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Today was the day. They were in one of her favorite restaurants, dressed to the nines, with violin music in the background. This was as classy a scene as Clint could imagine for what he was about to do. He had been certain about this for years now, that one day he would do this, and that she would almost certainly say yes. It had been a comfortable feeling, knowing they were for each other like that, which made it easy to put off making it explicit. But with the way the world had shifted since New York, he felt a new urgency. Everything was changing, but he wanted to hold on to this one thing, write it in vibranium.
The anxiety should not have come as a surprise. He shifted in his seat, resisting the urge to pat his jacket pocket again. It was a tell that would draw Natasha’s attention. He looked across the table at her, only to find Natasha’s gaze focused in on him. She wore the same expression when sighting down a rifle scope, and when playing chess.
Oh, God. She clearly knew exactly what he was planning. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he contemplated running out the door, but a wiser voice inside him noted she wasn’t laughing at him or making her own exit. She was just sitting there, observing him. Maybe deciding how to answer.
Before he could think of an excuse to chicken out, though, Natasha bit her lip and looked down with a small smile. “You remembered my favorite London restaurant.”
Clint grinned, trying to look dashing. “I keep a spreadsheet of all your favorite places in the cities we visit.”
“‘Visit?’” Natasha laughed.
“Well, this time we’re tourists, aren’t we? No mission, just the two of us. How long since we’ve had the chance to be together like this?”
“Eight-and-a-half weeks,” Natasha said, without hesitation. There was something weird about that level of precision in a casual conversation, but Clint couldn’t immediately figure out what it meant, so he took her words at face value.
“Right, eight-and-a-half-weeks,” he repeated, smiling easily. Their last get-together between missions had been in Paris, and they’d barely left their hotel. He took her hands in his. “Too long. Natasha, I--”
The waiter reappeared from wherever he had been hiding, bearing little menus.“Would you care for some wine?” he asked.
Clint squeezed Natasha’s hands, unwilling to let go even though their moment had been stepped on. Nat was giving him the usual look she aimed his way when he was being a sap, but there was something nervous underneath it.
“Our usual red, Nat?” He envisioned them clinking glasses together in a few minutes, celebrating.
Instead of agreeing, though, Natasha pursed her lips and said, “To be honest, I’m not in the mood for wine. Just Perrier for me, please.”
“Uh, same?” he told the waiter, distracted and now a little worried.
“You’re not on medication for anything, are you?” he asked when they’d been left alone again. “Were you hurt on that last mission?” They really needed to stop working separately.
“No meds, I’m just--Clint, I need to tell you something.”
“You can tell me anything, you know that.”
Natasha smiled a smile that was just for him, making Clint feel lit up like a lightbulb. “Okay, here goes. Clint, I’m--”
Both their phones rang at the same time, the special ringtone that meant an urgent mission. Natasha’s face darkened. “It’ll keep, she said, squeezed his hand one last time, and reached for her phone.
Clint spared a moment to wonder what Natasha had been going to say (maybe she wanted him to hold off on proposing? Or, infinitely better, to say yes before he even had to ask?) and pulled out his own phone.
It was Hill, who wasted no time on pleasantries.
“Barton, I know you and Romanov are in London. We have a situation there.”
So much for their weekend away from it all. A glance at Natasha showed her listening intently to her own briefing.
“Tell me what’s up,” he said to Hill.
“Intel is spotty, but Thor appears to be engaging a hostile force in Greenwich. How fast can you be there?”
“Not long. We’ll commandeer a car.”
“You don’t need to commandeer a car, just get there.”
“Ten-four.” He ended the call and turned to Natasha, who was grabbing the bags they always carried around with them, that contained uniforms and weapons. “Hill says to commandeer a car and get to Greenwich.”
~~
Minutes earlier, he’d been talking himself out of running away down the street, but now Clint could only feel disappointed he hadn’t asked the question when he’d had the chance. He glanced aside at Natasha, who sat in the driver’s seat of a fairly decent taxi whose owner had given into their commandeering with a sigh and some eye-rolling as she handed over the keys.
“One scratch, and I’m suing S.H.I.E.L.D., even if you two do save the world again!” the taxi driver had said, not unreasonably, he had to admit.
They had changed into their uniforms and were headed toward Greenwich, which even from afar they could tell was in trouble, from the deep rumbling and crashing sounds that were coming from that direction. On the horizon, smoke rose into the sky.
“Reports are all over the place,” Clint told Nat, frowning as he pressed the comm to his ear. “Aliens and monsters, like New York. How soon can you have us there?”
Natasha slowed for a stop light, eased through the busy intersection without colliding with cross-traffic, and sped up again. “This is going to take all day,” she said.
“We may not have much of a city left,” Clint said.
Natasha glared at him. Next to her, the digital counter on the fare meter ticked upward faster than he thought seemed just. Tourists were put on earth to get ripped off, he supposed.
“Are you being hostile?” she demanded. “Because I can—whoa!”
A giant man in strange armor appeared on the road, out of nowhere, and then came a flash of red cape and blond hair close on him—no, slamming into him with intent—also from out of nowhere. Natasha braked hard enough that the cab fish-tailed into a row of parked motorcycles, scattering them across the curb.
“Guess that cabbie’s getting her day in court,” Clint said, eyebrows raised, just to rile Nat up a little. He kicked open his door and scrambled out, arrow already pointed at the broad figure in heavy, dark armor. Thor hit the man with his hammer, and the man stumbled but didn’t look otherwise hurt. Natasha, already out of the car, shared a look with Clint over the hood. She had some firepower on her, and his concussive arrows packed a punch, but if that guy could withstand Mjolnir, she and Clint might not be much use. Clint scowled. He hated being left out of anything.
So did Natasha, as he was reminded when she raised her sidearm and fired at the armored man, the same moment Clint’s arrow streaked in the same direction.
But Thor and his opponent had vanished. A ways down the street, Natasha’s bullets harmlessly hit a wall, followed rather less harmlessly by Clint’s concussive arrow, which left a crater in the same wall.
“Strangely enough,” Clint said, “that answered none of my questions about what the hell is going on.”
“Very strange indeed,” Natasha murmured. She peered around, as though half-expecting them to reappear. He lowered his bow. The distant crash of pulverized buildings falling echoed all around them, though they knew the action was taking place by the river. As much as they both wanted to help Thor, they seemed to have no way to do it, and other people needed their help.
Clint nodded at Natasha, and stuck his foot back into the cab. Natasha made for the driver’s seat, and in moments they were back on the road. Traffic had all but vanished the closer they got to the theater of action. Clouds of dust obscured their vision, and the debris of buildings lay everywhere, much of it smoldering. Disturbingly familiar battle sounds came from only a few blocks away: the retort of energy weapons, crashing, screaming.
It would be unsafe to drive from here, so they got out and ran as fast as caution allowed.
~~
Though they had been slow in initially responding to the situation, S.H.I.E.L.D was all over the place by the time Clint and Natasha arrived in Greenwich and met up with their handler. Surveying the damage was as depressing as it always was. They did the bulk of their work in cities decimated by war, but it never got easier to look upon the destruction of people’s homes and livelihoods. Relief workers were already out in force, at least, rescuing people from under rubble, setting up triage stations and medical tents. Sirens whirred nearby and in the distance. It was reminiscent of the aftermath of the Battle of New York.
“So what are our instructions here?” Clint asked their new handler, who was escorting them through the disaster zone. It had been a year since Coulson was killed, and Elena was the fourth handler assigned to the two of them. She had experience and good judgment, and Natasha had said early on that she thought she might work out. It had been high praise, coming from Natasha, so Clint had decided to give her a chance.
“Are we extracting people from buildings?” Natasha asked. They were good at that, better since New York.
“No, that would not be the best use of your talents,” Elena said. “Today we have need of your unique problem-solving skills.”
Clint and Natasha shared an amused look behind Elena’s back. Their unique problem-solving skills were the reason they had run through three handlers already.
By now they had reached a scarily quiet block of the city, no one out here at all. Clint had a moment to wonder why it was deserted when they turned a corner and confronted… something he had never seen before.
It was a giant monster, the size of a tank, and it was curled up asleep in the middle of a wide road, on a bed of cracked pavement.
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Clint blurted, before he could stop himself. Natasha didn’t dignify him with a response, only stared at the monster with a sort of impressed respect.
The monster made a snuffling noise in its sleep.
Natasha turned to Elena. “So this is a big problem.”
“Indeed,” Elena confirmed. “Let me know how I can help you.” She turned and walked back the way they had come, her pace a little faster than it had been on the way there.
Clint and Natasha watched her go, then shared a look that said, So much for handler number four.
Standing motionless so as not to wake it, they studied the monster. It was big. It had grey skin stretched over a bony, armored frame. Its mouth was full of very long, sharp teeth and was protected by tusk-like protrusions on either side. The arm not quite curled under its body had claws the size of Clint’s palm at the end of its fingers.
Finally, Natasha whacked Clint in the bicep with her fist. “This is all your fault,” she whispered. “You had to go and chase away three—three!—handlers in less than a year. I knew that would come back to bite us.”
“You did not,” Clint whispered back, rubbing his bicep. “You are just as guilty as me! Remember Morocco?”
Natasha glared. “That was your idea.”
“It was not!” Clint exclaimed, forgetting to whisper. The monster twitched and the rhythm of its breathing changed. Natasha turned wide eyes on Clint.
“Oops?” he whispered.
After a few very tense minutes during which the monster did not wake up, Natasha and Clint exhaled in relief and then backed up a safer distance away.
“Not sure any of my arrows are going to do more than just annoy that thing,” Clint said. “No idea how we’re going to kill it.”
“Oh, we’re not killing it,” Natasha said.
“We’re not? What are we gonna do, take it home and keep it for a pet?”
“It is kind of cute,” Natasha deadpanned. “But no. I’m in the mood to annoy our superiors. Let’s subdue it and let them figure out what to do with it.”
Clint began to argue, but then he thought about it. “They did just kind of throw us out here without explicit instructions. And interrupted our lunch.” They could have been engaged by now!
And with that thought, some higher, braver part of Clint took over his mouth and said, “I love the way you think.” He sank down to one knee and took her hand. “Natasha, I left the ring I bought in my civvie pants pocket, but will you marry me?”
Several expressions crossed Natasha’s face, each more alarming than the last. Shock, pleasure, displeasure as her eyes tracked back to the monster sleeping nearby, and then dismay as she looked back at him. Clint’s stomach did a painful backflip.
Natasha pulled him back up to standing and then kissed him hard and closed-mouthed on the lips. “I’m going to tell you something important, and if you want to take that back afterward, I understand. I will murder you, but I will understand.”
Clint found himself drawing away a little, not prepared for whatever excuse she had for wanting him to change his mind. He couldn’t imagine what it could be. “Natasha, babe, I know everything about you that’s important, and there’s nothing about you I don’t love and admire.”
Natasha said, “I’m pregnant. Since our weekend in Paris.”
A sort of floaty feeling rose up from Clint’s feet to his head, but before he could say anything, Thor’s voice came from over to their left. “Joyous tidings indeed! Congratulations, my friends!”
And there was Thor, in the flesh, looking beaten and bloody, with cuts on his face but holding his hammer easily and grinning like he’d just heard the best news ever. In a daze, Clint allowed himself to be hugged by Thor and watched as Natasha let him kiss her hand in a warmly over-exaggerated manner. She was keeping her emotions to herself, but she seemed chagrined. “Thor, you goof,” he heard himself say. “How long have you been there?”
“I arrived just as you proposed,” Thor said. “I’m here for the Jotunheim beast, of course, but I thought it best to give you two a moment.”
“You couldn’t have waited another moment?” Natasha asked, not unkindly. It was hard to be mad at Thor.
Thor had the grace to look abashed anyway. “I’m afraid your happy news quite overwhelmed me.”
Clint could relate. He looked at Natasha, but she didn’t seem any different. Eight-and-a-half weeks was probably too early to start showing. Oh, hey! That was why she knew exactly how long it had been since they’d seen each other. Wow, did he have the wrong codename.
Natasha was watching him study her, face blank. Clint opened his mouth--
“I’ll go take care of the Jotunheim beast while you affirm your engagement,” Thor said, heading away and swinging Mjolnir jauntily.
“I’m gonna kill that guy,” Clint said, not meaning it. “Nat, this is amazing. Please say--”
Natasha rolled her eyes. “Of course I’ll marry you. I just thought you should know beforehand.”
Then they were in each other’s arms, embracing, and when they kissed, Clint could swear he saw rainbows in the corners of his vision. That turned out to be some guy named Heimdall activating the Rainbow Bridge to transport Thor and the Jotunheim beast off of Earth, probably to Jotunheim, but the rainbow effect was pretty. Natasha even agreed with him on that score.
End.