Ok. Sorry this was a long time in coming. I've been busy with finals. But I'm good to go for the summer now, so expect more soon. Oh! And check out Teenage Dirtbag if you liked this. There's going to be a whole universe on that soon.
So enjoy!
Current Song: Man Like Me by Robert Downey Jr. (he can act, he can sing. that's it. I'm marrying into this family one way or another)
Current thought: Gonna go make me a sandwich, yay!
The Hawk and the Spider Part Three
Phil dried his hands on a towel before throwing it over his shoulder and walking to the door. Someone had just knocked on it a second ago and he'd rushed out of the kitchen in a slight panic. He wasn't expecting any visitors tonight.
When he opened the door, he was a bit more than surprised to see Clint, and hood thrown over his head, with someone on his back, giving them a piggy-back ride. He moved out of the doorway, letting the other man and his passenger in and then he slammed the door shut, locking it quickly, before turning around and facing them.
Phil watched quietly as Clint let a little girl down, also clad in a dark sweater with the hood thrown over her head. She didn't look at Phil. She'd probably already scoped him out when he had opened the door.
"I'm sorry," were the first words out of Clint's mouth. He shrugged the hood off, shaking his hair out, and then helped the little girl with hers. Phil was surprised to see she had bright red hair and sharp green eyes. There was no smile on her face, no expression on it at all, but Clint was speaking to her in soft Russian and she was answering back, just as softly.
Clint turned back to Phil then. "We had nowhere else to go and I don't think SHIELD is very happy with me right now. I'm sorry we just barged in on your space." He pointed to the small girl, who was still staring at Phil oddly. "This is Natasha Romanov. The Black Widow."
Phil nodded. "Right," he said to Clint. "Don't worry, it's fine."
And then he got on his knees so he was level with her and said in German, "Hello, Natasha."
And she responded in the same language with a smile on her face, "Hello."
Clint froze and then looked at Phil. He looked at Natasha. Then he looked back at Phil. "What the hell just happened?" he said in English. Were they speaking… Hell, what were they speaking?
"Phil, what are you-"
Phil smiled at him. "Relax Barton, let me handle this. Give us a minute?"
So Clint went into the kitchen and tried not to freak out too much.
Phil shook his head as Clint walked away and then he looked back toward the young girl. She was biting her lip to hide a smile and he said in German, "Has he been nice to you?"
She shrugged. "He's a good man. He should have killed me. He didn't."
Phil nodded. "I know. My name is Phillip Coulson. You can call me Phil. I'm here to help you as well."
Natasha looked unsure, wary. Phil didn't blame her, not after what she'd been through. "Why?"
"For the same reason he is," Phil responded, the guttural words of the language coming easy off his tongue. "And because it's him," he conceded. "I know it's a good reason when it's him."
Her bright, jeweled eyes blinked at him. "How do you know him?"
"We work together," Phil said shortly.
"And?"
"Does there have to be an 'and'?" he replied, slightly confused.
Natasha was starting to respect this man. He came right out and didn't hide things from her. And he looked after Clint, who'd been helping her all this time and being so kind to her, something no one had ever taken the time to do before.
"You work together. Sleep together?" she asked curiously, a disgusting seed of odd hope starting inside of her. She didn't know what it was for, or why it was there, just that it was.
"No," Phil said slipping into Spanish. "We don't sleep together." His stomach knotted.
Natasha nodded and changed the subject, switching to Spanish herself. "Where will we be staying? What will happen to me?" Clint hadn't known, but if anyone would know, it would be this man. Phil.
Phil contemplated telling her a lie. But he wouldn't. Not when she'd been lied to for far too long. "I don't know. But you can stay here for now."
"Clint too?" she asked, panic gripping her. If he made her stay here alone, without Clint, Clint who said he wouldn't leave…
"Clint too," Phil said in Mandarin. He grinned.
She didn't smile back, but she didn't glare either. "Good," she said in Mandarin as well. She scratched the back of her neck and sniffed.
Phil nodded and stood up. He'd been kneeling down to her level so they'd be face to face. "Why don't we settle you in a room? There's one down the hall, over there. There's a bed already made up. Are you hungry? Has he been feeding you?"
Natasha nodded. "Yes. Not well, but better than most."
Phil nodded, changing languages and going with Italian. "I'm making something to eat. Real food. Will you try it?" He led her down the hall, allowing her to walk behind him, keep an eye on him. He kept his hands away from his sides, his fingers spread, just to show her that he wasn't carrying any weapons. He opened the bedroom door. It was cozy, a guest bedroom for when his parents came over or an agent needed a safe house. It'd be used for the latter now. He turned to Natasha. It almost unnerved him how she watched him so closely.
Instead of speaking, she nodded and walked in, checking the single window, the empty closets and drawers, under the bed, around the headboard. He left her to it, saying that he and Clint would be in the kitchen if she needed anything and that he would call her when he was finished with the food.
Phil's hands were shaking. She was like a grown adult in a child's body, checking for every escape route, looking for hidden cameras, assessing what she could use as a weapon or a shield. It was heartbreaking and terrifying, that she could kill him quicker than he could kill her, and more efficiently and with less remorse, Phil was sure.
Phil loosened his tie, unbuttoned a few buttons at his throat. He was finding it hard to breathe at the moment. He walked into the kitchen, watching as Clint stirred the chili Phil had on the stove.
"Well you're alive. She must not hate you. How is she?" Clint didn't even turn around. "Also, this needs more cyan pepper. " Clint was familiar enough with Phil's apartment to bustle about and throw in the ingredients he needed.
"She… she's looking around the spare room. You two need to stay here until Fury can convince the Council not to shoot the both of you and maybe me for good measure." Phil sat at the little table, rubbing his temples. He'd been working all week to help Fury calm the Council. They'd claimed they had no idea she was a minor, but both Phil and Fury had expressed their disbelief and felt they were just heartless and couldn't care less about her age.
Clint turned around, a frown on his face, then something else flashing across it, before he sat down across from him and swallowed hard. "That bad? Shit, Phil. I'm sorry. I warned you-"
"Shut up, Clint," Phil said. They only spoke each other's first names outside of work. In SHIELD, they were Agents Coulson and Barton. But in Phil's apartment, in his tiny kitchen at that tiny table, they were just Phil and Clint, two men who'd been working with each other for almost ten years and had grown to know each other better than they knew themselves. "Nothing you can say will convince me helping you was a bad idea. So."
Clint shook his head, knowing when to drop the subject. "Fine. Tell me this then: how the hell does she know German?" He'd finally recognized it. It said something about the last time he used the language that it had taken him a moment to figure out what it was.
"And Spanish, Mandarin, Italian and I guess more." He shrugged. "I heard it in her accent. It was Russian with a lilt of something else, suggesting that whoever taught her taught her to speak more than one language. Not English though, she doesn't seem to understand it." Clint briefly remembered asking Natasha if she'd ever left Russia, remembered her answer. That explained that then.
"You know she'd never seen the ocean?" Clint said suddenly, looking down at the table, a heartbreaking look on his face. "The ocean, Phil. The large body of water that covers most of the Earth? She'd never…" He sighed and shook his head. "Fuck. Fuck. What did they do to her? How could they?"
Phil sat back, a bit surprised. He'd never seen Clint affected by anything, not like this. There was the occasional mission that left him silent for a day or two, but then he was back to that quick mouth of his and witty smile. But now, now he looked wrecked, like nothing would ever be righted. He remembered Clint's file, had read it a thousand times, yet that told him nothing of the man. Sure, Clint had shared things about his life with Phil over the years but… none of it was helping now.
He knew better than to ask if Clint was alright; he obviously wasn't. So Phil got up, checked the chili, poured the other man a bowl of it and set it down in front of him. "Eat something. According to our little spider, you haven't been feeding her or yourself well." That gave him a broken laugh, but it was honest and that was good enough for Phil. He poured another bowl and then asked Clint, "Will she come out and eat with us?"
Clint shrugged. "I don't know. She's used to just me being around, but she seemed ok with you. I think she can sense when you're an asshole and when you're not. She's a good judge of character."
"Then why did she decide to trust you?" Phil teased.
"Phil, I'm wounded. How long have you known me?" Clint smiled, though.
Phil shrugged, pretended to do the math in his head, but he knew, he always knew. "Eight years, ten months, three weeks and five days." He gave a shy grin at Clint's look of amazement. "I'm nothing but precise."
They fell silent after that and Clint stood up. "I think I'll go see if she-" He stopped, looking a bit surprised and causing Phil to turn around and see what the ruckus was all about.
And there was Natasha, her hooded sweatshirt off, in a black t-shirt and ratty jeans that Clint had picked up in some consignment store along the way. Seeing her in the bright light of the kitchen, she looked a lot paler and smaller and thinner than at first. She looked so young, and both Clint and Phil felt an odd pang of sadness hit them right square in the chest.
"I think I'll try that," she said in Russian, pointing to the chili on the table.
Phil nodded and set the bowl closer to another seat, getting up to fetch glasses as Clint got the water pitcher from the fridge. He set the three that he took from the cupboard on the table in front of each of them, letting Clint fill them as he went to go make himself a bowl of chili.
Natasha slunk forward, sliding into the seat wither chili bowl in front of her. She lifted the small spoon Phil had found for her and took a tiny bite, raising an eyebrow in what looked like approval judging by the way she kept eating. Then again, she might just be used to eating whatever crap her previous company had given her.
"Phil tells me you speak a shit-ton of languages, Natasha," Clint said in Afrikaans sitting down again.
"Language," Phil reprimanded in the same language as he sat as well, which told Clint that he was correct in assuming Natasha could understand them.
Her forehead rumpled. "I have to have some secrets. And you never asked," she replied, falling into the same language and dialect as the two SHIELD agents. Her face went blank again.
Clint shared a quick look with Phil and they continued to eat in silence until Phil broke it again. "Do you like the room?" He was speaking in Russian again.
"It's a place to sleep," she said quietly. "Though I do thank you for your… generosity." Her eyes looked wide as she looked at the both of them. "No one has ever… done that for me before." She swallowed hard and Clint hoped to God that she wouldn't cry. It physically hurt him whenever she did.
"We're glad to help," Phil responded quietly. "And I hope the food is to your liking as well."
"I don't have to like everything," she snapped, then looked away in what may have been embarrassment or fear. Clint didn't know. He didn't like either option, either.
Clint swallowed. "You don't have to, Natasha. We won't make you do anything you don't want to, or like anything you don't want to. Ok? You don't have to be afraid of that with us."
"And we aren't going to hurt you if you tell us what you think," Phil added, his tone of voice just as soft and soothing as Clint's. Russian sounded beautiful falling off his tongue when his voice was pitched that low, Clint thought. Then he stopped thinking it, because he'd been dealing with this and now a simple voice change wasn't going to call it all back and break his progress.
Natasha looked back, her face confused and hurt. She didn't say another word, just finished eating, got up, and left the table in silence. The moment she was out of the kitchen, Clint groaned and let his head drop into his hands.
"I suck at this. I don't know what to do when she's like this. Jesus Phil, what do I do?" he asked, hating how confused he sounded.
"You let her have her space. She'll be fine. She needs to get through some things alone and this is one of them," Phil answered. He put a hand on the back of Clint's neck where it was bent over in his hand and rubbed it once before realizing that it was unprofessional and that Clint might-
Clint leaned into the touch, sighing. He was tired. They'd been running to America and he was tired. Phil finally dropped his hand, letting his fingers slowly drag away and then he was putting the bowls in the sink and saying, "You look like death warmed over. You need sleep."
"Couch?" Clint asked, not really caring at this point. He'd been awake to long. He got up and stretched.
"Unless you want to share a bed with me," Phil said, only half-joking, because they'd done it on missions, even though this was different, it wasn't a mission, this was helping a small girl stay safe and he was being a bit selfish here. Clint was his co-worker, his best friend at the most. And they had a little girl in the next room dealing with trauma even they couldn't begin to fathom.
"Oh, only if you don't mind," Clint teased back, though he looked like he was considering it for a moment before he walked over to the sofa and tossed himself onto it. "Till then, looks like I'm couched."
"That would imply that you've been in my bed prior to this," Phil said walking into the living room from the kitchen and bracing himself against the back of the couch. He rolled his eyes. "Which you haven't," he pointed out.
"Details," Clint said as he waved a hand and yawned. "What are we going to do until we get the ok from Fury to come in?" Clint asked quietly then.
"As long as you don't mind the couch, you two can lie-low here. I don't mind. Though we'll have to go out and buy her some clothes, some shoes. Basic stuff." Phil bit his lip. "Unless you have a better idea?"
Clint shook his head and clenched his jaw. This was his mess and yet Phil was willing to help, to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty with Clint. He really needed the guy and the best part was that he was there and willing. "No. Thanks Phil. Seriously, thank you. I can't do this-"
"Without me, I know," and Phil smiled. "As usual, Agent Barton."
Clint shook his head and tossed a pillow at Phil's face. "Kindly fuck off, sir."
They were on the run from Russians, the Council could be planning to kill them, Fury could be planning to kill them, Natasha could be planning to kill them, but it was ok, because Clint had Phil and Phil was going to help and he didn't have to save someone alone.
I told you there was going to be Clint/Phil. Stop now if that's not your speed. It's like, ClintxPhil with Tasha. It's like the Super Family (StevexTony and Peter Parker as their son) except it's called the SHIELD Family with Tasha as their daughter.
So.
Next up is more bonding as they wait for the Council to decide what to do with them. And when I say bonding, I mean clothes shopping for Tasha. And stuff. And she starts to get close to the boys. And they start getting attached to her and each other.
YAY.
Ok. I'm done.
Review?