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"Coffee?" means nice to meet you and let's talk and I heard they have a new flavor that tastes like spring.
Bobbi smiles as she clips her battle staves to her forearms. She wants to say, "I'm more a tea person," but instead she says, "Sure. On me." Their faces are still covered in grime and sweat (and a little blood). Bobbi has bruised ribs and Clint has some unattractive scratches crossing on the inside of his left arm, but those can wait. After escaping the clutches of death so narrowly, anything can wait. So even though they can feel the gazes settling on them as they pick up their lattes, they sit across from each other in a booth and strike up a conversation.
And frankly, neither of them care about the big, stupid smiles on their faces even after they fall into their own beds.
"Marry me?" means your smile is beautiful and I love you and please don't die without me.
It may be a little premature, considering that they've only known each other for a week. It feels like ages, though, which may be partly due to the fact that those seven days were spent foiling evil supervillain-y plans. Their daring strategy didn't get them killed, which they both appreciate greatly.
Bobbi is still reeling from the adrenaline pumping through her veins, but she knows she wants this - her and Clint, together - from the very bottom of her heart.
"Breathe," means I'm here and everything will be alright and it was only a dream.
Sometime Bobbi reads Clint poetry while he blinks away the dreams. Her husky tone pierces the air and cuts straight to his soul like a knife. Words flow off her tongue and the crescendo and decrescendo of her voice reminds him of the waves lapping the shores just outside the window. On rare occasions, she'll read him her own poetry and he listens while knowing that he'll never get tired of the passion infused in the way she reads, or the loquacious words assembled in a perfect rhythm that he could never write, because circus boys aren't taught to write snippets of stories in meter (or how to even understand meter, to be honest). Even after his heartbeat evens out and he can close his eyes without images burning the insides of his eyelids, she keeps reading.
It's not until a couple of years later that she gets nightmares too.
"Stop lying," means what happened to our trust and this is only going to cause pain and we had something but you're breaking it.
Clint's heart is in his throat - no, it's out there in the open, exposed and vulnerable, and Bobbi is shattering it into pieces. Maybe he should ask why, but it hurts so much that he can't do much other than clench his fists and yell. She yells back, many decibels louder than him, and that's just so Bobbi that he wants to hold her (he's still head over heels for her, God save him). He doesn't know who stomps out of the room first. His memory only consists of slivers between white static.
What he does know is that the silence feels like it's going to snap him in two.
"Is it really you?" means I thought you were dead and I'm so glad that you're not and I don't know why you're stepping off an alien spaceship but it's the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Bobbi holds her breath as the door of the spacecraft slides open. The feeling of earth underneath her feet makes her knees want to give out, but those thoughts fly out the window as soon as she sees him. It's Clint with a split lip and some god-awful costume, but it's Clint, not a Skrull, and suddenly she feels numb throughout her body. She steps forward with cautious feet, but when she's meters apart everything becomes too overwhelming.
He closes the distance for her and the kiss is rougher and sweeter than she ever remembered it to be.
"Coffee?" means let's try it one more time.