AN The end of the school year sucks and is stressful so here take this chapter so I can indulge in these poor little darlings' suffering. ugh i just wanted to post this a week ago and get on with it someone hold me.

This chapter was actually supposed to be attached to the last one, but then a few scenes were added and I came to some of my senses, and realized that it would have been an ungainly behemoth, so I had to break it up. This lead to some last second scrambling for the song and title for the chapter, so that's why a line was reused, but I just love it so much that I have no regrets.

what what chapter ten how did i ever end up here.

"Ready"

Oh, I'm ready,
Oh, I'm ready.
I'm ready for my number to be drawn,
And I'm ready for my love to
Come along.

He's taking his time,
He's taking all of mine
So I'll sing 'Sha la la,
Sha la la la la
Sha la la la la'.

Love can be heavy,
But I'll keep holding on.
'Cause I've hand my eye on
A fast one whose
Motor don't start and
Engine don't run.
I've been waiting, heart disintegrating,
Give me the boy with the licorice tongue.

Julia Haltigan

the next time she sees him, no new bruises.

Natasha managed to pretend she was not nervous as the next few days went by, as she walked on the street and she tended to her other regulars (she wasn't sure if it was her, the Landlord, or just fate, but several of her regulars had begun falling away. Natasha tried very hard not to let this be a sign). But she was waiting, waiting, praying that her rash decision had paid off, that Haulders had done as she had demanded.

But then finally, Clint called. She wanted to run to him, but she made herself saunter. Natasha walked up to his door with a lazy expression, lethal heels, and her warm red coat. They were they only form of armor she had, and she had a feeling that she would be needing them.

She held her breath when he opened the door, terrified for a moment that Haulders would have spited her, and had Clint beaten worse than usual. When she saw his smile, she let herself exhale. Haulders had kept his part of the deal.

He had kept his part of the deal, but Natasha couldn't help but feel weighed down by the secret on her tongue. She managed to ignore it for the first little while, when Clint again began their small ritual of making small talk. Natasha felt relieved that Clint had the energy for it, but everything felt muted after what she had done. For some reason, she felt guilt over her decision, like maybe she should have done something different, which made no sense. She was perfectly justified. She had done it to save Clint. There was no reason for her to feel so sick.

she holds her secret like a fire in her chest.

Clint noticed that something was off with her. His eyes were a little bluer and a whole lot brighter than last time, which meant he completely saw through Natasha's weak facade. He kept giving her this strange, analytical look, which she would pointedly ignore. At one point, he even broke off what he was saying to ask, "Natasha, are you alright?"

She looked down at him, somehow having expected this.

"What, oh, yes. I'm fine."

He narrowed his eyes and raised an eyebrow.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

He nodded, but it was obvious he didn't believe her. Still, he let it lie for a few minutes, and took some pleasure in kissing her and wrapping his fingers up in her hair. Clearly it was still eating at him, though, as he paused a bit later and asked, "Is there something wrong?"

His lips were almost on hers, teasing her just like she had done to him so many times. The words settled on her mouth, tugging at her, demanding that her own words tumble forth.

"No, nothing is wrong."

Natasha shifted, not quite uncomfortable beneath his gaze, because he had looked through her to her soul so many times, but it was a little strange to be the object of his attention. Not because she was demanding it via flirting or whatever other little tricks, but because...he was just interested.

"Okay."

He sat back in his chair, and folded his arms. Natasha blinked at him, a little confused.

"O...kay?"

"Okay," he repeated, and shrugged. "Nothing's wrong."

She waited a moment, but he just watched her, expression almost serene. Natasha leaned over so that she was practically laying on him in the chair, brushing the tip of her fingers along his jaw.

"Does something have to be wrong?"

"No, it doesn't."

Still, Clint didn't touch her like he had before. They just sat there, talking, passing time. The longer they went, the more Natasha felt that she was going to spring up and rip her hair out, because she couldn't do this again. Last time, she could understand, because his fiancee had left him, and his whole world seemed to be coming down, but now...now he was just testing her, torturing her, trying to get the truth past her lips.

It made Natasha want to spit. Her idiot moment of confidence in Manhattan had given him the perfect ammo. He knew that if he did nothing, she would try all that she could to get him to do something. He probably didn't understand why, though. After her little outburst, it was entirely possible that he thought she hated not being used out of a matter of pride, and not out of a matter fear of her safety.

After a while, Clint politely asked her to get off his lap. She complied, trying not to look a little sulky as he stood up. Natasha watched him undress and get into bed, stomach trying itself into surly knots.

"You coming?" he asked, looking at her from the bed.

"Of course," Natasha said, feeling exceptionally impressed that she didn't sound as put out as she felt. She took a moment to undress herself just as Clint had, tossing her clothes aside as if she didn't care about them (which she didn't). She walked to the other side of the bed, then slipped in under the covers beside Clint.

Natasha wondered if this would be the point when he set aside his damn games and finally kissed her the way he had wanted to all night.
As if hearing her thoughts, Clint wrapped his arms around her, and pulled Natasha close. She pressed into him, waiting, waiting.

Nothing happened.

She rolled her eyes, and chewed her cheek. She wanted to play along. She wanted to pretend, to wait him out until he couldn't stand buying her and not touching her. Natasha wanted to close her eyes and drift asleep against Clint's chest, but she knew she would never get it. Not with a secret pawing at her lips on one side, and Clint prying at the other.

Clint wound his legs in between hers, toes brushing against each other. Natasha turned into him, and tried not to feel guilty at loving the way he smelled. Everything felt so wrong, everything had fallen apart. At some point, one of them had broken the rules so irreparably that they had ended up there, hiding and feeling far more than they ever had a right to.

Natasha closed her eyes.

The last time he had asked her a question, he had offered to pay her for her answers. Now...he was letting her keep it all to herself. She really didn't know which was worse.

then he finally breaks, and it is a cool relief.

It took some time (two sticky notes, five weeks, an innumerable amount of drive by customers, and a handful of regulars, to be exact), but Clint finally gave in. When Natasha heard the Landlord's lazy drawl that you got a call from Barton, darlin', her stomach clenched and she nearly turned right around and closed herself into the bathroom, but she smiled because she she couldn't afford to do anything else. The words 'of course' came out of her lips, and already she was off, imaging yet another torturous night of nothing.

But that wasn't the case.

When Natasha knocked on Clint's motel room door, shivering in her coat due to the rain, Clint opened it as usual. Except he wasn't wearing a shirt.

"Am I interrupting something?" Natasha asked, unable to help herself. Clint laughed and nodded for her to come inside. She stepped in, taking the time to examine his bare skin. She found herself doing this each time, checking for new bruises, checking for some sign of double crossing on Haulders' part. It was partly out of anxiety for Clint's well being, but also anxiety as to what she could do about it.

Clint turned back to face her, taking her newly shed coat.

"Hell, it's cold out there. But no, I was just gonna hop in the shower. You wanna join me?"

Natasha gave him a smile. She loved the way he phrased it. You wanna join me. He was in all honesty offering her a choice, even if it was one that he couldn't truly provide.

"I think I will."

"Great."

Natasha moved towards the bathroom, then paused when Clint's cell phone rang. She turned back to him, look questioning as he checked the caller ID.

"You go on, I gotta take this. It'll only be a sec." Clint opened his phone as he talked, and moved off towards the relative seclusion of the tiny kitchenette. Natasha continued on to the bathroom, but she had to force herself not to look back. Clint's conversations weren't her business, hell, his life wasn't her business, so she had no right in worrying over him.

Natasha stepped into the bathroom, then closed the door halfway behind her. Privacy was an illusion, but it was one that she occasionally liked indulging in.

The bathroom was small, with little room for her feet once she had pulled off her dress and shoes. She examined her makeup in the mirror, and quickly wiped off as much as possible. Her mascara promised that it was water proof, and her eye shadow was generally light enough to escape any horrendous streaks, but she didn't like taking chances.

She picked up her clothes and tossed them onto the tank of the toilet. Natasha turned around absently, uncertain if Clint expected her to actually get in the shower without him. As she turned, her eyes fell on the mirror. Natasha knew she wouldn't like what she saw, but she looked anyways.

Her hair was getting long, hanging in limp waves past her shoulders. She looked tired, especially with smudges of misplaced makeup emphasizing the shadows under her eyes. Plus she looked a bit peaky, and not just because of the bleached lighting. Natasha hadn't really had time for food that day, what with a late start to her morning because of another customer, having to sort out a fight on her floor at the boarding house, and catching up on all of the daily errands she had let stack up over the last week.

If she was really being honest, though, the last two weeks hadn't been so great for eating, what with a hectic schedule and the Landlord breathing down her neck for her every last penny.

Natasha looked away from her reflection. She had seen enough. The red headed ghost wearing black underwear that was more expensive than she was clearly wasn't going anywhere soon.

Clint walked into the bathroom, looking just as comfortable as before. So the phone call hadn't been anything to worry about.

She gave him a smile, and he graciously ignored the miserable exhaustion in her features. Clint gestured towards the shower in a ladies first kind of way. Then he noticed that she was still wearing her underwear, and cocked an eyebrow that asked 'All ready?' Natasha allowed her smile to turn a little devious as she crossed the small space and slipped in past the curtain. For all his bravado, Natasha knew Clint liked the journey almost more than the prize.

It only took a second for Clint to finish stripping down, but then he was in beside her, adjusting the temperature of the water. Steam still billowed around them, and it seemed determined to coat everything inside Natasha, from her throat to her bones. She liked the clean feeling.

"Water warm enough for you?" he asked, barely a hand's breadth away from her. She nodded.

"It's fine."

"That's good," Clint mumbled, leaning in to kiss her. Their breaths were caught up in each other, turned thick with the steam. Clint kissed her again and again, practically demanding a response from her.

There was an almost twisted sort of satisfaction in Natasha's stomach as his lips moved from her mouth to her neck. Satisfied, because she had been right. Twisted, because she wasn't sure she liked the idea that she had made him suffer. He had craved this for every second he had played his games and kept his gentlemanly distance from her, craved it with an intensity that was now stunningly apparent. His kisses were harsh and lovely, like a pungent piece of candy. Some part of her recognized that this was not the honey she was used to experiencing with him, that this was more like Clint delicately shoving a piece of licorice onto her tongue, but the taste was too consuming for her to give up.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, ran her fingers through his hair, and tried not to think about how lightheaded she was feeling. Clint had his hands on her hips, but then they were sliding their way up her back towards her bra. He was kissing her collar bone now, the water from the shower dripping down his hair and splashing on her over his shoulder and making Natasha catch her breath. The water, Clint's hands, and his breath all competed for the hottest thing on her skin, contrasting starkly with the cold air from outside somehow bleeding into the shower snaking up her side.

Natasha felt her breath speed up as she leaned into the wall of the shower, trying to support herself against Clint. She kissed his throat as he undid her bra, casting it thoughtlessly aside. His hands pressed into her shoulder blades, bleeding warmth into her, warmth that she felt she had coveted all her life. She pressed into him, not caring that water was splashing all over their faces as they kissed each other, not caring that he had given up caring about the truth. Natasha was finally getting what she wanted. Clint was allowing them to once again be in a normal situation, where he called her and they had sex and then she could leave.

She noticed her hands shaking when she tried to pull on his hair. She couldn't quite get a firm enough grip, but she dismissed that as something to do with the water making his hair slick. When her fingers practically rattled against his skin as she tried to slide them down his back, she told herself to get over it, because this was not the time to start reacting like an amateur. When her knees gave way, Natasha knew things were probably a little bit more serious than she wanted to admit.

To her credit, she did a beautiful job of trying to cover herself. She took barely a second of bracing herself against the wall and Clint's hip as she tried to get the world to unblack itself and come into focus, then she looked up at Clint with a mischievous smile that said please please please don't comment act like everything is fine just let me do this.

He did not just let her do it.

"Natasha?" he asked, and it was very clear he saw through her ruse and was now on the edge of panic. "Natasha, hey, are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she said, and she was fairly sure that past the sound of her heart screaming in her ears, she heard herself laugh. Clint was not impressed. But that might have been because she was relying heavily on the wall to keep her upright, rather than her acting.

He took hold of her hand and tried to pull her up. Natasha bit her cheek, and looked away. She wasn't entirely sure she could stand up.

Clint didn't move for a moment, and she wondered if this was the part where he sent her home, or demanded a discount, or began being barbaric in some other terrible way. She closed her eyes, suddenly so ashamed and angry with herself that she could hardly think. Natasha didn't even know why she was so upset, she just was and she couldn't get up because she had no strength and she couldn't snap at Clint because he had done nothing wrong and she couldn't stand being angry at him and she couldn't fake her way through it because she was a half starved prostitute, sitting largely naked in some cheap motel bathroom while her client stood over her, confused and panicked.

Clint crouched down beside her. With him out of the way, the water was free to hit her directly on the head, causing it to stream down her face. She shook her head instinctively and wiped the water away before turning to face the wall. Natasha could feel Clint watching her, bright blue eyes taking in everything.

"Can you stand?" he asked. His voice was soft as he spoke, completely free of judgment. She turned just enough to look at him out of the corner of her eye and chewed her lip.

"I...don't know. Not without help."

He nodded, looking down somewhere between their knees.

"When did you eat last?"

"Not long before I came here."

He gave her a look.

"What did you eat last?"

"An apple."

"And before that?"

"...A muffin. For breakfast."

Natasha closed her eyes when he hissed out a sigh, and she suddenly found herself stiffening, pulling back in on herself, trying to become smaller. Not that it would do her much good, with him literally right there in front of her.

Clint sighed again, though this time it wasn't so much a frustrated sigh as a resigned one. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to the soft tone from earlier.

"We're going to get out of the shower now, okay?" She nodded, not caring that he was talking to her like she was a toddler, and not caring that she was responding like one.

he helps her dry off, helps her get her feet under her.

Clint settled one hand on her elbow and the other on her waist, and slowly guided her until she was upright. She flinched from the cold when he pulled back the curtain, and he froze for a moment, worried that she might collapse again.

He got the two of them out of the shower, and grabbed a towel for Natasha. She wrapped it around herself, unable to keep from shaking as she watched him grab another. He dried off her arm and shoulders, and even had a handful of her hair in the towel before seeming to think about it. Clint paused, then let her hair go. He settled the towel around her shoulders, hands resting on her shoulders for a moment. His eyes were pouring into hers, searching intently for something. Natasha looked back at him, trying to hide at least a bit of herself from his gaze, but at this point, she wasn't really sure what there was left to hide.

Clint turned away and shut off the water, then grabbed a towel for himself.

"You should...you should go dry off," he said, voice sounding so, so tired. Natasha nodded, then stumbled out of the bathroom.

The main room was dark as she carefully toweled off by the table. She finished in a couple of moments, but wrapped the towel back around herself. Everything felt suddenly freezing, now that she was out of the grasp of Clint and the hot water.

Clint came out of the bathroom, once again wearing pants. She wanted to avoid his eye, but she couldn't help but look at him, couldn't help but search for what would happen next in his face.

"If you wanna get out of those, we can probably get them dry before morning."

She jumped at his words, then glanced down at her underwear. Natasha gave an uncertain nod, and pulled off her last trace of clothing.

To Clint's ever increasing credit, he didn't linger. He didn't watch her like she was a freak show, like she was too pathetic to tear his eyes from. He moved on to rustling around the kitchen, giving her plenty of time to rewrap herself in the towel, and place her underwear with the rest of her clothes.

When she came back, he had food on the table. She glanced over the take out containers of once ornately placed rice, noodles, vegetables, and meat, then looked at Clint. He wasn't looking at her, but was instead searching a bag on the table for something. Natasha sat at the table, but didn't speak.

"All I've got is some left over Thai, but it should do. Here," he said, offering her a fork. Natasha took it, then looked back at the food.

They didn't say much for the rest of the night. Natasha continued staring at the take out container until Clint broke the tension by popping a piece of chicken into his mouth. She hesitated a moment longer, then sank her fork in. In between bites, she looked at Clint. His expression was mild, though tired. And something else. There was something there that she couldn't quite understand, and she was too tired to try.

At one point, Clint got up from the table. Natasha watched him for a moment, eyes dull, then returned to her task. When he came back, he set down a cup of water before her, saying, "This might help it go down easier."

She grunted out a thank you, and took a drink from the cup. The water tasted tinny and diluted the flavor of the food, but she was still glad for it.

With Clint's occasional help, Natasha finished off the rest of the Thai. It was slow going, as she had the feeling that the sick sensation in her stomach wasn't just from embarrassment. As it was, her small dinner was weighing down her stomach, pushing at her insides.

Typical. When I finally do eat, it makes me wish I hadn't, she thought, forcing herself to sip the water.

When she set down her fork, Clint nodded at her.

"I'll clean up."

She nodded at him, hearing his silent message. You go lay down. She was frankly too tired to care about the implications.

Natasha pushed herself up from the table, and made a quick stop in the bathroom. She rinsed her face, trying to wash some of the shame and the smell of Asian food off of her skin. She used the towel wrapped around her to dry her face, then hung it up. She did not look in the mirror again.

Clint was still taking care of the remnants of their meal when Natasha climbed into the bed. She closed her eyes and let her body just settle into the mattress and pillows.

It was very, very hard not to think.

he doesn't touch her. this time, it is perfect and wonderful and just right.

A few moments later, Natasha heard Clint walk towards the bed. There was the all too familiar rustling of him taking off his clothing, then he got in bed. There was a moment where he stayed still, a sterile swathe of sheet between them, and she wondered if this was it, if this was the moment where she ruined everything and lost the one vaguely enjoyable thing she had in her life.

The moment stretched on, and she resigned herself to this cold, broken, solitary state.

Then Clint rolled over and draped his arm over her side. Nothing more, nothing less. His bare skin was on her bare skin, and he was not asking nor demanding nor paying for more. No sex, no answers, no stories, no secrets.

Natasha was thankful that it was so dark, because she couldn't help a nearly pained expression crossing her face. This felt good, this above everything else. Better than seeing him, better than him giving in and allowing her to earn his money, better than everything.

She just wished that it came without all of the strings that so neatly wrapped up her life.

AN THIS CHAPTER I CAN'T EVEN. UGH CLINT BABY. UGH NATASHA BABY.

In terms of love, this chapter is on par with the haircut one. It was beautiful and painful and so marvelous to write. I can't express how excited I am right now, though. Things are gathering momentum at a really rapid rate, and I can't wait for you guys to see what I have in store.

With that said, though, keep in mind that things will have to get worse before they can get better for Natasha. But, stick with me and I will guide you all safely through to the other side ;)