status complete
background post-Winter Soldier, post-season one (Daredevil), pre-Age of Ultron
pairing Clintasha
notice I've already stated that I loved Netflix's Daredevil. And since I love Clint Barton and Clintasha as well, I thought, what if Clint didn't have an apartment in Brooklyn but in Hell's Kitchen? That's really all it took to get this story on the paper. I've been wanting to write about Clintasha for a while, and I thought this was as good a start as any. I love introspective pieces, and seeing someone's life through Matt's senses seemed really exciting. I purposefully pulled the first season of Daredevil a year back, because I wanted it to coincide with the aftermath of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Anyway, I'd like some feedback on this, since it's still kind of terra incognita for me. Hit me with your best shot!

no strings;
can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

Ever since that fateful day when he saved the life of a man and lost his sight, Matt had been more than aware of the world around him. He could hear, feel and somehow see everything around him even though his eyes burned red. He developed a very odd, very different way of experiencing and perceiving the world, and that made him stronger—smarter. But even when he could listen in on what was happening on the other side of Hell's Kitchen, it was the apartment across the hall that confused Matt the most.

It had been unoccupied for as long as he could remember, no sounds or signs of life coming from it. For all the noise that usually resided in his head, Matt welcomed the silence of his home.

However, after the incident a few months past, the Battle of New York as it was called, someone had moved in, pretty permanently as far as Matt could tell. It was a man; he could hear his deep voice and his strong heartbeat, even if his footing was light as a feather's, even to Matt's enhanced hearing.

They had never met officially. Matt figured that if he did leave the apartment, he did it whenever Matt wasn't there.

He had a dog. A pretty big one, Matt guessed, that didn't quite conform to his owner's orders and ate a lot of pizza he probably wasn't allowed to. His name was Lucky the Pizza Dog, and Matt didn't know whether the name was acquired after he had eaten all that pizza or whether said deed was a reaction to the name his owner had given him. But for all his size and dubious eating habits, Lucky was a nice dog who didn't bark in the dark hours of night and kept generally quiet.

Matt's neighbor had a girlfriend, too. One with even lighter footsteps and a smell like death and blood. He could always feel her looming presence the moment she entered the building and he always reached for his sticks unconsciously as he felt her ascending the stairwell. But she never attacked, never lurked, never imposed any king of threat to his neighbor (or the dog), so Matt kept calm—even if her mere presence in the building made his skin prickle in awareness.

They had really loud sex. Very kinky, too, some nights. The building was old and its walls decidedly not soundproof, so much that even without enhanced hearing, Matt would still be able to hear them. On those nights, he would clench his teeth and try to drown out the echoes of their moans. In the end, when it proved too much for his abilities to handle, he would wear the mask and go looking for crime.

(His name was Clint; Matt picked it up during those moments of pleasure. Hers was Natasha—Tasha, Nat.)

But they had other moments, too, those odd neighbors of his. Ones where he'd joke and she'd quip at his bad cooking. Ones where he'd whisper how much she meant to him and she'd make his heart beat like a sledgehammer. One in particular where he gave her a gift and she hummed in approval before calling him a sap.

Matt hadn't given his mysterious neighbor much thought, between Clint's occasionally long absences and practicing law and the Fisk case and everything that was going south in Matt's life.

It wasn't until Fisk was locked away and things were finally starting to look up in Hell's Kitchen that Matt's neighbor actually caught and held his attention.

It was a Tuesday and he could taste the anxiety emanating from across the hall on his tongue. The usually calm and collected neighbor was pacing around, muting and then turning up the volume of his TV every other minute. The world was on fire; S.H.I.E.L.D., a secret intelligence organization that was closely linked to the Battle of New York and a billion other stuff, was compromised, all of their dirty secrets and shady activities displayed on the internet for all the world to see.

The taste of death alerted Matt to her arrival. She wasn't followed, she said when she stepped through the door that was so eagerly pulled open for her. She didn't lie. Matt couldn't feel any unusual presence in alarming proximity that would indicate otherwise.

They were silent for a long while, not talking, not having sex, not even breathing differently. Matt listened for their heartbeats to find them beating in tandem, almost like one. They were asleep, probably nestled in each other's arms, clinging onto one another in fear that they would be pulled apart by an invisible force.

Despite the vast opportunities his enhanced abilities presented him with, Matt wasn't one for gossip. If the sounds he heard were not menacing or threatening, he simply stopped listening. But there was something about the odd couple down the hall that smelt of death and tasted like ash that kept his attention.

He returned from a patrol on the streets late into the night. It had been a quiet night that had left him with only a few scratches and a couple of bruises on his ribs. He was pulling on his pajamas when the sounds picked up from the neighboring loft. He heard rustling, smelt something like pancakes and felt the heat from the stove. Then he heard her.

It's all gone, Clint, she said with a level voice but an unsteady heartbeat. S.H.I.E.L.D. is down, Fury is gone, Steve is looking for the Winter Soldier. Maria went to Stark, Carter to the CIA. Rummlow is still out there somewhere. All our covers are blown, our pasts unveiled, our safehouses compromised. It's all gone.

It didn't take long for Matt to connect the dots and realize who she was. Her face, her job, her entire life was all over the news for the past few days. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. Top class spy and master assassin. Born and raised in Russia, under the wing of the Red Room, a covert espionage facility. One of the U.S.S.R.'s most lethal weapons. Then, a defected spy, recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D.

Clint's resume was more or less the same. Codenamed Hawkeye, he was the other half of Strike Team Delta (the first being the Black Widow). A product of a broken home and an adolescence of living with carnies.

Deadly people with a lifetime of war, pain and loss on their shoulders.

Avengers.

We're still here, Clint said, the rhythmic beat of a spatula against a counter echoing in Matt's ears. I'm still here, Nat.

That is how Matt knew them. Not as the master spy and the deadly carnie; the team their enemies feared and their colleagues looked up to. Not in the way the media portrayed them. But as Natasha, the woman with light stepping and a heavy heart, and Clint, the man with the deep voice and stumbling words. As two people who cared for each other and were probably all the other had in this world.

Matt wanted to applaud them. This life that they led, the one he had chosen as well, it didn't leave room for relationships like this one. In fact, it didn't leave room for any kind of relationships. Anyone you cared about could be used against you, a liability in the war that was waging around you. But Clint and Natasha were one of a kind, two sides of the same coin. Two people who seemed to have each other's backs through thick and thin.

Let's go to the farm, he heard Natasha murmur. This guy here could use a little running around in the countryside. Some time off, too.

So could you, Clint replied and then Matt suddenly stopped listening. It was too personal for his ears. They already had their lives broadcasted for all the world to see. He had no right to intrude to the few moments of privacy they had left. With a sigh, he willed himself to sleep, drowning their echoes in the fire that burned behind his eyelids.

The next time he heard from his neighbors was a few days later, when a giant ball of fur almost caused him to topple down the stairs as he was walking up to his apartment after a day of being hunched over a case with Foggy and Karen.

"Down, Lucky. Damn it," he heard Clint's familiar, by now, voice command the dog. A thud was heard, like a duffle bag being dropped on the floor, and then a hand closed around his elbow to steady him. "Sorry, man. I swear, that dog never listens to me."

"No problem," Matt reassured him. He inclined his head to the side. "Are you moving?"

"You could say that. The missus wants to travel the world. Beats me why, but I'll follow," he lied easily, and if Matt hadn't listened in on their previous conversation, he wouldn't be able to tell because the man's heart didn't skip a beat.

"You always do, Barton," Natasha cut in with a fondness in her voice that she always had when she addressed him. Matt almost didn't manage to hold back his smile. In their private moments, when the world wasn't watching, it was hard to think of them as anything other than a normal couple living in a dingy apartment in Hell's Kitchen.

"Story of my life," Clint breathed out tiredly. "Ready?"

"All set."

"Alright." He turned to Matt with an easiness he wouldn't have thought the other man possessed, given his line of work. "It was good seeing you, Matt. Take care of yourself."

Matt's smile froze. Apparently he wasn't the only one who could spy on people.