"Nat..." The archer stood, leaning against the doorframe of the indoor shooting range, pleading for the millionth time that day with a dangerously upset assassin.

"Clint." Her voice was cold, trying a little too hard to sound indifferent. She steadied her pistol and fired three times. If Natasha could just keep her back to him she could hold her composure. Unfortunately for her, Clint had no intentions of letting that happen. He strode across the concrete floor and ducked under her arm to stand in front of her, narrowly avoiding blunt-force trauma to the back of the head when she spun the gun around her finger. His face was inches from hers and he just stood, waiting, staring straight through every part of her carefully measured expression. Clint had long since given up on trying to hide anything from Natasha but she clung to that tactic for dear life. She'd been trained to do it from the time she was a little girl and not even that mission in Budapest could change her forever. She may have broken then, but she'd sealed up the cracks years ago. Or at least she had tried to. Damn Clint and his knack for knowing exactly what she was thinking…

For a long while, the two of them just stood there, eyes locked on each other, calculating every movement and every possibility. And then Clint did what he did best: The unexpected. Before the Black Widow had time to react, he caught her lips in a soft kiss, one hand reaching up to tuck a wisp of fiery hair behind her ear and lingering just a little too long. Nat leaned into the kiss before thinking better of it and then forced herself away. Clint sighed, his gaze dropping to the floor as the victim of his ambush-affections stormed across the room and slammed her gun onto the table.

"Nat, I-"

"You can't keep doing this!" she yelled, her hands falling hard to the metal below and landing with a clang. For a brief moment, Clint swore he saw her shoulders shudder, but her composure snapped back before he had the chance to decide if it had really happened.

"I didn't mean to… This time, I swear to you, I didn't mean to." Clint took slow, silent steps toward the woman that could very well snap his neck if he pushed the boundaries again. That possibility alone would halt any other person in their tracks... Except Clint was really bad at boundaries. He stopped behind her, his arms sliding around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder. "I didn't mean to," he whispered, his lips ghosting across her neck and leaving goosebumps in their wake. Natasha's breath caught as his breath blew lazily across her skin. She wouldn't break this time. Not again. She would not- Dammit.

The ever-so-stoic Agent Romanova shattered. "A year… A year, Clint," she managed, her voice quivering, her breath unsteady, her shoulders shaking violently into his chest as he tightened his grip around her. He wasn't sure what good it would do, but he feared that if he let go, she might literally fall to pieces. He'd only seen her like this once before and had been unfathomably useless.

It had been their first mission as a team and her first mission ever. A mission to Budapest. Natasha, a young and inexperienced agent at the time, stood in the middle of a burning city, the sounds of gunfire overwhelming her, and dozens of dead bodies around her, with Clint by her side. No amount of training could prepare you for that experience and so there, in the middle of the road, she had fallen to her knees and cried. Her partner, while experienced in the art of killing, was clueless as to how to deal with a woman sobbing into her bloodstained hands in the middle of a dirt road, and he just stood awkwardly next to her.

This time would not be like that. Although last time it wasn't his fault. Now, all the blame fell squarely on his shoulders. He'd always found a way to let her know before. He'd always let her know he was still okay, but 13 months ago when he dropped off of the face of the planet, he'd had no way of saying it was alright. He was just gone and Natasha thought she'd lost him forever. The first few months, she'd believed that he was just gone on some mission. By the fifth month, she worried constantly behind her steel exterior. By the eighth, she called off duty and mourned alone for weeks on end, consuming an impressive amount of alcohol one night when she thought she'd seen him on the street and it turned out to be a complete stranger with similar hair.

And then, one day, long after she'd come back to S.H.I.E.L.D. to resume her work, he just appeared in the doorway. Aside from the puckering pink flesh along his left cheek that would soon blend in with all the other scars he had gained, he was completely unharmed and looking decidedly not like someone returning from a dangerous mission. His eyes had lit up at the sight of Natasha standing but she simply walked out of the room, ignoring him completely. She could not be in the same room as him. Not after a year of devastatingly lonely mourning. The apartment had been eerily silent without him there. She thought she'd lost the love of her life and he could not just show up like everything was okay. She refused to talk to him, or even acknowledge his existence, for three weeks, but she was cornered now and she might as well just let it happen.

Clint burrowed his face into her shoulder, apologizing again and again, barely audible over the sound of both of them holding back tears. As his grip loosened, Natasha turned herself around to face him. "I'm so sorry." His voice nearly cracked, his impossibly blue eyes searching for any sign of forgiveness. And then Natasha grabbed him by his shirtfront and pulled him down into a desperate kiss, wanting to be as close to him as humanly possible and then closer.