Well, this is it, darlings! The end at last! Special thanks, as always, to eiluned, Koren, and euphoricsound for reading this thing and helping me make it, well, readable. Love you guys!

The most important thanks of all goes to you, dear reader, for putting up with all the time between my updates, sticking with me, and still reviewing at the end of the day. Love you all so much!

They leave Asgard, stepping through the portal and arriving back to a cold, bright Sunday morning. Clint can tell that Natasha is a little unnerved by the difference in the passage of time from the way she doesn't wait until they're alone, just slips her hand into his. They were only on Asgard for a few days, but it's been over a week here on Earth. He grips her hand back just as hard at that revelation. Losing time makes them both nervous.

When pressed, Thor makes a noncommittal pronouncement about the discrepancy in the passage of time that leaves Clint more confused than before, but he chooses to accept it. It makes sense, in its own twisted, Asgardian way, and well, he's alive, Natasha's alive, and they get to come home. It's enough.

Life goes back to normal, or what passes for it here. They slot back into the swing of things almost as if they'd never left, almost as if they hadn't spent the week before they went to Asgard wrapped up in sheets and each other.

Almost.

Steve is obviously still embarrassed by the whole thing. He can't quite maintain eye contact with Clint during certain parts of their debriefing, though he makes a valiant effort, and it's really rather sweet of the guy, if Clint says so himself.

The debriefing is short, to the point, and there really isn't much to report when it comes down to it. What can you say about fighting frost giants with the help of Norse gods anyway? They won. Loki lost.

Steve has lingering questions about the trickster, presses the two of them for every bit of information they can remember. Rogers wants to make sense of the world, needs to find the reason behind Loki's actions. Clint can't really blame the guy, but he's learned that sometimes there just isn't a reason, or not a good one at any rate. Sometimes, you have to let the search for those reasons go or else you'll never get to sleep at night. If nothing else, Loki drilled that lesson into Clint.

So when Steve finally gives the detailed questions a rest and just asks them if they know why, Clint just shrugs and watches Natasha do the same. They'd talked that morning when they woke up on another planet, decided to move past the need for explanation. Decided not to take for granted the fact that they'd escaped any lasting side effects. Decided to put the past behind them and just live for once.

They head from the debriefing room straight to medical to offer up their veins to Bruce. He wants to run more tests, wants to see if what Freya said was actually true, if the drugs and the accompanying nanobots are completely gone. While drawing the blood, he makes some noise about wanting to give them both a "complete physical" after the ordeal they've been through, and his tone suggests that it's going to require more than just a blood sample and a few deep breaths. Clint isn't feeling up to being poked and prodded any more than Natasha is, and besides, he figures if he can hold her hand this long without wanting to tear off her clothes and fuck her against the nearest available surface, they're probably okay.

Not that he would argue if she were interested.

They promise Bruce that they'll come back the next day, and he can get his tests in then, but for now they just need a break from the lunacy of the past few weeks. They need a chance to feel normal.

They head to the common floor to find something to eat. Tony and Pepper are there, absentmindedly eating in front of their computers. Clint notices that their feet are touching though as he enters the kitchen, and this whole being openly in love with Natasha thing must be softening him up because he actually smiles a little at the sight. It's not even a smirk.

Well, mostly.

Tony, of course, ruins the moment as soon as he opens his mouth.

"Oh, hey, it's the lovebirds. Or maybe that should be lovespiders." Tony wags his eyebrows at Pepper. "Love spiderbirds?"

Pepper rolls her eyes and smacks Tony across the arm. "Stop it," she says, then turns to Clint and Natasha. "Don't mind him. He gets restless when he hasn't talked himself into mortal peril for a week."

Natasha drops Clint's hand to root through the fridge, coming up with half a dozen things to pull together into lunch while he makes the tea he knows she would ask for if she had to (she doesn't have to ask, of course, because he knows her).

Tony's still making lewd remarks, but there's really no sting in them, and Clint just helps Natasha and throws the snark right back.

It gets weird, though, when Tony asks, "So how's all the sex?" Tony levels his gaze on Natasha. "You knocked her up yet?"

Clint can see Natasha tense for a split second before she schools her expression into one of careful indifference.

Clint rolls his eyes, tries to deflect attention from Natasha, who obviously wants nothing to do with this conversation. "Don't you have better things to do than ask about our sex life, Stark?"

Tony shrugs, takes another bite of his apple. "Maybe you should have thought of that before you did the horizontal tango in front of literally every security camera between the parking deck and your floor."

Clint groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You already made and distributed copies to all of SHIELD, didn't you?"

Tony snorts. "First thing I did. You two are an inspiration to us all. I didn't know you could bend that way, Barton . . ."

Pepper smacks him again, then says, "Don't let this one fool you, Clint. He had JARVIS delete all the files."

"Thanks," Natasha says, joining the rest of them at the table. She hands him a plate as she sits.

"How are you two feeling? Thor told us about what happened on Asgard," Pepper says, concern in her voice.

Clint shrugs, chewing thoughtfully on his sandwich, lets Natasha take over the conversation because really, he's fucking hungry and if he discovers that there's tomato in this sandwich he's pretty sure he's going to lock himself in a room somewhere with her in the near future and make her come three, no, at least four times.

Though he'll probably keep the reason for it under wraps. Natasha probably wouldn't appreciate him being that much of a Midwestern cliché, however much she enjoys his penchant for flannel and country music.

They finish up lunch pleasantly enough once Tony stops trying to bluster his way through his discomfort at regular conversation, and Clint finds himself pleasantly absorbed in a discussion about the pros and cons of the arrow prototypes he'd tested recently.

Tony and Pepper leave first, heading for the board room a few floors down, and he and Natasha are finally alone, truly alone for the first time since they stepped foot back on Earth.

That will never stop being an awesome turn of phrase.

Clint is washing up when Natasha comes up behind him and slips her arms around his waist.

"Hurry up with that," she murmurs, and she skims her hand along the waistband of his jeans.

Dishes forgotten, he lets her lead him out of the common area, back toward the elevator. He's on her the moment the doors slide shut behind them, pressing her back against the wall and kissing her until they're both breathless.

When she slides her leg up around his waist and rubs against him, he slaps his hand on the emergency stop button. He slips his fingers down into her pants, but he can't get a good angle to get at her, so he spins her around.

"Put your hands on the wall," he commands and she complies because he's still got his hand down her pants and she's writhing and moaning.

It doesn't take much to get her off, a few short flicks across her clit and a hand moving back and forth between her covered tits, and he sucks at the skin below her ear as she comes around his fingers, throbbing and loud.

"God, I fucking love you," he says when he's sure he's not going to come in his pants, and she turns back around to kiss him, licking the roof of his mouth and the backs of teeth in a way that should be awkward, but just makes him worry that he's going to lose it after all.

She laughs, then drops her hands to his waist. "I'm thinking maybe . . ." she says coyly, then looks at him with a strange glint in her eye.

"What?" he asks, even though he has a pretty good idea of what she's thinking.

It still surprises him when she suggests, "I'm thinking it's high time you fucked me in an elevator."

He does lose it at that, his higher brain functions utterly gone at the tone in her voice. Then there's a shifting of clothes, her pants off and away and his jeans undone and down low over his hips, and then she climbs him, wraps herself around him, and he's inside her and thrusting, and god he hopes there's no one waiting for this elevator car because they're busy right now.

She bites his nipple through the thin fabric of his tee shirt, and his orgasm washes over him unexpectedly. He comes hard and fast, pumping himself to completion in three swift, relentless thrusts.

She laughs again, a proper giggle this time, and he loves her a bit more in that moment because he can wrench that reaction from her, can make this perfectly stoic woman turn into the complete opposite, can make her act like a besotted child.

She's perfect.

They tug their clothes in order quickly, still clinging to each other, and he knows that she's ready to continue this in his rooms because of the way she kisses him as the elevator starts back up.

Mercifully, they meet no one else on the short ride up to his floor, and then she leads him with a spring in her step toward his bedroom. He's reminded of that first night, so long ago now, when she tugged on his hand and led him through his darkened apartment, drenched in the lust brought on by the sex drug Loki gave them, and it's the same, but somehow different because he still feels all the same things, all the thick and heady lovey dovey shit bound up in a healthy amount of lust, and he wants to possess her as much as he wants to be possessed by her.

She lies down on his bed, turns a heated glance over her shoulder at him, and he feels himself tugged by an invisible chain toward her.

He comes up behind her, runs his hands over her shoulders and back, kissing his way down her neck, kneeling on the bed and arching over her while he skims his hands over her chest. The mood has changed from what it was in the elevator; they're no longer racing for something, the goal line has shifted somehow and the point is the act itself rather than the rush of completion.

She arches into him, and he pinches her through the fabric of her shirt and bra, enjoying the throaty noises she makes when he teases her.

She moans an affirmation when he slides his hands under the fabric of her shirt, and he pulls it off over her head, tossing it aside. He stares, still a little awestruck at her body, still tongue tied that she lets him do this to her, that she returns his feelings and wants him as badly as he wants her.

He slides the cup of her bra down on one side, her breast spilling out and he takes one hard, pebbled nipple into his mouth and sucks.

"Oh, fuck, yes, Clint," she says, and the way she says his name makes him strain against his pants. He'll never hear enough of that, not if he lives a thousand years on a thousand worlds with shaky concepts of how time should work.

He guides her down onto her back, slides her pants over her hips, then tugs her panties down, too, nuzzling her mound with his nose as he strips her. She's wet, glistening under his gaze, and she spreads her legs wider as an invitation.

He takes it.

He fucking loves going down on her, loves that she lets him eat her out, loves that she trusts him with his face and teeth in such an intimate area. There's nothing like it, nothing can compare to that, the trust implicit in the act, and it only turns him on more that he can taste himself inside of her, like he's marked her somehow. And fuck, the way she tastes while she's coming apart under his tongue and the way she sighs his name and tears at his scalp, the way she can't control herself as he lathes her . . . it's too much and not enough all at once.

He can tell when she's going to come now, so attuned is he with her little tells. Her fists clench and her breath hitches, the long muscles of her thighs still around his ears, and she presses her pussy hard against his face, her fingers pressing him closer and holding his head still. She can't stall his fingers though, has no control over his tongue, and he keeps up the sweet torment even as she arches her back, cries out his name, and ripples across his tongue.

He licks her slowly as she moves out of the haze of orgasm, carefully, lovingly, if such a thing can be said, and he watches her with his own lust filled eyes as her dark gaze falls on him, face still between her legs.

"Hey, baby," she says, and her grin turns wicked even as she trades places with him, helps him get his pants down over his hips. He props himself onto his elbows to watch her as she works, licking a path up his thighs, scratching her nails lightly down his sides, teasingly avoiding the part of his anatomy that strains toward her. He cants his hips, desperate for her mouth, but still is not ready for it when she flicks out her tongue and teases the tip of his penis, lapping away the precum that has leaked there.

"Oh, god, Nat," he says, drawing out the syllable and breathing hard as she rubs her chin across his glans. She licks him, long and surely, maintaining eye contact as she draws her tongue up the underside of his cock from base to tip.

And then she presses her palm against his stomach and takes him in her mouth and he swears he can feel her tonsils as she envelops him. She's sucking and her head is bobbing, and goddamn it all he's going to miss some of the show because he can't keep himself upright when she's pumping away on his cock like that.

He feels his balls tighten, draw up into his body, and he knows he's close, but she must know it, too, must recognize the signs as surely as he recognizes her signs of impending orgasm because she tugs on his balls, lets him fall out of her mouth, and the moment of panic is over as quickly as it arose.

She crawls up his body, sharing that secret smile of hers with him, the little grin strangely warming his heart even as she kisses him, the taste of each other mingling on their tongues, and maybe he could come just from this.

Finally, she straddles him, sinks down onto him with her hands braced behind his head and her tits peeking out over the lacy fabric of her bra, and she's bouncing up and down on top of his dick, and fuck, she's hot. He leans up to tug one full breast into his mouth, latching onto her nipple and feeling himself twitch inside her even as he thrusts because she's just so fucking tasty.

She arches backward then, resting her hands on his upper thighs as she fucks him, and god he loves watching her, loves feeling her, just loves her. And whatever it is that's been bothering her, whatever it is that she's keeping from him, he's sure it's going to be just fine because they work so well together, here and everywhere, and shit if she keeps howling like that, he's going to come before he's ready.

He shifts her, loving the way she leans into his hands as he repositions her onto her knees in front of him, and he slides back into her heat slowly but firmly from behind.

She leans into him, cranes her neck to kiss him, and it's so fucking filthy and perfect that he's already close to the brink again. He reaches down, low over her hip as he fucks her, plays with her clit, feels her clench involuntarily as she sighs her pleasure at the action. She moans his name like he's something special, and god damn it all if she doesn't make him feel like he really is, and he wants to spend the rest of his life feeling this way.

He swears violently when he feels her come, feels himself go white and starry around the edges while she clenches around him, and fucking hell he's there right behind her, turning his insides out and pumping into her, clutching at her hips and holding her firmly against him.

They collapse into a heap of sweaty limbs, tangled up in each other and trading lazy kisses as their heart rates return to normal.

The thing that's been bugging her is back in her eyes then, just behind them, a shadow of doubt lingering when she looks at him. And maybe it's because he's stupid, but probably it's just as much because he loves her, he's going to have to ask, even though he really should know better by now.

"Nat," he says, not really going anywhere with it, but realizing that it's a question. There's obviously something going on in her head, something she's worried about, but she's private and even being in love isn't going to change that.

She stares up at him, a kind of sadness in her eyes, and she runs her hands over his face, his brow, his nose. She leans up, kisses him softly.

"I just . . . I love you," she says at last, staring into his eyes. He knows that's not it, or at least that's not all of it, but he won't press the issue. She'll tell him when she's ready.

He flips onto his back, pulls her into him, repeating her gestures, running the pads of his fingers over the familiar lines of her face. It's insufficient, the words, and maybe that's part of why she's hesitant, why she stumbles over her words, but he gets that. She makes him stumble, too.

"I love you, Natasha," he says. Then he kisses her and the ache in his heart eases, just a little.

The sun peeking in through the blinds wakes her. She stretches, her joints and tendons flexing and popping pleasantly as her brain clears the fog of sleep.

"Urnf," Clint says, or something like it. She doesn't bother to fight the grin that stretches across her face when she looks at him, tousled and sleepy eyed in her bed.

He clears his throat and tries again. "Hey, good looking," he says, half a grin on his face, and he turns onto his back, tries to pull her in for a kiss.

"Oh, no," she says laughingly, slipping out of his grasp and the bed. "None of that until you brush your teeth."

Clint makes a face, puckering his lips plaintively in her direction and sighing loudly when it doesn't work.

"The romance is over," he laments, but follows her to the bathroom anyway.

They take turns at the sink and the toilet, trading glances and smiles, and they don't even have to say anything to each other because it's just nice to spend the morning quietly. She's starting to pull her brush through her tangles when Clint comes up behind her, takes the brush from her. She watches him in the mirror as he slowly, carefully works through the knots he helped form. When he's done, he places the brush on the porcelain counter top and wraps his arms around her.

She twists around to face him, twines her arms around his neck and pulls him in for a kiss.

She doesn't mean for it to go that far, not really, but when she feels him stir against her hip she can't help it, doesn't really have a reason to, and she lets the desire quicken in her belly, lets him push her back and up onto the counter. Then he's sliding into her and she's clinging to him and crying out and fuck, she thinks she might black out from the sheer pleasure that erupts through her when she comes.

She hisses when he pulls out, but then he guides her into the shower and the hot water running down her body almost makes up for missing his heat between her legs. He washes her, and she's in the mood to let him, especially when he starts to massage her neck and shoulders. He drops kisses along the top of her back, and she starts to feel herself grow interested again. She'd wonder if the fucking sex drugs were at work in her system except for Freya's insistence that they were gone for good.

No, this reaction, this wanting, craving, yearning has nothing to do with drugs, not at all. Maybe she can only acknowledge it now that they're coming to grips with the emotional side of their relationship, but the heat between them has always been present. She's willing to admit it, even if only to herself, that she's always felt this for him, even when they first met, through all the years of their partnership, even before they started sleeping together. So what if it took being injected with some crazy ass fertility drug and watching Clint almost die for her to figure it all out? It wasn't ideal, no, but since when has anything in her life ever been?

She looks at him fondly, feeling her heart ache at the sight of him. He's down on his knees in front of her, pressing her back against the cool tile of the shower and lapping at her center. She threads her fingers through his hair to hold him against her, lifts her leg over his shoulder to give him better access, but he's not quite hitting the right spot, not quite reaching everywhere she needs.

"Fuck this," she murmurs, smacking at the shower handle until the water shuts off.

Clint looks up, dazed and damp. "Tasha?"

She drops her leg back down, pulls him to his feet. "I need . . ." she tries to say, but she can't articulate it, can't get the words out, doesn't even know what she means. Clint picks her up though, and she wraps her legs around his waist, clings to him and sucks on his neck while he walks them out of the bathroom.

He throws her down onto the bed but doesn't join her there, just sinks back down at the edge of the bed and hauls her bodily toward him until her center is on level with his face. He dives in, running his tongue the length of her slit, swirling around her clit, adding his fingers and laughing when she moans. He knows he's good at this, so fucking good at it, and she can't get enough of him turning his laser focus on her. The cocksure way he grins against her pussy, secure in the knowledge that he knows how to play her body like a fucking fiddle doesn't even upset her, just turns her on more, makes her squirm against him.

He reaches up with one hand to play with her breasts, pinching her in time with the thrusts of his other hand and the undulation of his tongue, and she feels herself twist inside, feels the pressure grow at the base of her spine. She feels warm all over, her skin, itchy, and he moves just right finally and she's coming apart with a shout.

Clint looks up then, a smug look on his face and she wants nothing more than to fuck that expression away, wants to pound him into the mattress until he forgets everything except her name, her face, and the feel of her surrounding him.

When he climbs up next to her, she pushes him onto his back, throwing her leg over him and sinking down onto his hard length in one motion. He gasps, his eyes rolling back into his head as he reflexively digs his fingers into her hips.

She grins at his reaction, and starts rocking, sliding up and down as slowly as she is able until he grunts wordlessly at her and tries to take over.

Pressing one hand to the center of his chest, she says, "No, let me do this." He relaxes then, cedes control back to her, lets her set the pace. For all that, he does not stop his hands from wandering, running his fingers over her belly and breasts, biting his lip as he rakes his gaze over her, ultimately deciding to focus on where their bodies join.

She bends low then, folds herself down on top of him and presses her mouth to his, the kiss strangely chaste considering what they're doing.

Without warning, Clint flips them, pulling one of her legs up around his waist and thrusting into her up to the hilt.

"Fuck, Nat," he breathes into her neck, increasing his pace. "You feel so fucking good."

She laughs because she doesn't know what else to do, doesn't know how to say that she was thinking exactly the same thing without it coming out stupid, but that's okay because he's laughing, too, and then he does something interesting with his thumb and they're coming, together and hard, all laughs and smiles and it's really fucking perfect.

He kisses her slowly as they return to reality, or whatever passes for it at Stark tower.

"I love you," he says, brushing a few damp hairs out of her face and dropping a kiss on the tip of her nose. She holds him closer at that, tears strangely close to the surface, and she hides her face in the crook of his neck.

This really isn't the kind of day she was expecting to have. They have plans to work out at some point; they haven't trained for what's either days or weeks, depending on the way you looked at time, and there's a ton of paperwork to be filed with SHIELD. Instead, she's staying in bed with Clint, ready for a second shower when she's still wet from her first, and trying not to cry.

And then Clint says, "Yeah, me, too," and she suddenly feels one hell of a lot better. It's not that she needs to be tough around him – they're past that. She can relax every defense she's built up over the years around him, knows that she can just be herself, tears and all.

There's just something about the way he looks her, his eyes red-rimmed and suspiciously misty that makes her feel like this kind of love, the thing that they share is something different than what the Red Room tried to beat out of her. She thinks that maybe they didn't really understand people at all, her former handlers, because if they did, they would try to foster this kind of strength in their operatives. She'd walk over broken glass in bare feet for this man, and the way he's looking at her, well, she knows he'd do the same.

Eventually, he rolls off of her, tucks her into his side, and even though they should be moving back toward the shower, they're both content to fall asleep, to doze in each other's company for a few minutes more.

She breathes in his scent, lets it permeate her, and she doesn't know how she got here, can't figure out how she ended up being okay with all of this, with Clint and her being . . . well, whatever they are and whatever they might become.

She can't deny that it's going to take a long time to figure out how to live with this, how to be normal in the middle of lives like theirs, but she kind of thinks that maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. It's going to take constant effort, time, and attention, but she wants this, wants him. More to the point, she needs him now, has always needed him to ground her, to pull her back in when she goes too far. She's better with him, more human around him, and he reminds her that life doesn't have to be made up of debt and the give and take doesn't have to be obligatory.

She shifts, turns her back toward him to get comfortable. He hooks his arm low across her waist, holds her closer to him, and when his thumb brushes idle circles against her belly, her heart clenches a little.

The future is uncertain, but it's always uncertain, and whatever comes, she's got him and he's got her, and they'll figure it out.

If you've got a minute, I'd love to hear what you think!

And, before you worry, yes, there's a sequel in the works!