Lessons in Domesticity

Clint still wasn't sure why, at three in the morning, he was up out of his cosy bed and wrangling with a pink princess duvet cover. Nat had just handed him the cover and the spare duvet from a cupboard somewhere without even saying anything, an he was 80% sure it was on backwards, or upside down, or inside out, or just wrong in general.

"Why is this so impossible?" he muttered to himself.

"You're doing it wrong, Daddy," his four-year-old daughter informed him sleepily.

"That's because this, this, thing, is harder than wrestling a crocodile," he replied, more than likely speaking from experience. He would have asked her why she was out of bed but, seeing as she was Natasha and Clint's offspring she would have said something stubbornly sarcastic and far too advanced for the average four-year-old.

"You have to do it like this," Natasha said, yanking the bundle of fabric from Clint's hands and, in under ten seconds, magically transforming it into a perfect, pink, princess bed-spread.

"Come on sweetie, back to bed now," Natasha said, ushering their daughter into her room where the sheets on her bed had all been replaced, and there was a distinct smell of lavender in the air, to hide the previous, and less pleasant smelling ammonia.
"Sweet dreams, baby," Clint said softly as Natasha spread the duvet over the half-asleep girl, both of them wishing they would be able to fall asleep as quickly as she had.

"Night, night my ptichka (little bird)," Natasha whispered and the two of them snuck out of the room like the spies they used to be.


"How did you do that?" Clint asked once they were back in their bed.

"What? Get her to sleep so easily? It was the lavender, sends her right off."
"No, the sheet thing. It was worse than a rubix cube, I thought I was going to cry."


So, this one shot is kinda special to me. It's the first piece of writing that I've ever let anyone I know in real life read.

It's based on my mum and dad changing their mattress cover because something spilled on it, and since I wrote it kinda late without double checking/rewriting it a million times, I thought I'd show my mum.

It was really nice, to see how proud she was, saying how I'll be a famous author. An she'll be buying my books in Easons.

Of and the 'Crocodile wrestling' and 'I thought I was going to cry' are both almost directly quoted from my mum, who got a great laugh out of it.

Oh and I didn't flesh out the daughter character so you can imagine her as whatever you like, it's up to you because I'm lazy.

Thanks for reading xx