So this was inspired loosely by Lady Antebellum's song Need You Now. Definitely an old one but an amazing one.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the lyrics.
It's a quarter after one
I'm a little drunk
And I need you now
The first time she rang him, it was an accident. She was drunk—as in sloppy, tripping over her own feet drunk—and she never wanted people to see her like this. It was okay when they drank as a team, because she had a high tolerance, and while everyone was feeling it after three or four shots, she was absolutely fine. Clint Barton was the closest thing she had to family, and the person she most respected in this world; but he was also the person that she least wanted to be disappointed in her, and that's what she was afraid he would be if he saw her like this.
Disappointed.
So when Natasha Romanov could barely move from the bar, definitely couldn't walk anywhere or figure out how to pay a cab, she ended up pulling out her phone with the intention of calling Maria Hill, the number four on her speed dial, and then held it to her ear. But clearly she had pressed number one, but not realized until it was picked up.
"Nat?" Clint asked, his voice rough with sleep.
"Clinton?" Natasha slurred. "Why are you with Maria?" There was a strange niggle at the pit of her stomach, which she swallowed down along with the last mouthful of whiskey. There was movement from the other end of the phone.
"Maria?" Clint sounded confused. "Shit, what are you on about—are you drunk, Nat?!" She let out a very unlike Black Widow giggle and then topped it off with a classy burp. "Natasha, where are you?"
"Um..." she looked around the place. There were a couple of older men in the corner of the room, playing pool and watching the soccer game that was playing on the TV overhead. Behind the bar, an older lady who was probably very pretty in her day was serving an older couple another round of drinks. "I'm at a bar."
"I sort of got that," it almost sounded like there was a smile to his voice, but Natasha wasn't fooled. There was going to be hell to pay tomorrow for waking his beauty sleep when they were in the sparring ring, and she was going to have to deal with it while sweating off a hangover. "Which bar?" Natasha looked around the room again, this time her eyes going to the big glass window and squinted as she tried to read the name of the bar backwards. "Nat?"
"Clarice's?" She attempted.
"Okay, I'll find it," Clint told her. "Just stay where you are, I'll see you soon." Natasha put down her phone and then looked back over the bar, to the expensive bottle of whiskey on the back shelf that she had slowly been making her way through. Clint lived on the other side of the city. She had time for another drink.
He arrived about twenty minutes later, his hair adorably mussed up as he came into the bar wearing one of those tight dark purple v-necks that she loved and jeans. She hoped that she kept the pervy look off her face as she appraised him coming into the room. He looked her up and down and shook his head, but there was a smile on her pretty face. He touched his thumb to the corner of her mouth and then turned to the bartender, asking how much her tab was and then covering it.
"Let's get you home, Nat," he said, slipping an arm around her waist and easily taking her weight as he helped her out of the bar. He was there in his gorgeous matte black Dodge Charger SRT-8, a car that had taken him a while, but he had finally talked Director Nick Fury around to letting him have, sponsoring it as a work vehicle. Natasha understood it; it was a gorgeous car. But personally, she preferred to ride her sleek Harley-Davidson motorbike. "Hey, girl," Clint reached out to touch her leg gently as he got into the drivers seat after safely depositing her in the passenger side. "Stay awake. At least let me get you back to my place, it's closer."
"Your place sounds good," she mumbled out, not one hundred percent certain but pretty sure the words were strung together in the right sentence. Thank God, because she had to face him tomorrow. She knows that they did go back to his place, because when she woke up at that morning, she was between red silk sheets that definitely weren't hers, and there was a shirtless Hawkeye, doing push ups just outside the door, who also wasn't hers.
Unfortunately.
The second time she drunk dialled him, it was on purpose.
Well, she had dialled him on purpose, but she hadn't gotten drunk on purpose.
It had been a pretty damn bad week.
She had finally been introduced to Thor Odinson, from Asgard. Clint had already seen him once, when he had first landed, but she had only heard about him. This time around he had started by having a fight with Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. Not exactly the best start. His estranged brother had come down to earth with some warped idea that they wanted a Hitler-esque ruler, and brainwashed her best friend and partner.
They had gotten the asshole off their planet, but only after destroying half of New York and inflicting a life time of guilt on Clint.
After making sure that Loki was zapped away by Thor, the newly put together Avengers had all gone their separate ways for a well earned break. Her and Clint had slid into his car and bee-lined toward one of the safe houses that he had brought a few years ago on a farm. She thought that maybe he wanted to talk it out, but he didn't want to see her. In fact, he told her that he was going to go out to the barn and asked her not to disturb him.
That was three days ago.
Eventually, Natasha had walked into town, and found the only pub there. It was a family place, so there were kids running around and parents shouting at them when she first arrived at just after six. But by the time eleven rolled around, the place was pretty much empty, and she was well on her way to being fucked.
"You want me to call you a ride, honey?" The girl behind the counter asked. "I don't know where you're from," she eyed Natasha's skin tight leather pants and deep red v-neck shirt. "But we don't have cabs around here."
"It's okay," Natasha told the girl, ignoring the slight look of disgust in the country girls eyes. "I've got a ride." She fumbled with her phone and then speed dialled Clint, hoping that he actually had it on him, because she had no idea what the landline number was, if there even was one. He had picked up on the first ring and she almost jumped when he started shouting down the line.
"Where the fuck are you, Nat?!" He started. "You disappeared hours ago!"
"I, uh, sorry," Natasha was tempted just to hang up and attempt walking back home. He had been ignoring her for the past three days and now he thought he had the right to get all antsy because she had decided to get out of the house? The past few days was probably the longest time she had spent in one place in her life. "Yeah, uh, sorry," she started pulling the phone away from her ear but then she heard him yelling, not sounding quite as angry as he had before.
"No, wait, wait, Nat," Clint was rushing on. She put her phone back to her ear. "Nat?"
"Yeah?" She muttered.
"I'll be there in five minutes," he sighed before disconnecting the call. Natasha had been about to tell him where she was, but then realized that he would already know. She had clearly been drinking and there was only one pub in this sorry excuse for a town. It wasn't long before Clint was walking in through the front door, a scowl on his handsome face. Natasha quickly paid the tab and walked over to him. She wasn't as drunk as she thought she would be, and she guessed that the backwater pub watered down a lot of their drinks. Clint was driving the beat up Jeep that he kept at the farm, and she got dust over her leather pants as she slid inside a little clumsily. "You good?" He grunted as he glanced over at her.
"I'm fine," Natasha mumbled back, crossing her arms over her chest as he started the rickety engine of the truck. They were back on the farm in no time, and Clint was already around her side of the truck, opening the door by the time she realized that she needed to get out of the car. She got out, ignoring the hand he put out to help her, and stumbled toward the house, holding on tightly to the railing as she walked up the few steps. There was no way she was going to be able to get upstairs to the bedroom she slept on, so she grabbed a blanket out of the spare linen closet and headed toward the couch. She tried kicking off her boots, letting out an annoyed groan when she realized that she was going to need to co-ordinate her movements enough to get the zips of her boots down. She was about to give up when Clint was suddenly kneeling at her feet.
"Lean back," he murmured, his hands resting on her calves and then slipping down. He took off her boots one at a time, his hands coming back up to rub slightly at her bare ankles. Natasha let out a contented sigh, and he looked up at her.
"You know I'm a sucker for a foot rub," she mumbled, her eyes closed. Despite his annoyance, Clint couldn't stop his smile as his fingers started to dig into the balls of her feet, drawing out more noises of approval from deep in her throat. It wasn't long before Natasha had slumped over, fast asleep. Clint licked his lips as he watched her, before straightening up and readjusting her body, so that she was stretched out over the couch, and pulled the blanket over her. For a long moment, he just looked down at her, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest and the way her perfect red lips were slightly parted.
"Good night, Nat," Clint murmured, pressing a soft kiss to Natasha's forehead, his fingers weaving gently through her hair before he turned and disappeared from the room.
The third time she had called him, it wasn't because she needed a ride. She just needed to hear his voice.
"Nat?" Clint asked, his voice rough, but she knew that it wasn't from sleeping.
"Clint," Natasha replied, her voice barely audible. She was sitting on her couch with a bottle of vodka hooked between her fingers. She was only wearing a pair of sleeping shorts and a thin camisole, but the alcohol burning through her blood was keeping her warm. The partners were quiet for a few minutes, just listening to each other breathing, before Clint hurt the hitch in Natasha's breath and he clenched the phone tighter in his hand.
"There was nothing we could have done," he told her, but the strain in his voice let her know that he was feeling exactly the same as her.
Guilty.
"She was so little, Clint," Natasha managed to say.
"There was nothing we could have done," he repeated, sounding a little stronger this time. There was some noise in the background, something that sounded like a woman laughing and music. Natasha swallowed hard and she ran her fingers through her hair, wondering if maybe he had gone out that night to drown his sorrows, just like she was doing in the comfort of her own home. "Nat?' She realized she had been quiet for some time now. "Nat, do you want me to come over?"
"Are you sure?" She asked.
"I wouldn't have suggested if I didn't want to, Nat," Clint replied. That was true. Clint never did anything he didn't want—one exception to the mind control from Loki.
"Okay," she agreed. He told her he would be there within ten minutes and then she knew that he wasn't at his place, because he lived across the city from her. There was no point in alerting the doorman to the fact there was going to be a visitor; the security in the building was a joke, and Clint would be able to get to her door easily. She looked down at herself, noting the camisole she was wearing was pretty much see through, but it didn't really process in her drunk mind that maybe she should go and put something else on.
Her partner had seen her practically naked lots of times before; on missions when they were doing a quick change, or when she was hurt and he was stripping off her cat suit to try and get her bandaged up.
There was a knock at her door, and she got up on wobbly legs to walk over to the front door. She opened it, and blinked as she looked at her best friend. He was wearing a grey v-neck tee-shirt, a leather jacket and a pair of jeans—nothing fancy, but it made him look delicious. Natasha shook the thoughts out of her head as she stepped out of the doorway, letting him in.
"Where were you?" She asked him, trying to keep her voice casual.
"I was at a bar," Clint replied in a low voice. "You should have told me you wanted to drink tonight, Nat. I would have come over so you didn't need to be alone."
"Wanda and Pietro were a complete mess," Natasha shrugged. "They needed you more than I did." Clint pursed his lips and gave a one shouldered shrug.
"They're only kids," he murmured. "And they've already been through so much shit in their lives that they shouldn't have been. But they're strong, and they're even stronger together. They deserve a lot more credit than we give them." He ran his fingers through his short hair and nodded, expelling a short breath of air through clenched teeth. "They're doing okay now, Pietro fell asleep first—I think Wanda might have done something to calm his mind."
"Think I could sign up for that?" Nat asked with a bitter laugh. Clint rolled his eyes over to her.
"As if you would ever willingly let anyone into your head," he answered knowingly. "You barely even let people into your world, muchless the bubble you have your head wrapped up in." Natasha gave him a quizzical look, her pretty, pink mouth twisted in confusion. Clint just sighed again and looked down at the bottle of vodka in her hand. "Don't worry. We want to drink?"
"We want to drink," she said agreeably, and they sat down and resumed the movie that she had been watching.
Clint might have been at a bar, but he had had a lot less to drink then she had. Halfway through Sister Act she could barely follow the story line, even though it was one of her favourite movies of all time. Clint looked over to her, where she was holding the open bottle of vodka, the lid long gone under the couch or the arm chair, and couldn't stop the small smile on his face, despite the shit they had been through today. It had been a while since he had been able to look at her; really look at her.
She was still as gorgeous as the last time he had.
Her pupils were dilated, her lips were parted and her head kept ducking to the side a little unsteadily, but she still looked drop dead gorgeous. His eyes dropped a little lower, skimming over her dewy shoulders and down her arms to where her hands were wrapped around the alcohol bottle loosely. She looked almost...Almost delicate like this. Vulnerable, even.
If someone who didn't know Black Widow saw her now, they might have a hard time believing that she could kill someone nine different ways using a pencil.
Or that just that afternoon, she had been running through a collapsing building with a little girls broken body in her arms.
"Nat..." Clint whispered, keeping his voice low in case she wasn't actually awake, but sleeping with her eyes open. It was a skill they had all acquired over time, but it was always difficult to tell whether someone was actually using that skill or not.
"Mm?" Natasha blinked slowly and looked over at him. Clint swallowed hard as their gazes met, Natasha looked completely unaware of how much she affected him. But there was a pain in her eyes that he didn't want her to fall asleep with, and he needed to try and reassure her one more time. He reached out with his left hand, taking the bottle of vodka away and putting it safely on the table, his other hand reaching out to touch her cheek, his thumb brushing softly over her cheekbone. It was almost a subconscious movement; her tilting her head into his touch, but he didn't care. He liked the way her warm skin felt against his calloused palm.
"Believe me, Nat," Clint murmured, leaning in closer to her and watching as her eyes flickered down to his mouth before lifting her gaze back to meet his. "If anyone could have gotten that girl out of there in time, it would have been you. There was no way we could have reached her." Natasha swallowed hard and blinked so slowly her eyes were closed for a good several seconds. "Think about all those people that you did help. Every time we go on one of these missions, there's a chance that someone is going to die—that one of us is going to die." Her eyes widened and his grip on her chin tightened. "But that's what we do. That's who we are."
"I wouldn't have stopped trying if it was you," she breathed and Clint's body stiffened. "I would have died with you if it had been you in that building."
"Nat," Clint's voice cracked and he inwardly cursed himself. He really had no idea what he was supposed to say in reply, he had never been good with words. He leaned in and pressed is mouth to hers for a split second. Natasha just stared at him for a second longer before her eyelids drooped. He bit down harshly on his lower lip as he stared at her for a minute longer before he heard her breathing deepen and she was fast asleep.
The fourth time she drunk dialled him, he was actually only about twenty feet away from her, and she wasn't that drunk.
She pretended he was, but given he was her partner and knew her better than anyone else in the world, he probably knew that she was over exaggerating just a little bit when she tripped and gripped his muscular arm.
"I think we should go upstairs," Natasha mumbled. Clint's eyes widened almost comically and she tilted her head to the side. "What? You scared?"
"What, of you?" Clint shot back at her. She stared back at him evenly, not batting an eyelash; another sign she wasn't drunk. "Of course I am," he smirked at her.
"Well," she tilted her head to the side and let the tip of her tongue slide out of her mouth and edge along her lip in a way that she knew he liked. "I'm asking you to take me upstairs. Are you saying no?" Clint's whole body was wired tight like a coil wanting—needing—to spring free.
"Fuck no, I'm not saying no," he replied. They both did a quick check over their shoulders, making sure the rest of the room was busy with their own thing before they made a hasty exit.
It was a mash of kissing and touching, and when looking at it from an outsiders point of view, it's not like all that much happened. But in the greater scheme of things in Clint and Natasha's life, this was the tipping point, when everything officially started to change. They made out for what seemed like minutes but in actual fact was hours. While all the Avengers were in the main drinking area of their base, they fell into the gym that Clint was never going to look at the same again. He let Natasha back him up to the wooden bench that ran along the wall and then she straddled him and her lips were on his.
She tasted like expensive wine and some sort of fruit, maybe pears, and she felt like silk and honey underneath his hands.
It had been building between them for years, maybe since when they had first been partnered together. Both of them were too careful with their emotions and their trust. It had taken a long time for them to become friends, and then partners to the point where they trusted their lives to each other. But to put their happiness into another person, what little happiness they had, was scary.
They were taking that risk now, though.
Without being too certain about where things could go, or what the future held, they were jumping.
Please review! They make me so happy, so tell me how much you love your beautiful couple x