Chapter Text
Natasha wakes up, but she doesn’t open her eyes. Instead, she breathes the sweet country air flowing in through the open window and listens for the sound of the breathing around her. Laura’s breath is light and sweet, deep and even and steady in front of her, and Clint’s is the same haphazard mess it has always been, one arm wrapped around them both, hand on Laura’s hip. Natasha is the middle spoon, and not many people, she would guess, can sleep three to a bed, but it’s one of the many things they do well. She loves these mornings, before the kids are up, the last job so completely done she doesn’t even have to think about it, the next job so far off it could be weeks or months before she has to start planning it. She breathes in the smell of Tide and Laura’s stupid lavendar potpouri, the smell of Laura’s slight glisten and Clint’s bad morning breath, and she lays there and enjoys the normal until Laura’s breathing changes and she mumbles, “Not it,” and shifts her weight a little, grabbing Clint’s hand to pull them both tighter. “Gone for three weeks, not. It,” she repeats. Natasha can’t see her face but she knows the frown and she feels her lips pull into a smile.
“Not it,” agrees Natasha, inching her head forward to kiss Laura’s shoulder through the t-shirt, “I got it.”
“Mmm-nnn,” groans Clint in protest, pulling back on Laura and squishing Natasha between them. “Nuh. N’yet. ‘S’too’early.”
“Not yet,” she reassures him, too, reaching back to pat his hip. He doesn’t have his hearing aids in, but he understands the pat and subsides back to drowsing, releasing Laura and thereby releasing Natasha some, too.
Natasha loves mornings like these. She feels a brief pang for Phil, who would love these mornings, too, if he ever got one, but it’s important to Clint to keep these two worlds separate, and Natasha respects the need to keep boundaries. Phil gets it, anyway.
Natasha watches the sun come up on the walls of the bedroom inch by brightening inch, and lets herself doze, too, sinking in to all the normal Laura has built for them, for when they come home.
~~~
It hadn’t started that way, of course. It started with Clint in an alley in Tokyo, when he was a young merc and she was a Widow and the Red Room’s haze hovered over her life. The kind of people who need sharpshooter bodyguards are also the kind of people of interest to the Russian government, mostly, at least on the Asian continent where everyone is neighbors in the worst way, and this one, well, this one more than most. But this time, there’s a kid, and while she knows she shouldn’t care, she does. No one will question her, there’s no one watching her, Widows are designed to fly solo, so she makes a different call on that day. The guy gets to live a little longer, and she feels nothing as she watches him breathes breaths she has given him, lean down, give the kid a sweet. She watches his sniper bodyguard watch her, his eyes seeing more than most, and she watches him decide his paycheck isn’t worth mentioning her. He nods at her, instead, in what he probably thinks is professional to professional, and she smiles, because it’s cute.
~~~
Later on, years later, she’s in her last bolthole from the cold. She hasn’t had anyone to watch her back since Ilyanna was a heartbeat too slow, two weeks ago, and she’s stretched so thin, jolting awake on adrenaline and wondering if she should just take the Brazilian’s offer, even though it is a terrible insult to her training. She hears a noise and she realizes this is probably it. Her physical capabilities have been drained, the constant vigilance takes its toll, too, on her mental faculties. She’s operating, she would guess, at about half her peak ability, barely a Widow at all. Just a scared, dumb woman. A scared dumb woman who just wants to be left alone.
She steadies a breath and checks her inventory, her exits, and then the gun outside cocks, and time starts to flow like molasses.
She can’t remember, now, which agency was first through the door, but she thinks it was the KGB. She kills two, but the third gets her in a hold and drags her outside. He’s killed, by Nigerians, she thinks, who she turned down the week before and that had been stupid, in retrospect, but she didn’t like the leering eyes of the second in command. Being free doesn’t mean much, mostly “die young,” but it does mean she doesn’t have to sign on if she doesn’t want to. Mostly, Natasha doesn’t want to.
The Nigerians are interrupted, after she is cuffed but before they can begin beating her, by the Hondurans, who definitely have their eye on selling her scalp to the Mexicans because that bounty is getting ridiculous, and she takes advantage of the confusion to free herself and acquire a weapon or two.
She shoots three Nigerians and a couple of Hondurans, only 2 instantly fatal, and then there’s a strange moment of silence before all hell breaks loose. In that moment of silence, she looks up at the night sky and sees a familiar face directly above her, on the building, and he signs, “Stay put, good spot,” and then signals, “Go, go,” and she’s not wearing her ear plugs so she covers her ears as all four snipers start to fire into the crowd.
In the end, the only people standing are her and SHIELD. Clint drops from the rooftop in a single, graceful leap and crouch. He signs, “Looking for a job?” and he’s smiling the same smile he had for her in Tokyo.
Phil is furious when they get to the safe house, absolutely enraged, and she wouldn’t know it at all but Clint assures her it’s true. The man must be locked down as tight as Natasha, not to betray it even in a twitch of his eye, but he welcomes her to SHIELD with a grimace of a smile and says smoothly, “Warm up,” with a jerk of his head at the kitchen.
It takes two days for their pick up. Natasha sleeps through most of it, curled up with Clint because he’s willing and warm. Clint coaxes her off of the bed to eat, which means she’s forced to get up and use the bathroom, too, but her bones are like heavy metal and that bed is like a magnet and it keeps pulling her down. Clint never seems to mind, and if Phil is irritated at her monopolizing of his asset, he has that buttoned up, too, as he brings them both enough breakfast in bed for four people each morning.
On-boarding at SHIELD takes a ridiculously short period of time. They already have a file on her. She’s already been assigned to Phil. She gets to pick from one of the three carefully tailored identities they have available for her and she choses Natasha Romanoff because she likes that the woman wears sweatpants and belongs to a gym and used to take ballet. It’s a comfortable persona, the kind the Red Room never allowed her, and she already feels herself sliding into it like a glove. Natasha, she decides, is going to have a good heart and a wicked sense of humor. Natasha is going to try to clear the red from her ledger.
Phil shows her to her official quarters and then says, diffidently, “But of course, Clint is going to expect you to go with him to his apartment. You’re cleared.”
She turns to him and lets one eyebrow raise up, cocking her head.
“When we bring someone in from the cold,” he tells her, and the shrug is so small she can barely count it as more than a twitch, “we don’t freeze them out again. It’s not conditional on your employment, but I think you’ll like Laura. I think a little normal will be good for you.”
She purses her lips, thoughtful, and when Clint does, in fact, come to collect her from Phil’s office, she nods and follows him down to the garage.
He drives like a madman.
~~~
He pulls up to a small brick four-plex in a neighborhood that could be anywhere in America. He parks in the parking spot for #4, and checks the mailbox at the bottom of the stairs. They climb the stairs in silence, and when he gets to the top, he turns left and leads her down the hallway to the door. She doesn’t know why she’s so surprised when he doesn’t knock, but she is. She’s startled by it, suddenly hyperaware that this is his home, he’s leading her to his house. She hangs back a sec and he pauses in the doorway, and swings his sharp gaze over to look at her for a full second before stepping forward into the apartment and shouting, “Hi, honey, I’m home!’
A woman shrieks with excitement and Natasha is at the doorway in time to see Laura jump up on her husband and pepper his lips with kisses. Clint’s arm muscles are bulging but he is laughing and looks comfortable here.
The apartment is small, but cheerful, full of bright colors and the smell of something warm cooking on the stove. Natasha steps in and pulls the door shut behind her, gently.
Clint is still kissing Laura when he says, “Look, I found her out in the cold, please can we keep her, Phil says I can,” and Natasha knows her eyes are wide and startled, like a deer’s, but she cannot get them under control fast enough, and so that’s Laura’s first look at her.
Laura smiles, big and wide and warm, and grabs a blanket off of the couch beside them to pitch at her and says, “Take off your coat, take off your shoes, and I hope you like spaghetti,” before returning to kissing her husband. “Get warm,” she commands, holding his lip between her teeth. “I need him for maybe thirty minutes, can you give me that?” She tilts her head to glance at Natasha and Natasha feels a laugh, an honest laugh grow in her chest and it might be the first one in her adult life that she lets go so easily.
“Yeah,” she says, looking at the two of them, “Go, I got this,” and she waves to the bookshelf full of DVDs.
“Good,” says Laura decisively. “You, soldier!” And Clint snaps to attention, grabbing another kiss. “Hey, bedroom!” she says, breaking out of it, and Clint replies, “Hup!” and turns and walks her down the hallway. They crash into a lot of things but Natasha thinks that’s mostly because Laura is trying to steer where she can’t see and Clint is trying desperately to do whatever he can to please.
Natasha rolls her eyes and settles on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It had made a big splash just the year before but Natasha hadn’t had time, she was already on the run. She spreads the blanket over her stocking feet and settles in for thirty minutes of screentime.
They are loud and unsurprisingly effusive with their praises of each other, and Clint holds out for longer than thirty minutes, which does surprise her.
~~~
“So, Natasha,” says Laura brightly, the steam from the spaghetti rising up in front of her face. “Fury and Phil said you could come over? I thought I was some big secret at SHIELD,” she says to Clint, obviously looking for a reaction.
“The biggest,” he assures her, “I mean, right after the aliens.”
She laughs, bright and happy, and turns to Natasha.
Natasha smiles, because Laura is that kind of person, she deserves smiles in return, and says, “You’re not in any file. You don’t exist.”
“Very reassuring,” Laura tells her. “So what makes you so special?”
Natasha shakes her head, her hair falling to hide her expression. She had actually just been thinking the exact same thing. She slides her gaze over to Clint, who has stuffed an entire meatball into his mouth, and they are definitely American portions, Natasha has cut hers into eighths just to process it better visually. He chews, staring back at them defiantly, and swallows, and then takes a sip of milk and says, “She’s cold, Laura. She needs warming.”
“Ahh, another Clint Barton special,” says Laura. “By which I mean, we’ve graduated to people, excellent, I was wondering if you’d ever get there. The couch is still completely the worst call ever.”
“I love that couch,” protests Clint.
“And I’m sure Natasha is at least as loveable as the ugly ass wreck of a couch. But we are going to need more space, Clint. Talk to Fury.”
“Yes, ma’am,” says Clint, and that is the only conversation they ever have about why Natasha is now a member of their family.
~~~
Once, in an unguarded moment, with Cole staring up at his mobile and the sun sinking in the sky, and the sounds of rural Missouri everywhere, Natasha asks Laura, “Why do you do it?”
Laura doesn’t pretend not to know exactly what Natasha is referencing, and so she stops folding the endless cloth diapers- Natasha and Clint had gone round and round about them until Laura had burst into tears and then Clint had caved- and looks at Natasha and says, “How many happily married people work for SHIELD?”
Natasha thinks about it. There’s a couple, mostly in the analysts, and there’s a pair of agents who always go out as a pair, and a handler who, like Phil, is a little more hands on, but that’s it, that’s all she can think of, and she’s not even sure their marriages are happy, per se.
Laura watches her think about it and says, “Yeah. I can’t save the world, or even some kids in a mine, or anything. But I can do this. I can do this so well that Clint - Clint and you- always have somewhere to come home to, a piece of normal. Not many people can do this, you know. And I bet nobody does it as well as I do.”
“Do-” and here Natasha hesitates, unwilling to hurt by misunderstanding, “but do you do it for him?”
Laura vents a laugh and says, quietly, “I do it for me. I love being the best there is at what I do. I love the look on his face when he comes home and home is here. I love watching him sink into home and normal and I love erasing every single thing that’s ever been done wrong to him. I love that I keep everything at an even keel whether you guy’s’re back or gone. I love that I’m probably the only woman in the world lucky enough to get to do this.”
“He is going to drive you nuts when he retires,” Natasha says.
“He already drives me nuts. We’ve got outbuildings. He can turn them into a moonshine and a saloon and keep his hand in with all that adrenaline junkie stuff selling illegal liquor to the Missouri mafia,” she responds matter-of-factly. “Natasha, what’s the matter?”
Natasha shifts uncomfortably, “Babies are a lot of work,” she finally settles on.
“Yes,” agrees Laura. “Work I am happy to do. They’ll keep me busy.”
“They?” asks Natasha.
“Oh, I am not stopping at one,” Laura states serenely. “One of the perks of those hazard bonuses is that I can have as many as I want, and I’ll stop when I damn well please, now that I’ve started. Now what’s the matter? Natasha, talk to me, here.”
“I just-” and to her horror, her voice clogs, and it never does that- her body is her tool and her tool never betrays her.
Laura watches her with kind eyes, the only kind of eyes Laura has, and says, “Natasha, if you want babies, you know I’ll watch them for you, right?”
Natasha’s head snaps up and she snaps out, “God, no, не́хуй, Laura, no!”
Laura spreads her hands, “I am not a super spy, Natasha, talk to me.”
“I just want to make sure-” and Natasha’s throat closes again, dammit, what are the odds, “Make sure you are happy.”
“What, like forever?” teases Laura, but when Natasha doesn’t say anything, she rises up and puts her hands on Natasha’s face and says, so slowly, “I can’t promise that. Every time you and Clint go out, I know he is in good hands, but even you can’t promise me that, and I’ve never asked it of you. I wouldn’t, what a horrible thing to ask. And you can’t ask that of me, you can’t, Natasha. I can promise you this will always be home. I can promise you I love this, and that I’ll say something if after maybe another decade or so I start to lose my edge at the top of my game. But I can’t promise you I’ll be happy forever, Natasha.”
Natasha nods, and lets the tears spill over, because this is Laura, Laura who changes the sheets on the bed in Natasha’s room, so that they are fresh and clean every time she comes home, regardless of whether that’s where she sleeps that first night back. Laura who never assumes she would want to sleep anywhere else, but who is always so welcoming when she does choose their bed. Laura who just makes everything normal, everything, even Clint, with his fucked up childhood, even Natasha, with her no-childhood-at-all.
“I love you, too,” says Laura, sweeping her up into her arms and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “This is always going to be your home, Natasha.”
Natasha nods, and Clint appears, like he always does, just at the right-wrong moment, and takes in the scene, and then comes forward and wraps them both in his arms and they stand like that for awhile until he says, plaintively, “So, what are we doing?”
And Laura quips back, “I love you, man, moment.”
“Who gave you tequila,” he chides Natasha.
“Nobody, dummy,” she says, and wipes her eyes on his shoulder.
“Eventually he’s going to sleep through the night,” Laura remarks. “And we’re all going to feel so much better. You could stop getting up with us every two hours. Or take turns.”
“Or we could try a bottle,” mutters Clint, already flinching before Natasha and Laura round on him, “It is a natural thing, I will be fine, I get enough sleep to get by-” “She has made her decision, Clint, support, don’t undermine!”
And then together, in unison, they say, “Not that there’s anything wrong with formula. Fed is best.”
Clint sighs and says, “I know,” resting his chin on the top of Laura’s head. “Not that there’s anything wrong with any of this.”
Natasha sighs. It is pretty perfectly normal.
After another moment, Laura kisses her forehead and slips out of their arms and says, “Diapers. So many diapers,” and Natasha glares at Clint and he gives her who-me eyes but doesn’t say anything more. So they’re all okay. That night, when she hears Laura stir with the baby, she doesn’t get out of bed the first time, and the second time, she firmly pushes Clint to her bed to go back to sleep. They’ll figure this out, too.