The Way We Sleep
Title: The Way We Sleep
Disclaimer: Characters are Marvel’s. Story is mind. Headcanon is my crack.
Rating: R
Warnings: Smut lives here.
Author’s Note: This was written around one line. One shots aren’t usually my deal, but here you go.
Summary: He rarely slept, she rarely slept, but they slept better together.
Clint stopped asking questions a long time ago. First, because questions led to answers and he didn’t always like the answers. And second, because sometimes they didn’t lead to answers and they just got him smacked upside the head and not in the way he liked. It took a year after Natasha defected and he brought her in before Fury would let them go out on missions together. And even then, the Russian seemed unawares of how to work with a partner. She threw herself into situations, never told him what her plan was, and would disappear for hours at a time, reappearing out a different door, and he’d be moving as quickly and quietly as possible, changing his angle and recalculating wind speeds. But it hadn’t taken her long at all to figure out one benefit of partnerships. He rarely slept, she rarely slept, but they slept better together. She didn’t try to play him. She did not even warn him the first time. He woke suddenly and if he hadn’t already known her footsteps, if he hadn’t known that she wouldn’t have let herself be heard if she didn’t want to be heard, she would have been dead with a bullet in her forehead. Or, at least, Clint likes to think so.
The first time it happened was Calcutta on their third mission. She slipped into his room, into his bed, under his sheets, curled up into a very small ball, took a deep breath and slipped into sleep. She never touched him. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, holding his breath, afraid to move, afraid that in his sleep he may instinctively move towards her. And a part of him wanted to laugh. The Black Widow. The Black motherfucking Widow was in his bed. And he was still alive. How many men in the world could say this happened to them? He was reasonably certain he was the only one.
The second time it happened, she came for him. It was Benghazi, and it was blood and murder and innocents and city blocks decimated and it was the difference between SHIELD running a mission and SHIELD helping the Pentagon because goddamn it, even the idiots running SHIELD knew better than to use a drone attack against a single person in a densely populated urban area. Clint had protected kids, used his body between theirs and flying glass, and spent the better part of the day in a hospital, having glass removed from his body. She had hovered at his doorway, a scarf thrown over her head, her eyes still and frightened. He had been terrified. He hated hospitals. And she did not know what to do with his terror until they returned to their hotel, exhausted and still bloodied, and she climbed into his bed, wrapped her arms around him from behind, and pressed her body against his spine. And for the first time, Clint allowed himself to be held by someone. And for the first time, Natasha slept touching someone.
They lost count. He would wake up with her shivering next to him and he’d throw the blanket over her, or pull her against his body, pressing his face next to hers and he could feel the very small smile that pulled at her cheeks. He would wake up and she would be next to him, sprawled, all limbs, and curves, and that endless red hair, wide eyed and touching his face gently. Sometimes she started the night with him, wordlessly following him into his room. Sometimes she left, sometimes she stayed. There was no pattern to it.
When he fought the nightmares, she murmured his name like a metronome without touching him until he rose, shakily, to the surface, to reality, gasping, fighting for air, and reaching for her, and only then did she touch him, her hands running through his hair and gripping him close against her body.
When the missions struck too close to home, he gathered her into his arms, a small shaking ball of silent Natasha, unable to speak, unable to sleep, and he kept her here on earth until her mind came back from orbit. He could feel the difference in her bones, in her breath, in the way her skin stopped prickling.
For years, they slept together.
For years, they understood what each other needed.
It was years before they kissed, though most of SHIELD assumed they were fucking long before that. It was years because it took Clint that long to nearly die on her and it took that long for Natasha to realize that she desperately wanted to tie him down to this earth, to keep him here, and he needed a reason to live in some dingy, backwards alley in Sofia. She kissed him in the rain and he whispered, damn. i wanted to die, and she laughed, softly, desperately, over her worried tears, into the hollow of his throat. She kept her hands pressed over the wound and counted, aloud, to the extraction team’s arrival.
It didn’t surprise him, the way she was in bed. She could top or she could bottom, but she was the same either way. She liked the push and pull. She wanted to be pinned to the bed, to the wall, to the floor, the kitchen table. Her eyes lit up when he growled at her. She likes the feel of his bow fingers against her. They’re calloused. She could only come when he took his bow fingers to her clit. And when she came, she screamed. She bit his ear and shook it, laughing, low throatily, sinking down onto him. He learned Russian prayers that floated from between his lips into hers, both of hers. They did not do pillow talk. He taught her to throw darts and to fire arrows. She drilled him on cleaning and loading a gun with his eyes covered. She covered his eyes with her hands, with a blindfold, with her breasts. The latter were distractions, but he conquered them, and the reward was worth it.
After New York, after Loki, the way they slept was different. She came with him at the start of the night and stayed all night. She slept draped over his chest, like she could stand between him and Loki again. They only took missions together. After New York, he whispered apologies to her as he kissed his way up her body. And she held him down, he told her she was a spy, not a soldier, and she softened then, and they came together softer then. After New York, the way they were was different.
But she still bit him. He still made her practice firing his bow with her left hand from bed. She taught him Russian. And when they had nightmares, they were together.