Natasha always smiled when she remembered the time she couldn't sit straight for three days for the bruise on her back where it had hit the doorknob. If Clint was anything, he was intense. About everything. All the time.
And she loved that about him. Loved how he could knock her out of her own head and make her forget everything but him, until the next time. How she could take all the rage and regret and pain out on his body, scratch and bite and he'd look at her, dig his fingers into her hips so hard it would bruise, snicker and challenge her. "Come on Tash. Is that all you've got? Hurt me." Because he knew she needed it, and so did he, though of course he'd never tell her that. Didn't have to, though. And he'd wince when he slipped his shirt back on, but he'd always be grinning too. At least a few of the scars on his back she had put there because sometimes, a lot of the time, there was really no difference between fighting and fucking, at least not for them. They just weren't fighting with each other. Any blood drawn between them, and there had been some more than once, was just to even the scores they couldn't settle elsewhere. Pain canceled out pain and that was all.
She loved that he didn't treat her like she was made of glass. Even when she felt like she was. While everyone else in her life tiptoed around with "Are you okay's" or would just steer clear of her entirely when she had that brooding look in her eyes, Clint would break her to put her back together again and later she'd cherish the ache of the angry red grip marks around her wrists which would turn purple and yellow eventually and remember how she tried – always tried – to get the upper hand, to never give in, how she'd fight him every step of the way just for the sake of it. But she could never break his grasp, even when she fought like an angry badger he would always be stronger, could always hold her down and make her take it until she stopped twisting her wrists and spitting curses at him and would whisper his name.
They made each other feel alive and whole, strong and fixed, they knew the taste of one another's blood and tears and they never held each other after because they didn't need to. What they gave to each other was beyond comfort, the name of the other etched on their bodies in scars, their blood having run together. Which is why, even when she didn't see him for weeks, she could always feel him there.
But sometimes, every way in which he was always there reminded her of every way in which he wasn't, when she was bruised and beaten in mind and body, when the pain she carried wasn't the good type, when the bruises had faded, when he was so close yet so far away. She didn't know what or who he did during those times and didn't particularly care because she'd always be his and he would always be hers, but sometimes she needed him so god damned viscerally that she hoped he could feel it and that he'd come to her, using her need for him as a beacon.
And sometimes he did. Other times, he didn't.
Sometimes she would try to talk and couldn't because it never really worked. She could stare into the wet, brown doe eyes looking at her and want to say something, something that started with "I feel" or "Thank you" but the words themselves closed her throat and fell all over themselves. Bruce had tried, he really had, in his sweet, patient way, never pushing and barely looking at her, sitting on the edge of her bed in her room staring down at his hands, waiting, but for all the languages he spoke he didn't speak this one, didn't speak hers, and she didn't speak his, but his eyes said "I know, please just talk to me" and she wanted to be angry with him, wanted to scream "You don't know, you don't know at all what it's like" but she couldn't do either one because he did and he cared. Not that Clint didn't. It was just... different. Clint could take the part of her that wanted to lash out at the world and destroy everything she touched, because she couldn't destroy him. Bruce, though, he was so fragile. She'd shatter him and never be able to put the pieces back together even though he – or the Other Guy, really, were they the same person? - could physically outmatch even Clint, obviously, but her acid tongue could burn Bruce and melt him and he had no defense against that.
Although the fact that he was still sitting there and hadn't sighed and walked out yet was impressive in its own right.
He hadn't said anything out loud but Natasha shook her head and softly answered "I can't..."
He nodded and turned away, put a hand on his knee, pushing himself up to stand because he hurt too, he was just as broken as she was inside and out.
"Wait. Bruce... don't..." and he froze like that, half sitting, half standing, almost afraid to move for fear of making the wrong move because he knew how she could be when she got like this. Everyone did. "I'm not going to..." She reached out and put her hand softly on his jaw and he looked back at her, perplexed and stricken. "Just for tonight, OK? Just for right now."
"Just for right now," he repeated back. "Sure."
It was almost like she'd never done this before, any of it, and maybe she hadn't, not like this, because she wasn't sure where her hands should go, leaning into Bruce with only half her body, his hand on her knee, gentle and warm, feeling strange. His kisses were soft and liquid, warm and tender and he held back until her fingers slipped through his hair and then he wrapped his arm around her hips and eased them down until they were side by side, her legs under and over his.
He didn't rush, is what she noticed, because maybe she was used to rushing or just not thinking, but it was all right because the hand resting on her hip locking her close to him was strangely soothing and he felt good, thinner and smaller than Clint but strong in his own way, somehow warm and familiar and safe. She put her own hand over his on her hip and wrapped the other around his shoulders and felt Bruce smile against her lips.
Maybe he did know this language. He just spoke a different dialect.
This was... it was nice. Just nice. It wasn't that Bruce didn't turn her on. He absolutely did. He was smart and funny and handsome and will wonders never cease, an absolutely amazing kisser, but the thought of using Bruce Banner to silence her inner demons, though she could and he'd have let her probably, seemed inconsiderate somehow. They would come apart at some point, probably wishing both that more had happened and being glad it hadn't, but not while he had his thigh pressed between her legs and her hands under his shirt and his tongue sliding against hers. Sometime after that.
For now, though, Natasha liked the weight of Bruce's body, the little noises he made in his throat when she dropped her hands to his hips and rubbed against him, the way his lips felt on her throat and his breath uneven in her ear. She turned her head and sought his lips again, kissed him deep, desperate and wanting, wrapping her leg around the back of his and she did want him, not just this (although that too), him, because he felt like home and he tasted like innocence. Still, somehow, she couldn't bring herself to do it. Amazingly he'd made her stop thinking but not completely, because she knew she'd ruin him. He wouldn't come out of the Black Widow's web the same. Very few ever had. And she liked Bruce the way he was. He was perfect just this way.
Finally, when there was nothing left to be done, when lips were raw and the aching in their bodies had crested and receded, when hands had twined and intertwined in futile pleasure and they knew exactly how their hips fit together, names had been whispered with quiet murmurs in ears, she pressed her back to him and slept, without meaning to, with his arm around her waist and his hand stroking her hair.
If she had ever loved anyone, or ever could, she loved him, just for tonight.
The knock came somewhere between dusk and dawn, but Natasha just rolled over and buried her face in Bruce's shoulder. "He's going to kill me," though he said it without any real emotion, as if he didn't care and had already accepted it as fact. His hand cradled the back of her head.
"We didn't even do anything."
"Except that we sort of did."
Natasha smiled against his shirt. He was funny even when he didn't mean to be. "I said for tonight, didn't I? It's still tonight."
"Then he'll kill me in the morning."
She reached up and brushed his hair out of his eyes.
"He won't. He gets it. Go back to sleep," she murmured, throwing a leg lazily over Bruce's and kissing him on the cheek, because even though she'd always be Clint's, there would be all the nights in the world for bloodshed and battle scars. Tonight she was Bruce's, he was hers, and it wasn't morning yet.