"Are you stupid?" He asks, completely serious.

"Excuse me?" Natasha's head jerks slightly, she has never felt more indignant at a question in her entire life.

"Are you stupid?" He repeats, his tone half a step away from condescending. "Have you lost your fucking mind?"

"Keep talking to me like that Clint." She warns, her lips downturned as a faint simmer of anger begins to grow inside her chest. Had it been anyone else she wouldn't have spared them even a fraction of emotion, but the fact that this is Clint, her friend, that stings.

"I will if you keep saying stupid shit to my face." The archer's own angry frown colors the whole of his face unpleasantly.

"Are you serious right now?" Taking an invisible breath, she tries to bring their conversation back under control, she knew this would happen. "I know this is a touchy subject for you but-"

"A touchy subject? Touchy? Natasha you're telling me this as if you didn't have any knowledge of what fucking magic does to people." He isn't shouting but it's a near thing, every word is spiteful and forcefully said.

"Clint, you're not thinking about this clearly." She tries reasoning.

"There's no one who thinks more clearly about this damned subject than me. You're not doing it." He says in a voice that calls the topic ended and closed.

"What, are you supposed to be my father now?" Natasha has to resist the urge to roll her eyes and remind herself she isn't a child. Clint isn't one either, but he seems to have forgotten that.

"When you're behaving like a stupid kid-" He leaves the sentence in the air between them.

"Clint!" She barks at him "Don't talk to me like that. I am your friend, not the enemy and much less someone who doesn't know what they're doing." The redhead chastises him just as forcefully.

"I just don't understand why we're even talking about this, why you're even considering this." Clint lets go of a fraction of his anger and through the cracks she sees the real emotion underneath- he's scared.

"I'm not doing this out of the blue Clint. I've thought about it a lot. It's not… I haven't decided yet." She confesses and the archer perks slightly.

"You don't need this Tasha, you-" He's pleading with her now but silences at her sharp look. "Sorry, sorry." He amends breathless.

She says nothing but visibly softens towards him.

"I've talked to Thor about it." She offers and catches his fear molding into anger beneath his badly controlled expression.

"Magic is a dangerous thing. Magic-" He spats the word like it tastes of poison in his mouth.

"Things are not black and white and I know you know that." She's centered now, she knew this conversation wouldn't be easy, she knew Clint's fear almost as much as she knew her own.

"Why would you even want to risk that?" His eyes are angry, desperate, pleading, everything they can be to try and stop her from making this choice. "Why stick your hand into the fire if you know you get burned?"

"Why cook with fire if you can get hurt?" Natasha says back at him with a little smirk. "After all you can eat everything raw, right?"

The blond narrows his eyes and his face contorts funnily.

"And what, am I not cautionary tale enough for you?" He crosses his arms and stabs his blues into her own. "Is my fucked up, messy, violated mind not warning enough?"

"You are and it is," she concedes that. "And I've considered what happened to you alongside many other things. Clint, this is not about you dissuading me from my choices. What parts I've already decided are already decided, and what I haven't you won't have a part in taking and neither are you changing my mind. This is not a discussion; it's not up for debate. I'm telling you because you're my friend and this is something important that shouldn't be a secret between us." She tries to be kind, but her friend is losing what small control over himself he'd achieved.

"You don't know what you're doing." Clint's voice rasps as he shakes his head. "You're taking a risk not even worth thinking about. You're just- you're just gonna let him do things to your body?" He looks horrified, like he can see the train derailing but can do nothing to stop it. "Things none of us really understand, because, a few years back? They weren't real."

Natasha frowns. "We're talking about Thor Clint, not some evil wizard in disguise that wants to do me harm. Don't you trust him?" she pokes at his loyalties.

"I… of course I trust him" he grimaces. "You know I do but… I also trust Cooper to be a responsible brother, but I'm not letting him cook Lila a meal, he'd burn the house down and probably poison her without meaning too."

"Clint." She takes a breath and a step closer to him, placing her hands on his shoulders. "Thor's been alive since before electricity was a thing, and he was probably old enough back then to be the Asgardian equivalent of legally of age. I think I can trust him to handle a bit of magic that he's been managing since before this country was discovered."

She raises a pointed eyebrow and beneath her hands she feels him deflating slightly.

"Natasha…" It's almost a whine, but it's just passable enough that it won't be called out as such.

"I trust him." She says with conviction. "I trust that he is good of heart and that he wouldn't lie to me about how much experience he has with this. He's that kind of person, you know?"

"Yeah I know." Clint grunts and lets his head fall on her shoulder. "I'm just worried."

"I know you are, I knew you would be, that's why I'm telling you." She rubs his arms up and down a bit.

There's a quiet moment between them, where they just lean against one another.

"So you're going through with this?" The blond asks a while later, his forehead still on her shoulder.

"I don't know yet. But…" Natasha thinks about it for a moment and her next words ring true as she says them out loud. "I think I really might."

Clint raises his head to look at her, he studies her face, trying to figure her out.

"You taught me that I could have a choice." She tells him earnestly, and even the thought of it fills her heart with how much she loves this stupid man. "That it was okay to want things just because I wanted them and not for some ulterior motive. And hearing Thor say what he could do, just by waving a hand and doing some magic?" She grins at that because she still can't wrap her head around how ridiculous it is and it's wonderful.

"He's the magic man." Clint tries joking, but his eyes are sad.

"I have never told you this, but I'm so grateful for what you've taught me Clint. I'm so damned grateful I get to decide things and live out what follows after making choices." Her smile is so thankful it reaches right into the archer's heart.

"You've never had to," he smiles tentatively.

"I know." She chuckles "But still."

Clint sighs out and closes his eyes.

"I also know you don't need me saying this, but if not for your sake, then let me say this for my own." He takes a deep breath and tells her with serious eyes. "Anything fishy, anything that doesn't feel right, you tell him to stop, or you come to me. Or if you want to hold a hand while it's happening-"

"I'll come to you." She finishes and her heart swells again, and treasures his words where no evil will ever reach them.

The tension left in his shoulders slips away and he inhales more calmly now. She can see he still doesn't like it, but he's not prepared to fight her on this anymore.

"We could ask Thor to come and give a little bust up to your plants if it'll make you feel better." She says as she gestures to the not-yet-dead plants on his window.

The blond scoffs.

"They're perfectly fine as they are, thank you very much. I take good care of them." He defends his gardening prowess "I do know how to care for living things, I have a farm I'll have you know."

"Yeah, they could be better though." She grins.

"Whatever." Clint rolls his eyes but his playful smile doesn't escape her.

Natasha lets out a breath of her own at another step taken and succeeded without anyone getting majorly hurt. Now she can proceed and discover exactly what she's getting herself into.