So many great ones out there, but I've definitely gotta mention "The Observable Universe" (http://sarea-okelani.livejournal.com/399836.html) by sarea_okelani. If you've read it, you know what I mean when I say I spent the whole fic just hoping against hope Jane would finally catch them making out or something, and if you haven't read it, well, you'll just have to check it out and find out if she ever does.

OMG I was totally going to rec this one!!! The UST and the whole "OH MY GOD WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO GET TOGETHER THEY MUST GET TOGETHER OR I'M GOING TO DIE" feeling is so perfect.

:D

I completely second your choice.

I meant this to be a short little thing and then it got... longer.

So I am posting the first part here, and maybe I will finish it when I have a bit more time later, or maybe someone else will take it up and decide what happens next!

Natasha aches to touch him. Her fingers positively itch with the urge to uncurl from their hard press against her leg and close that distance, to slide into his with a soft squeeze that says 'I'm here' and 'You're really you' and 'We'll be okay' and 'Don't leave me again'.

But she doesn't. She can't. That's not who they are. Natasha touches Clint every day in a million different ways, but never, ever, like that. So she shifts instead, settling her leg next to his, her shoulder at his side, and absorbs the warmth of his nearness. She stills the yearning twitch of her hands with steel resolve and distracts herself with answers to Clint's hard questions.

She knows it will pass. It has to. It always does.

It means nothing, this desire to slide her arm around him as they watch Loki stand chained and gagged in Central Park and she leans in to whisper something that she knows will make him smile.

It means that she worried. It means that she needs him safe and at her back when the monsters come.

It means nothing.

She starts to make excuses. She coaxes Clint back to the training mats despite his protests and the lingering shadows in his eyes and the way he pulls his punches now, because something eases in her chest every time a blow connects and she is reassured that he is here. When he pins her for half a second, she feels a frisson of electric thrill sing along her limbs, and she smiles because this is right, this is how it should be.

She tells him he needs to get back in the saddle, and the covers she chooses provide excellent justification for sitting too close at dinner and twining her fingers through his as they walk along the Seine. She rubs her thumb lightly over the archer’s callouses that mark him as Clint, hers, and no one else. She looks up at him and gives him a brilliant smile that she tells herself belongs entirely to Nicholette and not at all to Natasha.

It means nothing.

And when they are home again, she invites herself into his living room night after night for pointless movie after pointless movie with each of them curled into opposite sides of Clint’s couch. Her legs stretch between them, and sometimes she lets herself steal a moment’s reassurance with the press of her toes against the solid muscle of his thigh. Some nights he slings his arm across the back of the couch and his fingers move to brush thoughtlessly through the loose curls of her hair. She sets her jaw against the sensation and does not let her eyes drift blissfully closed.

Natasha has always been aware of Clint. She can tell you where he’s standing with uncanny accuracy and she can predict his line of sight and the angle of his next shot almost every time. But it has never been like this. It has never been this electric thing, alive with awareness and pregnant with potential. It has never called to her like this, a siren’s song she can’t shut out, a magnetic pull she gives into time and time again with a basketful of easy explanations.

It does not pass.

It means nothing.

They sit at opposite sides of a conference table as Fury briefs them and Natasha finds her eyes drifting back to the splay of Clint’s hand against the table. Her lips curl into a small smile as he takes up a ballpoint pen to spin it between his fingers in an impatient fidget. She could spend hours watching the deft work Clint’s fingers.

He’s always been good with his hands. She’s seen him juggle half a dozen oranges in a street market in Belize and handle a razor-sharp knife with a carelessness that would make most people uneasy. She’s watched those hands wrap around a man’s throat and jerk him up against a wall and she’s wiped blood from those knuckles with the sting of disinfectant.

She knows the feel of those hands as they wrap around her wrist to pin her in place before she can slip free or twisting with a sharp, professional motion to disarm her. They are strong, capable hands, and Natasha tries not to remember the brush of those fingers against her cheek as Clint rearranges a curl before they step into the ballroom. It’s not easy. She’s always had a vivid imagination, and in her mind’s eye he draws the calloused pads of his fingers down her cheek, across her collarbone, to the swell of her breast below the curve of her neckline...

It takes her name on Fury’s lips to reclaim her attention, and Natasha has to forcibly drag her gaze away and resettle her focus. It doesn’t go unnoticed. She can feel Clint’s gaze on her, full of questions she doesn’t know how to answer, and when the briefing ends she escapes the room ahead of him and disappears before he can ask them.

0.o FEELINGS.

the progression from "It meants nothing"/mostly truth to "It means nothing"/complete lie works really well.

Yay! Sometimes I go overboard with the repetition so it's nice to know that OCCASIONALLY IT WORKS!

I LURVE this. Like, I can't even talk sense about it right now, I'm just covered in the feels.

*blushes* Thanks!

Oh please, please, PLEASE! Keep going, it's amazing!!!
I almost choked with the feelings!

So does it count as UST if they had a thing, and now don't for whatever reason? (Not a philosophical tree in the forest question, but actually).

Oh totally. At least I'd say so. Maybe a different kind of UST subcategory, but tenion is tension in my book. (and i'm dying for the story of where they are exes who are still madly in love with each other but can't figure out a way to tell the other person that.)

Edited 2012-09-21 05:21 pm (UTC)

Oooh fun. Now I have an idea that has spiraled out to a story with a plot. We will see. To the Writemobile!

Is that the big white van parked out in front of the bar?

I feel by the time the next avengers comes out not only will we have a bar, we'll have a van, which will turn into a party bus and then we'll take over a casino. (We really need a Black Widow and Hawkeye movie. Just saying).

There needs to be a van AND a party bus. Sometimes the van can help get people to and from but I think the majority of the partying needs to have a dedicated bus!

To the Writemobile!

MUST. BE. ICONNED.

But what would our Writemobile look like?

I dunno, i just keep imagining the bookmobile (which in my mind is MAGIC.)

Trufax.

I totally saw it as a converted bookmobile! Man, I loved that thing as a kid... and I had a library within a bike's ride away! Still wanted the van to come by!

Writemobile/batmobile/bookmobile icon fusion ahead:

OMG these are awesome and perfect!!!! :D :D :D

I found so many fun bookmobile images! Seriously, just stick 'bookmobile' into a google image search. I love all the designs and the black and white photos of ye olden days bookmobiles :)

I totally had to snag one... <33333333

And every time I see it I'm gonna hear it Batman style *grins*. People of the bar, to the Writemobile! Heehee.

Just saw these! They're great :D

Glad you like :)

Agreeeed. Tension of any sort is awesome.

And I want to read that story too.

I knooooooooooooow! Someone needs to write this, stat.

Man, I would LOVE to read that story - I've come across a couple fics that touched on the 'exes who are still in love' idea but I would KILL to see a nice, long fic that did the whole shebang from the breakup to the 'we're still in love' to the 'fuck this, I want to be with you again and forever.'

I've started something else for this, but I had also written a UST thing for the summer promtathon. So I thought I'll just link that here too....

Denial is the best defence (http://folie-lex.livejournal.com/16078.html)




Edited 2012-09-21 05:47 pm (UTC)

I think one of the hardest things to do with UST is play it understated and close to the vest. If you can just get those occasional glimmers of what's going on under the surface, they are infinitely more powerful and pack quite a (gorgeous) wallop. Such are the fics below, by rollingplains all of which I have an absurdly intense admiration for, especially the dialogue (which for my money is flawless):


speculative fiction (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8266217/1/speculative-fiction)

Wednesday (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8110837/1/Wednesday)

Eroding (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8126257/1/Eroding)

Good Natasha fic I haven't read yet? Good Clint/ Natasha fic I haven't read yet? *tacklehugs*

This is why I love recs :D

Go forth and read and enjoy! It's great stuff. :)

**tacklehugs you right back**

it still feels so awesome that someone would rec me. so i'm just going to stop freaking out for a sec and say thanks.

THANKS!! eeeeee

get over it, buttercup. you haz fans. ;)


(you are also very welcome.)

maybe i do, but it'll never get old :D

Thank you for the epic fic! All of it is excellent. So many partnership feels.

Edited 2012-09-22 11:57 am (UTC)

“Fuck.” Clint swore as his computer shut down without warning for the third time that afternoon.

“Need help with that?” A familiar voice, one that Clint had tried to forget, came from the entrance to his office.

“Natalie?” Clint said in surprise.

“Good afternoon Professor Barton,” she said as she sashayed into the room.

“You can’t just show up here four years later." Clint spluttered. "Get out.”

---

Four years ago

Clint made a game of bouncing a tennis ball throughout the room was he waited for office hours to end. A soft knock at the door tore him from his game. A young blonde woman in a white sundress hovered at the entrance to his office. The morning light streaming through the window turned the dress partially transparent. She smiled and Clint suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

“What can I do for you, Miss...?” Clint asked, trying to remember the last time he’d washed the shirt he was wearing.

“Rushman. Natalie Rushman. I’m told you’re the man to talk to about artifact recovery. I have a proposition for you,” she said, seemingly ignoring his disheveled appearance.

“It’s the middle of the semester. I’m busy. I can refer you to one of my colleagues,” Clint said, professional to the hilt.

“I’ll stick around. I can be very persuasive,” Natalie said, eyes sparkling.

He believed her.

---

Present Day

“It’s Natasha now,” the woman in front of him said. Her hair was red and cropped short. She wore a black singlet and cargo pants, her curves turning the simple clothes into art.

“I know. I saw the TIME article. ‘Archaeologist Natasha Romanoff, the real-life Laura Croft.’” Clint’s tone was wry. “What’s a big-shot like you doing in a podunk college town?”

“What do you think?” Natasha asked.

“I think you should leave,” Clint replied, jaw firm.

“Clint, I know you’re angry, but I need you to listen,” Natasha set her hands on his desk and leaned forward to look him in the eye.

“You left me tied to a tree. Naked,” Clint protested, looking down at the desk and Natasha's splayed fingers to break eye contact. He could already feel himself losing control of the conversation.

“Well I’d say I’m sorry but...” Natasha let her sentence trail off, shamelessly undressing him with her eyes.

“Nat, what do you want?” Clint closed his eyes in resignation, gesturing for Natasha to sit down.

“What do you know about Hortensia’s tablet?” Natasha asked, doing as he indicated and primly crossing her legs.

“Oh no Nat. Do your own tomb robbing,” Clint said, forcing down the memories he had of her in this room.

“We made great partners last time,” Natasha said.

“Until the part where I ended up naked and tied to a tree.”

Natasha shrugged. “Nothing’s perfect. Hortensia’s tablet? You're a walking encyclopedia, you must know.”

“A wax tablet that gave its bearer a silver tongue? It was destroyed by the Church in the eleventh century,” Clint said almost absentmindedly as he walked to his bookshelf to find the relevant source.

“It turns out priests lie,” Natasha said, mock outraged.

“And now that you've located it you can't steal it yourself?” Clint said, paging through a thin book with small print. The half faded lettering on the cover read 'Curious artifacts from the Greco-Roman world.'

“To enter the crypt where it’s hidden you need two keys, and two people to turn them. My buyer had one key, your podunk museum had another.”

“Had?” Clint turned to Natasha, book still in hand.

“It was replaced by a good replica early this morning,” Natasha said, giving Clint a naughty grin. She uncrossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “You get two million, I get two million."

“So you figured all you had to do is waltz in here, flutter your eyelashes and I’d suddenly abandon any academic integrity I still have?” Clint asked coldly.

“It’s been a bad few years for humanities at public universities. You can have whatever else we find down there, and the credit for the discovery. It might bring the funding your department so desperately needs.”

Clint stayed silent. Natasha took it as permission to continue.

“It couldn’t have been fun for your colleagues to be forced to take a pay cut. Some of them are putting their kids through school. And the archaeology department hasn’t offered a field trip since 2009, which might explain why so many of your students are abandoning history for business and accounting.”

“You want me to sell my soul on the black market.” Clint stated flatly.

“It’s one artifact only five people in the world know exist, and with little historical value at that. It’s not like I’m asking you to fence the Orb of Atlantis.” Natasha said, getting up from her chair and moving towards him.

“And the buyer? A third-rate dictator looking to prop up a country he’s sucking dry?” Clint asked.

“A mousy businessman who needs the charisma boost.” Natasha took the book from his hands, brushing her fingers against his as she did so.

Clint cupped her cheek, thumb at the edge of her mouth. Natasha leaned into his hand and widened her eyes. He leaned closer, until his mouth bypassed Natasha’s lips to brush her ear.

“After we get the artifact we’re done. I never see you again,” Clint whispered, voice low and harsh.

Natasha pulled back, hurt in her eyes. Clint ignored it. The only emotion she showed was the emotion she wanted others to see.

---

Okay, I have this story in my head of Indy!Clint who is slightly technologically inept and Laura Croft!Nat who likes her flashy gadgets. And I figured why not cross it with the UST prompt, but it’s just not going onto paper the way I want. Continue, y/n? Advice?

Edited 2012-09-22 02:33 am (UTC)

I really liked this! And I lurve the idea of Clint and Nat having had something in the past that ended badly (and maybe a not so bright and shiny history) but still maybe also carrying a torch for the other. Plus adventure! Plus Lara Croft and Indiana Jones!!!

To summarize: I approve this fic. Yes, yes I do. :D

Just a heads up, folks, because I've had a few messages about this and I agree with it: pretty please put ratings, warnings, and/or triggers at the start of, or in the header for, any and all comment fics on threads like these. (Preferably for recs as well, but rec links usually go to fics were those things are already in the headers.) Thank you!

Excellent point. Thank you for the reminder. (i know i for one have been bad about that lately and i promise to mend my ways!) :)

Everyone's been so great about it everywhere else on the comm that I forget it's an issue myself, and then people remind me and it's 'oops, yeah, that.' (Shame on you *grins*. Now go and write more lovely fic so that you can practise writing ratings/warnings/triggers before them. Mmm, fic....)

(as luck would have it, i'm actually working on more stupid teenage makeouts right now...)

((appropriate ratings and warnings will of course be given. *g*))