Who: Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff What: Sleepover, complete with nail-painting. When: Night-time, post emotioning. Where: Clint's nest lol get it that's a bird joke. Rating:Probably starting mild, will updated if need be! Updated to "need be". Also WARNINGS FOR ENDGAME SPOILERS, againsies.
Natasha didn't know where along the line she'd started to think of peaceful moments as something she needed to claw out. Using the verb "claw out" in reference to "peaceful moment" was probably anathema to the entire concept of peace itself. Still: in an epic understatement, it had been a lot. James's fury when combined with the news that he remembered her was so much in and of itself; she couldn't get it out of her head, the look on his face, the way his voice had broken over the words. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference: she'd lost him more than once anyway, with the Snap being the most final out of those, and it had been five years ago. If he had told her before it happened, maybe it would have only made the situation worse. Maybe it wouldn't have. None of that mattered as much as the place it came back to, which was that today, she had finally learned, and even after all this time - after decades and other lives and countless things that filled the times between, her reaction to hearing it, seeing it, touching it was so powerfully visceral that it was shocking.
So there was that. There was still that whole death thing to deal with, and the Tony of it all, and the fact that she hadn't told Steve, and she needed things in her brain to feel - quiet. To still, just a little. She needed to feel safe.
And here she was. Because this was Clint, one of the people in the world she had always felt safest around, and this was a Clint who was so much the same in so many ways, but without quite the same level of baggage her cliff-dive was bringing to the rest of the people she loved. It was Clint without the last miserable few years. It was a Clint who made her feel almost guilty for how much she liked him this way, like it was a disservice to her own, but really - they were the same enough that it came out in the wash, right? His apartment was eons away from a farmhouse, and something in her chest had unlocked the moment she'd asked if she could come and he had said yes. A sleepover. In a giant nest of blankets and in the enormous zip-front hoodie that Jan had somehow managed to procure for her at her request - it would have fit Steve comfortably, which meant it was the perfect size for her to sleep in. It was quiet, now that it was night, and everything in his apartment still smelled a little like coffee. He hadn't been lying about the Avengers-as-mermaids art on the walls.
He hadn't been lying about the nail polish, either, the smile that had lit her face when he'd shown her that had probably been stupid. She had no idea how he'd gone and done that, but he had.
She had one of his hands cradled in her lap, fingers against her leg and spread apart because it was easier to get close enough for precision work than it would have been on a table. (It would have been just as easy. Natasha wanted him to touch her, though, and she didn't know how to say that she wanted him to touch her, so: this.) She dipped the brush back into the bottle and turned it on its side to thin it out a little, carefully tracing the shape of an arrow onto his middle finger. "I think we were right," she said, head bent in concentration, stray wisps of hair curling out of her braid. "I do think this is going to look excellent when we finish. Maybe this should be my calling here."