Chapter Text
Of all the things that Natasha Romanoff had been asked to do for a mission, being a housewife had to be the weirdest. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind that she couldn’t, but her domestic skills had never really come into play in her work with S.H.I.E.L.D. In order to fit into her cover and the conservative gated community where she and Clint were headed, Natasha had to buy a new wardrobe. She wasn’t one for sweater sets, but from the intel in her mission folder, the women in this community did not do worn jeans and fitted t-shirts. There was now a considerable amount of beige and pastel in her closet.
Natasha hated beige.
Clint didn’t seemed thrilled about the polo shirt and chinos he was wearing either. Every couple of seconds, he fidgeted with the collar or shifted in his seat and Natasha tried not to laugh. Tactical gear was perfectly fine, but a pair of khaki pants and a collared shirt made him uncomfortable. She looked out the window at the desert thousands of miles below as she ran through her cover’s facts once again.
Natalie Anderson, 30, grew up in Westchester County, graduated from Columbia with a degree in Art History but decided to be a housewife, married three years to one Clint Anderson, really likes pastels...
As soon as they landed at S.H.I.E.L.D.’s west coast headquarters, they were given the keys to a silver Audi registered in their covers’ names and a moving van full of their “belongings.” A couple of agents rode in the van to pose as movers. Clint seemed to fall easily into his role as man of the house and insisted on driving. Natasha gave a sidelong look before putting her nose back in the dossier. The Andersons’ soon-to-be neighbors, the Greenes, were suspected Russian sleeper agents were part of a network that operated on the west coast and were linked to a series of attacks throughout the western United States.
The drive to Orange County took a little over an hour, giving Clint and Natasha enough time to make sure their stories were straight. Gentlewind Bay closed itself off from the rest of the world with a large iron gate and keycode access.
“They should’ve just called it Silent-But-Deadly Bay,” Clint remarked as they drove through the opened gates.
Natasha snorted quietly and looked out the passenger window.
A chill ran down Natasha’s spine. There were three styles of home in this neighborhood and they formed a pattern along the street. Even the mailboxes and flowers in the front yards followed the same pattern, as though each façade style had a specific type of flower bed that matched it. Natasha wondered if the residents of Gentlewind Bay coordinated their outfits on a daily basis. Given Clint’s natural desire to be removed from the crowd, Natasha knew it was going to be interesting to see him in forced interaction with the gated community set.
There was a couple smiling a little too widely to be genuinely happy to see them who were waiting on the front porch when they pulled up. From what Natasha could tell, these were not Missy and David Greene, the sleeper agents posing as affluent homeowners. Though if their identical homes and yards were anything to go by, Natasha wasn’t so sure they weren’t either. The woman was holding an oversized, cellophane-wrapped basket on her hip and waved with her free hand as they exited the car.
“You must be the Andersons! Welcome!” she said with entirely too much enthusiasm. “I’m Tammy Bradford-Rhys - with a ‘y.’ This is my hubby, Bryan - also with a ‘y’.”
Natasha was not a religious person, but she found herself praying to every higher power she could think of that she would not reach for the pistol strapped to her ankle. Instead, she accepted the gift basket from her orange-skinned, bottle blonde neighbor.
“Well this is just so thoughtful, Tammy,” Natasha said through gritted teeth and set the basket on the ground. “You can call me Natalie and this is my partn- husband, Clint.”
“Without a ‘y’,” Clint added, shaking their hands.
The Bradford-Rhyses laughed a little too loudly at the joke.
“We would just love to give you a hand,” Tammy said.
“Oh, we have it covered, but thank you,” she interjected. “Really.”
Tammy appeared to process the rejection and quickly recover. “Well then I hope you both can make it to tomorrow night’s HOA meeting. Everyone is just dying to meet the newbies!”
Clint and Natasha exchanged glances and then assured Tammy they would see her and the rest of the community there. Bryan and Tammy left them with an enthusiastic “buh-bye!”. Natasha leaned over once the pair had disappeared four houses down and said to Clint, “This isn’t a gated community. This is hell. This is beige hell.”
That evening, the Andersons had been properly moved in and unpacked their “home office.” This consisted of enough surveillance equipment and backup weaponry to take on the entire neighborhood. Clint admitted to feeling naked without a bow, but there wouldn’t be much call for it on this particular mission. He would have to make due with more easily-concealed weapons.
Natasha toweled off after her shower and changed into a camisole and yoga pants. Carefully working out the knots in her hair, she braided her long, red waves back before leaving the master bathroom. She considered the bed - it was large enough for both of them with its California king mattress, but she made it a point to never sleep beside anyone. The second bedroom in the home was being used for Clint’s would-be home office, however.
“Wow,” Clint said when he saw her.
Natasha paused. “What?”
“Nothing... you just look... different,” he stammered. “Nice, you look nice. Like that.”
Raising an eyebrow, Natasha looked down at her outfit and then back at him. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m going to sleep in the bed. You can, too, if you like.”
Clint nodded. “There’s a good acre of mattress. I think we’ll have enough room to spread out.”
Choosing the bed turned out to be an excellent idea because it felt downright heavenly after a long day of travel and moving boxes. The shower’s massager head had pummeled most of the knots out of Natasha’s back, but the mattress provided the right amount of support for her tired frame. Clint watched her from the corner of his eye and looked amused by her appreciative sighs and groans as she settled in. She curled up under the covers and didn’t remember the rest of the night.
~*~
Natasha shrugged. “Maybe they’ll give us a pass for just having moved in.”
“Or have us taken out back and shot,” he said.
“I wouldn’t put it past these people.”
Almost on cue, the front door opened to reveal a petite, dark-haired woman who was dressed in what could be best described as maid’s clothing. She greeted them and stood to the side, allowing them to pass into the bustling front room. Natasha took in the group of mostly middle aged couples and noted how alike they were in dress and manner. Every one of them turned their attentions on the new couple, sizing her up as she did them. She looped her arm around his and put on her best face.
Tammy brought them into the center of the crowd, introducing them to each couple. She remembered each and every one, but did not see the marks among them. Clint followed her lead as they ingratiated themselves with the other homeowners, mostly keeping quiet and letting her do the talking as the women in the crowd seemed to do. They received at least three dinner invitations and offers to join book clubs, golf outings, in-home yoga classes, and a few other social activities that Natasha would have otherwise had no interest in. Natalie, however, would be delighted to join them.
Clint and Natasha remained at the meeting in the hopes of strengthening their cover and that they might see the Greenes. According to Tammy, the Greenes had left on a week-long trip the day before Clint and Natasha’s arrival. No information as to where, just that they were visiting a sick relative of Missy Greene’s who lived out of town.
Once the community’s grievances about a new security team for the front gates, acceptable mailbox colors, and regulations about garden gnomes in front yards had been aired, the meeting was wrapped up and the Andersons returned home. Natasha typed up a report on the new information as soon as she was in the front door. Clint grumbled as he removed his button-down shirt and khakis behind her.
“How did we not know this?” he asked. “They could be anywhere right now.”
Natasha closed her netbook. “We hold here and see if they do by next week,” she said calmly. “It will look a lot more suspicious if the new neighbors move out a day after moving in.”
“Did you listen to those people talk? I saw that movie, and the wives turn out to be robots,” he said and pulled on a pair of black pajama pants.
“Funny, I got more of a Valley of the Dolls feel off of this group,” she said, smirking.
Natasha’s gaze was drawn to Clint’s revealed form. Over the years, they had seen each other in various states of undress (and typically, various states of bodily trauma along with that), but there was something different when she looked at Clint like this. He was getting ready for bed, not stripping down in order to patch up a wound from a grazed bullet. Of course, she had been attracted to him from the start, but pushed that side of her down to remain professional. There were times though, times just like this, where being with Clint made her momentarily forget about the job and allowed her to enjoy being with him.
The idea of playing house with Clint for a week until the Greenes returned was sounding better and better by the minute. She rationalized it by not being pinned under heavy fire and by living in a nice house, even if her neighbors may or may not be pod people and she was forced to wear pastels whenever she left the house.
Natasha found something to sleep in and didn’t bother changing in the other room. She could feel him watching her as she stripped down, but managed to hide the smile that tugged at her mouth.
~*~
From her daily research and observation, Natasha had concluded that they were an incredibly paranoid and insecure bunch and that manifested in the identical fashion sense, the overly friendly, but observant nature, and the need to live behind walls as though Gentlewind Bay were a fortified medieval town. They watched her just as closely as she watched them though with considerably less subtlety. The husbands, when she did encounter them during the day, watched her as well but for a completely different reason.
Gatherings seemed more of an excuse to display wealth and a way for them to check in with each other rather than true camaraderie. It made Natasha wonder if any rule-breakers were ceremonially voted out of the community or punished if caught. In preparation for the community’s potluck block party, Natasha had gone to the Internet to find party recipes that were easy to prepare for a crowd and that would not melt or otherwise degrade while being outside. Pasta salad was something that popped up repeatedly in her research and seemed pretty straightforward: pasta, chopped vegetables, mayonnaise, mustard, relish...
“Sugar?” she exclaimed, her mouth pulling tight in a grimace.
Natasha double-checked the recipe and sure enough - sugar was on the list and she hadn’t misread. Shrugging, Natasha added it to her shopping list. Before she left the house, she made sure to check in on Clint and his Real Housewives of Orange County marathon (he claimed it was further research) to let him know where she was going.
“Can you get me some Froot Loops?” he asked. “Oh, and some more milk.”
Natasha looked at the stack of dishes that he had yet to bring down to the kitchen and frowned. “Clean up the mess while I’m gone,” she said, “and keep an eye on the gear.”
“I’ve got it set to go off if something weird happens. Not my first time doing surveillance, Tash,” he said with a grin that made her glare at him out of annoyance.
Turning on her heel, Natasha strode down the hallway towards the staircase and called after her, “Those dishes better be clean by the time I get back!”
It only struck Natasha how quickly she had acclimated to domestic life with Clint when she was comparing boxes of different pasta shapes. Her thoughts drifted toward how they might interact if they were themselves and not playing parts for a mission. In some ways, she figured it wouldn’t be so bad to share her private life with him. She trusted him with all other parts of her life, so the logic would follow that she could let him into that area as well. Natasha dropped two boxes of rotini into her basket and made her way to the condiments aisle without any further thought on the matter.
The dishes were hand-washed, dried, and placed back in the cupboard by the time Natasha returned to the house.
While Natasha was preparing the pasta salad, Clint came downstairs fresh from his post-run shower and walked up behind her. Her hand stilled from chopping up the carrots, feeling him leaning over her shoulder. Her body reacted strongly to the clean scent of him.
“You should really know better than to walk up behind me when I’m holding a knife,” she said.
“Tash, you could probably kill me with your bare hands,” he pointed out. “I just wanted to see what you were making.”
“Pasta salad. Did you know they put sugar in this?”
“Uh, yeah. Didn’t you?” Clint replied.
“Pasta salad wasn’t really in the Red Room’s curriculum, Clint.”
He huffed, a quiet laugh against her shoulder. “Good point. Do I get to test it out before the party tomorrow or are you going to threaten me with bodily harm again?”
“You can have some. I don’t know what this stuff is supposed to taste like anyway,” she said and felt him step away from her. “Hey.”
Natasha turned around to look at him and said,“Thanks for doing the dishes.”
With a grin, Clint responded, “Anything for my little woman.”
~*~
“That is just so quaint! Everyone is going to love it,” Tammy exclaimed in her too bright and bubbly manner. “I brought my famous crab cakes. I hope you don’t have an allergy to them.”
“Oh, um, no. I’m sure they’ll be great, Tammy,” Natasha said. “Let me get one for Clint.”
“Before you do,” Tammy said, keeping her from walking away, “there is someone I would like you to meet.”
Natasha furrowed her brows. “I thought I’d met everyone in the neighborhood.”
“Well, almost. Those sneaky neighbors of yours got back early from their trip,” Tammy said. “I told Missy that you two had moved in while they were gone and she was so excited about meeting you.”
Before Natasha was able to process how the Greenes had slipped past them, Tammy was all but dragging her over to a petite blonde woman who was chatting with Tessa, a woman who lived two houses down from Natasha. The hardened look in her eyes gave away a lot more than the smile she presented Natasha with upon seeing her. It was the look of years of government-facilitated training and carrying out unspeakable acts and Natasha knew it all too well. She was staring at a trained killer in a pale yellow Donna Karan dress.
“Missy, this is Natalie, your new neighbor,” Tammy said, completely unaware of what was really happening.
“I’m sorry we weren’t home when you and your husband moved in,” Missy said in a measured tone. “Family illness.”
“I understand completely,” Natasha replied, “but Tammy was nice enough to make us feel very welcome.”
Tammy ducked her head and patted Natasha’s arm in a show of gratitude for the compliment.
“I don’t doubt that at all. My husband and I would love to have you two over for dinner,” Missy said. “Are you free tomorrow evening?”
A curl of adrenalin worked up her spine at being so close. “I think we are. Why don’t I go over and talk to him about it, just to be sure?”
Missy nodded, giving Natasha an out. She quickly made her way over to Clint without making it look too obvious and borrowed him from the group of husbands he had been talking to. Playing it off like a quick need for affection, Natasha put her arms around his neck and leaned up to whisper in his ear what had happened. She could feel the warmth of his hands through her dress as they came to rest on the small of her back.
“How did they get back without us knowing?” he asked, turning into the crook of her neck. A small shiver went through her as she felt his surprisingly soft lips against her skin.
“Your guess is as good as mine. We’ll make a plan tonight,” she said and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
Natasha lingered in Clint’s arms just a little longer than necessary.