For some reason, they're sitting on a roof top and freezing in Siberia. They finished their mission, it wasn't an easy hit but if it had been, then it clearly would've been only a diversion. But this is the way they like their work, they like the challenge. Natasha likes the fact that no two people are the same. Despite how she might generalize the opposite gender when playing up her bad ass persona, she knows that people are as unique as their fingerprints. She likes to find their pressure points, not the ones of flesh, but the ones of mind. She likes to squeeze to see what happens. Sometimes she thinks this habit is the slightest bit psychopathic, when she treats an existence like an experiment, but she figures she's already an assassin. At least if she's psychopathic than she has an excuse. Clint likes the chase, the hunt. He likes to see men attempt to seduce his partner, and he loves to pierce an arrow through some soft piece of flesh in retribution. Maybe he's a little possessive, like a toddler and his toy. Sometimes her eyes catch his after a particularly brutal kill and sweat is rolling down his forehead and he hadn't realized his heart was racing like that- and her eyes glint in that playful manner and he calms.
All the same, the mission is over. Natasha poisoned the main mark and Clint took out his aid that had been checking out her ass. The official mission report will read that he noticed Natasha slipping something into his boss' drink. They have a hotel room to be in, stocked with hard alcohol and a tab opened under SHIELD's name. But Natasha feels claustrophobic in the room. It's too perfect, too pristine, yet to be ruined by the agents' very presence. Don't be confused, Natasha loves the lavish. She just hates when it lasts. She likes Versace and Henri Bendel for a few hours, but she loves them after they've been torn apart by a spontaneous blood bath, or caught on nails as she scales a building, or shredded by a far too eager archer- that last part's not important. Natasha had let the dress fall from her lithe form back in the hotel room, Clint's practiced fingers undoing the ribbon holding it all together. She doesn't bother redressing, maintaining the thick stockings she'd worn under her dress. Over her shoulders she tugs one of Clint's most beaten leather jackets (and therefore his most favorite). It smells like her.
On the roof they overlook the frozen city. Clint's head is in her lap, and though they both are mostly clothed, there is a feeling of nakedness about them. Neither of them shivers despite the cold. His bow has been left in their room, and she has only one knife stashed in her cleavage. They are virtually unarmed. Natasha lets her fingers stroke through the archer's hair, drawing slowly from his forehead back through his subtle spikes. His whole body, which had at first been full of anxious energy at the lack of arsenal, now relaxed under her calm touch. His eyes slipped shut, and his breathing calmed.
"Nat" he hoarsely mutters to her, lips barely moving as snowflakes slip across his tanned face. Her hand pauses for a moment, and she preps the other one directly above his cheek in case he gets any idea about professing his love again. The last time he said in the middle of a firefight in Monaco, she'd driven a dagger into his thigh. Of course she'd gotten the bad end of that deal because he'd looked at her with those sad puppy eyes for the next few days as he purposefully limped past her. He did not speak despite that he knew he had her attention. Clint's words dangled above them like an icicle about to break. "D'you think we're good for each other?"
She didn't bother to answer that they weren't 'together', weren't children who used words like boyfriend and girlfriend, weren't…worthy of those words. "We get the job done when we're together, Barton" she said, softly, and despite that it was his last name that she used, Clint could detect the softness in her tone.
"I don't mean that, Tasha" Clint answered her. "We're the best partners SHIELD has ever had, our kill records alone are double any other's pair and we've yet to fail an assignment. But that's not what I'm talking about. I mean this, me and you, sitting on a hotel roof in Siberia, you're wearing my jacket and my head is in your lap".
She didn't reply. "Don't put on the Widow now, Nat" he groaned, his voice vibrating against her thin flesh and she shivered, not from the cold.
Natasha was silent now. Her hand fell to cup Clint's face in a way that let him know she was mulling over her response.
The question was one she rarely allowed herself to think of. She didn't like to think that if she had never come into Clint's life then he might still be innocent, or as innocent as a SHIELD assassin can be, at least. Before her, he didn't take pleasure in his kills. He didn't really have vengeance. He joined SHIELD because he was a bored kid looking for some outlet for his nearly antiquated talent. He'd made kills before he was assigned to her, but he wasn't personal, he'd never could have handled being personal. For all it was worth, Clint Barton was likable. Even Fury, despite how he hollered when Clint screwed around on missions, still had a bit of fondness reserved for the agent. Clint could never killing up close. It was almost funny, Natasha could think, that she was the one who thrived on getting personal yet she'd only ever had one friend while Clint, who preferred to be an outsider, had no shortage of bonds. The Black Widow wasn't supposed to be a personal kill. She was supposed to be tracked and then eliminated from afar in a moment of weakness. But the Black Widow didn't play by anyone else's rules.
It had been in a small Ukrainian town that a drug lord called home that Agent Barton had found her. Rather, she'd found him. He had planned to begin his mission the day after his arrival. He'd gotten in late, and checked into an inn that he was happy to find located directly next to the local tavern. Barton's been waiting for his drink to arrive when the door had swung open with a cold burst of air. He heard the pixie-like footsteps but not been particularly cautious at the moment. He felt someone slide into the stool next to him and he tilted his head to see his new companion.
A woman with hair redder than Russia smirked at him in a vicious manner that only stirred a rumble in his chest. Her photo in SHIELD's database had not done her justice.
Of course they both knew who the other was; they wouldn't have lived so long in their field if they hadn't. They'd ended up in Barton's bedroom, which he ended up having to abandon the next morning before the innkeeper could sue for the massive amount of damages inflicted.
He couldn't kill her after that and somehow, Natasha can't really remember how, she ended up in a uniform that matched his with a dark room that she could call her own.
Natasha turned Clint into a killer. When he was with her, he understood the power of someone's pulse beneath his index finger. He understood that some people needed to die. He understood that guilt was an enemy and the only way to defeat it was by acceptance. Because of her, Clint bore many more scars. Some from her, some from battle, and some from stupid risks he'd taken trying to save her life when she'd been more than capable of saving herself.
And Natasha, when Clint became part of her, well he weakened her. Some say that he saved her from becoming a heartless shell of a person, that without him she would've become just a replaceable robot. Natasha knows that when she kissed Clint Barton for the first time and stained her lipstick on the collar of his shirt as a mark of ownership, that she inflicted a terrible wound upon herself.
Now she had to look out for two people, now she had the possibility to feel a sense of sadness or longing. Now she had someone to worry about when they were on solo missions. Now she had a weakness, an Achilles' heel, a pressure point, that someday someone would figure out how to push.
They were a violent game of tug of war, one that involved beating each other bloody and screaming the cruelest names at one another and sleeping in opposites sides of the bed. Clint was a match and Natasha was his kerosene. No one escaped their partnership without burns to prove it. But fire, fire was nice on a night like this when the world seemed so cold that it ceased to spin. The burns were a memory that they were alive when they sat on top of Siberia, like a snow queen and her ever faithful knight.
"You know what, Clint" she spoke, "We aren't good for each other. We are each other's most painful scars, and every time our fingers touch, it just reopens old wounds. We are a firefight that neither of us can ever escape from."
He's trembling under her hands, his eyes screwed shut and now her words are the dangerous ones, which make two assassins go tense. She tilts her head over his, that redder than Russia hair grazing his forehead. "And you know what, Barton" she murmurs, as his eyes begin to open at the touch, "neither of us wants to escape".