It had been a while...too long a while...since they'd done this. Or at least since they'd done this together. Their muscles instantly reacted to the familiar aches which were their own personal embraces. Natasha, particularly, was enjoying the strain in her arms and legs as she stretched them out before her, beside her and behind her. She enjoyed the strain, the proof of achievement. She sometimes amused herself with the fact that her body knew what was coming. She was in fantastic shape, as the wandering eyes in the gym were all too eager to betray, but since the Avengers Initiative had taken off becoming what was essentially a full-time superhero could be exhausting for the two agents. Being on your toes and agile didn't extend to the field only anymore, not when you were under Stark's roof. His newly completed training area within Stark Tower was a room that Natasha and Clint had both bolted for the second it was announced as finished.
Catching Clint's open stare out of the corner of her eye, she allowed herself a satisfied smirk as she bent down to touch her toes with ease. Clint tried to focus hard on not staring as he performed a similar stretch of his own, their eyes meeting mid-stretch as he lowered while she regained her upright position.
"Ready?" she asked him.
It was a courtesy she extended only to him. She never asked her opponent if they were ready to begin their sparring session - what was the use in preparing for a fight that you had to announce first? Stark may like the introduction, but she despised it - but sparring with Clint never really felt like work.
He returned to her standing position, nodding confidently. "Ready," he confirmed.
They stepped closer to each other, squaring each other up as they fell easily into fighting stances which were more well-practiced than their resting pose. Immediately, their eyes flew back to meet each others. Rule one: never take your eye off your opponent.
"Don't hold back," she told him, her voice softening but he knew it was a threat and not a request. The last time she suspected he was holding back she pinned him face down into the training mat hard enough to break his nose.
He nodded confidently, giving her a grin that was usually accompanied by the sneak observation of her behind, but not this time. "You're going down, Romanoff."
She raised an eyebrow and scoffed at him. "You wish, Barton."
Simultaneously, they both moved into the fight, and as usual it was Natasha who moved in for the first hit - a low, sweeping kick that would have sent any other sparring partner to the ground, but not Clint. He anticipated her move the second he saw her shoulders drop and jumped to avoid the sweeping leg, avoiding her foot and moving in for a stomach hit once he landed. She blocked his hands, initiating a series of puches, both open and closed hand to fly between them.
"Your evasion is improving," she complimented at one point - a rarity for her to speak during sparring - but she didn't sound out of breath at all.
"You're not the only one who's flexible," he reminded her.
"Still, it's better," she mused.
He nodded to himself, smirking. "The strength of your hits is a good motivation to move."
"Yeah, well, you obviously never felt the pain from one of your hits to the lower back..."
"I said I was sorry about that, and I did wait on you hand and foot, if you recall...whoa!" he exhauled when one of his blocks failed and he took a side kick to the gut. It didn't hurt too much, but it still threw him off balance and winded him.
She looked down at him from where he was kneeling and tilted her head. "Your accuracy is pretty bad today, though."
He looked up, raising an eyebrow. "Are you giving me tips?" he asked incredulously.
She shrugged. "We both know I'm better."
"Is that so?" he challenged, rising back up.
"Of course," she insisted, looking insulted at the possibility of anything else.
He gave a shrug as if it say "well, then" and threw himself into a kick as he spun aroun, however she blocked it easily, simply jumping back to avoid his foot.
"Stop holding back," she told him again. "We both need this."
She was right, they did need this. The stress levels of the last few days alone had sent his tolerance flying the ceiling and that was just because Thor had broken his fifth toaster. The reason they'd rushed to the training area was more because Natasha had grabbed his arm and physically dragged him to it after Clint had growled, actually growled, at Steve for whistling while he made his morning coffee. They needed this. Both of them.
As much as they wanted to believe otherwise the transition from 'hired killer' to 'responsible superhero' hard on them, even more so than it was on Tony, which irritated them both. Tony loved the attention, so if a child stopped him in the street to tell him how 'cool' he was, he'd lap it up and pose for photos and give an autograph onto the child's forehead. Clint had carefully removed Natasha from a situation a few days earlier where a little girl had told her that she was learning to do karate to fight like Natasha, and the former assassin had stared blankly as if to wonder why this tiny human was speaking to her.
He nodded before they fully threw themselves into the fight. This. This felt more like their comfort level. There would be bruises, there always were, but neither would mind, however a bruise anywhere above the neck meant that the other person made breakfast the next day - that was their deal. After ten minutes of strained hits, Natasha managed to bring Clint down onto the ground.
He winced as he landed on his back, and Natasha did allow a moment to panic - after all, he'd still been complaining (silently) of back pain since the minor incident of him jumping off a building during the Chitauri fight. She dropped down beside him, not to pin him for victory as she usuall would, but setting her hands either side of his shoulders on the mat. "Clint-"
She was that distracted that she hated herself for not realising it, but she found herself three seconds later pinned beneath Clint on the mat.
"Dirty trick," she pointed out, grinning from the adrenaline now she knew he wasn't hurt.
Clint smirked down at her, that sickening manly pride written over every muscle on his face, but his pride was more focused on the current submission, not the victory. "I thought you loved the dirty..." he teased.
He leaned down, still keeping her pinned, and brushed his lips against hers. If questioned, she'd have told him that the gasp was to catch her breath, not because of the rush of warmth it filled her with. He brushed lips again and again, finally settling in for a passionate kiss. When he was focused enough on her lips to forget about where her hands were he let them go, allowing her to wrap them tightly around his neck and shoulders when he pulled back from the kiss sharply.
"What?" she asked. It wasn't uncommon for training sessions to turn into something more...physical between them, but it was incredibly rare for him to stop midway.
"I can't...lose control..."
And there it was, the guilt. The terror that he'd been hiding. The feeling that even though Loki was gone from Earth, that he might not be gone from his head. He didn't want to lose control and bury himself in her no matter how sweet and satisfying it might be, because the last time he had lost control was for another reason, and he'd tried to kill her, and she could deny that all she could but he had tried to kill her and he knew that because Loki had made him experience every single second of it.
"He's not coming back," she said quietly, stroking a hand through his hair where she knew a headache would begin to form.
"You don't know that for sure," he said with doubt.
"I have a feeling," she shrugged.
Sighing, he looked down on her. "That's not exactly real evidence-"
"Close your eyes for a second," she interrupted him.
He obeyed instantly, of course he would, she still had a hand around his neck, and once he had she bought her hands up to his cheeks, tracing circles along his jaw. "What am I doing?" she asked him.
"Touching me," he acknowledged.
"And how do you know that?" she tested him.
"Because I..." he sighed, realising her intentions and dropping his voice to little more than a whisper. "Because I feel it."
"You should trust that," she told him simply. "You trust that reasoning in the field, but you need to learn to trust it outside of a fight." He kept his eyes closed as she leaned up to kiss him. "You know how we work, trust is more reliable than facts."
"You'd better be right," he whispered with a smirk that didn't reach his eyes as he opened them.
"Of course I am," she said, as his hands wandered, one of them coming to the back of his neck to raise her into a more passionate kiss. "I'm always right."