"I told you Coulson was hiding something." Natasha huffed in between kicks at a sparring dummy. It was exhilarating to feel the sure strength in her limbs; simpler, automatic, and released some of the clutter in her head, a problem she never had before yet has been troubling her in full force lately.
"Yeah? Well he didn't tell me either, if that makes you feel better," Clint said, wiping his bow with a rag. "Proved my point. When'd you say he started acting weird?"
"Sometime after dropping Selvig off," Natasha answered. "He told me to wait for him outside while he met up with someone. Then he came back with that stupid grin."
"No wonder he's been so... flexible. Think about it, though. Captain America. Dude's still alive."
"Super Soldier Serum," she said bluntly.
"Wow," he made a mocking, surprised face. "How did you know that?"
Natasha ignored him, ceased her session with the dummy and moved on. Unstrapping five or six knives from a black case, she weighed them in her hand. They didn't agree with her. Their shine was dull and their handles didn't yield with use. Her own knives wouldv'e felt a world different. Should she get her field set? No, it'd be a hassle.
"Well, either way, I'm not excited about his fawning." Clint blew on his bow to rid it of whatever dust he claimed had accumulated. With his constant care, Natasha doubted there'd ever be any dust. But she knew watching her and not being able to practice drove him mad, and interacting with his weapons pacified his sullen mood somewhat.
"Shut up, you wouldn't be let out early if not for him." She continued to study the S.H.I.E.L.D knives, and made her way towards her locker.
Clint dodged her comment. "Do you think we'd get to meet Rogers?"
"You don't even know what they're doing with him, Clint. You're turning into Coulson."
"I'm just interested. How are you not interested?"
"There're stranger things in the world." Natasha cracked the lid of her velvet box and peeked in. The steel inside caught light and glinted too-brightly into her eyes. She snapped the clasp back and pulled it out of her locker in one abrupt motion. "Sharpen these," she commanded, setting the box next to Clint.
"These don't need to be sharp." He looked at it, then at her, his hands unmoving from the grip of his bow.
"The tips," she corrected. "Just the tips. They're kind of blunt."
Her excuse was no better than Clint's obsessive bow-cleaning.
His gaze settled on the regulation knives she clutched instead of her own. A sudden shift in choice of weaponry, almost nonexistent of her. Natasha spotted the impending question on his face and blocked him before he could say anything. "Don't ask me why. I honestly don't know." And she didn't. She also didn't know why she brought them out for him at all. "You look like you need something to do."
Clint reached for the box to settle onto his lap. He opened it slowly, like he anticipated something out of the norm. There was none; not to his eyes. He would never feel the hostility there the way she did.
He ran a finger down the length of a small blade before gingerly lifting it from the casing. "Tips are blunt," he muttered. "Tips are blunt."
The soft grinding of metal on stone followed nonetheless as she whipped the knife in her hand towards a target.
The next morning, as Coulson had said, a jet flew them over to Oakland, where it dropped them off north of the grocery store their target scientist was at. After a two-mile walk they arrived. An electric doorbell went off the moment they stepped in. Clint's eyes shot to the treacherous device overhead. Behind him, Natasha tapped a foot on the doormat impatiently and waited for him to get in. She flicked the thick envelope in her hand at him to usher him on.
The man by the counter looked about fifty, with a thick hair of black and a belly that pulled taut his shirt. He lounged on a plastic chair with his feet up on the cash register. As Natasha approached, she saw that the man was cutting his fingernails.
"Dr. Sheerin," Natasha addressed him.
Sheerin lifted his face up to her, dazed.
"S.H.I.E.L.D, hi." He tossed the nail clipper he had been using into a box with a sticker labeled "$2."
Natasha nodded, suppressing a disgusted twitch of her mouth, and handed the envelope over. "This should explain everything."
Sheerin tore into it like he's unpackaging goods for the store shelves. He pulled a hand-written note from the top of the stack and held it with an outreached hand, squinting. "Huh." He smiled.
Natasha shifted and glanced around their surroundings, waiting for him to finish.
"You're Coulson's kids, eh? Well this is exciting. They haven't called me in for years." Sheerin laughed to himself and cramped the note back in with the others. "I'll come, I'll come. I don't think I have an option." He brushed past the dusty curtains behind him into a hidden doorway, and snorted when the two agents tailed him like puppies. "You're tending the store for me while I pack my equipment."
"I'm afraid we cannot do that," Natasha said.
"Why ever not? I can't leave the place unattended."
"We are not here to be cashiers."
"I don't want to argue, miss. If you'd just help out a little we can leave sooner."
Clint stepped forward to pull her away. "Tasha," he murmured, and shook his head. "Leave it."
She didn't look at him, instead gave Sheerin a long, cold stare before whipping around, her hair like flying streamers, and sat down on his plastic chair, deliberately bringing her legs up to clatter against the cash register the way Sheerin did earlier. "Thirty minutes," she ordered him.
"An hour," Sheerin dealt back.
Natasha shifted her feet to directly on top of the keyboard.
"I don't like this. I want a regular cover job," she muttered once Sheerin left, and tapped the glass tabletop with the tips of her fingers.
"My fault, alright? We'll be back to normal soon enough."
The infuriating ring of the doorbell alerted them of a customer. Natasha glanced towards the stacks of beer by the entrance. A small, ratty brown head bobbed up and down, pass the beer, the adjacent fruit racks, and into the pasta-cereal-condiments-baking aisle, serenaded by the pattering of quick feet on cheap plastic tiles. Rustling. Pattering. More rustling. A fridge opened and closed. A slower, softer patter towards them, now from the other side of the store. Marker-stained hands surfaced and settled a grocery basket onto the table.
"Who are you?" The boy stared.
"I work here," Clint answered.
"Where's Mr. Dave?"
"He's... out." He plucked a package of macaroni from the basket and rang it up.
"Oh."
"Yeah." He reached for the bottles of chocolate milk.
The boy flailed a hand at the cardboard box of candies next to Natasha. "Gimme that."
She tipped the box over for him and the boy picked out all the chocolates to stuff into his pocket. Maybe Sheerin left them out especially for him. Maybe.
"Are you out alone, kid?" Clint rang up the fruit loops and cheerios next, then a bag of chips.
"Yeah."
There was a piece of paper with a shopping list and drawings all over on the bottom of the basket. Clint handed it to the boy, who stuffed that into his pocket too.
"That'd be $22.48, please."
The boy dug around his pants and put a wad of dollar bills on the counter. Natasha counted them. $15. "I'm sorry, that's not enough." She handed the cash back.
"Oh."
Natasha held out a hand, in which he placed his grocery list, and she jotted down a message on the amount he owed. "We'll keep your things safe here, honey. Show this to your mom or dad and you can come back and pay us then." She slipped the list into his bulging pocket for him and smiled.
The boy grinned and took off.
"Well," Clint said. "Looks like you manage fine with everything... as usual."
Natasha laughed. "Go talk to Sheerin or something. Get some info out of him."
"You can't even stand talking to him," he countered. "And we're s'pposed to stay up here."
"Well then go help him pack. We don't need two people at one cash register." Turning her head to the door at the sound of the doorbell again, she added, "Unless you want to work with these fellas."
A loud mother with two kids lumbered in, with a snarky old lady hobbling behind them, looking around with a pout and snapping back and forth with the other woman.
Clint slid off his chair and fled through the curtained doorway.
Natasha bent over the counter top for a box of mints from the shelf below. She rested her chin on her palm and blankly stared ahead at the aisles. The odd company of four came to the register, arguing still about some dental appointment, and Natasha quickly rang up their groceries and sent them on their way. The little noy hadn't returned yet, and Clint was still downstairs. Maybe she shouldn't have made him leave.
A crawling feeling crept on her neck and the muscles there tightened. Natasha swiveled her chair around to get a better view of the entrance. The way the checkout was located blocked it completely unless you stretched your neck out and around. She sucked harder on a mint and crunched it between her teeth.
Silence. But not the good kind. Natasha skimmed her hand over the outline of the gun at her hip.
A figure emerged from the furthest, darkest left aisle and strode towards her.
She didn't remember hearing the doorbell.
As the silhouette advanced Natasha caught a glint of silver where its hands should be. Her eyes snapped up to the aisle sign. Pets and Gardening.
Coming into the sunlight, the imaged woman raked her fingers over a steel dog collar like prayer beads.
"C'mon, guess," she said, smiling.
Natasha was wordless.
The woman laughed. "And to think you once told us apart from the sound of our footsteps. Disappointing, Natalia. Disappointing."