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The first time Natasha got a concussion with SHIELD, it was because a building fell on her. So when Clint dug her out, panicked and desperate, and found her alive, and mostly unharmed, he found it a little comical that she spent most of the helicopter ride home to the base and medical facilities complaining about how her head hurt.
“A building fell on you, Romanov,” he replied dryly, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
“But I don’t get hurt,” she argued. “Besides, buildings don’t fall down for now reason.”
“In Tirana they do,” he replied.
“Yeah, well, that’d make sense if we were in Tirana,” she retorted.
Clint sat up and frowned at her. “Natasha, where were we today?”
She glared at him. “Miskolc.”
“Right,” he said with a sigh. “What is 2+2?”
“Five,” she snapped but at the look on his face, she ghosted a smile. “In large quantities of two.”
“What is my middle name?”
“Francis.”
“What is your name?”
“Fuck you.”
“Close.”
“Why are we playing twenty questions?”
“I think you have a concussion, Natasha.”
“Who died and made you a doctor, Barton?”
“We were in Tirana today.”
“I knew that.”
Later, when her memory loss increased, much to Clint’s worry, and they kept her overnight in the hospital, he woke in the hospital chair where he had drifted off. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dim light of the room. He realized why he had woken. “Yeah?”
“Thirsty,” she murmured from the bed.
He got up and poured her a glass of water. He found a straw and helped her drink the water. Even in the low light, he could see her eyes were still dilated and unfocused, slipping over his face unsure. She had called his name but clearly had no idea why she couldn’t get out of bed and why she was in a hospital.
“What happened?” she asked.
It was the fifteenth time she had asked the question in the last three hours. “A house exploded and fell down on top of you in Tirana.”
She smiled a bit. “Oh. That sounds right.”
He smiled roughly back at her and ran a thumb down her cheek. “You got a concussion. You’ll be alright. Your body heals super fast. They think they can release you in the morning.”
She said drowsily, slipping back into sleep again, “I’m a lucky girl, Barton, to have you.”
His heart skipped a beat and he rested his hand on top of her head. “You are. Don’t forget that.”
But of course she forgot it. In the morning, she remembered her mission, her name, and what had happened, but had forgotten everything that happened overnight. Clint didn’t tell her. He figured it was better that way.
The second time she got a concussion it was from being too close to a bomb blast when it went off in Syria. Clint hadn’t been there. It was one of the times that SHIELD tried to put Natasha on a regular team and deeply regretted the experiment, not only because she ended up with a concussion again. That being said, Natasha was not exactly the easiest person when she was disoriented and confused.
“Agent Barton to the Medical Wing, Agent Barton to the Medical Wing,” the helicarrier’s PA system blared noisily.
Clint stopped sparring instantly, but his partner did not, landing a blow to Clint’s collarbone that made him snap, “What the fuck. Stop. They just called my name.”
“Sorry,” said the other officer but he didn’t sound too sorry.
Clint glared at him and stomped off to medical where Coulson was standing outside of a room looking as amused as Coulson could manage to look. Clint said, “What’s going on?”
Coulson gestured inside. “Natasha had a head injury, can’t remember any of us except you. Congratulations on being the one to explain to her that she has a concussion, she needs to take it easy for the next couple of days, and that we’re not trying to poison her.”
Clint pointed at Coulson. “If she kills me, I want you to do the paperwork.”
Coulson’s lips twitched a bit and his eyes danced. “My pleasure.”
“Natasha,” Clint said, walking into the room like nothing was wrong.
She came at him, feet and fists flying, but the concussion had her just slightly off that he was able to fight her back and pin her to the bed. He straddled her, sitting down on her and scowling. “Natasha. Who am I?”
“My asshole partner who let Coulson send me abroad with absolute morons. If you tell me this is why I’m lucky to have you as a partner, I will fucking kill you.” Natasha snapped.
Clint called over his shoulder, “Coulson, you’re wrong. She’s totally fine.”
The third time Natasha receives a concussion, it’s Clint’s fault. Still, if he was faced with driving the car into a wall or into a wall of fire, he’d still choose the wall. Regardless, she hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt because she had been busy shooting their enemy through the rear window (or, rather, the hole where the read window previously existed). She was thrown to the front of the car, hitting it with a crack, and when the airbags deployed, they slammed her face first against the front passenger seat.
“Fuck,” Clint said, tasting blood in his mouth. “Motherfucker.”
“Did you hear me tell you to drive you into a wall?” she grumbled, using a knife to deflate her airbag and quickly checking the magazine in her gun. “Why the wall, Barton?”
“Saw a Bourne film. He went over the side of the parking garage wall.”
“Yes, because your life is exactly like a movie,” she snapped, cutting him out of his seat belt. “I hate these things.”
“Are you kidding me?” he said rubbing his head. “My life is exactly like the movies. People are chasing us through Budapest firing guns off the top of their Chevy’s, there’s a bombshell of a woman next to me refusing to wear her seatbelt and shooting back at them, and my car was faster. My life is a movie.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” She said.
They began to walk out of the parking garage where they had lost the people persuing them when Clint noticed that Natasha was frowning and squinting at the letters and numbers on each level. He said with a sigh, “How hard did you hit your head?”
“You’d think,” Natasha replied, “they’d make my skull more resistant when they screwed with my body in other ways.”
He rolled his eyes. “Your skull is fine. Your brain is small and rattles around a lot.” He held up three fingers for her, stopping in front of her. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Like six, but it’s hard to tell when you’re waving them around like an idiot.”
Clint shook his head. “What month is it?”
“June.”
“September, but good try.”
“Fuck you.”
“What year is it?”
“2003.”
“What month is it?”
“June.”
“September, but good try. What’s 2+2?”
“Five in large quantities of two.”
“How lucky are you to have a partner like me?”
“I’m not that concussed yet, Barton. Ask me again in a few hours.”
“You’re adorable when you’re concussed, did you know that?”
“I can still kill you.”
“Okay. Here’s two advil. Come with me and try not to shoot your gun at anything right now.”
Later that night, in their hotel in Budapest, Clint stayed up all night to make sure that her concussion didn’t worsen. They had improved her body’s healing capacity when she worked for the Red Room so she typically didn’t have concussion symptoms for more than twenty four hours but it didn’t hurt to stay up with her. When she woke, still groggy, he helped her to the bathroom and waited for her outside of the door, and then carried her back to bed. Though she healed quickly, she appeared to get the worst types of concussions for those twenty four hours.
As she passed out again, she squeezed Clint’s hand. “Ask me again.”
“Ask you what?”
“What you asked me before.”
“Oh. How lucky are you to have a partner like me, Romanov?”
She smiled and gripped his hand tightly. “Too damn lucky.”
He kissed her temple and whispered, “Lucky is a two way street, Tasha.”
She didn’t say anything. But the next time she woke up, she didn’t say a word to him. He didn’t mind. Not that much anyway.
The fourth time Natasha got a concussion was on their first time on a mission as the Avengers, officially anyways. She used his backup bow that she was carrying to shoot a grappling hook to a building, but she had chosen a weak support beam and as soon as she hit the nadir of her swing, the whole thing came down. She had an injured ankle and a kid in her arms, so she twisted in the air and took the brunt of the fall on her back. He saw her head hit the ground. He saw everything.
“Widow’s down in the warehouse,” he said calmly. “Proceeding to her location.”
“Copy,” said Steve in his ear.
When he reached Natasha, she was sitting upright, grimacing, and the kid they were saving was sitting nearby, unharmed. Clint checked the kid first and then squatted by Natasha. He held up two fingers. “You know the drill.”
“Two,” she said, “but I know I have a concussion.”
He grinned at her. “Four in twelve years isn't so bad. Don’t sound so defeated.”
“I don’t lose,” she replied, giving him a sad look.
“It isn’t a game.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked but then slouched against him and let him hold her up while they waited for Steve and the rest to clean up and get them out of there.
Later, she was laying on the couch with a bunch of boys around her fussing about her. Clint went to the kitchen to make her tea when he heard Tony asking her, “Have any good dirt on Barton?”
“Ooh,” she laughed, her voice pitched strangely because of her concussion. “He has a tattoo.”
“A tattoo!” Tony sounded delighted.
Clint ran back into the living room. “Natasha Alianova Romanov, don’t you dare.”
Natasha smiled him smugly. “I could. But I only know because you got shot once. I’m sure that Agents Sara Henderson or Lily Weiner or Hanna Mahn or Kylie Cruz could tell us much more detail.”
Clint rolled his eyes at her. “Darling, for a girl who can’t remember two plus two right now, you seem to remember my other partners quite well.”
“Two plus two is five in large quantities of two,” she laughed. She sat up and said seriously to him, like they were the only ones in the room. “Are you going to ask me your question?”
Clint glanced at the team who looked intrigued. He shrugged. “You know how lucky you are, Romanov?”
“Pretty damn lucky,” she said with a sigh, and she lay on the couch, her head on Clint’s lap, her feet on Steve’s, while the team watched the final installment of the Harry Potter movies.
The fifth time he saw her with a concussion it was because she had been taken captive and beaten. They found her on the third day, bruised, but alive, and somehow, amazingly, with the information they needed. Clint carried her out to the roof in his arms and held her the whole helicopter ride home, glaring at anyone who raised their eyebrows at them. It was his partner who had been captured because of bad intel and they would have to deal with him if anyone suggested that he leave her alone. He knew how to deal with her.
She argued with him the entire time when they got home. “No, I don’t need help showering.”
“You can’t stand.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’ve heard that before. Natasha, your head is purple.”
“Yeah. It collided with a wall sometimes.”
“Do you know what month it is?”
“I’m not even going to pretend.”
So he stripped her systematically, keeping his touches clinical and quick, refusing to let himself run his eyes down her body. He turned on the shower and pushed her in, scrubbing the blood and dirt and grease out of her hair and skin. She let him, her arms limp to her sides.
“We have a thing, Barton,” she told him seriously, squinting her eyes shut against the shampoo water running down her face.
“Do we?” he asked, distracted by cleaning a cut on her forearm.
“You have to ask me your middle name now.”
“What’s my middle name?”
“Fuck if I know.”
He smiled. “And what’s your middle name?”
“Trouble.”
He laughed. “It should have been. What’s two plus two?”
“Five, in large quantities of two.”
He shook his head, rinsing the shampoo out of her hair. “One of these days, you won’t be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Oh shut up, you’ve had more concussions than me.”
“I don’t have some crazy genetic modifications,” he reminded her. He turned off the tap and gestured to her. “Come on. Time to get dry and go to bed. You know you’ll be better in the morning.”
She shivered as she stepped into the towel he held open for her. He wrapped her up in it and she whispered to him. “What about the other question?”
He paused and cleared his throat. “Oh right. Wasn’t sure if you were concussed enough for this one.”
She looked up at him and rolled her eyes. She held out one of her arms with forefinger outstretched. She moved to put her forefinger on her nose and missed completely, nearly stabbing herself in the eye. “Ask me.”
He drew her by her hand out of the bathroom and into her bedroom. “How damn lucky are you, Romanov?”
“The luckiest,” she told him. She rose up on her toes, surprising him with a kiss. Her mouth was firm, determined, soft, insistent, her personality captured between his own lips. She sank away from him too quickly.
He didn’t move, just stared at her. She squinted at him and said, “If I don’t remember that, just play back the footage from this room. Stark records everything. I’ll remember that I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”
“Natasha.”
She said with a smile, “I’d go farther, but I want to remember it.”
Clint traced her lips with a finger and said, still stunned, “I’ll remember it for you.”
“Good,” she said, and climbed into the bed, falling asleep instantly.