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Clint will openly admit to himself to being too curious for his own good. He’s eavesdropped and spied and used his eyesight to his advantage to learn what he can about everyone. The more he knows, the better he can protect himself. So of course he hides everything he can behind a laughing face and a middle-school dropout’s IQ. SHIELD, when it takes him in, doesn’t agree with this bullshit, so the fake IQ goes. He does agree to the common band worn around his dominant wrist—like so many others—to hide the tallies.
Clint doesn’t have too many, and he can remember every person who he’d loved. Elle, one of the acrobats from Carson’s, had been his first love. Her mark on his wrist is faint now, just a raised scar after she’d died falling from the heights she loved. Bobbi’s is grey. They had loved and married and divorced; on some level they still loved each other, but it wasn’t enough to warrant a deep black mark. Natasha’s was red, as red as her hair. He admitted to her once that it was hers and she had, in turn, shown him her blank wrist. She was proud of it and it felt wrong to Clint. His heart ached for her, but he said no more. If she was happy that way, then he would be happy for her.
Another mark is trying to come in on his wrist, just faint pink now. Clint, for the life of him, is so deeply in denial about the feelings he has for his handler that he doesn’t even know who the mark is for.