Work Text:
1
Her name is Nadia and she works the morning shift every Tuesday and Friday. When people ask, as they always do in this country, she’ll say that she studies dance at the college across town and teaches a ballet class for young girls to help make ends meet. She speaks just enough English to take people’s orders and blushes prettily when people notice the modest engagement ring she wears.
None of these things are true.
His name is Chris, although she’s not supposed to know that, and he comes in every morning before nine and always sits at the same table by the window. Every Tuesday and Friday she will read him the specials menu and keep her expression carefully neutral as she waits for him to place his order.
Every morning he asks for coffee and eggs and she nods once and writes it on her pad in a looping hand that is not her own. Eggs is good. Eggs means everything is still playing out according to the mission brief. If he orders coffee before the eggs then it means nothing; if he orders it after then it means to check the underside of the table once he’s left.
Today he orders coffee first and then two servings of Eggs Benedict. Slants her a tired smile and says that he’s expecting company.
She lets Nadia return the smile (he’s one of Nadia’s regulars, after all, and a generous tipper) as she files that information away. Company in this context and in that tone of voice can only mean one person.
It’ll be the first time she’s come face to face with the target. She’s strictly support on this mission and only here because Clint refused to go in without her, insisted that he needed someone in the field he could trust. She isn’t sure how she feels about that. Trust is a dangerous word to throw around after only a few short months on the same side. Fury doesn’t trust her and she thinks he might be right not to. She isn’t sure she trusts herself.
She isn’t sure why Clint wants her here. Anyone could do what she’s doing.
And maybe she lets some of that show because something shifts now in his face and, for the first time in over a month, she sees Clint sitting in front of her instead of Chris. A Clint who wears his hair too long and has a weary slump to his shoulders and shadows beneath his eyes that the smudged eyeliner draws out and makes pretty but does nothing to disguise.
Just like the bulky watch and leather cuff do nothing to disguise the bruises circling his wrists.
“You think I could get some cream to go with that coffee?” He cocks his head to the side and his smile is easy but there’s something brittle in his voice. Something a little uncertain and the words aren’t one of their codes but she has a feeling he’s trying to tell her something all the same.
Then his eyes flick past her and she doesn’t need to turn around to see who he’s looking at because in an instant everything that is Clint bleeds away, leaving nothing behind but that quiet man with the tired eyes who comes in for coffee and eggs every morning.
The back of her neck prickles as she takes his breakfast order to the cook but she keeps Nadia’s steps light and unhurried. Breathes in and out and waits for the coffee machine.
By the time she brings over two plates of Eggs Benedict, the target is sitting in the seat next to Chris and has a large hand spread possessively across the back of his neck. Nadia smiles sweetly at them both and makes sure to show off her ring as she tells them to let her know if there’s anything else they need. Chris doesn’t lift his eyes from the table’s Formica surface.
She busies herself with the other customers that have started to trickle in and doesn’t glance at the table by the window any more often than a conscientious waitress should. The target eats his breakfast slowly and without ever moving his hand from the back of Chris’s neck. His mouth moves but whatever he’s saying that makes Chris duck his head and bite his lip isn’t loud enough to carry across the diner.
Natasha knows exactly the type of things men like him say.
It’s strange to be on this side of it, she thinks, as she wipes a table clean and surreptitiously keeps an eye on their reflection in the glass. She’s been in Clint’s position more times than she can possibly number. Years and years of forcing her body to stillness beneath unwelcome hands and silently counting down the seconds until she gets to snap their neck and burn their empire to the ground. She’s never had to watch before.
Never had a partner watching over her either. Never had someone she could trust to see her like this and not consider it a weakness.
It hadn’t occurred to her that Clint might feel the same way.
She watches that large hand spread across Clint’s neck and feels the echo of it in her own bones. Feels her own hand tighten momentarily around the cloth she’s holding.
But there are customers waiting and orders to take so Nadia finishes cleaning the table and gets back to work.
2
Clint arrives at the airport ninety minutes before his flight and takes out a battered paperback.
Today he’s meant to be a grad student travelling back East for his father’s birthday but Clint kind of skipped over that part of the brief. His job here is to go unnoticed and keep his eyes open and he’s never needed to pretend to be someone else to do that.
The book gives his hands something to do. Flight regulations mean that he doesn’t have so much as a knife on him, let alone a gun or his bow, and he feels their absence like an itch beneath his skin.
An itch he’s having to get used to. This is the fifth job in a row where he’s had to leave his bow behind and only two of those jobs didn’t call for him to go in completely unarmed. Some agents don’t have a problem with that but he does and anyone who’s read his file knows it.
So it doesn’t take eyes like his to be able to see what’s going on here.
Not that he’s said anything. Rule number one is never complain about things that actually bother you because you’re just showing the assholes where to hit hardest. If upper management wants to keep punishing him for going off mission and bringing in the best asset S.H.I.E.L.D.’s ever had then that’s fine.
Today’s job isn’t so bad. He’s had worse.
Airports are a surveillance nightmare, but they already know which flight their hijackers are going to hit so Clint positions himself at the gate and pretends to read his book. Most of his fellow passengers are families or travelling for business and he lets his eyes flick across them, looking for the things that don’t belong, looking for the places where the pattern degrades.
His eyes catch on a family of four. Mother and father and two little blond boys. He sees the man’s impatience, the tightness of the woman’s jaw, and the way the older of the two boys grips his brother’s hand and bites his lip as he watches his parents with eyes that are perhaps a little too careful.
Nothing useful there. Clint moves on.
Clint’s row is one of the first called and he makes sure to smile just enough to look harmless as he hands over the grad student’s ID. They wave him through and he lets that smile broaden and turn real once he rounds the corner and spots Natasha in her uniform.
And this might be the real reason he can’t get too bent out of shape about this job. Natasha has given him back up on a few missions and done some solo ones of her own, but this is the first time that the two of them are getting to work side by side and he can’t complain about that.
She’s just as happy to be working together as he is, even if she doesn’t want to show it. Natasha the flight attendant barely spares him a glance, all poise and fake smile as she directs him to his seat and Clint can’t quite resist making a point of reading her nametag. “Thank you… Nicole. Pretty name.”
If she were any less of a professional she would be rolling her eyes right now. However, she does give him a sharp look and a sharper kick to the ankle as he walks past and he’s pretty sure he deserves both.
Clint settles in and flicks through the inflight magazine. Folds down the table tray for the empty seat between him and the window and waits for Natasha to find him.
The plane is barely half full and everyone’s sleepy from lunch so he doesn’t have to wait long. Natasha’s still not really looking at him but she lays a hand on his shoulder as she leans across to right the tray and Clint keeps his voice low as he tells her who their targets are.
The hand on his shoulder squeezes briefly and then she’s moving away and asking the man in front of Clint to please return his seat to the upright position in preparation for takeoff.
Eyes follow Natasha as she makes her way up the aisle and Clint watches them watching her. For him, blending into a crowd is as simple as throwing on a hoodie and trying not to stare, but Natasha’s kind of beauty is always going to draw attention and she’s had to learn how to work with that. How to control what she shows them
Because right now they’re watching Natasha as she gets in close and assesses the targets Clint has identified, but what they’re seeing is Nicole completing her preflight checks.
It’s a shell game. A con so perfect that even he has trouble seeing where the sleight of hand comes in. It’s something he wants to keep watching until he has it all figured out.
Natasha finds him again once the plane is in the air. “They’re getting restless ahead of schedule. Wait for me to get into position and then move on my signal.”
Clint nods. “Well, at least this means I don’t have to watch The Wedding Crashers. Between you and me, I was starting to worry.”
She blinks and then her lips curve into the first real smile he’s gotten out of her all day. One of those rare uncalculated smiles that always make him smile back and feel strangely accomplished at getting that reaction from her.
Not quite idly, he wonders what it would take to make her laugh.
A mission for another time. Natasha is already moving into position and they’re still on the clock here so Clint lets go of everything else and waits for her signal.
3
“Let me do the talking,” she’d said to him as they entered the party and he’d nodded, grip tightening just a little on her arm but not looking at her.
Though there hadn’t turned out to be much talking involved. Barely enough to introduce themselves as Cameron and Nancy Rockwell and establish that he’d made his money in property while she was from some ambiguously European moneyed background before the target was eagerly leading them towards the private apartment at the centre of his house.
Cameron and Nancy make all the appropriate noises about the décor and the Caravaggio on the wall but then there’s a bed and Cameron’s wine glass is being taken from him and apparently Sameen Kapoor is not a man with much use for small talk. That’s fine. They’re far more interested in the files he has on the computer in his office anyway.
Usually, on a job like this they just need to wait until they’ve got the target alone before knocking them out and taking what they came for. But that isn’t going to work here. The instant that Kapoor and his people so much as suspect that there’s been a leak is the instant that the files and all the information they contain become useless. They knew this going in.
“Don’t try and get me off,” she’d said to him before the party. “It’s work. I don’t want to enjoy it.”
There are close to two hundred other guests downstairs. Right now they’re drinking and laughing and eating canapés while Nancy Rockwell is naked on all fours with her husband behind her and their host’s hands fisted in her hair.
The air conditioning is up too high and she’s starting to get a crick in her neck. To her it’s almost mechanical, the repetitive motion and the way the three of them are fitted together, but the air is thick with harsh groans and when she looks up Kapoor’s eyes are dark and his face drawn tight with longing.
He isn’t looking at Nancy.
She clenches down twice to get Clint’s attention and he makes a choked off noise and spreads a palm across the base of her spine. If she’s noticed where Kapoor’s true interest lies then it’s more than likely that Clint has too. He doesn’t miss much.
There’s shame beneath that longing. She wonders if he ever lets himself touch or if he’s always careful to keep the blank safety of a woman’s body between him and what he really wants.
Clint’s palm is warm against her skin, taking the chill off the air, and when he starts rubbing in circles she closes her eyes.
Files on a computer and different types of shame and she just pushes it all aside and lets herself focus on Clint’s hand rubbing slow circles against the small of her back. The same circles he always rubs when she’s feeling sick or trapped in her head. The same circles that had kept her grounded that entire ride in the Quinjet when he’d first brought her into S.H.I.E.L.D.; her hands empty and shaking and being so sure that they were just going to put a bullet in her no matter what he said and not caring because anything was better than living like this.
After, she lies between them and curls towards Clint, turns her back on Kapoor’s ragged breaths.
Clint’s hair is damp at the temples and his eyes heavy-lidded but he focuses on her instantly. She signs, awkward and one-handed, that he’s more the target’s type than she is and smirks when his mouth twists wryly. No doubt thinking, as she is, how the analysts were so quick to note that Kapoor’s chosen couples always contained a petite and cultured wife that they had managed to overlook the husbands entirely. She’s willing to bet good money that they were all muscular ex-military types.
Her post-mission report will make her feelings on this oversight very clear.
Clint’s mouth is still twisted up unhappily and, not quite on impulse, Natasha leans in, slow enough for him to move away if he wants, and kisses him. It’s little more than a soft press of lips, closed mouth and almost chaste, but she hopes it makes him feel the same way his hand on her back always makes her feel. That he knows it means he isn’t alone.
When she pulls back, his eyes are wide and a little surprised but he’s smiling. Something soft and open in his expression that Natasha doesn’t think she’s seen before, not this close, and it makes her want to curl in closer still. Makes her wish, not for the first time this evening, that the two of them were somewhere far away from here.
The moment breaks when Kapoor sighs loudly behind her and says, “Well, this was a highly enjoyable interlude.”
She’s still watching Clint so she sees the exact moment that he closes himself up again and slaps on a grin, something loose and lazy and vaguely predatory. “Who says it’s over?”
She doesn’t move when Clint climbs over her to reach Kapoor. He holds himself up on his arms and doesn't touch her any more than he has to but she still feels the warmth of his skin as a sweet drag across her own. At her back, Kapoor stutters out a protest that quickly turns into a moan and then there’s the slide of sheets and skin and a low dirty laugh that makes her fingers twitch.
Natasha lies very still for the count of ten and then slips off the bed. A quick glance doesn’t show her much more than muscles shifting across the broad expanse of Clint’s back, but from the sounds Kapoor is making it seems like he’ll be distracted for a while.
She pauses only to collect the flash drive from Nancy’s purse before walking naked down the hall to finish the job.
4
From up here the ballroom looks like a chessboard.
It’s not an unfamiliar view. He remembers lying curled up and unseen on the trapeze artist’s platform while two of the roustabouts passed a bottle back and forth and pushed mismatched pieces across a board. He’d taught himself to play by watching how the different pieces moved and before long he was heckling and calling down suggestions and making the men laugh.
There are more pieces to keep track of here and they won’t stay where you put them but the rules are just as simple once you know what you’re looking at.
Chatter filters up to his position on the balcony encircling the main floor. He easily picks out Hungarian, German, and Czech as well as a handful of other Slavic languages that he can understand but can’t quite pin down. That too is familiar and it makes an interesting counterpoint to the Russian in his earpiece.
He locates the source of that Russian without effort. Right at the centre of everything.
If the ballroom is a chessboard then Natasha is its queen. She moves where she likes and the room ripples and rearranges itself around her, as if the pampered elite recognise a true predator in their midst and either fall back or crowd forward to show their throats and beg for scraps.
Though some may just be fans of the ballet.
An old alias to meet with an old ally. A persona that Natasha never thought she’d have to pull from the back of her closet again, but her relationship with tonight’s contact predates her relationship with S.H.I.E.L.D. and this is their best chance of getting the codes they need. Everything depends on the contact not knowing who Natasha is working for these days.
Clint’s here in case they do.
Ideally, he’d have his bow and a dozen good arrows, but his position is too exposed and it isn’t as if he’s any less accurate with the small calibre firearm he has on him. He’s supposed to be the ballerina’s security detail and his orders are to stay close, but he can’t do that and watch her back at the same time. Not in this crowd.
He’d spent exactly ten minutes down there before touching his fingertips to the small of her back and heading for the balcony. Natasha doesn’t need him glued to her side; she needs to be able to work without worrying about what’s happening in her blind spots.
From up here Clint can see everything that he couldn’t on the ground. He can filter out the static of useless details and pay attention to patterns and the way things move. Stepping back makes everything quieten down and slot into place and make sense.
A spy who is also a ballerina. Take a step back and it makes sense.
Because he’s watching Natasha glide across a ballroom and at the same time he’s watching her walk into her tiny Parisian garret and kick off her heels. He’s been waiting for thirteen hours on a rooftop in the dead of winter and he just wants to finish the job and go home.
It’s snowing lightly and he watches as she takes off her makeup and jewellery and changes into a loose sweater and shorts. She steps closer to the window and he draws an arrow back. Inhales.
And then she begins to dance.
Slowly at first, as if she’s carrying a heavy weight almost too much for her to bear, but her steps gradually growing lighter and more certain until each movement flows together like music.
Earlier that week he watched her kill six armed men with her bare hands. He’s read her file. He knows what she is. But he watches her dance like it’s the only thing holding her together and he knows he can’t kill her. Not without offering her the same choice he’d been given.
Four days later he holds out his hand and she takes it.
And this is where it’s led them. His attention sharpens on the present and lets the memory drift back down to its usual place as the contact finally makes an appearance. She’s almost a mirror image of Natasha in silk and pearls but her hair is blonde and he’s already drawing his gun.
“Contact approaching on your six,” he says into the com. “I’ve got you covered, Nat.”
The corner of her mouth curls up as she artfully manoeuvers herself to watch the contact’s approach without ever breaking conversation with the excitable Czech couple in front of her.
Clint widens his focus to take in the whole room as Natasha and the contact exchange kisses and smile at each other like they’re comparing weapons. He has their voices in his ear but that’s Natasha’s department. He focuses on what he can see.
Her guys are good. They know the room and manage to blend in right until the last second but then the pattern catches and there’s the glint of a needle and Clint puts a bullet in them both while they’re still reaching for Natasha.
He holds his position as the entire ballroom erupts into chaos. Everyone breaks for the exits while he keeps his gun trained on the two writhing bodies just in case they have any stupid ideas about trying to get up again.
The contact’s on the ground too and Natasha’s already calling in a team to deal with this clusterfuck. She’s completely in control of the situation down there and whatever passes for security in this place is going to make Clint’s position within seconds. He needs to move. Hesitates.
And then Natasha is looking up at him. There’s blood on her face but none of it’s hers. Her eyes are bright with affectionate amusement and Clint lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.
He flashes her a grin and a quick salute before slipping away into the night.
5
Clint doesn’t pull his punch.
She sees it coming, of course. She’s been watching it build while gravel bites into her knees and the idiot in front of her grows less and less subtle about what he wants to do to her. What he plans to do whether she talks or not.
Nothing she hasn’t heard before. And, amidst all the bullshit, he’s remarkably free with what he lets slip about the workings of their operation so maybe she’ll show mercy once this is over and leave him with one functioning testicle. But maybe not.
It’s an hour before dawn and they’ve got her down on her knees in some parking lot behind a convenience store out in the middle of nowhere. Her wrists are tied behind her back and it’s probably all meant to be very intimidating but there are five men standing over her and the only dangerous one is Clint.
Dangerous to them. Not to her.
These morons think Clint is one of their own and none of them notice the forced edge to his laugh every time one of them grabs a fistful of her hair and slaps her across the face.
They’re amateurs. It doesn’t take long before she has what she came for.
The only problem is that it’s going to take her at least thirty seconds to free her wrists. Thirty seconds she doesn’t have as long as there’s a man standing directly behind her with a clear line of sight and a gun in his hand.
She can see Clint struggling with this. The idiot in front of her continues his tirade, blissfully unaware that he’s only making it less and less likely that he’ll be walking out of here in any way intact, and then his hand is raising and it’s curled into a fist this time and that’s what gets Clint to finally make his move.
So she’s expecting the punch but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Clint telegraphs the hit enough for her to move with it, letting the momentum knock her flat on her back with sparks pounding behind her eyes. He’s standing over her with his face twisted up and spitting ugliness, making the other men look to him, making them follow him the way people always follow Clint when he wants them to.
It doesn’t even take her thirty seconds with her arms pinned beneath her. They think she’s writhing in pain and are still laughing by the time they realise their mistake.
They don’t laugh for long.
She calls it in once they’re all down and joins Clint. He’s sitting on the hood of a car with one knee drawn up and slowly rubbing his thumb back and forth across the knuckles of his other hand. He doesn’t react when Natasha sits beside him and after a moment she takes his hand and presses a kiss to the knuckles.
He startles at that and tries to pull away but she doesn’t let him. Just watches him calmly and holds his hand to the side of her face until he turns it in her grip and spreads his palm against her skin. His fingers calloused and careful as he traces across the place he hit; his eyes raw and not quite meeting hers.
“Don’t,” she says firmly. “I’m fine. You know me, Clint, it won’t even bruise. You hit me harder when we’re sparring.”
It’s not yet dawn but her eyes are good and there’s more than enough light for her to see the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows something that might sound like a laugh but really isn’t. She doesn’t look away. “Clint.”
He lets out a shuddering breath and nods.
When he tugs at his hand again she threads her fingers between his and lets their joined hands rest in the space between them. The car’s hood is cold but Clint’s hand is warm and familiar in her own.
“I really want to shoot something right now,” he says, so quiet she almost doesn’t catch it. “Blow something up. I’m a sniper, not a… I don’t know why they keep sending me in for shit like this.”
Because you’re good at it is what she could say but doesn’t. That’s not something he’s going to be able to hear right now without it sounding like an accusation. She rests her head on his shoulder and sighs.
There are a lot of things she could say to him right now. That he’s a good man. That he’s nothing like his father. That she owes him her life and everything good in it and knowing that she’ll never be able to repay that debt isn’t going to stop her from trying but that isn’t why she stays by his side.
Nothing he doesn’t already know. Nothing she doesn’t tell him every time she smuggles a bottle of bourbon into medical or sits at his feet and lets him dig his thumbs into the unacceptably vulnerable juncture of her neck at the end of a long day. They’ve been this way for so long now that she can’t even remember where it first began.
She wonders if he can.
But there’s no time to ask. She can see the headlights of the approaching S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles carving through the early morning and they aren’t finished here yet. There’s still a site to secure and then they’ll be taken back to base for debriefings and meetings and probably some time in medical for her.
If they’re very lucky they may catch an hour or two of sleep some time in the next twenty four hours.
Clint groans as if he heard that last thought and for a moment the two of them just sit in silence and watch the lights get closer.
And then Natasha rubs her thumb one last time across his knuckles before standing up to go meet the cars. She doesn’t need to look back to know Clint is right behind her.
+1
It’s one of life’s great injustices that they only ever get leave when they’re too injured to enjoy it.
“You know that’s not true.” Natasha doesn’t even bother to look away from whichever soap she’s managed to find on Clint’s crappy cable. “Amsterdam. Cameroon. Perugia. Those four days after Easter that we spent in the city. Besides, we’d be doing exactly the same thing we’re doing now even without my shoulder and your ankle.”
She’s probably right. They don’t get much time off, and even less time off together, but they both find comfort in routine and this is where they always come once they’ve been cleared to leave the base. The two of them curled up on his huge old couch with their work phones turned off and a pile of takeout menus close to hand.
S.H.I.E.L.D. could always reach them if they wanted to, of course, but it’s nice to pretend. Just for a little while.
“I caught malaria in Cameroon,” he points out. “In case you forgot.”
The amused look she gives him makes it clear that she hadn’t forgotten that and was just waiting for him to bring it up. “But you only developed symptoms towards the end of the second week. It was a very considerate bout of malaria that let us finish the job and do some sightseeing before the projectile vomiting really set in.”
He snorts at that and hides his smile against her hip. Medical shot him full of enough painkillers that his ankle is just a dull ache below the knee, but the first thing Natasha had done once they were showered and dressed in sleep clothes was arrange him on the couch with a pillow beneath his cast and his head resting in her lap. He’d grumbled a little until she narrowed her eyes in warning and then he’d just opened the book she slapped against his chest and mostly stopped pretending he wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be.
Natasha starts to comb her fingers through his hair. “You liked the elephants,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.” Clint tilts his head to give her better access. He’s rewarded with her lightly raking her nails all the way from his hairline to the nape of his neck and he shudders happily. “Yeah, the elephants were good.”
It had eased something in his chest to see the elephants in the wild. Seeing them move as a family and without chains had made him reach out for Natasha’s hand and then shrug helplessly at her curious look.
He’ll tell her about it one day. Probably.
They don’t say anything else but Natasha’s fingers are soothing in his hair and he lets his eyes close.
The television murmurs off to the side. Neither of them can stand loud noises during this time any more than they can stand silence so she keeps the volume turned low. Watching trashy television always settles Natasha down after a mission and soap operas are her drug of choice. Especially the ones with evil twins and voodoo curses. She’s long stopped pretending it has anything to do with educating herself on American culture.
The painkillers are making him drowsy and maybe he drifts off for a while because when he opens his eyes again the light has subtly changed and the television is speaking in muted Spanish.
Clint blinks, disorientated and fumbling for his book until he catches sight of it on the coffee table. There’s a menu for The Blue Lotus tucked neatly between its pages and it takes his brain a second or two to catch up.
He’s seen many different versions of Natasha over the years, and expects to see many more, but he thinks this will always be his favourite. Natasha with her face scrubbed pale and clean and her hair in two messy braids as she obsesses over telenovelas. Natasha wearing his old tee shirt and a little closer to the surface than she usually allows herself to be.
It took months of them working side by side before Natasha trusted him enough to let him see this. Just like it took time for Clint to tell her what his alias had been before Hawkeye and longer still to tell her the truth of why he no longer went by that name. So many reasons not to let anyone in and she makes all of them seem a little less important with every day that passes.
Natasha’s pretending not to notice he’s awake and it feels like the simplest thing in the world to just reach up and gently tug on one of her braids until she laughs and lets him pull her down into a kiss.
It’s not the greatest angle but they’re both experts at making the best of what they have and their best is always pretty spectacular.
Especially when they’re working together.
They can’t hold the position for long though and Natasha soon has to straighten up, wincing and gingerly rotating her shoulder, but she doesn’t go far. Her hand slides round to cradle the back of Clint’s head, thumb stroking gentle circles behind his ear, keeping him close.
Clint’s entire body is humming quietly beneath his skin and his ankle is starting to complain but mostly he just feels tired. Like if he closed his eyes he could fall asleep right now despite everything.
Later, they’ll do this properly. He’ll turn off the television and she’ll stretch out on top of him and they’ll take their time carefully taking each other apart. He’s patient and she’s thorough and they can spend hours without ever coming up for air.
Something to look forward to.
But for now he has Natasha’s hand in his hair and soft Spanish in the background and all this will still be here waiting for him when he wakes up.