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Red
(hearts without chains, ellie goulding)
He wants to rip her apart. He wants to find the beating heart that's been keeping time with his. He sees the look within her eyes that tells him she sees something to claw and fight her way toward.
The same blood stains his hands. The same blood beats inside his arteries and veins.
He throws himself into fighting her when they spar. It's combat training, not a carefully controlled fight. It's down on the mats and dirty and blood and straining muscles and stopping when the first one hits the floor. There's nothing play about it.
See, we're the same, he wants to tell her. Instead, he kisses her with blood in his mouth from where she jabbed him hard and lets the red speak for itself.
Breathe
(sing to me, kate miller-heidke)
Natasha doesn't need him to love her. She just needs to crawl through the wreckage of battle and settle her uninjured side against his uninjured side and breathe in the scent of blood and sweat, bow wax and gunpowder if it means he is alive. She doesn't need to love him, and only a fool thinks that love is required for a partnership like theirs.
Clint's hand clasps hers and his injured arm weighs heavily over her shoulder as he rests his head on hers and they focus on breathing raggedly together. Alive. They are alive and they are together.
Eventually, they'll force themselves to their feet and out of the aftermath of battle. They'll extract and find a shower and bandages, but for now, they wait out the exhaustion sinking into their bones and revel that they are alive.