AN: Shout out to the one person who's reading this series and enjoys it! This one's for you buddy!

Song not really incorporated into this one, but it's No Church in the Wild by Kanye and Jay Z

**Important**
Make sure to follow along with the dates at the top. They go in flashback then present kind of pattern.

I don't own the song or characters.

Human beings in a mob
What's a mob to a king?
What's a king to a god?
What's a god to a non-believer?
Who don't believe in anything?

June 2nd, 2010

"Yeah, who knows 'Tash. It's Coulson."

The New Mexico evening dry air was a relief to Clint after his stint in the humid air of the Philippines, but the woman yelling in his ear on the phone was making it hard to enjoy.

"So what if you have to stick with Stark for a little while longer? You get to hang out in an expensive ass mansion, there can't be much wrong with—"

Apparently, the Black Widow had a little bit of an issue with the latest assignments. He got sent with Coulson to look at an 0-8-4, she got to stay on Stark duty. He wasn't really sure what she was mad about—aside from having to sit still for longer than a month—she had everything she could ever want at her fingertips thanks to the billionaire, and for some reason she was angry about it. Yet, here he was, sleeping in a tent out in the desert.

"Now you know the old man isn't going to let that fly, don't waste your breath."

Her idea of asking the Director for a reassignment was laughable. That guy never second guesses his assignments— and Clint should know— he's watched Emily try to get her assignments switched for 16 years. If she couldn't break the guy, no one could.

There was more chatter on her side of the line and he closed his eyes letting his head sink farther back into his pillow, his hand smoothing his hair away from his face. He needed a haircut. This was their routine whenever they were sent on solo missions. One would always call the other to see 'what was up' or to compare targets with competitions like 'bet your kill wasn't as clean as mine'. Natasha ignored the real reason behind these calls, but Clint had acknowledged it long ago and decided it was just how things were.

"What's the real issue here Romanoff? Tony Stark can't be the one thing to finally get under your skin."

Clint was met with silence from the woman he called his partner. Ever since he decided not to kill her years ago, the two have steadily become closer, and he'd like to think he knew this woman pretty well. There had to be something else bothering her other than some stuck up play boy billionaire.

He cracked an eye open when he heard her sigh and let his hand drop down to the bed, "Nat?"

More silence.

"Alright," he drug out the word, "you got about five seconds to tell me what's really going on."

What he heard was not what the archer was expecting.

"I just don't think it's a very strategic. Two people get more accomplished than one."

Considering he had been doing this sort of thing since he was 14, he knew the advantages of doing things alone were about as the same as having a partner. He also knew how to speak 'Black Widow' and knew the statement was more or less code for, "I'm lonely, and I might want to be where you are." It was as close to a confession of—not love, no, god no, but maybe just caring—that either of them would ever get.

Clint knew by now that to admit aloud that Natalia Romanov could be affected by emotions was to accept a death sentence, and he had long ago learned how to maneuver the conversation around it. Chuckling into the phone speaker, "Yeah, seriously, who's going to come help me when push-over Coulson fucks everything up?"

The melodious laugh on the other end made him smile in relief that he had somewhat broken though her clouded thoughts. His voice dropped to a whisper, "Don't worry, I snuck a little peek at the files on Eye Patch's desk before I left. Looks like you and I are schedule for a mission after these are closed. Couldn't really see what it was about though."

Rustling outside his tent made him rise up to investigate, switching the hand that was holding the phone as he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. He leaned forward to look out of the small gap of the tent flaps in the entrance way as he continued to listen to her.

"Yeah, I don't know, I think it said Budapest. I looked at it so quick it could have said Baltimore for all I know."

More rustling outside and he on his feet looking for a shirt to throw on so he could investigate.

"So what kind of 0-8-4 did you guys find in a freaking desert that required so many agents anyway?"

Clint stopped suddenly and held the shirt he had worn earlier in one hand as he held the phone to his ear with the other, and walked out into the cool air to get a quick look around the tent, grumbling "Didn't really ask. Coulson bitched about missing out on the Captain America case the whole way here, but—"

Something in the distance caught his eye. Were those vehicle head lights? He quickly went back inside and threw his boots on, lacing the strings up quickly, pulling the shirt on hastily.

"What the heck are you doing?"

A twig cracked outside, and he stepped over the corner of his tent and with a quick flick of his foot, had his bow in his hand, quiver thrown over his shoulder.

"There's something outside."

"Something or someone?"

He stepped outside his tent once more cautiously, looking around for a sign of the headlights he saw before, suddenly catching a glimpse of a large figure running towards the base. Taking off running, he breathily replied, "Definitely someone."

"Are they there for the 0-8-4?"

Leave it to Hawkeye and Black Widow, the agency's top two assassins, to carry on a casual conversation while in pursuit of a possibly hostile target.

"I don't know." The base broke out into alarms and screams, and the rain beat against his face as he dodged through obstacles in his way. He needed to get up higher. Throwing his bow into the lift and cursing under his breath, he jumped inside, operating the cart's controls to move up a cable attached to the temporary watch tower.

"Having problems Barton?"

"Fucker's fast," Looking at the thin plastic walls of the make-shift base, silhouettes of agents being tossed around like toys, "strong too."

"He's definitely going for the 0-8-4"

"Maybe, but—"

Clint could hear Coulson barking out orders over the radio strapped to his side, "Who would go through all this trouble for a hammer?"

They hung up shortly after Natasha started cursing under her breath in Russian. Something about his luck in getting all the action and her stuck babysitting, that she was going to knock their director's other eye out of his skull, and a couple other ones he didn't catch. The fight below had proven to be far more interesting than their conversation—though he'd never tell her that— and she had ended the call before he even realized it.

He shoved his phone in his back pocket, and tapped the comm device in his ear, drawing back an arrow, "Better call it Coulson, I'm starting to root for this guy."

Maybe the desert wasn't all that boring?

We make it out alive
All right, all right
No church in the wild

AN: Ta da! Short, yeah. But I'm still more or less just doing the backgrounds through the Marvel Universe so that when the stories catch up it already has a history that isn't incredibly made up and actually is plausible you know? Except for my OC. I'm just fitting her into the story as I please.

Also as I was writing this, I realized that my other story 'Smooth' could fit into this universe, if any of you wanted more Clintasha and haven't read it already.

Review my pretties.

Up next is Grant Ward