study_in_scarlet | Dancing in the Dark (for farmboyhawk)

“If you insist,” Natasha replied. Kicking Clint out of bed was certainly not top of her list of things to do, but as tempting as it was to lay around and be lazy for weeks she knew they had to keep in shape as well. It probably wouldn’t hurt her to get up and exercise a little herself, though she thought she might try something different, if only to give Clint a bit of time to himself to run on his own and enjoy this place at his own speed instead of feeling the need to be showing her around.

Selecting one of the dis to try, Natasha spread it over a piece of bread and chewed thoughtfully. It was sweet that he was concerned, but she hoped he didn’t let that put a stop to any fun he might have planned.

“Getting there,” she replied. “I think this is exactly what I needed.” After a full day of airplane and airport food, the fruit this morning, no matter how good, hadn’t quite cut it. The heavy bread and pasta would fill her and hopefully she would be back to rights by tomorrow.

"Well, wait until you see the main course."

Clint pushed that little hint of worry from his mind as good as possible. If something was really wrong, Natasha would tell him. And it had been a long travel.

Also, Italian air tended to make you hungry, so he wasted no time taking the leather clad menus from Turi when he came to take their order for drinks, and give Natasha hers. There were still not too many but carefully selected choices for both pizza and pasta available, but he already was pretty sure what this first exhausting day needed. No one mixed chicken and curry with the best noodles on the island like his old friend.

"The helpings are really big here", he warned Natasha, grinning. "So only go for the big plate if you feel up for it."

Natasha ordered a glass of wine before regarding her menu. It was thankfully small, but everything sounded amazing so it was still a difficult choice. At least she could easily narrow it down somewhat by discounting the pizza, feeling much more in a pasta mood.

“I think I can handle it,” she replied with the barest hint of a smile as she settled on a dish. “I just might have to skip supper tonight and just eat dessert instead.”

"I think we can manage that. Italy is also known for the best ice cream in the world."

Their meals came soon and as expected were more than enough. Especially Natasha's plate was really loaded, and Clint couldn't help but grin... You didn't get it out of a gigolo, no matter the age.

Thankfully they were provided with two shots of aniseed brandy afterwards - again on the house - to calm the stomach.

That was when Turi pulled himself a chair to their table to sit with them for a moment. First Clint didn't really understand when he saw the grainy, slightly blurry photo in the old man's hand that he had taken off the wall. Then he read the name of the displayed fishing boat as Flying Seahorse and a shudder of memory like a stiff sea breeze ran down his arms. On that picture, a younger, tired looking guy whom he somehow couldn't quite identify as himself, balanced on the rail and threw an equally younger looking Turi a small net of sea urchins. The old man's memory might be slowly going to sleep, but a photo-optical mind obviously wasn't tricked so easily.

"You know, the old lady is still in the harbor."

It took Clint a second to put the heavy Sicilian dialect into coherent words in his head, and he probably looked pretty silly when with the bill for the lunch came a weathered looking key.

"Take her for a ride if you like."

While Clint still fought his surprise, the old man turned to Natasha and his smile deepened.

"You're Russian, aren't you?"

The meal was more than filling, and it was all Natasha could do to finish hers, but after Clint’s teasing words she wasn’t about to leave even a morsel in her bowl. The brandy helped a little, though she was more than a little certain that she had overdone it and would regret it later.

Smiling warmly at Turi when he joined them at the table, she looked curiously at the picture before her eyes fixed on Clint’s face, carefully gauging his reaction. He looked a bit shaken, and clearly surprised, both by the photograph and the offer, so while he pulled himself together she was glad to engage Turi.

“Yes,” she answered, a little surprised herself. Her American accent was flawless, but apparently she still had some sort of tell that this old man could see. She thought about putting on a bit of an accent, but this trip was not about masks nor covering their tracks; they were here to relax and be themselves, and over the years the Russian accent was the one she actually had to put on, so complete was her transition when she worked to drop it. She went for the simple, honest explanation. “Though I left there many years ago.”

"Thought so. Guy always talked about the Russian girl."

Turi nodded at Clint with an amused smile, completely ignoring his heavy blush.

"That's the kind of man of woman keeps. Good man. Takes care of his family. Remember that."

After a quick, good-natured wink he left them alone with an awkward silence threatening to spread.

Clint suddenly was especially interested in relieving his wallet of the needed money and looking everywhere but not at the other side of the table.

Oh.

Taking another quick glance at the photograph, Natasha noted how much younger Clint appeared. The picture was clearly at least a few years old.

“I will,” she said to Turi, smiling warmly at him. “Thank you.”

Watching him walk away, she turned her eyes back to Clint to find him looking everywhere but at her, his cheeks holding a fairly distinctive red tinge. “And how many years ago was this?” she couldn’t resist asking. She wasn’t sure how to feel about the knowledge that even years ago he talked about her. It had to have been part of a cover, he couldn’t be honest about who he was, but he could have spoke about any woman, or none at all. Even years ago she had been on his mind more than perhaps a partner should.

Clint murmured something that could be interpreted as five years, his cheeks blushing even harder, and nervously scratched his head.

"Quite a time nearly completely off the grid", he murmured, nearly apologetically. "Endless nights on the ocean and all... Gets you thinking. I think I never missed you so bad."

Five years.

Natasha’s whole expression softened at the confession, and at the absolutely adorable way he was acting. He seemed to embarrassed and nervous, and she couldn’t resist reaching across the table and taking his hand.

“I remember that time,” she said. She remembered him being gone for so long, and she remembered being worried with no updates on his mission. Of course at the time she told herself it was because they made a great team and she didn’t want to lose her partner, and that he had become her best friend. She hadn’t let herself look any deeper.

“They wouldn’t give me any information as to your whereabouts, nor even the slightest detail of what your mission entailed.” If he was going to admit somewhat embarrassing things then it was only fair she reciprocate. “Though I may have hacked into the mainframe to retrieve whatever information they had stored in the system...”

Clint answered the touch of her hand gladly, soft caresses dancing over her narrow wrist, glad that she wasn't somehow annoyed or taken aback by his confession. At that time, being with her for more than an occasional night of passion had still been completely out of question, every word, every thought of more personal kind of feelings quickly shot off. Back then it would probably have made her very uncomfortable, knowing he was staring at the moon somewhere somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and think of her smile to not go crazy.

Her own explanation made it a little easier to think back of these days, and now his smile didn't look embarrassed anymore.

"S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database was never safe from your hacking skills", he chuckled before pulling her hand close for a long tender kiss on her knuckles. "Wish I could have written to you at least. But maybe it's better I didn't. At that point... It would have made things worse between us. I guess I..."

He hesitated for another short moment, but really... Nothing she didn't know. And now these kind of words shouldn't hurt anymore.

"I always knew I loved you, but when you spend months alone on a boat, or in a foreign city... You really get to think about the things you don't have in life. I wouldn't have wanted to burden you with that."

She would have been uncomfortable at the time, and probably would have pushed him away had she known them, but it was also about the same time she was realising that no other man could truly satisfy her anymore. She hadn’t been ready then to accept that anyone could love her, love her and not one of the various personas she put across, and she definitely hadn’t been willing to look too hard at her own feelings. She had thought herself incapable of love, but oh how wrong she had been.

“I think they gave up trying to keep me out eventually,” she said, smiling at him when he kissed her hand.

Back then she would have preferred a lie to the truth he offered now. “At the time I wouldn’t have accepted it,” she admitted, though he clearly knew that anyway. He knew her, and that was how they had eventually gotten to this point. No matter what he felt for her, no matter how early on, he had never pushed her, never asked more from her than she was willing to give. Had he done so they never would have made it, but he let her realise everything in her own time, gave her time to fall in love with him, and more time to accept the fact before ever hinting toward it himself.

“Do you still do that?” she asked with no agenda, just honestly curious. “Think about what you don’t have?”

Edited 2014-03-22 12:19 (UTC)

"No time for that anymore. And well, the one thing that's been in my heart for so long, is sitting right here with me, so..."

He blushed a little again and fled into a few sips of water while he pondered about her question. They had gone such a long way, and he couldn't be any happier than with her finally truly wanting to be with him. In truth, it was probably better not to challenge his lazy Dame Fortune.

"Sure, there are times you look at the normal lives other people live and wonder what that would be like... But I just know I'd go half insane after two months without a real fight for the right thing. Guess you can't get that out of your blood if you're that type of person. As long as they don't put me in the dino museum, I'll do what I can in the field. That doesn't really leave many other options."

And really, what kind of options would there be? Nothing he could truly answer for to himself.

"And let's be honest here, I'd probably suck at having something like a family anyway. I mean, where I come from, they still hold on to that belief, that's the highest achievement a man can get. Build a house, plant a tree and all that crap. But I'd be much too afraid to end up a shitbag like my own old man to think in that direction."

She had never seen Clint so open and honest, not to mention so quick to blush. It was endearing, and Natasha wanting nothing more in that moment than to just pull him into a tight embrace. Instead she squeezed his hand before taking a sip of her own water and giving him chance to recover himself.

She expected that would be it, that he wouldn’t elaborate, so she was surprised when he seemed to speak to exactly how she felt. There were fleeting moments when she wondered what it would be like to be normal, and she had had a small taste of that with Alexei, but she knew that wasn’t the life for her. She got too much thrill from the action, and while she might consider that S.H.I.E.L.D. might not forever be the place for them, she knew she could never go completely straight.

The talk of family, though, never failed to make her feel a little sad, though she never let it show. She barely remembered her own parents, and if Clint’s father were still alive today then it would take a lot of willpower not to visit the man for a little ‘talk’. Neither she nor Clint had had normal or real childhoods, they had both been forced to grow up too fast in their own ways. They didn’t have families, so how could they ever have their own family together? Why would they want to?

“You would never be like him,” she said with complete confidence. “I’m happy with our life how it is,” she continued. “Especially right here, like this.” Not that she would be able to handle all this downtime for any extended period of time, but it was a nice, much needed break.

"Very glad to hear that."

He leaned over the table for a quick, spontaneous kiss. That made it easier to keep on smiling.

They agreed about most of this, but that thing about his father... was something else. There were reasons why he kept away from beer, why he avoided visiting Iowa as much as possible, why he mostly didn't give in to aggression more than necessary even in dire situation with enemies. Some other things maybe were in your blood too, and he would never really live without the fear of them breaking through.

"You still too full to move or should we go see the ocean?"

It was still strange to feel so free. Here they didn’t have to hide who they were or what they mean to each other, and while it was nice and exciting, it was also a little frightening, as the unknown always is.

The moment for confessions passed, and Natasha nodded her head at his question. “I think if I sit still for much longer I may fall asleep right here at the table,” she joked, something that she did more than people gave her credit for. Usually her humour was dry, her quips told in such a flat tone that people missed them completely. “A walk would do us both some good.”

Rising from the table, she hooked her purse over one shoulder and reached for Clint’s hand. “We should thank your friend for his hospitality before we go.”

"Agreed."

After a last short moment of hesitation, Clint let that certain key vanish in a pack pocket of his pants and lead Natasha to the counter then to pay and say good-bye- for the moment... He had no doubt, they would be back.

Turi couldn't resist reminding him of that sea ride again and also let him know in a tone that indicated, he didn't expect him to acknowledge that, that sea urchin fishing was illegal for a few years now. Just in case he had planned on that.

Clint shook his head with an amused grin. Couldn't get it out of them, indeed, and the older they got, the worse it got.

"If I accidentally stumble over a few of them, I'll stop by on the way back."

That seemed to satisfy for the moment, because Turi turned to Natasha now and said good-bye in the traditional Italian way, with sort kisses on her cheek.

"Come back soon, Russian girl."

Natasha stood by quietly as the men conversed before accepting the goodbye from Turi with a warm smile. “I am sure we will be back soon enough,” she said. She wasn’t sure what other little gems Clint planned to take her to while they were here, but she had a feeling this would not be their only visit to this one.

Once back outside, she took her place again behind Clint on the bike, her arms wrapping comfortably around his chest from behind. She couldn’t resist taking the opportunity presented and gave him a brief hug, one cheek pressed against his back for a moment before she was back to attention again and ready for the ride.

When Natasha pressed herself against him, Clint responded with reaching back, caressing her knee, just below the edge of her skirt. He could get used to this whole being close thing, alright. Once they would be back in their real lives, they would have to act more discreet again, of course, but right now he couldn't enjoy it more.

Soon enough though he concentrated on driving again. After all, he had promised her to be safe. And the Italian's idea of road safety was honking a few times before speeding around the next serpentine curve. If you were lucky. He kept it slow, let the young people on their scooters pass him by all the wanted and kept especially close to the edge when a bus outran them, as these were even more crazy.

Soon enough they had reached the beach valleys of Giardini with the narrow peninsular of Naxos reaching out far into a calm, dark blue ocean. Out there, somewhere along the small harbors, Clint planned to at least pay a certain little sea cruiser a short visit, but for today he wanted to take it slow.

He stopped in the next free spot in sight which wasn't hard to find. The parking spaces, all along the waist-high walls between beach and freeway, were half empty. The tourist season was as good as over, it was hard to ignore. Which was just perfect.

They could easily make their way through just a few sun-lovers on of the white pebble beaches. Quickly they had reached one of thee concentration of huge black rocks reaching far out into the water, that shaped the landscape so much. Clint jumped on one of them easily and held back just in time from offering Natasha a hand to help her up. She'd probably have his ass for such chivalry.

"Who makes it to the outer rim first?", he grinned.

When they arrived at their destination Natasha left her shoes near the bike, not really caring if someone decided to steal them or not; she just didn’t want to carry them along as they explored the beach.

The air was so fresh here, so clean compared to the stale, smoggy air of New York, and she took a moment to just breathe it in. She could smell the sea, the beach, and life itself, she was certain of it.

The pebbles beneath her bare feet were warm from the sun and she wiggled her toes before falling into step beside Clint. He seemed to have a destination in mind, and this trip she was content to follow his lead anywhere.

“If you think you will have an advantage because of how I’m dressed, think again,” she said. She was hardly dressed to scale rocks, especially with a purse to worry about, but Natasha was nothing if not resourceful, and she put little stock in appearances. She could be just as effective in a dress as in her familiar catsuit.

Easily scaling the rock to stand beside Clint, she raised her eyebrow at him challengingly before quickly jumping into action.

Natasha fell into the game exactly as he had hoped and he could have kissed her if she hadn't already started.

Soon he wished, he'd have gotten out of his shoes too, as some of the rocks were slippery with seaweed. But well, they hadn't trained him in artistry for nothing. He avoided falling easily, jumping even over big lengths which indeed gave him advantage over Natasha's run one or two times, but in the end she just had speed and a certain agility over him.

He didn't mind. Losing against her wasn't exactly a shameful defeat.

At least he was hardly out of breath when he joined her on the mentioned furthest rows of rocks, where the waves hit high enough to touch the surface and you could spot fish in the water easily. He finally kicked his shoes off to let his feet dangle into the lukewarm water and sat back far enough for Natasha to sit in front of him if she wanted to.

"So... Since you've won, you can make a wish, you know."

He raised an eyebrow at her with a definitely dirty grin, leaving no doubt about where he preferred to fulfill such wishes.

The race was exhilarating, and while the rocks were slippery beneath her feet Natasha moved swiftly and easily over them, her years of training making it a piece of cake. Clint passed her a few times, but she always managed to retake the lead and when all was said and done she ended up at the edge of the rocks, grinning at him when he approached.

Watching him take a seat and get comfortable, she grinned silently at him for a moment before taking a seat beside him and dipping her feet in the water as well. It was nearing the hottest part of the day, and the game left her with a thin sheen of sweat on her brow which she didn’t wipe away, not wanting to also remove her sunscreen.

“A wish?” she said, giving him her most innocent look to deliberately contrast the filthy grin he was giving her. “There are so many things I could wish for. However will I choose?”

"Well, I could suggest a few things, but that would kinda contradict the purpose."

Clint laid back against the warmed surface of the rock, still smiling, with his arms crossed under his head and stared up into the blinding blue sky. They wouldn't be able to stay here forever, not under such a bright sun, but for a few minutes, this was just perfect.

Only salt and warmth on his skin, a few seagulls close by probably debating who got the biggest chunk of their lunch, a boat honking in the distance. It was quiet enough to hear even the children laughing and playing on the beach behind them. They were playing anime stuff and wizards or vampires on their card games nowadays, instead of superheroes or the good old UNO that Barney and him had preferred, but other than that... This was probably the closest to normal he'd ever get.

And it was enough. More than. Because he wasn't alone anymore, seeing others happy and feeling out of place, pondering about his miserable life choices. There were a few things he had done right and the woman by his side had been the best.

He turned his head lazily when the sun stung too much in his eyes and blinked at her, sighing. God, he loved her hair color in the sunshine.

“Oh, I’m sure I can handle the task of coming up with something on my own,” Natasha replied.

Lying down beside Clint, she folded her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes beneath her sunglasses, just relishing in the heat of the sun, the smell in the air, and the joyful sounds around them. She had no idea what the children were playing, not that she would have even if they had been playing the games of Clint’s youth, but their laughter made everything feel so surreal. When she was in the field all she heard were the sounds of screaming and crying, so the laughter seemed to be that final sign that all was well and that they were safe here.

Rolling her head to the side, she opened her eyes to find Clint’s blue eyes staring back at her. “Hi,” she said quietly, just holding his gaze.

There were moments like this when he fell newly in love with just the sound of her voice, with just one little syllable. That low, husky drawl never failed to creep inside of him, stimulating his senses like an intimate touch, even without any real nuance. Beautiful in her rough, intense, special kind of way, just like her face, her body, and God, he needed to stop staring at her.

With a small, helpless laugh, he closed his eyes and tried to get his fluttering heart under control. For heaven's sake, he wasn't a lovesick teenager... He was her partner, her best friend, her lover, everything she needed him to be and she gladly took it. There was no reason to flush like a teenager at the first date.

But that still was how she made him feel, after all these years. Maybe it was just the sun playing in her hair so fascinatingly in this very moment, or their feet accidentally brushing underwater, soft tenderness laced in warm salt. Or the simple fact that they were lying here side by side in a place he sometimes called home and had nowhere to be, nothing to do. Just relax and enjoy.

Whatever it was, he suddenly felt like he would die if he wouldn't roll over to her and kiss her, so he did just that.

When Clint laughed and closed his eyes, Natasha merely smiled and turned her head back toward the sky again. Lying here with him, here, like this... she couldn’t remember a time she had ever felt more at peace. There was always something going n in the back of her mind, some mission to look toward, some past transgression haunting her, but right now she felt none of this. Right now she felt only calm, only loved, only peaceful.

His leg brushed hers underwater, barely a touch but it made her smile, made her stretch out her fingers to his in a touch just as light. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him moving beside her but was unprepared for the sudden kiss, though it didn’t take her long to recover and reciprocate, her hand moving up to cup the back of his head.

She kissed him softly, lazily, just enjoying the moment. His lips, his hair - everywhere she touched him was warm from the sun, and she wanted to wrap herself in that warmth and lose herself in it.

Dancing in the Dark (for farmboyhawk)

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