paedophobia
Okay, Clint will admit that this wasn’t his best moment.
He had kept the nature of his children a secret to protect them. Hell, he could count on one hand the number of people at SHIELD who knew he was married. Fury helped him set this whole thing up and keep his family scrubbed from the records.
He should have known that ninja child assassins and babies don’t go well together. He could see the looks on their faces when he introduces them to his children.
Yelena pressed against Natalia’s side, trying and failing to not look at the babies. Cooper’s chubby fist brushed against Yelena’s shoulder when Clint moves past them inside and he pretends he doesn’t see her recoil into Natalia.
So maybe he should have told them. It’s too late now and Clint can only hope that this wasn’t a severe phobia. He wanted the sisters to be able to relax and enjoy themselves for the next five days, maybe get mother-henned by Laura a little.
They couldn’t do that if they were terrified of everything that had to do with children.
Clint had missed his son and daughter desperately but he would leave again to settle the sisters down at a hotel or something if it got to that point. His children had Laura to look after them and no matter how much Clint wanted to stick around for the time he got off, the sisters didn’t have someone like that. They looked after each other but there was always that lack of pushing each other to have fun and break out of their shells.
Clint sets his son down in front of a train set in the living room so that he can take the girls on a tour of the house away from the children and apologize.
Once they get upstairs and past the nursery where his son slept down to the guest bedroom at the end of the hall, Clint pauses in the doorway. “I’m sorry.” He finally says.
Both of them turn to look at him at the same time.
“I should have told you that I had kids so you knew what to expect,” Clint continues, watching as Yelena glances back at the room to scan it. “Is… is there something wrong with babies?”
To his surprise, Yelena answers his question. “Widows weren’t allowed interactions with young children unless it was to kill them.”
Clint blinks a few times at the answer, certainly not expecting that. He feels like a little bit of an asshole now for springing children on them. “It’s safe here.”
Yelena seems a little antsy, her eyes flickering around the room.
“If you are really so unsettled by my kids… I’ll get you a hotel room,” Clint says. Yelena’s head jerks up to look at him.
“They’re just infants,” Natalia comments, folding her arms. “We can handle that.”
The look on Yelena’s face tells him otherwise but he’s not one to argue with her.
“Look, you don’t even have to acknowledge my kids if you want. I just want you two to be able to relax after all the shit that’s gone down,” Clint tells them. “Get settled in, I’ll come to get you when dinner is ready.”
Clint heads out of the room, pretending he doesn’t see Yelena immediately starts searching for what he assumes is cameras.
The sisters do join them for dinner but they keep their eyes trained on Cooper the whole time. They watch as the toddler happily makes a mess and wears his dinner, smearing spaghetti sauce all around his mouth and dumping his noodles down his shirt.
It’s probably the chaotic way Cooper manages to get one in five noodles to his mouth and leaves behind smears of sauce on his cheeks and hands.
Clint had called Laura ahead of time to ask her about the sisters joining him and when she agreed he then warned her about their pasts. He didn’t tell her much, just about some expected reactions from them. His warning was probably the only reason Laura didn’t sweep them up into a hug as soon as they entered.
Clint lets them retreat to their room as soon as dinner was over and he gets left with the task of cleaning Cooper up so that Laura can breastfeed Lila.
“You weren’t exaggerating,” Laura comments from her spot in the chair as Clint wipes the squirmy toddler down. “They looked surprised at the appearance of the kids.”
“Yeah… I didn’t tell them. It was an oversight on my part,” Clint explains sheepishly, wrinkling his nose when Cooper tries to offer him a soggy noodle he had shoved down his shirt. “I just… didn’t think to.”
The kids had been very good so far but Clint knew it would only be a matter of hours before one of them was wailing hysterically and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to how the sisters would react.
The sisters could comfort each other but not others, not to mention their supposed phobia of babies. A crying baby just seemed like a bomb waiting to go off.
“I was thinking of taking them apple picking tomorrow,” Clint says, nodding at the back window that overlooked the backyard where the barn, chicken coop, and apple trees were. “Dunno if they’ve ever had pies but I refuse to let them leave without a taste of yours.”
Laura chuckles. “Always knew you married me for my pie-making abilities,” She comments, stroking Lila’s chubby cheek as she nursed.
“You don’t know good pie until you’ve had a Mama Barton apple pie,” Clint says with a grin, finally setting one squeaky clean toddler onto the table in front of her, leaning down to press a kiss to her cheek.
Laura lets out a sigh. “I thought the poor things were going to bolt the whole time during dinner,” Laura murmurs, tilting her head up to press a kiss to his lips. “I’ve never seen anyone look at a baby the way they were eyeing Coop.”
The somber mood returns as Clint sighs. “Yeah. They just needed a little break.”
“You’re a good man, Clint,” Laura said, shifting Lila to burp her.
Clint thinks that everything was going okay until that night when the baby monitor in Cooper’s room alerts him to his son wailing his little heart out. Clint glances at his sleepy wife who was already sitting up to settle him back down before he looks at the baby in the bassinet by Laura’s side of the bed. “I’ve got it.” He tells her, gently setting a hand onto her shoulder to settle her back down.
Laura gives him a sleepy smile, wasting no time in flopping back to curl right back up under the covers.
Clint heads down the hallway, nearly forgetting about the presence of the sisters until he sees Yelena staring at Cooper’s nursery door.
“Hey,” He yawns, trying his best not to startle her. He fails, the girl jumping and spinning around to look at him. Cooper had obviously woken her up from sleep and Clint knew that Natalia had to be awake as well.
The fact that Natalia let Yelena wander the hall alone spoke to the amount of trust she had in Clint.
“I’m sorry,” Yelena was already backing away down the hall, ready to duck back into the guest bedroom.
“Wait--” Clint doesn't know why he stops her but she freezes in her tracks. “Cooper-- Cooper isn’t being hurt.” He says.
It might sound like it but Clint knew the sound Cooper made when he really was hurt and it was a different cry.
“He’s probably just lonely,” Clint shrugs, reaching toward the doorknob. He glances at Yelena once again. “Come here. Look.”
The door to the nursery swings open and Clint enters, approaching his sobbing son and scooping him up. Cooper wraps his arms around Clint’s neck, burying his face into Clint’s shoulder. Clint pats his back, shushing him softly. He focuses very hard on a spot on the wall so that he wouldn’t get caught staring at Yelena who had peeked her head just far enough to look into the room.
Cooper’s sobs settle down into teary sniffles within a matter of minutes of being held. Clint finally dares to turn to look at Yelena. “You can come in.”
Yelena doesn’t deny her presence or bolt away. She appears in the doorway, wary and unsure. Clint moves toward her slowly and Yelena watches him stiffly.
“Babies just cry sometimes. It’s okay for them to cry,” Clint stifles a yawn. Yelena’s eyes zero in on Cooper’s face and Clint looks down to see that his son has planted his thumb between his lips. “Yeah, he likes to suck his thumb.”
“He’s very small.” Yelena says quietly, finally speaking. Clint doesn’t mention that Cooper was actually slightly tall for his age.
“He is,” Clint pauses for a moment. “Do you want to hold him?” He immediately regrets his words when Yelena recoils back, hastily backing away from him like he was going to hoist Cooper into her arms with no warning. “Okay. That’s fine.” Clint takes a step back, feeling out of his league as he watches Yelena. “Why did you come to the nursery?”
“I won’t do it again,” Yelena says, straightening up. “I’m sorry-”
Clint’s not looking for apologies. His sleep-addled mind searches for some way of reassuring her that he’s not upset or angry with her for making sure his kid is okay.
Then it hits him and Clint feels like a bit of a fool. Maria did pull him aside before he took the sisters home and warned him about hurting them or making them feel unwelcomed. Maria told him how hard it was to settle Yelena down in her apartment and Clint remembers the one thing she stressed, the one thing that he had forgotten after driving for eight hours straight.
“Yelena likes rules. They make her feel safe. She’ll constantly tiptoe around trying to stay unseen or hidden unless she knows it’s okay,” Maria had told him. “I don’t care if your house doesn’t have rules. Make them. Even if they seem silly. Write them down, pin them to the fridge, I don’t care. But you need to make them.”
Clint swallows hard, feeling Cooper going limp against him as he falls back asleep. “You’re not in trouble.” He reassures her. “You’re welcome to go anywhere in the house. I do keep weapons in the barn out back so I ask that you don’t touch those without asking first. If you need something then speak up. It’s safe here, Yelena. The Barton farm is safe, I promise.”
Yelena had pressed herself against the wall in the hallway just outside the nursery, watching him warily. “Why?”
“Why?” Clint echoes, tilting his head to the side.
“Why do you trust us around your children?” Yelena pressed, distress bleeding into her tone. “You know what we’ve done. What we could do.”
“I know what you were forced to do,” Clint doesn’t waste any time in correcting her. “If I didn’t think my family was going to be safe then I wouldn’t bring you here. Do you understand that, Yelena? You being here shows how much I trust you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Yelena murmurs, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Trusting you is my decision, Yelena,” Clint finally peels his sleeping son off of him to set him back down in the crib. “Proving me wrong is your choice.”
By the time he turns back around, Yelena is gone.
Clint lets out a sleepy sigh and heads back to his room. Laura was awake and Clint’s eyes fall onto the baby monitors that had relayed their entire conversation with her.
“You did well,” Laura scoots into his arms as soon as he settles back down in bed.
The reassurance does ease some of the tension from his shoulders. He pressed a kiss to the top of his wife’s head and settles down to go back to sleep with the hope that the sisters would be able to do the same.