Chapter Text
The call was not entirely unexpected, truth be told. Things had been quiet for the last two months, more than enough time for certain agents to start getting cabin fever. The phone had rung, Phil had picked it up on the first ring (as he usually did) and on the other end had been a very irritated Maria Hill. Again, not entirely unexpected. A lot of things irritated Maria, though if you didn’t know her well you likely wouldn’t notice, and so Phil nodded and made soft sounds of understanding until she finished explaining that the reason there had been a fire in ammunitions closet 4B was because someone was practicing with experimental weaponry. Stark tech to be specific, and if you wanted to be more exact they were concussive incendiary arrows.
“I see.” Phil felt his right eye twitch on the outer corner, just once, and took a calming breath.
“Find Barton. Now.” Maria had ordered, the phone clicking ominously in his ear before he gently hung up his own hand set. He stared at the phone for a full minute and a half after that, not really seeing the molded plastic. His mind was racing through the blueprints of the building which housed ammunitions closet 4B and factoring in the closest exits and bolt holes a man like Clint might partake of. After mentally flagging the top three places he thought the archer might go, he picked up his cell phone and scrolled down to contact #4. He never saved names with the numbers, it was a healthy sort of paranoia given how many spies he worked with and how often Darcy seemed to be playing with phones which weren’t her own.
The phone rang once before it was answered. Barton didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. Phil could hear a soft whirring noise with a bit of a hum and crossed off three of the seven bolt holes in his mental list. They stayed on the phone together, both of them silent, for a long few minutes. Phil was the first to speak, not because he cracked, but because he simply didn’t have the time to out-wait Clint today.
“My office, fifteen minutes.” Phil told him. He waited expectantly for another few moments.
“Yes, sir.” Clint agreed a moment later.
“Go by the clean room and get the ventilation dust vacuumed off you first.” Phil continued before hanging up and turning back to his computer. He had far too many emails to dig through these days, he missed the action days before he took on the managerial duties. Well, maybe not entirely. He was certainly happier knowing details which he could quietly hold over other people’s heads. There was a certain air that was hard to fake when you knew all the answers and stayed completely silent. Maybe that was why Darcy accused him of being sadistic?
Fifteen minutes later there was a short rap on Phil’s office door followed by it opening. Clint Barton walked in, still in black BDU pants, a black Under Armour shirt, and looking a bit singed on the edges. He stood, legs shoulder width apart and hands clasped behind his back, and stared straight forward while Phil folded his hands on his desk and leaned further in.
“Did you have fun?” Phil asked, his face calm and blank. A smirk cropped up on the other man’s lips.
“Yes, sir.” There was definitely a note of smug satisfaction to Clint’s voice at the moment. Phil smiled blandly, knowing he was about to kill that feeling.
“Ammunitions Closet 4B and the west wall of Firing range Bravo have been destroyed. The fire ruined the carpeting in the hall, and there are scorch marks which will need to be repaired.” Phil listed calmly, watching Clint’s face. The archer didn’t so much as twitch. That would change. He pulled a thumb drive out of his desk drawer and pushed it across the desk so it sat innocently in front of the other man. “These are the reports which will need to be filled out, in triplicate, and turned into Human Resources by the end of the week.”
“Sir?” Barton frowned slightly and stared down at the thumb drive. Usually Phil filled out all of the paperwork for the messes his Agents made, sadly he was extremely busy and Clint was getting antsy. Locking him down to a desk for a few days was the easiest way to keep an eye on him.
“You will be filling out any paperwork accrued outside of missions, Agent Barton. I trust you don’t need an HR refresher course on how to properly fill out action and damage reports?” Phil tilted his head just a touch, calmly pleasant as he stared down the man standing before him.
“No, sir. I’ve got it, sir.” Calloused fingers made the little drive disappear. The man was no longer smirking, either.
“You’re dismissed.” Phil allowed a blandly pleasant smile to spread on his lips as the Agent turned and walked out of his office. That had gone easier than he’d anticipated, not a single complaint from the archer. Well, not yet at least. He was sure he would get comments in the near future. For now he was going to put the entire issue out of his mind, there were Agents in the Middle East playing soccer with the local children and, unfortunately, falling for no doubt adorable grins and funneling American candy into the local economy and making certain governments and terrorist agencies a little jumpy.