acts like summer (walks like rain)
drops of jupiter
rating: pg-13
characters: Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Phil Coulson
warnings: canon-typical injuries
summary: Some things you learn to take on faith. Natasha hasn’t had many things she can say that for, but Clint’s stubbornness and Coulson’s determination are legendary. Now she’ll learn if both can get them through this night. [Part 2 of dare seize the fire (the Strike Team Delta trilogy)]
author’s note: Thanks to cybermathwitch for beta’ing, all those months ago.
dare seize the fire (the Strike Team Delta trilogy): Part 1 .. Part 2 (current) .. Part 3
“Oh, and a word of advice. If it turns out I’ve lost two good agents because you wanted a bigger payout?” Coulson’s voice doesn’t rise above its normal level and yet Drake pulls back against the chair in response, an unconscious effort to put more space between them. “I will hold you, and you alone, solely responsible.”
He seems so mundane in his business suit and tie, a bland expression on his face, that Drake wonders how more people don’t see the ruthless agent underneath.
Wonders how he didn’t see it himself until it was too late.
Coulson leaves, closing the interrogation door behind him with crisp control. The door latches shut - and the double-agent begins to pray that the two operatives he sold out have survived.
If they aren’t, he doesn’t think he’ll leave this room alive.
Natasha lowers Clint on top of the trash bags, the improvised slit in her dress giving her more freedom to move than its designer intended.
“We should be safe here until Coulson finds us,” she murmurs, setting the guns in Clint’s draped hands even as she continues to scan the tiny alleyway. Stray curls catch in her mouth and are ignored as she tries to see everything, to catch any strange shadows or the sounds of pursuit.
Her ankle flares as she shifts, a repeat of its refrain for the last half mile. With a hitching breath she braces herself on the wet wall with her left hand, the other hanging nearly useless by her side. In the darkness behind her eyes Natasha counts to three, the reek of rotting garbage underlying the grime of oil and muck-filled puddles, the wisps of Clint’s cologne and their charred clothing.
There isn’t time to be injured, time to be broken; there isn’t any time at all.
Even with his concussion, Clint must be conscious enough to notice something is wrong. (Part of her laughs at that thought. There is so much wrong with this picture she wouldn’t know where to begin.)
“’Tasha?” She opens her eyes to see him looking up at her, head lolling against the brick and worried creases around his eyes.
“I’m okay,” she lies, lifting half of her mouth in an almost smile. “We just have to wait for our back-up.”
“Our back-up fucking shot us,” he slurs, aggravation in the muttered syllables as his gaze tips down, and she laughs softly, just once, at that.
“And look what that got them,” she replies softly, twisting her head to scan the pooling streetlights at either end of the alley. If someone figures out where she's been forced to stop, they’ll have to give themselves away first - assuming they don’t try to take the two of them out with a grenade or long-range weapon. Her fingers twitch, itching for a rifle, a shotgun, anything more than the two handguns dumped in Clint’s lap and the stiletto still tucked in her garter. “Clint, if anyone comes I’m going to need those guns, okay?”
“Sure thing.” Natasha can tell without looking that his eyelids are drooping, the toll on his body overriding the adrenaline and pain. Keeping him awake is the only way to make sure he doesn’t slip into a coma, and yet they can’t risk drawing any attention to themselves. She curses in Russian silently, fiercely, willing time to fly by faster.
“Clint?”
“Mm?”
She traced the outlines of the bricks with her fingertips, keeping her attention focused on the most likely entryway.
“You have to stay with me, understand? I know you’re tired, but if they come I can’t hold them off myself.”
At any other time it would have been a lie, a falsehood designed to get a rise out of him and enjoy the ensuing banter. With a sprained ankle (it is not broken, it is not), a wrenched shoulder, and bruising spreading from her left hip to her collarbone, now the jest is anything but.
The plastic bags rustle as he works to focus, shifting his weight and leaning forward so his back isn’t against the wall. They stay like that for a long moment, their near-silent breathing accompanied by the patter of water running off the eaves and the fire escapes.
“We’re really in that much trouble,” he states finally, voice flat. While the consonants still slur together there is a deliberate thought in the words, something that she hasn’t heard out of him in the last twenty minutes. Natasha lets out a tiny breath of relief, some of the tension between her shoulder blades dissipating.
“Our informant was double dealing, the drug lords ordered a hit on us, and the only people who knew our exact location tried to blow us to Hell. You tell me.” The wry twist on the truth is the mildest way to put how she was feeling right now.
“’m gonna kill them,” Clint murmurs, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees while he stares down the opposite end of the alleyway.
“Somehow I think it’s too late for that."
“You got a bead on them?”
“Clint, at what point between getting dressed for our op, running out the door as our safe house exploded behind us, and carrying your ass halfway across town, would I possibly have gotten a line on them?” Natasha masks her irritation with smooth humor and bit her tongue, concentrating on blocking the shooting pain from her right shoulder. “No, I’m hoping Coulson has already gotten to them.” And in all truth, she is. Desperately, wishfully, hoping.
Before she joined SHIELD, rescue wasn’t a concept she was familiar with. You were out on your own on missions. The best that could happen if it went south was that you escaped, dragging yourself out by the skin of your teeth and the tips of your fingers. There was no back-up, no safety net, no handler bent on getting you back in mostly one piece because the paperwork was a bitch.
Natasha’s arm trembles for a moment, threatening to let her slump against the graffiti-covered wall. She digs her fingers into the straight lines of the mortar and kept breathing.
If she sits down next to Clint, if she weakens enough to take a rest, she isn’t sure she'll have the strength to get back up again.
She hesitates, realizing that it’s too long since she’s heard anything from her partner.
“Clint?”
“Mm?” Drowsy and perilously close to sleep.
“Barton, if you zone out on me, I will find your comics collection and set it on fire.”
“Wha’?”
“I’ll pull the crates out from under your bunk in Boston and take matches to every single one of them.”
“F’ck you, they’re not ‘n Bost’n.”
“One at a time. In alphabetical order.”
“’s not funny. I shoul’ know, ‘m funny.”
“Or better yet, I’ll offer them all to that asinine tech in Chicago who eats doughnuts while he’s reading his copies. Powdered doughnuts.”
“Y’ wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“God, ‘tasha, with frien’s like you…”
She smiles grimly, the line of her mouth hard in the shadowed light, and feels another droplet of rainwater slide down her face.
“I know. Who needs enemies?’
When he doesn’t reply, she holds her breath.
“Clint?”
Tearing her gaze away from the streetlights she sinks down onto the balls of her feet, crouching in front of her partner even while her ankle screams at her. Her left side is almost too sore to let her reach up to his face, but her right arm simply isn’t an option. She slips her thumb into the crook of his neck, hand ghosting up his jacket to his carotid, and looks up into his shadowed face.
“Clint?”
Her fingers come away red.
When he doesn’t answer her, she bows her head and closes her eyes.
Before she joined SHIELD, she didn’t care about the causalities on a mission. They were other people; they were expendable. They were lives to be used and discarded as she chose. No one was her partner, her equal, her anchor.
No one had been Clint, and she was glad of that, now.
Before she joined SHIELD, she had nothing to lose.
Now she has lost it.
Footsteps at the west end of the alley, just out of her line of sight. Her head snaps up and the Sig in her good hand does likewise, pointing into the neon-lit darkness.
“Natasha, it’s Coulson. Can you hear me?”
Locked muscles and years of training keep the gun level as she stares into the pool of light.
“Prove it,” she challenges, because some things are too good to be true.
“I’m going to be upset if you ruin a perfectly good suit,” the man answers, moving slowly into the opening with his hands held up as orange light falls over his shoulders and neck. “Do you know how many stores I have to spread my shopping around in so no one thinks I have a problem?”
“You do have a problem,” Natasha replies, the words weak with relief as she lowers the gun. Coulson steps forward as soon as the muzzle angles down, crossing the littered stretch of alley with long, easy strides.
“I know. I actually have two,” he informs her, flicking a flashlight on and giving them the once-over as black-suited agents follow behind him. Natasha blinks up at him in the pale beam from where she sits on piled garbage bags, Clint slumped across her lap so her left hand can reapply pressure to the shrapnel wound in his torso. For a moment - a very brief moment - she looks like the lost child she must have been once upon a time. Then her features soften, filling with relief and a trace of happiness, and she leans her head back to rest against the brick wall.
“Still do,” she whispers, and Coulson feels his heart ache at the near-miss that implies. Stepping aside so the medics can reach Clint and prep him for transit, he composes himself and looks up when a droplet of water splashes onto his shoulder.
“Looks like it’s going to rain,” he says, and meets Natasha’s gaze once the lead medic gives him a nod. Clint is holding on - for now. “Let’s go home, shall we?”
She rises unsteadily once they slide Clint onto a backboard, the singed and ragged remnants of her evening gown parting to show mottled skin over far too much of her body. When she wavers on her feet Coulson moves silently to her side, sliding his left arm under her shoulders to take most of her weight. Natasha hisses, the sound low and long, but hobbles down the slick cobblestones with his help to follow the knot of agents carrying Clint.
Slowly, unevenly, they make their way home.