om_main | Philip and Clint, Monday Afternoon

In which Clint learns about zakuski, Philip is remorseful, they both get drunk on vodka, and then find out that alcohol regresses Philip to his proper age. Also, Clint learns about Philip's secret mutation. At least, he thinks he does.

They'd been out forever, Philip decided. He hadn't argued when his grandmother had gone out after Clint. She was probably better equipped to talk to him right now than Philip was and, plus Clint wasn't incredibly pissed at her. He wasn't angry about it himself, besides the feeling of being ambushed. Looking back on it, it had been sloppy and careless and they were so incredibly lucky that the only one that had really gotten hurt was Philip. If he wasn't going to step up his game, then what the hell was he doing?

All that didn't stop him from pacing a hole in the floor all the while and his grandfather was no help. Ivan was no more pleased about the story than Victoria was, even less so once he'd gotten a few more details out of Philip. Who he'd gone with had been left out, of course, and the details of mutations, even more so, but he wasn't going to leave out the tac team involvement. Shadowy, sketchy organizations that were doing human experimentation under the noses of everyone? That, Ivan needed to know.

He finally stopped pacing when his grandfather put him to work, helping to lay out food. Philip knew Clint would be hungry after shooting, he was himself, and as usual, his grandmother had overprepared. There was a good chance a fair bit of it would be unfamiliar to Clint, but there was more than enough choice.

Not that Clint ever really balked at unfamiliar food. Despite being from the Midwest, he'd grown up learning that when food was put in front of you, you ate it no matter what it tasted like, because you never knew when you were going to eat next. He'd returned to the house, ruddy-faced and more relaxed than he had been since they'd left the school that morning. Lucky shook out a coat damp with snow while Clint jogged upstairs to put his bow up and change his shirt.

By the time he dropped into the chair across from Philip, he seemed more interested in the food than anything else. Of course, that didn't mean he was going to let Philip get off without a cold shoulder, either.

Philip just sighed and went to go find a towel for Lucky, it was better than having an uncomfortable, soggy dog wandering around. Once that was tended to, he sat across from Clint, fidgeting a little.

"Alright!" Ivan said expansively as he sat down. "Now, I will teach you a thing of Russia," he said as he looked at them across the overflowing table. He collected four crystal shot glasses and filled them each with ice cold vodka. "This is the zakuski, how we drink," he said as he distributed the glasses. "The vodka, the food, and then we continue."

Clint raised his eyebrows, a little grin starting to spread across his lips. "Seriously?"

"It is a very important custom," Ivan replied. "Even in the worst of communist Russia, there was the zakuski. When there were was little, when we all wore the same clothing, had the same cars, the same apartments, this was how a family showed their status, how they provided their table. I will show you."

"That's the kind of status I can get behind," the archer grinned, picking up his shot glass.

Philip just rolled his eyes but it was a fond one. He'd seen the custom before, of course, though hadn't participated in quite the same way. Russia didn't have the same drinking age rules and he figured that considering the conversation his grandmother and Clint had probably had, they were treating his friend like an adult anyway. He raised the glass with everyone else, to Ivan's 'To your health' and tossed it back without a wince.

Clint winced, but grinned after swallowing the vodka down - which was a hell of a lot more smooth than any he'd ever had. Even Stark's liquor hadn't been quite as silken going down. After setting the glass down, he looked around the table again, staring at the spread and trying to imagine what all the dishes were made of. It didn't really matter, but he'd never seen anything so colorful on a table before.

"Try anything," Philip suggested. "It's all supposed to be small bites of things so you can try it all. As a heads up, there's a lot of it that's pickled, that's a thing there."

Trying not to feel like he was the one on display (and also trying to remember that he was mad at Philip), Clint reached for some kind of stuffed mushroom, popping it in his mouth. When he bit into it, he found that it was really really difficult not to moan at Philip's grandparents' lunch table. In the end, he managed to keep the sentiment to himself and not seriously embarrass himself, but after that, it was smoked salmon and some kind of pickled fish and another shot of vodka before figs and honey, and something that looked like a rolled up pancake with cheese and fruit inside.

Philip really couldn't stop the smile, though he did keep it small and mostly hidden. He never had lost that fascination for feeding Clint, even if he wasn't the one doing it directly. He settled into the pacing of drinking and food, keeping his mouth shut for the moment. It was easier (and probably safer) to listen to his grandfather's stories of cold war era Russia, though he knew there was still a lot of censoring going on.

Clint asked questions between stories and toasts, bright-eyed from both the vodka and the food, but also from the fact that he'd realized that he really liked Philip's family, even if he wasn't so keen on his friend at that particular moment. Victoria was kickass and Ivan was lovable, and if he could have chosen his family when he was younger, he would have. His life might have gone a hell of a lot differently. Or, well, considering their lines of work, maybe not? But it would have been a hell of a lot more fun.

Philip started to relax a little as the time wore on and nothing else went boom. He was content to let the others talk, glad that he hadn't completely screwed everything all to hell. It helped that Clint was getting along so well with his grandparents and wasn't put off by anything he was hearing. "Dedushka..." he put in, "I'm not sure he needs to know about your cousin Igor..."

"'Cause you control everything I know about, right?" Clint grinned across at him, just buzzed enough that the pointed remark slipped out past his even more lax than usual filter.

"No," Philip said and maybe he was starting to get just a little flushed himself. "Nobody needs to know about Cousin Igor. Nope. Doesn't need to happen."

"I think I do," Clint announced firmly, his eyes flashing across the table at Philip. "And some decisions I can make for myself."

"I am not responsible for stories about a guy named Igor the Butcher," Philip said as he reached for the next round of drinks.

"Damn straight you're not," Clint huffed, reaching for his shot glass to swallow it down.

Philip couldn't help it, he just rolled his eyes while looking straight at Clint as his grandfather said something about 'boys... boys..." It was probably the most juvenile thing he'd ever done in his friend's sight.

For a second, Clint's worldview tilted sideways. For a second, Philip was just another teenager - not a drill sergeant or a security guy or a training partner or even the guy who'd dragged him back when he'd run away. He was just an incredibly attractive guy who was maybe a little drunk, kind of a jerk, and was being chastised by his grandfather, and Clint was a little fascinated by that for a second.

Then he blinked and the second passed and he rolled his eyes right back at him.

"Real mature, Barton," Philip said and who knew what possessed him, maybe the relief that the shunning might be over, at least kind of. At least that's what he'd claim if anyone asked why he aimed a not very hard kick at Clint's shin.

Clint's eyes widened at the kick, then immediately narrowed, a wicked grin pulling at his lips. "You want mature?" Completely forgetting about the two adults at the table, he got a stuffed mushroom in his hand and slung it one-handed, pegging Coulson right between the eyes.

"Hey!" Philip's hand darted down ready to scoop the mushroom back up and fling it back. He froze when he saw the disapproving glower at the head of the table and pulled his hand back. He grumbled and kicked Clint under the table again. "Jerk."

Clint noticed the look from Ivan too, and slid his hand under the table to keep from throwing something else, but gave Philip an icy glare all the same. Who was the jerk? Oh yeah, the ass who had left him behind when he'd gone off to do dangerous shit. He kicked him right back, but with enough force to actually hurt.

"Stop it!" Philip hissed. He wasn't going to rub his shin. And as much as Clint was ticking him off right now, he was having to hold in a laugh. It was the weirdest damn feeling and he didn't know what to do with it.

Another roll of the eyes, but Clint stopped. reaching for the last shot of vodka and another mushroom to stuff in his mouth before he asked, "Can I go?"

"Of course, dear," Victoria said. "You're welcome to anywhere in the house, though not all of it is open. A good deal of it is locked up for storage. Philip will show you anything you need, won't you?" There was just the tiniest edge that was decidedly not aimed at Clint. It was a tone Philip might recognize, the 'if you've just ruined my hard work...' tone.

Philip himself was a little buzzed still, okay, probably a lot and he couldn't stop the hot blush that crept up the back of his neck, spreading up to his cheeks. "Anything you need, Clint..." he mumbled. This had gone really weird somewhere and there was silly. He didn't know what to do with silly.

Clint looked between them, both a little uncertain and frustrated too, but pushed up out of his chair. He held on to the back of it for a moment, making sure he had his balance, which he did (seriously, when didn’t he?), and gave a little nod to both of Philip's grandparents. "It was, uh, good. Thanks. I mean it."

Then he headed up the stairs at a forward sloped trot. He hadn’t really decided whether he wanted Philip to follow him or not.

Philip lasted for about three minutes before he wilted under the Looks he was getting from the both of them. "Okay, okay..." he muttered as he got up.

"Do not damage the situation even further," Victoria said sternly. "We like him, rather a lot. So go fix this."

Clint had wandered down the hall on the pretext of looking for Lucky, even though he knew he'd seen the puppy curled up near the fireplace in one of the rooms downstairs. At the end of the hall, another set of stairs led to what was, he guessed, the third floor, then a winding little staircase off an odd-shaped room deposited him into the relative warmth of the attic.

It was about as high as he could go without going outside, which he didn't really want to do just yet, so he started poking around instead. The attic was full of boxes and old furniture, but nothing outrageous or creepy, like in all the movies he’d seen. He finally ended up dropping into an old wing-back chair, staring at a box with Philip's name on it that he’d deposited in his lap on a whim.

It was so weird to think of his friend as being...a normal kid. Coulson did everything he could to come off as much older and more mature and more...everything. But lunch had just proved that he was anything but at times. Probably only under the influence of vodka, which Clint decided he needed to remember for the future. He really, really wanted to open the box - see what was inside, what Philip had been like as a kid, but that seemed like a line even he shouldn't cross.

It'd taken a little hunting to find Clint and in the end, an educated guess had Philip going for the attic. The archer tended to go up when he had the option and that was as up as he could manage. The tipsiness had him being a bit less quiet than usual, footsteps coming up the stairs that you could actually hear. "Clint?" he called out. "You up here?"

Clint sighed, but he'd known Philip would find him eventually. He hadn't really tried to hide. He'd just wanted some place without the prying eyes of two ex-spy/assassin/secret agents. Besides, as much as he was still frustrated with the other teen, it was refreshing to see his friend failing to act like he was forty.

"Yeah," he answered, thumping his head back against the chair.

"Just checking," Philip said as he came up the stairs and into view. "A lot of it is blocked off but this place is a maze. It's been rebuilt and rearranged and who knows what a ton of times." He got close enough to see what Clint had in his hands and flushed again. Damnit, being buzzed was hell on the self control. "Looking for my deep dark secrets?" he said, trying to keep it light.

Clint set the box down on a dusty old table and sprawled in the chair, slinging one leg up over an arm. The flush on Coulson's face was new too, and he couldn't help but think he'd gotten a look at a whole other side of his friend. "Trying to figure out what you were like as a kid." Then, just because he felt a little guilty for picking it up in the first place, "I didn't open it."

Philip tried to remember what was in the box, probably not much and it's not like his family ever kept anything really incriminating anyway. In the end, he decided that it didn't really matter. He knew more about Clint than he'd been told, knew his family did too. This was... fair. "Go ahead," he said finally.

Clint eyed him uncertainly, then leaned forward to open the box and pull it into his lap again. It felt like the thing to do, with something so secret and personal. The first thing he pulled out was a report card...which was so foreign to him that he had to scan it for a long time to make sense of the marks and information. He was surprised to learn that Coulson wasn't always an amazing student and his grades weren't immaculate. He was just...like a normal kid. No robot perfection. He flicked a brief glance up at his friend, but then directed his attention back to a bunch of cards that looked like they were for birthdays or holidays. Those, he decided, were too personal, so he set them aside without opening them.

Also inside the box were a bunch of photos, and Clint flipped through them eagerly, grinning a little at the pictures of family...of someone who must have been his dad, and of his grandparents. He couldn't find a single picture of Philip's mom, which kind of pissed him off, since he knew she was some kind of agent too, and must have just cut herself out of his life for one reason or another.

Tiny Philip was kind of adorable, and the best picture, Clint decided, was one of his friend dressed up for Halloween, dressed as some kind of prince, he thought, with a red cape and a red feathered cap, brandishing a wooden sword and looking serious and fierce. "What is this?" he asked, finding that he was grinning like an idiot at the photo.

"What is what?" Philip asked as he leaned over and his eyes widened as he made an extremely uncoordinated grab for the picture. "Oh my god. Give me that. Why didn't somebody burn that thing!" It wasn't angry, oh, no, this was pure teen-aged mortification at play.

Clint was faster, though, pulling his hand back and swinging out of the chair, the box hitting the ground. He danced backwards with the picture, waving it in the air. "Heeeey. No. This is priceless. No one's burning anything. Definitely not Prince Coulson!"

"I was five!" Philip protested. "Maleficent scared the hell out of me so..." It was ridiculous, how being the dragonslayer had gotten him over that problem but... story of his life. Learn how to be the thing that'd take care of what scared you. "I will murder you in your sleep if you ever show that to anybody."

The threat might have been more alarming if he still hadn't been sort of uncoordinated and red as a beet.

Clint knew who Maleficent was, because he'd seen the movie recently, and he remembered a prince in the thing, but he hadn't been the one to try and slay the dragon. Maybe it was an older version of the story? He made a fuzzy mental note to check it out sometime. In the meantime, he clumsily attempted to avoid Philip's attacks, blocking a swipe with a breathless laugh. "Aw come on! Something this cute? The world needs to know!"

"Murder. In your sleep." Philip repeated as he made another grab. He overbalanced and landed in the chair Clint had vacated with a startled ooof. What the hell happened there?

Clint blinked at the sight, wobbling in the middle of the room, then started to laugh, breathless and low at first, then harder at the startled look of confusion on Coulson's face. "Holy fuck, your face!"

"Your face," Philip muttered as he righted himself. He really had to get a handle on sounding like he was twelve...

"Oh man, you are so much more fun with vodka," Clint laughed, dropping onto his ass in the middle of an old rug.

"I am silly with vodka," Philip clarified primly. "I don't do silly. I never do silly."

"You're pretty damn silly right now," the archer grinned. "Look. I'm putting the picture back in the box."

Philip just huffed out a sigh and tried for a glower that just... really didn't work. He wanted to apologize again for leaving things out, for not including Clint and for the things that he still hadn't told him but... he didn't want to risk another epic screw up again.

Clint reached into the box, finding the photos and putting the picture back...before palming it into his sleeve. Then he closed the lid and slid it across the ground back to where he'd found it. It wasn't that he planned on using the picture as blackmail. He'd probably never show it to anyone else. But when Philip turned back into the Secret Agent With a Mission, he wanted a little reminder that it wasn't everything he was. Besides, Coulson would never miss it.

"Look, about earlier," he sighed. "I'm sorry I was a dick about leaving me out."

"None of you are wrong that it was stupid," Philip said with a shrug. "I thought Tony was going to kill me when I told him what happened. I kind of had to, we were hiding at his place." He took a deep breath, and let it out again, the hell with it. "There's more that happened, when things went bad. I just can't talk about it, not yet. That a couple people know, feels like I've got a target on my back and I just can't..."

And he was buzzed enough that he couldn't keep a lockdown on his expression like he usually did. It peeked out, for just a second, that he'd died again. That he could remember the knives, the pain, and the cold that had washed over him when he started bleeding out from the inside. Just a second and he slammed that door hard again.

Clint's expression sobered as he recognized the look; his buzz dying a quick death in the pit of his stomach. He glanced away, pretty sure that was not something he was supposed to see, and tried to figure out what should say. Finally, he sighed. "You know, I'm pretty good at keeping targets off of peoples' backs. You don't have to tell me what happened, but if you need someone there in the future..."

"I do learn," Philip said dryly. "And try to not repeat the epic level mistakes if I can help it. Consider this a lesson learned." He paused again, picking his words carefully. "And for whatever it's worth, I'm fine. Simon checked me out."

Clint didn't say anything for a moment. Philip hadn't been injured recently - they trained regularly, and he would have known about it. So, either the injury hadn't been that bad, or he had some kind of healing factor. It wasn't unheard of at the school, so he just filed the information away and pushed to his feet. "I told you. You don't have to tell me. You don't owe me anything."

"Not about owing," Philip said with a shake of his head as he got to his own feet. "I'm just trying not to compound the mistake. And if something happens in the future, I don't want you to be blindsided or think I'm being careless." Because regardless of the reasons, Noriko and Bigby's reactions afterward still stung.

The archer shifted uncertainly. "What kind of careless are we talking about?"

"If I show you and promise that I'll give you details later when I can talk about it, will you not yell at me again?" Philip asked.

Clint eyed him, then scrubbed a hand through his hair with a frown. "Okay."

It's not that Philip had never been shirtless around Clint since it happened, but with the way he healed, marks were hard to see unless you were really looking for them. He moved to stand near the light in the ceiling and pulled his shirt and undershirt up, twisting a little so that Clint would be able to make out the faint scar between two of his lower ribs, the only mark left from the mess he was in.

The archer stepped closer, his gaze flicking over the scar. It would have been a nasty wound, he figured, judging by the positioning. There was no way it would have missed all of his internal organs. But Clint had promised that Philip didn't have to give him any details, so he couldn't ask. All he did was look, and wonder why a healing factor would still leave a scar. When he was done, he just stepped back and slipped his hands into his pockets. "Okay."

Relieved, Philip tucked his shirt back in before shoving his hands in his own pockets. No yelling was good. "I should get back downstairs," he said. "You don't have to if you don't want to, but if I don't, my grandfather's going to start teasing me about wrong ideas. He won't mean anything by it, but, you know."

Clint snorted, trying not to think about the fact that he’d noticed how hot Phil was, at least more than twice. He did pause though, frowning a little as he thought back to the scar. "Coulson...do they know?"

"My grandparents? Yeah. Well, about me specifically. They don't know about the school or anything. At least I don't think so, I never know what my grandfather's got his hands in. I know they talked with my mom after Dad's accident, she just said she knew a good place to stash me," he said with a shrug.

"I dunno how impressed I am with your mom right now," Clint grumbled, turning to head toward the stairs.

Philip just.. blinked at him. "Wait, where did my mom come into this?"

"There are literally no pictures of her in that box over there, and she just stashes her kid at some school for two years?" Clint pointed out.

The look Philip gave Clint was nothing short of pure bafflement. "She doesn't do pictures, she's still working. And she had to do something, she sure couldn't take me with her."

"I didn't grow up with contract killers and spies. All I know," Clint told him, as he carefully hopped down the stairs, "is that if I had a mom, I'd want her to actually be in my life."

"She was as much as she could be," Philip replied as he followed Clint. "It was better when Dad was still alive. He didn't do the dangerous stuff, it made it easier to stay together."

Clint started to say something else, but realized suddenly that he was being a hypocrite. He'd defended Barney too, and it wasn't like he was in Clint's life. "Sorry about your dad," he said instead.

"Thanks," Philip said. "He was the boring one," he said after a minute. "He was an analyst so not so big on excitement. But he got to stay home a lot, that was good."

"I dunno. You make boring work for you. I bet he did too," the archer smirked, glancing over his shoulder.

"He was good at it. And there had to be something there for him and Mom to get together," Philip said with a roll of his eyes. "Speaking of, I did warn you that my grandparents need to be told to get a room sometimes, right?"

Clint hit the first floor and turned away from the living room, squeezing his eyes shut from the scene of two older people way more intimate than he’d ever wanted to know about. "Holy fuck, you could have told me sooner."

Philip didn't want to know. He so very, very much didn't want to know. "Get a room!" he hollered out. "You better not be doing something weird with shoes in there again!"

The archer laughed. "Shoes?"

"Don't ask," Philip said, entirely pained. "Just.. seriously, don't." He peeked around the corner and relaxed. They were in separate chairs again.

"Bah!" Ivan called back. "I did not intrude on your private time with vash yastreb, did I? You have no ground to stand."

Philip could feel the back of his neck heating up again. He'd warned Clint that would happen. "Not what was going on, stop changing the subject."

Clint peered around the corner too, winking at them. "We have hot girlfriends. Well. He has a sort of weird, kind of cute but bossy girlfriend. I have a hot girl I make out with when he isn't looking."

"God damnit, Clint..." Philip muttered. He had no idea if his mom had told them about Noriko, worse, he so very much did not want to think of Abby and making out in the same time-zone. "Ignore him," he said firmly. "He's travel lagged and buzzed and No, I am not telling you anything."

'She has blue hair,' Clint mouthed at the two of them, eyes bright and mischievous.

"I hate you," Philip muttered. "I'm going to unpack," he said, louder that time. "And sleep off lunch."

"Me too," Clint told them cheekily. "Only the second thing first. With my dog. Not with your grandson. My dog is less prickly."

Philip turned a full glower onto Clint as his grandfather just burst into laughter. They knew damn well that there wasn't... stuff going on there. Or they better, he sure hadn't said anything to the contrary. "You're going to run laps until you die when we get back," he promised darkly.