BRAVO IRON MAN
Stark Averts Disaster at Opera House

Natasha snorted to herself as she swiped through news headlines on the iPad she'd borrowed from the tech center at The Abbey—S.H.I.E.L.D.'s tactical base in Hungary. It wasn't that she wanted the glory for herself. Far from it. Her life was much better lived off the front pages. At the same time, knowing Stark, Pepper had probably bribed or dragged him to the performance last night. It was just amazing to her the way that man seemed to fall in and come out of everything smelling like a rose.

She looked at the sludgy remnants of her breakfast coffee and decided against drinking it. Another constant in the universe was the quality of S.H.I.E.L.D. coffee. Bad, even by Russian standards. She should have gone for the tea, though Americans tended to do that badly by Russian standards as well. No winning there. So, iPad tucked under her arm, she ditched the paper cup in the trash and headed off down the corridor toward the infirmary. Despite his ongoing protests, Clint had spent the night there after the medics checked out his injuries. Sometimes, she suspected he might be afraid of hospitals rather than just pulling some tough-guy invincibility routine. She didn't know exactly what it was that gave her the impression, words or actions or some combination of the two, put together with what she knew about his background, but she'd seen it many times and she trusted her gut when it came to Barton.

Bottom line, she trusted Clint Barton. Period.

What he'd done for her at the Opera House… They always had each other's backs when they were in the field, but last night had been different. He couldn't have known for sure his vest would stop those bullets, not with the shooter so close to them, but he'd flung himself between her and the shooter anyway. While he'd been treated in the infirmary, she'd spent a few hours searching for anything S.H.I.E.L.D. might have on the man with the eyepatch. That laser eye thing she'd seen when the patch fell off was certainly distinctive. The son of a bitch had slipped their grasp this time, but he couldn't hide forever.

The base wasn't very large, with much of it hidden underground. She went down the steps instead of taking the elevator, which was too much like being trapped in a box, and soon enough she was in the underground corridor where the infirmary was located. A youngish man wearing blue scrubs was sitting behind a desk near the entrance. He looked like he was entering data from the clipboard beside him into the computer, hunting and pecking his way across the keyboard with his index fingers, pen between his teeth. She stopped in front of him and asked, "Agent Barton?"

The guy glanced up and made a distracted gestured toward the hallway behind him. His eyes returned to the computer, but then they snapped back almost comically. His mouth opened, dropping the pen onto the desk as he did a double-take of the red-headed woman standing before him. Not everyone got to see the infamous Black Widow in the flesh. Natasha smirked. "Can you tell me what room?"

"Uh, last one. On the left."

She sauntered by, feeling his eyes following her. She didn't look back. The doors were all closed, but one had a red plastic "flag" sticking out near the top and a medical chart in a plastic bin, presumably indicating that it was occupied. She gave a little knock, opening the door when she heard a muffled, "Come in."

In the fluorescent lights of his room, Clint looked terrible, even considering the scrapes they'd gotten into in the past. A large purple bruise bloomed on one cheekbone, vivid against his otherwise pale skin, and the eye on the same side was swollen partly closed. He'd pushed his half-eaten breakfast tray off to one side on its rolling table and was sitting up against several pillows, probably to cushion the large welts on his back. She'd seen them last night when they'd stripped his vest. He was still shirtless, a shadow of beard stubble outlining his jaw and upper lip. Bruises of various shades and sizes marred his arms and chest, and on his abdomen there were two red circles surrounded by a pinkish haze that looked like an odd sunburn, showing where the shock rod had touched him. Though Natasha didn't know it, a glimpse beneath the sheets would have revealed ugly bruises on both knees and shins as well.

"Wow…" she said softly, shutting the door behind her.

It was Clint's turn to smirk. "I know, I know. I'm just way too pretty for my own good. You're simply gonna have to learn to live with it."

She laughed, in spite of herself. His smile brightened in response, going all the way to his blue eyes. He had a way of being disarming—figuratively and literally. From their very first meeting she'd felt that uncanny knack he had for seeing beneath whatever current "truth" she was trying to project. Some might call it a keen bullshit detector, but it was more than that. He didn't just have sight, he had insight.

Crossing the short distance to the bed, Natasha sat down beside Clint on the mattress, up near his hip. She reached out with her hand to push back a sticking-up bit of his hair on top of his head, but it popped right back into disarray once her fingers were gone. Another smile flashed across her face as she thought "even his hair is stubborn." That faded to something more contemplative as her fingertips brushed along his chest and over the reddened area on his stomach. His skin flickered beneath her touch, almost like it tickled, though she knew he wasn't ticklish there.

"What are you doing?" he asked, a hint of uncertainty creeping into his unusually cocky tone, his own fingers curling into a loose fist around the blanket bunched at his side.

Natasha shook her head slightly and placed two fingers against his lips, shushing him. She'd already decided. Maybe it was when she walked in the door just now; maybe it was the first time she saw him, when he put his life on the line to give her a chance. In another moment, she replaced her fingers with her lips, kissing him. At first it was soft, exploratory, testing… whatever the word, it was beyond the carefully-maintained line of merely friendly. She felt his mouth give way, his spine begin to lose its surprised tension. Her weight shifted on the narrow bed, sliding closer to him, her body rising higher, head tilting more to the side, deepening the kiss. His hand slid around the back of her neck, large and warm, palm calloused, fingers threading into her hair, raising a line of goosebumps along her back. The room felt hot and chilly at the same time…

And then he was gone. Just like that. Clint glanced down, away from the unspoken question in her eyes. His lips pressed together in a tight line as he shook his head and covered the lower half of his face with his hand. It was one of his tells. Natasha recognized it from long experience. In private his face was very expressive, but he reflexively made that gesture when his emotions were threatening to come to the surface and crack the coolly impassive mask he wore for the world. A few seconds later, when he bared his face again and lifted his eyes to hers, they were warm (and a little wet?) but unflinching.

"I've been watching you work for years, Nat. Listening to you work. No secrets, right?" He paused, took a deep breath, let it out. She waited. He wasn't done.

"I know the things you've had to do..."