So someone left a very nice review on my story, and was confused about what the 14 Things to do in a Relationship are. It is just a random post I found on Tumblr, that someone had made. All of the things on that list were very cute and random, so I am writing a 14 chapter story, and each chapter talks about Clint and Natasha doing one of the things on that list. So, here is chapter three! Let me be very clear about what rule number three is, so there is no confusion ;D Enjoy! This chapter is set, let's say three or four months after the events of Avengers.

Rule Number Three-

Make them feel special, even on a monday night with a forecast of rain.

_

It was a Monday night, and Clint was sitting on the couch glumly working on what felt like a mountain of paperwork. It had been a long day for the archer, Coulson had been mad at him for being careless on a recent mission, some idiot in the labs had messed up his latest order of arrows, and the coffee machine had been broken. It had been a total disaster. On top of that, Stark had been called into HQ for some new kind of project, and had been as annoying as Clint would have expected. Their meeting had put more of a damper on his day than he would have thought. So now the archer was trying to distract himself with mindless busy work. Clint could have had an intern do half this stuff, but he wanted to distract himself tonight. Maybe if Clint didn't think about how he felt after such a crummy day, he would not fall into one of his dark self hating moods.

Oops, never mind, he was already in one of those.

Barton was checking off a row of boxes on this file, about the last mission the entire team had been on. Marking off who had been hurt, who they brought in, who needed a disciplinary hearing for not following rules when in the field (That was pretty much the whole team) when Natasha entered the room. She was flushed as if she had just been running, and she was holding two grocery bags.

"Hey there. Wow, what did you do to make Fury mad?" She asked, her vibrant eyes sweeping over the stacks of files covering the coffee table in front of her partner. Clint rolled his eyes, and snapped shut the file of papers he had just finished filling out. "I didn't do anything Romanoff. I had some extra time, and wanted to do something productive for once. I didn't feel like just sitting around the apartment all night."

Clint hoped this would end the conversation, but instead Natasha dropped her bags to the floor, and plopped down on the other end of the couch. Her eyes took in everything in front of her. The half empty pot of coffee perched dangerously on top of a pile of papers, the way Clint wouldn't meet her eyes, the downcast look of his face. Something was wrong, but he was trying to convince her he was fine. It wasn't working.

One second Clint was trying to understand the technical words on the paper he was reading, the next Natasha had somehow gotten from the other end of the couch, to practically sitting in his lap. She pulled the paper from his hands, and tossed it behind her, ignoring Hawkeye's protests.

"Naat! Come on, let me do this work! And now I'm going to have to print that one again, you totally crumpled it…. Ugh, can you just let me do this?" Natasha rolled her eyes. "No, I can't. Because you hate doing paperwork, so unless something was wrong and you were trying to keep yourself busy, you would not be doing this right now. You would have forced it off onto Coulson, or paid some poor intern to do it, or tried to slip it in with mine and trick me into doing it. Not that that's ever worked before. What's up?"

Clint was scowling now, and refused to look at his partner as he handled the papers in front of him. Natasha grabbed his chin and made him look at her. "Come on Birdman. Are you going to tell me what's wrong, or am I going to have to interrogate it out of you?" It sounded like she was joking, but part of Clint wasn't quite sure if she was or not. Just to be safe, he may was well tell her.

"I haven't had the best day. I tried to clear my head out on the target range, but that didn't work. So I thought if I kept myself busy with this stuff it might help me think straight. All it's done so far is give me a headache." He grimaced, and stared down at a new page covered in tiny fine print, covering both sides of the paper. "No wonder Coulson always tries to make us do this instead of him. It's awful."

Natasha smiled at this, but was more worried about why Clint had been having a bad day. "So, what happened? Did you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you're being a big baby, or did something genuinely upsetting happen to you?" Clint rolled his eyes, and reached for another paper but Natasha stopped his hand.

Clint stared at her, and his shoulders drooped a little bit in defeat. If he didn't tell her why he was upset, she'd be bugging him about it all night. The archer rolled his eyes, and started talking.

"Nothing particularly bad happened today….. Just, I've been having a bad couple of weeks. The psych evaluations are still happening, like Fury doesn't trust me enough to know when that damn god is out of my brain. I mean, wouldn't I know if someone was screwing around in my head? Shouldn't I be able to say when I am done with annoying little meetings, and sitting on a couch for two hours, and having some idiot asking me how I feel about things? I don't need therapy anymore. But if I don't go, Fury said he would pull me off all field work. Like he thinks Loki is still controlling me or something." Barton ran a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up at random angles.

"And the damn shrink won't shut up. She keeps asking me about stuff I don't want to talk about. Why I think I was chosen to be an Avenger, how I grew up, childhood memories, what I feel I do for Shield, why Fury took me in. I thought therapy was supposed to make you feel better about yourself. But this just makes me feel like I'm worthless. Like, I'm broken somehow, and it was a mistake that Shield ever hired me." Clint wasn't looking at his partner, but could feel her eyes on him.

"I mean, really, who am I even? Just some guy who knows how to shoot a bow. I'm not s super soldier, I don't have a metal suit that can fly. I'm not like Banner, or Thor, or you." Natasha opened her mouth to object at this last statement, but Clint shot her a look and spoke before she could. "Come on Nat. You were trained for years, and I don't need to know what the Room did to you, but we both knew they did things to help you learn the skills that you have. I hate them, but you can't say they had nothing to do with what you can do today. You are amazing, and I'm just an idiot with a bow. People should stop calling me an Avenger- Not that very many people do that anyway. Those that did actually notice me in the New York footage mostly make snarky comments on the internet about how stupid it is that I use a bow instead of a gun."

Clint's shoulders were drooping, and he looked pathetically sad. It wasn't often that he fell into these dark, self hating, complaining moods. But when he did it could be difficult to bring back the happy normal Clint that Natasha knew and loved. Well, she knew that one thing that wouldn't help was letting him mope in his own self pity.

"Ugh, just shut up Barton. Who cares what idiots on the internet think? Do they know anything about weapons, or how much damage an arrow can do? You just don't like going to therapy. No one sane does. Quit moping about it. And if you aren't an Avenger then why is your name in the top secret file that I stole called "Avengers initiative?" Is that just a typo? Maybe I misread it?" Natasha scoffed at this last part, and Clint almost smiled at her. Well, that was a start.

Natasha settled herself down next to him, pushing papers off the couch, resting her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close to him without even thinking about it. She smiled at his touch, and leaned into him. "I'm sorry you've had some bad weeks Barton. I'll talk to Coulson, and see if I can convince him to stop your therapy. Or at least give you a bit of a break for a week or two. That should help. But you know what else would help? If you'd stop caring about what other people think about you. Caring about if idiots think you're qualified to be an Avenger or not. Because you ARE one, and that's not going to change. You have to stop comparing yourself to a Super Soldier, or Gamme Ray infected Monster. Or a freaking Demigod." She glanced up at him, a smirk playing on the edge of her lips. "You need to stop comparing yourself to me too. Because let's face it, between the two of us you know I am always going to be the better one of this partnership." She was joking, and was relieved to hear Clint laugh at her words.

"And it's not about comparing yourself to the rest of the team, and thinking you're not good enough just because you have such a unique skill set. You're amazing Barton, just because you don't have a tacky uniform or magic weapon doesn't mean you aren't a superhero in your own right. You can hit a target from impossible distances. You can fight me, and come out alive. Not many people are able to do that, you and I both know I could kill Stark in less than a minute." Barton laughed at this too, Natasha could practically feel his dark mood falling away. She kept talking, trying to pull him out of the darkness that had sucked him in. The same darkness that pulled her in more than she liked to admit. The darkness Clint had pulled her from more times than she could count.

"I mean, look at your resume. You can throw knives, have amazing hand eye coordination, you design half your own crazy arrows, you tricked the Trickster God himself into catching an exploding arrow. That's pretty cool. You are an Avenger, no matter what idiots might think." She looked at him, and he was smiling now. She could have stopped talking, but she wasn't done.

"And you are more than just an Avenger, Barton. You're special. At least you are to me. You helped turn me back into something close to a normal human being. You have saved thousands of lives. You make me laugh, and don't hold back when you're fighting with me. You don't think you need to let me win. You always make me tea for breakfast, even though I know you prefer coffee. And you know how to cheer me up, when I don't feel like smiling ever again."

Natasha buried her face into his shoulder, his arm tightened around her. They didn't say anything, just enjoyed the moment. Finally she pulled away a bit. "Do you feel better now?" Clint smiled at her, there was some emotion in his eyes she didn't feel like analyzing right now. "Yeah, actually, I do. Thanks. I owe you a stupid self pity meltdown session- Just let me know when you want to cash that in," he joked. Natasha smirked, and pulled herself out of his grasp to unpack the groceries. Outside it had started to rain, the steady beat of water pounding against the windows echoed through the apartment.

"Do you want to help me unpack these, or are you actually going to try and do all of that paperwork?" Natasha asked, already knowing what his answer would be. Sure enough Clint chuckled, and began cramming folders and files into a briefcase Coulson had given him. "Of course not. I'll just find some poor newbie intern tomorrow morning, and tell them if they don't fill all of this out for me I'll send you after them."

_

I don't know if this was good or not, I am not used to writing this kind of fluff…. Please let me know what you think! Next chapter is going to be some fluff and will also be SO funny! Please review guys, feed the author!

Want more of my writing? Do you love Hunger Games and Avengers? Check out the collaboration I am a part of. Just search for the story In the End, You Always Kneel by The Freelancer Collaboration- I wrote chapter two, Natasha! It is shaping up to be a super good story, with some really talented writers. Check it out, and leave me a review over there! You won't regret it!