UNCLE JED ~ BROTHER (ORIGINAL BY MATT CORBY)

They were sitting in front of each other, cross-legged on his bed. Her forearms lay directly on top of his, holding onto his elbows as he held onto hers. They didn't touch anywhere else, though their foreheads were close. They breathed slowly together, every breath relaxing them further. His eyes were closed, his head bowed, but she was staring at him, her eyes unusually soft.

Someone standing in the room with them would feel the calm yet precise atmosphere. If someone were to put this bizarre bond into terms, they would say it was an inescapable competition between friendship and profession. It was obvious that there was a severe amount of trust between these two people, a connection that went beyond understanding. But it was as if they were the same side of separate magnets, made of the same thing, but unable to connect, held apart by an invisible force. It was a competition that neither person wanted to acknowledge, but was there all the same.

Natasha could feel Clint's heartbeat in his arms. His pulse was so strong that it seemed as if she could hear it too. He was warm and hard under her hands, features she appreciated from afar, never completely understanding. Her own fighting tactics were about speed and deception, not patience or strength. It was probably why he was able to overpower her half of the time.

Watching Clint's immobile, sleepy face was meditative to Natasha. The process was slow and easy. The lines in his face were soft, his eyelashes were shadowy, and his mouth was lax. The tranquility she saw in him at this moment was… dare she say it… beautiful, even if he was too rugged to really be called that.

Natasha didn't get enough tranquility in her life. However, she didn't think she could take too much of it. Clint's behavior after only two months of peace was evidence of what it could do to a challenging personality like theirs.

But she knew his behavior tonight wasn't just about being cooped up too long… He did have a limited amount of freedom around Paris, so long as his false identity was intact.

No, this was about assignments and objectives. Or, more correctly, the lack thereof. Clint's entire life was about starting, manipulating, and ending wars. Since he was eighteen, he'd been an adrenaline junkie with absolute control, a sniper with pinpoint accuracy and near-perfect judgment on the field, and a leading competitor in a most dangerous game of life and death… but Natasha knew he was also a man susceptible to withdrawal.

And so, she felt sorry for her outburst earlier. Clint didn't deserve her emotional drama, no matter how much he might have caused it. No one deserved the Black Widow's emotional problems, not even Natasha.

The man who'd given her life back to her deserved more than she could ever give, but she was going to give him whatever she could.

Clint's fingers shifted slightly on her arms, stroking her slightly before lying prone on her skin. When she did the same to him, his breathing became even more relaxed.

Natasha suddenly remembered their first mission together, when he'd threatened to kill her if she ever kissed him again. But now, after years of knowing each other, her touch relaxed him.

She wondered what experiences Clint had gone through that made him react like this. They must've been extraordinary to condition such an unusual response in an assassin, a person whose profession put them in contact with other human being's most vulnerable moments, the moments before a violent death. Natasha, an assassin herself, was basically immune to physical intimacy now. The only bodily contact that she had any thought over was violent and potentially threatening to her health.

But she couldn't ask about it; she was sure he'd never tell her and if the roles were reversed, he'd never ask. There were few things people like them would never admit to themselves, and the need for affection was one of them.

While his intense eyesight was cut off behind his eyelids, Clint's other senses became sharper. Not only was he fully aware of things going on in the other apartments and in the street below, but also he could hear Natasha breathing inches from his face and smell the soap she used and feel the utter smoothness of her skin with unusual clarity. It was mesmerizing to feel her dainty hands curled loosely on his arms and her soft skin just lying against his. It made her feel delicate and gentle, though she was anything but. It made him feel like he was made of marble, heavy and rough and immovable.

He was thinking about what Natasha had said to him about lying. About how much it had affected her.

Natasha wasn't emotionless. Clint knew that through experience. She'd just been acclimatized to emotionless states and was still learning what they were. She was facing them head on, no matter how messy they could be at times. He was proud of her for it. That kind of torment was harder than anything they would see on the field. No one ever got it completely under control, but Natasha was getting better at it.

Clint believed he'd become the best he could be at understanding and redirecting his emotions when needed. It had been years of hell, but he considered himself a master at knowing his own head.

Consequently, he knew Natasha meant more to him than she should. There was no point in denying it. He only wondered how it had escaped his notice for twelve years. But looking back, he realized that he'd started missing her whiplash moods while he was on a solo mission eight years ago, and it had grown steadily worse from there. He'd started genuinely smiling at her six years ago. He started teasing her shortly after that. He'd started liking her touch three years ago. He started sitting with his feet on her chair about a month later. He'd started feeling comfortable enough to sleep in the same room as her two years ago. He'd let her handle his bow a year and a half ago. He'd started seeing red hair instead of blood in his dreams about three months ago, right after New York…

If things continued progressing the way they were, Clint wasn't sure what he'd do. People like them just didn't rely on each other emotionally. It wasn't the sane thing to do. People like them relied on emotionally stable people for emotional support.

And yet… the fact that someone as strong as Natasha was here, holding onto him like he was as important to her as she was to him… it made him feel safer than he'd ever felt in his life. It made him feel stronger than he could've ever imagined being. It also made him afraid to loose her, and fear of loss was unacceptable in a world where people died every day.

Clint didn't rightly know what was wrong with him, but he was going to fix it. And he wasn't going to let Natasha know either. Boundaries.

Natasha felt his hands grow harder on her arms and his face tighten. Whatever he was thinking, he needed to stop thinking it. Right now.

"Clint."

He would've flinched if he were someone else.

"Clint, relax."

He chuckled tiredly, his eyes still closed, "I am relaxed. I'm about to fall asleep."

Natasha smiled, "Maybe you should lay down then."

Clint's hands slid away from her, making her feel suddenly cold, and he crawled around her to bury his face in the pillows as Natasha lay on her side next to him, bunching the pillow against her neck. It still amazed her how easy this was, laying in a man's bed without any implications of sex. It amazed her further that Clint didn't even seem to think about it.

Arrogance aside, Natasha knew that she was the epitome of any man's wet dream. It was half of the reason she was so good at espionage in a world dominated by men. And Clint Barton was as red-bloodedly heterosexual as anyone could get. She'd been around him long enough to notice when his eyes glow with sexual energy, looking at attractive women…

She'd never actually seen him act on it, though.

And he didn't seem at all affected by her either.

She knew better than to feel insulted or challenged. Knowing him, it probably just hadn't crossed his mind that they, Clint and Natasha, could possibly have sex. Natasha wondered what would happen if that topic of conversation was ever brought up…

When the bed stopped creaking from their trying to get comfortable, Clint moaned in content, his eyes fluttering. "If I don't wake up tomorrow, Nat, know that it's all your fault. You and that alcohol," he mumbled roughly.

Natasha internally scoffed at his childish joke, opting to see if he would fall asleep if she was quiet. And sure enough, his breathing became very deep and slow barely even a minute later. The fact that he could sleep around her gave her more pleasure than it should.

She watched him sleeping a little longer before she could close her own eyes and fall asleep herself.