Title: Cracking surface
Author: anuna_81
A Gift For: renegadewriter8
Rating: Teen
Warnings: injuries and blood, nothing too explicit
Pairings: Clint/Natasha
Summary/Prompt Used: I took some creative liberty with prompts you listed and things you mentioned you like. What stuck with me was “Clint is oblivious” bit in your prompts – it was challenging because Clint is this guy who notices everything, but turns out there's one subtle thing he is oblivious about. (He's going to have his eyes opened, though).
Authors Notes: She'll be loyal to him, like a knife under his pillow, gun in his hand, arrow on his mind.


Banner by frea_o



*

”She'll let you in her mouth
If the words you say are right”


New Jersey


When he wakes up, she's there, her big eyes deceptive in the glow of the streetlight coming through the window. She's next to him and he wants so many things at once – to ask her if she's okay (to make certain that she is, with his own hands); to grab her and shake her and yell at her because how could she be so careless, running into the crossfire like that? But he can barely move, all his bruises are still too alive and his body is still tired. She comes close and then closer, her look hard with an edge of panic or maybe even desperation, he isn't sure. He can't tell and that's disconcerting, because he's gotten to know her and he's used to being able to read her.

“You idiot,” she says, her voice heavily guarded, but there are things slipping in around the edges. His mind is too foggy and slow to truly catch them.

“... likewise,” he says roughly, as she checks his face, then works the sheet down, looking over his nude body searching for damage. Her expression darkens in response to the bruises covering his side, and even though she looks so harsh, like a blade against moonlight, her touch is soft and unobtrusive. He's still under her quickly searching hands, even if his mind isn't, he's lying on his side and not trying to move, just letting her do this. He sees how she exhales when she's done, how she almost crumbles and looks away for a moment. He pushes himself up, the weight of pain and the gravity of the sheets dragging him down, and panic and anxiety rise in his chest. He wants to ask her things, he wants to know what happened at the briefing, he wants to hear from her why the fuck she did it.

“Nat,” he starts, but she cuts him off, shaking her head.

“Not now,” she says, sounding rough and tired, somehow resigned. “I don't want to talk about it.”

He drags himself up to sitting position, groaning, and she turns around to face him even as she's stripping off her shirt. His eyes pause when she removes it and he sees dark blue and purple stretching over her skin like oil on water. She fixes him with a look, hard enough to pin him to the ground, so he swallows and doesn't say anything, and he doesn't reach out to touch her.

“Not now, Clint,” she says and the way she says his name convinces him (convinces him not to touch her, not to ask further, not to question things - just to be quiet with her.). Then he watches her take off her pants and crawl into the bed next to him, tugging him back down beside her and shutting her eyes. “Tomorrow, okay? I know we have to talk about it,” she says.

He lets her drag him down and watches her as she closes her eyes, fingers curled into his pillow. She falls asleep and she is so still that he checks to see if she's even breathing. She was equally still next to him under the rubble two days earlier when she ran into the collapsing warehouse to get him out. The order had been straightforward: if anyone fell behind, leave them. The intel and material and the mark were all too important. He knew what he'd been walking into. They all had. Natasha is a professional, he knows this, just like he knew he would die.

But she'd run. He'd seen her, across the rubble and the street, dodging bullets and throwing herself into the collapsing building after him, and then she'd found him and gripped his hand.

*

Belgrade, two years ago


“You love your fucking arrows,” she says, coughing up blood. He doesn't like it, he doesn't like how her face looks, doesn't know where all the blood is coming from. She'd already been pinned under the car when one of the attackers had gotten his hands on an arrow (one of his own goddamned arrows, Clint thinks) and had stabbed her. Clint's not a fucking surgeon. He isn't the one who should be cutting an arrow tip out of her thigh.

“Drink that,” he instructs and looks over his med kit. Okay, in theory? He knows how to do this. He's done something similar on himself. This is different. This is Natasha, and it's only their fifth mission together, and she's about to bleed out if he doesn't fix this, because waiting for help is not an option. It might arrive too late.

“I'm drunk already,” she says. She doesn't look drunk. “I can handle it without cheap vodka,” she assures him, and he almost believes her. “Just cut it out already,” she says.

He swallows and looks at her. “You have to be still,” he says. She rolls her eyes at him. He brings the scalpel closer to her skin, where the wood is sticking out of her leg and takes a deep breath.

She doesn't make a sound.

Later, after help arrives and she's been given proper medication and treated by a SHIELD medic, he's sitting next to her gurney inside the jet. She's slipping in and out of consciousness as he counts her breaths and even though he's been offered a place to lie down, he refuses to leave her side.

“Your bow and your arrows.... you love your arrows,” she says suddenly, raspy and slow and he looks up. She's looking at him, with dazed mirth and pain around the edges of her vision, but it doesn't seem like she blames him. (He still feels guilty, though).

“Nat -”

“Shut up,” she says. She doesn't talk to him like that. She never talks to him like that. “You're so good. So good with your weapons,” she says dreamily, drugged, and his mind plays a slow, bizarre game of catch up to an occasion when she teased him about this, about how he treated them. "You touch them like most men would a woman," she'd observed one day when she'd found him cleaning and polishing his gear.

“You left it,” she says. “Your bow,” she coughs and reaches out with her hand. He wraps his fingers around hers. There was no time, he thinks and he couldn't grab them both, not both her and his bow.

It hadn't been a choice at all.



*



New Jersey



When he wakes again, it's to the scent of food and coffee, to less pain and slightly more comfort.

Folded clothes wait for him on the other side of the bed, now tidy, with straightened sheets and pillow. He reaches and touches it, searching for the warmth she left behind. Then he gets up, slowly, and dresses, finding his way to the kitchen where she's trying to force the stove and his other belongings into compliance.

It's him who assesses the damage now, or what could be damage. He isn't sure. But she does remind him of a bow, of something tightly pulled and suspended as she moves. She has his shirt on and her legs are bare, but it's not the skin that makes his breath pause, it's the bruises. This time it's only bruises. The rest of the consequences of her actions are left to be seen, but he guesses it could have been worse for her. She's here after all, which means they've let her stay.

“You broke a direct order,” he says.

“I didn't,” she replies, not turning around.

“It said, leave anyone who falls behind. I fell behind, Nat,” he says. She becomes very still for a moment, doesn't move, doesn't say anything, doesn't even breathe.

“It said, secure the intel and the mark. That was done.” she says and then turns to give him one short look.

“You were supposed to leave me,” he insists. It's not that he regrets that he's not dead or that she came after him. He didn't expect her to, hadn't expect anyone to for that matter, because it was that kind of a mission. That's why they'd sent the best, that's why they sent the people who could walk away if need be.

But now, he stands here, three steps away from her wearing his washed out shirt, wondering if it was the other way around -

“The order said to leave everyone who'd fallen behind,” she says, voice causal, but too quiet. “In my estimation your status didn't fit said parameters.”

He comes closer, moves loudly enough for her to hear him and she turns around.

She looks up at him. “You didn't fall behind,” she says.

“I was trapped. The entire block was literally cut off. You ran into the crossfire and then into that warehouse that was about to collapse on my head.”

“I'm sure your stubborn head wouldn't be hurt,” she replies with hints of irony, but her expression matches his. Grave and completely serious. He exhales, narrowing his eyes at her. He won't get anywhere like this.

“You know how long we prepared this mission,” he says. She just stares at him. She knows how much they planned, how many hours were spent, because not a single mistake was allowed. The entire thing was more important than one agent, no matter how skilled or experienced. Her gaze shifts from his face to his arms crossed over his chest. Her eyes stay there, on his shooting hand.

“Four years, seven months and twenty five days,” she says.

“What?” he asks, not sure what she's saying.

“Since you brought me in,” she explains, her eyes returning to his hand. “You didn't fall-,” her voice catches, “behind.”

“Tasha,” he says, but she doesn't react. He watches as she traces the faint mark of the glove he wears to missions, almost but not quite touching.

“I've done those things, Clint. Hit and run, collect the intel and come back for the pay,” she looks up, and she seems tired, older than she really is. “It was like shooting a gun. Only, I was the gun. I was someone else's gun,” she looks back at his hand, and now he doesn't dare moving it or saying anything, because Natasha is telling him things. “Now I'm yours,” she says when she looks up again.

He almost snorts, surprised by the way she just described herself.

“You're not an object, Nat. You're not a weapon -”

“Am I not?” she asks, like it's a challenge to prove her otherwise. A challenge he'll fail. “It's my choice, Clint,” she says. “You offered me to choose my terms, back at the beginning. So I chose,” she takes a breath and takes him by surprise when she wraps her fingers around his. He watches when she lifts his hand and kisses it, his shooting hand, the scarred back with perpetual traces of his gear. “If I'm a weapon, if I'm a gun or … or a bow,” she's still holding his hand, looking at him and almost smiling. “I'm choosing who will wield me.”

*


Bratislava, one year later

She checks her elaborate hairdo and observes the makeup she just applied. Clint stands behind her, dressed in black tac gear and glances at her expression in the mirror. Everything is in place, as it should be. She's a painting, a dream, perfection. Their eyes meet as he brings his hands closer to her neck.

She is a weapon.

He hands her an earring.

“You should be able to hear me,” he says. She slips the fake jewel into her ear and smiles at him.

“I'll be listening to you,” she says, keeping her eyes on his as she puts on the other earring as well.

He smiles darkly. He will be on the roof, her eyes, her map. He will be aiming the gun.

“Necklace,” she says and he brings it to her, arranges it carefully around her neck, standing close behind her. She shifts and brushes against him, stays there for a moment until he's got everything in place.

“Transmitter,” he says, touching the jewelry just above her collarbone. “You don't have to kill anyone tonight,” he says, almost soothing her and she gives him this small smile, part irony and part something sad.

“I know,” her hand reaches and briefly touches his, and in the touch there's a hint of promise for more. She keeps her hand there for couple of moments and he closes his eyes.

More is for later.

“I'll be safe,” she says.

“You will be,” he holds her eyes. “Listen to my voice, gorgeous,” he says and he knows that she will.

“You'll be looking after me,” she continues. Their eyes connect once more, unsaid things sealed between them, and she lifts his palm and kisses it.

After that she walks out the door.

*

A/N part two: the lyrics at the beginning are from Bruce Springsteen's “Secret Garden”, one of my Natasha theme songs. I was listening to it as I worked on this.