The first time Natasha heard about Laura Mitchell was approximately six months after she had begun having sex with Clint Barton.
That was a lie.
They had been sleeping together.
That was a lie too.
They had been making love for six months.
Not that Natasha liked thinking about it like that. Every time her mind stumbled on the words, memories of the Red Room's teachings and the Matron rose like terrible sea creatures from the murky depths of her mind.
Natasha and Clint had settled into a new routine. They trained together, they planned operations, completed missions together and after the debrief they usually slept together. In the beginning they had had sex, made love, whatever childish name you wish to give to it, almost every day, but Natasha had seen the lines between professional friendship and something more beginning to blur.
Love was for children after all.
So Natasha had pulled back. She stopped visiting Clint in his room on the base or at his little New York flat downtown. Natasha had drawn back emotionally and physically, redrawn and hardened the lines around herself. They still slept together. She still let Clint hold her and touch her in ways she had thought were the things of fairy tales and little girls' fantasies. In those moments she dropped her masks and simply was. She wasn't the Black Widow or even Natalia in those moments…she was just Natasha.
Yet, even those moments had to be regulated. Natasha had had to protect herself. If they had more than one mission in a week then Natasha would only have sex with Clint once. She set limits. Made rules for herself. She stayed in control. Natasha was always good at controlling herself. Her mind, her body, her emotions. Desire was just a new one to be controlled.
When the sex was over, when her heart beat calmed from its frantic pace from their lovemaking and Clint had begun to dose while clinging to her, she would use all of her training to stealthily leave his bed. She never allowed herself to fall asleep in his arms again after the first handful of times. The foreign sense of safety made her sleep too deeply and softened all of the sharp edges that had kept her alive for so long.
It was why Natasha had begun accosting Clint for their post mission hook ups in training rooms, showers and even once a supply closet. It kept things frantic and distanced the softer emotions.
Clint had noticed the change. He had tried to broach the topic but Natasha would always find an excuse to leave, a distraction or a diversion to prevent that discussion from ever having any weight.
Natasha could see the hurt in Clint's eyes, the confusion and sometimes even understanding for her actions. She hated those looks.
Natasha liked to call what they had a friends with benefits understanding, a series of hook ups or a professional curtesy between partners to blow off steam and bond. All of those sound more superficial and less heavy than what she had feared was growing between them.
Deep down Natasha knew that in those moments when she was with Clint that she was more purely herself than she has been since before the Red Room. In those moments when Clint's rough hands were skimming her skin and worshipping her as though she was a person rather than a thing, an asset…she felt seen. She felt real. Sex has always been a tool to Natalia. An exercise. A mission necessary act for which she was trained and was as expert in the performance of as hand to hand combat and long distance assassination. Natalia could become any man's fantasy. A sub, a dom, a seductress, a shy enthusiast, a virginal novice, a kinky whore and any other fantasy that would please a man or a woman. Natasha could give head that would corrupt the most devote monk, she could suck the spots off a Dalmatian and tease with her hands with the skills of a genius musician playing their instrument of choice. Natasha could flutter her vaginal walls like a butterflies wings or clench like a vice. She could take anal like a hesitant amateur or with the ease of a seemingly bottomless pit to engulf any length or girth. Natasha could sing operas of breathy whimpers or high pitched cries of pleasure. She could recite sonnets of praise and desperate begging to her partners or she could growl at them with furious demands. Natasha's face could play the innocent, contort in agony or fly open in awed pleasure as her partner needed. Natasha knew how to do sex. She knew how to perform, and who to be for her paramours.
Yet with Clint Natasha was just herself. That was still a new, and sometimes frightening thing. With Clint she did not perform. She reciprocated, she indulged, she allowed herself to be split open and flayed alive with feelings and emotions. She allowed him to see what was good and what was bad for her because for the first time she mattered in this pursuit. She allowed her mind to sink into the orgasmic pleasure her body felt but which she had been disconnected from with every other person that had been given access to her body.
For the first time Natasha felt.
And that was the problem.
Thus, when Clint returned from a few days leave in the city where he no doubt visited animal shelters to play with the mangy mongrels he craves to one day have as a pet of his own, walked through the park talking happily to a dozen strangers, drank cheap beer, ate terrible food and viewed some tedious sporting event, he recounted the tale of meeting Laura Mitchell.
At first it began like any of Clint's other hundred anecdotes. She had heard them all. If there was a damsel in distress or a fella in need of a hand within a hundred metres then you can bet that Clint would end up helping them. Unsolicited and happily. The thought made Natasha feel furious and simultaneously, softly indulgent.
Clint had apparently been coming out of a comic book store of all places when he had run into a 'pretty brunet' who was carrying groceries. Clint, who was too engrossed in his comic had walked right into the fair maiden, causing them both to go down in a tangle of limbs. The brunette's grocery bags had torn and her meagre rations of Ramen, tinned soup, and long life bread had spilled across the sidewalk to be trampled by the unrelenting New York pedestrians. Savages the lot of them Natasha thought.
Clint laughed as he recounted how he had apologised and attempted to rescue the fallen foodstuffs in vein. Mutual introductions revealed the blushing and flustered woman to be Laura Mitchell. Clint had guessed from her shopping and age that she was a low income student of some sort. A rudimentary deduction which had amused Laura and prompted her to tease her new found, clumsy 'Sherlock.'
It was here that Natasha's attention was peaked and something like alarm began shivering down her spine. Clint was amused by the woman and obviously enamoured by her beauty. The fact she had teased him where many others would have shied away from his resting bastard face and his intimidating physique, had intrigued him. This young woman was unfailingly polite and entertained despite his poor first impression. Natasha knew that Clint could be charming when he chose to and it seemed obvious that he had turned it on in order to ease his apology and flatter this Laura Mitchell.
Clint being the ultimate gentleman had insisted on returning Laura to the grocery store and replacing her shopping while striking up conversation. Clint had quickly determined that Laura was a postgraduate student studying early childhood development and planning to be a teacher with an eye to doing some research on the side. Clint's tone was filled with admiration and something almost reverent as he recounted their conversation. Natasha always knew Clint had a soft spot for maternal types, a sore point for herself considering her graduating gift from the Red Room. His smug tone and mischievous eyes had implied that there was some kind of inside joke to their shopping experience which Natasha immediately questioned him on. Clint became almost bashful as he scratched his neck uncomfortably and admitted that he picked up a trolly and filled it with every kind of food he could find. Fresh produce, meat, eggs, pasta and a plethora of frozen items which if Natasha knew Clint, would likely keep the young student fed for another semester. Clint chuckled as he recalls Laura's flustered embarrassment at Clint's extravagant apology gift. Apparently she wasn't one to take charity and was sensitive about her unhealthy diet to date because she was actually a very good cook she claimed. Having grown up on a farm surrounded by the best produce the Midwest could offer Laura insisted she usually ate better when not scrimping her way through school.
The shopping trip had ended and Clint had hailed a taxi and handed the driver a crisp hundred dollar bill with instructions to take Laura and her mountain of shopping back to wherever her accommodation was. Natasha can see Clint's unusual cunning at work. He loaded the woman down with more food than she could carry and rather than give her a lift in his own car he paid for a cab so she didn't feel uncomfortable being alone with him out of public or by having to give away her home address.
Flustered by his generosity and charming personality Laura had then shown remarkable backbone by demanding Clint's number. 'She didn't ask Nat, She demanded it,' he recounted. Laura believed she owed Clint dinner and the opportunity to regain her reputation by proving she could cook more than Ramen. Natasha had the feeling Clint goaded and teased the poor women about her first batch of shopping and that it was already something of an inside joke.
Clint wistfully ended his story by narrating how he gave Laura his number but refused dinner, citing work commitments but that he would love to hear from her again if she needed to go shopping again. Natasha had rolled her eyes at his unorthodox charm but also felt unsettled at the hint of longing in his tone. It sounded like Clint wanted to stay in contact, like he wanted to have that dinner with Laura.
It is then that Natasha realises that in the six months Natasha and Clint have been sleeping together that Clint must have curtailed his other dating prospects. Natasha had felt irrationally pleased for a moment. It was such a Clint thing to do. A respectful and loyal gesture, but Natasha knew in her heart of hearts that she is not what Clint needs. She isn't the 2.5 kids, dog in the back yard and a white picket fence sort, but Clint is. Clint's broken childhood made him crave a conventional and stable family life. It was almost textbook.
Natasha and Clint in contrast? They were always going to be temporary. They were just friends with benefits.
That is what Natasha kept telling herself.
She needed to enforce more distance, so Natasha pushed Clint further away and built a new wall.
Before she really thought about it, Natasha was telling Clint to call Laura. She was telling him to go have dinner with Laura, or coffee, or whatever the prelude to dating and doing the nasty was.
Clint had reared back as though slapped. His shock and surprise was clear.
Yet Natasha had kept her tone teasing, light and almost matter of fact. She was not jealous.
Clint had stammered in a rare display of uncertainty, his mouth opened and he had begun to ask, "But what about…" and that was as far as Natasha had let him go. She had cut him off. She had not wanted to hear the 'us' that would have finished his inquiry.
There was no 'us' she repeated to herself.
Natasha had sighed and rolled her eyes as though Clint was being particularly slow when she replied that, "We're not monogamous. We made no promises and we know this will never last. It's a convenient hook up. I see no problem with you dating and looking for something 'real' with someone else Clint. Our job always means we hide things from civilians, us and our post mission 'workouts' are just one of those things that stays here and doesn't affect the rest of our lives. I think you should ask Laura out. You obviously sound like you like her and she has some passing interest in your ugly mug despite being a supposedly well educated woman. Give her a call, and if she turns you down you can come begging and I might give you some advice on how to woo her."
Natasha had winked and walked out of the room under the guise of heading to a briefing before Clint could respond.
That was the first time Natasha had heard about Laura Mitchell.
It wouldn't be the last.
Natasha had thought that it was the end of something and the building of a wall.
Really it had been the beginning, and the opening of a whole new door in her life.
Even then, from that most inauspicious beginning, they had been inevitable: Natasha, Clint and Laura.