➸ Salt Water by eiluned

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: smut, angst | Smut: yes
Word count: 4348 | Status: complete

My comment:  Basically porn without plot.

His skin tastes like salt water.
She starts at his hipbone and traces the trails of ocean that slipped down his tanned flesh, lapping up the salt. She explores every ridge of muscle in his flat stomach, loves the strength of use and hard work she can feel there. He is strong because he fights, not because he vainly lifts weights. He is strong and flexible, and she wants to twist him into knots of pleasure.
It was a close quarters mission. They were holed up together in a goddamn shack on a beach in Nicaragua, tracking a drug cartel, and close quarters with her when it had been a good goddamn long while since Clint had gotten laid meant that he was about to claw down the fucking walls.
And Natasha, in her typically uncanny way, could read it in him.
He plunged into the Caribbean, but the water was too warm to cool him off, to quench the hot lust that kindled in his body at the sight of her. He thought she had gone into the jungle to check their cameras, but when he burst into the shack clad in just his wet boxer-briefs, she looked up at him from the book she was reading.
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➸ Playing House by chez_amanda

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst | Smut: yes
Word count: 8825 | Status: complete

My comment:  An undercover mission as a couple makes our two favourite assassins confront their own feelings

Of all the things that Natasha Romanoff had been asked to do for a mission, being a housewife had to be the weirdest. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind that she couldn’t, but her domestic skills had never really come into play in her work with S.H.I.E.L.D. In order to fit into her cover and the conservative gated community where she and Clint were headed, Natasha had to buy a new wardrobe. She wasn’t one for sweater sets, but from the intel in her mission folder, the women in this community did not do worn jeans and fitted t-shirts. There was now a considerable amount of beige and pastel in her closet.
Natasha hated beige.
Clint didn’t seemed thrilled about the polo shirt and chinos he was wearing either. Every couple of seconds, he fidgeted with the collar or shifted in his seat and Natasha tried not to laugh. Tactical gear was perfectly fine, but a pair of khaki pants and a collared shirt made him uncomfortable. She looked out the window at the desert thousands of miles below as she ran through her cover’s facts once again.
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➸ Criminals by eiluned

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst (?), alternate universe | Smut: yes
Word count: 1469 | Status: complete

My comment:  A Clintasha partners-in-crime AU 

Mexico was nice. Clint leaned back in his beach chair and rubbed at the scar on his leg; it ached despite the hot sun. But he liked Mexico, and he liked the sight of Natasha in a white bikini swaying across the sand, margarita in hand and red hair blowing in the breeze.
They started out as rivals, two assassins working for the same boss, and there was only room for one hitman at the top. Much to their mutual annoyance, they ended up on the same job, both given the assignment probably in the hope that one would kill the other. They killed the mark together, because it was that or die trying to finish the job separately.
Clint found Natasha in his bed that night, naked and seductive, and he knew she was there to kill him. He fucked her anyway, pinned her to the bed and fucked her until she screamed, and then she took her turn, tying his hands to the headboard and blowing his mind.
After that night, they decided they worked well together, in bed and out of it. He was the guns and she was the brains. She was a beautiful distraction and he never missed a shot. They stole from the best, traded in secrets, killed for the highest bidder.
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➸ Better Than Silence (series) by samalander

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: smut, angst, hurt/comfort | Smut: yes 
Word count: 13585 | Status: work in progress

My comment: Clint and Natasha’s journey + loads of smut

When she got to SHIELD, fresh out of the Red Room program, Natasha had never made her own decisions, never been in charge of her own time. And suddenly there she was, an agent who was facing the most dangerous foe she’d ever seen–the revolutionary idea of weekends, of time to be herself. For the first time in her life, Natasha balked, and she wasn’t sure, later, if it was because she didn’t know how to take a day off, or because she didn’t know what self to be when the choice was left to her.
How she managed to go six months with barely any days off, taking mission after mission after mission, wearing out partners and handlers and support staff, Clint wasn’t sure. She probably had to make some promises, tell some lies. But she did it.
And when Hill found out, she was furious that Natasha had managed to skirt the rules about mandatory rest and recovery after missions. But Hill’s fury was never hot; never the safe kind that burned itself out on revenge. Hill was methodical and evil. She assigned Natasha to Strike Team Delta, because, she said, if Clint was going to recruit pain-in-the-ass agents, then Clint could deal with them himself.
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➸ Bruises by Tahllydarling (ff.net)

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst, hurt/comfrot, romance | Smut: yes
Word count: 66683 | Status: complete

My comment:  Angst angst and angst! Clint tries to deny his feelings for Natasha without any success. But right now, Natasha needs him, and he’ll go to the end of the world for her. A must read.

For several months he had tried to conceal the desire he felt for her whenever they are in close proximity but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. His desire for her would be his undoing and possibly the end of his career with SHIELD. He had made his peace with that thought some time ago and was content to sacrifice life as he knew it for he chance to be the one man she lit up for when she stepped into a room. Now however, she needed him more than she had ever needed him before and he was determined no matter the cost he would be there for her.
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➸ Worlds Collide by SugarFey 

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst, hurt/comfrot, romance | Smut: yes
Word count: 13215 | Status: complete

My comment:  A story of the development of Clint and Natasha’s relationship from the first day they met.

She has been in America for a month and progressed from interrogations with suspicious S.H.I.E.L.D agents to men and women in tweed with degrees in front of their names. Somewhere S.H.I.E.L.D has gone from considering her a threat to a salvageable asset.
She is not sure what to make of that.
Barton visits her in a quiet moment between the endless physical examinations and interviews. He tells her about the new bow he is testing, how the strike team he is placed on won’t stop bickering and that he isn’t allowed to smoke on base. After a good ten minutes of blather he asks about her day.
“They did a pelvic exam.”
Barton nods as if considering the information. “Ouch.”
She shrugs. Being poked and prodded by men in lab coats is a known variable.
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➸ After The Bombs by SugarFey 

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst, romance, alternate universe | Smut: yes
Word count: 3151 | Status: complete

My comment:  Heartbreaking yet beautiful Clintasha au fic, set during wartime. 

Three weeks after Natasha moved in to a draughty attic room in a boarding house in London, a letter arrived in the post, bearing the address of an American convalescent hospital. They were Clint’s words but not in his hand, as if he had dictated to a nurse or some helpful volunteer, and Natasha read the letter standing at the kitchen table, one hand flat against the wood in case she needed to steady herself.
She boarded a train at two o’clock that afternoon and sat in the window seat of an empty compartment, watching burnt husks of buildings give way to trees and fields that reminded her of Bletchley Park.
The military hospital was grey, character-less and sterile. Nurses and doctors in starched uniforms filled the corridors and the smell of cleaning fluid stung her nose. It took a short while for Natasha to find the ward named in the letter, but finally she did.
The doctor in the ward gave her an indulgent smile that did not quite meet his eyes. “He can’t hear very well,” he told her. “And he might have trouble speaking. But he can write.”
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➸ Hymn of the End by Mockingjay34 (ff.net)

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst | Smut: no
Word count: 473 | Status: complete

My comment:  It’s short, it’s brutal, it’s beautiful.

Clint, surprisingly, was a religious man. 
He went to church, prayed over his meals, read the bible. He had God and believed Jesus was his savior. He believed someone could help redeem him from his past. Only the people who he let in knew. He wasn’t a very open man.
Natasha, not so surprisingly, is not a religious woman.
She never went to church, never thanked any higher power, never cracked open a bible. She doesn’t believe there is anything else. She doesn’t believe it’s possible for anyone to save her. Everyone knows this. But she isn’t a very open woman regardless.
“I just don’t get it,” Natasha would say.
“You have to put your faith somewhere,” Clint would answer.
“I put mine in a bullet.”
“Yeah, but even a gun can misfire.”
And they left it at that.
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➸ Icarus (In My Veins) by shadows of a dream (ff.net)

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst | Smut: no 
Word count: 1781 | Status: complete

My comment:  A story of Clint’s past and how the Black Widow who never loved him back, was his light at the end of his tunnel of sorrows and despairs. 

The twin graves are cleanly craved of sheer white stone, their edges smooth beneath Clint Barton’s shaking hands. Eyes leaking, he lays a bundle of mismatched flowers between the headstones. He swallows a sob as he traces the engravings of their names (in his heart, they will always only be Mother and Father). 
When he tips his head back to the sky and looses a shriek - such an awful, barbaric sound - the sky is idyllic, blue and cloudless. The sun turns the edges of his vision red, red, red, and as more tears come (from the heat or his sorrow, and don’t they both burn just the same?), he vows he’ll catch the light someday, and maybe it doesn’t make sense, but he’s only an (orphaned) child, after all.
Clint screams until his throat is raw. As he turns away from the graves, he repeats his promise to himself (to rise and rise until he catches the light that laughs at his plight, that shines above such pitiable mortality,) a silent swear.
It is the quiet things that kill. 
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➸ Rivers and Roads by shtuff (ff.net)

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst, hurt/comfort | Smut: no 
Word count: 4798 | Status: complete

My comment: It’s gonna hurt, but you’ll love it. A very beautifully written piece of work.

Two days after everything came so terribly close to ending, Clint asks for a leave of absence. Fury looks at him, sees everything he’s so desperately trying to hide, and nods. He tries not to show how thankful he is for understanding – tries to preserve a little bit of his dignity as he turns and walks away, fighting the urge to run with every marching step. 
He throws things in a suitcase without really looking at them – too wrapped up in the need to get out and away before he drowns in the guilt and the blood that refuses to come off his hands.
There’s a sound in the doorway and he turns to see Natasha with a bag over her shoulder and determination written across her face. 
“No,” he says, trying to sound firm but only managing tired.
“Yes, ” she replies and her eyes spark with a familiar fire that tells him he has no hope of winning.
So he sighs and nods and ignores the rush of relief he feels and knowing he won’t be alone.
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➸ Between the shadow and the soul by viverella

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Steve Rogers
Genres: angst, hurt/comfort | Smut: no
Word count: 11924 | Status: complete

My comment: A beautifully written piece on the development of their relationship. Highly recommended!

Clint Barton learns fairly quickly that Natasha Romanov is one person he may never quite be able to figure out (it doesn’t stop him from trying though, either because he’s stupid or he likes torturing himself or both).
So when he asks Natasha, “Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?”
And she replies, “You know that I do.”
All Clint can think is, No, no I don’t, because he’s been working and fighting alongside her for years now and if he’s learned anything, it’s that she’s the most difficult person to know anything about that he’s ever met.
Clint learns the way her body works before he learns how she thinks, learns the feel of her soft skin, the exact placement of all her scars from bullets and knives and worse accumulated from a long, long career as a killer, the quiet stutter of her breath when she comes apart entirely beneath him. He learns that she talks in her sleep in tense Russian before he knows which of the skeletons in her closet make the ridge of her brow furrow and her teeth clench. He knows the sensation of her heel at his throat and her fist in his gut, but not why sudden movements when she’s sick can put her on edge for hours.
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➸ Stay With Me by angel-death-dealer (ff.net)

Warnings: none
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Mcu!Avengers 
Genres: angst, hurt/comfort | Smut: no
Word count: 7816 | Status: complete

My comment: It’s gonna hurt, but you’ll love it. The writing is beautiful and they’re all so in character. One of my all-time favourite Clintasha fics that includes the Avengers gang. Not one of those cliche Clint-takes-a-bullet-for-Natasha-and-they-make-love fics.

In hindsight, it was ridiculously suspicious how easy things had become. Four guns to eleven, so to speak; the four belonging to Black Widow, Hawkeye, Captain America and Iron Man. It was a Sunday, and the job had been a last minute call in for intel interception, and Fury simply didn’t want to wait until the intel had been passed and they had a more stable location. No, they were sent to the cliche warehouse in the middle of the meat-packing district and tasked with taking out both groups, securing the intel and bringing in the leaders of each group. Now, seven men lay on the ground with their arms above their heads as they waited for their back up team to arrive and transport them back to SHIELD base.
Tony was standing over them, hands extended with repulsors glowing ready as a constant an very real threat that they could end up like one of their four dead buddies if they attempted to move. Beside him, Steve was there with his shoulders thrown back at full height, ever the leader, and though he wouldn’t admit it, ever trying to remind Tony that in the field, he was in charge.
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