This makes me think of David Aja's drawings of Clint's apartment from Hawkeye. Clint's place will always look something like this to me.

Also I've always liked the idea of Clint actually reading a lot. He just isn't precious about his books at all and will give them away to all an sundry. I wrote a fic about that once: Page-Turner.

Ooh and there's that wonderful bit it we were emergencies where Clint always knows his way around Natasha's kitchens because she sets them up the same every single time. I always liked that. :)

Edited 2019-02-01 05:10 pm (UTC)

Oooh and there's always the lovely domesticity of frea_o's Exciting Adventures in Cohabitation. <3

YES I use those drawings as a reference too! Although... now that I think about it, I usually move the bathroom to the little space under the stairs, and I don't really know why?

Also agreed on the books front! Clint's ever-growing library that Natasha loves but also despairs of because there's absolutely no logic to his organization, as far as she can tell :)

That apartment drawing meant I HAD to use that for Clint's apartment, because it exists. Oddly I never thought much about what was in it though or books until your fic. (Which is so very Clint.) Which is kinda dumb because the apartment has bookcases.

...WAIT I hadn't seen that version with the floorplan before! Excellent, added info :)

Intriguingly, the loft element of this drawing (which doesn't actually show up in the comics) is very much like the thing I had in my "Skies Over Manhattan" apartment. Great minds, and all that! :D

And yes, Reading!Clint. I always figured he'd use all those stakeouts to make up for the education he never had.

This is only tangentially related but on facebook I kept having an ad pop up for The Company Store and it featured two toned purple sheets and EVERY TIME it came up my brain shouted "CLINT!" and it was very disconcerting until fb started showing me shoes adverts again.

(Natasha's spaces are pretty sparse with only a handful of very personal items. Clint's are crazy cluttered. When Bucky moves in with them he pars it down to areasonable amount of clutter. ;))

(Natasha's spaces are pretty sparse with only a handful of very personal items. Clint's are crazy cluttered. When Bucky moves in with them he pars it down to areasonable amount of clutter. ;))

I like how you think, Cassie. :P

In my head Clint absolutey has at least one set of purple sheets! And a purple duvet cover. And this is probably David Aja's fault lol.

And that's a great headcanon; I like it! :D

Well, I decided on an apartment for Clint before I read the Fraction/Aja comics, so I have both that space (minimalist, loft, with roof access) as well as my later, post-Fraction one in Queens. A lot of people liked my original Clint apartment, as it turns out, so I featured it in several stories:

The first appearance is in the first chapter of The Skies Over Manhattan; the second major one is post-TWS, when Natasha goes to clean it up after Hydra trashed it, in
Shards And then there's a cameo in In the Service).

The coffee-soaked, dog-haired Fraction-Aja apartment pops up pretty regularly after I found out it existed, namely in all of my Clint & Kate stories.

As for Natasha, I have her in what amounts to a Tribeca loft - chic, minimalist (and in need of a formative trip to IKEA with Clint):
Some Assembly required

I adopted David Aja's plan for Clint's apartment because it existed and therefore I HAD to use it *grins*.

I am a sucker for everyone living in the Tower (oh those post-Avengers stories where everyone moved in together or roadtripped together and all was happy), or the New Avengers Facility, or Avengers Mansion, probably because that feeds into my love of team!family stories and characters in (small) spaces (spaceships, camper vans, bunkers) together. There's just something about how the character develop in that close proximity.

I have book recs for this vibe actually: Mike Carey's The Boy on the Bridge (prequel-sequel to The Girl with All the Gifts) The Fated Skies by Mary Robinette Kobal (second in serise), Becky Chamber's record of a spaceborn few to an extent, Stephen Baxter's Ark...

I like fics where Nat and Clint end up living in Tony's space without him realising it for ages, because that's always fun. I like seeing lots of different interpretations of where Clint and/ot Natasha might live, and then seeing how that fits the version of those characters that the writer is building. I LOVE IKEA fics. Like:
> Some Assembly Required by alphaflyer
> for the many people by gsparkle
> mostly Tony & team but Phil Coulson Does Not Bake (and The Avengers Do Not Shop At IKEA Anymore) by scifigrl47
> the Steve/Bucky one where Nat hides the annoying bits you always lose in her bra and has a bra holster
> Consumer Affairs by galwednesday which is outsider (IKEA staff) POV on Steve/Bucky and beds vs supersoldiers

Edited 2019-02-01 10:28 pm (UTC)

I hadn't read the last two! Thanks for the rec!

haha IKEA fics are THE BEST! I especially enjoy that last one you rec'd :)

Also, hello new books to read [eyes the growing stack of books on my bedside table]

Hugh Howey's Wool trilogy! Especially the first one. *nods*

So I should probably start by saying that I am SUCH A NERD about this stuff (aka why I made this my ATTF topic...) Examples:

--I browse actual homes/apartments for sale in the neighborhood of where I'm setting the story (a non-Clintasha example of this is Maria's apartment that I use in both we are for each other AND hard to handle, which is this just absolute beautiful two-story condo in Brooklyn that I legitimately covet)
--I have folders that are just screenshots of real estate websites for apartments/condos for sale so that I have reference photos after the place gets sold/rented
--When I was trying to write crystal's "stealing a boat in the Mediterranean" fic (in production hell, sorry), I did a LOT of research on boats and how much room they have to make sure it was realistic to make them share a bed
--Right now I'm writing something where Clint lives in a trailer and this story might as well be sponsored by Airstream Trailers considering how much time I've spent looking at floorplans and features on their website
--Sometimes... I build out places on the Sims to get a feel for decor and spacing (ps if you also play the Sims HELLO, GET AT ME)
--I HAVE MORE THAN ONE LITERAL GOOGLE MAP, one for the private detective AU and one as just general MCU location references like the Triskelion, Clint's farm, the Red Room, Tony's Malibu house, etc.

I love the Tower, but I rarely describe their living spaces there and tend to think of them as functional more than personalized. If they're not in the Tower, Clint is obviously in Bed-Stuy with David Aja's general layout. I usually place Natasha in a cultural or ethnic neighborhood of New York, most often Little Ukraine. This is the case even in AUs.

Natasha's places, no matter the universe, have, in no particular order: green wooden windows with wide sills filled with plants, classic black and white checkered floors, copper pots and pans, a nice sound system that includes a record player, at least five nice blankets because she likes to be warm, a brass bed, a bar cart that always has Clint's whiskey of choice

Clint's places: near good Thai food, purple bleach-dotted sheets, really good pillows and a surprisingly nice mattress topper, a wooden bow prominently displayed and lovingly cared for, definitely five coffee cups on the sink, at least one gaming console (probably an N64, all things considered), rooftop access, a fire escape, dirty socks all over the place, a surprisingly well-stocked pantry ("why in god's name do you have six unopened jars of mayonnaise, Clint" "They were on sale!" "You don't even like mayonnaise!!") [this exchange provided by my husband]

Natasha's boltholes are no more than two blocks from a bakery, no matter what, and Clint thinks this is a glaring weakness and can't believe nobody has figured this out about her. Clint's boltholes are always in the tallest residential building in the city, usually with roof access and good sight lines.

RECS:
-not technically a home but we together make a city just brings the city alive in a way fics so rarely do
-natasha's place in saved from something like regret is so lovely if I remember correctly
-I can't for the life of me find it right now, but the one where Natasha and Clint are supposed to go to ground but instead Clint starts working with construction crews to clean up post Avengers and so Natasha ends up assisting Pepper in putting on a charity ballet? thing?? Anyway her apartment in that is nice :)

That's a lot of nerdiness! :) Mind you, I once dragged a colleague I was in New York with for business all the way to the neighbourhood where I had pictured Clint as living in Skies Over Manhattan, just so I could take pictures of a water tower and Chinese takeout there... :P

The story you are looking for I think is Come Near by Topaz. (I have it bookmarked...)

Edited 2019-02-02 05:36 am (UTC)

When I was trying to write crystal's "stealing a boat in the Mediterranean" fic (in production hell, sorry), I did a LOT of research on boats and how much room they have to make sure it was realistic to make them share a bed

Wow! Well, boats do have a lot of room - even the smaller yachts have at least two bedrooms, and a medium-sized sailing boat usually has between four and six. But a situation of a four-bedroom boat having only one functional room can be very real, since there are many things that can go wrong: mold, foul smell, extremely lumpy mattresses, you name it. A boat owned by someone who's not prepared to throw a lot of money for maintenance will very soon become a mess. (I'm not rich. I just live in Greece, where there are many sailing clubs where people can rent a boat together with their friends and go to a holiday, in a price much more affordable than a full week at the Cyclades would cost.)

I have occasionally looked up actual homes or home plans for fics, but never to that extent. Maybe because I always think "this won't be that long, so that's not necessary." More fool me.

Also, I honestly believe that most of the boltholes are shitholes because they have no intention of spending more than a week there. They have about four decent safe houses between them. Clint's Bed-Stuy apartment doesn't count because "Everyone knows who you are!" "They call me Hawkguy!" "They still know who you are, Clint!"

And thanks for the rec! <3

My headcanon is that they have various houses, and they share them all, and they're of various styles, because Natasha can live pretty much everywhere and Clint doesn't really mind. So, in order of how personalized they are:

1. SHIELD quarters. Clinical, almost empty. Each of them lived there only during their first months at SHIELD and bolted out as soon as the paychecks started coming in and they were able to rent a flat (or, in Natasha's case, as soon as her probationary period was over and she was permitted to live outside of the base). Now they only keep a few clothes, a change of sheets and some hidden guns and knives.

2. Stark Tower apartments. Clinical and almost empty at the beginning, now they're gradually turning into a home. I think that both Clint and Natasha lean towards the traditional side, so in order to balance the high tech design they both bought wooden furniture and an iron bed and, I don't know, Natasha made Tony build pre-war style bookcases to the walls? Or something like that.

3. Clint's farm. Look guys I hated the Barton family thing, but that house was awesome. It has everything a house should have: big windows, an open plan ground floor, and a garden. So in my mind this thing belonged to Clint's grandparents and now they go there to relax and detox, and it's full of books and pillows and records and chipped ceramic dishes, and a stack of photographs that once helped Jasper Sitwell become a decent human being (On Duality). Also this is where Natasha finally came to terms with the fact that letting go and hooking up with someone you have feelings for is not so very terrifying after all (Don't Go To Strangers).

4. A little house in a Mediterranean island. They say write what you know, right? So what I know best, and love, is tiny whitewashed houses with very thick stone walls and concrete floors (which were not built like this out of a sense of interior design, but because people were really poor back then and couldn't afford wood). Small windows which keep the cold and the heat out, and iron window frames (again, due to lack of other means). Not the best in terms of comfort, but so very simple that they somehow elevate all surrounding experiences to an unusual sensory level. Even food tastes better! So, Natasha might be a creature that loves comfort, but she doesn't give a damn, because living in a place by the sea means that everything seems clean and bright new every morning, as if the waves came in at night and washed away all the activities of the previous day. And this, somehow, helps. (The Fig Tree)

5. Venice. I love everything that is set in Venice, and I'm sure that Natasha has a flat there - in the quiet, less touristy part of the town, top floor, excellent sightlines, easy access to the neighboring buildings' roofs. Also Singapore? And maybe Munich. Clint just prefers to use SHIELD's safehouses, and he finds it really amusing that Natasha keeps a stash of decent wine in all of hers. That's a bit rich from a person who keeps Nutella jars in virtually every SHIELD's safehouse all over the world, but the nutritional value of Nutella is way higher than wine's, so there.

Edited 2019-02-02 08:47 am (UTC)

Honestly, I adore the way you write locations. You give them such a rich history and design and make them come to life as much as the characters.

OH the farm! And Clint's fixing things up obsession.

I love how you embed a sense of place in your writing and all the little details. And i'm a sucker for Venice as a location; just auch an interesting ciry. So much history, but now mostly populated by tourists, and sinking..

I like to think that they have safe houses that even SHIELD didn't know about (think like the Farm-they're really well hidden) so when everything goes bell-end with SHIELD/HYDRA they have somewhere to escape to just...be invisible for once.

Natasha has one in the Caribbean, a beach house that is open, airy, and lets the sun in from all the windows. She can pretend to be a dot com millionaire who does some creative things with her money.

Clint has one in a small Eastern European country, an apartment that has a great view of the cities architecture; spires and bell towers and rising arches where he's just a writer working on his next novel. Running down in the morning to the cafe on the corner that has the best chocolate croissants and coffee, spending his days writing in front of the window.

Good shout - I don't think they'd trust SHIELD (or anyone) with ALL of their safe spaces, especially not Natasha.

Natasha has a couple of safe houses from her days on the run from the Red Room that she never told SHIELD about, although Clint has a key to both of them. And yes, they're close to places where you can gut fresh croissants in the morning because lying low doesn't mean you need to eat badly.

I think Natasha would love Scandinavian designs with lots of light and space and Clints happy if it's warm and has a window seat so he can sit and people watch or read.
SHIELD dont really like the idea of the two of them living together but they don't have the manpower to stop them so its sort of a running joke that don't live together with Clint inventing more and more bizarre excuses as to why Natasha is in his quarters.

Weirdly I've always seen window seats as a typically Natasha thing, rather than a Clint thing. Probably because of his apparently love of couches, if Fraction is to be believed. :P

because my parent's have that WASP Thing for HGTV and I briefly saw a Property Bros episode today...

Clint gets Natasha to flip a house with him ("it'll be fun, plus some money we can do something stupid with." "your definition of stupid is different than mine.") and it's only when the place has a Hulk sized hole does he start to think this was a bad idea.