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They found a flat in Argentina.
It was Argentina because if you wanted to run or hide or get away from any past life or crime, you went to Argentina. They both spoke Spanish, though Clint’s was European and Natasha’s was Mexican. Beunos Aires had been too obvious so they went to Bahia Blanca silent and in shock.
They were supposed to have been in Bolivia, working on opposing teams as per usual. Bolivia was close enough to Bahia Blanca that it didn’t leave any obvious rates out for SHIELD or the Russia to follow but far enough that they wouldn’t be easily found. They swapped identities; Clint became Russian and Natasha became American. They swapped linguistic names on paper and in public, too. Kristoff and Natalie.
They barely spoke on the way there. They barely spoke when they arrived, scared to speak and give their voices away, scared to speak and break their dream, their illusion, wide open with noise.
The flat had been lived in before them. Some old woman, dead of a heart attack, found on the floor of her kitchen after three weeks. Apparently people had been put off buying it because they were creeped out by the thought of a rotting corpse and a potential ghost, so the price got dropped and in swooped newly-engaged Kristoff and Natalie, who between them could scrape together enough without having to rob anyone and were not at all fazed by the thought of a dead body having been in their flat.
They just hoped their’s wouldn’t be the next.
It was empty, some old carpets and some tacky lino. The walls were all sunshine yellow with white borders at the top and the bottom and they were both convinced there was a ketchup stain on the ceiling in the kitchen.
They slept on top of cloths on the floor at opposite ends of the living room. Clint would face the wall and Natasha would curl up and stare at the ceiling. They ate, three times a day, out of tins they’d put in a kitchen cupboard. The food was the only thing they’d dared unpack. They were tired and thing and dirty. Getting the water reconnected would require leaving the flat, using the payphone in the lobby to ring the waterboard and hoping that their fake accents were strong enough.
Halfway through the third night, Natasha summoned up all the courage she'd ever had and tentatively reached a hand out from under the blue duffel coat she was using as a duvet. She tapped her fingers on the carpet, gentle thuds the loudest thing she’d hear in days apart from her own breathing.
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Clint rolled over and looked at her warily. “Are you sure?” his voice cracked from lack of use.
“Your coat is nicer than mine.”
They both knew that wasn’t true but neither of them said anything as Natasha got up, walked over to Clint and lay down next to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
They slept.
-
They woke up at the same time; when the sun was spiking through the gaps in the only blind that had been left behind.
“Are we engaged for real or are we just fake engaged?” Clint whispered.
“I thought it was Kristoff and Natalie who were engaged.” Natasha whispered back. “Why?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Do you want to be engaged for real?” Natasha knew the answer. She knew Clint wouldn’t have double checked if he hadn’t been dreading an answer.
“Yeah.” his voice was small and soft. Feathers were small and soft, feathers could easily be blown away in the wind and forgotten about. Except sometimes they stuck to wood or rock or cobwebs and got snagged sometimes they blew right into people’s faces.
“Do you want to be engaged to me?”
“Yeah.” Clint wriggled out of Natasha’s arms, turned to gaze her and tugged off the cord necklace with a charm of a triangle she’d seen him wear occasionally. He put his wrist through it, wrapped it around once to create a secondary lop and reached his fingers out to Natasha’s, so that if she held his hand, her wrist would be in the other loop. “Do you want to bee engaged to me?”
“Yeah.” Natasha took his hand. They were quiet for a long time. They’d done about as much talking as they could manage. “I’d also like to have a shower. And a rocking chair.”
Clint nodded.
-
Once the sun had fully risen, Natasha went to the phone to ring about water while Clint amalgamated their clothes to make a nest in the middle of the room. The water man met Natasha outside the block of flats, a middle aged man with no crucifix who talked about an escaped donkey that had caused havoc outside his house the night before all the way up the stairs to the flat.
“You’ve got nothing!” he exclaimed loudly when Clint opened the door.
“We only moved in yesterday night.” Clint lied. “Out furniture hasn’t arrived from America yet.”
The water was set up and the man left without killing them or holding them at gunpoint while he rang in reinforcements.
“I think he was safe.” Natasha whispered after six hours. They were sat on the bathroom floor, staring at the shower and watching for signs of poison or a bomb.
Clint turned the shower on with a pair of jeans wrapped around his hand. “The water’s water.”
They stood under the shower head and washed each other with water. They stood as close to each other as they could get without making the other slip. Natasha tipped her head back and gulped down water.
“Does it taste weird?”
“Yeah.”
Clint copied her. “We’ll get sued to it.”
Natasha nodded. She kissed him for the first time in weeks. “We’ll get used to all of it.”
“I want to get a blender.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never had a blender before.”
“We can get a blender.”
Clint rested their foreheads together. “I’ve never had a home before.”
“Neither have I.” Natasha gripped his hand tightly. “We can have one of them too.”