Peter was caught off guard when he realized that Hawkeye had a family. An actual family, with three kids running around a rural farm that made for a strangely domestic scene. He had never seen Clint out of his suit before, and his ruffled shirt and friendly eyes made him seem so normal, it was actually strange.

Currently, he was helping Lila with her physics homework. She was not too much younger than him, but he could still make fun of her being a freshie because, well... why not? Making fun of freshmen was fun.

She sat crosslegged on the ground, chewing on the end of her pencil determinedly, staring at the problems in front of her.

"I hate projectiles," she sighed, throwing her pencil on the table frustratedly. "I hate physics, I hate school, I hate homework, I hate life-"

"Hey, this isn't too bad," Peter tried reassuring her. He picked up her chewed pencil, and tapped it on his nose thoughtfully, staring at the problems.

"Says you, genius kid," she grumbled. "And that's disgusting." She was eyeing the chewed part of the pencil that was currently on his nose.

"A little bit of spit doesn't hurt," Peter grinned. "Here, this is how you work these out."

He drew a lopsided circle and an arc next to it, signifying that it was supposed to be flying across the air. On the side, he wrote the numbers that were given in her textbook.

"So, you know how horizontal velocities don't affect vertical velocities, right?"

Lila just tilted her head, looking confused. How she had gotten this far without even knowing that simple fact, Peter had no idea.

"Oh… erm- well, think of it this way," he explained. "I just handed your dad a bow-"

"He's always carrying one around though," Lila argued, probably just to be frustrating.

"Fine," Peter sighed. "Your dad already has a bow and wants to shoot it level to the ground. The arrow's just going to be pulled down because of gravity right?"

"Yeah," Lila nodded. "There's always a vertical acceleration downwards... something like 10 meters every second?"

"Exactly," Peter grinned. "Well, what happens if your dad drops an arrow instead of just shooting it? Which one falls to the ground first?"

"That's easy," Lila frowned. "The arrow that Dad shoots is probably going to hit the ground last."

"Nope!" Peter said cheerfully. "They fall at the ground at the same time. It's because the vertical velocity, which in this case is zero meters per second in both situations, isn't affected at all by the speed that the arrow has in the horizontal direction."

"That's… really confusing."

"I know right? But that's how you can solve this problem," Peter explained. "See, you can divide the projectile into its vectors, or the speed that the balls are going vertically and horizontally-" he drew a right triangle and pointed to the two legs that weren't the hypotenuse, "and then you can use these individual velocities to find the time the ball would spend in the air."

He quickly scribbled an equation down and showed it to her. "Just find the time that the ball would take to fall to the ground, and that would be the same time that the ball also goes in the horizontal distance," he said. "Then, use that time to find the distance the ball travels."

Lila just groaned again. "I hate physics," she repeated.

"It just takes practice," Peter said sympathetically. "MJ always beat me up on how bad I was at English." He wrote down the other equation on the paper and handed it to her. "How about this," he offered. "You finish the problem, then we can take a break."

Lila perked up almost immediately. "Seriously?" she said excitedly.

"Seriously," Peter nodded. "You can er- teach me how you shoot a bow or something cool like that. It's all projectiles, anyways. Outside-of-the-classroom learning," he said.

"You're the best pseudo-babysitter ever," Lila beamed. She quickly went back to the worksheet to pour over the equations, calculator in hand.

"Teaching Peter our tricks of the trade, eh?" a voice said behind them amusedly.

Peter whipped around, too fast and too sudden. He inwardly cringed when he saw it was just Clint observing them from the distance, hands across his chest. From Clint's glance, it didn't seem like he missed that little detail.

"Hi, Dad!" Lila said cheerfully. "Peter sucks at shooting."

"Hey!" Peter protested indignantly. "I just started learning five minutes ago!"

"And you suck!" Lila responded, grinning. In her hand, she held her bow loosely, like she had done this a million times before. On the other hand, Peter was clenching his bow so tightly that he was surprised that it hadn't snapped yet.

Then he noticed a running crack on the side of the wood. He quickly tried to loosen up his grasp before his prediction became true.

And then dropped the bow.

Clint snorted, and Peter flushed red. At this point, he was probably going hit the world record of having the most amount of mortifying moments in front of superheroes.

"Don't worry kid," Clint clapped him on the back. "When I first started, I nearly poked my eye out. It was pretty bad."

"You said the same thing to me," Lila pointed out crossly.

"Because it's true," Clint winked at her.

He adjusted Peter's grip on the bow. "Don't hold it so tight," he instructed. "Let the bow be an extension of your arm."

"That sounds like Gorden Ramsey, but with his knives," Peter randomly blurted out. "The whole let-the-knife-do-the-work spiel." He blushed again and tried to focus on holding the bow instead of saying more stupid stuff.

"Except bows are awesomer than knives," Clint said, looking amused. He turned to Lila again. "Sweetie, show him how a good bow-hold makes all the difference."

Lila drew back her bow carefully and aimed towards the center of the target. When she let go, the arrow made a twang sound, sticking against one of the inner rings of the target.

"Nice job," Clint grinned at her. "Already beating most of the Shield agents, I see."

Lila beamed proudly.

"Of course, I have to take all the credit," Clint continued teasingly. "After all, we all know what you looked like when you tried shooting the bow the first time-"

"DAD!" Lila interrupted loudly, looking embarrassed. "Not in front of Tony Stark's intern," she whispered, unaware that Peter could still hear her whispering. Spidey powers were amazing.

"Alright alright," Clint conceded, looking down at her fondly. "You're the boss."

He turned back to Peter, a smile still gracing his lips. "You still want to give it a go?"

Peter blinked. "Now?" He was pretty sure that he was still holding the bow the wrong way, considering the way Clint was eying his hands again.

"Of course," Clint said easily, quickly shifting Peter's hands back to position again. "What's Stark's favorite quote again… something like you can't walk-"

"Sometimes you gotta run before you walk," Peter corrected.

"Yeah yeah, Stark nerdling," Clint brushed away. "Just don't try to shoot yourself in the eye. I'm pretty sure Stark will somehow manage to sue me if you go back to him missing an eye."

"But an eyepatch would look awesome," Peter said excitedly.

"It would," Clint grinned. "You would get all the ladies."

"I could like, draw an eye on the eyepatch, and pretend to be Mad-Eye-Moody for Halloween or something."

"Maybe not all the ladies," Clint corrected himself, looking even more amused.

"Just shoot already, Peter," Lila said impatiently, hopping up and down.

"Fine," Peter shrugged. "But if I completely miss, you better not make fun of me."

Judging on the glint in Lila's eyes, he was pretty sure that she was going to ignore that request. Inwardly rolling his eyes, he faced back to the target and aimed at the center, just as Lila had done.

In his mind eye, he constructed a mental estimation of where he would predict the arrow would fly. He could see that he was holding the bow a bit too high, considering that he was pulling back the arrow all the way, and from the slight strain in his arm, he could tell that it had a lot of horizontal momentum already.

He carefully inched the bow downwards, and finally, let go. The arrow struck right above the bullseye, close to Lila's arrow still embedded in the target.

"That's a first," Clint sounded surprised. When Peter turned back to look at both of them, they were staring at the target, looking astounded. Then Lila started applauding, looking impressed.

"How'd you do that?" she asked curiously. "It took me forever to get that close to the bullseye."

Peter shrugged. "I just… aimed," he said honestly.

Clint looked down at him, an eyebrow raised. "I would have assumed that this wasn't your first time shooting just based on your accuracy- but your bow hold is absolutely horrible," he admitted. "But damn, you have some good aim, kid."

"Thanks," Peter said, a bit shyly. He already had some experience of calculating and estimating velocities and momentum while swinging around in New York, because he literally was a moving pendulum and there was nothing more important than getting his calculations right from swinging place to place.

When he first started, that was the reason why he ended up face-planting multiple times into a wall. He couldn't tell what angle to release at or what his velocity was as he was flying through the air.

"Hey Lila, you want to let Dad show off a bit?" Clint said, a bit slyly.

Lila groaned. "You always show off though," she protested.

"It entertains Cooper and Nat though," Clint protested.

"You just like showing off," Lila stubbornly said.

"Fine, maybe just a bit," Clint relented, rubbing her head. She tried to duck under his hand, but failed and ended up looking extremely grouchy under her mop of messy hair.

Peter swore that he tried not to laugh, but he couldn't help but let a snort out.

Lila stuck out her tongue at Clint. "Aunt Nat is my favorite Avenger," she said while reluctantly handing over her bow.

Clint just grinned at her. "Oh surprise, she's my favorite too."

He turned to the target, notching in three arrows in his bow. He tossed a smirk to Peter, who just looked at him wide-eyed before Clint carefully lowered his bow, aiming at the target. His eyes filled with concentration- the same concentration that Peter always found in Mr. Stark's eyes when he was working on a particularly tricky equation for his engineering stunts.

The arrows landed a couple of inches away from each other, all in a straight line, with the middle arrow at the bullseye.

"That's so epic," Peter breathed out. He watched as Clint quickly drew three more arrows and released them in quick succession, hitting each of the arrows that he had shot and driving them in the target further.

"Show-off," Lila said, but her eyes glittered with pride.

"As you can see," Clint said wryly, holding out an arm and drawing Lila in a half-hug, "Lila's my most outspoken fan."

Peter couldn't help but bounce on his toes. "Wait seriously, that's so cool," he excitedly said. "You had to distribute the momentum to each of the arrows perfectly so they wouldn't have uneven velocities and hit different parts of the target at the same time."

"Not more physics," Lila looked horrified.

"Physics is great!" Peter protested again. "That's how your dad can shoot from so far away." He waved his arms in front of him, trying to approximate a semisphere to represent the Earth. "He has to keep in mind the curvature of the Earth when shooting so far away as well as the wind-speeds and the friction between the arrow and the air, and there are so many components to making the shot perfect-"

He shut his mouth quickly when he realized he was rambling again. Clint was looking at him appraisingly, looking impressed.

"Yeah, not much people know about that," he shrugged. "Takes a lot of years of experience to get the feel of how the surroundings are going to affect your shot."

Lila shrugged. "Physics," she said simply, and Clint chuckled.

"You devil," he swung her up and around before letting her land on the ground again. "You're supposed to be on the same side as me."

"Well, someone has to make sure you don't get a big ego," Lila said seriously, reaching up and tapping him on the nose. That was when Clint started to laugh in earnest, a sound that was a mix between a wheezing donkey that was somehow choking at the same time.

"Sweetie, you're unbelievable," he said, still laughing. He planted a brief kiss on her head. "Don't ever change, you hear me?"

It was the third night that Peter couldn't sleep, staring at the dark ceiling. His head was too filled with the memories of collapsing buildings and dark spaces, and the small room he was staying in always seemed so oppressive at night like the walls were inching closer and he couldn't do anything about it.

He turned around restlessly, trying to stop his frantically beating heart, before giving up his attempt to sleep altogether. He softly padded downstairs to the kitchen, hoping that the more open space would stop the fluttering in his chest and froze.

The light was already on in the kitchen, spilling out from the door that was opened a crack. Peter almost turned backward, but curiosity drove him towards the door, because who even would be up at 3 AM?

He peeked through the crack in the door and saw Clint staring straight at him. He nearly jumped out of his skin, heart pounding.

"Pete, you can come in," Clint's voice softly passed through the door, almost inaudible. "To be honest, I was kind of expecting you earlier."

Peter tentatively opened the door and crept inside, closing the door once he was inside. Clint was sitting at the table, looking tired and weary, and completely different from the man he had seen shooting with his daughter.

"You can join me," Clint said wryly, patting the seat next to him. "We can be the no-sleep buddies… make a whole club and everything."

Peter carefully sat down, observing Clint's baggy eyes, so similar to the ones he saw reflected in the mirror.

"Why are you awake?"

"Shouldn't I be the one asking you that?" Clint shot back good-naturedly. "I'm a grown-up so technically I can do whatever I want to do."

"Sor-"

"Nah, I was just joking," Clint reassured Peter. He sighed, passing a hand through his face. "I assume it's similar to why you're up at this moment. Nightmares, eh?"

"Yeah," Peter said softly, deciding that it would be safer to look at the table than Clint's probing stare. "It's not that big of a deal, I just-"

"First of all, it's a pretty big deal if it's keeping a teenage boy from sleeping," Clint interrupted. "So don't say that. And Stark already gave me the details."

"He did?" Peter looked back at him, startled.

"Yeah, he's kind of being a big mother bird right now," Clint cracked a weary smile. "It's always did you feed Peter today? or what's Peter doing right now? or if I see him missing a limb, I'll feed you to Friday even if she doesn't have a mouth."

"Oh… he hasn't really erm… talked to me much," Peter said awkwardly, wringing his hands. "He only er… texted me like two times."

"Because he's Tony Stark, kid," Clint said, eyes understanding. "He's not really into the whole feelings thing- you're kind of pushed him out of his comfort zone. Not that I'm complaining, of course," he hurriedly added, seeing Peter's sheepish face.

"But anyway," he quickly changed the topic. "We're not here to talk about Stark, we're here to talk about you."

He folded his hands together like he was in church. "What's up?"

Peter hesitated. "I- erm… I can't sleep."

He wanted to face-palm when that tumbled out of his mouth because duh- he was in the kitchen with Hawkeye in the middle of the night, which obviously meant that he couldn't sleep. But instead of laughing at him, Clint just nodded seriously, waiting for him to continue.

"It's just… a lot of feelings," Peter said truthfully. "I can't- I can't help but feel like I'm back under a collapsed building or back with- with Mr. Stern and my heart gets all," he made a fluttering motion with his hands, "jumpy, and I don't know. I just can't stand it," he finished softly. "My head keeps running through all these different scenarios, and it's always hovering over me- at school, at home, here."

"Restless?" Clint asked, his eyes calm and attentive.

"Yeah," Peter sighed. "If I don't do anything, the thoughts creep up faster." Like not Spidermanning for a whole week.

"And if you keep avoiding the thoughts, it'll keep festering," Clint said bluntly. "Denial only works short-term."

"I know," Peter whispered, feeling miserable. "I realized."

Clint softened. "I'm not saying that it's not a common mistake to make," he said gently. "But going through the motions of life only gives you hell instead of peace- that's why therapy is so effective at times. When you talk to someone about what had happened, you gain this sort of protective skin against the memory."

He shrugged. "It's called exposure therapy," he clarified. "There's also REBT, which helps change your style of thinking- that's more cognitive therapy. And then there's this weird one, known as EMDR, which somehow affects your brain by simulating your eyes."

He stuck out a finger and exaggeratedly moved his eyes around to follow his finger moving in front of him.

"How do you know all of this?" Peter said quietly.

Clint winced slightly, almost so slightly that Peter hardly even caught the motion. "I was… well, the kindest way to put it was that I kinda was spiraling," he said quietly. "Loki really messed with my head, and all I could see was blood for months afterward after the aliens came."

He stared at his hands resting on the table. "I- well, I was never going to go to treatment," he grimaced. "Tasha had to threaten to castrate me before I even stepped foot into a shrink's office."

Peter blinked.

Clint threw a sideways glance, and nearly cracked a smile. "It helps," he said quietly. "It doesn't seem that way at first, and who knows, it might never seem to work. Hell, it took me years before I was semi-functional and-" he gestured to himself mockingly, "-still can't sleep. But I'm still semi-sane with a wife that has the patience of a goddess and three wonderful kids I would never give up for the world."

He looked fondly at the closed door from the kitchen as if he could somehow see his family.

"You aren't so messed up yet, kid," he said gently. "It'll be worth it."

"I guess," Peter said hesitantly.

"Promise me you'll try," Clint shook his head, his eyes strangely serious. "You've been scaring the crap out of Stark, and sometimes I can see why. You have the self-preservation skills of an upside-down turtle."

"Can I at least be right-side-up?" Peter frowned.

He sighed when Clint didn't take the bait. "Fine," he grumbled. "I'll see what I can do."

"Awesome!" Clint made party hands in the air, a relieved smile on his face. "You've upgraded to right-side-up turtle! Congratulations!"

"My dream career," Peter shot back sarcastically.

"Your second dream career," Clint corrected, tired eyes glinting mischievously. "I'm stealing you and turning you into an archer so when you get back home, you can terrorize Stark with your newfound knowledge."

"Wait, I actually really want to do that," Peter said excitedly. "Can you please teach me?"

Peter was surprised that Clint's responding loud snort didn't wake up the rest of his sleeping family.

Man, I actually have to agree with Lila- physics is absolutely, terribly, horrific. It doesn't help that calculus brings physics to a whole new dimension of what the serious heck, and yeah, it's currently killing me and my grades this year. All of the physics jargon is completely correct- for those of you who've already learned about projectiles, kudos to ya'll cause you'll definitely be able to understand all of that mess.

I've always thought Clint was the more "human" one of the group, the one grounding everyone because in a group with supersoldiers, gods, and billionaires, the guy shooting the bow seems very very human. He doesn't have any special powers, except being a really good agent and shooting, which are talents he has to learn himself. So I definitely wanted to make him the one to kind of remind Peter that hey, he's just a kid, and he probably needs help- and he's also dad so he has more experiences with talking to kids.

Psych stuff is also all correct- I always wondered how EMDR worked; some sources said that it was just placebo BUT tbh I don't think anyone 100% knows yet. It just works. \o/

Stay safe all! Thanks for being patient with my slowness, and again, you all are awesome. :) BBQ weekend would be hilarious actually, but this is Avengers post-Civil war, and gotta keep it pretty tense for now. Tony's still kinda ishy with everyone, which is understandable, but he knows that they don't have bad intentions.