Barton is a menace with no concept of professional boundaries or the autonomy of others.
She says it out loud. To the picture of his son on her bunk wall. To one of the pictures of his son on her bunk wall.
"You're staring at a picture of a baby dressed as a frog like it just challenged you to a prying-someone's-fingernails-from-their-nailbeds-with-a-straight-face off. But yeah, I'm the menace."
He says it through a laugh. And a mouthful of pasta smothered in cheese.
Natasha scowls.
"It's on my wall."
"It is," he agrees.
"I would like for it not to be on my wall."
He chews absently on the corner of a breadstick as he mulls that over. "That could be a problem," he admits. "Maintenance has this thing about nails in the wall so I hot glued those frames up there."
That does not sound like a better solution, but she'd be the first to admit that building maintenance is low on her list of talents. Curious, she picks at the corner of one of the frames (this one housing a photo of the small, round-faced toddler dangling from a tree branch, his father's hands hovering centimeters from his sides). Barton has captioned it in thick, black marker- Hang in there, baby.
She thinks it was done for her benefit, which is horrifying.
The edge of the frame gives slightly and a patch of the cheap paint peels off with it, stuck firmly to the glob of clear gel on the back of the frame. Rolling her eyes, Natasha releases it and presses it back in place. Her palm leaves a veiny smudge over the child's feet, and she resists the odd urge to wipe it off.
"This is a security risk," she tries finally, halfhearted.
Barton snorts. "You getting many visitors these days?" Then, face softened, like he's concerned he's offended her, he jumps off the bed and claps the crumbs off his hands before he pats her awkwardly on the shoulder. "We'll take them out of the frames before we leave," he promises. Completely ignoring the fact that she is a massive part of said security risk. "Then you can put whatever you want in there."
"I want to not have frames to put anything in."
"By then, we'll have birthday pictures!"
When he leaves, she turns to the wall of photos and narrows her focus to the center of the collage, where the small Hawkeye is depicted with a bowl of porridge upturned over his head.
The Barton spawn is a menace as well, she decides.
She's fairly certain that Barton is pulling this shit with the radio on purpose.
It isn't like she expected to find a suitable middle ground between their respective tastes. But this is ridiculous. And she can tell from the lack of artless head-bobbing, like the kind Barton demonstrated when he brought that damned hits of the nineties playlist into her first cell, that he's only pretending to enjoy it. Motive unclear.
"You can change it if you want," Barton interrupts. Natasha doesn't startle. (Because Natasha doesn't startle.)
When she doesn't say anything, he clarifies, nodding to the knob for the radio. "The music, I mean. You could find something you like."
Shrugging, she slowly turns the volume knob all the way down until the only sound in the cabin of the rented truck is the crackling, static noise the radio makes when it's turned off.
"Okay," Clint nods, tapping a finger on the side of his head. "So you like silence. I'll file that away up here."
What purpose could that possibly serve?
Again, motive unclear.
Natasha shifts in her seat, rearranging her feet to fit more comfortably around the duffle bag of SHIELD hand-me-downs on the floorboards. The jeans she's wearing for the first time in weeks are hers, though why they were taken in the first place, she can't be sure. (Could you seriously harm someone with the metal teeth of the zipper? She's genuinely curious.) And they returned the boots she had on when Barton brought her in, minus the two tiny stiletto blades hidden in the hollow heels. But otherwise, she's completely outfitted in different takes on the same standard issue SHIELD merchandise. Soft flexible materials with the agency logo printed on the hip or breast pocket. Several pairs of thick socks with the symbol on the cuff.
SHIELD likes to mark their property, evidently. It's loud. Garish even. It makes her lips twist in distaste when she thinks about it.
"Something wrong?"
"No."
Then, "How would you kill someone with a metal zipper?"
Barton drums his fingers against the steering wheel, face tightened in concentration.
"You'd think friction would be the key," he muses.
Lights are on in the main house when they park the truck in a godforsaken barn of all things, and heave their bags over their shoulders. Barton is cradling his heavy, hard-shell bow case in his arms rather than using the utility strap fixed to the back of it. Like he doesn't trust his precious weapon to a strip of nylon webbing.
That, that kind of possessiveness she can understand. Much the same as an old handler who would rest his massive hand on the back of her neck in times of stress, or the way she adjusts her gait to feel the slight outline of the makeshift weapon strapped to her inner thigh. (A sharpened piece of wood, fashioned from the bottom of a dresser drawer she appropriated for the cause.)
"Watch the step," Barton grunts, shifting his duffel on his back. "Dry rot's a bitch."
Laura Barton isn't visibly armed and her muscle tone falls somewhere on the middle of the scale, not weak by any means but also nowhere near their standards. Which makes her casual attitude towards the lethal houseguest in her living room all the more baffling. But there she is, settled under a blanket on the loveseat, smiling widely at both of them for reasons unknown. Her face is soft, young, though Natasha knows she and Clint probably have a few years on Natasha herself, and it's easy to read her expression as tired, yes, but also very glad to see Barton.
Not a reaction Natasha has frequently seen him evoke.
Clint practically hauls his wife off her feet as he pulls her in for a hug, and she's forced to stand on her toes to keep her connection to the ground.
"You didn't have to wait up," he laughs, but the meaning is lost because he's grinning into Laura's hair, clearly pleased that she did.
Laura strokes her husband's shoulder once more and steps away, tugging the hem of her shirt down where it had ridden up. "It's cute that you think I waited up and not that it takes this long to put your son to bed."
"I'll talk to him," he promises solemnly, visibly holding back a grin.
Laura nods, equally serious, which is to say, not very. "He'll babble unintelligibly back at you."
Awkwardly, Natasha shifts slightly on her feet, suddenly the slightest bit uncomfortable with carrying a concealed weapon around these people. She suspects that will pass quickly.
A floorboard groans under her heel, drawing the Bartons' attention. Clint smiles at her in what might be a comforting fashion if she were susceptible to such things, and steps to her side, hovering a hand near the back of her shoulder but not actually touching her. "Presenting…the one…the only-"
"Hi, Natasha," Laura says, rolling her eyes, presumably fondly considering she married the man. She gently grasps her forearm and pulls her into a brief but tight hug. "We're so glad you're here."
Natasha finds that highly unlikely, but the look on Laura's face seems genuine, so either she's more highly trained than she appears to be or she's been woefully misinformed.
Barton's grinning proudly at her, probably because he knows how uncomfortably stiff she becomes with unnecessary physical contact. It's the same look he started giving her when she started showing the very early signs of something cooperation-adjacent during her first weeks at SHIELD. A sort of, 'look at you, not getting yourself shot' kind of smile. Bastard.
"Thank you," she says quietly, voice a bit gravelly from weeks of rare, reluctant use. "I…it's very nice to be here."
Barton beams.
Yawning, Laura shakes her head slightly and scrubs her hands over her eyes. "Okay," she says brightly when she looks up again. "I promise to be a better host after some uninterrupted sleep, but for now, welcome home, there's two plates of spaghetti in the fridge, and if you're hungry after that, I'm sure there's some clumps of it still sticking to the ceiling. Clint, your kid's a demon."
"I know," he sighs fondly, looking like he can't quite believe his luck. "Isn't it great?"
"Not particularly."
She kisses Clint and squeezes Natasha's arm before dragging herself up the stairs, Barton grinning at the back of her until she disappears around the corner, lovesick like a damned fool.
"I'm a lucky man, Romanov."
That doesn't seem like something she should have any input on so she stays quiet, compiling a mental inventory of what she's seen of the farm so far. It's isolated which could work for or against her depending on the context. It's large enough that it would be hard to secure the entire property, and she's likely to be given a little more freedom this far away from the general public. However, in a rural area like this if she's forced to run for any reason, she's sure she would feel an arrow between her shoulder blades before she ever reached a crowd to disappear into.
Barton touches her shoulder from behind. She tenses.
"Natasha?" he asks quietly. "You good?"
"Yes," she mumbles. "Fine."
She passes on the cold spaghetti, partly because she's never known Italian to reheat well and partly because Barton made her 'just try' a greasy burger the size of a small woodland animal on the drive there. 'Just try' is slowing becoming Natasha's least favorite phrase in the English language.
Clint pinches a couple strands of his own spaghetti, fresh from the fridge, and drops them into his mouth with uncharacteristically poor aim, leaving a trail of it down his chin.
Natasha frowns. "That's revolting."
"It is!"
Bumping his shoulder into hers, Clint gives her a cheerful, bright-eyed look, the implications of which she has difficulty interpreting, and nods towards the stairs.
"That's mine and Laura's," he points out, as they pass a closed door by the stairway. "Bathroom…Coop's room. Want to see him?"
He asks so eagerly, like a preschooler participating in their very first show-and-tell, that she feels a twinge of something akin to guilt when turning him down. Barton looks in anyway. He reemerges looking struck dumb with more fatherly pride than Natasha has ever seen up close. It's…unsettling.
The Barton's spare bedroom is small and crowded in ways that she is both bewildered and fascinated by. It's overwhelmed by heavy oak furniture topped with picture frames and assorted mementos that don't make sense without the memories attached to them. In addition to the overhead light, there are three different lamps, including one placed unnervingly high on the tower of stacked books and magazines on the nightstand. Would two not have been sufficient? Or one?
Four walls and not one of them is left bare enough to allow her eyes to rest. She's never known anyone to display this much of themselves anywhere, let alone in one room.
Barton lingers awkwardly in the doorway, pointing out the highlights of the room, like the bureau where she can swap out SHIELD's hand-me-downs for Laura's and the window that 'takes a little teamwork' to get open.
"I'll fix it," he promises. Natasha shrugs.
"And Laura thinks there's a draft in here." He squints and holds his hand out, like he can summon the rumored breeze. "I keep telling her this house is a fortified stronghold against the elements…but…"
He pauses, sniper's instinct probably picking up on the exact direction, strength, and speed of the draft that had suddenly made itself known.
Barton frowns. "I'll fix that too."
From the faded painted trunk at the foot of the bed, he unearths a mountain of equally worn blankets and semi-smooths them out over the bedspread before giving up and leaving the rest in a rumpled mound.
"Okay," he sighs, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. "Well, here it is. Home, sweet home. What do you think?"
"…it's nice. Very nice." She clears her throat, suddenly feeling like she should have something more than 'nice' to say. "Thank you…for…I'm very grateful."
Not much better, and certainly not up to her usual standards, but it's all she can muster at the moment. Awkwardly, she lowers herself carefully onto the bed and strokes her fingers over the collection of fabrics. Two quilted, some fleece, and large yellowish one that might be crocheted. Not a single one made of the familiar harsh, grey wool that had scratched at her legs for as long as she could remember. A vaguely defensive feeling catches in her throat, but on whose behalf, she isn't sure.
"Natasha?"
Before he can ask, she shakes her head. "Fine. I'm fine."
Barton nods and drops himself down on the bed next to her, landing so heavily that the mattress rebounds and nearly bounces her off onto the floor. "Okay. If you need anything-"
"I won't need anything."
Frowning, Barton knocks his shoulder into hers. "If you need anything," he stresses. "Laura and I are right across the hall. Hell, Cooper will probably have us up anyway."
"I will not need anything," she insists.
"Fine, fine. I'll get out of your hair." He groans like a man in pain when he gets up from the bed, though Natasha has it on good authority that he is in fine shape, and his joints should not be giving him trouble. "You know, you're even quieter here than you were at SHIELD. And I didn't think that was possible."
She shrugs. Clearly it was.
Resigned to her continued solemnity, he nods.
He makes it to the doorway before he turns around and slumps against the side.
"Look," Barton says, suddenly tired looking, with no trace of the usual clever, boisterous look in his face- the one that lets him slip in and out of places positions, situations, unnoticed. Underestimated. "I know this isn't what you're used to and you're probably not going to believe this, but I have a good feeling about this. You're going to be okay here."
She doesn't doubt that. She's been 'okay' in far worse places.
When Natasha settles herself in the guest bed that night, she discovers an 8x12 framed photo dominating the nightstand, right at eye level.
It's the Barton offspring. In his Easter best, diapered behind situated in a basket of cellophane grass, and smiling from ear to tiny ear.
She scowls and turns it the other direction.
Menaces.