Enforced downtime, words that don't fill him with joy. Clint hates them almost as much as he hates the words 'mandatory psych eval' and it's probably only a matter of time before he hears those again.
For three days he has been enjoying the solitude of his family farmhouse, a building which he has set foot in only infrequently since it had passed into his possession over a decade earlier. Stripping and varnishing floorboards, carving furniture, and sanding walls has kept him busy and provided an outlet for the emotions that have been stirred up by recent events. Clint is surprisingly adept at DIY and fixing up the house that once belonged to his grandparents is as much a labour of love as a way to keep his mind off the bigger picture.
Lately there is a fierce longing in him for the wild open spaces, for the height and the colour of mature trees that border his property, for the music of the wind through their branches. He longs for the freedom of the forest and the feel of the sun on his skin, for the simple life of what might have been, for the glittering canvas of the night with its expanse of stars. He can almost taste it at the back of his throat, the call of the simple life. Now, more than ever, he craves an element of normality among the turbulence.
The house is a balm to his weary heart, a chance to do something other than kill with his hands. He finds solace within its walls. He finds peace.
He is working on what will be the master bedroom when Natasha arrives, still coated in road dust from the long ride out. He doesn't hear her over the soaring guitars of his musical choices, too caught up in sanding the walls to hear her moving from room to room. He's been thinking about what colour the room should be, about where the best location for the bed would be, where pictures could hang, and he doesn't hear her quiet tread on the stairs or the soft creak of the floorboards in the upstairs hallway.
"Place is coming together nicely," she remarks from the doorway.
Clint, only by maintaining iron control on his major muscle groups, manages not to betray his surprise at her presence and continues working on the wall in front of him. He turns his head in her direction and offers her a welcoming smile, left hand still working though his attention is now elsewhere. "You should have called I'd have come and picked you up from the station."
Natasha raises an eyebrow as she glances around the room. "What, and drag you away from all this?" she grins.
Clint is aware that he probably looks a mess, his hair is no doubt full of plaster dust and sticking up at strange angles from where he has raked his fingers through it. Not expecting company, he is dressed in the oldest pair of jeans that he owns and a plaid shirt that he hasn't even bothered to fasten.
"How did you get here Natasha?" he asks, well aware that the house is off the beaten track and she doesn't have a car of her own.
She smiles at him and shrugs out of her leather jacket to reveal a simple black t-shirt beneath it. "I borrowed the bike."
The bike. Natasha's bike is a thing of beauty and the source of much envy among their colleagues, it's also perhaps the perfect way to travel to the farm, the best way to experience the winding country roads. Of course there is a downside, the bike belongs to SHIELD. "You did tell Fury, right?"
She presses in close to him, bringing the heat of her skin against his own as her fingers work their way under his shirt. "You really want to discuss this now?"
He really doesn't want to discuss anything right now, other than potentially why her tongue isn't in his mouth, but he doesn't say that out loud either. Instead, he winds his free hand into the hair at the back of her head and pulls her face to his, crushing their mouths together in a welcome kiss that stirs more than the plaster dust on the air.
She steps back only reluctantly, moving away from him to walk around the large room in which she stands, pausing to admire the view from the large window on the far wall. Clint pauses to watch her and finds himself momentarily captivated by the way the light falls on Natasha's face, framing her in a haze of autumnal glory and turning the image into something far more sensual than it should be. He briefly entertains the image of her rousing from slumber, bare skin covered only by the sheets of his bed, the same light falling on her in that enchanting way.
He looks away, feeling slightly voyeuristic, and occupies himself with tracing the recently patched area of wall with his fingertips to see whether he has successfully smoothed it out - not quite. Sandpaper in hand, he buffs the area a little more.
Her steps are damned near silent and before he knows it she's back, crushing his body from the back and pressing him into the wall, hands roaming beneath his shirt as she nips his earlobe with her teeth. "I love what you haven't done with the place," she whispers.
Clint laughs, sandpaper stilling beneath his palm as he lets her push him into the plaster. He's dusty and sweaty and has about a hundred things left to do before he quits for the day but somehow his priorities have shifted. "I was hoping for your input actually …"
She sighs into the skin behind his left ear, breathy and warm. "Took the words right out of my mouth …"
Her hand winds its way into the waistband of his jeans, which is a little lower than he usually wears to start with, and he knows that if she makes it just a few inches lower his willpower will evaporate entirely. He just can't bring himself to care, not really.
The sandpaper drops from his fingers and he turns, scooping her up in his arms and pivoting so that he can press her back against the wall, pinning her there with his hips tight against her own. Natasha smiles against his mouth, one hand still beneath the waistband of his jeans while the other winds its way around his neck, her fingers lightly scraping against his scalp.
"Been here all of ten minutes and already causing havoc," he murmurs when she tilts her head back to look up at the ceiling. Clint kisses his way up her jaw until he can claim her mouth again, making her aware of just how he's missed her in the week or so since they were last together.
She chuckles and rubs herself against him, her breasts pressing into his chest through the fabric of her shirt. "If there's something else you'd rather be doing right now…"
"Feel that?" Clint asks, pulling her hips even closer and moving against her so that she can feel his erection. "That's all you."
She meets his gaze head on, lusty and defiant, shifts her hips ever so deliberately against his own and he's a goner. The shirt is the first thing to go. Clint manoeuvres her around in his grip until she can help him in pulling the offending garment over her head. She throws it in the general direction of the window, no doubt well aware that the nearest neighbour is about two miles away and they are highly unlikely to be seen by anyone.
His shirt follows, Natasha's nails whispering over his bare skin as she pushes it off his shoulders. He doesn't let up for a minute as it drops to the floor, leaning down into the curve of her throat and tasting the pulse that jumps there with his tongue.
"Mmmm," she moans, deft fingers already working on the fastening of his jeans while he unzips first one boot and then the second, dropping each to the floor with a loud thunk that he barely notices.
Clint looks into her flushed face, feels her heart beating wildly beneath his touch, and rapidly loses himself in the chemical chaos of their shared arousal. They work together to shed the remains of their clothing, Natasha hopping lithely back into his arms so that he can press her back into the wall.
Clint takes a step, claims her mouth in a fierce kiss, takes another step and inhales a sharp breath as a sudden pain shoots through the sole of his right foot. Acting on reflex, he releases her mouth and raises the affected foot from the floor.
"What's wrong?" Natasha asks, no doubt able to tell that something is wrong, certainly able to see that something has distracted him.
Clint frowns, still balancing her weight in his arms though he does allow her shoulders to rest against the plaster in case his balance wavers. "Not sure," he replies and tries to set down his foot only to find himself gritting his teeth and lifting it again almost immediately.
Natasha untangles herself from his grip, landing neatly on the floor when she realises that he's in pain. "Let me see it."
The nail is good and buried into the meat of his foot, right below the instep. Of all the cockblocking instances he's ever come up against, this has to be the most unlikely - a nail through the foot - no doubt worsened by the fact that he put their combined body weight down on it. Just great. Natasha studies it for a moment, tucking her hair back behind her ear so that it doesn't obscure her vision. Clint's only thought - apart from the obvious - is that he's glad it ended up in his foot rather than hers. He also wonders how one single piece of metal can cause so much discomfort to someone who's been shot or stabbed on multiple occasions.
"This needs to come out," she tells him. Gently, she probes the skin around the entry site, trying to assess the damage and only succeeding in making his foot throb. He can feel his pulse through it when she puts the pressure on. "I think it'll be easier if I do it."
"No doubt about that," he replies tightly. He gestures toward the toolbox in the corner of the room. "Pliers in the toolbox. There's rubbing alcohol in the bathroom. Walk carefully."
She follows the instructions, collects the pliers from the toolkit, brings gauze and rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs and bandages from the med kit in the bathroom which he hasn't needed the whole time he's been at the house, while he stands nearly motionless on one foot. Should he turn around? Sit down? Will it be easier for her to work if he stays where he is and he can brace himself against the wall?
"I'm going to help you over to the window seat," she tells him, and slides herself beneath his shoulder so that she can take some of his weight. Each step is slow, both of them checking the ground for any stray tacks. Clad in only her underwear, Natasha lifts his foot so that she can look at it again, swipes the area around the wound clean with an antiseptic wipe and then glances up at him. There's a calm determination in her face that he finds comforting.
She rests his foot on her knee and takes a deep breath. "Ready?"
He isn't. The bouncing of his left leg must tell her that, his knee moving rapidly up and down as she grabs the pliers. Clint hums a discontented sound under his breath. He knows it's going to hurt. He rubs a hand across his face, braces his fingers tightly around the edge of the window seat, and takes a deep breath. "Do it," he tells her.
"On three," she says. Clint feels the pliers grip the end of the nail, the slight pressure at the tiny movement. "One…"
She yanks the nail out with a single sharp movement that sends Clint's head back, back arching slightly.
"Aah fuck!" he grinds out through gritted teeth. The urge to pull his foot away from her is prevented by her firm grip on his heel and the immediate press of gauze to the wound. He knew that she wouldn't make it to three but he wasn't counting on her acting on one.
He uncoils his fingers and opens his eyes to see her watching him intently. There's a smear of blood on the skin of her knee but she doesn't seem to have noticed it. Instead she cleans and wraps his foot, steady eyes holding his gaze when he flinches at the application of alcohol and the tightening of the bandage.
"Hospital," she announces firmly. "This is deep and needs to be checked over by someone who knows what they're doing."
He opens his mouth to argue but she's having none of it. Natasha pushes herself up so that their faces are level and brings up a hand to caress the side of his face as she plants a soft kiss on his mouth. "No arguments Barton. Hospital, now. I'm sure they'll clean it out, give you a shot, and tell you that you have to keep your weight off it for a couple of days."
"Did you notice how much I have to do around here?"
"You won't be able to walk Clint, which means I'll have to stick around and play nurse."
He can't argue with that, much as he'd like to. So he lets her help him into his clothing and hops in a highly undignified manner down the stairs. He even lets her help him out the truck, his arm slung over her shoulder so that he doesn't have to put his foot down. "You do realise that I've been here for days without a single mishap …"
"Yeah, it's all my fault," she chuckles. "So irresistible that you literally walked over nails to get your hands on me."
"Wasn't my just hands I was hoping …"
The slap to his shoulder wasn't a surprise but the sting of it was. She reverses the truck down the driveway a hair faster than is strictly advisable but her head is twisted round to watch where she's going and her reflexes are second only to his so Clint stays quiet. "Shut it," she tells him with a good natured growl, "or you can kiss goodbye to everything I have planned for when I get you home again."
He falls silent and watches the scenery whip past the windows before leaning his head back and closing his eyes. His foot throbs in time with his pulse and proves difficult to ignore so instead he turns his attention to thinking about what Natasha might be planning for later. Perhaps standing on that nail won't turn out to be so bad after all.