As requested by a reviewer: how about one where Clint has to diffuse a bomb strapped to Natasha and both get really scared. Ask and ye shall receive.
"Time?" Clint asked. His tone was calm, unconcerned, as if he were asking about the oven timer on a frozen pizza.
"Five minutes," Natasha replied, only flicking her eyes to the flashing red numbers for an instant before going back to staring at the dark hallway beyond the interrogation room. The little countdown box blinked tauntingly in her peripheral vision.
Clint had detached the timer first, sat it near her knee so she could feel useful by keeping him informed of the minutes. The timer had started at fifteen. By the time Clint burst into the room with a smirk and a 'This looks bad.' it had blinked down to nine.
"So what's our takeaway here?" he prompted.
"Don't piss off the terrorists," she recited dutifully.
"Or?"
"Or we end up wearing bombs."
"Good girl," he replied, and ruffled her hair from behind.
Nobody had bothered to tell the aforementioned terrorists it was impossible to extract information from the Black Widow. And her silence had led to them bashing her over the head and forcing her into a bulletproof vest (ironic?) with a bomb strapped to the back. Not the most creative 'fuck you' she'd ever received.
"Four minutes," she intoned, and glanced over her shoulder.
"Impatient," Clint accused. "I can't do it with you watching me."
She huffed and went back to staring into the hallway. She'd be hearing about this for at least a month. There would be reenactments from Clint in the cafeteria. Coulson would turn it into a cautionary tale for junior agents. She detested being used as the moral of a story.
"Three," she told him, and her stomach clenched with a little flutter of nerves. Clint was better than she was at the whole diffusing bombs thing, and she'd never seen him take six minutes to get the job done before.
"Yeah, I got it," he snarled. Then, quietly, "Sorry, Tash."
He gave her shoulder a brief squeeze.
"Clint-"
"It's okay. I've just never seen one rigged like this before."
The new tension behind the words gave him away. This time, he didn't know how to save her.
"Clint," she said again, insistently. Two minutes thirty. Her throat stung, threatened to close up, and she swallowed hard past the sensation that warned of tears. "You need to go. You still have time to get clear."
"No way," he shot back. His breath came in sharp bursts, and she knew from the irregular staccato he was beginning to panic.
"Clint." She reached back and caught his hand. He gave up the bomb with an anguished little whine and shuffled around until he was crouched in front of her instead of kneeling behind.
He held her face between his hands, calloused fingers rough on her cheeks, and kissed her forehead, then her lips. He pulled her to him, tucked her against his chest. She twined her arms tightly around him, one small hiccuping sob betraying her before she locked it down.
As far as goodbyes went, it wasn't the worst she had imagined for them. She'd always thought there would be more blood, gunfire, screaming. The calm stillness was somehow harder.
He couldn't really hold her, not the big enveloping hug that made her feel safe and invincible. He draped an arm around her shoulders, twisted his other hand into her curls, rested his forehead against her hair.
"Tasha," he whispered, voice cracking.
"You can go," she assured him, pleased that she managed to mask the tremor in her voice. If Clint knew she was the least bit frightened, she'd never get him out of the room.
Clint was too good to go down like this, in a dirty, damp compound in the middle of nowhere. Clint fought until the end, always refused to accept defeat. He hadn't been taught that sometimes, sacrifices had to be made for the greater good.
But Natasha had been trained for every inevitability. She had been trained to swallow cyanide pills, had been made to practice squeezing the trigger of an empty gun until the click in her ear and the vibration of the barrel against her temple no longer unnerved her. A bomb blast would probably be just as quick.
"You're an idiot, Romanoff," he said with a humorless little chuckle. He pulled back, held her at arms length with both hands on her shoulders. "Strike Team Delta. What's a Strike team with one person? What's left for me if I walk out of this compound?"
She shook her head but didn't argue with him. The cruel, selfish impulse to keep him with her until the end made her tears fall in earnest, and she hated herself. Hated that the one time it counted, she couldn't maintain her masks and covers. Hated Clint for changing her.
"So this is how I repay my debt? Getting you killed?"
"I'm not going to spend our last..." he consulted the timer "...forty-five seconds arguing about your imaginary debt," Clint told her with a scowl.
He kissed her again, hard and deep, and when he pulled away there was a new determination shining behind his eyes.
"There's a blue wire. If I pull it I'll either shut down the bomb or blow us to hell, can't figure out which. So you're going to count me down from five, I'm gonna pull it on one, and we'll see what happens."
Hope flickered warm in her chest as Clint pulled her to him again, even though she tried to remind herself there was no way out of this one. He looked over the top of her head and reached one hand back to grasp the wire.
She watched the seconds roll back until, "Five."
Clint got "Four."
"Let's hope this turns out better than Budapest," she said with a smile against his shoulder on three.
"Nothing can be worse than Budapest," Clint muttered, and jerked the blue wire.