Just Like Budapest
A/N: Oh god, Clintasha. I will always love Clintasha. Or Blackhawk, whatever you want to call it. JOSS WHEDON is a god. I will not deny. I fell in love with the Budapest line and I couldn't get it out of my head. And not only is Clintasha one of my favourite comic book pairings (comic nerd here) Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner are real life friends!
Much feels. In this little one-shot (that bled into a not-one-shot) there are going to be two parts: Part I, which deals with how Clint and Natasha first met, and then finally, Budapest! I'm not sure how long that will be but eh, we'll see.
So, without further ado, enjoy!
Warnings: Nasty language, and well, innuendos because Clint is a man-child and a man, so well, yes.
Just Like Budapest
Budapest wasn't that long ago and Clint can definitely still recall the details. He can recall all the details from everything. Well, everything that has to do with her.
Part I
"Just like Budapest all over again!" he hears Nat shout over the din of the Chitauri, calmly though; as if they aren't fighting for their lives, Manhattan and the rest of the world.
Clint is firing off his arrows as fast as he can, aiming quickly before releasing arrow after arrow. He doesn't need to turn his head to see Nat doing the same thing with her guns, firing off shots from both handguns in her hands. It's times like these where he sometimes wonders why she doesn't just bring bigger guns with bigger clip sizes before he remembers that it's Nat, and that she's more dangerous with handguns than anything else other than her thighs.
He can't fight off the flashes of memories that wash over him. The dull rhythm of the grasp-pull-release, of his arrows allow him to spare a minuscule section of his concentration on the memories spinning through his head. He sees a lot of red: red blood, red hair, red lipstick and a lot of silky, pearl white skin. There are patches of black too: black case, black suit, black dress. Then just Nat's face, disheveled hair as red as the blood on her black SHIELD catsuit.
"You and I remember Budapest very differently."
Budapest had been maybe three or four years after he'd had an arrow pointed to her head, ready to send the length of metal through her skull. He'd gotten such an amount of shit from Fury for choosing not to kill her, it was insane.
That said, the first time he'd met her had been interesting, to say the least.
Hot dammit. This is not going the way I want it to.
"I've been tasked to kill you," he'd said, chest heaving up and down as he panted. He could feel red blood dripping down his chest where the beautiful assassin in from of him had been able to slash at him with his own knife.
His own knife!
She was very good, and Clint didn't find any shame in admitting such a fact. He'd never been one to not appreciate the finer things in life, and God knew with the places SHIELD sent him for his missions he'd be a fool not to.
"I don't think I'll be leaving here without putting an arrow though your pretty little head."
"Then you will not be leaving with your head at all," the woman hissed, her Russian accent spitting forth freely. Clint stared at her curiously. As angry and as ready to kill him as the woman in front of him was, her eyes where wary and veiled an emotion he had no word in his vocabulary for. Unlike what he had expected however, Clint could not see the steady emotionless attitude towards his death. Darting eyes betrayed a lack of trust, and grey eyes were exhausted of the cold acceptance of the balance between life and death assassins had come to need to be truly excellent.
That, or maybe it was just him.
Clint could recall watching her as she sat in cafes, spying on the Russian assassin who was carefully eyeing her mark and his girlfriend. No doubt she knew she was being watched. Of what little SHIELD had on the renown Black Widow, he knew that she was fickle and ready to accept jobs from anyone and from everywhere, along with being everywhere from the Netherlands to China to New Zealand. She was extraordinary, brilliant at her job, Russian, exceptionally beautiful and more dangerous than anything he'd ever seen. Not to mention a ruthless seductress.
His type of woman.
At the time he'd begun to wonder what could become of her if she worked for SHIELD. To have a person so dangerous and efficient as the Black Widow work for SHIELD would be monumental. Sure, assassins were easy to make and SHIELD made enough of them already, but the truly gifted ones–the superior ones–were something very rare. And SHIELD only had two–including him.
Clint ran over the dossier that SHIELD had on the Black Widow once again in his head, making sure he wouldn't be coming up against something unexpected.
The Black Widow: dangerous, accurate and perfect. From what SHIELD and other various experts could tell, the assassin–also known as Natalia Romanoff–was skilled in various martial arts including, but not limited to forms of ninjutsu, karate, aikido and savate, to name a few. She caught her victims by seducing them, catching them off guard and spinning them in her metaphorical web before pouncing and taking what she wanted, needed or was tasked to do. She was a perfect liar, actress and manipulator and Clint couldn't help grin when his fellow assassin and often partner had begrudgingly admitted that Romanoff was better than her.
Her age was unknown, her alliances were fluctuating and no one knew anything about where she came from and how the hell she ever got so God-damn good.
Clint had looked over the half-undressed body lying in the corner of the hotel room, a draft flying through the shattered window and pulling at a few of the free red strands of the Black Widow's hair. He had no idea how her hair, with its blood red colour and careful up-do, had stayed even remotely intact, even after they had fought. Ballerinas, he thought incredulously and the blood on Clint's skin cooled.
"Well he's dead," he commented with a snarky grin, bow still strung and ready to fire. His eyes flickered warily to the gun thrown to the other end of the room during their fight. He'd coming in swinging, having literally been on the roof of the building across the hotel where they were now, waiting patiently for the perfect shot to hit his mark with a tranq shot so he could drag his ass back to SHIELD so that they could interrogate him for the Black Widow's location and just be done for the day.
But no, just his luck, someone'd just had to come across and screw it all up. He'd been waiting for at least an hour that night, hidden behind the small wall of the roof, happily chewing on a sandwich he'd snatched from a poor sleeping guard (probably the guy's dinner) he'd passed on his way up the stairs of the building. The anchovies in it were a bother, but he was hungry and Phil hadn't let him eat anything back at the Helicarrier.
In any case, he'd been waiting for a while, and the feeling of 'finally, he's here and I can go home' had been unmatched when his mark had stumbled into the room. Right up until the stupid idiot had gone and pulled the woman he'd remembered from Phil's lecture right before he'd boarded the plane into his hotel room.
"We need him alive, remember that Clint. The Black Widow has been making a lot of trouble for SHIELD for a while, and we need her gone. And since Monceaux was the last person to have any known contact with her, we're going to ask him some questions when he gets here. Alive." He'd nodded seriously as Phil stayed back and handed him a dossier filled with information, reminding him to read up on the flight, Clint.
But that was then and this was now, and God, did he want to go home.
"Yes," the Black Widow agreed blandly. Her arms hung warily by her sides and her eyes remained trained on the archer's bow.
Clint shrugged. "Fury's going to give me such shit over that. We needed to talk to him." He raised an eyebrow at the Black Widow, eyes roving over a ripped part in her purple dress that exposed a nice expanse of creamy white skin. "Any chance you'll come quietly with me and tell Fury what you did so that I don't get my ass hounded?"
Clint hadn't expected her to agree and she hadn't, but he definitely hadn't expected her to laugh darkly, her voice still low and husky from the adrenaline coursing through her system. Clint felt goosebumps appear at the back of his neck.
"You're amusing Hawkeye. I didn't think you actually talked as much as they said."
Clint raised an eyebrow. "Who said?"
"Associates," the Widow responded simply.
Clint scrunched his face up in irritation. "Come on, can't you tell me a little more? If people are talking about me, chances are they want to kill me somehow and I would like to know who to watch for." The Black Widow eyed him amusedly.
"You're like a child aren't you?"
"What? Me? Of course not, this is all man right here." She snorted loudly and he pouted. "What, you think I'm not man enough?"
"No."
"Well then why don't you come with me and let me show you?"
"No."
Clint frowned, throwing her an unamused look. The grip on his bow loosened infinitesimally and those grey eyes darted to his hands. He thought about her and all the signs she'd seemed to have given off–all the ones of being tired and annoyed, and just finished with having nothing to lean back on. Who was he kidding? He could see the signs–it was a little like looking at himself before SHIELD. She was reckless, wild, fickle, and slowing down. She'd had enough of always running, always being alone. At least he'd thought so.
Then he made what he thought was either the stupidest decision he'd ever made in his entire life, or the greatest.
"Then why don't you come with me anyways," he spoke, his voice low and soothing as if the woman in front of him would dart away in a second, like a wild, wide-eyed, dangerous doe. "Talk to my Director–you don't have to keep killing for liars and thieves. You could be on the side of the good guys for once."
Her face didn't move an inch. It didn't betray any feelings of surprise or well, anything and to some extent, it kind of annoyed Clint while making him kind of impressed at the same time. He cursed internally as she continued to stare blandly at him.
"I'm not a good guy."
"No, but you could be," he insisted, "SHIELD pays well." Clint stared at her, poker-faced as she hesitated, deliberating. "You won't have to search for a job all the time. No more running–" he shrugged "–less hiding."
Clint watched in fascination as the Widow moved forward towards him, taking small, slow, graceful steps, with her hips swaying as she moved. Her face remained passive, though her eyes narrowed slightly as she continued to consider his offer. The loose bottom of her dress swung from where they flared at her hips. Her feet were bare, and Clint could see her toenails painted a deep, careful, ominous red–almost purple. She walked forward almost toe first in a ballet-like fashion, as if she were gliding across the floor.
He could feel his chest as it moved up and down with his slow breathing, his bow still strung, but loose; simply simply pulled back far enough back so that if he let go of his arrow and hit her, she'd die. The hairs on the back his neck rose as she continued to make her way closer to him, and he tightened his grip on his bow, just to make sure she knew he was there and ready to shoot her if necessary.
Just because he wanted her on his side didn't mean he wanted to die over her.
But that woman–that goddamn woman didn't even flinch. She didn't even hesitate as she continued her way towards him, her eyes teasing and just God-fucking sexual as she stared at him with a thoughtful expression. His eyes followed her movements almost religiously as she glided past him, her eyes trailing over his figure as his bow kept itself trained on her.
Clint tensed as she then trailed a small, delicate hand over his forearm, and he cursed his own skin as goosebumps appeared. It infuriated him even further when the woman smirked and he wished he could move and just get it off her face now in some way. But her hand continued its way upward, and he didn't move one inch, because if he did she would fly away or disappear, and try as he might, this woman was hot and he really hadn't been laid in a while.
As her hands stopped at his bicep–her fingernails painted a neutral pink to match the colour of her own skin–he watched as her red-painted lips moved. "Thank you for the offer, Hawkeye," she blinked slowly, leaning in carefully and murmuring softly, "but I work for no one."
And then she was gone–fled through the shattered window of the room. Clint cursed loudly after spending a second staring at the gaping hole in the side of the hotel. He glared at the dead body in the corner and sneered irritatedly at it.
"This is your fault," he hissed. "I'm gonna get my ass kicked by Fury so hard, just because you couldn't keep it in your pants."
Clint ignored the incessant little voice in the back of his head that whispered that as a matter of fact, the Black Widow had escaped because he himself couldn't keep it in his pants. See a pretty girl, and all that.
He cursed again. Coulson was gonna murder him, and then string him up by his man parts. Ugh.
With a sigh, Clint turned and radioed in his position, muttering tiredly to his handler that yes, everything had gone wrong, and yes, he had let the Black Widow get away and yes, their mark was dead. Coulson promised that they would have a talk later when he got to HQ, and Clint just nodded and shrugged.
The mission had gone south in more ways than one, and now not only did he have his handler and most likely the Director of SHIELD on his ass, but a mad case of blue balls.
Hot dammit.
It was a month later when he finally saw her again. After making his way out of the hotel, he hadn't gotten Coulson's stink eye, but instead had been studied like a balloon-eyed fish in a fish tank. Clint trusted the man with his life, but it was still creepy, and he couldn't help but fidget uncomfortably in his seat like a little child the entire ride home to HQ in a Quinjet.
It was when he'd gotten home when the trouble started. He'd gotten an earful from Fury, who'd told him that as much as the dead mark wasn't his fault, offering a place in SHIELD to anyone, especially a world class assassin, was definitely not something he had the right to do. And then let said assassin escape his clutches without even trying.
As much as Fury wanted to suspend him for a nice long while (and he's specifically said, glaring down at Clint with his one eye, "That was not your choice to make, Barton!") he was still useful in the field and instead Fury had indefinitely reassigned him to little baby jobs for little baby recruits–something that was definitely even more humiliating than being suspended.
When he'd asked Fury to just suspend him (because it had been about a week and a half and he'd had enough) the man had eyeballed him and refused, stating that "Punishing you with inexperienced recruits is much better punishment than just letting you sit around and do nothing. You get punished; I get trained recruits–I'm double happy."
Clint left the office and sulked in the cafeteria until he was called out to another baby mission, where he sulked some more and terrorised the recruits in his care.
Almost three weeks later, he'd been walking into his apartment when he'd realised that he wasn't alone. Dumping his duffle onto the kitchen counter, he'd spun around with the sidearm he kept in the back of his pants pointed out in front of him, aimed at the dark shadow behind the kitchen island.
Warily, he shuffled to the left of the island where he could reach a light switch, the shadow not moving one inch. He was so surprised when the light flickered that he'd nearly put down his weapon, but then her eyes had flickered to his hands and he remembered how miserable his work had been because of her.
She looked nothing like she had in the hotel room–which wasn't to say that she didn't look freakin' hot right now and then, but in the hotel room she'd been a little disheveled with a torn dress and blood kind of everywhere. Now she had on a dark trench coat with furred cuffs, and black boots that did everything for her legs, which were swathed in black tights.
Man, woman was hot.
They'd exchanged pleasantries (they'd fought until his kitchen wasn't a kitchen anymore, but a warzone) and talked (flirted) until he thought they'd better get to the reason she was in his kitchen (until he had a really bad case of blue balls because Fury would disembowel him and then stomp on his neck so that he could hang him by his man-parts). They were both bleeding by the time they were done and so exhausted that they didn't even bother to shiv each other when they collapsed against the sofa and the coffee table, so close that they could have touched. It occurred to Clint that he could have likened their fight to the one in that spy movie, The Smiths or Mr. And Mrs. Smith, or something like that.
He was too tired and in too much pain to giggle.
Three hours later, he and the famous Black Widow walked into the front doors of HQ, bloody, battered, beaten, limping, and shoddily patched up to face a long line of black muzzles pointed calmly at their persons. When Fury had walked up to the both of them, he'd had the urge to poke fun at the man's one eye to reestablish his man-pride, but had wisely kept his cakehole shut until he was ushered to medical by Phil, and the Widow was taken to interrogation.
Almost four months later, they were out in the field together, testing their newfound partnership. And three or four years after that, had been it: Budapest.