Clint x Natasha FanFic's

Assumptions by jacesdbff

aussumptions by jacesdesbff

A/N: Natasha and Clint's romantic history helps Steve cope with the discovery of Wikipedia.

Everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. assumed Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton started sleeping together when he first went to kill her and brought her in instead. Why else would he save her, right? Upon signing on with S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha was immediately paired with Clint, ensuring that everyone assumed their assumptions were correct. The assumers were wrong, of course, but neither Clint nor Natasha cared enough to correct them.

As it so happened, the two assassins didn't begin sleeping together until they had been partners for two years. It happened when the two of them returned to their hotel in Prague after a particularly difficult mission during which each of them had come very close to dying. Clint walked in the door first, put his bow and quiver on the end table, turned around and reached over Natasha's shoulder to shut the door.

He looked her straight in the eye, signaling silently what he was about to do, giving her the opportunity to stop him. She didn't blink. Clint's mouth descended on hers, at which point Natasha attacked him in return. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and the next truly coherent thought either of them had was a few hours later.

Clint's hand drifted up and down Natasha's spine as her hand played with the hair on his chest. Clint laughed low in his chest, earning a look up from the woman draped on top of him.

"What?" she asked with a subtle smile.

"I'd say that was inevitable," he answered, the sexy laugh continuing.

She laughed in return. "Well, it was a stressful day."

He pulled her closer to him, pressing his lips to her hair.

"I almost lost you-"

"And I you," she cut him off.

"It brings things to the surface," he said, continuing to hold her tight.

"It certainly brought things to your surface," she purred as her hand drifted lower.

"I love you, Tasha."

Her hand stopped.

"Love is for children," she said, raising an eyebrow.

"So what, that makes me 10? And you're what, nine?" he smiled at her.

"Hello! I'm 10. You're nine," she humphed.

"Shall we see, then, exactly what trouble a couple of children can get into?" he asked in a low tone, the smile evident in his voice, as he rolled on top of her.

Having been partners and eventually best friends for two years by the time they became more, Clint and Natasha had long since shared certain stories about their backgrounds and childhoods. For instance, she knew what Clint thought about family - it had come up one week as they conducted surveillance on a pair of elderly married drug dealers who used their age and marital status to cover up some pretty ruthless business practices. The malevolent couple had been taken out, and Natasha and Clint learned a great deal about each other's attitudes towards the concept of family.

Growing up in the circus, Clint spent most of his youth high up in tent rafters looking down over the families that came to see the sights. Over time, there was a certain kind of family that young Clint looked for, that he yearned to be a part of. After enough years, Clint could pick the five families out of a crowd of 5,000 that went past being related to each other to genuinely wanting to be there together, to liking each other, who went past doing anything for each other, to doing anything to be with each other. Sometimes there were two parents, sometimes one and gender or combinations thereof were immaterial, as were the number of children. In fact, there were couples without children whose obvious devotion to each other went past love and lust to the deeper connection Clint sought - though those were the hardest to spot. Those families, those connections, were what Clint Barton grew up wanting.