Apologies for the delay - life has been a bit manic and I just haven't had the time to sit down and look at this. Hope this tides you over...
During the three days in which Clint fought the infection in his side, Natasha and Emma developed a bond that the Russian spy could honestly say she had never shared with another woman. Trust had been established before the phone call that had brought her out to Iowa but during those days in which they only had one another for company it deepened and became a solid friendship; communication became easier, confidences were shared, first names became the norm.
The late autumn weather had brought cold spells and they had made good use of the wood stores that she and Clint had gathered and chopped ready for the winter months to keep the cabin warm throughout the day and night. Truthfully, the weather didn't bother Natasha nearly as much as she suspected it would bother Emma, she had after all grown up in Russia where the winters were far colder than anything Iowa had to offer. Spare blankets and pillows had allowed both women to make comfortable little nests on the chairs where they slept so that they disturbed him as little as possible. Though Natasha missed the warmth of him at her side, she found some comfort in the hours she spent with him during the day.
Clint still slept many hours a day but was no longer sedated, meaning that with help he could sit up in bed and attempt to eat the small meals that the women prepared for him. He hadn't argued with either of them when they told him to stay put and give his body a chance to recover from all that it had been through. Apart from the residual swelling and some bruising the only visual marker was a neat line of stitches in black thread below his rib cage. That line of stitches was all the evidence that either of them needed to know that Dr Emma Carter was not only one hell of a doctor but that she was a medic in whose hands they could both place their lives. Natasha would have been confident going under the knife any day of the week as long as Emma's hand was on the scalpel.
"You're sure you want me to do this?" Natasha asked, sitting astride his legs and looking him directly in the eye. "We don't want to set back your healing in any way."
"It'll be fine," he reassured her, grey eyes flashing with something that might have been amusement. "You'll be doing all the work, what could go wrong?"
Slapping him playfully on the arm as he raised an eyebrow in her direction, Natasha heard herself chuckling. His body was warm beneath her denim clad thighs but no longer burning with a fever, his expression was calm and sure as he regarded her, one hand resting on her hip. Simple contact was something that they hadn't realised they could miss so much until one of them was too ill for them to instigate all those little instances of skin to skin contact. He was waiting for her to make a decision on his request.
"Okay fine," she sighed resignedly, "but if you end up bleeding it's your fault and you can explain all of this to Carter when she gets back from her hike."
Leaning to the side, she dipped a wash cloth into the bowl of hot water on the bedside table and wrung it out, the water chiming softly in the quiet of the bedroom. She repeated the procedure before she brought the warm fabric to his skin and gently cleaned the skin of his jaw. Next came the shaving soap, applied with an old-fashioned brush until the beard that had grown in during his illness was lathered up and ready for the part of the procedure that Natasha was a little bit afraid of. It wasn't that she didn't think she had a steady hand, she knew that she did, but the fact that she had only ever used a straight razor as a weapon did not instil her with confidence.
She flicked the blade open and tested its edge against her thumb, knowing that if the blade was dull she was likely to cut him. Clint recognised her behaviour as a way of stalling and tilted his head slightly, making sure that she was looking at him before he spoke. "I trust you Nat," he told her, "and I appreciate you doing this for me."
He made it as easy for her as he could, tilting his head and helping to support her weight when she had to lean in closer so that she could see what she was doing. Tentatively, she drew the sharpened steel over the soft skin of his throat, taking more care with him than she would herself. With every movement of the blade against his skin, with every rinse and every patch of freshly shaven skin that emerged, she found her confidence. It was a new experience to have him entirely at her mercy, to see in every glance and gesture that he had put his heart and his life in her hands. Just a tiny movement of her wrist could have slit his throat and yet the entire experience was somehow unbelievably intimate. Once again she was reminded that it was possible to miss him even though they had been under the same roof the whole time.
When he was clean-shaven and she had washed away any remaining shaving soap from his skin, she leaned in close. "I can't wait to get out of this bed and back on my feet," he exclaimed, running his hands up and down her back, the implication of his words clear to her in the way that he touched her. "Although having the Black Widow as a nurse maid has been an interesting experience."
Natasha leaned her forehead against his, her smile nothing more than a wicked curve of her lips. "It's not my strongest skill set," she admitted, "but for you I make an exception."
After dinner that night, during which Clint joined them at the table for the first time since he had fallen sick, Natasha found herself feeling restless. There was no obvious reason for the unease that she felt, Clint was doing well, the worst of his illness was over and the doctor was confident enough in his recovery to start talking about returning to New York, but she still couldn't settle. The reflection in the mirror was reminiscent of the woman who had looked back at her during her own ordeal, dark circles and tired features. Tiredness was her constant companion, the exhaustion of worrying over his condition grinding her down until sleep eluded her even when he was resting.
It was close to midnight when she found herself out on the porch, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders to ward off the chill of the night air. The cold helped her to think clearly, each inhalation easing the spiralling sense of panic that threatened to take over her. Leaning against the rail she turned her face up toward the night sky, searching for the reasons for her sudden foreboding in the stars. She had developed a strange affection for the night sky since the nights had started to cut in, learning the names and arrangements of the constellations during her late night talks with Clint. They were a constant upon which she could always rely, much like the man who now slept inside the cabin at her back.
Tonight the stars offered her no answers, they made poor companions as she sipped her hot chocolate and shivered in the breeze. The cabin had come to feel like home, her life with Clint had become decidedly normal, but it couldn't last. His injury, the infection that came after it, both of those things were proof that he had been right when he had told her that their life would never be normal. Natasha had never deserved normality, not after all that she had done. The thought that something might happen to rob them of the life they seemed to be building, terrified her.
She let out a puff of breath that she had held for too long and sank to her knees, half forgotten prayers falling from her lips as she clutched the dog tags that she had worn since they left medical all those months ago. The tags were a reminder of the life that Clint had once led as well as his promise to her that he was always with her. She must have traced her fingertips over the metal a thousand times since he had placed them, still warm from his own skin, around her neck.
The sound of the door opening and closing behind her grabbed her attention and she turned as Emma approached. Under the gaze of those dark eyes, Natasha felt as if she was about to crack wide open, her chest tightening and breath solidifying in her lungs.
"You okay?" she asked. "You've been out here for a while now." The doctor huddled into the coat that she had thrown on over her clothing, stepping further out onto the porch and closer to Natasha.
The redhead knew that there was no point in trying to hide the truth from the doctor, the woman in front of her was far too astute to swallow the lie. "Just can't seem to breathe properly," she admitted.
Carter's physician instincts came online in a heartbeat, feet carrying her across the wooden boards until she reached Natasha's side. It was obvious that she was looking for a medical explanation for shortness of breath, signs of a panic attack or some other physical stimulus that would give her something to work with. They both knew that she wasn't going to find anything.
They wound up with Natasha perched on the porch rail and Emma in the chair at the end of the porch, both huddled into the clothing as they tried to keep warm. Inside her blanket Natasha clutched the tags in one hand, tracing the letters that spelled out his name with her fingertip.
"You know, this thing with you and Barton ..." Emma said finally, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen between them.
Lifting her eyes, she traced the features of the other woman, a woman who had rapidly gone from an enforced presence at her side to a trusted friend and found nothing that could be considered approaching judgement in the eyes of the woman opposite her. "I don't ..."
"I approve," Carter interrupted. "The two of you are good for one another, always have been. I don't care what protocol says, what SHIELD say, the connection that the two of you have is the thing that's going to keep you both alive. I saw it that first day in your quarters and I see the two of you now and know that it's getting stronger by the day."
"We were never supposed to be this close," she explained, voicing her deepest fears. "We were meant to be partners, I don't doubt that, but the rest of what we are, what we've become … it freezes me."
"In what way?"
"I don't fear much," Natasha explained, choosing her words carefully, "death and pain are old friends. I've been a spy since I was a child and an assassin since I was a teenager, I've learned not to feel anything. Feelings can be used against you, it's safer not to acknowledge anything. If I didn't allow myself to feel then my emotions couldn't become a weakness. Clint is the first person I let in, the only person that I opened myself up to. At first my trust in him was liberating but now I realise that the only thing that has the power to hurt me is the thought of losing him. When I give my subconscious free rein, when I wake up from the nightmares, the only thing that scares me is living without him."
Emma sighed, reaching out a hand to lay her palm on Natasha's knee. "That's what love does to a person," she murmured. Before Natasha could summon any words to play down the way that she felt for her partner, Emma continued. "You can deny it if you want but we both know that you're in love with him Natasha. I see the way that you hold those dog tags and the way that you look at him when you're in the same room. If it helps at all, the feeling is entirely mutual. I see the way that Barton looks at you, like you are the sun and he's spent his whole life in the dark. He loves you Natasha."
"I know that," she replied a little defensively, hopping down from the rail and pacing around on the porch. There was no way that she could deny what Emma was saying, she could no more do that than she could deny they way that she felt about Clint. The anxiety that she felt was a churning sickness that pulled at her until she no longer knew which way was up and which was down, until the world was slightly off balance. "I know that," quieter this time, an acknowledgement and an apology for her earlier tone all wrapped up in three words. "He is everything that I think of as home and I know that he's getting better, so why can't I sleep?"
"You've been living in a one bedroom cabin in the woods for the last few months and when I arrived there wasn't any evidence that either of you had been sleeping in the living area which makes me think that you've slept side by side since you came out here," Emma paused, exhaled, then continued. "Did you ever consider that the reason you can't sleep is that you're not sleeping beside him?"
A short while later, when they returned to the cabin and Emma had settled into her nest of blankets on the sofa, she found herself in the doorway of the bedroom. It was easy to see that his sleep was troubled, the expression on his face betraying his unease. Courtesy should have prompted her to wake him, releasing him from the grip of whatever nightmare he was locked into, but instead she simply closed the door and approached the bed, shedding her clothing and slipping into her nightgown. At the touch of her palm on his shoulder, he quieted, the frown easing from his features. She settled in beside him, studying the profile of her best friend in the darkness, the way that his hair fell over his forehead, the line of his jaw. His arm came around her, pulling her closer. His touch was gentle, reverent as it ghosted across her hip and settled as an open palm at the small of her back. With her nose almost touching his, Natasha closed her eyes and slept better than she had in more than a week.