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1.
It was the first time Clint had been partnered with Natasha. To say he was impressed would be the understatement of the century. He hadn't heard the Ten Rings agent sneaking up behind him, thanks to the sound of pitched battle below, but she had.
A blur of red hair and black kevlar swept past him, and he dropped to the floor, spinning in time to see Natasha take down the guy using her thighs in a very creative way around the guy's neck.
"Holy shit. Marry me."
The words popped out of his mouth before his brain could intervene.
Natasha rolled her eyes and whipped out her gun, taking down the agent crawling through the window.
2.
Natasha had never used a bow before, if she was to be believed. She could shoot pretty much any gun that had ever been invented, but Clint was the lucky son of a bitch who got to teach her to use a compound bow.
He showed her the correct stance and watched her line up a shot.
"Wait," he said. "Turn your hips a bit more. Like this."
Stepping in behind her, he rested his hand on the curve of her hip, moving her into the right position.
"Rotate your elbow a bit, so the inside faces Coulson over there, not upward," he continued, gently guiding her arm into position.
She shot him a look over her shoulder. "Is this how you taught Coulson to shoot a bow?" she said, drawing the string back.
He let out a breath of laughter as she released the string. The arrow flew down the range, hitting the bull's eye dead-center with a solid thwack.
"That was your first shot with a bow," he said, more of an impressed statement than a question.
"Mm hmm," she replied, nocking another arrow and promptly splitting the first in half.
"Marry me," Clint said.
Natasha gave him a smug grin.
3.
"That's him," Natasha murmured, nodding at their crime boss of particular interest, who was surrounded by an entourage of what looked like every fashion model in Paris.
She slipped her hand into his, bumping his shoulder with a coy smile. If they hadn't been undercover, Clint might have believed she was flirting with him.
Stupid undercover work.
"We're never going to get him alone. Gotta think of some way to clear out the herd of supermodels," he replied in an undertone.
Luckily for them, the guy's dossier made mention of his predilection for seducing unavailable women.
Clint waited until they were even with the guy, right in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, before pulling out the big guns.
Natasha looked genuinely startled when he suddenly dropped to one knee, pulling a Tiffany's box out of his coat pocket. "Natalie," he said, "Will you marry me?"
He watched the very real surprise melt away into Natasha's perfectly schooled acting. "Oh my god, yes!" she exclaimed.
He slipped the ring onto her finger and rose to his feet, and she threw herself into his arms. For a second, Clint wondered what it would really feel like to know a woman like her was in love with him.
"We've caught his interest," he whispered in her ear.
Drawing back, she winked at him. And then she gave him a kiss that made his toes curl.
4.
There was a mirror across from the bed, and while he'd never really been a fan of watching himself fuck, Clint discovered that he was definitely a fan of watching himself fuck Natasha.
She arched her back, thrusting against him, and he thought the top of his head was going to come off. Everything about her was perfect: her flame-red hair; her gorgeous skin, so pale against his; her pink-tipped breasts; the feel of strong muscle under her soft curves.
He was so into his mental inventory of Perfect Things About Natasha that she managed to catch him completely off guard. He was suddenly on his back and not entirely sure how he got there, but she was straddling him, sinking down onto his cock in a gorgeous, wet glide.
From that point on, Clint's world narrowed down to that bed, her moans, the feel of her hands gripping his shoulders and hair, the press of her body against his, the amazing hot-wet-tightness of her pussy clenching around him as she climaxed.
He threw his head back and came, making a noise that probably would have embarrassed him if his brain had been working.
The very delicious sensation of her tongue on his neck brought him back into the world of the living. "Mmm. Y'know, if you were to marry me, we could do this every night," he mumbled.
Natasha raised her head and gave him an impish look. "We hardly have to be married to fuck every night, Barton," she purred.
He grinned up at her. That wasn't exactly a no.
5.
Clint was paralyzed, stuck in a closet, and as soon as he could move, he was going to kill that son of a bitch Loki, Thor be damned.
He didn't know what kind of drug was in that dart, but his fingers were starting to tingle a little bit. He also wondered if panic would make the drug wear off faster, because Loki suddenly looked like him, and Natasha had just walked into the room. Luckily for Clint--or unluckily--he had a perfect view through the louvered door.
Not-Clint was murmuring something to Natasha, and she let not-him pull her into an embrace.
The sight of her kissing not-him sent white-hot rage flooding through his frustratingly immobilized body.
Natasha suddenly pulled back, suspicion in her expression, and Clint would have shouted, "That's my girl!" if he had been able to speak.
"Natasha? What's the matter?" Not-Clint said, reaching for her.
In a flash, she had his arm twisted behind his back, and Loki's disguise rippled and melted away. Natasha shoved him face-first into the carpet, putting her knee in his back. "Nice try, asshole," she sneered.
But Loki was stronger or faster--whichever one, he managed to flip her off of his back, sending her crashing into the coffee table, and Clint panicked even more, somehow managing to thumb the alert button on his belt.
The outer door crashed open and a passel of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents burst into the room, but before any of them could get a shot off, the son of a bitch teleported out in a glimmer of Asgardian technology.
They found Clint in the closet a minute later and hefted him out onto the couch where Natasha was rubbing her back.
"You okay?" she asked, carefully but thoroughly checking him out for injuries.
"Fine," he slurred, pleased that his mouth seemed to be working again. "How'd you know he wasn't me?"
A faint smile curved her lips, and she leaned close under the pretense of checking his pulse. "He asked me to marry him," she whispered. "But the tone was all wrong. I know you too well, Clint."
Brushing a kiss on his cheek, she let the newly-arrived medics check her over.
Clint wiggled his fingers.
6.
All hell had broken loose, and Clint had no idea where Natasha was. He unfortunately didn't have the time to look for her, what with a goddamn Skrull invasion going on.
He climbed to the highest point he could get to easily--the top of a scaffold set up against a nearby building, and started picking off bad guys. Cap was bashing people with his shield, someone had pissed off Banner enough to get him to Hulk out, Thor was calling down lightning bolts, and Iron Man was concentrating fire on the Skrull ship to cut off their escape route.
With the help of about a hundred S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, they had managed to contain the Skrull in the plaza, and at that point, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Or it would have been if Clint hadn't run out of arrows.
His fingers scrabbled at his quiver a couple of times as if they couldn't believe he had actually run out, and in those few, precious seconds, a Skrull fighter managed to pull himself onto the top of the scaffolding. He shot Clint in the shoulder, right at the edge of his armor.
He hit the wooden decking hard, his left arm gone completely numb. The Skrull was grinning, stalking closer to him, and Clint tried to reach the knife strapped to his thigh.
Gunfire, and deafeningly close. Clint flinched, expecting to feel another bullet slam into his body, but someone stepped over him, guns blazing. Red hair and black kevlar swept past him, and he watched Natasha shoot the Skrull right in the head, kicking him over the edge of the scaffold.
Her terrified face was suddenly in front of his. "Clint? Goddammit, Clint, don't die on me," she said, her voice strangely muffled, as she yanked his uniform shirt open and pressed her hands against the wound on his shoulder. "The medic's on his way, Clint, do you hear me? Come on, answer me!"
"I hear you," Clint coughed.
And then the medics were there with morphine. He could hear the battle winding down as they strapped him to a stretcher and lowered him to the ground. "Hey," he said muzzily, catching a glimpse of red hair. "Natasha. Marry me."
Her face swam into focus, smiling. "Yes," she said, or he thought that was what she said.
Clint sank into an opiate haze.
--
"How's the shoulder?"
Clint had been staring at a crossword puzzle for the last half hour, and he jumped at the sound of Natasha's voice. She was standing in the open doorway, arms crossed over her chest, smiling.
"Fine," he answered. "Doc says it's healing nicely. Um... Natasha?"
She stepped into the room, closing the door behind herself. "Yes?"
"Did--did I ask you something?"
She was giving him that smile, the one where he knew he had done something embarrassing (usually when he was drunk). "Ask me something?" she said, perching on the hospital bed beside him. "When?"
Clint scowled at her, which just made her smile grow even more smug. "When they were loading me into the transport," he clarified. "Did I ask you something then?"
Natasha made a show of examining her fingernails. "Oh, that," she finally replied when he was antsy enough to fidget. "Yeah, you asked me to marry you."
He raised his eyebrows expectantly at her. "And?"
"And what?"
"I seem to remember hearing a yes. Or was that just the morphine?"
Gripping the handrails on either side of him, she leaned forward and gave him a long, slow kiss. He slid his good hand into her hair, sucking her tongue, breathing in the scent of her perfume. God, he was glad he hadn't died.
She finally pulled back, brushing her nose gently against his.
"You heard right, Barton."