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If Natasha is a fox, then Clint is a golden retriever. He lumbers alongside her light, quick-footed steps. While her somewhat slight figure remains inconspicuous, Clint and his broad, solid frame stand out.
If Natasha is a fox, then she isn’t the Black Widow, who stands tall and powerful in front of her enemies. This is what Clint tells her, when she speaks of not being a good person. “You’re a fox when the world isn’t watching, and you’re the Black Widow when it is.”
“How poetic of you,” she says flippantly, but Clint can swear her lips tilt minutely up at the corners. Surely not because he said something logical enough that it makes her feel better, but because him trying to make her feel better made her feel better.
She would roll her eyes at that train of thought.
Oh, to be back in Budapest.
They meet up at a house owned by Natasha. If previous evidence is accurate, she most likely owns one in every European country. This one is grand, has a grand piano, and is placed somewhat near the grand Castillo de Buda.
Natasha can play the piano, of course. At this point Clint believes she can do anything.
Over and over, Beethoven's Tempest is tapped out. Sometimes it’s slow and melancholic, weighed down by a thousand rain drops. Sometimes it's quick and flighty, a summer storm in the middle of the night that's only a distant memory in the morning. And when Natasha grows tired of that song, she switches to an Arabesque. It flows up and down the keys, at first slowly and then faster as she begins to know the song better.
You could argue that Clint is perhaps too abrasive to fall in love, or you could argue that he was already in love. But in Natasha’s house in Budapest, where they have shared so much cabalistic history for so long, he falls in love with her clever fingers as they weave music out of thin air.
He falls in love with her steady gaze, because it’s always alert, always watching. Natasha never misses anything, no matter how unimportant or insignificant.
He falls in love with her smile, her laugh, her mind. Her being.
If this is the case, and you really could argue that Clint is too abrasive to fall in love, then you could argue that no person can fall in love with Natasha. That she’s too capricious and unreliable in character, that the things she has done and the people she has killed will always stain her beautiful image. Overpower it. Cast a shadow on her beauty, in soul and body.
This is, in fact, very much not the case. Natasha is the easiest person to fall in love with in the world. Her charm and whatever person she decides to act as make falling in love with her as effortless as breathing.
Clint loves this Natasha, and this Natasha the most. When she drops all of her personas. When she adopts a birdlike lightness, as if the weight of the world has just been taken off of her shoulders.
Maybe her lack of personas is a persona, in which case Clint should stop thinking and instead concentrate on the shooting range. He can hear her playing a new song, now. It is airy, wistful, somber. It makes him think of Natasha.
Here, in the dark.
Here, in the odd space between being forced to do bad things and beginning to do good.
Here, nightmares reign.
At midnight, at one, at two and three and four. Like owls, their eyes are wide in the night. They reflect the faint moonlight and stand out in the thick air, which seems to have changed colour and texture. The lights are all off in the house. Natasha plays a flat rendition of The Entertainer. Clint pulls the string taut and lets an arrow fly.
They both always meet their target, regardless of the dark.
Clint would like to say that when they sleep curled around each other, the bad dreams go away.
But life isn't that easy, and night terrors and nightmares are not so easily evaded.
Clint never believed in God, or a god. But seeing Natasha, and her precise movements and her porcelain skin, her lips like paintbrush strokes on a pale canvas and her eyes, sharp and clear and taking everything in - it makes him think that a person like Natasha couldn’t have just happened. It makes him think that either she was made by a god, or she is one.
No god can create something perfect, and no god can be perfect. This is how Clint explains her flaws.
Natasha is a fox. Natasha is a god. Natasha is poetry and music and any song in the world.
Natasha can be anything she wants to be. Good. Bad. Sneering coldly or smiling warmly. Merciful or rigid in her anger, her rage. Natasha can be all of these things and more.
Apparently, she can also be a fox that falls in love with a golden retriever.
Natasha is untouchable when she sits at her grand piano, which, in the light of the setting sun, appears to be tinted gold. The melodies seem to envelope her, like she's walking through a morning mist over a dewy field or gliding into an evening fog that joins the sky and the water of a lake.
Clint can only watch and listen as walls of air and music build themselves around her. It takes his breath away; not many things can do that anymore.
Clint is only a man, too gruff and blithe for his own good; Natasha is only a woman, too mercurial and inconsistent for her own good. A thousand poets have attempted to describe this love but have never been successful, so Clint knows he'll never manage to. He's no wordsmith, not even close. But, one hazy morning, when the light catches Natasha's hair as she learns the right hand of the Graceful Ghost Rag, a smile playing on her lips, he feels like he just might be able to.
Natasha starts over, this time with both hands. The melody is lulling and wistful. Clint takes a sip from his glass of orange juice and closes his eyes.