"какашка!"
Clint paused while typing and peered around the monitor on his desk, wondering why his red-haired partner was grimacing and swearing at her computer screen in her native language. He raised an eyebrow questioningly. "What's wrong?"
Natasha made an unhappy face. "Jahan just sent me the ballistics reports from Thursday's field tests and I'm already ten minutes late for my meeting with Ordnance."
"Oh, are they finally making a call on those new flechette rounds?"
"Supposed to be," she replied.
Clint leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs under his desk. "Forward me the ballistics, I'll take care of it. You get going to your meeting."
Natasha gave him a grateful smile. "Are you sure?"
Clint waved his hand at her dismissively. "Yeah, yeah. I've got the bandwidth today. Do me a favor, though? When you're down there, can you pick up my tactical vest from QM? They fixed the straps."
"You mean, they let them out," she teased him, eyes twinkling.
He shook his head as he chuckled. "Hey, I can't help it if they keep putting cheeseburgers on the menu!"
Natasha grinned as she stood and grabbed several manila folders off her desk. "And here was I thinking about your incredible pecs."
"If only," he muttered at her cheerfully. "Go, go!"
"Going! I owe you... big time. Thanks, Barton. See you for dinner?" she asked as she rushed out of their office door. He nodded and resumed typing, and she smiled. "Mondays!"
Because it was Monday, dinner was, by routine, at Natasha's apartment, and consisted, by routine, of Thai take-out. Clint knocked on her door at 7:00pm, carrying a laptop bag, three large, rolled-up maps, a discreet nylon case containing a dozen new prototype arrows, a six-pack of Singha beer and two orders of panang gai (extra spicy) with rice. When she opened the door, she was on the phone but reached out and took the food and beer from him. It was immediately obvious that she was speaking to Agent Coulson. Again, all routine.
Clint followed her into her apartment and began dropping items on various surfaces. The laptop bag went onto the counter, the arrows on the couch, the maps on the coffee table. Natasha had tucked the phone between her cheek and shoulder and was spooning the Thai food onto plates. She walked one of the plates over to him where he was plugging in his computer.
"Well I agree with Agent Mendez," Natasha was saying. "Bosaso is still a mess and I don't even know what the odds would be. Can we bring it through Mombasa instead?"
"Goats," Clint added around a mouthful of rice. "Don't forget the goats!"
Natasha nodded at him. "Also Clint is pointing out biological weapons in a country with a livestock-based economy seems... well yeah, that's what we're saying. It's stupid, Phil," Natasha paused. "How's your Swahili?" she asked her partner.
"Makeruhi," he replied cheerfully, and she rolled her eyes.
"Well, let us know what the council decides," she said into the phone.
"It's 113° in northern Somalia today, Phil!" Clint shouted. "They are never supposed to see me sweat!"
Natasha smiled as she hung up. "He asked me to hit you."
Her partner raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? Are you going to give that a try?" he asked in a low voice.
Her eyes twinkled with mischief. "Of course, I'm not going to disobey an order. I'm going to wait until you're not expecting it, though."
Clint rubbed his hands together in boyish glee. "Oooh, exciting! I'll have to keep my guard up. More than usual, I mean. So really, now my guard is way up."
She laughed and opened two bottles of the Thai beer, passing the first one to him. He pushed the laptop over a little bit as she slid onto the barstool beside him, pulling her plate across the counter in front of her. "Alright, Professor, let's look at the recruits for the counter-insurgency units first, then go over the new human trafficking figures, okay?"
"I love it when you talk dirty," her partner waggled his eyebrows, and she gave him a wink. All in all, completely routine.
Clint woke up hours later, on the couch with a cozy afghan tucked neatly around him. That was also somewhat routine, he often crashed at her place after working late. What was strange, though, was the warm and heavy weight pushing on his legs. His brain was still fuzzy with sleep as he yawned and rubbed at his eyes. The city lights outside dimly illuminated the room, and he stared in confusion.
"Tasha?" he mumbled. She was curled up, asleep at his feet. She didn't stir, so he reached down and gently squeezed her shoulder. "Nat?"
Slowly, she pulled herself awake. "Hmmmff?" she said blearily.
"I thought you went to bed," he said, leaving his hand on her shoulder. "What are you doing out here? Everything okay?"
"Oh," she replied with a yawn. "I... I had a bad dream, but I didn't want to wake you up. I just... I just wanted to be near someone."
He chuckled, a deep rumbling sound that Natasha privately loved. "Someone? Anyone?"
"If I said 'you', your ego would overload," she quipped.
"I suppose that's true," he agreed amiably. "Luckily I have you to deflate me whenever it gets close."
She smiled in the dark, enjoying the warmth and closeness of him. "Clint?" she asked quietly after a few moments of quiet.
"Hmmm?"
Her voice sounded very small. "Will you come to bed with me? And just... hold me?"
His eyes widened and he sat up, reaching out and pulling her towards him. "Oh God, Tash, are you okay? What were you dreaming about? Red Room?"
She shook her head. "Not tonight, no. It was worse. This was about losing... losing you."
Her partner did not reply, but he slowly lifted the afghan off his own body and began to wrap it around her. She looked up into his face, basking in the pure honesty and reverence he always had there for her. He scooped her into his lap and stood up, brushing his lips ever so lightly across her hair, eliciting a soft sigh from her. His heartbeat was suddenly palpable in his chest.
"Thank you," she murmured, threading her arms around his neck. He gave her a gentle squeeze and carried her into her bedroom. He laid her down on her bed and she quickly climbed under the covers, moving to the far side in order to give him space.
Clint smoothed the blankets down beside her and laid down on top of them. He wrapped his powerful arms around her shoulders, and she snuggled into him.
"Thanks, Clint. I'm sorry, I just need you here."
He closed his eyes and buried his face in her silky red hair. "It's fine," he replied. "I'm here." He paused. "If I could promise you'd never lose me, I would, you know."
"I know," she whispered in the dark, her voice wavering just slightly. "I don't know why, sometimes I have these crazy urges to have normal lives."
He snickered. "Nine to five? 'Hi honey I'm home'? I'll mow the lawn on the weekend."
She smiled, he could feel the corners of her lips turning up where they were pressed against his chest. "I'll have made dinner and picked up your dry-cleaning."
"Which will have been a suit, and not a tactical vest," he added, making her laugh at loud.
"Haha, yeah, I guess so. And it would be a real shame, because damn you look good in a tac vest..."
Clint tightened his embrace fiercely, and planted a solid kiss on top of his partner's head. "Ahhh, Tasha. If we weren't who we were, I would promise to always be with you, and you'd never get rid of me."
"And I would kiss you," she whispered.
"And you would... wait, what?" he started.
She pulled herself up to look him in the eye. "Yeah," she said. "I would kiss you so hard that you wouldn't be able to breathe, and shove you down onto a bed and straddle your waist, stretch my hands across your chest and..."
Clint sat upright, his heart pounding and his breath starting to quicken. "Natasha," he interrupted, his voice breaking. "God, what you do to me is... it's criminal, it really is. There is no 'happily ever after' for people like us. You know that," he reached out and rested his hand alongside her ivory face.
"I don't care," she replied emphatically, clutching his hand and pulling it towards her mouth. He closed his eyes as she pressed her lips against his palm. "It's not fair, Clint. I've always had everything taken away from me. The Red Room, SHIELD. I want one thing, even if I can't hold on to it forever."
"And what's that?" he whispered.
She reached her free hand out and curled it around the back of his neck, pulling him towards her. "You."
His eyes flashed darkly, and he leaned into her, seizing her mouth with his own with a moan. Desire unfurled in the pit of his stomach as she made good on her threat to kiss him breathless. Feeling as though he was drowning in her, he had no warning whatsoever of the solid punch that connected with his bicep. He pulled away from her, a wounded expression on his face.
"Please don't tell me that this was all an elaborate ploy to sucker punch me," he pleaded, and she laughed.
"Oh no, you're not getting out of this one, Barton. I just wanted to get that out of the way so that I can focus on more important things," she emphasized her comment by tugging impatiently at the hem of his worn t-shirt.
"Okay, good," he breathed before he returned to his own important task of kissing his partner senseless. "Because I can definitely handle this as our own version of home life."
"I like it," she exclaimed between little gasps. "демона мы называем домашняя жизнь. The demon we call domesticity."