People left Clint, It didn’t matter if he loved them or not. They always left. Typically because they were dead. Yes, he was well aware that everyone dies one way or another, but the people Clint found himself in love with always seemed to get taken away by some ass hole on a power trip.
Clint’s bad luck started with his parents…Although he wasn’t sure if he ever really loved them. His old man was a mean drunk and his Ma just didn’t seem to care about him and Barney. Then Barney left him and came back only to get killed partly because of Clint. Only to come back again and turn in to the best big brother when he was out of Clint’s life. Or at least that’s how Nat so kindly put it. And yet there they were sort of coexisting. But Clint was sure it was all an act. After Barney there was Bobbie. Clint was sure he loved her to the point where he married her despite being against marriage. But it was short lived. First Bobbie faked her death and then there was that tricky little thing about her killing that man. She was gone again but that was Clint’s choice…though it still hurt like hell.
Slowly Clint took a breath in through his nose for the count of eight before blowing out through his mouth for the count of ten fingers drumming against his thighs. He should fix his hair Clint figured. May as well commit. Even if it scared him.. Dipping his hands under the flow of the tap to wet them first Clint then ran them through he hair and pushed around at the front until it was less messy and well sorta looking formal. He hated gel. Even if this was the most important day of the rest of his life. Turning the tap off Clint store at his reflection. He looked ready, but was he? He wanted this right? Yes, don’t be stupid. Tasha’s told you she’s sure a million times that he hadn’t misjudged. But that did little to deflate the ever-growing bubble of fear in his stomach. Clint had lost so many people in his life he didn’t want to lose anyone else. Especially Bucky. He was too important. Maybe Clint lucked out this time? Bucky had ‘died’ and come back twice already. Maybe he wouldn’t get taken or leave Clint like all the others. Clint nodded his head to his reflection. Nothing was changing this. Nothing. No childish fear of being alone, no depression or lack of sleep was going to change this. Nothing. Clint stopped in the doorway of the bathroom caught off guard by the wide grins spread over Tasha and Barney’s faces. “What? You two look like you’re up to no good…which is scary.” There was a moments pause that made Clint feel squirmy and hot across the nape of his neck. “You look good Clint…I’m happy for you….” Tasha said genuine and gentile. “We’re all proud of you. Red and I may not agree on much…er well anything really. But this.” Barney gestured vaguely to the empty air in front of him. “This you deserve more than you know.” He said a sparkle in his eyes Clint hadn’t seen since there time in the circus… Swallowing as Cint shifted on the spot feeling almost like a scolded child unsure of how to take the praise. “UH, thanks…Guys.” He said slowly blue eyes darting to the wall clock just to the left of the couch. “But we should get going…or we’re gonna be late and I don’t wanna be a fuck up…at least not today,” Clint said nervously and jammed his hands into his pockets. Clint’s palms were becoming increasingly wet with sweat by the second. “There’s nothing to fuck up Clint” Natasha attempted to assure even if it was a losing battle, Clint only nodded and started to walk towards the door hot on Barney’s heels.
Clint began to count his intake of air and every exhale all the way down the hall and up to his position. This was it. Clint was wearing more clothes than he really ever did and yet he felt like he was naked. There was nowhere to hide. Nothing left to do but marry Bucky. Easy enough. Repeat after the priest, Say I do and kiss. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Tasha is still more or less completely weirded out that her teammate shares a name with her.
She doesn’t know why it bothers her, it just… does. Not to mention the unavoidable confusion whenever someone says “Natasha”: Stark or Romanoff? The one that kills people or the one that blows shit up? Which one? It is a pain in the ass. That’s why the brunette has decided, all on her own and from a very early stage, that she is to be “Tasha” (no one ever really calls her any other way) and her teammate is “Nat”.
A pattern emerged from that, where Tasha would throw “Nat” everywhere in her sentences while talking to the agent, she’d threaten her with increasingly gruesome murdering scenarios and the whole thing usually ended up with Nat twisting Tasha’s fingers in a particularly painful way and the genius yelling “I NEED THESE FINGERS TO WORK!”
“I know you like me!” Would call out the brunette, making hilarious faces at her poor hand.
Eventually, “Nat” stuck, they stopped performing their little scene, and no one ever actually needed to say that it’s true Nat likes Tasha. Just as it’s true that Tasha likes her back. I mean, she did open her house to the most skilled spy assassin in the world, if that’s not a declaration of love, nothing is.
Except, there are a lot of ways to declare one’s love.
Clint’s way might be one of Tasha’s favorites, simply because it’s both golden material to tease him over and it all came from the fact that Coulson did not, in fact, die.
Everything started when, for some reason or another, they were all summoned to the helicarrier. It was the first time Tasha saw Nat, Clint, Thor and Steve after the whole Loki drama (she maintained contact with Bruce). The woman walked into a waiting room, talking in the phone while texting and trying to get her hair out of the way.
“No, Rhodey, I can’t talk right now, I have to go, I’m entering a very high-security place, Fury’s gonna have my metaphorical balls if I let you hear confidential secrets through the phone, oops, losing my connection, buh-bye!”
“TASHA…!” Called Rhodey, frustrated, before the woman hang up on him.
“Hey there, fellows!” Greeted Tasha, turning her cellphone off and finally managing to deal with her hair, “Capsicle!” She beamed, spotting Steve sitting cross legged, very prim and proper distracting himself with a magazine. “Long time no see! It’s good to see you are back from your loner voyage to find yourself.”
Steve raised his head and smiled – his large, boy-scout grin that made him look like a huge golden retriever puppy. “Hey, Tasha”, he greeted, softly “it’s good to see you again.”
“Huh”, the woman pushed her sunglasses up her forehead and sat unceremoniously next to the blonde soldier, “you really do mean it, don’t you?” She asked, poking him in the cheek.
“Of course I- why are you poking me?” He asked, baffled, as she kept doing it.
“Trying to find out if you’re some kind of bizarre mutant cross between a Care Bear and Aslan.”
“Between what and… what? Stop that!” A brief ridiculous scene followed, where Steve tried to get her hands off him and she dodged him insistently, before laughing.
“That’s pop culture, Cap. Don’t worry. You’ll catch up.” Tasha clapped him in the shoulder. “So! Does anyone know why dear ol’ Nick and his eye patch filled with secrets called us here? Is another alien race trying to blow up Manhattan?”
“Not that I know of”, replied Bruce, leaving his spot by the coffee machine and sitting at Tasha’s other side. The guy looked positively better than when they found him hiding in the wild, with a new wardrobe (provided by Tasha under many protests she unceremoniously ignored) and lighter circles under his eyes. “I was told they had to debrief us over some ‘unexpected turn of events’”, Bruce discreetly air-quoted the words.
“Has Thor’s psycho brother gone on the loose?” Inquired the brunette, raising one eyebrow.
“Thor is in the other room with Doctor Foster”, replied Steve, indicating the door, “he says nothing unusual has happened on his side.”
“Hummm”, mumbled Tasha, crossing her arms.
The woman had a striking feeling she knew what this was about, but, surprisingly, Tasha stayed quiet as Furry appeared to guide them into another room, all the awhile spinning his mysterious crap.
“I KNEW IT.” Yelled Tasha, as soon as she stepped inside. “I. KNEW IT. SUCK IT, FUCKERS! I knew he wouldn’t leave his cards out of their zipblock! FUCK YOU, FURY.”
“Tasha, what in the hell are you-“ begun Steve, impatient, pushing through her to get in and promptly freezing in shock.
“I knew you weren’t dead, your motherfucker!” Exclaimed the brunette, still busy doing her impromptu “I win, you suck” faces.
“It’s refreshing to know my death made such an impact on you, Miss Stark”, replied Coulson, deadpan.
Natasha and Clint were flanking Phill throughout the whole thing, even when Tasha convinced everyone to go out and do something other than be stuffed in shady SHIELD facilities. There was a serious amount of bickering on regards to where they would go, until it was decided bowling, where the brunette kicked everyone’s asses and talked Steve through Narnia and 90’s kids cartoons. Jane tried to teach Thor how to bowl leading to Clint and Tasha losing their breath from laughter and Nat cracking a smile. Coulson, all throughout it incredibly dead-pan and unbothered, proved to be quite proficient in bowling, to which Clint muttered “he’s good at everything”, and Bruce calmly kept everyone’s scores and discussed portals with Jane.
“Do you think Clint is looking a bit… tense?” Whispered Steve at some point, leaning across the table towards Tasha. The brunette finishing eating her slice of pizza and shot a look at their archer. He was sitting next to Coulson, but notably leaning away from him.
“Yeah”, agreed the woman, “why?”
“Do you think he might be unconformable with us?” asked the blonde, uneasy, “because of the whole mind-control thing?”
“What? No, no, no, no, no, no,” disagreed Tasha through a mouthful of cheese, leaning back towards Steve, “see”, she said, licking her lips, “that’s just sexual tension.”
“What?” Replies Steve and the confusion in his face is adorable. The woman laughs.
“Has anyone given you the LGBT talk yet?”
“Hum… no?”
“Let me put it like this. How do you feel about gay people?”
“Ahm…” the blonde blinks, “nothing… particularly? I think that if everyone is happy and consenting it really isn’t any of my business.”
“Great”, Tasha smiles largely at him and throws an arm around his shoulders. “This is what you should know: Clint is bisexual, Coulson is gay, and there’s a painfully obvious one-sided pinning on Clint’s part that they probably haven’t talked about.”
“How… how do you know that?” Inquires Steve. He is looking at Tasha dubiously, trying to fit all information together, wondering how trust-worthy his source is exactly, but not for a moment he seems bothered by the idea that the man who designed him a skin-tight uniform is gay, and Tasha likes him a little better for it. “Wait, and didn’t you say Phill had a cellist?” He remembers, suddenly, raising his eyebrows.
Natasha gulps down her drink. “Hum, yeah. His name was Harry something.” Muses Tasha, smiling as Steve’s blinks, his month forming a small “o”, as if his brain is only now informing him “cellist” is a unisex word. “Besides, Clint was checking out Coulson’s ass earlier.” She adds, shrugging. Steve seems to take her word for it.
Further down the night, when they have moved from the bowling to the newly built Avengers Towers and Tasha is touring them around quite drunk already, they realize Coulson and Clint have gone missing and backtrack looking for them.
If asked, Tasha and Nat will shamelessly admit they were eavesdropping, Steve will stammer and apologize, Bruce will look properly ashamed and apologize and Thor really has no idea it wasn’t polite to begin with.
“I’m not cornering you”, said Coulson, every bit as composed as always, while Clint leaned aggressively against the other corridor wall.
“Sure sounds a goddamn lot like cornering to me.” Replies the archer, defensive, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m only asking a question”, disagrees Phill.
“And you felt the need to get away from everyone else to ask me that question because…?” Points out the other man, ironically.
“Because you’ve been avoiding me ever since you found out I wasn’t dead”, Clint scoffs, but Phill isn’t bothered by it, “and I’d like to know why.”
The archer shrugged. “Because.”
“I’m sure there’s a reason.”
“I say there isn’t.” The man shuffled in place, “why are you even bothering yourself with this? You’re not my handler anymore. It’s been some time, actually, ever since you were my handler. So why do you care?”
“That is not fair”, states Phill, and by then Tasha was silently freaking out at Clint’s robotic capacity of keeping his calm, Nat was rolling her eyes, Thor was confused, Steve had this worried expression and Bruce was trying to decide whether or not to run before the two men found them squished together by the corridor’s corner. “Before this whole mess, I considered us friends.”
“Right”, sneers Clint, and Tasha shots a curious look at Nat – is Coulson that completely clueless? Nat shakes her head, and rolls her eyes at her friend. It seems Clint is better of an actor than he first let on. Except now his defenses are obviously crumbling.
“Is it because of Loki?” Asks Phill, and there’s a slight change in his posture, as if he’s getting close to understand, but can’t quite put his finger on it.
“Loki.” Repeats Clint, dry and tense.
“Yes”, answers Coulson, stepping closer, “you know it wasn’t your fa—“
Whatever was next on Phill’s speech was promptly lost when Clint sprung forward, an arm tackling the other man by the shoulders, his other hand grabbing the back of his neck, and suddenly the archer was kissing his ex-handler madly.
Steve’s jaw fell, Tasha made a little “WOOOOOOOH” soundless encouragement, Nat looked as pleased as she ever gets, Thor looked happy for them and Bruce had a mild surprised expression on.
“I thought you had died”, chocked Clint, grabbing the man’s waist until his knuckles went white, “I was going to ask you out, had been waiting for our schedules to coincide, but then Loki showed up and I thought you had died, and I never got the chance…” his breath was uneven, his eyes darting back and forth between Phill’s eyes and lips. “I never got the chance… Gosh, I was trying not to go into a weepy love confession here, but it got so fucking hard when I found out you weren’t dead.”
“Then shut up”, growled Phill, twisting Clint around and pressing him against the wall.
By then Steve dragged them all away claiming it was “personal!”, but he forgot Tasha has footage on every corridor of the mansion.
And, because Tasha and Clint rapidly became best buddies, bounding over recklessly, things that blow up, sex innuendos, practical pranks and Shit People Say about Bisexuals, the archer never saw the end of it.
