AN: literally decided to translate this last night at two am because ! so fluffy and adorable.
all creds to the original author Yu_Chi_P on ao3! literally my aspiration (her writing omg) so if you enjoyed this fic, show her some love as well
i CANNOT link the fic for some reason so here's the ao3 fic id: 58759345 (use the ao3 site address and then add this at the end!)
enjoy!
As far as friendships went, giving your best friend a spare key to your farm was pretty normal. It was trust, really, but Clint wasn't sure how much he trusted said best friend now.
He hadn't been back in Iowa in a long time. Just the mere thought of cleaning the farm gave him a headache, but there were just some things he couldn't run from.
He opened the front door gently, frowning at the dust that shot around at his slight motion.
Today was going to be a long day.
Sighing, he threw his keys into the box by the shoe cabinet. As he reached for the cabinet door, he saw something that wasn't supposed to be there.
A tiny, yellow rubber duck sat right by the keys.
Clint immediately stiffened. Years of training taught him to distrust any change in his usual surroundings, no matter how...small. He hastily grabbed an arrow from his quiver, and poked at the duck, very much aware that it could be some sort of mechanism that would trigger an explosion. Nothing happened. The birds continued chirping brightly, and the winds kept blowing across the farmland.
Carefully, he picked the duck up, turning the small toy around in his hands. The number "1" was printed on the bottom in bold font.
He didn't care too much about it and strolled into his bedroom to change into more comfortable clothes. As he peeled his shirt off, he noticed another yellow duck in between the two pillows on this bed, labeled with the number "15" underneath.
He found another five ducks by the bathtub when he was getting ready for a shower. Placed neatly in order, they had the numbers 30 through 35 printed on them respectively.
He was starting to get what was going on.
The shampoo bottle was almost empty, so Clint shook it a few times and frowned at the motion. He opened the cap to find a yellow tail peeking out from the dark, purple liquid.
Despite his reluctance to part with the remaining shampoo, he let his curiosity take control and shook the bottle, opening facing down. The rubber duck sailed out alongside the shampoo.
The number was "4".
He checked the fridge after his shower and was immediately greeted by a rubber duck staring back at him with its black, beady eyes, slightly larger than the rest he found.
"13."
For the rest of the day, Clint found numerous rubber ducks in the most random corners of his house - the cookie jar, the top of his closet, under the mattress, in his lamp...even a pair of shoes he hadn't worn in a long time. As soon as his foot entered the shoe, the pain in his sole told him exactly who was responsible for all this - Natasha, you little bastard.
He wasn't sure just how many ducks she had hidden around the farm, but tonight, he found 41.
Their eyes were big and round, kind of like hers.
He couldn't help but imagine how she sneaked into the house and wrote numbers on each other rubber ducks, and how she hid them in all the places. He couldn't help but laugh as he visualized the way her eyebrows scrunched together when she did something bad.
The next day, when Clint decided to check his piggy bank, he shook it, only to realize that there were no coins in it at all.
He opened the bottom to find three rubber ducks.
"87", "88", and "89".
"How many rubber ducks did you hide in my house?"
Clint no longer found the entire thing funny. The rubber ducks were hidden too well, and he was about to go crazy from noticing two black eyes staring at him in the corner of his peripheral.
So he called her.
"I won't tell you the exact number," Natasha's laughter sounded from the other end. "But you can guess, and I'll tell you if you're correct."
Clint found a rubber duck labeled "99" while he was repairing the roof; it was the biggest number he'd found so far.
He called Natasha to ask her, "Is 99 the largest number of the ducks?"
"Yeah," she replied. "How many have you found so far?"
"45."
"You have 54 left. Best of luck!" Clint could almost envision Natasha smirking on the other end of the phone.
"Great math, Tasha," he replied sarcastically.
This means he had to live under the same roof as the 54 rubber ducks hidden in god-knows-where.
Until he found all of them.
Without much thought, Clint had already shoved all the rubber ducks he'd found into a plastic bag. Sooner or later, he'd use them to get his revenge.
This entire thing started drifting from his mind, and Clint stopped purposefully trying to find the ducks. They'd occasionally appear in the most random corners, and he'd pick them up in triumph, each finding a step closer to 99.
He was curious just how many she hid in his closet - he could barely keep count of the number of times he'd put on an old jacket or some jeans and walked out the house only to realize there was something in his pockets - rubber ducks.
His backup quiver wasn't spared either.
But Clint didn't know it until he was emptying his quiver while complaining to Coulson. Two rubber ducks stumbled out alongside the arrows, and they both fell silent.
Clint shrugged. "I'm not sure how to put this, but I am indeed someone who has retained his innocence."
Coulson only gawked in response.
He didn't have anywhere to store the two ducks, and his new-found obsession with collecting all 99 rubber ducks made him shove the ducks back into the quiver.
As he lurked on the rooftops, counting his arrows, he spotted the rubber ducks. Naturally, he thought of Natasha, and that made him realize they hadn't seen each other in a long time. The rubber ducks made him realize he missed her a little.
Maybe more than that.
In the third winter, Clint found a total of 71 rubber ducks.
Natasha gave him a box of Christmas presents. Squished underneath all the other things was a tiny rubber duck, labeled with a "100".
Clint was silent. "I thought there were ninety-nine only."
Natasha only grinned at him. "Well, you get an extra one for free."
"Why?"
"I suddenly realized I'm not that big of a fan of the number 99."
As time went on, Clint spent less and less time at the farm. He wanted to deep clean his entire house and find all ninety-nine of the rubber ducks (100 now), but he never found the best time to complete this goal.
Just like how he wanted to spend more time with Natasha - they'd sit in the departure hall, staring at the ever-changing numbers and letters littering the screen while planning trips that they'd never get the chance to go on. And then they'd say their goodbyes, and head towards their next missions.
Sometimes, when he wasn't at the farm, Natasha would come by to stay for a few days. Clint never really knew why, but only that she'd find a few rubber ducks and leave them on the kitchen counter as a token of her gratitude.
She'd even leave notes - "This milk doesn't taste good, I bought a new carton" "helped you vacuum the floor" and "the stairs creak like crazy. sure you don't wanna have it repaired?"
Every time he read one of these notes, it felt like seeing past Natasha smile up at him.
Another few years passed, and he found 89 ducks. There were ten left, hidden in god-knows-where.
In the past few years, he made new friends and gained new identities. New people visited his farm, and they found more of the ducks for him. Accidentally.
"Barton, why is there a rubber duck in the bathroom vent?"
"...Why are you looking in my bathroom vent?"
At the end of that year, he found a total of 98 ducks. He told this to Natasha, who raised her eyebrows and said, "You're really close to success."
And then he started loving her.
He didn't just fall in love with her. He had loved her for quite a while, long enough for the feeling to merge into any other emotion in his daily life.
They spent some time figuring their relationship out and then returned to the farm once they got on break.
Natasha was kissing him, and he laughed against her lips, hands fumbling for her clothes as they got onto his bed. Things heated up quickly until they got to a point of no return, and Natasha rolled over to flip through the drawer in his nightstand, admonishing him about all the medications shoved together without organization.
"Come on, I'm only here a few days of the year," he complained. She continued looking through everything in the drawer, turning back with a cry of triumph when she found a worn box of condoms. Clint sighed. "I'm absolutely certain those are expired."
Natasha ignored his words and opened the box, shaking out a few foiled packages. The last to fall out of the box was something small and yellow.
Clint groaned. "What's that? Don't tell me it's a rubber duck."
She laid back down on him, placing the rubber duck on his chest. "Congratulations, you found the last one!" she exclaimed brightly.
Clint looked into her eyes. "You know, I almost regretted giving you my keys. Trying to find these ducks drove me insane."
"So did you regret it?" she asked, poking a finger into his chest.
"No," he laughed while shaking his head. And then he scrunched his eyebrows as if in thought. "I think I already loved you a little when I handed you my keys."
end.