Disclaimer: I own nothing, all characters belong to their appropriate creators, Marvel, Stan Lee, Joss Wheddon.

Natasha Romaoff/ Clint Barton

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Budapest, Chapter One

He wasn't supposed to get emotional, not now of all times as he fired another arrow at the demon aliens Loki had sent down. He couldn't help it though, how his heart skipped a beat as she said Budapest. How could he even begin to think about everything that had happened in Budapest? The secrets they had discovered or the lines they had crossed? What was he supposed to say? What could he say? Budaspest is when I fell in love with you? How could he compromise himself, now of all times? For she, had declared love to be a child's word. Weren't they better than revelations of love in the heat of battle? This wasn't some bad action movie where in the midst of a battle they have time for confessions or to even touch each other. So he buried it, and reminded himself to come back to it later, if they live through this.

"You and I remember Budapest very differently," he responded.

It was supposed to be like any other mission, but of course that's how it always started. The base he reported to was an abandoned warehouse in the outskirts of Hungary.

"You'll be working with agent Romanoff," Coulson reported, handing him the files that enclosed his target.

"Fine," Clint told him, as if he wasn't looking forward to working with her. They complimented each other perfectly, she was cunning, weaving webs with clear thought out plans, and he was the impulsive action guy. Together, they were unstoppable.

He climbed to the mezzanine and perched himself on the boards of the roof, gazing down at the people beneath him, as he reviewed the case. Before he could read about the target, she arrived. She looked different from when he had seen her last, nearly 3 months ago, her hair now gold. Falling in glorious curls, past her shoulders, she walked briskly in the stilettos, as if she wasn't dressed in a stunning red dress. He dropped down from his position and climbed to the floor, eager to start working with her again.

"Tasha," he greeted, striding up to her, mentioning nothing of her formal dress.

"How was Malta?" he asked, hearing tales of her latest missions.

"Easy," she shrugged. He had just finished the file on her and knew that assassinating 3 drug dealers, finding a secret base camp and handing the leader over to the authorities after a heated interrogation ( she submitted herself to) was not to be classified as easy by anyone else.

"Barcelona?" she asked, as they started walking in sync towards the weapons room.

"No complications," he lied and suddenly the memories of fighting off guards with his bare hands, broken bows and arrows, and almost loosing his tooth flashed in his mind.

"Ready for Budapest?" she asked, with a grin as she attached a gun the the inside of her calf, and he tried not to look, slinging arrows into his quiver.

"Are you going to change?" he asked, because he couldn't salvage it, she had already noticed that he was looking. She shrugged and flashed him a grin.

"Have you even looked over the file?" she asked, before she walked off in front of him, leading the way to the car that would take them to the hotel.

"The target is Markus Horvat," Natasha rounded off in the car, forcing her glorious hair into a tight pony tail. "Ex military, recently developing technology that SHEILD needs. Need to know,"

"And we don't need to know?"

"It's in the packet, Clint," she responded, rolling her eyes.

"Our cover?"

"You really should read the files, you're becoming unmanageable," she teased.

"You always share the best details," he responded as justification. She laughed, a smile tracing her lips as she put on fiery red lip gloss that matched her dress.

"You're worse than Stark," she teased. He was dressed in a blazer, collared shirt and she pulled him towards her suddenly. She pulled a bow tie seemingly out of no where and pulled him closer towards her, looping the bow tie around his neck. She tied it easily and for some reason he found it difficult to think. The silence was only broken when she backed away and resumed speaking, the soft tracing of her fingers abandoning his neck.

"Natalia Angello, a curator of gli uffizzi in Florence," the Italian rolled off her tongue as she reevaluated her work on the bowtie and nodded, pleased at her work.

"And you, are Scott Taylor, a Texan oil tycoon-"

"I'm always a tycoon," he laughed, suddenly serious, he began to finish her sentence. Now that he found his thoughts again. "And we infiltrate, you cozy up to Horvat, ergo that stunning red dress-" he paid no attention to her reaction to the compliment and continued showing off that he had indeed read the files. "We get in, get out, no complications, once we find the location of Horvat's military base,"

"And the details of the attack he's planning,"

"Oh I love abandoned military bases filled with radiation and biological weapons," he expressed, heavy with sarcasm.

"It won't be a repeat of Banner, don't worry," she assured, placing her hand on his for a second.

"I'm not doing an accent,"

"I'll be speaking in Italian," she contradicted.

"Yeah but that's -" he stopped himself before the word sexy rolled off his lips. What was wrong with him lately that he couldn't even keep his head on straight? He wasn't some kid who'd just stumbled into the government's secrets and had never been with a spy before. He was the Hawk, he saw things that were miles away. He was better than this. Yet, was it so really so bad that in his vision of the future, he saw them? He wondered if it was one of her latest missions, the Stark millionaire, Iron Man. Had he been jealous, he tried to think, but submerged the thought. He blocked it out of his mind and practiced a thick Texan accent, he would just be covering her after all, as she seduced the Hungarian threat.

There she was, in the window, he could see her distracting Markus with a Scotch, sitting on his lap. Clint concentrated instead, on hanging upside down and scaling the building. He slipped in through the balcony, leaping and landing on his feet, not even loosing an arrow. He entered through the door she had unlocked for him, probably under some romantic pretense of seeing the stars with Markus only minutes before.

"I'm in," he muttered into his mich, and in the conjoining room he saw her countenance change. Her flirtation suddenly obvious, her Itailan thick and lustrous. God, he had to stop paying attention or she was going to distract him with all her talk of lace and, just as he told himself to look away, he banged into a desk. He stood motionless for a moment, and bit his tongue to quell the impulse to swear.

"What was that," Horvat said in the next room, in broken Italian. Natasha covered it up easily, but Clint knew he would get a scolding later.

It wasn't his fault she was being impossibly sultry. So much so that he was being borderline unprofessional. Jesus, it was embarrassing. He was better than this. He set his mind to work and advanced to the computer. It was blocked with a password that he bypassed in a number of minutes. He located the intel instantly, and other information regarding the next attack. Then, with the loaded details on a usb, he slipped back out the balcony and out of sight, hurling down the 30 story hotel. He landed without a sound on the pavement and then disconnected himself from the Harness, yanking it off the building, it fell beside him with a clank. He collected it, and flicked open his phone, dialing Coulsen. He muttered the safe word and slammed his phone shut, climbing into the car to wait for Natasha.

An hour passed, before he started to get really worried. He tried to speak to her, into her microphone, but it was no use. There was no indication that she was hearing him. He could hear her conversations, a mix of Hungarian and Italian that he had to shut off, because it was driving him insane listening to nothing but her voice in the darkness.

Just as he was about to go and see what the fuss was about, to scale the hotel all over again and break through the balcony window, firing guns and blowing their cover, just to save her ( again,) the door opened. She climbed in without a word, her hair a mess, her dress torn at the side, anger coursing through her as she slammed the door shut.

"Go," she instructed.

"Tasha," he tried, but it just made her angrier.

"GO BARTON!" she shouted.

It took ten minutes, and complete sterile silence to calm her down. He focused on the road, ignoring the impulse to stop the car or put to music on, or even to acknowledge her. She had never snapped at him, like that before. And use of his last name, was unprecedented, unless he counted the borderline flirtatious conversations they sometimes had.

"I'm sorry," she broke the silence.

"What happened?" he stressed.

"He wont be walking for a few days," she responded, before, "I stabbed him in the knee with a bread knife before bashing his head into the table," she shrugged as if it was nothing, so clearly that wasn't the thing that was upsetting her. He stopped the car abruptly and turned to face her.

"Start the car,"

"What the hell happened?" he tried again, but she hid behind her lashes and her stunning hair and her red pouty lips.

"Nothing I couldn't handle, obviously," she pointed out, squirming in her dress, trying to distract him. But he knew better than to fall for that, she was most beautiful to him when she was real, not some act.

"Natasha, we're a team, tell me," he faced her, resisting the urge to take his hand in hers, to brush her hair past her ears and fix here with a gaze that would tell her she could trust him.

"It's not important," she brushed off. She sighed deeply and pushed her hair back, her jaw set before she began.

"He knew me, he knew my past, and he made it very clear he knew who my parents were, who killed my par-" she stopped suddenly and bowed her head. He wondered if she was crying, and tried to stop his breathing, for fear of disrupting the moment. She looked up, distraught, but tears hidden, nothing to give emotions away. Still, this was the most vulnerable he had ever seen her. She breathed in deeply and turned her attention to the road, waiting him to start the car, trying to hide beneath her beauty and skill set. He could see through it all.

"I'm sorry," he said suddenly.

"It's not-" her words caught and she shook her head at her foolishness. "Let's get the bastard,"

"It's not nothing," he said suddenly and his eyes found hers, she turned to face him. He breathed in deeply and reached forward. She twitched at the movement and he paused, tentative before he placed his fingers on hers.

"I have to find out," she said suddenly, rejecting the weakness. "If he knows who did it, if he knows where to find them-"

"Tasha, you can't get distracted, you're better than this," he said, trying to calm her down. "Listen to me, you deserve the truth, but not now, not today, sometime soon, I promise," his grip tightened around her fingers. She nodded slowly, and looked up to meet his gaze.

"Thank you," she muttered, "for calming me down, after he mentioned my parents, and mentioned that all I'm good for is seducing the rich guy, the femme fatale who's just a pawn-"

"That's not even remotely true,"

"After Stark, Grayson, Hammer, Horvat and dozens more, how can you say that?" she snapped, almost aggressive, only to hide her sorrow.

"They don't know you," he pointed out.

"Horvat did, he knew my parents, he knew everything about me and he wouldn't let me go until I'd given him what he was promised," disgust dripped off the sentences. He knew he had no reason to worry about her, she could handle herself, and it was obvious that Horvat left with more scars than she did. He laughed brightly, leaning forward to kiss her on the forehead.

"So you stabbed him in the knee and bashed his head in," he grinned.

"He'll have a scar for ages," she tried to quench the laughter that threatened to get out.

"I was better at this when I was one of the bad guys," she said suddenly.

"Me too," he confessed. "But isn't working for the good guys more morally rewarding or whatever?" he rolled his eyes and her laugh lit up the car, changing the atmosphere.

"Much," she agreed. "But we're not exactly superheroes,"

"Not yet," he promised, causing her to laugh once more.

"Not to be sentimental or whatever, I mean I am Russian-" her tone reverted back the seriousness felt moments before.

"Yes, and I've only ever seen you show emotion after a few vodkas," he teased.

"But seriously, thank you," He could only smile at the remark, nodding slowly.

"Anytime, Agent Romanoff," he grinned, trying for a second to run from the things he was feeling, the impulse to pull her against him and to convince her that she was perfect, so much more than the femme fatale, so brilliant that he couldn't think of anything else.

"I only defected to SHEILD for you," she confessed suddenly and that broke the dam. Everything he had been trying to keep in for months came tumbling forward. The emotions of seeing her again, the urge to protect her was rising up and possessing him. He felt like Banner, unable to control himself, leaning forward and closing the space in between them.

Once the distance was broken, nothing could hold them back. He grabbed her face in his hands, then her hair, trying to trace ever inch of her exposed skin with his fingertips, kissing her with a long repressed passion. She sunk into his touch and reacted with an intense fervor that only fueled his desire. He pulled her closer against him, though there was little space in between them, his hands sliding up her back, pulling her into their heated embrace.

He could tell she wasn't acting, this wasn't the way she kissed those billionaires, or those war lords, this was wanting, this was real. This was her, not the widow.

When he could find a clear thought trail, he stopped to wonder how long she had wanted to do this, because her body was betraying her. Her fingers winding in his hair, digging into his back, her tongue caressing his, pulling his attention back into the moment. Her lips then grazed along his neck, his jawline and his breathing caught before he forced himself to push her away. He held her at arm's length, meeting her gaze. Words faded from his mind and what had seemed so important moments before was trivial now. His lips were free for an instant, before she pulled him back into her arms. She didn't have to say anything for him to know that she wanted him, that she felt something for him. This was what they had always been fighting, but there was nothing they could say that with give this moment justice. They were distracted, focusing on how long they had wanted to do this, like a bitter engagement lasting years, finally to be fulfilled. It wasn't just the attraction fueling their desire, but they knew each other, they had fought together, shared battles and they knew everything about one and other now. It would be too easy to be compromised. Her fingers slipped under the fabric of his shirt and he fought himself to keep a clear head, unable to get enough of her.

It was she, with the clear head that finally pulled away from the heated make out. If anything, he had held back, as she had undone half his buttons, tossed his bow tie behind them, lip stick marks all over him. He took in her look, her disheveled hair, her dress pushed up to her mid thigh, in his flurry to touch as much of her as he thought was decent, careful not to go to far. Her lips planted a final kiss on the edge of his mouth before she finally pulled away and turned her attention back to the road. He waited for something to be said, but neither wanted to ruin the moment, or perhaps they had lost the ability to speak. Only the sound of the passing cars, and their own panting breaths filled the space between them.

He hoped that this wouldn't change anything, that it wouldn't compromise them or weaken them in the heat of battle. For, in that instant, it was just a physical release of everything they had been feeling forever, but it wasn't sentimental, it wasn't messy, or childish, it would never be classified as love, because it was more mature than that. Perhaps, that was what made it real.

"This won't change anything," she stated, her eyes on the road as she fixed her hair, reapplied lipstick, put on her heels. He wiped his skin clear of the traces of her lips and started on his buttons, nodding before he spoke.

"Nothing to change," he responded, so that she would know, but perhaps she had always known just how mad he was for her.

"Don't get compromised," she instructed.

"Would I?" he asked, pulling the car onto the road. He was deathly afraid that he already was.

tbc