Treat #5

Under Covers, originally written for 2016 Summer Promptathon (Rated M)

Edited 2021-10-31 03:18 pm (UTC)

Trick #9

This isn't good. It isn't good at all. They've got him tied to a chair in a locked room, he's been beaten so that his one eye is swollen completely shut, and he's pretty sure he's got at least two broken ribs. Nevermind that whatever they hit him with initially knocked out his hearing aids slash comm links and he's not entirely sure that any of the others even know where he is.

In other words, Clint's totally fucked.

If he's lucky, Natasha will figure it out. Or Tony's bots will scan the area for his biometric signature. Maybe Hulk crashes in to save him.

He's not holding out any hope for any of those thing to happen, though. No, if Clint's going to get out of this, he's going to need to figure it out on his own - without any tech, without any back up.

So, yeah. He's fucked.


Edited 2021-10-31 02:40 pm (UTC)

Trick 6

Treat 8 pleasee

Treat 7!

Clint reached for his hot chocolate, and then stopped as Natasha made an annoyed grumble from his lap. He buried his right hand in her curls again, and leaned over and reached across his body with the other hand. Natasha rubbed her face affectionately against his leg, and Clint sipped his hot chocolate, leaned back, and kept petting her hair as the Winter Friends bounced across the TV.

Trick #1

Treat #2

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27463237/chapters/87680893

Treat 3

i wrote a one-shot! hawk eyes, leaf boys, coffee shop AU for ~fall vibes~ :)

Edited 2021-11-07 02:49 am (UTC)

Treat 9

“What is that for?” Natasha raised her eyebrow as she watched Clint struggle through the apartment door with what was perhaps the largest pumpkin she had ever seen.

“Lucky,” Clint said simply using his foot to close the front door behind him.

“And what does Lucky want with a 10 pound pumpkin?”

“We’re doing a couple’s costume,” Clint said balancing the oversized gourd between his hip and the wall as he removed his coat and scarf.

“No. We are not.”

“Not us,” Clint sighed, hefting the pumpkin back into his arms and heading for the kitchen. “Me and Lucky.”

“You’re doing a couples costume with the dog?” Natasha twisted on the sofa, dislodging Liho who hissed as she leapt from Natasha’s lap to her perch on the windowsill.

“I saw it on TikTok,” he called from the kitchen.

Natasha went back to reading her book, but it only took Clint a few seconds to poke his head back around the kitchen door. “Have you got any good knives for gutting?”

“There’s a serrated blade in the set on the shoe rack. But make sure you clean it properly after,” she glanced up from her reading just long enough to give him a look that made clear he would regret any half-assed cleaning attempt.

“Sure thing,” he nodded and disappeared into the bedroom. It was less than a minute later that she heard him cry out in pain.

“Ah, Nat!”

“What?” She noted the page number before tossing her book onto the coffee table and going to investigate.

“Why are these all…,” Clint clutched his left hand with his right as blood pooled in the palm. “Why do you have so…” Clint kicked the shoe box of knives as he got to his feet. “They’re so sharp Natasha!” He glared at the blood in his palm.

“What? Did you just stick your hand straight into a box of knives?”

“No,” he stalked into the kitchen and began to run the tap with a scowl on his face.

“Let me,” Natasha pulled a barstool over to the sink. “Sit.” She instructed. He obeyed and she took his hand in hers. The gash was shallow, a little jagged nearer his wrist but he had caught the fleshy part near his thumb, so the bleeding was insistent. With a clean cloth she gave his hand a once over and slipped his wedding ring from his finger, setting it neatly on a folded square of kitchen towel on the counter, before lifting his hand in the air and applying pressure with her own.

“Thanks Nat,” He gave her a lopsided smile. “Sorry I got blood on your stuff.”

“It’s ok,” she quirked a quick smile. “I’ll clean them.”

“Will you help me with the pumpkin? I don’t know how I’m going to carve with this,” he gestured with his hand causing Natasha’s grip on it to loosen a little and a little blood trickle down his forearm.

“Don’t move,” she scolded with a tut as she readjusted her grip. “What do you need done with the pumpkin?”

“Just a jack-o’-lantern but it needs to be gutted from the bottom so I can get it on Lucky’s head.”

Natasha burst into a peel of laughter. “On his head?” She asked incredulously. “Babe, he’s going to hate that!”

“No, I’m going to put peanut butter inside, he’ll love it!”

“And how’s that a couple’s costume?”

“’I’ll be the grim reaper and I’m going to use my scythe to cut Lucky’s pumpkin head off. It’s theatre!” Clint gestured wildly with his right hand and received a stern look from his first aider.

“And what? Are you going trick-or-treating at Tony’s party with your bit?” Natasha smiled and loosened her grip slightly on his hand and brought it down to inspect.

“Nah, just to show the kids we hand out the candy to before we head over to Tony’s,” he winced as Natasha pulled slightly at the flesh by his thumb.

“It’s looking alright, want me to wrap it for you?”

“Please,” he fumbled with the door of the cabinet under the sink and held out the first aid kit to her. She made quick work of wrapping his hand and he made a lewd comment about the possibility of an undercover mission as a nurse, which earns him an eyeroll as she pushed his wedding ring back onto his finger with a little more force than necessary. Then she followed his directions in carving the pumpkin and together they made quick work of cleaning up both the pumpkin guts and Clint’s blood.

Natasha went back to reading with Liho curled on her stomach while Clint donned his costume and smeared peanut butter on the inside of Lucky’s jack-o’-lantern head. Natasha began watching with interest as Clint disappeared into the kitchen to return the peanut butter jar and set up a candy bowl for the trick-or-treaters and Lucky sniffed his way towards the peanut butter coated pumpkin. It was Natasha’s huff of amusement that brought Clint out from the kitchen to find Lucky with his head already buried in the pumpkin enthusiastically licking the peanut butter up.

“Lucky!” Clint scolded. “Not yet, we need to wait for the doorbell.”

“You want to do a dress rehearsal for me?” Natasha asked with a twinkle in her eye as she watched Clint extract the very slobbery pumpkin from Lucky’s grip.

“Ok, but you’ve got to take a video to send to Kate, alright?”

“Sure,” Natasha smiled and opened the camera on her phone ready to shoot.

The dress rehearsal was enough of a success to produce a highly amusing series of videos for Natasha to forward to Kate and enough of a disaster to convince Clint not to try re-enacting the theatrical piece for any trick-or-treaters. By the time the first group of trick-or-treaters rang the doorbell Lucky had torn the pumpkin head to pieces anyway in his efforts to lick every drop of peanut butter from inside.

They clear up the pumpkin and drop the candy bowl off on the front stoop on their way over to Tony’s party. A couple of blocks from home Clint’s phone chimes with a message from Kate.

Your dog is dumb. But not as dumb as you.

“Did you send Kate a video?”

“All of them,” Natasha slipped her arm through Clint’s and gave him her most charming smile, which he knew better than to trust.

His phone chimed again.

What happened to your hand? Did you

It cut off halfway through a sentence and Clint frowned but another message appeared immediately in the wake of the dropped off thought.

HOLY SHIT! IS THAT A WEDDING RING?

Trick 4

Trick #10 :)

Edited 2021-10-28 09:08 pm (UTC)

Taking this job was the best decision that Clint had ever made. It had sort of been on a dare back when he’d been job-seeking. His roommate James had returned from shopping one day and dumped a newspaper on his lap with an advertisement circled in red marker pen several times.

“That ad’s been in the papers for weeks now,” James had said. “The pay is incredible, but there’s a good reason for that. Maybe you could give it a try. If you’re not a wuss, that is.”

And of course Clint had taken that as a challenge.

As it turned out, the job was a night shift guarding and maintaining a cemetery – and, when Clint saw just how much he’d get paid, he all but jumped at the chance to apply. The only catch, it seemed, was that the cemetery was ‘haunted’. At the time, Clint had laughed. He didn’t believe in ghosts.

⁕ ⁕ ⁕

The first few days on the job were mostly spent getting used to it; he must have drank about three times his body’s weight in caffeine, and one night, when he felt like he felt like he was about to pass out, he’d turned on some cheesy pop music and had his own little dance party inside the community mausoleum.

Once he felt more acclimatized to his new sleep schedule, he spent some time clearing up the place – litter picking, weed plucking, power washing the older gravestones. It ended up being quite a nice job, actually. Soothing. Working with his hands helped him get out of his own head. He didn’t know why it had taken so long for anyone else to apply for the job.

It wouldn’t be long until he found out why.

A while into the job, he’d started noticing something that upset him a little. There was a line of graves – all people who died and were buried in the nineties – that were still diligently attended by friends and family, with flowers and photos placed neatly around the stones... But there was one grave that never had any visitors.

It looked a little odd, all empty and by itself in the crowd of well-loved strangers. What made it worse was that the woman buried there was around the same age as him. And, though Clint didn’t know the woman – for all he was aware, there could be a very good reason no one was visiting – he still didn’t want to ignore it. It wasn’t fair.

So, he started buying bouquets. There was a sweet little flower shop on the way to the cemetery, so he took to buying a new arrangement of varying bright colours and sweet scents each time it looked like the old one would need to be replaced. He also took to having a little conversation with her every time he placed the new bouquet.

“Hey, Natasha,” he’d greet. “How have you been? I’ve not been too bad myself... Had to take Lucky to the vets the other day – found out he was feeling so bad because he ate my socks. Two of ’em – a whole pair! The big dope. I love dogs. Are you a dog person, Natasha...? You know what, you strike me more as a cat person. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, you’re definitely more of a cat person.”

It was nice, he found, to have someone to chat to – even though there was no chat back – on such a lonesome job.

⁕ ⁕ ⁕

It was a cold night when it happened. The fog low on the ground made the cemetery look delightfully spooky, and Clint was sort of hoping that bunch of drunk highschoolers would try to break in again. Last time, he had scared them off by leaping out from behind a gravestone, pretending to be a zombie, and it was hilarious. But he thought he could get a little more creative than that next time.

He arrived to his shift bearing gifts: roses this time, in red, pink, and yellow. He almost dropped them however, upon the sight that greeted him when he approached Natasha’s grave.

The vaporous visage of a woman, pale grey and smoky like the mist surrounding her, stood in front of him. She was... beautiful. There was no better way to put it; however strange and terrifying she was, she truly was beautiful, alarmingly so. In her arms, she was somehow cradling the dying bouquet of white lilies and gypsophila that Clint had brought last time – Clint wasn’t sure how she was doing so, as her translucency made her look a little incorporeal too.

She was a ghost, Clint realized belatedly. An actual, real-life ghost. Huh. Maybe the warnings were right after all.

Clint felt his stomach flip as she looked in his direction, her long hair swaying in the air as if she were floating underwater. In an odd moment of panic, Clint hid the roses behind his back. He didn’t know why, but he’d come over all shy all of a sudden.
A small smile spread across the ghost’s delicate features.

“Are you the person who’s been leaving flowers at my grave?” She asked. Her voice was strange, echoing and ethereal.

“Uh... are you Natasha?”

“That’s the name on my headstone, yes.”

Clint gulped. “Well then... yes.”

The ghost – Natasha – looked him up and down slowly, then placed the old and dying bouquet back down by her gravestone. Clint felt his heart running a million miles an hour as she moved closer, her legs seeming to merge with the fog she waded through, making it look like she was floating through the air. Once face to face, Natasha glanced curiously over Clint’s shoulder.

“Oh!” Clint realized, taking the roses back out from behind his back. “Th-these are for you.”

Her smile brightened into a grin as she reached out and took them from his hands. Clint was a little cautious letting them go, worried she might drop them and then get angry and attack him or vow to haunt him forever or something else that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie. Instead, she lifted them to her nose and breathed them in, letting out a happy sigh at the scent. That was weird. Could ghosts even smell?

Natasha leaned up then, as if standing on her tip-toes, and Clint felt as though someone had gently pressed a block of ice against his face when she laid a soft kiss against his cheek. The sensation didn’t last long, however, as Clint found his cheeks heating up soon after.

“They’re beautiful,” Natasha said sincerely. “Thank you.”

Huh. This was an odd turn of events.

Edited 2021-11-02 11:08 am (UTC)

Trick 3 (changed because someone else already picked Treat 7)

Edited 2021-10-30 11:55 pm (UTC)

"Nobody is immortal."

Thor looks at Clint with something like pity in his eyes, but something else, too.

"We Asgardians like to think we are. But if that were true, Valhalla would be empty and I would not have to mourn the loss of most of my people."

Clint shakes his head. He's been doing that a lot lately, he knows. It's become almost a tic.

"No, that can't be. She was taken by an infinity stone. Not some parlour trick. Infinity - that's got to mean something. And that red dude? He was older than Cap, minus seven decades in cryo sleep. So, if she went because of the soul stone, another one of those things should be able to bring her back."

His voice peters out. Thor won't listen; he has his own way of dealing with his losses; they involve quantities of mead, not denial or trying to change the unchangeable. He's holding out a pitcher to Clint now. Clint takes it, just to be polite, but only has a sip; that shit is way too sweet for his taste.

"I gotta go home," he announces, because obviously, there's nothing more for him here on Quill's ship. One supernatural being remains to be asked - Wanda having disappeared - and Rocket's grudging research had suggested that the person in question is in New York.

"You think you guys could give me a lift back down to Earth?"

Space is interesting - Clint hadn't been kidding when he'd suggested to Natasha that it was cool. But that had been on the way to Vormir; that attraction is totally gone... Hooking up with Quill's ship had been a necessity, not something he'd enjoyed, and hard enough to do given that it'd been Natasha who'd set up the comms channel.

The skyscrapers of New York, when the shuttle sets down on the platform at Avengers Tower, are as welcome a sight as a world without her can be.

Clint waves goodbye to Nebula and heads for the elevator.

*****

Stephen Strange is not exactly welcoming; he looks at Clint like he's an encyclopedia salesman. He has to be reminded that his unwelcome guest is the guy who'd brought Thanos' glove to the surface, pursued by a hundred Chitauri and a dozen explosions. Even for an arrogant prick that little feat ought to buy some credit.

Surprisingly, it does. Strange opens the door and leads Clint past a staircase that looks like a small airplane crashed into it.

"Tea?" Strange says. "I have a feeling that whatever you want from me, it's going to be a long story and I'll need something to keep me from falling asleep."

Well, he's not wrong - on the length of the story, anyway.

"She can't be dead," Clint insists, when he finally comes to the end of his tale. "I mean, Stark told us that when you were on that moon, you foresaw 14 million plus alternatives for how things were going to go with Thanos. Surely in one of those Natasha survived? I mean, you're a wizard. Can't we go to one of the 14 million places where we fucked up because we didn't go to Vormir and bring her back here, where we did, and didn't?"

That didn't come out quite right, but Clint doesn't care; it seems that his point has registered anyway.

Strange fiddles with the amulet around his neck. It seems to be an unconscious gesture, but Clint hasn't spend a decade-plus being a spy to think that it's meaningless. Plus, he just remembered something.

"That thing," he says, jabbing at it with his finger in a way that causes Strange to recoil a little. "Bruce picked it up from your coven here in New York when we collected those stones, and Cap took it back there after Tony's snap. So far as I know, that's gotta be a live Infinity Stone. Can that help?"

Strange doesn't say anything for a while; Clint isn't sure whether that's because he doesn't have an answer, or doesn't want to give it. The guy is pretty hard to read, apart from his obvious disdain for anyone with less than three PhDs. (He reminds Clint a bit of the BBC Sherlock, scary smart with zero inter-personal skills.)

"Well???" he says, trying hard not to pronounce too many of those question marks.

Strange sighs.

"If I say no, you're just the type to stage a sit-in in front of my building until I change my mind, right?"

Clint had been thinking more about throttling the good doctor until he says yes, but if that's what the guy is worried about, then fine. He lifts his tea cup in salute.

"You know it," he says.

*****

The spinning fire of the portal is a familiar sight - but this time, no heroes step through. Instead, what Clint can see through the opening looks pretty end-of-the-worldish. Explosions galore, and a vile stench that creeps into the Sanctum through the golden ring. An army of ragged zombie-like ghouls shuffle towards a partly destroyed building. Ahead of them, a lone, familiar figure runs for her life, turning around occasionally to lob fiery missiles at her pursuers.

Natasha.

Clint draws his bow.

"You can't shoot through that gate," Strange says, but there's no conviction behind it and so Clint ignores him.

"Tasha," he hollers. "This way. Follow the arrows!"

At the sound of his voice Natasha's head whips around, her eyes widening as she sees the gate. Clint starts firing off one arrow after the other, watching the zombie things flap and fall only to be stepped on by those in the next row.

Natasha changes course towards the gate. The trajectory brings her closer to the rotting army, but Clint's arrows serve to clear the angle. A few seconds later and she bursts through the fiery ring like a trained lioness, landing almost at Strange's feet.

The wizard makes one more circle with his hands and the fiery gate closes with a slight slurping sound; a partly decomposed hand falls out of the air and onto the carpet with a wet thud.

"I expect you two to clean that up," Strange says. "That's the least you can do."

But neither Clint nor Natasha pay any attention to him.

"You're alive!" she says, looking at Clint as if the sun rose in his eyes. "I thought..."

"Yeah," he says. "Me too."

Because, really, what else is there to say? Okay, so there'll have to be some serious explaining later on, about why there aren't any zombies here - yet, anyway - and just what's been going on in his particular corner of the multiverse.

But for now?

Whoever they are in their respective universes, and whatever got them to this point, the other not being dead is all the bridge between worlds that they need. Clint tosses away the bow and waits for her to step into his arms. Natasha smells of cordite and a long time without a hot bath - just like in Budapest.

Her kiss, it turns out, is just as sweet.



Edited 2021-10-31 03:04 am (UTC)

Treat 10

It's well past midnight when Clint shuts the door to the farmhouse. Late enough that the cat doesn't wake up, even. He should be in bed much earlier, he has to be up at the ass crack of dawn again tomorrow to feed all of the animals and make sure the crops are watered. And really, all the same shit as today. But it's almost his wife's birthday and he has to find the right gift- one she'll really love-

Clint jumps when someone taps him on the shoulder.

He fumbles the Switch, almost dropping the handheld before ultimately managing to bump it safely back onto the couch.

'Hi.' Nat signs, 'Busy farming?' she gestures at the console.

Clint glances quickly at the clock and grimaces.

"I guess Harvest Moon… harvested all my time today." Clint offers Nat a sheepish eyebrow waggle.

Natasha sighs at him but she's still smiling behind it. So Clint isn't too far in the shit for blowing off all his real life chores today.

She flops down on the couch next to him, handing the Switch back to him.

"So did you finally marry the redhead who's good with animals?"

"Oh, Anne? Well-"

Edited 2021-11-18 05:36 am (UTC)

Trick 7

When Clint wakes up, head pounding with a distinctive post-fast-acting-sedative hangover and blood red lipstick smeared on his jugular, he knows exactly what it is: a warning.

Not just anyone survives the Black Widow.

🕷🕸🕷

The arrow slices through her cheek.

It's not deep enough to be serious, but certainly enough for the blood to flow wet and warm down her cheek.

It could be payback for when she left him drugged in the hotel room a year or so ago. But then she sees the red scrap of fabric tied to the shaft.

A warning for a warning, then.

🕸🎃🕸

Natasha presses harder into the hole ripped through her side.

"Didn't hit anything important with that angle," Clint says.

Natasha laughs. Doesn't tell Clint about the blood bubbling up into her throat.

"That… was a warning shot. The Winter Soldier doesn't miss."

🎃👻🎃

Natasha feels Steve tense at her shoulder. Her shoulders are squared, stance perfectly balanced and gun aimed at the Winter Soldier— at Steve's best friend's head.

She fires, ignoring Steve's sharp intake of breath. Her shot hits the Soldier in the eye. The goggles fall off his face. He narrows his eyes at them and flees.

"See? Warning shot." Natasha says before Steve can get any further.

She gets a patented Steve Rogers Disappointing Stare™. But that's getting off considerably easier than she was expecting.

Treat #10 too because I can't help myself!

[AU where Barney owns the Barton family farm bc that’s one of my favourite headcanons!]

---

“Let’s go to Missouri, you said,” Natasha says loudly as she hears Clint re-approaching. “We’ll make it a romantic getaway, you said. Missouri is so beautiful in the fall, you said.” She nearly falls backwards off of the step-ladder trying to pluck the next apple. “I didn’t realize your brother just wanted to use us for free labor.”

“Aw, c’mon, lots of couples do this kind of stuff! We’ll make pie together when we’re done picking and eat it by the fireplace – how’s that sound?”

Natasha chuckles as she empties her armful of apples into her basket on the ground. “Alright. Twist my arm. That does sound very romantic.” She looks up to see him fiddling with his bow and arrow, and raises an eyebrow. “Are you really practicing right now? I thought you were gonna help...”

“I am!” Clint grins. “I just have quicker harvesting methods!”

At that, he pulls back his bow and lets an arrow fly. Natasha chases the movement of the arrow with her eyes and watches as one – two – three – four – five – six apples fall to the floor in rapid succession, the arrow piercing the stems above them, followed by a squelch and another thump as the arrow hit its final target and falls to the floor.

“Ha!” Clint says smugly, grabbing a basket and running after his arrow. “See?”

Natasha rolls her eyes affectionately. “Very impressive, Barton. Not sure Barney will be too pleased you’re bruising and stabbing all his apples, though.”

“What Barney doesn’t know won’t hurt him!” Clint calls back, picking all the fallen apples on his way. “And the stabbed ones are just for us! We’ll use ’em for the pie. Or –” he adds, picking up the apple the arrow had struck from the ground and taking a bite “– as snacks!”

“I see! Very ingenious. You clearly put a lot of thought into this one.”

“Yeah. Lot more thought than I put into most missions, actually,” Clint says jokingly as he jogs back over.

“Ah, but that implies you do put thought into missions sometimes,” Natasha teases. “And I know that’s a big fat lie.”

“Har-de-har,” Clint smiles, wrapping his arms around her middle and pulling her close. Natasha wraps her own arms around his shoulders and lifts herself onto tiptoes as he leans down, breaking the distance between them, and presses his lips to hers.

His kiss is honeycrisp; sharp and sweet and delicious.