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She paced in front of him and for a moment, he didn’t recognize her. He’d seen her look vulnerable before, thousands of times, even, but he’d never seen her look small. And yet she was still so goddamn beautiful, even when she was clearly berating herself over something she couldn’t control.
She glanced up, met his gaze, and scowled. “Stop looking at me like that.”
He bit back a smile and quirked an eyebrow at her. “I’m not looking at you any differently than I normally look at you.”
“That’s not true,” she said, her voice wary suddenly and he wondered if she even noticed the way she knitted her shoulders up around her ears, trying to ward off the truth that they both felt in the room. They’d had this conversation before, but it’d never gotten this far. She’d come out of the shower smelling like soap and water and heaven, and when she’d seen the look on his face, asked if maybe, tonight, they could try. She hadn’t said again because they both knew how many times they’d stopped and started this process. She hadn’t been ready before. He wasn’t sure she was ready now.
“How am I looking at you?” He asked her.
She frowned, pausing for a beat and then pacing again, her face pale and shadowed in the hood of his sweatshirt. She had stolen it ages ago, before they’d even lived together in this little brick-walled studio they’d made their own. “Like this means something.”
“It does mean something,” he said, trying not to sigh. It wasn’t that she was trying his patience. It was that he didn’t know how to say it any other way, without using the words. If he said I love you , right now, she’d be gone, out the door and halfway to the other side of the world. He wanted her to be here, to process her feelings and his feelings here, where he could see her. He fell a little more in love with her every time he watched her work through something she swore for years she couldn’t understand and wouldn’t understand. He added gently, “And you know it means something too or you wouldn’t be pacing and considering.”
“That’s not--,” the words tripped out of her mouth, the only time she hadn’t been graceful. “You don’t look at me like this. Not like you want me.”
He wanted to stand up, wrap his arms around her, draw her against the security of his chest. But she’d close up. He knew this now, having made this mistake a time or two. He forced himself to stay on the bed, in a position that wasn’t as comfortable or as casual as he intended it to be read. This is farther than we’ve gotten before, he reminded himself. This is a process. You knew this. You love her, not because of or in spite of this. “Okay. I understand. But, Tash, I always want you. Just because you don’t always see or acknowledge it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Listen to me. If you aren’t ready, you aren’t ready, and that’s fine.”
“I want to be ready,” she snapped.
“I know,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you are.”
“I’ve had sex before,” she muttered, and it sounded a little bit petulant.
He knew. Of course he’d known. That was at least seventy five percent of the problem here. To her, sex was work. Work was sex. It was something to detach and suffer through for an end goal. It was not a part of something bigger. It was not to be enjoyed. “Yeah.”
“You’ve listened to me have sex before.”
He didn’t drop his gaze. “Yes.”
He didn’t say, and that’s how I’ll know if you’re faking it. He was not going to mention orgasms. That concept would definitely be foreign to her.
She turned away, and then spun to face him again. “And don’t tell me this is different because it matters.”
He wanted to reach out and run his hands through her wild, tangled curls, the ones she hadn’t had time to comb out before she’d started this conversations and now they framed her face, bright as a sunset. He wanted to touch her, to reassure himself that this conversation wasn’t splitting them in half. But what he needed and what she needed at times were completely opposite. He knew this. “It is, though. And you can’t make yourself be ready. You are, or you aren’t.”
She looked past him, her gaze growing soft and distant. Where do you go, Natasha, he’d asked her once. Wherever I’ve been with you, she said, but it had sounded like a lie. He turned to see what she was gazing at. Photos he’d taken from rooftops and gardens around the world. He wondered if she’d ever noticed that there was a flash of red in every one of those photos. Every one of those moments had been one that reminded him of her.
“I don’t know that that’s true,” she said softly. “What if I’m eighty percent there?”
No, he thought immediately. He thought about the girl he’d met in Budapest, injured and angry and wild and broken and self-determined, about how she offered to fuck him for her freedom, about the look in her eyes the first time she’d had to do for SHIELD what she’d had to do for the Red Room, thought about the first time he’d kissed and how she almost moved straight from a kiss to being on her knees, like that was the only logical next step. How they’d spent the last few years learning boundaries for both of them. Then he said, as carefully as he could, “That’s not happening, Natasha. I know you, and you know I do. You’re asking me to know you and be okay with something other than full, enthusiastic consent?”
She shrank, wrapping her arms around herself. “No, you’re right.”
It was too much. They couldn’t do this. And that was okay, but he didn’t want to push this too far and set them back in other ways.
“Come to bed,” he said, his voice gentle. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
She shook her head. “We’ve been talking about it for years, Clint.”
“Which is why another day won’t hurt either of us. Natasha, sex has never been a dealbreaker. It never could be.”
He’d said this before and it bothered her for reasons he still couldn’t understand. He didn’t think it was jealousy. Didn’t think that she looked at other couples and wondered if she was missing out. Maybe if she hadn’t had sex but felt the attraction, she would wonder, but she felt the attraction and knew what sex was, and he knew that the only thing she felt like she was missing out on was him, not some relationship milestone.
He watched her unfurl her body, some clarity crossing her face.
“What if--,” she paused, then swallowed audibly. Her fingers trembled against her face and he knew if he took them into his own hands, they’d be cold. “What would...how would you start?”
It took him a beat to understand what she was asking, but when he did, he inhaled slowly and deeply. It was smart, even genius, and he was almost upset that he hadn’t thought of it himself. He’d thought that dirty talk or sex jokes would have crossed a boundary, and maybe he’d been right. Then. Not now. Now she was asking for it and it was everything he could do not to growl, not to crack open his own skull and paint pictures of the things he’d imagined them doing together.
Don’t fuck this up, Barton, he told himself. Don’t fuck this up.
He unfolded his legs, hands sliding to his knees. He wanted to be ready to stand if she started to flee. “I’d kiss you.” He held her gaze. Look at me, Natasha. This changes nothing. It’s just another way for me to love you. “Not the way I kiss you before we leave the apartment in the morning. I’d cradle your face in my hands, Natasha, and when I kissed you, I’d be telling you that you’re safe with me. That I--,” he stumbled, picked up another word and pressed it into the space between them, “want you, as imperfect and beautiful and deadly as you are.”
She fingered the hem of the sweatshirt like she was thinking about undressing. “Then what?”
He’d seen her naked before. But this would be different. He’d get to touch her this time. And there’d be no war wounds in sight. Just her. “I’d pull your sweatshirt over your head.”
“I’m not wearing a bra,” she whispered.
His dick liked that image flashing across his mind and twitched. The rush of blood south to his groin made him light-headed. She was going to kill him before he even got to touch her. “And tug your pajama pants down over your hips. I’d hold your hands so you could step out of them. You’d try to touch me now, because you’d be self conscious. You’d want control, but Natasha, you only need control. You want to give it up. You want to give it to me.”
“Yes.” The sound of a step closer to him.
“I’d touch you,” he murmured, eyes opening again.Her eyes widened, pupils dilating like she was trying to take all of him in. He could dive into the blue and never surface. He’d die a happy man. “Your skin’s smooth and soft and it heats everywhere I touch, streaks of blush across your skin.”
“Yes,” she said again, louder this time. If she thought he was cheesy, she didn’t show it. Her throat glistened, blossoming with pink. Turned on. This is what Natasha looks like when she’s turned on. He was dizzy.
“I’d know you with my mouth first,” he said, making himself look up at her face. “And my hands. You’d shiver, and I’d apologize for my rough hands.”
He wouldn’t, really. He’d want to see the way his fingers could curve into her, the way his hand could imprint on her hip, the way she responded when he drew his bow fingers across her nipples, across her cunt. He wanted her to feel him everywhere. He wanted her to be his, the way he had always been hers.
She stepped closer. She didn’t seem small anymore. Curious and brave, bright and vulnerable. She licked her lips. “I would want to touch you now.”
Yes, you do. He wouldn’t let her. “Not yet. You’d be wet.”
She shivered.
If he closed his eyes, he’d see her underneath his body, naked with his mouth on her, his cock pressing deep into her, and he couldn’t rush this. He needed to do this part right. His fingers itched to slide into his sweatpants, run his hands over his erection, thumb the head of his cock, but this wasn’t about him. He could wait. He’d make himself wait. This would always be about her. “I’d run one finger down your breastbone, over your stomach, down between your legs. Just one because you want more, but just one because I’ll be gentle with you. One finger sliding inside of you. My thumb on your clit.”
A whimper slipped out of her lips. She swayed on the spot. “Please.”
He wanted her to make that sound again. Even to him, his voice sounded throaty and low. Dark. “How many times can I make you come, Natasha?”
She swallowed and he wanted to lick the line of her throat, feel her pulse against his mouth. In his mouth. “I never have with--with someone else.”
He swore softly. “You’ve always torn me apart.”
“I don’t know how many times,” she answered, sounding almost frightened. She wasn’t playing him. He’d heard Natasha playing people, making them think they were fucking someone chaste and scared, something that would turn those dirtbags on, and this wasn’t the same pitch to her tone. This was her, wavering on the edge of fear.
“We’ll find out,” he promised. “You’ll come on my hand with my fingers inside of you and my mouth on your breast. And then you’ll come around my cock, and then when I put my mouth on you. You’ve always been limitless and wild. I want to taste you when you come apart.”
They were never going to leave this bed. They were calling out sick tomorrow. He wanted to cement the rightness of this between them before she had time to overthink it. He wanted to drown in her. Focus, Barton. It felt like the first time all over again for him. Tunnel vision. Sweaty palms. A dick so hard it felt painful.
“When do I get to touch you?” she asked.
He tilted his head, watching her. She’d noticed his erection. It wasn’t like he hadn’t woken up hard in the years they’d slept together, but she always turned away, avoided his eyes, pretended it wasn’t a part of him. Not now. She almost looked...and he blinked. “You’re curious.”
“Yes.” She stepped closer, her knees bumping against his knees.
He tilted his head up to see her. “You first.”
If she touched him, he’d explode. But maybe this would remind her that despite what came out of his mouth, despite the thoughts in his head, despite what he thought--hoped--was happening, he was still Clint. Still the same body and person she saw all the time. She lifted her hand, running her thumb across his cheekbone. He leaned into her hand, kissing the heel of her palm. She smiled. “I don’t think you’re allowed to do that.”
“I’m not?” he asked into the soft skin of her wrist. She swung a leg over his lap, kneeling on the bed, and lifting her other knee to his other side. She sank down onto his lap and he wrapped an arm around her to keep her from falling backwards. Every point of friction--her stomach and his erect cock, her sweatshirt against his hypersensitive aware bare chest--lit him up. He almost groaned but bit it back instead. He was not going to come in his pants like some goddamn teenager. She breathed in deeply and he mirrored her. She pressed against him and he swallowed at the feel of her breasts against him, at the muscle over her ribs shifting under his fingers.
She reached down between them, wrapping her hand around his cock through his pajama pants and he wrapped his hand around her wrist, moving it back to her own thigh. Another time, love. “Natasha, look at me.”
Her cheeks were bright with embarrassment as she stared at some point on his face, anything but his eyes. He clucked his tongue, correcting her, and her eyes shot to his. Good girl. . “Do we need to go back to the game? Did we move too fast?”
She shook her head. But her voice was small. “No.”
“You’ll be honest with me?”
She met his gaze and lifted her chin a little bit. “Yes.”
He pressed her hand flat onto her thigh. “Then this is about you tonight.”
“It can be about you too,” she protested.
He cut her off with a raised eyebrow. “When has it ever been about you in the bed?”
She bit her lip and looked away. Her gaze ran over their bed, like she just comprehended that they were one roll away from him pressing her down onto the bed, pressing himself into her. He nodded. “Okay?”
She nuzzled the side of his neck, and it was the only confirmation he thought he’d get. She rose on her knees a bit, sinking and grinding against him. He saw stars burst across his vision at the heat of her through her pajama pants, through his pajama pants. He gripped her arms and pushed her backward, gently, until she slid from the bed and stood before him. He tried to breathe, to get control of himself again, while she stood there, just watching him.
“I want you,” she said clearly. “Like that. Like you said you would.”
Mine. He stood up, tracking the curves of her with a hand on her side. My Natasha. “Then let’s start from the top.”