Marksman

This was nothing new to him, even if he and Natasha never had an actually talk about the job coming first, it did and they both knew it. Their work was too important to let it fall under whatever it was they were doing. Not that he was totally sure what that was anyway, they tended to just have sex and hang out, neither of them were very good at relationships.

“You're missing out, Stark, I look great naked.” This was still hard for him, acting like he didn't think that all looked at him and saw some monster that had nearly killed them all. How could they just forgive him for what happened? They barely knew him and the first thing he does is kill agents and nearly all of them. Natasha knew all of the dark secrets in his past, her forgiveness hadn't really surprised him. The others though? He kept expecting to turn around and have to face Stark in his suit to pay for his crimes.

Steve decided to join in the conversation, clearing his throat and trying to get their attention. “Obviously your private life is your buisness, not ours, but Tony is just concerned.”

“He doesn't need to be, the job comes first. We both know that.”

Everything Is Paused (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

She raised an eyebrow, at Clint, mostly but she wasn’t about to back down from a confrontation with Stark, friendly or otherwise.

“So how long has this,” Tony made a broad, sweeping motion with one hand, and managed to infuse enough crudeness into the gesture to earn him Natasha’s begrudging respect. It almost an art form for Tony Stark, to make everyone in the room feel uncomfortable, “been going on.”

“Why do you want to know?” she counted.

“Curiosity.”

“It killed the cat, you know.”

“Ha!” Tony cawed, pointing a triumphant finger. “But I have it on good authority, Agent Romanoff, that satisfaction brought it back. Well this explains why you were so resistant to my charms when we first met.”

“That could also be because she had no desire to catch something from you, or because I am so good in bed she doesn't need anyone else to fulfill her needs.” Clint laughed and took a drink of his beer, not moving his eyes from Tony's face. He'd had enough training in reading body language that even Stark couldn't hide things from him easily.

He was going to leave it up to Natasha to decide what they did or did not tell Tony and the rest of their new team. They were private people, it was a means of survival for them.

“I highly doubt that, Barton. Now I'm in a mostly stable relationship with the wonderful Pepper, missed out on your chance with me, Romanoff.” He was sprawled out on the couch, not trying to look provocative, that was his typical stance, Clint had learned. Despite how much he made fun of the guy, he was suprisied to find he honestly liked Tony Stark.

“Are you a voyeur, Stark? Is that why you want to know?” That remark got a laugh out of Bruce, though not from Steve.

#legendofarchery

Everything Is Paused (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

“That makes my hand on your leg a little weird,” she counted, giving his thigh a pat. It was rewarding to see Tony sputter, but also why lie? She never said she was a robot.

“Oh,” Stark said. And then, “Oooooooooh.”

She rolled her eyes. “Just because a woman’s not attracted to you, Stark, doesn’t mean she can’t be attracted.”

“So you’re attracted to Barton?” When she merely inclined her chin and gave him a blink, he made a sharp, exasperating motion with his hand. “Fine then. So, Barton, does Agent Romanoff—what—notch your arrow?”

"There is a long list of archery and sex metaphors you could have used, but you went with that one? Not gonna lie, I'm a bit disappointed, Tony." Clint wrapped his arm around her shoulders and smiled. Steve looked like he wanted to bolt out of the room and Bruce was very busy looking at the television remote. The two of them were far better at handling Tony, Clint and Natasha gave as good as they got from him.

Tony merely shrugged and kept looking at the two of them, clearly not bothered by Clint's mocking. "Don't dodge the question, Barton. Inquiring minds want to know." Bruce kicked Tony's shin and tried to get him to let it go, it didn't work.

"Look at her, Stark. She is the most beautiful woman alive, and she is fantastic. So, yes, she notches my arrow. Often."

Everything Is Paused (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

She smiled, laying a palm flat on the table. “If I’d known this was part of the requirements for being an agent, I might have stayed a freelance.”

The sun burned brilliantly outside the large glass window. There was still large scale recover going on in the city proper, and she would have preferred to be there, than listening to Stark ramble on. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had reported Stark to display ‘textbook narcissism’.

Tony might have overheard at least the tail-end because his words tapered off and he was looking at them.

“Problem, Stark?”

"Just curiosity, Romanoff. You never explained this." He made a vague gesture towards the two of them at the word 'this', his voice made the other Avengers look in their direction, no one else spoke. Either they had figured it best not to ask or juts assumed they were sleeping together, only Tony would need real confirmation.

Clint smiled at Natasha from the side, the smile was less one of joy as one that made him look even more mischevious than he did naturally. Though he wasn't totally comfortable around the others yet, part of him still assumed that they all looked at him and saw what Loki had turned him into, that's what Clint saw in the mirror sometimes; it was easier to get comfortable if he could joke around. “We're brother and sister, faternal twins actually.”

Everything Is Paused (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

Tony was talking about something, Clint had long since stopped listening to him. No that he didn't like the guy, honestly he did, but sometimes he just started talking and it went so far over his head that it was either tune him out or have some sort of seizure trying to keep up with him. Bruce happily nodded along with Tony, they had their own little world of science that Clint would never even try to be a part of it.

He took another drink of the beer in front of him, it wasn't often that he drank beer so he made sure to enjoy it when he did. Drinking anything other than really strong vodka or whiskey was basically unheard of when it came to him and he rarely drank for any other reason than to get absolutely plastered. It was easier to fall asleep when he knew he wouldn't dream at all, being drunk was the only time that happened.

Somehow Clint found himself at some 'team-building' excersice in what used to be Stark Tower, a lot of people called it Avengers tower now. Even though they didn't all live there it was what served for their base of operations. They were still new at this, everyone was trying to figure out how to act around the others and Clint still found it difficult to believe that he was supposed to be a hero now. He was a killer, had been a killer since he was nineteen years old, nothing changed that.

He leaned over to whisper in Natasha's ear, "This is possibly one of the strangest things I have ever been told to do by S.H.I.E.L.D, and I was on that mission in Toronto with the lizard-god things that lived in the sewers."

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

They’d slept in the same bed before, of course, but there’s always been a sort of line, especially in the sanctity of HQ. She had her space, and he had his. Neither of them had entered this without any sort of baggage, and between them was a deep-sated respect that privacy and space, and licking your own wounds in the dark.

Her room had always been hers, her private sector, just like his room had always been his.

She smiled, rubbing one hand across his cheek. “What made you think you had a choice, мой мужчина?” She returned the kiss, soft and sweet, not intended to bring any lust to a boil. Just—him and her, kissing. Halfway to normal. She tugged toward her bed. “Maybe I’ll get you a dream catcher? There’s a Native American chief who owes me a favor.”

"Not sure it would be able to handle all of my nightmares." He smiled, laughed slightly at the words that came from his mouth. She knew his nightmares, had been around when he woke up from a few, as he had for hers, it was a fact of their lives. Wake up with screams caught in their throats and sweat soaked skin. Most night Clint took a shower and went to the gym until he passed out.

With a sigh of relief, a noise he wished he could hide, he slide into her bed and let his head fall against the pillow. It was cool and felt comforting in every way that his own bed made his shiver with memory. His face half buried in the pillow he looked up at her and gave a sleepy smile. "Come here."

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

Laughing, she brought him back against, arms weakly encircling his waist. Her whole body shook with laughter, though she couldn’t say why.

“My motives weren’t complete altruistic,” she pointed out and ran a hand down his sweaty chest. “I missed you, hotshot. I wanted you back. Don’t go away again, okay? At least not to anywhere I can’t follow.”

She didn’t say, but Natasha thought he already knew, probably—that she would follow him, if he went somewhere, right down to the bowls of hell if that was what it took. She was the Black Widow, she never left survivors unless she had to, and he was compromised, gone, out of his body and out of control. She should have taken him down, but she hadn’t. She had hesitated, and she brought him in a live.

She never brought anyone in alive.

He wrapped his fingers around hers, looking at their hands as he held them together. "I won't, not if I can help it." He didn't ask for her to promise the same thing, that wasn't who they were, wasn't how this worked. They would follow each other to the grave, there was no one on this Earth that he would follow further than her.

Clint loved her, he knew that, was sure that she knew it too, but he didn't say it. Just kissed her again, slowly and sweetly, wanting her to know how much he adored her. "Can I sleep here, just for tonight?" Even if he was feeling better, there was no way he would make it through the night alone.

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

Clint reluctantly loosened his grip on her, letting her stand on her own before taking a step back. Just an inch between them, he could still feel the heat from her skin and smell her, it was intoxicating to be around her all the time but particularly after sex.

"That would be a change for us," his voice was a laugh, younger and more at ease than he had been in weeks. His arms wrapped against her waist and he pulled her tightly against him, holding her. "Thank you."

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

Her slid closed and she slid into the kiss, hands fisting at his shoulders. “I’ve missed you, hotshot,” she mumbled when her mother had a moment free. “I’m glad you came back.”

And she meant that in every way. She didn’t think she’d ever be comfortable discussing just what it had been like, having him MIA, having him in the hands of Loki Laufyson—knowing he’d hurt Clint in unimaginable ways just because cruelty gave him pleasure.

One hand slid down, to his abdomen, fingers scrapping lightly against muscled flesh. Her hips canted forward. They both needed this, but he needed it more.

“Don’t hold back,” she said, pulling her mouth away a fraction of an inch, teeth biting down into his lower lip. “You can’t scare me, remember?”

If he was going to break, he wanted it to be Natasha that broke him, let her wrap her fingers around him and destroy him like she had done to countless men before him. He could be happy with that kind of death, if the last he got to see was her triumphant smile, he would want nothing else.

But he needed to live, for himself and for her, for this team they were apparently a part of now. "I can scare myself though." Clint had already scared himself, the first time he killed someone and the first time he didn't care about the death he caused. His hands gripped the hem of her shirt and ripped it over her head, tossing it on the ground without a care. There was more skin for him to touch, that's all he wanted.

Her skin was so warm it felt like fire, she always thought she was cold but he'd never felt skin so warm in his life. "I always scare myself when I'm around you." He left words unsaid, they always left words unsaid, it's who they were and always had been. Gripping her fingers he moved them to the edge of his shirt, urging her to take it off for him. He pulled at her pants, trying to push them down without breaking the new kiss he started.

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

Not so long ago she might have made a comment like will we even make it to my room? and laughed with him, but she held back. Sex between them was always explosive, volatile, but there was always an element of control underlying it all—because she had never fully let go of hers, even if he had.

There was no control now, there was only her hand trapped in his his, and her showing him her trust in him, letting him take her where he pleased.

She kissed him fiercely, trying to imprint the idea on him—I’m here, I’m real. When she had first been deprogrammed she had needed something solid to cling to. She knew what this was. This was about sex, but more than that it was about him trying to prove to himself that Loki hadn’t completely torn him apart, that he could put himself back together, that he was still him.

And she had already sworn to herself that anything he needed from her, she would give—because she did trust him.

Pulling away from her lips he managed to meet her eyes for a moment before turning away and heading towards her room again. His lack of control scared him, he was used to always being aware of his movements, knowing exactly what he was going to do before he did it. Now, he was just running on instinct and desire.

The hand not holding hers was closed into a fist, nails digging into his palm so hard he swore there was blood. Focusing on the pain was the only way that he kept even the semblance of control, but pain was easy for him, he'd been in pain his entire life.

Clint knew which room was her's, had been to it many times before this happened. He opened the door and pulled her in after him, pushing her against the wall as he closed the door. His body followed her's and his lips crashed against her again. "Nat, I missed you."

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

She gave herself, fully and completely. No half-measures here. Clint needed all of her, in those moment, so Natasha would give him all of her.

Craning her neck to give him better access, her fingers clenched around his shoulders. Surrendering control didn’t come easily, or naturally, to her but she forced herself to loosen her grip. Clint had never hesitated to hand all control over to her, when she needed it. She could return that favor.

“I’m yours,” she told him, voice edging toward breathless. “Whatever you have to dish out, I can take. So take me.”

"Your room. Can't go in mine, not yet." His lips were pressed against her skin and he nearly groaned at the feeling of her. With great reluctance, he pulled away from her but kept his hands on her skin. A few days after the battle Clint had locked himself in his room and ripped it to shreds, his last act of defiance before he closed himself off. He hadn't cleaned it up, barely went in the room anyway.

He grabbed her hand and walked quickly through the door out of the gym. It was only a few steps out into the hallway before he turned around and kissed her again, needing to remember that she was real.

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

Her first reaction was to grab at him, hold him tight enough to break bone, to squeeze all that doubt and worry and fear out of him—until he was back to being Clint again, cocky and arrogant and sure of himself.

But the moves tonight, whatever happened, couldn’t be up to her—not tonight. She couldn’t force what she wanted onto him, he had to want it. She had said her peace—if he wanted to spend the next night, the next two nights or week or month of year, she would let him; healing was not something she could do for him, she could only change the bandages when needed.

When he came closer, stepping into her personal bubble, her fingers itched to grab, to peel at his shirt and find skin—find him, assure herself he was alive and whole, and that he was warm, not chilled from Loki’s touch; they hadn’t so much as brushed hands since she’d knocked Loki out of his head, Clint had been so careful—but she merely tilted her head to keep their eyes aligned.

She smiled, a slow dangerous smile. “I’ll keep his brother busy for you,” she promised.

He brought his lips down to hers and kissed her with bruising force. If he could just feel something besides anger and fear, he could make it another day. One more day was all that he needed, one day could lead to infinite days. His teeth bit into her lower lip and sucked it into his mouth, fingers still digging into her hips. She was warm under his hands, warm and real, not a figment of his imagination not a ghost that was chipping away at his mind.

He slipped his fingers under her shirt and touched every inch of skin that he could reach. “I need you,” his voice was practically pleading as he moved his lips down her neck and his teeth sought her skin. She grounded him, kept him real, kept him alive.

If he couldn't kill Loki, he could at least live to spite him. Jumping off a building would bring him too much pleasure, knowing that he had ruined Clint's life. He would be stronger than that, would prove wrong the people that watched him so carefully in the halls. "Please, please, please," he was mumbling and not sure where his hands where anymore. Teeth bit sharply onto her collar bone, leaving a mark that almost made him smile.

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

She wore she could see the fear and pain gnawing away at his bones, standing before her like a pilgrim come for absolution. She was the last person any one seeking goodness should look to.

“I can’t promise you that,” she said, because she could only be honest with him. She wouldn’t lie to him, not when his existence hinged on the knowledge he’d take from this. “I wasn’t able to—before.”

What she meant was, simply, that only a handful of years back, if Loki had been in his mind then, controlling him, she wouldn’t have hesitated to take him out. She would have snapped his neck and been done with it. Even with his knife to her throat, her goal had only ever reached incapacitate. Maybe she could kill him, when her back was to the wall and the world was burning down around her, but Natasha knew that if she thought she had a glimpse, a slim chance, of letting him live over letting him die, she’d take that first.

Her hand closed over his battered fist, lifting it and reaching it to the trim line of her hip. “I can promise you that I will do everything in my power not to let you hurt people, but even if you hurt others—even if you hurt me—you know it wouldn’t be you? Those hands wouldn’t be yours, that mind wouldn’t be yours. You’d just be a body, a vessel. It wouldn’t be your fault. If you wake up with blood on your hands—a woman’s, a man’s, a child, maybe Steve’s, mine?—you’d pull yourself together and you’d make the person who did it suffer like they’ve never suffered before.”

It was a hard truth she’d come to when the last of conditioning had ebbed from her, when the sheen of Bolshevik red had at last leeched from her vision. She’d hurt a lot of people in her life, and she couldn’t say they all deserved it, and each one was like a weight tied tight around her heart but she’d come to understand—there had been someone else behind the wheels of her mind—it had been her hands and her body and her guns and her bullets, but it hadn’t been her and she owed it to the people she hurt to try to make what amends she could, and never forget.

Her mouth sought his, unhesitating. She wouldn’t hesitate, not now when it felt like each little stutter from her would be a dig into his heart. She understood he was afraid of hurting her—she was afraid of hurting him, too, sometimes—but he’d never been afraid of her, and she needed to return the favor.

“But you—Clinton Francis Barton, Agent Hawkeye, мой мужчина—would never hurt me. Do you understand.” She forced his fingers to close around her hip, tight enough to bruise, and didn’t flinch.

He nodded, even if he wasn't sure that he believed her. Natasha was like a windstorm and he would let her carry him wherever she chose.

Thinking was exhausting, he was so tired of living inside his own mind, so tired of denying every invitation out that he received, tired of not trusting his own body. If he let himself fall asleep for even a moment he woke up screaming less than an hour later, flashing blue eyes starred back at him from every mirror and his own eyelids. Most of all he missed Natasha, feeling her around him, the one person in the world that he trusted was the person he couldn't trust himself around.

If she trusted him, that had to be good enough for him, he couldn't keep living like this. There was always going to be blood on his hands, so much that he could never wipe it away, but he felt clean when he touched her. The blood on both of them disappeared when she touched him. His hands dug into her hips and he took a step closer to her, though there was barely any room between them. "I'll kill him, if he ever sets foot on this planet again. I will shoot him so full of holes there will be nothing left for his brother to take home."

What Have I Become? (closed to Natasha Romanoff)

There was a promise, a hint, of a shudder at the small of her back—not fear of him, but because she knew the sort of sick, sadistic pleasure Loki would take, in making Clint kill her. It wasn’t even the idea of her, dying, but the knowledge that the god would make sure Clint survived long enough to come back into himself and see what he had been made to do.

But she steadied herself. And crawled right back into his personal space. This wasn’t a time to back off, to let him lick his wounds. Clint Barton was always distance, in a way, he was always the man on the roof—it was never the trees and always the forest for him.

He needed to look at the trees.

“You’re severely underestimating me here, Barton,” she pointed out. Her fingers curled into a fist and planted against the spot on his abdomen, were muscles jumped. “And even if you did—let’s say you did hurt me? It wouldn’t be you. It’d be him, and you’d wake up, pull yourself back together because that’s you do. And then you’d wrecked hell all over Loki in my name.”

She twisted, stepped in even closer, her right foot sliding between his two. “And nothing you do is going to make me afraid of you, Clint. So quit trying to push me away. I don’t need to be protected.”

He fought down the urge to move away from her. She was right, he wouldn't be able to push her away, she was stronger than he was. "Promise me something, if he gets in my head again, kill me. I can't do this again. I can't wake up and know that I killed innocent people, that what I have spent my life learning was used against people without my consent. Promise me."

His hands stayed at his side but he managed to look at her, not in her eyes, he was afraid of what he would see in her. Clint wasn't afraid of dying, hadn't been for a long time. At least if she killed him he would know it was for a reason, to protect people, including her.

Ever since he had woken up strapped to that chair it felt like he was drowning. Lost in memories that weren't his, would never be his, Clint would never have done those things. He would never attack S.H.I.E.L.D, never hurt Natasha, but he had, his hands, his mind, his bow. All of that damage was his. It didn't matter that he wasn't in control of himself at the time. Agents weren't supposed to fall that easily, let people in their heads with barely a fight.

Slowly, he brought his head down to hers, putting his forehead against her own. "Promise me, Nat."