Work Text:
Natasha sat on the wide window ledge of her room as the ambient sunset washed over the streets of the city below, painting everything gold. It wouldn’t last. A few minutes, maybe. An hour at most. Then the dreamy haze would dim and the electric lights would snap the city into another stage of its daily cycle. One reality wasn’t necessarily better than the other. Just different. Inevitable. Change always was.
Case in point: Clint Barton swearing loudly from the other room and shattering the awed silence of sunset. The solitude had been nice, but it was also nice to know she had a friend to share it with. He must have tripped over the rug, which Natasha had carelessly placed for the exact purpose of throwing off unexpected guests. She'd worked for SHIELD too long not to take a few simple precautions, even within the safety of the tower.
She kept her posture relaxed, unassuming, and her gaze fixed outside until Clint nudged her with his elbow. If it had been anyone else, he would have been on the floor unconscious in a heartbeat.
"Hey, brought ya something." He held out a cup with tendrils of steam curling and weaving from its surface. “Added raspberry jam, just like you like.”
“The only jar in the tower has been sitting in the fridge since the team moved upstate.”
“Jam lasts for ages.”
Natasha shook her head and accepted the dainty white cup. She stirred the mixture with a scalloped silver spoon and let it cool.
Clint was holding a mug of hot cocoa in his other hand, and half of it had been spilled down the front of his shirt. He pinched the fabric and flapped it to dry it. Maybe it was a sign of their friendship that he didn't bother to ask about the obvious trap, and she didn't comment on how easily he'd fallen into it. He settled down across from her with a grunt. A generous dollop of whipped cream had survived the mishap and he spooned the fluffy concoction directly into his mouth.
“So you were in the kitchen.” She took a sip, eying him over the rim of her cup. She’d unofficially banned him that morning for breaking her favorite bowl and eating Sam’s share of breakfast. Not that she'd expected the punishment to stick—and it hadn’t. No more than half a day. He'd been using the vents to sneak snacks by the time mid-afternoon rolled around, and by sundown he'd given up even that pretense.
Well, if she had been serious, he would have known. “Your patterns are getting predictable, Barton,” Nat said.
“Probably,” Clint conceded, mussing his hair. "So far they work for me."
“Don't let yourself get too soft,” she warned lightly.
“Too late.” He took a sip of his hot cocoa and licked froth from the corner of his mouth. “I have it on good authority from my kids that I'm already a big old teddy bear.”
Natasha tilted her head. Clint was watching the shadows outside lengthen and diffuse, his fingers ticking against his mug, and he was chewing on the inside of his cheek. He’d come to talk, and he wasn’t being subtle about it, but he was taking his time getting to the point.
Natasha turned the cup in her hand and smoothed her thumb over the spoon, the etched designs on the handle blackened with disuse. She breathed in the scent of sweet raspberries and smoky black tea. “So to what do I owe the pleasure of this cup of tea?”
“Oh, well.” Clint looked into his drink. “Reading me like a book, huh?”
“Only if you want me to,” she reassured him. She wouldn’t push, as easy as it might be to manipulate the conversation out of him.
“Could just be my way of saying sorry for breaking your bowl today.”
Natasha pursed her lips into a not-quite-smile. Her sentimental attachments to objects were fleeting at best. She'd used the bowl every day during their first stint in the tower as Avengers, but she’d long ago learned that liking something didn’t guarantee it would never be broken. She accepted it, and tomorrow she’d use a different bowl. No tears, and Clint was well aware of that. The punishment she’d doled out was more to assuage his own guilt—and also for Sam, because he’d made everyone breakfast and Clint hadn't left any for him.
In any case, Clint didn’t need to do anything extra to demonstrate his contrition. Not for her. So she waited for the real answer and he let out a little puff of air as he gave in.
“Fine. You knew him,” Clint said. “Barnes, I mean. Back before we met.”
Nat schooled her expression. If anyone was going to put two and two together, of course it had to be Barton. “As much as one assassin can know another,” she replied. "Why?"
“I dunno,” he said, shaking his head. "I got to wondering with him here now and all. And just. That’s messed up."
"Messed up" was a polite description for the truly twisted machinations she and Barnes had been trapped inside. “You saw what I came from.”
“Were you just, ah, work colleagues,” he gestured vaguely, “or…?”
Natasha chuckled. “The sordid details are not where you want to go with this,” she said, but not unkindly. “That was a different life. We were different people.”
“Does Cap know?”
“I’m not sure Barnes even knows at this point,” she said. If he remembered any of their interactions, he'd given no sign. Granted, he'd been a bit distracted the last few days, what with SHIELD trying to murder him and adopting Tony Stark as his fake soulmate.
“You gonna tell them?”
“No,” she said firmly. “I have no desire to insinuate myself into that love triangle.”
Clint puzzled, counting on his fingers. Triangle? he mouthed.
Natasha rolled her eyes. “Don’t pretend you don’t know how this is going to play out, Barton. You’ve seen them together.”
“For, like, a day.” Clint scratched his jaw. “And Cap and Barnes are already bonded.”
“Nothing says a bonded pair can’t have an unbonded third,” Natasha said.
“I guess not, but it’s unheard of. Usually soulmates are too gaga over each other to even look at someone else.”
“There is no ‘usually’ for those two. Rogers and Barnes were actively hiding their relationship long before Hydra and the Winter Soldier came into the picture," Natasha said. "That’s not typical soul bonded behavior, either.”
Clint made a thoughtful noise, stretched out his legs, and Natasha propped her feet up on his knees.
Clint had never made full peace with the idea of soul bondings, or so he'd told her way back when. More accurately, his opinion swayed like a metronome. One day soul bonding was the was the stuff of legend, and the next it was a great way for the universe to grab you by the balls. He never could make up his mind.
He'd only had one opportunity to bond and by all accounts it had been a nightmare. By that point, Clint and Laura were already happily married and a soul bond would have turned their lives upside down. The mark had appeared days in advance and Laura said nothing more than that she trusted him to do what he thought was right. He hadn't trusted himself nearly as much. He’d worried himself sick over it. Really, it was all kinds of inconvenient. Especially since he’d been smack dab in the middle of a mission at the time.
Ever the diplomat, Natasha never did point out that Clint was just a shade despondent after completing the mission. Like he wondered what might have been if he'd gone to his rendezvous, even though he insisted he was better off not knowing.
“Okay, enlighten me,” he said. “So what’s their deal? What makes our guys so different from everyone else?”
Natasha put a spoonful of sweet tea in her mouth and savored the rich flavor before swallowing it down. “To be honest? I can't get a read on it,” she said. “On most people, soul bonding is like a loose seam, a thread you can pull. A weak spot happily flaunted,” she said. “But Rogers and Barnes? They wear it more like a responsibility. And they guard it like it's always been something to hide, which is strange. I wondered if there might have been someone Steve was pining after, but the only one thing that made sense was a perfectly mundane romance with Peggy. And Barnes? It never even crossed my mind the Winter Soldier could have a soulmate. It just wasn't an option, not until the two of them were side by side in the same room.”
“Maybe Barnes buried the bond so Hydra couldn’t touch it,” Clint offered. “Compartmentalization, dissociation, whatever. To protect himself.”
“Maybe.” But that was doubtful. Clint liked the illusion of control—that a person could keep their loved ones safe by burying every sign of them. That’s why his family was tucked in a pocket of nowhere, cocooned in the idea they were protected from the worst the world had to offer. It made Clint feel better about leaving them, and Natasha wouldn’t take that away from him. "However it happened, I think Barnes lost the connection and he lost it for a long time. It was Rogers who was stubborn enough to bring it back from the dead."
Outside the sun had slipped below the horizon, leaving a fading gradation of light in its wake. The internal glow of the city was taking over, casting a fluorescent sheen over the gathering dark.
“Something like that could have happened to me, Nat,” Clint said. “Not the soulmate stuff, you know. But, after Loki? Or if Loki had won? Shit. I’d still be under.”
She leaned forward and squeezed his hand. “You’re here, Clint. And you're with us, okay?” she said. And, figuring a distraction was in order, she added, “If you were still a brainwashed assassin, then maybe you’d be the next lucky one in line to shack up with Stark."
Clint snorted and passed a hand over his eyes. “You think they’re going to hook up with Stark. For real?”
“I don’t deal in absolutes,” Natasha said, “but, yes. I think it’s likely.”
"How?"
"They need each other," she said simply. "If the last twenty-four hours hasn't brought up something, I'd be surprised. Stark has had eyes for Rogers since the day they met. He falls hard and fast, so all he ever needed was a push. Now that Pepper has her own soulmate, there's nothing standing in the way. And Rogers? The moment he realized Tony had a genuine heart underneath the posturing and the metal, he was sold in theory, if not in practice. Barnes is the catalyst. Steve is too loyal to Barnes for even a perceived betrayal, but if Barnes expresses interest? Steve will happily follow wherever he wants to go, as long as it's with someone Steve already trusts."
"And you think Tony likes Barnes, too?"
"You saw the press conference kiss," Natasha said. "Tony's weak for physical affection, and Barnes knows what he's doing."
“Shit, my brain can’t even handle that mental picture.”
Natasha’s lips curled into a cat-like smile, and she settled back against the wall. “You know, if I’d known Captain America’s type was dark, broken, and broody, I would have made a lot more progress on his love life by this point.”
“God help us." Clint shuddered. "Are you planning to play match up?”
Natasha fluttered her eyelashes dangerously. “Only if they need the nudge.”
+
Nat once had the opportunity for a soul bond. She and Barton had been sent together on a mission to Budapest when the mark appeared on the outside of her left hand. At the time, she didn’t have the luxury to lose herself in love, not when there was still red in her ledger. And, as it turned out, her potential partner was already neck-deep in the American dream. A soul bond would have been just as inconvenient for him. So together the pair had agreed to botch SHIELD's carefully prearranged plans to avoid a very specific time and location. At least until the writing had faded.