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[vantagepoint]

[Texting anyone he thinks will want to spring him from his current situation.]

SOS, please. Can't take another therapy session.

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[study_in_scarlet]

“Hello, I am here for Agent Barton,” Natasha had told the secretary after striding swiftly and importantly into the lobby. Of course she received the usual apologies and mutterings of ‘Agent Barton is in an appointment’ but she only narrowed her eyes at the poor woman. “Well I am very sorry, but you are going to have to interrupt them. I am on orders to bring him back to the base immediately for a very important briefing. It cannot wait.”

It wasn’t so much the words as the tone they were delivered with that had the secretary making the call. To keep up appearances Natasha moved to wait by the door, checking her watch and clearly ready to hustle them out of there as soon as he emerged from the elevator.

[vantagepoint]

"You sure are a sight for sore eyes." The comment isn't anything out of the ordinary, so Clint doubted that it would tip anyone off to the game being played. Leaving the building quickly, that too would lend credit to her cover story. Even just by the time they stepped out of the front door, Clint felt worlds more at ease and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"My hero."

He grinned. Agents turned truants for the rest of the afternoon.

[study_in_scarlet]

“More than just your eyes will be sore if we’re late,” Natasha grumbled in reply, not waiting for Clint to cross the lobby before pushing open the front doors and exiting the building. Moving swiftly down the steps, she took a left on the sidewalk and kept moving, not slowing her step until she had rounded the corner and the building was out of sight. Only then did she turn to look at Clint’s grinning face.

“You owe me,” she stated. It was easy to say about the small things, and she wouldn’t hesitate to remind him of it, but no matter what she did she would always feel indebted to him. She had saved him countless times in the field, but he had saved her just as many; they would never be even. How could she ever repay the man who had given her a second chance at life?

[vantagepoint]

He knew it, and he'd help her out just as readily as she was willing to help him. That was part of what being partners was all about.

"We've got the whole day then." Clint's next suggestion was going to include some kind of hotdog stand and/or ice cream truck. Whichever they spotted first.

"Food? And then something ridiculously average. Like a zoo."

[study_in_scarlet]

Natasha scoffed and gave Clint a look that clearly stated that she thought his suggestion was childish, but she didn’t say no. There life was full of the extraordinary; it was fast and dangerous and anything but average, and she would be lying if she said that the prospect of playing ‘normal’ for a day wasn’t appealing. They had done so before, though the opportunities felt very few and far between, and they were some of her favourite memories. So often she had to play a role on assignments, she pretended to be other people so often she often wondered if she even knew who she truly was anymore. These few forays into normal always helped to remind her, even if they were ultimately bittersweet.

“Well it isn’t as if we can go back,” she conceded, her voice remaining neutral so as not to betray any excitement at the prospect he proposed. It would be good for him, she told herself; after everything he’d been through he needed more normal in his life. “I can’t remember the last time I went to a zoo.”

Her brows pinched together just slightly, the only indication that this thought was bothersome to her at all.