The Other Olympics, PG-13, 1/1
Title: The Other Olympics
Fandom/Pairing: Avengers, Clint/Natasha
Word Count: 3400+
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Inspired by this prompt from inkvoices at the Promptathon: "Natasha and Clint have a mission. At the London 2012 Olympics. (Because someone is planning to kill an athlete and make it look like someone from a certain other country did it to start a war/international incident maybe.)
Many undercover options: security staff, sales staff, coach, athlete, tourist...."
I have to admit that I went with a very simplified version of the prompt. I was very excited, though, as I love - and am fairly obsessed with - the Olympics. It initially played out as more of a fun idea than an actual story, but parts of it took on surprising depth, which was fun to encounter. Overall, though, the plot is pretty light. I expected a 1,000 word little ficlet; I'm still not quite sure how this much longer story happened, but hey, hope you like it! As a note, there is no graphic depiction of sex in this story, but a good portion of it centers on that topic.
S.H.I.E.L.D. sent Natasha in as Nonna Romanova, 25-metre pistol shooter with the Uzbekistan Olympic team. Clint went in as Cam Hauksson, an archer for Iceland. It was quite simple to arrange given that athletes from large, ultra-competitive countries frequently find ways to ally themselves with smaller teams. In this case, Natasha competed in the Uzbek Olympic trials under the guise of the daughter of Uzbekistan-based Russians who moved to New York to find a better life. Clint did the same with Iceland's trials as the American grandson of a paternal grandmother he spent summers with growing up. Iceland, of course, had a residency requirement, necessitating the grandmother claim.
The joke at S.H.I.E.L.D. was that Clint and Natasha had to put more effort into not being perfect than they would to win. Uzbekistan and Iceland could only send one athlete in each of the agents' events, so the spies had to perform well enough to win but not high enough to attract international attention. Copious amounts of betting went down prior to both sets of trials regarding what sort of line Romanoff and Barton could balance between perfection and “just good enough”. Allegedly small fortunes were made, much to Clint's amusement (no one was foolhardy enough to brag about it to Natasha.)
The spies' mission in Beijing was fairly straightforward. They were to infiltrate the inner circle of Feruza Yesikov, daughter of Stas Yesikov, a prominent “businessman” based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital. As Stas was actually the most powerful underground figure in Uzbekistan, a strategically powerful Central Asian state, S.H.I.E.L.D. had great interest in developing a inside relationship. The difficulty was that the Yesikov empire was notoriously tight-knit, resistant to insiders, and few people had the cache to bring in someone from the outside.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had chosen Feruza as the target and Beijing as the contact point for a series of reasons. Feruza Yesikov was raised to be ruthless in a violent culture, and she was as likely as anyone else in her father's crime syndicate to deal violently with those who crossed her. She was also an internationally elite equestrian jumper who had a healthy respect for others who were at the top of their games, so much so that her boyfriend, Maxim Ramanuk, was a Belarusian pole vaulter she met at the Games in Athens four years previous. Where better to penetrate the Yesikov empire than at the next available Olympics?
Further research found that Faruza had a strong dislike of ethnic Uzbeks, her family being culturally Russian. It was ridiculously easy to ensure that Natasha was assigned to be roommates with Tori Bukharov, an Uzbek “goody two-shoes” - to use Faruza's words-in the knowledge that Natasha could use that to her advantage. One of the reasons for embedding Clint, as well, was that Faruza was wildly jealous of her boyfriend so much as looking at another woman. It therefore made sense to supply S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most alluring agent with a ready-made sometime-Icelandic archer boyfriend in order to assure the possessive Faruza that Natasha didn't have eyes on the girl's own squeeze.
The plan worked perfectly.
Knowing as they did that the Olympic Village was increasingly becoming the site of the “other Olympics”, those being the games of a sexual variety, Natasha and Clint utilized that to get in with Faruza and Maxim.
“It would be easier if my roommate wasn't such an uptight prude,” complained Natasha as she slumped against the wall across from Faruza's room.
“She's still better than my roommate,” Clint paced as he rubbed his hands through his hair. “That psycho freak nut job would try to kill us. Tori's just a virgin. I'll take her any-“
A female voice from the room behind them cut them off.
“You got stuck with Tori?”
Clint moved aside and Natasha leaned forward.
“Last in the roommate draw,” she explained with an eye roll.
Maxim spoke up.
“What's up with your roommate, bro?”
Most internationally elite athletes spoke English, so it was to be expected that Faruza and her boyfriend did.
Clint moved to stand outside Faruza's door.
“Water polo player with anger management problems. Doesn't like that his roommate has the hot chick while he can't get a girl to talk to him for more than five minutes.”
“Why is that?” Faruza asked from where she was tucked into Maxim's shoulder.
“Because five minutes after they meet him, girls figure out he's psychotic,” Natasha answered with a smirk. “And not in the make-me-happy-in-bed kind of way.”
“Oh, I like that kind of psychotic,” laughed their target. She snuggled further into her boyfriend's arms. “Don't I, babe?”
“Hell, yeah,” the pole vaulter answered with a not-quite-appropriate-for-company kiss.
Natasha draped herself over Clint, sliding her hand up his Team Iceland t-shirt. “And I have a virginal, sheltered Uzbek puritan for a roommate. Not that I mind performing for an audience-“ she gave Clint an intensely suggestive look, “or going against a wall, but it would be nice to have a bed once in a while.”
Her audience laughed appreciatively. The Olympic Village was famous for public displays of affection - alleyways, parks, anywhere couples could physically complete the act, and every athlete knew it. Just as Natasha and Clint knew their audience.
“Have a seat,” Faruza pointed to the empty bed across from her and Maxim. “I don't have a roommate.”
“How'd you score that?” Natasha managed to sound understandably jealous, awed and worshipful all at the same time as Clint sat down on the bed and she nestled in front of him, her back to his front.
Clint wrapped his arms around Natasha possessively, earning an approving “guy nod” from Maxim.
“My uncle's head of the Organizing Committee,” answered Faruza with a laugh.
“Which I would know if I spent any time in Uzbekistan,” Natasha snickered as she ran her fingers lightly over Clint's forearm.
The two couples spent the rest of the evening getting acquainted. In the room and later over dinner in the Olympic Village cafeteria, Natasha explained how she had been born in Uzbekistan to Russian parents, the family later moving to New York. She and Clint met at NYU on the outdoor range, becoming a couple and pushing each other to accomplish their dream of going to the Olympics. Natasha, of course, was able to do this by calling upon the fact that she was born in Uzbekistan. Clint explained that he accomplished his Olympic goal by calling on his Icelandic heritage and summers spent at his grandmother's cottage.
Faruza told of being an only child and how all she ever wanted was a pony. Her father got her a horse, White Star, when she was five and he became Faruza's best friend. Faruza and White Star went to the Athens Games together when she was 15, and he was still with her in Sydney. Faruza talked about how hard it was to accept that it was time to retire her beloved partner prior to Beijing, but she knew she had to. She was here this time with Sasha, a beautiful black stallion who Faruza loved very much, but she insisted it wasn't quite the same.
Maxim didn't talk much, and spent most of his time rubbing Faruza in ways that pretty much seemed like foreplay. He did say that he got into track and field because his father was an Olympian in the 1980 Moscow Games. He also said that the best thing about coming to his second Olympics was spending time with Faruza. He came across as a stereotypical jock obsessed with sex, but he did seem genuinely devoted to his girlfriend.
Clint and Natasha both had preliminary competitions the next day, so after dinner, the discussion regarding where to sleep began. Obviously the two of them preferred to sleep together, but where to do so was up for debate. In support of their new besties, Faruza and Maxim invited Natasha and Clint to use the other bed in Faruza's room, to which of course Clint and Natasha readily agreed.
:::::::::::
Over the four years they had been partners, Clint had given more thought than he cared to admit contemplating what his first time with Natasha would be like. As both spies appreciated the amazing gift that was their partnership and not wanting to damage it, they had never crossed that final line. That being said, Clint wasn't dead, and he had wanted Natasha for almost as long as he had known her.
When he and Natasha first worked together, in the rare moments Clint's imagination forced its way out, it focused primarily on the physical. In recent years, though, his images of them together had taken on decidedly more emotional depth-even more reason to avoid crossing the line in Clint's opinion. In order for their partnership to survive, the only way to take their relationship further would be to go full bore, to truly commit to each other on a romantic level. For better or worse, Clint loved Natasha too much to risk losing her if a passionate relationship didn't work out, so he had locked those feelings away and had never tried for anything physical with his partner.
One thing was definitely certain. Clint never imagined that his and Natasha's first time would take place in front of an audience.
Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff were professionals, and they knew going into this assignment that a situation might likely arise in which they would have to present themselves as physically intimate, but this scenario? Not one they had remotely conceived of. As they got into bed that night, they both knew that this was not the time to fake it. In one evening, the two of them had made more inroads towards building a relationship with the Yesikov family than any operatives since the end of the Cold War. They weren't gonna blow it out of sexual squeamishness. They were just gonna have to take one for the team.
Ultimately, audience or not, the partners had a very good time, and Natasha made sure to congratulate him.
“Вы выиграли золото.”
There was a low female chuckle from the other side of the room.
“He'll have to share that gold,” Faruza challenged.
“Works for me,” answered Natasha.
As the two couples settled down in their twins beds, Faruza and Maxim held a quick conversation about Faruza's father and his trip to see her compete in a few days. The op was progressing better than anyone could have anticipated.
:::::::::::
As Natasha and Clint spooned, the red-headed temptress was unsettled. In her experience, sex was a job at best and usually a chore. What she and Clint had just done, though, bizarre circumstances notwithstanding, had not remotely been a chore. In fact, based on the feel of Clint's arms around her at the moment, could what they had just done been an expression of...emotion, of love? The thought, when she finally acknowledged it, was so frightening that Natasha pulled Clint's arms around her more tightly, like he was a living safety blanket, sinking deeper into his embrace.
:::::::::::
The Olympics were two weeks long and both Natasha and Clint's events took place at the very beginning, one of the reasons (beyond the obvious) those events were chosen for them. Both of them worked very diligently to narrowly miss moving on from the preliminary rounds which left them free to spend the rest of the Games as they pleased. As it pleased them to fulfill their mission and continue building a relationship with their marks, the pair had a very focused two weeks.
Busy competing in their own events, Natasha and Clint missed the first round of equestrian show jumping, but were able to watch with Maxim and Faruza's father, Stas, as their new friend competed first in the team competition and later in the individual medal rounds. As Faruza was quick to point out, she was the only halfway decent jumper from Uzbekistan, so the team finished second from the bottom, besting only the team from Peru. A few days later, Faruza finished fifth in the individual event finals, a personal best.
Maxim, conversely, didn't make it past the preliminary round of pole vaulting, but he did so with Natasha, Clint, Faruza and Stas cheering him on from the stands. Faruza's father, apparently, approved of his daughter's boyfriend, which may have had more to do with Maxim's wealthy family than with the young man himself, but the event still provided Clint and Natasha the chance to make better friends with the head of Uzbekistan's premier criminal organization. Yay, them! was essentially Coulson's response when they surreptitiously checked in with him.
With five days left to go in the Olympics, Natasha and Clint had a rare moment to themselves lying on the grass in the main square of the Olympic Village. The Yesikovs had family in from the homeland and were having a closed dinner. It was the first time that the spies hadn't been invited to an event with the Uzbeks, but they still considered it a win as they had been able to plant an untraceable bug in the sold of Maxim's shoe. Coulson was dutifully recording the dinner while the spies lazed on the green in front of their dorm.
Paranoid about his daughter's friends, Stas hadn't been subtle about having “Nonna” and “Cam” checked out. Fortunately S.H.I.E.L.D. was very good at what they did and the agents' cover stories were airtight. Even so, the two of them were aware that their every move was being watched. Accordingly, even they were technically alone, they still put on a show as they lay in the sun together.
Clint leaned over Natasha and brushed a hair off of her face.
“We're going to have to talk about this at some point,” he said softly, looking into the eyes of his lover and partner, earning a sigh from the beautiful woman beneath him.
“Can't we just enjoy it?” she asked just as quietly.
They had spent every night of the Olympics so far sharing a bedroom with Faruza and Maxim, and an unspoken rivalry had developed between the pairs to see who had the most active sex life. Accordingly, Clint and Natasha had been very busy proving how sexually compatible and open they were. Mission or not, though, Clint and Natasha were enjoying what they were doing. In for a penny, in for a pound. As the days passed, their closeness grew as did what almost seemed like a certain desperation. They didn't want this to end and both were afraid it would.
Aware that their conversation was quite likely being monitored, the pair was careful to make their conversation compatible with Nonna and Cam's cover stories.
“Just take it as it comes, move forward without a plan?” Clint/Cam asked.
“Day by day,” Natasha/Nona trailed her fingers down the side of her partner's face.
He smiled at her. “Because you're so good at working without a plan.”
“I can go with the flow!” she protested.
“Uh-huh,” he laughed low, stirring an unintentional response in Natasha. “Sure you can.”
“Shut up and kiss me,” she demanded, signaling an end to serious conversation and a return to duty. Clint, not Cam, happily responded. Day by day it was.
That night Faruza came up with a grand idea. Now that all of their events were over, it was time to have a little fun. Under her leadership, the four of them undertook Plan Make Nonna's Roommate As Uncomfortable As Possible. This consisted of the two pairs making out in Nonna's room as opposed to Faruza's, arranging for Tori to walk in on Nonna and Cam getting it on in Nonna's twin bed and other such delightful pursuits. When word got back that Tori had begged Faruza's uncle for a change of roommate, the young people knew they had won. So it was that on the last night of the Beijing Olympic Games, Natasha and Clint had a room to themselves, their first evening alone since they had met Faruza and Maxim.
The agents didn't bother scanning the room for listening devices. Coulson had already confirmed that they were there, and Clint and Natasha acted accordingly. Regardless, the pair couldn't help but enjoy the fact that this was their first night as lovers without another couple in the room.
“It's been quite the few weeks,” Clint said as they climbed into bed.
In the short time they had been there, the two of them had already found what worked best for them in such a small bed. Clint lay with his back against the wall, facing the room while Natasha tucked herself into him, also facing out. It was a little scary to both of them how natural it felt.
Without any planning or forethought, doing his best to simply enjoy the moment, Clint dropped kisses down Natasha's neck. Her hand snaked up to cradle his head behind her.
“Yes,” she murmured.
During their time in Faruza's room, they had kept talking to a minimum. The unspoken rules of same-room sex had dictated the terms and that had quickly developed as one of them.
“Tell me what you want,” Clint whispered in her ear, his breath making her shiver.
That she did, using all kinds of fun and descriptive words, and he obliged her every whim.
:::::::::::
Bags packed, airline tickets and rides to the airport standing by, the two couples met for lunch one last time. Faruza invited the pair to come visit her family's compound as soon as possible, and plans were made for six weeks out. S.H.I.E.L.D. was ecstatic, as was Faruza.
Sticking to the traveling athletes cover, Clint and Natasha flew home commercial and 24 hours later, touched down in New York. Saying goodbye for the first time in two weeks, both agents seemed sad and a little wistful for the end of what had been an easy and unexpectedly pleasurable mission.
Clint opened the door to his apartment, dropping his bags by the door as he made his way to the liquor cabinet. The only way he was going to survive the first night without Natasha in weeks was going to be with the aid of some bourbon.
Usually able to sleep anywhere at anytime, it was disconcerting to the archer that he couldn't fall asleep after crawling under the covers. At the end of most missions, he got home and essentially slept off the experience, waking up to a new start, free of the mission's parameters and guidelines. Maybe that was the problem here. He didn't want to wake up free of his new ties to Tasha. And he didn't want to get under the covers alone.
As good as he was at his job, though, there were some areas in which Natasha was that little bit better and stealth ops was one of them. So it was that Clint wasn't aware that his partner had entered his apartment until she slid into bed next to him. Hand instantly on the knife under his pillow, it was Natasha's scent that loosened his grip on it.
Noting that it was shortly after four in the morning, Clint smiled as Natasha settled down in front of him.
Feeling that nothing he could say would be adequate, Clint simply kissed Natasha behind her ear, and pulled softly on her earlobe.
Natasha simply pulled his arms tighter around her, burrowing into his embrace.
Go for the gold it was.
/fin
Fandom/Pairing: Avengers, Clint/Natasha
Word Count: 3400+
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Inspired by this prompt from inkvoices at the Promptathon: "Natasha and Clint have a mission. At the London 2012 Olympics. (Because someone is planning to kill an athlete and make it look like someone from a certain other country did it to start a war/international incident maybe.)
Many undercover options: security staff, sales staff, coach, athlete, tourist...."
I have to admit that I went with a very simplified version of the prompt. I was very excited, though, as I love - and am fairly obsessed with - the Olympics. It initially played out as more of a fun idea than an actual story, but parts of it took on surprising depth, which was fun to encounter. Overall, though, the plot is pretty light. I expected a 1,000 word little ficlet; I'm still not quite sure how this much longer story happened, but hey, hope you like it! As a note, there is no graphic depiction of sex in this story, but a good portion of it centers on that topic.
S.H.I.E.L.D. sent Natasha in as Nonna Romanova, 25-metre pistol shooter with the Uzbekistan Olympic team. Clint went in as Cam Hauksson, an archer for Iceland. It was quite simple to arrange given that athletes from large, ultra-competitive countries frequently find ways to ally themselves with smaller teams. In this case, Natasha competed in the Uzbek Olympic trials under the guise of the daughter of Uzbekistan-based Russians who moved to New York to find a better life. Clint did the same with Iceland's trials as the American grandson of a paternal grandmother he spent summers with growing up. Iceland, of course, had a residency requirement, necessitating the grandmother claim.
The joke at S.H.I.E.L.D. was that Clint and Natasha had to put more effort into not being perfect than they would to win. Uzbekistan and Iceland could only send one athlete in each of the agents' events, so the spies had to perform well enough to win but not high enough to attract international attention. Copious amounts of betting went down prior to both sets of trials regarding what sort of line Romanoff and Barton could balance between perfection and “just good enough”. Allegedly small fortunes were made, much to Clint's amusement (no one was foolhardy enough to brag about it to Natasha.)
The spies' mission in Beijing was fairly straightforward. They were to infiltrate the inner circle of Feruza Yesikov, daughter of Stas Yesikov, a prominent “businessman” based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital. As Stas was actually the most powerful underground figure in Uzbekistan, a strategically powerful Central Asian state, S.H.I.E.L.D. had great interest in developing a inside relationship. The difficulty was that the Yesikov empire was notoriously tight-knit, resistant to insiders, and few people had the cache to bring in someone from the outside.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had chosen Feruza as the target and Beijing as the contact point for a series of reasons. Feruza Yesikov was raised to be ruthless in a violent culture, and she was as likely as anyone else in her father's crime syndicate to deal violently with those who crossed her. She was also an internationally elite equestrian jumper who had a healthy respect for others who were at the top of their games, so much so that her boyfriend, Maxim Ramanuk, was a Belarusian pole vaulter she met at the Games in Athens four years previous. Where better to penetrate the Yesikov empire than at the next available Olympics?
Further research found that Faruza had a strong dislike of ethnic Uzbeks, her family being culturally Russian. It was ridiculously easy to ensure that Natasha was assigned to be roommates with Tori Bukharov, an Uzbek “goody two-shoes” - to use Faruza's words-in the knowledge that Natasha could use that to her advantage. One of the reasons for embedding Clint, as well, was that Faruza was wildly jealous of her boyfriend so much as looking at another woman. It therefore made sense to supply S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most alluring agent with a ready-made sometime-Icelandic archer boyfriend in order to assure the possessive Faruza that Natasha didn't have eyes on the girl's own squeeze.
The plan worked perfectly.
Knowing as they did that the Olympic Village was increasingly becoming the site of the “other Olympics”, those being the games of a sexual variety, Natasha and Clint utilized that to get in with Faruza and Maxim.
“It would be easier if my roommate wasn't such an uptight prude,” complained Natasha as she slumped against the wall across from Faruza's room.
“She's still better than my roommate,” Clint paced as he rubbed his hands through his hair. “That psycho freak nut job would try to kill us. Tori's just a virgin. I'll take her any-“
A female voice from the room behind them cut them off.
“You got stuck with Tori?”
Clint moved aside and Natasha leaned forward.
“Last in the roommate draw,” she explained with an eye roll.
Maxim spoke up.
“What's up with your roommate, bro?”
Most internationally elite athletes spoke English, so it was to be expected that Faruza and her boyfriend did.
Clint moved to stand outside Faruza's door.
“Water polo player with anger management problems. Doesn't like that his roommate has the hot chick while he can't get a girl to talk to him for more than five minutes.”
“Why is that?” Faruza asked from where she was tucked into Maxim's shoulder.
“Because five minutes after they meet him, girls figure out he's psychotic,” Natasha answered with a smirk. “And not in the make-me-happy-in-bed kind of way.”
“Oh, I like that kind of psychotic,” laughed their target. She snuggled further into her boyfriend's arms. “Don't I, babe?”
“Hell, yeah,” the pole vaulter answered with a not-quite-appropriate-for-company kiss.
Natasha draped herself over Clint, sliding her hand up his Team Iceland t-shirt. “And I have a virginal, sheltered Uzbek puritan for a roommate. Not that I mind performing for an audience-“ she gave Clint an intensely suggestive look, “or going against a wall, but it would be nice to have a bed once in a while.”
Her audience laughed appreciatively. The Olympic Village was famous for public displays of affection - alleyways, parks, anywhere couples could physically complete the act, and every athlete knew it. Just as Natasha and Clint knew their audience.
“Have a seat,” Faruza pointed to the empty bed across from her and Maxim. “I don't have a roommate.”
“How'd you score that?” Natasha managed to sound understandably jealous, awed and worshipful all at the same time as Clint sat down on the bed and she nestled in front of him, her back to his front.
Clint wrapped his arms around Natasha possessively, earning an approving “guy nod” from Maxim.
“My uncle's head of the Organizing Committee,” answered Faruza with a laugh.
“Which I would know if I spent any time in Uzbekistan,” Natasha snickered as she ran her fingers lightly over Clint's forearm.
The two couples spent the rest of the evening getting acquainted. In the room and later over dinner in the Olympic Village cafeteria, Natasha explained how she had been born in Uzbekistan to Russian parents, the family later moving to New York. She and Clint met at NYU on the outdoor range, becoming a couple and pushing each other to accomplish their dream of going to the Olympics. Natasha, of course, was able to do this by calling upon the fact that she was born in Uzbekistan. Clint explained that he accomplished his Olympic goal by calling on his Icelandic heritage and summers spent at his grandmother's cottage.
Faruza told of being an only child and how all she ever wanted was a pony. Her father got her a horse, White Star, when she was five and he became Faruza's best friend. Faruza and White Star went to the Athens Games together when she was 15, and he was still with her in Sydney. Faruza talked about how hard it was to accept that it was time to retire her beloved partner prior to Beijing, but she knew she had to. She was here this time with Sasha, a beautiful black stallion who Faruza loved very much, but she insisted it wasn't quite the same.
Maxim didn't talk much, and spent most of his time rubbing Faruza in ways that pretty much seemed like foreplay. He did say that he got into track and field because his father was an Olympian in the 1980 Moscow Games. He also said that the best thing about coming to his second Olympics was spending time with Faruza. He came across as a stereotypical jock obsessed with sex, but he did seem genuinely devoted to his girlfriend.
Clint and Natasha both had preliminary competitions the next day, so after dinner, the discussion regarding where to sleep began. Obviously the two of them preferred to sleep together, but where to do so was up for debate. In support of their new besties, Faruza and Maxim invited Natasha and Clint to use the other bed in Faruza's room, to which of course Clint and Natasha readily agreed.
:::::::::::
Over the four years they had been partners, Clint had given more thought than he cared to admit contemplating what his first time with Natasha would be like. As both spies appreciated the amazing gift that was their partnership and not wanting to damage it, they had never crossed that final line. That being said, Clint wasn't dead, and he had wanted Natasha for almost as long as he had known her.
When he and Natasha first worked together, in the rare moments Clint's imagination forced its way out, it focused primarily on the physical. In recent years, though, his images of them together had taken on decidedly more emotional depth-even more reason to avoid crossing the line in Clint's opinion. In order for their partnership to survive, the only way to take their relationship further would be to go full bore, to truly commit to each other on a romantic level. For better or worse, Clint loved Natasha too much to risk losing her if a passionate relationship didn't work out, so he had locked those feelings away and had never tried for anything physical with his partner.
One thing was definitely certain. Clint never imagined that his and Natasha's first time would take place in front of an audience.
Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff were professionals, and they knew going into this assignment that a situation might likely arise in which they would have to present themselves as physically intimate, but this scenario? Not one they had remotely conceived of. As they got into bed that night, they both knew that this was not the time to fake it. In one evening, the two of them had made more inroads towards building a relationship with the Yesikov family than any operatives since the end of the Cold War. They weren't gonna blow it out of sexual squeamishness. They were just gonna have to take one for the team.
Ultimately, audience or not, the partners had a very good time, and Natasha made sure to congratulate him.
“Вы выиграли золото.”
There was a low female chuckle from the other side of the room.
“He'll have to share that gold,” Faruza challenged.
“Works for me,” answered Natasha.
As the two couples settled down in their twins beds, Faruza and Maxim held a quick conversation about Faruza's father and his trip to see her compete in a few days. The op was progressing better than anyone could have anticipated.
:::::::::::
As Natasha and Clint spooned, the red-headed temptress was unsettled. In her experience, sex was a job at best and usually a chore. What she and Clint had just done, though, bizarre circumstances notwithstanding, had not remotely been a chore. In fact, based on the feel of Clint's arms around her at the moment, could what they had just done been an expression of...emotion, of love? The thought, when she finally acknowledged it, was so frightening that Natasha pulled Clint's arms around her more tightly, like he was a living safety blanket, sinking deeper into his embrace.
:::::::::::
The Olympics were two weeks long and both Natasha and Clint's events took place at the very beginning, one of the reasons (beyond the obvious) those events were chosen for them. Both of them worked very diligently to narrowly miss moving on from the preliminary rounds which left them free to spend the rest of the Games as they pleased. As it pleased them to fulfill their mission and continue building a relationship with their marks, the pair had a very focused two weeks.
Busy competing in their own events, Natasha and Clint missed the first round of equestrian show jumping, but were able to watch with Maxim and Faruza's father, Stas, as their new friend competed first in the team competition and later in the individual medal rounds. As Faruza was quick to point out, she was the only halfway decent jumper from Uzbekistan, so the team finished second from the bottom, besting only the team from Peru. A few days later, Faruza finished fifth in the individual event finals, a personal best.
Maxim, conversely, didn't make it past the preliminary round of pole vaulting, but he did so with Natasha, Clint, Faruza and Stas cheering him on from the stands. Faruza's father, apparently, approved of his daughter's boyfriend, which may have had more to do with Maxim's wealthy family than with the young man himself, but the event still provided Clint and Natasha the chance to make better friends with the head of Uzbekistan's premier criminal organization. Yay, them! was essentially Coulson's response when they surreptitiously checked in with him.
With five days left to go in the Olympics, Natasha and Clint had a rare moment to themselves lying on the grass in the main square of the Olympic Village. The Yesikovs had family in from the homeland and were having a closed dinner. It was the first time that the spies hadn't been invited to an event with the Uzbeks, but they still considered it a win as they had been able to plant an untraceable bug in the sold of Maxim's shoe. Coulson was dutifully recording the dinner while the spies lazed on the green in front of their dorm.
Paranoid about his daughter's friends, Stas hadn't been subtle about having “Nonna” and “Cam” checked out. Fortunately S.H.I.E.L.D. was very good at what they did and the agents' cover stories were airtight. Even so, the two of them were aware that their every move was being watched. Accordingly, even they were technically alone, they still put on a show as they lay in the sun together.
Clint leaned over Natasha and brushed a hair off of her face.
“We're going to have to talk about this at some point,” he said softly, looking into the eyes of his lover and partner, earning a sigh from the beautiful woman beneath him.
“Can't we just enjoy it?” she asked just as quietly.
They had spent every night of the Olympics so far sharing a bedroom with Faruza and Maxim, and an unspoken rivalry had developed between the pairs to see who had the most active sex life. Accordingly, Clint and Natasha had been very busy proving how sexually compatible and open they were. Mission or not, though, Clint and Natasha were enjoying what they were doing. In for a penny, in for a pound. As the days passed, their closeness grew as did what almost seemed like a certain desperation. They didn't want this to end and both were afraid it would.
Aware that their conversation was quite likely being monitored, the pair was careful to make their conversation compatible with Nonna and Cam's cover stories.
“Just take it as it comes, move forward without a plan?” Clint/Cam asked.
“Day by day,” Natasha/Nona trailed her fingers down the side of her partner's face.
He smiled at her. “Because you're so good at working without a plan.”
“I can go with the flow!” she protested.
“Uh-huh,” he laughed low, stirring an unintentional response in Natasha. “Sure you can.”
“Shut up and kiss me,” she demanded, signaling an end to serious conversation and a return to duty. Clint, not Cam, happily responded. Day by day it was.
That night Faruza came up with a grand idea. Now that all of their events were over, it was time to have a little fun. Under her leadership, the four of them undertook Plan Make Nonna's Roommate As Uncomfortable As Possible. This consisted of the two pairs making out in Nonna's room as opposed to Faruza's, arranging for Tori to walk in on Nonna and Cam getting it on in Nonna's twin bed and other such delightful pursuits. When word got back that Tori had begged Faruza's uncle for a change of roommate, the young people knew they had won. So it was that on the last night of the Beijing Olympic Games, Natasha and Clint had a room to themselves, their first evening alone since they had met Faruza and Maxim.
The agents didn't bother scanning the room for listening devices. Coulson had already confirmed that they were there, and Clint and Natasha acted accordingly. Regardless, the pair couldn't help but enjoy the fact that this was their first night as lovers without another couple in the room.
“It's been quite the few weeks,” Clint said as they climbed into bed.
In the short time they had been there, the two of them had already found what worked best for them in such a small bed. Clint lay with his back against the wall, facing the room while Natasha tucked herself into him, also facing out. It was a little scary to both of them how natural it felt.
Without any planning or forethought, doing his best to simply enjoy the moment, Clint dropped kisses down Natasha's neck. Her hand snaked up to cradle his head behind her.
“Yes,” she murmured.
During their time in Faruza's room, they had kept talking to a minimum. The unspoken rules of same-room sex had dictated the terms and that had quickly developed as one of them.
“Tell me what you want,” Clint whispered in her ear, his breath making her shiver.
That she did, using all kinds of fun and descriptive words, and he obliged her every whim.
:::::::::::
Bags packed, airline tickets and rides to the airport standing by, the two couples met for lunch one last time. Faruza invited the pair to come visit her family's compound as soon as possible, and plans were made for six weeks out. S.H.I.E.L.D. was ecstatic, as was Faruza.
Sticking to the traveling athletes cover, Clint and Natasha flew home commercial and 24 hours later, touched down in New York. Saying goodbye for the first time in two weeks, both agents seemed sad and a little wistful for the end of what had been an easy and unexpectedly pleasurable mission.
Clint opened the door to his apartment, dropping his bags by the door as he made his way to the liquor cabinet. The only way he was going to survive the first night without Natasha in weeks was going to be with the aid of some bourbon.
Usually able to sleep anywhere at anytime, it was disconcerting to the archer that he couldn't fall asleep after crawling under the covers. At the end of most missions, he got home and essentially slept off the experience, waking up to a new start, free of the mission's parameters and guidelines. Maybe that was the problem here. He didn't want to wake up free of his new ties to Tasha. And he didn't want to get under the covers alone.
As good as he was at his job, though, there were some areas in which Natasha was that little bit better and stealth ops was one of them. So it was that Clint wasn't aware that his partner had entered his apartment until she slid into bed next to him. Hand instantly on the knife under his pillow, it was Natasha's scent that loosened his grip on it.
Noting that it was shortly after four in the morning, Clint smiled as Natasha settled down in front of him.
Feeling that nothing he could say would be adequate, Clint simply kissed Natasha behind her ear, and pulled softly on her earlobe.
Natasha simply pulled his arms tighter around her, burrowing into his embrace.
Go for the gold it was.
/fin