Work Text:
1
When Natalia Romanova first arrived at SHIELD (this is a euphemism, and all is not as the stories are told), she didn't really eat.
"Natasha Romanoff," she corrected brusquely across the table from Coulson.
Coulson was doing an admirable job of being patient and understanding and treating her like a valued new recruit rather than a dangerous threat who had probably determined twelve different ways to dispatch him using nothing more than her sandwich and plate, but Clint could see the faint frustration in the lines around Coulson's mouth. Natasha was being polite but uncooperative.
Clint watched the food move around and around on her plate. She had carefully picked the lettuce out of her sandwich, shredded it into tiny pieces, and replaced it again. She had cut it into eight pieces with her butter knife and spread the mustard more. She'd even chopped her sliced tomatoes, but she had yet to eat more than the tiniest nibble, and he suspected she hadn't swallowed it.
It was another point of her declining to cooperate. It wasn't just a quirk.
Clint—Hawkeye—had noticed it before when she was just the Black Widow, another pretty redhead in a sea of faces, sitting at an outdoor café with a client. She hadn't been as obvious that time, but the food was Italian and easier to pretend to eat without actually eating. She made a decently displayed salad even prettier and cut and swirled her pasta masterfully. When the client had left, the Black Widow returned the entire plate uneaten.
Natasha allowed Clint into her tiny SHIELD quarters whenever he asked, a small concession to his word being the reason she was alive. It was a shoebox, little more than a bed, bathroom, and kitchenette, but it locked down and also gave her enough space to call "living."
He didn't ask when he walked into her kitchenette, scrounged around in the fridge, and made another sandwich (though he also made a note to get her some groceries she'd actually want to eat). He assembled it in front of her while she watched with raised eyebrows, then handed her his own knife to cut it in half.
Natasha studied him for a long moment, then cut it.
He claimed his half and took a bite, then finally broke the silence after he swallowed. "How's debrief?"
She rolled her eyes and poked at the sandwich. "I don't like cheese."
"So take it off." He took another bite.
She fished out the cheese and dumped it on his plate, then nibbled lightly at the edges of her sandwich.
Clint grinned. He'd been right.
She gave him a look and he told her a funny story so they could both pretend he'd been grinning about something else.
2
Natasha's coy, sharp-edged smile had come out by the time Clint lined up his shot, and he doubted it was his imagination that she'd stepped right into the best sightline from his position.
"Widow," he gritted out into the comm. "Quit playing with your food."
She laughed suddenly, brightly, and with a sincere note that surprised him, though the mark seemed to think she'd meant it for him. She backed up one half-step and smirked in acknowledgement as Clint took the shot.
He didn't look too closely at whatever that might mean.
3
Natasha liked to savor anticipation. Clint set a dish in front of her and expected that sometime between another ten minutes of conversation and the time the coffee got cold, perhaps she'd get around to tasting whatever it was he had made her.
Tonight, the dish was pasta. She'd challenged him to create something new that she'd never tasted before and he had delivered rather easily by drawing on his childhood and all the times he and Barney had concocted what they could from odd and end imperishables in the house. Most of the grocery money went down his father's whiskey bottles before it ever made it to the table.
Clint sipped his coffee as he watched Natasha twirl the noodles on her fork and pronounce them linguine.
She frowned. "And fettuccine? Clint, you're not supposed to mix them."
He smiled mildly. She liked to criticize his bad culinary habits, such as starting with coffee instead of ending with it. "How was the debrief?"
Natasha gave him a look and delicately sniffed her forkful. She raised her eyebrows slightly and he knew she'd identified at least one unexpected spice. She took a bite and the eyebrows climbed higher. She chewed slowly while artfully rearranging her plate (the art of serving food was still one she claimed eluded him, regardless of how well he could cook). At last, she swallowed.
"It's quite good," she said, surprise evident.
He finished his coffee and set the mug to one side. "Let's see you recreate that recipe."
Natasha usually analyzed the ingredient list of any dish with scary accuracy, but sometimes Clint's off-the-wall choices still managed to evade her expertise.
"Challenge accepted," she replied coolly.
He chuckled and counted it as a win either way.
Three days, ten text messages, and a hysterically laughing Maria later when she told Clint about the smoking kitchen and fire department visit (and Maria being banned from Natasha's kitchen permanently), Natasha waved the white flag and showed up on his doorstep with a growl.
"Show me," she ordered.
He laughed and obeyed.
4
Watching the Black Widow in the kitchen was a different experience entirely. She approached a set of neatly arranged ingredients with the precise efficiency she brought to her weaponry. Her body took on the lithe grace of a predator, and Clint would watch her eyes narrow in calculation.
He liked to sit there and watch from a comfortable distance as she measured and weighed, tasted and assessed. Anywhere from five to fifteen variations would spring from her deft fingers before she decided which was best and worthy of being cooked.
At last, she brought him over a small tasting bowl and a fork and arched an eyebrow.
Clint had learned early on to never waste food, to appreciate it only after it found a home inside his stomach, so he dispensed with her rituals and gestures and generally scarfed down the entire sample in one bite as she wrinkled her nose but said nothing.
"More of the red stuff," he told her.
Natasha looked despairing. "The red stuff, Clint?"
He shrugged. He didn't know the names of half the spices he used, but he knew how to use them, so what was the fuss? "Just a pinch."
She sighed and took out her own forkful to taste it again. "Three eighths of a teaspoon," she said.
He just smiled. This was all child's play to her, the ability to stop and measure and, pleased, see how accurate she could be. In the middle of a real battlefield, all the neatness vanished in raw, ruthless instinct. She liked to slow down because it was a luxury she couldn't often afford.
5
It really wasn't all that surprising to discover that Natasha loved foreplay almost more than the act itself. She loved to touch and be touched, to arch her body under Clint's hands and stop him when he went too fast. He knew when she would start the dance, turn a smoldering gaze to his and linger, smile with a little more promise and a great deal more sincerity than she ever gave a mark that it would be anywhere between twenty minutes and about five minutes from her first climax before she'd even get her clothes off.
It was the last incident he decided was too frustrating. "Widow, quit playing with your food," he ordered with a low growl.
She laughed that bright, sincere laugh and finally let him slide her blouse off her body. She arched upward and breathed in his ear, "Make me."
He did.