Title: Cold Fusion
Author: DJ Liopleurodon
Rating: Currently T - will probably go up
Disclaimer: I think its stupid that we have to say it at this point, but I claim no-ownership-of-these-characters-Hail-Marvel."
Special thanks to my awesome beta - Ringo01
Black Widow
If Clint Barton looks at me like I'm made of glass one more time, I'm going to kick his ass.
I could do it too.
We are sitting in a cafe on a side street in Paris. I catch him looking at me over his demitasse when I glance up from Le Figaro. Even through his dark sunglasses, I can feel "that" look in his eyes. At the mixture of self-reproach, affection and pity, anger flushes hot across my cheeks and my heart clenches a little. I want to slap him.
I'm torn between reminding him that even trying his damnedest, I still beat him and pointing out how crucial he was in the battle of New York. I'm not sure what, if anything, I could say to reach him. There seems a gulf impassible between us as he wrestles with what Loki did to him. Clint always knows what to say to me to calm me and bring me back from the brink—often it's nothing—and I used to be able to do the same for him. But what can I possibly say to him to assuage the guilt he feels even though we both know how little control he had?
We've recently arrived in France where we were scheduled to "meet" with the council via a secure web link at the US embassy for debriefing. I went in for my grilling first; the contents of such tribunals are sealed. Suffice it to say I told the truth, the almost-whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Following his debriefing by the council, Clint disappeared for hours until he came stumbling back to our hotel three sheets to the wind. He woke up the next morning, threw up in the tiny hotel bathroom and went back to bed. The council called me in for a second interview that day and seemed very insistent that I betray some hint that might contradict Clint's story. They had already debriefed Fury, Hill, Selvig and whoever else they could, but they still wanted evidence Clint had been acting voluntarily. I think our testimony finally convinced them, but I bet it will be a good long time before we get a decent field assignment again.
That's fine with me; this is my first vacation in... well, ever.
Now if only I could get Clint to stop berating himself. If that is, in fact, what he's doing. Even before the debriefing, he was pulling away from me; retreating into his Hawkeye persona. The lone-gunman, keeps-his-own-counsel thing impressed the hell out of the junior agents, but it has been a long time since he's been that way with me. Our partnership has always consisted of complete confidence, more so since we started sleeping together.
After arriving in Budapest, we spent two weeks in quiet comfort and loud sex. It's so freeing to just be somewhere; it's an entirely foreign concept to me. We weren't following anyone, gathering intel or awaiting a kill order. We weren't trying to blend in as locals or invisible nobodies or Russian arms dealers or obnoxious American tourists. Despite the world-wide attention on the Avengers, no one is focused on us. We are invisible next to the Hulk and the rest. We've been free to go where we pleased unnoticed.
We talked, we ate, we walked, we made love and we trained for the simple joy of it.
But it didn't last long.
A small park near our hotel has an athletic field where several martial arts schools work out several mornings a week, so no one raised an eyebrow when we began to spar there too. We had to be careful to keep our more showy techniques in check. We didn't want to attract spectators.
We spent hours there. A few days before we left Hungary, our session started out like always, sparring and exulting in the precise movements; evenly matched and constantly challenging one another. I never feel so close to anyone as I do when Clint and I face each other like this. The fluidity and synchronization we have as we move together is a singular experience.
That day, the experience ended with him pinning me on the grass, face to face and breathing hard. I watched the triumphant sparkle in his eyes die as he lay on top of me. He got up, grabbed his towel and wiped his face as he headed for the hotel. He has refused to train with me ever since.
And it's really pissing me off.
Even more than the reserved, almost perfunctory way he's been fucking me ever since that day.
So here we sit in the supposedly most amorous city in the world, surrounded by saccharine-sweet couples wandering the streets and, I swear to God, feeding each other fucking crepes, a mile apart even though our knees are touching beneath the table.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. It's a secure transmission call and Nick Fury's unmistakable voice is clear:
"Enough screwing around. It's time to get back to work."
Want more? Reviews spur me on. In the mean time, read and review the first story in the series, "Bound." (Yeah, I hate the title, too.)
