Sorry, some of the characters might be OOC, but this one was supposed to be fluff with a bit of humor :3 Anyways, enjoy! x
1. The privilege of nicknames
"Nataaaaashalie!" Tony Stark shouted, calling the nickname that he had just created for Natasha Romanoff, since she had pretended to be Pepper's assistant in his company under the name of Natalie Rushman.
Natasha plus Natalie? Natashalie. Tony thought it was a stroke of genius.
He needed one of the Avengers' resident assassins in his lab to test a prototype that he had just finished making of a new grip for one of her push knives since half the hilt of her favorite one got exploded in her latest assignment in Doha.
She dropped from one of the many air vents in his huge lab (it was one of the things that the Black Widow had picked up from their other resident assassin/archer) and punched Tony's stomach (hard) while grumbling not to call her that and informing her fellow Avenger of the fact that she hated pet names with a fiery passion.
"Could've told me that earlier…" He groaned, clutching his abdomen in pain.
"Not that it would've changed anything," Natasha replied as-a-matter-of-factly, picking up the push knife on the table and flinging it at a small red star on the wall that had been marked specifically for that purpose.
"I like it. Make more." Were the only things she said before slipping back up the air vent (and back to her archer, probably), leaving poor Tony on the floor, still moaning and groaning while telling JARVIS to get Pepper in between his whimpers of pain.
"You do it!"
"No way, Spangles! She hates me! Bruce, you go do it!"
"Um… I'm good. I think Clint should do it."
Tony immediately agreed with Bruce's idea, "Yeah, Clint should do it! She likes him, right?" He turned to Steve for affirmation.
Even Steve ganged up on Clint, "Yeah! It seems like our safest option."
Clint sighed resignedly; he knew that the job of waking the Black Widow up every morning was probably the most unwanted job in the entire tower, even more unwanted than the job of cleaning the bathrooms when Dummy was unavailable.
Natasha Romanoff was usually a complete monster in the morning. And the Avengers had a good sense of self-preservation, so they pushed it all on the person who they had just started living with (since the poor guy had been possessed by a certain 'brother' of Thor's when Fury made them do some 'team bonding').
"Fine." She really wasn't so bad…
God, Clint was doing a really bad job of trying to persuade himself about that particular topic.
Everyone else in the room exhaled in relief, thanking Clint over and over while he rolled his eyes and reluctantly made his way to Tasha's room, wanting to prolong the walk of doom for as long as possible.
He wasn't even trying to be dramatic. There was a 99% chance that he was going to be murdered in the next five minutes. Clint prayed to whatever higher being there was out there to please let him get off with only a few severe injuries… at best.
Slowly and (sort of) quietly behind the archer, the rest of the Avengers were tip-toeing and trying to stifle their giggles.
Well, this was bound to be amusing. …to everyone except a certain Clint Barton.
Carefully, Clint opened Nat's door, trying not to disturb the sleeping assassin (and like all good assassins, she slept lightly).
He silently sat on the foot of her bed, gently shaking her shoulder. "Nat? Hey, wake up."
She groaned into her pillow and rolled over, now facing away from her partner.
"Go away. Don't wanna." Natasha grumbled.
Clint chuckled softly and shook her shoulder again. "Come on, Nat. Wakey, wakey! If you get up, I promise we can have a Harry Potter marathon!"
At this, Tasha snorted and a pillow came flying at his face, "You're the one who likes Harry Potter, not me."
"Mm." He agreed, but Clint knew that Nat secretly loved watching the films with him whenever he begged her to let him play the movies and then dragged her along to the couch, goofily singing the theme song and urging her to join in (she never did).
"JARVIS? What time is it?" She asked the AI. It was kind of a policy for her to wake up before 11 o'clock, no matter how much she loved to sleep in (a little-known fact about the infamous assassin).
"It is currently 10:37, Miss Romanoff." JARVIS dutifully answered.
"Ugh," Natasha groaned. "Fine. Getting up now."
"Thanks Tasha!" Clint beamed, jumping up from her bed and picking up his partner to dash past the rest of the Avengers so he could get to the kitchen.
"We have a Harry Potter marathon waiting for us! You gotta hurry, Tash!" A childish shout made its way down the corridor from the direction that Hawkeye ran down with the (still sleepy looking) Black Widow.
"CLINT! I still have to brush my teeth!" An answering shout came down a split second after.
"Dental hygiene can wait for a day, Nat! Now, hurry up!"
Bruce sighed, looks like the tower wasn't going to be spared a day of the SHIELD agents' banter, no matter how many times he wished for it.
Steve rolled his eyes at his friends' immature arguments (though he knew it was just their way of having fun).
Tony was looking offended, "So he gets nicknames, not me?! How in this universe is Clint Barton better than me?!"
Bruce sighed again. Is that the only thing that Tony gets out of their conversation?
"AND HE WALKS OUT WITHOUT A SCRATCH! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!"
…and Bruce sighed again.
Clint practically shouted the Harry Potter theme song for everyone in the tower to hear. Tony muttered something about 'not born to sing'.
2. Entering the 'personal space' bubble
"Sooo, I heard you were single…" Tony Stark said flirtatiously to his girlfriend's PA (not the best idea).
"Yes, I am. Not interested. Bye." Natalie Rushman (otherwise known as Natasha Romanoff) replied tartly.
"Come on, sugar; you know you want this," Tony tried again, winking and flinging his arm over her shoulder as she walked through the hallways of his (Pepper's) company.
"No! Get out of my space!" Outraged, Natalie (Natasha) threw his arm off her shoulders and sped off in the other direction.
"Humph. Touchy." Tony grumbled
"Yeah. Considering you have a girlfriend." A (female) voice came from behind him.
He could practically feel the CEO of Stark Industries' anger/disapproval/fury.
"I was only kidding, Pep! I promise! Swear? I didn't really mean it!" Tony pleaded with his (really mad) girlfriend.
"Nope. Couch, Tony."
"But it's my house!"
"Couch."
"Pepper, please."
"Nope."
"Please?"
"Couch." A glare was sent in the direction of Pepper Potts' (soon to be not) boyfriend.
"Meep."
"Good boy."
"She's supposed to be back today! Eighteen minutes and forty-three seconds ago, by the way!" Clint was pacing back and forth in front of the elevator.
"Chill, Legolas. She'll be alright, Natasha's a big girl." Tony was the picture of relaxed; on the sofa with his feet up on the coffee table and a glass of something in his hand.
"But what if-?"
The doors (conveniently) opened and an exhausted-looking Natasha Romanoff came out.
"Tash! You're okay!"
"What, did you think I wasn't?" She joked, a tired smile on her face.
"Yes! You were nineteen minutes and thirty seven seconds late!" Clint rushed over to his partner and hugged her. ("Obsessive much?" Tony muttered in the background.)
"Yeah, and he was pacing the whole time, plus ten minutes before." Tony butted in, raising his glass in the redhead's direction. "Nice to have you back, Natashalie." He winked.
"Don't call me that!"
"So he gets nicknames and invasion of personal space? Hmm, soon, I'm gonna think that there's something going on there!" Tony waved his finger between the two agents with what looked like an eyebrow spasm (to Clint, but he was sure that Natasha saw it too).
Both of them looked at their teammate (Fury made them team up; it wasn't by choice…) oddly for a few seconds, then Clint started poking Natasha's sides to get her to start the walk to her room so she could wash off and he could treat the wounds that everyone knew were there (and were probably hidden by her catsuit).
"There is totally something going on there…"
3. The whole 'revealing the painful past' stuff
"So," Steve tried to politely make small talk, looking down at Agent Romanoff as she led him through the Helicarrier. He didn't want to make enemies with someone who he might have to closely work with over an indefinite period of time (from what he'd already heard, the Black Widow was lethal).
"Yes?" Was her one word reply. She glanced up at the clean-cut blonde with a raised eyebrow.
"Um… so how's working with SHEILD?" Steve stammered. Why was he stammering? She was only replying to his prompt…
There was a small hesitation before her answer, "It's okay. Pays well, I have a… partner," She almost choked on the word. "And it's safer than my old job."
Safer than her old job? Now it was Steve's turn to do the eyebrow-raising.
"Then what was your old job?" He asked, out of genuine curiosity; not because he wanted to fuel the gossip chains that agents around the Helicarrier were certain to have about the mysterious assassin.
"That is none of your business." Natasha shot back sharply.
It was safe to say that there was no more conversation between the two after that.
"…and that's why I have my arc reactor." Tony finished, tapping the glowing circle of metal in his chest.
"Well, while we're sharing our sob stories-" Clint started to say.
"Not happening." Natasha cut in.
"But, don't you-?"
"Not really."
"Don't you trust them, Tash?"
"Hm. To a certain extent."
"Then just tell them a story. Like that one you told me in… oh god, where was it? Oh yes, Bulgaria! That one."
"…so, can it be fake?"
"NO!"
"Hmph."
It was like watching a tennis match, Tony concluded.
"Fine. Well, Clint thinks I should tell a story from my childhood in Russia. But I don't really want to, so…"
"So she's gonna tell one." Clint finished Natasha's sentence with a hint of a smug smile.
The redhead sighed loudly, "Well, it was a snowy night in Russia-"
"Aren't they all?" Tony quipped.
"Do you want the story or not?!"
"Sorry…"
Natasha rolled her eyes before continuing on, "As I was saying, it was a snowy night in Russia when I was picked to be the Black Widow-"
"Wait, wait, wait." Tony butted in (again). "So what you're saying is that there are other little mini Natasha assassins running around who also wanted to be picked as the Black Widow?!"
"Not anymore." The redheaded assassin replied coolly.
A shiver ran down everyone's spine at that.
"Oh," Tony squeaked, his voice at least three octaves higher. "You can continue on now!"
"Hmph." "Come onnnnn, Tash."
"Fine, Clint. So, back to where I was," She shot a hostile glare at Tony while he cringed under her gaze. "I was being picked to be the Black Widow by the Red Room. They, well Ivan, called me in and told me that he would give the title of the Black Widow to me if I could... defeat all the other candidates for the spot. Later, I found out that he told that to every girl who he thought had the potential to become his Black Widow."
Natasha's eyes looked half in the present and half in the past as she recalled the (most likely horrible from what they were hearing) memory from the far reaches of her mind.
"Did you?" Steve asked softly, not wanting to push the female assassin too far (like he did before).
"What do you think, Steve?" Her expression was sad and rueful.
He didn't reply, but the sad smile on his face was full of sympathy (sympathy that Natasha Romanoff didn't need, but she decided not to comment on it).
Clint silently slung his arm over her shoulders and pulled her over to his side, knowing that his partner (the most important person in his world) needed the support even if she didn't ask for it (she never would ask; the Widow couldn't appear to be vulnerable, after all).
Mentally, Tony 'aww'ed at the sight of Natasha wrapped up in Clint's arms (definitely not saying anything out loud), knowing he was already on Natasha's 'people to punch' list. Wouldn't really want to upgrade to the 'people to drop off their own towers' list.
"Well, that wasn't the story I was expecting," Clint commented to the (very lethal) woman that had finally snuggled into his arm after giving up on all attempts to escape his hold (without breaking his arm, that is… and she didn't try that hard anyways; Clint was comfy).
"Yeah, I felt like they deserved a bit more than my usual 'I don't like torture, I don't like rape, I hate Ivan Petrovich with every fiber of my being' story." Natasha replied, wrinkling her nose a bit before relaxing back into her partner.
"Well, its nice that you trust them."
"Yeah, I think it's a side effect of spending too much time around you."
"Hey!" Clint exclaimed indignantly (though he never withdrew his arm from her shoulders).
"I was kidding, Clint!"
"I know; I must be pretty awesome to worm my way into your 'icy cold' heart." He joked, ruffling her red curls to tell her that he didn't really mean it.
"Ugh," Natasha acted offended, but didn't make any move to erase her small (and very rare) smile.
"Definitely somethin' going on there." Tony commented to Bruce and Steve.
They both rolled their eyes and Steve told Tony to stay out of the assassins' business.
Later that night...
"Think Tony was right when he said there was something going on?" Natasha kissed Clint chastely on the lips before laying down beside him in their (his) room.
"Mmph, he better be," He murmured, pulling her body flush against his chest and playing with the two rings on a chain around his (secret) wife's neck.
"Can't wear them now, Clint. Not yet." "I know, Tasha."
"…don't worry, Clint. I wish we could too."
So how'd I do with the flirting thing? I'm a girl, so I don't really have any idea how a guy would try to get someone of my gender to go out with him... sorry if it's bad, but I hope you liked it and review & favourite, please! x