This has been bouncing around in my head for weeks and I finally had time to write it out. Hope you guys like it!
Rated T just for a teensy bit of foul language.
Clint silently crept up the hill to the SHIELD safe house following completion of his most recent mission. It was a routine mission. Locate the target that is slowly but surely becoming a threat to international security and take him out. Despite how easy the mission was, Clint was tired, and he couldn't wait to collapse on top of the bed at the safe house.
He reached the front door of the safe house at the top of the hill, and he entered his pass code onto the keypad that slid out from the exterior wall. The small screen flashed "Welcome Hawkeye" in green letters and granted him access into the house.
He slipped through the door and immediately whipped around to snap all of the locks on the door into place. When they all clicked into place and he had tugged at the door to ensure his safety, he let out a breath and walked deeper into the house.
When he reached the standard bedroom, he collapsed on top of the full-sized bed and let out a sigh of relief. After a couple of minutes, his quiver of arrows was starting to bug him, and he sat up to slip it off of his back. He gently placed the quiver and the bow on the bedside table and stood up, stretching his arms above his head, feeling every bone crack.
As tired as he was, he couldn't go to sleep. Not yet. He had one more obligation to fulfill before he went to bed. He checked under the bed for the familiar silver briefcase that came equipped with every SHIELD safe house and pulled it out from the under the bed. He popped it open to reveal a simple laptop and carefully took the laptop out of the briefcase and set it on top of the bed.
Clint pressed the power button and waited for the computer to boot up. While he waited, he searched through the fridge in the kitchen to find something to eat. Unfortunately, the only thing he found was a couple bottles of water and what looked like a block of cheese that had to be three months old.
He returned to the bedroom mid-yawn with his bottle of cold water in hand and watched as the laptop ran through its usual security measures. Anytime a SHIELD safe house laptop was booted up, several security measures ran before any SHIELD agent logged in. The security measures were essentially a way of cloaking the SHIELD laptop so that no one in the world could hack in and gain knowledge of the location of the SHIELD safe house and the agent currently residing in it.
Once the laptop was finished booting up and clearing its security measures, Clint logged on using his SHIELD pass code and watched as his personal settings came to life. Clint watched as it loaded all of the important applications he needed for his work back at SHIELD's base, but the only application he needed right now was the one with the little blue cloud icon: Skype. He double clicked on the icon, logged in, and waited once again for his settings to load.
His contact list loaded and he searched for the one he was looking for. He clicked on the name and waited for his contact to answer the video call. The call rang several times until the call was picked up. He straightened up and before he knew it, his red-headed partner was smiling back at him on the screen.
Her hair was a complete mess, and by the look in her eyes, she just woke up. Back at SHIELD's, it must have been morning as opposed to it being nighttime where Clint was. She was wearing a black tank top that hugged her body and a pair of black shorts.
"How'd the mission go?" she asked almost immediately.
"It went according to plan," he replied.
"Any problems?" she asked.
"No, it went according to plan," he repeated.
"Oh, right," she said, looking down at her nails.
"How are things back at SHIELD?" Clint asked, relaxing back against the pillows and picking up the laptop to place it on his lap.
"The same," she said. "Thor checks in every so often. Tony's irritating the hell out of Fury. Bruce is in China dealing with a cholera outbreak. Cap spends his days in the training room beating the shit out of a punching bag and mumbling something about a girl named Peggy."
"And Miss Romanoff? How is Miss Romanoff?" Clint asked.
"Miss Romanoff is feeling a little under the weather," Natasha deadpanned.
"Everything alright?" Clint asked taking a swig of water.
"Yeah, give me a second," she said and disappeared from the screen. Off in the distance, Clint could hear the sounds of her banging around in her bathroom coming through the speakers on the laptop. A couple seconds later, she reappeared on the screen looking a little uneasy.
"You have to promise me you won't get mad," Natasha said.
"Mad? Why would I get mad?" he asked as he tipped the bottle of water towards his lips again.
Natasha reached under her leg to reveal the item she had been hiding. Clint didn't get a good look at it until Natasha had moved it closer to the camera on her laptop. When Clint saw the item, he choked on the sip of water that was currently traveling down his esophagus.
He slammed the bottle down on the bedside table and removed the laptop from his lap so he could focus on clearing his throat.
"Clint? Clint, are you okay?" Clint heard Natasha's voice say from the laptop.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he wheezed. He turned back to the laptop, replacing it back on his lap.
"Are you…are you sure?" he asked.
"You're mad aren't you?" Natasha asked innocently.
"Nat, why would I be mad?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Are you mad?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said, shrugging her shoulders again.
"Let me see it again," Clint ordered. He watched as she picked up the white stick with the purple plus sign and held it up to the camera again.
"Wow," was all he managed to say.
"I find it strange that you're fascinated by a white stick," she said, pulling the item away from the camera.
"I'm not fascinated with the stick. I'm fascinated with the results the stick has given us," he said.
"Natasha, this is fantastic!" Clint exclaimed.
"Really?" she asked uneasily.
"We're going…we're going to be parents!" he said excitedly.
Clint could almost remember that day, five years ago a couple months after the Battle of New York against Loki, when he had proposed to Natasha. At first, she said no, but Clint was persistent and he wasn't going to give up. Several months later, during a mission in Venezuela, Natasha had been injured really badly and Clint thought he was going to lose her forever. Fortunately, she pulled through, like she always did. When she woke up, she knew Clint was right beside her – because he always was – and she muttered one word: yes. It took Clint a couple seconds to realize that he was accepting his proposal, but once he did, he kissed her on the forehead and then softly on the lips.
It took another two years for them to walk down the aisle. Missions got in the way and they didn't quite know how to tell Fury, but once they did, they had a simple wedding with only the Avengers and a select few SHIELD employees in attendance. Natasha wore a simple curve-hugging satin gown with a sweetheart neckline, while her curls were pulled back into an intricate bun with white flowers pinned in.
In the three years they had been married, the topic of children had come up every so often. Clint knew Natasha didn't want them because she always thought she'd be a horrible mother, but Clint had tossed around the idea of kids every once in a while. However, every single time, she shot him down. It wasn't because she thought she would be a horrible mother if they did have kids. It was because their children would be targets. Even if they quit SHIELD, there was no guaranteeing their safety. Having the two best assassins from SHIELD as parents just wouldn't cut it.
"I can't do this Clint," Natasha whispered barely audible.
"You're not doing this alone. You have me," Clint said, gripping the sides of the laptop as if he were trying to grab her by the shoulders like he always did when he tried to reassure her of something.
Natasha sighed. "We can't bring a kid into our lives, Clint. It would be a target. It would be our weakness, just like you are mine. You saw the way Loki threatened me by using you on that security footage. It would be ten times worse if we had this kid."
"That's not going to happen, Tasha. This child is going to have the two best assassins in the world as parents. No one and nothing will be able to touch it without getting through us first," Clint reassured her.
"I won't let it happen. I promise," Clint said.
Natasha let out a breath and Clint watched her shoulders relax. It was almost as if she was on edge during the entire conversation.
"Okay," she said finally. "Okay, but you're the one who has to tell Fury. You are, after all, the reason I'm going to go through nine months of pure agony."
Clint chuckled. "It's a deal."
Clint watched as she rubbed a hand over her flat stomach. Suddenly, Clint wished his extraction from the SHIELD safe house could be now, but he had to wait at least 24 hours from his entrance into the safe house until he could be picked up.
"What time are you being extracted?" Natasha said, looking up at the camera, her hand still resting on her stomach.
"Ten o'clock tomorrow night," Clint replied instantly.
Natasha sighed again. "Okay. Do you think Fury will let you put off the debriefing for a couple hours?"
"Who knows," Clint said shrugging.
"I just want to see you as soon as possible," she said with a slight smile on her face. Then the smile faded and she suddenly looked like she was going to be sick.
"Oh my God, I've got to go," she said gulping to keep the bile from rising any further in her throat. He watched as she put a hand on the laptop and – he assumed – pushed the laptop closed; the connection was lost.
"Glad I'm not there for that," Clint muttered to himself and then chuckled. He powered down the SHIELD safe house laptop and returned it to the silver briefcase underneath the bed. He stripped off his gear from the mission and climbed underneath the covers in just his boxers.
He wouldn't be able to sleep tonight, but staying awake would only make the wait for the extraction even more agonizing. As he burrowed underneath the covers, a smile spread across his face.
When he and Natasha got married, she refused a ring and she refused to take his last name. Both things would have given away their union to their enemies. A ring would have been obvious that she was married and taking his last name would make it easier for him to be tracked down. But, of all the things she was going to cave in on, it was going to be having his child.
As Clint drifted off to sleep, the smile on his face never cleared. His wife was going to have his child, their child, and he couldn't bear to wait one more night to be with both of them.
Hope you guys liked it! I thought of it on Father's Day. The original idea was for Clint to be away on a mission on Father's Day and when they video chatted, Natasha revealed she was pregnant. But I just tweaked it a bit for it to be a normal day.
For those of you that read my other fanfiction Fix You, the next chapter should be posted later if all things go according to plan.
Thank you for reading and let me know what you think! Review please!
