Chapter 9: August 27, 2013 – Natasha & Clint

Chapter Summary: **The 'Love Interest' Part of the 2013 LiveJournal's Twisted Shorts FaD** series. Turns out that Buffy is bisexual…and she likes her women dangerous, too.

Timeline: post-series for BtVS; post-movie for Avengers.

Challenge: for the livejournal 2013 August Fic-a-Day Challenge.

Warning: three-way relationship, but nothing graphic.

A/N: This is for one of my faithful reviewers on fanfiction net. Let me know if you have any ideas for fandoms that you'd like Buffy paired with (male or female).

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

The Hyperion

A group of tired, dirty people piled out of the bus and looked longingly at the building before them. A building filled with space, beds and hot showers…three things they'd missed a lot in the past months, but especially right now. They'd dropped off their seriously wounded – meaning they couldn't patch up the wounds themselves – at a nearby hospital and left a contact person there. In a few hours, somebody else would go relieve Giles and let him partake of the wonders of a bed and shower of his own.

But when they walked in the door, they were met by smartly-dressed woman holding a PDA and talking to somebody through her earphone. Was she one of those lawyer people from Wolfram & Hart that Angel warned them about?

When she saw them come in, she quickly said her goodbyes to the person on the phone and walked over to the group. "I have a message for Buffy Summers from Natasha and Clint?" she offered, wondering just which one of these women had the pair tied up in figurative knots. Only a few of them looked remotely old enough, unless there was something about the two that she didn't want to know.

A blonde woman stepped forward with a huge smile on her face, apparently not concerned about her blood-soaked shirt or jeans. The rest of the girls took off for the stairs since they figured it didn't concern them at the moment. Only Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Xander and Faith stuck around for the messages.

"They're okay, then?" Buffy asked worriedly. It had been a few months since she'd heard from them.

"Yes, and they wanted me to pass along two messages to you, but you'll only get them verbally. I refuse to give them any other way to somebody who I'm told could snap me like a twig," Pepper replied. "So consider yourself kissed because it's wonderful you are alive and hit for making them worry about you."

"Thanks. I consider myself smacked twice then," Buffy quipped. "What's up? I doubt you came just to deliver those messages…unless they are hurt or unavailable, and since you said they were okay already, I'm going with busy."

Pepper nodded. "They are just cleaning up a little mess on the East Coast, then catching the next flight out here tonight. I was sent to invite you and your colleagues to Stark Towers. After Natasha and Clint finished explaining why they thought the town of Sunnydale sank, Tony insisted on playing host for the people who most likely saved the world from some horrible evil."

"The First Evil," Buffy confirmed, "What all other evil supposedly comes from. I can't speak for the others, but as long as Stark promises not to turn me into a lab rat, I'd feel a lot more comfortable at his place than here. This is too close to being tied to Wolfram & Hart to me," she explained for the sake of the others.

"And you trust Tony Stark?" Willow asked.

"I trust Natasha and Clint, and they wouldn't allow him to make the offer unless they sort of trusted him," Buffy said. "And I only say 'sort of' because I'm not sure they completely trust anyone…even themselves."

"How well do you know these people?" Dawn asked, wondering who they were and why she had never heard of them before.

"I know them well enough that I considered sending you to them when Glory was after you," replied Buffy, shocking those who knew about the Hellgoddess.

"If you were willing to trust Dawn to them, why haven't you ever asked them to come help out with apocalypses?" Xander demanded.

Buffy quirked an eyebrow at him, not so much for his question, but for the tone he was using to ask it. "The same reason I never sent Dawn to them. They have their own lives and villains to fight. Unfortunately, their villains and ours seemed to work on the same schedule because they were always busy when I needed help the most and vice versa. I couldn't help with theirs because I was too busy with my own. Besides, Willow should be glad I didn't get their help last year."

"Why's that, B?" Faith finally joined the conversation.

"Because she'd be dead if they had," Buffy replied in a scarily certain voice.

Scoffing, Xander said, "I doubt that. She was superpowerful. She could even beat you up," he reminded her.

"That's because I cared about her," Buffy retorted. "They don't. They would have seen her as a threat and eliminate that threat as efficiently and safely as possible. She wouldn't have even known they were there."

"How did you meet them?" Willow asked, looking pale at the idea of somebody 'eliminating' her because she was a threat – even if that was very much true when she dove into Rack's kind of magick after Tara's death.

Buffy sat down on the couch and relaxed. The others, including Pepper, joined her because not even she knew that story. "It was the summer after graduation. Xander wasn't the only one who took a small trip; mine was just shorter and more painful." She chuckled at the memory. "I came across Clint first and helped him with some vampires. Normally, I'd say that I saved him, but I think he would have managed without me…just with a few more bruises at the end."

"I saw his bow and fell in love…with it, not him. I was still mourning Angel's leaving me at that point. He laughed at me when I asked if I could try it out, but then was shocked when I managed to do so. We decided on a friendly competition with our favorite bows, and he kicked my ass all over the place. But I did good enough that he spent time teaching me what he knew, not just about archery, but also about fencing and hand-to-hand fighting.

"The next time we ran into each other was when after Faith woke up and went to LA. I was so pissed off at Angel that I went to find some slaying action to burn off some energy. 'His town', my butt!" she snarled. "He was with Natasha and must have told her about me because she wanted a 'friendly' sparring match as well."

"I was all set to beat the crap out of her, only to find that she is like scary-talented when it comes to fighting and she doesn't mind fighting dirty to win. She grudgingly told me that with a few more years of training and real-world fights, I could be somewhat of a challenge for her."

Pepper gasped at that. "That's…a tremendous compliment coming from her!"

"Believe me, I've learned that," Buffy said. "Since then, they call me up when they're nearby and not busy so we can practice together. They've helped me with some minor Slayage stuff and I've helped them with a couple of their little things. But not real often because like I said before, our bad guys like to cause trouble at the same time."

Then she shocked them by telling them, "They're the reason we were able to keep the house after I came back. They offered to pay all of our bills so that I could concentrate on slaying, but my pride wouldn't let me take more than what was absolutely necessary. We called it payment for the times that I helped them, since they were getting paid by somebody. When they helped me, it was for free because I didn't charge anyone kill demons."

"I think the main reason I could never love Spike was because I was already in love," Buffy finally admitted out loud.

Pepper smiled. Assuming she was right, there would be two very happy people back at Stark Tower when they found out Buffy had her epiphany about them. Both of them realized they cared about Buffy when they heard she had died fighting Glory. Clint had always had a bit of a crush on Natasha, but it was unrequited until he had been taken by Loki.

It was a little staggering to be the person Natasha confided in about her feelings – or the fact she allowed herself to have them in the first place. After he had been rescued, Natasha came over to the Tower, raging mad and ranting about love. "Dammit! I love that arrow-fetished freak!" she ended up screaming. "How can I love not one, but two people! I don't love anyone!" she tried to convince herself.

"Well, whenever you're ready to go," Pepper prompted the blonde woman who would either solidify the relationship between Black Widow and Hawkeye or destroy it with her realization.

"Um, yeah," Buffy stammered a bit. "You wanna come with, Dawnie, or stay here?"

"Are you coming back?" Dawn asked, suddenly unsure about where she stood with her own sister.

Buffy reached over to hug her and said, "Of course I am. And I'd be willing to bet that you would be more than welcome to visit me there if you wanted to."

Pepper nodded and stood up.

"Have fun with your man, B," Faith called out, leaning back to take a quick nap before heading upstairs for a shower. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

Stark Tower

A week later…

A group of concerned Sunnydale survivors demanded to see Buffy. They hadn't seen nor heard from her since she arrived at the Tower.

Tony was smirking as he informed them that once Dr. Banner declared her fit, Buffy said something to Natasha and Clint. Afterwards, nobody else in the building had seen them even once. Natasha and Clint each took an arm and dragged her to a room, sealed the door shut with a code that would take even Tony a week to crack, and hadn't come out since.

"JARVIS, you monitor all health signs in the tower, correct?" Pepper asked, hoping to give the people some kind of information on their friend and sister. "Are there any signs of distress from Natasha, Clint or Buffy?"

The computer voice of JARVIS assured them, "All parties are healthy and not being held captive - at least not against their will. Miss Romanov and Mr. Barton had planned for this once they heard Miss Summers was staying here, so they stocked the room with plenty of food and water, as well as other essentials to their…activities."

Bonus scene:

Hawkeye smirked back at Stark when the man tried to tease him about Black Widow and Buffy. "I have two gorgeous women who are probably the most dangerous women on the planet in love with me. Tell me how that's a bad thing," he replied a touch smugly.

It was Bruce who answered him, though, "You have the two most dangerous women on the planet in love with you...you'd better hope you never do anything to upset them or they'd make my other half look like a little, green puppy."

Tony started laughing and added, "You also better pray to any gods there might be that you never get them pregnant at the same time."

A/N: Hope this meets with your approval, manticore-gurl071134.