Thank you all so much for the crazy amount of response this has gotten! I love seeing all your reviews and comments when I check :)

When Clint wakes up, the last sun rays of the day are filtering in through the blinds in his living room. The light casts strange shadows in the room, throwing the familiar furniture into chiaroscuro.

He's got a crick in his neck and his arm is asleep, but that's okay. He doesn't want to move and dislodge Natasha from where she's burrowed against him, softly snoring and drooling on his shirt. He doesn't get to see her like this nearly as often as he'd like.

Still, Clint can't stop himself from running his free hand across her features, even though he knows that could very well wake her. She's so beautiful, lying there against him, and not for the first time he feels like the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.

Or the dumbest.

Now that the lust and heat has abated, he could kick himself for revealing himself to her earlier. He knows her well enough to know that she wouldn't deal well with any half-assed declaration of love from him, no matter how earnestly he meant it. Natalia Romanova wasn't the sort of girl to swoon when someone professed themselves to her.

Even if he did butter her up with damn good pancakes first.

Love, after all, is for children, and she is anything but a child. He doesn't know what he expected her to do, honestly. Fall over herself to declare her undying love to him? He scoffs. If she did that, she wouldn't be Natasha and he wouldn't love her.

He feels like an idiot for it now. He should have known better. He should have kept it to himself, secret and safe, never revealed and only taken out for contemplation in the deepest night when he was alone. Natasha Romanov was honed into a weapon, fierce and untouchable.

But then, if she really was so untouchable, she would never react to him the way she does. If she didn't feel something for him, she wouldn't flush and turn her eyes away when he teased her, nor would she kiss him back the way she did. If it were just the drugs, she wouldn't throw herself in front of bullets for him in alleyways in Brazil.

And she most definitely would not panic when he tried to tell her he loved her but still follow him when he stalked off to sulk.

Right?

Clint can't even rely on his own senses anymore. Because what if he's reading more into it than he should? What if she really doesn't feel anything for him and he's just seeing what he wants to see because his heart gives him no other option? It's not like he's never fallen victim to it before. He knows that when he lets someone in, he feels too quickly, too deeply, and without caution for his own good.

He's such a fucking idiot sometimes.

He knows, or rather, tries to tell himself that whatever they have, however much she allows them to have, that it will be enough for him. It has to be.

He can wait her out, see what happens. She still slept with him despite the way he acted. And if she doesn't love him even a little bit, if all of this idiocy is because of the drugs, well, it's enough to know that she feels so strongly about him that she'll kick him in the head rather than just shoot him. It's more than she affords most people.

So maybe they're just friends, but, well, neither of them exactly has a lot of those, and if he occasionally gets to sleep with her, it should just be icing on the cake.

He refuses to contemplate how much that isn't true.

Natasha shifts against him in her sleep. She's got one bare leg hitched up over his hip, and the smooth firmness of it against him is enough to arouse his interest. The slight shift is enough to bring her pelvis in alignment with his, and he feels himself harden again, so he twists a little, tries to angle his hips so his erection isn't quite so insistently pressed into her.

She snorts softly, and he can tell from the sound that she's not far from wakefulness.

Natasha looks very different when she sleeps, and he knows that he's one of very few who have ever seen this side of her. The lines in her forehead smooth out, her jaw relaxes, and she looks young. Of course, he knows she's younger than he is, but when she's awake and alert it's easy to forget that age difference.

A few more minutes pass before she mumbles, "What time is it?"

He glances at the clock. "Seven. We slept through the afternoon."

Natasha sighs, but she does not sound unhappy. "You tire me out, Barton."

She sits up, letting the blanket fall to her waist. She stretches, arching her back, and he can't drag his eyes from the swell of her breasts.

Natasha catches him staring, though, since all her actions are deliberate, he doubts that she's really surprised that she's caught his attention. Her expression is fathomless for a long moment, like she's turning something over in her mind.

At last, she smirks down at him, and she adjusts so he can get a better look at her.

"See something you like, Hawkeye?"

It's the way she utters his codename as much as it's the unimpeded view of her tits that has him reaching down below the blanket to grab himself. He wants her, now, badly, but if he's a bit chafed, he can't imagine what it feels like for her. So instead of leaping on her like he wants to, Clint pumps himself once, slowly, staring slack jawed at her.

Natasha flashes a wicked grin at him and knowing precisely what she's doing to him, she licks the fingers on her right hand, then lets them fall to her chest where she toys with her nipples.

"Fuck, Tash."

And he's not really expecting a reply, which makes her response somehow sexier.

"Okay."

She turns completely around now, slipping out from under the blanket and facing him. She spreads her legs open wide open, one leg hanging off the side of the couch and the other flopped across his chest, her toes pressing into the cushion behind him, the awkwardness of her position necessitated by the couch.

From where he's laying pressed into the back cushions and half on his side, he can see everything as she pinches her nipples and fingers herself with her other hand.

Clint can't tear his eyes away, but he doesn't know where to look first. Every part of her is just so fucking perfect.

He tugs on his cock, but it isn't enough; he wants to feel her hands on him. He wants to touch her instead of himself, to run his hands all over that body and feel her skin on his. Coming between her thighs earlier was fantastic (not to mention a memory that he's going to keep close for the rest of his life), but he'd give his last breath to push himself inside of her and fuck her until she screams.

Natasha's got her head thrown back now and she's moaning and he just can't take it anymore. She's never been this uninhibited, and the need to be in her is cutting.

In one fluid motion, Clint sits up and pulls Natasha against him. Her face is so near to his he can taste her breath, and she's hovering so close to his cock that he can feel the slickness at her entrance.

"Tasha . . .?" He can hardly see straight, the desire is so strong, but he doesn't want to hurt her.

She sinks down onto him as a reply.

The tightness and heat grip him, and he very nearly comes at the suddenness of it. He tries to bury his face in her neck, but she pulls his head back and kisses him roughly, tugging on his hair and biting his lower lip.

She gasps as she moves, rolling her hips and grinding against him instead of thrusting, and he's in goddamned paradise.

"You get me so wet, Clint."

He can't get enough of this new, unexpectedly vocal side of Natasha, the one that whispers dirty things to him while he's buried inside of her. He's heard her use dirty talk before, sure, over the comms on missions where she lured people to their doom. She never did it like this, though, in between gasps and nudges and appeals to deities.

She's never said it like she means it.

He really fucking hopes it's not just the damn drugs.

He starts to thrust, his hands on her thighs to help raise and lower her, and he's glad that she wasn't lying about how wet he made her because he can feel where she's chafed from earlier. Nor is she moving as frenziedly as she usually does, so he scans the room behind her, searching for the bottle she'd carelessly tossed aside earlier.

When he finally spies it, he stills her motions. "Hey, Tash, let's slow it down a second."

She pouts prettily, but he knows she understands what he's aiming for because she stops moving, contenting herself to squeeze him with her inner muscles.

He could come just from that.

Focusing on the task at hand, with one arm keeping her firmly in place, Clint reaches for the bottle of lube lying underneath the coffee table. He squeezes a good amount onto his palm, and she slides off him, putting her weight onto her knees on either side of his hips and balancing with her hands on his shoulders. He takes his time applying it all along her slit, slipping in and out of her, teasing her, paying special attention to her clitoris and smirking when she presses herself against his palm.

And then she moans, drooping against him, and his brain shorts out. Clint grabs her hips and pulls her back down onto him with a grunt.

"Tell me what you want, baby."

She still hasn't stabbed him for the last time he called her that, so he tries the pet name again, hoping that his luck holds.

It does.

Natasha starts rambling in Russian as she rides him, running through all of the things she would do to him given half the chance. He can't wait to take her up on those offers, but for now he just wants to lay back and surround himself in her.

She's so utterly lost to the moment, and he can barely hold back just looking at her and feeling her screw him so mindlessly. She's leaning back and bracing her hands on his thighs just to keep the angle right. Her hair is disheveled in just the most fascinating way and her breasts are undulating in time with her movements and he can't stop touching her. He splays his fingers low across her belly as his thumb works against her and he feels fuzzy and warm all over his body and he's come so many times in the past two days that he isn't sure if he can come again or not, but this is even better because it feels so fucking good sliding in and out of her.

He's not sure how long they remain that way, with Natasha bouncing on top of him while he watches her every move lustily, but eventually she's quaking around him and crying out his name, and it's that last bit in particular that makes him orgasm. The shout he lets out would be embarrassing except that it isn't, and he's never felt so good in his entire life.

Clint slides back and to the side, taking her with him to lie on the couch. He kisses the top of her head where it's comes to rest against his sternum.

When his breathing has righted itself, he says, "I think you broke me."

Natasha sighs, still breathing hard from her exertions. "I'm never going on a mission again."

"We can just stay here . . ."

" . . . and you can cook . . ."

" . . . and we'll watch shitty action movies . . ."

" . . . and screw each other senseless."

The conversation is familiar; it's one they have every time they manage to get some downtime together, and the normalcy of it is centering. Even when they're hopped up on mystical unearthly drugs, they're still them underneath it all.

He knows he shouldn't say anything, but he's a moron and can't help it.

"Nat, about what I said before . . ."

She stiffens against him, then relaxes just as suddenly, and he thinks that maybe he has a chance here.

"Look, I don't want you to change who you are just because I'm an idiot. You don't have to say it back, shit, you don't even have to feel it. I just want you to know that no matter what happens, no matter what you say or do or think or feel, I love you."

There's a hitch in her breathing, and Natasha bring a hand up to her eyes.

"Nat?"

She audibly drags air into her lungs, and he feels her brace herself.

"I'm okay." She turns her head and shoulders and looks up at him with red rimmed eyes. "I . . . know that you do. And maybe . . . maybe I . . . maybe I feel the same way." She looks away as she says the last part all in one breath.

His heart stops. Did she just . . . ?

She pushes against his chest, using him as leverage to sit up on the edge of the couch. She looks like she's thinking hard about something, and well, he's still reeling from what just happened, so he just lets her take her time to process whatever it is she needs to process.

Her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees, she starts speaking again.

"You confuse the shit out of me, Clint, you have to know that. The way I grew up . . . I know you know what they taught me about trusting people. About . . . l . . . loving them."

He does.

"And then you came along, with your stupid bow and arrow and you held out your hand and dragged me out of the nightmare that was my life and . . ." She exhales. "I didn't even realize that life could be something other than blood and bullets. Not until you showed me. And even then, I'm still me, Clint. I don't know how to be anything else."

She looks down at him and she looks so utterly conflicted that he can't help but sit up beside her and take her hand in his.

Looking seriously at her, he asks, "You think my bow is stupid?"

Obviously surprised, she huffs out a chuckle. But then, Natasha being Natasha, he smacks him on the shoulder. "Jackass."

He's grinning as she teases him, but then, he's trying to lighten the mood, to give her an out if she wants it.

She doesn't.

"I'm used to being alone. I like being alone."

"I know, Tash."

He puts as much feeling into his words as he can. Though they were raised in two completely different worlds, he understands what it means to have grown up without anyone to trust. He knows what it means to be alone, how you get used to it, how being around other people can make your skin crawl and you can't quite fill your lungs.

She smiles ruefully and a tear threatens to overflow. She swipes at it half-heartedly, laughing a little.

"Yeah, I know you know. That's what . . . I mean, you can sit here and be so fucking normal after all the bullshit you went through."

It's his turn to laugh.

"I'm hardly normal!"

She cuts him off, fixing him with an annoyed stare. "Shut it! I'm trying to express my innermost emotions to you. It's hard enough without you cracking jokes! "

He quiets at that, but refuses to wipe the grin from his face. God, he loves her.

"As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me," she squeezes his hand reassuringly, "you confuse me. I know that love and trust don't exist. I'm certain of it. They're just lies parents tell their kids to make them fall asleep at night."

His heart sinks, twists a little bit at her words. It's the same tune as always.

Until it isn't the same, not at all.

"And then you come along, Clint. Make me trust you, and I don't know what I know anymore." She exhales forcefully. "What I'm trying to say, Clint . . . What I want to say . . ."

His blood is rushing in his ears and his heart is beating so erratically he thinks he might have a heart attack right here, right now. That's even before she completes her thought.

Natasha, beautiful, perfect Natasha, all five feet three inches of her, hair mused and puffy eyed, puts one hand on either side of his face and kisses him as chastely as he's ever been kissed. She pulls back, keeping her hands where they are, and she looks him right in the eye.

Without blinking or flinching or cringing away, she says the one thing he never thought he'd hear.

"I love you."

Well, this thing is about to suffer an attack of plot. A big part of me wants to write some angsty pregnancy!fic, and I think this story could have an interesting set up for that. On the other hand, I'm kind of enjoying writing tons of porn, so, well, yeah.

It can continue on for a while yet in either direction, but if you have an opinion, I'd love to hear it (and why!).

Thanks for reading!