty young. Younger than he felt equipped to deal with. Clint's age usually hit around four or five, though on rare occasions he did age down a little younger than that. And sometimes that meant he wanted what he liked to call 'the full treatment'. But they'd only done that a handful of times. He wasn't sure he was ready to deal with a baby. But what was it Fury had said to him about the Avengers once? Not trial by fire, but trial by big ass explosions? Phil chuckled mirthlessly, cupping a hand over Tony's eyes as he rinsed Tony's hair out. Tony squirmed and sobbed, but it was so weak that it was heartbreaking.
He let the water drain out of the tub and draped a towel around Tony's shoulders to keep him warm, then got up and investigated Steve's linen closet. Somehow he wasn't surprised to find a diaper bag on the bottom shelf, hidden behind a couple of old towels. Phil yanked it out and laid a towel on the floor, along with a diaper and talcum powder. He had just put the bag back where it belonged when Clint, displaying the kind of timing that had kept him alive all this time, walked into the room and took one look at what was going on. The about-face he performed was admirable, even if it didn't work.
"Stop right there," Phil commanded in his best daddy voice, because sometimes being Agent Coulson didn't work and he suspected 4am was one of those times.
Sure enough, when Clint turned around he was pouting. "Babies are gross," he whined, crossing his arms. "I didn't think Tony was a baby."
"If I might remind you, I had to put you in diapers once," Phil pointed out, refusing to feel guilty when Clint flushed. Sure Clint had been sick at the time, but that didn't mean he got to say anything about Tony. Phil had taught him better than that. "And you wear pull-ups to bed. Everyone has different needs, Clint. You and I talked about this, remember? I bet Tony wouldn't say it was gross that you like playing with dolls, or that you still like to be fed baby food sometimes."
Clint pouted even harder but let his arms drop to his sides. "I left a message for Nat," he said grumpily, which was his way of acknowledging that Phil was right without admitting it.
"Good. Now help me get Tony out of the tub."
Between the two of them, they got Tony standing on wobbly legs and then down on the floor on the towel. Phil expertly diapered him - because Clint might not have been a fan of diapers, but he'd spent enough time around his niece and nephew to have experience - and then, calling on every last bit of patience, managed to get a wriggling baby into an oversized t-shirt that had been pilfered from Steve's closet. The t-shirt was big enough that Tony was swimming in it; it fell to mid-thigh and covered up the fact that he was wearing a diaper, and Phil figured that was good enough.
By that point, Tony's eyes were heavily lidded and his thumb had found its way into his mouth. He looked so vulnerable, so lost, that all of Phil's frustration and annoyance faded away. His anger at Steve, on the other hand, only increased. No matter what anyone said, Tony Stark was dangerously fragile where it counted. No matter what else was happening in Steve's life, that didn't mean he had the right to ignore his other commitments.
"Will he be okay, Daddy?"
Phil tensed a little, but gave no indication that he was surprised Clint had slipped so quickly. "I hope so. It might be a little while until Tony's daddy comes home, and in the meantime I think we're going to have to take care of him. Do you think you can be a good big brother for Tony?"
"I've never had a little brother before," Clint said slowly.
"I know." Phil didn't bother to mention he'd never intended for Clint to have one. He wrapped an arm around Clint's shoulders, muffling his yawn by pressing a kiss to Clint's head. It was still really early, and he suspected the coming day would be a long one without having to deal with a cranky, overtired little archer. "Come on, little bird. Let's take Tony and go back to bed."