Clint shrugged. “Look, Stark, I am telling you this because you are supremely drunk and probably won't remember. But Nat and I are kind of... She's my North star. She's the only stable thing in my world. The continents can move, governments could fall, the world could reorder itself, but Nat is my lodestar. And I wanna be hers. So we didn't work together, as lovers, that doesn't change the fact that she's still Nat. And I'm still me." (I can't fit the entire passage here, but you get the gist!)
“And I wanna be hers. So we didn’t work together, as lovers, that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still Nat. And I’m still me. So I fully expect to either die in her arms or die with her gun pressed to my forehead, and eh, everyone’s gotta go sometime,” Clint said, philosophical.
Tony considered that through the booze fog. “You need therapy,” he said after a long moment.
“Oh, like I’m going to take mental health advice from you.”
From “The Act of Creation Will Be Your Salvation”
I really loved the hints of a relationship that we get in The Avengers between Clint and Natasha. They don’t fall into each other’s arms, there’s barely any hint of physical contact between them. Are they lovers, are they partners, are they friends, are they colleagues?
They’re none of that, and yet, they’re all of it.
There’s something very simplistic, and very deep, about the way they are with each other that fascinates me. I like to think that they were lovers, at some point, that there is a physical intimacy there, and it didn’t work. That they couldn’t make that work, but they couldn’t let each other go entirely.
So instead of breaking up, the sexual aspect of it just kind of went by the wayside. They’re still in love, they’re just not lovers.
I write them both as people who are very careful about the people they trust. They both have their reasons, they both have their pasts. And in each other, they’ve found a bedrock, a place to stand their ground.
In this particular scene, I wanted to deal with the concept of what happens when a relationship ends. We have two men, one drunk, one aiming to be in the same state in short order, and because of that, they’re both being a little more honest than they might be otherwise.
I wanted to make it clear that breaking up with someone doesn’t mean losing them. That Pepper still has a place in this world, that Pepper is still Tony’s friend, still his most loyal supporter, still his rock. She is still Pepper Potts, and Tony can grow up a little bit. He’s nursing a broken heart here, he’s nursing the fear that he will be alone, that he’s lost something irreplaceable.
And Clint is saying, there’s another way. If you’re tough enough to take it.
Also, taking advice from Clint Barton on relationships is really stupid, but you know what? In The Avengers, Tony and Bruce and Steve and Thor came for the Tessaract. The Tessaract in Steve’s folder, and a holograph in Tony’s hand and the phone in Bruce’s, and Thor chasing it and Loki across the dimensional rift.
But Natasha came for Clint. Natasha came for one line: “Barton’s been compromised.”
So he’s got to be doing something right. 8)
