#mellowasinyellow

With Clint meeting Alexei and Melina for the first time. Cue Clint's big appetite and Melina's Russian love for force feeding people 😂

“I think your parents may like me even more than you.”

“Yeah?” Natasha smirked from the passenger seat as they drove through the dark, finally having extricated themselves from her parents’ house.

“They thought I was hilarious!” Clint exclaimed as he drove on.

“Well, they barely speak English,” Natasha explained. “They laugh based on social cues, not actual comedy.”

“And Melina said I could come back any time,” he added.

“Because you ate her food.”

“More than you,” he gave her a pointed nod. “You told me the first rule was to eat what I was given and what did you not do?”

“That was an insane amount of <i>zakuski</i>, even for her!”

“Well, when they invite me back for Friday night dinner, I’ll be sure to bring you as my plus one,” he gave her a self-satisfied smile.

“Urgh, please don’t,” she groaned.

He laughed and reached across the console to take her hand and squeezed it while tossing her a wink.

“Don’t worry, your parents are nice and all, but I get why you don’t want to see them more,” he forced a smile on his face as he spoke with a sudden seriousness. She had told him enough about her childhood and somewhat unstable relationship with Alexei for him to understand that her relationship with her parents was at its best when interactions were kept short and infrequent.

She smiled back and they continued to drive in silence for a while.

“Melina will want to do something for the New Year,” Natasha said quietly. “She wants me to get Lena to come.”

“She won’t?” Clint asked.

“She’s not ready, but it’s hard to explain that to Melina and Alexei.”

“Yeah,” Clint said slowly. “They’re…” he trailed off, knowing he couldn’t say what he was thinking to Natasha.

“Blissfully ignorant?” Natasha offered and then twisted her lips and let out a breath. “They don’t deserve Lena if they can’t understand what they did to her.”

They didn’t deserve Natasha either, but he didn’t think she wanted to hear that right now.

“I’d love to meet Lena,” he settled on instead. He really would. Every time Natasha spoke about her, she became animated in a way he rarely saw her. Her face seemed to brighten, and she spoke faster and sprinkled the conversation with anecdotes from her youth; actual happy memories that she and Yelena shared.

“Ha!” Natasha laughed aloud at his suggestion. “She would hate you.”

A continuation of So, you and Barton? in which Clint finds out Natasha got shot

Rating: G Chapter 2

He laughed as she broke away from him and readjusted her carryon case, ready to head out of the airport. “Sounds like a lot happened in the past few days,” he grinned.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she quirked an eyebrow as her hand wormed its way into his and they made their way to the parking lot.

They waited in line to validate Clint’s parking ticket trading small squeezes between their hands and the occasional peck to the cheek and didn’t speak again until they were safely ensconced in a pick-up truck that looked like it had seen better days.

“So you’ve been making out with Rogers, huh?” He asked as he pulled out of the space and began to meander his way towards the highway.

“Little bit,” she smirked from the passenger seat. “But don’t worry, he wasn’t into it.”

Written for @determined-overthinker and based on the prompt, "Wanna Bet?"

Summary: Clint and Natasha get frustrated with their own bet when it seems their teammates are too unobservant to figure out their secret relationship anyway.

Rating: T for some suggestive content

Word count: 2809

Wanna Bet?

“This is dumb,” Clint shook his head. “A, I don’t think you will ever be able to refine Tony Stark’s observational skills beyond what he wants to see and I think that his world view very much involves you being single. And b, you are madly in love with me. There’s no way you could keep that under wraps for more than a few hours.” He hugs her tightly to him and plants a kiss on her temple.

“A, don’t be gross,” Natasha dismissed. “He’s not really like that. And b, wanna bet?”

“You’re on.” Clint agreed. “Whoever doesn’t spill the beans gets to choose which couch we keep on our joint floor when we move in together.”

“You don’t like my couch?”

Clint shuffled a little. “It’s just not got that lived in feel.”

“Or any coffee stains.”

A continuation of Target Language in which Yelena meets baby Katie.

Rating: G Chapter 3

“You have a baby,” Yelena’s voice startled Natasha awake.

Her sister stood right by her bedside looking down into the bassinette at the side of the bed.

“Lena?” She squinted. She had no idea what time it was, last thing she remembered was Clint pacing the side of the bed with Katie in his arms promising her the whole world.

“Da.”

“When did you-” She saw the beginnings of sunlight making their way around the bedroom blinds and glanced to the alarm clock that told her it was 6:45am.

“Clint let me in. I told him to make coffee. I’m too tired to deal with him. Next time have a baby at a more sociable hour,” she tapped her sister’s feet to tell her to make space on the bed.

Natasha winced as she moved her legs across to let Yelena sit down.

“Oh I’m sorry,” she said noticing her sister’s wince. “Does your vagina hurt?”

Natasha only rolled her eyes in response.

“She’s got a name?” Yelena nodded towards the crib.

“Katie.” With a little difficulty, Natasha scooted a little higher in the bed to give herself a better view of her scrunched-up daughter sleeping next to her.

“You like her?”

“Very much.”

“I think I like her too.”

Natasha looked back to Yelena as her sister said this and they each caught the dopey smile on the other’s face from smiling down at the baby and burst into a peel of laughter.

Five times Natasha thinks about it (plus one time she acts on it)

A continuation of Five signs Lila Barton misses (plus one she notices)

Rating: G Word count: 2,583 words Endgame: Clint/Natasha

One

2005

She steeled herself as she followed him down from the rooftop. When he had got her cornered, she had resigned herself to the arrow lodging itself in her throat and she wondered if it might be peaceful that way. Her body neatly cleaned up by an American crew that knew nothing of who she really was.

Then he had started talking, describing to her in excruciating detail all of the feelings and thoughts that she had never been given the vocabulary to articulate in any language. On the one hand his offer of defection sounded like an excellent way to get herself off the rooftop and out of the compromising situation so that she could turn the tables; on the other hand the offer was tempting. But when had SHIELD ever taken in a disgraced Russian agent? There was no telling that bringing her in alive wasn’t just a pre-text for torturing information out of her before disposing of her. Still, she was sure she had had worse than whatever the Americans could dream up.

It wouldn’t be so hard to overpower him. He had never dealt with the Black Widow before. He had believed the tears, shown concern over her shaking, and believed the pleading in her eyes when he had promised her hot tea and dry clothes back at his safe house while they awaited extraction.

She could seduce him. It wouldn’t be hard. Good looking Americans never were. They liked to believe themselves desirable to someone like her. It was the red hair, the accent, something about her felt like a conquest to American men.

Once she had him on his back it wouldn’t take more than his own arm guard to suffocate the air out of his body.

Just as she was wondering whether he’d be the type to go down easily or whether she might have to put on a bit of a performance to get him willingly on his back he turned and smiled, offering her a hand over a missing step.

Nothing about him suggested he was well enough trained for the trusting smile on his face to be anything but genuine.

Her gut twisted as she found herself smiling back as she took his hand and hopped the missing step. She didn’t need his hand.

She didn’t need his American intelligence agency either, but maybe she would like whatever kind of life it was that led to such easily given smiles.

Thanos Was Right

At nights he still sees her. Every night he sees her again. Sometimes he sees her right where he left her and he wakes up with wracking sobs in his chest and the only thing that cures them is the realisation that nothing can change it. Gods, scientists, superheroes, immortals, time travellers, assassins, aliens, talking racoons, none of them have the power to bring her back. In other dreams she’s ok; she’s laughing, joking, scowling. In those dreams his kids are missing; Laura’s gone and he wakes up in a blind panic.

Laura doesn’t share his bed anymore. He supposes they never really did much before anyway. It never became a marital habit of theirs. He was never around. But she can’t take the nightmares. She says she can’t run the household, keep the kids happy, and be the sole income provider if he wakes her multiple times a night. So now he sleeps on a pull-out couch in the dining room. She offered to take the spare room but he couldn’t even listen to the end of the sentence.

It had never been a spare room. It was her room and he still thought about nudging it open with one foot while balancing two mugs of coffee and seeing nothing but her red curls peeking out from beneath the quilt Laura’s mother had given them.

@creativepromptsforwriting's may prompts

“Coulson’s happy,” Natasha announced as she stepped over the threshold of the small safe house to join Clint on the balcony, overlooking the neighbour’s ramshackle yards.  “He said there’s a quintet leaving Tbilisi at midnight tonight, or he’s happy for us to make our own way back.” 

“Is it urgent?” Clint pushed himself upright from where he had been leaning against the balcony railings.  

Natasha shrugged.  “He doesn’t need to see us until Monday.” 

“Want to take a little time?” Clint looped his arms around her waist and pulled her in.  “Take a scenic route?”

She smiled, “You know I do.” 

He chuckled.  “Been around here before?” 

“Not that I remember,” she shook her head.  She had been to Georgia multiple times both with SHIELD and before, but only ever information gathering trips in Kutaisi and Tbilisi.  For all she knew she might have been brought out here as a child: the bugs, changing weather systems, and heat were the exact kind of situation the Red Room actively sought out for training purposes.  

“There’s some good trails in the National Park,” Clint slid a hand into her back pocket.  “Pretty quiet.  Good views.” 

“Sure, I could go for a hike,” Natasha shrugged and then laughed at the pleased look on Clint’s face.