Clint stumbles as he's dragged out of the vehicle. There's a blindfold over his eyes and his hands are securely tied behind his back. He coughs wetly. The Mace burns like acid, his eyes and nose are running freely and saliva keeps building up in his mouth as his body tries to get rid of the severe chemicals. He is viciously satisfied to hear that his captors are all coughing and sniffling wetly, too. Even second-hand exposure to Mace in a confined space like the back of that van is pretty damn unpleasant.
The blindfold is secured around his head with several loops of duct tape. A bit overkill, he thinks as they haul him forward. It's not like he would be able to see much anyway, thanks to the pepper spray. He tries to blink behind the blindfold, tries to lessen the fierce burning in his eyes. Every inch of skin that was exposed to the spray hurts, and he's desperate to get his hands free, to scrub at his face, but there's zero give in the ties that bind him. Then something on the ground makes him stumble heavily, but the two assholes who are dragging him along apparently have no interest in letting him recover his balance, because they keep going and his knees scrape painfully against the uneven ground. He knows there's another guy somewhere up ahead, he can hear the sound of his steps.
He struggles to get his feet under himself, and manages just as a hard, clanking sound is heard. They keep going. The sudden change in temperature and acoustics tells him they're taking him into a building of some kind. A few seconds later he hears the sound of another door opening and he's pushed forward. The loss of visual input combined with the fact that his hands are tied behind him means there's no way to compensate when, from one step to the next, his boot suddenly finds only empty space where the floor should be. As he falls, he has half a second to hope that he's not going head first down a flight of stairs, but then he lands hard on his side. His head hits the ground with enough force that the darkness behind the blindfold lights up with sparks. The taste of blood fills his mouth. He hears several unseen someones laugh, and then he's dragged to his feet again. He feels warm wetness runs down his chin as he's maneuvered around. Fuck. Feels like he took a sizable chunk out of his tongue when his teeth clacked together.
Hands grab his arms and fingernails dig cruelly in under the tape that holds the blindfold. The adhesive sticks to his stinging skin and tugs at his hair and he hisses as it is pulled off. When it's gone he manages to crack his eyes open a fraction, blinking rapidly against the pain and the still streaming tears. His head pounds from the knock on the floor, deeply and viciously, but he shoves the discomfort away.
The room he's been taken into is not a room. It's a small, dingy garage. Oil and grease stains cover the floor. When the hands on him let go, he hunches forward with a pitiful groan. He lets a trickle of blood dribble to the floor, playing up his injuries. He makes use of the movement to camouflage the way he scans the surroundings. The place is a mess. Every available surface taken up by junk and car parts and mismatched tool sets. He takes automatic note of the ins and the outs. There is space in the garage for three cars. One space is empty, but the other two are occupied. The nearest one houses a banged up white Nissan with rust spreading like leprosy along from the wheel well up the side of the driver door. In the middle one, a black Mercedes is parked. It looks out of place with its gleaming chrome and shiny paintjob. Stolen, no doubt, and probably destined to be disemboweled in a matter of hours. The job has already begun. Panels are missing inside, wiring has been exposed and cut off, and a hand-operated winch dangles over the open engine compartment. Its chains are already attached to the engine block. A mechanic in stained coveralls and with a very obviously caved-in head lies dead in a pool of blood next to the grease pit.
He straightens up with some more groaning. There are four people in the room, not counting himself and the dead mechanic. He recognizes everyone. To his left is Seeley, Breton's body guard. He's big, a head and a half taller than Clint and comes across like he's a few points shy of average intelligence. Clint knows better than to underestimate him, though. Seeley is nasty. On Clint's right is Terrence Poole. He's looking every bit like the meth head he is. The only reason he's part of the organization is that he happens to be Breton's nephew. The third man in the room is Joseph Sharpton, Breton's second in command. British. Served in the first Gulf war. Dishonorably discharged from the S.A.S. eight years ago after being convicted of sexual assault. Clint knows everything about these guys, down to their shoe sizes and what brand of toothpaste they buy. Which also means he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that all three of them are armed. They don't leave bed without their weapons.
There is one last person in the room. That's Natasha.
She stands at the far end of the space by the outer garage doors. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest and she's curled in on herself a little. She's projecting a carefully tempered air of small and scared, but she looks unhurt.
Her usual looks are toned way down. Her hair is straight and a mousy brown color. She's wearing glasses and her clothes have been carefully chosen for a woman on a budget who tries to dress fashionably but is unable to get neither cut nor fit quite right. Clint's part of the job had been three weeks of surveillance work, and then this past week his front had been a service technician, working on a cable network glitch in Breton's building that 'mysteriously' kept coming and going. Natasha on her side had spent almost two months befriending Breton's girlfriend, trying to get close and gain access to him that way. It had been a long, boring job, but earlier tonight all the pieces had finally slotted into place and Natasha had walked out with a flash drive filled with incriminating evidence not just against Breton's group, but more importantly against the much larger international network he was involved in, the one SHIELD had their sights set on. All in all, Breton was just a small fish in a large pond, but had been deemed the easiest access point into the network.
The intel they had gathered had been dispatched to SHIELD by courier within the hour, and the two of them had gone their separate ways. But apparently neither of them had gotten very far. Clint had been snagged just as he walked up to the rented car. The liberal dose of Mace straight to the face had put him out of commission long enough for them to wrestle him into the back of a van. He looks Natasha over one more time and wonders how they picked her up. She looks unhurt. No bruises. Her clothes don't look like she's been in a fight.
He gets a shove in the back and stumbles forward.
"Who are you. What do you want from me?" Natasha asks Sharpton. Her voice is pitched a fraction higher than usual, fear tugging at her words. It's something that doesn't mesh with Natasha Romanoff on a job. It's something that doesn't mesh with Natasha Romanoff, period, which means she's still maintaining her cover, and it's a strategy that Clint is more than happy to play along with. If they're lucky they might still be able to bullshit their way out of this.
He coughs and tries once again to wipe his face on his shoulder. Everything is still a bit foggy and hazy halos float around every light source, but there's nothing really wrong with his eyes. Other than the fact that they hurt like a motherfucker and he'd be a happy man if he could close them and never open them again. "Do you want money?" he asks Sharpton. "Is that it? I can get money. I'll call my uncle, he's very rich—"
Sharpton's gun comes out and Natasha makes a breathy, scared sound next to him. "You think you're so smart," he sneers.
"I don't know what you—"
"Shut up." Sharpton pulls his phone out and motions Seeley and Poole over. "Do you know who we got here?" He angles the small screen their way. Clint sees Seeley's thick brows lower and then a look of dark venom is turned on him.
Poole suddenly looks even twitchier and he reaches into his jacket. He pulls out his gun and fumbles as he tries to chamber a round. "Let's just kill them right now."
"Wait," Sharpton orders sharply. "Boss man wants to talk to them." He waits until Poole lowers his gun, then turns back to Clint and Natasha. "We know you're SHIELD," he tells them.
Fuck, this is not good. How the hell does he know that?
Sharpton looks back at his phone. "To be honest, I kinda expected more." He steps in closer and shows the phone to Clint who blinks rapidly and tries to make his vision less blurry. When he manages his stomach goes tight. It's a screen shot of his profile from one of SHIELD's deepest databases. He can't see enough details yet to make out if it's the one with the fake info, the one used for administration and other trivial things, or if it's the real one. Both have a mug shot of him, and he sees himself glower back from the small screen.
"You thought I wouldn't realize we're being watched?" Sharpton continues. "I'm not an idiot."
Clint knows full well that Sharpton is a clever strategist, but on one important subject he begs to disagree with the blanket non-idiot statement, because sure, Clint istied up securely, but Natasha isn't. That means Sharpton has pegged him as more of a threat than her, and that's a big, big mistake.
Sharpton swipes his finger across the display and Natasha's file is displayed. "We should feel honored, boys," he tells the other two over his shoulder. "My sources say that not only are they SHIELD, they're pretty much SHIELD royalty."
"What? What do you mean?" Poole still looks nervous.
Sharpton sweeps his hand in Clint and Natasha's direction. "I give you the fabled STRIKE team Delta."
Seeley makes a low rumbling noise that makes Clint think of large and vicious dogs. He keeps his head down, doesn't give away any reaction to the words, but shit, this is trouble on a whole different scale. The existance of Delta is definitely not common knowledge. Someone at SHIELD with access to a fuckload of classified things is leaking intel. To the highest bidder? Published somewhere on darknet, WikiLeaks style?
"Know what? I'm not sure I believe this." Sharpton waves the phone and the image on it. His voice has taken on a mean, calculating note. "There's no way these two are SHIELD's top guns. What do you think?" he asks his cohorts.
Seeley just keeps glaring at Clint. During the weeks that Clint had been listening in, he never once heard the man speak.
"Sure don't look like much," Poole laughs nervously.
Sharpton grins at Clint and Natasha. It's not a nice sight. "I think you need to show us some of that famed Delta teamwork to convince us it's really true."
"Sure," Clint tells him lightly. No use trying to maintain cover now. "Who wants to die first?"
Their three captors laugh. Clint smiles back. The files these guys have are either the sanitized ones, which give no specifics about their jobs, or there's some serious over-confidence at work here. He doesn't care which it is, either will work to their advantage.
Right now there's no realistic chance to fight their way out of this, not with Clint tied up and at least three guns in the room. None of them in their hands. What they need to do is give these guys enough rope to hang themselves with. Not restraining Natasha has gotten them some length, but they need more. The odds are still stacked heavily against them.
"You know, there are rumors about you," Sharpton tells Natasha. He gives her a very deliberate head to toe look.
"Really? All good I hope," she says, her voice warm and velvet soft, but there's an edge hidden underneath that Clint recognizes. There's nothing demure about her now, nothing cowering or scared. The Black Widow has emerged, and this moron seems utterly oblivious to the fact as he steps closer. How the hell did he survive eight years in the S.A.S.?
Clint works at keeping his body language neutral as he gauges Sharpton's position, the way he holds himself, Natasha's stance, the proximity of the other two. Sharpton is well trained in hand-to-hand, but with the element of surprise on her side, Natasha could still probably disarm and disable him in a matter of seconds. But Poole and Seeley are still out of her reach, and Poole still has his gun in his hand, so there's more than a decent risk that both of them would end up dead if she tries.
"I want you to suck his cock," Sharpton tells her.
The room goes very silent for a few moments.
Okay. Clint did not see that one coming.
Seeley shows his yellow teeth in a wide grin when Sharpton shoves Natasha towards Clint. She stumbles into him.
Poole snickers. "Joe, you sick fuck."
"Shut up."
Natasha remains pressed up against his side, doesn't move, but Sharpton's gun does, it comes to point straight at Clint's head.
"You heard me. Suck. His. Cock."
Clint keeps his breathing even and tries to keep the tension from his shoulders, but that's a hard thing to accomplish with the black eye of a barrel staring him down. He has heard of this, of assholes getting off on humiliating and degrading captives like this, but as much shit as he and Natasha have been through together over the years, this is a first for them. Hopefully it's just posturing, nothing more than threats and intimidation.
"You don't want to do this." The razor's edge in Natasha's voice has moved closer to the surface.
Sharpton leers at her. "Pretty sure I do. Move."
When Natasha still doesn't move, Sharpton fires into the floor next to Clint's feet. The sound is brutally sharp and painful in the enclosed area, and Clint ducks his head against the stinging shards of concrete that go flying everywhere. Overlaid with gunshot he hears a flat 'plink' and when he raises his head, he sees that the bullet has ricocheted into the garage door, leaving a round hole in the flimsy metal.
"You got to the count of five to get his cock in your mouth or the next one goes through his head."
Fuck. He's really serious about this.
"One."
Natasha holds Sharpton's gaze for another beat, then steps in front of Clint, turns her back on the room. She reaches for his belt.
Over her shoulder, Clint glances at the mechanic lying dead by the Mercedes. As soon as Breton has done his gloating or whatever it is he wants to do when he gets here, Clint knows open season will be declared on them and they'll most likely join the poor guy on the floor. He hopes Breton is far, far away, and that traffic is a bitch. They need all the time they can get here.
"Two."
His zipper hardly makes a sound as Natasha's pulls it down.
He clenches his teeth as her fingers snake over the lining of his pants and his underwear. They'll get through this, too, he reminds himself. They just need to stay alive until these fuckers make that one crucial mistake that will give them their opening.
"Three.
Natasha makes eye contact with him. "Eyes front and center," she says under her breath, quiet enough that only he can hear." Hands by your side."
When Clint nods, more with his eyes than his head, she pushes his pants down a few inches, just barely below his hips. Her fingers are cold on his skin as she works his cock free from the fabric. Poole snickers about how they should show Natasha what a real man feels like. Clint tunes it out as she gets down on her knees in front of him in a smooth, graceful move.
"Four."
He locks his eyes on the oil-stained wall on the other side of the garage and concentrates on not curling his hands into fists. For a second, just as Sharpton says 'Five' he feels her breath ghosting hot and moist against his skin before her fingers wrap around him and she takes him in her mouth.
The soft, wet heat of her mouth feels foreign and horribly wrong in this situation, but she looks up at him through her lashes and there's nothing but determination in her eyes. Get your head in the game, Barton, she's telling him without words, and he takes a deep breath and tries to blank his mind when she takes him deeper.
He doesn't waste his breath telling them how he's going to kill them all the moment he gets the chance.
"That's a good girl," Sharpton says.
"This is unbelievable. Wait until the others hear about this," Toole cackles. His nervousness is gone, replaced with a fervent kind of glee. Something flashes, and Clint realizes he's holding his phone, taking pictures. Possibly recording.
The garage goes quiet around them, apart from the rustle of movement when the assholes position themselves to see better. Clint has to work hard at not closing his eyes, because he can't give anything away, but there's nothing good about this. A quick glance tells him they're raptly staring at Natasha's mouth around his cock. Sharpton looks smug, Seeley is still scowling, and Poole now looks like he wants to palm himself through his jeans.
"Aw, look at him, he's cwying,"Poole leers and his camera flashes again.
Clint knows that's what it looks like. His eyes and nose are still running freely from the Mace. He's more than fine with letting them believe this sick little game of theirs is getting to him like that. The surprise on their faces when he kills them will be all the more satisfying.
Natasha starts moving and Clint concentrates on the the points of contact; her mouth around him, her hand resting lightly on his thigh for balance, her other hand wrapped around the base of his cock. Even without looking down he can see the top of her head move. He wishes he could tune out, but he needs to stay in the moment and be ready to take these fuckers out the moment they fuck up and it's game over for them.
Natasha's mouth is hot and wet around him as she works him. Pressure and wetness and suction. No frills. She knows just how to bring him to the edge quickly. Embarrassingly quickly at times, and she's not wasting time here, she's trying to make this as quick as possible, but the situation is what it is and the sting of the Mace, the gun aimed at his head and the bastards watching is working against him, so it still takes time for him to get hard.
"Stop," Sharpton orders.
Natasha lets his cock slip out of her mouth and sits back on her heels. She doesn't turn to look at Sharpton, just waits.
"You're a team, right? So I think it's just fair if you did some of the work too," Sharpton tells Clint. "I want you to fuck her mouth. And you," he says and points at Natasha, "back against the wall."
Natasha doesn't hesitate. She shuffles on her knees to the wall next to Clint and turns to face the room.
Clint is ordered to turn around.
"Make one wrong move and you die," Sharpton tells Clint. The next second he feels the cold steel of a blade slide between his bound wrists and then he's free. And look at that, more rope. With his hands free their chances of succeeding with anything to get them out just increased quite a bit. He can finally scrub at his stinging eyes, and God, it's such a relief.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Fuck her face."
He moves, but apparently not fast enough, because Sharpton punches him in the back, and Clint's breath hitches from the pain. Fucker. He carefully steps to straddle Natasha's folded knees, and looks down at her. He almost cringes at the sight of his hard and flushed cock, slick and glistening with saliva, level with her face.
Her eyes meet his. They're still steady, still calm. He tries to convey 'I'm so sorry' and 'Let's do this', and 'First chance we get we'll kill them. Messily. Deal?'
She gives a very neutral blink of her eyes he knows she read him loud and clear.
He moves forward a few inches and Natasha rises on her knees, sliding her back up the wall to get her face at the right level. She opens her mouth, takes his cock in again. He puts his hands flat on the wall, unwilling to put his hands on her for this, and pushes forward a little. Her lips seal around him, and he takes a slow deep breath and pushes in.
A hand at the small of his back pushes him forward, and Clint takes a split second to visualize how easy and gratifying it would be to twist around and snap that arm, but below him Natasha makes a choking sound as he goes too deep, and he doesn't even contemplate going through with it, because they still have a chance of getting out of there alive, but that requires not being stupid. It requires playing along with their game, as fucked up as it is.
So he pushes into Natasha's mouth, along the slick slide of her tongue, and he knows she hates it, hates not being able to set the pace, the depth, the angle. Hates not being in control. He keeps his hands pressed against the cool wall. She said not to touch her, and that's just about the only control he has to offer her right now.
"I said, fuck her face!" Sharpton orders. He shoves Clint into Natasha again, and she makes another harsh, coughing sound around Clint's cock, but doesn't try to twist away.
"Fuck, yeah," Poole mutters appreciatively. "That's what I want to hear."
Seeley is leaning against the door at a safe distance, his arms crossed over his chest. His body language projects boredom, but there's an intensity in the way he's watching them that belies that. Natasha's hands come up to wrap around the back of Clint's legs, around his pants that are still just barely down over his hips. She pulls him forward. Sweat trickles down his back and he gives silent thank to the fact that his brain is still deeply and mercifully in mission mode, because he knows that's the only reason he's able to do this. He widens his stance a fraction and starts moving harder, concentrating on nothing but the wet, slick friction and the heat. Just the sensation, not the person behind it, because if he does, he'll never finish, he will prolong this unnecessarily, and this isn't something he wants to drag out.
He wants it over so he can get to the killing them messily part.
"Grab her hair," Seeley says. His voice is surprisingly light for someone that big. And look at that, he's not quite as disinterested as he seems.
Clint ignores it, because Sharpton is very clearly the boss in the room and Clint isn't doing anything in this context he doesn't absolutely have to.
"You heard the man," Sharpton says.
Clint grits his teeth and reluctantly puts his hands on the sides of her head, curls his fingers along the curve of her skull. The hair at her temples is already damp with sweat. He rubs the pads of his fingers minutely against her scalp and tries to communicate again how fucking sorry he is for having to do this. He gets a reply in the form of her fingers squeezing his legs and he wraps his fingers in her hair and starts moving with purpose, because if this is what he has to do to keep them alive, then he will do it. Nothing more to it.
The pace he sets is hard and fast. He feels her throat work around him as she swallows and takes him even deeper. She manages a few strokes before she gags again, tensing and shuddering. Clint keeps moving, keeps fucking her face as shallowly as he can get away with. He licks his dry, burning lips and desperately wants this to be over.
Poole keeps coming with suggestions and comments, but Sharpton stays silent and in his head Clint runs through scenario after scenario of getting the hell out of there and leaving no one alive. He feels overheated and numb, but he doesn't slow down, just keeps fucking into Natasha's wet mouth. Each thrust produces a wet, lewd sound, and he hates it.
Natasha is talented, but there's nothing enjoyable about it, just a chase for something that isn't meant to happen like this. But he's exceedingly good at compartmentalizing and physical stimulation overrides a lot of things, so eventually he feels himself getting closer. It's still a slow, laborious rise towards completion, and when it finally, finally comes, it's with no sound at all and a feeling of hollow relief more than anything.
He lets go of her immediately and takes an unsteady step back. Behind him, Poole cheers. Natasha sits back on her heels and coughs. She wipes the back of her hand across her glistening mouth as she swallows. He tries to school his breathing, but he feels out of air, like his lungs are too tight as he quickly tucks himself into his pants. He's sticky and wet. His hands feel shivery and he tells himself to get a fucking grip. They're not out of there yet, there's still work to be done.
Natasha gets to her feet and runs her hands over her hair to tame the flyaway strands, casual as you like, like he hadn't just held her in place and fucked her face.
"Over there," Sharpton orders and points towards the middle of the floor.
He pulls Natasha towards him by the arm, gun held carelessly in the other, and Seeley moves in on Clint. Clint doesn't have to look at Natasha to know she spots the moment, too. Both of them are within easy reach of a weapon and both of them are conveniently shielded from the only other gun in the room by a body.
Clint resists as Seeley grabs him and tries to pull him along. The beauty of pulling backwards is that when one suddenly switches to pushing, the other person is usually unbalanced for a short moment. Clint uses that advantage to the fullest as he goes from pulling to tackling Seeley. Behind him he hears Sharpton give a sharp cry that is suddenly cut off. Poole is shouting. Clint doesn't have the time to check on Natasha before he and Seeley hit the floor heavily, tumbling into a tool cart with a metallic crash. Tools and spare parts clatter to the floor. Clint grabs for the gun at the small of Seeley's back, painfully aware that he needs to get Seeley between him and Poole's gun again, because the likelihood that Clint is about to take a bullet to the head from that direction in the next two seconds is pretty high.
But just as Clint's fingers close on the butt of the gun, Seeley manages to land an uncoordinated, meaty fist on the side of his head and everything goes flat and bright for a moment. He distantly hears the sound of the gun skittering across the floor. Then Seeley flips him easy as anything, and Clint's back hits the floor. Seeley is on top of him in a heartbeat, his face red and furious. There's barely enough time for Clint to get an arm up to block the punch, and he twists to the side, hand fumbling across the floor to his right for something to use as a weapon. His fingers brush across something long and narrow just as Seeley's huge hands wrap around his neck. The pressure is enough to cut his air off immediately, and fuck, he claws at Seeley with his free hand. The bastard is going to crush his windpipe. He hears a gun go off, but can't tell if it's Sharpton's or Poole's. He twists again and manages to get a grip on the item, a large screwdriver he realizes. He swings it up and stabs it into the side of Seeley's neck.
The pressure on his throat disappears instantly, and as he coughs and tries to catch his breath again, Seeley's mouth open and close without a sound. Seeley's hand comes up to the side of his neck, and he paws clumsily at the screwdriver handle for a moment. Then he wraps his fingers around it and pulls it out with a roar. The sharp spray of blood paints the side of the Nissan and as Seeley starts choking on it Clint manages to get out from under him.
Clint dives towards the cover of the car and crouches next to it. He glances behind him to see a pool of blood growing rapidly under Seeley. He spots Seeley's wayward gun on the floor resting against the outer garage door. He considers going for it for about a second and a half, then nixes it, because it would put him out in the open, and he has no idea what the story is on the other side of the garage. He crawls towards the back of the car, and sticks his head out for a second to check.
Sharpton lies slumped on the floor next to Natasha's feet and Poole is backing away from her, blood running from his fingers onto the floor. His gun is nowhere to be seen. Sharpton's Glock rests in Natasha's hand and Clint makes an educated guess that the bullet that put Poole's arm out of commission came from it. Poole must have caught a hint of movement from Clint's direction, because he swivels his head around and stares at Clint with wide open eyes. He turns and makes a run for the interior door.
Natasha is on his back before he's halfway across the room. She takes him down with ease. It's bloody and it's brutal. And later, Clint thinks it was way too fast for the bastard.
He slowly gets to his feet and limps towards her. "You okay?" he asks. His voice is rough and hoarse from Seeley's grip around his throat.
"Yeah." She sounds a little breathless from the short grapple.
A wet, choking sound is heard from behind, and they both turn. Seeley's fingers claw against the concrete floor and Clint wonder for a brief moment what will kill him. Drowning in his own blood or the bleeding. Probably the bleeding. It already looks like it's slowing down. Which with that kind of injury means Seeley's running out of blood.
Clint nods towards Sharpton "Is he alive?"
"Yes."
"Is he vital?"
"No."
"Good."
Clint finds a couple of short zipties, zips three of them together and secures Sharpton's hands behind his back. He then spends a few minutes rinsing his still stinging face over the dirty sink while Natasha siphons gas from the Mercedes.
"How's the head," she asks. He hears her pouring the gas across the floor and the work benches.
He splashes one last handful of water on his face. "Nothing an Advil or two won't cure." He heads back to Sharpton and drags him by the ankle to the sink. He uses more zipties to secure him hand and foot to the sturdiest pipe he can find.
A bucket filled with water gives Sharpton a cold, wet wakeup call. As he coughs and splutters and shakes the water from his face, Clint crouches down in front of him.
"Hello there," he says amicably.
For a moment Sharpton doesn't react, but then his inability to move must have registered. He tugs sharply at his hands, but the zipties are the good kind, the one with a metal clip so there will be no breaking out of them the second Clint turns his back. Sharpton starts swearing and keeps pulling uselessly at the ties. Natasha hums tunelessly under her breath as she works at the back of the garage. The splashing sound and the sharp smell of gasoline must tip Sharpton off to what she's doing. He keeps swearing, keeps his scowl, but Clint can see fear creeping in.
"Well, my friend. You wanted to see us work as a team." Clint sweeps his hand over the room, over the blood splatter and gore that paints the floor, over the lifeless bodies of Seeley and Poole. "Do you like it?"
"I'm gonna kill you," Sharpton grinds out, but he's looking decidedly pale now.
"Yeah, no, that's not how this is gonna play out for you today," Clint informs him and gets to his feet.
Natasha puts down the gas canister and holds up a box of matches. "Ready?"
Clint remembers something. "Hang on."
He quickly frisks the dead men, relieves them of their phones. In case the fire doesn't destroy everything, he doesn't want any evidence of their presence or what had gone down. He returns to Sharpton and pats him down too, ignoring the man's threats and curses. He finds a key fob, ambles to the door, sticks his head out and presses one of the buttons. A black Mustang GTO outside flashes its lights in reply.
"Nice," he mumbles.
He looks back and nods at Natasha. She strikes the match and the small flame flares into life. He sees the way she deliberately makes eye-contact with Sharpton for two long seconds before she lets go and the match drops to the glistening floor. The gasoline ignites with a quiet 'whuff' and a moment later translucent blue fire snakes along the floor.
Sharpton starts screaming as they walk out the door.