green and summer gold
the growing season
rating: pg
characters: Laura Barton/Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff, Cooper Barton, Lucky
warnings: none
summary: Three summers Natasha spends at the farmhouse and two she spends at home.
author's note: Thanks to inkvoices, whose 'Natasha & farming' prompt in the 2015 be_compromised promptathon ended up being the inspiration for, and only remotely related to, this story.
Thanks as well to cybermathwitch for beta'ing this! All remaining mistakes are firmly my own.
i. 2001
It starts out as an exercise in anger management. Natasha Romanoff storms into the farmhouse on a brilliant summer morning with hard edges in the corners of her mouth and black fury in her eyes, grabs a pair of gardening gloves, and glides out through the back door. Well, ‘storms’ might not be the right word, Laura is willing to acknowledge as she watches the screen door slam shut behind the SHIELD agent. Even here in the seclusion of the farm she carries herself with an unmistakable grace. If she truly did storm in through the front door, Laura would grab the phone and the butcher knife sitting sedately in its wooden block.
Instead Laura takes her time fixing an extra sandwich for lunch (ham and cheese, lettuce, red onion, no mayo) and checking on the sun tea brewing on the windowsill. There is no shortage of people who would have gone for the butcher knife upon seeing the Black Widow enter their house, regardless of the cause, but Laura trusts Clint’s instincts. He made a different call, he pulled for her to be assigned as his partner, he brought her here into the heart of home a year ago. She’s bet on his gut before. She’ll do it again now.
Even with all that, she can’t help the small breath of relief when her errant husband comes in the front door half an hour later alive and well despite a renowned assassin’s anger with him.
“I fucked up,” he tells her wearily, a hangdog air firmly entrenched in the crinkles on his forehead. Laura sets her own sandwich on the table and brushes her hands over his sweat-soaked hair, meeting his eyes with a mixture of amusement and frankness.
“Go fix it. As your wife and the person who counts on her to bring you home in one piece, or as close as you ever get, I have a vested interest in making sure she’s happy with you.”
Clint sighs with his whole body, his head and shoulders slumping under her touch. “What do I say?”
“Whatever makes this right. She’s your partner; she depends on you, the same way you depend on her. You’re both just trying to to find your footing, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, apparently I’m good at treading on her toes.”
Laura steps aside to pick up the second plate and a glass of unsweetened tea, placing them firmly in his hands. “It took me weeks to take you how to dance,” she agrees, “but you can manage a decent waltz now. Take these out to her and apologize, then go run another eight miles.”
“Yes ma’am,” he says meekly, the wrinkles in his brow easing, and pauses. “Where is she?”
After pointing him in the right direction and trusting that SHIELD’s best sniper would be able to manage opening a door with two full hands, Laura sits down to her lunch.
Natasha comes back in an hour later, shaking dirt out of her hair and gliding silently in dusty socks across the hardwood floor. The gloves and dirt-caked sneakers sit in exile out on the back porch.
“Thank you for the sandwich. I appreciated the thought,” she says cautiously when she enters the kitchen, bringing her empty dishes with her. The irritated air has completely vanished to be replaced instead by the centered and even keel of her normal bearing. Whatever snarling anger drove her has dissipated. As much as that display might have scared other people, Laura finds it oddly comforting. Given what Clint’s learned about Natasha’s past, the childhood she never had, it makes more sense than most would realize. If she didn’t trust them so much she would play whatever flawed or perfect or bespoke act she believed they needed.
Apparently Laura isn’t the only one who trusts Clint implicitly.
“Hard work makes everything taste better, or so my father told me. Personally, I think it was all a ploy to get me to do yard work on the weekends, but there you have it.” Laura takes the plate and glass from the counter and transfers them into the sink. “I’m heading back to work. You good?”
“I am now. Thank you.”
“I’m not the one ripping weeds out of the garden. The enormous, eight-foot-wide, six-foot-long garden.”
“You live on a farm.” Her eyes are bright with something that Laura needs a moment to identify as amusement. “A farm with two hundred acres intended entirely for growing things.”
“Most of which is leased out to other people,” Laura corrects her. “And besides, there is a big difference between farming and gardening. Except for the fact that I don’t do either.”
“Mm.”
Laura returns to the accounting books waiting in her office, putting pen to paper to earn her paycheck, and hears the front door close when the Black Widow heads out to jog after Clint down the driveway.
They spar, the kicks and blows moving almost faster than Laura can follow, the lethal power in the hands and feet and hearts of the two fighters checked only by their knowledge of their limits and the other person. There’s no clear winner as the practice progresses, no one dominating over the other; it is an equal exchange, a lightning fast fight that says more about them than it does about their training. She’s seen Clint focused before, seen him train and practice and break up bar fights - and start them - but she can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen him go full-throttle. Even this is simply a practice, but it’s mesmerizing. Clint and Natasha, together, are mesmerizing. She understands more clearly now why SHIELD is willing to let a former Russian spy and their best sniper team up together, even with all their flaws and questionable methods.
Then Clint steps a hair too far inside Natasha’s range. In a heartbeat she has him between her thighs and bears him down, down, down into the green grass trampled by their quick steps. He goes limp as she maintains the choke hold, his arms falling to the sides to tap the ground, and Natasha eases off of him to stand up. Clint says something drawn out into a groan. The agent’s steady regard barely breaks, but she reaches down and helps him up.
Laura, shaking her head, goes in to get the aspirin out.
Two more sets of work gloves joins Laura’s in the closet, one leather and one fabric. No one points it out or remarks on it, but Natasha wears the leather pair when she sets about weeding the flower beds around the front of the house on another visit. Laura’s well aware that the beds are filled with blooming roses only because a previous owner planted them years ago and they’ve withstood her constant neglect. She doesn’t caution her to watch for the inch-long thorns; if there’s one thing the agent is good at, it’s watching for danger in any form.
“Your lack of any hedge trimmers is a serious default,” Natasha informs Clint later that night. He gets the blank look that means he has no reference for what it is she’s talking about. She exhales, her gaze admonishing, and digs up a lawn and garden catalog Laura positioned under the cattywhompus chair a few months ago to show him.
“Don’t they use those for sculpting elephants and stuff?” is his question when she indicates the tool in question. “Laura, do we want to make elephants?”
“Right now you’re making a mess,” his partner points out, her gaze dropping to where his thin t-shirt lies against his bandaged ribs. Blood is slowly leaking out into the heather-gray fabric and dotting it with dark red spots. Clint winces.
“Aw, no, shirt. I liked this one.”
“Then don’t get injured so much.” Laura lets her breath out with exasperation and waves at him. “Come on, get up, let’s go get you fixed up again.”
“And perhaps next time go to SHIELD medical before taking off,” Natasha adds. Clint winces again when Laura stares at him.
“You didn’t get checked out?”
“Which would be why I drove out with him to make sure he didn’t pass out and crash in a ditch somewhere.”
“Okay, hey, it’s just a scratch-”
“Up,” Laura cuts him off. “And then we’re going to talk. Thank you,” she says gratefully to Natasha as she pushes her idiotic husband towards the stairs, and the other woman inclines her head.
That the injury came from a turn-coat SHIELD agent in a badly botched mission, and that the betrayal must have hurt more than the wound, explains things in a way that Laura can understand - and, it seems, Natasha does as well.
Fall is coming on fast, the trees turning ruddy golds and reds around the farmhouse when Clint broaches the subject they’re left unspoken all summer. “I was thinking.” He rubs the back of his head in the way that he does when he’s self-conscious or nervous about something. “Next summer, if you’ve got any projects around the house, maybe they could be inside?”
Laura grins, leaning forward to kiss him. He smiles under her lips and brings his arms down to wrap them around her, holding her close enough that the warmth and strength she loves about him are both close to the surface.
“I think that’s an excellent idea.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” His grin turns up. “I have another one, if you’d like to hear it…”
“Oh? Do tell,” she teases, and he bends his head to kiss her again.
ii. 2002
The warped barbed wire fence by the house is the first thing to get straightened out when Natasha arrives with sparse background reading in her bag and a plethora of sunshine in the yard. In short order the second pair of handyman gloves go missing while the spy wrestles rotten posts upright, only to return with bolt-cutters and strip the rusted fencing completely.
”You don’t have wire cutters, Barton. Proper equipment is key to a successful mission.”
“Right, but are we going to draw a line between ‘missions’ and ‘honey do’ lists, ‘cause if we aren’t I’m screwed.”
“Honey…”
“That sounded idiotic even as I said it. I’ve got Laura Sheppard as my wife and Natasha Romanoff as my partner, I’m already screwed, aren’t I?”
“Now he catches on.”
Laura would be more bemused by the random activity if she hadn’t mentioned it offhandedly to Natasha during her last stop-over two months ago, discussing the possibility of putting the car in the nearby barn during the winter. “We’ve still got months to go,” she had admitted, “but even with the mild winters it’d be nice to know that scraping my car off isn’t something else I have to worry about.” When Natasha comes in for dinner, silently putting Laura’s gloves back in the yard-work closet, the fences that had surrounded the barn doors no long careen into the path of a parking car.
Clint and Laura don’t do more than thank her for it, exchanging glances over dinner, but Natasha seems satisfied enough.
Another visit brings the two women to tackle the interior of the newly designated ‘car stall,’ a name which never fails to make a grin break across Clint’s face. “Because stalling, and cars. You know?” He says, suggesting the name, and they patiently wait his humor out. Miscellaneous objects are dragged into the light of day, sorted, and disposed of or set aside for a garage sale as needed.
“What is this?” Natasha’s tone is a mixture of incomprehension and disgust. Laura looks up over the edge of the bandanna she’s tied around around her face to block the worst of the dust.
“…I have an idea,” she admits as she stares at the rusted object. “But I’m really hoping it’s not what I think it is.”
“Mm.” They scrutinize it for another moment. “There used to be animals on this farm, didn’t there? The kind that would need gelding?”
“Yup.”
“Hm.”
“Yup.”
Natasha deposits it in the ‘scrap metal’ bin and they say nothing more about it, even when Clint asks if they’ve found anything interesting that day.
Later that month Laura tucks half of the money from the garage sale into a cookie jar for Natasha.
The ‘FOUND: LOST DOG’ poster that Laura holds up during Clint’s July trip is met with three puppy dog eyes: two from her husband and one from the Lab whose head rests on his lap, ears drooped behind his soulful gaze.
“Enough of that,” Laura chides Clint, hiding her laughter under a stern look. “If he’s someone’s dog, we’re going to return him.”
“Look at him, Laura,” he protests as he gestures at the ragged coat and the ribs that show through it all too clearly. “You want to give him back to whoever let him get like this?”
“You do know it’s possible he ran away, right? It’s a thing that dogs do. Besides, you’re not going to leave me here with a pet while you’re off on missions all the time.”
“I don’t know, I think he’d make great company. Maybe not a guard dog, you know, but.” Lucky’s tail thumps the chair when Clint pets him. “Laura…”
She holds out for another minute before she sighs, placing the poster on the table.
“We’re putting those up. But if no one calls, I’ll try my hand at having a dog.”
“Yes ma’am.” He relaxes, expression crooked and boyish and loving, but there is a shadow lingering under his eyes that she can still pick out.
“Okay, I let Lucky distract me long enough. What’s wrong?”
Clint shifts in his chair uneasily with the change in subject, his eyes sliding to the side as he rubs Lucky’s ears. Laura doesn’t give him the option of an escape. She might need to be more circumspect and hands-off with his partner, but with the Barton boys it’s a full-court press to bring whatever is bothering them to the surface when they’ve buried it that deep.
“It’s Natasha,” he says at last.
“Is she all right?” They had been trying separate missions, she knew, but both SHIELD and Strike Team Delta agreed they performed best when they were together. Had she been badly hurt?
“What? No, she’s fine, she’s good. It’s just…” His free hand creeps up to the back of his neck as he stares at nothing in particular, working to put together his thoughts. She lets him. She might not have his sniper’s marathon patience, the willingness to wait for days for the right opportunity, but she’s gotten good enough to wait him out on everything else.
At last Clint swallows, clearly struggling, and the muscles along his jaw tighten. “I’m having a hard time not having feelings for her.”
Laura lets the words sink in, absorbing what he means, before she exhales.
“That’s not a surprise.” When he looks at her, startled, she meets his gaze levelly. “She’s your partner, Clint. She’s a beautiful woman and you spend ninety percent of your time with her. It’s not a surprise that you’d start seeing her as more than a coworker or friend.”
“But you’re my wife, Laura, and I love you. I know I’m not here as much as you want me to be, I know I’m barely home, but I love you, and I’m not unfaithful, I can’t fuck this up, I’m just…” Clint fights to find the right words and fails, his archer’s hands rising and falling with his distress in the same way his body reflects his tension. As witty as he might be with one-liners, Laura knows, he’s less eloquent when the hard discussions get going. The specter of his father hanging over him doesn’t help this either.
Well, she can’t banish that particular ghost, however hard she tries, but she can handle everything else.
“I want you home whenever you can be.” She pulls out the chair at the head of the table and sits facing him, letting her aching heart settle as she speaks. “I want you home for as long as you can be. I understood what I was getting into when you joined SHIELD, Clint, and I haven’t regretted most of it. I love you. But I want you home in one piece, and it’s no secret that I have Natasha to thank for a lot of that. And I love you enough to know your heart is big enough to love two people, and even a dog. A flea-bitten, one-eyed, pizza-loving dog.” Clint’s laugh is broken, but it’s there. “I know you’re not unfaithful. I know you still mean the vows you said on our wedding day. I never doubted that.”
“Even after that undercover op in Benin?”
“Especially after that op in Benin,” Laura agrees. “Natasha complimented me afterward on teaching you how to dance. I took the credit as my due.” His laugh this time comes more easily. “And to be honest, if I was still single, I’d hit on you and Natasha. Maybe not at the same time. Although...”
Clint finally breaks down into the full belly laugh she loves, a deep and genuine guffaw that shakes his shoulders and nearly brings tears to his eyes. He grins at her while Lucky noses him insistently, trying to figure out what’s so exciting.
“I tell you I’m in love with another woman and you end up making me laugh. Fuck, Laura, I love you.”
“I know.” She smiles back at him, holding her hand out. He takes it and twines his calloused fingers around it, squeezing tightly. “I don’t know what you face in the field, Clint, but I know who’s by your side. And if something happens between you, if you end up sleeping with her or kissing her or God forbid making her marathon the Lord of the Rings extended editions, please don’t piss her off. I need that woman to watch out for you, idiot.”
“Yeah, you do.” He sobers, stroking his thumb over her wedding ring. “I don’t want to ruin us,” he says more quietly, his attention on the golden band.
“You won’t,” she promises. “You have your house wife and your work wife, and I’m pretty sure I can speak for both of us when I say we love you. Maybe differently, but still. You come home, Clint, and that’s enough. That’s what all I ask for.” And the ring of truth is there because at the end of the day, that’s all Laura needs. Come home.
There is a banked desire in Clint’s eyes, enough to banish the shadows and the ghosts for another day, and he turns her hand so his thumb runs across her palm.
“That’s all?”
“Mm. Although there is the matter of that ‘honey do’ list…”
Lucky ends up being nudged out of the way so Laura can climb into Clint’s lap, their touches slow and full of heat, and they relearn each other with this new thing built between them.
The Black Widow’s first solo visit to the farmhouse is designed to keep her off the radar after a particularly heated mission. Thanks to the recent developments at the farm, it doesn’t entail a solo exercise routine as well. Natasha’s push-ups are instead accompanied by Lucky’s happy panting as he lies slumped on the grass beside her, securely out of range of an inadvertent foot or fist. Clint had been the one to teach him the idea of personal space during exercise, albeit accidentally and with a significant amount of ensuing apologies and closer attention.
They come in for water after another half hour of working out under the beating summer sun. The click of Lucky’s toenails provides a double-time cadence for Natasha’s footsteps on the recently refurbished hardwood flooring; a new improvement also courtesy of her husband. Lucky’s smooth coat and steady weight gain, however, Laura takes responsibility for.
Clint’s involvement with Natasha, with Laura’s consent, is probably thanks to all of them.
“Does he really fetch arrows?” Natasha asks as she sips from her refilled water bottle, leaning back against the counter in the kitchen.
Laura nods. “Clint started calling them boomerang arrows because they were coming back to him.” At the other woman’s surprised chuckle, she nods again in agreement. “I nipped that one in the bud.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all.” Her smile is small but a far cry from a pretense. “He has a horrendous sense of humor. But he’s right; most things have a way of coming back to him.”
For a moment she wonders if Natasha knows how much her relaxed manner gives away, how clearly her own trust in Clint and affection for the ragtag archer comes through. The answer is yes, of course; she is rarely unaware of anything she reveals. In her confidence Laura can read the other half of a partnership that has been beneficial for both of them, good and growing in ease and strength like the crops outside her window. Every visit has made it clearer that the call two years ago changed a great deal for SHIELD sniper and Russian spy alike, and it is comforting, encouraging to see.
“Although he does have his home here,” Natasha adds as an afterthought, “which would make him the one who keeps coming back.”
“Thank you for making sure that he can. I know it can be a thankless task.”
“When you always have ice tea ready when we arrive? Hardly. And having him there to watch my back is only a small benefit, of course.”
“Watching is what he does best. Besides archery, that is. And surprisingly restoring old floors.”
“So working with his hands, then?”
Natasha’s suggestive tone is the first sign she’s seen of the change in her relationship with Clint. Laura raises an eyebrow.
“Turns out he’s pretty good with them. Except for wallpaper removal. You should have seen him when we first moved in here; he acted like he had never seen a spackle knife before. Who would have thought, right Lucky?”
The Lab’s tail thumps happily away on the floor, splashing water freshly spilled from his bowl across the kitchen, and she gives him a long look.
“We’re going to have to work on that, buddy.”
Natasha has already pulled several dishtowels out of the cabinet when she turns to get them, holding them out to her across the kitchen.
“Thank you,” Laura tells her.
“Thank you,” she replies, and the warmth in her tone says all that needs to be said between them.
iii. 2003
The cast around Natasha’s ankle and the doctor’s prescription for rest prevent any more serious yard renovation projects. The spy still gravitates to the sun like a cat, choosing to review her latest intelligence briefings on the back porch, practicing her gun assembly on the coffee table when the westward facing window are in full light. When she maneuvers her crutches outside and settles onto the low wooden walls of the garden, uprooting wildly growing weeds with pinpoint precision, Laura leaves a bottle of sunscreen with one of Clint’s sweat-stained ball caps on the corner of the back porch.
In a few hours the rampant greenery has been thinned to reveal bare, loamy earth waiting for rain, the new heaps of weeds piled to one side for easier collection. Natasha herself sits on the wall with her ankle propped on her trophy mound, her deft fingers weaving the small vines of a purple-flowered weed together. Laura is coming up the stairs when Natasha seems to realize what’s she’s been doing, blinking and examining the nearly-complete flower crown. A small crease appears on her forehead as she frowns - and then something seems to boil up in her, shaking and furious and heart-stopping fast. For a moment the spy’s entire body seems to tremble, seems to struggle to contain the well of whatever emotion draws her lips up to show white teeth. Then a flick of her wrist sends the crown flying, its flowers scattering over the backyard, flung as far from her as she can.
After that Natasha closes her eyes, working to control the storm raging inside her, and Laura slips into the house in the opportunity Natasha has purposefully given her.
Before she begins to make an early dinner that night she takes the small vase of flowers off of the kitchen table. As cheery as the knot of small flowers are, they’re a yellow variety of the purple ones Natasha wove together. Natasha notices, of course, because her green eyes miss little on a battlefield and even less in a house. To say her initial smile is grim is to say nothing at all.
“I appreciate the thought, but you can put them back. It’s not the flowers I’m upset with.”
“They tell stories about that, you know.” Laura continues chopping the final cucumbers for the salad, knowing she’ll give too much away if she meets Natasha’s gaze. As it is she’s enjoyed wielding the knife too much this afternoon. It had been remarkably easy to imagine Red Room trainers under its blade instead of carrots. “It’s called pulling on Death’s whiskers.”
“Not the tiger’s tail?”
“Same thing for anyone stupid enough to try it.” That earns her a soft huff. It’s a good sign. It’s a better one when Natasha crutches to the counter and retrieves the flowers herself, stretching with a dancer’s figure to place them on the table without having to hop across the linoleum.
“It looks better like this.” She fixes the table runner with two fingertips, leaning on a chair to stay off her bad ankle. “And you’re far from stupid, Laura.”
The trademark Barton sarcasm that’s rubbed off on her rises but she checks it. The last thing Natasha needs is to think Laura is annoyed with her, annoyed as she is with herself. Instead, sweeping the cucumber into the salad bowl, she nods.
“I appreciate it.”
That seems to be the end of it until a storm rolls in two days later, ponderous gray clouds pushing across the yellow evening sky. Natasha has been watching it from the back porch swing for almost an hour when Laura steps outside to see if she needs anything. She knows from the moment she sees her that something is wrong. Whether it’s the incident from the other afternoon or the view of the rain moving closer, there is something unsettled and lost in Natasha’s expression. Her eyes track the swaying treetops and distant lightning bolts, but aimlessly, distractedly. It’s clear wherever her attention is, it isn’t here.
Laura waits by the door, wondering for the second time that week if she should leave or stay, waiting for Natasha to indicate which it is she wants. Or is it what she needs? So often it’s hard to tell the difference between the two, even when it counts.
Whichever it is, Natasha gives no sign of seeing Laura - but she does begin to speak.
“I never learned how to make daisy crowns as a child.” There is something like an echo in her voice, the reverberation of the words from somewhere deep inside, somewhere tucked away so far that no one could find it. Laura takes the unspoken invitation and leans against the railing, her back to the flashing display and waving crops. “There weren’t gardens in the compound, no weeds or daisies for us to pick. Just pictures of them, so we could recognize what it was we might see in the outside world.” Again her lips flatten, press together in that display of discomfort. “It wasn’t a skill we needed to know.”
“So how did you learn?” She asks when it becomes clear that Natasha is waiting for a response, for a question. The agent draws her gaze away from the storm and tips her gaze down to the hands she unfolds in her lap.
“I learned on my mother’s lap when I was eight, weaving crowns while my father and brother played nearby. They matched our white dresses and we wore them the whole day, so when I was sixteen and seducing a man I knew how to braid them into his hair, to bring him to a secluded part of the park and set him up for a sniper.” Her hands are trembling visibly now, her distress is unchecked as she speaks. The dissonance between reality and remembering jars the edges of the world, the truths that cannot be questioned, and for the first time Laura begins to understand what it was that the Red Room did to the hearts of its daughters, and not only their minds.
She pushes herself off the railing and takes Natasha’s hands, folding her own over them.
“You’re here, and now,” she says with every ounce of firmness and certainty she can muster. That cannot be questioned; that must always be true. “You know how to make flower crowns. It doesn’t matter how you learned.”
It’s not enough. Whether Natasha has followed the false memories down the rabbit hole or she wasn’t prepared to defend herself against their draw, it doesn’t matter. A dozen emotions are still fighting each other across her normally smooth expression and the scrutiny, the attention that Laura is so used to, has not yet come back into her eyes. So Laura lifts Natasha’s hands up, the hands that kill men and change lives and make daisy crowns of weeds, and presses her lips to the fingers that make countries bleed.
It’s enough.
“You’re here.” She kisses the other hand. “And now.” The quiet words stretch between them as Natasha focuses on her lips and her words, the awareness of a grown woman and highly trained field agent flooding back into her face - and her pupils dilate in her green gaze, a faint flush spreads across her cheeks.
Laura understands what that means. So does Natasha.
Natasha rocks forward and stands effortlessly on her good leg when Laura leans back, the space between them charged with something she is afraid to name, afraid to hold onto. There is nothing lost or confused about the other woman’s unguarded expression, nothing beyond a desire that drops Laura’s eyes to her mouth. And then Natasha is kissing her, gentle and soft and electric, and she closes her eyes, answers back -
The summer air seems cold against her lips when the other woman breaks it off, pulling back far enough that she can meet Laura’s gaze. The muted evening light is still enough for her to know she isn’t misreading the cautious hope there, the question that is answered by her own tentative smile. And quick Natasha, bright Natasha, understands more than what is said. She slips her fingers out of Laura’s to touch her cheek carefully, delicate and warm.
“Here and now,” she says, thunder rolling in the distance.
“Here and now,” Laura agrees, settling her hands lightly on Natasha’s hips to steady her, while the rain starts to sweep over the fields and the eaves of the house.
Lucky is the first one to see the dust cloud coming up the driveway and alerts the whole house - read, Laura - by barking wildly and whirling in circles at the front door until Laura comes down. She waits to let him out until the car comes to a full stop, which is why Clint barely makes it out of the driver’s seat before he’s tackled by seventy pounds of excited Labrador.
“Oof! Hey, big guy,” he manages to get out, rubbing Lucky’s ears as the dog attempts to lick his face. “Okay, okay, got it, thanks. I’m glad someone’s excited to see me.”
“What, and I’m not?” Laura asks as she walks down the steps through the roses. Her bare feet make no sound on the beaten path to the gate.
“I’m glad to see me? You” Clint tries, but he can’t stop petting Lucky without the Lab leaning on his legs to pin him against the car. “Help?”
“Lucky, sit.” He whines but obeys, his tail proving to be an admirable weed whacker for the lawn. “Good boy.” She waits by the gate until Clint scoops her up and kisses her.
“You have the boys well trained,” Natasha comments as she exits the passenger side. She has enough time to grab her two small bags from the back seat before Laura is free to greet her as well.
“Glad you could make it,” she tells the other woman before kissing her. It starts out chaste before it turns more heated, still new and electric for both of them. When they finally part Natasha glances at Clint, her lips curling.
“I think we broke him.”
Clint is doing a fair impression of someone who’s just been pole-axed. Lucky, eternally optimistic, is pawing at his leg in a quest for scratches.
“Guh. Uh. Wow.”
Laura breaks out into laughter, the sun-warmed scent of roses wreathing around them, and Lucky barks happily along with her.
iv. 2004
The garden renovation project begins the first time Natasha is at the farmhouse post-Laura’s pregnancy announcement. Laura is tempted to make a comment about nesting but refrains, knowing all of them are working to adjust to this new reality in their own ways. Besides, with Natasha’s careful wonder and equally careful, exquisite way of celebrating, it takes Laura a little while to catch on after the spy stops and stares out the window at the empty garden plot.
What she doesn’t expect to find is the sight of freshly weeded and newly turned earth two hours later.
“Are you anticipating needing a lot of weeding this summer?” She asks when Natasha toes off her muck boots and steps through the back door in thick wool socks. She begins pulling off her extra layers, shedding a work jacket and one of Clint’s plaid shirts into the closet with her gloves.
“We’ll see,” is the only answer Laura gets. But she spots Natasha going outside to examine the garden throughout the next day, critically judging the amount of early spring sunlight and shade on various parts of the plot without any further explanation.
“Trevor down at the hardware store says he saw Natasha with gardening stuff,” Clint mentions when he’s next home between missions, working to build up enough leave for her due date in the fall. “I told him he was just hallucinating but he swore up and down it was true. Tell me I haven’t gone crazy.”
“You haven’t gone crazy.” He notices the odd emphasis and gives her a questioning look, forehead wrinkling in his trademark confusion. Laura suppresses a grin and guides him to the kitchen window overlooking the backyard.
Clint stares.
The garden is meticulously laid out with stakes and twine and more, seemingly everything that a home gardener could ask for. The frond-like leaves of young tomato plants wave beside the tentative sprouts of onions and stretching basil, the easily identified melons and squash are neatly quarantined in their own corner of the plot, and all of them are connected by a hose running over black mesh and bare ground.
“I told Natasha that I don’t garden,” Laura says by way of explanation. “She told me that was fine and all that I have to do is turn on the sprinkler once every afternoon. She’ll take care of it while she’s here.”
Her husband’s dumbstruck surprise is slowly turning to something else; something soft and amazed and aching. “Tasha never plans on going back to a place. She’s never had a home that would still be standing if she tried to return there. Even at HQ, even here, she never leaves anything that can’t be left behind.” Clint turns to her with a growing hope, a wealth of emotions running under his awe, and Laura nods. Pregnancy hormones have nothing to do with the tears welling up in her eyes.
“She’s going to come home,” she tells him, and the joy that’s too much for her own heart is matched only by his.
They spar in the yellowing grass, all lithe limbs and quick blows, ducking and weaving and flowing like poetry, like motion. Laura knows she’s being overly dramatic when those phrases come to mind, standing as she is and watching her two lovers work out in the backyard, but it’s hard not to be. They’ve clearly done this routine enough to be comfortable with it, with each other, and as lethal as some of the blows might be in real life they’re graceful and almost playful here.
Then Natasha taps Clint as she slides out of the way of his fist, her knuckles leaving the barest impression on his muscle shirt. She makes a comment lost in the moment, shaking her head and its long ponytail at him, to which he says something inaudible and tackles her. They go down in the grass in a tangle of legs and feet and hands, rolling in and out of grapples and holds with natural ease, and Laura finds she’s laughing along with them.
“All right, all right, break it up,” she calls when she eases her way down the steps, the bump of her belly now obscuring the sight of her feet. “Don’t make me take you both out.”
“Yes ma’am.” Clint dusts off his loose pants as he grins at her with the crooked, whole-hearted expression she loves so much. “You’re the boss.”
“Damn straight I am,” Laura agrees, tilting her head up for a kiss once she reaches him. He obliges her, one broad hand alighting on her stomach and their child growing there. Laura catches Natasha’s tiny smile out of the corner of her eye when they break apart and raises an eyebrow silently.
“There’s no one like you,” the other woman concurs and shifts to close the small distance between them. Her kiss is equally satisfied, her hand on Laura’s as gentle.
“I hope you appreciate what you have in me.”
“We try to,” her husband tells her as Natasha smirks, drawing her into a dance frame. They waltz in the backyard as Clint watches, moving to the music of the wind through the trees and the corn stalks; three dancers with ballroom steps made for two, three people who will soon number four.
Laura can’t wait for that dance.
v. 2005
As soon as it gets above 70 degrees Natasha brings little Cooper outside with her while she tends the garden, tugging on his floppy hat and slathering his chubby hands in sunscreen as he burbles nonsense words. Laura secretly accumulates a number of photos of the famed Black Widow on her hands and knees tending young plants while Cooper rocks happily in his carrier, accompanied over by an ever-vigilant Lucky.
“The fresh air is good for him,” is all Natasha says after the first time she steals him from his playpen to keep her company outside. Laura nods understandingly and doesn’t suggest she does it again; like a cat, there are some things Natasha doesn’t want to be invited to do. It becomes one of the favorite parts of her routine while Natasha is home with or without Clint: a much-needed nap, a fresh glass of sun tea, and the comfort of seeing her red-haired lover bonding with their child.
Cooper’s childhood will be one full of sunshine and growing things, of greens and blues and rich dark browns of healthy earth. Healing can be slow, in whatever form it takes, but Laura is learning this: it does come.
A stray black cat follows Natasha in one night, scruffy and skinny but still carrying herself with feline grace. Natasha dubs her Liho, meaning ‘an unlucky spirit’.
She stays.
rating: pg
characters: Laura Barton/Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff, Cooper Barton, Lucky
warnings: none
summary: Three summers Natasha spends at the farmhouse and two she spends at home.
author's note: Thanks to inkvoices, whose 'Natasha & farming' prompt in the 2015 be_compromised promptathon ended up being the inspiration for, and only remotely related to, this story.
Thanks as well to cybermathwitch for beta'ing this! All remaining mistakes are firmly my own.
i. 2001
It starts out as an exercise in anger management. Natasha Romanoff storms into the farmhouse on a brilliant summer morning with hard edges in the corners of her mouth and black fury in her eyes, grabs a pair of gardening gloves, and glides out through the back door. Well, ‘storms’ might not be the right word, Laura is willing to acknowledge as she watches the screen door slam shut behind the SHIELD agent. Even here in the seclusion of the farm she carries herself with an unmistakable grace. If she truly did storm in through the front door, Laura would grab the phone and the butcher knife sitting sedately in its wooden block.
Instead Laura takes her time fixing an extra sandwich for lunch (ham and cheese, lettuce, red onion, no mayo) and checking on the sun tea brewing on the windowsill. There is no shortage of people who would have gone for the butcher knife upon seeing the Black Widow enter their house, regardless of the cause, but Laura trusts Clint’s instincts. He made a different call, he pulled for her to be assigned as his partner, he brought her here into the heart of home a year ago. She’s bet on his gut before. She’ll do it again now.
Even with all that, she can’t help the small breath of relief when her errant husband comes in the front door half an hour later alive and well despite a renowned assassin’s anger with him.
“I fucked up,” he tells her wearily, a hangdog air firmly entrenched in the crinkles on his forehead. Laura sets her own sandwich on the table and brushes her hands over his sweat-soaked hair, meeting his eyes with a mixture of amusement and frankness.
“Go fix it. As your wife and the person who counts on her to bring you home in one piece, or as close as you ever get, I have a vested interest in making sure she’s happy with you.”
Clint sighs with his whole body, his head and shoulders slumping under her touch. “What do I say?”
“Whatever makes this right. She’s your partner; she depends on you, the same way you depend on her. You’re both just trying to to find your footing, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, apparently I’m good at treading on her toes.”
Laura steps aside to pick up the second plate and a glass of unsweetened tea, placing them firmly in his hands. “It took me weeks to take you how to dance,” she agrees, “but you can manage a decent waltz now. Take these out to her and apologize, then go run another eight miles.”
“Yes ma’am,” he says meekly, the wrinkles in his brow easing, and pauses. “Where is she?”
After pointing him in the right direction and trusting that SHIELD’s best sniper would be able to manage opening a door with two full hands, Laura sits down to her lunch.
Natasha comes back in an hour later, shaking dirt out of her hair and gliding silently in dusty socks across the hardwood floor. The gloves and dirt-caked sneakers sit in exile out on the back porch.
“Thank you for the sandwich. I appreciated the thought,” she says cautiously when she enters the kitchen, bringing her empty dishes with her. The irritated air has completely vanished to be replaced instead by the centered and even keel of her normal bearing. Whatever snarling anger drove her has dissipated. As much as that display might have scared other people, Laura finds it oddly comforting. Given what Clint’s learned about Natasha’s past, the childhood she never had, it makes more sense than most would realize. If she didn’t trust them so much she would play whatever flawed or perfect or bespoke act she believed they needed.
Apparently Laura isn’t the only one who trusts Clint implicitly.
“Hard work makes everything taste better, or so my father told me. Personally, I think it was all a ploy to get me to do yard work on the weekends, but there you have it.” Laura takes the plate and glass from the counter and transfers them into the sink. “I’m heading back to work. You good?”
“I am now. Thank you.”
“I’m not the one ripping weeds out of the garden. The enormous, eight-foot-wide, six-foot-long garden.”
“You live on a farm.” Her eyes are bright with something that Laura needs a moment to identify as amusement. “A farm with two hundred acres intended entirely for growing things.”
“Most of which is leased out to other people,” Laura corrects her. “And besides, there is a big difference between farming and gardening. Except for the fact that I don’t do either.”
“Mm.”
Laura returns to the accounting books waiting in her office, putting pen to paper to earn her paycheck, and hears the front door close when the Black Widow heads out to jog after Clint down the driveway.
They spar, the kicks and blows moving almost faster than Laura can follow, the lethal power in the hands and feet and hearts of the two fighters checked only by their knowledge of their limits and the other person. There’s no clear winner as the practice progresses, no one dominating over the other; it is an equal exchange, a lightning fast fight that says more about them than it does about their training. She’s seen Clint focused before, seen him train and practice and break up bar fights - and start them - but she can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen him go full-throttle. Even this is simply a practice, but it’s mesmerizing. Clint and Natasha, together, are mesmerizing. She understands more clearly now why SHIELD is willing to let a former Russian spy and their best sniper team up together, even with all their flaws and questionable methods.
Then Clint steps a hair too far inside Natasha’s range. In a heartbeat she has him between her thighs and bears him down, down, down into the green grass trampled by their quick steps. He goes limp as she maintains the choke hold, his arms falling to the sides to tap the ground, and Natasha eases off of him to stand up. Clint says something drawn out into a groan. The agent’s steady regard barely breaks, but she reaches down and helps him up.
Laura, shaking her head, goes in to get the aspirin out.
Two more sets of work gloves joins Laura’s in the closet, one leather and one fabric. No one points it out or remarks on it, but Natasha wears the leather pair when she sets about weeding the flower beds around the front of the house on another visit. Laura’s well aware that the beds are filled with blooming roses only because a previous owner planted them years ago and they’ve withstood her constant neglect. She doesn’t caution her to watch for the inch-long thorns; if there’s one thing the agent is good at, it’s watching for danger in any form.
“Your lack of any hedge trimmers is a serious default,” Natasha informs Clint later that night. He gets the blank look that means he has no reference for what it is she’s talking about. She exhales, her gaze admonishing, and digs up a lawn and garden catalog Laura positioned under the cattywhompus chair a few months ago to show him.
“Don’t they use those for sculpting elephants and stuff?” is his question when she indicates the tool in question. “Laura, do we want to make elephants?”
“Right now you’re making a mess,” his partner points out, her gaze dropping to where his thin t-shirt lies against his bandaged ribs. Blood is slowly leaking out into the heather-gray fabric and dotting it with dark red spots. Clint winces.
“Aw, no, shirt. I liked this one.”
“Then don’t get injured so much.” Laura lets her breath out with exasperation and waves at him. “Come on, get up, let’s go get you fixed up again.”
“And perhaps next time go to SHIELD medical before taking off,” Natasha adds. Clint winces again when Laura stares at him.
“You didn’t get checked out?”
“Which would be why I drove out with him to make sure he didn’t pass out and crash in a ditch somewhere.”
“Okay, hey, it’s just a scratch-”
“Up,” Laura cuts him off. “And then we’re going to talk. Thank you,” she says gratefully to Natasha as she pushes her idiotic husband towards the stairs, and the other woman inclines her head.
That the injury came from a turn-coat SHIELD agent in a badly botched mission, and that the betrayal must have hurt more than the wound, explains things in a way that Laura can understand - and, it seems, Natasha does as well.
Fall is coming on fast, the trees turning ruddy golds and reds around the farmhouse when Clint broaches the subject they’re left unspoken all summer. “I was thinking.” He rubs the back of his head in the way that he does when he’s self-conscious or nervous about something. “Next summer, if you’ve got any projects around the house, maybe they could be inside?”
Laura grins, leaning forward to kiss him. He smiles under her lips and brings his arms down to wrap them around her, holding her close enough that the warmth and strength she loves about him are both close to the surface.
“I think that’s an excellent idea.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” His grin turns up. “I have another one, if you’d like to hear it…”
“Oh? Do tell,” she teases, and he bends his head to kiss her again.
ii. 2002
The warped barbed wire fence by the house is the first thing to get straightened out when Natasha arrives with sparse background reading in her bag and a plethora of sunshine in the yard. In short order the second pair of handyman gloves go missing while the spy wrestles rotten posts upright, only to return with bolt-cutters and strip the rusted fencing completely.
”You don’t have wire cutters, Barton. Proper equipment is key to a successful mission.”
“Right, but are we going to draw a line between ‘missions’ and ‘honey do’ lists, ‘cause if we aren’t I’m screwed.”
“Honey…”
“That sounded idiotic even as I said it. I’ve got Laura Sheppard as my wife and Natasha Romanoff as my partner, I’m already screwed, aren’t I?”
“Now he catches on.”
Laura would be more bemused by the random activity if she hadn’t mentioned it offhandedly to Natasha during her last stop-over two months ago, discussing the possibility of putting the car in the nearby barn during the winter. “We’ve still got months to go,” she had admitted, “but even with the mild winters it’d be nice to know that scraping my car off isn’t something else I have to worry about.” When Natasha comes in for dinner, silently putting Laura’s gloves back in the yard-work closet, the fences that had surrounded the barn doors no long careen into the path of a parking car.
Clint and Laura don’t do more than thank her for it, exchanging glances over dinner, but Natasha seems satisfied enough.
Another visit brings the two women to tackle the interior of the newly designated ‘car stall,’ a name which never fails to make a grin break across Clint’s face. “Because stalling, and cars. You know?” He says, suggesting the name, and they patiently wait his humor out. Miscellaneous objects are dragged into the light of day, sorted, and disposed of or set aside for a garage sale as needed.
“What is this?” Natasha’s tone is a mixture of incomprehension and disgust. Laura looks up over the edge of the bandanna she’s tied around around her face to block the worst of the dust.
“…I have an idea,” she admits as she stares at the rusted object. “But I’m really hoping it’s not what I think it is.”
“Mm.” They scrutinize it for another moment. “There used to be animals on this farm, didn’t there? The kind that would need gelding?”
“Yup.”
“Hm.”
“Yup.”
Natasha deposits it in the ‘scrap metal’ bin and they say nothing more about it, even when Clint asks if they’ve found anything interesting that day.
Later that month Laura tucks half of the money from the garage sale into a cookie jar for Natasha.
The ‘FOUND: LOST DOG’ poster that Laura holds up during Clint’s July trip is met with three puppy dog eyes: two from her husband and one from the Lab whose head rests on his lap, ears drooped behind his soulful gaze.
“Enough of that,” Laura chides Clint, hiding her laughter under a stern look. “If he’s someone’s dog, we’re going to return him.”
“Look at him, Laura,” he protests as he gestures at the ragged coat and the ribs that show through it all too clearly. “You want to give him back to whoever let him get like this?”
“You do know it’s possible he ran away, right? It’s a thing that dogs do. Besides, you’re not going to leave me here with a pet while you’re off on missions all the time.”
“I don’t know, I think he’d make great company. Maybe not a guard dog, you know, but.” Lucky’s tail thumps the chair when Clint pets him. “Laura…”
She holds out for another minute before she sighs, placing the poster on the table.
“We’re putting those up. But if no one calls, I’ll try my hand at having a dog.”
“Yes ma’am.” He relaxes, expression crooked and boyish and loving, but there is a shadow lingering under his eyes that she can still pick out.
“Okay, I let Lucky distract me long enough. What’s wrong?”
Clint shifts in his chair uneasily with the change in subject, his eyes sliding to the side as he rubs Lucky’s ears. Laura doesn’t give him the option of an escape. She might need to be more circumspect and hands-off with his partner, but with the Barton boys it’s a full-court press to bring whatever is bothering them to the surface when they’ve buried it that deep.
“It’s Natasha,” he says at last.
“Is she all right?” They had been trying separate missions, she knew, but both SHIELD and Strike Team Delta agreed they performed best when they were together. Had she been badly hurt?
“What? No, she’s fine, she’s good. It’s just…” His free hand creeps up to the back of his neck as he stares at nothing in particular, working to put together his thoughts. She lets him. She might not have his sniper’s marathon patience, the willingness to wait for days for the right opportunity, but she’s gotten good enough to wait him out on everything else.
At last Clint swallows, clearly struggling, and the muscles along his jaw tighten. “I’m having a hard time not having feelings for her.”
Laura lets the words sink in, absorbing what he means, before she exhales.
“That’s not a surprise.” When he looks at her, startled, she meets his gaze levelly. “She’s your partner, Clint. She’s a beautiful woman and you spend ninety percent of your time with her. It’s not a surprise that you’d start seeing her as more than a coworker or friend.”
“But you’re my wife, Laura, and I love you. I know I’m not here as much as you want me to be, I know I’m barely home, but I love you, and I’m not unfaithful, I can’t fuck this up, I’m just…” Clint fights to find the right words and fails, his archer’s hands rising and falling with his distress in the same way his body reflects his tension. As witty as he might be with one-liners, Laura knows, he’s less eloquent when the hard discussions get going. The specter of his father hanging over him doesn’t help this either.
Well, she can’t banish that particular ghost, however hard she tries, but she can handle everything else.
“I want you home whenever you can be.” She pulls out the chair at the head of the table and sits facing him, letting her aching heart settle as she speaks. “I want you home for as long as you can be. I understood what I was getting into when you joined SHIELD, Clint, and I haven’t regretted most of it. I love you. But I want you home in one piece, and it’s no secret that I have Natasha to thank for a lot of that. And I love you enough to know your heart is big enough to love two people, and even a dog. A flea-bitten, one-eyed, pizza-loving dog.” Clint’s laugh is broken, but it’s there. “I know you’re not unfaithful. I know you still mean the vows you said on our wedding day. I never doubted that.”
“Even after that undercover op in Benin?”
“Especially after that op in Benin,” Laura agrees. “Natasha complimented me afterward on teaching you how to dance. I took the credit as my due.” His laugh this time comes more easily. “And to be honest, if I was still single, I’d hit on you and Natasha. Maybe not at the same time. Although...”
Clint finally breaks down into the full belly laugh she loves, a deep and genuine guffaw that shakes his shoulders and nearly brings tears to his eyes. He grins at her while Lucky noses him insistently, trying to figure out what’s so exciting.
“I tell you I’m in love with another woman and you end up making me laugh. Fuck, Laura, I love you.”
“I know.” She smiles back at him, holding her hand out. He takes it and twines his calloused fingers around it, squeezing tightly. “I don’t know what you face in the field, Clint, but I know who’s by your side. And if something happens between you, if you end up sleeping with her or kissing her or God forbid making her marathon the Lord of the Rings extended editions, please don’t piss her off. I need that woman to watch out for you, idiot.”
“Yeah, you do.” He sobers, stroking his thumb over her wedding ring. “I don’t want to ruin us,” he says more quietly, his attention on the golden band.
“You won’t,” she promises. “You have your house wife and your work wife, and I’m pretty sure I can speak for both of us when I say we love you. Maybe differently, but still. You come home, Clint, and that’s enough. That’s what all I ask for.” And the ring of truth is there because at the end of the day, that’s all Laura needs. Come home.
There is a banked desire in Clint’s eyes, enough to banish the shadows and the ghosts for another day, and he turns her hand so his thumb runs across her palm.
“That’s all?”
“Mm. Although there is the matter of that ‘honey do’ list…”
Lucky ends up being nudged out of the way so Laura can climb into Clint’s lap, their touches slow and full of heat, and they relearn each other with this new thing built between them.
The Black Widow’s first solo visit to the farmhouse is designed to keep her off the radar after a particularly heated mission. Thanks to the recent developments at the farm, it doesn’t entail a solo exercise routine as well. Natasha’s push-ups are instead accompanied by Lucky’s happy panting as he lies slumped on the grass beside her, securely out of range of an inadvertent foot or fist. Clint had been the one to teach him the idea of personal space during exercise, albeit accidentally and with a significant amount of ensuing apologies and closer attention.
They come in for water after another half hour of working out under the beating summer sun. The click of Lucky’s toenails provides a double-time cadence for Natasha’s footsteps on the recently refurbished hardwood flooring; a new improvement also courtesy of her husband. Lucky’s smooth coat and steady weight gain, however, Laura takes responsibility for.
Clint’s involvement with Natasha, with Laura’s consent, is probably thanks to all of them.
“Does he really fetch arrows?” Natasha asks as she sips from her refilled water bottle, leaning back against the counter in the kitchen.
Laura nods. “Clint started calling them boomerang arrows because they were coming back to him.” At the other woman’s surprised chuckle, she nods again in agreement. “I nipped that one in the bud.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all.” Her smile is small but a far cry from a pretense. “He has a horrendous sense of humor. But he’s right; most things have a way of coming back to him.”
For a moment she wonders if Natasha knows how much her relaxed manner gives away, how clearly her own trust in Clint and affection for the ragtag archer comes through. The answer is yes, of course; she is rarely unaware of anything she reveals. In her confidence Laura can read the other half of a partnership that has been beneficial for both of them, good and growing in ease and strength like the crops outside her window. Every visit has made it clearer that the call two years ago changed a great deal for SHIELD sniper and Russian spy alike, and it is comforting, encouraging to see.
“Although he does have his home here,” Natasha adds as an afterthought, “which would make him the one who keeps coming back.”
“Thank you for making sure that he can. I know it can be a thankless task.”
“When you always have ice tea ready when we arrive? Hardly. And having him there to watch my back is only a small benefit, of course.”
“Watching is what he does best. Besides archery, that is. And surprisingly restoring old floors.”
“So working with his hands, then?”
Natasha’s suggestive tone is the first sign she’s seen of the change in her relationship with Clint. Laura raises an eyebrow.
“Turns out he’s pretty good with them. Except for wallpaper removal. You should have seen him when we first moved in here; he acted like he had never seen a spackle knife before. Who would have thought, right Lucky?”
The Lab’s tail thumps happily away on the floor, splashing water freshly spilled from his bowl across the kitchen, and she gives him a long look.
“We’re going to have to work on that, buddy.”
Natasha has already pulled several dishtowels out of the cabinet when she turns to get them, holding them out to her across the kitchen.
“Thank you,” Laura tells her.
“Thank you,” she replies, and the warmth in her tone says all that needs to be said between them.
iii. 2003
The cast around Natasha’s ankle and the doctor’s prescription for rest prevent any more serious yard renovation projects. The spy still gravitates to the sun like a cat, choosing to review her latest intelligence briefings on the back porch, practicing her gun assembly on the coffee table when the westward facing window are in full light. When she maneuvers her crutches outside and settles onto the low wooden walls of the garden, uprooting wildly growing weeds with pinpoint precision, Laura leaves a bottle of sunscreen with one of Clint’s sweat-stained ball caps on the corner of the back porch.
In a few hours the rampant greenery has been thinned to reveal bare, loamy earth waiting for rain, the new heaps of weeds piled to one side for easier collection. Natasha herself sits on the wall with her ankle propped on her trophy mound, her deft fingers weaving the small vines of a purple-flowered weed together. Laura is coming up the stairs when Natasha seems to realize what’s she’s been doing, blinking and examining the nearly-complete flower crown. A small crease appears on her forehead as she frowns - and then something seems to boil up in her, shaking and furious and heart-stopping fast. For a moment the spy’s entire body seems to tremble, seems to struggle to contain the well of whatever emotion draws her lips up to show white teeth. Then a flick of her wrist sends the crown flying, its flowers scattering over the backyard, flung as far from her as she can.
After that Natasha closes her eyes, working to control the storm raging inside her, and Laura slips into the house in the opportunity Natasha has purposefully given her.
Before she begins to make an early dinner that night she takes the small vase of flowers off of the kitchen table. As cheery as the knot of small flowers are, they’re a yellow variety of the purple ones Natasha wove together. Natasha notices, of course, because her green eyes miss little on a battlefield and even less in a house. To say her initial smile is grim is to say nothing at all.
“I appreciate the thought, but you can put them back. It’s not the flowers I’m upset with.”
“They tell stories about that, you know.” Laura continues chopping the final cucumbers for the salad, knowing she’ll give too much away if she meets Natasha’s gaze. As it is she’s enjoyed wielding the knife too much this afternoon. It had been remarkably easy to imagine Red Room trainers under its blade instead of carrots. “It’s called pulling on Death’s whiskers.”
“Not the tiger’s tail?”
“Same thing for anyone stupid enough to try it.” That earns her a soft huff. It’s a good sign. It’s a better one when Natasha crutches to the counter and retrieves the flowers herself, stretching with a dancer’s figure to place them on the table without having to hop across the linoleum.
“It looks better like this.” She fixes the table runner with two fingertips, leaning on a chair to stay off her bad ankle. “And you’re far from stupid, Laura.”
The trademark Barton sarcasm that’s rubbed off on her rises but she checks it. The last thing Natasha needs is to think Laura is annoyed with her, annoyed as she is with herself. Instead, sweeping the cucumber into the salad bowl, she nods.
“I appreciate it.”
That seems to be the end of it until a storm rolls in two days later, ponderous gray clouds pushing across the yellow evening sky. Natasha has been watching it from the back porch swing for almost an hour when Laura steps outside to see if she needs anything. She knows from the moment she sees her that something is wrong. Whether it’s the incident from the other afternoon or the view of the rain moving closer, there is something unsettled and lost in Natasha’s expression. Her eyes track the swaying treetops and distant lightning bolts, but aimlessly, distractedly. It’s clear wherever her attention is, it isn’t here.
Laura waits by the door, wondering for the second time that week if she should leave or stay, waiting for Natasha to indicate which it is she wants. Or is it what she needs? So often it’s hard to tell the difference between the two, even when it counts.
Whichever it is, Natasha gives no sign of seeing Laura - but she does begin to speak.
“I never learned how to make daisy crowns as a child.” There is something like an echo in her voice, the reverberation of the words from somewhere deep inside, somewhere tucked away so far that no one could find it. Laura takes the unspoken invitation and leans against the railing, her back to the flashing display and waving crops. “There weren’t gardens in the compound, no weeds or daisies for us to pick. Just pictures of them, so we could recognize what it was we might see in the outside world.” Again her lips flatten, press together in that display of discomfort. “It wasn’t a skill we needed to know.”
“So how did you learn?” She asks when it becomes clear that Natasha is waiting for a response, for a question. The agent draws her gaze away from the storm and tips her gaze down to the hands she unfolds in her lap.
“I learned on my mother’s lap when I was eight, weaving crowns while my father and brother played nearby. They matched our white dresses and we wore them the whole day, so when I was sixteen and seducing a man I knew how to braid them into his hair, to bring him to a secluded part of the park and set him up for a sniper.” Her hands are trembling visibly now, her distress is unchecked as she speaks. The dissonance between reality and remembering jars the edges of the world, the truths that cannot be questioned, and for the first time Laura begins to understand what it was that the Red Room did to the hearts of its daughters, and not only their minds.
She pushes herself off the railing and takes Natasha’s hands, folding her own over them.
“You’re here, and now,” she says with every ounce of firmness and certainty she can muster. That cannot be questioned; that must always be true. “You know how to make flower crowns. It doesn’t matter how you learned.”
It’s not enough. Whether Natasha has followed the false memories down the rabbit hole or she wasn’t prepared to defend herself against their draw, it doesn’t matter. A dozen emotions are still fighting each other across her normally smooth expression and the scrutiny, the attention that Laura is so used to, has not yet come back into her eyes. So Laura lifts Natasha’s hands up, the hands that kill men and change lives and make daisy crowns of weeds, and presses her lips to the fingers that make countries bleed.
It’s enough.
“You’re here.” She kisses the other hand. “And now.” The quiet words stretch between them as Natasha focuses on her lips and her words, the awareness of a grown woman and highly trained field agent flooding back into her face - and her pupils dilate in her green gaze, a faint flush spreads across her cheeks.
Laura understands what that means. So does Natasha.
Natasha rocks forward and stands effortlessly on her good leg when Laura leans back, the space between them charged with something she is afraid to name, afraid to hold onto. There is nothing lost or confused about the other woman’s unguarded expression, nothing beyond a desire that drops Laura’s eyes to her mouth. And then Natasha is kissing her, gentle and soft and electric, and she closes her eyes, answers back -
The summer air seems cold against her lips when the other woman breaks it off, pulling back far enough that she can meet Laura’s gaze. The muted evening light is still enough for her to know she isn’t misreading the cautious hope there, the question that is answered by her own tentative smile. And quick Natasha, bright Natasha, understands more than what is said. She slips her fingers out of Laura’s to touch her cheek carefully, delicate and warm.
“Here and now,” she says, thunder rolling in the distance.
“Here and now,” Laura agrees, settling her hands lightly on Natasha’s hips to steady her, while the rain starts to sweep over the fields and the eaves of the house.
Lucky is the first one to see the dust cloud coming up the driveway and alerts the whole house - read, Laura - by barking wildly and whirling in circles at the front door until Laura comes down. She waits to let him out until the car comes to a full stop, which is why Clint barely makes it out of the driver’s seat before he’s tackled by seventy pounds of excited Labrador.
“Oof! Hey, big guy,” he manages to get out, rubbing Lucky’s ears as the dog attempts to lick his face. “Okay, okay, got it, thanks. I’m glad someone’s excited to see me.”
“What, and I’m not?” Laura asks as she walks down the steps through the roses. Her bare feet make no sound on the beaten path to the gate.
“I’m glad to see me? You” Clint tries, but he can’t stop petting Lucky without the Lab leaning on his legs to pin him against the car. “Help?”
“Lucky, sit.” He whines but obeys, his tail proving to be an admirable weed whacker for the lawn. “Good boy.” She waits by the gate until Clint scoops her up and kisses her.
“You have the boys well trained,” Natasha comments as she exits the passenger side. She has enough time to grab her two small bags from the back seat before Laura is free to greet her as well.
“Glad you could make it,” she tells the other woman before kissing her. It starts out chaste before it turns more heated, still new and electric for both of them. When they finally part Natasha glances at Clint, her lips curling.
“I think we broke him.”
Clint is doing a fair impression of someone who’s just been pole-axed. Lucky, eternally optimistic, is pawing at his leg in a quest for scratches.
“Guh. Uh. Wow.”
Laura breaks out into laughter, the sun-warmed scent of roses wreathing around them, and Lucky barks happily along with her.
iv. 2004
The garden renovation project begins the first time Natasha is at the farmhouse post-Laura’s pregnancy announcement. Laura is tempted to make a comment about nesting but refrains, knowing all of them are working to adjust to this new reality in their own ways. Besides, with Natasha’s careful wonder and equally careful, exquisite way of celebrating, it takes Laura a little while to catch on after the spy stops and stares out the window at the empty garden plot.
What she doesn’t expect to find is the sight of freshly weeded and newly turned earth two hours later.
“Are you anticipating needing a lot of weeding this summer?” She asks when Natasha toes off her muck boots and steps through the back door in thick wool socks. She begins pulling off her extra layers, shedding a work jacket and one of Clint’s plaid shirts into the closet with her gloves.
“We’ll see,” is the only answer Laura gets. But she spots Natasha going outside to examine the garden throughout the next day, critically judging the amount of early spring sunlight and shade on various parts of the plot without any further explanation.
“Trevor down at the hardware store says he saw Natasha with gardening stuff,” Clint mentions when he’s next home between missions, working to build up enough leave for her due date in the fall. “I told him he was just hallucinating but he swore up and down it was true. Tell me I haven’t gone crazy.”
“You haven’t gone crazy.” He notices the odd emphasis and gives her a questioning look, forehead wrinkling in his trademark confusion. Laura suppresses a grin and guides him to the kitchen window overlooking the backyard.
Clint stares.
The garden is meticulously laid out with stakes and twine and more, seemingly everything that a home gardener could ask for. The frond-like leaves of young tomato plants wave beside the tentative sprouts of onions and stretching basil, the easily identified melons and squash are neatly quarantined in their own corner of the plot, and all of them are connected by a hose running over black mesh and bare ground.
“I told Natasha that I don’t garden,” Laura says by way of explanation. “She told me that was fine and all that I have to do is turn on the sprinkler once every afternoon. She’ll take care of it while she’s here.”
Her husband’s dumbstruck surprise is slowly turning to something else; something soft and amazed and aching. “Tasha never plans on going back to a place. She’s never had a home that would still be standing if she tried to return there. Even at HQ, even here, she never leaves anything that can’t be left behind.” Clint turns to her with a growing hope, a wealth of emotions running under his awe, and Laura nods. Pregnancy hormones have nothing to do with the tears welling up in her eyes.
“She’s going to come home,” she tells him, and the joy that’s too much for her own heart is matched only by his.
They spar in the yellowing grass, all lithe limbs and quick blows, ducking and weaving and flowing like poetry, like motion. Laura knows she’s being overly dramatic when those phrases come to mind, standing as she is and watching her two lovers work out in the backyard, but it’s hard not to be. They’ve clearly done this routine enough to be comfortable with it, with each other, and as lethal as some of the blows might be in real life they’re graceful and almost playful here.
Then Natasha taps Clint as she slides out of the way of his fist, her knuckles leaving the barest impression on his muscle shirt. She makes a comment lost in the moment, shaking her head and its long ponytail at him, to which he says something inaudible and tackles her. They go down in the grass in a tangle of legs and feet and hands, rolling in and out of grapples and holds with natural ease, and Laura finds she’s laughing along with them.
“All right, all right, break it up,” she calls when she eases her way down the steps, the bump of her belly now obscuring the sight of her feet. “Don’t make me take you both out.”
“Yes ma’am.” Clint dusts off his loose pants as he grins at her with the crooked, whole-hearted expression she loves so much. “You’re the boss.”
“Damn straight I am,” Laura agrees, tilting her head up for a kiss once she reaches him. He obliges her, one broad hand alighting on her stomach and their child growing there. Laura catches Natasha’s tiny smile out of the corner of her eye when they break apart and raises an eyebrow silently.
“There’s no one like you,” the other woman concurs and shifts to close the small distance between them. Her kiss is equally satisfied, her hand on Laura’s as gentle.
“I hope you appreciate what you have in me.”
“We try to,” her husband tells her as Natasha smirks, drawing her into a dance frame. They waltz in the backyard as Clint watches, moving to the music of the wind through the trees and the corn stalks; three dancers with ballroom steps made for two, three people who will soon number four.
Laura can’t wait for that dance.
v. 2005
As soon as it gets above 70 degrees Natasha brings little Cooper outside with her while she tends the garden, tugging on his floppy hat and slathering his chubby hands in sunscreen as he burbles nonsense words. Laura secretly accumulates a number of photos of the famed Black Widow on her hands and knees tending young plants while Cooper rocks happily in his carrier, accompanied over by an ever-vigilant Lucky.
“The fresh air is good for him,” is all Natasha says after the first time she steals him from his playpen to keep her company outside. Laura nods understandingly and doesn’t suggest she does it again; like a cat, there are some things Natasha doesn’t want to be invited to do. It becomes one of the favorite parts of her routine while Natasha is home with or without Clint: a much-needed nap, a fresh glass of sun tea, and the comfort of seeing her red-haired lover bonding with their child.
Cooper’s childhood will be one full of sunshine and growing things, of greens and blues and rich dark browns of healthy earth. Healing can be slow, in whatever form it takes, but Laura is learning this: it does come.
A stray black cat follows Natasha in one night, scruffy and skinny but still carrying herself with feline grace. Natasha dubs her Liho, meaning ‘an unlucky spirit’.
She stays.