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Clint was acting strange. That in and of itself wasn't really anything abnormal, but it was the details of it all that had lead Natasha to where she was now, waiting for the secret camera she had installed outside of his room to alert her that he was on the move.
It had started two weeks ago. At first she had thought he was just sick; it would have explained why he looked overly tired and spent most of his time in his room, but as the days passed she grew worried. He didn't train with them through the days, or hang out with them in the evenings; he just came out to eat then sequestered himself again. Seeing how she had always known him to be very social, this was not typical Clint Barton behaviour at all.
By week two Natasha had started watching him closely. Sometimes he changed his clothes midway through the day, and he looked like he hadn't slept well in ages, but it was when she noticed him sneaking food from his plate and hiding it in his pockets that the strange factor hit the point that she had to get to the bottom of this.
She had tried talking to him, but he had acted cagey and claimed there was nothing wrong. He pulled the sick card, but she knew him better than anyone and she knew he was lying. To her.
That was the worst part. As well as she knew him, and after everything they had been through together, it ate at her that she couldn't figure this out. Usually she could read him like a book, but not this time, and worse than that was the lies. He played around, sometimes he concealed things, but he never flat out lied to her.
So that was what brought her to this moment, fidgeting in her room while she waited for the motion sensor to activate. She had been filming him for three days, and after reviewing the footage she had discovered that around the same time every night he snuck out of his room, looking like he was smuggling something under his coat, and was gone anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours. When he returned he looked just as suspicious, still strangely bundled.
What was he hiding? What was he carrying around under there? He could be stealing things to sell, but he always came back with something as well. Bartering? But for what? None of it made any sense. That was why tonight she would be following him.
When the quiet alarm finally sounded Natasha practically jumped out of her skin. Normally she was unshakable, but this was <i>Clint</i>, and the rules never applied when he was involved. She would burn down the world to protect him, to save him, even if the person she had to save him from was himself.
As soon as he vanished from her screen she gave him the appropriate amount of time to reach the elevator before she left her room. Sneaking through the darkened hallway to the stairwell, she made sure every step was silent and the door made no sound. Hooking her line on the railing, she jumped without hesitation, repelling down the centre of the spiral staircase to the ground floor in one smooth move.
It would be faster than the elevator, so once her feet were back on the floor she unhooked her line and pressed the small glass to the wall and her ear to it. She heard the ding as the lift doors open, then the front doors of the tower. Silently she slipped out, catching sight of Clint just as he rounded the corner.
Keeping close to the building she moved swiftly to the corner and peered around. Halfway down the narrow street he had stopped and was crouching down. She felt her stomach clench. Was he hurt? She could hear him mumbling, and then an inhuman sounding yelp.
Unable to hold back her fear Natasha broke her cover and rushed forward. “Clint?”
He stood and spun around so quickly he almost fell over, and the look of surprise on his face would have been comical in another situation. “Natasha?” he stuttered. Another of those inhuman yelps followed and her eyes were drawn downward. At his feet stood a fluffy golden puppy, tongue hanging out and tail wagging happily.
“A dog,” she stated in disbelief. Clint at least had the decency to look sheepish. “This is what you've been hiding? A dog?”
Holding the leash firmly in one hand, he rubbed the back of his neck with the other. “You know how Tony is, and what if Thor and Hulk wanted to play with him?”
Natasha looked positively beside herself. “You hid and lied and claimed to be sick for two weeks because you were hiding a dog?” She wanted to be angry at him, and part of her was, but a bigger part of her was relieved. Over the past few days she had imagined a million different scenarios, everything from him falling back into the circus of crime, to becoming a drug addict, to having some sort of incurable disease that was going to kill him. Never would she have even dreamed that he was just hiding a dog.
The relief washed over her in a wave, and she actually let out a laugh, but it was a strange and emotional sound and Clint looked a little worried himself. He expected her to yell at him and berate him for... for worrying everyone. “You were worried,” he stated when realisation dawned. Her face flushed slightly and she tried to hide it by looking down. “You were worried!” he confirmed, grinning.
“Dont't you dare be happy about that,” she said, sticking her finger out at him in a warning gesture. The puppy seemed to think this was the beginning of something playful and tottered toward her on feet that seemed too big for his body. Okay, she had to admit it was cute.
“Happy about what? That you were worried about me?” Clint continued, not ready to let it go just yet. “Come on, admit it.”
“Why do you have a dog?” she asked, ignoring his taunting.
He looked down at the puppy and it looked back up at him and barked. “I found him,” he replied. “He was scrawny and dirty and hiding in this alley, and I couldn't just leave him here.” He looked back at Natasha with the saddest, most pitiful expression she had ever seen him wear. “Someone just... abandoned him.”
Looking between the two, Natasha wasn't sure which of them gave the best puppy dog eyes. She got it, though. Clint had issues with abandonment, issues she had only helped deepen when SHIELD had required she betray him to prove herself loyal to HYDRA. She couldn't risk being suspected as a double agent, so she'd had to lie to Clint, had to hurt him in ways she was so overwhelmingly grateful that he had forgiven her for. So of course he would relate to some stray and want to protect the thing.
“Have you taken him for his shots?” she asked, and Clint's face brightened. She wasn't telling him he couldn't keep it, and that was enough.
“Yup. Got him all fixed up and cleaned and reg...istered.” Whoops, he hadn't meant to mention that part, as that was admitting that this was his dog now. Not that Natasha wouldn't know the second she saw his room. The number of toys and treats he had already purchased for the puppy was ridiculous, and everything that wasn't furniture had been picked up off the floor and placed on higher surfaces or hidden in closets. It was simultaneously the cleanest and the messiest his room had been since he'd moved in.
“And you were planning on hiding him forever?” Natasha questioned.
“No, not forever. Just until I had him properly toilet trained.”
Now that was an image Natasha hadn't known she needed until that moment, but he idea of Clint trying to train this ball of fluff to use the newspapers was a wonderful thought, especially when she thought of his mid-day wardrobe changes.
“Gotta get him to stop wrecking stuff too. He's getting better, but he ate my favourite glove yesterday,” he continued, wincing, and she could no longer hold back her laughter. “Hey, that's not funny!”
But Natasha kept laughing, and the puppy danced around happily, and Clint was the only one left looking miserable. When her laughter subsided she crouched down and held out her hand, and the puppy padded over to her and licked her palm. Noticing the tag that dangled from the purple collar, she caught it between her fingers and read the name inscribed. Lucky. “Okay, I'll help you,” she said without him even asking. “I'm good at training problem subjects.”
“You?”
“I trained you, didn't I?” she said with a smirk, and while Clint stuck out his tongue at her he didn't argue. Although the acrobatics and weapons training were all him, all of his best hand-to-hand combat moves he had learned from Natasha. He hadn't always been the best subject, but she kept pushing him until he got it right. Because of her he knew he could hold his own without any weapons in a close combat situation.
“How about we start with a walk?” Clint suggested, and she nodded and fell into step beside him. And that was how it went for the next four nights, only with the two of them sneaking out together to walk lucky, often not getting back until the wee hours of the morning. Through the day Natasha spent most of her time with Clint in his room, and now that it was two of them missing, the others started to notice too.
Nobody said anything until one morning when Tony confronted them with a newspaper. There on page three was a picture of the two of them, walking and laughing together, and with the lame headline “Black Widow and Hawkeye and puppy make three?” and the caption “Avengers lovebirds take romantic stroll and show off the new addition to their family”.
“Wow, whoever wrote that should be fired. I could write better than that,” Clint said, curling up his nose and muttering under his breath something about only making page three.
“No you couldn't,” Natasha replied flatly, shoveling in a mouthful of cereal and looking bored.
“You only like it because they put your name first,” Clint sulked into his coffee.
“That's not the point!” Tony interrupted. “Lovebirds? This is why you've been missing training? So you could sneak around on 'romantic strolls' with... whose dog is that, anyway?”
“Mine,” Clint admitted, suddenly finding the article extremely fascinating.
“Yours? You don't have a dog,” Tony insisted.
Clint glanced at Natasha, but she was not helping one bit, so he shrugged one shoulder and looked sheepish. “Surprise,” he said. “And sorry about the rug. And the vase. And that wooden sculpture thing.”
A floor above them Thor and Hulk were playing video games when they heard Tony's angry yelling.
“Tony does not sound pleased this morning,” Thor stated, tilting his whole controller as he tried to maneuver his little car around the corner.
“Wonder who pissed in his cornflakes,” Hulk muttered, slamming his car into the side of Thor's. The statement was enough to throw the god off and cause him to lose the game.
“Is that some Midgardian practical joke?” he asked, looking thoroughly disgusted. “My own trickster brother would not even stoop so low.”
Hulk decided not to clarify that it was a figure of speech. It was funnier to let Thor believe he was being literal.