Chapter Text
It had been a hard month in my fugitive apprehension world. A hard few months, if I was really being honest. Skips had been few and far between, and those who I did have to pick up were getting the slip on me using both conventional and unconventional means.
I was frustrated, I was broke, and rent was due in less than a week.
And maybe when I came up with the plan for this apprehension, I was under the influence of one too many kids' movies. What? I had to stay in the know so I could look like a cool aunt to my nieces. Plus, Lula had gotten to me. She was obsessed with "going viral." She was convinced that she could record the whole takedown, and we'd be famous. I wasn't sure I wanted to be famous, but I was certain that I didn't want to listen for one more minute to Lula complaining about me crushing her dreams.
It was almost midnight, and it was cold as fuck outside. Still I waited in my hiding spot, ready to catch my skip when he was, hopefully, too stunned to put up a fight. I had everything set up just so and was expecting my FTA to arrive home shortly.
Naturally I was hiding in the bushes right next to the walkway.
Maybe one day I would look back at the moment my life changed with some measure of pride that my trap had worked.
Kind of.
It was dark, but I saw the form of a man in about the right shape and build come up the driveway. Only instead of hitting my trip wire, he stopped and bent down to study it.
I let out a near-silent hiss of disappointment when I saw the man reach into his pocket and pull out of a pair of wire cutters. WHO kept wire cutters in their pocket? I mean, really? How was this my luck?
I barely had time to begin to prepare myself to chase after him when he inevitably ran away before he apparently heard me and jolted in surprise. His head snapped to the side, and his eyes zeroed in on the bush that I was hiding in. Unfortunately for him, as he made that move, his hand shifted just enough that he triggered the trip wire after all.
His eyes shifted down, and I heard a soft, "oh shiiii" that was cut off by the crack of a bunch of sparklers setting off.
The man let out a "what the-" in surprise that ended in a whoosh of air leaving his lungs when he side-stepped onto the small patch of black ice I had created on the opposite side of the walkway. His feet went out from under him fast, but he still might have stuck the landing if not for the net gun I fired at him just before he hit the ground.
"Wooooohooo!" I yelled, jumping up with my arms in a V of victory. "Did you see that, Lula?! It worked! … Lula?"
When I didn't hear a response from Lula, I turned to her hiding spot along the side of the house only to see a big bulky man behind her, one hand keeping her in a headlock with his other hand engulfing her mouth to keep her quiet. I saw the terrified look on her face and started to reach for my gun when two things happened simultaneously- the entire yard lit up like it was daytime with spotlights coming from every direction including above AND a deadly sounding female voice came from behind me saying, "don't even think about it." Her statement was, of course, accompanied by the obligatory press of something cool and metal to the back of my skull.
Honestly, a normal person probably would have started screaming or crying at that moment, but it wasn't my first time having a gun leveled at my head.
Hell. It wasn't even my second.
Plus, when my eyes flicked back over to Lula, I noticed that the man holding her was wearing a distinctive uniform.
Eyes now firmly fixed over Lula's shoulder at freaking Captain America, I calmly called out, "what on earth to the Avengers want with a simple indecent exposure FTA. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't want to have to see anyone's parts on my drive down the street either, but this is Trenton. It's filled with perverts anyway. Take a different pervert- Barty George is mine, and I need the money from this capture!"
"He's not a pervert," the woman behind me said calmly. "And his name isn't Barty George, it is Georges Batroc. He's a mercenary that SHIELD had in custody before it fell, and he's been on the run since. We have questions for him."
In the distance, I could almost hear the sound of voices, faint enough I realized they must be coming from a comms unit in the woman's ear. In a flash the gun at my head was gone, and the woman's hand was over my mouth, silencing me as she pulled me backward.
"Move, Barton!" she barked out, hardly sounding like she was exerting herself at all despite being about the same size as me and the fact that I was putting up as much of a fight as I possibly could. The lights went out at the same time as she threw me into the back of a van that was parked across the street.
"What the fuck did I ever do to you?!" I yelled. My tone had started out indignant, but I trailed off and stopped moving to stand up when the woman quickly glanced at me before checking the computer screens on one side of the van. Because HOLY SHIT that was the Black Widow. No wonder I hadn't been able to break free from her. The basic self-defense classes I had finally broken down and taken were meant to help me protect myself against your garden variety thug, not the best assassin in the world.
"I did you a favor," she said in an almost sing-song voice. Then she looked at me with dead eyes and said, "and you took out my partner" before going back to typing away on a keyboard that was in front of her.
No sooner had she finished speaking than I felt the breeze of the van door opening again, and a large mass crawled in with a groan. A man flung himself dramatically onto the ground next to me.
That was the moment that I realized he had a bow and arrow strapped to his back, which meant that he was Hawkeye but also that he must have landed on those which had to have added insult to injury.
"Did you hurt anything?" I asked him cautiously.
There was a moment's pause in which I noticed that Black Widow had stopped typing. I looked over at her and saw her going completely still for a beat.
"Everything, I think," the man finally said when the silence had gone on long enough that I thought he might not answer.
My breath left me with a soft, "oooohhhh."
I was still laying on the floor of the van because I had been too scared to move from where the Black Widow had put me, so I slowly rolled to my side and looked at the man with wide eyes.
"Do you mind if I…" he trailed off, grin slowly moving onto his face as he too rolled onto his side so that he was facing me.
I couldn't figure out what he meant until he reached down and pulled up the front of his shirt a little.
Holy six pack, Batman.
I took a moment to shake the sudden lust out of my brain long enough to let my eyes fully scan the revealed skin. There on the left side of his abdomen, written in handwriting I recognized as my own, were the words "Did you hurt anything?"
I let out a short bark of joyful laughter as I pulled up my shirt to show a matching set of words in what I assumed was his writing on the right side of my own stomach.
"Oooohhhh," I said again, dumbfounded by the turn of events.
My eyes met his and held as his hand reached up and pushed a piece of hair behind my ear. As his hand slid further around to the back of my neck, I murmured, "I'm Stephanie."
"Clint," he responded simply, pausing with a question in his eyes as he said, "I'm glad to finally mee-"
I slammed my mouth into his and felt his grip tighten on me, pulling me more firmly into him. After a couple seconds he pulled again until I was right on top of him and he now had both arms free. His left hand slid down my body until his palm was flush against my mark, and I let out a hiss at the tingling sensation that spread out from that spot. His right hand moved up and buried itself in my hair.
We carried on for a few minutes with a kiss that shifted from relieved joy at finding one another to a deep hunger I was dimly aware had to do with our soulmate connection forming.
I jolted in surprise when there was a sudden, very loud thunk on the side of the van. I ripped my mouth away from Clint's and looked up to find a wall of the van bashed in.
"What the fuck?" I asked at the same time Clint pulled me down and rolled me to the other side of the van with him covering me protectively. The move was followed almost immediately by a higher pitched metallic clank, and I gasped as I saw what was definitely part of Captain America's shield poking through the now smashed in side panel.
I felt Clint push slightly into me from above, and looked back up and over his shoulder to see Black Widow climbing back to her feet off of Clint's back, clearly amused but trying to look unimpressed. Clint had bumped into her and knocked her feet out from under her so she landed on top of us. I caught the slight twitch of her lips into an almost smile, which caused me to break into a fit of the giggles.
The twitch turned into a wide grin as she gave her back to us, either trying to give us some privacy or getting back to her job. Clint, on the other hand, had gone still and was looking at me with sheer wonder written on his face. After a couple seconds, he gracefully pulled himself to his feet and then helped me to mine.
"Hi," I said, admittedly sounding a bit breathless.
"Hi," he said with that huge smile firmly fixed in place.
Over his shoulder, I could see through the window next to the bank of computers two people… fighting. If you could call it that.
My jaw dropped because they were moving so fast while also flipping and jumping through the air and at each other.
"Kickboxing," Clint said helpfully.
"People actually kickbox to fight?" I asked. "It's not just something gyms throw together into a workout class?"
"People actually do," he simply agreed.
"I… cannot do that," I mumbled. "That would have really hurt if I had tried to capture him."
"He probably would have just knocked you out and run away," the Black Widow commented blandly. "He and Cap have a bit of a history, and he knows if Cap is here, we all are. And that means he knows he's trapped."
"Why aren't you helping him?" I asked, eyes flicking between the two Avengers in the van with me.
Black Widow sighed and pushed a button, causing a row of seats to pop up into the middle of the ground from the floor. She sat herself in one, and Clint slid a hand into mine then took the far one so he could turn and face her but pulled me into his lap with him.
"Cap needs to blow off some steam," she told me. Then she reached her hand forward to shake mine and said, "Nat."
I immediately reached forward and took her hand, which I thought might have surprised her, and said, "Stephanie Plum. You can both call me Steph." I watched her for a moment then darted my gaze back out the window before looking back at her. "Can you do that?"
Her smile was immediate that time and she said, "I don't need to. I can work around that." I hummed in acknowledgment, mulling the comment over but not wanting to be annoying with questions. She watched me carefully then leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially to me, "would you like me to teach you?"
"Yes!" I practically shouted, eager to accept her offer. Then I hesitated, "I'm in… really bad shape though. I really hate running."
Clint mumbled something that sounded a little like, "felt just fine to me" before he said louder and more clearly, "too late now. Tasha'll have you working out and liking it by the end of the week, and you'll wonder how it even happened."
"Maybe not by the end of the week," Nat protested, smirking. "I have a feeling you two might be a little busy."
The hand that Clint had placed on my hip to hold me in his lap clenched a little then slid over instinctively to cover my mark.
"Yeah," I agreed. Not caring at all that I sounded breathless that time.