A/N This fic takes place shortly after Clint and Natasha start dating. It came out of a conversation with Black Widow and Hawkeye OTP, in which I was convinced to give writing Clintasha another try. I wasn't too happy with 'AfterParty', so I was reluctant to try again. But here this is. Please review and let me know what you think!
Ch. 1: Just Another Mission
"Should we tell them?" Natasha whispered to her partner as the team snuck down the hallway.
"Nah. They're SHEILD. If they can't figure it out, they don't deserve to know." Clint replied, undeterred by the fact that they were breaking into the headquarters of an international smuggling ring.
"SHEILD doesn't know anything I don't want them to."
"Well, I can't say I'm that lucky. Not all of us have a super-brain, Nat." Clint said, rolling his eyes.
"Fury won't like it. He'll probably be livid when he finds out," she said before bursting into the room where all the leaders of the target organization were meeting. "Sorry, boys. Meetings over," she simpered to the room before they attacked.
Clint was prevented from responding right away, partly because he had his hands full of bodyguard and partly because he got distracted watching Nat work. By the time he'd taken care of one, she'd gotten three down and was halfway done with another. Granted, his was the biggest and he'd been sidetracked watching her.
"Fury doesn't have to. It's not like he'll fire us; we're his best agents." Clint said finally without a hint of modesty. He finished off the first man before moving to the next. The goons were slow and stupid, only attacking one at a time. "I thought international criminals were supposed to be smart?"
Tasha chuckled, "They rarely are. And Fury could disband Strike Team Delta." She jumped on a man's back and zapped him with her Widow's Bites.
Clint snorted, "No way I'll let that happen." He punched a guy in the face and looked around for the rest, only to realize Natasha had finished them off. "That was easy," he said, checking his partner for injuries.
She was doing the same to him. "Good, me either" Nat said, smiling. "Beat you by seven, Barton. Losing your edge?"
"No way. Maybe I just didn't want to beat my new girlfriend."
She rolled her eyes and grabbed her comm unit, "Send in clean up. We're done here."
In short order a dozen agents in SHEILD black burst in and started cuffing the dazed smugglers.
An hour and a half later, Clint and Natasha were on their way to their respective locker rooms in SHEILD base after reporting on the mission accurately and concisely, just the way Fury liked it.
"So, you coming over tonight?" Natasha asked, scrubbing her face with a towel.
Clint looked her up and down and she raised an eyebrow expectantly, "Hmm. What exactly are you offering, Miss Romanoff?"
"How about dinner and maybe a backrub if you're good?"
"Backrub, huh? Will you be giving me one or me, you?"
"Well, you know the saying, you rub my back and I'll rub yours."
"I think you spent too much time in Russia, Tasha. The saying is most definitely 'scratch.'"
"I modified it to fit the situation," they'd reached where the hall diverged to the individual locker rooms, so they stopped in the fork, "And I can always go back to Russia, Agent Barton."
"Are you threatening to leave me, Romanoff?"
"Depends. You wanna keep being pert with me?"
"No, ma'am. I'll be good, ma'am."
"Believe it when I see it," Natasha muttered.
Clint laughed, "Maybe I'll come over . . . for dinner, of course. The chance to exchange backrubs with my favorite woman has nothing to do with it."
"'Course not," she smiled, "See you at my place, Clint. Don't be late."
"You didn't give me a time to be there."
"Exactly," Nat turned on her heel and disappeared into the locker room, with Clint watching her go.
A/N So, please review. But just a warning, you won't be getting that backrub scene. I'll let you handle that in your imagination. Thanks for reading! –AthenaMay24