Here it is: posted nearly five months after "Post-Mission Natasha," the prequel, "The Story of Us" - and it's turned out to be longer than I thought it was going to be. Hopefully you guys enoy!:)

Clint and Natasha, Natasha and Clint. That's how it had always been between them. They didn't need anyone else. Sure, Coulson was there in the wings, and he cared, but strike team Delta didn't need him. But it was nice to have people around. It had grown on Natasha especially since the Avengers had moved into the Tower after defeating Loki.

After their first unusual meeting in Calcutta, Natasha could admit that Bruce had become a special friend of hers. She loved Clint so much that, even though they were only quietly together, he might as well have been her husband – of course she did, after everything that they'd been through together, but it was Bruce who could get her to laugh, to see the bright side of things. Without quite noticing that it had happened, she had begun to need Dr. Bruce Banner – and much in the same way that she needed Clint… but she still loved her partner. So she shoved away her blossoming feelings for Bruce, leaving them totally unacknowledged – she was good at leaving feelings unacknowledged – and went about her life.

But she should've known better than to try and hide anything about herself from Clint Barton. He knew that she had fallen for Bruce. She knew that he knew it, and it only made her feel – unacknowledged, of course – worse about the whole situation. The thing was, though, that Natasha didn't realize that Clint had figured out something that she hadn't.

Bruce was falling for Natasha too.

Only, now they had to figure out what to do about it. It was Clint who came up with the unusual idea, and he mulled it over to himself for weeks before becoming okay with it in his own right and deciding to mention it to Natasha. Bruce and Natasha had both decided – each to themselves, it seemed – that it would be better to just let their emotions go without recognition. Clint, however, knew at least Natasha well enough to realize as he watched her over time that this wasn't healthy – probably not for her or Bruce, for that matter. So he came up with a solution – and now he had to approach his partner about it.

"Hey, Tasha?" Clint started, blinking as he held the punching bag in the training room steady while his partner took another swing at it. "I want to talk to you about something, and I need you to hear me out with an open mind."

Natasha's head was bent as she pounded into the punching bag, but she glanced up at him unsuspectingly, cocking her eyebrow before answering, "Okay…?"

"Bruce."

Natasha stilled for all of a split second before asking, "What about him?"

"The two of you are… in love - No; you promised not to interrupt me, so listen - and trying not to be is making you both unhappy. I want you to be happy, Natasha. Heck, Bruce is a part of the team, I want him to be happy too. Better for the Hulk that way, too, I guess. And I think I know a way that we can all be happy. Now, let me make this perfectly clear: I am straighter than my own arrows, so I'm not suggesting a threesome. But what I am suggesting is that you, how to put this…?I'm suggesting that the three of us - you, me, and Bruce - try you dating both me and Bruce, separately but at the same time. Don't look at me like that, Tasha; I'm only saying that I think you - we - should give it a try. See if it might be a workable solution. If not, then fine; we'll deal with crossing that bridge when we come to it. But I don't want anyone to be miserable because they shut themselves off from all options without giving anything that might work - even if it is different - a chance. I want you to consider it - seriously give it some thought - and then we'll go from there as to whether or not we bring the idea to Bruce. Promise me, you'll think about it, Nat."

The first time Natasha opened her mouth a squeak came out. The second time it was a scoff. The third time she managed a stunned, "Okay." And then she asked suddenly, her voice an octave or three higher than normal, "What the heck do you think Bruce is going to say about this?! If we ask him, of course… And the rest of the team!"

"'The rest of the team' doesn't have to know a thing about it unless we decide that we want them to. As for Bruce… I don't know. But it wouldn't hurt to ask, would it? The worst thing he could do would be to say no, right?"

"Right," Natasha eventually agreed, and to look in her eyes, Clint could see her initial shock at the idea gradually slipping away to be replaced by honest thoughtfulness.

And so, it wasn't too many weeks afterward that Clint and Natasha went to Bruce's level to propose the idea to him. They had asked Jarvis to inform them when the doctor left the labs for the evening and returned to his quarters, and even though the alert came later than expected, they went anyway. Considering the "now or never" feelings that had been bouncing between strike team Delta all day, neither one of them was particularly willing to take a chance on losing their nerve. So they went.

Bruce was in his kitchen scrounging around for something that might resemble a meal when they stepped off of the elevator. When Clint and Natasha reached the kitchen, he was just taking a container of soup out of the microwave.

It was all so very normal, and yet here they were about to propose something that was anything but normal.