Trade in Being Your Spine

When Darcy rolls over, the dip on the couch almost throws her to the floor and she inhales sharply before remembering she really shouldn't have. Spilled pho and leather-sofa-cleaner do not a sweet scent make.

Sam smacks her calves. "Give me your other leg so you're even."

"I pledge to you my firstborn," Darcy vows.

"Not interested. I still have five younger brothers and sisters to raise."

She lays her right leg on his lap because she's a good friend and he proceeds to rub her calves because he's the most excellent friend in the history of friends who are within a three-hour drive of the five NYC boroughs, Dr Jane Foster, science mom, tiny crazed genius, she is looking at you. Jane totes deserves to be honoured guest professor for the semesof ter at MIT, considering she basically brought Star Trek to life but Darcy needs her girl, dammit, and Sam is pretty good at painting toenails for a straight guy.

Clint would do it but for all that he's a stone fucking fox, he wields lacquer wands about as well as he carries Mjolnir-- Thor made Darcy repeat the name over and over and over until she got tired of murdering the pronunciation. Plus he's not at home very much though that might be kinda her fault because she vetoed living in SHIELD's drone-shelving and Tony Stark's Avengers Penis Enhancement.

Three of the five door locks click open. Sam gently pushes Darcy's other leg off his lap, only half massaged.

"Noooo," she whines.

"I ain't getting on the wrong side of your boyfriend."

"Should you be?" asks Clint because his timing is impeccable so of course he'd catch her and Sam looking PG-raunchy when really, Darcy deserved a leg massage after out Peppering Pepper Potts today.

She tries to stave off Clint's sulk with eye-fluttering and a "Hey there, hot tamale" in what she hopes is a sexy drawl but suspects sounds more like smoker's bronchitis. Rawr.

Clint shrugs his kit off. Instead of stashing it in the hallway closet per usual, he pulls out one of the arrows and inspects the tip. The testosterone nearly blows Darcy's glasses off.

"Guthrie," he says by way of hello to Sam before Darcy even and now she's annoyed.

Sam, the traitor--see if she ever bakes him any more brownies-- goads Clint on by replying with, "Barton," and doing his own Muppet Brow of Doom.

"Bueller," says Darcy.

"You been keeping my girl company?" asks Clint.

"Just down for the day," says Sam, "She asked me to. Reckon she's feeling kinda lonely and wanted someone to pass the time with."

"And I 'reckon' I can keep her company just fine without any help."

"It's awesome how you both know want I want and what I need without asking me," Darcy interrupts, "I'm gonna go ahead and charge my batteries in the nearest socket. Feel free to take me out when you finally whip your dicks out to measure. I have an app for that."

"Right," says Sam. "Going home now. You did great, darlin'. I'm really proud of you." He gives Darcy a hug, normally very welcome 'cause Sam gives great hugs, but she's still kinda pissed that him and Clint harshed her chill with their gorilla mode.

"What's he doing here?" Clint demands before she even closes the door.

Darcy slaps Lock No. 4 into place. "Hi, baby. Missed you while I was gone a whole freaking month so deep under Eyes Only even Thor looked confused when you asked where I was. Yes, I'd love to hear about your awesome day! Kisses. Roses. Hot sex on the couch."

"I come home after all of that to find you with your legs in your ex-boyfriend's lap and you're the one who's supposed to be mad?"

"First of all, everyone in the room who works constantly with their ex-lover-soulmate and their ex-wife raise their hand. Second, Sam was never my boyfriend."

"He knows about your tattoo," Clint snarls.

"We had three drunk make-outs!"

"You said two before."

She flaps her hand. "Two, three, whatever. We were the only non-combatants under forty Robin Hooding in a warzone. Pardon our damage if we needed to get shit-faced and gropey three whole times in twenty-seven months. Also ex-lover-soulmate and ex-wife. Working with. Like, constantly. Maybe if we broke up again, I'll actually see you a lot more often."

Clint's face blands out to sniper-mode. Darcy hates that. She prefers ragey over blank. At least with ragey she knows what's going on in his twisted brain because honestly, ugh!, her day's been way too rad for his diva to ruin so she pre-empts by saying, "I'm sleeping on the couch tonight."

"Fine. I'm going to the range," he says and if today was triple-decker gelato on a chocolate-dipped waffle cone, the last five minutes was the part where all the scoops fall on the mud after one lick then a seagull steals the cone.

Darcy grabs a pillow and the top blanket from the bed and pitches them, and herself, on the lumpy couch of righteous hissy fit for a night of tossing and turning the likes of which she hasn't experienced since the Prank Kit Fiasco of Band Camp '02. She's surprised to be awakened by someone squeezing under her, smelling of microbrew and gunpowder. Clint's swearing pretty uncreatively at the couch-- lots of "motherfuckers" and "shits" and "burnt ass" type of stuff which means he's not even trying nor is he that drunk-- as he draws the blanket over both of them.

She levers herself up to look at him. Clint winces, "Baby, wait--" and adjusts her elbows away from his presumably sore ribs and yeah, there's guilt, but she's clinging desperately to her hissy fit.

"I thought you were going to the firing range," she says.

"Been and gone," he says.

"There's isn't enough room here for two of us."

"Darce, I've been waiting to get home for twenty-four days and I'll be a horse's ass if I'm spending my first night back alone. There's plenty of room." He shimmies, Darcy's legs tangle in his, and he pulls her arms around his neck to dangle over one of the arm rests.

"Fine, I'll take the bed." She starts to get up but he ninjas her back on top of him and if his ribs get a little squashed, well, that's his fault.

"Do you want to fight?" he asks. "We can fight here and now."

"You started it."

"Really. Really? 'You started it.' Jesus, Darcy!"

"You did! With the arrow thing and the chest beating to Sam before you even said hello to me but I guess whichever warm body you see first when you walk through the door."

He nods slowly. "Okay. It was a dick move. But your first response to my bull was to sleep on the couch instead of telling me why you were mad. I'm a sharpshooter, not a mind-reader, baby. I can tell when you're angry but not why."

"Superhero powers acknowledged and stored for future reference." Darcy rests her head on his collarbone, all loose, 'cause even though Clint's ripped like the Andes, he's a pretty comfy body pillow especially when he rubs circles on her back and crawls his fingers around her hair. She traces the whorls of his ears which always relaxes him thus supporting her theory that his codename should be feline-related, not avian. Catman. Cateye. Arrowclaw. So she sucks at codenames.

"I only meet women at work," he says out of the fucking blue. Darcy's boyfriend is the master of the awkward. See: fondling of arrows in front of Sam. See: reasons why Darcy will never again bring him to Karaoke. See: his cowboy boots.

"Congrats?"

"You were talking about Nat and Bobbi. I don't have a life outside of work so I only went out with women at work. That's why I work with my exes. Hell, I met you while I did detail for Dr. Foster and Selvig."

"Oookay." Darcy's not sure where this conversation's going but she knows at least two bottles of Florence Welch-inspired merlot behind on his blood alcohol content. Her celebratory drinks were six hours ago.

"Jane probably talks to Bobbi more often than I do," says Clint. "She's SciDiv. They give equipment to Fury and Fury gives them to me if Stark doesn't get to them first."

"I was a big fan of the magenta arrows."

"You would be. My point is, I don't work with my ex-wife as much as you think I do. It's not fucking Grey's Anatomy with explosives."

"You obviously never watched Grey's Anatomy." Then Darcy takes the plunge because she'd had half the menu's martinis six hours ago which was why she sacked out on the couch when Sam took her home, and also she'd never managed to buy that brain-to-mouth filter; she'd gotten a mega-rad coffee maker instead. "What about Natasha?"

Clint goes still. He legit doesn't even breathe. Darcy buries her nose in the notch between his collarbones and reflects on the fantastic seven-month sequel of their relationship. She can now keep a house plant alive for more than a month, rock the Arc du Triomphe sex position, and run three miles before taking a macchiato break. Personal growth bonus score!

"Tasha knows me inside-out," he says into her hair.

Yeah, good thing she took advantage of Clint's extreme bendiness to try everything on Cosmo.com and, BTW, she really needs to remember to write them a firmly worded letter on about the effectiveness of The Hula position. Which is to say, it wasn't.

His squeezes her a little extra hard. "It's not as sexy as-- look, Nat and I were partners before you even finished high school. We had missions that-- when we work, we have to--" He shakes his head. "Of course, she knows me. She's my good eye."

Darcy is parching for that merlot now but it's in the kitchen ten whole feet away and she can't escape Clint's embrace of the feels. Clint puddling over Natasha Romanov is pretty much her worst nightmare. No, that's a lie, her worst nightmare is being trapped in on an ice floe with a dead human body and being forced to eat it for survival while wearing a sundress. Her in the sundress, not the dead human body. Although the dead human body might've gotten there because of hypothermia if they were inappropriately dressed, too. Anyway, Clintasha: Lovers in a Dangerous Time is a very close second worst nightmare ever and Darcy's even wearing a dress right at this moment!

"You don't see-- when I'm with you, I can't-- there's this... thing--"

Darcy takes pity on him and on her metaphorical triple-scoop gelato which is not only on the ground but now also vomited upon by a half-assed carnie clown with body odour. "It's okay, hotpants. I get it."

She figures maybe a couple weeks to find a place to live upstate and Clint doesn't really accumulate things so it'll be pretty easy to separate their stuff and, wow! This blows worse than their first go at sex-plus-feels when she could blame cheap tequila and the idiocy of youth-- can she call the undergrad years 'youth?' yet-- on her relationship choices.

"Baby, you're crushing my spleen," says Clint. He's grinning down at her. "I love you."

"You're fucking basketcase." She pokes his chest. "No, really, you are a zeppelin of wrong in the head. 'Natasha sees me. Natasha's my partner. Natasha's the Nick to my Fury. Darcy, I love you?' Screw you with your grapple arrows. Like, really deeply, and with a lot of twisty movements and without lube. With, like, the opposite of lube."

"You didn't let me finish."

"Because everything that's come out of your mouth tonight is horrible!"

Clint stops breathing. He blinks. His arms fall away from her and--

And...

Oh.

Oh!

Darcy presses his cheeks between her hands and states deeply into his eyes. "Did you mean it? Blink once for yes, twice for no."

Clint blinks once.

"Has anyone told you that you're wrong in the head?"

"Stark. He gave me the beer."

"You took relationship advice from Tony Stark while you were at a gun range shooting arrows. I'm guessing you also started digging a rock-bottom basement."

Clint blinks once.

He starts talking again, slowly, with pauses like a five-second delay in a live broadcast. "You keep going on about Nat... Y'know, to fuck if Natasha knows me more than anyone else. She's has to; she's my partner. You can't compare-- And besides, I don't want to always... It's not... it's like you're naked and exposed and even the stuff you don't want to go back and prod, is written all over your skin and you can't cover up." His words come out faster, delay on the fritz, his hands gripping her hips so tight, Darcy knows she'll have finger-shaped bruises in the morning. "You're not allowed to cover up; you let them see all the squishy parts so they know where to hit, so they know where to protect. That's what we have to do to each other to... but it's fucking hell sometimes. I love her and hate her at the same fucking time. I trust her with my life but if it comes down to the wire, she's my biggest weakness."

"Not your civvie girlfriend?"

"Fuck no. Darcy, you're-- you-- you make me strong, okay? You believe I'm better than I am and sometimes I need that to... it's like... shit, if I have to quote Ryan Fucking Gosling, we really will end this."

Darcy slips off Clint, the feelings slip off Clint's face, but she keeps holding his hands and tugs him up to his feet. She leads him, walking backwards to their bedroom and once the back of her knees hit the bed, she spins around to push him down on the mattress.

"Off," she says.

Clint's as good at reading body language even though he says can't read her mind so he knows she means strip it all off. He crab-crawls to the top of the bed, letting himself sprawl out, no shame, 'cause Darcy's boyfriend is a tractor trailer of issues but self-confidence isn't one of them and he likes to show off his hot bod. He's already half-hard. She knows she can make his cock pretty much touch his bellybutton in five seconds flat but she wants to have a conversation first so she pulls up on his sac and strums the bit of skin stretched between it and his ring.

"I make you a better man," she muses. "I make you strong. You realise I've warned friends off guys who say the exact same thing."

"Hnnngh," says Clint.

"Changing a bad boy into a good man never works because it's crap on a cow's tail. You're a good guy because you're a good guy. You know that, right, Barton?"

"Y-yes?" Darcy squeezes a little, licks her other hand and rubs a little, then blows lightly over the slit on his dick before starting the main event and he quickly corrects his tone. "Yes. Cow shit. Lots of it. Holy Christ."

She lets him slip out of her mouth so she can slide up his leg from his knee to his groin, making sure to keep his cock pointed north instead of up. She's still fully dressed anyway; he's got no entrance. Leaning forward, she licks the scar on his right pectoral that used to be a tattoo. He grabs her ass and presses her down. She bats his hands away.

"Baby," he whines, and because Darcy is a kind and magnanimous goddess of hawt sexxorz, she rolls her panties off and threads Clint's hands through the leg holes. He grins as he twists the polka-dotted cotton and lace tighter around his wrists. Note to self: Clint looks great naked except for polka-dotted handcuffs and a smile. This mental image will go into Darcy's spank bank the next time he has an op. Hell, it's going in her spank bank the next time she's bored at work. Or when she's stressed at work. Or when she's relaxing at home. She might just tattoo this mental image behind her eyelids, walk everywhere with her eyes closed, and die happily crushed under a bus.

Darcy makes her way back down his body, tasting all his new ouches. His torso is a xylophone of yellow and blue bruises. Half a dozen steristrips curl around his left forearm. His right knee looks bigger than his left. She kisses the hurt away then proceeds to give him the best damn blow job ever for general anesthesic purposes, thank you very much for the Nobel Humanitarian Prize, she's a giver like that. Clint whacks his hands on the headboard before he manages to grab a hold of the edge but since he didn't make a sound, Darcy's pretty sure her technique is still rockin' the free world.

A few seconds in, Clint gently knees her to one side. "Darce. Head isn't an apology."

She sucks a little harder to counter-argue his statement. Damn straight her BJs aren't an apology. They're practically freakin' State of the Union Addresses.

He traps her between his knees. "Darcy Forsythia Lewis. Don't be a brat."

Popping him out of her mouth, she says, "Fine, fine, I'm sorry."

"For?"

"For not explaining why I was mad then jumping down your throat when you couldn't read my mind."

"And?"

"There's another reason?"

He gives her a stare, unimpressed, and with anyone other than Clint, the stare wouldn't be half as effective considering his current lacy accessory. She gives him the Big Eyes of Sad while tracing the veins of his penis but even though his abs ripple, he doesn't change his stone face.

"You gotta give me a hint here," Darcy says.

"For throwing Nat and Bobbi into almost every fight we have."

"It's my best ammo."

"It's shit ammo and you know it. I chose you, Darcy. I want to be with you. Get over my history and goddamn trust me already, will you?"

"I do!" He doesn't let go with the knees so she pushes and wriggles up to meet him face to face. "I do trust you, Clint," she says.

"You're not leaving," he says like an order but he makes with the kicked puppy eyes and Darcy. Fucking. Breaks. She peppers his entire whiskery, sexily life-beaten face with kisses and after a few seconds, he returns the favour. Goddamn him anyway. He makes her go from sixty to gooey faster than videos go viral.

She slides down his body, rises up just a little on her knees, and then comes down, honest to fucking God plunging him inside her in one throat-hitching move. He's moved his hands on her thighs-- her panties will rip soon-- and she leans forward so he can loop them over her shoulders. She holds him in. He doesn't move.

Darcy turns her head to one side to kiss his wrist. "I'm the fucking love of your life, Clint Barton."

The stiffness eases from his face. He's so much hotter when he's relaxed and Darcy's sure the unbiased masses agree Hawkeye is hot shit. There are Tumblr polls and everything. She hangs on to his arms, eyes closed, and rides him, no fancy moves, no porny tricks, just sweat and panting and muscles tightening around each other until they're both spent amoebas all over the sheets.

She spoons into his side. Clint smells sweaty and polyestery and still kind of beery and all hers, hers, hers. "So, you want to hear about my awesome day?" Darcy whispers in his ear.

"Fffnngh."

"I got a job."

"What? Baby, that's great! That's fantastic." He smishes a kiss to her temple.

"A master's degree can actually get me further than the Manhattan temp pool, who knew?"

"Me." Yeah, he's smug but he also made her scream out an orgasm five minutes ago and helped her fill out a kafrillion job applications since they moved in together so she'll let that pass and besides, Darcy will never turn down an acknowledgement of her position at the top of the Rad Cake. "That's why Guthrie was here," Clint says.

"Damn straight. You're now looking at the Lead Logistics Administrator of the Xavier's Institute. It's this kind of charter school Sam went to but they've gone coast-to-coast and diversified their services to include social welfare. The main office is about an hour's train upstate but I have the option to telecommute and what is that look on your face, Barton?"

There's a wrinkle between his eyebrows. "Um. Nothing. I'll tell you later. Congratulations, baby! We need to celebrate."

"I thought we already did."

Clint does an adorable little squeal when her fingers find their mark then he snuggles in for more and yeah, life is pretty much back to gelatos for Darcy. "I'm a constantly celebrating type of guy. Do we have enough celebratory condoms around here? And why are you still dressed?"

"Shut up, you love my naughty businesswoman look. If we find celebratory condoms, I'll even wear the shoes."

Clint groans, Darcy beams, and life devolves into more groping which is what life should be until Darcy's struck with a thought.

"Do you realise every serious relationship you've had involves a woman with a man's name? Did you want to share something with the class, hotpants? Brokeback Iowa, maybe? Illicit Kevlar on Kevlar action at the Stark's hot tub of chlamydia? Are there vids?"

He kisses her ever so sweetly then smacks a pillow over her head.