'til the magnolias bloom
girl leave your boots by the bed
rating: pg
characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff
warnings: none
author's note i: For enigma731, who asked for "Clint/Natasha, patching one another up." Can be read as gen or het.
author's note ii: Title and summary from Cover Me Up by Jason Isbell, also the suggested background music.
summary: Cover me up, and know you're enough to use me for good... Patching each other up after another mission, in a house where the magnolias bloom.
Another day, another mission, another SHIELD safe house with red clay bootprints on the carpeted stairs, bloodstains on the floral hallway pattern. Clint would feel bad about it, really, but any agent who outfitted a bolthole should know better than to imitate Martha Stewart’s tastes in a place meant to be shot up and blown to hell. Maybe they’ve already resigned from SHIELD and taken up interior decorating, the archer thinks almost grimly as he opens the master bedroom door with one hand, supporting Natasha with the other.
Once the spacious shower and wall of mirrors reveal that the worst injuries are deep scrapes and bad grazes only, he thinks a little more kindly of the unknown agent. It doesn’t keep him from tromping through the pristine white bedroom in his unlaced and dripping boots. The beautiful queen-sized quilt he sinks onto, however, does give him a pang of guilt.
Natasha opens one of the sun-ward windows, letting a fresh breeze in to clear out the steam and stale air. She pauses there afterwards, raw hands resting on the windowsill as the spare set of sweats hangs on her shoulders, off her hips and the knee she keeps half-bent. He understands, appreciates too the rare moment of peace; for all that they are nominally running, there is no danger now, no need to watch for shadows in the suburban streets or around the magnolia trees.
Her movements, when she stoops to bring the first-aid kit out from its hiding place, are stiffer than she would have let anyone else see.
They are growing old; the days have passed by like years for their bodies, for their souls, and soon they will be retired not by will but by time. He can see the knowledge of that in Natasha’s level gaze when she sits on the bed beside him, knows his own half-smile echoes the sentiment. One day they will have to keep their feet on the ground, their hands empty by their sides.
(Surrounded by clean white walls, crisp linens and hand-sewn quilts, Clint thinks when that day comes, it might not be so bad.)
But that day isn't today, isn't here yet. For now, they are battling, driving forward in missions and side streets and the future, and every heartbeat is an affirmation that they have one more fight left in them.
She runs her thumb along his cheek, the needle held between two fingers; the smile she gives him is the same one he saw in an Infirmary room, the same one gave him the courage to rise. He grins back, a lightness in his chest that would surprise those who thought they knew him, and breathes in the scent of magnolias as she begins sewing a new scar closed.
rating: pg
characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff
warnings: none
author's note i: For enigma731, who asked for "Clint/Natasha, patching one another up." Can be read as gen or het.
author's note ii: Title and summary from Cover Me Up by Jason Isbell, also the suggested background music.
summary: Cover me up, and know you're enough to use me for good... Patching each other up after another mission, in a house where the magnolias bloom.
Another day, another mission, another SHIELD safe house with red clay bootprints on the carpeted stairs, bloodstains on the floral hallway pattern. Clint would feel bad about it, really, but any agent who outfitted a bolthole should know better than to imitate Martha Stewart’s tastes in a place meant to be shot up and blown to hell. Maybe they’ve already resigned from SHIELD and taken up interior decorating, the archer thinks almost grimly as he opens the master bedroom door with one hand, supporting Natasha with the other.
Once the spacious shower and wall of mirrors reveal that the worst injuries are deep scrapes and bad grazes only, he thinks a little more kindly of the unknown agent. It doesn’t keep him from tromping through the pristine white bedroom in his unlaced and dripping boots. The beautiful queen-sized quilt he sinks onto, however, does give him a pang of guilt.
Natasha opens one of the sun-ward windows, letting a fresh breeze in to clear out the steam and stale air. She pauses there afterwards, raw hands resting on the windowsill as the spare set of sweats hangs on her shoulders, off her hips and the knee she keeps half-bent. He understands, appreciates too the rare moment of peace; for all that they are nominally running, there is no danger now, no need to watch for shadows in the suburban streets or around the magnolia trees.
Her movements, when she stoops to bring the first-aid kit out from its hiding place, are stiffer than she would have let anyone else see.
They are growing old; the days have passed by like years for their bodies, for their souls, and soon they will be retired not by will but by time. He can see the knowledge of that in Natasha’s level gaze when she sits on the bed beside him, knows his own half-smile echoes the sentiment. One day they will have to keep their feet on the ground, their hands empty by their sides.
(Surrounded by clean white walls, crisp linens and hand-sewn quilts, Clint thinks when that day comes, it might not be so bad.)
But that day isn't today, isn't here yet. For now, they are battling, driving forward in missions and side streets and the future, and every heartbeat is an affirmation that they have one more fight left in them.
She runs her thumb along his cheek, the needle held between two fingers; the smile she gives him is the same one he saw in an Infirmary room, the same one gave him the courage to rise. He grins back, a lightness in his chest that would surprise those who thought they knew him, and breathes in the scent of magnolias as she begins sewing a new scar closed.