Seeing You
This time they had all reason to celebrate. The mission they had been working on for months had gone well and finally they had come back home. It was already late when Clint unlocked the door to his apartment in Brooklyn, New York and let Natasha and himself in.
He flicked on the light switch to his right, giving the room a swift glance. Everything was in order as usual. As chaotic he could be on missions sometimes, leaving stuff lying around on the floor, or wherever else he just dropped it, he was pretty orderly when it came to is private home.
Natasha came around now and again after missions. Sometimes invited, mostly not.
It was a ‘thing’ they had going, but nothing he could wrap his head around really. Not after what happened. She just came, when she felt like it at times and he learned to cope with it.
He put his keys on the bar and stepped into his kitchenwhile Tasha walked around it and took a seat, facing Clint. “Proper Whiskey, yeah?” he asked, without waiting for a reply, but pulling out a bottle from a cupboard and fetching them each a glass.
While pouring them two doubles, Clint looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Natasha looked just as tired as he felt. Half an hour ago they left the headquarters behind them, after having more than two hours of debriefing. He felt slightly brainfucked. “Thank god it’s over”, the redhead mumbled, reaching out for the glass which he handed to her. She would only ever be that honest with him. Only with him. “Yeah, I’ll drink to that.”
The chime of the glasses sounded loud in the quiet flat.
Barton took a large slug, while she hardly nipped at it. It made him grin slightly, knowing she just simply preferred Vodka to Whiskey.
For a while they stood and sat there in silence. He had leaned back against the counter, cross-legged and his head tilted back, his eyes half closed, one hand braced against the edge of the cold counter. Her eyes had looked down into the glass, observing the swirling liquid in it, due to her swinging it slightly clockwise. Only slowly her gaze wandered up, to look at him, standing there, relaxing himself. She could see how he made himself loosen every muscle deliberately. Tasha’s eyes wandered over his broad torso, over his shoulders to his face. Dark shadows made him look worn out, older, but still he seemed at ease, not minding her presence or the late hour.
His spine tingled, the hair in his neck rose, giving him slight Goosebumps. Whenever she looked at him long enough he would react to it – to her – like that. Clint couldn’t help himself. He tried to ignore it in the beginning. Tried to ignore how he felt when she looked at him. Also tried to ignore how he felt about her in general. Especially after Budapest.
Thinking of it made his heart ache.
Pushing away his thoughts he straightened up, looking right back at her, then knocking down the rest of his Whiskey and refilling his glass. “Drink up, otherwise I’ll be the only one wasted tomorrow.”
“You know I don’t ever get hung over.”
“Why do you always take me so literally?” he asked, arching an eyebrow, although a smirk was pulling at the corner of his lip.
She rolled her eyes at him, emptying her still almost full glass in one large slug and then stretching it out in his direction. Clint grinned at her, while giving her a refill. Her nose twitched, disliking the taste of Barton’s favorite drink. “Getting me drunk will take more than one bottle between the two of us”, she pointed out, her lips ever so slightly twitching with a grin.
“I remember, so now I always have more where that came from.” While saying so he got out another bottle of the same Whiskey and placed it next to the already opened one. Thank god, they had a couple of days off now, so if he in fact got wasted it wouldn’t matter.
It wasn’t the first time they drank together. The first time he didn’t know she couldn’t get drunk, or rather only very slowly. She drank him under the table with ease. That night she had put him to bed and the next morning had been … awkward.
“To a successful mission.” They raised their glasses, both of them grinning lopsided and again emptying them in one go.
Barton pushed himself away from where he leaned and walked around the bar to sit next to her, leaving a barstool between them, to put his foot up on. He hardly ever sat in an upright position. With his left arm he leaned on the bar and had the next glass of Whiskey, leaving the bottle open and playing it between the both of them. She would know, that she could help herself to as much as she liked.
“Clint?” her voice was low, sounding rather thoughtful. He lifted his glance from his glass to her face. Anybody could tell that he was tired and could use rather a shower and a bed, than another shot of spirits.
“Hm?”
“…Mh”, Tasha usually was a straight forward person. She always said what was on her mind directly. She’d always lay it on the line. Her not reacting immediately made him perk up. Concern crossing his face when she still didn’t react.
“What is it?”, he asked slowly, not sure how to interpret her behavior.
“I had this weird … picture in my head.”
Clint finished off his drink and while giving himself another refill he tilted his head slightly, his eyebrows knitted together, not sure where this was going. He waited for her to continue, sipping away.
She took her time, drinking and avoiding looking at him.
“On our way back”, she started to explain herself. “I nodded off.” Clint gave a slow nod, still not sure where this was heading. He felt uncomfortable though, clinging to his glass. “And something popped into my mind. I don’t think it was a dream, Clint.”
Only then she turned her head to look at him sideways, both hands holding on to her own glass, which was yet again empty. “I… I think it was a memory.”
“So?”, the word just slipped out. He couldn’t take the bad feeling anymore which had bloomed in the pit of his stomach.
“So…” it sounded like a sigh, her shoulders shrugging slightly. “I could see you.”
Yeah, now he knew this was about Budapest. They never talked about it. He had never told her. He had never told her what happened there … because … because of so many reasons. Something like panic crept down his spine. Her green eyes locked with his and he knew she could see the change in his expression. The change in his body language, the tension in his muscles. He only shifted slightly, taking his foot from the barstool between them.
“You… “ Natasha could hardly bring out the sentence which formed in her head. At first the picture had meant nothing to her, but in the past couple of hours it had come back to her over and over again, bringing new details with it every time. “You caressed my cheek.” The image came back to her, clearer than ever. His blue eyes had looked at her differently from now. They had been in awe, warm and caring. There had been a cut above his right eyebrow; his left cheekbone had been blue-green, bruised. She could almost feel his thumb stroking her cheek, then the slight pull at her then long hair, as he had pushed it behind her ear.
His lips were slightly parted, as if he wanted to say something, but then the memory was over. There was no more.
“Caressed?”, he asked, sounding as dumbstruck as he could, remembering the very moment in the hideout, when he had touched her face. For a second he wasn’t sure if he should tell her … but no. No, she had been through enough. It was good the way it was.
Her skeptical glance made him feel guilty, but he stuck with his decision. He wouldn’t say a word about what happened in Budapest. “Yes, caressed.” Her eyebrow had arched, when she looked at his apparently irritated expression.
Tashas senses tingled. She could feel that something was off. She was not stupid and by now she knew Clint well enough, to know when he was not telling her something.
In the moment of silence that followed Clint had refilled his glass twice and drowned himself in the Whiskey. Yeah … he still was a bad actor and liar. If she made him drunk enough, he might spill. Although he was working on that pretty well by himself…
“Clint?” Tash interrupted him, while he was again putting the air out of his glass.
“Hm?”
“If you carry on drinking like that, you will definitely be the first to lie on the floor”, she pointed out. Clint huffed. He’d be the first one, no matter how quick he’d drink.
The Russian sipped at her drink, while her partner had almost emptied half the bottle by himself. She’d find out, what was bugging him. One way or another. Something happened back then. Even if she couldn’t remember when exactly it happened, she knew it did in fact happen. It wasn’t her imagination playing a joke on her. Natasha was sure that the moment had happened – that Clint had looked at her in ‘that’ way and had stroked her cheek.
