Author's note: Thanks to MagicLia16, , Nimrodel 101, PrimeReader and Teyerin for your reviews! I'm going to keep on writing chapters.

Chapter 22

"I call this maneuver The Corkscrew," Clint explained to Steve one day at practice, getting into a new stance.

After weeks of daily lessons, Steve was not only learning modern combat at a rapid pace, but he was also getting to know Clint and Nat better. The three of them were all on a first-name basis now, and frequently had dinner together in the cafeteria even after they'd spent the entire day together training. Apparently the two of them weren't sick of Steve's company yet; in fact, just yesterday Nat had cracked a joke about how Bonnie and Clyde were morphing into the Three Amigos, to which Clint replied that it was really more like the Three Stooges, which was a reference Steve got.

"This move's good for when you need to dodge an airborne attack," Clint continued, "because it puts your body at an angle that's less predictable than just diving to one side or the other. Plus, it lets you land on your feet, and then you're in a position to strike back. I've used this fighting a swarm of military drones in Bolivia, and once in Thailand when some guy came swinging down on me from the rafters on a grappling line. Works like a dream."

He took a quick couple of steps and launched his body into the air laterally, pulling his arms in tight against his chest as he rotated a full two times before coming down nimbly on his feet again.

Steve raised his eyebrows in approval. "I like that."

Clint grinned, his cheeks creasing deeply. "Good, huh? Want to see it again?"

"Yeah."

Clint demonstrated it a few more times, and then motioned for Steve to try.

The first couple of attempts were a little clumsy, but Steve quickly got a feel for how he needed to adjust his body, and his third and fourth tries felt much better.

"How was that?" he asked Clint.

Clint narrowed his eyes at Steve. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to learn that move?"

"How long?"

Clint waved his hand vaguely. "I can't remember. Too long. And it was a little embarrassing, too, because the guy who taught it to me — Agent 45, one of my trainers at S.H.I.E.L.D. — he must have been over 50. Fifty! And he could perform that twist to perfection." Clint laughed in delight, remembering. "Made my whole group of trainees look like klutzes. Wish I'd thought to ask him his secret before he finally retired. He must have been on a high-protein diet or something. I mean, I'm only in my 40s, and I'm already starting to feel it."

Clint was quiet for a moment, and then added, "He was the first person who ever put a bow in my hand."

"No kidding."

"Yeah," Clint said as he sat down on the mat to catch his breath, leaning his back against the wall and stretching out his legs. Steve sat down next to him. "You know, when I came in, I was already a pretty crack shot with a gun," Clint continued. "I grew up in the country, and we had our own targeting range and everything. So the agents were teaching the other trainees how to shoot, but there wasn't much they could show me that I didn't already know. I'd been shootin' since I was a kid. I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Agent 45 just wanted to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off my face. I think he figured he would give me some unconventional weapon I'd never touched before and knock some humility into me that way."

"So how did you do?"

"The first few times shooting a bow?" Clint asked. "I sucked. But I loved it." His eyes grew a little distant. "I really loved it. It was a good challenge. So I kept at it, I got better. And then one thing led to another. I got to know Quinn in R&D — have you met him?" Steve nodded. "And he and I started tinkering around, bouncing ideas off each other for trick arrows that could do all kinds of different things, and after a while I realized it was much more versatile, much more precise, than just spraying bullets everywhere." He shrugged a little. "I never looked back."

They were quiet for a minute. Then Steve said, "Hey, remember when Stark called you Legolas?"

"Oh yeah," Clint said, and laughed in remembrance.

"I finally remembered to look that up," Steve said. "It's from a movie called 'Lord of the Rings.' Seen it?"

"Yeah, when it first came out. It's been a while now."

"I guess the author wrote it because of the war," Steve added. "My war, I mean. It sounded interesting."

"It was pretty good," Clint agreed. "One of those classic good versus evil stories, you know? And it didn't have any language or sex or anything. You'd like it."

"You wanna come over and watch it with me?"

"Yeah, sure," Clint said readily. "When?"

"This Saturday?"

"I have plans for the weekend," Clint said.

It seemed like Clint always had plans for the weekend. Throughout the week he would give his work his full attention, but when Friday afternoon hit, it was like he couldn't get out of the Triskelion fast enough. And he never said what his plans were. At first Steve suspected he was running missions for Fury on the weekend that were too sensitive to be openly discussed, but that didn't really seem to fit. Because when Clint came back on Monday morning, he always seemed happy and well-rested, more like he'd just come back from a vacation.

"It'll have to be a weeknight," Clint continued. "We'll have to watch it in installments though. They're long movies. You want it to be just you and me, or should we include Nat?"

"She can come too," Steve said.

If he was being honest with himself, his first thought had actually been to invite Nat, not Clint. But he'd instantly second-guessed that. What if she thought he was asking her out on a date?

It wasn't that the thought of being on a date with Nat was unpleasant. Intimidating, more like it. But mostly, Steve hadn't yet been able to figure out what the deal was between her and Clint. Were they, or weren't they? They were so comfortable with each other. Sometime he was sure that they were a couple. Nat had taken to constantly teasing Steve about the various women who worked in their building, trying to get him to ask one of them out. But she never once suggested such a thing to Clint. That seemed revealing to Steve. And a couple of times Nat had left on a Friday afternoon with the same alacrity as Clint, and Steve had suspected that wherever he was going, she was going with him.

And yet there were no obvious signs that they were together... and no reason Steve could think of why they would keep something like that a secret. And there was something else. More and more, Nat was sticking around on weekends, sometimes cajoling Steve into going various places with her while Clint was off doing whatever it was he was doing. The two of them had gone to see some of the historic sites around D.C., and even taken a boat ride up and down the Potomac one day.

Steve had figured that all of that had just been a friends-spending-time-with-friends thing. The social rules for men and women spending time together seemed to be much looser now, and it was all a little vague and confusing, but as far as Steve could tell he and Nat were doing what everyone nowadays called "hanging out."

But he still wasn't 100 percent sure that there was nothing between Nat and Clint. And that uncertainty was a problem because Steve knew, or at least hoped, that he'd be working with them both regularly once this training phase was over. So whenever Nat starting talking to Steve in a way that felt flirtatious or even started playfully roughhousing with him the way she always did with Clint, he would try to subtly but politely back away. Whatever was going on, he didn't want to get caught in the middle of it.

"Nat's coming," Clint suddenly said, catching a glimpse of her through the narrow window set in the door of the practice room, and without needing to consult with each other, he and Steve guiltily jumped to their feet and quickly got into fighting stances. Every time Nat happened to walk in while they were taking a break or had gotten distracted by an interesting conversation, she would tease them mercilessly for their "laziness."

Their ruse today actually worked, and in short order Clint had bowed out of the session to attend a briefing while Nat, as usual, put on music from her '80s playlist to listen to while she and Steve practiced.

It was free-style today, which was the way Nat preferred, and they had only been going a few minutes when she launched into one of her flying kicks that ended with her legs wrapped around his neck as she used the weight of her entire body and his own momentum to jerk him down to the ground. Except by now Steve had seen enough of that type of maneuver from her that today he was ready for it. He started to fall the way she had intended, but then grabbed her and whirled at the last second and ended up landing on top of her instead, careful to catch most of his weight on his hands and knees instead of body-slamming her as he could have, since this was only practice. In a flash he had one hand wrapped around her throat, although of course he didn't squeeze. She blinked at him a couple of times, bemused.

"I think this means you're dead," he informed her politely.

"Huh. That usually works," Nat said mildly, gazing up at him.

"Hey, Nat," he said, still holding her down. "Guess what?"

"What?"

"I kinda like this song."

Nat's eyes practically beamed up at him in surprise and delight. "Finally!"

He released the hold, got up and held out his hand to pull her back onto her feet. "What is it?" he asked.

She smiled widely. "Billy Joel's 'Uptown Girl.' You really like it? For real?"

"I really like it," he admitted.

"See, I knew I could get you to like '80s music," Nat said triumphantly. "And Billy Joel's written tons of songs. I have some of his CDs at home. I'll bring them tomorrow for you to borrow."

"I don't have a CD player," Steve confessed.

Nat frowned at him. "Then how do you listen to music at your place?"

"I bought a record player. At an antique shop."

"Seriously, Steve?" Nat pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed, shaking her head sadly.

"What? What's wrong with that?" How else was he supposed to listen to his records? He'd found some great ones of the old big-band music: Harry James and Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman... He was starting to get a good collection going.

"You can't take a record player with you on the train," Nat said impatiently. "You can't listen to music standing in line, or while you jog, or..."

"I don't need to listen to music then," Steve said.

"You're only saying that because you've never tried it," Nat said. "Steve, I am going to bring you into the 21st century if I have to drag you kicking and screaming." She dug around in the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a tiny, square device with earbuds attached. "Here. You can borrow my MP3 player until you get your own. Try this."

She reached up to tuck the earbuds into his ears, but he backed away before she could do it. "So I can walk around like a zombie with a little machine in my ear, just like everyone else?" he said.

"Yes," Nat said firmly. "You're going to love it." She showed him the tiny screen of her music player. "This is how you scroll through the list," she said. "See, here's my Billy Joel collection. Push this button to play."

"I'm not gonna use that," he said stubbornly.

Nat shot him a look of pure exasperation that lasted an uncomfortably long time. "Would it kill you to bend a little?" she asked at last.

He stared right back, unwavering. "It might."

She threw up her hands in exasperation and stalked away in defeat. Or at least he thought so. It was only after he had left the Triskelion for the day and arrived at the barbershop to await his turn for a haircut that he put his hands in his pockets to make sure he had his wallet, when he discovered Nat's music player and earbuds had been tucked in there without him ever noticing.

Annoyed, and yet flattered by her persistence all the same, Steve stared at the music player for a long moment, and then shrugged in resignation and put the earbuds in his ears. He was going to be sitting here a while waiting his turn anyway, and none of the other men waiting next to him seemed inclined to talk... they were all absorbed in their own devices.

If I can't beat them, might as well join them, he thought.

He pushed play, and nearly jumped out of his skin as "Uptown Girl" started to play. For a couple of panicked seconds he hunted around for the volume button to turn it down, but gradually he realized it actually wasn't too loud. It was just that the sound was so intimate, coming straight into his ears like that. It was like having music piped directly into his brain. It was almost too much, and yet it was just enough.

He glanced around at the people next to him, hoping he wasn't bugging them with his music, but no one even looked over at him. They couldn't hear it. It was like he was in his own soundproofed cocoon.

He sat back and listened to Billy Joel sing about honesty. About how much he loved New York. About how women were kind until they were cruel, and how they never gave up or gave in... they just changed their minds. Steve had to listen to that song twice, amazed at how perfectly the lyrics explained some things about women that he had never really understood before. Why couldn't he have found this sooner?

By the time Steve had listened to four or five songs, he realized that he didn't really like Billy Joel's music.

He loved it.

In fact, he was so absorbed in the music that the barber had to call his name three times before he noticed, and guiltily Steve jerked the earbuds out of his ears and hurriedly stuffed them back in his pocket before heading over to the chair.

"What are we doing? Just a trim?" the man asked.

Steve opened his mouth to say yes, and then hesitated. He had met a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel over the last few weeks, and he couldn't help but notice that the only men who had a haircut like his — parted and combed neatly over to the side — were the gray-haired desk jockeys who were nearing retirement. He didn't really want to change his hair — he hadn't thought twice about it during his stay in New York — and yet...

For the first time it occurred to him that sticking to his 1940s habits might not look like devotion to the good old days to everyone else. Maybe it looked like pride, like he was setting himself apart from them. Like he thought his ways were better than theirs.

Maybe there was even a grain of truth to that.

Steve scratched his nose thoughtfully, and then met the barber's eyes in the mirror.

"Can you do something to make it a little more..." he started, and then trailed off.

"Sexy?" the barber finished.

"No!" Steve said quickly. "No, no. Just... modern. But I don't want it to stick straight up like I just got out of bed," he added quickly.

"It only does that if you gel it that way," the barber said. "But we can cut it shorter on top, and lose the part."

Fifteen minutes later Steve went outside. His hair was shorter, he had ear buds in his ears, and he walked to his motorcycle with an involuntary bounce to his step as Billy Joel sang passionately about a river of dreams.

He'd bent. Just a little bit. Nat was going to be so proud of him.

Two weeks later

STEVE ROGERS: Help.

BRUCE BANNER: dont says its aliens again

BRUCE BANNER: not in the mood for code green

STEVE ROGERS: I just got a girl's phone number.

BRUCE BANNER: thats even worse

STEVE ROGERS: What do I do?

BRUCE BANNER: dont call

STEVE ROGERS: I'm laughing.

STEVE ROGERS: I mean, LOL.

BRUCE BANNER: im not joking DONT CALL

STEVE ROGERS: Why?

BRUCE BANNER: because youll look desperate

BRUCE BANNER: text her insted

STEVE ROGERS: Srsly? I have to ask her out by text? That doesn't seem right.

BRUCE BANNER: dont ask her out steve just say sup or something

STEVE ROGERS: Is that a typo?

BRUCE BANNER: no sup means whats up

BRUCE BANNER: it means what is happening

STEVE ROGERS: I'm confused.

BRUCE BANNER: ok back up when did you get her number where did you meet

STEVE ROGERS: At Central Park. Her Frisbee got stuck in a tree when she threw it for her dog. I got it unstuck.

STEVE ROGERS: The Frisbee, not the dog.

STEVE ROGERS: That happened today.

BRUCE BANNER: ok wait 2 or 3 days and then text sup.

BRUCE BANNER: dont ask her out for a week or two just keep texting but not too much

STEVE ROGERS: Are you sure?

BRUCE BANNER: no you are talking to a single guy

BRUCE BANNER: if you want good advice talk to tony

STEVE ROGERS: I don't think so.

BRUCE BANNER: yeah his methods might not work for you

BRUCE BANNER: steve if you blow this it wont be hard to get more phone numbers

BRUCE BANNER: you're famous

STEVE ROGERS: She didn't recognize me at first. That's why I liked her.

STEVE ROGERS: We had a normal conversation. It was nice.

BRUCE BANNER: that does sound nice

BRUCE BANNER: i think im a little jealous

STEVE ROGERS: Should I see if she has a friend?

BRUCE BANNER: what a friend who likes men who turn green and go insane

BRUCE BANNER: ?

STEVE ROGERS: My mother always said there's a lid for every pot.

BRUCE BANNER: LOL

BRUCE BANNER: funny but not

BRUCE BANNER: i had a lid for my pot once

STEVE ROGERS: What happened?

BRUCE BANNER: she was general ross daughter

STEVE ROGERS: Oh.

STEVE ROGERS: Sorry.

BRUCE BANNER: i try not to think about it

BRUCE BANNER: it still makes me mad

BRUCE BANNER: thats not safe for anyone

"Steve," Clint said cautiously, "are you sure this is a good idea?"

Steve handed the shield to Nat and glanced over at Clint. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Clint raised his eyebrows, but didn't deign to answer directly. "Your funeral," he said with a shrug.

"Are you afraid I'll be good, Clint, or that I won't be?" Nat asked, trying the shield on and looking down to admire the results. Several hundred feet away, a target had been set up in a spacious storage room in the bowels of the Triskelion, since the mirror-filled training room was not well-suited for what they were doing today.

"It's a toss-up," Clint said. Having said his piece, he wandered off aimlessly, bow in hand, while Steve turned to Nat.

"Ever throw a discus?" he asked her. "For track and field in high school or something like that?"

"I've thrown a lot of things at a lot of people," Nat said. "Can't say a discus was one of them." She quirked an eyebrow at him. "How about you?" she asked. "I bet you were the star of the track team, right? Or were you more of a football man?"

"I didn't do sports in high school," he confessed, ducking his head a little. "I was... kinda a late bloomer."

She laughed lightly, as he knew she would, and he smiled back.

"Okay," he said. "We'll start at the beginning."

He explained the basics of shield-slinging to her, and then had her make her first couple of attempts. Just then a song started to play, one with a fast drumbeat and a strumming guitar, echoing around the large room. A man started to sing: "All of my love, all of my kissin', you don't know what you've been missin', oh boy! When you're with me, oh boy!"

The song went along at a fast clip as Nat tossed the shield and Steve retrieved it for her. Every now and again the singer was putting a funny little hitch in his voice, almost like a high-pitched hiccup, and in a weird way it actually worked. The song felt light-hearted and a little bit silly and... just plain good fun.

"Hey Nat," Steve said. "I like this song, too. What is it?"

"I don't know," Nat said as she took the shield back for another try. "That's Clint's phone, not mine."

"It's Buddy Holly," Clint said from where he was kicking back against a stack of storage crates, his legs stretched out comfortably on the floor and his bow leaning against the crates nearby. "And I told you so." He gave Nat a smug smile.

"Told me so, what?" Nat asked, mystified.

"I told you we should have started Steve on this kind of music, remember?"

"No, what you said was, 'Steve can't go straight to '80s music,'" Nat reminded him. "And I already made him love Billy Joel, which means I'm the one who proved you wrong!"

"Nat, 'Uptown Girl' was throwback music," Clint explained patiently as he got back to his feet. "Billy Joel was doing doo-wop. Like Buddy Holly, which is exactly where I told you to start him off!"

Nat let out an exasperated sigh and hurled the shield at the target, hitting it dead-center... and then ducking as the shield came careening back at an angle she was clearly not expecting.

"I just got him to like '80s music, Clint, don't ruin it!" she shot back.

"It's impossible to ruin Buddy Holly." Clint cranked up the volume on his phone, picked up his water bottle and held it in front of him like a microphone as he began to sing along with the song:

"Stars appear and the shadows are fallin', you can hear my heart a-callin'-" Clint rocked side to side to the beat, belting it out. "A little bit a-lovin' makes everything right, and I'm gonna see my baby tonight, yeah!"

Steve's eyebrows went up. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't that. Clint was... good. He was putting a rough edge to his voice, like all the rock-n-roll musicians did, but he was hitting the notes spot on and singing the words with both clarity and style. Steve glanced at Nat, not hiding his amazement, and she grinned back at him and shouted over the music with a big grin: "Clint's the king of karaoke!" He didn't know what that meant, but she was probably right.

Nat spontaneously started dancing toward Clint, shaking her head in a cloud of red curls. Clint didn't stop singing, but he dropped the water bottle, grabbed Nat's hands and started dancing with her, both of them laughing at their own badly executed choreography.

Steve smiled, watching them... but after a bit, he also backed away before one of them got the brilliant idea to suck him into their little song and dance routine, and instead wandered over to where Clint had left his bow leaning against a target.

Curious, Steve picked up the bow, got it into what he hoped was the proper position in his hands, and gave the string an experimental tug. He'd never held one of these before.

"You wanna try it?" Clint asked, coming up unexpectedly behind Steve, slightly out of breath from his singing and dancing. A new Buddy Holly song had started, a more low-key one. Nat had gone back to her shield-slinging.

"Yeah," Steve admitted.

Clint handed him an arrow. "Okay. Fit that to the string. Yep. And pull back. More, more, more."

"Don't wanna break it." The bow felt just a little too fragile in his hands, like it could snap at any second.

"If you break it, I'll kill you. No, I'm just kidding. Well, maybe not. Seriously though, pull back more. It's bendy, it can take it. There, perfect. Now, look at the target..."

Steve got the bullseye in his sights.

"I shouldn't be showing you this," Clint muttered. "You're probably gonna put me out of a job."

Steve wasn't so sure Clint needed to worry about that. He didn't know which arrow tip to focus on; there appeared to be two of them. He squinched one eye shut. There, that was better. Now there was only one arrow tip.

"Hey, Steve," Clint said. "Do you close one eye when you throw your shield?"

"No," he murmured distractedly, wondering if he was supposed to inhale or exhale when he released the arrow.

"Then don't close one when you shoot my bow. Dope." Clint slapped him lightly upside the head. Behind them, Nat threw the shield again, badly, and it clattered against the wall in an anti-climatic way. Clint laughed at her, and Nat scowled at him.

"You think you're so smooth?" she asked Clint. She scooped up something off the ground and tossed it at Clint, who instinctively caught it. "Try that, and then we'll see who's laughing."

Clint looked down at what he was holding, and Steve recognized Nat's Widow's Bite bracelets.

Clint smirked. "Tasers. Big whoop. I've used these before."

"Not like that, you haven't."

Clint wrapped the bracelets around his wrists and glanced up at Nat in a totally unconcerned way.

"Don't forget to turn off the-" Nat started.

Clint clenched both fists to activate the bracelets. Twin blue sparks flew, and suddenly Clint grunted wordlessly and hit the ground while Steve looked down at him, bemused, still holding the bow.

Nat came to stand over Clint's writhing form.

"-anti-theft device," she finished coolly.

Clint grunted and gasped, rolling side to side on the ground for endless agonizing seconds, and then ground out some very bad words.

"Oh behave yourself, Steve can hear you, you know," Nat said.

Eventually Clint staggered back to his feet, red-faced, and looked in disgust at the bracelets wrapped around his wrists.

"Don't push any more buttons," Nat advised. "You might set it off again."

"Get these things off me!" Clint demanded.

"Now?"

"No, yesterday!"

"Like this?" Nat asked, raising the shield edge-first and shooting Steve a questioning glance.

"Works great for getting handcuffs off," Steve said.

"No, not like that!" Clint exclaimed, backing up out of Nat's reach. "I want to keep my hands, thank you very much! Do you know how many alien limbs I saw flying in New York thanks to that little maneuver?!"

"It isn't that sharp," Nat said, running a fingertip appreciatively around the rim of the shield.

"It crushes more than slices," Steve agreed.

Suddenly there was a loud bang that echoed unnaturally loud in the open space, and all three of them jumped, Nat crouching instinctively behind the shield, Steve pointing the bow toward the source of the noise even though his arrow had slipped off the string, and Clint raising both his bracelet-fortified fists in a threatening way despite the fact that he was still wobbling from his own self-inflicted tasing.

An utterly mystified Maria Hill, armed with a tablet held loosely down by her side, stared back at the three of them.

"Oh," Steve said foolishly, lowering the bow as Nat, by his side, slowly straightened up from behind the shield. Clint quickly put his hands behind his back in a belated attempt to hide the Widow's Bite.

"I am so confused right now," Maria said, eyes darting back and forth among the three of them.

"We were just-" Steve started.

Maria held up a palm meaningfully. "You know what? I don't even want to know. Knowing you three, you'll make me forget what I came in here for in the first place."

"Which is?" Nat asked.

She focused on Steve. "A change in your training, starting next week. Fury feels like you've had enough instruction. Now he wants to test out what you've learned and how well you've learned it."

"How do we do that?" Steve asked.

"We'll put you through some war games." She glanced at Nat and Clint. "Not with these two. You probably know too much about their styles by now. We'll put you with a new group, see if they can throw any surprises your way."

"You're gonna kick their butts, Steve," Clint said. "You're gonna make us proud."

"Who is it?" Steve asked.

"STRIKE team," Maria said. "Brock Rumlow's making a plan for you right now."

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: What do you think of Steve's developing relationship with the other Avengers? Reviews are welcomed!

(By the way... Jeremy Renner really does have a great singing voice. Look him up on YouTube sometime.)