Prompt was a Clint/Nat battle wedding or an "effed-up" wedding. I like this one much.
"O-negative," Clint told the nurse with the clipboard.
Not Clint, no, he was Clark tonight. Clark and Natalie. Natalie Rushman, a familiar cover, easy to remember and maintain even with the pain pills Clint-Clark had forced on her in the car.
"Alright, Mr. Brandon, we'll get her prepped for surgery, and I'll send someone out to update you as soon as-"
Natasha leaned forward and planted her feet firmly on the floor, bringing the wheelchair to a halt. She looked over her shoulder, past the man in scrubs pushing the chair, past his wide eyes and confused expression.
The woman with the clipboard and Clint had paused on the threshold of the last set of double doors. The nurse had a hand planted firmly on Clint's arm, stopping him from entering the hallway.
What would Natalie do? Natasha knew what Natasha would do. She was about three seconds from walking out and leaving the damn bullet stuck in her thigh, fuck the blood loss and fuck Coulson's ordered ER visit.
"Excuse me," she said sweetly, and hauled herself out of the chair to stalk back to Clint and the nurse.
Her leg throbbed and she could feel blood soaking her jeans through the dressing Clint had taped down in back of the car. Clint I-can't-find-the-bullet Barton. Useless asshole.
"-and you aren't Miss Rushman's spouse or immediate family, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait here."
"But we're partners," Clint protested. Natasha gave him an incredulous look over the nurse's shoulder as she approached. That always worked at S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities, but civilian hospitals weren't in the habit of making exceptions.
"Partners?" the nurse echoed, a suspicious note to her tone.
"We're officers," he added lamely. "Off duty."
Clint didn't panic often, and maybe the frantic way he was combining aliases and covers was the only reason she wasn't freaking out. Natalie Rushman certainly had never been a police officer, off duty or otherwise. Clark Brandon was a goddamn investment banker.
"I think I'll keep the bullet, thank you," Natasha told the nurse, and lifted the clipboard full of Natalie's information from her hands. "Let's go, Clark."
She hooked her arm around his and made to walk back the way they'd come, but he didn't follow. He took the clipboard and passed it back to the nurse.
"Come on, Nat," he muttered softly. He led her a couple paces away to make the conversation private. "You heard Phil, we're on our own until tomorrow. The closest safe house is four hours away, no extraction. I can't fix you up this time. I tried and I made it worse."
An icy shock of fear rippled through her chest, and she shook her head and backed a step away.
"Nat. Nat, please."
"Not without you," she whispered, still shaking her head and hating the tremor in her voice. Clint blew out a breath.
"Okay," he said softly. He turned back to the nurse. "If we were married, I could go back with her, right?"
"Yes, but-"
"Perfect. Nat?"
He swung her arm around his shoulder and strode back down the hallway, every bit the focused sniper now.
"Mr. Brandon!" the nurse called after them, and Natasha listened to her running to catch up.
Clint paused at the nurses' station and reached over the counter. He straightened up with a paperclip and a handful of Hershey's Kisses from a candy dish, nodded once toward the main lobby, and left Natasha to keep pace beside him as he worked. She watched him bend the paperclip into a near-perfect circle, then he started on the foil candy wrappers. He passed her the chocolate as he opened each one, then twisted the foil bits together.
Natasha grinned and popped the chocolates into her mouth, irrational fears long since gone. It wasn't the craziest idea he'd ever come up with. It was better than being dragged into the bowels of the hospital and sedated without him.
They stopped again in the middle of the lobby. Clint turned a slow circle, scanning the faces of the people sitting in the small clusters of chairs around the room.
"Knew I saw one around here," he muttered, and pulled her arm back around his shoulders. The unsuspecting priest was occupied reading Better Homes & Gardens in a chair along the far wall. "Keep up!" he growled back at the clipboard nurse. "We'll need a witness."
Natasha tried to put on a pleasant, vapid smile and slip back into Natalie. She really tried. But when they approached the priest and Clint said "Sorry to bother you, Father, but-" she broke into an uncharacteristic fit of giggles. Probably the blood loss.
"You're bleeding, dear," the priest said, and stood to lay a soft hand on her shoulder. There was something kind behind his eyes, and also a faint hint of polite curiosity, and Natasha let him keep the hand rather than break it.
"It's her fault," she replied, and jerked a thumb at the nurse.
"Hospital policy," Clint spat. "Look, my fiance's terrified of doctors and they won't let me - what?"
She tugged his sleeve and arched a brow.
"Right. Sorry, one second," he said to the priest. The man watched, lips pressed into an amused smile, as Clint dropped to his knees in front of her. "Nat, you're the light of my life, etcetera etcetera, I can't breathe when you're gone, my life is a void without you, whatever. Wanna get hitched?"
"You're not bad in bed," she conceded, and held out her hand. Clint slid the paperclip over her finger.
"Anyway," he continued, and got to his feet, "she won't go back without me. She's so stubborn she'll stand in this lobby and bleed out if they won't let me go with her, and they won't let me back there unless we're married, so-"
"What happens after tonight?" the priest asked, and gave them a stern expression. "Will you have the marriage annulled?"
After tonight they would go back to S.H.I.E.L.D. and debrief and...what? She hadn't even considered it. Clint hadn't, either, if his deer-in-the-headlights gaping was any indication.
Common sense told her to play it up, tell the priest what he wanted to hear, but that hadn't been Clark proposing to Natalie out of necessity. It was Clint proposing to Natasha, in the frank, blunt way their relationship worked. No flowery language or meaningless overt declarations of love.
This was Clint and of course he loved her, and she loved him, and it didn't matter when exactly it had happened or how because they had always been drawn to each other. Clint was her axis and she was his. Ceremony and foil rings wouldn't alter the way she laid herself bare for him, or how he admitted things to her in the dark he never dared to tell anyone else.
They had never cared about confirming or denying anyone's suspicions about them. But she didn't want to simply tell the priest what he wanted to hear, either.
"No?" Natasha guessed, and looked to Clint for confirmation. He shrugged.
"We've been partners for almost ten years," he reasoned.
"We celebrate an anniversary," Natasha said, and couldn't help the distaste behind the words. It was ridiculous and something Clint insisted on, making a big deal about the day he brought her in.
"She already steals my clothes, and my apartment's full of her crap."
"We've got a joint Netflix account," Natasha added. "And a dog."
"I guess we're pretty much married, huh?" Clint said, sounding a little surprised as he grinned down at her.
"Do you ever have disagreements?" the priest asked.
"Only about twelve times a week," Clint replied. "Like I said, she's stubborn."
"And he's a reckless idiot," she countered. The priest scrutinized them closely.
"Alright," he agreed at last. He smiled again. "Where would you like me to perform the ceremony?"
"Let's make it count," Clint said, and indicated the small room off the lobby with a sign on the door that read Chapel.
It wasn't for weddings, instead for mourning and bargaining and sending up desperate pleas for mercy on behalf of dying relations, but Natasha didn't much care. Maybe a church built with death in mind rather than salvation was appropriate, given their line of work.
The room was tiny and dimly lit, crammed with three short benches, a table with candles, and a little altar at the front. There was only one other occupant, a man leaning forward with his head resting atop the back of the bench in front of him, hands clasped and raised. Clint tapped him on the shoulder.
"The Lord's omnipresent," Clint told the man, and slipped him a hundred dollar bill. "He'll hear you in the lobby."
"He isn't wrong," the priest said mildly, and oh, she liked him very much. The nurse simply looked scandalized.
The man considered the bribe for a moment, then took himself back to the lobby as instructed. Clint dragged her forward to stand parallel to the altar and passed her one of the two identical foil rings he held. He gave their names as Clark and Natalie and held her hands while the priest recited the beginning of the wedding ceremony.
The room dipped and swayed and her leg throbbed just a little harder, white needles of fire coursing out from the wound as the painkillers wore off. Clint was staring at her, eyebrows knit together in concern.
"Yes," she told him, because they were probably at that point, and he kissed her and she fell against him as tiny black stars winked at the edges of her vision.
"So we're married, right?" Clint asked.
"In the eyes of the Lord, if not the state," the priest agreed.
They'd forgotten the marriage license. Panic swelled again, until Clint scooped her into his arms.
"And God outranks you, lady," Clint snarled at the nurse, "so get my wife taken care of."
He swept out of the room, and she dropped her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. Clint wouldn't let a technicality keep them apart, not after all the trouble they'd just gone through.
"Can't wait to tell Coulson," she muttered.
"Yeah, it's your turn, alright," Clint agreed. She looked up in time to see him roll his eyes. "You made me explain the Turkish prison incident."