This thread is for any questions you want to ask a mod and general chat that isn't related to or spinning off from a particular prompt :)

YAY!!!!!

that's it :)

Five of Clint's Relationships That Kate Didn't Approve Of (And One That She Does)

ooooooooooohhhh. First one, and possibly hooked...

By now Natasha has moved so many times and/or set up some many safe houses and bolt holes that she has this whole plan for IKEA, knows her way around all the home stores, thrift stores, where to go for what she wants for what theme, plus all the handy spy stuff; she has this entire, efficient process.

Clint... does things his own way.

A fic in which Clint and Natasha move in together or set up a safehouse together.

Man, you're on fire tonight.

Fake Wedding as an undercover sting operation to catch a bunch of bad guys (a la this actual thing that happened).

(repost from a previous year because this still amuses me)

Inspired by my colleagues (bless 'em) last week: someone/SHIELD plans an important meeting/mission/thing for the 14th February and is checking everyone is available to attend when Clint (or Natasha, or person of your choice) points out that, no, because it's Valentine's Day and they have plans. And everyone laughs, some because 'yeah, right', others because obviously that's not as important as this Very Important Thing, and Clint (or whoever) is all: no, seriously. My partner would kill me.

Edited 2019-02-08 09:22 pm (UTC)

Natasha and ladies of your choice - SHIELD ladies, Avengers, or otherwise - celebrating Galentine's Day.

Maybe this is a tradition that Natasha is resigned to. Maybe it's a new thing and she's dragged along. Or maybe Natasha is the one to instigate it, because she's found it hard making friends who're other women and to hell with that, ladies kick ass.

HAIR.

Rated G
Spoilers for Endgame
This is much darker than Valentines deserves, but it's where my brain went with the prompt. Sorry.

He sensed the person behind him before he saw them. Heard the patter of the rain on their umbrella. Smelled their vaguely floral scent wafting in the damp air, in sharp contrast to the faintly metallic scent of the blood all around him. Heard their sharp intake of their breath in the eerie silence that had fallen over the street.

"Might not want to stick around here," he warned gruffly, wiping his katana on his sleeve. "It's not safe."

There was a gasp, and he swore… No. It couldn't be. It wasn't. But there was no mistaking the sound of her voice as she whispered his name.

"Clint…"

He turned, slowly, surprise and wariness warring for dominance over his emotions. It was her, really her. Here. Here in this street, in this city.

Why was she here? Why now? And where had she been all these months, while he grieved, all alone,without anything or anyone for comfort?

"Clint."

He hesitated, not sure if he wanted to run to her and pull her close or turn his back and walk away.

She solved his dilemma for him, quickly closing the space between them before dropping her umbrella and pulling him tight in her warm embrace.

He shuddered at the feel of her in his arms. Warm. Real. Alive.

"You're here," he breathed.

"Yeah."

"Why? How?" he asked. He fingered the tail end of her braid. "And when did you go blonde?"

He didn't know why he said it. It had nothing to do with anything, but it was the first thing that came to his mind. He'd been lost so long, nothing making sense. So much had changed in the blink of an eye, including her hair it seemed, her signature red locks now a dull blonde shade.

She chuckled, though it held no humor. "Things have changed. A lot of things, including my hair."

He tried to hold on to his bitterness, but it was impossible. He couldn't hate her. He could never hate her.

"They're gone," he admitted roughly, hugging her tight again.

She nodded. "I know."

"And I…" he swallowed, unable to choke out the words.

She hushed him with a finger against his lips. "You don't have to… not right now. Come back with me. We'll figure things out."

"How?"

"I don't know. Not yet. But together… when haven't we been able to figure it out?"

I will prompt versions of this until someone finally writes it:

"When the [time machine][inter-dimensional rift][turn of Dr Strange's tacky medallion] spat Clint out in front of that saloon in Tombstone in what looked like the early 1870s, the last thing he expected to see inside was the Black Widow, dealing a deck of cards."

Oh I loooove this!

I have you shoved against the wall but now I can’t stop looking at your mouth.

Someone keeps sending Natasha anonymous Valentines gifts, just they're really awful and she has no idea who to punch to make them stop.

(an oldie but goodie from last year that I couldn't quite make come together)

Oh hey what was my prompt! I wondered why I recognised that. :P

I just told you I liked you but now I’m shy and say “never mind, forget it” and why are you looking at me like that?

‘i’m rly hungover and i rly rly need some takeout right now but oh god i called the wrong number and your voice is rly attractive do you wanna come over with a pizza’ au

The thing is, nobody has a landline anymore, which means that the only calls Natasha gets at home are from the pharmacy, the library, or credit card scammers. As such, when comes home from her Saturday morning workout and hears her phone ringing through the door, she’s in no hurry to answer. It’s only on the third ring, when the caller ID robotically butchers, “Call from Bedford Stuyvesant,” that she gets interested enough to answer the phone.

When she answers, the voice at the other end says, “Yeah, can I get an extra large pepperoni and peppers?”

“Sir, I think--”

“And breadsticks,” the guy goes on. He sounds terrible, like microwaved death; everything about his wincing voice screams hangover. “Oh, and can I get some marinara sauce with that? Also, do you deliver aspirin?”

Truly, he sounds pathetic. “I think you have the wrong number,” says Natasha, trying not to laugh. “Sorry.”

“Shit,” the guy says, with a lot more vehemence than she expects from someone half-dead. “This isn’t Shield Pizza?”

Understanding dawns: Natasha orders from the same place, just around the corner, and their number isn’t so different from hers. “They’re 555-1616,” Natasha explains. “This is 555-6161.”

“Fuck,” the guy says after a long pause. “Sorry about that,” and then the line clicks off, leaving Natasha to stare bemusedly at her phone until Maria texts her about a cute one-eyed dog in the neighborhood and she forgets the whole thing.



Until he calls again two weeks later. And then again, two weeks after that. And again. And again. “Dude,” Natasha finally says the sixth time it happens. “Why don’t you just save the number in your phone?”

“Huh,” says the guy, surprise apparently breaking through the fog of his hangover. “Good idea.” He hangs up and Natasha thinks she might, weirdly, miss these odd exchanges. She doesn’t know his name, but his voice is nice, deep and sleep-rumpled, and he’s always polite.

So she’s not all that upset when the phone rings again two weeks later. “If you’re going to do this every week,” Natasha says, glad he can’t see her exasperated grin, “I should at least know your name.”

“Clint,” the guy says, sheepish. “And it’s not every week.”

“Every other,” Natasha concedes; and then, feeling fully justified to be nosy, all things considered: “But why are you hungover every other Saturday?”

Clint explains: “So my friend has a huge crush on the bartender at the Utopian, and every pay day she goes down there and buys a ton of drinks in, like, a really bad attempt at flirting? And, like, I mean… I can’t just let all those drinks go to waste, y’know?”

Natasha squints at her phone for a few seconds, partially because the Utopian is only a few blocks away. “you know that alcohol doesn’t… go bad, right?” she finally says, finding herself fully unable to come up with anything else to say in response.

“I know,” Clint sighs. She doesn’t know what he looks like, but can still imagine an arm over a face, a classic pose of hungover distress. “But she needs a wingman. I’m just trying to be a good friend.”

“Well,” Natasha says, “in that case, I’ll talk to you again in two weeks, then. Unless your friend finally gets lucky.”

“Unlikely,” Clint groans, and Natasha tries not to smile as she signs off.



It’s just--there’s a point where it gets too late to tell her friends about it. Like, the conversation would begin, hey, funny story, this guy keeps calling me trying to order pizza and also he sounds increasingly sexy the more often I talk to him, and Pepper will say how sexy is increasingly sexy, and then Maria will say more often in that question-mark-less-question voice she has, and Jess will say just how long has this been going on, and Natasha will have to leave, or die, or something.

Because she can’t tell her friends that this has been going on for the better part of six months now. That he doesn’t even try to order anymore, just says, “Oh, hey, Nat, sorry,” asks about her week, gives her the update on Kate’s continued inability to make a move on America; that she even knows the names of these peripheral people who are unknowingly contributing to the stupidest crush she’s ever had. They absolutely cannot know that sometimes she considers what it might be like to wake up next to a man she has never even met, that she wants to meet him even though literally all she knows about him is that he regularly drinks just a bit too much and can’t be bothered to save a phone number in his phone, that she has built an embarrassingly elaborate fantasy around this person based on little more than a gorgeous voice and a repeating mistake. And there’s no way in hell she’ll ever admit that she’s laid in bed more than one Friday night, thinking about walking down to the Utopian and maybe finding America and somehow from there identifying Kate and therefore Clint (though the plan kind of falls apart here because what in the world would she even say, how could that kind of introduction possibly go well).

It’s better, she thinks, to just keep it to herself. And so it’s a problem when Maria follows her home one day after the gym to hang out, and drapes herself across the couch to allegedly hate-watch reruns of The Bachelor. “I’m not moving,” Maria declares, misinterpreting the reason for Natasha hovering in the kitchen. “You can sit on the floor.”

Natasha crosses her arms. “It’s not that,” she says, trying not to say anything, and then not needing to because the phone rings. She snatches it up. “Hello? Oh, Clint, hi--” Without meaning to, she smiles into the receiver, her shoulders softening as she tucks the phone under her chin to listen to the latest episode of Kate drama. He doesn’t sound nearly as miserable as he usually does, his voice so full of laughter as he describes Kate trying to show off while playing darts that Natasha laughs, too, big and bright.

“Who are you talking to?” asks Maria, suddenly right behind her. She tries to grab the phone because, underneath it all, Maria and Natasha are still the same miserable boarding school roommates they were when they met at ten years old. In the ensuing scuffle, she manages to repeat her question into the speaker before Natasha yanks the phone from her hands, breathlessly says, “I’m-so-sorry-bye” into the phone before hanging it up so sharply it nearly falls back off the hook. Maria stares her down, hands on hips. “Who was that?”

“Wrong number,” Natasha says, impressed by her own levels of cool.

“Romanoff,” Maria sighs, equally unimpressed, “Do not make me pull that man’s phone number off your caller ID.” She would, too. Natasha sighs, leaves the kitchen, and sprawls over the couch, figuring she might as well be comfortable for her confession.



Natasha does not have subtle friends, which is why they’re at the Utopian two weeks later, and why she’s been harangued into her tightest jeans and lowest cut shirt under her favorite motorcycle jacket. “Which one is he?” Pepper whispers loudly, as if there is any need to be secret in a crowded Friday night bar.

“I don’t know,” Natasha says, feeling deeply stupid. “I’m getting drinks.” She peels away from the group before they can start speculating on which of the various male patrons is Clint, although even as she moves away she can see Jess pointing at someone with truly atrocious facial hair. Nope, Natasha thinks, turning her attention to the bar. Her plan for this evening is to provide absolutely no help in identifying Clint until her friends either give up or become distractably drunk. This is step one: “Can I get two rounds of shots, vodka?” she asks the bartender, who nods and takes her card to start the tab.

“Natasha, huh?” says the bartender, handing the card back. She’s got a curling mass of black hair and warm brown skin, arms dotted with star tattoos in various sizes, and Natasha recognizes her from Clint’s descriptions as America. Shit, because now, automatically, her eyes scan her vicinity for anyone who could be Kate, even though Clint’s only descriptors for her have been an infant and bossy and looks like one of those Gossip Girls. And while she considers this, America across her shoulder, calls, “Hey, princess!”

Me? Natasha thinks, half-turning; but no, there’s a girl squeezing her way through the crowd, maybe 22, definitely bossy, definitely a Gossip Girl. “What’s up?” she says, and Natasha positively IDs her as Kate from the way she looks up at America like she hung the moon. America tips her chin in Natasha’s direction, and Kate’s round blue gaze swings to Natasha, and Natasha wishes very much that her vodka shots would hurry up. “Oh,” Kate says.

“Anyway,” Natasha says, pushing back from the bar. “My friends and I will just be over there, if someone could deliver those? Thanks.” But she only gets a few steps before a small hand latches around her wrist.

“You are her, aren’t you?” says Kate. “Natasha? The one Clint keeps definitely not accidentally calling?”

“No,” Natasha lies, then pauses, then turns to Kate. “Not accidentally?”

Kate smirks; Natasha scowls. “He’s playing darts,” she says, pointing to--to--to the literal most attractive man Natasha has ever seen, tall and rangy and the good kind of dirty blond, staring down the dartboard with an intensity that is arrestingly hot. “Go,” Kate says with a not-so-gentle push, and Natasha can’t even find it in her to be annoyed.

The crowds part before her, somehow; she’s behind him in what feels like seconds. “Um,” she says, tapping his shoulder. “Clint?”

“Katie?” he says, turning around, and oh god he’s even hotter up close, oh god his smile feels like the best sort of hangover. “Hi?” he says, eyes darkening. “Do I know you? I feel like I definitely should.”

“I’m,” Natasha says, melting from the inside out. “I’m Natasha. From, uh, the phone?” Jesus. “I thought I’d try to save you the hangover tonight.”

“Tired of my phone calls?” he says, wariness creeping into his tone.

Natasha shakes her head and grins. “Tired of not having a face to put with a name,” she says. Clint’s smile widens and she steps closer into his space, well aware that Kate and America and probably all of her friends by now are watching. “Do you wanna get out of here?” she asks. “I’ve heard of this place, Shield Pizza? Supposed to be good. This guy won’t stop calling to tell me about it.”

“You’ll be shocked to learn this,” Clint says, throwing his last darts before taking her arm and wheeling them for the door, “but I love pizza.”

‘I don’t know who you are or how you got in here but I need you to give back at least some of the armoury.’ AU

Ooo I wanna read this :)

C'mon, at least give him back the bow ;)

“I swear, if you play that song one more time….”

Five times Natasha was drunk and one time she wasn't

Clint and Natasha are invited out by another couple each believing they are the only one invited, however they quickly discover it's meant to be a double date

Edited 2019-02-09 08:21 am (UTC)

Clint wakes up from being black-out drunk to find Natasha now won't talk to him. He must use all of his (and the other Avengers) skills to work out what happened last night.

Aww, Clint, no. Heh.

“I hate to inform you but *insert film title here* Is not a RomCom”

I... love this one.

“It’s about time you showed up.” Clint’s on a solo mission when things go south - he thinks he’s alone but Nat gets called in/has her mission cancelled/coincidence of your choice, and arrives to bail Clint out.

Drunk texting. Bonus points for confessions of love. Bonus bonus points if they’re not in a relationship (yet).

Med interns au - i’ve been up for twenty-four hours and am definitely seeing double but can i take one of you out some time?

Hee.

When Clint is injured SHIELD make use of the makeup skills he picked up in the circus and ask him to give Natasha a makeover for a mission.

5 times a bed was shared +1 something???

and one time they "slept" on the floor...?

You’re a princess that wants to escape castle life and I happen to be just traveling the world, totally not running away from bad people or nothing... (AU)

You’re the neighbor that keeps their curtains open, even when changing, and I can’t talk to you without blushing

Oh my word that's WONDERFUL <3