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Phil wasn’t particularly familiar with what kinds of things were kid-appropriate.
He didn’t have kids of his own, he wasn’t close enough with any of his extended family to really interact much with their kids, and most of the SHIELD agents and Avengers he knew had no kids and had no intention of having kids.
Lian Harper stared at him from across his desk. He stared back at her, considering.
He could figure it out. He could handle this task. He could and he would keep her safe and happy while Roy and Clint and whoever else barreled off to take care of the critical mission that had needed multiple crackshot archers at last minute notice.
“So, Miss Harper. What do you like to do for fun?”
She wrinkled her little face at the honorific and swung her legs back and forth as she thought.
Phil waited her out. Patience was something he had in abundance, courtesy of years of probationary agents.
Eventually she shrugged.
“The playground is fun.”
Okay. Playground. Phil could work with that.
“What kinds of things do you like to do on the playground?” he asked, going through his mental catalogue of equipment in the SHIELD base as she talked.
Monkeybars were easy: they had those in their sort of adult jungle gym already. Slides were also easy. They didn’t have anything already made up but Phil was confident they could cobble something together that would be fun and safe at the same time. He could even probably wrangle a couple probationary agents to the cause, make it a competition of sorts.
The rope ladder, oh there was an idea.
Phil took Lian – holding her hand firmly but not too tightly the entire way – down to the bouldering cave.
“Now there’s a couple things we have to do to be safe here, okay? We have mats down in case of falls and we always have people spotting the climbers.”
“Spotting?” she asked, clearly only half paying attention to his words, her eyes roving greedily over the wall with its brightly colored hand holds.
“Yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that part. You just go on and climb where you want and if you get scared or need to come down just let me know.”
“Okay!”
Lian scampered off and was halfway up the wall before Phil could even blink. He followed after her quickly, hovering a bit in case she got unexpectedly afraid of the height but she… was fine. More than fine. She was exceptional actually, pulling herself up the wall easily, understanding the colored routes without anyone having to explain the idea to her, leaping fearlessly and nearly giving Phil a heart attack every time.
She climbed for a while, longer than Phil would’ve expected. Possibly hours, though he hadn’t noted the time they’d come down here to begin with.
And then, inexplicably, she stopped.
“I’m hungry,” she announced, looking up at him expectantly. Well, no wonder. She was a growing kid who had just been very active for quite a long time.
“Alright, let’s go get something to eat then,” he said, offering his hand again. She took it easily and they started their journey back through the maze of hallways towards the cafeteria.
“Now if I remember correctly, Mr. Fisher might have some ice cream set aside and if we ask really nicely maybe he’ll let us have some.”
“Yay, ice cream!!”