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Natasha is on mile eight of ten when Clint comes in the gym. He nods as he passes by, and plugs his USB into the treadmill in front of hers. Natasha dials her screen opacity down so she can look through the gauzy scroll of her background reading and observe him as he warms up with a slow jog. He watches a sports highlight reel for five minutes, before stopping to stretch, flexing a little more than is strictly necessary, because he knows she’s probably looking. Natasha rolls her eyes, but doesn’t block him out. They are watchers of each other, a constant surveillance, checking against old benchmarks, noting new patterns. Clint straightens up with a gratuitous arching of his back, and Natasha turns her attention back to the Rolling Stone profile of Iron Man. She taps her speed higher, and her music shifts tempo to match, and she doesn’t look at Clint anymore.
Three teeth-grating pull quotes later she minimizes the ass-kissing masquerading as journalism and takes a break to push hard for a few minutes. Clint is plugging away in front of her, Mandarin flashcards on his screen, a fist-sized patch of sweat between his shoulder blades. Sometimes even Natasha is surprised by the things she takes comfort in, but this is undeniably one of them, how familiar she is with the way that dark band of sweat will reach down his back and unfurl out over his shoulders, until his whole shirt is sodden. Once, in Colombia, they were deprived of their vehicle and had to take off on foot, running single file through the hills, and Natasha had only Clint’s back to follow for three hours, an interplay of shadows, the shifting Rorschach pattern of sweat, and a thickening stream of blood that began just under his ear.
Add that to the many known patterns of Barton, cataloged along with his slow sniper breaths, his tendency to steal Coulson’s fries two at a time, and the way he always lines up his shoes to point north before going to sleep, when he’s not sleeping with them on.
A message pings in the corner of her display. As if summoned by her thoughts, Coulson wants a word. Three guesses says Stark is the reason. Natasha finishes the Rolling Stone piece while she cools down. She flicks Clint in the butt with her towel as she comes round to unplug her data drive. He twists hazardously for a moment, torso at odds with his feet, cheerfully spits some of his new Mandarin over his shoulder. There’s a dark yoke of sweat edging his collar in front too. “As is your mother,” Natasha informs him in Spanish, Colombia still fresh on her tongue and he grins as he looks forward again.
Coulson is waiting out in the hall between the gym and the showers, hands neatly folded in front of him. “We’re moving up insertion by three days,” he tells her without preamble. “You’ll go in as a notary and have to impress your way to the assistant job. I don’t want Stark thinking he needs to call in anyone off that interview list.”
Natasha wipes her face on her towel. “That won’t be a problem.”
“Do you have everything you need for Rushman?”
She smiles, with teeth. “Just a couple things more.”
Coulson nods. She’s trained him out of asking if she needs help, so he just looks at his watch and tells her she has thirty-six hours. “Make it work,” he says, and turns to go.
“You are not Tim Gunn,” she calls after him, already turning towards the locker room, already making her lists.
***
“Want to help me take dirty pictures?” The question is punctuated by the clanking noise of the bag Natasha dumps onto his desk next to his propped up feet.
“Actual request or rhetorical question?” Clint asks, without looking up. He marks one last answer while it’s still fresh in his head, and quickly flips the workbook closed before Natasha can mock his handwriting. Getting to his feet, he tugs the zipper open he finds a strange assortment of objects, none of which appear to be weapons. Not that that would really deter either of them, but usually when Natasha brings him a present it tends to be more obviously lethal. He picks up a cylindrical leather case and peeks inside. “Are these evidence cameras? Did you raid forensics?”
“A camera’s a camera, I brought a couple so you can pick.” Natasha shrugs. “So, dirty pictures?”
“Why?”
She pouts at him, and slips into accent. “When I offer to take my clothes off, the men, they do not ask me zees questions.”
“Usually, the men, they don’t know better,” Clint says, dropping the lens back inside, and tugging absently at a messily scribbled field report that’s half-trapped under the heavy bag. “I do. Supposedly. Also, busy.” The report eases free at first, then rips, leaving one corner crumpled underneath. “Whoops. I owed that to Coulson yesterday. Why do you need dirty pics?”
“Stark detail,” she responds crisply, accent dropped. “Fury pushed up my insertion. I’d like something distracting to turn up in the background check, keep him from thinking too hard about it.”
“I’m pretty sure Stark doesn’t know any other way to think,” Clint observes, tossing the report aside. “That man’s brain only has one setting. And don’t you already have some I-modeled-in-Europe shots?” He scratches at his head, scalp still slightly damp post-shower, and grins across the desk at her. “I seem to recall those as very distracting.”
Natasha rolls her eyes. “That was two broken noses ago. Plus I was blond.”
Clint’s grin deepens. He’d been a fan of that wig. She taps one shiny red nail on the lens case. He can see her other hand is still unpainted. “I just need you to snap a few, please?” She pouts again, but sweeter this time, younger. She’s still feeling her way towards her cover, towards a someone that Stark will find irresistible.
“I’m no photographer,” Clint reminds her, stalling openly now, even as he idly sifts through the different paraphernalia. “More used to telephoto lens, you know, might wind up making you look tiny and far away.”
“I’m kinda on a tight schedule Clint,” Tasha says, no more accent, no more playing. Really on a schedule then.
“Ok, I can take some shots.” He rummages in the bag a little more and unearths a camera without a terrifying amount of dials. “We doing this right here? Cause I have to say I’m feeling this space, and I think you on the desk—”
“No.”
“No? Lying across all my undone reports, maybe ripping a few files with your heels, I could send one to Coulson—”
“Please keep me out of your and Phil’s bizarre paperwork fetish.”
“You’re no fun. So where we going?”
“Interrogation.”
“Whoa, even kinkier than what I was thinking—“
“They have bright lights.” She zips the bag again, leaving him holding the camera, and is out of his office before he can blink.
He groans. She pops her head back in the doorway. “Also Google translate is really shit for Mandarin, so.” Then she’s gone again.
“You cannot see my monitor from there,” Clint hisses at the empty doorway. But he loops the camera strap around his neck and shoves his language workbook in a drawer, before he catches up with Natasha halfway down the hall.
“I didn’t see your monitor,” she says. “I just know you cheat.”
“It’s checking my answers, it’s not cheating.”
“Handwriting’s improved at least.”
“Oh shut up.”
They appropriate one of the smaller, more intimate interrogation cells, outfitted with a table and two chairs. Clint turns up the interior lights to their full sleep-depriving blindness and moves the furniture out of the way, while Natasha unpacks her bag. She takes out a white drop cloth and stands on a chair to pin it up, tacks sinking easily into the soft noise-canceling insulation. He suspects that it’s actually a sheet also appropriated from forensics, but it looks stain-free. Small mercies. Natasha would probably consider blotches of formaldehyde and bodily fluids to be artistic.
“Ok, how dirty is this actually?” Clint asks. “You doing glamour shots, you doing sexy, what?” He hops up onto the table that’s pushed back against the wall, let’s his legs swing as Nat examines the set up in satisfaction.
“Four close up, two full body,” she says, ordering instead of answering, and pulls her shirt over her head, steps out of her pants. Clint wolf whistles, an old habit in the face of that much skin and that little lace, but he’s also turning the camera on and sighting through the viewfinder.
“You got that get-up out of your dress up box didn’t you,” Clint says, snapping a few test shots and adjusting the aperture.
“Full body first,” Natasha says only, and steps to the middle of the space. He grins behind the camera.
“Someday I’ll get you to admit how many pairs of shoes you have,” he promises. She continues to ignore his commentary, staring stone-faced as he tries to determine the light reading. It’s a little scary, the lingerie combined with her interrogation gaze. He and Nat have seen plenty of each others' bodies, plus each others' weapons, passports, and dossiers, all of which are far more personal. The outfits though, remain a mystery. His SHIELD gear locker contains a jumbled assortment of arrows, sniper scopes, small coils of wire in different tensile strengths. His cover outfits range from a navy suit for daytime to black tux for night ops. Natasha’s locker contains just as many weapons as his (okay, more) but her covers also call for more variety of outfits and he’s never determined where she hides the clothes.
“Rumor has it that the Widow has special Kevlar reinforced corset, and a garter set that can hold seven knives,” he informs her, as he tries a dial of unknown function. She finally cracks at that one and sticks her tongue out at him, just as he presses the button again. He laughs at the result.
“Yeah, I think this’ll work. Take your mark.” He doesn’t bother settling up a tripod, just assumes a sniper’s stance and waits a moment for his hands to settle into stillness with a heavier object than they’re used to. Natasha crosses her legs and cocks one hip, buries the hand without nail polish in her curls, props the other on her bare waist. She looks like some punk Botticelli Venus, defiant where the seashell one was demure. “Christ,” Clint murmurs, making sure to depress the button in time with his exhale.
“Rumor would be sorely disappointed by my actual mission-wear,” Natasha says finally, once he’s taken a few shots.
“I’d disagree.” He makes a twirling motion with one finger. She swivels around and smolders over her shoulder.
“Nice, perfect. And I was a big fan of that green halter number, in Bangkok.”
“It’s mostly cheap dresses that Logistics buys in bulk.”
He leans out from behind the camera to frown at her. “And poof. The magic, gone. Way to not retain an air of mystery, Nat.”
“I am to please,” she says, deadpan. “Are we done with full?”
“Hang on, pissed is a good look on you.” He takes two more, then beckons her over. “See what you think,”
She flicks through them on the tiny display while he studies her. “Fine,” she says, and hands the camera back.
He puts it down on the table and points to her shoulder. “That’s not gonna fly in close-up though.”
She cranes her head and tries to glare at the too-pink remnant of a recent scar near the base of her neck, then prods the spot with her fingers. “Ah,” she says. “Bangkok.” She crosses over to the bag again, and returns with a little bottle she gives to him as she stands between his knees. The makeup is cold and slippery on his fingers, and he tries to be light about dabbing it on, blending with the callus-less side of his thumb.
“Speaking of those ever helpful minions in Mission Support, you could just have them photoshop your head onto someone else,” he says casually.
Natasha makes a noncommittal mmmm sound. He feels it vibrate in her throat as he blends the near edge. Clint knows despite the asking. You don’t have others do what you can do yourself. It’s the way, it’s the code, it’s the reason they’re (still) here. The secret of living this long is self-reliance. Natasha once told him she prefers to throw knives she’s sharpened herself, because sharpening is how you learn a knife. Clint rarely feels the need to be that poetic, but the sentiment’s the same. He’s gutted fish, fletched arrows, and once, memorably, baked a file inside a cake, rather than let someone else handle it. Coulson calls it micromanaging, but Clint knows for a fact that Phil hand-launders his ties, has a nightly gun-cleaning ritual that can only be described as fetishistic, and has never set his subordinates a test that he hasn’t passed himself first.
He nudges Natasha back a step, searching for other trouble spots. There’s a smudge of bruise under one arm that he swipes concealer over, and a scratch on her rib cage that seems faint enough to be erased by distance and direct light. Natasha doesn’t have too many obvious scars, though they’re all there, under the skin. There are ways to erase the body’s memory, just as there are for the brain, but the body’s memory is longer and the ways more imperfect. If he ran a hand over her skin he would feel the braille story of the scars that have been encouraged to blend into the surface, but refuse to fade away entirely. In certain low-angled light they spring into relief, a shadowy web thrown over her limbs. There are reasons Natasha’s suit has long sleeves, and they’re not entirely about making the pale flash of her cleavage all the more striking.
He caps the bottle. “Think you’re all set.”
“Thanks.”
“Got a mirror? Wanna check my work?”
She shakes her head. “Let’s finish.”
The second rule of staying alive is sometimes letting those you trust do things you could also do yourself. It’s practice for future times when you might not have a choice in the matter. It’s not the first time he’s applied makeup over a fresh wound. Natasha has fletched her share of arrows.
She sits on a chair now and he takes pictures from the waist up, and then closer, her chin in her hand. The concealer and the spotlights do their job. She looks smooth-skinned and poreless.
“You want to do some lying down?” he suggests and she agrees, rummaging in the bag for props. She pulls out a wad of fur that looks vaguely familiar, even more so when she shakes it out and it resolves into some kind of ritzy shoulder wrap. “Didn’t I bleed on that once?” Clint asks.
“Only a little,” she says, showing him the brown stain on the underside silk lining. The memory coheres in his head and he winces. “It’ll be fine for laying on the floor,” she continues.
“And people say you’re not sentimental,” Clint says dryly, crouching on the floor to stay level. She reclines on her elbows, eyes luminous, mouth pouting. “Okay, holllld,” he says, sighting. “Three more and we’re done. Two. One.”
She puts on the accent again. “And now I become rich and famous dancer yes?”
“Da,” Clint agrees. It’s a joke because her Russian accent is as fake as any Bond villain’s. Tasha has only ever spoken English flawlessly. “Alright, you’re done, you’re a star.”
Nat laughs, and goes to put her pants back on. He sits on the table and watches her de-glam. “How you feeling on the Stark front?” he asks, resting the camera on his shoulder out of habit. It’s heavier than the bow, but it still feels right.
She shrugs one shoulder, and pulls her shirt over her head. “Iron Man is still a man. I think we’ll do fine.” Clint nods, considering. She raises an eyebrow. “Something to share with the class, Clint?”
He waits a moment longer before speaking, tapping one finger on the camera. “Yeah okay, you’re gonna be sexy, that’s fine, it’s the default setting. But you should show the danger side too you know? Stark, he’s an adrenaline guy, he loves fast red things that could kill him. He’s got the suit, he had his cars before that, and he has that scary right hand woman. He’ll like you even more if you’re dangerous.” Natasha laughs in approval. “It’s really Potts you need to get by,” Clint continues. “She’s way sharper than Stark. You’re gonna have to earn her respect.”
“How?” She draws closer, arms crossed.
He thinks back to his few vivid memories of Pepper Potts, terrified and soot-smudged. Clint ran backup on Coulson when he went to SI that night, then stood by with the rest of the agents as they watched Stark and Stane go at it in the street and the stratosphere. First time in a long while he’d felt useless in a fight, but for sure not the last. Battles these days are getting bigger and bigger and Clint’s not sure how long he and his bow will be able to keep up. He studies Nat and wonders if infinite adaptability is something she can teach him like she taught him her favorite chokehold.
She nudges his knee with her own. “Clint.”
“Right. Sorry.” He conjures Pepper again, soot-streaked and dignified, terrified and tall. “The highest heels you got in your secret shoe closet. Strap those on. That woman knows a cost-benefit of pain versus physical intimidation for sure.”
Nat smiles. She’ll like them, he knows. They’ll become a fearsome little trio of crazy flame-colored super-powered people who’ll accidentally take over the world, and then where will Clint be?
“Please don’t take over the world,” Clint blurts, before he says something even more incriminating.”
Nat laughs at that, her mouth wide and curved. He finds he doesn’t mind so much, the knowledge that she’s laughing at him. He takes the picture with the camera still propped on his shoulder, the same way that he shoots behind his back, because what’s in his hands is an extension of his arm, his self, and he knows where the lens is pointed as sure as he’d know where his own finger was pointing in a dark room.
Nat chuckles once more, over the sound of the shutter clicking, “No promises.”
Clint sees her off the next day, prim in wide-legged trousers that conceal some truly impressive heels. He doesn’t say goodbye because that’s not something they say, not to each other, but he watches as she gets in the chopper, smoothing her curls, already in character as Rushman.
“Heard you and Widow had a photo shoot,” Coulson says next to him on the flight deck, as the chopper dwindles to a speck in the sky.
“Sorry Phil, I don’t do nudes, no matter how tasteful they are,” Clint says, much louder than necessary, so the air traffic gnomes can hear him and laugh at their superior’s expense.
***
“All in all, considering the megalomaniacs we were dealing with, and I do mean that on both sides, we probably came out with minimal damage.” Fury glares around the room. “Next time, do better. I want to be able to stop these people before there’s any damage, but I’ll grant you the Starks have always been a magnet.”
Coulson starts a quick run-down of prelim stats on the casualties. The post-expo briefing is drawing to a close, and Natasha aches. She’s sufferd worse, sure, but it’s not battle weariness, just exhaustion. Her arches are punishing her for spending so much time in Potts-impressing, assistant-drag, and idiots like Hammer tend to give her tension headaches.
Bad guys with accents from the motherland, she could also do without, but those don’t make her hurt so much as they make her feel very very old. It already feels like a long time ago that she and Clint joked over the same thing.
She wishes Clint was in this meeting. It’s not his mission, but he was right - about Stark, about his death wish - even though he wasn’t read into the details of her mission, didn’t know about the poisoning. She wants to know what else he was right about. One of his most reliable patterns, after all, is seeing the ones that she doesn’t.
His first act of their partnership, after all, was seeing her.
“Get some rest everyone,” Fury says, almost lost in the shuffle of papers.
Natasha shifts her hands, letting the manacles of the Widow’s Bite clank on the glass tabletop. It’s a harsh sound, metallic and cold, and it reverberates through the room. She’s taken advantage ever since Clint told her about ring-knockers, the West Point grads that tap their class rings on conference tables to get attention in meetings, to remind everyone of their status.
Fury looks up. “Something to add Romanoff?” Fury doesn’t need a ring. His eye patch does the job just fine. And anyway SHIELD isn’t built off prestigious alma maters. SHIELD is built of cast offs and wretches. SHIELD is built off the back of a once-scrawny kid from Brooklyn. And a woman who didn't know when to back off, come to think of it.
“I stand by my assessment of Stark,” Natasha says carefully. “He’s everything I said, possibly even worse now he’s dragged the colonel into things, but I still feel there’s a place for him here.” She pauses. “Some of our top people could be accused of insanity and narcissism, and sometimes they’re better agents for it.”
Fury nods. She knows the shortlist for his pet project is a whole roster of insane cast offs, once-scrawny boys, and once-carnie bowmen, and one old woman from a Russia that no longer exists. “Noted, Agent Romanoff. Dismissed.”
Natasha goes down to her gear room, places the pieces of Bite back in their case, unzips her suit and strips off the top half, tying the sleeves around her waist. Reaching up to grab her shampoo off the shelf she dislodges something small and flat. It flutters to her feet, and as she stoops to retrieve it she feels even older. Someday soon she’s going to go talk to Rogers about what it’s like being from a Brooklyn that no longer exists. One hand braced on her back, she flips the card over and it’s a photograph of her, close-range, laughing and shot from below. Her eyes are closed, mouth open, her collarbones and an old scar under her chin thrown into rare sharp relief.
“Knock knock,” Clint says in the speaker.
“Open,” she tells the door, and he sticks his head in.
“Heard you were back.” His shirt is sweaty a hand length down his chest, which means he paused his workout two-thirds done when he heard the news.
She wiggles the photo between her fingers. “Do I have to worry about the rest of these showing up anywhere? Mess hall? Testing range? Coulson’s screensaver?”
“I was going to say of course not, but that last one might be too good to pass up,” he admits. “But no, that’s just for you. Online records already got deleted in the post-op purge, much to my dismay.”
“How sad for you.”
“Enh, I have the real thing.” He grins at her. “And maybe I kept a copy.”
“Creep.”
“I’m gonna hang it inside my locker and draw a heart around it, shot through with an arrow.”
She flips him off, out of habit.
“How was the Grand Prix?”
“Jealous?” she smirks. “The expo was better.”
“I heard. All kinds of fireworks. You’ve been busy.”
“May we live in interesting times, et cetera. I need to shower, but you wanna get food, after? I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Actually I’m heading out with Coulson anyway. Wheels up in an hour, and I need to dust off my desert gear before then.”
“Fun times with Phil.”
“Party never stops.”
He turns to go, because they don’t say goodbye to each other, never do. Except.
“There’s a bigger fight coming, isn’t there,” she says. It’s not goodbye, so it doesn’t count. It’s not even really a question, just a pattern they’ve both seen growing.
He turns back, and shrugs, leans against the doorway. “Wondering where you’re going to fit, Widow?”
Natasha nods shortly. The Grand Prix had been an exercise in unfamiliarity, standing at the sidelines of a fight too big for her to join.
“We’ll keep on keeping on, Nat,” he says, like it’s an easy thing to do, like they’re both here just cause they didn’t screw up too bad, and not because they’ve worked and bled the hardest.
“Stark may be crazy,” Natasha says slowly. “But he’s also working on a different scale. He upgraded ahead of the game, but everyone else is catching up.”
“Maybe we’ll find something in New Mexico that puts us back on top, huh?” He holds up his fingers in a camera shape to frame her face, and crooks one finger over an imaginary button. Taking a mental picture. Cute. She scowls at him while he grins and leaves.
She looks back at the picture still in her hands. Clint sees a superhero when he looks at her, and just another trick-shot when he looks at himself, even though living to old age is the only trick she’s really mastered. But Clint believes in her. Maybe that’ll have to be enough. She puts the photo back on the shelf, goes to take a shower, goes to see what happens next.