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1.
The first time Natasha drove him to drink she put a bullet in him. Before she came to SHIELD, and he couldn’t have known then that he would be the one to turn Natalia Romanov into Natasha Romanoff, Hawkeye chased the Black Widow all over the world. And in some back alley of Thailand, she got the bead on him faster than he got it on her. He never was good up close. He should have stayed in his perch. But a man’s got to eat at some point and even if he shot his meal, he’d have to go get it eventually.
She was waiting for him. He could hunt with the best of them, but she was an artist. She put a bullet in him, right through his kidney. Clear through and through and if it weren’t for all the blood, he figured he could’ve seen daylight right through his own damn body. He didn’t have much in his hotel room and SHIELD gave him too many hours to evac. He poured a local street liquor called Ya Dong onto the wound. And it was only fair. An ounce for his kidney, two ounces for him.
Ya Dong tasted like ass. And yes. Clint would know.
2.
Natasha did not come willingly. All of that bullshit about how she came because he talked her down off a rooftop was something Coulson dreamt up. God only knows it wasn’t Clint’s idea. Clint didn’t do stupid ass ideas. It was one thing to keep secrets. That he knew how to do. There were secrets he’d take to the grave. Lies that he’d have to keep up for god only knows how long? Yeah. He argued with Coulson on that one.
But Coulson wasn’t the reason that Clint bought a Glenfiddich whiskey. It cost more than he paid for rent all year. Granted, SHIELD barely charged them shit for the rooms it was more like a formality but it was the idea of rent and how expensive this whiskey that counted.
Coulson stared at Clint as the archer tipped the bottle toward his glass. Again. “Care to explain what happened?”
“No.”
Coulson pressed his lips together. “You’re acting like a petulant child.”
“I am not petulant.” Clint lifted the glass to his mouth, tipped it back. At least this alcohol tasted good. Too good. He set the glass down and muttered, “She pinned me. On the mats.”
He scowled and refilled his glass to drown out the sound of Coulson’s laughter.
3.
One shot for her. One shot for him. Celebration of their first mission. Natasha looked fucking beautiful, her head tilted back, her throat bobbing as she swallowed the vodka, her long red curls tangled still from the mission. They hadn’t even gone back to shower and change. There was still blood spatter along her cheek, the collar of her shirt. It had been a brilliant move by her. He had never seen someone seduce someone and slit their throat in literally the same heart beat.
The only problem with about everything is that maybe Clint was a little drunk and Natasha wasn’t.
He pointed at her. “You should drink more.”
Natasha’s eyes smile, the way her eyelashes slow to caress the rise of her orbital bone. She tips her head, and something works its way into the beautiful hazy fog of Clint’s mind. He had seen her do this. With the mark.
She said, “No. If I drink more, you and I will end up in bed together.”
When she left, Clint just bought the whole bottle. If he couldn’t pour the vodka directly on his brain and burn away all of those images, then he might as well drink it back into a dark corner of his memory where they’d never surface again.
4.
Four days. Thirteen hours. Forty six minutes. Approximately seventeen seconds. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
Natasha missed her check in on a deep cover op. Clint hadn’t been on the op. He was busy chasing down Asgardians in New Mexico which is, honestly, the last thing he thought he’d be doing. Instead, not long after Coulson held him off from what would have been a career making shot and for that he would never forgive his best friend, Clint got a call. From Nick Fucking Fury himself.
“Any idea where your partner would go if she went into hiding?” Fury didn’t pull any punches.
Clint had been walking to his favorite bagel place in New York. He has two weeks downtime between New Mexico and going to play with R&D on the Hub for a few weeks, and he was carbing up.
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “No, sir.”
“She’s gone dark, Agent Barton. Missed her check-in. We want you to report in. Find her.” Clint heard the unsaid questioning of Natasha’s loyalties. Six years with SHIELD and they’d still question her every fucking time she went back to that motherfuckingcountry.
“I’ll be there, sir.”
Clint had to get a commercial flight to London where SHIELD would be picking him up for a flight to Russia.
Clint knew how fast his body metabolized alcohol, and how long the flight would be.
He had a drink. Just one. He needed to be sharp.
When he landed, he had a voicemail from Fury.
“She dropped her phone in a river and wanted to keep her cover secure. She’s fine, Agent Barton. We’re sending a communication from her to your phone.”
There was a text from Natasha, flipping him off, holding a piece of paper with the date and time.
He sent back one text. “Please tell her to go fuck herself. With a wooden spoon. And I hope she enjoys it.”
He drank a lot more when he found the nearest pub to Heathrow.
5.
Natasha walked sixteen blocks with a broken ankle. Clint was pretty sure he had a fractured vertebrae. He definitely had two broken ribs. And his wrists hurt. He was a fucking sniper. He wasn’t a fucking tactical weapon to be pointed at like seven billion aliens riding…aliens…or alien bikes…or whatever invading his fucking world and firing a million arrows. He couldn’t remember if he slept at all after Loki played his mind tricks, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to sleep again. He was afraid. He wouldn’t tell anyone but Natasha knew. She knew. She knew that there were things he didn’t even want to talk about yet.
When they got back to the loft they rented together, she shoved the couches back against the wall, pulled down all the bottles of alcohol they had sitting on top of the fridge, and sat down in the middle of the floor. He sat across from her. His mouth tasted like shawarma. His body felt old. He could only smell blood still.
She pushed a bottle of her favorite vodka at him. “Never have I ever had my mind stolen by a man closely resembling Edward Cullen.”
Clint laughed.
He. Laughed.
And holy fuck did it hurt. He gasped, grabbing at his ribs. “Fuck you, Tasha. My ribs.”
“Drink, Barton,” she said, smiling. Really smiling from eyes to chin this time.
He tipped the vodka to his mouth and set it down, smacking his lips. “Never have I ever sashayed to seduce the Hulk.”
Her lips curved into a tight smile. “I didn’t seduce the Hulk. I seduced Bruce Banner.”
“Same difference, Romanoff. Drink,” he said.
She tilted the vodka to her mouth and drank. She pushed it back at him. “Never have I ever flown through a glass window.”
He took the bottle but shook his head at her. “That’s not possible. I’m sure you’ve gone through a glass window before.”
“Drink, Barton.”
He did.
One Time Natasha Got Tipsy
Natasha kicked Clint’s ass. Again. They had finally come off probation, gone underground long enough that SHIELD figured they could go out in the field again, and yet, they hadn’t broken the new routine since New York’s fun invasion. They sparred, every morning, in the gym Tony installed in the Avengers tower because—though Clint still debated it some mornings when Tony ambled through the kitchen wearing nothing but THE HULK boxers—now, they were Avengers most of the time and SHIELD some of the time. Clint only had trouble with the Avengers portion of that equation. Natasha had problems with the SHIELD portion of that equation. But between them, the air was cleared. And filled with sweat, blood, and foul words in at least two dozen languages only about a dozen of which Clint spoke.
Natasha spat blood onto Clint’s face and he laughed, flipping her with his hips and pinning her down, arms behind her head, until her legs came up around his neck and yeah. He was done for.
“Well played with the Master Thigh Choke, Agent Romanoff,” JARVIS said.
JARVIS played favorites.
Clint pounded his fist three times against the mat and Natasha instantly released him. She got up and reached for her water, tossing him his water bottle where he was still gasping for air on the mat. She didn’t play fair and he didn’t mind. He guzzled the cool refreshing liquid, watching her brush back the blonde locks. It was weird, not seeing her in red, but they were trying to push on the idea that the Black Widow had died in New York. No red hair, probably for awhile.
Her eyes slid over his head and narrowed on the wall behind him. Before he could react, Natasha was over the ropes of the mat. Clint got to his feet, looking for the threat, but all he saw was Natasha pinning Coulson to the wall by his throat.
Coulson. He was dead. Except he was clearly not because he was rambling on in English and Russian about how Natasha needed to just listen to him.
“Tash,” croaked Clint, because that’s all he could say.
Natasha let go of Coulson. “What the fuck.”
Coulson rubbed his throat and said, “I can’t explain, because I don’t know. I died. I’m back. And Fury wants us all to move on.”
Clint had a lot of really clever responses to that but Natasha beat him to the punch. She opened and shut her mouth, and then said, “I need a drink.”
“I could use one too,” Coulson said, giving her a weak smile.
“No, I don’t think you want to drink with me right now,” Natasha said. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at Clint. “You can hash it out with him. As far as I’m concerned, unforgivable.”
Clint watched her go and Coulson said, “She loves you.”
Clint shrugged, shifting his eyes back to his handler. Friend. Zombie friend. Vampire friend. “Yeah. Good thing the feeling’s mutual.”
Hours later, Clint trudged up the stairs, exhausted from talking with Coulson and in desperate need of a shower. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Natasha sitting crosslegged on his bed, her hand wrapped around the neck of a wine bottle, as she watched some Bollywood flick she was fond of.
“Hi,” he said. “You alright?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and hiccupped.
Clint stopped on his trajectory to the shower. “Pardon me?”
“I’m fine. But when you’re done washing up,” she said, “I think we should talk. But you should be dressed when we talk because I have a hard time talking to you when you’re naked. You’re distracting.”
Clint stared at her and snorted. “How much wine have you had, Tash?”
“Shut up.”
“I know it takes a lot for you to even feel a buzz. What bottle is that?”
“Three go fuck yourself.”
He grinned and slid into the bathroom. Around the edge of the door he said, “Distracting, eh?”
He shut the door in time for an empty wine bottle to shatter against it, but he could hear her laughing.