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Kate's got freckles. Dozens and dozens and dozens of freckles. The highest Clint's counted is to eight-four, and he can't seem to get much higher because she wakes up and tackles him, kisses him until he's awake, their morning breath not seeming to be an issue for her.
"I was doing something," he mutters, the morning he almost gets to eight-five. Kate grins.
"Now you're doing something else."
Clint can't argue with that.
In the kitchen, she's wearing one of his tank tops, the strap to big for her tiny frame, the fabric slipping off her shoulder. He counts them there, too, pressing his lips against her and making note. He gets to twenty-two before she turns around, backing him against the other side of the kitchen and slipping down the length of his torso, kneeling in front of him. Clint tangles his hands in her hair as she goes down, takes him into her mouth.
"Twenty-three," he murmurs, spotting one that looks like it's traveled away from the others, trying to swim in her skin toward her collar bone. Kate hums around him, takes him deeper and he comes, gripping the edge of the countertop with one hand, the other loose in her curls. "Katie, Katie, Katie."
He pulls her to the couch, slipping her pajama pants down her legs and easing her down, kissing over her knees, the tops of her legs. More freckles. Quick count, probably seventeen here. Why hadn't he noticed before, why hadn't he looked before. Since LA, since before, since everything. She whines above him and Clint presses his mouth against her folds, slips his tongue inside her, his fingers inside her, brings her closer and closer. He loves this, he loves her. He is, he is, he is--
"Oh fuck--" She comes, not gracefully, not eloquently, and Clint swallows it all, words and everything and he kisses her and she is struggling to take off his clothes and they fuck on the couch, her back facing him, and Clint counts a few dozen more littering her back, a birthmark over the swell of her ass, a scar on her hip, a bruise here that he presses, gently, and she moans so loud he's sure everyone's heard if they haven't already.
What's the total, now? More than two hundred, he thinks. He shouldn't know this. He shouldn't remember that Kate has more than a couple hundred freckles floating across the sweet, soft expanse of her body. In his bed, later, he counts them while she sleeps, realizing they've gotten nothing done today except a few orgasms between them, but hey. That's, like, exercise, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
A few weeks into his whole Counting Thing, he gets busted. In the shower, of all places.
"Why are you staring at my shoulders?"
"Huh?" Clint looks up and Kate's standing under the spray, her brow arched high and lovely.
"My shoulders. Your eyes. Usually you just--" She snaps her fingers. "Jesus, it'd make sense if it was my tits, but--"
"You have freckles. I just...I just noticed. I don't know why." Kate looks at him for far too long. Clint flushes. "Look, I was just...just looking, I didn't--"
"You mean Hawkeye just saw my freckles? Clint." She covers her mouth with her hand and laughs and he puts the bottle of soap away and brings her in. "How many?"
"Hmm?"
"How many have you counted?"
He closes his eyes, adds them up. "Three hundred and forty-seven."
"God that's sexy."
"The freckles or the counting?"
Kate grins and digs her teeth gently into his shoulder. "You have twenty-one freckles on your shoulder when you come in, after you fall asleep on the balcony. There's eleven on your nose, twenty-six on the other. There are eighteen around your left ankle, and thirty-three on your chest." Clint laughs. "I love you," she says.
"I love you, too."