A Gift From: enigma731
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: Out of the Woods
A Gift For: franztastisch
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None
Summary/Prompt Used: You won't disappoint me, I can do that myself.


banner by enigma731

Looking at it now
Last December
We were built to fall apart
Then fall back together
(X)


There’s nothing inherently special about the night it happens.

Natasha’s on her way home on the first evening back after the latest in a string of routine jobs. Clint is lingering by her side as she walks the last few blocks to her apartment, the New York streets filled with holiday lights and the first late November dusting of snow. She feels almost drunk on residual adrenaline, slap-happy from a day spent on paperwork and debriefs, her head in a pleasant jetlagged fog.

“Think Sitwell’s going to enjoy my report,” says Clint, turning into her building’s entryway and trailing her up the stairs, as if she’s ever been the sort of woman to need a safety escort home.

“Why’s that?” asks Natasha, arching an eyebrow as she fishes her keys out of her coat pocket, as if she might be an ordinary person opening an ordinary door.

“Because my reports are always exemplary,” he says glibly, waiting a moment as she turns discretely to let the retinal scanner find her eyes. “Also, I might have illustrated the part at the end. You know, with the car chase and my breathtaking heroics.”

“Well,” Natasha deadpans, turning her key and opening the door as the locks click open, the security system going dormant, “you pretty much saved the world.”

“As usual,” he agrees, then pauses. “So, good night?”

She isn’t sure what makes her do it, what changes in that precise instant to propel her across the final boundary, the last thin layer of armor she’s been keeping around her heart. It’s something about the way the moment crystallizes, the glint in his eyes and the way his lips curve upward in a crooked grin, ghosts of their breath mingling in the night air like a shared pulse of life between them.

“Wait,” says Natasha, catching his arm. “Stay?” She meets his eyes, sees that he wants this too before she leans in and kisses him solidly.

“Natasha,” he breathes against her lips, his arms coming up to tangle around her waist, the answer to a dozen questions she has yet to ask.

“Stay,” she repeats, lacing her hands at the nape of his neck and allowing him to guide her backward over her own threshold.

---

“What are we doing here?” Clint asks afterward, sprawled naked on her couch, crowding her so she's perched on the edge.

The room is scented cinnamon from the tea she’s drinking, cold fingers wrapped around the warm mug, his too-large shirt hanging off her shoulder as she looks down at him and smiles. There’s something profoundly comforting about this moment, something she tries to wrap up in her mind and file away for the future, for a time when she’ll need it. If there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that happiness like this is hard-won, a rare and precious thing she still has trouble accepting for herself.

“Well,” she says slowly, taking a sip of her tea, “I’m pretty sure we just had really excellent sex, and now I’m wondering why it took us so long to get around to that. I’m also thinking we should do it again later.”

“Oh,” says Clint, and he smiles, but this time it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, a subtle shift in the muscles of his jaw. “That sounds good. But--I meant--What are we doing?”

Natasha sets down her mug and turns to face him more completely, a little tendril of concern unfolding in the pit of her stomach. “What are you trying to ask, Clint?”

“What are we doing?” he repeats, sitting up and pulling his boxers back on, the movement letting him avoid her eyes. “You’re my partner. You’re--You’re my best friend.”

“Do you want to stop?” she asks, wondering whether she’s miscalculated, whether she’s crossed a line when he wasn’t ready. “This doesn’t have to happen again, if it’s not what you want.”

“No,” says Clint, and there’s a sincerity in the word that she believes, though she still can’t quite read what he’s thinking.

“Okay,” says Natasha, surprised by the rush of relief she feels at that, by how attached she’s already become to the idea of having something more with him. It isn’t as if she’s never contemplated it before--hardly--but there are still things she considers off limits to people like her, incompatible with the life she’s chosen. “Well I don’t want to stop either.”

“Okay,” he echoes, his brow still slightly furrowed. He reaches out and drapes an arm around her shoulders, almost experimentally, though he’s hardly a stranger to touching her.

“Something still bothering you?” she asks, because the tension hasn’t gone completely.

Clint just shakes his head, leaning in to kiss her gently, like it’s still a revelation.

---

“We should leave separately,” she tells him the next morning, because in the light of day she’s begun to remember the risks, begun to regret her reckless display on her own doorstep.

Clint blinks--she sees it in the mirror that hangs above her dresser, where he’s attempting to make his hair look something in the realm of professionalism. “What?”

“I’m going to leave first,” Natasha repeats evenly, thinking through her strategy. “You know how to arm the security, right? You can head out a bit later, the neighbors are usually gone by a quarter to seven.” She searches a dresser drawer for a moment before finding a clean t-shirt and sweatpants.

“Natasha.” Clint gives up on his hair and turns to face her, his usual morning irritability lining his brow. “How many times have I been over here? How many times have you let me sleep off a bad job or a bad date on the couch? Think it’s a little late to keep my existence secret from the neighbors.”

“I don’t care about your existence,” says Natasha, trying to force down her own frustration--the jetlag isn’t nearly so pleasant on this end of the night--as she dresses quickly. “I don’t care if they know that you’ve been here. But I would like to keep everyone under the impression that we are still friends and partners.”

“We are still friends and partners,” he says sourly. “Aren’t we?”

“Of course we are.” Natasha takes a measured breath. “I would like to keep everything beyond that between us. This isn’t a game.”

Clint says nothing to that, but keeps his gaze fixed on her just a little too long for Natasha to remain silent.

“It’s a liability,” she says firmly. “If anyone knows, it becomes a weapon. You know this.” She isn’t sure why he’s hesitating, hasn’t really imagined that he would want to go spread details of their personal lives. If she didn’t trust his discretion, she would never have wanted this in the first place.

“Okay,” he says after a moment. “But I’m leaving first. You can catch up if you really feel the need to wait.”

He turns and leaves, the sound of the front door coming so quickly that Natasha wonders how he’s had time to retrieve his coat or shoes.

---

Five days pass before they get any more time to themselves. Clint’s spent the week at the Academy, teaching target practice to a new class of recruits. He’s back in New York now, though, was supposed to on her doorstep in time for dinner.

By the time Clint’s knock comes, the food’s gone stone cold on the table and Natasha’s stomach is roiling with a mix of equal parts hunger and concern. It’s nearly ten, and much as she has always believed in his ability to defend himself if needed, it isn’t like him to be this late without checking in, to have ignored all the messages she’s sent. The familiar dread--the knowledge that one day, something will have happened to him, or to herself--has begun to take root as she moves to let him in.

“What happened?” she asks, raking her gaze over him, knowing he’ll realize exactly what she’s doing as she does. They’ve checked each other visually for years, but almost always in the field. Nothing’s amiss, or at least nothing she can pinpoint, but that does little to loosen the knot in her stomach.

Clint shrugs. “Lost track of time.”

“You lost track of time,” Natasha repeats, incredulously. For a moment she can’t decide whether she suspects a more insidious explanation, or if she’s simply angry at the fact that she’s apparently panicked over nothing.

“Yeah,” he repeats. “Was at the range. First chance I got all week to shoot without a bunch of baby agents tracking every move.”

“First chance you got all week to come here, too,” she points out, keeping her voice even. She believes him, she decides, recognizes the blissed-out look he gets after spending time with his bow.

He shrugs. “And here I am.”

“Dinner was two hours ago,” says Natasha, but now that the adrenaline’s faded, exhaustion is setting in. She doesn’t want to be angry, she decides, doesn’t want to punish him. At this point, all she wants is to enjoy what’s left of the evening. ”Just come sit down.”

He pauses for a moment longer, looks like he wants to say something. But then he decides otherwise, brushing past her and toeing off his shoes before sitting on the couch, ignoring the food already set out on the kitchen table.

---

The first time Natasha wakes up alone, she doesn’t think much of it. Clint has never slept particularly well, and over the years she’s grown accustomed to his nocturnal workouts, motivated by insomnia. It’s still dark outside, more than an hour before she’s planning to get up, so she readjusts the blankets and tries to drift back off.

The next time--the second in a week--she spends a while staring at her ceiling in frustration, watching the waves of light from cars passing on the street below. She isn’t sure what’s bothering her, whether it’s her inability to get back to sleep, or the fact that she’d really like the comfort of feeling him there, warm and solid at her back.

The third time, it’s raining when Natasha wakes to the sound of her front door, closing just loudly enough to set her heart off in a wild flutter. Clint is gone, of course, when she scrambles to get the light turned on. But this time she isn’t going to let it go, can’t deny the worry that’s begun to crawl beneath her skin again. She lets the nervous energy propel her out of bed and into the shower, which gets her out the door well before dawn. The cold air is cutting against her skin, but she doesn’t let it slow her down.

She’s waiting for Clint in his cubicle when he arrives around nine. She's spent the time sorting through the various stacks of papers, every little article of detritus he seems invariably to collect. He pauses a few feet away when he catches sight of her at his desk, his hair disheveled and surprise in his eyes, the fingers of his left hand tightening around the takeout cup of coffee he’s holding.

“Good morning,” he says, when he finds his voice again.

“What’s going on?” asks Natasha, keeping her tone gentle this time. Something is wrong, she can sense it, but he’s been quieter lately than ever before, withdrawn even when he is in bed with her, even with nothing but bare skin between them.

But Clint just shakes his head again, pastes on a smile that doesn’t even half convince her. “Nothing. Just--I don’t know, too much coffee last night? Or maybe too much jetlag. Brain’s confused, trying to turn me into a morning person.”

“Fine,” she says coolly, worry and her own lack of sleep combining to make the evasion sting more than it otherwise might. “You decide you want to talk, you can let me know.” She gets to her feet, vacating his chair, and sets off for the gym.

---

Natasha isn’t sure when it happened, doesn’t even notice until she comes home, gets a moment alone in her apartment for the first time in days.

There’s evidence of Clint’s presence all around, and not the usual subtle signs she’s found comforting for years. Now it’s a pile of forgotten socks by her couch, reminding her of his nocturnal vanishing act. There are scummy rings from the bottoms of mugs marking the table, a tower of unwashed dishes in the sink. A trail of coffee grounds leads from the kitchen floor to the couch, not quite footprints.

For a moment, Natasha just stares at it all in disbelief. Clint has never been like this before, at least not in her space. His apartment might be a perpetual disaster, but he’s always been quietly respectful of her needs.

She considers calling him, considers ordering him to come over and clean it all right now, even though she knows he’s training late. She considers smashing all of the dishes. In the end, though, she can’t find the energy. Instead she resigns herself to turning out the lights and facing the mess again in the morning.

As she slips into bed, she decides that the thing she resents the most is the fact that he isn’t here with her already, the distance that’s somehow grown between them.

---

Waking in the middle of the night yet again is not unexpected. If Natasha is honest with herself, the real surprise is the fact that he’s agreed to come over at all, that he’s continued to tell her he wants to be with her, even when all his actions seem to suggest otherwise. She can’t get a read on what’s going on in his head, feels more adrift than she has in years, since they first met and she couldn’t fathom anyone being invested in anything other than her death.

She sits up in bed, momentarily disoriented by the haze of sleep, the weight of unease that’s been settled on her shoulders for days now. At first she isn’t sure what’s disturbed her; the bed is empty and cold on Clint’s side, so he’s been gone for more than a small amount of time. But then the light spilling under the bedroom door catches her eye, a new development in this pattern. Sighing, Natasha gets to her feet, deciding to investigate.

It takes a beat for her eyes to adjust to the brightness of the living room--the clock on the wall reads just after four--and when they do, all she can manage is to stare incredulously. Clint is seated on the couch, still wearing nothing but his boxers. On the table in front of him is an elaborate array of used arrows, shafts and fletchings and splinters of wood, all piled on top of last night’s dirty dishes, and a mug of tar-black coffee to one side. Then she sees what’s in his hands--an old, damaged arrow shaft and one of her throwing knives. He’s using the blade to strip off remnants of the old sticky arrowhead, seemingly oblivious to her presence and to the fact that the knife is currently being covered in goopy resin.

“Clint,” says Natasha, hot rage blooming in her chest as all the sleepless nights, all the little thoughtless acts finally seem too much, too many inconsequential stings to simply ignore. “What the hell is going on here?”

His movements are nonchalant, just a bit too relaxed, belying the fact that this is an act, that he’s doing it purposefully. He looks up at her and shrugs, a challenge. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get some work done.”

“At four a.m.?” she asks, crossing her arms as she takes another step closer. “All over the coffee table?”

“Well,” Clint says sourly, “I couldn’t sleep. And you’ve made it pretty damn clear that it displeases you when I go to the gym.”

“I never said that.” She tries to bite back her anger, tries to resist the urge to use it as a real weapon, to wound him. “And this--That knife is mine. Which you know.”

“Oh, this?” he asks, feigning ignorance as he holds the knife up to show her the dull blade. “This is important to you? Never would have guessed. My bad.”

“Clint,” Natasha growls, closing the rest of the distance between them. “You know it is. You know better than any of this. What are you doing?”

He shrugs again, maddeningly casual, though she knows it isn’t genuine, isn’t even close. “Just wondering what’s important to you. Apparently I’ve got my answer. Knives. Knives are sacred to Agent Romanoff. Don’t worry about anything else, but god forbid you touch her knives!”

She narrows her eyes, the provocation somehow undercutting her anger, concern winning out over everything once again. She knows in her gut that something is terribly wrong; this is nothing like the arguments they’ve been having for years, disagreements over paperwork and fast food joints, skirmishes over sneaking out of Medical against orders. Clint is maddening at times, but it’s never seemed deliberate, never a targeted attack like this. She wonders again whether she’s made a mistake, has irrevocably damaged things between them in wanting more.

“Are you trying to make me angry?” she asks finally, trying to breathe in something resembling calm. “Because this--This isn’t like you.”

Clint sighs, deflating, and drops the knife and half-finished arrow onto the table with a clatter before getting to his feet. “Would you really know if it was?”

Natasha just stares at him for a beat, still trying to parse what he’s really saying. “I just said so, didn’t I? There’s obviously something you want me to know, so why don’t you just tell me?”

“I did,” he snaps. “Two weeks ago. I asked you what we were doing. What this--What I--mean to you.”

“You did,” she agrees, feeling vaguely ill as all of the pieces fall into place. “So this--Was all of this a test?”

“Yes. No.” Clint blows out a shaky breath. “I don’t know.”

Natasha reaches out carefully and rests a hand on his forearm, watching as his whole body tenses slightly. “What do you want this to be?”

“I don’t know,” he admits softly, refusing to meet her eyes. “Important. I don’t--I won’t be the scary secret you keep at arm’s length, Natasha. I don’t want to just be convenient.”

“Clint,” she whispers, her own throat suddenly tight as she thinks back over the past few weeks, all of the hurt she’s tried to see as meaningless, all of the ways she’s blinded herself. “It was never like that.”

“Yeah?” he asks, an edge of bitterness sharpening the question. “Felt like that from where I’m standing.”

“So why didn’t you just tell me?” she asks again, running her hand down his arm until she finds his fingers, laces them with her own. “Why the games?”

“Because it didn’t matter,” he huffs. “Not if this--this thing wasn’t important to you.”

“But it is,” she says quickly, keeping hold of his hand as he tries to turn away. “It always was. Don’t you get that?”

“Then why the secrecy?” he asks, turning to face her finally, the hurt in his eyes sickening. “Why the refusal to call it what it is?”

“Because I don’t know how to do this either!” Natasha lets go of him, then, throws her hands up helplessly. “Because I have no idea how--How do people like us make this work? I am doing the best I can.”

“Then say it,” Clint insists, his jaw tight. “What is this, to you?”

“I want to be with you,” she says after a moment, feeling as though she’s diving over a cliff. “I want us to be together. I want you.”

He stays quiet for a moment, his eyes still guarded, like he’s trying to decide whether or not to trust any of what she’s saying. “I’m a mess,” he says finally. “I’m--I’m going to fuck it up. You know that, right? I’m going to wake you up at night sometimes, and leave your place a mess sometimes, and sometimes I’m going to doubt you.”

“That’s okay,” she says softly, touching his cheek, his small intake of breath rocking through her. “I can live with that, as long as it’s real. Because, Clint--You are worth that to me. But if we’re going to do this for real, then I need to know that it’s worth it to you too.”

“I do,” he breathes, the last of the fight going out of him as he steps forward and wraps his arms around her, exhaling in a rush as he rests his chin against her hair. “I--I’ve wanted this for a long time, you know?”

“Yeah,” says Natasha, her voice muffled against his shoulder. She runs a hand over his back, pulling him in closer as she finally allows herself to relax for what feels like the first time in weeks. “Yeah, I do.”

Clint doesn’t respond to that in words, just makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, then leans in to kiss her slowly. There’s a cautious glimmer of hope in his eyes when he pulls back, a subtle sort of joy underneath the exhaustion.

“Do you want to go back to bed?” she asks gently, though she has a feeling she already knows the answer.

“No,” he says resignedly. Outside the windows, the sky is just beginning to lighten. It will be morning soon anyway.

“Okay,” says Natasha. “Then how about you put on some coffee, and I’ll help you clean this place?”

“Square deal,” says Clint, but he doesn’t let go, steers her toward the couch instead, his fingers creeping under the hem of her shirt.

“Or we could not do that,” she amends, kissing him again, more deeply this time.

Clint just laughs and crowds her back against the cushions.