Thanks again to everyone who's been following along with this - I'm so happy to hear that you like this fic!
Just the wrap-up left after this, and it should be posted tomorrow. Enjoy!
As it happened, "anytime" turned out to generally mean lunchtime.
"Anywhere" was a little more complicated - enthusiasm aside, there were public decency laws that had to be minded.
She was willing to admit that it was kind of nice (Clint would say "Awesome!") to work with him when they weren't under constant threat of violence. Not that walking into a war zone with him at her back wasn't her idea of a good time, just that this whole "average" thing was starting to grow on her.
Well, after a fashion.
She wouldn't be happy with it forever, not if it were her real life, of course, but the dull job was so much better with him here. It was great to go to work actually with him, not to part ways with him so he could watch her back from afar. When they met up (she had a hard time saying "rendezvoused" without laughing, especially in light of recent developments), instead of slipping off to a clandestine safehouse, they could be open about what they were doing and where they were going. It was nice not to hide.
Oh, and the sex was pretty fucking awesome, too.
She couldn't recall a time in her life when she'd gotten more action, nor had more fun doing it. She'd always known that it'd be great if they ever started sleeping together. Two people didn't have a working rapport like they did and not have that carry over to other activities. Knowing that, however, and experiencing it, were two very different things.
They hadn't been able to keep their hands off each other since they'd started … whatever this was. He'd fucked her twice that morning, enthusiastically taking her in the shower and then again in the breakfast nook. They had a lunch date (such as it was) planned for today, and if the last three were anything to go by, she'd either end up with her skirt hitched up around her waist in one of the many empty offices in the building (the downturn in the economy was good for something) or they'd spend their lunch hour getting each other off in his truck. Either way, the planned debauchery of it had her squirming in her seat, and it wasn't even 10 am yet.
Sally was handling the development about as well as could be expected.
When they'd been forced to leave their self-imposed cocoon for work on Monday, Natasha had dreaded the reaction of her coworkers. She liked Sally, but the woman was a gossip; it was what had attracted Natasha to her in the first place.
As it turned out, Sally hadn't said a word, not to anyone in the office, and when Natasha had walked into the office, it was only her friend's head that turned, only Sally that waved a greeting.
That didn't stop her from asking for details when she plunked the weekly brownie down on her desk.
Natasha had surprised herself by how willing she had been to talk about it, how much she'd enjoyed telling her friend what she thought of Clint, even if it was in the guise of their covers. At the end of the day, however, Rose's feelings about Frank weren't so different from her own about Clint, and, well, she still was feeling pretty light headed and happy from the day before.
Beth had high fived her in the warehouse break room during lunch.
Mark, at least, hadn't been bothering her this past week. Her, or anyone else, actually. He hadn't shown up at work until Wednesday, and when he had, he'd been sporting a shiner the size to rival any she'd had (or given) in her day. He'd been keeping to himself, entering his office with his head down at the beginning of the day and leaving the same way in the afternoon, and she expected that the trend would continue.
Mark hadn't gone to the cops, at least, which she'd half expected after Coulson agreed that they shouldn't go themselves. Their cover identities could stand the scrutiny of the local PD, but it wouldn't do to draw attention to themselves, not when they still weren't sure if this place was a HYDRA front. She'd be more worried, except that Mark's facial bruising was sure to prevent him from trying to pull the same thing on anyone in the foreseeable future. Clint had bugged his car and apartment earlier in the week, so they would know if he tried.
That said, motherfucker was going to burn the moment she and Clint pulled out of this place.
The last was a more and more likely occurrence with each passing day. There hadn't been so much as a blip on the HYDRA radar since Clint had joined her here, and it seemed increasingly likely that they weren't going to find anything …
She paused, peered closer at her monitor, frowning. Was that … ?
"Fuck."
Of course.
"You'll never guess what I found," she said, sliding into the seat across from Clint at the cafe. He'd already ordered for her, a salad and a coffee, and she was pleased to see that he remembered the kinds of things she liked. It was a small detail (and one that she would bristle at from anyone else), but those were the sorts of things that kept you warm on lonely nights, and she would cling to every bit of it that came her way.
Clint eyed her warily, taking a bite of his own lunch, what looked to be some kind of pasta in a cream sauce.
"Snakes in the nest?" he asked, when he really meant "HYDRA?"
She nodded. They couldn't have this conversation, not here, not so close to the facility, but she wanted at least to clue him in. It was unfair and dangerous to let him go back to work without knowing the whole story.
Speaking in code (the sort of which was vague enough to be useless to the careless eavesdropper, yet still clear to people who'd worked together for as long as they had), she told him what she could, especially about who to watch out for. She would tell him the rest later, when they were alone back at one of their places.
They walked back across the street together, and though she was still on edge, it helped that he kissed her thoroughly by the elevator before heading down to the warehouse.
Yep, she had it bad.
They didn't get a chance to talk until later that night when he showed up at her house, a pizza box and six pack in tow.
"Did someone order a sausage pizza?" Clint asked when she opened the door, holding the pizza box in front of his crotch and wagging his eyebrows at her.
She rolled her eyes, motioning him inside. "Please tell me that doesn't really have sausage on it."
"Please, Nat," he snorted. "Would I do that to you?"
"Or your dick," she finished, taking the six-pack from him.
He opened the box with a flourish, and she was almost afraid to look down. Almost, but the smell that wafted up at her was wonderful, if a bit strange, and she really was hungry …
"Why the fuck is there fruit on the pizza, Barton?"
"I'll have you know that Hawaiian pizza is considered fine dining among a certain element."
"A certain batshit insane element," she countered, wandering into the kitchen to grab two glasses and some napkins. She wasn't the sort to care whether her beer was in glass when she drank it or not, but Clint swore left and right that it made a difference.
When she got back to the living room, he'd already pulled her coffee table closer to the couch, and he was sitting, obviously waiting for her. She sat beside him, and he grabbed a slice of pizza, holding it up in front of her face. She eyed it warily.
"But fruit. On the pizza. With ham."
"C'mon, you gotta try this," he said, grinning widely at her, and had she ever been able to say no to that face (she hadn't)?
Tentatively, she opened her mouth and took a bite, feeling his gaze hot on her as she chewed.
"Okay," she said grudgingly. "I might admit that your weird fruit pizza is passable."
He took a bite from the slice she'd just started. "Passable!" he exclaimed, mouth full. "More like amazing and perfect."
She rolled her eyes at him and reached for her laptop.
They talked at length over dinner about the intelligence they'd gathered in the past several days, trying to fit together pieces of a puzzle that they didn't have the original image to. It was hard work, but they were good at it.
He tucked the box with the few remaining slices in the fridge, cleaning up while she went over her files again from the day.
"I just can't quite see how it all fits together," she said when he came back into the room. "It's like everything is there, but we're missing some major piece."
"I know what you mean," he said. "There's gotta be some key part or a player that we're missing, some plan that we haven't figured out yet …"
She rubbed a hand over her eyes in frustration, collapsing backward on the couch. "I was so ready for this to be a dead end," she lamented.
She felt him throw his arm across her shoulders, and he hugged her against him.
"Yeah, I know. Me, too. But, hey, at least we'll get to bust some heads, right?"
She chuckled, then craned her neck to look up at him. "Can we go over this one more time? Just to see if we missed something?"
"Lay it on me," he said, and they both sat up. She grabbed her laptop once more and pulled up the record that had caught her attention earlier today.
"Well, there's this, for starters" she said, pointing at the screen. "Tomorrow's shipment of olives is identical to another one the company handled a little over a month ago."
"Just before I got here," he confirmed. "But aren't most of the shipments we handle virtually identical?"
She nodded. "You're not wrong, but nothing is this identical." She tapped the screen a few times. "Especially not with details like these."
He looked where she was pointing. "And why is a shipment of olives from California listed as an import?" he asked, echoing the question that he'd posed earlier when they'd first gone through these notes.
"And then there's the question of what happened to the guy you replaced," she said. "I did some digging on him after Sally told me that he fell during a late night delivery and broke his leg."
Clint nodded. "That's what I heard, too."
"Right, which would make sense, except that he never showed up at any of the local hospitals."
"But someone with the same height and coloring came into Memorial that night with a GSW," Clint finished for her. "And we determined that Coulson didn't pick up on this because . . ?"
"Because our esteemed handler has been a little busy with all that shit going down with Stark," she said.
"But busy enough to miss our friend in the hospital?"
She shrugged. "Apparently. You know we're it for this job. I don't think anyone else expected this lead to pan out."
Clint sighed and polished off his beer before continuing. "I still can't figure out why he sent me in."
She stared carefully at the computer screen. She'd been hoping that he wouldn't pick up on that, that he would have just assumed that Coulson wanted her to have another agent in the same building as her.
"I might have asked for backup," she said quietly.
Clint raised his eyebrows. "You? Really?"
She didn't know why she felt embarrassed about it; people asked for backup all the time. Of course, people didn't ask for backup primarily because they knew full well who would be tasked with providing that backup. She couldn't tell him that, though.
"Something about this whole operation didn't feel right right from the beginning," she said instead because it was the truth, or an approximation of it, at least. "I didn't want to have to call on Andy Griffith if HYDRA showed up."
"Oooh, classic television references!" he teased, jostling her with his shoulder, obviously trying to lighten the mood. "I didn't know they let you watch tv in Russia."
"All to make better spy," she said with a grin, playing up her old accent.
Without warning, he leaned in and kissed her, sealing his mouth against hers and stealing all of her breath.
Asshole.
"So what do you want to do?" he said as if he weren't asking two things at once. There were all sorts of things she wanted to do right now, but very few of them involved finishing their new report for Coulson.
"Nat?" Clint asked when she didn't respond.
"I think we need to be there when this new shipment comes in," she said at last. "Think you can get on the crew?"
"Shouldn't be too hard," he said. "JT likes me, and if anyone is involved in this, it's gotta be him."
"Good," she said, bending back down over the computer. "We should let Coulson know. We should get a team on standby."
"Yeah," he agreed, and she was thought she heard reluctance in his voice. He didn't say anything, didn't bring it up until after she'd sent a message to Coulson and closed her laptop.
"So," he said, leaning back next to her on the couch. "I guess we're about done here."
She definitely heard reluctance now, and she was too tired to pretend that she didn't know the source of it.
"We don't have to be," she said quickly, not daring to look at him because she was terrible at hiding her emotions from him. "If you don't want to be."
He picked up on the fact that she wasn't talking about the mission, but them, this new thing that had sprung up between them.
"I don't," he said quietly. He reached out, took her hand in his. "Do you?"
It was a stupid question, but she thought it deserved a good answer. She turned to him then, braving his eyes, and she saw all of her fears reflected there.
"No, I don't want this to be over."
He grinned at her, dropping her hands to cup her face between his palms. "I am going to kiss the shit out of you right now."
She grinned. "How does one do that, precisely, Barton? Because …"
His mouth closed over hers, silencing her teasing, and she felt herself stir. She climbed into his lap, straddling him to get a better angle as she explored his mouth. He tasted so fucking perfect, and she didn't think she'd ever get enough of this, of the way he made her feel.
His hands skimmed up her sides, sliding under her shirt, the coarse pads of his thumbs running over her stomach as he moved higher. She gasped into the air, tearing her mouth from his in an effort to get more air when he reached her breasts, and it was funny, but she never remembered being this sensitive before, never remembered being this turned on just from kissing and a bit of petting.
He did odd things to her though, made her feel strange things. Like right now, with his fingers deftly unworking the buttons on her blouse and pulling the offending fabric away, leaving her shirtless and warm, her hips moving restlessly in his lap. He bent to suck at her neck as he unhooked her bra, and then his hands were warm and rough on her skin, driving her to greater heights as he plucked at her nipples.
"I fucking love your tits, woman," he muttered against her skin, and then he bent to draw one pert breast into his mouth, sucking on her until she moaned his name.
He let go of her nipple, replacing his mouth with his fingers, pinching her lightly to keep her at attention, and he looked up at her with a gleam in his eye.
"You like it when I play with your tits?" he asked, his voice harsh and aroused, and she wanted to hear that voice as he shouted his pleasure, as he rattled the walls and disturbed the neighbors.
She nodded, but the answer wasn't good enough for him.
"Tell me," he ordered, pinching a little harder and twisting. Heat flooded through her at the pressure, and she bucked against him, unable to get enough friction against her clit with all the fabric in the way.
"Tell me," he said again.
"I fucking love it when you play with my tits," she growled, and his mouth fell back onto her, sucking with renewed vigor, nipping her lightly until her world narrowed to the feel of him against her, and fuck, she thought she could come from this alone.
He must have sensed that she was close, because he shoved his hips upward even as she pressed down, and then he nipped hard, so hard, just to the point of pain and she flew right over the edge, quaking and crying out in his lap.
One of his hands swept low on her back as she rocked, pulling her belly flush against his torso as he teased her, and then he slid underneath the waistband of her pants.
"You need to get out of these," he said, his voice muffled against her breast, and she'd never agreed with anything more. He pushed her up and off him, but held her firm, not letting her step away from him as he undid the fastenings on her pants, holding her gaze as he helped her out of the rest of her clothes.
"I can smell your pussy," he said, and the words were dirty, but they didn't feel that way. They felt close, intimate, and she hoped like hell he was still interested in putting his mouth to good use because she wasn't nearly done with him yet.
He put his hands on the fronts of her thighs, ran them up to the juncture of her thighs, and he stroked her with his thumbs. She had to reach out and grab his shoulders to stop herself from falling, and even then it was a near thing.
"Can I eat your pussy, Natasha?" he asked. "You smell so fucking good."
She whimpered at his words, knowing that her answering nod wouldn't be enough for him, but it was all she could manage with him fingering her and the image of his face buried between her thighs at the forefront of her mind.
He nuzzled her mound, the day's growth of beard rasping at her sensitive flesh, and then he asked again, "Please let me lick your cunt, Natasha. I want to taste you."
"Yes," she managed somehow. "Yes, I want you to eat my pussy. Make me come on your face, Clint, please."
She was dangerously close to begging, but she didn't give a shit because he slid down to the floor, taking her with him, and he guided her up his body until she was perched over his face. She eyed him warily; she'd never done this, and she wasn't sure about the etiquette involved in sitting on your partner's face.
Clint didn't have the same reservations.
He leaned up, parting her folds and licking the length of her slit, drawing his tongue with maddening slowness along her pussy, working her into a frenzy seemingly without effort. She pitched forward, unable to hold her weight on unsteady thighs, and she braced one hand on the carpet and buried the other in his hair.
He hummed his approval below her, licking and sucking, and Jesus fucking Christ, he knew what he was doing with that tongue of his. He nudged her thighs a little further apart as he ate her, and he wound a hand between them, using his fingers to fuck her as he sucked on her clit.
He pushed up, pulling his mouth from her briefly to growl, "I want to hear you, Nat. Let me hear you scream."
It wasn't hard to accommodate his request because he attacked her with renewed interest, pumping her in time to the undulations of his tongue. She cried out as he ate her, shouting his name and her pleasure all mixed together with curses in languages she'd thought she'd forgotten. She forgot other things then, too, like how she didn't want to smother him as she rode his face in earnest, bucking and grinding harder as the ache in the pit of her stomach grew.
He crooked his finger inside of her, and she gushed, actually felt the fluid escape her body and slick her thighs and his face. She might be embarrassed, but he held her hips tighter, sucked on her harder, and oh, oh, oh fuuuuuuuuuuuck . . .
He didn't let her come down from her orgasm, but he climbed out from underneath her and toppled her forward to her hands and knees. Dimly, she heard the sound of fabric rustling, a zipper being undone, and then he was warm across her back, and she felt him bobbing against her entrance.
"I'm going to fuck your pussy now, baby," he said, the words making her moan. She wanted him, now, right now, pulsing and hot inside of her.
"Please fuck me with your big cock," she said, and she spread her legs a little wider and pressed backward, eager for his touch. "I want you to fuck me."
He grunted at that, and she felt his hand on her pussy, felt him parting her and placing the tip of his cock against her.
"Your cunt is so wet," he said, and it might have been stating the obvious (because how could she not be right now?), but the obvious coming from him was very, very hot, and he needed to hurry up with those promises because she needed him to fuck her already, to make her come again.
"Wet for you," she said because she knew he liked it, had seen the way his eyes flashed whenever she said such things, and then he slowly, surely pulled her back against him, filling her, stretching her open and wide.
"Oh, fuck me!" she shouted when her ass met his lower torso, and he chuckled, a crude, enticing sound, and she dropped forward to the carpet, her face planting on the floor.
"Oh, I intend to," he promised.
And then he started thrusting.
The noises she made were unrecognizable to her, barely human sounds of pleasure that tore up out of her throat as his balls slapped against her backside. Her hand slid up to her clit of its own accord, and she touched herself while he fucked her, while he broke her down into a moaning puddle of hot aching.
"Fuck," he hissed when she started to quake. "I can feel you coming. Oh, fuck, Nat, you feel so fucking good coming on my cock!"
She couldn't take it anymore, and she fell into the abyss properly now, convulsing for what felt like years or eons or maybe just minutes. She might have blacked out there for a minute or two because they next thing she knew, she was laying flat on her stomach with Clint curled around her, stroking her hair softly.
"You with me?" he asked, sounding concerned, and she wondered just how far gone she'd been.
She slid into his arms and kissed him, slowly and thoroughly, and he must not have come yet because his hands were restless and his cock was pressing insistently into her belly.
"I think you shorted out my brain," she said, nipping on his lower lip, and then she straddled him, sitting up on belly to his obvious delight. His cock nudged at her ass, and she slid backward, grinning wickedly when he hissed.
"You like that?" she asked, enjoying the way the tables had turned in her favor.
He bit his lip, and she reached behind her to grab onto his shaft, to pump him experimentally, reveling in the swift, harsh curse that escaped his lips.
She came to her knees above him, passing his cock off to her free hand in front, and then she ran his glans along the length of her pussy, watching his face the entire time and feeling the fire of arousal kindle along her spine once more.
"Christ, Nat, stop teasing and fuck me already," he groaned, his fingers digging into her hips, and tugged on her, really pulled, tried to thrust himself up inside of her from below. Maybe some other time when she wasn't in such a good mood, when she hadn't come all over his face and had him fuck her until she blacked out, maybe then she would prolong his want, maybe then she would feel like torturing him a little.
Today, though, she just wanted to return the favor.
She dropped down onto his length, taking him to the hilt, and she was glad she was still so wet from their earlier activities because he slid home without any difficulty, easing the empty ache that had grown up inside of her.
He was staring at her tits as she started to move, and she took the hint, grabbing hold of his hands and drawing them up to grasp her breasts as she moved.
"I want you to grab my tits while I fuck you," she said, her voice hoarse. She twisted her hips then, and his hands clenched in response. She moved harder, faster on top of him, moaning because he felt really fucking good buried inside of her cunt.
He opened his eyes after a while, and it gratified her to see how he had trouble deciding where to look, at her face or his hands where they were latched onto her tits, but ultimately he ended up staring down between them, where their bodies joined, watching with his mouth wide as he entered her again and again.
"Your pussy is so fucking tight," he groaned, eyes still fastened on their lower bodies. "I love watching you take my cock."
She got that, knew exactly what a view the two of them presented when they were having sex because he'd taken her in the bathroom two days ago, fucking her from behind in front of the big mirror, and she'd come hard watching him pound into her.
"Love taking your cock," she said in response, and his pupils dilated impossibly more, his eyes now pools of liquid black.
Just like that, she was close again, but that was probably a good thing, since she felt him tighten up, felt his cock twitch in that peculiar way she'd already discovered presaged his impending release.
Without warning, he sat up, shifting her in his lap until his mouth was fastened firm to hers and his hands were clenching her ass. She wasn't sure any more who was the one in control and it didn't fucking matter because this was Clint and she had been wanting to do this with him for years, and she was rapidly discovering that not a whole hell of a lot mattered when he was balls deep inside her.
"Oh, shit," he moaned against her mouth, gripping her hips tighter, and she knew he was going to leave marks there. "Fuck, I'm gonna come, baby."
He did, and the hot pulse of his semen inside of her set her off, the subtle rippling of his cock as he ejaculated tipping her into yet another orgasm, quieter than her previous one, but still intense.
Laying beside her, their limbs tangled in the aftermath, he whispered into her hair, "You're so fucking perfect."
The warmth that had been flooding her changed a little then, deepened into something else, and she surprised herself by wanting to say the same thing back, by feeling the same thing. She blinked twice, then turned her face up to look at him.
Grinning she said, "You're not so bad either, hot stuff."
He smacked lightly across the ass, laughing even as she rolled on top of him and held him down. She leaned in to kiss him, unable to resist him when he had that wide, goofy grin on his face. His mouth tasted different than she expected, sweeter now that it lacked the immediate force of desire, and they laid there on the shitty, industrial grade carpet of her SHIELD-rented apartment, holding each other close.
A little while later, when his neck got a crick in it from straining upward to meet her lips and when her still-sore ribs started to ache, she let him chase her into the bedroom, let him toss her in front of him onto the bed, and if her heart hurt a little when he held her close, if their fucking felt dangerously close to something else, well, it could be their secret.