Avengers: trust
Disclaimer: Avengers and Marvel and everything in them belong to their respective owners; I'm just borrowing. No copyright infringement intended! (Though Marvel...we want more Clint. And Nat. I would pay for a Black Widow movie)
Author's Note: This is the first of two tags I wrote to a beautiful fic by cirque (Ao3) called "one day you'll find you already know". Truly it's the most gorgeous thing. The moral of this story is that you should go look her up and start reading.
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Natasha has been on the Barton farm for three days. It's the longest she's ever stayed with someone without killing them.
She confesses this to Clint after his kids are asleep and she feels she can venture out of the guest room. It makes it harder, the kids. Natasha avoids them, afraid of being herself. She knows she is not suitable. Barton knows it, too, but he brought her here anyways, and that makes her angry.
"You put them in danger, with me!" she accuses, hard and hot and sharp and slipping into Russian so his wife won't understand (she still doesn't know how to feel about Laura). "Why would you do that?"
"Nat." The address is unfamiliar, brings her up short. Clint takes advantage of her hesitation and put his hands on her shoulders. He is not aggressive, but it is an aggressive posture, and Natasha's body wants to react. She could. In a heartbeat, and even with her injuries, she could break his arms and snap his neck and irun/i. It would be as easy as breathing.
She meets his eyes and stands very still.
"I trust you." He repeats this in Russian. Waits for it to sink in.
Trust. Natasha feels her way carefully around the concept. When they'd first arrived his wife had talked about it, too. But it doesn't make sense, doesn't reconcile neatly with the facts in her head. The facts surrounding her, however, don't lie. She's been in his home, talked to his wife, seen him with his children. He is touching her now as if she doesn't have the potential to snap, and tear them all to pieces.
What she feels doesn't translate into English, or Russian, or any of the dozen other languages she's conversational in.
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Note: I could potentially do more with this, maybe. But I can't even begin to think about it until after NaNoWriMo (I am very highly motivated to get to 50k).