Many thanks, as ever, to all you lovely people here - I appreciate each and every one of your reviews and comments and favorites and follows so very, very much! Thank you!
Some sleepy sex in this part, and then the plot for the second half of this thing get properly underway. I hope you're enjoying this half as much as I did in writing it! If you've a minute, I"d love to hear what you think!
She didn't know what woke her up at first.
It wasn't yet dawn (and they'd drawn the blinds anyway), their phones were off, and she didn't need to use the bathroom. Maybe she'd heard a noise; it wasn't uncommon for Tony to blow something up in the middle of the night. She peered over her shoulder at Clint, to see if he was awake, too, but since he was still out cold, it probably wasn't Tony.
Clint's fingers dug reflexively into her hip when she shifted, and it was at that moment she realized what had roused her - he was hard as a rock, and when she moved her hips, he pressed his erection more tightly against her, sliding between her bare thighs.
Oh, fuck that was nice.
She could tell from the rhythm of his breathing that he was still asleep, that he was unconsciously seeking her warmth. They had a lot to do in the morning, a lot of shit to deal with and, by all rights, she should be prying him off of her, moving away and going back to sleep, but the insistent movements he was making just served to turn her on, to make her wet and needy and breathless, and she was just groggy enough that she sank into him instead of moving away.
His hands were on her belly, holding her in place as he moved against her. Moaning low in her throat, she grabbed his hand and pushed deeper into his embrace. His breathing changed, and she could tell that he had woken up, at least a little. She felt him adjust behind her, and his cock teased at her entrance, sliding up and down along her slit. She dropped her hand between her legs to stroke her clit.
"I was dreaming about you," he breathed against her ear, and she couldn't remember a time when she'd wanted him more than this. He stopped his teasing immediately at her responding moan, slid right into her wetness with a satisfied grunt, and damn it all, but she was already close, could already feel herself tightening up around him. His right hand skimmed up her belly to fondle her breasts, and she arched into his touch, whispered words of encouragement as he fucked her.
"I love being in you," he said lowly in her ear, and the growl of his sleep roughened voice sent a shock through her system, one that rippled all the way to her toes. "You're so fucking hot."
She shouldn't be so turned on by the words; she'd heard them all before, but here and now, with this man, her partner, the father of the child growing inside of her, all it made her do was gasp for air and move her hips more insistently. He couldn't possibly be deep enough inside of her, couldn't possibly be hard enough, couldn't make her feel enough, and the hand between her legs sped up, touching her clit quicker and harder.
He must have been feeling the same desperation that she felt because the next thing he rasped was, "I need you on top of me."
She was all too eager to comply, twisting out of his embrace and forcing him with one sure hand onto his back. She could just make out his features in the low light, could make out the open mouth that accompanied the gasping noises he was making, and she thought she might come from the way he panted her name alone.
She straddled him, and his hands rose to her hips, stroked the skin there. He moved one hand between them, grabbing his cock at the base, and together, they steered him back toward her pussy. Slowly, carefully, as if this were something important or special (it was), he pushed the head of his cock into her. He stopped moving then, let her take over, and she'd never appreciated more his ability to read her mood because at this moment all she wanted to do was fuck him senseless, to take him, to ravish him, to make him come so hard his brain shorted out.
She sank onto his length with as much restraint as she could, slowing herself down to a crawl even though she wanted to sprint, even though she wanted to drop her entire weight on him and feel him hit the deepest part of her. She was rewarded by the choked noise he made as she slid down his cock, by the way his hands flew up to her breasts to play with her painfully sensitive nipples.
When her ass was finally resting on his thighs, she said, "I love the way you feel inside of me," and she felt him twitch as he writhed beneath her. His grip shifted when she rolled her hips, and she arched her back, her hands falling onto his knees for support. She raised herself up off him, almost to the point that he slid out of her, but then she dropped back down, taking him fully in one solid stroke, a vivid contrast between her earlier motions.
He was reduced to a litany of her name and affirmations, crying out to a deity she knew he didn't believe in, cursing anything and everything that she did. She felt powerful, in control, and there were few times in her life when she'd ever felt surer about anything than the decision to have a child with this man.
Shockingly, that thought only increased her desires, only made her wetter, only sped up her actions as she moved over him. She pitched forward, bracing one hand on the pillow next to his head, the other over his racing heart, and she claimed his mouth with hers. His tongue darted out against her lips, begging her for the entrance, and he searched her mouth wildly.
The ache low in her belly started to grow. She could feel the warmth and the tightness spread along the length of her spine, through her hips and thighs, right down to the tips of her toes. She was close, so very close, and then his sure fingers found her clit.
"I'm going to come," she managed, breaking away from the slick heat of his mouth only for a moment. She felt his answering grin, felt the way his hand sped up between their bodies, the way he added another finger to tease her as he fucked her. He shifted on the bed, drew his knees up and placed his feet flat on the mattress. Despite their positions, it felt like she'd given up all control to him, but instead of minding or resenting it, she let herself go, let herself enjoy the moment.
His thrusts grew ever more erratic as he pushed into her, and she knew he was close, too, could already tell that this was going to be explosive, that she might die from the pleasure of this release.
He whispered, "I love you," against her mouth, and it was all over for her. She shouted and rippled against him as she came, and she'd always thought it a terrible cliché, but she saw stars behind her eyelids as she bucked artlessly against him. For his part, he bit her lip, moaning through his own orgasm. Time stretched out between them, pleasure bouncing back and forth between them endlessly, and she could scarcely believe how lucky she was to have this life.
When it was over, when she sagged against his chest, his softening cock still buried inside of her, he stroked the side of her belly, kissed her slowly, nipping her lips and her tongue. Her heart swelled with a depth of emotion she did not fully recognize in herself.
"Love you, too," she said, and his fingers tightened against her sides.
She didn't wake up completely until she was already halfway to the bathroom, her body long since used to sprinting the steps between her bed and the toilet.
It made the whole situation feel strangely real to have Clint there with her when she straightened up. He flushed the toilet and handed her a cup of water.
"Seems like you've got that down to an art," he said wryly.
She shrugged. "I've been throwing up a lot."
He pulled her into his arms, tucked her under his chin, and she let him rock her in their bathroom. It felt pretty damn good.
"You still want to do this?" he asked quietly, like he wasn't sure he'd heard her right the night before.
She held him tighter and pressed her lips against his chest. "Yeah," she said. "As long as you are." She leaned back and looked at him. "Are you sure?"
He grinned at her. "Hell, yes. I'm great at babies."
She rolled her eyes and swatted him. "In that case, Hawkass, I'm going to let you change all the diapers."
It was a sign of how serious he was about wanting this that he didn't even protest.
He was feeling fairly loopy on their way down to breakfast.
Well, lunch, actually, but who was checking?
He'd woken up with a sore face, and he kind of thought it had something to do with the way he couldn't stop smiling .The fact of the matter was that from the moment that they found out that she wasn't dying, from the second the words left Bruce's mouth, he'd been over the damn moon. Just for Natasha to be okay was enough, was more than enough, but this, this was something else.
He held her hand on the way down to the common area, pulling her into every available alcove to press his hand to her belly and kiss her senseless. Judging from the stupid grin plastered on her face and the way she returned his attentions, she was in the same state.
That mood, the perfect, pure elation that swelled in his heart and made him want to dance his way through the day was killed when they got downstairs.
Tony, Steve, and Bruce were sitting around the table, looking like the world had ended.
"What happened?" Natasha asked, immediately in battle mode. If he'd looked at her then, he knew he would see her eyes flickering over the other members of the team, assessing their responses.
"Fury contacted me twenty minutes ago. They've found something," Rogers said, nodding toward a manilla folder in Stark's hands.
"Something?" Clint asked, leaning on the table by Stark's elbow. Tony shifted slightly in his seat so he could see more easily.
They were satellite images mostly, of what looked to be a massive industrial complex in the middle of the jungle. Clint squinted at the photos. The jungle was dense, thick, but it didn't look like the Congo or the Amazon or any of the half dozen other tropical locales he'd been to in his life.
Natasha leaned in over Stark's other shoulder. "Where is this?" she asked.
"Antarctica," Stark said flatly.
Clint exchanged a bewildered glance with Natasha. "Antarctica? Since when are there jungles at the South Pole?"
Stark leafed through the rest of the images, spreading them out in front of him on the table. He pulled one of the pages out, a spy satellite close up of a man.
Or, what used to be a man. He didn't look like any man Clint had ever seen, present company included. It almost looked like he didn't have any skin on his face, just bare flesh poured over bone; his face was nothing more than gleaming red flesh.
"Since this guy showed up again," Stark said, handing him the picture.
"Who is this?" Clint asked.
"The Red Skull," Natasha answered at the same time that Steve said, "Johann Schmidt."
Clint recognized the name from Rogers' files. "I thought he died," he said. "I remember reading that he was on that plane with you, Cap, when you went down over the water."
Rogers shrugged one shoulder. "The tesseract was on that plane, too. Schmidt tried to use it, and when he touched it, he . . . dissolved. I thought he wasdead." Rogers looked up at Clint then, a curious look in his eye. "But then, the tesseract is capable of some pretty strange things."
Wasn't that the truth.
Clint nodded, pushing aside the residual feelings of guilt that would probably always plague him at mentions of the Asgardian device. There was no sense in dwelling on it, even if he always unintentionally froze anytime someone referred to it. He knew that it was a dangerous tell, particularly for someone in his line of work. He'd been working to rid himself of it, but judging from the slight frown on Natasha's face, he needed to work harder. He smiled grimly at her, trying to assuage her worry, but he knew she would corner him the second she got the chance.
"So Schmidt is back from the dead, and what, exactly? What's the facility for?" Clint asked.
"Fury doesn't know, but he wants us to find out," Rogers said. "He thinks it might be connected to HYDRA's recent interest in industrial grade diamonds."
Clint blinked. "Diamonds?"
Banner was the one who responded this time. "Something I noticed, actually, through my own research when I encountered roadblocks in obtaining a sufficient supply for . . ." Realizing that he was rambling, Banner cleared his throat and started over. "I contacted SHIELD a few months ago about it. Apparently, HYDRA has been taking over major diamond mines in Africa and Asia. Whatever they need them for, they've all but shut out all other potential buyers in the market."
Clint debated for a moment before deciding to share what he knew. "I know," he said. "About HYDRA and the diamond mines."
Everyone but Natasha and Stark looked surprised.
He'd already told Natasha all about it, of course, but Stark just said, "I figured Fury sent you to Botswana for a good reason."
Clint had long since learned not to be surprised when Stark knew more about SHIELD operations than he should.
"And?" Banner prompted. "Find anything interesting?"
Clint shook his head. "SHIELD sent me in for recon to confirm the HYDRA presence at the site."
"Which you did," Rogers said.
Clint nodded. Stark twisted in his seat to look up at him. "Just to confirm their presence? Nothing else, Master Assassin?"
Clint set his jaw. The details of his and Natasha's jobs with SHIELD had been one of the points of contention between them, and it probably always would be. Stark wasn't stupid; he understood that sometimes bad things had to be done in the pursuit of the greater good, but that didn't mean he had to like the idea of necessary evils. It certainly didn't mean that Stark wouldn't poke at him every chance he got.
Clint knew that Stark couldn't help himself from picking at open wounds. He knew that Stark found some kind of strange validation from pointing out the flaws that made others just as imperfect as he. That, however, didn't make Clint want to punch the man less when it was his own turn for the infamous Stark laser focus.
He tried to force himself to relax. Stark, for all the blood he had on his hands, it was somewhat more indirect. He didn't understand what it meant to have as much red in his ledger as Clint did; he had no idea what it meant to be personally, physically responsible for the number of deaths that Clint was responsible for. Clint had been there, had seen the faces of the people he'd killed. For the most part, that wasn't true for Stark. Stark's nightmares weren't filled with visions of the death throes of men and women bleeding out around an arrow through their throat.
Briefly, his thoughts flickered to Natasha and the child growing inside of her. He couldn't help but think that maybe they shouldn't, after all. Maybe the baby would be better off without two people like them for parents.
Natasha reached out then, put her hand on his arm before he could say or do something stupid. "Can it, Stark," she said. "Barton did what he needed to do."
Thankfully, Stark let it drop.
Clint breathed out. He needed to get a fucking grip. Stark didn't mean it, or, at least, didn't mean it the way that it was received. Tony had a pathological need to meddle, and Clint should know better than to let him wind him up this way.
"So what does Fury want us to do?" Natasha asked, taking the focus away from Clint. "Recon? Blow the place up?"
Rogers' mouth was set in a firm line. "All of the above, was the impression I got." Steve looked around the room quickly. "We were just discussing whether we wanted to do it when you got here."
At the question no doubt apparent in his eyes, Banner interjected, "JARVIS informed us that you two were already on your way down, or we would have called you."
Clint tilted his head in thanks. He looked over at Natasha, who was chewing thoughtfully on her lip.
"I wonder if James knows anything about this," she said.
Steve frowned. "You think he might?"
She nodded. "It seems awfully coincidental to me that James would show up suddenly, looking for a leading research scientist at the same time that HYDRA was building a secret Antarctic base."
"You don't think he was trying to kill Marino, do you?" Banner said, getting up from his seat.
She shook her head. "No, I don't. And I'd be willing to bet that the mysterious employer he's so twitchy about it HYDRA."
"Let's go find out, then, shall we?" Stark said.
Letting the others step out of the room in front of them, Natasha grabbed his arm and pulled him back slightly, slowing his steps. With an eye to the others, she spoke in a whisper. "You okay?"
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it lightly, grateful that she noticed his hesitation back there. "Yeah," he murmured, nodding firmly. "Fine."
She squinted at him a little bit as if discerning whether he was telling the truth. Satisfied, she smiled and squeezed back. "Well, you know who to call if you want someone punched in the face."
Yeah, he did.
He chuckled softly under his breath as they walked down the corridor, moving more quickly to catch up to the team.
Barnes was asleep when they got to his cell, but he woke quickly, springing to his feet at the sound of the door sliding open. Rogers, Stark, and Banner stayed behind in the anteroom, just as they had before, but Clint followed Natasha inside. Maybe it made him a caveman, and maybe he was having second thoughts about the whole thing, but there was no way in hell he was letting Natasha walk into that room alone.
Barnes stepped toward the bars as Natasha approached.
"This the boyfriend?" Barnes asked, sizing Clint up. Clint fought the urge to smirk. If Barnes thought that would get a rise out of Nat, he had another thing coming. He didn't exactly mind being her called her boyfriend; even if it was stupid, the moniker fit. All the same, he was glad that she wasn't the sort to that kind of thing distract her from the task at hand.
"That's not your concern," she said.
"Why are you here?" Barnes asked, a little calmer than he appeared the last time he and Natasha had been here, when he'd watched her talk to her old friend through the two way mirror. Calmer, yes, but still not the sort to beat around the bush. Clint realized that his straightforwardness was a sign of respect, much like it was with Natasha. They didn't bother to mince words with each other, just came right out and said what they were thinking.
"What were you doing in Rome?" she asked. "Why did you want Marino dead?"
Bewilderment ghosted across Barnes' face, but he recovered quickly. If he didn't have so much experience in reading micro-expressions, Clint doubted that he would have noticed.
"My mission in Rome was not to kill Marino. It never was."
Clint pushed off the wall where he'd been leaning, and walked closer to the bars, standing close to Natasha. "What was it then?"
Barnes flicked his eyes back and forth, as if making a decision. At last, he said, "My employer wanted him alive for some facility or something. He didn't say much, just that he needed someone with Marino's specific expertise."
"Expertise?" Natasha asked.
Barnes shrugged. "I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with bioweapons and nuclear energy."
"A bomb?" Clint asked.
Barnes eyed him before answering. "No, I don't think so," he said carefully. "It seemed more like they wanted Marino to harness massive amounts of power, and nuclear energy was the only way they could get enough to juice to test it."
That didn't bode well.
"Who hired you, James?" Natasha asked quietly. "You did not answer when I asked you before."
Barnes closed his eyes and turned away from them. "They'll kill me, Natalia," he said, pacing. "Can't you just be glad that they didn't get Marino?"
"If they know we have you, you're already dead," she said, ignoring his question. What she said was true - HYDRA didn't suffer failures, and by all accounts, they'd gotten that way at least partially because of Schmidt.
"Tell us," she prompted again.
Barnes sighed, a resigned sound from deep within his chest. "HYDRA. I was hired by HYDRA to take Marino to an undisclosed location in Brazil."
Natasha scratched her chin. "When?" she asked.
"I was to meet with my contact in two days," Barnes said. "But that's going to be a little hard, now." He gestured to the bars between them. "Unless I can persuade you to let me out of this cage?"
Neither one of them bothered to respond to the taunt.
Barnes tried another tack. "You're going after them, aren't you? HYDRA?"
"Let me go with you," Barnes said when they didn't respond. Clint could picture the disbelief on the faces of his compatriots watching the proceedings from the other side of the glass.
"Why should we do that?" Natasha asked.
"I can help you," he said. "I've worked for them before. I know how they think."
"So do I," Clint pointed out.
Barnes raised his eyebrow, a gesture eerily similar to Natasha's own. "Maybe you think you do, but you've never worked with them, is my guess. You need me."
He wasn't wrong. All the surveillance and interrogations in the world couldn't match first hand experience. If they wanted to infiltrate that facility in Antarctica and come back alive, they needed someone at least moderately familiar with HYDRA's standard operating procedures.
Natasha turned to look at Clint. "What do you think?" she asked, and he could see where she was heading with this.
"I'll back your play," he said, reconfirming what she already knew anyway.
"He's cuffed the whole time," she said. Clint nodded. "We shoot him if he tries anything." Clint nodded again.
Natasha turned back to Barnes. "We'll see what we can do."
They walked back out of the cell, Clint letting Natasha take the lead. He'd expected to find the other Avengers fuming. He'd expected to see them arguing about whether or not he and Natasha could be trusted anymore if they were so willing to work with someone like the Winter Soldier.
Instead, they were silent, watching Rogers end a call.
"What is it?" Clint asked, noting the look on Rogers' face as he pocketed his cell phone.
"Marino didn't report at the research facility where he works this morning. SHIELD intelligence indicates that he was picked up by HYDRA agents outside a cafe."
"Shit," Stark said, the syllable echoing in the still room.
It was what they were all thinking anyway.