➸ 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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➸ 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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➸ 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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➸ Laid Bare by chez_amanda, eiluned

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Phil Coulson
Genres: hurt/comfort, fluff | Smut: yes, explicit 
Word count: 19594 | Status: complete

My comment: So much unapologetic smut.

“All right, Agent Barton. You’ve convinced Director Fury,” Coulson said as he stepped back into his office. “You are to fly to Moscow and make contact with Agent Romanoff. Provide assistance with her mission if she deems it necessary.”
Swallowing a sigh of relief, Clint picked up the black folder Coulson slid across the desk to him. Natasha was in trouble. Well, she might be in trouble. She had been undercover in Moscow for the last month and a half, and she hadn’t made contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. in the last two weeks. So she might be in trouble, but no one really knew, and Clint wasn’t going to take any chances. This was Natasha, and Clint never fucked around when her safety was on the line.
“That is your identity,” Coulson continued, sitting with his usual precision of movement. “You are Alex Reynolds, the son of an American oil baron, and you are in Moscow for a series of meetings with a Russian petroleum company. This will leave your evenings free to visit The Pigalle, the club where Agent Romanoff is working undercover. Your flight leaves tomorrow morning.”
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➸ buying a stairway to heaven by zihna

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Mcu!Avengers 
Genres: hurt/comfort, alternate universe | Smut: no, brief mentions 
Word count: 34592 | Status: complete

My comment: One of the best Clintasha AUs I’ve ever read. This fic uses the plot of The Avengers but in an alternate universe where the six of them are fallen angels, messengers and servants of God. There are also some BrucexTony and past StevexTony in it but it’s a must-read especially if you like mythology as much as I do.

God has many eyes. Some are small, some are vast, some peer into the darkness, others stare into the sun, but no pair of eyes is sharper than Uriel’s.
(Though that is not what he will call himself, one day. Uriel is a strange name, even among humans.)
Uriel’s eyes see everything, given enough time.
He finds Gabriel in 1881. It was only a matter of time, really, and good ol’ Gabe hasn’t made himself all that hard to find. (Granted, it’s been nearly three thousand years. He’s grown arrogant, not that he wasn’t in the first place.)
“Raz,” Uriel whispers. “I’ve got him.”
“We moving in?”
On the wind, there’s the faintest rustle of wings.
Uriel pauses. “No,” he says, folding his own wings (wide, golden-brown) in tight. “Not today. We know where he is. Now we just wait.”
“For what?” Raziel turns towards him, heaven’s light stirring beneath her eyes.
Uriel is God’s sharpest pair of eyes, and he is the archangel of wisdom. “For when it’s time.”
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➸ Cupid by AlphaKantSpell

Warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, suicidal thoughts 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Phil Coulson, Barney Barton
Genres: alternate universe (ish), hurt/comfort, romance | Smut: yes 
Word count: 46088 | Status: work in progress

My comment: What if Clint was actually a cupid? A cute (yet at times heartbreaking) Clintasha fic.

“Well Fuck.”
The capital F was important. It stood for “Frankly Ulcers Can Kill,” as in he felt a lethal ulcer forming because of the given circumstances. Those weren’t things a person said upon meeting the love of their life, with a capital F or otherwise. However, Clint had never been a normal person. Not even in the unusual fellow sort of sense – he was literally not a person. To be more precise he was a Cupid. ‘Match Maker, Match Maker make me a match’. That kind. He had wings and everything (though they were tiny – no bigger than a quail’s wings, not even restaurant quality). Clint even had an inexhaustible set of magic love sparking arrows, though that’s getting ahead of things.
More important than all the menial tidbits about Cupids and their duties was the fact that Clint could see the love strings that connected any random person to any other random person. They came in a multitude of colors from platonic friendly yellow to Roxanthin Red for romantic love, invisible and intangible to non Cupids. He once followed a rosebud pink line from a quiet girl on a city bus to a farm hand several miles away. The string connected the two by their ring fingers over the long distance without snagging. Clint pricked the woman with an arrow (just as invisible to her as her own love line) with an urge to stop by the farm one day soon. As far as he knew the couple was still happily married.
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➸ The Red Thread (series) by Anuna, Koren M (CyberMathWitch)

Warnings: descriptions of violence and blood 
Characters: Clint, Natasha
Genres: angst, hurt/comfort | Smut: yes 
Word count: 21277 | Status: work in progress

My comment: Clint and Natasha begins with red. Read it. You’re gonna love every single tiny bit of this story.

It begins with red.
She begins (again) when she cuts off the dyed hair. All of it, the artificial faded blond hanging around her shoulders. She cuts it off mercilessly, because it makes her feel faded as well, like a picture without a face.
In days to come she watches (gleefully) how red reappears.
She is red. Strands of red, swirling around her like snakes, winding like ropes, a beautiful warning – her hair, the only thing that was always hers.
She knows she is red in the blur of things and choices; different kinds of bread and different ways to have your coffee; a variety of fabrics under her hand while she touches and tests them under her palm. She wonders what would the girl from two months ago like, the last one among the fake girls. It would be like flicking a switch and then, this would be easy.
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➸ Perilous Business by SidheRa

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Bucky, Yelena Belova
Genres: alternate universe, romance | Smut: none 
Word count: 12018 | Status: indefinite hiatus

My comment: A beautiful Clintasha Pacific Rim AU, I only wish the author finishes the story, at least the last chapter can still be called an ending, sort of.

“Widow, it’s behind us!” James shouted, even though he didn’t need to. He was brash, even for an American, and he’d never quite broken the habit of speaking out loud when they were drifting.
Not like Yelena. Natasha couldn’t remember if they’d ever said anything to each other when they were linked.
She rolled her eyes pointedly at James, knowing he could feel her reaction even if he couldn’t see it. They turned as one, moving the jaeger as smoothly as something the size of a building could move.
“I told you not to call me that, Barnes,” she said, and they raised their arm to grab hold of the kaiju by the neck.
He laughed.
“Just admit it already, Widow.” he said, emphasizing the nickname. “I know you like it. I’m in your head, remember?”
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➸ They Will Rock You by SneakyHufflepuff

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Mcu!Avengers, Darcy Lewis, Kate Bishop, Loki, Fury
Genres: alternate universe, romance| Smut: none (brief mention) 
Word count: 27081 | Status: complete

My comment: It’s a finished Clintasha medieval AU! How rare!

Sir Nicholas Fury, Slayer of Evil and Defender of the Realm, lay collapsed against a squat tree. Steve knelt in front of the wounded knight, squeezing water from a cloth into Fury’s mouth, but it was of no use. He was fading, and fading fast. A spear wound to his side had become infected. There was nothing either of his squires could do.
“Barton and Rogers. Listen up.” Fury’s voice was gruff and authoritative, even as he approached death. “This land is a shithole, and if you stay here much longer you’ll be the ones at the receiving end of a spear.” He coughed, flecks of blood landing on his armor.
“Tell me something I don’t already know, sir,” Clint said, hiding his grief at his master’s illness behind snark. Fury wouldn’t want tears.
“Shut it, Barton. I don’t have much time left.” Fury took a steadying breath, then winced at the pain. “When I came here I had hope of lands and a wife if I served long enough. You two don’t have that. You do have my armor and my horses. Take them, and go on the tourney. Make your money from the noble bastards and get out.”
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➸ La Belle et La Bête by ShaiWinchester

Warnings: none 
Characters: Clint, Natasha, Mcu!Avengers 
Genres: alternate universe, romance, fluff (?) | Smut: none 
Word count: 21469 | Status: indefinite hiatus

My comment: I can only hope that this fic ruins you just as much as it ruined me.

“I like to live away from others, so in my search for a home I was much selected. I needed solitude and a place to sleep, that was it,” Clint told her as they entered the door. He held onto her hand tightly and brought her inside with him. Her long white dress dragged on the floor and the pearls around her neck felt like ice.
Natasha’s eyes wandered around with curiosity. The floors were polished wood and the walls were stone, but decorated. There was the most lavish of furniture, but none of it looked very comfortable. It was very dark, except for candles and torches selectively placed. The castle seemed as if no one lived in it, but yet he did… all alone, until now.
“Don’t you freeze to death, Lord Barton?” she wondered aloud. A chill came through her body and she shivered. He chuckled and pulled her closer to him as they walked.
“I like the cold, but you shall be fine here,” he responded.
“What does that mean?” Her brow furrowed in confusion.
“You’ll see, my love,” Clint mused and kissed her on the forehead before they moved forward again. His affection for her seemed to heighten as they moved further into his home. At their wedding he barely touched her, but now he practically cradled her to him.
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