Work Text:
Natasha stared at the phone in her hand, and said several highly uncomplimentary things in Hungarian. Fortunately, the only person around to hear them was her seven-month-old son, and he was too busy babbling as he bashed his toy octopus into the ground. For a moment, she was tempted to join him. Why had no one told her that babies were so cheerfully violent? It suited her mood perfectly.
She had to go into the office. New intel for her current operation (she still wasn't back in the field, but it was her operation), which needed to be poured over and analysed as soon as possible. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue – Clint was John's main caretaker, having retired after he was born. But today Clint was off at the archery range with some friends, and Natasha didn't particularly want to take him away from that without it being an emergency. Which this wasn't. This was just inconvenient, as her normal babysitters were either scattered or called in as well.
Natasha sighed. “Well, Vanya,” she said to the baby in Russian.“Can you promise to be good?”
She didn't get a reply, and the toy octopus sounded particularly poignant as John clutched a different tentacle and made it squeak.
Natasha tried not to think of it as an omen.
– –
The sound of a baby screaming was not one often heard in the San Diego field office. At least not in the office part as opposed to the day-care part. Although honestly when the dulcet tones of an unhappy baby was heard in the actual office, it was heard on the weekend. People had plans on the weekend, people couldn't find babysitters, and the day-care wasn't open. The weekends was when you saw harried agents walking the corridors with infants who honestly didn't give a shit what plans they were derailing.
Nick Fury had plans this weekend, which was why he was in the field office avoiding them. His oldest granddaughter was getting married and what, exactly, was the point of being the director of an international peacekeeping organisation if you couldn’t invent international crises to get out of conversations about seating plans.
(He'd already investigated the future granddaughter-in-law; accountant, partly put herself through college by being a call-girl – she seemed level-headed and street-smart, and Nick approved. He just couldn't use investigating her as an excuse to vanish anymore.)
The source of the indignant wailing was to be found on the second floor inner-balcony, where Romanoff was walking backwards and forwards trying to get her baby to shush. He was a study little blond thing, twisting and kicking as he screamed. Romanoff's expression was perfectly neutral, which was never a good sign, and Nick moved out to join them.
“-Sir?” Romanoff didn't pause in her pacing, but she did raise her eyebrows a little. “Sorry about the noise.”
“Romanoff,” Nick said, very evenly, “If I can do paperwork in a warzone, I can do paperwork with a screaming baby.”
The corners of her lips curled up briefly, and then John managed to hit her in the mouth. “Nyet!” she snapped, reaching up to (gently) grab the tiny fist. “No hitting Mama.”
Nick regarded the pair for a moment, thinking about the new reports regarding the situation in Romania, and the tightness between Romanoff's eyes. He didn't have to think about the wailing – babies tended to make sure they weren't forgotten – but he did think about distractions and deadlines.
“Is Barton around?” he asked as Romanoff readjusted her grip on her wriggling son. Already, though, the wailing was decreasing in both volume and outrage.
“He's going to collect John on the way home. Should be here in a couple of hours.”
“Natasha,” he said, and she glanced back at him. “If you need, you can always leave John with me until Barton gets here.”
Romanoff looked startled, which wasn't an expression that was a frequent visitor to her face. “You? Sir?”
Nick schooled his expression to mildly entertained neutrality. “I've been around my fair share of children.”
Her brows creased slightly, and she tilted her head. “You can hold him,” she said, and then her face did another set of highly complicated, barely noticeable shifts when Nick managed to hold John with the ease of long practice, and John actually stopped crying in order to stare at this change of events.
John started crying again after a moment, but it was a small triumph.
Cautiously, Romanoff stopped looking startled and started looking pleased. “Thank you, Fury, I'll grab his things,” she said, and then bolted as if she'd handed him a bomb instead of her baby. Except that Romanoff would only ever hand a bomb over to a bomb disposal expert, and would certainly never leave Nick holding one without an express order.
“And that,” Nick informed John, “is one of the scariest people you will ever meet.”
John just chewed on his fist and looked miserable.
– –
When Clint finished his second match at the archery club, he took a break to grab some water and check his phone. Greeting him were two texts from Natasha.
Work called, taking His Highness with me into the office. Collect him on your way home? – H
Fury's minding John until further notice – H
Clint stared at the screen for a long moment. He knew those texts were from Natasha, because she signed them a H instead of an N. It was code for 'I am sending this of my own free will', as well as being a spot of whimsy, and a reference to the Cyrillic alphabet – all very Natasha (although she had to explain the reference).
Knowing that she'd sent the second text of her own free will did not help.
He texted back seriously?, because that was exactly what he was thinking. And then he texted, copy thanks, because Natasha was hardly going to reply quickly if she'd been called into work on a Saturday.
“Jason, you okay?” Maggie called out, and he looked up at her.
“Yeah, the wife just had to go to the office. Took the kid with her,” he said, and Maggie winced sympathetically.
“On a Saturday? Yeugh. You okay to stay for the final match, or do you need to rescue the offspring?”
“It's...no drama. Apparently-” Nick Fury is looking after my son? “- Nat's boss is helping mind him. Not an emergency.”
He hoped, anyway. Nat would tell him if it was an emergency.
Right?
– –
“Director Fury, I really must insist-”
“Shh. You'll wake the baby.”
Agent Strathern snapped his mouth shut and – finally – looked around Nick's office to find the pram. It was a well-made pram, not flashy but built to withstand a lot of damage. It was, it should be said, a little hard to miss.
And Strathern kept wondering why he failed the field agent's exam.
“Sir?” Strathern said, obediently quiet and completely confused lost. Nick held up his finger, and glanced over at the pram. John stirred, and then settled back into sleep.
“Yes?”
“Why-” Strathern visibly tried to change gears. “Uh, I need to talk to you about requisitions.”
“We've talked about them.”
“But-”
“And there is is a meeting on Monday. It can wait.”
“I- Yessir. I'll.” The agent's eyes darted towards the pram, and Nick could almost hear the 'who' that was forming in Strathern's mouth. “I'll...talk to you on Monday.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
It was, Nick reflected as Strathern retreated, a good thing the boy hadn't asked who John belonged to. It wouldn't do to terrify him by telling him that he'd nearly woken up the Black Widow's son.
Nick wasn't, after all, completely cruel. Only a little twisted.
– –
Natasha finally made it home at nearly 11pm in an unpleasant state somewhere between 'wired' and 'exhausted'. The townhouse itself was quiet, but there was a light on in the living room to help Natasha see where she was going and – upstairs – a light on in the master bedroom that let her know Clint was still awake.
She checked on John first. Her son was tucked in his cot, arm sprawled out over a stuffed purple dinosaur that she still couldn't believe Clint bought after what happened in Budapest (although she did have to admit that the toy T-Rex was very cute). He was currently snoring, and hopefully he'd stay that way. Resisting the urge to pick him up, Natasha blew the baby a kiss and then quietly left his room.
Clint was in bed reading when she walked in, wearing only one of his at-home hearing aids.
“I think,” he said, looking at her pointedly over the Louis L'Amor, “I may never recover from what I saw today.”
“Oh, really?” Natasha pulled a face at him, unbuttoning her blouse.
“Yes. I went to retrieve the kid, and I found him sitting on the floor of Director Fury's office. Fury was also sitting on the ground. They were playing with John's toys.”
Natasha paused with her blouse hanging off her arms, and then shrugged, letting it fall to the ground.
“To be fair to Fury, we did suggest investigating those things in case they'd been laced with technology to make them ridiculously playable,” she said, keeping her voice as deadpan as she could. Clint snorted, closing the book.
“I am deeply shaken,” he said, solemn except for the way his eyes danced.
“Of course you are, darling,” Natasha breathed at him before walking over and giving him a lingering kiss. His hand slid up her arm, and she regretfully noted that wired as she was, she was too tired for the combination to be a good one.
“I'm having a shower,” she added, “but then I might be in the study until I'm calm enough to sleep.” Clint took her hand, kissed her knuckle, and then paused in sudden thought.
“We could use John as a secret weapon in negotiations,” he said. “If he worked his magic on Fury...”
Natasha rolled her eyes at him. “Too unpredictable. We'll never know if he's going to be charming, or start screaming the house down. I'm going,” she added, kissing him lightly again and extracting herself.
Her last thought, before her mind was taken up by issues of hot water and combing conditioner through her hair, was that on Monday she needed to add some money to the running bet on whether Fury had a family or not. She had, it should be said, gone from ambivalence to being firmly in the affirmative camp.