we could use more submissions for this creative support group at bc.unfinished.gmail.com. please remember to also include your lj user name. today's submission comes from topaz119 (please contact me so we can include your lj handle if this is your entry.)

::waves:: So, this is the first part of what is looking to be a pretty long story, one that I would dearly love to actually finish but is moving at a glacial pace. Post-movie, all those spoilers, etc, Clint/Natasha, moving into a not-restricted-to-just-partners relationship, really very rough, but here goes nothing:

Somewhere in the post-adrenaline crash, Clint thinks he hears Fury conferring with Stark and making arrangements for personnel from the helicarrier to bunk out in the shell of Stark Tower, both so they can bring the carrier's reactors down for inspection and repair, and so SHIELD can offer manpower to the mayor's office to assist with getting the city back on its feet. When the fleet of SUVs pull up and the team piles in, Clint assumes that's where they're going. He's more tired than he's ever been--the only sleep he's gotten since before it all started is the two hours he was unconscious after Nat had cognitively re-calibrated him. She's right there next to him; his brain takes that as permission to switch off so he's basically sleepwalking as he piles out of the car after the rest of the team. It takes him until they're inside to realize it's a house, not the tower, and even then, Nat just points him toward a sweeping staircase and he stumbles along next to her.

Hme makes it to the first landing without ending up flat on his face, but after that it's like he half-falls on every other step. Nat has him around the waist and he appreciates her determination, but she's not in such great shape herself. He braces himself to at least try to keep from taking her right back down with him, but then Rogers is behind them both, a solid presence that gets them to the top of the stairs and in front of a half-open door.

"Don't drop yet," Natasha is saying. She digs her nails into his side, jagged pinpricks of a sharper pain in the middle of the dull, throbbing ache that's the rest of his body. "Shower, Clint, come on, two more minutes to get the top layer of dirt off you." He wants to tell her to fuck off and leave him alone, but it's their standard process at the end of an op, instituted with good reason in that it's kept at least a half-dozen nasty infections from getting firmly established in various cuts and gashes over the years. He shuts down that line of thought as quickly as he can, because it'd been Coulson who'd pushed them to do it and there's no way Clint can deal with thinking about Phil just yet.

The bathroom is something out of a magazine, with a small lake for a tub and a shower built for an orgy or three. It takes Clint long enough to get his Kevlar and boots off that the steam is like mist drifting through the marble and gilt. He has a long couple of seconds where he can only see the cloud that had kept his stolen Quinjet out of visual range of the helicarrier on the approach to attack, but then Natasha is there again and he’s back in billionaire-land, every muscle in his body shaking and sore and his brain all but paralyzed from a lethal combination of exhaustion and grief and guilt.

“Clint,” Natasha says quietly, and he kicks himself out of that headspace. It isn’t going to help anything if he shuts down. He repeats that over and over as he drags into the shower and groans as the water lives up to the promise of all the steam and all but scalds his skin. His forearms and biceps are cut way the hell up from the window he’d slammed through; every little nick and scrape stings and burns under the spray, but at least none of them feel like they’ve still got glass in them. He braces his forearms against a wall and lets the water beat down on his neck and shoulders, not moving for long enough that he’s not sure he hasn’t fallen asleep.

“If you drown in there, I will make Stark build the tackiest, most maudlin memorial anyone has ever seen,” Natasha calls. “It will be so sickeningly sentimental nobody will be able to look at it without gagging.”

“Good to know you haven’t lost your deep well of compassion,” Clint manages. He’s kind of proud, to tell the truth. He had no idea his brain was functioning well enough for sarcasm, but maybe the snark really is in his DNA.

“I didn’t hunt your brainwashed ass down to lose you in the shower of Tony Stark’s city house.” Natasha hands him a towel and eyes him critically, reaching up to touch the bruise along his hairline, her gift to him. Clint stays still until she steps back. “Did Medical write you a script for anything?”

“I don’t know,” Clint says, fumbling the towel around his waist and moving out of the way so she can take her turn in the shower. “Maybe?”

“Jarvis?”

“Agent Barton does have several options for--”

“Don’t need it.” Clint leans against the door and closes his eyes.

“Barton--”

“Romanoff,” Clint matches her tone. She calls his bluff and lets the silence draw out and he knows she knows he’s too fucking tired to out-stubborn her, so it only stings his pride a little to concede. “I really fucking don’t need to be fighting through drugs if... you know, my brain cracks wide open on me.” He hears her muttering and adds, “I’m good, Nat. I can barely stand. I’ll sleep.”

“Then you should probably get your ass into the bed, because I’m not much better shape. You’re spending the night where you fall.”

Clint grunts a wordless agreement, but doesn’t move away from where he’s propping up the wall until water stops. He honestly doesn’t know what good he’d be if she were the one who went down, but, well. Partners. He figures he could at least get Stark’s AI involved. Natasha doesn’t say anything when she sees him there--which actually says a lot, since she’s not shy about voicing her opinion of what she sees as his stupidity--only nods to the pile of clothes on one of the sweeping marble counters, the one Clint honestly hasn’t noticed until now.

Clint expects basic SHIELD issue, sweats and a t-shirt, the cotton new and stiff, but instead the material is soft and rich. Expensive, even just going off the feel.

“All part of the standard Stark hospitality package,” Natasha says, reading Clint’s mind like usual. She pulls on her own variation of the same stack and rubs a towel over her hair. There are circles dark enough to be bruises under her eyes, and the cut on her bottom lip looks like it could use some ice, but Clint doesn’t see anything else in his automatic once-over. She’s moving slowly--which, yeah, so is he--and is favoring one leg, but Clint’s seen her function through much much worse. Of course, it’s been a hell of a long time since Clint himself was responsible for any of it--

“Bed.” Natasha shoves him out of the doorway and he lets the momentum carry him across the cool hardwoods and into the biggest bed he’s seen outside of Vegas. Natasha crawls under the layers of sheets and comforters, on the right side like always. She curls on her side to face him and one side of her mouth curves up in the smallest of smiles when he does the same. They've slept in the same bed more times than he can remember: back-to-back, when they're expecting trouble but have to rest; wrapped around each other when they're likely to freeze before the sun comes back up, whoever's hurt worst having to be the little spoon; face-to-face when they need to connect. Clint doesn't know who needs that connection more right now, but he doesn't much guess it matters.

“Thanks,” Clint says, his voice catching hard in his throat. He’s said it already, but he doesn’t think it’ll hurt anything if he says it again. He mostly expects her to tell him to shut up again, or at least roll her eyes at him; it's how they are, how they deal with all the shit that rightfully should bury them. He's caught flat-footed, completely off his game when she reaches out instead, fingertips tracing his cheekbone before she fits her hands to her jaw. There's more he wants to say, more than he needs to say, because he's not talking so much about whatever she did to get him back, but more that she came after him in the first place, but he… can't.

"I knew you were there," Natasha says, her voice uneven and worn. Clint’s been on her side of the equation before, when the situation’s shot to hell and nobody has any idea of what they’re going to find when they start poking. It’s when everyone finds out if they really can walk the talk and Clint knows how goddamn lucky he was to have the team he had. “Thanks for not proving me wrong.”

Clint turns his head enough that he can press a kiss to her palm. “I’d say ‘anytime,’” he finally manages to say, even if it doesn’t come out as much more than a whisper, “but I’m really fucking hoping that never happens again, so.”

“No argument there,” Natasha murmurs, and Clint’s asleep before he can even see if she’s smiling.