A/N: My hand slipped and I wrote another chapter. It is unedited, so please forgive any mistakes. I hope you enjoy this.

Two weeks.

Nat had been seeing Neville for two weeks. She had taken him out for pizza, forced him onto rides at Coney Island, and walked him down 6th avenue to window shop at impossibly expensive places. He had been absolutely fucking perfect. He looked at one of the crystal stores and said,

"I would walk in and break something before they could say hello."

He wasn't as clumsy as he thought he was. He tripped over things, and sometimes over nothing at all, but he was in control of himself. They were back in his hotel room when Natasha asked,

"What's it like to do magic?"

Neville shrugged.

"It doesn't feel particularly special. I'm not good at it, pretty average. Except in Herbology, which I love, but ... 'm not sure what you mean, what's it like?"

"Do you feel it?" Nat asked. "Do you need to use your wand to do it? Do you have spells or do you just think something and it happens?"

Neville laughed and considered her questions for awhile. Natasha curled into him on the sofa and stared at the television. It wasn't on; Neville said he didn't like it 'barking' at him. She stared at it so long it blurred around the edges. Neville wrapped his arm around her shoulders and said,

"Right, well ... I dunno if I feel magic. I've always had it so I don't know what it feels like to be without it. Like I said, I'm not particularly great, so I need my wand to channel magic. My friend, Hermione, though, she can do wandless magic. It's a very difficult skill to learn and she's the most powerful wizard on the planet."

"Should I be afraid of her?"

Something strange passed over Neville's face when she asked. He licked his lips and looked toward the ceiling.

"Is that always your instinct, to be afraid?"

"Only with things I don't understand."

"You were never afraid of me."

"I'm very skilled at reading people," Natasha said. "You were never a threat to me."

"Only because you didn't know I had magic."

"No," Nat countered, "because I knew you weren't the kind of person who would use it to hurt me."

Neville smiled and said, "You were right about that. And I knew you could kill me any time you wanted to, but trusted you wouldn't."

"Considering my body count, professor, not a wise calculation."

"Considering your heart, Natasha, I came to the only proper conclusion."

Goddamn.

She kissed Neville then said, "I might be going a bit soft."

"You did say you were a one-and-done, and we've done 'one' about twelve times now ..."

"We can make it thirteen later tonight," Nat teased.

"Hmm ..." Neville trailed off and rested his forehead on the crown of Nat's head. "What do you want from me in return?"

Natasha considered it. Nothing, really. Sex with Neville wasn't a chore, it was comfortable. Not in a routine way, but comfortable in a way that was safe.

"Would you show me magic?"

Neville tensed around her and asked, "You really want that?"

"Yeah," Nat said, nodding and pushing herself up. "I want to see what you can do."

Neville shook his head.

"No, I don't think I want you to see me do something that frightens you."

Nat pressed, "Have I lied to you?"

"No, but I've really enjoyed this, Natasha. Being here with you, ending my day with you is such a happy feeling. Right now you feel safe with me, or, at least I hope you do."

"I do."

"Then if I show you magic it could change how you see me, yeah?"

"I don't think so. I want to see this part of you."

"Well, I'm not very good at telling you no, am I?"

Nat laughed. Neville smiled and stood up to retrieve his wand. Nat went back to staring at the television screen, blank so she could see their reflections. She watched Neville leave the room and saw the moment he returned. She reconsidered for a moment. Neville might have been right, if it wasn't the sort of magic she could handle she might never feel quite right in his arms again.

Neville plopped onto the sofa next to her and said, "I'll do this, but I will start with something more pedestrian so you don't run out to the lift and I never see you again."

"Good idea."

"Right, well ..."

Neville was flushed pink. Nat smiled as he swished his wand then flicked it toward the television remote. It slowly rose off the coffee table in front of them and hovered in the air. Three inches, six, then two feet ... It flew higher until it was near the ceiling.

"You can make things fly?" Natasha asked, stunned. "That's amazing."

"Small things," Neville said. He slowly lowered the remote back onto the table. "Large objects require more power that I haven't got."

"Why do you do that?" Nat asked. "You speak about yourself like you're unimpressive, but to me you're just," she shrugged, "great."

Neville blushed. He ran a hand through his hair and nervously twirled his wand between his fingers.

"I like plants," he said. The blush did not fade. "I like to study things but so much of what we learn about magic isn't personal enough. Charms or Potions or Transfiguration ... Those things are useful, I suppose, but I want to learn about the world. Herbology is great because not only do I get to discover new species all over the world, it brings me closer to the people I meet there."

"Brought you to me," Nat added.

Neville's blush deepened as he replied.

"Yes, it did. I enjoy growing things. I know I will die one day, but I get to leave a lasting impression on the world that I can't do with a potion. And this is the one thing I was never horrible at. I speak poorly about myself because school was difficult. I was bullied a lot, especially by one teacher who thought I wasn't worth the fabric it took to make my robes."

"Sounds harsh."

"No, he, um, he said that in class after I spilled something."

"Oh."

"But my Herbology professor never looked down at me and she gave me every opportunity to learn. I have no bad memories associated with this and I really fucking enjoy plants."

"That's depressing," Nat quipped.

"The first seventeen years of my life were fairly depressing," Neville replied.

"Well then ... Show me a happy spell. Something that you have to be happy to do."

Neville thought about it for a moment and sighed heavily.

"Okay, but I'm going to need you to kiss me first."

Nat did so without preamble. Neville's fingers were tangled in her hair as he pulled her close, like he was trying to memorize the feel of his lips against hers. He broke away with his eyes still closed and he nodded.

"Yes, that'll do." He opened his eyes and half-shouted, "Expecto Patronum!"

A fine silver mist peeked out from the end of his wand, and it kept coming. The mist slowly formed itself into a shape Nat couldn't make out until it formed a perfect circle. A 'U' shape formed at the top like it was some sort of scarab beetle.

"Huh," Neville muttered, "this is new."

A few seconds later, a fully-formed spider was visible, about the size of her closed fist. Nat smiled at it. The spider slowly made its way over to her and landed on her hand. She chuckled as it crawled up her arm.

"Normally it's non-corporeal," Neville admitted. "It's never more than a mist ..."

"It's adorable," Nat said. The spider had reached her shoulder by the time she said, "They call me the Black Widow but I never told you that. How could you know?"

Neville quickly paled as he started piecing together a puzzle that Nat couldn't see. He stood up and stuffed his wand in his pants pocket. The spider disappeared and Nat looked up at Neville, confused.

"I'm not feeling well," he said.

"Oh," Nat said, concerned. "Should I go get you some soup or, you're British, should I grab some tea?"

"No, Natasha," Neville said, staring resolutely down at the carpet. "I think you should leave now."

"Right, okay ..." She grabbed her jacket off the edge of the bed and asked, "Should I come back tomorrow for thirteen?"

"No."

"Well I thought we had plans."

Neville walked over to the door and held it open.

"Please, Natasha, I think you should go."

She walked out the door, but darted back in just to grab Neville's hand. She tried to catch his eye but he wouldn't look at her. He squeezed her hand then dropped it before shutting the door between them.

.oOo.

She slipped.

Sparring with one of the nameless S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, she slipped. What was the problem? Everyone slips. Except the whole gym heard her hit the mat and turned to stare. Natasha huffed and jumped out of the ring. This was her first week back on duty after the Battle of New York and she was failing miserably.

"Nat?"

She didn't want to hear his voice. She kept walking, pretending she hadn't heard him.

"NAT!"

She walked faster until she felt Clint's hand on her shoulder. Without thinking, she grabbed his hand and flipped him onto the floor. He hit the ground and she heard the air fly out of his lungs with a sharp "Whoosh!"

"You should know better than to sneak up on me."

Clint grumbled something as he tried to stand up. Once he was firmly on both legs, he crossed his arms and gave her the look. She hated the look because he always saw more than he should. Natasha threw her hands up in the air and asked,

"What?"

"You're tense."

"Yes."

"This isn't like you," he said, concern evident in his voice. "Is something wrong?"

Nat nodded. Clint sighed and placed both hands on her shoulders.

"Yogurt?"

Natasha nodded again and repeated, "Yogurt."

.oOo.

The best froyo in the world was located at the bottom of the Bloomingdale's in Millburn, New Jersey. When they needed to speak without fear of being heard or seen, Nat and Clint went to Bloomies because hiding in plain sight was easier than trying to remain unseen. Nat chose vanilla, Clint chose chocolate, and they each took a chair on opposite sides of a rickety white table.

Clint kicked at the table stand and asked, "Was it a mission?"

Nat shook her head.

"Tasha ..." Clint frowned into his yogurt. "You look sad. I've always seen you, Tasha, but this is different and I don't like it."

Nat nodded.

"I made a mistake and I should have known better."

"Ah," Clint said with a grin. "Does this mistake have a name?"

"Possibly."

"Are you gonna tell me?"

"Don't count on it."

"Let me guess, you like him."

Nat sucked her spoon dry and admitted, "I like him."

"What's the problem?"

"I like him and he rejected me," she snapped. She put her unfinished yogurt cup on the table and let her head fall into her hands. "I hate this. I always keep it together, but at this moment when I want to hide myself away from him, I keep exposing myself to everyone."

Clint nodded.

"Tell me about him."

A tear slipped out. It surprised Natasha; she hadn't felt any buildup. She wiped it away and glanced down at her fingertip.

"He's wonderful."

"How'd you meet?"

"In a bar."

"You fell for a guy you met at a bar?" Clint playfully scolded her. "Tash, I taught you better than that. Bar fucks are one and done."

"I thought that, too, but he was different."

"Twelve-inch dick?" Clint guessed.

Nat stole a massive scoop of his yogurt in lieu of a reply.

"Come on, Nat," he insisted with a more somber tone. "You're my best friend and I want to be here for you. Let me be your friend the way you've always been mine?"

Natasha swallowed hard, and then she cried.

"I never let myself get close enough to anyone because they can reject me. And they should because of everything I've done." She paused to hiccup. "But he was different. Kinder, safer, really fucking great, Clint. It was ..." She paused again to laugh through a hiccup. "It was magical."

"What makes him different, Tash? Why him?"

Because he was the only person who could help me get over you.

"Because he never looked at me like I was evil, or like I would be a hot fuck. Like you said, he saw me."

Clint took several bites from his yogurt, but Nat wasn't all that hungry. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and took a deep breath. The tears eventually subsided.

"How did he reject you?"

Nat couldn't reveal the magic. Clint was too raw from it, and she would be hard-pressed to argue that she was of a different mindset. So she explained as best she could.

"I think he finally realized I like him more than a little. Dammit, I promised it was one-and-done, but I never expected him to feel whatever it was that I felt."

"You know, Tash, you might be wrong."

"How?"

"Maybe ..." Cint trailed off and shook his head.

Nat stole his yogurt cup and held it out precariously behind her. Clint's eyes went wide in mild horror and Nat grinned.

"Maybe what?"

"Nat, give me my froyo."

"Not until you say what you were going to say."

"I was just going to say you've got it backwards."

Nat set the yogurt down on the table.

"Maybe he realized he likes you more than a little." Clint grabbed his yogurt and took a bite. "I mean, a barfuck is hardly how you think you're going to end up in-"

"Do not," Nat warned. "Do not go there."

"Tasha." Clint stared resolutely down into his nearly-empty paper cup. "You know it's okay to be in love, right? It is alright for you to fall for someone."

"Is it?" Nat shot back. "I keep finding the wrong someones."

"Why do you think he's wrong?"

She shrugged and didn't answer. Clint stole her yogurt and picked around the strawberries.

"Not everything has to be a fight."

"It does when fighting is the only thing I'm good at," she replied. "I was trained to treat everything as either a threat or a target. I finally found someone who doesn't feel like either and he's terrified of me!"

"I don't know the man, Tash, but if I had to guess, as your friend, I would say he's not terrified of you. He's afraid that he wants something more than you can give him and he's trying to keep himself from being hurt."

Nat stared at a rack of clothes over Clint's shoulder.

"He's a teacher."

Clint didn't acknowledge that he heard her, too engrossed in the frozen yogurt.

"Someone set him on fire when he was seventeen."

"We have that in common."

"He's got a beard though," Nat teased. "Not sure you could pull off that look."

"And cover up this face?" Clint asked. "Not a chance."

Natasha smiled and leaned back in her chair. This was easy. Clint was never a fight. Like Neville said, he was the light that always managed to guide Nat back home. Back to the person she wanted to be.

Clint asked, "Does he know you could kill him with your thighs?"

"I don't think he minds; he enjoys being between them."

He laughed and admitted, "A brave, brave man."

Nat frowned and said, "Not brave enough to risk his heart on me, though."

"Then de-risk it. Try showing him you can make it work. Laura and I work through this together, and she knows I will be with her any time I can be. And that I'll make it work even when I can't. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs me more than I need them. I considered retiring after ..."

After.

Clint squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head from side-to-side like he was trying to shake the remnants of Loki from his brain.

"There are still fights to be fought and I want to win them. I want to win them with you, Nat, and you can't win if you're distracted by heartbreak. One way or another, you've gotta figure out where you stand."

Nat nodded in agreement.

"When the hell did you get so good at this?"

"I've always been this good," Clint teased, "you just never had any reason to ask."

.oOo.

The next day, Nat followed Neville through the streets until he stopped at a crosswalk. She walked up next to him and said,

"Hello, professor."

She was staring straight ahead, but heard what sounded like Neville sighing with his entire body. The signal changed and they were smushed together in the middle of the mass migration across the street. Neville instinctively wrapped his arm around her shoulders to keep her close. However, he dropped his hold the moment they touched pavement again. Nat tried to ignore the way her heart sank into her stomach.

"I should have known you would find me."

"Trained assassin."

"Right." Neville kept walking and Nat quickened her pace to keep up with him. "Why are you here?"

"Because I want to know what I did wrong."

"No, Nat," Neville said as he stopped walking and pulled her off to the side, out of the way of passersby. "You did nothing wrong and I'm sorry if that's how I made you feel."

"Then what is this?" Nat asked, frustrated. "I thought we were ... we were ... I thought we were planning on thirteen."

"Oh, is that all?" Neville snapped.

Nat took a step back. He'd never spoken to her like that before. Neville looked heavenward and asked,

"Did you ever think of me as anything more than a way to get over him?"

"Yes."

"Well that makes this more difficult," he mumbled.

"I know it was something about the spider," Nat said. "I thought magic could pull me away from you, but I never considered it would push you away from me."

Neville stuffed his hands into his pockets and said, "The spell it's, um, it's called a Patronus." And then he didn't say anything else. He turned to look at the street like he was seriously contemplating running into oncoming traffic.

Natasha grabbed the front of his shirt and demanded to know, "What the hell does that mean?"

Neville brushed her off and said, "We use it to ward off different kinds of evil. You conjure it by thinking about your fondest memory."

"Which memory did you use?"

"Snogging you."

Nat felt her face go hot at his words.

"Kissing me is your fondest memory?"

"Yes, Natasha, because you ..."

"Because I what?"

"Before you, my Patronus was just a mist. For a Patronus to take an animal form you must either be a powerful wizard or have a fiercely happy memory."

"Kissing me makes you happy!" Natasha insisted. "You might have noticed I enjoy it, too. What is the problem?"

"The problem is that I am falling in love with you!" Neville shouted. "A Patronus can change form when its caster falls in love, usually into a representation of the person they're in love with. When mine changed into a black widow ..."

Natasha hadn't heard anything after "I'm falling in love with you."

"Could you repeat that?"

Neville swallowed hard and admitted, "I love you, Natasha. It is completely mad, I've only known you two weeks, but you have done nothing but make me feel comfortable as myself. You've come to see my magic as something other than terrifying. You look at me like I am a future you never thought you could have, and that's just it, Nat. It is a future we can't have."

"Why not?"

"Because a month from now I will be back in England and you will still be here! We have lives an ocean apart. I would rather end things now than have you become my next Hannah."

"I fly a jet that can cross the Atlantic in an hour," Nat said. "I have missions across the world. I haven't ever had a home, professor, and I'll be damned if anything can keep me away from whatever this is, because being with you is the closest I have ever felt to home. Maybe I am a little bit in love with you, too, and maybe I see the same future you do."

"It can't work, Natasha."

"For you? I will make it work."

"I can't ask you to do that."

"You don't have to."

Neville started walking and Nat followed him. He said nothing for three blocks and she followed him right through the door of his hotel. They stood next to each other on the elevator, neither of them saying a word. Nat figured if he wanted her gone he would have said as much. He walked to his room, unlocked the door, and Nat followed him inside.

Before the door had shut, Neville pressed her against it and kissed her, hard. His hands cupped either side of her face and Nat wrapped her fingers around his belt loops and pulled his lower half flush against her. He broke away just long enough to ask,

"Thirteen?"

Nat nodded and repeated, "Thirteen."