welcome to dailyclintasha, a blog dedicated to the partnership between natasha romanoff and clint barton - aka BLACK WIDOW and HAWKEYE - across the multiverse!
[tracking: #dailyclintasha #clintashaedit]
BLACK WIDOW & HAWKEYE - celebrating 60 YEARS (coming March 2024)
THE EYES OF A HAWK AND THE VENOM OF A WIDOW!
Even when Black Widow and Hawkeye had no one to trust, they still had each other – even though their paths sometimes diverged. So when Clint Barton is accused of a rogue assassination attempt that puts the U.S. and Madripoor at odds, a symbiote-equipped Natasha Romanoff thinks nothing of coming to his aid. But as echoes of their past ripple into the present, it will take all their faith in each other – and the lessons learned along the way – to protect their futures. (full article)
Brand new 4 issue limited series for Clint and Natasha’s 60th anniversary coming March 2024. Written by Stephanie Phillips, art by Paolo Villanelli. Issue #1 cover art by Stephen Segovia.
Clint’s never been the lightest sleeper, but his brain has become accustomed to waking up at the sound of paws stretching softly at the wooden door. He thinks Lucky needs to go outside at first, but after stumbling out of bed, he finds Lucky scratching instead at the guest room door.
The guest room, where Natasha was sleeping. She had had a bad day, and had needed an alone night, as they call them. It wasn’t uncommon for either of them to occasionally need time to themselves, considering both of their pasts.
Clint squints at his dog, but follows his lead anyways and presses his ear against the door. He frowns, hearing Natasha’s heavy breathing on the other side.
“Hey Nat?” He calls out, tapping a knuckle on the wood as he pushes the door open.
She’s having a nightmare. That much is immediately clear from the way she’s kicking out and twisting her body, her head turned into her arm to muffle her sounds of distress even in her sleep. Her right arm is raised above her head, and Clint doesn’t need light to know she’s resorted back to the empty comfort of the handcuffs.
“Natasha.” He says, louder this time, as he approaches the bed. He knows it’s dangerous, but she’s caught too far in the nightmare to wake up on her own. Clint rounds the bed, coming around to the side she was facing, and places a hand on her shoulder to shake her, calling her name once more.
Natasha snaps awake and Clint stumbles backwards, narrowly avoiding the knife Natasha has somehow produced out of thin air as she slashes it through the air. Caught in the throws of her nightmare, she tries to lunge after him, but the handcuff catches her and jerks her back, keeping her confined to the bed. The force of it causes her to lose her balance and she crashes to her knees on the floor beside the bed.
“Shit, Nat,” Clint curses. He is quick to swoop down and grab the knife out of her hand, and she doesn’t resist. “Hey,” He crouches down in front of her, “You awake?” He reaches out and brushes her hair out of her face, pushing it back. Her green eyes blink back at him. “Ah, there you are.”
“I almost hurt you.” She whispers in horror.
“But you didn’t.” Even if she had, he wouldn’t have cared. He understands.
She doesn’t respond, so Clint stands up to rifle through the nightstand drawer until he finds the handcuff key. He jams it into the lock of the cuffs and jiggles until they pop open. Her arm falls free, and she curls it around her midsection.
“C’mon,” He gently takes her by the shoulders, guiding her back up to the bed. Lucky jumps on the mattress, and she flinches away from the dog. Clint is about to shoo him away, but Nat stops him.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. Just a bit on edge still.” She confesses. She sends a half hearted smile to Lucky, giving him a pat on the head.
“It’s only 2am. Do you want to try to go back to sleep?”
Natasha glances down to her wrist, where the handcuff has left an angry red mark circling around it. “I don’t think I can.”
Normally, he would indulge her. Put on some goofy movie or suggest taking Lucky on a random midnight walk, but he knows she has a long day of security briefings tomorrow. He guides her back to lay down against the pillows, and then lays next to her. She’s confused, but he just continues, pulling the blankets back up to cover them. Then, he takes her wrist in his hand, wrapping his fingers around it, keeping his hold gentle enough to not irritate her skin further, but firm enough she could easily feel it. “Is this okay?”
She nods, a deep breath of relief finally escaping her as the tension drains. “Thank you,” She whispers in the dark, so quietly he almost misses it. He hums a response, broken by Lucky nudging his way into their tangle of legs.
Natasha was in the kitchen, making some coffee and fixing food to share as she heard harsh cursing come from the living room. Then some rustling and clattering. And even more cursing.
Curious she popped her head out of the kitchen. "You alright? Are we getting ambushed or something?" Her boyfriend mumbled something under his breath. "Honey? Can I help you?", she tried again. A sigh. A heavy one. "Okay, come in here."
With a concerned look on her face she went across the hall to their living room. Clint sat - fully defeated - on the sofa, surrounded by scissors, Christmas wrapping paper, tape and bows.
"Mission impossible?", she teased, gliding next to him. He nestled his head next on her chest. "Totally. I can't do this. Heeeelp me!" She stroked his hair and kissed it. "Poor baby. So. Should I wrap my own present?" "Kind of." Clint had hidden the box with her present beneath his feet before he called her in. "Maybe you could close your eyes?" "Um…" "Only until the layer is about to cover what I want to give you. We'll do it together.... please?" How could she say no? Clint was so desperate and she couldn't stand those puppy eyes. So she put her hands on her knees and closed her eyes.
"Alright. Put the paper on the table. Make it big. No room for mistakes this time." She heard him roll out the paper and cut it. "Okay." "Place the box in the middle, along to the edges. Got it?" He did as she told him. "Now put one side up first and tape it on top. Then you do the opposite. Do it slowly, it's not rocket science." She heard him fold the paper, the sound of cutting the tape.
"Yay! Alright. Open your eyes. I think you can't spoil yourself anymore", Clint said, in a much better mood.
Natasha took hold of his hand and together, they took care of the yet unpacked sides. "Then you fold here and here, see? After that, you pin this down and tape it. And that's it!" He kissed her "I know why I love you!" "Don't celebrate too early, you'll do the other side alone!", she grinned evilish. "Aww man...!"
She steps out of the bathroom in a haze of steam and hairspray and he knows she’s trouble. The smell of perfume wafts towards him- that perfume- the perfume that makes her marks weak at the knees- floral wrapped in vanilla and musk. He doesn’t ask if she’s okay, they’ve done that part already. She’s slipped into the person she needs to be. He helps her with the zipper and clasps a necklace around her throat. It drops low on her chest, almost as low as the neckline of the dress. Her heels click as she walks outside.
XXXXX
The necklace chain breaks as she rips it off, tossing it on the floor with her bloody dress. He raises an eyebrow as the bathroom door slams behind her. The water runs for a long time. He’s about to check on her when she emerges in shorts and a tank top, damp hair around her shoulders. She slumps on the couch next to him.
“That good, huh?” He grabs her hair brush and a bottle of her favorite lotion from their room. “Let me?” She nods, turning her back to him. He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. Starting at the bottom, he’s careful not to pull as he works the brush through. His fingers pause for just a moment at the bruise on her neck. He doesn’t mention it. When he’s finished, he nudges her shoulder. “Lay down.” She reclines against a pillow, watching him as he pumps a generous amount of lotion in his hand. He starts at her shoulder, down her arm to her wrist, then again in the other side. She sighs, closing her eyes. The smell of lavender calms her. He moves onto her legs, her thighs, knees, down to her ankles. Nothing about it is sexual. When he reaches her feet he massages them gently. She laughs and pulls back, too ticklish for it. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah. More like me,” she admits, sitting up. He snuggles against her, breathing in her scent.
“My Natasha,” he mumbles against her hair. She can’t help but smile.
Any time he tried to say anything, it came out in a jumbled mess. All his pronunciations were wrong, and he never had the correct voice infliction. He only knew the simplest words and phrases, but other than that he was completely lost.
But despite that, he always kept trying.
He got Natasha to help him, coaching him in a less formal way of speaking. He even enlisted the help of that stupid cartoon owl, who yelled at him every time he got something wrong. Clint was sure that he could get it someday, but he hoped that that someday would come soon. He wasn’t just learning this language for no reason; he had a plan.
One night, just after Natasha had fallen asleep, Clint got out of bed and made his way to the living room. He went over to the bookshelf and took out the English to Russian dictionary. He spent the next hour finding every word he was going to need and writing them down on a piece of paper. Once he was done with that, he spent another two hours practicing exactly how to say it.
Clint knew it wasn’t perfect, but it had been too long, and he wanted to do what he had been practicing for in the morning. He crawled back into bed and prepared to wake up early.
By the time he woke up in the morning, Natasha had already left. She got up at 5:30 every morning to go work out, so she was right on schedule.
Clint made his way to the kitchen and started making breakfast. He made waffles with strawberries and whip cream, eggs, and sausages. He poured them glasses of sparkling cranberry juice and set the table nicely. Then he waited for Natasha to get back.
Clint stood by the door of the apartment, nervously running through what he was going to say in his head. He knew that if he panicked and had to switch to English halfway through, Nat wouldn’t be mad. She would probably be proud of any progress that he had made. Still, Clint wanted this to be special.
At 6:45, right on schedule, Natasha opened the door. She jumped a bit when she saw Clint, fully dressed, standing in the doorway.
“Oh, good morning Clint. You’re usually not up this early,” she kissed him and made her way into the kitchen.
“What’s this for?” she asked, looking at the assortment of breakfast foods on the table. She was smiling.
“Well, umm,” Clint started, and then took a deep breath, “I actually have something I want to do, so here it goes
“Наташа, я так до смешного люблю тебя. Я люблю все в тебе, даже то, что ты ненавидишь. Я хочу быть с тобой до конца своей жизни, ты выйдешь за меня замуж? I hope I said that right.”
With this, Clint got down onto one knee and pulled the ring out from his back pocket. Natasha’s eyes were filling with tears.
She nodded while trying to wipe the tears away and knelt to throw her arms around Clint. As he was about to slip the ring on her finger, she put her hand up to stop him.
“Wait,” she said, and then she started to sign.
“I’m actually learning to sign so that I can make things easier for you. Also, I was going to ask you to marry me by signing later today, but I guess you beat me to it!”
“I hope I said that right!” she said laughing. Now it was Clint’s turn to hold back tears.
“Perfect” he signed.
Natasha threw her arms around his neck again and rested her forehead against his shoulder. When they pulled apart, Clint put the ring on her finger, and they kissed.
Natasha still had a long way to go with sign language, and Clint with Russian, but they were both so proud of each other at that moment that it didn’t even matter.
They could always learn from each other.
——————————————————————————————-
Translation:
Наташа, я так до смешного люблю тебя. Я люблю все в тебе, даже то, что ты ненавидишь. Я хочу быть с тобой до конца своей жизни, ты выйдешь за меня замуж? - Natasha, I’m so ridiculously in love with you. I love everything about you, even the things that you hate. I want to be with you for the rest of my life, will you marry me?
Clint’s phone buzzes with a text message, the four quick vibrations signaling it was Tony.
He ignores it. He’s exhausted, having been driving for several hours at this point through the night, and he’s not confident in his ability to drive in the total darkness and read a text while being so tired.
A ringtone fills the car a minute later, and Clint groans. He lets it ring to the final ringtone out of spite before accepting the call.
“Tony, if you’re calling me at almost 3am because you blew up another lab I swear--”
Tony cuts him off. “How far away are you? We need you here, now.”
Clint frowns and glances at the clock. “I’m only like.. An hour away. What’s going on?” He’s almost afraid to ask.
“Natasha just rocked up from her mission with a concussion.”
Clint waits for him to continue. He doesn’t. “...Is she okay?”
“No. I mean, yes, she doesn’t have any other injuries, if that’s what you’re asking. But this situation is absolutely not okay because she has a concussion and you’re not here to deal with her. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she doesn’t exactly listen to anyone else.”
Clint puts more pressure on the gas pedal, watches as the speedometer goes up. Tony starts to say something else to him, but Natasha’s voice cuts him off from further away, and he interrupts himself to mumble at her for a moment before returning. “Seriously though. She’s asking for you.”
There’s fumbling on the phone, and then Natasha is speaking.
“Clint?”
He smiles, suppressing a laugh at Tony in the background who is cussing at her for stealing his phone. “Hey Nat. What happened to ya?”
“Uh,”
“It’s okay if you don’t remember right now.” He tells her.
“Where are you?”
He glances at the clock on the dashboard. “I’m 40 minutes away. I’ll be there soon, okay?” The roads are empty - he doesn’t feel guilt as he presses the car to go faster upon hearing the frown in her voice.
More fumbling, and Tony is back on the line. “What am I supposed to do with her?”
Clint rolls his eyes. “You’ve dealt with concussions before, Tony. If she’s not being combative, just wait with her. I’ll be there soon. Put on a movie or something to keep her distracted. She likes Bond. Just no disney or cartoons or anything like that.”
“Yeah, got it, Okay.” Tony says something to Natasha, and the phone clicks off.
Clint laughs and turns the radio volume higher, returning his focus back to the road. Tony likes to act like an idiot, but Clint was also well aware of how close Tony and Natasha actually were. He was thankful to have someone he didn’t have to worry about Natasha being around while she was not in her right mind.
.
His phone is ringing again.
“Are you here yet?” It’s Natasha, even though it’s Tony’s phone.
“Tasha. It’s only been like… ten minutes.”
There’s a pause as she tries to process his words. “...But are you here yet?”
“Goddammit, Natasha.” Tony is there then, taking his phone back. “I go to the bathroom for one second and she finds the phone again.”
“Where is her own phone?” Clint asks.
“I confiscated it. I don’t trust her near any technology while she’s concussed. No way. Next thing we know she’d probably accidentally leak CIA documents while trying to open Spotify.”
Clint snorts. He doesn’t blame Tony for taking it. “Tell her I’ll be there at 3:20.”
There’s a thump, sounding suspiciously like the small body of his partner hitting the ground, and Tony disconnects the call, but not before Clint catches an exasperated “I thought you were supposed to have good balance?!”
Fifteen minutes later, It’s Steve’s phone calling. Clint’s stomach drops as he immediately assumes the worst- that she was becoming resistant and Tony had had to get Steve, the only other person on the team besides Clint who was capable of restraining her. It wasn't uncommon for her to forget where she was or who she was with while concussed.
Instead, It’s just Natasha again. “Tony is being mean to me,” She tells him, and he has to stifle a laugh at the pout he can practically hear on her face.
“I am not!” Tony’s protest comes from across the room. “I was just trying to get her to drink some water!”
“Drink some water, Nat.”
She ignores him. “Where are you?”
“I’ll be there soon. Tony told you at 3:20, remember?”
“That’s going to take hours.”
“No, Nat. Look at the time. It’s 3:00 right now. It’s only twenty minutes.”
“Hours.” She repeats, a whine in her voice.
“How did you get Steve’s phone, anyways?”
“He gave it to me.”
Clint isn’t sure how much he believes that, but he isn’t going to argue with her. There’s a noise, reminiscent of the phone slipping out her hand, a string of cuss words from her, and then silence as the call gets cut off.
He’s making good time, pushing the car despite the almost empty gas tank. He’s only five minutes away when the next call comes, this time patched through from JARVIS.
“Okay, seriously, how far out are you now?” Tony asks, and Clint can hear the hint of desperation. “Can you speed it up? Because now she is starting to be combative. She’s confused about why you’re not here. Thinks something happened to you that we aren’t telling her.”
Clint can hear Natasha arguing with Steve in the background as he tries to reason with her, explaining why he couldn’t let her leave the tower.
“Can she hear me now?”
“Yeah.”
Clint talks to her, then, letting her know he was only a few minutes out, that he was okay. He keeps up a constant string of random dialogue for her, updating her each time he gets a minute closer, until finally he is pulling up into the tower. He barely has time to get out of his car before the elevator to the garage is opening, and his arms are filled with a red haired figure crashing into him.
Clint presses a kiss into her hair before glancing up to fist pump at Tony. “Four minutes early!”
germansingergirl
gummygunk
izzy806
blakekathryn
discoholicmusic
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
