Chapter Text
So many people look at Natasha and only see what she wants them to. They see the quirk of her hip, the swell of her breasts, the bow of her lips, and they assume that she is perfect. They assume that she is the paradigm she presents; they forget that she's actually, under all the fight and deadly grace, a human woman.
Clint doesn't make that mistake.
He knows about her faults; even the ones he hasn't seen firsthand, because she's told him about them in great detail. And Clint loves her for them, he loves the way she keeps score, like she has something to atone for.
(She doesn't, not with him.)
And he loves how real she is, solid and soft under his fingertips in a way that no one else in his life is. Real like a weapon, like his bow, and her knows her cracks and flaws in the same intimate way.
He loves the little things about her – the things no one else gets to see, because no one else gets to know how profoundly human she is. He loves the constellation of freckles on her right leg, just three small ones, like Orion's Belt, on the back of her knee. He likes pressing small kisses along the path they take, and he loves that she lets him worship at the altar of her body.
He remembers the first time she let him into her bed – not the first time they fucked, because that had been hard and fast against a wall, hardly any time to enjoy it because they were lost in the adrenalin of being alive – and how he had wanted to take a year, a lifetime to explore her body. (He hadn't though, because she urged him on, and so he's spent the last few years cataloguing the ways in which perfection eludes her, keeps a record in his mind of the ways in which she is beautiful.)
Her left nipple never gets quite as hard as her right one, and he loves that, too. It's a challenge, he thinks, something that her body does to test him, and she always arches and gasps when he bites down, trying to excite it. She traces the curve of his spine with her fingernails when he sucks on it, cooing encouragement and filthy lies in his ear.
He loves watching her in the morning, the thousand ways she enhances her face, her body. What mark would know about the spare black hairs on her big toes? How would they know of the soft bags under her eyes, the ones that she dabs away with lotion and makeup, carefully applying it and blending with a tiny paintbrush? These are the things Clint gets to see, the things that are only for him.
The things she keeps secret from everyone else.
He wishes he could tell her, wishes there was a way to explain that the scars on her body were more precious to him than gold, were more beautiful than all the seductive moves she had learned in the Red Room, more sensual even than the way she kills men, the way she can take apart an enemy with just a little flick and a sigh.
He wishes he had those kinds of words, but he doesn't. He doesn't know how to tell her things like that, the things she deserves to know.
He wonders, sometimes, if she loves his imperfections as much as he loves hers. Does she treasure the fact that, no matter how hard he works out, he'll never get a six pack, or does she wish for a physique more like Steve's or Tony's? How does she feel about the hair on his chest, how will she think of it when it starts to gray, showing how many years he has on her? Does she mind that his hands are rough and calloused, he'll never be able to touch her skin with the same softness she can give him?
He supposes what he really wants to know is if she loves him, if she wants him, if she needs him. But neither of them would ever use those words. Not out loud. People in their line of work didn't need each other. They didn't express desire like the rest of the world, because someone will find a way to use that against them. Because they have to be vigilant, they have to protect each other at all costs.
But he does, even if he never says it. He needs her.
He tries to show her – tries to lay his emotions at her feet, tries to lean on her when he feels weak. He tries to give her the little secret parts of himself, the parts that would make other Agents laugh or recoil. And she accepts them – she props him up, she carries him through, and, once in a blue moon, she even lets him see her waver.
Maybe it's the only way they can love each other. Maybe she's too programmed and he's too scarred to ever be the kind of people that Tony and Pepper are, the kind of people who would willingly expose each other to the world.
But it's good. For him, it's perfect.
Some nights he lies next to her in bed after she falls asleep and he presses a kiss to her forehead, between her eyes – which he knows will wake her up, but he also knows she'll decide it's him and go back to sleep. How bright those eyes are in wakefulness, how dangerous and perceptive. And the right one is a fraction of a centimeter smaller than the left, or more heavily lidded, and he loves that, loves that there are ways that even the Black Widow is imperfect.
He loves her. And that scares the fuck out of him.
And if she loves him, if she cherishes his flaws the way he loves hers, then maybe that's another thing to add to the list. Maybe "scared of loving you" is a totally acceptable flaw, and maybe, just maybe, Natasha thinks it's one of the things that makes him perfect.