Step 13 is finally heeere! xD
We lost power because of a storm - so it was just raining and we had candles burning and I was drinking tea and AH it was the perfect atmosphere for writing. ^-^
Anyways, obviously our power's back now cause I'm posting this - I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Hope you guys like it too! x)
Clint had a lot to think about during his shower. Namely, what was wrong with Natasha and why she wouldn't tell him. But after mulling over it for a while (i.e., coming up with a list of hideous things that could be going on), he finally decided not to worry about it. Obviously, Natasha had her own way of coping with the problem, and he was sure that if it was something really bad, she would tell him. (Or at least, he was pretty sure.)
As he changed, his mind returned to the Google article. He considered not taking the next Step today, since Natasha was apparently going through some rough times, and now might not be the time to hit on her.
But when he checked the list, he saw that Step 13 was:
13.) Touch them, casually, on the arm or knee when you're talking to them.
And while this idea simultaneously excited him and scared the crap out of him, there was at least one good reason why he should proceed with it:
As he'd already covered, Natasha was pretty protective of her personal space, but right now, touching her might be a good thing. She was dealing with a tough situation, and even though she would never admit it, physical contact might be comforting for her right now.
So Clint decided to go ahead with Step Thirteen. He finished changing, then headed up to the Rec Room where Natasha was waiting.
…
The Rec Room was on the fifth floor of Stark Tower. The entire level was floored with hardwood, and there were few or no windows, probably to avoid glares on all the TV screens. As a result, the rooms were very dim, and had to be lit artificially.
When Clint stepped off the elevator into the hall, he could hear noises coming from one of said TVs, and the flickering light from the screen played on the wall in the hallway. Clint followed the noise through the first doorway.
The main room was furnished with several game tables; a pool table, a foosball table, and a ping-pong table, to name a few. There was a little cocktail bar at one end of the room, and at the other end, a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. Facing the TV was a couch, and on the couch was Natasha Romanoff.
She looked up and smirked at him as he walked in, then muted the TV. Clint stood in the middle of the room for a minute, hands in his pockets, smiling back at her.
"How was your shower?" she asked playfully, quirking an eyebrow.
Clint nodded. "It was good. They have good showers here. They have good everything here. Wait, why do we not live here again?"
"Because Stark lives here," Natasha said promptly.
"Oh, that's right. Forgot about that," Clint quipped. "Guess they have good almost everything here."
Natasha chuckled and shook her head.
"So!" Clint clapped. "What do you wanna play first?" He glanced hopefully at the dartboard on the wall.
"Not darts," Natasha said, standing up. She strode past him, and he caught a whiff of her shampoo.
Focus, Barton.
"What!" he exclaimed, turning toward her. "Why not darts?"
Natasha snorted as she headed towards the game tables."Uhh, because it's literally impossible for you to lose at darts?"
Clint trailed forward in Natasha's wake. "Fair enough. What then?"
Natasha stopped beside a table, then leaned her hip against it and crossed her arms, smirking at him. "Pool."
Clint grinned at her. "Sounds good to me." He joined his partner by the pool table and they both selected cue sticks.
Natasha twisted the billiard chalk on the tip of her stick. "Ready to get your ass kicked, Barton?"
Clint scoffed and shook his head. "As if. Nah, I have a feeling about this game. I think I'm gonna win."
Fifteen minutes later, his feeling turned out to be wrong.
After the first game, they played another round, and Natasha won again.
It wasn't necessarily that Clint was sidetracked by the redhead – Natasha was just really good at pool. They both were, really, but for Natasha, there were more situations on the field where she had to play pool while undercover, so she got more practice than he did.
He wasn't losing because he was watching her… although he certainly was watching her. In pool, there were just so many opportunities for him to look at her without compromising his game – when she stopped to re-chalk her stick, and throw sarcastic lines at him. When she was leaning over the table, preparing to take a shot, the way her brow wrinkled in concentration, and she bit her lip as she focused. And after she made a shot, the triumphant smirk she tossed his way.
"All these victories are going to go to your head," Clint complained after her third win. "Let's play something else."
Natasha leaned against her cue stick and smirked at him, raising her eyebrows. "Afraid you're gonna lose to me again, Barton?"
"Course not," Clint said. "I just wanna play foosball now."
Natasha rolled her eyes but put her cue stick away. "Both of us are bad at foosball."
Clint shrugged. "Well, this is a good chance for us to get better."
"Suit yourself." Natasha headed for the foosball table. "I still say you're trying to get out of losing, though."
"Well, to be fair, you won that last round by a hair," Clint defended himself, following her to the table. "Plus, I'm pretty sure my cue stick was slightly bent. I think it was the one Thor sat on."
(The real reason he was so determined to play foosball was because he knew it would be easier for him to stop staring at Natasha in a more high-energy game.)
He was right. Because, even though neither of them was very good at foosball, they both really got into it, hitting the ball as hard as they could, jumping between the handles, and shouting back and forth to each other. Clint kept grabbing the ends of Natasha's bars to tick her off, and she would retaliate by using her bar to jab him in the stomach.
By the time they had finished three rounds (Clint won two, Natasha one), they were both out of breath and damp with perspiration.
Clint collapsed into the corner of the couch, and Natasha flopped down next to him.
"I really think we're getting better at that game," Clint said, once their breathing had evened out.
Natasha snorted lightly. "Five of my points in that last game were from you hitting the ball into my goal."
"That's because I kept getting confused about which side was mine! Why does it have to keep changing every game?" Clint complained.
Natasha turned her head over to look at him, amusement in her eyes. "I didn't write the rules, hotshot."
Clint grinned. Then he happened to glance down the couch, and it suddenly occurred to him that, even though it was a pretty long couch, Natasha had sat down right next to him. And then he remembered that he'd never gone through with Step 13.
"I wonder what time it is," Natasha was saying.
Clint glanced at his watch. "It's eleven-thirty." He paused. Come on, just do it. "Wanna go see what the others are up to?"
As he spoke, he reached down and grasped her knee.
Natasha's leg jerked, and he snatched his hand back, his face going hot.
Natasha looked swiftly at him. "Don't do that."
Clint was burning with embarrassment – until he detected something in her manner. He saw a flash of something in her eyes, caught a certain quality in her tone, and it gave him pause. Then she looked away, and he lost sight of it.
"Last I heard, Stark and Banner were in the lab," Natasha went on. "I don't know where Steve and Pepper are though – I guess Pepper may have gone down to Stark Industries."
"Yeah, maybe," Clint agreed. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, trying to catch a hint of what he had seen a moment before. He couldn't see it though; and he started to wonder whether he had seen it at all.
Well, there was only one way to be sure…
"We should find out if they're eating lunch yet," Natasha said.
"Why?" Clint asked. "Are you hungry?"
I better be right about this, or else I might be missing a hand by the time I get home.
He reached down and squeezed her leg again.
Natasha jumped, and she turned towards him again. "Stop it!"
And he noticed it again, the tenor of her voice, the spark in her eyes, and this time he was certain.
She was laughing.
And that was when it clicked.
A memory stirred in his mind, a sparring session years before, when he'd discovered something about her by accident. He'd forgotten all about it, and now it had suddenly hit him again.
Natasha Romanoff was ticklish.
Natasha must have seen the realization in his face, because she suddenly drew her legs up to her chest and turned her body towards him on the couch, keeping her knees out of his reach. "Barton," she said, but it didn't sound like she was warning him so much as daring him.
"What?" he asked innocently, a grin spreading across his face.
Natasha's mouth quirked into a smile, and she started steadily backing up towards the opposite end of the couch.
Clint's grin broadened.
In one fluid motion, Clint grabbed her ankles and dragged her toward him. She cried out in surprise as she fell onto her back, and then he launched himself forward, landing with his hands on the couch on either side of her, and his face inches from hers.
Natasha's eyes went wide, and her breathing quickened. Then she laughed lightly. "Get off, you dummy!" she exclaimed; but she made no move to push him away.
There was one small sane part of Clint's mind that was screaming at him to stop, that he was coming on way too strong. But then Natasha was laughing again, and he could feel her breath on his face, and a challenge was sparkling in her eyes. And his pulse rate was spiking, and he could feel her body heat issuing off of her as she watched him, waiting for him to act.
So he convinced himself that they were just playing, that he was just teasing her as a friend. And then he dropped onto her and grabbed her wrists.
Then she did start struggling. "Barton," she panted. "I swear, I'm gonna kill you!"
Clint just laughed, redoubling his efforts. She was putting up a good fight, but based on how most of their sparring sessions turned out, he knew she wasn't fighting him quite as hard as she could.
They were both almost out of breath from laughing when he finally managed to wrestle her hands behind her head. "Barton, stop it!" she cried, and her voice cracked with laughter at the end, the way Clint had always found endearing.
Clint grinned. "What are you gonna do about it?" he taunted, crossing her wrists over her head. She laughed breathlessly and tossed a curl off her forehead. Clint used one hand to press both her wrists into the couch, then he moved his free hand slowly toward her ribcage, grinning mischievously at her.
She started squirming. "Don't do it, oh god, stop!" she laughed, squeezing her eyes shut.
Clint just chuckled. Then he lightly tickled her ribs.
Natasha screamed with laughter, twitching away from him. "Barton, cut it out!"
Clint didn't cut it out.
"Clint!" she wheezed. "Clint, stop!"
Clint paused to join in with her laughter, bracing his palm on the couch beside her.
Then suddenly Natasha stopped laughing.
She opened her eyes and looked right at him. "Oh my god Clint, stop it," she breathed. "Stop it right now."
Her voice sounded much different now, and Clint froze.
He barely had time to wonder if he'd taken it too far, if she was mad at him, when he learned the real reason why she had stopped him.
"Oh my gosh." There was a clattering sound by the door, and Clint's head snapped up. Steve was standing there, looking shocked.
"I am so sorry," the supersoldier said, his face going bright red. "I'm really sorry – I just – I came to see if – I mean—"
Heat flushed Clint's face as he realized how they must look to Steve. He scrambled up off of Natasha and she sat up, hurriedly adjusting her hair.
Steve was mumbling on, saying something about "sorry" and "fondue", and Clint interrupted him.
"Look, Rogers, it's fine. We weren't – I mean, we weren't about to – er—" He looked at Natasha for help, but she was staring at the floor, rapidly twisting her hair between her fingers.
Oh, yeah, that definitely makes this look LESS suspicious. Thanks, partner.
"Sorry," Steve said again. "I should probably, uh… probably go now." He backed hastily out the door.
As soon as he was gone Clint looked quickly at Natasha. She was still gazing at the floor, and her face was flushed. He wondered again if she was mad at him.
He cleared his throat. "Uh, sorry. About that," he said awkwardly. "I mean, uh… Yeah. Um, that was, sorry."
Natasha lowered her face into her hand. Then she started snickering.
Clint stared at her for a minute. Then relief washed through him, and he joined in. Their chuckling started out small, but pretty soon, they were both flopped back onto the couch, dissolving in gales of laughter. Clint looked at Natasha, loving how her eyes and nose crinkled up when she laughed this hard.
Finally she sat up, wiping her eyes. "Wow."
Clint shook his head, grinning. "I can't believe he thought—"
"I know!" Natasha agreed. "Because, first of all, why would you be on top?"
Clint froze. "Wait what?"
Natasha smirked and leapt to her feet. "Come on, let's go get lunch," she said. She started stalking toward the door.
Clint just stared at her
She stopped in the doorway and glanced back at him. "Coming?"
Clint blinked. "Uh, yep." He got hastily to his feet and followed her to the elevators.
So yeah, stuff is happening now! :D
I actually came up with the idea for this chapter when I was half-asleep, then I woke up and was like "ha ha that's dumb. i'm gonna write it"
OH and thank you so much to my reviewers!,!,! Seriously you guys are the best, and everyone who has followed/favorited this story, you are all my favorite people.
Special shoutout to Mockingjay500 and Buu22 - like seriously, whenever you guys review freaking out and having feels attacks, like, it just makes me so ridiculously happy like you don't even know. xD I love that I can give feels to people all over the world it just it really makes my day :D
THANK YOU ALL FOR EXISTING BYE