We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

“Look,” Clint says in Ottawa, “you don’t have to do this. It’s been over a year, and you never owed me anything anyway. For god’s sake, go back to your own damn bed.”

Natasha doesn’t move. “It’s negative thirty outside,” she says.

“You’re from Russia,” Clint grumbles; he was doing a good job pretending he didn’t feel it until she mentioned it.

“Come on.”

“Where are we going?” Peggy asked, not moving.

“She’s in a house a couple blocks that way, come on.”

“Step back so I can get out of the car, Jack,” Daniel said, and Jack blinked and stepped back.

“Should we just be rushing in?” Peggy asked when they’d joined him on the sidewalk. To her surprise Jack didn’t say anything snide as he started eastward.

“I’m sorry for imposing on you like this,” he said, pushing his scarf down to reveal dark stubble and a surprisingly pretty mouth. His voice was quiet and harsh, as if he hadn’t used it much, and no doubt he hadn’t, if he was travelling alone in the middle of winter. But the accent wasn’t what Clint had expected at all, not just eastern but definitely New York. “But the storm came up sudden, and I got no idea where the nearest town is.”

“You won’t make it in this storm,” said Clint. “Stay until it blows over, it’s no trouble.”

Steve’s not the ideal woman. She definitely wasn’t before, either, but now, now that she’s six feet tall, covered with muscles but her breasts barely larger than they used to be, if you wanted the ideal woman you definitely wouldn’t look at Steve Rogers.

You might look at Peggy Carter. Probably not, not once you got to know her—Steve’s never known the kind of guy who talked about the ideal woman to include the ability to punch your teeth in—but by looks, yes. Peggy looks like a pin-up, except that her skirts are longer.

Not that Steve’s absently drawn her in pin-up poses, or anything. Not often, anyway.

“Clint, I—”

“You don’t have to say it,” he said. She frowned at him. “Really.”

Nat looked down, and then she gave him a sardonic look. “I know you don’t believe anyone’s going to stay with you, but I’m not planning on leaving, Clint Barton,” she said, and there was almost, almost enough insolence for it to work, for him to stay calm.