Title: Dynamics
Author: LaughtersMelody
Rating: G
Fandom: Avengers
Disclaimer: I don't own Clint or Nat, but, well, Christmas is coming up soon… *looks hopeful*
Genre: Friendship
Pairing: Hints of Clint/Natasha
Type: One-Shot
Spoilers: No real spoilers in this.
Characters: Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton
Secondary Characters: N/A
Summary: Clint unwinds after a long mission by listening to music.
A/N: I've been absolutely lazy and haven't posted a fic on LJ for ages, though I've written quite a bit. (My Avengers multi-chapter "Twenty Pieces of Silver," is now 24 chapters, rather than the two chapters I have posted here... *looks sheepish*). But, I just wrote a birthday fic for
spyforaday, so of course the fic had to be posted here too. Her prompt was "how about something featuring music." :)
I hope that you have a wonderful birthday,
spyforaday! May it be filled with all the things you enjoy!
As always, I thank my Lord Jesus Christ for his incredible mercy and grace, and his many blessings.
I hope you enjoy this, and please let me know what you think!
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Dynamics
Natasha sat in the pilot's seat of the quinjet, staring through the cockpit windshield, though, truthfully, the dark sky outside - and the vast expanse of ocean below them - meant that there was very little to see. Maybe that was why Clint had chosen to sit in the back of the jet instead. Then again, he might simply have taken the opportunity to catch a little bit of sleep. They had spent the last several weeks in Turkey, dismantling a terrorist cell that had recently acquired a small stockpile of chemical weapons. The mission had been a success, with relatively few complications, but the sheer number of surveillance hours required had left them both running on fumes.
Natasha was almost tempted to try for some sleep herself; the quinjet's autopilot was sophisticated enough to warn them far in advance should anything go wrong. But as exhausted as she as, she could still feel the buzz of leftover adrenaline in her veins, and experience told her that it would be a few hours yet before that dissipated. Sleep wouldn't be easy to come by until then.
Deciding to stretch her legs, she slid the pilot's chair back and stood, rolling her neck and shoulders to work out the kinks in her muscles. She paused when she caught sight of Clint. He was sitting on one of the bench seats in the aft section, leaning back against the wall, his eyes closed, a pair of earbuds tucked in his ears. Brow furrowing a little, Natasha stepped closer, until she was able to hear the faint strains of the music he was playing.
His eyes opened as she approached.
"Did I wake you?" she asked.
Clint shook his head. "Nah. Too geared up to sleep yet - trying to wind down first."
"And to do it, you're listening to…" she cocked her head, listening to the guitar riffs for a moment. "What is that?"
"Thousand Foot Krutch."
Natasha frowned faintly at the unfamiliar name.
"Not your kind of music?" Clint guessed.
Natasha opened her mouth to correct him, then closed it again.
It was almost funny…or it would have been, if these sorts of moments didn't still have a way of catching her off-guard three years after she had left the Red Room.
The soft-spoken librarian she'd pretended to be in Poland had only listened to the classical masters - nothing less than Mozart, Beethoven, or Vivaldi would do. The Goth woman she'd played in New York, with her hair dyed black and studs in her nose and rings in her ears, had harbored a secret fondness for pop and 80s love songs. The business woman she'd portrayed in Sweden had relished opera when she actually had the time to sit down and enjoy it.
But as for herself…as for what she liked…she realized, suddenly, that she didn't know.
The silence stretched on, and Clint watched her, his sharp gaze missing nothing. A moment later, he was giving her the same, oddly determined look he'd given her three years ago, when he'd asked her what her favorite food was and she'd told him that her preferences were irrelevant.
Then, Clint was pushing himself up from his seat, tugging the earbuds out of his ears and striding back towards the cockpit.
He slid into the co-pilot's chair, and curious about what he had in mind, Natasha followed. She reached the pilot's seat just in time to see Clint plug his MP3 player into the quinjet's internal speakers.
"Here," Clint said simply, holding out the MP3 player. "I've got a pretty big play list. You pick."
Natasha almost wanted to refuse, but she knew Clint, and she was sure that he wouldn't let this drop any time soon…the same way that he'd insisted she try a new dish at every meal until she'd discovered Bavarian cheesecake. Perhaps she'd tell him that he owed her one of those cakes now, just for going along with this.
Shaking her head, Natasha accepted the player from him and started searching through the music listed there. A few of the artists she recognized in passing, but many, like the band he had mentioned, were unfamiliar. Her eyebrows raised when she saw a piece by Tchaikovsky, and she stopped, looking at Clint askance.
"What?" he shrugged. "I thought it was kind of obvious by now that I have a thing for Russians."
Natasha snorted at that and kept scrolling.
She paused again when she came across a group called "Spiders Down Yonder," and saw that the song listed was titled "Arachnophobia."
Clint leaned forward to see what she was looking at and laughed. "I shoulda known you'd pick that one first."
Natasha rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help the small smile tugging at her lips as she pressed play.
Maybe he wouldn't wind up owing her that cheesecake after all.
Fin
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A/N: "Spiders Down Yonder," is a real group, and their song "Arachnophobia" has always struck me as being perfect for Nat, so I just couldn't resist including a mention of it. The song came out in 2014, and considering the Avengers' timeline, I'm bending the space-time continuum a bit, but well, the Avengers universe is sort of an AU of our own universe anyway, right, lol?
Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think!
Take care and God bless!
-Laughter
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