a favor for my love
rating: pg
characters: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff
summary: "For warmth."

author's note: For the prompt "for warmth" on the be_compromised LJ community's prompathon.

a favor for my love

She holds onto the scrap of cloth, running her fingers over the threads and ragged edges almost absentmindedly.

"You can keep it," he says, amused. She glances at him, looks back at the cloth, and silently tucks it into her belt.

They never mention it again, but she keeps the rag in her suit and pulls it out on long, lonely nights when her muscles are stiff and the quiet invades even her heart. Eyes trained on the house, the mark, the scope, she brushes it against her cheek and holds it there - and the weight of her winter past lightens a little.

"Why do you want this?" A medic asks her once, her fingers white against his bloodied hand as she prevents him from taking it. She holds on until he relinquishes it with a press of wet fingertips and heat and incomprehension as she's wheeled away, because she cannot tell him the truth.

He pulls his vest off easily, setting it down on the table to inspect the graze along his ribs where a machete came too close to his heart. She stares at the splashes of dried blood across the purple and black, shunting her gaze away only when looking any longer will draw his attention. As she gives his guns a cursory inspection to see if they're still usable, he turns the discarded armor around.

"Well, this is shit," he says, tugging a piece off of the shredded vest; miraculously, it's unstained by the blood that seems to be everywhere else. "I'm going to kill someone in R&D for this. Don't they know people use regular weapons too?"

She snorts softly because he expects her too, because she normally would; after all, who are they to talk about 'normal' weapons? He tosses the scrap onto the countertop, and when she places his Glock down her fingers stretch out and take the soft black cloth away with them.

This man, who accepted her faults and her burdens, who went to face the enemies hunting her and kill them because he said that anyone after her was going to have to deal with him too; this man...

She breathes into the fabric and feels the bite of the cold fade away.

the end