Coming back to this story was like coming back to an old friend. A complicated hard to write friend, but still a friend! Honestly, I had lost my list that was inspiration for this story. But, I FOUND IT. SO, I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS. WHATEVER IT TAKES. Ok, it's really not that serious but I still wanna get it done. Also hi I had to delete and repost this chapter because I forgot to put what the rule for this chapter is in here, and then could not find a way to edit the document I had already posted...

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Rule eight- Make Chocolate Covered Strawberries in The Summer Just Because You Can.

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All she wanted to do was read her damn book in peace. But no, Barton had to be making a mess in the kitchen, and in the process making enough noise to raise the dead. Pots were clanging, he kept shouting curse words, Natasha was pretty sure she'd already heard him break two glasses. She tried to focus on her book, she really did... Strike Team Delta had cashed in a couple personal days for a weekend at Clint's farm and she'd told him that all she wanted to do was not have to kill anyone for two days, and finish reading the Harry Potter series.

But if Clint kept making this much noise, she was going to have to give up on the idea of her first wish coming true. Natasha was trying to read the passage where Harry learns about what a Horcrux was, when a particularly loud yell got her attention. "SON of a— Romanoff did you bring any burn ointment with you or do I have to go to the store?" At these words Natasha groaned, threw her book down on the couch, and stormed into the kitchen. It was a complete and utter mess. The sink was somehow full of dishes, something was smoking heavily on the stove, one of Natasha's throwing knives was laying on the counter next to a pile of strawberries and currently Clint was sticking his hand into the freezer whining about how much pain he was in. "Please tell me you have burn cream Nat. I didn't think the handle of the pot would get so hot so fast, and now my finger on my shooting hand is burnt." Natasha swept in, lowered the heat beneath the steaming pot of mysterious gunk, grabbed her knife off the counter and yanked Clint's hand out of the freezer all in the blink of an eye.

"You idiot, you know we have to get rid of all that ice now because you contaminated it? Your fridge is so old it probably won't even make enough ice for a soda until it's time for us to leave, ugh... And what did I tell you about using my knives for your cooking experiments?" At this question Clint got what could only be described as a pout on his face. "You said if I used your knives to cook anything again that you'd start using my arrows like pushpins to put things on your bulletin board."

Natasha inspected his hand; It was hardly burnt, a small blister was forming on one of his fingers. "Yeah, so you better start keeping track of your arrows before I use them to hang up mission reports in the apartment. Don't touch my knives. This is hardly even a burn, I have some burn cream in my medkit, if you're in too much pain you can grab some... What are you making anyway? It smells like crap in here." Clint pulled his hand away from her, and began shaking it around as if he could toss off the pain from the blister. "Well I was bored, there was nothing good on TV, so I decided I'd try to make chocolate covered strawberries." At these words, Natasha stared blankly at her partner trying to process what he'd just said.

"You were bored... And from there logically the first thing you decided to do was make chocolate covered strawberries? Why?" Barton shrugged at this, grabbed a chocolate chip from the already open bag on the counter and tossed it into his mouth. "Why not? I've never made them before." Well, she couldn't argue with that logic. Natasha just rolled her eyes, "My med kit is in my purple backpack, go take care of yourself..." It didn't take long for Barton to come back, his hand heavily wrapped in gauze as if he'd actually been dealt a serious injury. Honestly, the man could shrug off a bullet wound claiming it was nothing, but one little burn and suddenly he had zero pain tolerance. When Clint entered the kitchen, Natasha was trying to scrape the goop out of the pot from the stove, and into the sink. Unfortunately once it had stopped steaming it had begun to congeal and harden, she wasn't having much luck. "Seriously Barton what did you do to this pot?" He scoffed, "I just tried to melt chocolate in it." Natasha was now trying to chisel out the remains of his failed cooking attempt with a spatula because the spoon she'd been using wasn't getting the job done.

"Did you literally just dump chocolate in here and turn up the heat?" She asked, when Clint sheepishly nodded his head, she dropped the spatula into the pot in defeat. "That's it, you're on dishwashing duty, you're not allowed to touch the stove for the rest of the day." "But I'm injured!" The archer objected, at these words Natasha gave him a death glare that caused her partner to shut up and resume scrubbing away at the mess he'd made.

When he was attempting to clean, Natasha was a blur of motion making her way through the kitchen. She always claimed to hate cooking, but apparently just because she hated it didn't mean she was bad at it. She was boiling a pot of water on the stove, and pouring out chocolate chips in a measuring cup when Clint groaned and dropped the still disgusting pot into the garbage. "That's more of a lost cause than I am. Remind me to buy a pot that can't be destroyed by chocolate next time we're at the store." The Russian just rolled her eyes, "Whatever, it's your money birdbrain... Do you have any glass bowls around here? Never mind, found it, here, are you too injured to help me rinse off the strawberries?"

For a few moments the kitchen was pleasantly silent with just the sounds of cooking filling the silence. The whole scene felt painfully domestic and though they both knew if they ever had the chance to be a normal couple, to lead a normal life, they'd get bored quickly; In the moment it felt achingly nice. It was a nice change to be melting chocolate and washing off strawberries together, instead of writing mission reports and lurking in the shadows.

Natasha handed Clint the spoon she was stirring the chocolate with. "Don't touch the stove, don't touch the chocolate, don't stop stirring until I tell you to." She warned, before she started rummaging through the cabinets of a kitchen for a cookie tray. "Do you have any Wax Paper anywhere Barton?" The archer was focused on stirring, apparently his burn injury was forgotten when he was given a new task to focus on. "Um, uh, maybe? Check in the cabinet next to the sink. Also how do you know how to melt chocolate? Is there anything you don't know how to do Romanoff?" Natasha opened the drawer, there was no wax paper, instead she pulled out a half used roll of tin foil.

"What can I say, spend enough time with Coulson and I guess the shows he watches on food network start to stick with you. You wouldn't believe how many people lose the final round of Chopped because they don't know how to melt chocolate properly. That, or trying to use the ice cream machine always gets them in the end. Speaking of, has the chocolate for the most part melted by now?"

Clint peered into the bowl that was perched atop the pot of boiling water, "Yeah, it's melted. Now what, do we just dump the strawberries in and stir them around?" Natasha rolled her eyes at her partners joke, "No, you just hold the stems and dip them in." They fell into a pattern, taking alternate turns dunking their fruit into the chocolate and laying them on the cookie tray Natasha had prepped. Her berries were symmetrical, evenly covered in chocolate, and lined up in even rows along her half of the sheet. As for Clint's...

"Crap!" The archer hissed, as he dropped another berry into the chocolate. Natasha grabbed a fork, and fished out the strawberry. "Barton, come on, it's not that hard. You hold the berry, dunk it, and then take it out. At no point should you be letting go of the berry!" Clint laughed, as he licked chocolate off of his fingers. "I'm not letting go, they just keep slipping!" Natasha wanted to be annoyed but instead Clint looked so confused by the fact he couldn't keep hold of a berry that she couldn't help but laugh.

The archer threw up his chocolate covered hands in mock defeat, "Fine, I give up! My strawberries all suck! You'll just eat the pretty ones and I'll claim all the misfits!" The assassin quirked an eyebrow at her partner. "Claim the misfits, isn't that what you always do anyway?" Barton smirked, and grabbed a strawberry that hadn't been dipped in chocolate yet. "You know me too well."

Natasha ended up finishing the rest of the berries because Clint got bored, and just wanted to eat the chocolate straight from the bowl. They had to leave the strawberries in the fridge to let the chocolate harden, and when they waited they went back to the living room. Natasha threw her book at Barton, "Read to me birdbrain, I deserve something in return for making you your damn strawberries." And she laid her head on his lap, and listened to her partner read aloud about Magic, and Horcruxes, and terribly dark things that seem impossible to overcome.

It was such a simple afternoon. They didn't do anything amazing, or exciting, or overly romantic. But they also didn't do anything dangerous, undercover or life threatening. That night instead of dinner they ate strawberries outside on the porch, and watched the sunset together. So much of their life was about grand gestures, intricate plans, secrets and surprises. It was nice having an afternoon that was so blissfully normal.

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