He smiles that stupid, lopsided smile before he pours the sweets into his mouth. He never really grew up, Natasha thinks for a second, he might have dragged his sorry ass into some sort of survival - but the kid deep down never really left.
It seeps out of him in a way she's not even sure he's aware of - the innocent kindness that seems to escape regardless of how much his mouth says otherwise. It's endearing, or it would be. If it didn't go against everything, they ground into her DNA to just be exposed and young. To play pretend that none of it had been real and the biggest problem in the world was that the corner shop had a chocolate milkshake and didn't have a chocolate fudge brownie milkshake.
"I get it, buddy", Clint says, breaking Natasha out of her thoughts and back to Dog Cops, "Don't think I'd want my balls chopped off either. Won't stop Fury from trying though"
Despite herself, she laughs. She loves him. She knows it. Somehow, there is some weird magnetism in her absence and his suffocating presence. It feels like medicine, like who she should have been. She wants to reciprocate, to drop it all and meet him in whatever moment he's in, but how the hell do you even start?
"Earth to Tasha", he calls, chucking one of the sweets he'd insisted on buying at her head, "You still with me?"
She must have lost time.
"Was it good?" She asks weakly, letting him lay his feet on her lap.
"What? DogCops? Yeah, I give it two more years, and they won't need us anymore. Just get some super soldier German Shepard on the case"
No warnings but angsty -> "Its not who you are, its what I'm not"
It seeps out of him in a way she's not even sure he's aware of - the innocent kindness that seems to escape regardless of how much his mouth says otherwise. It's endearing, or it would be. If it didn't go against everything, they ground into her DNA to just be exposed and young. To play pretend that none of it had been real and the biggest problem in the world was that the corner shop had a chocolate milkshake and didn't have a chocolate fudge brownie milkshake.
"I get it, buddy", Clint says, breaking Natasha out of her thoughts and back to Dog Cops, "Don't think I'd want my balls chopped off either. Won't stop Fury from trying though"
Despite herself, she laughs. She loves him. She knows it. Somehow, there is some weird magnetism in her absence and his suffocating presence. It feels like medicine, like who she should have been. She wants to reciprocate, to drop it all and meet him in whatever moment he's in, but how the hell do you even start?
"Earth to Tasha", he calls, chucking one of the sweets he'd insisted on buying at her head, "You still with me?"
She must have lost time.
"Was it good?" She asks weakly, letting him lay his feet on her lap.
"What? DogCops? Yeah, I give it two more years, and they won't need us anymore. Just get some super soldier German Shepard on the case"