TRIGGER WARNING FOR MISCARRIAGE
This was originally written as a Girl!Sherlock/John fic on the Sherlock kinkmeme, I was the filler, and rewrote it for this pairing. If you notice similarities, that's why.
It's a hectic month for all of them. There is a manic cyborg on the loose somehow related to a sex slavery ring in Iran, which should buoy Natasha's spirits, but as the body count rises and they come no closer to making a connection it stops being fun or interesting and starts feeling more like work. Several times she almost gives up and goes back to New York out of pure hate for this stupid machine, but then Clint makes an apt appearance with a cup of strong tea or starts rubbing her shoulders in that way he knows she likes and she feels a little better.
They still don't have sex, only because it's her rule while on a mission. She hopes that the one night they squeezed in a week before the job began - 'squeezed in', like a dentist appointment or something - will be enough to satisfy Clint for the long haul. He's good to her that way. He understands.
She's not been having an easy time of it lately, she realizes near the crux of the matter as they're diving across rooftops. It's a horrible time to think about these sorts of things, but when she's just that much slower and nearly misses her jump she can't help looking back and pinpointing exactly when she started flagging. Two weeks into the mission she'd been so exhausted that Clint actually managed to get her to sleep through the night, rather than their routine of three-hour shifts. He hadn't even had to do much to convince her. It's not her period, though she has been having cramps; her period's always been erratic if present at all, and she's learned to figure out when it's really on its way and just a bit of indigestion.
But it's not indigestion, either.
It's probably just the frustration of build-up with no relief, she decides, and in a split-second she's tossed the concern aside and picked herself up from the roof. They catch the woman (a female cyborg who evaded SHIELD for over a month; Natasha's starting to find the joy in her work again) with minimal damage to their persons - Natasha got power-housed in the kidneys and Clint a gash in his arm, but they're alright - and once they're debriefed and the cyborg's carted off for questioning, Natasha and Clint take the first taxi back to their hotel. She isn't feeling well.
"You're looking rough, Tash," Clint notes as they stumble in the door. "Feeling okay?"
Without any regard for tidiness Natasha starts undressing. "Fine, just tired. I think I want to sleep alone tonight."
He nods; it's not the first time she's asked this after a mission since they'd fallen together. "That's fine. I'll try not to wake you when I go for my run."
"You're still training tomorrow after the night we've had?"
Clint shrugs, pulling off his armor and quietly despairing over the bandages on his arm. "Might as well. I've been sleeping more than you, after all."
Her answer is a shake of the head and to climb under the bed covers, leaving Clint to the roll-away bed. She really is exhausted, and is asleep almost the moment she flops face-first into the pillow. She doesn't dream, never has within memory, but sleeps deeply until she abruptly wakes sometimes around three in the morning.
At first Natasha doesn't know why she's woken up, feels irritated by the interruption, and is about to roll onto her side and drop off again when she feels it: a rolling, crushing pain across her abdomen strong enough to make her gasp and clench the sheets. The usual hotel linen feels wet in a way that is so, so wrong, and after a moment of fumbling in the dark Natasha finds the lamp, nearly knocks it over in an attempt to turn it on. Clint stirs but doesn't wake, his back to her light.
The sheets look like a crime scene, and despite years of conditioning against gore Natasha's shock is so strong that she is momentarily paralyzed. Then she feels another surge and curls around herself, too panicked by the onslaught of sensation on little sleep to bully herself to her feet. She feels a terrible something - something bloody and wrong - and she gags it hurts so badly. Her legs are smeared and sticky with the rusty brown blood. She's shaking, she doesn't know what has just happened but she's tired and sick and needlessly, tremendously afraid.
Without knowing why at first Natasha yanks the sheets from the bed - hide the evidence, evidence of what? The evidence under your armor. No, that's wrong, that's - and drags them to the bathroom adjoining their room, even as more blood starts slipping down her legs and a trembling sob slips from her throat. She doesn't know why she's so upset over something as minor as having her period, because of course that's all it is, couldn't be anything else-
She dumps the soiled sheets into the bathtub and turns the water on cold, cold, cold, the way her mother would have taught her to do in case her period ever came unexpected in the middle of the night like this. Cold will get it out, make it go away, make it all stop, make it less-
Her legs are shaking and eventually she has to sit on the edge of the tub and just breathe, reminding herself that for the last several minutes she has not been doing enough of it. The bathroom tile and porcelain beneath her are stained with a trail of reddish-brown, the tub is filling with murky water because the sheets are clogging the drain, her stomach still hurts though she can't tell if it's hunger pangs or another dreadful surge, and there are tears on her face she doesn't yet know the cause of.
"Natasha?"
Clint must have woken up when she turned on the tap; she didn't notice how it roared. He's bleary-eyed and tousled from interrupted sleep, but his face is lined only with concern as he sees her perched like something from a vile horror film at the edge of the tub. "You okay?" he asks. His mouth is dry; he was snoring.
Nodding and keeping her eyes averted she replies, "I just have my period. Got it on - the sheets - I - sorry -" she feels a surge greater than the others, accompanied by a small rush of blood, and breaks off with a muffled groan. Suddenly Clint is slipping in the mess on the floor in his haste to get to her side, wrap his arms around her, ease the pain, brush away tears that neither of them understand for the early hour. Then she realizes that she's getting hysterical for little or no reason at all. It was just such a shock, she rationalizes; after all, being prepared for blood and guts on a mission is much different than waking up to blood and guts in the middle of the night.
After she's calmed down and the pain has faded a little Clint gives her knee a squeeze. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up. I'll take your sheets downstairs first. You wait right here, okay?" All she can do is nod and watch Clint clean up her mess - he's always doing that - with cold hands. Why are her hands cold? But she's been squeezing her own arms for the past twenty minutes, so that must be it.
Clint returns and she's still sitting there like a statue. Something comes over his face as he helps her climb into the tub and undress, this time with warm water running from the tap. They both see the blood clots in her underwear and on her thighs, one standing out particularly vivid and terrible from the rest, but don't talk about it. They don't talk at all until after Natasha is clean and completely despondent in Clint's capable hands. He wraps her in a plush hotel towel, then vanishes to the corner store for sanitary napkins and painkillers while she sits in the bedroom without anything on but the towel round her middle.
It's gone four in the morning when he comes back with what she needs. She dresses without a word, still shaking, and he makes the spicy tea she likes best with hot water from the tap. They sit in the dark bedroom and try to wrap their heads around what has just happened. Of course they both know, Clint's not an idiot and it's Natasha's body, but it hadn't been something they thought they needed to worry about. They hadn't been trying, hadn't planned on this, but still feel as though some great disaster has happened.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Clint finally asks. His voice is strained and weak, but carrying the determination of a soldier who needs to hear that his entire platoon has been killed before seeing the carnage himself.
She shakes her head. "I didn't know. I swear to God, Clint, I had no idea. If I had, I -" She swallows and shakes her head again, hugging her mug close. He's not going to ask what she would have done, had she known, and she doesn't know the answer. Clint doesn't push her, and they sit quietly for a while.
"Maybe..." Clint begins after a long time, but has to stop and steel himself. He speaks slowly, obviously weighing every word before he says it. "Maybe this is, sort of, for the best, right now? I mean, this...it's...neither of us exactly has the most stable of careers, y'know Nat? So maybe...Christ." He shakes his head as though disgusted by his own vocal shortcomings, and changes direction of the conversation. "How're you feeling?"
She takes a moment to assess. "A bit nauseous, achey, still having cramps and-"
"No, Nat, how are you feeling? You know...emotionally," he corrects himself. "You seemed pretty worked up when I found you."
Oh. Oh, well that is different, and really not territory either of them is familiar with. They're agents, they don't do feelings. She shrugs her shoulders and opens her mouth to say 'I was in shock,' but instead what comes out is, "It feels like I'm five."
Clint blinks. "Sorry, it's still early and you're shrewd, I know, but it feels like we're having two different conversations." He smiles weakly, tries to touch her hand on top of the covers, but she pulls away, shaking again.
"I feel like one of the memories they gave me," she says, voice hollow and quick, "when I was five, at my grandmother's house. I wanted to look at the vase on her mantelpiece. I didn't know my grandfather's ashes were inside until I-I accidentally knocked it over and it broke all over the fl-"
She's crying again, the fictional five-year-old feelings of watching her fictional grandmother's quiet despair and loud anger - the Red Room really knew what they were doing when they put those little details in her head - intermingling with the bloody confusion and horror of this night until she doesn't know whether to cower or scream. Clint trips over himself getting closer, pulling her up and then back down but this time into his lap, wrapping sturdy secure arms around her and pressing kisses to the crown of her head as he whispers meaningless platitudes. "It's okay, it's fine, it wasn't your fault, Tasha..."
It feels like her fault. Despite Clint's attempts to comfort her, she feels filthy and naked in the dark bedroom. But she pulls herself together with an almighty sniff, pressing heels of her hands to her eyes until Clint pulls them away. "I'm acting like an idiot," she insists through a clogged nose. "It's not rational to be upset over this; I didn't even know. We weren't trying, we haven't discussed this for perfectly good reasons, I wasn't-" She gulps thickly, looks down at her hands, finds dried blood in the creases of her knuckles and under her fingernails. She is as red as her ledger now, but there is no way to wipe this out.
Clint pulls her closer, his nose and mouth nestled in the curve of her shoulder. "It's a hormone rush," he says slowly, Coulson's words in his mouth, and she relaxes slightly. Medical explanations always make her feel better, and he knows it. "Completely normal reaction, considering how fucking insane things have been in the past few weeks." His mouth puckers and hardens into a kiss on her shoulder. "We've both been strung out over the past few weeks, you haven't been eating or sleeping right, your body's running on fumes and it's put you on edge." After a moment she accepts this explanation and leans her head against his, waiting for The Plan. They always help each other come up with one in emergencies, so this will be no different.
"Okay, here's what we're going to do," he sighs after a minute of thought. She smiles into his hair. "You and I are gonna go the fuck to sleep. Tomorrow, back on the Helicarrier, either you or we are gonna go to the infirmary to make sure everything went okay and you aren't gonna get an infection or something, and once you're feeling better, if you want to, we'll talk. We're both kinda tired and shaken up. I don't really think you wanna have an in-depth conversation right now. Right?"
Pulling back slightly, she looks into his face and sees that he does seem very shaken along with tired. He worries about her so much, always works to protect her, works as a barrier between her and the rest of the world, and not for the first time she wonders Who protects you, Clint? Who looks after you like you look after me? It should be me. It should be me. Right now, though, he just looks very, very sad. She nods and frames his pale sad tired perfect face between her hands. "Okay."
"Okay," he nods back with a weak smile. They get up, but before she can get away he pulls her back by the hand. They're inches apart, he rubs his nose along the length of hers and drops a kiss on her lips. "Hey, Tash?"
"Hm?"
"I love you so much."
She swallows and tries not to lose herself again, because the amount of patience and understanding Clint has for her digs a hole right into her chest that screams in the agony of love, and when she can't say the words he shows her that he knows anyway. "I want this," she says instead, fiercely, trying to get it out before she loses heart. "I want to do this with you. It won't be too much, I can handle it, and SHIELD can go die in a hole if they think otherwise. I want it."
"It's okay, Nat, we can talk later," he assures her, pushing her hair back behind her ears, running deft fingers across her cheeks, her neck, her collar, her arms, and she feels so safe. Before she knows what she's doing her arms are around him tight. They stand like that for a few minutes before she finally finds the strength to pull away, give him space to breathe. He leads the way to his bed, one hand a steady anchor on the small of her back.