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Clint Barton swirls the glass of amber liquid in his hand and watches the drink coat the sides of its container, he has been doing this on and off for the last hour. He knows better than to drink bourbon fast. Particularly when it is bourbon which has been bought for show and not for enjoyment. He presses himself back into the high, wooden back of the booth and pretends that he is comfortable. Though Clint is never quite comfortable outside the walls of his apartment. He watches his partner move across the room.
He thinks, distantly, that Natasha Romanov was born agile. Her body weaves through chairs and tables carrying a glass of wine (not something she would drink personally, he observes) back to the table they are sharing. When she places it on the table with a soft clink his eyes dart up to meet hers and he can tell that she is playing a role. Really, they both should be, but Clint isn’t as good at this game as she is, Natasha has lived false lives for months on end and Clint is never quite able to shed his reality the same way. It’s why he allows her to do the talking when they are both caught off guard, it gives him a chance to find the man he’s pretending to be.
She flashes him a look, and his lips quirk upwards in a wry smile. Natasha and he don’t need words to communicate anymore. She knows by the shape of his body, pressed into his seat and the way his left hand keeps rubbing at his left ear that he’s uncomfortable. When she sits, she does so carefully but her skirt still rides up and Clint pretends her doesn’t notice how pale her thighs are compared to the black, faux leather.
“You okay, Miller?” She asks, she’s using the name he’s currently under and he appreciates it. Her foot touches his calf under the table, and he smiles at her slowly. More genuine this time.
“Better than ever, Pamela.” He shoots back, lifting his glass to sip at it slowly. They have been in this bar for an hour waiting out a mark, but he knows he wouldn’t want to spend it with anyone but her even if it was just a casual-drinks-between-friends-who-aren’t-really-friends-but-aren’t-really-dating kind of scenario. Though he is acutely aware of the fact that he hasn’t been seeing other people. He doesn’t have the interest or the time, what he does have is spent with Natasha or with Kate Bishop who stole his name and his gear and demanded he teach her how to shoot a bow. Clint’s never been one to say no to a kid with that type of guts. Plus, he has a dog to look after, who is dependent on Clint for walks and scratches and scraps of food he doesn’t need.
Natasha lifts her own glass to her lips and takes a very small sip, he is lost as he watches her closely. Her eyes are scanning the whole room, and each person individually. When he had first met her, everything about her had been gaunt and angry. She was a little softer now, healthy. She does not look like a ghost with a shock of red hair, instead, Natasha looks very much… alive. When her eyes turn to meet his, he nods. She nods back.
If Clint had been a more honest man, he would say he doesn’t think their mark is coming here tonight. The intel they’d received had been improbable at best but sometimes it was the unexpected information that gave you the biggest rewards. And their investigation had gone cold so any titbit, any morsel was significant enough to at least be checked out. If Clint had been a more honest man, he would point out that most of that was an excuse to spend even a moment of quiet time with Tasha.
It is that exact moment that a man across the room pulls out a gun and Clint’s moment of peace is shattered.
Just another day on the job.
-
In a hotel, in a different city, he is running a comb through his wet hair. If he doesn’t brush it down, it sticks up everywhere and that is not a trait that Jeremy Waterson has. Perhaps something that Clint would do out of laziness but not a business owner, not a business owner who definitely combs his hair every day, at least twice and especially before bed. Not someone who has scraped their whole life to be respected, who has a fiercely intelligent wife and a successful company. He eyes the man in the mirror and sees only himself for now.
Natasha opens the door to the bathroom; she is dressed in loose fitting clothes that are comfortable enough to sleep in but practical enough that if she was jumped in the night she could escape with some degree of comfort. Clint is dressed similarly. He feels her eyes on his back, they meet in the reflection of the mirror and he smiles at her lazily. Natasha smiles back at him. He feels a warm pool of something in his stomach but decides perhaps it is best to ignore that jolt of affection.
“You look tired.” She comments suddenly and Clint rolls his shoulders in a shrug.
“’M always tired,” He answers, “You should sleep first.”
Natasha rolls her eyes and pads towards the bed, neither of them really sleep anymore but he often feels he should give her the courtesy of sleeping first. She pauses as she slowly pulls back the sheets, she is waiting expectantly when he turns around to face her properly.
“What?”
“Get into bed.” She states blankly and he rolls his eyes, as he slowly walks around the other side of the bed and crawls in with her. Natasha is the one who reaches to flick out the bedside lamp, which had been the only light in the room.
They lie back-to-back, he can feel how warm she is, and he feels a little easier for knowing that she’s there. They both know that they are supposed to take turns watching but they don’t say anything when they both fall asleep.
He wakes with an arm around his waist. He can feel her breath on the back of his neck, and it makes him shiver slightly. He pretends to be asleep until she wakes up and crawls away from him across the room to go into the bathroom.
When she re-enters the bedroom he is sitting up, they share two cups of shitty hotel coffee before Natasha suggests that they should go and source breakfast. Clint tries to pretend that he didn’t enjoy being so close to her and pushes the thought to the back of his mind, it’s easier to pretend than to think.
-
The first time they’d kissed had been in Paris, he pushed it to the back of his mind and they’d both acted like it had been entirely for cover. They both felt it though, the spark. At least he liked to believe they had. They were often posed as a married couple, so kissing had become part of their routine.
Foreheads, cheeks, the corners of lips, occasional pecks. It had never been more intense in public unless it needed to be because this was a job and Natasha was his partner and they had both been through so much. Clint knew he shouldn’t bring feelings into things; Bobbi had left because he’d fucked it all up before. Natasha was different though. Everything about her was different. She brought out parts of him he didn’t know existed.
It terrified him.
-
Natasha met his family purely out of necessity. They needed somewhere to crash badly, so he’d called his sister-in-law and Laura had been waiting outside the house with towels and a patient kind of smile. He had often wondered how Barney had convinced Laura that marrying him was a good idea.
The moment they step into the house Clint knows the kids are still up, he can feel the vibration of tiny footsteps just as he is tackled by Lila. Natasha’s body language is tense, it always is around kids, but Clint doesn’t ask questions. His niece and nephew talk his ear off for fifteen minutes before their mother gets them back into bed. Both he and Natasha are handed clothes and fed and gently ushered off upstairs. The spare guest room is pleasant, if a little plain and not at all lived in. This is his room when he comes here and he supposes, for now, it is Natasha’s too. She is curled in on herself and Clint knows something is wrong.
“You gonna tell me what’s up?” He asks softly, a hand finding its way to her shoulder.
“Do I have to?” Her voice is strained, Clint doesn’t want to press much harder, so he pulls her in close.
“No, no you don’t,” He says finally.
That night she cries on him about things he never thought she would tell him. Natasha wails that she is broken, that she is weak, that she is everything she isn’t, and Clint’s arms keep her steady until she can calm down enough to breath properly instead of gasping for air. Natasha has been drowning under this for so long. So, he lets her cry on him for as long as she needs.
In the morning, Natasha plays with the kids and helps them torment him.
He has never been happier to allow it.
-
They are in his apartment and she is curled up in his armchair, Lucky is lying at her feet like the good dog he is, and Clint can’t help but smile a little. She looks relaxed, at ease, he can tell from the slope of her shoulders because her face is obscured by a novel. He’s not sure what she’s reading but he drops himself down on the couch and proceeds to remove one of his hearing aids. He doesn’t need both in when he’s in the apartment and his left ear is his bad one. The hearing aid helps but it certainly has never solved the problem. Natasha knows well enough that it’s better to stay on his right side anyway.
If he’s honest these are the moments he lives for. These quiet seconds of domesticity that he gets when he has breaks between assignments. They both enjoy it, he thinks. He likes having her around too, he’s not sure where she stays when she isn’t here, but he would rather she just came here all the time. Come to think of it she’s been here almost everyday since they got home.
And she’d been here everyday before they’d left. When he looks around, he can see pieces of her in places he’d never quite expected to see them. A jacket on a hook, her books stacked in a magazine rack, some of her equipment sits next to his. He gets the distinct feeling that she is slowly moving in and, given that he owns the entire building, Clint doesn’t care at all. He hums with a pleasant sense of satisfaction and leans back in his seat. He has a new season of “Deadliest Housewives” to catch up on.
-
“You’re an idiot.” She says, loudly one night from her place on the right side of his bed and Clint finds himself snapping his head up to look at her. They are both propped up on pillows, reading. They look, he thinks, distinctly like those old married couples in sitcoms. Natasha would kill him for even entertaining that notion.
“The fuck does that mean?”
“It means what you think it means.” Natasha answers, the whole conversation is cryptic and Clint wonders if she’s going to chew him out for something he’s done recently. Clint takes a quick mental flick through of his mind’s “Gallery of Fuck Ups”, there are more than he’d like to admit to. He stays quiet and she scoffs loudly.
“What?” He asks, suddenly defensive.
“Sometimes,” She begins quietly, “I wonder why you picked me up, why you… stopped them from doing whatever they wanted with me. You could have washed your hands of the trouble-,”
“I wouldn’t wash my hands of you for the world-,” He interjects suddenly, earning a glare.
“Let me finish.” She snips, before breathing in and pinching the bridge of her nose, “Sometimes I just don’t know why you stay so close to me. You pretty much just let me move in.”
He can suddenly feel all the blood in his body rushing around in his ears, Clint swallows and watches her. There is an earnest fear in her voice that he’s never heard before, her eyes are so wide, and she looks so damn pretty. Clint swallows, hands shaking as he reaches out to grab her hand.
“You know why?”
“No, I don’t, that’s why I asked-,” He kisses her before she can finish and is relieved when he feels her sink into him. They cling to each other, pressing hard against the other in a hope to meld their bodies into one.
In the morning she’s not in bed and he panics, before he forces in a hearing aid. He can hear her in the kitchen. The radio is on, she’s talking to the dog and the sunlight streams through his shitty blinds.
Clint Barton stares up at the ceiling and smiles.
He does not feel unsteady anymore.