Yay new chapter! Friendly reminder I did not come up with these rules, all of these are directly from a tumblr post, I don't change them at all :) (Just, the wording on this rule felt weird, so wanted to clarify that lol) Ok, when is this chapter set….. Before Avengers, I think right around before the time their friendship becomes something more ;D
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Rule number 7- Care for each other when sick, soup is the easiest thing to make.
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Natasha Romanoff did NOT get sick, she just didn't. It was practically impossible thanks to the Red Room. It was also supposed to be impossible because Natasha straight up did not have time to be sick. Her schedule wouldn't allow it. This had to be a fluke, an accident, maybe she was just randomly feeling really crummy. Yeah, and her throat felt like it was full of broken glass because- Maybe she just needed a drink of water. And this room in Shield HQ was just stuffy, that's why it felt like she had a fever. She probably didn't. She was fine. This was fine.
Natasha was telling herself this, then she stood up to go report to Coulson for the days job, and found the room spinning around her sickeningly. She had to sit down on the nearest chair, before she ended up on the floor.
Crap. Someone at The Room had not done their job, because either someone had found a poison she was not immune to, or else she was sick.
The Black Widow hated showing weakness, admit she was not invincible, but she was smart enough to know there was NO way she was going into the field like this. Maybe back in The Room they would have forced her to work through it- But things were different here at Shield. They wouldn't send her out like this. Mostly because she would probably mess up the mission and possibly get herself killed, but also because unlike her previous employers, the people of Shield were not so heartless as to put their agents before a job.
Well, ok, at least not as often as The Red Room did.
Bottom line, no way was Coulson going to let her work in this condition. So, annoyed at herself for having to admit defeat, at her body for betraying her like this, Natasha had picked up the phone and called her partner. He sounded far to chirpy for someone who was awake this early, he must have already ingested a few pots of coffee. "Nat, what's up? You almost here? Come on, we only have two hours to listen to Fury lecture us on how to behave on an undercover mission before we need to be on the plane!" Natasha wanted to roll her eyes at this, but a headache was forming, so she closed them instead.
"Clint, I need you to tell Coulson, I can't work this one. I- I'm sick." There was a disbelieving silence on the other end of the line, Natasha swallowed past the pain in her throat before she spoke. "Clint? You there?" He sounded like he didn't quite believe her. "You? YOU"RE sick? Is that even possible?" She did roll her eyes now, it was worth the added pain in her head. "YES! I'm sick, you idiot. Doesn't Shield give sick days? Or am I expected to stumble through this mission, and blow our cover in the first five minutes when I throw up on the mark?" Clint chuckled a bit at this. "Five minutes? Really? You think you'd be able to make it that long?" She scoffed. "Oh, like you would last longer. If you were sick on the job you would probably surrender yourself just to get a nap in a prison cell, when I broke you out."
Clint did not argue this. "Um, gee I don't even remember the last time Coulson and I talked about sick days. Ar you sure you really need one? It sounds like this is the kind of thing I might need to fill out paperwork for." Annoyance coursing through her, feeling sicker by the minute Natasha practically snarled into the phone "Clint. Figure this out with Coulson, or I am going to find you and make sure you get whatever screwed up virus is bad enough to get me sick." She hung up after that, and then somehow she was back in her bed, a knife in one hand, in a fevered uneasy sleep.
She was startled awake by the realization someone else was in her room, she threw the knife without thinking, opening her eyes when she heard his laugh. "Oh my gosh, Nat, I'm trying to help you, could you please NOT kill me? Just, don't do anything awful for like one minute, ok?"
Natasha was feeling worse, her throat was killing her, and for a second she actually thought she might throw up when she sat up and the room tilted sickeningly around her. "What the hell Barton, you're LUCKY I didn't kill you. Who the heck let you in here?" He lifted an eyebrow at her, and dropped an armful of grocery bags on the counter of the small kitchenette tucked in the corner of the room. "Um, I let myself in? Don't worry, you're lock was extremely hard to pick. It took me almost a whole minute, that's rare."
Natasha groaned, and whipped a pillow at his head. Unlike the knife he had dodged, this missile landed right on target. "Go away! I just need to sleep, let me rest you idiot, just, leave me alone!" Clint whipped the pillow back at her. "No! You are sick, and since I sure as heck know you aren't going to take care of yourself, I need to take care of you. Have you even had any medicine yet?" Natasha wrapped the thin Shield issued blanket around herself, wondering if this was a crazy fever dream. "What? No. I don't like medicine, I'm fine, my body should fight the virus off by tomorrow."
Clint searched through the bags he had brought in, and then tossed a small bottle at her. "Here, Coulson sent me to the Shield pharmacy to get you those. He said that if you don't take them, he's putting you on desk duty for the next month." Rolling her eyes, then wishing she hadn't, Natasha twisted the top of the bottle off. "If I take these will you leave me alone?"
The archer was emptying the bags, and taking stock of what he had bought. "What? No! I'm here to take care of you. If I leave you alone who's going to do that? Take two of the pills, you get more in three hours." Natasha shook the bright blue pills into the palm of her hand, and stared at them in a fever induced haze for a couple seconds. "I don't need anyone to take care of me." She mumbled, jerking back in surprise when Clint was suddenly at her side holding out a glass of water. She grudgingly accepted it, and swallowed down the three hard little pills. "There, will you leave now?"
Clint looked concerned as he stared down at her. "Nat, no. I'm not leaving, you need someone to help you get better. Come on, let me help you?" He was standing over her bed, looking down at her. It gave Natasha a sudden flashback to the very first time he had offered to help. When she'd been holding an empty gun in her hand, had an arrow pressed against her forehead, and was staring up at a man who had offered to help her begin a new life. She blinked and the flashback was gone. Suddenly she felt cold.
She didn't have the energy to fight this anymore. "Whatever Barton, stay if you want. Just don't blame me when you get whatever freaky virus got me- And don't die from it or anything. Fury would never let me live that down." Natasha was violently cold now, she suddenly shivered, and bit her lip to stop her teeth from chattering. Clint saw this, and walked back to the large bags he had carried in. He searched through them for a few minutes, opening one then the other, before he finally found what he wanted. Clint pulled out a large, fluffy, very pink blanket and walked towards Natasaha with it. She closed her eyes, and grimaced. It hurt to talk, but she had to say something.
"You have to be joking." Clint chuckled at this. "Nope, it was the softest, most comfortable blanket that I could find. Want me to go find some paint or something and make it black?" Natasha ignored this, and grabbed the blanket from him. It WAS comfortable- Too bad it physically hurt her eyes to look at the obnoxiously bright pink that it was.
But it was soft, and warm, and oh- Ok, she couldn't keep her eyes open now…
When Natasha woke up, the clock on the wall said she had been sleeping for a few hours. She didn't feel much better though, if anything she felt worse. Clint was sitting at the table next to the foot of her bed (This was seriously a small room.) and watching something on his laptop. The counter in the corner was covered in what looked to be at least ten kinds of juice bottles, a case of water was on the floor, medicine bottles and what looked to be vitamins were all over the table Clint was sitting at, and why did it look like a vegetable truck had exploded in her tiny never used kitchen?
"Clint- what the heck, are you cooking something?" His head snapped up as he looked away from the computer screen, he grinned when he saw her. "You're up! How do you feel? Do you want some water, maybe juice? I got like every kind the store had, wasn't sure what you would like. Do you know carrot juice is apparently thing? I never heard of it but it looks pretty ok, wanna try some of that? You need to stay hydrated, it will help you feel better. That's what the dude who gave me your medicine said. Oh, speaking of that, you slept for like four hours- Time for more pills!"
Still not feeling well, Natasha closed her eyes against the relentless torrent of Clint's conversation. "What- Um, water's fine. Are you cooking something?" As she asked this a second time, Natasha had her own question answered as she noticed a pot of SOMETHING was bubbling away on the stove that she had used maybe twice in the years she had lived here. Clint grabbed a water bottle, and handed it to her as he sat down on her bed and pulled the bottle of pills out of his pocket. "Oh, yeah. I thought that soup might help make you feel better."
Natasha painfully swallowed the pills, and stared at her partner in disbelief. "You know how to make soup?" He shrugged, and as if without thinking brushed a few limp strands of sweat matted sleep tousled hair out of her face. But he still looked at her as if she was the most amazing thing he had ever seen, and Natasha had to close her eyes again because she was not feeling well enough to think about that. She avoided thinking about how he felt about her anyway, but now, when she was flustered and disoriented, it was best to push any and all thoughts about Clint Barton and his feelings to the very back of her mind.
Clint seemed to sense her discomfort, because he pulled his hand away from her face, and let it drop down to fiddle with the blanket he had brought her.
"Um, yeah I know how to make soup, it's like the easiest thing to make ever. You just- buy a bunch of soupy stuff that would taste good together, let it cook in a pot all day, and maybe throw some noodles in it when you think it's almost done. It's easy, I bet you could even make it Romanoff. Are you hungry? Wanna try some of my creation? You'll like it, it has awesome stuff like spinach, and chicken broth, and cool looking veggies I didn't know the names of. Wanna try some? Even if you don't want to, you should. So that you don't hurt my feelings of course, and also so that you get some food in your system. It will make you feel better."
Natasha just shrugged at this, and Clint leapt up, and grabbing a bowl stirred the soup for a few seconds, before pouring some of it out for her. "Do you want to sit at the table, or are you still feeling bed bound?" Natasha had just taken a swallow of the water he'd given her, and paused, considering. "Um, lets stick to the bed. I'm pretty tired." Clint nodded at this, and handed over the soup to his partner with a spoon and a smile. Natasha subtly investigated the contents of the bowl, and was trying to decide if she really wanted to eat it, when to her surprise Clint sat down next to her on the bed with his own bowl of soup. Apparently when she said she wanted to eat on the bed, that meant THEY would eat on the bed. Whatever, if he wanted to be this close to her and get sick, that was his stupid problem. Idiot.
"Ok, do you like it? Have you tried it yet?" He asked excitedly, actually stealing part of the hideously pink blanket draped over her lap, and tucking it over his legs. Natasha was too tired to argue about this, so she just lifted a spoonful of the soup to her mouth and cautiously tried it. It was actually amazingly good. Not that she would tell him that. "Does Shield know you can cook?" She asked instead. "Seems like a skill that could really help you out on an undercover job or something." Clint snorted at this, but he was smiling as he started slurping down his soup. "Nah, I can't cook, not really. I know how to make soup, and pancakes, and that's about it."
Natasha lifted an eyebrow at him."You make pancakes?" Clint smirked, and stirred his spoon around his bowl. "Oh yeah, in all kinds of shapes too. Squares, hearts, mickey mouse ears, flowers, um, circles, I should show you sometime."
The two of them ate in silence, then Natasha just couldn't eat anymore, and Clint was done with his third bowl somehow. He cleaned up the kitchen, and she curled back up into her new blanket, wondering what would happen next. She couldn't say she was totally surprised when Clint dragged the table with his laptop on it in front of the bed, and asked her what kind of movie she felt like watching.
Before long he had put in Finding Nemo (You'll love it Nat, this movie is iconic, and funny, and has talking fish, it's awesome!) and they were both sitting up against the wall her bed was against, watching the movie together. Somehow the blanket started to shift over to Clint's side, and before long it was wrapped around both of them. Natasha didn't mind, she was cold again, the extra warmth of him was nice.
By the time Nemo was heading off to his first day of school, Natasha found her head had somehow come to rest on Clint's shoulder. By the time Marlin was talking to a blue fish about finding his son, Clint had his arm wrapped around her, pressing her up against him. And before the sharks had even made it into the movie, Natasha was asleep again. Her partners arm wrapped around her, resting up against him, still feeling sick, but for once in her life feeling totally safe.
When she woke up the next morning, Natasha's fever had broken. She didn't feel like she was at the top of her game, she might need to take another day off, but she no longer felt like someone might have poisoned her. When she woke up, Clint's arm was still wrapped around her, She was still curled up against his side. He hadn't moved once during the night, although his position could hardly be called comfortable. Natasha wasn't sure what to do…. Slip away and leave? No, duh this was her room. Wait for him to wake up and pretend she hadn't realized this had happened? Try and go back to sleep?
Finally, she decided what to do. Natasha gently poked Clint in the side a few times, then nudged him less gently until he woke up. When he finally was awake, he looked confused for a minute, then smiled when he looked at her. "Hey….. Your fevers gone?" She smiled at this, nodded. "Yeah, so is my sore throat. I'm not 100% ok, but at least I don't feel like I'm dying anymore." They both chuckled at this. The both knew what it really felt like when you thought you might be dying. A fever and sore throat were nothing compared to that.
They were silent for a couple of beats, then Natasha rolled her shoulders, Clint pulled his arm away. Then, she smiled at him. "So…. Do you really know how to make pancakes?"
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