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In Which Natasha and Clint Have Trouble Sleeping

Summary:

Clint and Natasha have very messed up sleep schedules. Or something like that.

Notes:

Okay so my friend wanted a Clintasha story and I had planned for it to be this badass tale or whatever, but then the first two lines of this story happened and I thought, "Okay, maybe not, maybe this'll be some sort of comedy," and then the rest of the story happened and I just decided to hell with it, it's good enough.

Work Text:

Natasha’s sleep schedule is fucked up. Like, seriously fucked up. Clint, however, has the talent of being able to fall asleep wherever if he doesn’t have too much on his mind, but Natasha, who is used to being in every place at once, assassinating random people in the darkest hours of night, tosses and turns next to him, itching to get up and attack something.

Clint’s used to this. He’s used to living on the road, living in that state of existence where you never have that much time to sleep but when you do it’s as if you don’t know what to do with it because you feel like you should be doing something important instead of just curling up in a ball and dreaming of kittens on spaceships. He understands Natasha’s fidgetyness, but he still can’t help but hope she’ll finally lay down next to him on the floor and sign to him all about the amazing things she’s seen in her life as an assassin until her fingers simply can’t sign anymore, and she falls asleep with her head on his arm and a smile on Clint’s face. Clint and Natasha gave up on beds long ago, they both toss and turn too much which causes the other to wake up or get annoyed, and they decided that a blanket pinned to the floor would be the best for them. It reminded Clint of home, and Natasha of the fact that not everything has to be normal.

Natasha is used to getting up super early in the morning, as is Clint, but Clint doesn’t care anymore now that there’s no reason to be up at the “asscrack of dawn” as he likes to call it. But that doesn’t stop Natasha from getting up and starting some breakfast and typically burning it all because she got too caught up in her book to remember that she was cooking something. The fire alarm would go off and that’s what wakes Clint up, and he cartwheels himself out to the kitchen where he sees Natasha attempting to stop the bacon from bursting into flames.

“You can shoot a man between the eyes from a mile away but you can’t make eggs,” Clint teases.

“You can stand on your hands and use your toes to shoot an arrow and not miss but you can’t get up in the morning to make eggs,” Natasha teases back as Clint kisses and they proceed to attempt to salvage whatever they can from that morning’s fiasco.

Sometimes in the evenings, Clint puts on Natasha’s favorite Vivaldi song. This is always his favorite thing to do because even though he can’t really hear the song, he loves to watch Natasha immediately go from whatever she was doing to dancing, remembering gingerly every single ballet move she’d ever been taught as if she was just now being taught them, slowly sliding to the tune of the song. She then grabs Clint by the hand and together they attempt to ballroom dance across the living room, horribly of course, but they’re both incredibly happy and that’s more important than how many times Clint steps on Natasha’s toes.

And sometimes, when they’re not at home, when they’re at Stark Tower with the rest of the Avengers, Natasha and Clint “text” each other across the room using sign language; the rest of the Avengers know only a few basic words just in case of emergency, excluding Steve and Sam of course, who both thought it in their best interest to learn ASL but ignore the silently loud conversations Natasha and Clint have. In these conversations they discuss the usual things, Sorry about breakfast again dear, I swear if Tony calls me Birdboy one more time, We should take up yoga.

And Clint’s a poet, which is something only Natasha knows because she’s the only one who has stumbled upon his writings, all of which are about her and her red hair and her smile. But Clint doesn’t know she knows, but whenever he signs to her something poetic she knows that he’s going to turn that one sentence into an entire sonnet once he gets a pen and paper in hand.

Sometimes when they’re at home and they’re both just walking aimlessly around the house and not really conversing or interacting at all, Clint randomly pulls Natasha into a kiss, a rendezvous of rough lips and soft lips, large arms around a slim waist and slim arms around a neck, hands running through hair colored scarlet and gold, a flame crackling from the fireplace slowly warming cold wooden floors, where bliss and tragic pasts unite.

Then they later go to sleep, where they toss and turn and cuddle and discuss what they plan on doing the next day, that is, if Natasha actually goes to sleep that night.