When Laura Met Clint update

http://archiveofourown.org/works/4748405/chapters/11162471

Laura had never ridden in a helicopter before. It was a silly thing to think—she’d nearly been killed. Clint’d nearly been killed. Four people were dead, or at least very, very badly arrowed. But she’d never flown in a helicopter before. Seemed like it would be a lot like flying in a plane.

She was also tired. That seemed silly as well; she hadn’t done anything. But all that adrenaline in the gunbattle—her body had gotten her ready to run a marathon, lift a car, anything. Just because she’d ended up cowering and finding herself regretting never trying anal sex (on a man), didn’t mean all that marathon-running, car-lifting energy had been recycled. It seemed to have been expended in sheer worry. Even now, in a landing zone (LZ, memories of a thousand war movies whispered) secured by Marines with camouflage and everything, she was still worrying about dying in her apartment. Maybe she just hadn’t noticed she’d died yet. Shyamalan had to get his ideas from somewhere.

She sagged, losing her balance even as Clint waited vigilantly beside her for the chopper to come in for a landing. His arm shot out, catching her by the shoulder. Like an autonomous reaction. It took him a half-second to turn his head and realize he was touching her, not letting her fall. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just—“ Her eyes closed again. It seemed impossible to keep them open without toothpicks or something. Nap time. That’s what she wanted. She wasn’t tired like cranky-tired, but like there was warm, voluptuous sleep available, she could have it if she’d just find a pillow…

She yawned. Answer enough. Clint took her hand, bringing her arm across his shoulders so she could rest her weight on him. It was shockingly comfortable. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Adrenaline rush, adrenaline crash,” he said, like he was just a study partner trying to get her through her next test. “I’d give you some sugar or a Gatorade or something, but you can sleep on the whirlybird.”

“The whirlybird.” She was tired enough for that to be very, very funny. She looked up at him and saw a blotch of red in his dark yellow blur. “You’re bleeding.”

“Shrapnel. It’s nothing. Won’t even scar.”

She licked her thumb and daubed at it. That got most of it. Without the blood, it was a nick no bigger than a shaving cut.

The helicopter came down, side-door thudding open, gunner inside gesturing to them. Clint helped Laura put one leg in front of the other, their escorts melting into the shadows, headed for some other extraction point. Everything was black for a moment, then Laura was woken by the door slamming shut. Clint was pulling a seatbelt corset-tight around her. He seated himself beside her as they took off, everything loud and shaking and at the tip-top of a roller coaster, but she just had to close her eyes and lower her head a little and everything became quiet and dark and still.

***

She woke up on the ground, appreciating suddenly how the ground didn’t shake or make noise or move her stomach anywhere she didn’t want it to go. She was still moving, though. She looked around, trying to determine which way was up, and found Clint’s face. He was carrying her. She suddenly felt petite.

The man actually blushed. “You were sleeping,” he explained. “No reason to wake you up so you can walk thirty feet to a bed.”

“This the more enlightened version of clubbing a girl over the head and dragging her back to your cave? Getting her all tuckered out in a firefight and,” Laura yawned, “carrying her around like a sack of potatoes?”

“If you’re implying I’m smooth, we should hold off before you meet Natasha. She’ll disabuse you of that notion”

“Ex-girlfriend?”

“More like an annoying little sister. We’re here.”

He set her down in some kind of cot, muttering an apology as then he yanked the sheets out from under her and pulled them over her huddling body.

“Don’t forget my shoes,” Laura said, and Clint lifted up the tail of the bedsheets to pull off her shoes for her.

“You’re kinda milking this kidnapping thing, just so you know.”

“If you’re going to be pampered, might as well be well pampered.”

“Want me to give you a pedi while I’m down here?”

Thank higher, Laura thought and fervently hoped she didn’t say.

***

When she woke up it was mid-day, and Laura felt automatically lazy for sleeping so long despite being up half the night in a hostage situation. Clint was gone and the infirmary, she guessed it was, seemed empty. Laura drew back her sheets, about to go looking for her shoes when a voice came out of nowhere.

“Ms. Frasier?”

Laura was awake enough to give a shriek in all its glory. She whirled around, grabbing the nearest blunt object before thinking that, while a pillow was technically blunt, it was also of little danger to anyone who wasn’t a chubby eleven-year-old girl who didn’t think sleepovers were anywhere near as fun as the movies made them look.

Or so Laura had been told.

The man standing over her seemed vaguely Clintish, in that sense of being halfway dangerous and halfway just not anything she’d expect. He was a baby-faced man in his thirties, male pattern baldness in combat with a long, shaggy hairstyle that made a play for his shoulders—and the eighties. He wore a tan polo shirt and khaki shorts, and a set of not-kidding-around sunglasses were bookmarked at the nape of his collar. “Coulson,” he greeted, so abruptly that Laura wondered if that was a greeting in some foreign language before taking it for his name.

“Clint?” Laura retorted, gesturing around like he was late for an appointment.

“Agent Barton,” Coulson corrected. “He’s giving his debriefing. Those tend to take a while. His field decisions can take some… explaining.”

A nurse breezed in, passing him, and without so much as a by-your-leave began to look Laura over. The tests were familiar enough—making sure she was patched together enough not to fall apart on the carpet—so Laura let it pass.

With Coulson staying almost challengingly silent throughout, Laura took in the room. It was squat and dark, reminiscent of the desert dwellings she’d visited in Afghanistan. Windows with no glass, doorways with no doors—nothing to distinguish the place from just being another Russian Hooverville, constructed by refugees and abandoned just as quickly.

The nurse departed without a sound. “Thanks,” Laura called after her.

“She doesn’t speak English,” Coulson said dryly. “Ms. Frasier, on behalf of the United States government, we’d like to apologize for the inconvenience you’ve been put through and thank you for the great courtesy you’ve shown our operative. We have men at your apartment now, repairing the damage that’s been done, and as far as the IRS is concerned, a wealthy and distant relative of yours is about to die and leave you a great deal of money. Contingent, of course, on your signing a non-disclosure agreement.”

Laura shrugged. “Not much to tell either way. Mostly I just needed to pee.”

Coulson nodded seriously. “Although I’ll stress you’re not in any real danger, it might be a good idea to spend some time in another part of the world while this is all sorted out. We can pack your things for immediate shipping, if you’d like.”

“I… suppose I could visit my mom.”

The same nod. “I’ll see if I can arrange you a chance to freshen up before your flight,”

Laura had one of those feelings like the entire conversation was just him putting a contract in front of her and her signing it. “What about Clint?”

“Agent Barton is fine.”

“I’d like to see him.”

“I’ll pass that along.” He sounded like he’d rather have forty different performances of The Vagina Monologues on his iPod. “Please wait here until further notice. You’re not cleared.”

“For what?”

“The rest of the base.” He turned, about to leave like he had the President on call waiting, when a cell phone ringtone purred in his jacket pocket. He slipped his hand in and out of the pocket, checking a text message in passing. He rolled his eyes. “The Widow wants to see you.”

“The who now?”

***

The other room of their little government pueblo was much like the first, thatch-roofed and stone-walled. A command center of multiple laptops and a table full of maps and files were the only things out of place. Laura stepped inside, Coulson shadowing her like a bodyguard, and Laura suddenly had a boutique bag shoved into her arms.

“Clean clothes,” Natasha said. “Worth an education at most community colleges, and that’s just the underwear. That’s worth putting up with Clint Barton for an evening, isn’t it?”

“He wasn’t so bad…” Laura said, really hoping this wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome.

“Really? How many times did he grunt?” Laura shook her head. “Not once? That must mean he likes you.”

Natasha looked like someone had weaponized an issue of Vogue, body of every mean girl in high school with the smile of an A/V club. Laura took an instant liking to her, if only because Natasha was the first person she’d met since Clint who seemed to want to discourage thoughts of being put in a shallow grave if she was naughty.

“Whoa, you really don’t look like you live in a basement pit.”

“Thank you,” Natasha said with a huge grin. “No one around here pays me any compliments. Probably afraid I’ll disfigure them, just because of that one time…”

Laura stopped wondering why Natasha, a girl who could be America’s Next Top Model, was working for MI6 or whoever.

“Paul give you much trouble?” Natasha continued, in a sympathetic voice.

Paul? Laura guessed Coulson had a first name after all. “No, not really.”

“Well, let me know if I can do anything to thank you for babysitting Clint. You want help lying on your resume? We can put down that you were Mission Control at NASA. We’ll just tell the Cape Canaveral boys it’s for a cover. They’ll say you tried to warn them about Apollo 13, but nobody listened…”

“That’s alright,” Laura insisted, and a steadily louder voice insisted Donald! Somewhere in her inner ear. “Actually, could you check on my… Donald? Agent Barton kinda gave him a hard time; can you check he didn’t call my mom to start a gang-up on me? Not that I think you spy on people without a warrant or—“

“No, it’s cool, we do. But only pad people. Promise.” She went over to the world’s smallest Best Buy, laying a hand on the hacker’s shoulder. “Pull up the boyfriend.”

The multiple screens were suddenly taken up with Donald. Facebook page, LinkedIn account, Twitter, job history, taxes, bank account, medical records. Phone log—with a few key strokes, Laura had his E! True Hollywood Story.

One of the screens was taken up with Laura’s information. As she looked closer, curious what her credit rating was, the screen shifted to a profile of a pretty brunette—one of those nice Jewish girls who kept themselves thin enough to be lifted up by a tall guy’s bicep curl. That seemed to be their primary boyfriend requirement.

Laura guessed this monitor was some kind of known associates thing. She checked the name and recognized it from the phone log. He’d been calling her. A lot. “Who’s Jane Foster?”

She looked to Natasha. Natasha was biting her lip. “We’re pushing the limits of my social awareness with that question.”

“What’s that mean?”

Natasha gave the guy’s shoulder a squeeze. “Move.” He moved, Natasha taking his seat and typing. “This is a cell phone picture Donald sent to her fifteen hours ago.”

It was a picture all right. She recognized the skinny abs, the oddly prominently nipples, the little white indentations the elastic waistband of his underwear made in his belly. Below that, she had a passing familiarity as well.

“That dickhead!”

“What about it?” Natasha asked.

“He’s cheating on me! With… Dr. A-cups!”

“Actually, she just started working on her doctorate.”

Laura slumped into the nearest chair. Suddenly, it was all rushing back. Insanely unfair, but all that worry and fear and adrenaline that had laid her out was back, pounding in her temple, demanding its say. There’d been bullets around her, guns fired, blood and dead bodies. She could’ve died. And her boyfriend was fucking cheating on her, fucking on her, cheating on her, fucking someone else… Laura laughed hysterically. Something so petty didn’t even seem to compute. She’d been in a helicopter. She’d been carried around by a spy like a bride over the threshold.

Natasha picked her up from the chair; arm around her shoulders, she guided her from the room as she shook like she had palsy. Natasha had a way of touching: firm but gentle. It compelled Laura to move with polite insistence, but without physically forcing her. Soon, Laura was in a supply closet, or a pantry—bullets and canned goods. Natasha sat her down on a cardboard box full enough to be solid, petting her with brisk strokes like she was trying to warm someone freezing to death.

“It’s okay, it happens,” Natasha assured her. “Anything can set it off, you’re just going to have to ride it out. Let it happen, let it pass.”

“Oh God,” Laura said, her mind a train threatening to run off the rails. She thought, desperately, that Natasha had done this often enough to have some kind of cue, that Clint had, God, how many times had they been shot at, how many bullets had they taken—she’d seen the scars on Clint’s chest and thought they were just make-up or something, like tattoos, someone to show how much of a badass Batman or Rambo or Conan the Barbarian was. But they were real, he’d been shot. “Where’s Clint?”

“He’s sleeping,” Natasha said. “Collapsed, really. Had to pull rank to get him debriefed, then told him his mom called to get him to the barracks—passed out there. He’d been up about thirty hours, the bad guys knew he was coming, he’s been on the run ever since—”

“Oh God…”

“He’ll be up soon. All the residual caffeine in his system has to revolt some time. I know you want to say goodbye.”

Laura had to say something or she was going to start blubbering. There had to be something to say, had to be… “How can this be my life? I just get into my car and when I get out of it, people are shooting at me and my boyfriend isn’t my boyfriend and there are lingerie models in catsuits…”

“Thank you,” Natasha said. “Listen, don’t feel bad about freaking out. Everyone freaks out. You’re actually handling this a lot better than some politicians I’ve known. One little laser sight and those Congressmen pee their onesies…”

“How am I handling this well!? I feel like I’m gonna scream! Or cry! Or both!”

“You haven’t vomited yet. That’s something.” Natasha petted her hair. “Don’t cry. You’ve a very strong woman, Laura. A very beautiful woman. I want to take care of you, just let me take care of you.” Her hands ran over Laura’s face, feather-light fingertips coming to her mouth, gently tracing every crack in her lips. “I want to take care of you so much… I’ve never felt this way about anyone, but it’s like I can’t control myself around you… I don’t want to…”

Then she kissed Laura.

In hindsight, it was good for Laura to know she wasn’t in the closet or anything. Just a regular old heterosexual. Because, given Natasha’s redheaded everything, if she’d been the slightest bit bicurious, she wouldn’t jump up and say—

“WHAT THE HELL!”

Natasha looked up at her, startled. She paused a long moment. “Sorry, training—that’s the only way I really know how to comfort people.”

Laura wiped her mouth. Natasha’s lipgloss tasted like an Adele song. “You don’t know any way of relating to emotionally vulnerable people other than sucking their face?”

“Clint and I are working on that,” Natasha said lamely. “He lets me punch his shoulder…”

Laura shook her head in bewilderment.

“I had a weird childhood,” Natasha stated. “I’m going to check on Clint now.”

She left Laura alone in the stockroom. A moment later, she poked her head back through the door.

“I really do think you’re pretty, though.”

“Out!”