XXI
Babysit
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
"How much are we getting paid for this again?" James said finally.
"Nothing, we're doing it because I owed Clint," Natasha said, not moving. "Old debt from 2000, we were in India and I was almost killed. I'm almost done repaying him." She tilted her head, and then said, "Although, I don't know if this is what he had in mind when it came to repaying said debt."
Little Francis Barton giggled, watching the two agents that were supposed to watch him for the next seven days while his parents went to Mexico to investigate a S.H.I.E.L.D. operation that had snafued last week. It was Bobbi's first mission since Francis's birth, and Clint had had to pry her away in order to catch their flight.
"Well, it's just a two year old. How much trouble can that be?" James asked, rolling his sleeves up; he was using the mini-hologram projector to make it appear as though he had a flesh arm, as to not frighten Francis. "Let's do this."
Natasha made a mental note to shoot him later if he jinxed them.
Of course, by the end of the first day, she was too tired to shoot him.
Watching Francis turned into a weird tag-teaming event, since he couldn't sit still. He always got into trouble literally the second either James or Natasha took an eye off of him.
"He is two. He shouldn't be able to get into that much trouble," James complained; the two were sprawled all over the couch, the TV muted. "I mean, how do you get applesauce on your back?"
"Easy. Do what he did and splatter it around first, get some on the back of the chair, and then bounce in your seat for two hours straight," Natasha said, curling up and nursing a new bruise where she'd bumped her arm against the crib when trying to put Francis down for bed.
"Can you believe we have six more days of this?"
Natasha glanced at James, who seemed content to stare at the ceiling. She tried to gauge his tone, trying to guess his intentions. Was that his (too) subtle way of hinting that he'd like children of his own? They'd already discussed this; their jobs and her infertility rendered this impossible, but given that someone already knew how to bring people back from the dead, chances were likely that there was a way to have children after all. "James?" she asked after a slightly long silence.
A soft snore was her response. Straightening, she found that he'd fallen asleep, one hand resting on his chest, another still in the air while lying on the back of the couch. He'd slung both feet over the armrest of the couch, and his head was at an odd angle, mouth hanging open.
Despite the fact that the position looked extremely uncomfortable, Natasha also found it strangely endearing. Sighing, she muted the television before standing up and setting the remote off to the side. Then she walked over to James and carefully nudged him into a better sleeping position, mindful of the mechanical arm (it only took one hit to get the lesson across, James was never one to hold back when he thought he was being threatened), and, once she was satisfied, she eased herself into the embrace, tucking his arm around her body for comfort.
A/N: Prompt: Doing something together.