banner by perpetuations

A Gift From: franztastisch
Type Of Gift: fic
Title: And Only Stars Above
A Gift For: kiss_me_cassie
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary/Prompt Used: 'stranded in a cabin' and 'stargazing in the middle of nowhere'
Author's Note: beta's by the wonderful gecko. <3


“Are you sure about this?”

Natasha voice seems almost too loud in the dark silence but Clint doesn’t turn to look at her, focused as he is on the road ahead through his night-vision goggles. He hates driving without headlights, hates the green tinge of the night-vision goggles, but they’re in Middle Of Nowhere, Australia: headlights are really noticeable, if there’re people around to notice that sort of thing. And while Clint is fairly sure there aren’t, there’s no reason to be stupid.

“Yeah,” he says, keeping an eye out for the left hand turn he needs. There’s very few left hand turns on this stretch of road – very few turns of any kind, to be honest – but doubling back would be incredibly irritating when all he wants is to get out of this damn car.

He has to admit, he likes that Natasha no longer questions him as much as she used to. He’s worked very hard – very hard – over the last year or so to prove to her that he’s trustworthy and not stringing her along. And while the fuck up in Austria did prove that she doesn’t want him dead yet, her increased lack of follow-up questions still gives Clint a small thrill.

“It’s very far out,” she says after a short silence.

“Well, it used to be owned by a guy who actively loathed people, so that’s not that surprising.”

Clint still doesn’t turn his head but he can feel Natasha looking at him, raised eyebrow and all.

“Someone from the circus,” Clint elaborates. “Had enough of people, upped sticks and moved to the Australian outback. When he died, the place passed onto the only person he could stand, who was also the only person I kept in touch with. She couldn’t afford to look after it – nor did she have any use for it, seeing as it was in Australia and not Tennessee – so I made a deal with her. She keeps the place and I pay its upkeep. So legally, it’s all hers. But really, it’s all mine.”

There’s a long silence, which lets Clint navigate an alarming amount of night-time wildlife that’s suddenly decided to hang out on the road.

“What’s her name?” Natasha asks eventually, and it’s been quiet for so long Clint has to think hard before he can answer the question.

“Oh,” he replies once he’s connected the dots. “Tina.”

“Tina in Tennessee,” Natasha says, sounding the words out carefully, like it’s something she has to remember.

“Don’t look her up, Natasha,” Clint says warningly, because Natasha would, for no other reason than her own curiosity and need to know all variables. But Tina and Charlie deserve better, and if trouble ever lands on them, Clint wants to be sure that it didn’t come from his quarter.

“I won't,” says Natasha eventually and Clint’s not sure he believes her, but decides to take her at her word regardless.



The house is an old ranch, with the land rented to the surrounding ranchers to provide Tina with some extra income. It's hardly changed in the many years since it's been built and is probably an embarrassment to those self-same ranchers, whose frankly ridiculous incomes seem to have mostly gone on fancy cars and massive home improvements.

Clint likes the place, because it’s unexpected and in no way tied to him. He hates the place because it’s too much like the house he grew up in.

“It’s nice,” Natasha says blandly, once Clint’s got the generator going enough to switch on a light.

Clint grunts in response.

The wife of one of the neighbouring ranchers turns up every couple of months or so to make sure the place is still secure and she has been known to randomly move furniture for some divine purpose Clint can’t fathom. Lights right now are about as clever as headlights on the car, but he’s not been here in long enough that having nothing on means asking for him to walk into something.

Case in point; she’s moved one of the bookshelves, though Clint’s fairly sure that’s due to the issue with the window that Tina emailed him about. It’s been fixed, but the shelf hasn’t been moved back yet.

“There’s some tinned stuff in the kitchen,” Clint says, dumping his bag on the couch, “and there should be warm water from the solar panels.”

The solar panels had been Tina’s idea. Why pay for hot water you’ll hardly ever use?

“I’m alright.”

“Aah, you say that now,” Clint says, faux-superiority out in force to soften the blow, “but this place doesn’t have air con.”

The look Natasha levels him is unimpressed beyond belief. The air con of the car they’d rented – cash-only, because they were laying low, if not outright hiding – had given up the ghost only about half an hour into their four hour drive. And given that Australian nights are not much cooler than Australian days, the fact that the sun set at much the same time didn’t actually make much difference.

“Towels?”

“In the bathroom.”

Clint digs out a couple of lantern torches from the mud room, handing one to Natasha before killing both the lights and the generator. They won’t really need either until morning so there’s no sense in advertising their presence.

Quick showers are part and parcel of being a field agent, so Natasha is done within ten minutes, clean and in fresh clothes, her hair in a damp braid. Clint nods towards the bag of provisions and then leaves her to poke around the place while he takes his own army-quick shower.

The only problem with this place is that it’s not equipped like a safe house, mainly because it isn’t one, and that’s fine when he’s using it as a getaway on downtime but less good when he’s here at the tail end of a mission; even a successful mission leaves him wanting more safety measures than this place offers. But their latest mission took a turn for the unexpected and the nearest SHIELD safe-house was much further away than this place, so Clint offered its services. He doesn’t mind – obviously – but it does mean he won’t be sleeping until the morning, when he can check the property boundaries himself. With the shower to wake him up a little he can definitely last that long.

Idly, he wonders what an outside observer would think of him bringing an ex-enemy agent into one of the few off-the-books residences he owns, but he dismisses that thought. Against all logic, he’s trusted Natasha Romanov from almost the moment he met her and she’s had more chances than most to abuse that trust and hasn’t. Bringing her here is unlikely to make much difference at this point.

Plus, there are no outside observers. He told Hill he knew a place, but not where it was. No one knows they’re here.

Clint rummages through one of the cupboards until he unearths the tatty old cushions for the porch swing. If he’s not sleeping, he’s not being inside. From the front you can see anyone come up the road, and the night is warm enough that being outside will be pleasant.

“What are you doing?” Natasha asks, curious rather than accusatory.

“It’s too dark to check the boundary, which means no sleeping for me.” Clint shrugs. “And it’s nicer outside.”

Natasha gives him a calculating look before nodding. She’s found a tin of peaches and is eating them straight out of the can with a – probably hastily washed – fork. She looks like any unassuming student you’d find in any US college town, and Clint knows he’s not being played right now, but part of Natasha is always a front and sometimes he finds he’s surprised to be reminded of this.

“I’ll take the couch,” she says once she’s drained the tin. “Four hours, then we swap.”

“You can take a room, there’s bedding around.”

She gives him another unimpressed look but doesn’t say anything, and Clint doesn’t bother to argue. He probably wouldn’t take a room without a perimeter check either; the couch has better sightlines, better exits and is closer to the old barn where the car is stashed.

It is nice, though, to have proof that Natasha trusts him to watch her back.



He’s been on watch now for at least two hours and it must be coming up to half three in the morning. As he suspected, absolutely nothing has happened; there’s been no movement on the road and the only living thing he’s seen was a dingo sniffing around the eucalyptus trees by the drive. His neighbours would probably have liked it if he’d shot it, but it wasn’t doing any harm and anyway; no sense drawing attention to themselves.

He can feel tiredness somewhere at the base of his skull – the kind of tiredness that hits hard, crashes down – but it’s a good five hours off by his estimation and Natasha will have taken over by then so it’s fine. Clint looks out over the outback. It’s probably only when he’s this tired that he can let himself see just how beautiful the world can be – if he saw it all the time he wouldn’t be able to do his job, his life a stain on this kind of beauty.

But then, it’s very hard to stain the stars.

There’s a slight sound from behind him, more a change in the movement of air, and he turns just in time to see Natasha open the screen door, dressed in an overlarge t-shirt and leggings.

“You’re not due for another two hours,” Clint says, his voice barely above a whisper.

Natasha shrugs, but doesn’t reply. Instead she pads over to the porch railing, her bare feet making no sound on the wooden planks, and Clint is struck again by how graceful Natasha is, and how controlled. He wonders if it’s as exhausting as it sounds, to be constantly aware of yourself like that, or if she’s so used to it it’s just second nature now.

She briefly looks back over her shoulder at him, just catching his eye before turning back. “It’s so…” she starts, and then trains off in a way Clint knows she would never do if it weren’t ass-crack in the morning in the middle of the desert.

“Yeah,” Clint replies. Because it is.

There’s no moon tonight or, if there is, it’s low and behind where they’re sitting, so the stars are as bright as Clint has ever seen them, making Natasha’s silhouette a black patch of night cut out against the universe. If he were artistic, or carried a phone better than the disposable pay-as-you-go brick that he bought in Perth, he’d take a photo.

He thinks that a lot, around Natasha. He tries not to, but he does.

Clint gets up from the porch swing, the hinge’s protests sounding much louder than usual in the desert silence.

“Here,” he says, touching her briefly on the arm before walking down the three steps to the dry grass.

When he looks back, Natasha's outline has been swallowed by the house. But she’s still there. He can feel her.

“Why?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer but she follows eventually anyway.

Clint leads her away from the house, down the drive and past the barn where the car is hidden, until they’re far enough that the shadow cut-out of the ranch building is swallowed up by the dark horizon. Then he touches her arm again, an almost-nothing touch, and says, “Look up.”

The Milky Way stretches across the sky above them; a rent in the sky, as if another universe is trying to press through into this one. And Clint has a gun in the back of his jeans, and Natasha will have a knife somewhere because she always does, and the wide open space is as exposed as either of them have been, probably in years, but for a long moment none of that matters. Everything is wiped clean away by the immense sky, so distant and untouchable as to make you feel almost godlike – pushing through insignificant to come out the other end.

If he’s honest, this is the real reason Clint keeps this place.

“It’s Christmas Day,” Natasha says quietly after a moment, and Clint can’t see, but he can tell she’s looking at him.

Clint hadn’t forgotten that, even though it’s Australia where it’s hot and sticky and summer in December, but he’d decided against reminding Natasha. It’s not like either of them particularly care, or as if they get each other presents.

But maybe he does do that, now.

“So it is.”

The weight of Natasha's gaze leaves him, turning once again to the sky.

After another long silence she says, “Thank you.”