AN: I've been struggling massively with a combination of writer's block and general life chaos over the last few months. Things have been tough. Not the usual offering but right now just being able to grab half an hour and create something feels like a win ...
"Two and a half minutes," she says quietly, "you should go Clint."
From the floor in front of her, Clint looks up and meets her eyes for a fleeting glance before returning his attention to the centre of her chest. His hand squeezes her knee then he resumes his examination, gaze skimming over her body and the restraints that bind her to the chair on which she sits.
"I mean it Barton," she sighs, hiding the emotions that are coursing through her behind a perfectly neutral, almost colourless, tone. "You need to leave."
She's still trying to shake off the aftereffects of the blow to the head that rendered her unconscious, an unfortunate incident that led to her waking up strapped into a bomb vest. The headache is making most things fuzzy but one thing is perfectly clear, she has to get him out of the room before the device detonates.
Moving around her, he studies the wiring attached to the device. "Still got time," he tells her calmly. There are times when his laid back nature makes her want to throttle him and this is probably the best example of it in recent memory. It's probably a good thing that her hands are bound.
She shakes her head, tries to concentrate on the type of explosives that are strapped to her chest, to the wiring and the timer that are counting down the final minutes of her life. Those glowing red numbers, counting ominously down are the metronome by which she measures her elevated heart rate. Clint might be good with explosives but this is complex, a challenge on their best day, more complex than either of them can probably defuse in less than three minutes.
"Anti tamper devices?" he asks, knowing that she will already have done her best to assess the situation. She also knows that he's looking for himself, two minds being better than one in a crisis. Allegedly.
Natasha tries to slow the runaway train of her thoughts. "Most likely," she agrees.
Clint's fingers follow the straps of the vest, stroking gently over the fabric of her shirt. He's taking deliberate care not to touch the wiring, trying to reassure her with that simple touch that he's still there, still working on the problem, not ready to give up on her yet. "Do you recognise anything about the design?"
She shakes her head, thoughts tumbling end over end. "Other than that there's enough C4 attached to it to bring the building down?"
He lets out a strangled chuckle but when she turns her head to look at him she can see the strain in the beads of sweat forming on his brow and across his cheekbones. "Always looking on the bright side."
Again, she wriggles as best she can within her bonds but there's no slack in the straps and the locks are firmly fastened. She's never been the kind of woman to allow sentiment to cloud reality, the simple facts of the matter are that if they don't get clear of the blast radius in time they're going to die. She isn't getting out of this room alive.
"What do the wires look like?" she asks because the faster she makes him realise he can't diffuse it, the quicker she can get him out of danger.
"Three different colours, braided together," he tells her, "looks like they're plugged into the device and soldered in place."
"Colours?"
"Red, black, yellow."
"Any chance you can strip the casing off any of them?" she asks, "see what's underneath."
Clint hums under his breath and bobs out of sight, looking at the wiring more closely. The second or two that he spends assessing the wires is more than she can stand. "Bastard's clever," he growls. "Looks like the wiring is tamper proof."
Of course it is.
"I have to work out which one will deactivate it."
"And if you make the wrong choice it'll blow. Clint, you gotta be rational here …"
"Storytelling is in the details - wires mean something," he mutters, ignoring her. "Need to work out the significance …"
She hazards a glance at the timer and feels her heart seize at the numbers displayed there, red and glowing. They mock her with their constant downward movement. Filled with the need to get him out of the building, she turns her head and looks for her partner. "End of the road here Barton," she says firmly, "you need to go while there's still time."
He pretends not to hear her, sliding his hands gently over the straps and wires that tie her to her fate. She knows that he's looking for weak spots, anything that will help him to get her out of her restraints, but the pass of his hands over her skin feels more like a caress.
"I mean it Clint," she exclaims and even she can hear the desperate plea behind the words. Her anxiety has been building, swelling and pulling back like the ocean before a tidal wave and now the wave is crashing back, swallowing her whole. She can't hold it back, can't stop the caustic burn of it as it moves through her veins.
And then he's there, right in front of her. Grey eyes hold hers and in spite of the desperate circumstances, she finds strength in them. Clint has always been her rock, always been the one to give her what she needed in her worst moments. She can feel her eyes beginning to prickle and wonders whether she'll cry before it's over, knows that if she does it won't be for herself but for the man in front of her.
"I'm staying," he says softly.
From his tone of voice she knows that there's no arguing with him. It doesn't stop her from wanting to. "Please Clint," and a single tear escapes the edges of her control, rolling down her cheek. "I don't want …"
"Shh," he whispers, wiping away that one traitorous tear.
She can't stem the words though, can't stop herself from trying to save his life even if her own can't be saved. "Please!"
"Hey, I've been saying you'll be the death of me for years," he chuckles. His gaze is steady, unflinching. "No way I'd rather go."
He leans forward and rests his hands on her knees again. His pulse is jumping in his neck and he swallows audibly. Like her he's capable of putting on a good show.
Natasha has never loved him more.
A minute to go. Clint follows her gaze to the glowing numbers and his grip on her knee tightens fractionally. With his free hand he lifts her chin, his fingers steady and sure.
Natasha drinks his concern like liquor and it destroys her as she falls for him all over again, hopelessly, endlessly. "Never thought it would end like this," she whispers.
Clint's lips quirk in a pale imitation of a smile. "What say we give this a shot Nat, cut one of those wires, go out on our own terms?"
She still wants to fight with him but she can't stand the thought of watching the seconds tick away. Natasha nods wordlessly, turning the facts over in her mind. Black, red, yellow. Red, yellow, black. Which one doesn't fit? Panic is clouding her thoughts. "You choose," she says.
She has put her trust in him a thousand times, looked for his face on every battlefield and across every border for years. He has never let her down. Not once.
He gently moves the three wires that snake between the timer and the payload, filtering them between his fingers as he tries to make his choice. As if from nowhere he produces a pair of wire snips and prepares one of the wires to be cut. "Red," he whispers.
Quite unexpectedly, he leans in and presses a kiss to her mouth. He presses his forehead to hers and Natasha lets his presence steal away reality. Clint has always been able to make the world fade away. She's never been more thankful for that than she is now.
She doesn't even close her eyes, content to go looking at Clint.
He counts back from three and she can feel the slight shift in his muscles but he keeps his head against hers. Then abruptly he glances away from her. "Not red - yellow!"
He slices through the wire before she can protest. Natasha sees the snips closing around the cable and fights really hard not to flinch. Her last thought is to press her mouth to his. If this is to be her last second on earth then she wants to immerse herself fully in him. Clint's hand loops around the back of her head, holding her to him.
She waits for the pain but there is nothing but the hard, desperate press of his mouth on hers. She breathes, once, again, and then feels the rumble of laughter in his chest. Wait … what?
When he releases her, all she can do for the longest moment is study his face, bright eyed, disbelieving. The hand holding the wire cutters trembles and Natasha forces her gaze to the now blank screen on the timer. The yellow wire hangs, severed against the black fabric of her shirt.
She breathes: in … out … again. Clint seems to be having the same moment of disbelief because he's staring straight into her face, the only difference is the quirk of his lips into the smallest of smiles. "Storytelling is in the details," he murmurs. "Knew I'd seen this signature before, that job we worked out in Odessa a few years back."
Natasha tries to cast her mind back to the job he's referring to. The perp had been a Soviet agent with a twisted sense of humour who was hung up on the glory days of his country. He had taken a particular interest in Natasha as a former asset and defector. "Bazorov?"
His hands begin to move in earnest, working to free her from the restraints and what remains of the device. "One and the same."
Natasha remembers the way the man had seemed to have an almost pathological need to prove himself smarter than everyone around him. He'd been obsessed with riddles and clues in his work - as insane as he was clever. "But they locked him up."
"Odds are if we made a few calls we'd find out he escaped," Clint replies. His voice isn't normal, still low, still full of emotions that are too real to name. His attention is on the task at hand, freeing her, getting them the hell out of this room and away from the recent near death experience. They've had more close calls than either of them want to admit, dodged death too many times to count. "Bazorov was obsessed with the glory of the mother country - black and red are your colours Nat. Black Widow - star of the Red Room."
"Yellow didn't fit," she whispers.
Clint's knife saws at the leather strapping until her arms are free and she can help him with the rest of it. She fumbles, fingers numb from being held too tight for too long. Free at last she tumbles out of the chair, partially because her circulation isn't great and partially because falling into her partner's arms is too tempting to pass up. He catches her, as always, and they sprawl on the floor, rolling over one another like waves crashing on the shore, cutting off one another's air with bruising kisses and fingers that grip a little too tight.
When they eventually pull apart, chests heaving, eyes bright, hands gripped, white knuckled, to one another's clothes, they simply stare at one another. He can read her like a book, seeing the cracks that nobody else would think to look for. Vulnerability does not sit well with her, she needs to reassert control in order to be comfortable in her own skin once more. "It's okay Nat," he assures her. "We're okay."
He strokes a thumb across her cheek and she leans into his touch, savours it. Their eyes hold and she offers him a brief smile. "I know," she tells him. There are a thousand other things that she could say but it's inadvisable for them to waste too much time tussling on the floor. "Thank you."
Delaying their escape to safety in favour of a reunion that would be better kept for behind closed doors would be foolish indeed. Reluctantly, she climbs off him. He stays where he is, on his back and looking up at her - lips slightly swollen, one leg straight and the other bent. It's a tempting sight, almost too tempting.
She reaches out a hand to help him up and he accepts it. The strength in his grip is almost enough to make her reconsider. It would be so easy to pull him down on top of her and revel in every hard line of his body.
On his feet again, he slings an arm around her shoulder and tucks her into his side. Natasha allows this, wraps an arm around his waist in return and lets her head fall onto his shoulder. "We need to report in," she murmurs as they fall into step with one another. "We have a maniac to catch."