Liar (What If This Storm Ends?), an avengers fanfic

A/N: I intended to work on revising my novel tonight. This happened instead, purely of its own volition. Sometimes I think that stories exist independently of authors, and these fanfics are simply those plots that chose to set up camp in my head. Maybe I'll never understand it.

As far as I know, no one ships this couple. I wrote the one-shot anyway. I don't question the muse when it strikes (like lightning, it seems.)

~x~X~x~

LIAR (WHAT IF THIS STORM ENDS?)

~x~X~x~

You lay careless, your head on my chest

And don't even look at me looking my best

And all these things I can't describe

You would rather I didn't try

But please, don't cry

You liar

~ "Liar," Mumford & Sons

~x~X~x~

The helicarrier is decorated with streamers and lights, and there's cake where mission briefings usually rest, and instead of dry conference calls, there's laughter. A splinter group of recent S.H.I.E.L.D. initiates is having a food fight, making creative use of their desserts, but they keep their mania to the corner, and they'll be cleaning their own mess later, so no one complains. Music is playing instead of directions to a live combat site. Phil Coulson is lighthearted, discussing old cars and new weaponry with Nick Fury, whose one eye is bright. Someone is playing Galaga where he thinks he won't be caught.

It's a celebration, and it's all for the archer.

The day Clint Barton arrived — a sorry excuse for a government agent — no one would never have expected this future for him. But Maria swears there was something in his eyes. A steady hope. Like an arrow certain to pierce the bullseye.

She raises a glass, tapping her headset so she can access the room's sound system. The helicarrier goes silent. "To a year of Clint Barton shooting apples off heads," she says.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents all cheer, the younger ones throwing their fists into the air. "To Clint Barton!"

Glasses clink, and everyone drinks.

Maria's breath catches as suddenly, Clint catches her eye from across the room. She sees the familiar, steady hope in his eyes now, but there is also a spark — something new, born of fresh adventures and opportunities flung wide. "To Maria Hill, who saw a soldier in a scrappy archer from a carnival."

Coulson cracks a smile. "To Agent Hill," he echoes.

The agents drink again. Maria tips her glass back, the alcohol burning her throat, but not as much as Clint Barton's lazy smile burns in her chest, like a candle hidden behind her ribs.

Natasha elbows her. "I think he likes you," she laughs, her words slurred by alcohol. She lost count of her vodka shots ten minutes ago.

Maria laughs, mostly at herself. She knows how to identify a rifle solely based on a bullet wound, how to track a rogue agent without his knowledge, how to hack a security system and leave no trace. On the other hand, she hasn't the slightest idea how to talk to a man. It's absurd, it makes her feel like a fool, but she's spent such a long time focusing on her career that she never had the chance to learn. Flirting is cast aside when there are civilians to save, and there will always be someone in need of saving.

"Maybe," she says, and she closes her eyes.

~x~X~x~

It's twenty minutes past schedule, and Clint Barton is still absent from the Quinjet landing platform. "Agent Barton," Maria comms him, struggling to mask her frustration. "If you do not arrive at the launch point within the next three minutes, we will be forced to abort —"

"I'm here."

Maria turns with a start. Clint is sprinting across the platform; his blond hair catches the sunlight, hopelessly disheveled. His shirt doesn't even match his pants, as though he dressed in the dark.

She bites her lip. "Where were you?"

"Preoccupied."

"Target practice late last night?"

He flashes a smile like it's effortless; like it's second-nature to make her heart skip a beat, as it does now. "Something like that."

Maria smiles back because it's impossible to do anything else. She looks at his face — his slender eyebrows, his warm gaze, the smooth arc of his jaw — and realization slowly dawns. "You have lipstick on your lower lip."

"Do I?" he says, careless. He wipes it away with the back of a hand; it's a bright, bright red, like a bloodstain against his mouth, which is tinged with barest pink. "My apologies for lateness, Agent Hill. It won't happen again."

"I sure hope not," Maria says with a forced laugh. But her throat is tight, her mouth gone dry as she boards the Quinjet, wondering whose lipstick was on Clint Barton's mouth.

~x~X~x~

Maria and Natasha leave work early on every other Wednesday, regardless of whatever hell has been happening on their assignments from S.H.I.E.L.D. Sometimes, coffee is necessary to stop their minds from spinning off course. Sometimes, a pretended normal is the closest thing they have to a safe place. Sometimes the nearest café feels like a home.

They talk about work, of course, but not about trying to keep wounded agents from bleeding out, not about broken helicopter blades or burning fields or barely breathing children in the rubble. They talk about wisecracks on the Quinjet, about how awful the food is when they're in the field, about how strange the shadows look in combat zones — like creatures from another world, seen through a veil of smoke. They make small talk to make their world seem smaller. They ignore the cracks in their shelter of glass, and they act as though they can simply take a break and have a drink (it's never so simple.)

It breaks the simplicity of their dialogue when Natasha, eyebrows drawn closely together, breathes, "Clint Barton is in love with me."

Maria's heart leaps into her throat, pounding, pounding. Her voice comes as if from a great distance, unfamiliar to her own ears, and it trembles. "I'm... I'm so happy for you, Natasha. He's a wonderful man."

There are so many other words in her head, unspoken for the sake of allegiance. Oh, Clint Barton is a wonderful man, and she knows because she's seen it. And his favorite food is pizza and his favorite color is blue and sometimes he dreams about having wings — but he'd never tell anyone that unless he was drunk, which he was as he slipped into sleep on that fateful mission, and he slept for hours while Maria bound his grisly flesh wound, and to her surprise she found that the great Hawkeye snored, little stumbling snorts coming from a raw, raw throat — but when he woke he would deny it, and she'd say that now she had blackmail material, and he'd laughed and said she was probably right, and she could keep him on a tight leash now, but he wouldn't mind.

Natasha takes a breath. "I don't love him."

Maria stares, unable to process. "What?"

Natasha is the Black Widow now, all sharp angles and cold armor; her eyes darken, and she slides them shut. She sits like a tree in winter — tense against the wind, its bark being stripped away in the snowstorm's ferocity, its bare white inside laid bare. "I don't love him," she says.

"Natasha..."

"I don't love anyone."

"That isn't true."

Natasha presses her lips together. Her lipstick is red, red, red, like blood against her pale skin. "I don't know what to do."

Maria swallows. "Follow your heart," she says, and wishes she could do the same.

Months go by, the sun rises and sets, and one day the light flooding through her window feels different, fiercer. Natasha is on time for her latest mission; so is Clint Barton. They are going to different locations with different teams. They did not sleep in the same bed.

Everything and nothing has changed, and Maria wonders how long it would take to learn how to talk to a man.

~x~X~x~

Clint Barton arrives promptly at work every morning, with his quiver upon his back and dark circles beneath his eyes.

One day, as he stops by the armory to store his weaponry, Maria passes him a glass of wine. He arches an eyebrow, confused. She only nods. "Thought you could use it."

He smiles, but it's false. "Thanks."

She raises her glass, her lips lifting in the slightest echo of a smile. "To new beginnings."

"I'll drink to that," Clint says, and they do.

The wine tastes like sparks; like something seen as light and felt as warmth, but never held.

~x~X~x~

"He misses you," Maria says, clutching her cup of coffee so tightly that her knuckles are white.

"I know."

"Every minute."

Natasha's eyes flash. "Don't try to make me feel guilty, Maria."

"You don't?"

"What do you think?"

Maria swallows a gulp of hot, hot liquid. It burns her tongue, leaving it like sandpaper, numb to the bitter words that it proceeds to speak. "He's only human, Natasha. You can't give him everything and then nothing at all. He's lost in the wake of that. He's alone —"

"He'll find someone else."

"Is that what you want?"

Natasha blinks. "No," she says. "No, it's not."

Sickness rises in Maria's chest. "Then you never loved him," she says, thrusting the words like she might have a knife. Natasha says nothing.

In two weeks, they will not banter over coffee; they will hardly have spoken at all.

~x~X~x~

Ten minutes after his comlink switched to static, Clint Barton limps into the temporary S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost. There is a dart lodged in his thigh, and his veins have gone dark around the puncture, tainted with an unknown poison. Maria screams for a medic without thinking — really screams, so loud that her lungs will ache the next day.

Later, they lay him on a makeshift stretcher. Maria enters his tent warily, the blood having drained from her face. "I thought..."

"It's okay," Clint says. His speech is even, practiced, but the light in his eyes flickers. "I'm okay."

Maria kneels beside him in the dirt. "Your comm, it went dead and I... If you were gone... I don't..." She closes her eyes, sealing the wetness behind closed lids. "If you were gone..."

"Maria." His voice is barely audible, his breath warm against the shell of her ear.

"I'm sorry," she says, opening her eyes. She is suddenly aware of how close they are. A single tear slips through her defenses, catching in her eyelashes.

Clint wipes the tear away with his thumb. "Don't be."

"I should be."

"Don't."

Maria lays a hand on his shoulder for balance. Every part of her trembles. She inhales slowly, her head filled with the scent of sweat and antiseptic and Clint, all smoke and ash.

Maria stands, her blood thrumming. "I'm glad you're all right," she says. "Okay?"

Clint nods, and for the first time since his blessed return, he smiles. "Okay."

They do not speak of this moment again.

~x~X~x~

"They say Fury is considering the Avengers Initiative again."

A muscle feathers in Clint Barton's jaw. "Stubborn man," he says.

"You're one to talk."

"Are you insulting me, Maria?"

Maria's pulse spikes. She doesn't know when she and the archer began calling each other by their first names; she only knows that her breath hitches whenever he says hers. "Maybe," she says.

Clint hangs his longbow on the wall. "I take offense."

"That's unfortunate."

"So cold."

Maria smiles. "I can be cruel when I feel like it."

Clint cocks his head. His eyes shine in the half-light of the helicarrier's hallway. Softly, he says, "I like this."

"Like what?"

"Smiling again. Laughing at the things you say. Seeing you blush every time you crack a joke."

Maria blinks. "I blush?" she says, and even as she speaks, her cheeks feel heated.

"Every time."

"And you love it."

"I didn't say that," Clint says, but as he turns away from stowing his arrows, he bangs his shoulder into Maria's, stumbling. She braces him with a hand against his chest, stopping his fall.

Their eyes meet. The near darkness is electric, alive with something unspoken, unexpected. On impulse, Maria lifts a hand, lays it against his cheek.

He takes a shuddering breath. "Maria..." he says, his fingers slipping into her hair. His gaze holds hers, weary, searching.

"Clint," she breathes, her eyes sliding shut.

The only sound is their breathing, the only sensation his fingertips against her skin. Her blood sings in her veins, sure and sure and sure.

She sighs against his mouth. "Kiss me, Clint."

There is a beat of silence stretched thin. Then his lips ghost across hers, barely touching. He tastes like saltwater. His kiss is soft, slow. He holds her face between his palms like she is made of glass, like if he opens his eyes, she will shatter. She laces her fingers behind his neck, hardly daring to kiss back.

So this is what it is to kiss a man. To say nothing and everything without a word, to fashion hope with her lips apart from the slightest sound. To take her every insecurity and lay it in his open palm, shameless, reckless.

Kissing Clint Barton is a moment and a forever, as all beautiful moments often seem; an instant and an eternity, the briefest glimpse of all that might have been.

Clint's mouth draws back, but his hands are woven into her hair, loose strands of it caught between his fingers. He breathes a sigh. "Goodnight, Agent Hill."

It has been six months since he called her anything but Maria.

There are broken things in him, fears too terrible to speak. He has loved and lost, and loved even still, and so lost love twice over. He needs time to mend, and time is a tricky thing; it wedges itself between them and makes Maria take a step back, unsteady. Clint watches her, eyes glassy.

Setting her jaw, Maria swallows a sob. "Goodnight, Agent Barton."

~x~X~x~

What if the storm ends, and I don't see you

As you are now, ever again?

The perfect halo of gold hair and lightning

Sets you off against the planet's last dance

~ "What If This Storm Ends?", Snow Patrol

~x~X~x~

A/N: I honestly have no idea where this concept came from. I was daydreaming about Natasha and Maria's friendship, and I imagined their discussing Clint, and suddenly Maria having feelings for him made perfect sense in my head. You tell me if it makes sense on paper.

Thank you for reading.