Work Text:
1.
Natasha scraped lightly over the mark on his arm with her nails, eyes flicking upward to meet his.
Clint ignored the faint pain of it, ignored everything but the uncertainty in her eyes. He met it with steadiness in his own.
An hourglass within a web. Black widow.
“Did you always know?” she asked, voice quiet and even. Had he known when they sent him to kill her?
He reached up to cover her hand with his, both surprised and unsurprised when she let him. He glanced toward her own mark, hidden under her ribs, unmistakably a bullseye. “Did you?”
2.
Clint waited for her to finish her exploration in the wake of their lovemaking, until she lingered near his own ribs, hand warm on his skin, before he called her on it with an amused question, “Found it?”
Natasha just looked at him, all the warmth in her eyes nonexistent on the rest of her face. She leaned down and kissed the mark Clint had known about for a long time.
“You’ve met ‘em,” he said, half unsure if it was a question or an observation. He rubbed the back of her left shoulder gently.
She stiffened. He’d found it.
3.
“James,” Natasha called him, voice soft, eyes holding the same sort of warmth they’d always held for Clint.
He watched the Soldier study Clint with an intensity that proved he was aware of why he and Natasha shared an apartment, the room they were standing in, the bed. On the plus side, he didn’t look angry at the knowledge. On the other hand, Clint wondered briefly what kind of fate decreed both of his others would be intimidating, world-renowned assassins.
“You’re hers,” he said. The Soldier, James, Bucky... Hard to say.
Clint gestured at his ribs and countered, “I’m yours.”
4.
Nobody rushed anything. It could've been too easy to think they could pick up where they left off or simply go on, slotting a new person into the mix. But Clint and James didn’t know each other. It was all testing the waters and waiting patiently while they adjusted to each other’s touch, attention, presence. They’d always had to watch their backs.
It was Natasha giving them space and time now, for all they’d thought it would be Clint.
“I don’t have your mark,” James finally admitted.
It would've been on the arm he’d lost.
Clint shrugged. “Does it matter?”
5.
It wasn’t the first night or week or even months before James occupied a space in their bed and not his own. Trust came slowly between them. Clint chose to trust James because he had shot Natasha and she still took him back into her life and heart as if he had never left and all could be forgiven. James chose to trust Clint because Natasha never gave her trust easily or casually and she offered all of it to Clint.
Natasha...
She liked to settle between them, holding on, bridging the gap with what both men agreed was love.