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Clint’s been hovering for weeks. And while it is endearing the way that he randomly gets this look to his face, and his jaw mimes speaking but nothing comes out. It’s the best thing ever in the years they’ve been together, watching him be reduced to a middle school boy asking his first girl out and failing miserably.
So of course it takes Natasha to lay down what’s going on.
“He’s never going to ask you to marry him,” she says. Darcy’s eating in the cafeteria and swallows her bite of sandwich before leting her jaw drop a little.
“Is that why he’s been acting like a constipated hummingbird?” Darcy quirks her eyebrows because hey, if Natasha is going to act as Clint’s feelings relay, she should listen.
Natasha sits down at the table, directly across from Darcy, “He can’t figure out a way to say something about it without making it sound like he wants to break up.”
“Yes, that would make sense. Because everything Clint’s learned about romantic relationships have come from the movies.” Darcy takes another bite to think for a moment, “It didn’t occur to him that if I had a really pressing desire to be married that I would just ask him?”
Natasha levels her gaze, raising both eyebrows.
“Point taken. My boyfriend is that much of an idiot sometimes.”
For just a moment, Natasha softens. Every time Darcy has seen her do that, it’s been a bone-weary exhaustion. She holds the truth of herself so close to her heart that it takes everything you can throw at her before it shows, “Darcy, the thing is, he wants to. Or at least be able to say it and mean it. Barton loves his work and loves that he has a base and you to come back to at the end of the day.”
“He hasn’t had a whole lot of stable in his life,” Darcy says, even though it’s not needed. They both know, “But he thinks that he can’t have both; the work and the stability. That’s marriage to him?”
“That’s what he wants marriage to be. He’s a sweetheart that way. But as long as he has the work….”
“He wants me to have an out.” Darcy looks down at the table and just breathes before saying firmly, “I hope he knows that I never plan on taking it.” She hopes that the finality in her voice gets through. Natasha nods and leaves as suddenly as she appeared.
It’s not even that Darcy wants to get married. She never was the girl that planned her wedding as a kid, and she’s the only one of her college friends to not have a pinterest board devoted to the subject. The only one that seems to be concerned with…oh, her mother. She had the phone on speaker the last time mom asked about “when is that nice Avenger going to marry you?” and Darcy had only changed the subject. Again. Twice, because since when does one subject change actually change the subject with her mother?
He wants me to have an out, she thinks, because his work is dangerous. Because his life has always been a series of temporary moves and events; three years with Darcy and just a little longer living in the same space, still terrifies him.
She works late that night, preparing the final drafts of tomorrow’s public technology releases, and she barely kisses him goodnight before falling into bed. Clint draws her closer and tighter than normal. He’s gone in the morning, training mission with the new SHIELD recruits, but she finds that he’s hooked a bracelet tight around her left wrist. Five long links of titanium, each with a purple inlay the color of his uniform.
Clint’s not a gift-giver, and tends towards the random more than meaningful when he does. This is different, an answer and something that’s not quite a promise.
She digs a little bit, because she’s not without her own spying techniques now, finds the jeweler and orders a matching bracelet, the inlay the color of her just-kissed lips and hangs it from his very favorite bow for him to find.