Title: Symbiotic
Author: SLynn
Rating: T (language)
Fandom: Avengers (movieverse)
Characters: Avengers!
Spoilers: Takes place after the movie. Follow-up to Some Nights. #15 in Recruitment series.
Summary: As SHIELD decides to work with someone new, the Avengers are learning just how well they really work together.
Notes: Much to my own surprise, I'm still writing this beast. For clarification, for this AU, the only films that are including are the ones up until The Avengers. Probably after Age of Ultron comes out, I'll start something new and build from there, but I was so far off track by the time Iron Man 3 came out that there was just no going back. I'm still writing this and will post when I can. Hopefully that will be often. Thanks and enjoy!
i.
Clint's eyes shifted slightly at the sound of the bedroom door creaking open. He'd tried to be quiet, the movie was practically on mute, but knew it wasn't so much the sound as it was the space. Natasha sensed movement and vacant space, and had probably been awake as long as he had been.
"I thought you loved sleep," she said with a sly smile as she slid onto the couch and curled her feet under her legs.
Reflexively Clint checked the clock and was surprised to find it much later than he'd imagined. He sighed but said nothing, only clicked off the television and turned his attention to Natasha. His hand falling easily to her knee. Perfectly content to sit in silence.
"Are we going to talk about this?" she asked.
"I was gassed to sleep for four months," he shrugged. "I can't just fall off anymore. I don't know."
"Still?" she asked, because it had been over six months ago.
"Still," he repeated.
"Isn't that why medical gave you sleeping pills?"
"I'm not taking those."
"Then throw them out."
"What's your problem?" Clint asked, without a trace of anger. She wasn't being confrontational, and he knew it. She was just being herself.
"You know my problem."
"I know what you say the problem is," Clint said, "but I don't think Carol alone is keeping you up at night. Phil says she's fine. That used to be good enough."
"He's lying."
"About what?" Clint asked and Natasha stared at him blankly before shrugging her shoulders indifferently. "Do you think I'm lying, too?"
"No," she admitted, getting to her feet and heading for the kitchen. "I just don't think you know any more than I do."
"Well, glad you still think I'm stupid," he returned, stretching his arms over his head before leaning back into the couch.
Natasha, rummaging around in the kitchen, laughed and Clint couldn't help but smile. After all the back and forth between them, after everything they'd been through together and separately, they'd fallen into an easy and surprisingly domestic pattern.
In the end, the simple act of being together was the easy part.
Everything else was still hard.
"You're not stupid," she said, returning with two cups of tea. "You just don't want to see the truth. Or hear it."
Clint stopped, his cup partway to his lips as he frowned.
"They're both lying," Natasha said as if it didn't really matter. "We're all liars."
"Why are you in such a mood?" Clint asked, finally irritated the way she'd probably intended. She got more out of him irritated. It was he strived to be so goddamn Zen - not that he every actually achieved it. His patience was always surface deep; an act.
A good act.
"Why are you out here in the middle of the night?" Natasha asked in return. "It's not because you can't sleep. If you wanted to sleep you'd be at the gym. Or in my arms. You'd exhaust yourself until you had no other choice but to sleep. I know you. I know you better than you know you."
"I'm not so sure I'm that complicated," Clint countered, still trying to avoid the issue. Still trying to work himself out of his anger by making light of her remarks.
It wasn't really working.
"But instead of working out your aggression, you're here," she persisted. "You're out here on the couch watching a movie you've probably seen. You knew I wasn't asleep. Why pretend? Why the effort?"
"I can't just be polite?"
"Have you ever just been polite?"
"I've turned over a new leaf," Clint said with a bitter smile, getting to his feet and tired of drinking his tea.
Still tired of being tired.
"If that's true," Natasha said in-between sips, still seated on the couch as if they were discussing anything but his life. "Tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"Whatever it is that's on your mind," she sighed. "Whatever it is that is keeping you up all night. Whatever it is that you're hiding."
"I thought Phil lied," Clint spit out, finally at his breaking point. He loved Phil, and he loved Natasha, but he'd always disliked the idea of them talking about him when he wasn't around. He knew they did it. Hell, he did it to them, but that didn't mean he had to like or condone it.
"About Carol," Natasha clarified, knowing she'd inadvertently triggered a land mine. "Not about you. He sees that, too, though. He knows. Sooner or later..."
"There's nothing wrong."
"Liar."
"Aren't we all?" Clint shrugged, sitting back by her side.
"Okay," Natasha sighed, setting down her mug and turning her body towards his, "you don't want to tell me. I don't need to know."
"Really?" he asked sarcastically.
"Really," she returned in a too sweet voice. Clearly if he was going to put on an act, she had an equally compelling one in mind. "Just tell me one thing."
"What?"
"You're scared."
"Are you asking me something?"
"No," she answered, leaning her head back against the couch as she continued to look in his eyes. "I'm telling you. I know you, remember?"
"I know you do," Clint said quietly.
"You're scared," Natasha repeated with complete confidence, "but how much? How scared are you?"
"You don't already know that, too?" he asked with a laugh, still trying hard to pass the whole thing off as a joke.
"I used to know," she shrugged. "It's been awhile."
"So tell me what you think," he said, scooting towards her and pulling her into his arms. "What's your guess?"
"Hmm," she said, resting her head against his shoulder, her back to his chest. Taking a deep breath before continuing, "I think it's more than that time in Barbados."
"Gun runners."
"Yeah," she said with a little nod, smiling as he dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head. "Definitely more than Barbados."
"I wasn't scared then."
"You were," she disagreed and this time he laughed. "Now isn't like then. You're more scared now, but it's not nearly as bad as your bathtub phobia. It's somewhere between Barbados and baths."
Clint didn't answer. He tried to keep his breaths as steady as they had been before she'd said it. Tried not to react, which he knew was a mistake. For Natasha a non-reaction was a reaction.
"You still have control," she added and he found himself nodding in agreement.
Natasha pulled herself free from his arms and put her hands on either side of Clint's face to look him in the eyes.
"When you're not," she said, her tone and voice rigid and firm, "I will expect answers."
"What if I'm not ready to give them to you?"
She answered him with a kiss.
"This is..." Tony started to say, looking at Steve and shrugging his shoulders at a loss. "Why? Why?" he repeated, turning to Fury; almost as confused as he was angry.
"The Council feels that they can provide valuable information," Fury answered with little inflection.
Every person in the room knew how Fury felt. There was no point in being vocal over it.
"Have you told Agent Coulson?" Steve asked.
"I have," Fury said with a short nod.
"What about Clint?" Tony asked.
"Agent Coulson has requested that he be allowed to tell both Barton and Danvers," Maria answered.
Tony nodded, realizing he should have guessed as much. He looked back to Steve briefly before turning to Fury and Hill. He didn't know what to say. For maybe the first time in his life, when Tony absolutely needed to talk, he found it nearly impossible.
"What's changed?" Steve finally asked, shaking his own head and clearly unhappy. "What changed their minds?"
"They did," Fury said plainly. "The Skrulls. They may not have convinced enough people that their actions were... justified, but they convinced the right people."
"And we know for certain that the people they convinced are in fact people?" Steve asked, still trying to wrap his head around the change.
Five minutes ago the Skrull invaders who had slowly been taking control of SHIELD, who had kidnapped and impersonated their friends and colleagues, were the enemy.
And now...
"We can never be certain," Maria admitted. "They can tell us that they've taken and passed the tests. That they are who they say they are. They can show us results, but we know those can be faked. We know what extent they are capable of covering up their tracks so... No. We can't know that. We'll never be certain."
"We should work on the assumption that they are not," Fury added.
"How do we do that?" Tony asked, finally finding his voice again. "Are we suppose to assume anyone we don't know personally is a Skrull? What about the people we do know? Are we going to test ourselves daily? Should we suspect anyone on the team that goes on vacation? That goes on a solo mission? That goes out for the night? When does it end? Where's the line? To be honest here, this whole body snatching-space invaders is a nightmare that I try hard not to think about. They could literally be everywhere. And I am using literally correctly in this situation. Literally. Everywhere."
"They're not everywhere," Maria said with a roll of her eyes.
"Not yet."
"You already have security measures in place," Fury said with a shake of his head. "Deputy Hill and I passed through those safety measures on the way through the door. The Tower is safe."
Tony didn't deny it. It was the first thing he'd done after they'd arrived back from the mission to recover Phil and Clint. Skrulls had a lower body temperature than humans. The tricky part was adapting the new security measures to account for Thor and Carol, who both ran warmer than average. He wasn't lying about this being a nightmare scenario, but he wasn't overly concerned with Skrulls impersonating his loved ones. Tony was more concerned about the people he didn't now. The ones he'd have no reason to suspect as acting out of the ordinary.
"You want the system for SHIELD," Steve guessed.
"For my office at least," Fury said with a near laugh, "but no. Not all of it. For Hill and Coulson. Certain key locations that will allow us to know where they're going."
"You want me to help you spy on the spies?" Tony asked.
"Do you object?"
"No," Tony said, shaking his head. "I can hide the program in a sub-file and Sitwell can load it into the system. You've already got scanners all over SHIELD, it will just be a question of where you want to watch. It will give you a discrete way to remotely track their movements."
"What good will that do?" Steve asked, still not understanding what good it would do.
"They want to be a part of SHIELD," Fury answered, "then I want to know why. What programs are they interested in? Who are they shadowing? What are they really after? We start by following their movements. Let's see what piques their interests."
"I won't let them in the Tower," Tony said, shaking his head definitely.
"They don't want in," Maria returned crisply.
"What?" Tony questioned, still confused.
"They haven't requested access to the Tower. Or the Avengers," Fury said. "They do not want any of the files. Or to do their own interviews. They've asked for nothing other than that we listen and let them observe. They want to help."
"They just want to help?" Tony returned skeptically.
"They took two of our own," Steve said, also trying to puzzle this new turn out. "So... does that mean they already have what they wanted?"
"Maybe," Fury shrugged.
"We confiscated all the records," Maria said, shaking her head. "The information they wanted from Coulson and Barton appeared to be personal. Information that their doppelgangers could use to better portray them. They've had people inside of SHIELD for decades, comparatively what they could have learned from Coulson and Barton was insignificant to the intel they already potentially possess."
"What are they after?" Tony asked quietly, leaning back to consider the sudden shift.
"They seem very concerned about the Kree," Maria said, equally at a loss.
"We've heard that tune," Steve put out there.
"And I'm not saying they're wrong," Fury said as he got to his feet, signaling the end of the meeting. "I'm not discounting the Kree as a threat. But I'm not ready to make peace with the Skrulls either. You'll be receiving official word tomorrow. The WSC demands the Avengers cooperation and I expect each of you to be alert. Do we all understand one another?"
"Got it," Tony said, giving a half-hearted salute as he stood up. "Let me walk you out," he continued as they headed for the door. "Tell me about Paris."
"Tell you about Paris," Fury repeated with a faux-angry, sarcastic tone as the elevator doors shut on them.
Leaving, as Tony probably planned, Steve and Maria alone.
"How was Paris?" Steve asked with more genuine curiosity than Tony had before him.
"It was beautiful," Maria answered, relaxing for the first time as she sunk back in her chair. "At least I'm told it's beautiful. The only part of Paris I ever see are the SHIELD offices, which look exactly the same no matter where they happen to be."
With a faint smile, she tapped her foot against his and Steve leaned forward, taking hold of Maria's hand as she sat upright.
"I missed you," he said quietly.
"It felt like it was longer than six days," she admitted. "It felt like months," Maria added with a faint laugh, as if she didn't quite believe it herself. "I missed you, too."
"Are you..." Steve asked, moving closer as he spoke.
"Off duty?" Maria finished before checking the clock. "Officially I've been off duty for three hours now."
"Good to know," he said before kissing her softly on the lips.
Maria let out a contented sigh as Steve pulled her chair closer to his, kissing her again before leaning back.
Unwittingly, she yawned and Steve let out a laugh.
"Am I boring you?"
"No," she smiled, shaking her head and despite her protest, yawning again. "I've been up now for twenty-six hours and I'm expected back at HQ in another four."
Getting to his feet, Steve gently tugged Maria to her own and led the way towards the elevators.
"You need a nap," he said as he pressed the call button.
"I don't want a nap," she said, leaning against him and enjoying that now-familiar flutter of nerves.
Steve wrapped his arms around her and hesitated. Despite all the time they'd spent together, he still hesitated but at least now Maria knew not to take it personally. He was cautious and never made assumptions when it came to the two of them.
He asked. He always asked.
"Do you want to stay with me tonight?"
Maria loved that about him, amongst other things. Not that she found that sentiment easy to express.
"I would like that a lot," she said, pressing the button for his floor before she leaned up and kissed him.
"Good," he said as he pulled her a little closer, "because you really shouldn't drive."
"I'm a little punchy," she admitted as the doors opened again and they headed for his room. "I was fine while I had the meeting to focus on but now..."
"You need to sleep," he repeated, letting her walk through the door first and then ushering the way to the bedroom.
Maria had stayed over often enough to have clothes and other assorted items scattered about, but she wasn't lying; she did feel punchy. And exhausted. The whole situation, the stress of everything that was going on inside and outside of SHIELD, was beginning to take its toll. While her mind had been occupied with work, Maria had been alert but now it all seemed to strike her at once.
"I don't want to sleep," she sighed, locking her hands behind his neck and leaning against him in the still dark room. "I've missed you and..."
They had so little alone time.
"I'll still be here tomorrow," he assured her, kissing her quickly before he leaned her back against the bed.
"I missed you," she repeated, nearly asleep before the last word left her lips.
"I'm right here."