Clint woke to a sudden deluge of icy cold water being poured over his head.
His eyes shot open, a yelp of shock leaving his mouth as he flailed, trying to get away from the unholy spray. The surface he lay on was smooth and slippery, he couldn't get a grip on it, and that only made him panic further.
To his surprise a pair of hands clamped around his wrists and stopped him from struggling, the water cutting off before he could shout any more. Clint looked up to see Natasha hovering over him, a concerned expression on her pretty face. A series of colourful curses left his mouth in a rush, but Clint couldn't hear them. No hearing aids, then. One of his eyes was swollen shut but he still tried to look around; dizzy and nauseous and really fucking cold.
He was in a bath tub without a shirt on, shuddering as the shower above his head dripped several more freezing cold droplets down his back. The room itself was tiny, more an en-suite than a bathroom. The once white tiles were stained an ugly moss green.
"Jesus fuck, why would you do that?!" he spluttered, hoping he sounded just as affronted as he felt.
"You [-] [dirty?]," she replied with a casual shrug; any worry wiped clean from her expression in the blink of an eye. She looked a little paler than usual, but cleaner than before, her hair hanging limply around her face, a frown on her lips. For a second Clint had the crazy idea to ask her what was wrong until he remembered they didn't exactly do that.
Instead, he nodded slowly, his head a great deal heavier than he remembered. A headache had begun to thud dully behind his temples but everything else hurt twice as bad, so Clint wasn't worried. He shook his head, sending droplets of water everywhere. "'Course I was. Silly."
Natasha poked him a few times, asking him a few disjointed questions. The date, the president, what was 2+2. Clint answered as best he could, but judging by the look on her face, his answers were less than satisfactory.
Everything that happened on that base was slowly coming back to him as he shivered in that unhygienic little bathroom. He remembered Natasha's blood spewing across the ground, the vivid red stark against the grey stone. Clint frowned up at her, noticing little things.
How she held herself differently now, how heavily she leaned against the edge of the bathtub, how all the blood drained from her face when she moved a certain way. There was a pale blue bruise forming around her eye and another at her jaw, her lip split in two places and her movements sluggish with exhaustion.
Despite all this, Natasha began pressing a small bag of ice against Clint's head, her face expressionless. He winced when she pressed a little too hard on a sore spot. "Hey, hey watch it," he murmured, bringing a hand up to do it himself before she batted it away impatiently.
"Idiot, American," she muttered in irritation, but stopped pressing so hard anyway. "[-] could h-[ave? alf?] died."
Clint snorted, a smirk tugging at his lips as another shudder ran through his body. "Yeah, but you should've seen the other guy."
She shook her head at him and he grinned back, still a little woozy from what he was sure had been another breath taking concussion. They sat for a while in a comfortable silence. Clint could feel himself begin to warm up again, his jeans drying off and the unforgiving summer heat seeping into his bones like it had never left.
"Hey, didn't see Bucky in there, did you?" he found himself asking when he couldn't stand the silence any longer. She shook her head, not meeting his eyes.
"Fuckin' knew it," he groaned, his head thudding against the edge of bath, exhausted. "He was never there to begin with, was he?" Clint let out a long breath, not bothering to wait for an answer. "You lied."
It wasn't a question.
Natasha's expression didn't change, and he hadn't expected it to, but there was a new tension in her shoulders that hadn't been there before.
Clint didn't actually care that he'd nearly died because of her lie. He wasn't one to believe in ghost stories and he'd had no reason to trust her word in the first place. He was surprised to find he wasn't even annoyed about it. The men in that building probably weren't good people, no matter who the hell they worked for or what flag they fought under. The world was better off without them and you wouldn't catch Clint defending bottom of the barrel scum. But then, some would call him that too, so Clint couldn't really talk.
He thought of the way Natasha had killed those men, the pure fury that had fuelled such a bloody massacre. It was a crime of passion. Revenge, through and through. For what? Clint had no idea, but the signs were all there, and he could sympathise.
"You could've just asked y'know. I would've helped," he said, watching as she pretended to focus on the icepack in her hand. He hoped he sounded sincere. It was difficult to tell. "Didn't have to rope Steve or Bucky into it."
To his surprise she responded, shaking her head with a slight scowl on her face. "[-] no guarantee [-f] [that?]," she said, her head lowered a little, making it harder for him to see what she was saying. "[-] [it's?] personal peo-[ple?] always [help?] without [-] [questions?]."
Clint remembered standing over his big brother, an old, rusty pistol, heavy and shaking in his hands as he clicked off the safety and took aim; his little heard thumping hard against his ribcage and his mouth dry. Revenge was always a personal thing, he thought. Natasha was too proud to ask for his help when there was an alternative option available. He could understand that.
He was about to say as much when Natasha's head suddenly whipped towards the door. Seconds later a tall, bald man walked through it and began to speak. Try as he might, Clint couldn't understand a word of it. He guessed it to be French when Natasha responded in kind without hesitation.
Clint wondered if she kept her slight Russian accent when she spoke French or if she only did that with English. She seemed equally fluent in both from his limited understanding. How many languages did she know? Where did she learn them? Hell, better question, where the hell did she learn to fight like a ninja? And where could he sign up?
Clint didn't ask any of these questions and after a few minutes the unknown man left, closing the door behind him. When Natasha turned back to Clint she informed him that the guy was allowing them to rent his bathroom for two days. Clint couldn't help but think that the Frenchman was a bit fucking crazy if he was willing to let two blood soaked assassins anywhere near his home. But considering he was benefitting from the deal, he chose not to argue.
Instead he asked how they got here in the first place. Natasha said she had banged on the guy's door, bleeding like a stuck pig and supporting an unconscious Clint on one shoulder, and he'd just let them in. Without asking any questions.
Natasha seemed to think this was a perfectly normal reaction while Clint came to the ultimate conclusion that the guy was absolutely batshit.
"He sewed you up, then?" Clint asked, remembering the wound in her side that had gushed blood all over his hands, all over his clothes, all over the street. He couldn't see any blood on her now, she'd changed into what Clint could only assume was one of the French guy's shirts.
Scowling, Natasha lifted up her shirt just enough to show off a roughly stitched wound, the flesh raw and pink against her pale skin. It was clean at least. "[-] a [scratch?], I [-] do it [myself?]," she said, in that increasingly familiar tone that meant Clint was being stupid again. She gestured towards him. "I [had?] [-] do you [too?]"
Clint frowned in confusion. He followed her gaze to his left thigh and noticed it was much fatter than his right under his jeans. Thanks to the bandages, he presumed. His old shrapnel wound must've opened again with all the fighting he'd been doing. Clint was struck by the thought that were it not for her, he could've bled out.
"Thanks, Nurse Natasha," he murmured, the gratitude foreign on his tongue but sincere nonetheless. Natasha looked genuinely surprised at the praise and it was a reaction Clint was intimately familiar with. He suddenly had an inexplicable urge to punch something.
The expression was gone in the blink of an eye and she gave him a curt nod of acknowledgement. "[Now?] [-] you're aw-[ake? ay?] [-] you have [any?] broken [-]?"
Clint shook his head, not quite sure what she said but too embarrassed to ask her to repeat it. He was pretty sure he hadn't broken anything anyway, bar his nose which thankfully had been set while he was unconscious. It throbbed dully, but nothing that demanded immediate attention.
Small mercies, he thought to himself, small mercies.
Natasha turned away from him to rummage in the cupboard underneath the sink. Clint realised that if she said anything he wouldn't be able to tell and he frowned at the thought. He missed his hearing aids now that he had someone to talk to, which was surprising after weeks of despising them. Right now they were in the rucksack he'd been living out of for the past few months, wrapped up in a spare pair of socks. He wondered how the fuck he was going to get to them.
Speaking of clothes, "Where'd my shirt go?" he asked, almost as an afterthought.
Natasha turned, this time with a damp cloth in her hand. She threw it on his chest and after a few seconds Clint got to work, running it over the tender bruises on his stomach and back. "I [thought?] you [-] bruised [-] [ribs?]," she said with a slight shrug.
"Okay, now that we know I do, could I have it back?"
She shook her head, her eyes scanning over his torso in a critical manner. "Shower first," she ordered shortly before standing up and marching towards the door.
"Hey, wait! What if I can't stand up on my own?" Clint yelled, not really worried about the possibility but wanting to be difficult nonetheless. "Not gonna join me?"
To his surprise she actually turned her head towards him so he could read her answer, her expression deadpan. "[-] bite me, [Barton?]."
Clint let out a laugh as the door shut tight behind her.
When Natasha returned Clint was stretched out on their patron's couch, his leg propped up on a footstool and the television on, but muted. English subtitles running along the bottom of the screen. He had wrapped himself in a blanket a while ago, warm, loose limbed and relaxed; a far cry from how he'd been earlier that day.
"Hey," he called to her, his eyes still glued to the screen.
"Hello. Where's [A-]?"
"Who? French dude? He said he was going out to get some bleach- or I think he called me a bitch." He wrinkled his nose. "I mean, they both look kinda the same with his accent but I'm pretty sure it's the first one."
"Why would [-] want [bleach?]?" Natasha asked as she dropped his rucksack on the floor, searching through it's contents. A slight smile curling at her lips.
"The real question is why he would call me a bitch," Clint muttered, scandalised, until Natasha reached over to smack him upside the head. "Ow!"
"[Answer?] [-] question."
Clint pouted childishly for a second before he dropped the façade with a shrug. "Nah, he didn't say. I guess speaking English clearly for the stupid American wasn't really his thing. But, I'd guess all the blood on the bathroom floor might have something to do with it."
"Blood?"
Clint shrugged, not half as embarrassed about it as he felt he should be. She'd seen him in worse condition a few hours ago, after all. "Fell getting outta the shower, stiches came out, crazy Frenchman came to my rescue to patch me up," he huffed, trying to sound bored with the concept even as he shifted awkwardly in his seat. "Dude's got the accent from hell, I can't understand half the shit he says."
"[-] least you [don't?] stink any-[more?]," Natasha commented, dropping down onto the couch beside him. He appreciated the evasion of the topic. She threw two tiny black cases onto his lap. "[-], those [might?] help with [-]."
Clint opened one case to find a hearing aid, much slimmer and more compact than his own, in a startling shade of purple. A peek into the other case revealed another identical aid. They even had the fucking Stark Inc. logo on them. Clint gaped for a moment, in utter astonishment. "Where the hell did you even get these?"
She shrugged noncommittally and didn't reply; eyes fixed on the TV.
A bright grin spread across Clint's face, so big it near physically hurt, but he couldn't stop. He couldn't remember the last time someone had done something like this for him. A simple, gift born out of necessity though it was. Even if she only had to walk into some store and swipe the two cases off a shelf, actual thought had gone into it, real effort.
He ducked his head down to hide the smile, though he knew she saw it. "Thanks, they're great."
A minute later he had the aids slotted comfortably behind his ears. They were watching the French movie Clint had found with the subtitles on, staring at the screen with glassy eyes. The exhaustion of the day's fight finally crashed onto Clint's shoulders now he had the opportunity to relax and he slumped further down into the sofa, curling around a cushion. He was half asleep when he heard it, so quiet it was barely there.
"You're welcome."
