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Clint is absolutely okay with not getting what he wants. Hell, he’s used to keeping his needs and desires hidden. They’ve always come second.
Maybe that’s why he’s so terrible at being rejected.
“Clint, no.” Natasha looks up from her Russian crossword after his third attempt to steal her pen.
“My treat. It’ll be fun, I promise!” He lays his chin over her shoulder, lowers his voice. “And neither of us has ever been on a classic date before. Dinner, a movie, etcetera. Maybe there’s actually something to it.”
She absentmindedly takes his left hand in hers and lays it on the table in front of them. She spreads her fingers on top of his before taking the pen and dragging the tip over his knuckles, leaving small black lines in its wake.
After a moment she says, “You got me those flowers in Hong Kong.”
He feels his cheeks flush. He remembers stumbling through the street market after losing a lot of blood and most of his weapons (he still misses that bow, may it rest in peace). He is wheezing when Natasha hauls him into the nearest alleyway. She peels his layers of gear away to look at his wounds, the gashes over his ribs and arms. And he remembers her shock when he pulled the bell-shaped flowers from his boot and held them to her, his arm shaking with the effort. They were tiny and crushed, and Clint swore that he saw a few tears in her eyes.
“You were silent for six days, Barton, I had no idea if you were—”
“I’m sorry, Tasha.”
The police sirens began before she could respond, and she carried him for four miles.
Natasha smiles at him, now. Somehow, through all the blood and exhaustion and fear, the memory is still a good one.
“Dorogoi, all I am saying is that maybe,” she says, pressing her cheek to his. “We are not suited for the classics.”