"What's your play here, Scott? Is this a Cyrano thing? That's a little bit cute," Natasha said, her lips twitching with amusement that she didn't actually feel. Because it wasn't funny. It wasn't something she should be making light of - Clint wasn't something she should be making light of, under this circumstance or others. And here she was, playing it off as though he had a puppy's naive affection for her, like Clint was any other smitten Capitol boy she could twist around her finger and discard once he started being boring or less useful.
When she'd raised her eyes and bitten her words off in carefully enunciated tone that signified drop it, the gesture calculated and measured out, she'd expected him to let her up off the mat. It interested her, on some level, that instead, he hadn't just outright ignored it, he'd pushed it into a different place entirely.
The place he'd pushed it into was best described as thin ice, but still, they were both speaking so mildly, so civilly. Capitol games, in a way, where they were playing cards and she suddenly felt a little bit as if she was playing chess at the same time. She shuffled the cards a little between her fingers and looked at him again, slipping one of her own into the discard stack, too.
That was the thing about Capitol games: for as good as she'd always been at playing them, lately, she'd felt exhausted for doing it. Lately it had been wearing on her. It was a dance she'd done for years, and as soon as she'd made the right step, the coy little comment laced with just enough acid to really qualify as innocent, fuck if it didn't suddenly feel draining.
Maybe she was tired of chess.
"We're alone in your home," she pointed out, apropos of nothing. "And as far as I know, it hasn't been outfitted with video surveillance. If there's something you want to say, it's been a long few weeks. I think I'd rather you just say it."