Over the next few days, Natasha tried to stay focused at work. Each time István walked by, more questions fluttered through her mind. What did the paintings mean? How was István involved in the TPE's plot? What was the gallery's role?
It was three days since the dock fire, and Natasha was still tossing the possible scenarios around in her mind as she typed. At the soft scrape of her office door she looked up.
"Hey, Charlotte," said her goodnatured co-worker with a smile.
"Hey Adrienn. What can I do for you?"
"How did it go with the Rindicourt Museum?"
"Decently so far," Natasha replied. "They've agreed to lend us Untitled #3, but they're hesitant about shipping Rosepettles, even for the exhibit about evidence of rust in the statue's armature."
Adrienn giggled. "How stupid do they think we are? Everyone knows Carmino Saltieri used Aluminum wire for his armatures. No iron at all."
"I know! I couldn't believe it when the assistant curator said that to me!" said Natasha.
"That's alright. He'll come around," said Adrienn. She disappeared down the hall, then popped her head back in a second later. "Hey, are you heading out soon?"
Natasha looked up again. "I've just got one thing to finish."
"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow. I know you're new, but don't overwork yourself too much."
"Don't worry. I'm almost done," Natasha smiled.
She waited until clack of Adrienn's footstep disappeared down the hall, then eyes the clock on the corner of her monitor. Ten minutes should be enough. Natasha went back to work, pretending to finish up her task. When enough time had passed, she powered down her computer and collected her purse and keys. She locked her office door and walked casually down the hall, slipping her thin black coat over her shoulders as she went. Only a few employees remained on the office level.
Natasha took the stairs, as she usually did, but instead of continuing to the ground floor, she ducked out of the stairs at a door marked level two. Transitioning onto the display floor, she found herself among the meandering students and observers strolling the gallery on this mild summer afternoon. Natasha made her way through several exhibits, pausing to examine a piece here and there. In a back corner of the Greek room, she came to a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. She swiped her identification badge and the heavy door unlocked with a click.
The temperature dropped significantly as she entered the storage room. The air was more stagnant and smelled of dust and oil and canvas. Here the exhibits were not carefully hung on granite walls or displayed on glass-encased pillars. Instead, huge industrial shelving held the unused pieces. Natasha crossed the bare concrete floor and looked up in false awe at the shelves around her.
The storage room was not new to her. Charlotte Welch had a habit of peaking in on her lunch break, but today Natasha was here with a task. She made her way to the shelves nearest to the huge freight elevator that transported even the largest sculptures and canvases from the ground floor. A new shipment of paintings leaned carefully against the wall. Thick plastic wrapped their frames, but it was still possible to see to the colors beneath. Some were beautiful certainly, but it was not aesthetics that interested Natasha. These paintings had all come from András Szabo's shipping company, and they had all arrived after the fire. Whatever these paintings were being used for, the Szabo brothers seemed to have a steady supply.
"Snooping in the storage room again, Miss Welch?" István's voice cut the silence.
"Mr. Szabo, sir," she replied. The fluster in her voice wasn't hard to fake. Natasha new that Szabo might confront her, but she still had to play this moment carefully. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to pry, but I heard that a new shipment came in earlier today, an I just had to see it."
"And what do you think of my newest additions? Marvelous, no?" said István.
"Absolutely," she replied. Natasha was careful not to betray her real observations of the paintings such as 'none of there are actual masterpieces,' 'they are all oil paintings,' 'they all include extremely thick areas of paint,' and 'although they appear to be from extremely diverse periods, the colors indicate they are all recent and the strokes say only a few different artists painted them all.' Instead, she stuck to general comments about the composition, or the lighting of a piece, and proclaimed them wonderful examples of this or that movement.
Szabo smiled pleasantly, nodding and interjecting observations of his own. He seemed pleased with Charlotte Welch's assessment of the works, and the fact that she found nothing about them suspicious. They were excellent paintings. In fact, if she hadn't known to look for anomalies in them, Natasha might have believe they were genuine.
"Do you make a habit of this, Miss Welch?"
Natasha shifted her weight and let her purse fall from the crook of her elbow into her hand. "I must admit, Mr. Szabo, I've spent a few lunch breaks down here. Not eating, of course," she added immediately.
"Is that so?" he said. If István decided to check the security footage, which Natasha was positive he would, he would see that she was telling the truth.
"I just love to see the new pieces before they go on display."
"Surly the gallery provided better lighting than in here."
"It's. . ." she paused, pretending to consider telling a secret. "Seeing them first feels like this is my own private gallery. Only a handful of people will ever see them this way."
István smiled. "I admire your perception, Miss Welch. I knew I'd found something special in you." Natasha sighed inwardly with relief. She was afraid she had overplayed the art nerd a bit, but Szabo seemed to like it. "However," he continued, "many of there pieces, including this collection before you, are awaiting restoration before they can be displayed. The fewer disturbances they endure, the more can be preserved. So," he said gesturing to the door," if you would kindly stay out of the storage room in the future. . ."
"Of course, sir," Natasha replied, and made her way from the museum.
Natasha hopped a taxi on the bustling avenue outside the Galleria and headed home. The car slowed several blocks from the apartment.
"Is there a problem?" Natasha asked politely.
"We got construction up ahead, honey. Looks like it could be a few minutes."
"That's no problem," said Natasha, "I'll just get out here."
Natasha paid the driver and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The shrill squeals of children cut through the clamor of machines and gruff voices down the street. Natasha looked beside her to see the playground she had fled to after her fight with Clint. Instead of being bathed in shadows and slicked with rain, the yard was alive with children. Tiny figures in brightly colored outfits climbed over the wood and metal structures and ran over the wood chips. "Get down from there!" a women's voice shouted, "No Primaries on the pull-up bars!" Natasha looked over just in time to see a small girl with a tumbles of khaki hair hanging from the bar. Their eyes met as she dropped to the ground.
Natasha let the corners of her mouth tweak up in a smile, and set off toward the apartment. Even before Natasha turned the key, she could smell the sweet scent of garlic wafting from behind the door. She stepped into the apartment and a wave of different smells washed over her: sautéed onions, tomatoes and seared beef all wrapped in the sweet aroma of paprika. Several potatoes sat on a cutting board. A bundle of carrots awaited the peeler and various spice jars lay strew over the counter. A huge pot bubbled gently on the stove, dwarfing the little gas cooktop. Clint stood in the middle of it all, a dish towel draped over his good shoulder.
"Well well, Martha Stewart, what's for dinner?" Natasha said.
"Hey, Natasha," said Clint as he gave the bubbling red liquid a stir. "Taking inspiration from our present surroundings: Goulash, the national dish of Hungary."
"Enjoying your time off I take it?"
"Actually no. Three days and I'm already going stir-crazy. I can't workout, I can't shoot. So it was on to plan B. I hope you don't mind."
She dropped her keys on the table and took a seat at the tiny counter. "I mind that you don't do this more often. It smells delicious. Seriously, sometimes I forget you even know how to cook."
"Yeah well, a few years in the circus will do that to you."
Natasha smiled. "Sometimes I forget that too." She picked up a carrot and bit down with a loud crunch. "When's dinner?"
Clint turned around and snatched the carrot out of her hand. "Now, apparently." He pointed a large knife at her before chopping the bitten end off the carrot. Clint took the small metal peeler off the counter and handed it over to Natasha.
"You're putting me to work?"
"That's your punishment. You nibble, you help."
Natasha rolled her eyes. "Peeling carrots. Are you sure I can handle it?"
Clint sighed. "Honestly, not really."
"So," Natasha said over the rhythmic tap of the peeler, "why do you never cook like this on the Helicarrier?"
"It's different."
"It would taste the same."
"That's not what I meant," said Clint as his knife sliced through a potato. He paused. Natasha waited. "Cooking . . . it reminds me of when I was younger. Before I was Hawkeye, before I was a Shield agent. Shield might as well own me. You know. This is something they can't have."
Natasha put down the last carrot, starring at the cutting board.
"Sorry if that's corny."
"No," she replied quietly, "I get it. It's sweet."
"Besides, remember that time I lost a bet to Coulson and had to bake him that pie? There was a line of agents outside my door for a week!"
Natasha laughed. "Oh yeah. I swear when the air circulators are on, the hall outside your door still smells like blueberries."
"My point exactly." Clint took the peeled and chopped vegetables and tossed them into the stew. When he turned back around, Natasha had a stick of celery hanging from her mouth.
"Hey!" said Clint.
"You not even using it anymore."
"You're a pest, do you know that?" he smiled. "Now get out of here before you eat the rest of the kitchen." She pouted playfully as Clint swatted her away.
Natasha munched the celery as she crossed the room to the couch. She was about to sit down when she noticed the pages on the coffee table. "Oh my god." The stub of the celery stalk fell from her hand. She bent closer, picking up on of the sheets. She couldn't believe it. "Clint, did you draw these?"
Clint rubbed the back of his neck. He'd meant to pick those up. "The goulash was actually plan C," he confessed.
"These are incredible," Natasha said staring down at the page in her hand. And looking back at her was . . . her. A perfect sketch of her face in the grayscale of graphite pencils. There were others too. A few of Fury and Coulson, one of the Szabo brothers, but mostly they were of her. Natasha let herself down to the couch. "Clint these are. . . wow. I had no idea you could draw like this."
He turned the burner to low and came to stand beside the couch. "Back in the circus we had a caricaturist traveling with us for a few years. Nice fellow. A little quirky. He taught me some stuff. Or he tried. Somehow our little lessons always ended in the same argument. You see, he was all about capturing the essence of a person. The fewer details, the fewer lines you needed to capture a likeness, the better off you were. Me, I was all about the detail. I wanted to get every angle just right."
Natasha didn't reply. She just sat staring at what felt like a mirror.
"Tasha, you alright?"
"You're lucky," she said quietly.
Clint shrugged. "It's a learned skill, just like anything else."
"That's not what I meant," said Natasha. "You're something more than all this. The drawing, the cooking. There's some part of you that Shield doesn't own. I know you don't do it often, but when you pick up a pencil or, . . or a sack of potatoes, you're more than just a dagger off to take another life. You're very, very lucky you have that," she explained. "I don't."
Clint slipped onto the couch beside she and placed a gentle hand on her back. "What do you mean?"
"I'm a bullet, I'm a gun. Nothing more." She looked back at the sketch again. "I don't have an outlet like this. There is no part of me that is separate from the job, that doesn't belong so Shield, or to the KGB. There is no part of me that is my own."
Clint took her free hand rubbing his thumb over her palm. "Natasha, the angles I see when I'm setting up a shot, the lines that tell me where the arrow will go, that's the same principle I use to map the angles of your face." He tucked a curl behind her ear, brushing her cheekbone as he went. "These drawings, these stupid little sketches, they're inseparable from my bow."
"Even still, you have something. I don't."
Clint stood up. "That's not true." He held out his hand and she took it. He pulled her up and lead her toward the open space near the windows, placing his other hand on her waist. "You dance," he said, and before she could object, he had started a slow waltz.
Natasha shook her head.
"You're much better than I am, so you'll have to help me out," said Clint. He spun her around and dipped her toward the window.
"There's no music," Natasha replied.
"You could sing. You do that to, as much as you pretend otherwise."
"That is not going to happen," said Natasha. Slowly she took control of the dance from Clint, leading them in faster spins and more intricate footwork.
"See," said Clint. Even he was having trouble believing how well Natasha was making him move. "You dance."
"But I dance to kill people. I dance so I can seduce unsuspecting men and wring their necks."
"Sometimes," Clint said as they spiraled around.
"Always."
"Well I certainly hope that's not why you're dancing now," Clint jested. "Go on." He let go of her hands and let Natasha sail onto their makeshift dance floor alone. She continued at first with the waltz's rhythm then broke into the graceful, swooping motions of classical Russian ballet. She whirled around performing pliés and arabesques, a grand jeté and all manner of steps. When she slowed, Clint outstretched his arms, calling her back. She spun into his arms and resumed their waltz. Natasha couldn't contain her smile. "It's been so long since I've done that. Years since I've been on pointe."
"I told you," said Clint. Their steps slowed from an elaborate dance-floor waltz to the slow easy steps normal people do at their cousin's wedding.
"Thanks you," said Natasha.
"Of course."
They were looking directly into each other's eyes. Natasha brought her face closer to his, then stopped herself and looked away. They took another few steps before Clint said, "I ended things with Clara."
Natasha faltered then planted her feet on the floorboards. "What?" Her heart rate sped up in her chest, and she knew it had nothing to do with dancing.
"You missed a step," said Clint, coming to a stop beside her.
"When?"
"A few weeks ago. That night. I called her on the satellite phone, but what came out wasn't what I was expecting," he said. "I meant it though."
Natasha swallowed hard and bit her lip. "I, uh, . . ."
Clint hooked a knuckle under her chin and tipped Natasha's face up. She leaned in to meet him. Their faces were inches apart when the timer rang on the stove.
A/N: Sorry if I'm being too much of a tease with them.
Next chapter preview: A gift from András Szabo leads Clint to take Natasha on a date only he could devise, and brings us to the Clintasha moment we all (or at least I) have been waiting for!