Work Text:
I: 2008
- one -
How exactly, wonders Clint Barton as he taps his SHIELD ID on the card reader, are you supposed to guess at a deadly Russian spy’s hobbies?
When he walks into the barren grey room, Natalia barely looks up. She only watches him motionlessly from where she’s sitting on the floor in the corner, right under where the security camera blinks: a steady reminder that she’s being watched.
Clint fidgets with the items in his hands, abruptly shy. “Not happy to see me?” he tries for levity.
Natalia blinks. “You broke into my apartment, blew all my stuff up, pretended we were married, almost got us arrested—”
“Okay—” Clint winces, overly aware that the security camera is more than capable of picking up audio from the room, and frankly Coulson does not need to know—
She’s not done. “And I wake up in a prison cell they’re amiably trying to call a ‘temporary arrangement’,” she states calmly, tongue curling over her native accent. “I hate you.”
“I feel like that’s a little bit unfair,” says Clint. “Like, I’m hurt. I brought you chocolate.”
Natalia narrows her eyes at the Milky Way he’s holding. “It looks American.”
“We’re in America,” Clint says helplessly.
She contemplates him for a moment, then stands suddenly and walks over to him. She opens her palm, expectant, and Clint is so shocked at her initiative that it almost hypnotises him into putting the chocolate bar in her hand.
Natalia nods at what he’s got on his other arm. “Books?”
“Oh, yeah,” says Clint, setting the stack down on the table usually reserved for interrogations. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I brought trashy romances—No? Yeah, I figured it was a long shot. Well, I’ve got translated Russian classics, and, uh, Captain America comics…”
“I remember these,” Natalia says enigmatically, reaching out to trace her fingers over the comic covers featuring Steve Rogers. “They were part of the brainwashing program in the Red Room.”
Clint stares at her. “Okay. I’ll just…” He takes the comics back carefully, and then adds the romances to his pile, since Natalia has seemingly already taken her pick, returning to her corner and setting a copy of War and Peace in her lap. The Milky Way packaging crinkles in her hands as she opens it.
He finds himself suppressing his amusement. Faced with this image, no one would know half the things she was capable of. Faced with this image, anyone would assume that she was just a regular woman reading and snacking in her free time—not an assassin with a surprisingly terrifying amount of strength in her thighs.
Natalia bites into the chocolate bar tentatively, then starts chewing, eyes growing just a little bit wider. This time, Clint can’t hold his chuckle back.
“You still hate me?” he asks, because he just can’t resist.
“A little less,” Natalia allows, flipping a page.
He smiles, then turns to go.
“Yastreb,” she stops him right when he’s at the door. “…Leave the romance novels.”
Clint grins.
- two -
Clint has no idea how his life has brought him to this moment: him stalking out of the bar across from SHIELD at a modest 9pm with the Black Widow following hotly at his heels—not out for murder, but for an answer to the question are you mad at me.
“Barton!” She’s still hurrying after him out the exit, struggling to keep up with a stack of paperwork in her arms. “Slow down—What’s wrong? What’d I do?”
Clint whirls around with anger injected into the action, continuing to walk backwards—Anything to put some distance between them. “Could you just chill with the work for five minutes! I don’t need to hear about overdue forms on a Friday night.”
“But they’re overdue,” frowns Natalia, glancing down the road anxiously for cars before following him.
“I was gonna get laid tonight,” Clint informs her, a fresh wave of frustration washing over him at the reminder, “before you walked right up, asking for—details of our fake marriage—who brings paperwork to a bar, anyway—”
“Wait, that’s what you were trying to do with Agent Morse?” Natalia wrinkles her nose, following him through the door. “She doesn’t want to sleep with you, you know.”
“Oh my God,” Clint explodes. “See, this is exactly—You’re a terrible partner. Your people skills suck and you have no concept of personal boundaries, and—and it’s not just that! On every single one of our missions, you go off and do your own thing and leave me in the dust. I have to just guess what your new plan is because you never tell me. I have to explain it to Coulson. God, sometimes I really hate you, Natalia.”
Natalia is stricken.
It’s only then that Clint realises they’re right in the middle of the SHIELD lobby, and the agents usually milling around have stopped in their tracks, unsure how to react to an unmissable argument between two of the deadliest people in the building. Among them stands Maria Hill with an arched eyebrow.
But even that amounts to exactly nothing when Clint turns his attention back to Natalia and notes her fallen face, her defeated posture, her dimmed eyes.
Wait, he wants to say, I didn’t mean it, but the weight of all these stares push down on him until silence is the only sound he’s able to make.
He wouldn’t blame Natalia in the least if she spat a fuck you at him and went straight to HR or Fury’s office. Instead, she only says, soft and without malice, “Natasha.”
Clint continues to be speechless, too dumbfounded and ashamed at his own outburst to ask.
“My name’s Natasha, not Natalia,” she corrects, then shrugs. “Can’t hate me if you never knew me.”
She walks away after that, leaving Clint with a confused mixture of hurt and humiliation that stings and sediments somewhere in his chest.
- three -
Getting into the vents of the Budapest Metro is no easy feat when you’re bleeding out through your stomach.
“Please, please, please,” Natasha repeats like a litany as she hoists him through the opening.
His bullet wound burns as he painstakingly crawls a few feet forward, and then Natasha’s lifting herself into the dim space, closing the hatch behind them hurriedly and panting in the sudden silence.
Here above the action, the two of them listen, cautious not to move or make any sound, as the Special Forces search the station beneath them and eventually declare it a lost cause. As the last of the soldiers leave and the quiet is broken only by the sparse night trains, Clint finally lets out the breath he’s been holding.
Natasha squeezes her eyes shut. “I hate you,” she declares softly.
“Not enough to leave me behind,” Clint observes, and figures it’s the closest he’ll get to saying thank you for now.
Her mouth twists sardonically. “Would’ve been easier, that’s for sure.” But she’s barely able to keep the teasing up; the smile slips from her lips as she takes in the sweat beading on his forehead, his staggered breathing, the way he lies against the vent walls like a body bag.
“Fuck, Barton, don’t die on me, not now,” she warns, crawling up next to him and removing his jacket. “Let me see the bandages. God, I knew I did a shit job.”
Clint determinedly does not look down at the wound. It’s easier when Natasha is so close, giving him somewhere else to focus his attention on. She didn’t come out of the fight unscathed, either: There’s a cut on her temple, albeit shallow, and some of his blood has made it into her matted braids, and he knows there’s no possible way what he’s smelling is her usual almond perfume, but his mind convinces him of it anyway.
After the fight at SHIELD, Natasha had gone out of her way to avoid him, refusing to speak at meetings, turning the other way in corridors.
He’d missed her.
She’s shaking her head now, panic creeping into her voice. “It’s going to get infected.”
“‘S not,” he says, ignoring that he’s lying down somewhere in a network of dark vents that were last cleaned God knows when, and it’d take a damn miracle to keep it uninfected. “Hey, you know what’ll make you feel better? If we played twenty questions. Except, really, it’s only one question that I ask you. Because I’ve gotta know.”
Natasha frowns. “I’ll allow it, but not in a granting-a-dying-man-his-last-wish way.” Unexpectedly gentle, she reaches up to rub her thumb over a spot on his forehead, presumably to clean it of blood. Clint can’t help but do the same for her, but when he brushes her cut and she winces, he draws his hand back like he’s been burned.
“Why?” he asks. “Why do you care? I’ve been so terrible to you, and I’m sure you could find a way out of this whole mess without me. Even easier, probably.”
She’s quiet for a few moments, searching his eyes for something he isn’t sure is there. Then she answers, simply, “You brought me chocolate.”
Clint can’t look away. “Yeah,” he finally says, “I did, didn’t I?” And when he smiles, she does too, the bloom of a bright rouge orchid.
II: 2016
- four -
Natasha expected a smooth escape from the medical centre, after giving Tony a piece of her mind. It’s what she goddamn deserves, after the shitshow of the past week.
She should’ve known better.
As she’s walking to her car behind the building, someone clears their throat from the shadows. Natasha whirls around.
Clint, who she’s always known to be warm and funny, fumbling with his violet hearing aids and haloed by the lights in his loft apartment, looks out of place against the dull brick. He looks tired.
She’s willing to bet whatever he’s going through doesn’t hold a candle to her exhaustion.
“I see you’ve evaded capture,” she says coldly, not even bothering to snap. “Bet it felt incredible, just slipping away while everybody else was actually worrying about Rhodey.”
“You attacked the king of an actual nation,” Clint recounts, like she’s become an amnesiac overnight, “who’s in ownership of a fiercely loyal army, and scary-ass claws. I don’t care what you have to say, Natasha, I’m staying, of course I’m going to make sure you’re okay first.”
“I don’t need your protection, Clint,” she bites.
He sighs. “You don’t need to take this out on me, or Steve, or… Look, if you thought that signing was going to make you feel better about what you did in the past—”
“Fuck you,” she scoffs. “That’s not what this is about, and—and you only refused to sign because it made you feel like an important member of the team for once, instead of just some guy with a bow and arrow.” It’s meant to sting, and she can see that it hits its mark; she waits for the satisfaction that never comes.
“That’s so not fair,” he tells her.
“Am I wrong?” she doubles down.
He lets out another sigh, head falling forward. She supposes it means something, that it’s still natural for them to be dropping their guards around each other, that where other people would deceive and manipulate, they will always trust each other, even when the earth splits in half and they’re on opposite sides of the fault line.
“God, I hate you,” he exhales, and fuck if it doesn’t break her heart.
She steps forward and Clint melts fully into her arms, shaking—not from tiredness, she realises now—but from fear.
He’s not trying to piss her off. He just cares about her. He always has.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into her shoulder. “I know it’s been hard for you, Nat, you’ve been trying so hard to keep us together…”
Natasha pulls away; she wants him to see her face when she says this. “This team… It means more to me than anything else in the world. All but…” She shakes her head, traces his jaw with her finger. “Losing them is one thing. Losing you…” She has to swallow some of her emotion down. “I… can’t even fathom…”
Clint shushes her. “You won’t have to,” he promises, and turns his head to kiss the inside of her wrist.
- five -
Ross’ cars are closing in on them, Natasha’s family is waiting for her, and, “I’ll stay,” is what Clint says.
Natasha almost laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m serious, Nat, I’ll stay.”
“No,” she shuts him down, “you’re worth more than bait.”
“So are you,” he counters. “Look. I’ll explain this whole mess to Ross, make sure he knows exactly what you did.”
“What we did,” corrects Yelena from a few feet away.
Clint smiles, and it feels like the last rays of the winter sun at dusk. “Nat, your family needs you. The other Widows need you. And…” He takes her hand, runs his thumb over her fingertips. “I need you, and Wanda and Sam and everyone else down there.”
“They’re going to put you in the Raft,” says Natasha, curling her hand into his.
“So? You and Steve will break me out,” he says easily.
“Natasha, let him stay,” says Melina.
“Let me do this for you,” Clint echoes, soft.
“You idiot, you have nothing to prove,” she murmurs, and then stands on her tiptoes to kiss him like she’s wanted to for years. He kisses her back but doesn’t lean into it, doesn’t ask her for more, only rests his hands solidly on her waist and beams when she pulls away.
“I hate you so much,” she says into the pocket of summer air between them.
The look on Clint’s face is one she knows well and can’t help but be endeared by, even though it means trouble: It’s the look when he’s got one more trick up his sleeve, one last arrow in the quiver. It’s the look right before he says, “I love you, Tash.”
Natasha is frozen in place, gaping as her mind blanks. Clint only smiles as Yelena, exasperated, walks up and tugs her away with an impatient, “Come on,” and Natasha doesn’t stop looking straight at him until the ship’s door closes between them.
- and -
Natasha startles when the front door opens, but it’s only Clint joining her on the porch. For a moment, they just stare at each other under the Iowan sky, the first time they’ve been alone in two weeks that have felt like a lifetime.
“Everyone’s okay,” Clint breaks the quiet, answering her question before she can ask it. “Some of them are crashing in your usual room, though, so we’ll have to share.”
Natasha smirks. “No complaints.”
Clint smiles, sitting down next to her on the swing. “Wanda’s a little shaken. Scott’s thinking about turning himself in. Steve’s worried about you. He can tell something happened. I told him it was just the psychological effect of the different hairstyle.” He combs his fingers through her short, light hair.
“I’ll tell him eventually,” she says. “Or maybe I won’t. Maybe it’s enough that you know.”
He pulls her into his shoulder and she sighs, deep and drawn-out, looking up at the field of stars as if they could tell her what comes next.
“Long day?” he asks.
“Well, I broke my friends out of a supermax underwater prison,” she smiles up at him. “So really, it’s just another Friday.”
Clint kisses the top of her head. “It’s okay to be tired, Nat.”
“What you did back there…” she starts. “I’m not doing a catch-release with you again. Do you have any idea how hard it was to plan a prison break without you?”
“You managed it,” he says cheekily.
“It was hell. I…”
Clint grins. “Let me guess. You hate me?”
Natasha steadies herself and just throws it out: “I was gonna say I love you, actually.” She looks at him, then away again, hating how shy she feels. “You jerk, you didn’t give me enough time to say it back—”
But he’s already turning her to face him and leaning down to kiss her, and maybe it was written in the stars after all, the gentle way he brushes her cheekbones and the delighted giggles in between each kiss.
“Come, it’s getting cold,” Clint says eventually, standing up from the swing and holding out his hand. “There’s chocolate in the pantry.”