Shoutouts to Guest, Rosay Chere Khann, sailorraven34, clarawithfitzsimmons221b, yornma, beverlie4055, pengineer, Aunt Siduri, princessjoey630, Black Betty, Jo, paranoid-mandroid, Eva7673, EpicPackage, Hawaiichick, xSuperNovax, Guest, MyPerfectEscape, Guest, and MaddieFayeth96 for reviewing!

Ok, after the amount of feedback I got on Chapter 5, I feel a little less anxious =)

Before you read any farther: WARNING - THIS STORY IS NOW RATED M. There is a sex scene in the first part of this chapter, so you've been warned about the rating change. I usually try to give a warning farther out, but this scene just kind of wrote itself. (Shoutout to loversandmadmen on AO3 for suggesting I go this direction with it!)

Quick note: I know that it can be frustrating that Clint isn't wanting to talk about what's going on with him, but PTSD is a tricky subject to handle. While it's easy to say, "Why doesn't he just talk to Natasha and tell her what's wrong?" it's not quite that simple, unfortunately. If you want to learn more about the symptoms of PTSD, I'd highly suggest researching it because that might make it a little easier to understand why I'm writing him this way! I've never been mind-controlled by an alien before, but I can imagine that it'd be pretty traumatic!

If you want extra emotions, listen to "Samson" - Regina Spektor =)

As always, keep leaving your thoughts and opinions. Whenever reviews drop, I always get nervous!

Enjoy! =)

Chapter 6

After Clint kissed Natasha, he couldn't stop thinking about it. They went back to their apartment together, and all he wanted to do was kiss her and touch her and use his mouth to tell her everything that was wrong but with kisses instead of words. If he couldn't whisper out the images and the memories inside his brain, he could melt them onto her skin. Neither of the two spies was great with words, but granted, both of them were fantastic with physical communication.

As they walked through the door of their old D.C. apartment they hadn't actually lived in for a few years but still kept, he watched her walk wearily into the kitchen and turn the oven on. "Homemade pizza sound ok?"

"I think I can be ok with pizza," Clint answered, a smile hinting over his mouth.

"Good. Because that's the one thing I can cook. That, spaghetti, stir-fry, and rice," Natasha replied. "Thank God we picked up a few things at the grocery store around the corner earlier this week."

"Yeah." Clint crossed to one of the counters in the kitchen and hopped up on it, perching on the edge with his legs dangling over the side as if he were a little kid watching the adults. Natasha opened the door to the fridge and pulled out pizza crust, cheese, sauce, and pepperoni. "Is the oven pre-heating?"

"Should be," Natasha said without glancing at the oven. Clint took a sneak peek and saw that it was, indeed, pre-heating. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and smirked as she finished opening the packaging around the pizza crust. "I'm not completely useless in the kitchen, Clint. I've made us pizza a thousand times before."

"I know." He watched her make the pizza, her nimble, sure hands spreading a light layer of sauce on and then sprinkling a mixture of cheese and pepperoni on top. Sure, pizza was easy to make, and Natasha wasn't a good cook, but he would have eaten her homemade pizzas for the rest of his life if it meant that he got to stay with her. Hell, he'd eat them every day forever and ever if it meant that things could get back to normal with them.

"I know you're staring at me," Natasha said out loud.

"I'm just watching you," he replied in a nonchalant tone. She peered up at him through her red hair, and the corner of her mouth twitched up.

"You have eyes like a hawk, Clint," she said. He listened for any sarcasm or bitterness in her voice, but he found none there. If anything, she was speaking truthfully.

"Hence the name," he offered. Sliding down off the counter, he turned and reached up to the cabinet to pull out a glass before crossing to the fridge and pressing the mouth of the glass against the water faucet. Behind him, he heard Natasha open the oven and stick the pizza in—his hearing might not have been perfect with his aids in, but it was good enough to pick up on those little moments—and he turned around.

Natasha moved towards him after she shut the oven door, and she leaned against the counter, pressing her hip into the marble. "We have about 10 minutes before it's done."

"Ok." Clint nodded. Despite how badly he'd been worrying about losing control over himself and hurting her, he couldn't help his eyes flicking down to her mouth and then back up to her eyes. And the worst part was that she saw. She noticed it by the way she pressed her lips together and deeply inhaled, a habit she had whenever she needed to take a few moments to clear her head and focus.

"Welcome home," she said. She tried to smile up at him, but it didn't fully reach the corners of her eyes the way her real smiles did. Carefully, so she could stop him if she wanted to, he lowered his head and moved in towards her. She stared up at him with unreadable eyes, and then when he kissed her, his mouth covering hers, she closed them. He kissed her softly and slowly, the complete opposite of how he had earlier in the shooting range.

Natasha took a step in towards him, and Clint helped her along by slipping one arm around her waist and drawing her in while his other hand went to frame her face. And just like that, they were kissing. Suddenly, Clint felt heat flood his body; he felt heat and desire, and he wanted her. He was wary of Loki memories coming back to haunt him, but honestly, he was having lots of trouble focusing on Loki when Natasha's body pressed against him demanded so much focus.

"Nat," he sighed into her mouth. Quickly, she pulled back to look at him. Her green eyes were dark and heady, and her lips were already swollen and pink from kissing him.

"Do you want this?" she asked in a breathless tone. "Are you sure, Clint?"

"Yeah." He gulped a breath down and nodded. "Yeah."

Without another word, Natasha yanked his head back to her mouth, and they were kissing again. There was something strange about it, though, Clint noticed. Every time he tried to tilt his head to the other side, she would accidentally make some kind of move that made their noses bump into each other. She wanted to kiss him slowly, but he wanted to kiss her hard.

"Bedroom," Natasha said, interrupting his thought process.

"Pizza?" Clint asked. She paused as she remembered it. Pulling away from him, she turned to the oven, slammed her hand against the panel to turn it off, and then turned back to face him. She retreated towards him and gently pushed his back to urge him forward.

"Let's go," she said. Clint didn't argue. Instead, he made record time to the bedroom, stripping his jacket and his shirt as he stumbled through the door of a bedroom he hadn't considered his in…how long was it? He paused as he realized that he couldn't remember how long it had been since he and Natasha had lived there. He tried to look for some kind of context clues in his memory, but he simply couldn't find a single one. "Clint?"

Natasha's voice brought him back to the present, and he realized that he was standing by the edge of the bed with his pants half-off while she was on the bed, almost completely naked. She looked up at him with concern on her face. "Are you—"

He interrupted her by leaning forward and kissing her roughly on the mouth. Before he knew it, her hands were shoving his jeans down past his knees, and she was grasping him through his boxers, and oh, God, she felt so good. A moan escaped his mouth, and he pulled his lips away from hers as his hips leaned forward into her touch. His head fell against her shoulder, but he didn't get to stay there long because in less than a second, she had his boxers down and her hand actually wrapped around his bare length.

Clint was already hard as a rock, but he felt himself grow harder as her hand worked him over. Careful so that she didn't stop touching him, he moved on top of the bed and on top of her, suppressing another moan. Natasha was so perfect—she was so perfect. As she continued to work him and kiss him, he put his hand on the inside of her thigh and pushed upwards, his fingers going to search out what she wanted. Right as he reached the space where her thigh turned into the base of her hip, she took his hand and pushed it aside.

Natasha had never turned down his fingers before; she had always readily welcomed them and expressed her love for them, but today, she didn't want them, and he couldn't be more confused. He paused and was about to pull away as he started to rethink what was happening, but she removed her hand from his and put it on his face by his ear. "I want you."

"Ok," he exhaled without argument. He could live with that. As he kept kissing her, it hit him that everything seemed to be happening so quickly. One second he had been clothed and drinking a glass of water—he didn't even know where that glass was now—and now he was naked and extended over an equally naked Natasha, who was now wrapping her legs around his waist and drawing his hips down to be flush with hers. He didn't know why it seemed like they were moving so fast—they'd been undressed and grinding at each other in much quicker time in the past-but his brain was spinning, and his eyes were swimming, and all he could really focus on was how badly his erection wanted to be inside her.

He reached down with one hand and lined himself up accordingly before glancing back up to check in with Natasha. Their eyes met, and she tilted her hips hard beneath him, causing the tip of him to sink very lightly into her. Clint could most definitely take a cue. With one push, he was inside her. Natasha's face twisted into a small wince, and he could feel that she wasn't quite wet enough yet. "Natasha—"

"No, no, no. It's ok. Go," she whispered and moved her hips in a way that made Clint realize how close he was to actually coming right then and there before he'd even had a chance to thrust. He pulled his hips back and away from her, and then he pushed them into her, sighing quietly as he did it. She closed her eyes and let her mouth open as she turned her head to the side and exposed her neck to him. To try to keep some semblance of control over himself, Clint kissed her in that spot he knew she loved right below her ear, and he began to pick up the pace.

Moving inside her was becoming easier, and there was less resistance as she became more aroused, but even so, something was off. He could feel by the gentle roll of her body beneath him that she was trying for something slower while he was increasing the pace and force of his thrusts. They weren't in sync the way they usually were, and he didn't know how to fix it. Right as he started trying to match her pace, she tried to match his, and they were awkwardly missing each other.

Natasha kept arching her hips beneath him right as he would pull almost all the way out of her, but then they never seemed to meet back up again. The pace was awkward, and nothing was going in the right direction, but Natasha had started kissing his shoulder in one of his favorite spots, so he could overlook the awkwardness a little bit. Right?

He began to push deeper and harder, and even if their rhythm was shot to hell, being inside Natasha still felt amazing, her quiet moans still beautiful. It wasn't long before he felt her tighten around him, and her body went rigid and still as her head fell back. Her red hair spilled across the pillow, a memory of blood against white, her hair against her skin. And at the sound of her low, tight gasp signifying her orgasm, he could no longer hold back. His own body went still, and he held himself pressed forward as far as he could push into her as he started to come. He came hard and quiet and long, spilling deep into her, feeling her grasp his shoulder blades beneath her firm, strong palms.

For a few seconds, Clint didn't breathe. He didn't move, and he didn't breathe. He simply held himself above Natasha just enough so he didn't crush her with his full weight. Then he felt Natasha's fingers dancing smoothly over his back, rubbing his heated skin as he breathed hard against her neck. Her heart thrummed beneath his chest, and he felt it slow as she came down from her orgasm and got her own breathing back under control.

Once Clint felt as though he had control over himself, he gently pulled out of her with a wince and rolled off and to the side so she could get up and go to the bathroom. He lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling, trying not to feel like a failure. That had never happened with them before; they had never been so out of sync or out of touch with each other; even the first time they'd had sex, they'd been able to find a natural rhythm that had made Clint think from the very start that their bodies simply worked that well together. He lay completely still and thought about taking his hearing aids out because he didn't know what else to do. Now he just didn't feel like hearing, and he knew that signing wouldn't be an issue if he chose to remove them.

Natasha's soft footsteps against the wood floor made Clint turn his head to look at her as she came back to the bed. She kept her eyes averted from him, and she slid under the covers without saying anything, but she turned on her side to face him. As he slid underneath the covers with her, he felt her eyes finally lift up towards his face.

"So," he said. "That…that wasn't quite how I thought things would go. I don't…"

"It's ok," Natasha interrupted. She placed her hand on the side of his jaw and rubbed the forming stubble on the edge of his jawbone. "It's been four months. It's only natural that we'd lose some of our groove."

But that's never happened when we've had to be apart for longer, Clint thought. But he didn't say it. He kept that thought to himself and just nodded. Thank God he had the dignity to not ask her for a redo because that was what he wanted to do more than anything. He didn't know how to explain what had just happened between them, but it looked like Natasha didn't have the words, either. She just kept rubbing her thumb back and forth across his incoming facial hair, a non-verbalized question on her face.

Unable to see her look so un-Natasha-like, Clint draped an arm over her waist and pulled her in tight to him. Loki was far away from his brain for him to feel comfortable enough to be this close with her; Jesus, he'd just been inside her moments ago. He couldn't exactly use fear of hurting her to get out of being physically close to her when he'd just been as close to her as he could ever possibly get.

Natasha buried her head in his bare chest and put an arm back around him. "I have to tell you something."

That's not good, Clint thought.

"Yeah?" Clint prompted. She was quiet for a few seconds.

"I talked to Loki on the helicarrier," she finally said. She waited as every muscle in his body went still. "That's what I meant when I told you I've been compromised."

"What…what did he say?" he asked, his tongue suddenly feeling very thick and heavy in his mouth.

"He knew all kinds of things about me. Things I've never told anyone else," she said without having to specify that these things Loki knew had been certain stories she'd told only Clint. She looked up at his face and saw his expression becoming more and more distressed by the second.

"Oh, no," Clint said. Within seconds, he was sitting up and pressing the heels of his palms against his brow bone. "Fuck. Natasha…Nat, I'm so sorry."

"No, I didn't—Clint, I didn't tell you so you could beat yourself up over it," she said quickly as she moved after him without touching him. She looked at his strong muscled back and saw the light pink trails that her nails had left behind, and she swallowed hard. "I didn't want to add anything else to your load. I just…I wanted you to know."

"How the fuck do you trust me right now?" he snapped, suddenly feeling irrationally angry. She stared at him as if she couldn't understand why he was mad at her, and then her face hardened, the tell tale sign that she was starting to lose her grip on her emotions.

"Why are you mad at me?" she countered. "I just told you how I've been compromised, and now you're mad at me? That's really shitty, Clint."

She yanked the blankets up around her to cover her body, and Clint hated himself for doing that to her. He ran a hand through his short blond hair in frustration, and he sighed.

"Nat, I'm sorry. I didn't—I really didn't mean it like I was mad," he said, even though he totally had been. "I'm just having a hard time understanding why you're…still here."

He looked away from her and down at the covers over top of him. He hadn't planned on being that candid with her, but he'd said them, and he couldn't take them back. Truth be told, he wasn't sure he'd really understood the sentiment himself until he'd just spilled it out there for Natasha to tear apart.

The thought made him bite the inside of his cheek. He hadn't thought about her like that since the first few months she'd started speaking to him back when he'd brought her in to SHIELD. He remembered thinking of her as, well, a spider. The Black Widow. She was lethal and deadly and a bomb waiting to explode, and he'd thought for a long time that he couldn't tell her anything about himself or his past because she'd A) Use it to her advantage and rip him into tiny little pieces, B) See him as the fucked up person he was, and C) She'd judge him for his man pain when hers had been so much more traumatic on some level.

God, he hadn't thought of her as the kind of person to rip apart what he was thinking or feeling in seven years. Guiltily, he dragged his hand down the side of his face and looked back up at her as he waited for her to reply. She was staring at him with those expressive eyes of hers, giving him that look she saved just for him whenever it was the two of them and no one else around.

"We're partners," she said out loud, her voice quiet and soothing. "I'd never—I couldn't not still be here."

It was the closest thing she'd ever gotten to saying that she would never leave him. They'd never said the words to each other before because they'd never had to; they'd just always known. But now for the first time ever, Clint actually felt afraid that she would. He met her eyes and shifted his jaw from side to side as he processed what she'd just said.

"What did Loki do to you?" he asked, repeating the same question he'd asked her before. "What did he talk to you about?"

Natasha gave him another unreadable expression. "Only things that you know. You and no one else."

She wanted to wipe the look of pain and guilt off his face as he tightly nodded to show that he understood. He looked at her the way she imagined she must look at him whenever he got injured on a mission. "I'm so sorry, Nat."

"It wasn't you." She shook her head just once, but Clint shook his harder, physically cutting her off.

"Nat, it was me," he insisted. "That's why all of this…it's just…"

"Clint, that was not you," Natasha finished. She stopped clutching the blankets as tightly to her chest as she scooted a little closer to him, her green eyes fierce and blazing with the need for him to understand her. "That was what Loki did to your mind. Wasn't you."

Clint lifted his hand and rubbed the back of his neck, again taking his gaze away from her. Natasha waited for him to speak, to move, to do anything other than sit here in silence. In that moment, she thought how funny it was that she'd once told him she didn't do the whole talking thing. To some degree, that was still true. She didn't like to do awkward talking or the kind of talking that went in circles over and over and over. But this? She could do this. Kind of.

She leaned forward just enough to rest her temple on his shoulder, and she closed her eyes. She knew his body so well that she didn't need eyes to identify him. She could have identified even just from resting her head on him like this. With her eyes closed, she stayed perfectly still, as if one small movement would rip apart everything she'd worked towards to have in this moment.

And then her stomach growled.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and looked at him with a regretful expression. "If I go turn the oven back on and get the pizza going, will you go get it when it's done?"

To her surprise, he gave her a half-smile and then a nod. "Yeah. I can do that."

"Ok." She started to move the blankets away from her when she paused. "And you can't wear clothes while you go get the pizza."

She got the right reaction she'd been aiming for because she turned back to look at Clint and found him grinning like an idiot. "Yep. I can definitely do that."

And because he looked so much like the Clint she'd said goodbye to four months ago, she just smiled. "Good."

After that, things were different over the next 24 hours before the mission. Natasha couldn't pinpoint what was different or how, but they were. The way they acted around each other, talked, moved, and even breathed felt different, and it was all due to the fact that they'd had sex. In a way, it was like having to deal with the next day repercussions of a one night stand except this wasn't a one night stand. This was Clint, and he was her best friend and so much more. They weren't supposed to act like that.

And yet, there was an extra sense of comfortable trust that had come from it, too. In the day before they were supposed to ship out with Palmer to Venice, Italy, Clint was the most relaxed he'd been with her since the Battle of New York. He did little things like touch her shoulder as he passed by her in the living room, or he'd place his hand on the small of her back when he came to stand next to her in the bathroom while she finished brushing her teeth.

Natasha had never experienced anything like it, and it went without saying that they were both going to have to figure out how to act around each other in Venice since they were posing as a married couple. Clint seemed to be completely unconcerned about the whole thing, so Natasha took her cue from him, and she played her nonchalance well.

She always did.

"It's way too fucking early." Palmer looked like he was ready to drop dead asleep in the very seat he was leaning into as he and STRIKE Team: Delta waited for the jet to get clearance for take off.

"Dude, just go to sleep," Clint retorted. Palmer yawned and shrugged noncommittally.

"Yeah, I could," he agreed. "I just feel like as soon as I go to sleep, we're going to be there."

"It's a long flight," Natasha answered with lifted eyebrows. "You'll get plenty of sleep."

"Excuse me, Romanoff, but we're not all used to being up this early the way you are," Palmer said, smirking. He pulled his Styrofoam cup of coffee in closer to him and wrapped his hands around it. "God, how do you even do it?"

"Lots of practice," Natasha replied.

"She's been doing it for years," Clint added without batting an eyelash. "Since we first picked her up."

"Years," Natasha confirmed. Palmer yawned again but managed to cover his mouth this time.

"I don't think I can do it," he said. "I'm going to pass out."

"Go ahead, man," Clint encouraged with a nod towards the bunks. "They're all yours."

"I was trying to stay awake so that I could at least let Kathleen know when the plane took off," Palmer murmured as he pulled his phone out. "Eh, it's not that big of a deal. I can let her know now and then crash the rest of the way."

"Have you seen Hill?" Natasha asked suddenly, frowning. "She's handling us now."

"Is she?" Palmer asked mildly. He lifted his eyebrows slightly and looked over at Clint to see if Clint would confirm or deny. Clint nodded. "I feel like I should already know that."

"Do you even look over the files you get?" Clint asked.

"Yeah, man," Palmer replied, looking slightly offended. "I do. I just forget about them afterwards. Besides, she's not exactly my handler. I kind of handle myself. It's you two who need the handling."

"Ha ha, fuck you, Palmer," Clint snorted with a good-natured eye-roll. "Go the fuck to sleep."

"That's probably the smartest suggestion you've had since I met you, Barton," Palmer said as he rose up from his seat, coffee still in hand. He lifted his hand up in a mock salute. "I'll see you in Venice."

"See you in Venice," Natasha returned, watching him walk away. Unable to help herself, she smiled. "It's nice having him back. Like the good ol' days, huh?"

"Did we ever have good ol' days?" Clint smartly quipped. Natasha quirked an eyebrow and gave a half-nod.

"Ok, true," she agreed. "But you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do," Clint replied. He leaned his head back against the headrest. "I might actually go try to sleep, too."

Natasha gave him a knowing look that he purposefully ignored. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He pushed his seat back and began to stand. "Care to join me?"

"Maybe in a little bit," Natasha said, her eyes following him as he moved past her. "I'd like to talk to Maria. Get a bit of a head start on the mission."

"Ok," Clint said. "Well…you know where to find me."

"I do," Natasha said with a smile. She watched him walk down the hall and towards the bunks before she fully relaxed in her chair. The only people who knew about her real place on this mission were Nick Fury, who had given her the orders in the first place, and Maria. The next time she saw Maria, she was supposed to get more detailed specifics on what exactly she was supposed to be watching Clint for.

Fury had assured her that she wouldn't be spying on Clint, but as she waited for Maria to appear instead of going with Clint to a bunk to pretend to fall asleep beside each other, she couldn't shake the feeling that spying was precisely what she was doing.