Fic: Unconventional Approaches to Debt Reduction - Avengers, Clint/Natasha
Title: Unconventional Approaches to Debt Reduction
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Pairing: Clint/Natasha
Rating: Mature
Notes: Thanks to
ataratah for beta.
Summary: Seven times they both needed a partner.
1.
Clint’s handing Natasha a pair of stockings and making sight-lines with her eyeliner.
“Which one works?” Natasha says, taking the stockings from him and holding them up to the light to look for tears before she bends to slip them on.
“For that dress?” Clint says.
“No, for your ballast,” Natasha bites back, adjusting the waistline of her lady killer dress. It makes her legs look even more like weapons, but their target won’t see it that way.
“Who says I’m gonna need a ballast?”
“If you end up taking the shot from the water, you’re gonna need a ballast. And use the one with metallic sheen, it’ll show better with your flashlight.”
“Put your heels on, I’m tired of having to look down at you.” Natasha does, and wow, the target doesn’t have a chance.
“That good, huh?” Natasha says. “This should be easy.”
They fall silent as she curls her hair. Clint checks his new boot knife - he lost the last one in Catamarca. Or at least that’s where he thinks it went. Fury doesn’t really like it when Clint’s knives aren’t accounted for. Neither does Clint, not when they fit into his palm as well as that knife did.
“It’s a shame,” Clint says.
“That men always fall for the honey trap?”
“I was talking about my knife,” Clint says.
“If you stopped taking them out to fiddle with them, you wouldn’t lose them so often,” Natasha says idly.
“Honey traps always work, because men are cursed to admire beauty like yours and never be able to touch it.”
“You making a pass at me, Barton?” Natasha grins.
“You go kill our mark with your bare hands, that’s all the honey I need.”
2.
“Don't let them see I got hit,” Clint rasps. He's taken a shot to the abdomen. They're crouching in a storage shed heavy with dust.
“Kinda hard to hide,” Natasha says.
“Please,” Clint says, and he never says it, not like that. “If we're cornered and they're coming, at least don't let them see that they hit their target and I didn't.”
“They'll see soon enough if they take us in,” Natasha says.
“Won't take us in,” Clint says.
There's a crack against the wood of the outer door.
“I have an idea,” Natasha says, and vaults up to open up one of the crates Clint is propped up against. Under the brittle wood is - yes - a crate of whiskey. She cracks the neck of the bottle and starts to pour it over Clint.
“Oh, you're clever, you're very clever.”
She pulls open her shirt, arranges herself on top of Clint, and and takes a huge sip of whiskey, spilling some down over her shirt.
Two overly muscled guys bust through the door as Natasha leans in and licks whiskey off Clint’s neck.
“Hey, this is a private party,” Natasha slurs, spilling more whiskey as she gestures with the broken bottle.
They swear and call her a drunken whore in two languages, both of which she pretends not to understand.
“Ok, ok, fine,” Natasha says. “If you are gonna be like that - “ The guns come out to accompany their gesturing, “Ok, we’re leaving, come on baby,” she says, and licks Clint’s neck again, all the while keeping her arm covering the wound on his side.
They sway as they stand, Clint murmuring about where exactly he’d like to take Natasha in a thick southern accent, as their pursuers pound down the corridor behind them.
“I can't believe that worked,” Clint says.
“Keep your lies simple,” Natasha says, like this is spy school. “Let’s find cover before they see you’re trailing blood.”
Clint sways, and Natasha thinks she’s going to have to heft him over her shoulder, but he reaches for the bottle, and takes a swig.
“Good whiskey,” he says.
3.
As soon as Clint wakes, he can feel that he’s bound, and worse, he’s bound face first to a building support column, and Natasha is bound to him, panting. Not a good sign.
“Tasha?” he tries. She hisses and bites her lip.
“Been dosed,” she says. He doesn’t like the way her voice sounds at all.
“S’ok, I’ll get us out.”
“Out’s not the biggest problem right now,” Natasha says.
“No?” he says. He tries to look around but can’t see whatever it is she sees. They’re bound with Natasha's ribs digging into his back. It’s a weird position and he guesses like they started out with some other arrangement of bodies and Natasha has been moving herself into this. “Gimme a sit rep, Tash?”
“Did you ever read Fury’s 87-zd folder?”
“You mean the one with a great big 'classified eyes-only Fury will kill you if he feels you breath too close to it' folder?”
“Sometimes I get bored,” Natasha says, sounding like herself again for a moment. “There’s been a rumor, about a new serum based on maca phytotherapy.”
“You’re gonna turn into a plant?”
“I’m going to go into cardiac arrest if I don’t climax.”
“Tell me you’re exaggerating and you’re just really horny.”
“Barton,” she says, a little desperately.
“Ok, how do we make this work?”
“Trying,” Natasha says, and twisting his neck, he can see sweat rolling down from her forehead, over her chin and down her neck. “Can’t get a good - “
“Hang on,” he says. “Move to your right, if you shift your weight, I think I can - “ They struggle, and shift, Clint getting his hand into the tight space between her legs. Even through her pants he can feel the heat. He moves in increments to slide his hand under the waist of her pants and down across her pelvis, into her pubic hair. She's burning hot.
“Jesus, Barton, don’t dislocate your shoulder.”
“I know how far I can take my shoulder,” he says. “Can you make this work?” he says.
“I'm not dying from something as stupid as this.”
“Natasha - “ he says, planning on some kind of encouragement, and then his fingers are sliding hot and slick inside of her.
“Fuck,” he says, as she groans and twitches against him, muscles straining to achieve this almost-impossible position. She has to do most of the work, Clint’s just praying his angle is enough for her.
“Forgot to mention,” Natasha says, breathy and still moving against his hand. “Place is set to blow in two and a half minutes. Should take out the support we’re bound to. Figured we could ride the explosion out.”
“That a euphemism?”
She laughs and moves faster.
“This gonna be enough for you?” he asks.
“What else you got to offer?”
“Well,” he says. “I could talk dirty?”
She laughs again and then groans, and then he can feel it, this close, he can feel her climax building all over her body. “That’s right, come on, Tasha.” She starts to gasp, small strained sounds. “Come on, come on,” he says, not dirty at all, just to reassure her he’s right there with her.
She comes quietly, but her face shows it all, the desperate relief, the thing she’s been dosed with breaking like a spell. The walls start to rumble.
“You ready to blow our way out of here?”
“Is that a euphemism?” Natasha asks, and then the ceiling creaks and they twist and pull, duck and cover and run.
Under a blossoming magnolia tree, branches hanging low enough to hide from as the factory goes up in a cloud of smoke, Clint snaps out his bow as Natasha watches their target head for their escape plan.
“Bastards,” Natasha breathes out.
“Don’t worry, I’ll send them a message,” he says, fingers finding the right arrow.
“What, because I might have sprained your wrist getting off to save my life?”
“Because it shouldn't be that difficult to make you come,” Clint says, and he lets an arrow fly.
Their eyes lock, and it's full of heat for a moment, and then they both grin.
4.
Natasha gets paged for a Code 3 to the long-term storage, and all she can think is that it’s a stowaway, or possibly that Fury’s running another evac simulation, but when she opens the bulkhead doors, Coulson is standing there with a tablet, swiping his fingers across the screen.
“Natasha,” he says.
“I got a call for a Code 3,” she says, looking around. “The order get canceled?”
“It’s a small scale Code 3,” Coulson says, looking apologetic. “Barton’s somewhere up there,” Coulson says, voice lowered. Natasha knows that Coulson knows that Barton’s better up in a nest, so there’s something else up. Coulson touches a keycode onto the tablet and hands it to her. “He came back from Madrid at 0300. Briefing notes were normal, wrap up without a hitch. But he hasn’t been down since. I expected him for debrief and recon two hours ago.”
“And I’m assuming you called up and asked?”
“Turned his radio off,” Coulson says and when Natasha gives him a look, he adds, “and he didn’t respond to my shouting.”
“So something else happened in Madrid,” Natasha says. Coulson nods. “And you want me to see if I can figure it out?”
“I want to make sure that when he figures it out, he comes back down,” Coulson says. Natasha nods.
“I can do that,” she says.
“He’s pulled up the rope ladder. I can get you another one,” Coulson says.
“No, I’m good,” she says, and starts to climb.
“Password,” Clint says before he opens up the curtain.
“Don’t make me kick my way in there?” Natasha says, and then, after a moment, “Delta.”
The curtain slides back, and Natasha gets a glimpse of a shadowed Clint a moment before he settles deep into the recesses of the backstock. He’s disabled the emergency lights, and Natasha knows that’s a clue.
They sit together in silence for a moment and then Natasha asks, “Caracas or St. Petersberg.”
There's only quiet, until Clint says, “St. Petersberg, the second time.”
“You could tell Coulson,” Natasha says. “He'd understand.”
“You understand and I don't have to tell you anything.”
“Yeah, well, that's because I'm usually there with you.”
Natasha waits him out, and finally, Clint says,“I don't want Coulson to understand. I don't want to know about it myself. Most of the time I'm fine with what we do, I believe in it. The big picture. But there's that moment, outside of it all, where there's no big picture, just life and death.”
Natasha nods and just sits there with him. Sometimes that's all they can do, just sit there for each other, so they're not sitting alone.
“I want a grilled cheese,” Clint says.
“The commissary grill closed an hour ago.”
“You're saying you won't break in and make me dinner?” Clint actually pouts.
“You don't want me to cook for you,” Natasha says.
“True,” Clint says. “Come on, Nat, you're blocking me in.” And with an acrobatic move, Clint hops over her, out through his make-shift curtain. She can hear a moment later when he clicks his belay into place and drops the rope to repel.
He leaves the rope for her. She follows him down and decides she is probably hungry enough to demand he make a grilled cheese for her, too.
5.
In the landing strip of an air carrier, Clint's refusing to be bandaged and Coulson's hovering.
“No,” Clint says.
“If we start the debrief I can - “
“Hold your arm out, sir, please, I can't - “ The medic is dancing around both of them, looking like either may be her next target for strangling with bandages.
“No,” Clint says. “Send me back.”
“I need to bandage your - “ the medic tries again.
“My arm is fine, back off.” The medic and Coulson have a short non-verbal conversation and the medic pretends to busy herself with his med kit.
“She's not on the ground,” Coulson says.
“You didn't see it down there,” Clint says.
“I see it all over you,” Coulson says. Whatever Coulson sees, whatever part of the attack Clint is still wearing on his skin, isn't what matters. Not leaving his partner behind is the only thing in his mind, and the whole pot-hole riddled ride back to the rendezvous, he's thinking of what route to take, what direction to approach, where to look and where to hide.
“I'm going back,” Clint shouts over the RV's gunning engine.
“We'll be at the rendezvous in 10,” Coulson says calmly. “We'll discuss our options then.”
Natasha is standing in the shadows just outside of the rendezvous, and Clint sees her before anyone else does. She doesn't come forward, though, which either means she's being followed or - no, the pieces finally fall together for him. She suspects someone in their team. That's why she wasn't there at the pick-up, and that's why she won't come forward now.
“I was wondering, sir,” Clint says to Coulson. “Any chance you still have that bottle of whiskey at base?”
“Whiskey,” Coulson says dryly, and for a heartbeat Clint thinks that he won't get the message at all, and then Coulson says, “Barton, you know how I feel about drinking on the job.”
“Yes sir,” Clint says, “Of course, sir.”
Clint knows Natasha is going to take out the suspect a second before she does it - he's been watching for all the windows she'll take - and now that Coulson's on board, it's over in seconds, and Natasha is back at his side.
“Are you flirting with your handler?” Natasha asks, as the long-suffering medic finally gets to bandage Clint's arm.
“What, because I called him 'sir?' I call Fury 'sir.'”
“I know you do, but not in that tone.”
“I have a tone in a single word?”
“You know you do.”
“I’m not flirting with him, he’s our handler.”
“Your handler.”
“Our handler.”
“He has yet to win me over,” Natasha says, but Clint's pretty sure it's an empty threat, especially with the way the take-down just went, and the appraising way she's eyeing Coulson when he comes back to check in.
“Was he worried?” She asks Coulson, like she's asking for intel on a suspect.
“I don't worry,” Clint butts in.
“He wasn't worried,” Coulson says, and the look Natasha gives him is priceless. Except then Coulson says, “He was just going to hike all 54 miles back to the incident zone and search for you.”
Yeah, Clint's pretty sure Coulson is well on his way to winning Natasha over.
6.
The firefight is loud and messy and Natasha can't hear the sound of Clint's bow over the machine gun fire, and she lost her comm link somewhere along the way through the building. All that she can really hear is the repeat of her pistols and the echo of artillery somewhere a block or so up and it's starting to make her head spin.
“I can see you thinking,” Clint says, backing close to her and shouting.
“Isn't that a good thing?”
“I know how you think,” Clint says. “What do you say, go on up over the warehouse, or around to the bakery.”
“How do you know it's a bakery?”
“I don't know, maybe it's not, maybe it's just wishful thinking.”
“You think there's time to get a croissant before we take down the ringleader?”
Clint shrugs.
“Over the warehouse. I'll buy you a croissant in Alsace.”
With a nod, they're making their move, but it turns out the artillery echo was actually from inside the warehouse, and everything only gets messier and louder.
Natasha sees her opening - aiming for the the ringleader's private security before they get their guns unholstered is the easy part, but it means the ringleader sees her coming. She's fast enough, or he's slow enough, to bring him down when the last of the security goes for a reload, but she ends up having to wrestle a surface to air missile launcher from the back-up.
“That was a stupid call,” Clint says, sharp and pissed off, as they duck towards their exit.
“It worked.”
“It was careless.”
“I knew you were fine.”
“This isn’t about me, Nat, this is about you. You can’t take suicide runs anymore. You've got a partner now.”
They have a legitimate stare down, where she’s half sure Clint's going to throw his hands up and walk away.
“How about I agree not to?” is what she says instead of all the other arguments spiraling around in her head.
“Not to what, be an idiot?”
“Not to do suicide runs alone?” They stare at each other, neither one willing to give.
The comm link crackles on. “Agent Barton? Agent Romanov?”
“All present and accounted for, sir,” Clint says, beating her to it.
“So which one of you detonated a bakery?” Coulson asks.
“That was me, sir,” Natasha says, and Clint blinks and finally looks away as he tries to stifle his laughter. “I may have had some sloppy aim with the target's missile launcher.”
“That's a shame, I was planning on getting a snack.”
“Might still be something well done, sir,” Natasha says.
Coulson signs off with a laugh.
“We should get back to the rendezvous,” Natasha says. The air between them still feels charged with their unfinished, half-unspoken fight.
“Are you flirting with my handler?” Clint asks after a long moment.
“Our handler,” Natasha says.
She knows when he smirks that it's as good as an all clear.
7.
The difference between stake-out and wait-out is that, with a stakeout, at least there's something to watch. Clint takes out his boot-knife and starts to spin it over his knuckles.
“That's how you lose them. I give you ten minutes before you've dropped it twice, and you'd better be thankful the motion sensor is down the hall.” Natasha's stripping off her night-vision gear and tucking it into corner within arm's reach.
“I'm not gonna set off your motion sensor dropping my knife.”
“But you admit will drop it.”
“I still miss the other one. Maybe it was in Purmamarca. Think they have a lost and found?”
They'd split the trap set-up 50/50, with Natasha taking the first floor and the street, and Clint taking the second floor and the roof. Coulson had tried for the past several missions to convince them not to use so many traps overnight if neither of them is actually going to sleep, but it's habit, and they are nothing if not bad influences on each other.
Clint exhales, Natasha breathes in. It's reassuring and slightly hypnotic, Clint doesn't actually think he could fall asleep, but he doesn't want to lose the sharp awareness of each second passing by.
“You want to play a game?” Clint asks. “Chemical conversion?”
“No math,” Natasha says.
“Song lyrics?”
“You think we're loyal to the right people?”
“Never heard of that one,” Clint says. Natasha pushes back against him. “If I didn't, you'd be the first to know.”
“I Spy?”
“I forget the rules of that one.”
“We could sleep,” Natasha says.
“We could,” Clint says. Neither of them is going to, so it's going to be a long night. They settle with their backs to each other, the last trap. The best weapon each of them has may be themselves, but the second best weapon is definitely a partner. You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth (
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Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Pairing: Clint/Natasha
Rating: Mature
Notes: Thanks to
ataratah for beta.
Summary: Seven times they both needed a partner.
1.
Clint’s handing Natasha a pair of stockings and making sight-lines with her eyeliner.
“Which one works?” Natasha says, taking the stockings from him and holding them up to the light to look for tears before she bends to slip them on.
“For that dress?” Clint says.
“No, for your ballast,” Natasha bites back, adjusting the waistline of her lady killer dress. It makes her legs look even more like weapons, but their target won’t see it that way.
“Who says I’m gonna need a ballast?”
“If you end up taking the shot from the water, you’re gonna need a ballast. And use the one with metallic sheen, it’ll show better with your flashlight.”
“Put your heels on, I’m tired of having to look down at you.” Natasha does, and wow, the target doesn’t have a chance.
“That good, huh?” Natasha says. “This should be easy.”
They fall silent as she curls her hair. Clint checks his new boot knife - he lost the last one in Catamarca. Or at least that’s where he thinks it went. Fury doesn’t really like it when Clint’s knives aren’t accounted for. Neither does Clint, not when they fit into his palm as well as that knife did.
“It’s a shame,” Clint says.
“That men always fall for the honey trap?”
“I was talking about my knife,” Clint says.
“If you stopped taking them out to fiddle with them, you wouldn’t lose them so often,” Natasha says idly.
“Honey traps always work, because men are cursed to admire beauty like yours and never be able to touch it.”
“You making a pass at me, Barton?” Natasha grins.
“You go kill our mark with your bare hands, that’s all the honey I need.”
2.
“Don't let them see I got hit,” Clint rasps. He's taken a shot to the abdomen. They're crouching in a storage shed heavy with dust.
“Kinda hard to hide,” Natasha says.
“Please,” Clint says, and he never says it, not like that. “If we're cornered and they're coming, at least don't let them see that they hit their target and I didn't.”
“They'll see soon enough if they take us in,” Natasha says.
“Won't take us in,” Clint says.
There's a crack against the wood of the outer door.
“I have an idea,” Natasha says, and vaults up to open up one of the crates Clint is propped up against. Under the brittle wood is - yes - a crate of whiskey. She cracks the neck of the bottle and starts to pour it over Clint.
“Oh, you're clever, you're very clever.”
She pulls open her shirt, arranges herself on top of Clint, and and takes a huge sip of whiskey, spilling some down over her shirt.
Two overly muscled guys bust through the door as Natasha leans in and licks whiskey off Clint’s neck.
“Hey, this is a private party,” Natasha slurs, spilling more whiskey as she gestures with the broken bottle.
They swear and call her a drunken whore in two languages, both of which she pretends not to understand.
“Ok, ok, fine,” Natasha says. “If you are gonna be like that - “ The guns come out to accompany their gesturing, “Ok, we’re leaving, come on baby,” she says, and licks Clint’s neck again, all the while keeping her arm covering the wound on his side.
They sway as they stand, Clint murmuring about where exactly he’d like to take Natasha in a thick southern accent, as their pursuers pound down the corridor behind them.
“I can't believe that worked,” Clint says.
“Keep your lies simple,” Natasha says, like this is spy school. “Let’s find cover before they see you’re trailing blood.”
Clint sways, and Natasha thinks she’s going to have to heft him over her shoulder, but he reaches for the bottle, and takes a swig.
“Good whiskey,” he says.
3.
As soon as Clint wakes, he can feel that he’s bound, and worse, he’s bound face first to a building support column, and Natasha is bound to him, panting. Not a good sign.
“Tasha?” he tries. She hisses and bites her lip.
“Been dosed,” she says. He doesn’t like the way her voice sounds at all.
“S’ok, I’ll get us out.”
“Out’s not the biggest problem right now,” Natasha says.
“No?” he says. He tries to look around but can’t see whatever it is she sees. They’re bound with Natasha's ribs digging into his back. It’s a weird position and he guesses like they started out with some other arrangement of bodies and Natasha has been moving herself into this. “Gimme a sit rep, Tash?”
“Did you ever read Fury’s 87-zd folder?”
“You mean the one with a great big 'classified eyes-only Fury will kill you if he feels you breath too close to it' folder?”
“Sometimes I get bored,” Natasha says, sounding like herself again for a moment. “There’s been a rumor, about a new serum based on maca phytotherapy.”
“You’re gonna turn into a plant?”
“I’m going to go into cardiac arrest if I don’t climax.”
“Tell me you’re exaggerating and you’re just really horny.”
“Barton,” she says, a little desperately.
“Ok, how do we make this work?”
“Trying,” Natasha says, and twisting his neck, he can see sweat rolling down from her forehead, over her chin and down her neck. “Can’t get a good - “
“Hang on,” he says. “Move to your right, if you shift your weight, I think I can - “ They struggle, and shift, Clint getting his hand into the tight space between her legs. Even through her pants he can feel the heat. He moves in increments to slide his hand under the waist of her pants and down across her pelvis, into her pubic hair. She's burning hot.
“Jesus, Barton, don’t dislocate your shoulder.”
“I know how far I can take my shoulder,” he says. “Can you make this work?” he says.
“I'm not dying from something as stupid as this.”
“Natasha - “ he says, planning on some kind of encouragement, and then his fingers are sliding hot and slick inside of her.
“Fuck,” he says, as she groans and twitches against him, muscles straining to achieve this almost-impossible position. She has to do most of the work, Clint’s just praying his angle is enough for her.
“Forgot to mention,” Natasha says, breathy and still moving against his hand. “Place is set to blow in two and a half minutes. Should take out the support we’re bound to. Figured we could ride the explosion out.”
“That a euphemism?”
She laughs and moves faster.
“This gonna be enough for you?” he asks.
“What else you got to offer?”
“Well,” he says. “I could talk dirty?”
She laughs again and then groans, and then he can feel it, this close, he can feel her climax building all over her body. “That’s right, come on, Tasha.” She starts to gasp, small strained sounds. “Come on, come on,” he says, not dirty at all, just to reassure her he’s right there with her.
She comes quietly, but her face shows it all, the desperate relief, the thing she’s been dosed with breaking like a spell. The walls start to rumble.
“You ready to blow our way out of here?”
“Is that a euphemism?” Natasha asks, and then the ceiling creaks and they twist and pull, duck and cover and run.
Under a blossoming magnolia tree, branches hanging low enough to hide from as the factory goes up in a cloud of smoke, Clint snaps out his bow as Natasha watches their target head for their escape plan.
“Bastards,” Natasha breathes out.
“Don’t worry, I’ll send them a message,” he says, fingers finding the right arrow.
“What, because I might have sprained your wrist getting off to save my life?”
“Because it shouldn't be that difficult to make you come,” Clint says, and he lets an arrow fly.
Their eyes lock, and it's full of heat for a moment, and then they both grin.
4.
Natasha gets paged for a Code 3 to the long-term storage, and all she can think is that it’s a stowaway, or possibly that Fury’s running another evac simulation, but when she opens the bulkhead doors, Coulson is standing there with a tablet, swiping his fingers across the screen.
“Natasha,” he says.
“I got a call for a Code 3,” she says, looking around. “The order get canceled?”
“It’s a small scale Code 3,” Coulson says, looking apologetic. “Barton’s somewhere up there,” Coulson says, voice lowered. Natasha knows that Coulson knows that Barton’s better up in a nest, so there’s something else up. Coulson touches a keycode onto the tablet and hands it to her. “He came back from Madrid at 0300. Briefing notes were normal, wrap up without a hitch. But he hasn’t been down since. I expected him for debrief and recon two hours ago.”
“And I’m assuming you called up and asked?”
“Turned his radio off,” Coulson says and when Natasha gives him a look, he adds, “and he didn’t respond to my shouting.”
“So something else happened in Madrid,” Natasha says. Coulson nods. “And you want me to see if I can figure it out?”
“I want to make sure that when he figures it out, he comes back down,” Coulson says. Natasha nods.
“I can do that,” she says.
“He’s pulled up the rope ladder. I can get you another one,” Coulson says.
“No, I’m good,” she says, and starts to climb.
“Password,” Clint says before he opens up the curtain.
“Don’t make me kick my way in there?” Natasha says, and then, after a moment, “Delta.”
The curtain slides back, and Natasha gets a glimpse of a shadowed Clint a moment before he settles deep into the recesses of the backstock. He’s disabled the emergency lights, and Natasha knows that’s a clue.
They sit together in silence for a moment and then Natasha asks, “Caracas or St. Petersberg.”
There's only quiet, until Clint says, “St. Petersberg, the second time.”
“You could tell Coulson,” Natasha says. “He'd understand.”
“You understand and I don't have to tell you anything.”
“Yeah, well, that's because I'm usually there with you.”
Natasha waits him out, and finally, Clint says,“I don't want Coulson to understand. I don't want to know about it myself. Most of the time I'm fine with what we do, I believe in it. The big picture. But there's that moment, outside of it all, where there's no big picture, just life and death.”
Natasha nods and just sits there with him. Sometimes that's all they can do, just sit there for each other, so they're not sitting alone.
“I want a grilled cheese,” Clint says.
“The commissary grill closed an hour ago.”
“You're saying you won't break in and make me dinner?” Clint actually pouts.
“You don't want me to cook for you,” Natasha says.
“True,” Clint says. “Come on, Nat, you're blocking me in.” And with an acrobatic move, Clint hops over her, out through his make-shift curtain. She can hear a moment later when he clicks his belay into place and drops the rope to repel.
He leaves the rope for her. She follows him down and decides she is probably hungry enough to demand he make a grilled cheese for her, too.
5.
In the landing strip of an air carrier, Clint's refusing to be bandaged and Coulson's hovering.
“No,” Clint says.
“If we start the debrief I can - “
“Hold your arm out, sir, please, I can't - “ The medic is dancing around both of them, looking like either may be her next target for strangling with bandages.
“No,” Clint says. “Send me back.”
“I need to bandage your - “ the medic tries again.
“My arm is fine, back off.” The medic and Coulson have a short non-verbal conversation and the medic pretends to busy herself with his med kit.
“She's not on the ground,” Coulson says.
“You didn't see it down there,” Clint says.
“I see it all over you,” Coulson says. Whatever Coulson sees, whatever part of the attack Clint is still wearing on his skin, isn't what matters. Not leaving his partner behind is the only thing in his mind, and the whole pot-hole riddled ride back to the rendezvous, he's thinking of what route to take, what direction to approach, where to look and where to hide.
“I'm going back,” Clint shouts over the RV's gunning engine.
“We'll be at the rendezvous in 10,” Coulson says calmly. “We'll discuss our options then.”
Natasha is standing in the shadows just outside of the rendezvous, and Clint sees her before anyone else does. She doesn't come forward, though, which either means she's being followed or - no, the pieces finally fall together for him. She suspects someone in their team. That's why she wasn't there at the pick-up, and that's why she won't come forward now.
“I was wondering, sir,” Clint says to Coulson. “Any chance you still have that bottle of whiskey at base?”
“Whiskey,” Coulson says dryly, and for a heartbeat Clint thinks that he won't get the message at all, and then Coulson says, “Barton, you know how I feel about drinking on the job.”
“Yes sir,” Clint says, “Of course, sir.”
Clint knows Natasha is going to take out the suspect a second before she does it - he's been watching for all the windows she'll take - and now that Coulson's on board, it's over in seconds, and Natasha is back at his side.
“Are you flirting with your handler?” Natasha asks, as the long-suffering medic finally gets to bandage Clint's arm.
“What, because I called him 'sir?' I call Fury 'sir.'”
“I know you do, but not in that tone.”
“I have a tone in a single word?”
“You know you do.”
“I’m not flirting with him, he’s our handler.”
“Your handler.”
“Our handler.”
“He has yet to win me over,” Natasha says, but Clint's pretty sure it's an empty threat, especially with the way the take-down just went, and the appraising way she's eyeing Coulson when he comes back to check in.
“Was he worried?” She asks Coulson, like she's asking for intel on a suspect.
“I don't worry,” Clint butts in.
“He wasn't worried,” Coulson says, and the look Natasha gives him is priceless. Except then Coulson says, “He was just going to hike all 54 miles back to the incident zone and search for you.”
Yeah, Clint's pretty sure Coulson is well on his way to winning Natasha over.
6.
The firefight is loud and messy and Natasha can't hear the sound of Clint's bow over the machine gun fire, and she lost her comm link somewhere along the way through the building. All that she can really hear is the repeat of her pistols and the echo of artillery somewhere a block or so up and it's starting to make her head spin.
“I can see you thinking,” Clint says, backing close to her and shouting.
“Isn't that a good thing?”
“I know how you think,” Clint says. “What do you say, go on up over the warehouse, or around to the bakery.”
“How do you know it's a bakery?”
“I don't know, maybe it's not, maybe it's just wishful thinking.”
“You think there's time to get a croissant before we take down the ringleader?”
Clint shrugs.
“Over the warehouse. I'll buy you a croissant in Alsace.”
With a nod, they're making their move, but it turns out the artillery echo was actually from inside the warehouse, and everything only gets messier and louder.
Natasha sees her opening - aiming for the the ringleader's private security before they get their guns unholstered is the easy part, but it means the ringleader sees her coming. She's fast enough, or he's slow enough, to bring him down when the last of the security goes for a reload, but she ends up having to wrestle a surface to air missile launcher from the back-up.
“That was a stupid call,” Clint says, sharp and pissed off, as they duck towards their exit.
“It worked.”
“It was careless.”
“I knew you were fine.”
“This isn’t about me, Nat, this is about you. You can’t take suicide runs anymore. You've got a partner now.”
They have a legitimate stare down, where she’s half sure Clint's going to throw his hands up and walk away.
“How about I agree not to?” is what she says instead of all the other arguments spiraling around in her head.
“Not to what, be an idiot?”
“Not to do suicide runs alone?” They stare at each other, neither one willing to give.
The comm link crackles on. “Agent Barton? Agent Romanov?”
“All present and accounted for, sir,” Clint says, beating her to it.
“So which one of you detonated a bakery?” Coulson asks.
“That was me, sir,” Natasha says, and Clint blinks and finally looks away as he tries to stifle his laughter. “I may have had some sloppy aim with the target's missile launcher.”
“That's a shame, I was planning on getting a snack.”
“Might still be something well done, sir,” Natasha says.
Coulson signs off with a laugh.
“We should get back to the rendezvous,” Natasha says. The air between them still feels charged with their unfinished, half-unspoken fight.
“Are you flirting with my handler?” Clint asks after a long moment.
“Our handler,” Natasha says.
She knows when he smirks that it's as good as an all clear.
7.
The difference between stake-out and wait-out is that, with a stakeout, at least there's something to watch. Clint takes out his boot-knife and starts to spin it over his knuckles.
“That's how you lose them. I give you ten minutes before you've dropped it twice, and you'd better be thankful the motion sensor is down the hall.” Natasha's stripping off her night-vision gear and tucking it into corner within arm's reach.
“I'm not gonna set off your motion sensor dropping my knife.”
“But you admit will drop it.”
“I still miss the other one. Maybe it was in Purmamarca. Think they have a lost and found?”
They'd split the trap set-up 50/50, with Natasha taking the first floor and the street, and Clint taking the second floor and the roof. Coulson had tried for the past several missions to convince them not to use so many traps overnight if neither of them is actually going to sleep, but it's habit, and they are nothing if not bad influences on each other.
Clint exhales, Natasha breathes in. It's reassuring and slightly hypnotic, Clint doesn't actually think he could fall asleep, but he doesn't want to lose the sharp awareness of each second passing by.
“You want to play a game?” Clint asks. “Chemical conversion?”
“No math,” Natasha says.
“Song lyrics?”
“You think we're loyal to the right people?”
“Never heard of that one,” Clint says. Natasha pushes back against him. “If I didn't, you'd be the first to know.”
“I Spy?”
“I forget the rules of that one.”
“We could sleep,” Natasha says.
“We could,” Clint says. Neither of them is going to, so it's going to be a long night. They settle with their backs to each other, the last trap. The best weapon each of them has may be themselves, but the second best weapon is definitely a partner. You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth (
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