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“Nat, stop fussing. I’m fine.”
Okay, he wasn’t really fine. His leg was broken, his wrist was fractured, he had a very mild concussion, but hey, the doctor said he’d be out of medical by the end of the week and by those standards, he was fine.
Natasha was being insufferable. She was always like this when he landed in medical for an extended period of time. She was just plain mean when others were around; snapping at him, sassing him, so mean.
When they were alone, she was constantly fluffing pillows, checking machines, asking him all kinds of questions to the point he was feeling smothered.
He thought she did it out of spite; if she annoyed him enough, he’d be more careful.
“A building collapsed on top of you and you are more than lucky to be alive with what you got, so shut up and let me take care of you.”
“You’re saying it like I asked the building to collapse on me.” Clint complained. “I was saving lives.”
“You were being an idiot.” Natasha scoffed. “The building was cleared–”
“You never know if the building is clear for sure. I went to check–”
“And you ran in there–”
“To save a life–”
“And I almost lost you!”
Clint blinked, surprised. Since when had she been so concerned about losing him? Their jobs were dangerous; she knew that and she’d always been worried in her own kind of way, but she’d never been so…open about it.
“Where is this coming from all of the sudden?”
She sat on the edge of his bed, looking down at her hands quietly.
“I saw that building fall on you and I thought that was it. That it was the end. I was going to dig you out and you were going to be dead.”
Clint blinked, a frown making its way onto his face.
“I don’t have many things that I can call my own, Clint.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Nat.” Clint said firmly.
She laughed and it sounded so sad that his heart ached for her. He didn’t realize just how worried she’d been about all of these things and he felt so guilty, but she’d obviously been trying to hide it from him.
She reached out to cup his face in her hands, palms soft against his cheeks as she leaned in to press their lips together. It was soft, but it held something else, a bit of desperation.
It lasted a few moments before she pulled away and he smiled at her, trying to bring her smile back to her face.
“Hey, I’m not going anywhere.” Clint said. “You better not go anywhere either.”
She huffed out a laugh, rolling her eyes.
“I won’t.”