Mission Ten: Red in My Ledger

It was really hard to read Natasha.

Clint supposed that was probably a good thing for her career: the fact that she could hide her emotions so well and could let people see what they wanted when they looked at her. But it was a serious problem for Clint on a personal level, because he had gone ahead and made the official request for her to be his partner, and he still didn't feel like he entirely understood her.

There were times when he felt like they got along. Really well. He could even get her to joke around with him, so he knew that she had a sense of humor that was eight kinds of wicked. And those times when he got her to laugh—really laugh, not just the sort of breath that she let out through her nose when she was amused—just made him want to kiss her. More than usual.

She had been very frank with him about the fact that sex appeal was part of her job description. She was used to using her looks to get what she wanted—or at the very least, using what people assumed about her looks to get part of the way there. He'd seen her do it to him and to Coulson and to other agents, playing the part of a quiet and almost shy, eager-to-please new agent until she would throw out a phrase or a biting comment that reminded everyone of her sharp edges.

It was hot.

He was trying not to make it weird, because he really did actually like having Natasha as a partner. He felt like they worked well together; it was easy to fall into a rhythm working with her, and he didn't feel like he had to prove that he deserved to be there with her. She didn't have the same sort of almost-animosity that the rest of SHIELD had toward a former felon, probably because she had more or less the same problem he did, too.

He hadn't known her as long as he'd known the few other agents that he actually got along with in SHIELD, but he felt like he had that same sort of back-and-forth with her. She was, for lack of a better word, comfortable.

So he was trying really hard not to make it weird, even if the longer they worked together, the more he couldn't help but notice little things about her. Like the way her lips would purse when she was frustrated with something small like a hair out of place or a small slip in training. Things that no one else would get mad at her for doing—but she was mad at herself. She wanted to be perfect; she just didn't say anything out loud.

He did the same thing in his own training, when he was anything less than perfect on a shot. Because the thing was—if he wasn't perfect, then he was just some carnie with a bow. He wasn't anything special, wasn't worth all of the effort that Coulson had put in to reform him and train him and turn him into "one of the good guys."

So he got it. He did. He knew why Natasha was so critical of herself, even if she didn't say anything out loud. He had that same drive.

But that wasn't the only thing he had noticed about her. He had also noticed the way she would quietly smirk when Clint would mess with the too-cocky new recruits—and he had noticed that those same recruits seemed to somehow end up missing their left shoes or getting locked in the bathroom, little things that seemed like childish pranks that weren't befitting of the Black Widow at all. And yet Clint just knew that she was behind them. She was too pleased with herself for it to be anyone but her.

So, yeah, she was hard to read. But that just made it harder for him to resist trying to figure her out.

He was usually pretty good at reading people. That was part of why he had the codename he did. And, he was sure, that was why Fury had sent him after Natasha in the first place. She was right; Fury hadn't picked him on accident. But Clint didn't think that Natasha was right about the why. It wasn't just that the two of them had similar backgrounds, coming from places that wanted to use them as weapons, having to learn to make a name for themselves in a place that inherently distrusted them. It was that Clint understood people, and he knew when someone wasn't worth the shot.

And that was yet another similarity that he saw between himself and Natasha. She could read people, too—but it was different than what he did. She seemed to know exactly where to push to expose some kind of weakness, whether it was pride or lust or anything in between—though those two were more often the case.

It was immensely satisfying to watch her work, too, because she had this ability to turn everyone's expectations on their heads. The first time some cocky agent had come up to her trying to act like he owned the place, Clint laughed so hard that he almost gave the whole thing away.

"You know, if you ever want a real spar, I can give you a few pointers about how we do things in SHIELD," the guy had said—which was what had Clint barely able to hold it together, covering his face with both hands to keep from blowing Natasha's game.

In true Natasha fashion, she'd turned the agent's way and raised one eyebrow with a shy sort of smile that Clint knew was actually a cover for her to look him over and assess just how badly he needed his pride taken down a peg. He could practically see the decision before she even reached it, because she bit her lip when she had finished her once-over. To anyone else, it would look like flirtation, but Clint knew the truth: she was only just holding back a smirk.

"I've already been trained to fight," she said. "What's so different about your training?"

It was kind of a brilliant response, if Clint was honest. It gave the guy a chance to bow out gracefully if he was really interested in teaching her anything. If it had been a sincere offer, he could have sat down to explain to her the different protocols or even asked her about what kind of training she had.

But what he said instead was, "Oh, don't worry, sweetheart. You'll like my way better."

She bit her lip again, and Clint had to duck into the hallway, because he was barely holding back the laughter. She was going to eat him alive.

And she did.

Clint may have spread the word around some of the other agents that someone was about to get their backsides handed to them. And he may have made sure that, in particular, any of the women that this guy had harassed before knew that he was about to get comeuppance. And he may have asked Clay Quartermain to record the whole thing. After all, Clay could be counted on for stuff like that.

Clint was still chuckling to himself when he caught up with Natasha after that, not even bothering to hide his grin—or the fact that a few of his friends were outright laughing as they headed back to whatever they had been doing before Clint told them about the free show.

"You sold tickets," Natasha accused him, shaking her head at him.

"I did not. I didn't make a profit off of you," Clint insisted, one hand over his heart in his very best impression of an innocent, falsely accused person.

"No, but you turned me into a sideshow."

"I turned him into a sideshow," he corrected her. "And he totally deserved it. Half those agents or better had to put up with his stupid. I just pointed them to where sweet justice was."

Natasha couldn't stop her smile. "You know, Clint, for someone who says that he preferred to work alone before, you seem to know an awful lot about everyone in this organization."

"I'm a Hawkeye; I can't help that I'm observant."

"But you seem to take it to a higher level," Natasha countered. "You notice all those little things because you care, Clint. And don't try to argue with me, because I've already corrected one man today and I get progressively less pleasant with each successive argument."

Clint quickly held up both hands. "Hey, I feel like there should be levels to your aggression," he laughed. "Disagreeing slightly with your assessment is not the same as the total creep show you just took down."

"No, but the total creep show did take up a lot of my patience."

"I can't believe you even kept a straight face," Clint couldn't help but snicker as he shook his head.

"You weren't helpful laughing like an idiot," she told him, though she was flirting with a laugh herself. "Never play poker, Clint."

"Hey, I'm decent at poker."

"That's not possible," she said, finally letting out that breathy laugh that had Clint grinning even wider when he heard it. "You must be mistaken. No one with the terrible poker face that you have could play poker for long without being completely bankrupt."

"Hurtful."

Natasha's smile widened a bit as they walked together. "You keep saying that you can't help but notice things because of your training. Can't I say the same?"

"Yeah, but you're being mean about it," he teased.

"I am not."

Clint grinned a little wider, honestly enjoying the way Natasha couldn't hold back her smile. He liked that she was starting to relax a little more—because it meat he got to see that smile come out more often, too. All of a sudden, he took a deep breath and had to ask, "Do you want to grab a bite to eat?"

"You mean outside of the cafeteria they have here?" Natasha asked, one eyebrow arched up. Clint wasn't sure if she was still teasing him because she was in a good mood or if it was her way to quietly signal that she was keeping things as just friends; she was still sometimes hard to read.

"I meant… as a date," Clint said, suddenly feeling a lot like an idiot teenager, which was kind of ridiculous, considering he was a grown adult.

Natasha's smile dropped slightly, and Clint felt the air rush out of his lungs as if he'd been hit in the chest.

"Never mind," he said quickly. "Sorry. That… I … I got the signals mixed up and put my foot in my mouth and we can just pretend—"

"Clint." Natasha reached over to rest her hand on his arm, cutting off his babbled almost-excuses. When he looked up at her, she had that same sort of smile in the corner of her mouth—which really wasn't fair, because it was that corner-smile that made him want to kiss her all the time.

"Yeah, I… sorry, Nat—"

"Stop apologizing," she said, shaking her head at him. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yeah, but I don't want things to be weird when we've got this great thing going—"

"Are you going to make things weird?" she challenged, one eyebrow raised, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Well, no, but—"

"Then we're fine," she said, waving him off with one hand. "You asked and didn't push; that's better than half of the agents around here."

"Well, that's one thing in my favor," Clint said with a self-deprecating smile.

Natasha finally let the corner-smile out, spreading it like warm butter over her expression as she gave his arm a little squeeze. "You have more than that in your favor," she told him. "You just choose not to see it."

"You accusing me of being blind, Nat?" Clint asked, trying to get back to their teasing mood from earlier. "I feel like I should be insulted. Coming after my Hawkeye title like that…"

"You are blind to yourself, not others," Natasha corrected him, shaking her head with a breath like a laugh. "But if you feel the need to be insulted… I won't stop you."

Clint shook his head, smiling despite himself, despite the fact that he felt like an idiot kid with this beautiful girl. "Okay, Tasha."

They walked together in silence for a long time before Natasha was the one to break the silence—which was unusual for the two of them, but Clint was still stuck in his own head analyzing all the ways he must have read the signals wrong and screwed up a good thing.

"Clint," Natasha said, catching his attention and getting him to turn her way. She smiled and rested her hand on his shoulder. "You're making it weird."

"I'm not trying to," he promised quickly.

"I know," she said. She seemed to consider something for a long moment, her teeth on her lower lip as she thought in a way that meant Clint had to look away so he would stop thinking about kissing her. He really needed to get it together; she'd made it clear that she wasn't interested, and he wasn't going to be the creep that kept pushing until he turned into a sad little excuse for a pickup artist. "Clint, I make it a rule not to date anyone I owe."

The comment set him back a few steps, and he furrowed his brow. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Of course it does," she said, twirling her hand in an impatient sort of wave. "You understand power dynamics, Clint. And I don't bring romance into any situation where I feel beholden to someone."

"No, no I get that," Clint said, shaking his head. "I just don't know why you think you owe me."

Natasha gave him the driest look he had seen from her yet. "Clint."

"No, seriously. All I did was decide not to shoot you. That's not, like, monumental. It was a judgement call, and I make those on missions all the time." He shook his head. "You don't owe me anything, Tasha. I swear."

"I disagree," she said, her tone one of finality as she rested one hand on her hip. "You might not think very much of yourself or what happened, but it makes a big difference to me. And it's not something I'm so willing to brush aside."

Clint frowned at her and then at least made an attempt to brush it off with an easy shrug, his hands in his pockets. "Okay. But we can still be friends, right? I can still eat with my partner?"

Natasha smiled at that. "Of course," she agreed. "I wouldn't be opposed to eating somewhere outside of the cafeteria."

"Had one too many agents treat you like you're green, huh?"

"A few dozen too many," Natasha said with a smirk.

Clint nodded. "Yeah, I get that. I had … well, not the same treatment, but there were definitely a lot of people who thought that 'new' meant 'ripe for abuse'. You can imagine how that went over."

"If you say 'like a lead balloon'…"

"Well, now that you've stolen my line…"

Natasha smirked and shook her head as she rested her hand on his arm. "Do you want to get something to eat, or would you rather stand here and tease me?"

"Can't we do both?"

She laughed. "Then you're buying."

…

"How are things with your new partner?"

Clint looked up from where he had been fixing his arrows, replacing old nocks and the fletching on some others. He preferred the feathers to any other kind of fletching, but then again, he'd learned how to shoot on an old carnival bow that didn't have the trappings the nicer ones did. So, feathers were easier to deal with, since they slid off the bow and didn't get caught.

Coulson was standing in the doorway with his usual inscrutable look, and when Clint didn't answer immediately, Coulson simply put his hands in his pockets and waited. They'd worked with each other long enough to know that any unanswered question would eventually come back around to an answer—once Clint had time to think it over.

Clint appreciated that about Coulson. And because Coulson was willing to wait for the real answers, Clint did his best not to give the guy the kind of glib, off-the-tongue answers he would give other people.

Which, of course, only meant Coulson had to wait longer. But such was the way they worked.

Finally, Clint let out a breath and leaned back so his back was against the wall as he considered Coulson. "I think we're lucky she's on our side now," he said. "I think she's the kind of person to hold a grudge, so we're lucky on the how she joined up, too."

Coulson raised an eyebrow at that. "Oh?"

Clint nodded. "I think if she'd been caught on a job or if she felt like she wasn't being given a choice, she'd torch the place and leave nothing in her wake."

"She'd have a hard time," Coulson said with a small smirk.

"Sure, Phil. You go ahead and think that."

Coulson chuckled at that, shaking his head before he sat down across from Clint. "You think she's that dangerous?"

"I think someone taught her how to destroy anything and anyone that stood in her way, and she's not above using all of that training on personal vendettas," Clint said. It was hard to keep the smirk off his face, especially when he added, "But she's pretty good about proportional responses. She wouldn't torch the place just because your agents don't know how to stop trying to get fresh with her, for example."

Coulson nodded slowly, which Clint knew meant he was thinking over his response before he shared his thoughts on the matter. "You're already pretty protective of her, Clint."

Clint didn't bother to deny it, not when he knew it was written over not only his expression but the report he'd just given Coulson. So instead, he simply shrugged. "It's hard not to like her."

"Really." Coulson very nearly smiled at that, though he was professional enough to school it into a smirk instead. "That's not the word around the base."

"Well, who are you talking to?" Clint asked. "Are you talking to the women on base that enjoy watching creeps get twisted around her little finger and then neutered or are you talking to the creeps?"

"Clint—"

"Hey, from where I'm standing, she's got plenty of friends. Maybe you just need to talk to the right people and not the ones who are coming up to your office to complain because they got served their own egos by a girl they thought they could handle."

Coulson did finally smile at that. "You sure paint a picture, Barton."

"Didn't say a thing that wasn't true."

"I didn't say that." Coulson chuckled and shook his head. "But you haven't answered my question. Is she dangerous?"

Clint weighed it out. He'd given his answer, he thought, but then, that had been about her potential. And the thing about Coulson was that he was better than the pencil-pushers and had more heart than Fury and Hill did. He didn't want to know about the numbers or the potential alone—he wanted to know Clint's gut instinct.

"I think," he said at last, "that she still feels like she owes us for getting the brainwashing out. And like I said, she remembers where she stands with everyone. If we crossed her, she'd take down whoever she had to. But right now, the scales are balanced in SHIELD's favor." Remembering the conversation he'd had with her over lunch, he added, "She has red in her ledger. So if we ask her to work for us, that's her way of paying her debt. I think that's half the reason she took the offer."

"And what was the other half?" Coulson asked, leaning forward, genuinely interested.

Clint paused. "Don't take this the wrong way," he said. "But . . . me."

Coulson laughed at that, a real laugh that pushed wrinkles into the corners of his eyes. "What on earth would make you think I'd take that the wrong way, Barton?"

"Aw, shut up, Phil."

Coulson smiled a little wider before he shook his head, and the expression melted away to one that was a lot more like the usual non-expression he tried to wear at work. "Right," he said, though the smile was still apparent in his tone. "Then you'll just have to walk me through your thought process, Barton."

Clint watched Coulson for a moment longer before he finally let out a breath, knowing Coulson wasn't going to stop being entertained no matter what he did. So, he simply shrugged. "It's not like I'm sleeping with her to keep her here or anything—"

"Are you sleeping with her, Clint?" Coulson asked, his chin dropped to his chest and his eyebrows raised.

"That's a personal question, sir."

"That's a no," Coulson said.

Clint couldn't help but snort out a little laugh. It was nice to have a superior office who could give the teasing as well as he could take it. "You're not wrong."

Coulson smirked and leaned back slightly. "I don't think you're sleeping with her, Barton. If you were, you probably wouldn't be able to stay quiet about it. You don't do subtle when you get involved."

"How would you know?" Clint asked. He wasn't disputing the assessment; he just knew for a fact that he'd only have a few dates that didn't get off the ground much after the second or third date in the entire time he was in SHIELD.

But Coulson didn't come back at Clint with any super-creepy admission about background intel or surveillance—which was a relief, frankly. Instead, he simply tipped his head Clint's way with the kind of expression that simply screamed that Clint should have been able to work out the answer to his own question. "You can't even do friendships quietly, Barton. You really think you can keep your mouth shut on anything more than that?"

"Fair point," Clint said. He wasn't even mad; he almost wanted to laugh. Coulson sometimes seemed to know Clint better than he knew himself—or at least, he was good at cutting right to the heart of whatever Clint was thinking.

"So, you're not sleeping with her, and you're definitely not sleeping with her in some misguided attempt to use sex to keep her on our side," Coulson listed off. "Which, by the way, would be a very bad idea—so don't ever do that."

"Yeah, wasn't planning to," Clint said, holding up his hands. "I only brought it up so you wouldn't think I was that guy."

"You know I don't," Coulson said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, well, the idea's been floating around," Clint grumbled out of the corner of his mouth.

"I thought you didn't put much stock in what other people thought," Coulson said.

"I don't."

"You do."

Clint narrowed his eyes before he simply shrugged. "Yeah. Well. Anyway. The point is… I think if you paired her with a career agent, she'd be out of here as soon as she felt like she'd paid back her debt."

Coulson raised a single eyebrow. "And that's an arbitrary deadline if I ever heard one."

"Yeah."

"So you don't think we have her loyalty?"

"I think you're looking at the wrong kind of loyalty," Clint said. "You want her to swear loyalty to an organization, but that's not her style. Organizations and faceless bureaucracy? Come on, Phil. She got brainwashed by some government program in Russia, and you really think she'll just jump right into step with another one?"

"SHIELD isn't—"

"You want her loyalty, you get it on a person-by-person basis," Clint continued, not about to listen to a lecture on what SHIELD was and what it wasn't. "She doesn't do faceless, mindless loyalty."

Coulson leaned back, his expression totally inscrutable, though his tone was almost soft. "Like you."

Clint paused and then tipped his head. "Well, yeah."

Coulson watched Clint for a long moment before he finally smirked. "I'd be more worried about getting my intel from such an obviously compromised source if I didn't know you were good for your word."

"What?" Clint shook his head. "I'm not—"

"Right." Coulson got to his feet. "Most operatives don't date their partners, Barton. Just for the record. If it ever comes up. In the future."

Clint blinked at Coulson, at the barely restrained smirk the guy was wearing as he headed for the door.

Finally, he broke into a laugh. "Screw you, sir."