#vpu

*rubs hands together and blows on my finger tips* Here we go, thanks for kicking it off...

“Don’t be fucking rude.” 

Phil looked up from the data pad he was reviewing mission reports on. 

He knew that voice. More importantly, he knew that tone of voice. That tone meant bodily harm was imminent for whoever had caused it. 

Phil warily put down his data pad and pulled down his feet from where they were propped on another chair. His gaze searched the gym, seeking out his agent. Clint wasn’t easy to rile these days. His temper hadn’t quite mellowed in the years since he’d come to SHIELD, but he had become an expert at controlling and hiding the emotion tied to it. 

So drawing an actual reaction from him wasn’t so easy anymore. It was a welcome change from the angry 18 year old who had picked a fight with anybody willing to hit back. 

But...Clint’s temper had an exception.

One thing that, if brought up in any sort of negative light, sparked a reaction every. single. time. 

Natasha. 

The two of them were standing shoulder to shoulder now. Nat had one hip cocked and her hand propped on it in a deceptively casual stance. Phil couldn’t see her face, but he’d bet dollars to donuts that she had one brow arched and murder in her eyes. 

Clint, similarly, didn’t immediately appear to be in any sort of aggressive combat stance. But then, he never did. Even neck deep in a fight for his life, Clint was just as likely to be standing casually and cracking wise as he was to look like his life was on the line. 

It was his voice. That was the real indicator. Clint wasn’t a shouter. He wasn’t exactly soft spoken, per se, but neither was he a loudmouth. But his voice had different levels of lethal. It dropped lower when he was truly pissed.

Like now. 

Phil stood, eyeing the situation warily. The rising tension was practically a palpable thing. The handful of men his two agents were facing off with didn’t appear all that concerned. They were a visiting team, Phil realized absently, from the London base. They likely only knew Clint and Natasha by reputation, and like most people that didn’t actually know them probably thought that the rumors and stories were exaggerations. 

Clint always took particular pleasure in ‘explaining’ how true all the stories were. 

An eerie quiet fell over the gym. Several other agents had stopped what they were doing to nervously watch the developing situation. 

Then, without any warning, Clint was throwing a punch. 

It all kind of went downhill from there. 

Phil moved toward the brawl while the rest of the agents backed away. Nobody who knew them would wade into a brawl with the Hawk and the Widow unless they had a personal interest. 

By the time Phil got there, it was all over. 

Clint was shaking out his left hand and grinning at Natasha like it was just another day at the office. Natasha was in the middle of saying something in Russian that drew a chuckle from Clint and a response in the same language. 

As much as it frustrated Phil not to know what they were saying sometimes, plausible deniability had its merits. 

“I see you’re really making strides with cross-base relations,” Phil observed with crossed arms. 

“You know me, Phil,” Clint replied with a sarcastic smirk. “I’m a regular social butterfly.” 

Phil hummed a sarcastic response and eyed the four unconscious agents on the floor. 

“Anything I need to know about?” he asked with an arched brow. 

The two agents exchanged a silent look. Clint eventually just shrugged and waved Natasha on, clearly telling her it was up to her whether they told Phil what had gone down. 

She turned to Phil and smirked. 

“You know how it is dealing with foreign teams. I think something got lost in translation and we cleared up the confusion.” 

Clint chuckled and Phil took a slow breath, barely holding back an eye roll. 

“They’re British.” 

Natasha blinked blankly at him. 

“They spoke English,” Phil went on. “There’s not much translation to get lost in.”

When his two agents just stared innocently at him, Phil held up a hand in surrender. 

“Nevermind,” he said. “I don’t want to know.” 

"You need to go.” 

Natasha looked up briefly from where she was working to bypass the electronic lock on Clint’s cell. 

“Shut up,” she hissed. Then more gently, “Save your strength.” 

Clint blinked sluggishly and shifted awkwardly in the metal chair he was bound to. 

“You need to go,” he said again, more forcefully. 

“Not without you,” she shot back, cursing when her hand slipped and the locking mechanism sparked but didn’t release. 

“I can’t walk, Nat,” Clint insisted. “You need to go while you still can. Finish the mission.” 

Natasha’s eyes drifted involuntarily to Clint’s thighs. Both had messy, bloody bandages wrapped around them. She had heard the gunshots during Clint’s interrogation. She could only hope the bastards had missed the bone and only damaged meat and muscle. 

“I’ll carry you if I have to,” she argued. “I’m not leaving you.”

Clint sighed meeting her eyes with his one working eye, the other was swollen shut. 

“Would you leave me?” she countered quietly. 

Something in Clint’s expression softened. 

“Never,” he admitted. 

“Then don’t ask me to,” she pleaded. 

He sighed again and nodded. Natasha blew out a breath and focused back on her task. It felt like hours, but only took her a couple of minutes for the lock to finally spring open. 

She had him free moments later and then paused, pressing her forehead against his. She could do this. She had to.

“Natasha...”

“Don’t say it. I will kill you myself if you do. I’m not leaving you.”

“I’m too heavy.” 

She pulled back, glaring at him in challenge. 

“You doubting me?” 

“Never,” he assured. “I just don’t want you to die here too.”

“Nobody’s dying but them,” she declared, pressing her gun into his hand. “Cover me,” she ordered. Then without hesitating, she hefted him into a fireman’s carry. Her back protested immediately, but she pushed the ache away. 

“Alright, I love you,” Natasha stated softly.

She watched Clint’s face for any sort of reaction, but his features remained lax and unresponsive. 

“Isn’t that what you want? To hear the words?” she asked. “You never admit it, God, you would never admit to needing anything, much less just words....but you do, don’t you. You need to hear them.”

She let out a deep sigh, reaching out to brush the hair off his forehead before thinking better of it and withdrawing her hand. 

“Well I said them,” she reminded. “It’s not my fault that you aren’t awake to hear it.” 

There was no response but the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. 

“Has anyone ever said them to you?” she asked quietly. “Since your parents I mean?” She doubted it. Clint would never put himself in a position of vulnerability like that, not until her at least...and Phil, in a different way. 

There was, of course, no response from him.

“Someone said them to me once,” she admitted. “I believed him too...” She clenched her jaw, anger and old pain sweeping through her. “I shouldn’t have.” 

Memories of Alexi rose in her mind and Natasha banished them through pure force of will. Alexi didn’t matter anymore. Clint was the one that mattered. 

“I think that’s why I can’t say it now, not even to you. Not when you’re awake at least. He ruined those words for me, taught me a lesson about love that I’ll never forget.”

She  bit her lip and finally gave into the urge to touch him. She wrapped her fingers around his and squeezed. 

“If I promise to say them to your face, will you wake up?” she bargained. When he didn’t immediately surge to consciousness, she smiled softly. “Can’t even admit to needing them even now, huh?” she teased gently. 

She watched him for a moment and then leaned closer, resting her elbows on the bed and wrapping both her hands around his cold one. 

This one will probably send some of you guys into a tizzy, but i’m saying right now this doesn’t mean anything for the VPU one way or another! 

“Just stay with me.” 

Clint froze halfway off the bed. A small hand wrapped around his fingers and tugged him back down. Clint offered no resistance as he stretched back out on the narrow twin bed, folding an arm behind his head. 

“Just a little longer, Ana,” he informed gently. “Then you need to try and go to sleep like a big girl, okay?” 

“Another story?” the four year old next to him asked hopefully. Her bright green eyes were wide and innocently manipulative in a way only a child’s can be. Long sandy blonde hair was already a tousled mess from the whole bedtime ritual. 

Clint shifted so he sank a little farther into the mattress and hummed thoughtfully. 

“Which one do you want to hear?” 

“The one about the princess that saved the outlaw!” 

“Ah, okay...well, once upon a time...there was this kicka--kickbutt princess with long red hair and perfect green eyes named Talia. She wasn’t like other princesses, though. She didn’t care about ponies and castles and being saved by any prince charming. No, she-”

“She wasn’t no damsel and didn’t need a prince charming!” the little girl chirped happily. 

“No she didn’t. She could save herself just fine without some stinkin’ prince getting in the way,” Clint agreed. 

“She also wore a black dress because pink stuck out too much in the dark,” Ana recited faithfully. 

“Exactly, black was much more tactical,” Clint nodded. 

“Then what happened?” 

“Well,” Clint went on, “one day she was just riding along on her faithful steed and she came upon this man being chased by a dragon! Now, this guy, he was no chump. He could take care of himself pretty well most of the time...”

“I know this part!” Ana exclaimed. 

“Well then by all means...”

Ana cleared her throat dramatically. 

“His name was Francis and he was the bravest, most daring outlaw in all the land. But he wasn’t a bad outlaw! He helped people!” 

“He did, but by helping people he made a lot of enemies, including the evil dragon Hydra. And that was who was chasing him when Talia found them. Well, Francis got himself trapped and who should show up just in the nick of time?”

“Talia!” Ana chirped. 

“Yep, and she battled that dragon like the badass she was, saving Francis and all the land in the process.” 

“And then they fell in love and lived happily ever after!”

“Yep, with some bumps along the way, but that was the gist of it.” 

“You’re such a good story teller, Daddy,” Ana sighed happily before yawning widely.

“Well I think you’re a biased audience,” Clint chuckled warmly. “Now sleep.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead then climbed out of the bed. 

“I love you, Daddy.” 

“I’m not even sorry.” 

Phil sighed and slowly dropped down to sit next to Clint on the hard metal cot of his cell in the brig. 

“I didn’t think you would be,” Phil replied as he eyed the double set of flexicuffs keeping Clint’s wrists tethered. Whoever had arrested  him had apparently been smart enough to know regular cuffs were a waste of time. 

Without another word, Phil reached for the folding knife he kept in his boot and cut the cuffs off. 

Clint flexed his wrists and gave him a sideways grin. 

“I could have done that,” he said with a grin. “But I didn’t want to push my luck quite yet.” 

“I thought they searched you,” Phil replied, folding his knife and putting it away.

Clint scoffed. 

“Phil, you think some flunky security guard, SHIELD trained or not, would be able to find all my weapons?” 

Phil rolled his eyes. 

“Do I even want to know how many you still have on you?” 

Clint just grinned. 

“So you’re still in here because? What? You thought you could use the down time?” Phil asked, motioning around the low security cell. Clint, by all rights, could have been out of here on his own hours ago. 

Clint shrugged a shoulder and rubbed at his wrists. 

“I distracted from the search enough already. I didn’t want them wasting resources tracking me down when they should be looking for her.” 

Phil nodded but didn’t quite buy it.  

“McGuire is okay, by the way. The concussion you gave him was a minor one.”

“I must be losing my touch.” 

“Why did you hit him, Clint?” Phil asked quietly. “He’s the base director here. Fury is going to be...”

“Furious?” Clint interrupted with a smirk. 

Phil narrowed his eyes. Clint was up to something. There was no way he was this calm. Natasha was missing for God’s sake. There was no way Clint was content to just sit in this cell and not look for her. 

“What are you planning?” Phil asked suspiciously. 

Clint gave him an innocent glance. 

“Clint...”

“Plausible deniability, Phil, it’s a wonderful thing.” 

Phil sighed. 

“Is anyone else going to end up in the infirmary?” 

“No,” Clint assured, but then added in a steely voice, “As long as they stay out of my way.” 

A sharp knock came at the cell door and Phil stood. His time was up. He paused at the door and glanced back at his agent who was still sitting entirely too casually on the metal cot. 

“When do you need the guard monitoring the cameras distracted?” Phil asked. 

Clint glanced down at his watch then back up. 

“In 7 minutes.” 

Phil nodded. 

“Don’t be an ass.” 

Clint held up his hands in a show of surrender. 

“I didn’t say anything! Did I say anything?” he defended as he valiantly tried to keep his urge to laugh under control. He mostly succeeded, but still a short burst escaped. 

Natasha’s green eyes flashed dangerously and Clint clamped his mouth shut. He couldn’t quite stifle his grin though. 

Natasha’s stern expression cracked as an answering grin tried to break free. 

“Stop,” she demanded, reaching out to swat him hard in the shoulder. 

“What? You look...nice,” Clint stated as he looked her new outfit up and down and promptly had to fight back another burst of laughter. 

“I look ridiculous and you lying about it doesn’t change that.” She swatted his shoulder again and he stepped backwards, out of her reach. 

“Hey! It’s not my fault,” he defended around a chuckle. “I told you I would do it.” 

“Right because you could totally pull of a convincing Mrs. Clause,” she shot back sarcastically as she motioned dramatically down at her bright red dress. “And i’m sure you could totally pull off the white wig too.”

“Hey, I would have given it my very best shot,” Clint replied. “Fact is, Mr. Clause is on the naughty list and this was our only in. So go be merry and shit.” 

“Actually, it’s not.” 

They both turned as Phil walked into the small trailer they were using as a base of operations. 

“Turns out an elf just called in sick so there’s an open slot for Santa’s little helper.” 

Phil tossed a scarily bright green bundle of fabric at Clint and he caught it mostly out of instinct. He stared down at the bright fabric in horror. 

He could feel Natasha’s vindictive smirk. Clint nearly dropped the bundle when he realized what else was wrapped up in it. 

“There are tights! Bright yellow tights!”

Natasha leaned in and kissed his cheek mockingly. 

“Are you fucking insane!?” Romanoff punctuated the angry words with a hard shove that sent Clint stumbling back a step. 

If he had a dollar for every time he’d been asked that, he’d probably be able to match the funds in his off shore bank account. 

“It’s been said,” he admitted with a shit-eating grin that somehow turned Romanoff’s expression even more murderous that it had been 20 seconds ago. Considering he hadn’t thought she could look more murderous than she had 20 seconds ago, it was quite the accomplishment. 

“You jumped out of a plane without a parachute,” she accused. “Without a parachute, Barton!” 

Clint chuckled nervously. The whole thing was an adrenaline high he wasn’t likely to come down from anytime soon. He jerked his chin towards the unconscious man on the ground. 

“He had one,” Clint pointed out. 

It had been an admittedly poorly thought out decision, made in the heat of the moment. Their captive had proven too smart for the two TAC team memebers guarding him in the cargo hold. The gunshot had been what drew Clint and Romanoff out of the cockpit where they’d been conversing with the pilot. 

Clint had taken one look at their captive, who was strapping on a parachute stolen from his guard, a gun still in his hand and he’d just kind of...reacted. 

The next thing he knew, they were grappling in free fall. In the end, Clint had knocked him out, and clung to him like a spider monkey while pulling the rip cord for the parachute. 

There had been one horrifying moment where he’d thought he was going to lose his hold and go careening to the earth at terminal velocity. But his iron grip with his legs and arms had held out...barely. 

He hadn’t even realized Romanoff had followed until she was landing next to him. He had still been trying to decide if his shaking legs would support him when she rounded on him.

“What if you hadn’t held on?” she demanded, giving him another hard shove. 

“Well then you would have caught me,” he countered. 

“You didn’t know I had followed you!”

“Of course you did,” he shrugged dismissively. “That’s what partners are for.”  

Romanoff fumed silently for a moment and then gave him one last angry shove. 

“Next time? I’m not jumping after you.” 

“Can you shut up?”

Phil froze, mouth agape, and stared at Clint. His agent, for his part, had gone still, eyes wide, but no less furious than they had been when this argument started. 

“Excuse me?” Phil challenged, more shocked than anything. 

Clint appeared to get over his own shock and his posture stiffened defensively.

“You heard me,” Clint shot back. “Just shut up, for once, and stow the lecture.” 

“Clint,” Phil nearly growled, “you need to hear me. This is not a good idea.” 

“Jesus Phil, haven’t I earned a little trust by now?” Clint argued. “I mean, the Council wants to question my every move and instinct, sure I get it, they hate me. But I thought I’d earned a little more than that from you.” 

“You have but...”

“No! No ‘but’. Either you trust me or you don’t.”

“But this is-”

“Is what? Dangerous?” 

Phil clamped his mouth shut against the instinct to agree. Admitting his worry would only fuel the fire. Clint had been working hard to prove he was at 100% after the whole Croatia disaster. 

But apparently whether he spoke his agreement or not, Clint heard it. 

“So when it’s your idea or the Council’s then it’s okay? I can put my life on the line on your say so? But when it’s my call, suddenly it’s too damn dangerous?” 

“Clint,” Phil tried, holding up a placating hand. 

“No, Phil, I’m sick of this. Croatia happened, but its over. You have to let it go!” 

“I can’t!” Phil snapped. 

This time it was Clint surprised into silence. 

“I can’t ‘let it go’, Clint because you almost died. And I can’t...I can’t just let that go...” he admitted, all the fire leaving his tone. “I can’t not worry. I can’t not think about the what if’s and the worst case scenarios. Your idea, the council’s, or God forbid mine, I hate sending you into dangerous situations. Every. Damn. Time.”

Clint stared at him in silence, the anger almost visibly draining out of him. 

“It’s the job, Phil,” Clint eventually reminded softly. “It’s my job.” 

“I know,” Phil sighed tiredly. “But, kid, you gotta understand...if something happened to you...if I couldn’t get to you when you needed me...” Phil shook his head, banishing the horrifying thought. 

“Well...I’m not worried about that.” 

Phil met Clint’s gaze, surprised by the casual confidence in his words. 

“I’m not worried about you not getting to me because I know you’ll come. I know that with absolute certainty. I trust that and count on it.” 

Phil felt a soft smile pull at his lips. There had been a time when Clint and the words ‘I trust’ never would have mixed. 

“So if i can trust in that then you need to trust that whatever happens, I’ll survive until you get to me. Trust me to be strong enough and smart enough. Take the same leap you always ask of me.” 

Phil sighed, feeling a bit chastised even if that hadn’t been Clint’s intent.