She hadn’t talked to him since they had gotten back. What was there to say? Thankfully they had not appeared in the same place at the same time so it wasn’t hard to slip away and go down to the beach. As curious as she was about the house and the new things around Atlantis, Natasha needed to be alone right now.
When she got to her little hut, she was relieved to see that it hadn’t changed. It was still there, everything was just as she’d left it. She had enlarged it a bit so it wasn’t quite so cramped and had brought a few things since she was planning to stay there a couple of days at least. Before she had left, she had made sure that she’d told Sharon and Daisy that she was going camping and they’d asked no questions because Natasha knew they’d understand why she was leaving.
After settling down, she leaned back against the rolled up sleeping bag and pulled a water bottle out of her backpack. Except it wasn’t water, it was vodka and god knew she needed it right now. With a sigh, Natasha took a sip and stared out at the ocean. Clint had asked her to marry him or more precisely Charlie had asked Alice to marry him and she had said yes. Deep inside though, she’d known that it wasn’t just something that the AU had brought on. They’d both started to have memory flashes near the end, everyone had, and when he’d told her that he loved her, she’d felt it in a part of her mind that wasn’t Alice. They needed to talk about it and Natasha knew that she should have looked for him but she wasn’t ready so she’d come here. It shouldn’t have surprised her that about half an hour after she’d gotten to the beach, he’d appeared at the entrance to her hut.
“Damn, you are scary,” she said, looking up at him. “ I thought it would take you a couple of hours at least.”
Clint had taken a moment or two to look over the new housing arrangements - full on houses now rather than apartments, as if Atlantis was apologizing for the two month mindscrew that had been Breckentale, Colorado. He had Captain Kirk as a roomie again, along with the shrink who didn't like carnivals. He skipped out before she could try to psychoanalyze him and wandered the city for awhile before heading down to the beach. Sharon's list of the missing had been one kick after another after the mother of all suckerpunches, and Clint didn't need Claire - or worse Coulson - asking him if he was more pissed at having his head messed with yet again or at the fact that he'd been torn away from a daughter and the love of his life at the same time.
…Alice was the love of Charlie's life. Nat was… Nat. Like Dani, she wasn't his. Laura was Clint's. Laura who he’d thrilled to see for her short time in Atlantis. Who made him a better man from countries or worlds away just by thinking of her. Who argued with him over his renovations, never quite reproached him for his absences, and forgave him for the advent of rogue assassins and government watchdogs into their lives.
To be fair, Laura had been on the radar of both before they went off the grid. That was what spies did to their families, be they spouses or siblings, parents or children. Laura had been on the periphery of a darker world all of her adult life, and still brought the sunshine of blessed normality. Clint loved her for it, for bringing it into a life that never been normal even by SHIELD standards, and loved her for the strength that never needed to wield a weapon but held their family together by force of will and compassion. He had never been tempted to stray, even when half a world away.
But Clint was worlds away, fighting a war that seemed unlikely to end anytime soon, if COS had tricks like this up its sleeve. Nat wasn't a pretty face with a smile for a lonely SHIELD agent far from home or a flirtatious fellow operative suggesting some fun and stress relief. She was half himself, his partner in the field and his lifeline even when they were assigned missions on opposite sides of the globe. She may not shine a light on the dark places in him, but she still knew them intimately because she had her own to match. He was every bit as in love with her as Charlie had been with Alice. It had been something they drifted into naturally somewhere between their early, tentative partnership and their passionate affair. They'd called it off because Clint had wanted more. The home, the farmhouse, the three kids, picket fence and a dog. The dream.
That wasn't something the two of them could have. They'd agreed. It had hurt, but the wound had healed. The mess had been swept away, and after a rocky transition, they had been solidly partners again because Clint Barton could not have stood it without Natasha Romanoff in his life. Then, a year later, Clint had met Laura and fallen head over quiver for her, and they'd managed everything he'd dreamed of (He still woke from dreams in which all of it: Laura, the children, the farmhouse itself crumbled to ash around him and blew away. He didn't know if they were more memories or just fears brought on by the stories of his fellow one-time Avengers, but he feared that if he went back, the ash would be his only reality, without even the hope that Atlantis offered of seeing the dead one more time.).
But he'd never quite fallen out of love with Natasha. It was as if it had been quietly biding its time all these years, contentedly reveling in their closeness, but emerging only when forced into the light by Loki's probing (How the smirking little creep had enjoyed peeling through the layers of that little secret when he'd grilled Clint on the Avengers and their weaknesses) or an enchanted cocktail.
Breck had brought it all into stark relief. They'd had every bit of normalcy that their real lives had denied them, and those memories were far more recent and tangible than a long closed love affair or even his wife's last visit. Those were not thoughts or feelings Clint liked to dwell on, but avoiding them here would mean avoiding Natasha and he needed to know she hadn't faded into nothing like the rest.
The hut had been one of the first memories to return to Clint in Breck, and so this is where he'd come. “I wanted to make sure the place was still standing,” he said aloud. He sniffed, recognizing the smell of alcohol. “You gonna share or do I have to beg?”
“It’s still standing. I wanted to check it too,’ she said, holding up the bottle. “Sure come on in, I wouldn’t want you to have to beg especially since we both need this right now.” Nat felt strange with him here and that was a new feeling. She’d known Clint for a long time and not once had she ever felt uncomfortable around him. Even now she didn’t necessarily feel uncomfortable but it wasn’t the same. They’d been two entirely different people for the past two months, two people who were very much in love and were planning a life together. Not to mention the physical part that came along with that. It wasn’t the first time of course but it wasn’t the same either. There was a whole other layer to it and Nat wasn’t sure where Alice ended and she had begun. Especially when the memories had started to come back.
For a few minutes, she didn’t say anything, taking the bottle back from him when he handed it to her and she took another drink. With a sigh, she put top on it and put it in the sand beside her. This was not a conversation that they needed to have when they weren’t sober. Or maybe it was. Who the hell knew. “So I guess we need to talk about the elephant in the hut, huh?” she said, glancing over at him. “I just have no idea where to start.”
Clint took the bottle and sat next to her. He took less of swallow than he was tempted to take before handing it back. He looked at the opposite wall rather than Natasha, studying it with a determined concentration until she spoke. Then he exhaled in a huffing laugh a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and shrugged. “I mean, I'm for drinking and forgetting, if you are,” he said, only partly joking.
He rubbed his face as if trying to wipe away sleep. “Better than the last time I had my head unscrewed. I guess we're supposed to be grateful for that.” The rest was harder to put into words.
“I’ve got nothing against drinking but I don’t think that’s going to necessarily lead to forgetting unless somebody spiked the vodka,” she said. What had she expected him to say? That he wanted to see where things could lead? If she was being completely honest with herself, that was what she had hoped for but she had known that wouldn’t be his answer. It was one of the things that she loved about him. He was loyal to those he cared about, he didn’t give up and she was grateful for that because if he had done what he’d been ordered to do, he life would be drastically different even if he hadn’t killed her on the spot. He could have taken her in and she would have ended up in prison but he’d trusted his instincts and now here they were. If their little vacation in imagination had shown Natasha anything, it was that she still loved Clint, a fact that she had been trying to ignore but now, after seeing what a life with him could be like (to a certain extent) she wasn’t as content to ignore it.
“Fair enough,” said Clint. “Vodka's bad for that.” That triggered memories for Clint (a mission in Odessa in January) and for Charlie (a New Year's Eve party at the resort), and he swore without heat. He still didn't look at her, but his left hand felt along the space between them until it found hers.
“Still here.” It was either a question or a promise. Both, maybe.
Natasha tried not to look surprised when he took her hand even though she was. Instead she turned her hand over and linked their fingers together as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Which it certainly felt like it was and truthfully maybe it was. “I see that,” she replied. “I’m glad.” it was a simple sentence but it spoke volumes. Nat wasn’t good at expressing her feelings with words, she never had been but that wasn’t necessary with Clint. He understood her without them and it was one reason she loved him. Even if she couldn’t come out and say that either.
He could say it was just Charlie, just Atlantis, or the vodka, but this was Natasha, and Clint couldn't lie to her, not really. “I never know what the h-ll I'm doing,” he ventured. “You know that.”
“I know you don’t. Neither do I when it comes to you,” she said. Natasha was a self confident woman and she always trusted her instincts except when it involved Clint. Before Breckentale, she had been content with the way things were but now that she’d seen what things could be, it confused her. Had whatever force that had pulled them there tapped into something that made them see part of themselves that they’d been hiding? She didn’t know and probably never would but she did know that she still loved him.
Clint scoffed a little. “Now that’s not true,” he said. “You brought me out from under Loki’s brainwashing. You pulled me out of Odessa.” There was a long list, on both sides. It wasn’t about debts, whatever she might think, because in Clint’s mind they were long past the point of figuring out who owed who more. He shifted without letting go of her hand, so that he could look her in the eye. “I don’t know what happens if we get sent home. Or-” Or if Laura arrived from before whatever devastation Thanos had perpetrated on their universe. He didn’t say it. He couldn’t say what would happen, what he’d do to find her alive again. “What we had over there - not the high school teacher, tourist trap stuff maybe, but the rest-” Family. A future. He swallowed. “I want that.”
There were not many people who had seen Natasha Romanoff cry or who could stir her emotions enough to make her cry but this man could. She blinked tears away and then brushed at them with her free hand. “I want that too,” she said and leaned in to kiss him. If she tried to say any more, she didn’t think she could get through it. When she pulled back she tilted her head at him. “You know that it’s probably more private here than at either of our houses if you wanted to hang out here for a while.”
It had been a long time since Clint had kissed Natasha - no Charlie and Alice, no magical cocktails, no Atlantis trickery of any kind. One advantage of having had his mind messed with repeatedly was that Clint was getting fairly good at recognizing what was him, even if he didn't always want to admit it. This felt like it had always felt with Natasha - like coming home. She'd missed a few tears. Clint stroked her cheek with the hand not holding hers, and then ran it back through her hair. “Let's do that,” he said. “Try not to scandalize the new housemates too soon.”