➸ 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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➸ Mr. & Mrs. Barton (Or: Why Natasha Sends Jennifer Aniston an Annual Apologetic Fruit Basket) by shellybelle

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: romance, drama, au | Smut: yes
Word count: 13630 | Status: complete

My comment:  A must-read Clintasha Mr and Mrs Smith AU. It is just not possible to not have imagined our favourite pair of assassins playing the two main roles while you watch Mr and Mrs Smith, right?

“Egy nagy tejeskávé, kérem.” 
Something about the woman’s voice caught Clint’s attention, and he glanced up from his newspaper in time to see a slim, pretty redhead flash a dazzling smile at the barista as she handed over some cash in exchange for a large cup of foam. She turned away, tossing a few red curls out off her forehead, and Clint caught her eye.
She stopped for half an instant. Hesitated an instant more.
And then, slowly, cautiously, she smiled.
Clint tilted his head to the side, nudged the other chair away from the table, and raised an eyebrow in invitation.
The woman set her bag on the floor and sat down across from him, her latte in her hands. “So,” she said in American-accented English, and damn but that voice was like honey dripping off the comb. “You’re American.”
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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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➸ enough to go by by sweetwatersong (ff.net)

Warnings: self harm, smoking
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: angst, hurt/comfort | Smut: no
Word count: 1490 | Status: complete

My comment: This fic is going to kill you but you’ll love it. One of my favourite Clintasha fics ever. Exquisitely written.

Clint picks up the habit in the aftermath of New York, the rush of nicotine nothing compared to the steadiness of his hands as he pulls out the first cigarette, cups it against the fall wing and breathes life into it. There is something so simple about the minute flame, controllably, touchable, erasable; on, off, on again with the flick of a switch. Bright against the dimness in the alleys, bright and warm within his curved hands, steady hands, hands that shake no more.
She finds him leaning up against the corner of the apartment building, feeling relaxed for the first time in days – weeks, if he’s honest, months if he can admit it, and really the lie of normalcy is the only thing he can cling to Th the moment so no, he’s not honest, not about that. He exhales a stream of smoke, watching her with the cigarette low against his side; watches, waits, for her reaction, for her expression.
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➸ Couldn’t Get That Boy To Kill Me by redbrunja

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: angst, hurt/comfort | Smut: yes
Word count: 3158 | Status: complete

My comment: Clintasha and angst and just Clintasha :)

Her right knee is dislocated, three ribs broken, wrist sprained. There’s blood dripping into her eyes, sweat stinging at her cuts, and she’s out of bullets. He’s panting, faced bruised to hell and back, the left leg of his fatigues glistening with blood, black on black, and he has an arrow pointed at her forehead.
Kill me, she thinks, empty gun trained right between his eyes.
She is so tired.
He lowers his weapon.
Natasha hates him for that for  years.
During her intake, with SHIELD combing through her mind and testing her body, she thinks she should have forced the issue, fought Barton until he put her down. She would have deserved it. Death clears all debts. But Natasha has never been one to take the easy way out. Dying wouldn’t wipe out the red in her ledger.

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➸ Find Your Way Home to Me by watts

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: angst, hurt/comfort | Smut: yes
Word count: 7926 | Status: complete

My comment: A quite accurately characterised Clintasha fic set before and during the catws events.

She’d been expecting him for a while by the time she heard someone approaching the door, pulling her handgun from beneath her pillow all the same. The footsteps paused and she knew he was pressing his hand into the recognition system, waiting for his name to pop up on the screen and grant him entrance. Natasha lowered her aim when the sliding door revealed Clint’s familiar frame, and he shot her a smile as he headed over to join her on her bed.
“The Winter Soldier, huh? Wasn’t expecting that one.”
“No,” she agreed, replacing the gun and leaning into Clint’s warmth as he sat down next to her and twined his arm around her shoulders, “me neither.”
“I thought nothing took you by surprise, Agent Romanoff.” She gave him a weary smile, letting her eyes shut as his hand slipped down her side and under the loose hem of her t-shirt, caressing her hip gently.
“Don’t be a smart-ass, Clint,” she chastised him mildly, all too willing to let his teasing slide as long as his ministrations continued. She’d learned early in their partnership that in such an exchange she always came away with the better deal. He chuckled and twisted his body, dropping his mouth to the shell of her ear and nipping at the sensitive skin in a way he knew all too well would elicit a moan from her. She kept herself passive, content with the progression, or lack thereof, really, of their conversation, practically purring with pleasure when his hand moved down to the juncture of her thighs, palming her through her panties.

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➸ Faithfully by wtfrenchtoast

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: smut, fluff | Smut: yes
Word count: 3392 | Status: complete

My comment: So much shameless smut + Clintasha baby fic c:

Clint startles awake. His phone buzzes obnoxiously; who the hell? He glances at the digital clock on his nightstand. 3:44. And not in the afternoon.
Bleary-eyed, he grabs the offending object and glares at it accusingly, until he notices the source. It’s a text from Natasha.
You up?
She’s in Beijing, working. It’s roughly, what, quarter to five in the afternoon there? He groans, but replies anyway.
I am now. You good?
Get online.
He blinks slowly. If he had ever made the mistake of thinking that being married to Natasha meant he would have her figured out, that was an illusion long past.
Alright.
Clint swings his legs over the side of his narrow, SHIELD-standard twin bed and clicks the lamp on. The yellowed light is harsh and he winces as his eyes adjust.

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➸ you are the only exception by bittervoid

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha 
Genres: hurt/comfort, angst | Smut: no
Word count: 1461 | Status: complete

My comment: A take on the development of Clint and Natasha’s relationship. 

The blood seeps from splintered knuckles—
It hurts, bones brittle and snapped so easily like a fence panel, but it’s nothing she hasn’t had before. Burst vessels in her eye, a broken leg or ribs shaped into a new cage by someone’s boot; most at a younger age, at her most vulnerable and just learning the trade of an assassin, most done by her creator.
She hisses as the bandages press against raw skin, split open by how hard she’d punched her target, and doesn’t look up when she senses Clint hovering at the door. She knows his arms are crossed, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
‘Who pissed you off this time?’

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