You Don't Have to Leave to Arrive (8/9)
Title: You Don’t Have To Leave To Arrive (8/9)
Disclaimer: Characters are Marvel’s. Story is mind. Headcanon is my crack.
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Cursing, violence, possible mentions of rape/abuse, PTSD.
Author’s Note: I love Andrea Gibson, a very talented poet and spoken word artist. You should totally check her out. These lines worked for me. That’s all.
Summary: And she tells him, “They write stories about people like us. Damaged and rough around the edges and in love.” And he says, “Is that what this is? Love?”
Kiss me where the flames turned blue.
Tell me there are places on my skin
that look exactly like the sky
and your heart is a jet plane - Andrea Gibson
Three months later, she gets off the plane and makes her way to the airport bar. She has been on a plane or in transit for six hours and she knows she not only smells like airplanes and sweat and stale pretzels, but she feels like a gymbag full of stale pretzels. Her mind is buzzing and she is exhausted. But two days ago, she received a text message from a number she didn’t know that gave her coordinates and yesterday she received a text message from the same number that spelled out in morse THUNDER and Natasha is willing, just this once, to listen to a command.
She walks into the airport bar, tosses her hair over her shoulder, and it has gotten long, and she walks the way she walked around Stark’s office. Eyes follow her. The bartender pauses and watches her. Normally this makes her sick, but mostly, she’s watching one guy in the corner in a rumpled leather jacket who is running a finger over the rim of his glass. He glances out of the corner of his eye, stares at her, smirks, and says, “Bartender, I’m going to need another one of these. And something for this pretty woman.”
Natasha slides onto a barstool a few seats down from him, hooks her ankles together and leans forward a bit, making the bartender breathless. She can hear Clint’s barely contained snort. She says, “Vodka.”
The bartender says, “And?”
She smiles at him, shy, demure, bats her eyelashes a bit. She brings tears to her eyes and pretends to brush them away with the heel of her hand. She swallows hard. She says in a low voice, “Just vodka. I just broke up with my boyfriend. I need something strong.”
“Miss,” says another gentleman, sliding onto a bar stool. Natasha looks at him through her lashes, her eyes flickering to Clint who is barely repressing his grin on the other side of the man. He says, “Let me buy you a drink. That’s terrible. Quite an ordeal.”
“Terrible,” agrees Natasha, and when the bartender gives her the vodka, she lifts it and says, “Vashee zdarovye!”
“He’ll need it,” Clint adds from the end of the bar.
“I’ll need what?” asks the guy between them, glancing at her strangely and then at Clint. He points at Clint. “Hey, buddy, you just leave her alone. She needs a gentle touch right now.”
Clint’s now laughing into his cup. “Yeah. A gentle touch.”
Natasha’s schooled her face into a picture of confusion but she brightens, like a schoolgirl. She says, “Bartender, another.” And when he pours it, she lifts it in Clint’s direction.
His eyes are sparkling at her. He lifts his own glass. She knows that it’s water, or tonic water. Clint doesn’t drink. He says, “Za vas.”
She can’t hold his gaze. It’s too much. He can be breathtaking when he’s not even trying and it’s been too long since she’s actually seen him. So when she looks away, a little shy, she isn’t pretending. She says, “Za tbya.”
He smiles wickedly, “You move fast.” He buys her another drink and says, “I better toast to my luck. За удачу.”
She throws back her head, laughs, and she lets herself smile at him, really smile. “За удачу.”
He gets up and walks around the other side of her and she turns, letting their knees touch and he grins at her, sloppy, and rests a hand on her thigh. The guy behind her says, “Buddy.”
Natasha leans on the bar, slouches, tips her head back and lets the vodka run down the back of her throat, warm and filthy and the way she wants him right then. She says, “За дружбу."
And his eyes get serious. He says, softly, “За нашу сильную половину.”
She leans forward and kisses him, her lips warm and sticky from the vodka, and he slides a hand into her hair, pulling her closer. She slides off her barstool and in between his legs. She pulls back slightly, taking a shuddering breath. He kisses her cheek, her neck, her forehead, her eyes. Her mouth. Again. Again. He whispers, “Моя любовь, я скучал по тебе.”
She says, “мой ястреб.”
He runs his hands down the outside of her bare arms. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Please,” she murmurs as he slides a bill across to the bartender who is staring at him and then at Natasha, and as she slides out of the stool, she lets him take her hand and lead her out of the airport.
He tosses her his cellphone when they reach the car. “Tell Phil you want two weeks off.”
“Do I?” she asks.
He pauses, considering. He shrugs. “Ask for three, minimum.”
She says, “I want to talk with my hands.”
He smiles as they slide into their seats. “Not while driving. I was gesticulating too much and may have driven into a cow last week. Phil’s not happy with me, either is Accounting or whoever the fuck deals with insurance over there. They keep calling me. I keep emailing them and saying, “Read the report. I was in an accident because I was signing, dumbass. Stop CALLING me.””
Natasha feels breathless next to him but she doesn’t say this. She says simply, “It’s good to be back.”
He squints at her a bit, dramatically as he pulls out of the parking lot. “You’ve never been here.”
She signs, “You’re home to me.”
He keeps a hand on her knee while they drive, like he’s trying to keep her from flying away, but mostly he’s telling himself that she’s actually there.
It takes them a week to get around to it, but finally, in an apartment overlooking Seattle, Clint decides he needs to talk to her. He wanders out of the bedroom, fingering the cross around his neck and wondering how exactly to approach this. She’s standing in a tshirt and her underwear by the glass window overlooking the Sound, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea, and she’s momentarily, terribly distracting. Her hair has gotten long and she keeps talking about cutting it but she hasn’t yet, and Clint doesn’t really mind. Her eyes are distance, and her face is a little sad. She has been different since the Stark assignment. She spoke of him with affection, occasionally, but mostly, she was quieter with Clint. She seemed determined to memorize him. She took her time around him.
She says, in his moment of distraction by her long, pale legs, the way her t-shirt didn’t actually hide any part of her, “We need to talk.”
He says, “I know.”
She waits for him to pour coffee and stand at the window with her. He says, gesturing to her long bare legs, “Someone might see you.”
She laughs. “Worried?”
“For them, maybe,” he shrugs. “They might bike off a cliff or something.”
“Hmm,” she casts him a mischievous sideways glance. She says quietly, “I’m not opposed to taking freelance, but I don’t like it, and I want it to have a goal. It can’t be this open ended thing where we do freelance just to get away from SHIELD. SHIELD isn’t the cruelest fish in the sea.”
“Don’t we know it,” he replies. He says. “You sound like you have a goal in mind.”
“Retire.” She says immediately. “I’m done. I want to…I want to clear my ledger, but I’m tired. I’m tired all the time. I just want this. I want to do mundane things like walk around cities and drink coffee and buy old used books just because they look like they need homes.”
He wants to reach out and touch her, but he doesn’t. He says, “I can see that.”
She faces him. “Together.”
Clint gives her a halfway smile. “Was separately an option?”
“No,” she says stoutly. “Not for you, anyways. I once told Fury I’d take you unconscious with me out of SHIELD if he kept pushing me.”
Clint reaches out, picks up her right wrist and flexes it until she winces. “For this.”
“There’s a tipping point for everyone,” she murmurs. “I don’t like surgeries. That’s when they used to mess with our minds.”
He pulls her to him then, buries his face in her hair. He says, “So some freelance, some SHIELD, save like nobody’s business, and get out when we can.”
She wraps an arm around his and nods. “Yeah.”
He says, “So I guess I have to thank Tony Stark for something, huh.”
Natasha looks up, grinning. “So there’s this thing. The Avengers Initiative. He was being considered for it but they decided he didn’t belong.”
“Too pretty? Too rich? Too smart?” suggests Clint, frowning. “Why wouldn’t Tony Stark not be an asset for SHIELD?”
“They decided that he doesn’t play well with others. Not a team player,” and he realizes when she says this, why her eyes are dancing so much. He frowns at her and she grins up at him, broader. “Yes, yes, it is Fury’s idea. What ever gave you that idea?”
“Fuck,” Clint mutters. “We aren’t being considered, are we?”
“Oh yes, we are,” Natasha tells him, positively gleefully. “Imagine what our scores are going to look like.”
“I’m going to fail so hard,” muses Clint, staring over the city.
“You?” she sputters. “Imagine what they’re going to say about me!”
“I think, Natasha, that any time I fail an activity or test involving teamwork or playing well with others, it’s fair enough to assume that you failed abysmally.”
There is some teamwork she excels at, and she proves it to him.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Clint and Natasha do a traditional russian toast, starting from formal "To you" to more affectionate endearments. In order so you don't have to scroll back up!
Him to her: Za vas -- to you (formal)
Her to him: Za tbya -- to you (informal)
Both: За удачу -- for good luck
Her: За дружбу -- to friendship (like a longstanding friendship)
Him to her: За нашу сильную половину -- To my stronger half
Him to her: Моя любовь, я скучал по тебе -- my love, I missed you.
Her to him: мой ястреб -- my hawk