Because I am currently in an Avengers mood. There you go. Enjoy!

You Didn't Get To Heaven But You Made It Close

Natasha paints her fingernails. She does that from time to time and she has every right to do so because she is a beautiful woman with beautifully shaped fingernails and that she is a warrior does not mean she cannot have some colour on her fingernails.

She prefers red, always red.

Clint watches Natasha when she paints her fingernails. He tries to be subtle about it because he does not want to get mocked when caught- though not being mocked by her because for mocking him she would have to care about him first. There is a bitter taste in his mouth and he swallows. Natasha looks up and arches an eyebrow gracefully, ever so gracefully. Everything this woman does is graceful and he thinks he should hate her for all the things that happened between them but he can't.

"You like what you see?" She asks with her calm, smooth voice, a deep, steady tone almost like the earth breathing before releasing a storm. Clint never was a poetical man but she makes him want to wish to know his way with words.

"Well, how couldn't I, baby?" He answers instead and grins because Natasha sighs and sends him a look out of green eyes so bright that he needs to bite his lip briefly because he wants to lean forward and watch the golden sparks in them until Natasha decides to kill him with one of her knifes. It would be a sweet death, he supposes. Also, she would probably getting yelled at by the Cap which is kind of satisfying- even though he would not be able to see it live because he would be, well, dead. He thinks of nights spent in those strong arms, arms of a woman and yet fully capable of holding him down and choking the life out of him if she wanted to.

(She never wanted to. He supposes it was because he was more useful to her alive than he would have being dead.)

(He should probably be glad for that and yet he is not.)

Natasha watches him for another moment until she continues with painting the nail of her index finger a fiery red. He has always wondered how a woman as cold as the Russian winter could take such a liking to a colour like red but this is Natasha- he has never figured her out and he is fairly sure nobody else has, too. It suits her, though. Natasha is a woman with taste, nobody can say anything else.

Does that make him a man with taste because he wants Natasha more than everything else, wants not only her body writhing beneath his, her lips bitten and hissing angry-sounding Russian words at him, those red fingernails clawing at his back, her legs tight around his waist as he rocks into her, spilling himself into her again and again and again until his head is spinning-but also wants her to crack that icy mantle around her open, see her smile, laugh, even cry, see her eyes twinkle because of him, holding her hand because she has so beautiful, entirely female but deadly hands-

And he knows that he will never have those things and that he should not wish for because Natasha crushes things whenever she thinks it is necessary without caring about emotions but he cannot stop himself from thinking that they could be great together, again, under different circumstances than they were before, better circumstances with all those friendly, funny, dorky, stressing people around them, with a very interesting family around them-

And so Clint turns toward Natasha against knowing better, opens his mouth and says: "Hey Nat, what about watching a movie after you've finished your nail-business? Working on all that being-a-team-stuff the Cap always talks about?"

Natasha looks up and musters him and for a moment his heart leaps into his throat, frightened traitor it is, and he thinks that she will say no in that uncaring, cold manner she always says no with and he prepares himself for grinning and answering with an equally snarky answer as if he was not affected by the way she speaks with him most of the time- as if there never was anything between them and maybe there was not, at least not for her-

But then she shrugs with her elegant shoulders and purses those lush lips that haunt him in some of his better dreams and he has to swallow, and again when she says- in a bored way, though, but she says it: "Sure, why not."

And Clint breathes out and breathes even when she adds: "We can take Thor and Bruce with us", because even though a demigod and a Zen master will tag along them and probably destroy a few things, it is still totally a date and maybe, just maybe, they could be great together, again, under better circumstances than before.