So we've got the second part of Clint and Natasha's slumber party weekend and I think you guys are going to really like this chapter ;). Enjoy!
When Clint awoke the next morning, he was lying on his stomach on the couch with his arm dangling over the side. The first thing he saw was Natasha sleeping peacefully on the air mattress with her knee still properly elevated. Her red curls were splayed out on the pillow that she rested her head on and her chest rose and fell with every breath she took.
The second thing Clint noticed was how close their hands were to touching. Her arm was limply stretched out towards Clint's with her palm facing the ceiling. If Clint moved his hand less than a couple inches away from the edge of the couch, he could reach her hand. And yet, he didn't.
With a groan, Clint pushed himself up into a sitting position before pushing off of the couch and tip toeing to the kitchen to get something to eat for breakfast. Staring blankly into the refrigerator, he grabbed the gallon of milk and poured himself a glass. Leaving the milk on the counter, he grabbed a box of Cheerios from the cabinet and poured himself a bowl.
As he was putting away the milk, he saw Barney stumble into the kitchen, scratching the back of his head. Barney looked around in a daze before focusing his gaze on Clint.
"Morning drunky," Clint said.
"Shut up," Barney grumbled. He pulled the coffee maker away from the wall and started to prepare it to make coffee. Clint watched Barney fumble to put the filter into the coffee maker. When he finally succeeded, he put in the rest of the ingredients to make coffee and pressed the start button to begin brewing it.
Immediately, the sweet aroma of freshly made coffee began to waft throughout the kitchen. Barney grabbed a cereal bowl from the cabinet and Clint slid the box of Cheerios over to his brother. As Barney was pouring himself a bowl, Clint grabbed the gallon of milk from the fridge and handed it to his brother.
The two Barton boys stood in the kitchen in silence, the only sound of them noisily chewing their cereal and drip of the coffee brewing. When the coffee was finished brewing, Barney put down his bowl of cereal, grabbed a mug from one of the cabinets, and poured some coffee into it. When he took a sip from the mug, Barney moaned with delight and resumed eating his cereal.
"So, you want to tell me what was going on between you and Red in there last night?" Barney asked, nodding his head towards the living room.
"First off, she has a name and it's Natasha. Second, what the hell are you talking about?" Clint asked irritated.
"You guys have this weird sexual tension going on between the two of you," Barney said. "Like you're not quite friends but you're not quite dating either. I don't know, but whatever I walked in on last night was not a friendship thing."
"What? A boy and a girl can't playfully fight over an Xbox controller?" Clint asked.
"No. At least not the two of you. Dad told me you're, like, in love with her and I could tell, just from the few seconds I saw her last night, that she's in love with you too."
"What? No, that's ridiculous! She's engaged!" Clint exclaimed.
"That means absolutely nothing. Honestly, baby brother, you act like you haven't watched any movies or TV shows," Barney said as he shook his head in disbelief.
"Yeah, this isn't a movie or a TV show. This is life," Clint shot back.
"It doesn't have to be," Barney said with a smirk. With that, he swiped his mug of coffee and his bowl of cereal from the counter and headed out of the kitchen.
It felt like an eternity until Clint pried his eyes away from the doorway of the kitchen; he had been staring at it ever since Barney disappeared through it what only felt like moments ago. Clint's family knew that he had a lot of feelings towards Natasha, but he never thought she would possess feelings for him, let alone reciprocate them.
Clint picked up his half eaten bowl of cereal and headed into the living room just in time to see Natasha pushing herself into an upright position. She pushed the stray curls out of her face and rubbed the sleep from one of her eyes before she noticed Clint standing in the doorway.
"Oh hey, morning," she said with a small smile.
"Hey," Clint said as he set his bowl of cereal on an end table. "Do you want something for breakfast?"
"No thanks, but, umm, actually, I need to pee," she said hesitantly.
It took Clint a couple of seconds to realize what she actually meant. At first he just wanted to point her in the direction of the bathroom and tell her to go right ahead. But when Clint realized the one and only bathroom that was in their house was upstairs, it finally clicked for him.
Even though she was perfectly capable of going up the front steps by herself, it was only a couple of steps. To reach the bathroom, she would have to go up an entire flight of stairs. She could do it by herself but it would take her a while.
"Umm, okay, do you want help getting upstairs?" Clint asked uneasily.
"No, I want to crawl upstairs like an infant who's just learning how to use the stairs," Natasha said sarcastically. She whipped the covers off of her body and pushed herself to the edge of the air mattress. "Actually, while I'm up there, is it okay if I take a shower too?" Clint nodded his head. "Okay, can you hand me my bag then?"
Clint nodded and he grabbed her bag from where it laid at the foot of the stairs. He set it down next to her on top of the air mattress and she began rummaging around in it for a change of clothes and some toiletries. When she had grabbed all of her necessary items, she looked at Clint as if to tell him she was ready to go upstairs.
"Well, how do you want to do this?" he asked.
"Oh for God's sake, just pick me up and carry me," she said confidently.
Clint stared at her blankly. Picking her up and carrying her upstairs was quite possibly the most intimate thing she could ask him to do and Clint worried that if he even touched her in the slightest, Alexei would somehow know. Clint knew Natasha would never tell Alexei, but he feared that Alexei had some sixth sense that he could tell if someone else touched Natasha.
Then again, the tone of her voice and the look in her eye convinced Clint that she wanted his arms around her. Clint wanted her in his arms too but the physical contact would be far too personal for their friendship. Or relationship. Whatever it was that they had.
"O-okay, umm, just…pick you up?" he asked.
Natasha rolled her eyes and then nodded her head. Clint hesitated to step forward and scoop her up in his arms. But eventually, he did. He carefully put his one arm underneath the backs of her legs while the other rested around her back. He hoisted her up and he immediately felt her arm snake around the back of his neck. It took every bit of energy to not jump at that action as he headed towards the stairs.
He knew that if his brother or his parents caught them like this, they would definitely be suspicious so Clint took the stairs two at a time. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, he was winded. Natasha really didn't weigh that much, but the extra weight definitely contributed to it. When they reached the bathroom, Clint carefully set her down on the floor and shadowed her to make sure she had her balance.
"Okay, so towels are in here, along with the washcloths," Clint said, pointing to the closet. "You can use any of the shampoo and soap that's in there."
"I'm good. Got my own," she said, shaking a bottle of shampoo that she had brought upstairs with her.
"Okay, umm, I'll just be, umm, out here," Clint said, nodding his head towards the hallway. Natasha nodded as he backed out of bathroom and closed the door behind him. He leaned against the wall outside of the bathroom and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Yeah, it won't be long until the two of you are fucking," Clint heard his brother say. He searched around the hallway until his eyes fell on his brother standing in the doorway to his bedroom.
"Mind your own goddamn business or I'll tell Mom the reason you can't pay for your tuition next semester is because you spend it all on pot," Clint shot back.
Barney scowled at his younger brother before slamming his bedroom door in a huff.
Clint and Natasha spent the rest of their day on the living room couch watching movies. Clint's dad was the owner of an extensive DVD collection so there was a lot for the two teenagers to choose from. Clint pulled a stack of DVDs from the shelf and took them over to Natasha – who was situated on the couch due to her injury – so she could pick out a movie. She searched through the stack of movies before settling on two different movies. She couldn't decide so she handed them to Clint and told him to surprise her.
Clint grabbed the movies and took them over to the DVD player to pop one of them in. He grabbed the remotes for the TV and DVD player and then rushed back to the couch and flopped down on it. The DVD reached the main menu and Clint pressed play to start the movie.
Though they sat in silence as they watched the movie, Clint couldn't help but glance over at Natasha out of the corner of his eye every so often. When he wasn't looking at her, he felt like he could feel her eyes on him as well.
Movie after movie, they never said anything to one another. Once they finished a movie, Clint would get up and put in another one. He would then return to the couch, sit down, and press play to start up the next movie without either of them saying a word to the other.
They were on their fifth movie at about seven o'clock at night when Natasha broke the silence. Out of the corner of his eye, Clint could see Natasha squirm uncomfortably. Her leg had been resting in the same position for the past several hours so it was no doubt stiff and uncomfortable.
"Hey, Clint," she said softly.
"Hmm?" Clint hummed as he turned his head to face her.
"My leg's killing me. Do you mind if I stretch it out on the couch?" she asked.
"Yeah, yeah," Clint said as went to get up from the couch to move to the arm chair.
"You don't have to get up unless you would mind my leg being in your lap," she said with a smirk.
At this point, Clint was pretty convinced that Natasha had a goal for the weekend. What that goal was he wasn't quite sure, but he was definitely convinced she was trying to provoke him in some way or form. Whatever she was trying to accomplish, it was working.
"Oh, umm, yeah, that's fine," Clint said as he sat back down on the couch. Natasha brought her uninjured leg up onto the couch first before gently swinging her injured leg up to rest in Clint's lap. She pushed herself up so that she was sitting comfortably and so that her leg wasn't disturbing Clint.
"You're okay with this?" she asked.
"Yeah, it's fine," Clint said, waving his hand to brush it off. Natasha nodded and then returned her attention back to the movie. Out of the corner of his eye, Clint could see Natasha trying to fend off a smile but failed miserably.
As much as he didn't want to admit it, maybe his brother was right. Maybe Natasha really did have feelings for him.
It was later that night, in the wee hours of the morning, when Clint and Natasha had ended up just lying on the air mattress, talking about random things in their life. Clint's parents and his brother had gone off to bed hours ago so it was just Clint and Natasha awake at the moment. How they got onto the topic of random things in their lives, they weren't sure, but they were learning more and more about the other than they could've ever guessed.
Natasha learned that Clint got a concussion from a time that he fell backwards off of his grandparents' deck at a family picnic. She learned that he hated hip-hop and rap music because of all the times when his brother would blast the music when they shared a room when they were younger. She learned that he despised spiders and it was mostly because of the scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when Harry and Ron meet Aragog in the Forbidden Forest.
She learned that he has a crush on Tina Fey because of her ability to od everything on the set of 30 Rock, including write, produce, and star in it. Not to mention that she created the show. She learned that Clint smoked pot but it wasn't very often. He also made sure to mention that he didn't do any other drugs.
Clint learned that Natasha started doing ballet when she was three years old because her mother had forced her. At first, she didn't want to go, but over the years, she came to love it. Clint learned that Natasha was also almost forced to compete in pageants at the age of six but she had put her foot down on that one.
Clint learned that she favored her father over her mother because, surprisingly, he was much more sympathetic towards her feelings. He learned that she had never broken any bones in her body but she had had countless injuries over the years. She has had three sprained ankles, six sprained wrists, one dislocated shoulder, and a complete ACL tear in her right knee.
"I almost didn't dance again," she said quietly. "But that was at a time when I was still in love with ballet."
"Are you accident prone or something?" he teased.
"No," she said with a laugh. "Dancers and athletes just tend to get injured more often because of how dedicated they are." She flicked her hair over her shoulder and then flashed a smirk in Clint's direction. She then laughed before saying, "I actually have a really crazy scar from the surgery. Want to see it?"
Clint shrugged his shoulders. Natasha pulled at the pant leg of her yoga pants and rolled it up to reveal an angry looking scar that ran from the base of her knee to a couple inches above it. Nowadays, knee surgeries were done by making small incisions. She must've done some really bad damage to it for the surgeons to have to completely open it.
"Shit," Clint said, leaning forward to get a better look at it. "That looks like it really hurt."
"It wasn't so bad," Natasha said. Clint turned his head and his blue-grey eyes connected with Natasha's stunning green ones. His eyes searched hers before he slowly leaned in and softly pressed his lips to hers.
"Sorry, sorry," Clint said when he quickly pulled away. He turned his head because he wasn't sure if he wanted to face her. It had gone too far this time. It didn't matter if she had feelings for him. She was engaged and his conscience was telling him it was wrong. It was so very, very wrong.
"Clint," she said softly. He turned to look at her and he expected her be slightly angry. Instead, his lips met hers again as she crushed her lips against his. This time, Clint wasn't as nervous, and it was mostly due to the fact that she was the one who had instigated the kiss. But in the back of his mind, his conscience was nagging him that this was wrong.
But he ignored that as he felt Natasha lean back onto the air mattress. Wrapping her arms around him, she dragged him down with her. As she fell back against the mattress, the kiss became more passionate, more romantic. Clint put more of an effort behind it now that he knew that she wanted it. His lips searched hers and Natasha grew more aggressive. Every so often she would playfully bite Clint's lower lip and then giggle when Clint was startled by it.
Clint slowed down the kiss when his conscience started to nag him again. Eventually he pulled away from Natasha, only to see her green eyes sparkling back at him.
"What is this, Natasha? What are we?" Clint asked.
"Whatever you want it to be," she purred as she placed a hand behind Clint's neck and pulled him down to kiss him again. Clint kissed her back only because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. When they were finished, he pulled back again to see her excited green eyes.
"No, really Natasha. What is this? You're engaged - ."
"So? He cheats on me all the time," she interjected.
"So you're going to use me to fight fire with fire?" Clint shot back, arching an eyebrow.
"No, Clint, no. I didn't mean for it to come out like that," she said with a sigh. "I like you. I like you, and not just as a friend, but I don't know how to get out of the mess I've gotten myself into."
"Just end it with him," Clint ordered.
"I wish it were that simple," she sighed.
"Well, no, it's never simple. But maybe if you tried it, you wouldn't feel so guilty," he said.
"I don't feel guilty. I don't feel guilty about this one bit," she grumbled. Clint tilted his head as he looked at her in confusion. "You know that I don't love him. I don't even remotely like him. I can't feel guilty about this unless I have feelings for him. I have feelings for him alright, but none of them are positive."
Clint shook his head. "You have to end it. This isn't healthy. You shouldn't be in a relationship where you're not happy."
"And you think I'll be happy with you?" she asked, arching one of her eyebrows.
"I don't want to be selfish so I'm not going to say that. To tell you the truth, I just want you to be happy," Clint said. It was extremely deep and personal. Yes, he wanted her to be with him, but really, he just wanted her to be happy. If she was happy with him, then so be it. If she was happy with someone that wasn't him, then so be it.
"Would I be a horrible person if I said I'm happy right now?" she said with a smirk.
Clint couldn't help the smile that spread across his face when she said that. Maybe he did make her happy but he couldn't be selfish in thinking that. He didn't want to think too positively. There was no telling if she was going to rip the rug out from underneath him.
"Clint, I know this seems bad, but you make me feel different when I'm around you. You treat me differently and you look at me differently. I didn't think I'd fall in love with you," she said.
Clint's jaw dropped at that last bit. Did he hear her right? He wasn't dreaming, was he? She had fallen in love with him. She wasn't just smitten with him. She didn't just have these little things called feelings for him. She was in love with him. Well, she was just full of surprises tonight.
"Don't act so surprised. Even your brother could see it," she said. Clint's eyes opened wide in shock. "Yeah, I was awake during that conversation you guys had in the kitchen."
Clint chuckled. "Okay, fine, so where do we go from here?"
"How about you kiss me again and you let me worry about Alexei, okay?" she asked as she put her hand on the back of his neck again and pulled him down towards her lips but leaving just enough space in between them.
"What are you going to do about it?" he asked.
"I told you to let me worry about it," she said and then she pulled him closer to her so that their lips could connect. The more they kissed, the more the guilt dissipated. Maybe he could be okay with this. To tell the truth, even if she didn't end things with Alexei, he would be okay with it. He wasn't okay with her using him to fight fire with fire, but Clint realized Alexei needed a taste of his own medicine.
They kissed until they grew tired, and when they awoke in the morning, they resumed what they didn't finish. Clint didn't care if his parents were judging him or if Barney was telling him "I told you so." Clint didn't even care that his neighbors were possibly watching him as he kissed her goodbye when her cab came to pick her up. There was nothing he liked more than the feel of her lips against his and the feeling that there were no secrets between them any longer.
What? They kissed? But Natasha's still with Alexei and she wants to be with Clint. Oh what a tangled web I weave. So I'll leave you guys with that until next time (Thursday).
As always, thank you for adding this to your favorites, signing up for alerts, and reviewing. Reviews are very much appreciated so please leave me a review to let me know what you think!