At the request of paintallthestuff I've written the flip side of the situation. I'm not sure whether I got the characterisation right here but I figured Clint might be a bit more emotional than Natasha, that the longer he's away the more he relies on his memories of her to stabilise him ... hope you like it.

He's gone before daylight, mind already on the job. The targets are on the move and he has miles to go before he even gets close enough to think about taking a shot. The first day is never a problem and the job is routine, a simple kill order, if he gets it right he can be home again by the end of the week, two at most. More specifically, he can be back with Natasha.

It quickly becomes apparent that nothing about his mission is routine and it becomes equally apparent that he's in this for the long haul. He won't be going home until the job is done and the job is far bigger than the one that he signed on for. The first couple of days pass quickly and, though she's never far from his thoughts, he doesn't have much time to dedicate to thinking about the woman he left in his bed when he shipped out. When he does steal a moment to think of her though he thinks of their goodbyes, finds his fingers tracing the scratches that she gave him, the perfect print of her teeth in the space between his thumb and forefinger, a legacy of their parting written in his skin that will sustain the memories for a few more days. By feeling them he feels her and the fire of what they share keeps him warm.

He moves as quickly as he can given the limits of the mission but it isn't fast enough. Her marks are fading but he clings to what is left. He removes his glove to look at the fading bruises on his hand, allowing the passion that resulted in them to offer him dreams of their last night together and enable him to conjure the burn of her touch. They never last long enough though and before long all he has are slight red marks that he can no longer feel and dreams of fire that slip away and leave him cold in the night.

Weeks go by and the exhilaration of their encounter fades to something bitter-sweet. Amid the succession of crash pads and safe houses, her touch fades away and the worry begins to creep in. The insecurities raise their heads and howl and all of their voices sound like Natasha screaming. Though the marks they leave on one another are by the by product of pleasure, he doesn't like to see the evidence on her skin, hates the thought that he might even for a second cause her pain. It isn't about want though, she doesn't want the pain, they need the depth and the physicality to remind them that they're alive. If the evidence of rough hands on her skin is almost more than he can bear, even when the hands are welcome and the touch is his own, then that is his problem. He pushes away the doubt and tells himself that she is fine, that the marks will be healing just as his own are, but the doubt lingers and it begins to eat at him relentlessly.

Three months pass and Clint begins to forget the taste of anything other than blood and petrol fumes against his tongue. He can no longer conjure the taste of her skin or the way it feels when she coils her legs around him in the night. The assignments keep coming, with each target eliminated another takes its place. He dreams of red hair and bruises and begins to wonder whether he will make it back, starting awake in the small hours with the sound of his heartbeat thundering in his ears.

Sleep eludes him, the whispering doubts of what might have gone wrong at home keeping him awake long after he should sleep. He dreams of her but the images warp, ending with Natasha screaming beneath him as he aggressively seeks release in her body, in flashes of blood and the smell of smoke that make him feel as if his world is burning down around him. The stars keep watch over him while the sweat and tears dry on his skin and the images fade away. He greets the sunrise with the only physical reminder of her that he always carries, a two-inch scar to his left hip that she gave him in the first fight they ever had. He traces that scar repeatedly and he finds himself. In the light of day his demons no longer rain her cries down on him, pained and begging for mercy, but the memory of her voice comes to him, soft and sweet, a stream of words spoken in her mother tongue that promise him she is waiting for him to come home. He draws strength from it and he moves on.

Four months in and Natasha's is the voice in his head that keeps him sane. He blocks out the thoughts that like to torment him in the night by sheer force of will and holds the memories close; the clench of her thighs at his hips, the arch of her spine as she rises to meet each thrust of his body, the warmth of her body against his back as they sleep. Though he doesn't sleep well, he wakes with the blood in his veins slumbering for her, answering a call that he senses from a continent away, and he understands her need to see and feel their connection. He realises that he is unravelling without the steady gaze of her eyes to ground him or the touch of her hand on his shoulder at the end of the day. He misses her more than anything and he needs her more than he needs his next breath.

His body takes a hammering but he uses it to his advantage, every bruise and ache and strain energizing him. No matter what they throw at him, they don't come close to what Natasha can dream up in one of their training exercises and that makes it tolerable. The aches give him clarity, the explosions of pain bring her voice ever closer. The bow in his hand becomes his best friend, the tool with which he will pay for his ticket home. His darkest moments are when he sees her, in every thought and action, in every wound that bleeds and bruise that forms she is there. In the pain he finds her, finds them, and he draws on the strength he finds there, using it to destroy what stands in his path.

He follows the beat of his blood, trusts the call of the primitive to carry him back to where he needs to be most. The closer he gets to home, the louder the call sounds, rising up from within him and somersaulting within the cavern of his chest. Under normal circumstances he would wash away the days of travel before he goes to her but he can't wait a moment longer than is necessary - dawn is coming and in just a couple of hours the world will begin to intrude on their homecoming.

She rises amid the covers as he closes the door, hair tangled from restless movement within the covers and her eyes find his own. In all of his memories, all of his dreams, he hasn't done her justice. His eyes track her as she climbs from the bed and closes the distance between them, the way her shorts and vest cling to her skin summoning all sorts of images that involve muscle memory and the sound of her name falling from his lips as he moves inside of her. As if she can read his mind, she's up against him, climbing his body like ivy, arms tight around his neck as she settles against him. His arms move of their own volition, absorbing her weight. He breathes in the smell of her, the essence of a hundred fevered dreams and feels the tension ease from his muscles, a warm heavy heat sweeping through him in its place. Home, he is home.

"You've been gone too long," she tells him, With his brow pressed to hers, he hears what she will never admit in actual words, she was worried about him. Her next words confirm it. "I even contemplated tearing Fury a new one over this supposed routine mission he sent you on …"

"Routine my ass!" he snorts, remembering the many ways in which the mission brief and its reality did not match up. He leans back to look at her properly, assesses the delicate angles of her face and the shadows beneath her eyes. He isn't the only one who's been having trouble sleeping and he's willing to bet that he isn't the only one who has drawn on their shared history to get through the months since they were last in the same place. His body stirs beneath the knowing gaze of those green eyes, despite the exhaustion, waking and stretching like a contented cat. He isn't surprised, no matter how lost he gets, no matter how bad things seem, he can always find himself inside of Natasha. His hand finds the curve of her hip, the place where the black and blue marks always seem to form most prominently; just for a second the fear returns. "You good, bruises heal up okay?"

She knows why he's asking and she accepts it without comment. "Months ago," she replies and he feels her ankles locking together at his back, heels gently nudging his ass so that he presses in tight to the front of her body which is exactly where it needs to be to remind him what he's been missing. Her eyebrow arches in silent invitation and he claims her mouth with deliberate patience, chaining the growing urge to throw her down on the mattress and lay claim to her body in the way that he wants to. He feels the current of her on his tongue and the trails of heat that follow the movement of her fingers. He wants her stretched out beneath him, wants to see her body arched over his, to hear his name knocked from her mouth by the surging of his hips as they work out the energy that crackles on the air between them. He just wants.

That savage desire that she incites in him flares to life, straining within him and scratching like a wild beast trying to get free, and he smiles against her mouth. Nobody else can draw out this side of his nature; he has never felt the need he knows for her with anyone else. With a shift of her hips against his own, she communicates her growing impatience, enticing him, luring him. The breathy sigh against his skin is a sirens song; he is powerless to deny her anything and she knows it.

Carrying her across the room, he feels her stretch up against him, pressing her entire body flush against his own as she brings her lips close to his ear and sinks her teeth into his flesh, a nip followed by the sweep of her tongue, just a press of blunt human teeth and the promise of so much more. "You know that I always did prefer the way we say hello to the way we say goodbye …" Memories of a dozen nights spent wrapped around one another, sweating, writhing, gasping, light up his mind. "... if you're feeling up to it that is?"

She's baiting him and he knows it. His grip tightens on her, hands digging into her hips and she sighs into his mouth. He tracks the movement of her hand down the planes of his chest, a hand that begins to work his belt buckle as he growls a reply low in his throat, "after seven months away I'm up to it Nat, don't you worry about that."