Having your first baby will always come with a lot of challenges and 'firsts'. Having Clint since he was six meant James and Phil never went through sleepless nights, crying babies, toddler tantrums, diaper changes, feeding times and first steps, words, laughs but the one thing that truly tested them as parents, and their very new marriage, was teething.

Harlowe, their beautiful baby girl with blonde tufts of downy hair, chocolate brown eyes that contrasted both her fathers' and her brother's adorably and a kick that would rival any major league football player; she was a quiet baby, snuffled for food, pouted for cuddles and laughed at nearly everything Clint did. The only time that she cried with sheer abandon and utter pain was when she began to teeth at four months old.

It started with the drool…

"Daddy! Harley's spit all'ver my drawing!" Phil whipped his head around, catching the disappointed face of his son and the waving arms of his daughter as he tried to co-ordinate the next test-run of Tony's new Avengers equipment, before karma came smacking around looking for a new building to crumble or beast to unleash, maybe he'd already jinxed them, at the other end of the table. Tony'd presented them with a child-friendly kitchen table/workbench for their wedding present; it incorporated rounded edges of polished oak wood on one end with cushioned benches to match that then led down to a multi-coloured plastic table end that had an adjustable height for any child and chairs to match. Phil and James could work in the same space as the kids with some degree of safety from paint, pens, and apparently drool, while spending time together. Plus Clint always said it made him feel like a grown-up, pretending that he was working with his dads.

"How'd she manage that? She's strapped in her high chair?" Phil mused aloud, mostly to himself, as he moved down to witness the damage.

"She threw it at me… See!?" Clint pointed as his Father removed his reading glasses, standing over by the high-chair, close enough to watch chubby little spit-covered hands smack on the tray attached to the high-chair but splatter across Clint's workstation just below. That was a lot of drool…

"Ah-ah! No, no, Harlowe, let Daddy see those hands, hmm?" Phil cringed a little as he hefted her out of the contraption and she wrapped her soaked hands in his clean shirt, gifted for his recent birthday. Well, you couldn't really cringe that often anymore with two kids under eight in tow; the amount of times he's been covered in body fluids both at home and at work was too high to count…

"It's ruined, it was a new prototype drawing for Tony for my new bow," Clint sat his head on his hands, looking forlornly at, the rather detailed, drawing of a purple bow with interchangeable arrows to match.

"Don't worry too much ace, Daddy can make sure it's all dried up and as good as new in a minute, I'll just sort out Little Miss Spit here first. Would you do me a favour and set the table for dinner? Your Dad said he's on his way back with pizza?" Phil tried to cheer him up, some days Clint was the best child they could've asked for, always helping out and offering to do chores, but other days Phil could see him struggling to remind himself that he was only a child and that he was just as loved as Harlowe. Ever grateful to his loving husband that they came up with Boys' Night In with pizza and Clint's choice of film to remind him of just that.

"Yes! Okay, thank you Daddy!" Clint raced off towards the kitchen drawers and with a little help from JARVIS, Phil was able to take little Harley back into her room and not worry about Clint breaking anything or climbing anywhere, which he is often doing to his fathers' terror.

"Now what is wrong with daddy's little bug? Hmmm?" Phil checked her temperature, her head, her stomach, her limbs, her cheeks… A touch flush and with shoving her fists in her mouth, definitely some signs of teething. In the past few months, Harlowe proved herself to be quite untouchable, barely flinching at her jabs, not once catching the flu or chicken pox and even banging her head or catching her fingers like babies were oft doing, not even a tear so Phil wasn't worried too much. He'd heard enough horror stories from co-workers and books about days of crying, sickness, fever, diarrhoea and dehydration but his little girl was made of tough stuff as were her family, they'd pull through… What was that about jinxes?

Next came the biting…

"Aghhh!" The shout echoed through the corridor between the playroom and James' home office.

James damn near vaulted his desk, computer; chairs and all; being a super soldier and ex-military officer, your guard was never fully down, not even in your own home because that's when the Dad Defence went up, as soon as you see your children cry for the first time, there's nothing you wouldn't do to never see that again. So hearing what sounded like Clint cry out jolted something deeply ingrained in him, ever since Clint's abduction he'd been hyper aware of anyone around his son and with Harlowe even more vulnerable, his heart almost jumps out of his chest every time he hears the baby monitor go off. Thank Odin for Phil's calm demeanour most of the time or else he'd have them both wrapped in bubble wrap and locked in a safe somewhere unreachable from any evil.

Reaching the playroom two doors down which now included a baby friendly soft play area, he found his seven year-old clutching his arm to his chest, pout firmly stuck on his face and his four month-old chewing on her fist again; Phil had told him about the teething signs and he'd presented his many home remedies.

"What happened?" James moved further into the room, trying not to sound as out of breath as he felt.

"Harlowe bit me!" Clint's little nose scrunched up, shocked and sore, you know Clint's hurt when he uses his sibling's first full name.

"Harlowe! No! That was very naughty, this is why dad gave you some nice cool oranges to chew on. You do not bite people and definitely not your brother!" James scolded the baby as he picked her up, not shouting but keeping his voice firm so she could understand that she'd done something wrong. She tried to go back to chewing on her hands but James kept tugging them away in fear of her hurting herself so she hung her head onto her dad's shoulder. "Give Clint a kiss and say sorry," he moved her around and Clint accepted graciously as both James and Harley kissed him and once his dad checked him out he'd moved back to his Lego Avengers scene.

She'd really given him a chewing, although Harley hadn't cut any teeth yet, her gums were quite swollen and hard as though they were about to cut but that left them quite blunt, as the bruising on Clint's arm proved. James decided to remove Harley the Destroyer from the equation and try and keep her occupied with some apples in the kitchen to teeth on. Humming some vaguely new song about being young and a menace; accurate in this household most days; he carried his daughter through the corridor, her head resting on his shoulder when a sharp nipping pain radiated from his collarbone area.

The serum kept most pain to a dull throb so it took him a minute to realise that Harlowe had nudged his shirt open to reveal the junction between his neck and shoulder just enough for her to get her newly blunt gums into, with a lovely reddening mark left behind by the time he'd moved her away.

"Ah, damn, so maybe my mother's old frozen oranges aren't working for ya huh baby?" Harlowe just drooled onto his shirt and looked smugly into his eyes with some form of grin on her face.

Later that night really proved it when Phil finally returned home from a black ops project and their hot and glorious welcome home was interrupted by scrutinising and insecure looks until James explained that it was in fact a love bite but one from their daughter and not an affair; let's just say the night was effectively ruined by Phil's laughter and the baby monitor because…

Then came the tears…

"Come on sweetheart, you're okay, it's okay, shush shush shush…" Phil repeated over and over again, rocking the baby against his chest, as James tried to search for any remedies to baby teething because as grating as the screeching was to hear, the actual pain his baby girl must be going through to react that way was what was really causing his heart to break.

"Dad?" Clint shuffled in the door way, rubbing his eyes and clutching his ear.

"Hey bud, did you want to turn your aid down a little? This might go on a while," James set down his laptop to fiddle gently with the volume and signed one-handed as he spoke. "Better?"

"Yeah" Clint signed and spoke back tiredly, James lifted him up and went back to his bedroom, making sure he was comfy and not in too much pain because the aids could irritate him at night, but as these were the prototypes, Tony needed the research back so he could make it more comfortable and permanent for Clint. During all this, the crying hadn't lessened but Phil's talking had, all James could hear as he made it back was some soft humming he didn't recognise and Phil clutching at his head, 3 hours of close quarters screeching on top of 72 hours black ops would do that to a guy.

"I'm taking over, go sleep…" James clutched the whimpering infant to his chest, running through everything they've tried so far to sooth her as Phil just slumped and gave in, very unlike him, and a testament to how tired he really was. Her temperature was warm and she'd refused her bottle for the night with the pain of drinking it being too much for her.

Oranges, apples, ice, teddies, skin on skin contact, baby teething gel which worked for ten minutes, hard foods… none of the home remedies they knew worked… And the crying kicked up a notch once James stopped swaying to think, so he picked back up and thought about trying over the counter stuff even though he'd convinced Phil they wouldn't need it and that plastic in those rings was filled with toxins; Stevie came out in hives from one when he was a toddler.

Well that was night number one of six before James was ready to try anything to get his little girl to stop crying. They'd snapped at each other, at their co-workers, their friends but when they snapped at Clint for something rather innocent, that's when they knew they had enough of this; it was time for medical help.

Bringing her to Bruce should've happened a while ago but he was only back two days previously from a month-long research mission which then led to him being holed up for about 60 hours in his lab with specimens. When he checked her over, he never said a word other than to take hold of Phil's hand, wipe it with anti-bacterial wipes and press a finger along her gums, massaging them a little until Phil did it himself and finally the continuous whimpers and sniffs resided just a bit. He then handed them a rubber tube filled with water, a brand new piece of lab equipment it look like, and moved James' hands so they soothed at her jaw and cheeks, quieting her almost completely.

The three of them said nothing to each other, Bruce was re-adjusting to being in a family and in the presence of such small, vulnerable things and Phil and James were exhausted and relieved enough that they didn't have to speak for Bruce to understand how grateful they were.

After another two weeks of constant soothing and chewing, it finally came, Harlowe Barnes-Coulson's first tooth; the Avengers were never so happy to see a tooth arrive in their lives. No more tip-toeing around Agent or taking the brunt of Sergeant Barnes' exhausted temper or their child's chewing of everything placed in front of her. At one point during that first six days, Tony removed Clint from his room and had him sleepover in the lab with him just so he could hang with his best bud without having to plug his ears; Clint was also very glad and almost thankful for being partially deaf those few weeks because no matter how much he loved his sister, boy did she have a set of lungs. And his Uncle Tony knew exactly how to cheer him up when his dads were away or busy; robots, climbing and pizza!

After all was said and done and Harley's teeth kept coming, tempers fizzled and apologies were made but everything finally returned to normal when James made his first joke in a while…

"You know how Clint has his pinkie promises?" James asked Phil, lying in bed next to each other and just enjoying the silence.

"Yeah," Phil whispered in reply, watching his husband curiously.

"Well, now Harlowe has a promise ring… a promise teething ring," he grinned to himself, quite proud, as Phil just huffed and rolled his eyes next to him, wrapping an arm around his waist and they both fell asleep together and dreamed of golden rings of water and babies with shark teeth.