So, I'm just going to leave this bit here for
bob5fic since it's her fault anyway...
July, 2000 ~ Santiago, Chile (outskirts)
"You slept with her, didn't you?"
Clint tipped his head back and groaned. "Fuck you, too, Bobbi."
"Did you miss 'don't sleep with Russian assassins' during SHIELD orientation, Barton?"
A wadded up ball of paper flew past his head and he opened one eye to look at her. "Fury asked me the same damn thing."
"And?" She was leaning back in her chair, mirroring how he was sitting, except her feet were propped up on the desk. She had her arms crossed loosely over her chest and a smirk on her face.
"And I'll tell you the same damn thing I told him. No. I did not sleep with her." He let his chair drop down onto all for legs and turned towards her. "Why is that so hard to believe?"
"You slept with me on our first mission."
His eyes widened. "Oh, no. That was your idea, remember?"
She gave him an appraising look. "And it was a very good one. How long until our shift is over?"
Clint rolled his eyes. Yeah, the probably would end up back in her room after scrounging up something for dinner in the nearby town. They'd had an on-again, off-again thing since that night in a seedy little shack in Mozambique after their lead had gone cold, when they'd had two days until extraction and it'd been too damn hot for clothes.
"You really didn't sleep with her?"
"I really didn't."
"Then what the the hell, Clint? Why'd you screw the mission sideways?"
He scrubbed his hands over his face. He'd been asking himself the same damn question for two weeks. "I have no idea."
She just watched him, as patient as if she was waiting for a mark to make their move.
"She hesitated. Or - that's not quite right. She just stood there, Bobbi. She was going to let me shoot her. She looked tired. Beaten. I'd been watching her for over a month - she's amazing, you have no idea - but right then? It looked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she was going to let me kill her."
Eyes wide, Bobbi blinked at him. "Well, shit, Clint."
"What?"
She sucked in a breath and schooled her features into blank lines. "If you don't know, I'm sure as hell not gonna tell you. In fact? I'm gonna go get us some water for the road while you wrap up the surveillance report. Then we're gonna get in the jeep, go find a cantina and have really excellent food and some piss-poor beer and call it a night. Capisce?"
He shook his head as she left, confusion warring with the exhaustion clouding his brain. He could run for miles, no problem, but sitting in a windowless box listening to a resounding chorus of nothing for twelve hours drained the life out of him. He knew that whatever she'd come up with, there'd be no getting it out of her until she decided he needed to know. Another time, he might be tempted to try and pry it out of her with alcohol and some merciless teasing, but he couldn't work up enough energy to give a damn. Two and a half weeks to go on this damn assignment, and it couldn't pass quickly enough.