This is a commission for s2ma, who wanted a stevetony fic
that focuses on the friendship between Tony and Natasha. This rolls in at 15k.
(read on a03)
-
Natasha takes one look at Stark and assumes she’ll end up
sleeping with him.
It’s a fair assumption. She’s done her research, she’s met
the guy and got an initial read on him, and everything points to falling into
bed with him. She sets up the groundwork, inventing excuses to flirt when she
can.
As covers go, Natalie Rushman: PA Extraordinaire is one of
her easier identities. When she was younger, she had her backstories poured
into her until she believed nothing else. She would walk around in her new skin
and think thoughts that were placed in her.
Nowadays, she is given a file and told to memorise it.
No-one comes into her cell and forces her to repeat phrases in languages and
accents she’s had to perfect, no-one holds her eyes open as images flash in front
of her eyes until her mind accepts her new reality.
What once was forced onto her has become a habit. Natasha
finds herself carving out a story for each cover she takes. As Natalie Rushman,
she implements subtle seduction techniques and exudes quiet, assured confidence
in most aspects of her life- so Natasha weaves a life that might have led to
those traits, to transform into the kind of woman who would want to be a PA and
excel at it.
Natalie Rushman is the kind of woman who would sleep with
her boss. Natasha hasn’t decided on the reason, but if Natasha has to, then
she’ll make one up for Natalie. Maybe she does whatever it takes to progress in
her career. Maybe she’s the kind of woman who falls for men who are bad for
her.
Stark would be bad. For Natalie or Natasha. She has no
romantic interest in him from the start, and any physical feelings she might
have had are negated by what an asshole the guy is. She’s told a few days into
the mission that he’s being slowly poisoned by palladium, and after that his
actions make more sense when she goes over them.
Not that she does it much. Her mission isn’t to fix Tony
Stark, it’s to evaluate him.
So far, she isn’t impressed.
-
Most days Natasha can differentiate between who she is and
the personas she pulls out when she needs to. She has different ones for
missions depending on what the mission needs. She has one for SHIELD, another
for talking to strangers, and another for fighting.
Sometimes Natasha will slip up and the lines will blur.
She’ll find herself making a gesture she only makes when she’s comfortable, but
she’ll be faking it to gain someone’s trust. She’ll spin a story and it will
have colloquiums that Natasha learned as a child.
This happens most often with her SHIELD persona, especially
around Nick.
When Stark turns around, gauntleted fingers heavy on his
sunglasses as he examines her, Natasha allows herself a smirk Natalie Rushman
would immediately try to smother with cool politeness.
“You’re… fired,” Tony mutters.
“That’s not your decision,” she replies, and comes over to
sit next to Nick. There’s a needle hidden in her hand and she doubts Stark will
make it hard to use it on him.
-
By the end of the mission, Natasha has come to a conclusion
that produces a faint tinge of shock when she realizes it.
She doesn’t dislike Stark.
This had mostly happened after she’d been able to drop her
Natalie persona. Before that, she was getting him coffees and bending over in a
way that would give him the best vantage point to stare at her ass and finding
excuses to look at him from under her eyelashes.
She figures out he’s gay about a day into the mission. He
hides it well, which is the only reason it takes her a whole day. Still, she
keeps up her flirtations: Natalie Rushmore isn’t as good at reading people as
Natasha Romanoff.
After she’d been able to revert back to Natasha Romanoff:
SHIELD agent, there had been a shift. Stark’s hurt, maybe- not because he
trusted her, but Natasha figures he’s gotten tired of having people lie to him
for their own gains. It must be a pain realizing that yet another person has
tricked you into thinking they were someone they aren’t.
Natasha can relate, but on a more deadly level.
(Then again, she thinks as she pours over his file and comes
across Obadiah Stane, deceased, AKA Iron Monger- maybe so can Stark.)
Stark sulks for a few
days and Natasha watches him force a relaxed posture whenever she walks into
the room. “Agent,” he’ll say.
“Stark,” she’ll reply. There’s a grudging something there.
Not respect- Natasha gets the feeling that Stark doesn’t dole out respect too
often, though he seems to be hiding some for Nick.
It takes months for Natasha to realize that the grudging
something was understanding, though she expects neither of them knew that was
what it was until later.
Before that, it takes until after the Expo- where Tony has
saved his own life, stopped Rhodes’ suit from being hijacked, taken down
Hammer, exploded some of New York and rescued Pepper from being part of the
explosions- for Natasha to conclude that she doesn’t, in fact, dislike Tony
Stark.
It doesn’t change her evaluation. Being indifferent to Stark
doesn’t mean Natasha recommends him for the Avengers- she recommends Iron Man,
because she’s witnessed how he shapes up when he has to.
But Tony Stark- she’s witnessed him get falling-over,
piss-yourself drunk in the amour. At one point he’d let her try on the gauntlet
and shoot at an ice sculpture, which had Natasha yelling at him in her head for
his bad judgement while she giggled and pretended she was wielding something
that could kill most of the people in the room in under a minute. She’s seen
him be childish and irresponsible and selfish, and his redeeming traits fall
far from making up for it.
Days after the Hammer attack, Natasha runs into Stark in an
elevator at SHIELD.
He barely looks up from his phone. At first Natasha assumes
he’s still sulking and is on his silent-treatment stage, but then he speaks up.
“You should’ve worn that catsuit when you were pulling your
PA shtick. What’s that even made out of?”
Natasha knows what it’s made out of down to the chemical
compound, but she tells him she’s not at liberty to say. Then she says, “I
think it would have been counterproductive to your work.”
There’s a beat where she wonders if he’ll bring up the fact
that he wouldn’t be distracted in the least, since Natasha’s long since deduced
that Tony is gay as the day is long.
But all Tony says is, “You have a point.” Then he turns back
to tapping away on his phone.
Old habits die hard, Natasha guesses.
Tony asks, “Going to some secret spy meeting?”
“Telling you would negate the secret part, wouldn’t it?”
It shuts him up for a few seconds. Then it doesn’t. “Fury
gave me your evaluation of me.”
There it is.
Natasha readies herself. “And?”
Tony gives an aborted shrug. His face twitches. “It… might
be a fair conclusion to get to, given what you’ve seen of me.”
Natasha schools surprise out of her expression. “A very fair
conclusion,” she agrees.
He nods. It’s short and he avoids her eyes when he’s doing it,
and for a second Natasha thinks that his sunglasses are more than something to
shield his hangover from fluorescent lights- maybe they’re a border, something
to protect himself, something glossy and reflective so people can’t meet his
eyes properly-
The evaluation is over,
Natasha reminds herself. Stop assessing
him.
“Fury mentioned you might be on the team yourself,” Tony
says as they’re nearing his floor.
“No, he didn’t.”
“No,” Tony says after a beat. Neither of them bring up Tony
hacking into a secure branch of government, but they don’t have to.
Natasha waits. When Tony doesn’t continue, she says, “I’m
being considered for it, yes.”
“Would you want to? If they offered a place to you?”
He displays careful,
feigned disinterest that Natasha matches.
“If I’m needed.”
Tony grunts. He adjusts his sunglasses and steps forwards as
the elevator dings. “Oh, and Romanova.”
“Romanoff,” she corrects, but ice creeps down her spine. How
many files did Stark get into while he was hacking SHIELD? He’d have to dig pretty
damn deep for that name.
“Whatever,” he says, and there’s the asshole again. He
points his phone at her. “Pepper told me you two have a lunch date later this
week.”
“Yes.”
Tony falters at the lack of information she’s giving him.
The elevator doors slide open in front of them.
He stares at her for a second. “Don’t… snap her neck with
your legs.”
“I’ll endeavour not to.”
He eyes her some more, but leaves once the elevator doors
start to close.
-
Natasha’s lunch dates with Pepper carry over from Natasha’s
short period of being a PA. It had started out as the two of them getting
together to discuss work, which had run long and turned into the two of them
ordering takeout and pausing in the middle of a conversation to take phone
calls.
The lunch dates had started after that, and involved a
strange mix of work, personal conversations and food.
They hadn’t had anything concrete before ‘Natalie’ quit her
job and Pepper went from being CEO back to PA again, so Natasha had been
surprised to get a text from Pepper a week after she’s handed in her assessment
of Stark. The text asks Natasha- and Pepper does say Natasha, not Natalie- if
she’d be interested in checking out a sushi place this Friday.
Which is how Natasha finds herself going for lunch with her ex-coworker,
who had only ever known her under an assumed identity.
“Pepper,” Natasha greets as she sits down. She can’t help
but let a little bit of Natalie Rushman bleed into the way she arranges herself
in her chair; in the smile she shoots at Pepper.
When Pepper smiles, it’s not entirely friendly. “Natasha,”
she says. Her makeup is impeccably neat and well suited to her, as are her
clothes. Natasha can remember seeing photos of her at Stark’s side in a stuffy
dress suit, hair pulled back into a messy ponytail.
Natasha is still working out her angle. “How’ve you been?”
“Well, my hair is no longer falling out from stress.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” Natasha says. She wonders if she
should apologize. Pepper seems like the kind of girl who appreciates an apology,
god knows she probably doesn’t get many from Stark. “Pepper, I wanted to tell
you how sorry I am-”
“Are you?”
Natasha hesitates. “Am I sorry?”
“Yes.” Pepper’s smile is, again, perfectly polite but
lacking warmth. “Are you?”
Natasha goes for a half-truth. She always ends up telling a
lot of them in her line of work. “I’m sorry I had to deceive you. You didn’t
deserve that.”
“Mm.” Pepper glances down at her menu. “So, all of those
things you told me about your life- are any of them true?”
“Most of them, no.” Where she grew up, her parents’
professions, her pets and her friends- all a lie constructed by SHIELD or made
up by Natasha to flesh out her new identity. “I do have a friend called Clint
who continually gets himself in trouble, but he’s not a freelance artist.”
“He’s an… agent,” Pepper guesses, and presses her fingers
briefly to the bridge of her nose. “Natasha, what do you- what do you actually
do? Tony told me you’re a spy.”
“That’s more or less accurate,” Natasha allows. “My job at
SHIELD entails a wide range of tasks.”
“Which involves spying.”
“Spying is a part of it, if it becomes necessary to do so,”
Natasha agrees. She pauses to thank her waiter when he comes over with a jug of
water and some glasses, which he leaves on the table.
Pepper is staring at her. Natasha can’t quite get a read on
her expression.
“Okay,” Pepper says. “Tell me something about you that’s
true.”
Natasha pours herself a glass of water. As she puts the jug
down, she says, “I grew up in Russia.”
“Oh? Your accent is very good.”
“Thank you.” Natasha smiles. Obviously Tony hasn’t told her
about her past with the KGB. They had drilled so many languages into her and
forced her to perfect her accent for each one. She can pass for a local in many
countries.
Pepper waits and Natasha tries to find something else.
There’s a lot about her that is classified to agents, let alone a civilian. How
long has it been since a civilian knew who she was and still wanted to be her
friend? Natasha has pretended to be friends with many people, but only under a
false identity.
This- she doesn’t know what to do with this. She doesn’t
know if she was pretending to be friends with Pepper back when she was Natalie,
or if she wants to be Pepper’s friend now. Because it’s obviously what Pepper
wants: at first Natasha had considered that this would be Pepper being bitter
towards her, but instead she’s trying to get them back onto safe ground.
“Why did you move,” Pepper asks.
Even with Clint, Natasha tries to be as vague as she can
about her life. No one will ever know her full story, and Natasha accepted that
truth long ago.
“It was a choice that was made for me,” Natasha replies.
“Did Tony mention anything else when he told you I was a spy?”
Pepper blinks rapidly. “He… said you were good at it.”
Natasha doubts he used those exact words. “I’m very well
trained.”
“Did SHIELD train you?”
Natasha watches Pepper’s face as she realizes it might not
be a good question to ask.
“Um,” Pepper starts, reaching for the water jug.
“No,” Natasha says in answer to the last question. She
reaches for her menu. “Shall we order?”
Pepper looks at her and Natasha wants to tell her she knows
what it’s like: seeing someone who you thought was a friend, someone you knew,
but they’re an entirely different person now. The friend had been a
smokescreen.
Natasha is used to being a smokescreen. She slips personas
on and takes them off whenever is necessary. It’s what she was made to do, and
she’s very good at it.
Still- she decided long ago she needed something stable. She
couldn’t live shifting from identity to identity with nothing to keep for
herself.
As the lunch progresses, Natasha tries to give Pepper a
glimpse of who she is as Natasha instead of the persona she had put on to be
Stark’s PA. Gone is the helpful, innocent attitude and the voice she used to
answer phones and tell Pepper about clients. In its place is Natasha, or as
much as she’ll allow to show in a public place with someone she doesn’t fully
trust. Natasha is mostly sure that Pepper means her no harm, but she needs more
than that to be truly comfortable with someone.
The lunch runs late, and Natasha finds herself giving a
quiet, genuine laugh at one of the jokes Pepper makes. It’s quiet, which is why
Natasha notes how Pepper pauses in raising her glass to her mouth.
“What,” Natasha asks.
Pepper shakes her head and takes a sip of water. When she
places the glass down, she says “You reminded me of- no, nevermind.”
“What,” Natasha repeats.
Pepper squints at her. “You reminded me of Tony for a
second.”
What, Natasha
repeats a third time, but keeps it to herself. “How so?”
“Just-” Pepper gestures towards her face, titling her own
face inquisitively. “It reminded me of how Tony laughs when it’s just me or
Rhodey, compared with how he laughs when he’s in public.”
Stark has a public
persona. Of course he does, it’s something Natasha noted right away, it’d be
impossible to live in the limelight so often without one. What Natasha hadn’t
considered is how much his public persona differed to his private one.
It strikes Natasha that she hasn’t heard Tony laugh like she
just had. And why would he have? She had been a PA trying to sleep with him,
and then she had been a double agent.
Natasha wonders if Tony’s told her about her
recommendations- Iron Man, yes. Tony Stark, not recommended.
She stands by it. Still, a flicker of something runs through
her at Pepper’s words. Curiosity, maybe.
“How is he,” Natasha asks.
Pepper sighs. “He’s not dying anymore, which is great. God.
I can’t believe you knew before I
did.”
“I’m a very good spy. Don’t feel bad about it.”
Pepper picks at their sushi. They’re nearing the last few
pieces, and Pepper has given her all the ginger. She hates it, Natasha loves
it. It works out.
“He’s good,” Pepper says. “He’s- he mentioned something
about a team? A superhero team that might be happening?”
“I’ve heard about that,” Natasha says.
-
The Avengers come together in a less peaceful way than
Natasha had hoped. Less peaceful, less planned, less disastrous-
It works, is the important thing. They come together and
they argue and splinter, but when it comes down to it they achieve wonders.
They save the world, and Natasha spends the next few days with a quiet, proud
glow that starts up whenever her mind gets too quiet.
She helped save the world.
There were still casualties, and she could’ve done more, and they should’ve
saved more people, but the world is still here and they’re rebuilding and
Natasha was in the epicentre of that. She stood on the top of Stark Tower and
closed the portal that would’ve ended it all.
She keeps an eye on Stark, after. He had gone into that
wormhole thinking it was going to be the last thing he would ever do. It’s a
sacrifice that Natasha is surprised by, and that surprise continues as she
notices that Tony doesn’t think it was a big deal.
He bitches about it, sure. But Natasha watches his
expressions, his posture, his words, and realizes he’d do it again in a
heartbeat.
For the first time, she thinks back to her evaluation and
wonders if she was wrong.
She still hasn’t decided on an answer when she gets a call
from Fury telling her that Stark is herding them all into his Tower, which has
gone from Stark Tower to Avengers Tower. Apparently he’s serious about this.
Tony even turns up to show her to her floor when she arrives
a day later. Natasha looks around and hides how impressed she is- he designed
all of it; he’s poured all his resources and his effort into this and by the
looks of it he personalized each floor.
“Clint’s one floor up if you get lonely, I heard you two are
spy buddies,” Tony throws out as he walks her around.
Natasha supresses a smile. That means Clint’s on the highest
floor- had Tony noticed Clint’s liking of heights and made a note of it so
Clint would feel more comfortable?
A year ago, she would’ve thought it was a coincidence. Now
she’s not so sure.
“Tony.”
He pauses, turns around. His eyebrows shoot upwards when she
approaches him and lays a hand on his arm.
“Thank you for this. I like my floor. It means a lot that
you put the effort in,” Natasha says, putting enough sincerity in it to sound
genuine but not enough that he’ll see Feelings on the horizon and run.
Even so, Tony still pockets his hands and tries even harder
to look casual despite how he’s practically been bouncing off the walls since
Natasha walked onto her floor. “It’s no problem. I didn’t actually do much, I
just threw money at people.”
Then he flashes her a smile that Natasha interprets as ‘look
how easygoing I am, really, look at my face, ignore how incredibly
uncomfortable I am right now underneath it.’
She squeezes his arm and drops her hand. “Whatever you did,
I appreciate it. I… think this team could work out.”
“Me, too,” Tony says after a second. Then he clears his
throat. “It’d be awkward if I didn’t, given that the ‘Avengers’ is already out
on the front of the building.”
And you said you
weren’t a team player. Natasha doesn’t say it. She’s starting to think that
the reason Tony’s perceived as one is because he never got the chance to join
anything team-ish.
-
Once everyone has moved in, they do a good job of ignoring
each other for close to a week.
Natasha thinks it could have gone on indefinitely until they
get called out to stop a mutant in Manhattan from turning everyone into sludge.
After they’ve apprehended the guy and turned him in to SHIELD, they’re running
on adrenaline. They cajole each other the whole way back to the Tower and when
Bruce suggests they get something to eat, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
Tony immediately gets out his phone and announces they’re
getting pizza. “Okay, I’m on the Dominos website, who wants what? We’re
definitely getting pepperoni, but what else?”
“I’d like something vegetarian,” Bruce offers.
Tony clicks his fingers at him. “Veggie pizza, got it.
Anyone?”
“What options are there,” Steve asks. “Wait, don’t tell me,
I’ll pull it up-”
He gets out his phone, but Tony is already reeling out a
list of options. “-prawn and hollandaise, chicken carbonara, peri-peri chicken,
bacon and feta, apricot chicken, tuna, lamb tzatziki-”
Steve stares at Tony, then down at his phone. Natasha
glances across at the screen- he’s scrolling through ‘pizza types’ on Wikipedia
and looking bewildered.
“What site are you on,” Steve asks. “I’m- do they not have
normal pizza?”
Tony grins at him. He has a cut over one eyebrow and he
keeps having to wipe blood away from trickling into his eye. “Meatlovers, bacon
and mushroom- what do you want on your pizza, Cap?”
Steve sighs. “Cheese and meat. Anything other than that,
I’ll trust your judgement. Pepperoni sounded fine.”
“Oooh, Cap trusts my pizza judgement,” Tony mutters. His
fingers fly over the keypad. “Opinions, anyone? Otherwise I’m just ordering a
few pepperonis and one veggie for Bruce. Wait, you want more than one pizza?
You must burn a lot of calories when you Hulk out-”
“One is fine, Tony.”
“Right, right right right,” Tony says. “I’m also getting a
side of everything, I trust it’ll all be gone in an hour with Thor and Cap on
our side.”
Natasha tries to remember what they have for sides at
Dominos. There are definitely a lot; that she remembers. When she looks over at
Clint, he seems to be wondering the same thing and shrugs when she gives him a
questioning look.
They turn on the TV during the wait, which according to Tony
will be incredibly short as Tony tips like only an eccentric billionaire can.
They come across a program that’s showing reruns of M.A.S.H., which everyone is
familiar with except for the resident alien and guy from the 40s. Natasha only
knows about it because Clint made her watch it with him while they were waiting
to see if his infected leg wound was going to kill him before SHIELD got to
them.
Natasha sneaks looks over at Steve as they watch. It’s a
comedy, but it’s still a show about a war and Natasha isn’t sure how much PTSD
Steve is harbouring. She wonders if he’s read the information SHIELD gave him
about it and makes a note to bring it up later.
Ten minutes into the M.A.S.H. episode, JARVIS speaks up.
“The delivery man is at the front door, Sir.”
“Bring him up,” Tony says, not taking his eyes off the TV screen.
Less than a minute later, a teenager is stepping out of the
elevator looking vaguely scared at having been guided up into Avengers Tower by
a disembodied voice. He’s also dwarfed by the amount of food he’s carrying in
several bags.
“Hi,” the teenager squeaks, rushing to unload the bags when
as Tony waves him over.
Natasha scoots to the edge of the couch as the food is
unloaded onto the coffee table. Jesus, there are a lot of sides- chocolate
mousse, wedges, something that looks like chicken nuggets. Natasha moves for
the chocolate mousse only for Clint to grab it at the last second.
“Too slow,” he tells her, and then starts eating it with his
fingers because he can’t find a spoon.
“You’re an animal,” she tells him, and takes a slice of
pizza instead, passing the vegetarian pizza over to Bruce when she opens that
first.
The teenage delivery boy squeaks again and Natasha looks
over. He’s holding a wad of cash and stammering as Tony talks quietly to him.
Natasha eyes the cash. She’s sure their order wouldn’t cost that much. Tony must be one of those
rich people who actually tip well.
“It was an honour to sell you the food,” the teenager blurts
before he gets back in the elevator. He swallows when all their gazes turn to
him. “And- thanks for saving Manhattan today.”
“Part of the job,” Tony tells him. He’s leaning back into
the couch with a slice of pizza and a wedge of indeterminate origin.
Natasha watches him suck cheese off his fingers before
looking over and realizing Steve is doing the same thing. He notices her gaze
is on him a second too late, and his face goes carefully blank before he
returns to eating his pizza, eyes trained on the TV screen.
Huh, Natasha
thinks. She remembers the files SHIELD gave him and thinks of the one lone page
containing LGBT history of the last 70 years.
-
Natasha walks into the kitchen to find Tony chopping
mushrooms.
“Hey,” he says when he notices her. He’s in sweatpants and a
raggedy t-shirt emblazoned with a band that broke up the year Natasha was born.
As Natasha surveys him, she realizes they’re actually around the same height
when Tony isn’t in lifts.
“Good morning,” she replies, heading over to the shelves of
tea. She turns the kettle on to boil and watches Tony out of the corner of her
eye. Tony gathers the diced mushrooms in his hands and heads over to the stove,
where something is sizzling in a pan.
Natasha watches in dimmed fascination as Tony loads the
mushroom onto one half of the omelette and then folds the clear half on top of
it. Then he slides a spatula under the whole thing and flips it over. It’s
golden-brown and Natasha can spot shards of red capsicum and cheese in the
omelette.
Natasha’s stomach growls loud enough that Tony looks over at
her and raises his eyebrows at her stomach.
“I haven’t had breakfast yet,” Natasha explains over the
boiling kettle.
Tony pushes the omelette gently around the pan. “I could
make you one of these,” he offers.
Natasha considers. Something feels off, but she can’t place
what it is. “I’m sure you have things to do.”
Tony’s face closes off. It’s small but it’s there, and
Natasha realizes that she’s made a mistake. Damn. She suddenly remembers Tony
offering Steve a blueberry, that first day.
“Fine,” Tony says, turning back to the pan.
Natasha goes on damage control. She leaves her tea to steep
and comes over to stand next to Tony, close enough to watch but not enough to
crowd. “I didn’t know you could cook.”
“Yeah. Ja- uh, someone taught me when I was a kid.”
He keeps his gaze on the pan. Natasha wonders who the person
was that Tony doesn’t want to name.
“You’re good,” she says.
Tony snorts. “It’s an omelette. Any idiot can make an
omelette.”
“I can’t.”
Tony does a double-take in her direction. “What? You can
kill me with how many things in this room and you can’t make an omelette?”
She shrugs. “I’ve never tried. I don’t cook, as a rule.”
He’s looking at her like she just admitted she owns a set of
tentacles and has been hiding them since they met. “You’re saying you can’t
cook.”
“I’m not saying I can’t-”
“What happens when you try?”
She purses her lips against a smile. “Your omelette’s
burning.”
Tony curses and turns the stove off. He slides the omelette
from the pan onto a plate sitting on the bench, then puts the pan onto a cold
element.
When he glances over at her, she relents. “My attempts at
cooking have never… turned out how I expected.”
Tony’s mouth twitches. “So you can’t cook.”
“I…” she pauses. Looks behind him to where the omelette is
sitting nicely on the plate. Her stomach rumbles, and Tony still isn’t entirely
comfortable, and Natasha doesn’t blame him.
“You could teach me,” she says. “I’d like to think I can’t
manage to mess up an omelette.”
Tony startles, but he recovers quickly. “Uh. Sure,” he says,
and with some of his usual bravado, continues, “Not with me to save it.”
She rolls her eyes, but keeps her smile. It has the intended
effect, and soon they’re trading well-meant barbs as Tony eats his omelette and
tells her what to get from the fridge.
It’s more than Natasha expected- milk, two eggs, a red
pepper, mushrooms, cheese, onions. On Tony’s request, she also gets salt and
paprika out of the cupboard.
Tony finishes off his omelette and places the plate in the
sink. “You can pretty much shove in whatever you want,” he tells Natasha as she
lines up the ingredients on the counter. “Okay, so I’m ninety percent sure you
won’t mess this part up: crack the eggs into a bowl.”
Natasha does. Then she picks out the tiny pieces of eggshell
that follow the eggs into the bowl. After pouring in some milk, chopping the
vegetables and giving the whole thing a quick whisk, Tony examines the contents.
“Looks good,” Tony says. He heads to the stove, turns the
element back on and puts the pan onto it. “Bring the bowl over.”
Natasha does.
Tony asks, “You sure you want to do the mushroom-flippy
thing I did? Making a plain omelette is a lot easier.”
“I’m sure I can handle it.”
“If you say so,” Tony says mildly, and steps back. “Okay, so
this part can be a bit of a bitch because that element tilts a little. Grab the
spatula, then pour the egg stuff near one of the sides and stop it from getting
into an awkward shape with the spatula.”
“Awkward shape?”
“A shape that’d be hard to flip into half,” Tony says after
struggling for an explanation. “It doesn’t matter too much, I’m just very
particular about my omelettes. It doesn’t matter, go for it.”
Natasha feels inexplicably nervous about the omelette shape,
but she pours the mixture into the pan and watches the mixture spool out over
the pan. There are some trails that she puts a stop to, pushing them back until
the mixture has solidified a little and stops trickling all over the pan.
“How’s that,” she asks.
Tony leans over to examine it before leaning back. “Looks
good. Okay, grab the mushrooms.”
Natasha goes over to the chopping board and returns with a
pile of chopped mushrooms in her cupped hands.
“Doing good. Great job carrying the mushrooms over, see,
cooking isn’t too hard.” Tony flashes a grin at her when she gives him narrowed
eyes. “Okay, put the mushrooms onto one side.”
She does. The omelette is firming up a lot faster than she
expected.
“Get the spatula and slide it under the part of the omelette
that isn’t mushroomed.”
She does. It tears a little on one side. She eyes it, but
Tony waves a hand.
“It’s fine, you’re good. Fold it on top of the mushrooms.”
She does, but it sits unevenly so she uses her fingers to
gently tug it, but it tears some more.
“Good enough,” Tony says. “Okay, flip the whole thing over.”
She does. Mushrooms spill out the sides. She supresses a frown
and watches Tony as he picks a mushroom out of the pan and pops it into his
mouth.
“Good for a first try,” he says. “Stop pouting, it was fine.
You must really not be used to being bad at things.”
She looks down at the omelette. It looks a little pathetic.
She’s only slightly hamming up the discontent she feels in order to coax a
reaction from Tony- she’s terrifyingly efficient at most things, surely an
omelette should’ve been easy. She eyes the ripped edges of the omelette.
“It’ll taste the same no matter how bad you fold it,” Tony
says and Natasha realizes he’s actually trying to comfort her.
She turns to him with a smile. It’s an odd situation they’ve
caught themselves in, but Natasha is using it to her advantage. “Thanks for
this, Tony.”
“Don’t thank me until it’s on a plate,” Tony tells her.
“Flip it again.”
She does, nudging the mushrooms back into the omelette when
more spill out. When the omelette is more or less golden brown, Tony gets a
plate from the cupboard and holds it out for Natasha to put the omelette onto.
She can’t slide it straight from the pan to the plate and it threatens to rip
more when she tries, and when she picks it up with the spatula, even more
mushrooms spill out. By the time it’s plated, most of the mushrooms are sitting
next to the omelette where Natasha has scraped them from the pan.
Tony leans on the counter as Natasha cuts a piece off and
takes a bite. “It’s nice,” she says. Much nicer than anything she’s tried to
cook before this. “You’re a good teacher.”
Tony shrugs the compliment off. Natasha’s starting to notice
a trend where Tony gets oddly uncomfortable at the first hint of sincerity,
especially when it comes to compliments.
Natasha wonders if touching him would make the situation
better or worse. Tony is casual with sex but Natasha has observed that he’s
iffy about any other kind of physical touch. She settles for taking another
bite of her omelette and bumping his shoulder gently when she passes him.
“You’ll have to teach me more about cooking sometime,” she
says as she passes.
“I have to?”
She turns in the doorway. “I can teach you something in
return.”
“Yeah?” He folds his arms. “Like what?”
“Still thinking about it,” she says. “I’ll get back to you.”
-
Natasha muses on it for a day or two before calling Tony
down to the gym.
Tony eyes her warily as he walks in. He toes off his shoes
as he walks. “Okay, this isn’t how I expected you to pay me back. Not that
getting pushed repeatedly into a mat by a beautiful woman isn’t my idea of a
good time,” he says, grinning.
Natasha gives him a look that broadcasts she knows just how
much he’s bullshitting. His smile shrinks slightly.
“I’m not teaching you how to fight,” she tells him. “Well,
not yet. I thought we’d test your flexibility first.”
Tony blinks. “Sure. What the hell are we doing?”
Natasha walks over to the makeshift barre. It’s actually a
bar to do chin-ups on, but Natasha’s remodelled it. “I’m teaching you some
basic ballet moves.”
“Ballet,” Tony repeats. “As in-”
“Yes,” she says. She smiles. “It looks graceful, but it’s
very physically taxing. We won’t get into anything too intense, though- we’re
just focusing on your flexibility. Come here and put your hands on the barre.”
Tony looks dubiously at it and her, but he comes over. “Fine,
but we’re fighting after this, right?”
“Why?” Natasha feels herself fall into the familiar
stretches. “Need to prove your masculinity?”
“Maybe,” Tony allows, copying her badly as she shows him a
stretch.
“You’re holding yourself too tightly,” she tells him. “You have
to let yourself loosen.”
Tony mutters something she doesn’t catch. When he copies her
stretch again, it’s more accurate and she tells him so.
He doesn’t answer to the praise. Instead he says, “So. You
can do ballet, but you can’t cook.”
“I contain multitudes,” she says, giving him her sweetest
smile.
It doesn’t trip him up. “Where’d you even learn this? Was
ballet vital to your spy training?”
She doesn’t falter, but only because she’s well-versed in
hiding her feelings. It’s been years since she’s succumbed to vivid flashbacks,
but for a moment she can feel marble under her bleeding feet.
I am one of 28 young ballerinas with the Bolshoi.
Training is hard, but the glory of the soviet culture, and the warmth of my
parents-
The life she never
led, but remembered nonetheless. No-one would ever know her full story, not
even Natasha.
“Natasha?”
Natasha opens her
eyes. When had she closed them?
She forces her jaw
to unlock. Apparently she had been clenching her teeth hard enough to ache.
“No. It wasn’t vital.”
Tony is staring,
but he’s still in the pose she left him in. “Okay. What else did they teach
you, knitting?”
She forces a laugh.
“No. I picked that up later.”
“You can knit
but you can’t cook.”
She taps his
shoulder. “Stop hunching. Shoulders back.”
“It’s such a basic
skill! You have to eat to live!”
“Concentrate,” she
tells him.
Tony sighs, but he
straightens into the position she’s in, arms out and curved. “Should there be
music?”
“We’re not dancing,
you’re just learning the basic movements. Get into the fourth position.”
She moves one arm
out and the other up. Tony copies her, eyes dropping to her feet and shuffling
into the right position.
“Ow,” he says when
he achieves it. “Are feet supposed to bend like this? Hey, can you stand on
your toes? I hear it’s hell. Stand on your toes.”
“Go into the fifth
position,” she tells him, moving into it.
Tony does. He looks
out of place, but oddly graceful as he holds both his arms aloft. She steps
back to consider him. He has the wrong body to do it professionally, but he
doesn’t look bad.
“And relax,” she
tells him. He does, dropping his arms and wincing as he gets his feet back to
their usual position.
“Good work,” she
tells him. Then she goes up on her toes, holding her arms up for the full
effect.
Tony’s eyebrows
raise. He barks out a laugh. “Holy fuck. I mean, there’s not much weight on you
to lift, but-”
“You couldn’t pick
me up,” she returns. “I’m pure muscle.”
“I believe it,”
Tony says. His mouth is open to say something else when Steve walks in and Tony
turns to see who it is. “Hey, Cap.”
“Hi,” Steve says.
His hands are wrapped, so Natasha assumes he’s here for the punching bag that’s
reinforced but has still had to be replaced three times in as many months. “You
two are-”
“I’m teaching him
basic ballet,” Natasha says, dropping back to the flats of her feet. “To help
with his flexibility and thank him for teaching me how to make an omelette.”
Surprise colours
Steve’s face. “Oh, that’s- nice of you both.”
“Yeah, I’m having a
ball,” Tony says dryly. He rolls his shoulders. “You can cook, right?”
Steve nods. “I do
alright.”
“But- Depression
era cooking, yeah. Boiled chicken and… crackers and the like. Did you guys have
crackers?”
Steve gives Tony a
look that Natasha assumes Tony is far too used to, like he’s trying to figure
out if Tony’s screwing with him or not. “Yeah, we had crackers back then. They
existed. Uh, I can leave if you two need to focus-”
Natasha says, “No,
it’s fine,” at the same time that Tony says, “You should join in.”
They both turn to
him. Tony is starting to grin. “Natasha, you mind taking on another student? Or
should he teach you how to make toast first?”
“Actually, I’m-”
Steve pockets his hands. “I was looking for some time by myself. Another time,
maybe.”
Natasha nods and
makes a note to check up on him later. Their Captain has good days and bad
days, and by the rigid line of his shoulders and him coming here to beat up a
punching bag, Natasha expects that this day isn’t one of the good ones.
Steve leaves and
Tony briefly watches him go before turning back to Natasha expectantly. “Just
so you know, I have to head to a meeting in 40 minutes so I can’t do pirouettes
for long.”
Natasha nods again.
“Does Steve know you’re gay?”
Tony takes a second
to catch up with the sudden change of subject. His face tightens. He doesn’t
seem too surprised that she knows. “No, he doesn’t. Why?”
Natasha shrugs. “I
think he’d like to know.”
“Why,” Tony
repeats. “You think he’ll have a problem with it?”
“No. I think it’d be good for Steve to have someone to talk
to about this.”
“About-” Tony trails off. “You think Steve is-? He had that whole thing with Peggy Carter!”
“That doesn’t make him straight.”
“I… true,” Tony allows. He runs a hand through his hair,
looking dazed. “Huh. I hadn’t- huh.”
Natasha guesses he hasn’t noticed the looks Steve has
occasionally been giving Tony- lingering ones, warm with something other than
the new, tentative friendship they’ve kindled lately.
She decides to keep quiet on that particular subject. “Do
you want to continue?”
Tony shakes his head. “Later. Thanks,” he adds. “I’ll, uh,
teach you how to cook something else if you want.”
She considers. “Could we make cupcakes?”
“You got it,” Tony says, but he says it in that tone that
means he’s thinking about a hundred other things at once.
-
Natasha has attended many parties in her life, but never for
fun. Instead it’s always to infiltrate a building, to seduce a corrupt
businessman, to coax information out of someone after pouring too many drinks
into them.
At this gala, her mission is to improve the Avengers’ public
image. It’s not an official mission, but the Avengers need to work on their
image so Natasha makes it her personal mission for tonight.
It’s not hard to talk up her teammates when the people she’s
talking to are the kind of people Natasha has been trained to manipulate: rich,
powerful people who have secrets on top of secrets. It doesn’t hurt that
they’re also apocalyptically drunk by 10pm.
Around about the time people start leaving to vomit, Natasha
excuses herself for a breather. She leaves the ballroom and heads into what
looks like a darkened library, and is preparing to lean against a bookshelf and
close her eyes when she notices someone else is in the room.
“Who’s there,” the someone says, and Natasha relaxes.
“It’s just me.”
“Oh. Hey,” Tony says. He comes closer and Natasha can see
that his tie has been loosened, his shirt undone a few buttons. “Here to peruse
the legendary book collection they boast about?”
“Here for a breather, actually.” Natasha heads over to the
window, since the moon is about the only source of light in here.
Tony follows. “The mighty Black Widow needs breathers? Last
week I saw you take down eighteen HYDRA agents one after the other and you
didn’t even stop to breathe, just kept gunning for the bomb.”
“Well, the bomb did put some urgency into the situation.”
“So if it wasn’t there you would’ve had a sit-down?”
“Oh, definitely.” She laughs and finds she even means it.
It’s not that it was particularly funny- she’s just comforted by Tony’s
presence, his dependable sarcasm. It’s a revelation that sends a wave of
fondness through her as she examines Tony in the weak moonlight. He’s tired and
showing it, which means he’s exhausted. Usually he can hide his tiredness until
he should’ve gone to sleep at least a day ago.
“How are you,” she asks.
His shoulder twitches. She learned fast that people usually
don’t ask Tony and care about what the answer is.
“Fine. What about you- something happen to send you to the
world’s dustiest library or did you just feel like inducing a sneezing fit?”
She thinks about making a dry joke. Instead she goes with
honesty. Unlike what everyone thinks, Natasha can be honest. She’s honest all
the time. She just uses it when it best suits her. “I just needed a minute away
from- everything out there.”
Tony makes a small noise of agreement. He will rarely offer
these kind of things, Natasha has learned, so she’s taken to holding out olive
branches. Most of the time, he takes them.
“It can get overwhelming,” Tony says. “Surprised it got to
you.”
“It gets to everyone sometimes.”
Tony makes another noise. This one is more thoughtful. In
the dim moonlight, he’s more of a thick shadow than anything substantial. “I
figured they’d train it out of you.”
“They tried.”
Tony nods. He pries sometimes, but usually not when he has
the sense to shut up. Which is… sometimes.
Natasha says, “Some things can’t be trained out of a person.
Not entirely.”
Tony doesn’t reply. Then he’s straightening, throwing his
shoulders back in the way he does when he’s trying to seem more assured than he
is. “Should we get back out there?”
“Mm.” Natasha brushes her hair back into place. “Time to go
be Tony Stark.”
Tony groans quietly, making a face. “Yeah.”
Natasha feels a muted pleasure at Tony trusting her enough
by allowing her to see that admission, that small hint towards the idea that
Tony doesn’t always like being Tony Stark™ every minute of every day.
She links her arm around his. “We’ll be able to leave soon.
I don’t think Cap can take any more of this, either. And Bruce is already
waiting for us in the limo.”
“We could always say we have urgent Avengers business to
deal with.”
“Good idea,” Natasha says. “We’ll fall back on that if we’re
still here in half an hour.”
On the car ride back to the Tower, Natasha thinks back to
Tony trusting her in that dim library and makes a decision.
When she lies her head on Tony’s shoulder, she feels him
tense. She waits, and soon Tony is relaxing as Natasha leans into his side, her
face tilted into his shoulder.
He gives her a questioning look as they pile out of the car.
She moves to make way for Clint to get out after her and tells Tony, “Thanks
for the shoulder pillow. You’re comfy.”
It’s… not her best line. Clint’s told her she can be a dork
when she gets around to actually trusting people.
Still, it seems to work on Tony. His lips hitch in a smile,
albeit a confused one. “Thanks?”
Natasha gives his shoulder a pat and heads into the Tower.
-
Natasha starts spending more time with Steve as the months
pass. He’s adapting well to the future, despite the wreck he’d been when he
first moved into the Tower. He had kept it under wraps and insisted he was
fine, but Natasha has been trained to read people since she was old enough to
wield a knife.
Nowadays, Natasha thinks Steve is balancing on ‘not okay,
but I can definitely see a place where I will be okay.’ It’s not ideal for
their team leader, but Natasha expects nothing else from a man who’s been
through what he’s been through. All things considered, Steve is doing
remarkably well.
His bad days have gone from being close to unbearable to
being just something else he has to slog through. Natasha has learned to read
the signs and has done trial runs on how she should act for the best results
when it happens. So far, the most difficult thing is figuring out if she should
press Steve on it when he says he doesn’t want to talk. There are times when it
works out in everyone’s favour, and then there are times when Steve truly does
need to hole himself up in his room or his art studio or the gym for a few
hours and will snap at anyone who tries to get him to do otherwise.
Natasha watches him pour his cereal and decides that today
is a Talking day. She comes up behind him, making sure to keep her footsteps
audible. Steve would hear them anyway, but sometimes he gets so lost in his own
head that his superhearing is put in the backburner.
“We’re going to watch that new Harry Potter movie later,”
Natasha tells him. “The one that isn’t actually a Harry Potter movie. You up
for it, Steve?”
She uses his name. She always uses his name now, apart from
when they’re in the field, because she knows how many people see him as Captain
America and don’t bother looking past the surface.
Steve turns around, holding his cereal close. “That’d be
good,” he says. “When’s this happening?”
“Around 2.”
Steve nods. He takes a bite of cereal. “I’ll make sure to be
there. Hey, uh.”
“Yes,” she prompts when he doesn’t continue.
Steve clears his throat. He’s holding himself like he’s
still that skinny kid from Brooklyn. “You and Tony are… close.”
Her first thought is that Steve wants to know if they’re
dating. Her second is that she’s certain Tony told Steve he was gay four- five?
Five- months ago. Her third thought-
“We’re close,” Natasha agrees. She keeps her tone as light
as possible. Open, but casual. “It was a surprise to the both of us, trust me.”
He laughs. It’s so forced Natasha wants to school him on how
to fake a laugh properly. “Right,” he says, and then seems to have trouble
making anything else come out of his mouth.
You should’ve asked me
to spar first, she thinks. You’d find
it easier if your blood was up-
“Has he-” Steve’s fingers tighten and loosen around the
bowl. “I mean, does-”
Natasha assumes he’s trying to find a way to say it without
saying like a high schooler.
“You read people,” Steve tries. “And I was wondering- when
you see us- uh, me and Tony-”
In retrospect, Natasha thinks she should be less surprised
that a team of superheroes tend to have the emotional capacities of teenagers.
As Clint says, they’re ‘good at kicking ass and terrible at feelings.’
Natasha cuts him off before he can stammer himself into
silence. “Tony seems very fond of you, Steve.”
Steve smiles. Despite their rocky beginning, Steve and Tony
have gotten along like a house on fire except when they’re screaming at each
other. “Yeah. I was more wondering- what kind of fondness he has for me. In
your professional opinion.”
“In my professional opinion,” Natasha repeats, concealing a
smile. She thinks Steve would feel mocked if she started snickering right now.
“I think this is something you should discuss with Tony.”
Steve sighs. “That’s fair enough. That- yeah, I know I
should. That’d be the sensible thing to… do.”
The prospect of it has him looking into the distance like he
knows he has to face a sea monster, alone and unarmed, in the near future.
“Tony’s not that scary,” Natasha tries. “Remember when you
cut him off after he had too many coffees and held the jug over his head and he
tried to jump for it? Hard to find that guy any kind of scary.”
This time Steve’s laugh is genuine. Then his smile fades.
“I’m just not sure it’d be a good idea.”
“What, telling him?”
Steve nods. His fingers keep flexing around the bowl of
cereal. “I don’t know which outcome I’m more afraid of,” he confesses before
locking his jaw.
Natasha watches the muscles in his face twitch and thinks of
the silent journey she’s watched him go through. She’s only caught glimpses and
she suspects it’s been much less quiet for Steve, who has been in the 21st
century for less than a year. Developing feelings to a close friend while
orientating himself in a completely new environment can’t have been fun, not to
mention Steve had come into the present in love with a woman who had aged 70
years since they last saw each other.
“One is definitely preferable,” she says, coaxing another
jolt of laughter from him.
“Yeah,” he says, eyes on his cereal.
Natasha wonders just how many relationships Steve has had.
From what she’s gleamed from him, she gets the feeling that Peggy would’ve been
his first relationship if they had managed to get together. Possibly his first
for a few other things as well, which Natasha has no doubt will freak Tony out
to no end.
Natasha touches
Steve’s arm. It gets him looking down at her. “I’m her to talk if you make a
decision,” she says. “Or even if you don’t.”
He nods. Then he takes a deep, short breath and squares his
shoulders and suddenly he’s Cap again, pulling on a smile he brings out when he
wants to convince people he’s fully functional and there’s absolutely nothing
wrong in his head.
Natasha has intimate personal experience with that smile.
Natasha once lived as the personification of that smile, but things are more
stable now. This is something she wants to tell Steve, but she doesn’t know if
he’ll take it well.
She settles for touching his arm again, squeezing briefly
before letting go.
-
“Ow. Ow. Ow.”
Natasha slows and stops as she passes the bathroom. Inside
it, Tony swears quietly.
Natasha knocks. The swearing stops. “Occupied?”
“Are you decent,” Natasha asks.
“I’m fully clothed, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m coming in,” Natasha says. She pushes the door open to
find Tony standing in front of the sink, leaning towards the mirror. In the
sink is a massive bag of makeup that looks like it’s been used maybe once in
the last decade.
Sitting open on the sink is a small bottle of liquid concealer.
Some of said concealer is sitting baldly on Tony’s cheek, covering half of the
greenish bruise he received days ago after being slammed into a wall by their
latest villain of the week.
“I’m going out with Rhodey later,” Tony explains.
Natasha leans against the doorframe. “And you wanted to
gussy up for him?”
Tony grins. “You know I have to look good for my
Rhodeybear.”
Natasha smiles back as she steps closer. She holds out her
hand for the concealer sponge. Tony hesitates, but hands it to her.
Wordlessly, Natasha reaches up to Tony’s face and tilts his
chin sideways so she has better access and the light falls properly on the
bruise. She smooths the concealer gently onto the bruise until it’s covered
entirely, then blends it in.
Tony keeps quiet as Natasha rummages through the makeup bag
for foundation. As Natasha nears his cheek with the makeup sponge again, she
pauses. “Do you want me to do your whole face, or just the cheek?”
“Might look strange if my cheek was a slightly different
colour than the rest of my face,” Tony says. “That was kind of what I was going
for when I went for the makeup.”
Natasha nods and proceeds to brush a thin layer of
foundation over Tony’s face. As she’s finishing up, she asks Tony if she has
anything to help keep the makeup in place.
“Powder,” Tony answers. He closes his eyes when Natasha
comes at him with the powder, and only opens them once she’s zipping things
back into the makeup bag.
Tony turns to examine himself in the mirror. He tilts his
face at several angles. “This is another one of those things you’re freakishly
good at, huh?”
“It was a necessary skill to learn,” Natasha answers as she
hands him the makeup bag. As he’s about to take it from her hands, she pauses.
“Do you know how to apply eyeliner?”
Tony blinks. “Nat, I haven’t worn eyeliner since I made some
very bad fashion decisions in the 80s.”
“It’s for me.”
“Oh,” Tony says, cottoning on. “You want me to-?”
She nods. “I have yoga with Pepper later. She’s bringing
Darcy and Jane along, and I figure I could show off my own winged eyeliner for
once. If you’re up for it.”
Tony pauses, but he unzips the makeup bag. “Uh. Okay. What
tools do I need for this?”
“Liquid eyeliner.”
Tony nods, fingers digging through the bag. “Might have that
in here. I just got a makeup artist to shove a bit of everything in here in
case I need it.”
When Natasha looks at him questioningly, Tony flashes her a
smile. “Shockingly, I don’t always have a makeup team trailing behind me when I
need it. Figured I might as well learn the basics.”
He makes a triumphant noise when he surfaces with a stick of
liquid makeup. Natasha eyes it dubiously, wondering how old it is, but Tony’s
already unscrewing the lid so Natasha tilts her face towards the light.
“One second,” Tony says. With his free hand, he gets his
phone out and taps at it. He sets it on the sink and Natasha catches sight of a
Wikihow article about winged eyeliner.
“Okay,” Tony says, leaning in. “Hold still.”
Natasha does. She closes her eyes and seconds later there’s
the thin touch of the tiny brush. It’s remarkably steady, but Tony has steady
hands.
Tony runs the brush carefully over the bottom of her right
eyelid, then slowly flicks it in a swooping line just under where her eye ends
and fills that in. After he’s done the same to her left and has used a makeup
wipe to smooth away any lumpy bits, Natasha opens her eyes.
“Sorry if it’s not up to standard,” Tony says as Natasha
tilts her face in the mirror. “The most I do is concealer and foundation, I
don’t exactly-”
“It’s very good for your first time,” Natasha tells him. The
wings are slightly uneven, but only if you peer closely. She turns to Tony.
“Thank you.”
“Back at you,” Tony says. His smile is hesitant, but
grateful. “Uh. It’s not really to look good for Rhodey,” he admits, gesturing
at his blemish-free face. “I just, I really don’t need to give the paparazzi
more fodder tonight.”
“I understand,” she tells him. And she does, in her own way.
It never fails to surprise her, how much she’s come to understand Tony over the
two years they’ve known each other and the eleven months they’ve been on a team
together.
From the look on Tony’s face, Natasha guesses he’s just as
happily surprised. He rubs at the back of his neck, an uncharacteristic display
of nerves that he doesn’t pull out unless he’s around people he knows well.
“Does that need anything to keep it on?”
“It’s liquid eyeliner,” Natasha says. “Getting it off is the
hard part.”
“Right,” Tony says. His hands fall to his belt, where he
puts his thumbs through the belt loops. “Well, have fun at yoga.”
“Have a good time with Rhodey,” Natasha replies.
Tony nods. He gives Natasha another smile before stepping
around her and taking his makeup bag out of the bathroom with him.
Natasha stays for a few seconds longer, catching her
reflection in the mirror. She touches the space beside her right eye, just
beside where the wings end.
-
Natasha wakes up gasping. It would have been a scream, but
she’d been taught at a young age not to- the lounder she screamed, the worse
they’d punish her for it.
Natasha sits up, pushing the sheets off. She’s dampened them
with her sweat and the cool night air already has it drying on her skin. She
closes her eyes and rests her forehead against her knees as she pulls them up
against her chest.
Her nightmares are rarely like this anymore. She’s years
past the dreams following her into waking life, and yet she’s pushing away the
phantom feeling of cold, the non-existent hands at her throat and wrists.
Natasha squeezes her own wrists just to make sure. She presses a hand to her
throat.
They’re dead, she
reminds herself. They’re years gone, you
killed them all. You made sure.
Sometimes, though- sometimes she’s uncertain if her memories
are her own or if they’re fabrications that have been poured into her. She can
vividly remember slitting the throat of the man who ran the Widow program for
twenty years, but she can also remember her early teenage years spent as a
ballerina. And she’s checked- those years never happened. Instead, those years
had been spent learning how to kill someone quickly, kill someone slowly and
with the most amount of pain, how to manipulate, how to twist someone’s mind to
get the desired outcome.
Natasha takes slow, shallow breaths until her heartbeat is back
to normal. They’re dead. You killed them.
You checked, she tells herself.
With that, she slides out of bed. Sleep is beyond her now,
as it always is on nights like these. She leaves her mattress to soak up her
sweat and makes her way to the kitchen. Bruce has long since started sharing
the tea rack, which doesn’t officially belong to him and Natasha but feels like
it anyway.
She’s pouring water into a mug when footsteps come into life
behind her. Natasha can tell who it is just by the way they walk, the weight
they put into the steps. Natasha tracks them move through the hall and then
through the kitchen doorway.
“Tony,” she says.
Tony moves for the coffee machine. “Nat,” he replies. His
gaze goes over her, checking how she is, and Natasha does the same as soon as
his gaze returns to the coffee machine.
He’s on one of his workshop binges. There are rings of
exhaustion under his eyelids, he smells like he hasn’t showered for days and
his hair is sticking up from Tony repeatedly running his hands through it with
engine oil on his fingers.
Also he’s drinking coffee at 3 in the morning. That’s
usually a good indicator that things aren’t all bright and happy with the
world.
Natasha curls her hands around her mug. The warmth seeps
into her palms. “What are you working on,” she asks.
The question jolts Tony back into the kitchen. Natasha
assumes he was off solving a magnificent scientific problem in his head.
“What? Oh, logistics. Trying to figure out how to get this
damn energy generator to compact down to three times its usual size.”
Natasha sips her tea. She hasn’t steeped it for long enough,
but the action of drinking it is a small comfort. She points at his arc
reactor. “Haven’t you done it before? And more than three times its usual
size?”
Tony waves an impatient hand. “Yeah, yeah, but this is a
different kind of energy and its containing field is different. And a bitch.
God fucking shit.”
You should sleep.
Natasha doesn’t say it. Instead she says, “How about you take a break? We could
watch a movie.”
Tony scrubs a hand down his face. “Or spar. Can we spar?”
Natasha doubts Tony could fight too long without the
adrenaline giving over to pure exhaustion. She nods anyway, and Tony follow her
to the gym after draining his coffee in several long gulps that must burn his
throat.
Natasha sets her tea down a safe distance away and heads
towards the mats.
It’s not the most polished fight for either of them, but
Tony is tired enough that Natasha would have the advantage even if she hadn’t
been training her whole life. She takes him down over and over until Tony’s
arms tremble as he pushes himself up.
Natasha watches him shake. “It’s time to stop.”
Tony shakes his head. “I can go another-”
“That wasn’t a request,” she tells him. She pads barefoot to
her tea. It’s not even lukewarm yet. Adrenaline continues to throb through her
veins.
When she looks back at Tony, he’s sagging against the wall.
Natasha comes over and stands in front of him. “Okay, come on.”
Tony gives her a dubious look, which turns into a wide-eyed
one and a yelp when Natasha scoops him up and tosses him over her shoulder.
“Whaaaat the hell,” Tony says from where his head is
dangling down by her ass.
“You were about to fall over,” Natasha t