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He knows she knows six hundred and fifty thousand ways to kill somebody; at least a hundred thousand of those ways involve the kidneys, so when, mid-way through her slamming him to the mat (again), her hand runs over the sharp, stuttering scar on his lower back, he knows she knows how it happened, can probably picture the twist and agonizing fall of it. When they land she’s got him completely pinned (no surprise), but he thinks maybe there is a new softness in her eyes. It turns out he’s wrong, every time after that when she goes for a kidney shot it’s at full tilt. After a mission where there was a closer call than usual for someone who’s supposed to be sniping from on high, she seems damn determined to plant a knee in his back and he realizes it is fear and a warning: see you screwed up and you could’ve died right here and here and here and don’t do it again.
Even later, when her hands have been on the bare skin of his back dozens of times, she never asks about it and he never volunteers.
He gets the name Hawkeye long before basic and that first so-natural look along a rifle. His brother gifted it to him, to match the scar running from eyebrow to cheekbone. It was a stupid fight between brothers about stupid shit and it nearly lost him the eye. He remembers his brother’s look of horror and all the blood, but no pain at all. The scar’s so faint now that she sees it for the first time when he’s got her flat on her back, thinking he’s won (he hasn’t). The scar’s nearly as gone as his brother, who was never as good of a shot as Hawkeye. She does ask him about this one, and he tells her because it’s faded now and she isn’t.
There were some truly fucking ignominious ways to die and he was pretty sure bleeding to death impaled on his own arrows was one of them. They can’t lift him out of the rubble pit formed by the collapse of the building he’d been using as a perch, and there’s distant-sounding shouting about a trauma team. She rappels down into the cellar and he laughs thickly ‘cause, get it, she’s a spider. She checks him for concussion because of it and hushes him when he tries to explain because it’s funny and better than thinking about what happens next which is a shitload of pain and PT and still being an amazing shot, the best shot, because he’s Hawkeye and anything else isn’t acceptable. She doesn’t batter at those scars to prove a point, but she’s there the entire time.
She’s got scars too; oh not the pale lines here and there he knows, has catalogued because he’s had his gaze and hands and mouth all over her and it’s his job to see everything. They’re in the way she always has an exit and won’t eat at the SHIELD cafeteria and he’s pretty sure she has a plan to kill all of them. They’re in the way her file’s even more classified than his and she won’t talk about her past at all, except when he tells her about his brother, one breaks open and bleeds as she says “I had a brother. Arkady.” Right then they’re about as close as it’s possible for two people to physically be, but her eyes are blank, staring at the wall. He’s not sure what to say, he thinks he’s said enough (too much) tonight, so he doesn’t say anything and neither does she.
She’s pretty good at steering around his scars. They’re both fighters, scars are part of the business. This time Thor talks him into Asgardian mead, though, and introspection, which as a rule he Did Not Do, is on the table along with the contents of Stark’s pockets because goddamn the man has no poker face – and seriously how has he not lost everything before now? – and there she is, across the room, and he folds on a full house and walks over to her. She’s smiling, her real smile, which is just a tug at the corner of her mouth (and that’s a scar too he thinks, maybe) and a raised brow at his (possible) stumbling and he kisses her, a little sloppy. Stark hollers at them to get a room which is a bit rich considering from the way he’s sitting, his hand is possibly down Rogers’ pants; Clint doesn’t care. Him and Natasha end up in her room, he’s been there before, but now the mead (he swears it’s the mead) has him looking around at the place and thinking this neatness is orphanage or prison or both and he realizes he said that aloud.
Goddamn (hah) mead.
She’s not looking at him, not smiling anymore, she’s heading towards blank again and possibly homicidal along with it and he thinks fuck it scars don’t mean shit.
He’s said that out-loud (again) so he goes for broke, touches her waist, slowly, because he’s having a hard enough time balancing and is not capable of hand-to-hand because she’s feeling defensive, and says, “Natasha”.
And she looks at him not so blankly and he kisses her again and she kisses him back and pushes (steers) him onto the bed.
Later maybe the mead has started to wear off and maybe it hasn’t but they’re curled together and he kisses the back of her neck just because, and she doesn’t tense. So maybe scars fade or they don’t but it doesn’t matter right here (the mead hasn’t worn off yet) and then Natasha says, “Clint. Shut up and go to sleep.” And he does.