Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“We are approaching the drop zone, sir,” came JARVIS’s clean British accent. Natasha finished lacing up her boots— new combat ones that Tong had designed specifically for her— and took her stance beside Steve. He was in his full tactical gear, a more muted version of his uniform that would suit better for camouflage in the Sokovian forest. They had all gotten upgrades as they prepared for the showdown with Strucker, suits threaded with vibranium scraps and a titanium alloy that Tony had designed to mimic the properties of the rare metal.

“Are you ready?” asked the soldier, a man with a much gruffer voice than that of her boyfriend. The widow stared back at him, her eyes narrowed and her weapons energized.

“I am. Are you?”

He cast her a sidelong glance. “As I’ll ever be.”

It used to be that when they fought with each other they could separate it all, that they could work together as the soldier and as the spy and not allow for any sort of personal feeling to get in their way. It was easier that way, especially because Natasha was still keeping things from him. Now, it was harder. She didn’t want to let him out of her sight, he hovered protectively, and she knew the others were noticing.

They had run a few other missions since they found out about Strucker. Intel reconnaissance, mostly. Easy runs that were more for practice than anything else. Or, they should have been. She ran one with Tony and Steve the week before, simple in and out— allegedly. They had gotten cornered by some guards after taking a wrong turn. Steve’s shield was cast aside, lying helplessly on the ground. Tony had been on the other side of the base. Steve ended up taking a bullet for her before Tony had flown back in, armed with his recovered shield and a barrage of bullets.

They had played it off as a tactical decision. Steve healed faster. But they were met with one or two skeptical glances when they got back to the tower.

The others joined them at the hatch, standing in front of the open doors of the quinjet, preparing to drop down onto the warehouse Strucker had been working out of for the last month.

“Everyone clear on the plan?” Steve asked, shouldering his shield.

“Yes, dad,” Tony said. His voice was muted by the suit, but the sarcasm was still obvious.

“Get in, get out,” Clint said. “Just like we practiced.”

“If you can call that practicing,” Bruce said. Natasha looked over her shoulder, where he was neatly folding his shirt and coat. The pants he was wearing— also a part of Stark’s designer line— were made to transform with him.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Bruce?” she asked. He offered her a small smile.

“Of course.”

“That’s the base,” Steve said. His voice was clipped, and not only from the impending fight. “Get ready to drop.”

With the six of them so close it wasn’t obvious when Natasha reached out and squeezed Steve’s hand. She saw his lips twitch out of the corner of her eye.

“In 3… 2…”

They jumped, the jet just low enough that even Clint would survive the roll that they landed in. The loud thud behind her told her that Banner had been successful in transforming.

“Tony, Thor, find the scepter,” Steve shouted. “We’ll try and clear as many of them as we can.”

They took off through the air, the rest of them hitting the ground running. Natasha and Clint pulled two soldiers out of a truck and began speeding toward the base. She watched as a guard fell from the base’s outer wall, flipping once before hitting the ground at a painful angle. There was shouting, screaming, and then an alarm went off.

Natasha took out a soldier on her right, spun around and sent her widow bites deep into another. Clint was behind her, firing off arrows as fast as he could, keeping the soldiers away from them. She sent another truck spinning into a tree. From the corner of her eye she saw Steve speeding past them on a motorcycle— of course he had found one— and Thor taking out an entire blind of men. Hulk ran through a barricade, throwing himself forward on his arms like a gorilla would to propel himself across the snow-dusted landscape that they had dropped down into.

It was late February in Sokovia, about two months since they had found out about Strucker. It had been a month of planning, of training, of trying to remember how to operate as a team. The last time they had all been together, when the Chitauri attacked, they had had no time to prepare. They wanted to do better this time— to be better. They refined their attacks, ran “practice runs” as Tony so mockingly put it, by running down SHIELD’s list of enemies and taking them out one by one. She and Steve had trained, Tony had worked tirelessly alongside Dr. Cho and Bruce to refine their tech, Thor had flown home to round up as much information as he could on the scepter, and Clint—

Well, Clint had been pretty miserable. He couldn’t go home, not when everyone else would have noticed his absence, but she could tell it was killing him. Being away from his kids and Laura— Laura who was now about five months pregnant— was eating at him. He wanted out.

But there they were. In Sokovia.

It was impressive really, how much they had accomplished in those months. They almost looked like a real team, they certainly felt like it. She had grown closer to all of them while they trained, especially Bruce. Steve had his reservations about it, which she understood, but he couldn’t do anything when she was the one who held the key to bringing him back.

Out of her peripheral, she saw Tony peel away from the group, propelling himself towards the base. She continued to fight from the ground, hand to hand with Strucker’s men. She preferred it that way, on the ground. She knew she didn’t need to keep an eye on him, knew he was by all means as capable as any of them, but she wanted to keep an eye on Steve. They fought well together, which was how she justified it. They had been unstoppable since New York. It just made sense that they would fight with each other now.

“Shit!” Tony yelled through the coms. Static assaulted her ears for a brief moment and she glanced up to see a flash and the outline of a force field that wrapped around the base.

“Language!”

At the moment, the widow in her didn’t acknowledge the comment, but Natasha filed it away for later.

“JARVIS, what’s the view from upstairs?”

Natasha kicked another soldier, wrapping her legs around his neck and using her momentum to take out another. Over the radio, she heard JARVIS say, “The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield. Strucker's technology is well beyond any other HYDRA base we've taken.”

“Loki’s scepter must be here,” Thor confirmed. “Strucker couldn’t mount this defense without it. At long last.”

Natasha threw a guard to the ground, using her momentum to take out a second one behind her. “‘At long last’ is lasting a little long, boys.”

She saw Clint duck behind a tree as some bullets flew past him. “Yeah, I think we lost the element of surprise.”

The chaos continued as they tried to fight their way forward. From their coms, she heard Tony’s snide voice:

“Wait a second. No one else is going to deal with the fact that Cap just said ‘language’?”

A few feet ahead of her, Steve threw his bike at a truck that would have run Natasha and Clint over if left alone. “I know. It just slipped out.”

They continued to fight, pushing forward through the brutal onslaught of men and wind and snow torn tree branches, taking out soldier after soldier while Tony tried to contain the damage that Strucker was doing to the nearby city. It felt wrong to Natasha. This was not the plan, not what they had budgeted for. It was taking too long, and she felt herself growing tired, weary, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A few minutes later, it did.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash, then the brief vision of a boy— that’s what he was, just a boy— standing still with a snarky smile on his face and a beard that had probably taken him a few months to grow. He winked at her and was flying past her again, a blur. A moment later she heard a gunshot, and saw Clint hit the ground.

“Clint!” she screamed, fear and adrenaline surging through her bones.

She ran to her friend's side and glanced over as she heard Steve hit the ground.

“We have an enhanced in the field,” he said. Natasha didn’t care, couldn’t stomach the concerned look he threw her way as she knelt by Clint’s side. It couldn’t be that bad, not yet.

He was gripping his stomach, where his hand was red with blood and his face was already pale and dripping with sweat. He wasn’t enhanced like her, like Steve, like whatever delinquent had spun him around. He wasn’t going to heal quickly, and he was losing too much blood. Under her breath, as her hand aided him in what felt like a losing battle to keep his blood inside of his body, she whispered, “Come on, Clint, Laura will kill me if you come back in a body bag.”

He laughed, then winced. Bullets continued to fly past them from a bunker nearby.

“Somebody want to deal with that bunker?”

She heard a crash, caught a flash of green behind her, and the bullets halted.

“Thank you.”

Steve had taken to fighting off the men around her, forming a protective ring of vibranium as his shield ricocheted off the trees that surrounded her. She looked up at him, hoping the panic would be conveyed without her having to say it.

He nodded and his shield snapped back to his wrist.

“Stark, we really need to get inside.”

“I’m closing in…” He trailed off, and she looked up to see him circling the base, a blur of red and blue propulsion. A moment later, the trees rustled as the force field fell. “Drawbridge is down, people.”

Theo flew down, taking in Clint’s injured state and the piles of bodies around Steve. “The enhanced?”

“He’s a blur, all the new players we’ve faced-- I've never seen this. In fact, I still haven’t.”

Natasha thought back to that moment when she had seen the boy, the gray athletic shirt he had been wearing clad to a winding, muscled frame. Not the muscle of a runner, but the muscle of a fighter.

She looked back down at Clint and the memory turned sour. His eyes were barely opened.

“Clint’s hit pretty bad, guys. We’re gonna need evac.”

“I can get Barton to the jet. The sooner we’re gone, the better. You and Stark secure the scepter.”

“Copy that,” Steve said. Natasha swallowed hard and gritted her teeth.

Thor flew off with Clint, holding him like a damsel in distress and propelling them both through the air. Natasha did her best to turn back into the Widow, to stop thinking about Clint, but she couldn’t. With every punch, kick, gunshot-- with everything-- her mind was on him.

Bruce-- Hulk, rather-- helped. He took out their bigger issues, their tanks and their blinds, and their bunkers, and eventually it was enough. No more men came.

“We’re locked down out here,” she said into her com, looking around for any stragglers they had missed.

‘Please let me get back to the jet,’ she thought.

Steve could hear the panic in her voice, even though it was heavily veiled by her “widow voice,” as he called it. To be loved is to be known, and all that. It was the part of their relationship she was struggling the most with.

“Get to Banner, time for a lullaby,” he said.

‘Get out of here. Go find Clint.’

Natasha ran through the woods, following the destruction and the bodies and the Hulk-shaped holes in the brush. If Stark had been here he would have made a Kool-Aid man joke, but he wasn’t, and she wasn’t in a joking mood. When Hulk caught sight of her, he flinched backward, throwing a tree over his shoulder.

“Hey big guy,” she said, just like they had practiced. “Sun’s getting real low.”

The words and the eye contact weren’t enough to trigger his transformation, but they were enough to hold his attention. She reached a hand out.

Just like they practiced.

They had only done this once before. Once, in a controlled environment, in a lab, after he had intentionally transformed into the Hulk and didn’t have to fight or get angry or kill. She had no idea how it was going to work in the field, if it was going to work, or if she was going to get tossed around like Loki had been at the battle of New York.

“The trick is to stay calm,” Dr. Cho had said, from behind a layer of bullet proof glass in the titanium cell they had had built specifically for Bruce to transform in. Natasha tried to do that now, but it was hard. She still remembered how scared she had been on the helicarrier, how sure she had been that she was going to die.

She could survive a lot of things, but broken ribs punctured lungs. The rocks on the ground would surely crack her skull open. She imagined Laura’s reaction if her and Clint both came back dead. She imagined Steve’s.

Her hand flinched away from his as soon as she had completed the movement, a stroke along his supinated palm, because that would be the easiest to do if they should have to do it in battle. If things got out of control.

Bruce came back to her before her eyes, slowly, almost screaming from the pain of it all, and she turned away after casting one last glance at him. He had told her it hurt, and she knew she was the one he trusted to see him like this, but she didn’t want to make him suffer under her prying eyes while he writhed about in that odd purple shade that came between green and skin.

----------------------------------------

When they were all back on the plane, flying home to where Dr. Cho would perform her miracles and fix Clint up, she sat beside Steve. To the outside, untrained eye they would appear perfectly friendly. The picture of professionalism. She was leaning over her knees, her head in her hands, eyes trained on the floor and a single rock that one of them had brought in on their shoes. She was trying to think of anything but Clint, who had been rendered unconscious by some of Tony’s new tech, to slow the bleeding and ease his pain.

Steve sat beside her, eyes on her. She was nervous, he could tell by the tension in her shoulders and the anxious and incredibly subtle bounce of her knee. He wanted to touch her, to pull her against his body and tell her it would be okay. He didn’t, and not only because they were surrounded by their coworkers who would freak out and probably crash the plane if they found out. No, he didn’t because he didn’t want to lie to her. It wasn’t all going to be okay, and this was only the beginning.

He nudged her slightly, with his knee, just enough to get her attention.

“You should talk to Banner,” he said. “He looks… nauseous.”

She nodded and headed over to where Bruce was bouncing his knee in a much more exaggerated fashion a few seats over. He saw her set that smile on her face, the placating one that she doled out on the rare occasion she was faced with a child.

Or a drunk Tony.

“The lullaby worked better than ever,” she said. He looked away and tuned out their conversation. He didn’t need to hear it-- it was her business. He trusted her, even if he didn’t know that he trusted Bruce.

Over the past two months he had come to terms with Bruce’s feelings towards Natasha, although he wasn’t exactly happy about them. It was undeniable, to everyone on the team, that the doctor was pining. If the scan in Cho’s office hadn’t been enough, the longing glances he cast at her every time she walked by, the way his face lit up when he saw her, the way he always left a seat open for her to sit next to him during their meetings…

Well, it was obvious.

He couldn’t say he was happy about it, especially after observing how… intimate their lullaby was, but it was tolerable. He loved Natasha. She loved him.

And it was his bed she crept into every night.

His face that got to bury between her legs when they had more than two minutes to themselves.

He stood up and began to pace as Tony and Stark started to discuss the extent of Strucker’s research. The enhanced that they had seen.

When Tony returned, his suit barely scuffed and his wit clear even through the tinny microphone of his helmet, no one had seen anything wrong with him. But Steve knew, he knew as soon as they got back on the plane, as he watched Tony shed his armor, both physical and metaphorical, and take a long, shaky breath. Something had happened to him in that base, something he didn’t want them to know about just yet.

“And who doesn’t love revels. Right, Captain?” Stark was saying. Steve tuned back in.

“Hopefully this puts an end to the Chitauri and HYDRA. So yes, revels.”

They all knew it was a pipe dream.

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Natasha sat at Clint’s bedside-- lab side, really-- as Dr. Cho ran various instruments over his injured side. She really liked the woman. Helen, she kept insisting. There was something about her intelligence and her optimism that Natasha really respected. She looked at the world in a very unique, clear, calculated way. And from her perspective, the world didn’t seem all that bad.

She could hear the guys muttering with Hill about the enhanced they had encountered in Sokovia. She was sure Steve was making waves, and by the sound of it she was right. Tony worked in his lab, opposite Cho’s and separated by a wall of thick glass that he had taken to scribbling on with whiteboard markers like a character from the shining.

Clint was awake, putting on a brave face while he was poked and prodded. Natasha watched as the skin seemingly regrew itself. She once again found herself in awe of Dr. Cho’s biotech.

“Are you sure he’s going to be okay?” she asked. Then, to lighten the mood: “Pretending to need this guy really brings the team together.”

Bruce walked in as Cho typed away at her computer. “There's no possibility of deterioration. The nano-molecular functionality is instantaneous. His cells don't know they're bonding with simulacrum.”

“She’s creating tissue,” Bruce said. He looked over her shoulder at the computer screen, watching what appeared to be a progress bar that was monitoring the repair of Clint’s wound.

“If you brought him to my lab, the regeneration Cradle could do this in twenty minutes.”

“Oh, he's flatlining. Call it. Time?” Tony’s voice was carrying as he walked in, but it drew the attention from Natasha and her carefully hidden worry.

“No, no, no. I'm going to live forever. I'm gonna be made of plastic!” Clint exclaimed.

“You'll be made of you, Mr. Barton. Your own girlfriend won't be able to tell the difference.”

Clint shot Natasha a look. “Well, I don't have a girlfriend.”

Dr. Cho smiled pityingly. “That I can't fix. This is the next thing, Tony. Your clunky metal suits are going to be left in the dust.”

For a brief moment, something flickered behind Tony’s eyes. “Well, that is exactly the plan.”

-------------------------

Natasha slipped into Steve’s room once she was sure Clint was in the clear. The bathroom door was open, steam emanating out the frame and pulling Natasha towards it like a cartoon hobo to a pie. She shed her tact suit on the way, stripping out of the lycra and vibranium and shaking out her hair. Steve was just rinsing off as she got in, but he dropped his soap and wrapped his arms around her as soon as she closed the sliding door.

“How’s Clint?” he whispered into her hair.

“Fine. Laura’s going to be so mad that I let him get shot.”

“I’m sure he’ll heal by then,” he replied.

“He’s normal, Steve,” she reminded him. “And-- I don’t know. He’s getting old. He’s over forty now. I just, I worry, you know? He can’t keep doing this forever.”

And there it was, unspoken: None of us can.

All of us must.

They stood in silence for a brief moment. It was too hard to think about-- the future. It hurt to know that no matter what, they probably wouldn’t get that life, that perfect little house together with a perfect little family. At least they were together. At the very least they had each other.

“He needs to spend more time with his kids,” she said. “Especially when the baby is born. I might try to convince Tony to cut him some slack.”

“Hard to explain why the aged bachelor needs time for himself,” Steve said pointedly. “Tony still doesn’t know.”

“Yeah…”

She trailed off and leaned her head back into the water, saturating her hair completely. She had cut it short again, rather recently, and she loved running her hands through it and feeling how abruptly it cut off. Steve leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips. He tasted like soap, and she was sure she tasted like sweat.

“We can figure this out, Natasha,” he said. “Clint is healing, we’ll make up some excuse, we’ll get him out of harm's way. Everything will--,”

He cut himself off before he could say, “--be okay.” Natasha was grateful. She didn’t have the stomach for the lie right now.

“Yeah,” she said instead. “At least I get to be with you everyday.”

Steve smiled, that boyish smile that only she really got to see. “Small wins, right?”

She glanced down between them. “Small?”

He grinned again and kissed her, properly that time, and she found her back suddenly arched against the cold marble of the shower wall as his hands found her waist and ass. She gasped, her skin lighting up with goosebumps and her nerves fraying beneath his touch.

And Christ, did he know how to touch her, how to move to get her going. How to tease. It was mere moments before they were both panting with the exertion of holding back from each other, his hands twisting and pulling at the most delicate parts of her skin, and her fingers wrapped around his cock.

“Nothing too acrobatic,” she said between kisses. “I don’t need Stark finding out you broke your neck because of some strange sex position.”

“I was thinking we could stick to the classics today,” he said lowly. He pulled one of her legs up over his hip, giving her leverage as he leaned against the handicap bar that was-- for some reason-- installed in his shower. Probably another old-man joke that Tony had thought of when designing the place.

As he lined up his fingers prodded her clit and dipped down to her entrance.

“You’re so wet already, Natasha,” he whispered. “Fuck me.”

“Language!” she said in mock surprise. He rolled his eyes.

“It just slipped out.”

She grinned. “It better not.”

Chapter Text

A few days later, Natasha found herself getting ready for another one of Tony’s parties. They hadn’t had one since they found out about Strucker, and the whole thing felt ominous and silly, like something bad was going to happen and they were prefacing it with a champagne fountain and a partnership with Gucci.

Clint had made a full recovery since Sokovia, but he was still… off. She could tell he missed Laura, missed the kids. He hasn’t seen them since Christmas. Laura had to be huge by this point. She prayed that with Strucker gone and all of the tech back in their hands, HYDRA would be sent reeling. Still, the enhanced twins… They frightened her. They were wild cards. Fast and weird, as Steve had told her over breakfast a few mornings back. A possible threat, if they decided to become one.

They had been in nonstop meetings since they got back, debriefs with seemingly every government they could possibly have pissed off. Mostly from bringing in the iron legion, Tony’s idea of a safeguard and a way to reduce civilian casualties. It worked for right now, but they weren’t smart enough to operate on their own. They still needed the Avengers.

Tony himself was seemingly different after Sokovia. Quieter, if anyone would believe it. She would look over and find him lost in his thoughts, dark thoughts. It was the same way he acted after the Chitauri, when Pepper and him got into a screaming match surrounding the effectiveness of therapy for a man who had had to send a nuke into an alien wasteland. She worried for him, really she did, about what he would do if he thought he was doing the right thing.

Steve shared her concerns.

They talked about it at night, in the hushed whispers that still felt too loud in the darkness of the tower. They traded off where they slept, and always— always— snuck back before morning. Everything was still so new, and with the team dynamic hanging on by a thread she didn’t want to do anything to mess it up. Tony and Steve were finally getting along, sort of. Bruce had taken even more of a liking to her. She kept him at arm's length, reassured Steve that nothing— she promised, nothing— was going on between them, and smiled politely at his mousy advances.

In truth, she knew Steve had no reason to be concerned. Ever since Christmas, since she had told him she loved him and started considering him to be… what? She had been calling him her boyfriend, but that felt too temporary, too juvenile. Like at some point in her life she might have a different one, and Steve would be the ex, which wasn’t even a possibility in her brain. She had never really thought too hard about the future, what it might hold, what she might have if she wasn’t an Avenger. It was too hard to consider, too much to think about the what-ifs.

What if she could fall in love?

What if she could get married?

What if she could be a mother?

It was torture, white hot burning pain, like a pile of hot coals laying across her body. Now, she was in love. And she didn’t want it to ever stop.

She stopped thinking what if, and she started being realistic. She wanted out, she wanted a normal life— or as normal as it could ever be. But she couldn’t leave the team, not quite yet. Not while the world still needed her.

That’s why, when Ultron made his appearance later that night, she wasn’t that mad at Tony. She was frustrated that he had kept it from them, annoyed that he had been so careless, but she wasn’t mad. She understood it.

Steve did not.

“I just don’t get it,” he said, later that night when they had called it quits and left a frazzled Tony and a pissed-off Bruce to track down the program that was about to destroy mankind. They had a few hours, at most.

“Well it’s a robot,” she began, her tone mockingly patient. “Imagine a man, but it’s made of metal and—,”

“Not the time for jokes, Romanoff,” he snapped. She smiled dryly.

“Just trying to lighten the mood.”

“I mean— I see his reasoning. I do. I just don’t understand why he thought that this— this program or person or whatever the fuck—,”

“Language.”

“—Ultron is, would end in something good. I don’t understand why he left it unsupervised and didn’t expect it to do this.”

Natasha sighed. “I think Tony is a very smart man who doesn’t realize just how smart he actually is. No one could have expected this. The mind stone is unknown territory—,”

“Which is exactly why he shouldn’t have messed with it.”

“Yes, but my point is he couldn’t have known that this was going to happen. He couldn’t have seen these consequences.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Tony wants out. An artificial defense system isn’t a bad idea, it’s just… hard to execute. He just wants to protect us all, to protect the world.”

“That’s our job. We don’t need a computer making those decisions for us.” His voice was harsh. His accent was coming out, like it did when he was tired and pissed. He squeezed his eyes shut, ran a hand over his face, and for a moment showed his age. “We’re supposed to be a team.”

Natasha stayed silent. She didn’t want to say anything more, anything that would upset him further. Steve wanted the same thing that her and Tony did. He wanted peace. He and Tony just fundamentally disagreed on how to achieve that.

“I’m going to shower,” she said quietly, letting her fingers run down his shoulder in what she hoped was a comforting way. “You should get some sleep.”

She gave him some time to cool down while she washed off. She thought of Yelena, of Steve. Of her future. Of how much she wished Tony’s plan had worked, and Ultron had been the hero that could have stepped in and taken the weight off their shoulders.

When she finally went to bed, Steve was facing away from her. She wrapped an arm over his shoulder, pressed her face into the back of his neck.

For a moment he said nothing. Then—

“I’m sorry.” His voice was muffled from the pillows. “For yelling. I’m just— pissed. And I don’t even know why, because I see what Stark was going for. It just feels all too…”

“Easy,” she finished for him. “It’s too easy. Something that simple always has drawbacks. Always has flaws.”

“A while ago, after Strucker, I found him in his lab. He was drunk, clearly, fiddling with something. Tony is—,” he rolled over to stare at the ceiling, “—he puts up such a front. Always confident, always snide. Sometimes I forget that he’s just a man.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“He told me that Pepper wants to get married. That she wants to start a family. And that he couldn’t do that.”

“What did you say?”

He huffed out a humorless laugh and the gust fluttered Natasha’s hair. “I said we wouldn’t get a break until there was someone else to do the avenging for us.”

They were silent for a long moment, each taking in the weight of those words. Now they finally knew what Tony was getting up to in his lab. All that time, and he had just been trying to protect them.

“I didn’t know Pepper wanted to get married,” she finally said.

“He had a ring. He was going to ask her on Christmas Eve.”

She felt his arm wrap around her, pulling her against him. She pressed her face into his chest and inhaled the scent of his body. “When this all ends, if it ever ends, I mean, would you want to…”

The question trailed off and for a horrifying moment he was silent. She held her breath.

“I don’t have any intentions on waiting until it ends, Romanoff.”

————————

Steve couldn’t help it. He held her.

They were outside of the salvage yard, waiting for the all clear from Tony, who was busy dealing with Bruce and all the destruction he was inflicting on the neighboring town. Clint sat next to them, staring at the ground, lost in thought. He knew, or even if he didn’t, Steve didn’t care. Natasha looked so small at that moment, so broken. Her eyes weren’t all there, gaze never quite focusing. He wasn’t much better— how could he have been— but he was better than she was.

He saw Peggy. And he was mad about it.

The flashback was hard. It hurt. To see Peggy— of course it did, when she was sitting in a hospital bed in New York and couldn’t even remember his name— but more than anything it hurt to remember everything he had left behind. Peggy, his friends, Bucky’s sisters, who he always promised he would take care of if anything ever happened. He had left them all behind.

‘To do what was right,’ he reminded himself. ‘To save the world.’

And that was some consolation— it was. He would do it again, with no hesitation, but after reliving that— after having to see everything he left behind and all the time he would never get back— after seeing it all, he understood Tony a little better. He understood why he wanted to take the easy way out.

He knew what Natasha saw. The Red Room, Yelena, Irina. Bucky, probably. Everything that she went through there with the serum and her final operation.

“Natasha,” he whispered into her ear, pulling away for a moment to try and meet her eyes. She still wasn’t back, still couldn’t focus.

She was still under Maximoff’s spell.

“I’ll kill her,” he whispered under his breath to Clint.

Clint pursed his lips. “She’s a child.”

Steve said nothing. She was. He had gotten a glance at both of the twins this time around and they really were children. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen. She was probably scared, pissed at the world, and trying to do what she thought was right for her and her brother.

Unfortunately, she had also fucked Natasha up. So he was having some trouble rooting for her.

“She’s still under,” he said. “Why isn’t she back yet?”

“She has a lot more to see. Than the rest of us,” Clint said. “She’s told you about it all?”

Steve nodded. Natasha was crying now, he could feel it on his shoulder. He pulled her tighter to his chest.

------------------------------

At Clint’s, Natasha put on a brave face. She said ‘hi’ to Laura, hugged the kids, smiled for the team. And maybe ‘faking it until she made it’ almost worked. Lila showed her the new nail polish she had just bought with some of her Christmas money and Nat let her paint her own fingers the sparkly blue while she sat with Laura in the kitchen.

“Where are the boys?” Laura asked.

“They need some alone time,” she said, smiling to herself. “It’s been a long week.”

“I’m sorry, Tash,” she said. Lila messed up and ran her nail along Natasha’s cuticle. “And things with the soldier… How is he?”

“He’s my…” she trailed off, again, not quite sure what to call him. “He’s mine. You were right, it wasn’t that complicated.”

“I can set you two up together, if you want,” she said. “Give you the guest room.”

“The team doesn’t know yet. I think half of them think Bruce and I are…” she glanced at Lila. “Kissing.”

“I see. Well, maybe I’ll give you the living room then. You can each take a couch.”

“Thank you, Laura.”

“Hey, Nat,” Clint called, poking his head in through the door frame. “I have a call for you.”

She frowned. “Oh, well I’m actually getting my nails done right now--,”

“It’s Nadia.”

Natasha sat on the porch swing, a burner clutched in her hand awkwardly after she had promised Lila not to smear her nail polish. “What is it?”

“It’s the Maximoff girl, she’s picked up some attention recently. I mentioned Strucker had ties with the Red Room, well… they found out that she disappeared. Apparently they wanted her with us.”

“They wanted her in the Red Room?”

“Yes, but she refused. She wouldn’t leave her brother.”

“So they joined Strucker?”

“They have a serious vendetta against Stark. Apparently they waited days for one of his bombs to kill them after their building caved in. They should never have lived, I mean-- it’s a miracle that nothing happened.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

She heard a tinny sigh through the receiver. “Because you need to know who you’re up against, Natasha. These two… they think what they’re doing is right. The same way Yelena thinks what she’s doing is right. The same way you thought what you were doing was right.”

“I never thought that.”

“You did before Ohio. And then Yelena came in and changed everything. They don’t have a Yelena. And they are much more dangerous than what you have seen from them.”

“She made me… see things.”

“Your greatest fears? Yeah, she does that.”

“No, this was… stuff that had already happened. Images from the Red Room. The other girls, a hostage we killed. She kept zeroing in on this one day when they brought the younger girls in to watch us dance. I kept looking for Yelena, but she wasn’t there.”

Nadia was silent for a moment. “Don’t get soft on us, Natasha. Maximoff is nothing like Yelena.”

Nat frowned. “She’s a kid. She’s just—,”

“In possession of a crazy power after a series of mind-bending human experiments. She will kill you if given the chance. Don’t give her the chance.”

Natasha opened her mouth to reply, but the line cut out.

————————

Later that night, they slept. She could hear Clint snoring through the ceiling, like a lawnmower. She didn’t know how Laura managed. Bruce was in the guest bedroom, Tony in the basement den. Bruce had offered her the guest room, but she had declined— she was fine with the couch. The couch that was next to Steve.

His feet hung off the end and he was arguably much too large for the shallow sectional, but he pulled her on top of him nonetheless.

“Are you okay?” he asked. She nodded against his chest.

“Of course. I’m always okay.”

“I’m not.”

She pushed herself up so she could look at his face and his eyes were locked on hers. “What did she show you?”

“Everything I left behind.”

“Peggy?” The name left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Yes.” He held her tighter to his chest. “But it wasn’t really Peggy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was… I don’t know. The idea of her. The idea that the war would end. We were dancing, at some party, after they took down the nazis. She wasn't showing me Peggy, she was showing me what I could have had.”

Natasha tensed beneath his grasp, his words cutting deep and picking at insecurities that she didn’t know she had. “And you can’t have that now?”

His brain appeared to catch up to his mouth. “No, no, Natasha— Christ. That’s not what I meant. I was just thinking about what Ultron said about me. On the barge.”

“‘God's righteous man’,” Natasha quoted. “‘Pretending you could live without war.’”

He nodded. “I don’t know if I can. Maybe at one point there was an end in sight, but now—,”

“You sound like Tony,” she said. He laughed, and she felt it rumble through their bodies.

“I don’t blame him for what he did. Maximoff was trying to rip us apart, but she actually did the opposite. I understand him a bit better now. Because I would do anything for this to end.”

“This, like, the fighting?” she asked.

“Like all of it. She took me back to the life I could have had with Peggy, to try to throw me off. But it didn’t. Because I never wanted her as much as I want you.” He ran a hand over her back. “I want Ultron gone. And thanks to Maximoff, I have new motivation.”

—————————

They fucked in Clint’s barn, giggly and lucid and for a brief moment forgot the world. Steve laid down a blanket on the top of the hay bales at the top loft and held her wrists down as he ate her out, drawing gasps from her that were muffled by the weight of her thighs. He tugged at her hips and kept his forearm across her stomach and she came quicker than she ever had before.

When he fucked her, it was slow and intimate and he kissed her hard before she rolled them over so she could set their pace and pressed his hands against the blanket with his fingers interlocked with hers.

Afterward, they laid there until morning and enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather of early March.

————————

Natasha woke up to the sound of a rooster. A fucking rooster, because they were on a farm, in Iowa. Clint’s farm, with their team inside probably wondering if they had been taken by robots in their sleep.

“Steve,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder. His eyes opened slowly.

“Round two?”

“It’s light outside. We need to go before someone notices we’re missing.”

He stood up and pulled his clothes back on, shaking off her tank top and tossing it to her. They scrambled out of the loft and back up to the main house, sharing a look as they heard the symphony of plates and silverware moving about the kitchen.

“There they are!” Clint called as they walked back inside, trying not to look incredibly guilty. The team was gathered in the kitchen, all in various states of relief. Clint looked like his smile was about to split his face in two. Bruce looked suspicious. “I told you they were just on a run.”

“You guys really freaked us out,” Laura said, shooting Natasha a look. “We thought something had happened.”

“But I was quick to point out that you two are… let’s say exercise fanatics?” Clint said. He had that brotherly voice he got sometimes, like he was trying not to be too obvious as he teased her. Natasha discretely jabbed his leg with a spoon.

“Had to enjoy the morning,” Steve said, his neck flushed with embarrassment. “You have a lot of land out here, Clint.”

“With a lot of hay, it appears,” Bruce said, gesturing to Natasha’s hair. Steve glanced over and pulled a piece out of it.

“Take a tumble?” Stark asked.

“We went to split some wood in the barn,” she snapped. “I have a lot of pent up anger over having to fight the bastard son of one of my overzealous teammates.”

Tony clutched his chest. “Low blow, Romanoff. Low blow.”

The sneaking around made Natasha giddy in a time that she would deem fairly inappropriate. She felt better than she had in a while, after her talk with Nadia and her night with Steve. She felt… secure. Like she knew who she was, at least for that moment. She wasn’t going to let Bruce’s misguided feelings ruin that for her.

The last two months had been hard, mentally, but her vision had given her clarity. Just as with Steve, she had relived the past in complete and vivid totality and she had realized that that was no longer what guided her life.

That was no longer who she was.

They met with Fury before leaving Clint’s, for more information and for what she hoped would be a bit of a pep-talk. It was not.

“Well, this is good times, boss, but I was kind of hoping when I saw you, you'd have more than that,” Natasha said.

“I do, I have you. Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere, ears everywhere else. Here we all are, back on earth, with nothing but our wit, and our will to save the world. So stand. Outwit the platinum bastard.”

Natasha smirked and looked over at Steve. “Steve doesn’t like that kind of talk.”

He cocked his head and she knew— hoped— she would pay for that comment later. “You know what, Romanoff?”

God, his voice. Jesus.

——————————

Steve wanted to scream.

He had lost her. Christ, how had he lost her?

The battle was a blur. A frustrating, tedious, chaotic blur. Chaos had become monotonous in his life. Just another day on the job. Except for it wasn’t, because he had lost her.

He saw flashes in his brain, blurs of battle and then there was Natasha.

Picking up his shield.

Saying something just a little snarky over the coms.

Telling him that she was heading into the bus.

Telling Clint to leave with the Cradle.

And maybe if Natasha had been there to put one of her soft hands on his shoulder-- and when that didn’t work, yell at him-- he wouldn’t have been so pissed off at Tony. But all he could think about was how Tony’s robot had taken her from him, had stolen the woman that he loved.

“Shut it down!” he yelled. Tony gave him a petulant look.

“Nope, not gonna happen.”

“You don't know what you're doing.”

Bruce looked at him with a hatred that Steve had never seen from him before. He wondered if it had anything to do with Clint’s. “And you do? She's not in your head?”

Steve was taken aback. Wasn’t she? Isn’t that why he was so mad? Because of Wanda’s vision?

-------------------------------------

Natasha sat in her cell, or whatever Ultron wanted to call it, thinking. She would die here if no one found her, and she would be alone and cold and pissed off because a stupid robot got the better of her.

The air smelled damp, heavy, and she had a brief memory of a humid day in Ohio when one of the moms-- the true midwestern mothers who wore ‘Michigan Sucks’ t-shirts and made casserole for every pot-luck-- proclaimed that it was like walking through pea-soup. Natasha couldn’t help but laugh to herself as a rat scuttle past her somewhere in the distance.

Pea-soup.

“Natasha! Natasha!” It was Bruce’s voice, and she wished it wasn’t. She wished it was anyone else.

She wished it was Steve.

“Bruce?”

She saw him run up to her, his eyes scanning over her for any injuries. “You alright?”

“Yeah.”

Get me out of here.

“The team’s in the city, it’s about to light up.”

I need to find Steve.

“I don’t suppose you found a key lying around somewhere?” She tried to sound sweet.

Get me out of here.

“I did,” Bruce said. He lifted up a gun. Nat smiled, even if the look on his face reminded her of a dog that had just dragged in a dead animal. Misguidedly proud.

“So what’s our play?” she asked as soon as she was out.

“I’m here to get you to safety.”

I need to find Steve.

“Job’s not finished.”

“We could help with the evacuation, but I can't be in a fight near civilians. And you've done plenty. Our fight is over.”

‘Our fight.’ Her fight was with someone else.

“So we just disappear?”

“You’re not going to turn green?” she asked. He took a step closer.

“I’ve got a compelling reason to keep my cool.”

She stepped away as he leaned in, putting a hand on his arm. “Bruce--,”

“I’m sorry, did I-- Did I read this wrong? I thought--,” The confidence he had had dissipated as quickly as it had appeared.

“This probably isn’t the best time to talk about it, Bruce. We should go--,”

“Is it Rogers?” he asked. She faltered, and her silence was telling enough. “When did it start? I mean, did I ever--,”

“Washington. When we were teammates, after New York.”

“Oh, Jesus, Natasha, so it’s been, what-- years?”

She didn’t have the heart-- or the patience-- to correct him. “It’s been a minute.”

He ran a hand over his face as an explosion echoed behind them and shook the church. “This probably isn’t the time to talk about this, is it?”

“Probably not.”

“And you need the other guy?” The hurt in his voice was apparent. Natasha felt guilt wrack her body as she nodded slowly.

“I need the other guy.”

--------------------------

When he saw her, he couldn’t stop himself. They were tucked behind a half-crumbled building with a swarm of robots soaring over them, and he kissed her. Hard, properly, with all of the worry that he had felt when she was missing. She tangled her hand in his hair and slipped her fingers under the helmet and kissed him back.

“We should go fight,” she said. “These people need us.”

He nodded and pressed his lips to hers one final time. “Don’t die.”

She smiled. “You first.”

Chapter Text

Steve stood with Tony on the lawn outside, watching as Thor disappeared into the folds of space and time. Ultron was gone, a figment of the last week that would have felt unreal if the death count in Sokovia hadn’t been plastered across every newspaper. One hundred and seventy-seven people that they couldn’t save. And that didn’t include the people Ultron had killed before they got to him.

Dr. Cho.

Strucker.

Pietro.

God, Pietro. He felt it when he died. He could physically feel Wanda’s pain, the whole city could. The rubble shook. Stark almost fell out of the air. When the city had collapsed, turned to dust, Wanda cleared the place. She set off a wave of power so immense that the dust and debris dissipated completely, leaving a circle of carnage around her brother’s bullet-peppered corpse. Clint had to pry her off of it. She screamed as they left, wracking sobs that left everyone white in the face and shaking with the same amount of pain as her.

They couldn’t find Bruce. Fury kept Natasha updated, but she didn’t exactly seem to care.

“He needs time,” she had said as they sat on one of the helicarriers, anonymous amongst the grieving and the shunned. “Away from all of us— all of this.”

“Did you—,” Steve had asked, but she cut him off.

“He knows. I told him when he rescued me.” She ran a hand over her face and leaned against him. He wrapped an arm around her. “I should have shut him down months ago.”

“You were just being nice,” he had said, tone comforting. She laughed, and buried her head further into this shoulder.

“First time for everything, I suppose.”

Back on the lawn, Tony stared at the pattern the Bifrost had left on the grass. “This man has no regard for lawn maintenance. I’m gonna miss him, though. And you’re going to miss me. There’s going to be a lot of manful tears.”

Steve walked with him towards the car. “I will miss you, Tony.”

“Yeah, well, it’s time for me to tap out. Maybe I should take a page out of Barton’s book. Build Pepper a farm, hope nobody blows it up.”

Steve almost laughed. “The simple life.”

“You’ll get there one day.”

Steve sighed, still unsure where he stood with all that. He had thought about it a lot in the past few months, even more in the past week. He had come to the conclusion that him and Natasha weren’t black and white, it wasn’t all or nothing. They could be together, be happy, and still live this life. It was all they could do, at least for now.

“I don’t know. Family, stability… The guy who wanted all that went into the ice seventy-five years ago. I think somebody else came out.”

Stark nodded and started to get into his car. “You alright?”

Steve thought about Natasha inside, the new team he had waiting for him. “I’m home.”

——————————

They fell into a routine, him and Natasha. They had to, they practically had kids. Wanda, Vision, Sam, Rhodes. The dream team.

Or at least they would be.

Sam and Rhodes were simple enough. They had both been in the military, so they knew what it meant to be on a schedule. They knew what it meant to work hard.

Vision was a little harder to deal with. He didn’t quite think the same way that Steve did. Didn’t understand the necessities of waking up early, or sleeping through the night, or… walls. The third thing had proved rather compromising for Natasha and Steve when they had been shut up in one of the living rooms one night, lazily making out while a movie played in the background. Vision hadn’t mentioned anything about it-- hadn’t even acknowledged it when it happened-- beyond apologizing for phasing through the door.

He was good, though. Whip smart and capable of incredible strength and power. It was interesting to train him, with all of his openness and honesty and knowledge. They had recently found out that his appearance was not only confined to the red form Dr. Cho had left him with. Natasha nearly had a heart attack when she walked into the living room in the middle of the night and saw a pasty blonde British man sitting on her couch. He had taken to wandering the compound like that, often found with his nose in a book and Wanda nearby.

Wanda, who was Steve’s biggest pain in the ass. Wanda, who was still grieving her brother in the most destructive ways.

It started off with the training. Running, lifting, learning how to fight hand to hand combat. Natasha put her through it, took the lead while Steve led the others in military-style combat lessons, hoping that it would distract her from everything she was dealing with. It felt like the Red Room in a sick and familiar way, a way that allowed her to bond with the girl that didn’t involve once speaking about anything that she was going through.

Wanda ran herself ragged, every day, until she was finally tired enough to go to sleep. Her eyes hung baggy on her face. Her hair was limp. Her skin was gray.

When it became too much, a few weeks after she had lost her brother, there was a brief, blissful period of absolutely nothing. Her door shut, her room closed off. Natasha recalled seeing her once the second week of this, sitting on the countertop in the kitchen while Vision attempted to cook for her. During the quiet period, he was the only one who could get through to her.

After the quiet, there was the crying. Huge, wracking sobs that shook the compound with their hopelessness and drained everyone around it of any energy. Natasha was sure that their was magic in her heaving screams, some red mist that was seeping into her bones and leaving her lethargic and worried. She had nightmares that entire week, memories twisted with fiction that left her shivering and sweating and had Steve’s arms wrapping around her in the middle of the night.

The crying lined up with when the paint crew came through to finish the living quarters. The whole compound reeked of grief and wet paint that week.

Steve had come home from the store one day and laid down on the bed they shared (technically his, but who really knew at this point-- the place was too big for anyone to keep track of who was sleeping where) and opened up a book on parenting teenagers. When Natasha had laughed at him, he had just stared at the ceiling in defeat.

“I don’t know how to help her.”

It was hard, especially due to her powers. They couldn’t exactly lock up the liquor cabinet. Especially with Vision at her beck and call.

So they read the book. They made a routine. They stuck to it.

They did their best.

It wasn’t all bad. They had the freedom to do what they wanted, mostly. They still snuck around, but Sam was almost never at the compound. It wasn’t too far from the city, and he had been flying down to spend time with his sister and his family most weekends. Rhodes, too, was usually out. So it was mostly Wanda, mostly Vision, and he and Natasha really just had to sneak around them.

And they still managed to get caught.

It was May. They made it three months, three blissful, wonderful, quiet months. They got called in for debriefs occasionally, ran cleanup for SHIELD, but mostly lived their peaceful domestic life. Wanda was improving, she was, but it was an uphill battle. Anytime she wasn’t fueled by rage she was caged by anxiety, and anytime Steve or Natasha tried to help her she shut down.

Tony flew in one day, walking into their kitchen in his Iron Man suit and startling Steve, who was pouring orange juice.

“What can I do for you, Tony?” he asked, reaching for a wad of paper towels.

“Well, Spangles, I was thinking about hosting a little get together now that the compound is done. Plus, you know, my birthday is coming up. Figured it would be a good idea to get everyone together, hang out, have some drinks-- Christen the place.”

Steve thought back to the past two parties they had attended. First Christmas, where they found out about Strucker, then in February, when Ultron had nearly wiped out human kind.

“I don’t know, Tony. It feels like a bad omen, you know? With everything everyone has gone through?”

“Just the team, then. Our friends. We can eat cake, have a nice meal. I have a certain British chef that owes me a favor because I let him wear the Iron Man suit on a cut scene for Master Chef.”

Steve thought for a moment, but couldn’t come up with a reason why not. It would actually be nice to see everyone, to get the team together. Natasha would be happy to see Clint, at least.

“Why not?” He shrugged. “As long as it’s nothing crazy and there’s no press.”

Tony pursed his lips. “Press at the dinner.”

“They can’t photograph Wanda, and I only want on picture.”

“Deal.”

They shook on it, Steve heaving out a sigh and Stark tossing an ‘old man’ comment his way.

And that was how, two weeks later, he ended up in the living room of the Avengers compound, Natasha on the couch above him, her smooth legs tantalizing against his cheek.

They were all crowded into the den, the less formal of the living rooms in the living quarters. There was a deep sectional and a movie screen, drawn curtains and soft plush carpeting. It felt lived in. Real. Not at all like the fake, modern lounge of the tower, but it still wasn’t exactly home.

Steve and Natasha had talked about the idea of “home” a lot. She had admitted that she didn’t really have a clear picture of it in her brain when the word popped up. It wasn’t her home in Ohio, it certainly wasn’t the Red Room, and she had been shuffled from apartment to apartment for so long there weren’t really any of those either. Steve had admitted that he felt that same, but in his brain, when he thought of home, he thought of her.

They were crowded next to each other, Stark in the loveseat with Pepper at his side, Maria and Nadia next to Natasha, Thor and Jane on the other end of the sectional. Sam, Rhodes, Vision, Wanda-- they sat together on the other couch. Sam had taken a liking to Vision, and Steve thought he was helping him socialize. Or at least trying to.

Even Laura and Clint had made the trip, flying in with their kids who were sleeping peacefully upstairs with a nanny that Stark had paid for in order to get Clint out to the compound.

It was nice to see them all. The dinner had been incredible, or at least the food had. The actual dinner was awkwardly tense with all of the government officials side-eyeing them the entire night and the cameras snapping away whenever one of them moved. When everyone had arrived it was a flurry of hugs and NDAs, written and signed to protect all the children in attendance. Clint still didn’t want his family to be in the public eye, so the reporters were ushered out before he arrived.

They had sat through the dinner, served course after course of food so small and delicious that Steve finished it in a single bite. At one point, he made eye contact with Natasha from where she was sitting across the table from him and she mouthed ‘Josie’s.’ He laughed. A burger would have been nice.

Afterwards, they danced and talked and sipped signature cocktails (ranging from the more clever ‘Martoni’ to the less clever ‘Steve on the Beach’). Natasha caught his eyes every time she moved in a long backless dress that pooled at her waist and was held precariously over her neck by a thin string of fabric. He wanted her, badly, and when they had a moment of peace where he offered her a friendly drink, he made sure that his hand lingered on her waist while he passed by.

When she slid past him on her way past the table, she pressed closer than she needed to.

The night ended early and they all had piled into the den, exhausted and buzzing and excited to be away from the prying eyes and accusatory questions of the world. Steve had sat next to Natasha at first, then, after his alcohol riddled brain had deemed that too suspicious, had slid down to sit on the floor so that Nadia could perch next to her. Thor had brought mead, of course, and the first bottle of it was nearly empty. About halfway through the night he had disappeared for more and, apparently, received a stern lecture on using bifrost for beer runs.

“Strangest thing you’ve ever had to do undercover,” Pepper read, pulling from a card game Tony had specially made for this night. Something about team-building. Steve leaned his head back against the sofa and Natasha’s hand briefly swept through his hair.

“I had to participate in reconstructive shoulder surgery,” Nadia offered. “I was undercover in a war zone and no one else knew how to do it.”

“How did you?” Rhodes asked.

“The Red Room had a very basic medical school for their widows. I attended it after I graduated.”

“You guys just had a whole life there, huh?” he asked. Nadia cast a glance at Natasha. Natasha took another sip of her drink.

“During my— very brief— stint of undercover work,” Clint began, “I was stationed at this tiny cafe in Paris to scout out an arms dealer who worked at the bank across the street. The only problem was I didn’t speak a lick of french and it was very obvious to everyone that I didn’t belong there. They mostly made me talk to the tourists.”

“That’s where we met,” Laura said. “I was celebrating graduation with some girlfriends and he served us coffee one night.”

“I got the guy and the girl!” Clint yelled, wrapping his arm around his wife. They were both giggly drunk with the absence of their children. Steve wished he could be that way with Natasha. Wanted to be one day.

“Natasha, you must have some good stories,” Maria said. “Mine was just that I got mistaken for this new reporter in New York and it almost blew my cover. Some podunk channel, but she really did look like me.”

“When I was undercover as a kid I played on a children’s field hockey team,” Natasha said. She was always hesitant to share bits of Ohio with others. Most of them still didn’t know about her sister. “I took it way too seriously and got thrown off after one game. It was the only thing I did that almost blew our cover.” She paused and her finger found the nape of Steve’s neck again. “I mean, the girl's shoulder popped right back in.”

Thor reached over and refilled Steve and Natasha’s glasses, both empty. Steve reached for it inherently and handed Natasha hers. His vision was starting to swim, his usually overly sharp sense full enough that he could focus.

“I ran undercover work for a year,” he said, surprising everyone. “With Rumlow and Romanoff.”

A slight tug against his hair and he rested his shoulder more fully against her leg.

“Any fun tales?” Stark asked, leaning forward on his knees.

“In Argentina he forgot the Spanish word for ‘four’,” Natasha said. “Almost blew our cover.”

“Our cover remained intact,” he said.

“Only because the grocery girl was too busy making eyes at you to notice,” she snapped. It was accompanied by a sharp tug of his hair and his head snapped back. He grinned up at her, his smile lazy and drunk, and her flushed cheeks were pulled tight as she looked back down at him.

He loved when she got jealous.

“Does Captain America even have any game?” Rhodes asked, laughing to himself. “I’m sure he gets that all the time, and yet we never see him with any women.”

“I have game!” he protested. They all laughed. Natasha polished off her drink, reached over him for more. He willed himself to stare straight ahead as her breasts pressed against the side of his face.

God, the irony was so thick he could taste it.

“When was the last time you kissed someone?” Stark asked. “When was the last time our star spangled man with a plan got any action?”

‘Natasha’ he wanted to say, especially as her hand returned to tracing circles across his neck.

“Natasha?” Rhodes roared, nearly jumping out of his chair.

Fuck. Had he said that out loud?

Next to him, Natasha had frozen. She glanced down at him, her face equally flushed, and it was a moment longer than it should have been before either of them spoke.

“It was to keep a cover,” she said finally. “When we were in DC, right before SHIELD fell, when Fury died. Rumlow was chasing us and I kissed him on the escalator to save our cover.”

Tony looked skeptical. “How exactly does macking on Steve save your cover?”

“Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable,” Steve said, parroting those words from nearly a year ago.

“And was ‘uncomfortable’ the word you would use to describe it?” Rhodes asked. He and Tony had a little act going on, a two man bit that they were running, except neither of them was Good Cop.

Natasha finished her drink and it was magically refilled for her. She scratched at Steve’s scalp, and it felt good. He closed his eyes.

“Pull another card, Tony.”

———————

They kept playing their game, kept drinking, and by the time the second jug was finished Steve was properly drunk and overly aware of how close Natasha was. He wanted to touch her. Wanted to put his arms around her.

He wanted to fuck her.

She wanted to fuck him too. It was silly, this infatuation, but she needed him. Badly. With every drink it got worse, made her skin burn and her nerves light up where he leaned against her. She kept tugging at his hair, pulling slightly every once and a while like she knew he liked. He glanced back at her every once and a while, his eyes dark and his skin flushed.

The other guided the conversation, so they didn’t pay much mind to Natasha and Steve. They didn’t notice the way they were touching, casually drawing fingers along exposed skin, and when Steve sucked in a breath as Natasha traced his ear with her finger nail, no one batted an eye.

It all got to be too much when she reached over him for another drink, making sure to push her breasts-- carefully taped to the dress that was more than a little risque-- up against him as she leaned forward. He inhaled sharply and finally stood up, placing a hand on her knee to get up and exposing more of her skin through the slit. The contact was enough to soak her panties and she watched him shift subtly to try and hide what would soon be an erection.

“I’m going to go grab something to eat,” he announced. “Would anyone else like anything?”

A few of them glanced over from where Tony was flipping through his movie collection to find a suitable watch.

“Some chips, if there’s any,” Maria requested. Steve nodded and walked out the door, shooting a glance backwards at Natasha and raising his eyebrows slightly. She got the message.

“And if we’re settling in for a movie, I am going to put some different clothes on,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

No one even acknowledged her.

As soon as she was out of the hallway she felt Steve’s hands on her, tugging her into the kitchen where he was waiting, shirt unbuttoned and tie loose around his neck, for her to meet him.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Natasha,” he whispered, his lips on her neck as soon as she was in the room. “That dress is too much. You’re such a tease.”

She wanted to respond, really she did, but the sensations were too much for her already. She didn’t trust herself to open her mouth, much less speak.

Steve pulled the dress strap up and over her head before crashing his lips down onto her, his hands trailing over her ass and leaving ripples in the smooth fabric that only served to fuel his rage that the garment was still on. He lifted her up onto the counter and pushed the dress up, standing between her wide spread legs, her back to the entrance to the kitchen. They had left the light off, just in case someone walked by.

Natasha could do nothing but pant as Steve had his way with her. His lips trailed down her cheek, neck, chest, and he leaned her back onto her arms to press his face between her breasts and inhale deeply, thumbs circling up on either side to trace circles over her pert nipples.

She ground against him while he did this, pressing herself as close as she could with his hands holding her hips firmly against the granite and her ass barely hanging onto the side of the counter. He had taken her nipple in his mouth and was rolling it between his teeth, sweet and slow like he did when they had all the time in the world, when they were alone, but they didn’t have all the time in the world and she just wanted him to get to it already.

“Steve, please,” she said against the top of his head. “Please, please, I need you, please.”

He nipped at her breast once more, leaving an angry purple mark, before hiking her dress up even further and pushing her against the counter so she was laying down. Her tits pointed straight up and her eyes fluttered shut in the darkness as he slipped a finger inside her, then two, all the while laying kisses along her thighs and pressing his tongue, open and flat, against her clit.

She was close, so close already from the alcohol and the touching and the danger of it all. Hiding it from their friends, even if she wasn’t even exactly sure why she was hiding it any more. She just knew she loved him, loved what his body did to hers, loved the way his free hand tugged at her hip as he ate her out.

When she finally-- finally-- heard the rustle of a belt buckle and he slipped his hand down to thumb her clit, she wanted to cry. His cock pressed against her entrance, briefly teasing, but they were both too drunk and too turned on to bother with games for very long. He pressed inside of her, her hands fluttering to unbutton his shirt, his yanking her closer to the edge of the counter so he could shove into her at the right angle to hit her clit.

They fucked like that, on the countertop where they sat and ate breakfast every morning, one of her hands wrapped around his neck, the other pressed against the granite to support her weight. His fingers alternated between gripping the edge of the countertop and touching her in some way, one hand always clutching at her knee and pulling her in time with his thrusts.

She dissolved beneath him, quickly reaching her orgasm and falling over it, almost by surprise, his body taking her over the edge in just a few minutes. He quickly followed, leaning down to press his lips to her neck as he finished. She sighed against his shoulder, kissing it gently and feeling both his arms fall heavily at her side, supporting him.

“We need to get back to the party,” she said after a few moments, ladened with heavy breathing and the sound of skin on skin.

He wrapped his fingers around her ass, pulling her closer, and she could already feel him getting hard again. Super Soldier, indeed.

“I don't want to,” he mumbled. “I just want to be alone. With you.”

Natasha moaned as his fingers pinched at her nipples and she felt herself flutter around his cock. “Steve…”

“Imagine how often we could do this if we lived together,” he said, pulling out of her slightly before pushing back in. She gasped, half in pleasure and half with surprise. This was new.

“We do live together,” she said.

“A place to ourselves, without prying eyes and men who float through walls. We could live in Brooklyn.”

His words sounded honey sweet to her as he fucked her slowly, even if they were just the lovesick ramblings of a drunken man. She clutched at his shoulders and felt her skin begin to come alive again.

“Brooklyn, you say?" she whispered. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

He pressed his lips to hers. “I am.”

She smiled and pulled him against her once more, strong arms at her side and soft lips on her neck. “You know that means we would have to tell people,” she said. “The team, for starters.”

He murmured something incomprehensible and she twitched as his thumb found her clit again. “Let them know. Let them watch, for all I care. I want to start a life with you, Natasha. I don’t want to wait.”

“Oh, Captain,” came a third voice, Tony’s voice, from the edge of the kitchen. The light flickered on and Natasha was suddenly very aware of her bare ass on the stone and her dress pooling around her waist. She instinctively covered herself, Tony’s face in a rare expression of true surprise. “I guess you do have game.”

Chapter Text

“Tony!” Steve exclaimed, still inside Natasha. Stark clapped his hands dramatically over his eyes and Steve pulled out, tucking himself back into his pants and pulling Natasha’s dress up and over her head. When they had composed themselves Natasha cleared her throat.

“Stark,” she said. Her head was swimming, but she tried to focus. “I don’t know what you think you just saw—,”

“Let’s not kid ourselves, Red,” he said. “It’s pretty clear what I just saw.”

Natasha pressed her eyes shut, praying to some higher power to help her through this conversation.

“I just came in to see what was taking Steve so long with the snacks,” he said. “You guys know we have rooms with doors here, right? Bedrooms, too.”

“Thanks,” Steve snapped. He was still trying to get his buckle closed, hands fumbling. “Now, I know it’s not exactly your strong suit, but I’d really appreciate it if you could keep this to yourself.”

Stark just grinned. “Oh Captain, my Captain, I think the team needs to know about this.”

“Know about what?” Sam asked, wandering into the kitchen behind Tony. The shuffling of footsteps let them know the others weren’t far behind.

“That the soldier and the spy are boinking,” Tony said. Natasha threw the nearest thing at him, which just so happened to be an orange. It bounced off his head and he frowned. “Did I lie?”

“We were trying to keep that a secret, Stark,” she yelled. Much like Steve’s did, her true accent poked out when she was pissed. Her hands were on her hips and she had a threatening scowl on her face, which all would have looked a lot more intimidating if she wasn’t sporting a fresh hickey and Steve hadn’t buttoned his shirt up the wrong way.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been fucking in our communal kitchen, then,” he snapped back. “Seriously, guys. Clorox.”

Steve flushed even redder, though his was from embarrassment while Natasha was only getting angrier.

“Tony--,”

“Wait, I thought everyone knew they were sleeping together,” Rhodes said. “Was that not-- Was it a secret?”

Steve paused from where he was reaching under the sink for the Clorox wipes, frozen at Rhodes’ comment. He glanced up at Natasha, who was also in a state of relative shock. Tony had an eyebrow raised and for the second time that night was rendered speechless. The three of them shared confused glances. Natasha spoke first.

“What?” she asked.

“I thought everyone knew,” he said again. “Was it a secret?”

“Hell, I knew,” Sam said. Clint nodded.

“Me too.”

“Quick show of hands,” Stark said. “Who here knew that these two were going at it and didn’t mention it?”

Everyone raised their hands.

“What?” Steve, Tony, and Natasha all exclaimed at once. Tony glanced at Pepper. “You knew?”

She nodded.

“I mean, you’re kind of terrible at hiding it,” Wanda said. “You’re always doing things for each other, like picking up groceries or making dinner together. I thought you were just friendly, but then Vision said he saw you two in the den--,”

“Ah, that’s okay,” Steve interrupted, face flushed at the memory. Rubbing his head, he looked at the rest of the group. “Who else?”

Rhodes had apparently seen them entering and exiting the coat closet at the Christmas Eve party. Maria and Nadia had both known separately from talking to Natasha, though neither had brought it up out of privacy concerns for their friend. Jane knew because she had walked in on them fooling around in Tony’s living room that first night at the tower. Thor knew because of Jane. Pepper knew because she had found a pair of Natasha’s underwear lying behind the bar.

“I saw her sneaking out one morning in Beirut,” Sam said. “When we were looking for Bucky, she used to climb through the windows every night. Could have said something, let her come in through the front, but it was a lot funnier to watch you two scramble. Plus, you know, you ruined my dresser.”

“I don’t know if we need to tell that story,” Steve said, but Tony’s attention had been caught.

“I will give you one million dollars to tell me that story right now,” he said. Pepper frowned.

“Try again.”

“I will give you five hundred dollars to tell you that story right now.”

And then it all came out, the whole story of it. How they had been friends after New York, briefly lived together before SHIELD fell, gone on the run together and-- yes-- ruined Sam’s dresser. How they had split up to look for Bucky and for Natasha to find a new identity (they tactfully avoided mentioning her search for Yelena) but couldn’t stay away from each other. How they had rekindled their relationship over their Christmas vacation.

“So, Bruce?” Pepper asked. “Was that all just a farce?”

“It was pretty one-sided,” Natasha said. “He was just my friend. I told him about Steve when he saved me in Sokovia. I don’t think he took it very well.”

“So even Banner knew before I did?” Tony whined. Pepper placed a consoling hand on his shoulder.

“I think everyone did, Tony.”

“Only because these two don’t know how to keep it in their pants,” he grumbled. “I mean seriously, is there anywhere on my property that you two haven’t fucked?”

Natasha thought for a moment. “Third floor guest bathroom?”

Steve furrowed his brow, then shook his head. Natasha raised an eyebrow.

“Then I guess no.”

Tony looked as if he wanted to giggle and then maybe throw up.

“Well, I guess it’s all out there now,” Steve said, wrapping an arm around Natasha. “We wanted to put off telling you until it was serious and the team was in a good place. And we were in a good place.”

“And it’s serious?” Jane asked, raising her eyebrows. “She’s your…”

She trailed off in question and Natasha and Steve shared a look. ‘Girlfriend’ still felt like a silly word. ‘Partner’ to impersonal. ‘Lover’ made her want to gag.

“Give me a year and I’m hoping she’ll be my wife,” Steve finally said. Natasha’s body tensed up, but his hand fell comfortingly on her shoulder and she relaxed again. She couldn’t help the smile on her face.

She blamed the booze.

“Tony, I swear to god, if they beat us I’m leaving you so quick,” Pepper hissed, smacking Stark across the chest.

Tony bickered with her for a moment—

(“Getting around to it, what do you mean you’re getting around to it?” “I mean it’s on my to-do list.” “It’s a wedding, Tony. You can’t just cross it off your Microsoft Planner—,” “Maybe if I could it would have been done by now!”)

—and Natasha rested her head against Steve’s shoulder.

“Do you mean that?” she asked. He kissed the top of her head.

“Of course. I’m a man of my word, Natasha.”

She grinned and he kissed the top of her head. It wasn’t the way, or the time, that they had planned on telling the team, but at least it was out there. At least they didn’t have to sneak around. Any other problems that cropped up could be dealt with.

“So, I actually really wanted to watch 21 Jump Street,” Clint said. “Is that still on the table, or…”

------------------------

The next few weeks were tame, compared with what was to come.

Natasha and Steve continued with their routine, save one piece: she no longer had to sneak back to her room every night. She still had it, of course, but she had practically moved into Steve’s room by the time June was up. They woke up, ate together, ran, trained, ate again, trained some more, ate again, watched a movie, and fell asleep. It was nice.

It was very. Very. Nice.

But it wasn’t all that exciting.

She knew Steve felt it too. What Ultron had said, on that barge off the ivory coast when he had been taunting them and baiting them— it had hit deep for Steve.

“Thinking you could live without war?”

He was discovering more and more that he couldn’t. That his life was tied to the fight, to the villain. He had always had a villain, as had Natasha. For him, the bullies, and then the army, and then the Nazis. And then the 21st century. For her, she had been the villain. For so long, she had been the villain, and then one day she wasn’t and there were less bad guys than there were good guys so she was there, sitting, training for what felt like nothing.

“It’s the serum, I think,” she had said to him one day. “It boosts my adrenaline. It fries my nerves, constantly, so that I always have to be on and if I’m not it just feels wrong.”

“Battle instincts,” he said. “They did the same for me. Tactical awareness so that I could always be ready. Just in case.”

“Well I guess they succeeded there,” she said. This had become a hobby of theirs, comparing side effects of their serums, trying to figure out what the Russians had replicated and what still needed tweaking.

“Did the serum ever… mess with you?” he asked one night, laying on the couch watching Full House (a show they had recently gotten into— Natasha claimed it was essential media, he knew it reminded her of her childhood). “I mean, mess with your head?”

She paused the movie and looked up from where she was lying against his chest. His fingers had been lazily stroking her back, drawing circles on the skin and pulling the fabric up higher and higher with each pass.

“Constantly,” she said. “It’s a motivator, you know? The anxiety? It pushes you. The serum stimulates your cortisol production.”

Sometimes when Natasha spoke it made him feel stupid, which was no fault to her. It appeared she had a better grip on what had been pumped into her— into them— whereas he had gotten the abridged “enhance the good and the bad” spiel from the US Army.

“It makes me feel hopeless,” he said. His voice was empty, the way it sometimes got when he talked about his past. About the people he lost. “Like if I’m not doing something, nothing is ever going to get done. I know we’re a team, but I don’t know that I really trust anyone to get the job done. I don’t know if I trust myself to get the job done.”

“It’s just the chemicals,” Natasha said, a blanket statement that wasn’t really consoling. The truth was, she didn’t know how to console him. She felt the same way.

“It’s driving me goddamned crazy that there’s nothing to do right now,” he said quietly. “Which is horrible. The world is safe. Or— I don’t know— relatively safe. And I’m giving Bucky his space. And that’s all fine and good, but—,”

“I get it,” she said. “We react. We don’t usually get the time to plan ahead, to rest. I feel like I’m just waiting for something to go wrong.”

“Exactly. And then I feel guilty, because this is all I wanted before the war. A quiet life, a steady job, a great girl— and I can’t even appreciate it.”

She pressed a kiss to his cheek, soft and slow, a gesture of consolation, of understanding. “But the life isn’t quiet. Because we aren’t done. We’re just… unneeded. For the time being, we just have to wait.”

Steve thought about that while Natasha returned to watching the show. He remembered his words to her, a drunken mumble uttered seconds before Stark interrupted them.

‘I don’t want to wait.’

————————

Steve felt like he had a nine to five. They trained during the week, clocked in for lifting, conditioning, and tactical training. Stark was churning out new technology left and right, sending them huge boxes marked ‘Adam and Eve’ every week that the delivery men laughed at. Steve sent Tony a strongly worded text after Natasha explained the joke to him. They sent him lists of what they needed and he found angel investors and government grants to cover the costs.

The new tech was to help them improve, new robots to use as target practice, upgrades to all of their suits (including one for him, with a zipper that opened up the crotch. Another strongly worded text), and a brand new patented suit for Wanda.

Wanda, who was currently Steve’s biggest worry. Wanda, who was still grieving.

He couldn’t ask her to get over it, he knew he couldn’t, but he also wasn’t sure how to help her. He met his breaking point one night when he snuck out of his room to go to the kitchen for a snack, leaving Natasha sprawled out and snoring in his bed.

Wanda was in the kitchen, eyes empty as she stared at an amity tumbler.

“I told you not to drink,” Steve said, sighing heavily. She glanced up at him with nothing but contempt behind her
stare.

She said nothing.

Steve sighed and opened up the liquor cupboard, pulling out the bottle of scotch and another glass for himself. He filled both their glasses.

“Why aren’t you asleep, you know we have training tomorrow, right?” he asked. She didn’t look up, just watched the alcohol swirl around her glass.

“I can’t sleep anymore. It just… keeps me awake.”

Steve furrowed his brow. “What does?”

She looked up at him— briefly— as if it was the stupidest question he could have asked. “Everything.”

Her brother’s death.

The magic.

Sokovia.

Her accent was thick, still so thick. It got worse when she was upset, he noticed, just like Natasha’s.

“Have you been having this problem for long?” he asked. There was nothing else to do but ask. This was not his area of expertise. He doubted it was anyone’s.

“Pietro… grounded me. I don’t know how to deal with it without him. I don’t know how to—,” her voice broke, her face briefly showed a woman much older than her own eighteen years. Her next words were careful. “I don’t know how to handle this power without my brother to help me.”

Steve stayed silent. He wanted to be a leader, wanted to help her and help the team, but he couldn’t. All he could do was spread the ring of his glass into swirling patterns and watch it dry.

“What have you been doing for the past few months?” he asked. He wanted to tack on that he wished she had mentioned it sooner, but he bit his tongue.

She shrugged. “I just stay awake. Sometimes I go running at night. Sometimes I just… give in.”

He tilted his head. “Give in?”

“I cry, mostly,” she said. “Or I use my gifts. It makes me feel more relaxed. Like it's out of me.”

“How?”

She glanced over at the counter, like she was a hawk scanning the ground for an unfortunate field mouse. Her eyes landed on the toaster.

“Watch.”

Steve watched as the toaster floated into the air, surrounded in that eerie cloud of red mist that clung to her when they fought and made her hair stand up when she got too intense. The screws twisted out on their own, Wanda’s gaze never wavering, and Steve watched as the entire thing came apart. Each individual piece floated about the kitchen, creating a mosaic of metal and wiring. A drop of sweat rolled down Wanda’s temple.

“This is very impressive, Wanda,” he said. The LEDs under the kitchen cupboards glinted against the aluminum.

“Sometimes it helps,” she said. “But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.”

She spat out the last words and Steve watched as the pieces of toaster began to morph in front of his eyes. Horrifying, twisting, screeching movements brought about by the twitches in Wanda’s eyes and the subtle movements of her fingers. Steve watched as the deconstructed toaster writhed in the air until the pieces had mutilated into screws, into tiny daggers that glinted with all of the fatality of knives and none of the beauty he had seen moments before.

“Wanda…” Steve trailed off, but she didn’t look at him. One by one, the pieces were sent into the wall, impaling themselves in the wood so deep that Steve could barely make out where they had entered.

Wanda was panting, her lips twisted into a sneer. “That’s how I deal with it.”

Steve could only nod, watching as the girl drained her drink and left the kitchen.

The following day, Stark sent over a shipment of toasters.

————————

A week later, they drove into the city. They took Steve’s car, a Ford Escape that Tony had given him endless shit for since purchasing it. Steve liked the car. It was functional, it was American, and it got the job done. When he told Natasha this, she made a point to reference a certain part of his anatomy that shared those qualities.

They did brunch at Natasha’s favorite place in Brooklyn, a little building next to a tiny neighborhood park where kids played touch football outside and Nat could order her favorite coffee— a pistachio iced latte.

She had a sweet tooth, a surprising thing for him to learn. She told him that when she and Bucky would run missions they would end the night with a pastry or sweet. She was getting better about talking about him, and Steve was getting better about being okay with it. He had never been mad, not really. Just… jealous. An ugly emotion, one that he tried to push down. He wasn’t even really sure who he was jealous of. He just felt like he had missed out. He wished he could have known her then. He wished they could have been young together.

They got their food and sat by the window, watching the city pass them by as they talked. They weren’t exactly disguised, but no one would recognize them unless they really looked. Natasha’s hair, now quite long, was straightened and pulled back into a ponytail, something he rarely saw her do. He was wearing a pair of glasses and a blue baseball cap. A bit of an inside joke between them at this point.

“So why are we in the city, Steve?” she asked, polishing off her latter in just a few sips. Steve drank his coffee slower and he knew in a moment she would order a second one, because she couldn’t stand it when he had a drink and she didn’t.

“Can’t I take my girlfriend out for a nice day in Brooklyn?”

She narrowed her eyes, face arched with skepticism. “You can, but you don’t. So why are we here?”

“I found a place that I want to look at. An old townhouse.”

He had actually found it by accident. He was on facebook marketplace, trying to find a dresser to mail to Sam’s place in Louisiana as a bit of a joke, when he had seen the listing advertised. He had clicked on it out of pure curiosity— that’s all it was, really— but it had been perfect. He could picture them in it so clearly, with the tall ceilings and the oak kitchen and the dark trim around the cream walls.

Natasha’s face was frozen and for a moment he wondered if he had done something wrong. “What is it?”

“I didn’t know you wanted to move to the city,” she said. Her voice was small, and her eyes were beginning to close off.

He reached for her hand. “We don’t have to move if you don’t want to,” he said quickly. “If you want to stay at the compound with everyone—,”

Her brow furrowed in confusion for a moment and then a smile pulled its way across her face. “We?”

He laughed, half relief and half amusement. “Yes, Natasha, ‘we.’ I’m not going anywhere without you. I thought I mentioned this?”

She snorted, another habit that only he got to see. “Yeah, while you were drunk and we were naked.”

“Did you not believe me then?”

“Those are two situations in which I don’t take much of what you say at face value.”

He rolled his eyes and their food came out, halting their conversation. He had ordered a massive stack of pancakes, her an omelet, and without saying a word they both moved half of their food onto the other's plate. The kids outside their window shrieked as it started to rain. Natasha looked outside fondly.

They hadn’t much broached the subject of children. It was the one thing neither ever brought up. Steve, because he knew it was an impossibility. Because it wasn’t realistic. Natasha, because it hurt. Still, as he watched her watch them, sticking her tongue out when they looked at her and smiling as they did it back, he wished they could talk about it.

One thing at a time, he thought. They had only been dating a few months.

Chapter Text

The apartment was perfect. Almost too perfect. The bedroom had a balcony and a bathroom, the living room had built-in shelves where Steve could picture stacking his book collection that had been sitting in storage since DC. They applied for it on the spot, smiling and signing autographs for the realtor and his four kids when he ran their Socials. On the way home, Natasha made him stop to buy a plant that she could put in the corner.

“Moving, huh?” Rhodes had asked when they told the team. “Were we cramping your style?”

“We’ll still be here during the week,” Steve said. “We still have a team, we still have jobs.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, okay.”

Wanda said nothing, eyes on the floor. Steve was worried about her the most, because he knew it was unrealistic to think nothing would change, and she had already lost so much.

“Do you want to come out with us, Wanda?” he asked. “Come see the place, maybe grab dinner in the city?”

She glanced up, those calculating eyes boring into his, and for a moment he was afraid. He though about the moment in the kitchen, the way she had twisted the metal as if it was nothing and sent him the shrapnel flying into the wall.

“There’s a Russian restaurant down the street from our house,” Natasha said, offering Wanda a small smile. Wanda looked back down at the table.

“Sokovian’s hate Russians,” she said under her breath. Steve’s eyes slipped shut in frustration, a sigh primed, when Wanda glanced back at Natasha. “But I do like their food.”

Natasha looked at Steve for a moment, exchanging a look that neither one of them really understood. Exasperation, maybe? Relief?

“Once we’re settled we’ll have Tony send a car. You can be our first guest.”

Sam put a hand over his heart. “Offended.”

“You’re in the city enough as it is,” Steve said. “How is Alicia, anyways?”

Sam shook his head, blushing just a little bit. He had been seeing a girl for the past month, Alicia Wordsworth, a chef in Manhattan. She was pretty, from the one photo that he had seen of the two of them at dinner with one of his army buddies. She was good for Sam: a nice, normal girl.

He glanced next to him, where his nice, normal girl was balancing three moving boxes that should have been too heavy and too awkward for her to hold. He smiled.

“Well, we should probably go,” he said. “We’ll let you know when we’re all moved in.”

“Good luck, you guys,” Rhodes said. Steve waved as they left, throwing the last of their boxes into the Ford escape and slamming the trunk with an air of finality.

“So we’re really doing this?” Natasha said. Steve opened the door for her.

“Not having second thoughts, are you Romanoff?” he asked. She gave him that coy smile that he had come to adore, putting a hand on his cheek and tugging on his earlobe.

“Of course not, Captain,” she said. “Just wanted to make sure you’re prepared.”

“Prepared for what?” he asked, leaning closer to her as her fingers slipped down to the nape of his neck.

“I don’t know… never getting to control the remote again, finding my hair everywhere, never wearing pants again?”

He laughed. “Natasha, we’ve been together for a while now. I’ve accepted the first two things as a fact of life. As for the third—,” he pressed his lips to hers, “—I think I’ll learn to live with it.”

She kissed him back, hand snaking further into his hair and pulling him closer. His lips moved over hers, shoulders and chest flexing as he held himself awkwardly up over the passenger seat.

“Have you ever had car sex?” she asked.

He ran his lips over her neck. “Only if you count eating you out in that parking lot in Pennsylvania.”

“Mm, while that was fun…” she trailed off. “It might be worth it to try again.”

Steve growled low in his throat, climbing further atop her as much as the awkward spacing would allow.

“Rabbits, the both of you,” came Stark’s voice from behind Steve. He jumped so quickly that he hit his head on the doorframe of the car.

“God, Tony, do you ever get tired of that?” Natasha asked, fixing her tank top from where it had fallen to the side.

He squinted, then shook his head. “Not particularly.”

“What do you want, Tony?” Steve asked.

“To wish you both well on the move and check in on my team,” he said. “And also I have to spend a certain amount of time here, legally, to call this my place of work. But mostly the team stuff.”

“Well, thank you for the well wishes,” Steve said. “As for the team— they’re getting there.”

“Well, we need to be getting there faster— as well as doing some more PR work. I have a few things planned. Banquets, charity appearances, a fun run that I’ve promised we won’t blow up— some standard stuff.” Stark checked his phone. “And a news panel for the city that the mayor is organizing, apparently.”

“Jesus, Tony. I thought we were done with all that stuff,” Natasha said. “Wanda’s still barely sleeping. She doesn’t need to be on a panel right now.”

“Politics of being an avenger,” he replied, starting to walk inside. With a hand on the door, he glanced back. “I’ll leave the girl out of the more public appearances, but she’s not getting out of the Superhero Sprint fun run.”

Natasha winced at the name.

“Hero’s hustle? Avenger’s Adventure? I-run, Man?”

“None of those, Tony. Not a single one,” she said.

“Cut me a break, my new AI isn’t nearly as good at coming up with these as JARVIS was.”

“You could always ask Vision,” Steve said. Tony raised an eyebrow.

“I forgot about Gossamer,” he said. “I’ll check in. They want him back on NPR’s ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.’”

“Give us a call if you need anything,” Steve said.

“Please don’t call us,” Natasha said.

Tony gave a wink. “Let me know what you think of my gift when you get there. It was delivered to your place.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve said. “That was very thoughtful of you.”

-------------------------

“It’s a sex swing,” Natasha announced, unwrapping the giant box that was sitting in their living room when they arrived. Steve was busy unloading their boxes from the car. He was midway through unpacking the kitchen supplies.

“What?”

“A sex swing. You hang it from the ceiling and--,”

“I do know what a sex swing is, Romanoff,” he said dryly. She smirked.

“From experience, or…?”

He rolled his eyes. “The name is pretty explanatory.”

“So, should I open it?” she asked. “It’s the first piece of furniture that we own together.”

“Awe,” he said dryly. “Well when you put it that way.”

She rolled her eyes and began checking the box for the receipt. “We can probably exchange it for other goodies.”

“Goodies?”

“Recreational equipment.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Oh.”

She smirked and walked over to him. He placed one of her pans in the cupboard, sliding it into the organizers he had bought at Williams and Sonoma the previous weekend. Natasha had a lot of cooking supplies. She was really good at cooking, something that had surprised him just a bit. She told him it was a way to kill time when he first brought it up, but he knew it was more than that. It was a way to provide for herself.

The kitchen was gorgeous, spacious and clean, with high ceilings and counters that Natasha was going to have to fully stand on to reach the top shelves of their cabinets. The whole thing was warm and woody— all mahogany and light from the living room. There was even an island (“A goddamned island— in Brooklyn!”) that Natasha had already bought a vase of flowers for.

“You’ve been getting better with electronics lately,” Natasha said. Her arms were on either side of him now, pinning him against the limestone counter. “And you know I love a harness.”

He blanched. “What?”

She kissed him lightly. “Only joking.”

He let out a sigh, reaching a hand around her waist. “Good.”

Fast as lightning, her fingers were around his wrists, pinning them back to the counter. “Although…”

He laughed, and it was only a little bit nervous. “We need to unpack.”

“We need to christen the bedroom,” she said. His eyes slipped shut.

“We don’t even have a bed yet.”

“Then we can christen the kitchen counter,” she said sultrily. His resolve was crumbling as her lips found his neck.

“Natasha…”

She stepped back, huffing. “Fine. Let’s unpack.”

So they did, for about ten minutes. They set up their life together, one box at a time, until Steve came back up from the car with a stack of boxes and found Natasha sitting on the counter again with her pants off.

“Natasha, I thought we were unpacking,” he said. She looked up from where she was tracing the hem of her shirt. His shirt. An old SHIELD shirt that she had stolen back when they lived in DC.

“I’m taking a break.”

He raised an eyebrow. This was a side of her he rarely saw. “You’re taking a break?”

She smirked. “Taking. A. Break.”

He stepped towards her. “But you had time to unpack this shirt.”

“Well, the bedroom is all unpacked. And I was a little warm.”

“You were warm?”

“I was warm. Would you prefer I take it off?”

He swallowed hard. He had gotten closer to her somehow, in a way that he almost didn’t notice it, so close that he was standing between her legs. Her finger traced its way down his chest, where a trickle of sweat, courtesy of the Brooklyn heat, had left a dark streak on his shirt. He grabbed her wrist in his hand.

“Natasha, I love you, but we need to unpack. We still need to go pick up our furniture.”

She looked up at him with that teasing smile she got when they were alone, when she was about to say something that she knew she shouldn’t. “Is that an order, Captain?”

He growled as her other hand found his belt buckle, pulling him flush against her. She kissed him, open mouthed and sloppy, like she only did when she was really trying to turn him on. It worked. He exhaled against her chin and caught her lower lip between his teeth. She smiled and pushed him away.

“What are you doing?”

“I was just about to go grab another box.”

He pulled her knee up over his hip, tugging her closer. His eyes slipped shut at the warmth.

“Romanoff, it’s going to be a little hard to do that if you’re not wearing any pants.”

She grinned up at him and pulled his other hand down between her legs. He groaned.

“Or underwear.”

“Like I said,” she said. “I was hot.”

Her legs widened, shifting to allow him to slide a finger along her slit, to allow him to slide a finger inside of her. Her mouth opened, a silent ‘oh’ slipping out as his lips found her neck and his fingers probed deeper inside her.

“God, do you just walk around this wet?” he asked into her ear. “I’m surprised I couldn’t fucking smell you.”

Something that most people didn’t know: Captain America had a dirty fucking mouth.

“Careful with that mouth, Rogers,” she said. “It’s going to get you in trouble one of these days.”

“No one would believe that Captain America would ever say something like that.” His lips were millimeters from her ear. “I’m America’s golden boy.”

She nipped at his earlobe. “I guess I’ll have to catch you on camera.”

He grinned and kissed her neck. “We need to buy a bed.”

She shifted against his hand. “One thing at a time.”

He took a step back, placing both his hands behind his neck and staring at the ceiling. He looked at her with his jaw clenched, scanning over her body. For a moment, she couldn’t read him. He looked like he was analyzing something. He turned and glanced around the kitchen.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Just figuring out if you’re going to fit on the island,” he said, turning back around and pulling her towards him again. She gasped as he kissed her, dragging his lips over hers and opening her mouth to allow his tongue space to slide inside. Her hands clutched at his shirt as he lifted her up, sliding his fingers around her ass.

“Steve— Steve the flowers,” she said as he set her down. He pushed the vase off the table and she heard it shatter on their hardwood floors.

“I’ll buy you more,” he said, his voice muffled against her skin. “I’ll buy you as many flowers as you want. Take your clothes off.”

She pulled her shirt up and over her head and he pressed her down against the countertop, laying his lips on the plateau of her stomach. The lime was cool against her bare back, her bare ass, as he pushed her flat against the counter.

“Shit,” she whispered as his hands hooked around her legs, cupping the place where they met her hips and pulling her up to the edge of the counter top.

This was his preferred position to eat her out in: ass hanging off whatever it was they were fucking on, him on his knees in front of her, her thighs between his fingers. She stretched out, contracting her core, feeling her clit pull in anticipation as his breath brushed over her.

“Eager, are we?” His voice was teasing, as hers had been moments ago. She squeezed her thighs around his ears.

“I’m not the one who just broke a flower vase,” she said. “Someone’s eager here, and it’s not me.”

He raised an eyebrow, pretty much the only part of him that was visible given their position.

“That a challenge, Romanoff?” he asked. She grinned at him and leaned back, running her hands over her chest.

“One I’m completely certain I’ll win,” she said. Her heel drew a line up his back.

He pressed his lips to her clit and drew it between his teeth. “Do you want me to make you beg? We both know I can.”

Her fingers scraped down his scalp, running through his hair and drawing goosebumps over his neck. She pulled him away, enough that his eyes were forced up to meet hers. “You can, but you won’t.”

The lilt in her voice made him groan and he flicked his tongue across her. “Because I need you so badly?”

“Because you want to get back to unpacking.”

——————

They fucked twice before the furniture was delivered, once on the kitchen countertop and once in the shower after the sweaty ordeal of hauling boxes up to their apartment was completed. Their shower— which Natasha had neglected to look at before they bought the place— was a little tight for two people, but the waterfall shower head (and the sight of Steve’s bare back) had tempted her. Her hair was still wet when the couch was delivered, and after an exhausting day of moving and an even more exhausting night of unpacking, they were finally settled in.

“Well, Romanoff, we did it,” Steve said as they settled in to watch Empire Strikes Back.

“We did it,” she said. “We officially settled down.”

He squeezed her tighter. “I don’t know if I would call it that. In two days we’re being shipped off to Alaska to take out that HYDRA drug ring.”

“You’d think they’d get tired of bio weapons,” she said. They watched as Hoth appeared in all of its wintry glory. Natasha thought about how the two of them would probably get to see New York in the winter in this very apartment.

“Do you think the team’s ready?” Steve asked after a moment. He sounded unsure, almost vulnerable. Natasha wanted to reassure him, thought that’s what she should do, but that’s not who she was.

“I don’t. But I think this mission will be low-risk enough to pull them through it relatively unscathed.”

He was quiet for a second. “I’m worried about Wanda. Rhodes and Sam… They’re military men. Vision has all the knowledge in the world at his fingertips. But Wanda…”

“I know what you mean,” Natasha said, and it was the truth. Wanda was a bit of a loose cannon at times. She was still not past her brother’s death, still not recovered from all the horrors she faced with HYDRA and before.

And how could she be?

“Can you try talking to her?” Steve asked. It was not the first time he had brought it up, and Natasha knew that if he asked a second time it meant he was serious.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Wanda, but there were things about her that threw her off. Her loyalty to her brother, because Natasha had never been allowed to have attachments like that. Attachments that came before the team, before the mission, before the kill. She had never been able to hold on. Even when James had been taken away, she had not allowed herself to grieve. Wanda did it so openly, so unashamedly, It made her feel guilty that she had not mourned James like that, had not cried over Irina like that.

Wanda reminded her of Irina, the girl who had died in the gymnasium all those years ago. A girl who would be pushing thirty now, who would be a young woman. Instead, she was forever fourteen, her face burned into Natasha’s brain with that bloodstained hair and look of shock. Seeing Wanda, the way she fought with emotion, with passion, with motive, it reminded her so much of the young girl.

And of Yelena.

When she had teamed up with the Avengers again to take down Strucker, she had known that it would mean giving up on Yelena, that it would mean leaving her to the Red Room for at least another few years. Nadia had warned her of it all, had urged her to save the world before saving Yelena, but hadn't she done that? And now there she was-- world saved-- saving another angry girl, another child who had been warped by HYDRA and molded by war.

She owed it to Wanda to help her, after all she had done for the KGB and HYDRA way back when. The red in her ledger was splattered all over Wanda. She was drenched in it.

But that didn’t make it any easier.

“Sure, I can talk to her,” she said. “I’ll find the time.”

“You’re the best,” he said. Natasha leaned her head further against his shoulder.

--------------------

Alaska was a nightmare.

Everyone made it out, but Steve sat next to her on the plane already fielding a barrage of calls from Tony, Pepper, and every news outlet north of the equator. Wanda sat at the back of her plane, everyone giving her a wide berth. Vision had a hand on her back, rubbing a circle around her shoulder blades, trying to calm her down in some way that no one else could understand.

Steve was muttering into his phone, his hand pressed into his hair in the way that Natasha claimed would leave him bald one day.

“Yes, Tony, I understand. I get that, but--,” he sighed loudly. “No, that obviously was not my intention-- Yes, I understand the position this puts you in. Look, I’ll call you back later. No, my team is taking priority right now. Goodbye.”

He fell heavily into the seat next to Natasha, leaning his head against the side of the plane and shutting his eyes. His face was smeared with mud and oil, and his suit had been torn at.

“Jesus,” he said. Natasha put a hand on his arm and offered him a small smile.

“We all got out,” she said. He shook his head.

“We’re the only ones that did.”

The mission had started off easy. In and out, that’s what it was supposed to be. They had traced the drugs to a dock in Juneau, where a collection of HYDRA agents and scientists had been working to develop another iteration of the super serum, the fountain of youth that had left its mark on both Natasha and Steve. This version, a capsule that snapped in half and was meant to be breathed in through the nose, gave the user inhuman strength and a brief, massive adrenaline spike.

When they got to the site, it was abandoned. There were signs of a struggle: overturned tables, broken windows, and-- most strangely-- massive scratch marks. Natasha felt like she was walking into a horror movie. The walls were covered in blood splatters. The back room, the only one with any semblance of human life, had a corpse. A young man, a soldier, who had written out in blood above him:

Get out.

Steve and Vision sorted through the files left behind. There had been twenty volunteers on the trial, and for a while, they couldn’t find them. When they did, it was almost too late.

The people-- Natasha barely considered them that, but surely they had once been people-- attacked as a horde. If she hadn’t been a woman of reason, she would have called them zombies. That’s what they appeared as, at least. Most of them couldn’t see, had had their eyes poked out in whatever struggle had occurred. There were scratch marks along their faces, their bodies. Some sported bullet wounds. And yet they kept coming.

Vision’s running theory was that their adrenal gland had short circuited, that whatever that had huffed had sent them into overdrive. In the same way that people were known to survive car crashes or rescues trapped infants, they had survived whatever attack had occurred due to pure adrenaline.

They couldn’t fight them.

Natasha had helped Rhodes thoroughly rid the lab of any findings, and had burned their facilities, their files.

Vision had traced all their files digitally and destroyed them.

Steve and Sam had fought them off.

But Wanda had destroyed them.

She had shown a level of ruthlessness that Natasha didn’t know could be possessed by a human. One by one, they had disappeared. Popped, that was the word Natasha wanted to use, but it didn’t exactly do it justice. Wanda had pulverized them, shredded their skin in flakes that blew away in the harbor wind and left their organs to melt into the ground. Some had been pressed into the dirt so quickly you could hear their spines snap, others had been thrown into the offshore rig, and one unlucky woman with her face half off had been ripped down the middle by the sheer power of Wanda’s mind.

She had done what needed to be done. She had to destroy them completely, had had to leave them unable to go on. But the damage had destroyed the oil rig. They had turned over gallons of oil into the northern Pacific and killed three civilians.

Stark had called within a minute of the rig being out of sight. Wanda had already pulled over half of the oil back out of the bay.

News vans were on the scene within minutes, beating the government cleanup. There had been no way to hide the bodies, hide the destruction, before the cameras had come out.

“Fucking Juneau,” Steve spat. “Town of thirty-thousand and somehow they all own a news van.”

Natasha didn’t say anything. There was no way to make it better, and she didn’t want to lie. She cast a glance at Wanda, who was staring blankly at the front of the plane. Her head rested on Vision’s shoulder. Her eyes were wide and unseeing.

Chapter Text

After Alaska, they had to stay at the compound for a week. It was Natasha’s idea, so that they could keep an eye on Wanda. The media was dragging her through the mud, painting her out as some horrific killer. One journalist with the Post called up the question that if she could do this to HYDRA officers, what was to stop her from doing it to anyone else? It was a question that had worried Natasha for some time now, which was why they decided to spend a week at the compound.

“They’re calling her the ‘Scarlet Witch,’” Rhodes said, throwing a copy of the paper down on the island in the communal kitchen. Steve was sipping a coffee, black and steaming hot. He looked down at the article, a front page piece with a blow-up caricature of Wanda with a severed body floating around her head. The title read ‘Witch Out! Avengers’ Newest Member Dismembers Dozens!’

A picture of Wanda right after the fight was featured below, her eyes and cheeks hollow and her face streaked with blood. She stared at a point just behind the camera, a red haze still floating around her body.

“Oh, Jesus, get that out of here,” he snapped. “Who even gets the paper anymore?”

“Tony sent it over this morning with a bow wrapped around it,” he said. He reached in the fridge and pulled out a cold pizza.

“Tony needs to get a grip,” he said. “Wanda is a kid.”

“Not by law, she isn’t,” Natasha said, joining them in the kitchen. “They’re talking about bringing her before a court.”

“For doing her job?” Steve demanded.

“For killing twenty-two people.”

“Twenty of which were HYDRA.”

“And two of which weren't,” she said, her voice rising. “She saved the bay from the oil spill, but there were still two casualties. Those can’t go ignored. And after Sokovia, we’re all on high watch.”

“Christ,” Rhodes said. “Does she need a lawyer?”

“Tony’s monitoring it. He’s got his media people running some press to help handle it.”

Natasha sat heavily in the chair next to Steve and looked over at the coffee pot with a sense of hatred. Just out of reach.

“I’ve got it,” he said, standing up and grabbing her a mug. She flashed him an appreciative glance.

“She’s going to have to do some press or something,” Natasha said. “I don’t like it anymore than you do, but there’s politics to this stuff.”

“Shouldn’t the politics just be taking out the bad guys?” Steve demanded.

“Maybe in Nazi Germany it was that black and white, but there were civilian deaths, Steve. Wanda killed--,”

“Civilians,” Wanda finished, her frame half-shrouded by the shadow of the hallway. Natasha cursed herself. They really needed to get a door.

Vision floated behind her, his face drawn into a curl of unease, a perpetual echo of her.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Wanda,” Natasha said. “You know I didn’t mean it--,”

“It’s not like you lied,” she said. She joined them at the table. “Pass me the OJ?”

It floated across the kitchen and landed next to Wanda, who scowled at Vision.

“I could have done that.”

“I did it for you,” he replied. “I can put it back.”

“Well you already did it—,”

“We’re going to the city,” Steve announced, interrupting what was surely going to be another fight. They had all been getting in a lot of them lately.

Well, not Steve and Natasha.

Never them.

“Why’s that, Dad?” Rhodes asked. Tony’s sarcasm was starting to rub off on him, something no one was really happy with.

“We need an outing. We need to get out of this compound, we need to get away from each other and all the politics of it all, and—,”

“We’ll have you all over to the new place,” Natasha said. “A dinner, or something. A housewarming party.”

“Natasha will cook,” Steve said. “Don’t worry.”

“We’ll have to invite Tony, you know,” Rhodes said. Steve grimaced.

“Well, that would kind of ruin the point, wouldn’t it,” he replied. “He’ll want to make it a whole thing, with press and interviews and everything. This team needs to be out of the public eye for a night.”

“Tony wouldn’t do that,” Rhodes said. “He’s not an idiot.”

-------------

“Tony’s a fucking idiot,” Steve swore, splitting another bag. Natasha calmly hauled another one over and hung it up, before returning to her own. They were training together, one of the few things they could get through without snapping at someone. Even at home, it was hard to forget. Every time they turned on the news there was another shot of one of them, another story about Sokovia or New York or Juneau, another something to piss them off.

Steve thought it was all a load of shit, that the Avengers should be free to operate on their own as they had been before. Natasha didn’t want to be the one to point out that they hadn’t been operating on their own, they had been supervised by SHIELD, but she didn’t want him to first hear that argument from Tony, so she would occasionally broach the topic. Steve wasn’t a fan of that point.

Natasha secretly agreed with Tony. It was hard to get behind a band of— essentially— vigilantes that were running around with inhuman powers and no government reins. Throw in the fact that they were being privately funded by a billionaire who had made his fortune selling weapons and developing illegal technology, and it became a PR nightmare.

She knew from personal experience that people weren’t always good guys, no matter how much they thought they were doing the right thing. She knew how easy it was to slip onto a dark path, to lose control. Steve had never been in a position where he wasn’t one hundred percent in the right. He was America’s golden boy, the perfect hero.

She was not.

Natasha knew she had red in her ledger, despite all she had done to try and clear it out. She had been to some dark places, some truly horrible ones, that she had only confessed to him in the safety of inky night, in hotel rooms on the run and in the compound when they had been sneaking around. When it still felt dangerous and scary. She knew those places intimately well, had had to face the direct consequences of all that she had done, and she knew that Tony had, too.

Obadiah Stane.

Justin Hammer.

Ultron.

Steve didn’t understand what it felt like to have all of that on their backs, not in the way that they did. She could never be perfect to the public, not after the data leak left her life in bold black and white for the entire world to read about. With Wanda’s checkered past, she knew it was only a matter of time before the hounds were sent after her, and she didn’t want that to happen. She almost wanted to put the control in someone else’s hands, to let them take the wheel. Natasha was tired of making the wrong decisions, of constantly being reprimanded for her moral compass that never quite seemed to point north, while her boyfriend got off scott-free because the world only saw the man who dismantled the Nazis.

She sent her own bag flying across the room.

That was an ugly thought.

“I don’t know, Steve,” she said. “Maybe some charity work will improve her— our image.”

He didn’t miss the misstep in her words. He reached over and picked up another bag, hanging it up for her before continuing on his own.

“She just killed two people, is helping some kids pick out a book for a bunch of photographers going to cure those families?”

“No, but maybe the new library that the Avengers foundation is donating to the town will help to mend some bridges,” she replied. “There’s only so much we can do. If we hadn’t blown up that oil rig there would still be two dozen zombies on the loose.”

“If I had trained her better she wouldn’t have had to blow up an oil rig to get rid of them,” he replied.

She dropped her hands to her side and watched as he drove hard into the bag one final time before squeezing his eyes shut and running a taped palm over his face.

“I feel like I’m failing,” he said quietly. “Like I’m failing everyone. Her, the team. I’m failing them all.”

Natasha took a deep breath and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and forcing him to look her in the eye. “Steve, you are not failing. You’re a great leader. We’re dealing with uncharted territory right now. We’ll get through this.”

His face softened slightly, the rocky exterior melting into a mask of worry and vulnerability.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She wasn’t.

“I’m positive.”

He leaned down and kissed her, momentarily forgetting the worries that weighed on him. She kissed him back and tried to ignore that feeling of perpetual doom that lingered in the back of her mind.

—————

The team flew out to Juneau later that week, where Tony’s team of miracle workers had erected a new public library in just under three weeks. They took some photos, smiled with children, and were good little PR soldiers while the town looked on with a split between amusement and loathing.

Wanda was center stage and Steve and Natasha were both hovering like concerned parents at the first day of primary, neither wanting to look like they were too concerned or involved. Natasha internally cringed when she looked over and Wanda’s smile had fallen, overly aware of every flash of the cameras that would capture her look of indifference. Steve visibly twitched when a kid near her dropped a book and she drew it back into his hands with a pull of her magic.

“Should she be doing that?” he asked Natasha. She shrugged, but her lips were pressed thin.

“It depends on how we spin it. She’s either using her power for good or flagrantly abusing a dangerous force in a town where dozens died from it.”

“Well, let’s hope it’s the former,” Steve said.

They made their rounds at the new library, pulling cameras away from Wanda as they walked. They kept their distance in public, neither one of them wanting the story to break that they were together. Everyone from their landlord to their doordashers had signed NDAs, but if the media got wind of it they would never take the deal. As far as the public knew, they were just coworkers.

Steve loved watching Natasha with children. She was very good with them, so attentive and kind. Especially with the girls. He knew they reminded her of her sister, when her sister was young and they were happy in a town not unlike this one. Removed from it all.

Natasha took comfort in those periods where she got to be away from the world, away from her life as a hero.

Steve took comfort in being one.

He wanted to be needed, to save the world again and again. He wouldn’t give it up for anything, not even if he could jump back in time and drop right into the moment he had disappeared, slip back into his life with Peggy and the army. He wouldn’t trade Natasha for the world. He wouldn’t trade his team for the world.

But then again, watching Natasha bend down to point to a title on one of the lower shelves, a little blond boy staring intently at her while she explained the book to him— it made him wish for a life he would never have. Just for a moment.

“You’re so good with kids,” he whispered to her as the boy ran off to find his parents.

“You just have to talk to them like they’re adults. They’re excited about everything,” she said, and she couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

“Maybe we should go visit Clint soon,” Steve said. “Go stay with his family for a bit. We haven’t seen them in a while.”

She grinned. “I’d like that.”

“I’m so sorry, can my daughter get a picture?” a woman asked, holding a four year old girl on her hip who had a Captain America plushie in one hand and a shock of red hair. Steve nodded.

“Of course,” he said.

“In fact,” Natasha said, a mischievous twinge in her voice that made her sound almost conspiratorial, “I think Captain Rogers here is probably pretty excited to get a picture with his number one fan, huh?”

She nudged the doll and the little girl laughed and buried her head in her mom’s shoulder. They both crouched down to her height, Natasha kneeling next to her and smiling widely as the mother snapped a photo. A few photographers had made their way over and their cameras flashed a few times before they were allowed to stand up.

“Thank you,” the woman said. “She just loves you guys!”

Natasha smiled widely and it was a real one, not at all placating or fake. Steve grinned looking at her. A camera flashed off to their left.

———————

“Call it a promotion,” Nadia said. Her voice was tinny from the relay, but Natasha could hear the intensity behind her words.

“You’re no longer with Madame B?”

“No, they’ve reassigned me. Under Dreykov.”

The name drew a chill up Natasha’s spine, immediately back in Cuba with Yelena and Alexei, and then again when he had come to view their program. He had stood so proudly, so tall, looking over them like he was anticipating they would mess up, hoping for it. Like they were animals to bet on, that would either win, or be put down.

She had only met the man one other time, barely, when she had been sent to kill him.

“So you’re no longer with the girls?” she asked.

“No, I’m no longer with the girls,” Nadia said. Her voice was slow, anticipating her next question. “But Yelena is alive. She’s safe. You know, relatively.”

“What do you mean, relatively?” Natasha asked. There was a long silence as Nadia inhaled a breath.

“They have this new drug. A new way of doing something, I don’t— I don’t really understand it. They can control their brains, Nat. The widows have lost their autonomy.”

Natasha immediately thought of James, of the way that they had controlled his brain, of all the horror they put him through.

“They’re brainwashing them?”

“Not exactly. I don’t understand it all, but it basically shuts off their frontal lobe. They become mindless, machine-like.” She sounded tired, scared. Very un-Nadia. Natasha ran a hand through her hair, causing Steve to look up from where he was making dinner.

“What can we do? Would Melina be able to help?”

There was silence for a moment. “Natasha, it’s Melina who’s causing this.”

———————

“It’s a nice place, Steve,” Tony said, clapping a hand on his shoulder as he and Pepper walked into the living room. He was dressed down in a pair of jeans (that probably cost a month’s rent) and a Stark Industries branded polo. He looked almost human, except for the blue light emanating from the buttons of his shirt. Pepper carried a bottle of wine with her, adorned with a small bow. Natasha set it on the counter.

“Thank you,” he said. “It was a miracle we found it.”

The conversation was polite, normal, so much so that it almost felt forced. The whole evening felt that way to Natasha. Just a bit forced. Like they were all pointedly ignoring the conversations surrounding the legality of their team, the constant influx of articles and late-night segments about the destruction they had caused. It seemed like the whole world was getting in on it, like everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. Natasha could deal with it, she had been through it all before. She knew that eventually everyone would get tired, that they would lay off Wanda, but for right now it sucked. She just had to remember that it would end.

And do her best to convince Steve of the same.

There was still tension between the two of them. Steve was fed up with the media, with the attention, with Secretary Ross beginning to poke his nose in their business. It seemed like he was just waiting for them to mess up again, to do something wrong, something that would give him the leverage he needed to bring the hammer down on the Avengers Initiative.

“It’s all about control,” Steve had said the night before, pacing as he always did when he got heated. “He wants to control us.”

“We need someone,” Natasha had responded. “Just not Ross. We need a new SHIELD.”

Steve had nodded, jaw tense. He had never really liked SHIELD’s involvement, and they both knew that.

“Did Natasha make dinner? It smells incredible,” Pepper said. Steve grinned at his girlfriend, who had been busying herself all day over the stove. He loved that she knew how to cook, he couldn’t remember the last time they had had to go out.

“I did,” Natasha said, moving the bottle they had brought into a cupboard. “And luckily I also prepared a wine pairing, so this can be saved for a later date.”

They laughed, and it was weird. It was all weird, the domestic little evening they were having, Wanda and Vision were already on the couch, trying to con Rhodes out of his last paycheck with their enhanced abilities. Sam had brought Alicia with him, Barton had sent his regrets, Maria was draining their bar to cope with the absence of her girlfriend. Natasha tried to convince herself that this was what she had been wanting, that she wanted to have a nice, normal life with her normal boyfriend in her normal apartment, but she couldn’t lie to herself. There was just no thrill anymore, not while they all sat and waited for the other shoe to drop.

They had continued with their training, with their missions, letting Wanda take the back seat as the media attention blew over. Their visit and the new library had done wonders for her public image, especially as a photo came out of her using her telekinesis to illustrate one of the books she had read. The poor girl had been white as a sheet afterward, exhausted from the attention and the pressure of it all. Natasha wanted to help her in some way, but it was impossible for her to know how.

“Any plans for the fourth, Captain?” Tony asked. “I’m assuming you have a tour scheduled or something, perhaps breaking out your tights again after all these years?”

“Ha ha,” Steve deadpanned. “Natasha and I were actually thinking about heading out to Clint’s. See the family, get away from everything for a bit.”

“Before you know it, he’s going to convince you to buy a farm,” Pepper said.

“Steve could never give this up. He likes his job too much,” Natasha said, and she hated how much she sounded like Ultron.

“How about you guys?” Steve asked, pulling plates out of the cabinet and setting them next to the dinner Natasha had prepared.

“Barbados,” he replied. “Nothing makes me feel more patriotic than getting the fuck out of the country.”

Natasha laughed. “I’ll drink to that.”

--------------------------------------

They cleaned up together, doing dishes side by side and wiping down the countertop where Maria had managed to spill an entire glass of wine without anyone noticing. She had been practically carried out by Rhodes, who looked about ready to toss her uncooperating form over his shoulder. Tony had filmed the entire interaction, laughing as the two fell down one step into the hallway.

“That was fun,” Natasha said as she dried a pan and set it back on its shelf. “Good to get away, to see everyone.”

Steve glanced over at her with disbelieving eyes. “It was fucking weird, Natasha.”

She sighed and her body seemed to fold over with relief. “Oh my god, it was so weird. I’m so glad you felt it too.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to fix it. Tony is just-- it feels like he’s our boss, you know? And he’s not, we’re a team. But there’s this underlying feeling, like we’re at ends with each other. Like he’s the enemy.”

“There’s always been that with Tony, though, right?” Natasha said. Steve chewed on his cheek, a habit he had picked up from her. “I mean you two fought on our first assignment.”

“I’d gladly take aliens over Fox News,” he muttered. She raised an eyebrow. “I guess we’ve always gotten into disagreements. It just feels like we should be past them by now, like we should know how to function as teammates.”

“I think you’re just too different,” she said. “You come from different worlds, different times. You’ve always been on the right side of history, Steve. It would be a pretty hard argument to make to say what you did in the forties wasn’t for the greater good. Killing Nazis is the probably most ethical form of killing.”

He laughed at that, a huff of a laugh emitted without eye contact. She grabbed his chin and forced his eyes to hers, an action she was finding herself doing a lot of recently.

“But Tony didn’t come from that. He’s made mistakes, he’s fucked up. Stark Industries was the top weapons manufacturer for the United States, and a lot of other organizations that did a lot of horrible things. He’s responsible for them, for Ultron. You have to see where he’s coming from. He’s trying to make up for his past mistakes.”

Steve was quiet for a moment. “Do you agree with him?”

It was a question he had never asked her outright, and the one she was dreading the most, because she knew the answer was yes. The Avengers worked as a solo operation right now because everything they were doing was in the best interest of the world, but what happened when that wasn’t the case anymore? If they could no longer help Wanda, if she lost control of her powers again?

“I understand him,” Natasha said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“That’s not what I asked,” he whispered. “I need to know whose side you’re on, Natasha.”

She wanted to scream that there were no sides, that they all wanted what was best for the team, what was best for the world, but she couldn’t.

“I’m always on your side, Rogers,” she said. “I love you.”

He relaxed at her words, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her head. “We’ll get through this, right?”

“Of course.”

“I’m so glad I have you,” he said. She smiled into his shirt and tried to remind herself that she loved him, that they would get through this.

“We can leave the rest of the dishes for the morning, right?” she said into his chest. It shook with a laugh and she felt him pull away, leaning down to press his lips against hers. She kissed him back and wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling the tension seemingly melt away from his shoulders.

“Let’s go to bed,” he said. She let him pick her up, legs wrapping around his waist, and for a moment it all felt like it would be okay.

Chapter Text

Natasha woke up to Steve’s side of the bed cold. She stretched lazily, enjoying the empty space of their king mattress, feeling the day creep in. She had pulled a shirt on before they fell asleep, legs bare and smooth against the sheets, freshly shaved.

There were noises in the kitchen, the clattering of pots and pans, the faint hiss of the gas stove. Natasha pulled herself out of bed, rolling her feet and padding across the cold hardwood into the bathroom. She walked out of it with a toothbrush in her mouth and her hair pulled up into as much of a bun as it would allow. It was starting to get long again, past her shoulders. She figured she would grow it out this time around.

“Are you cooking?” she asked, taking in the sight of Steve, shirtless, bent over the counter attempting to evenly slice an onion. It was a painfully slow sight.

He startled at the sound of her voice, the knife slipping and nicking the tip of his finger. He swore and shook his hand.

“Trying to, at least. Thought I’d do something nice after you made dinner for everyone last night.”

She slid a hand around his stomach and leaned up to kiss his cheek, then reached up to wipe away the toothpaste that had caught on his stubble. “But instead you cooked?”

“Hey,” he protested. “I can make an omelet.”

“I know you can,” she said, letting the smile bleed into her voice. It was difficult with the mouthful of toothpaste burning her gums. “I’m just teasing.”

She leaned over and spat into the kitchen sink, running the water and rinsing her mouth out. It was hot already, hot enough that she figured she could justify turning on the airco. Their apartment building was stone, so it fared well in the heat, and Steve had never been one for using it, but she often protested that she never felt more Russian than in New York summers.

The sight of him working so hard made her jaw clench, tugging at the soft part of her that was reserved for only him. All of the sudden she felt guilty, angry at herself and the situation they were in. All of the sudden she saw that boy from Brooklyn with his whole life ahead of him.

“I’m sorry about last night,” she said. He looked up from where he was unevenly browning the onions, the fork he was using grating against her nice stainless steel pan.

“What about it?” he asked.

“Just everything-- with Tony and Wanda and just… all of it.” She ran a hand through her hair. “You’re just trying to do what’s right. And Tony’s just trying to do what’s right. And it’s just an impossible situation that we’ve been put in.”

He nodded, watching her carefully. She felt so naked under his eyes, less guarded than she had ever been. It was like he saw her, he really saw her.

“Remember when I was the craziest thing we had to deal with?” he asked. She smiled.

“I’m not quite that old, grandpa.”

“Wanda’s just a kid, you know? And I’m scared of what will happen if she’s forced to be the person that everyone wants her to be.” He chewed the inside of his cheek, pulling at the corner of his lip. “She’s so strong willed.”

Natasha nodded. Like someone else she knew. “Talk about an impossible situation.”

“She’s the first enhanced we’ve really had to deal with,” Steve said. “And she’s still so young. God, I just-- she’s so young. Can you imagine being that young and--,”

“Yes,” Natasha interrupted. “I can.”

He sighed. “Right. Sometimes I forget.”

She ran a hand over his arm and pushed him aside, shuffling in front of the stove to finish the food he had started. The onions were nearly burnt. “I wish things could go back to the way they were.”

“That’s a dangerous thought, Natasha,” he warned. A pause. “I do, too.”

“The team isn’t really a team anymore,” she said. “With no aliens or robots to deal with we don’t have any uniting cause anymore. We’re just coworkers.”

“We’re not,” he said.

She smiled. “You know what I mean. It’s almost isolating. Tony isn’t a part of the team anymore, Bruce is MIA, Thor is off god knows where. Fury’s dead.”

He snorted. “Just like how I’m dead?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Everything we do feels forced. We’re apart all the time, when we’re together we fight. Even a nice evening feels like a chore.”

“You’ve gotten soft on me, Romanoff. It sounds like you want us to be a big happy family again.”

“Don’t you?” she asked. He sighed.

“Of course I do.”

-----------------------------------

Missions became few and far between. Tensions grew. Sam spent more time away from the compound, with his sister, with Alicia. Rhodes was away for longer and longer. He didn’t officially work with the US Government anymore, but he was consulting on some of their tactical training. It was better to have him out of the compound, with how frustrated everyone was about Tony’s involvement with Secretary Ross. The only upside was Wanda. The girl had made remarkable progress in controlling her abilities recently, running exercises with Steve and Natasha when they were afforded one-on-one time with her. Vision sat and watched, taking careful notes, as if she was a specimen he was made to observe.

Tony rarely visited the compound. When he did it was to document the team’s progress, to report back to Ross. He fought with Steve. Natasha overheard them yelling one morning after she had returned from a run with Wanda.

“You don’t care about these people anymore, Stark,” Steve had shouted. “You’re too removed to see what Ross is doing to us, how much power he is trying to control.”

“What, as opposed to you controlling it?” Tony had yelled back. “Face it, Steve. One way or another, someone has to be responsible for overseeing this team. Someone had to be there to take the fall when the Wicked Witch of the Eastern Bloc blows up an orphanage or when Banner returns and demos another city.”

“We’re responsible for ourselves,” Steve bit out. “Just like we’ve always been.”

Through the frosted glass, Natasha could see Tony wipe his hand over his face in exasperation. “You have never been responsible for this team, Steve--,”

“Now, hold on--,”

“No, you hold on,” Tony shouted. “You have never understood the skill that it takes to manage a team like this. You never saw what Fury did for you, you have no idea the money that the Avengers Relief Fund-- my money, my company-- spends cleaning up after each mission goes sideways. There are politics at play here. You can’t claim to lead this team and not realize that.”

“This team doesn’t need a manager, Tony, they need a leader. They need someone who actually cares for them, not someone like Ross who’s going to send them into a battle that--,”

“They’re not soldiers, Rogers!” Tony roared. There was a pause, heavy, as both of the men took a breath. “They’re not soldiers. And this is not an army. And this is not a war. This is a team of enhanced individuals in the 21st century. We’re not just fighting Nazis in forests anymore, life isn’t that black and white. The Avengers have cost more lives than they’ve saved recently, that’s how the world sees us. So if Ross is here and willing and ready to bend over and take the blame for us, then-- Christ-- I’ll bring the lube.”

Steve stood still, so silent that Natasha felt the tension against the glass of the office.

“You’re a coward, Tony,” he finally spat.

“Yeah, well--,” Tony’s voice was tired, “--we can’t all be Captain America.”

-------------

Natasha was no stranger to nightmares. She had dealt with them since she was little. They were always the same, always awful, and always involved the people she cared about most. Alexei had said it was her greatest flaw all those years ago: she cared too much. First it was her aunt, her sister, Irina, Nadia, James, Clint, Steve-- they always came back to Steve. She knew how to deal with them. She knew to push herself to the point of exhaustion, to find solace in what she could and could not control. All the garbage her SHIELD issued shrink had told her when she was working through the withdrawals after Budapest.

Natasha was no stranger to nightmares.

But Steve was.

They started in July, right on his birthday. He sat up straight in bed one night, jostling their bed frame so much that it woke Natasha up. He was soaked in sweat, his eyes wild. For a moment, as she forced him to breathe and look at him, it was as if he didn’t recognize her. It was as if he was a thousand miles away.

“Steve,” she said, her tone low and soothing. He panted, searching wildly for something that wasn’t there. She tried again, reaching out to touch his arm with her hand. “Steve--,”

He lurched away from her touch, falling onto their wooden floors with a sound that was sure to wake the neighbors.

“Rogers!” Natasha shouted, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. The snap of her tone seemed to pull him out of it.

“Natasha?” he asked. “What--,”

“You had a nightmare,” she said.

He climbed back into bed, his skin still clammy, and she felt him tense for a moment as she wrapped her arms around him.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her hand scratching a pattern over his spine. He nodded.

“It was just a dream,” he said.

“About James?” she asked. He shook his head.

“About the war.”

He rolled over, turning away from her and pulling the covers up and over his shoulders once more. Natasha laid back down, reaching her arm over his chest and pulling herself flush against him. She pressed her lips to his shoulder.

“I’m here for you.”

The next night, the same thing happened. This time, Steve got up. She heard him turn the shower on and step into it. When he came back to bed, he smelled of mint. It continued, night by night, until it was nearly August and Steve had taken to sleeping on the couch so as to not wake Natasha. Circles rimmed his eyes. His skin was pale and gray. He looked like death. And still, he woke up. He went through the motions. And Natasha had no idea how to make it better.

“You look terrible,” she said one morning at the compound. She had just come back from her daily run with Wanda. There was a trail in the forests around the compound, a two mile radius that snaked through forests and banked a creek that she had once pushed Steve into.

He laughed. “Thanks, Romanoff.”

“No, I’m serious,” she said. “Like you look like when they pulled you out of the ice. We’re going to Iowa.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Yep,” she said, already pulling out her phone. “Back your bags.”

——————————

Laura and the kids picked them up from the regional airport in Dodge, pulling into the Culver’s in town at the insistence of the kids and Natasha. They had packed their bags the night before, enough clothing for a week, but they both knew they would probably be there for longer. Sam called in a favor from one of his friends from the Air Force— a pilot who had retired a few years back and flew commercial. They had a layover in O’hare, where Steve had seemed personally offended by the invent of Chicago-style pizza.

“That is not pizza,” he muttered. “That’s savory cheesecake. Horrifying.”

They got into Dodge around six, an hour later than they were supposed to. Steve hasn’t said much, and Natasha hadn’t pushed it. She didn’t want to upset him, so she didn’t say much. He dozed on the plane. She stayed alert.

During the flight, she thought about Wanda. Specifically, how worried she was for the girl. She had been spending more time with her in past weeks, ever since Ross started poking his nose in everyone’s business. Against her better judgement, she had grown fond of the girl. Now, she could only see Irina, Yelena. Even herself. A strong willed girl in a world that gave very little grace to strong willed girls.

It was something that had been festering for the past few weeks, ever since Alaska, but she had only really acknowledged it after talking to Vision, of all people.

“I worry about her,” he said, floating in that odd way that he did when he was trying to broach an uncomfortable subject. As if even touching his feet to the ground would be too much of a disturbance.

“I do too,” Natasha said. She was talking about Wanda, they both were, but in her mind’s eye, a tiny redhead stared back at her. A girl younger than Wanda who had been used to commit crimes beyond her control, to utilize strength and power that she had never properly learned what to do with.

“I wouldn’t tell her this, but I’m glad she’s being grounded,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t you tell her?” Natasha asked. She thought of Steve.

“Because she’s already so afraid of herself. I don’t want her to know that we’re afraid of her, too.”

Natasha understood. There was a time in her life, just after Budapest, where she would have killed herself if Clint had said that. Now, she knew better. She was made to be a weapon, and no matter how much she hates herself for doing it voluntarily, Natasha knows that there was nothing voluntary about what she did.

She knew there was something different about Wanda, and whether that extended to Pietro or not was unclear. There was no way they could have survived those experiments if they hadn’t been special in some way. The incident in Alaska was only the tip of the iceberg. Until they knew what the girl was capable of, until they figured out a way to control the power that the Avengers were wielding like some sort of vigilante excalibur, it wasn’t right to put civilians in danger.

But that didn’t mean that Ross was the one who should hold the sword.

“I’ll take a chocolate cement mixer with cookie dough and cocoa fudge,” Natasha said, leaning over the center console to speak into the microphone. “And a bacon cheeseburger.”

“I’ll have the same,” Steve said from the very back of the minivan.

“Two of those,” she called. Laura just laughed. It had been a fight over who got which seat at the airport, but after Lila had beat Steve best of fifteen in rock-paper-scissors, he had finally conceded and climbed into the back.

They ate in the car, stuffing their fast food wrappers in the back under the seats. Natasha found it hilarious that both Laura and Clint snuck fast food around each other, but she reaped the benefits every time one of them came to pick her up, so she didn’t complain. She tried to think if her and Steve had any quirks like that, but she couldn’t think of any off hand. She wished they had fun traits.

When they got to the farm, they were exhausted. Clint greeted them with Nate in the baby sling, his legs kicking and what appeared to be a disengaged fire alarm in his mouth as Clint wielded a plate of barbecue chicken and a severe-looking pair of tongs. There was a cloud of smoke behind him.

“Just in time for dinner!” he said brightly.

They ate outside, the kids running off after wolfing down their food to chase each other through the yard. Laura watched them fondly, holding Nate on her knee and offering him what looked like smashed corn every so often. Natasha couldn’t take her eyes off the baby. He looked exactly like Lila had when she was that age. Steve caught her eye as she stuck her tongue out at him, reaching for her hand. He squeezed it gently.

“Who’s taking care of your kids while you’re away?” Laura asked.

Steve and Natasha exchanged a glance. “We’re taking a break from team stuff right now. It’s become too much of a liability with Wanda’s powers being so… unpredictable.”

“What did they do to her?” Clint asked.

“You remember Juneau,” Natasha said. “The Avengers brand hasn’t really recovered from that. Ross is worried that we need a governing body. He doesn’t trust us to operate on our own with everything that’s happened.”

“He grounded you?”

“Not officially.”

“Might as well be,” Steve muttered. An uncomfortable silence settled over them.

“So what brings you out here?” Clint asked.

“Vacation,” she said. “Figured we’d get out of the city for a while.”

“Is that why the Captain looks like he hasn’t slept in days?”

“The city air ails him,” Natasha said. There was a sly humor to her voice. Clint didn’t push it.

“Well, we’ll put you to work,” he said, exhaling and looking out over his land. “We’ve got some corn that needs harvesting— us and the rest of Iowa. Chicken coop needs to be rewired, baby probably needs to be changed.”

“Baby definitely needs to be changed,” Laura said.

“Point is there’s plenty to do, kid,” Clint said, offering Natasha an affectionate smile that felt very fatherly. “Stay for as long as you want.”

————————

So they worked. Over the course of the week, they picked up chores where they could, played with the kids, helped with the harvest, and tried to distance themselves from everything that was waiting for them back in DC. They ignored their phones, not that Tony was in any hurry to reach out to either of them and inquire upon their wellbeing.

Steve, he discovered, had a knack for farm work.

“This is exactly the kind of thing an asthmatic kid from Brooklyn would die doing,” he told Natasha as he tossed a bale of hay into the loft.

She smiled.

Natasha helped around the home. It had been a while since she had spent this much time with Laura, and she had missed her. And the kids, of course, but it was nice to have someone to talk to who wasn’t wrapped up in the politics of the Avengers, wasn’t an enhanced teenager, and wasn’t serving her coffee.

The kids loved having them there. They would start school soon, at the tiny schoolhouse in Waverly, registered under their middle names. Laura was going to take Lila into the city soon to buy new clothes. Her jeans were skimming up above her ankles, she had grown so much in the past year.

Over the week, they forgot their troubles. They forgot about the team, about the politics of it all, about the fights with Stark and that little thing that Ross did with his lip right before he said something that would make Steve turn red.

It was nice, and for the first time in a long time, there was no exception to the sentiment.

They crashed in the guest room, a small addition that Clint had put in after the team had taken over their house earlier that year. Bay doors with glass windows looked out over the backyard hill, large windows expanding the walls. Natasha drew the curtains before opening her bag. The room was nice. Homely, like the rest of Clint’s farm.

Steve had been quiet all night, all week really. He watched Natasha as she changed into her pajamas. She had been sleeping in one of his old SHIELD shirts every night for a while now, really since before the Triskelion, when she had first stayed at his apartment after Baker and they hadn’t so much as kissed. She looked up at him from where she was sitting on the edge of the bed.

“What?”

“Just… this was a good idea,” he said. “Coming out here. Getting away from everything.”

“I’m glad you agree,” she said. He climbed into bed next to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her tightly against him.

“I think I miss when it was just us,” he murmured into her ear, rustling her hair as his breath crested her curls. “Maybe I thought the apartment would fix that, but we’re still so wrapped up in everything ‘Avengers’ that it was basically just a change in scenery.”

“We do our best work alone,” Natasha said. “I mean, we were partners before any of this started. The Zodiac, Baker. We’ve worked alone more than we’ve worked with this team.”

“I’m your partner before I’m anyone’s teammate,” Steve said. “I’d rather have you by my side than anyone else.”

Natasha relaxed into his words, but something still ate at her. Instead of pushing it down, she voiced it. “Aren’t you worried that something else will come between us? That we’ll get pulled back into the Avengers bullshit and it will tear us apart again?”

His hands lightly stroked her stomach, his thumb languidly tracing her belly button. “I’ve been having these nightmares recently, about the war. About Buck.”

She waited for him to continue, not wanting to push a subject that he had been so abject to talking to.

“I’m still a soldier, Natasha. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be a person, not really. I was a kid, and then I was a soldier, and then I was dead.”

“There was never a time when you thought you would make it out?”

“There was an abstract idea of what my life would look like. A place in the city, kids, maybe. But I never really expected to make it this far. I think I thought that you and I would have the kind of life that every soldier was supposed to get after the war ended. The kind of life I thought—,”

He stopped himself before he brought up Peggy.

“But Ultron was right. I'm a soldier, Natasha. It is literally all I know how to do. I was made to fight-- I was made to die fighting. But I can't die, and I have no purpose now. And Stark was right, even. This team is not an army, and they are not soldiers. They are people.”

He took in a deep breath, a breath that she felt against her back.

“And they are people that I don’t know how to lead.”

She turned to face him because she didn’t quite know how to voice what she was feeling, and pressed a kiss to his lips, wrapping her fingers around his neck and drawing him closer. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t want to lie and tell him that was okay. It wasn’t okay, and everything he had said had been correct. He was behind the times. He was lacking the nuance of the last eighty years, the nuance that he had been frozen during. Everyone he had known-- more importantly, everything he had known-- was gone. The convictions and morals that had guided him to win an unwinnable war now left him reeling in an era of distinction and subtlety. His greatest strength had become his greatest flaw.

So she kissed him, because what else was she going to do? If she could not vocalize her feelings, she could sure as hell act on them.

He kissed her back, pressing her body into the bed and pulling her closer to him by the hip, the waist, anything he could reach, really.

The spark was back, the spark that they had had in the beginning when everything was a secret and they had been on the run. The spark that had brought her back to life. She hadn’t realized it before, but she had been chasing that spark for a long time. It was something that only came with pulling the politics out of their relationship.

It was the spark that came with guarding themselves.

It didn’t feel right to fuck in Clint’s guest room, not with the rest of the family just doors away, so they snuck out to the barn. Old habits died hard.

It was primal, for the first time in a while. There was nothing pretty about it, no nice duvet and fluffy pillows that they had left behind in Brooklyn. It was raw, painful, and taxing, just like the past month had been. Natasha came quickly, with the feeling of hay scratching her back and Steve’s fingers buried inside her. When she had caught her breath, he wiped his mouth and flipped her over and did all of the things she only saw every so often: the hair pulling, the ass slapping, the tugging of his hands on her hips and the way he lifted her up to meet his thrusts when she was too limp to do so.

They sprawled out afterward, on a canvas tarp that Clint used to weigh down the hay so that it didn’t blow away. Steve held her to his chest and they both watched the sky slowly get brighter as the morning grew closer. Natasha was weary of his silence.

“I’m glad I have you, Romanoff,” he said, after what must have been hours of nothing.

“You know you have me,” she said. “Before anything else, I was your friend.”

“Partners,” he said.

“Partners,” she agreed. His hand tightened around her waist, and they both looked out over the forest to watch the sun rise.

Chapter Text

They spent the next two weeks at Clint’s, doing more of the same, but something had changed. There was an air of togetherness, as if they had silently agreed that a change would be made. Neither one of them spoke on it, but there were signs. They began to train again, circling routes across the farm, carving out trails in increasing radii around the main house. Natasha pushed to keep up with Steve, her legs shorter and her muscles weaker. She found a familiarity in the grit that it took to hold his pace, the same grit it had taken years ago to keep up with the older girls when she had not yet been afforded the gift of the injections.

To her credit, she pushed him right back. While he possessed more brute strength than her, her skill lied in close combat. She could match him blow for blow, and it took more out of him to match her lithe jabs than it did for her to dance around his broad swings. It felt good to train like this: tailored to her own growth, her own combat style, instead of having to watch over Sam, Wanda, and Vision. She didn’t have to train anyone else, to stoop to their level, to bite her tongue when Wanda got frustrated and blew something up. She was allowed to be selfish.

They didn’t quite know what they were training for, but they knew a change was coming. One night as Natasha read in the sun room, she got a call that answered their question.

“Do you remember Oksana?” Nadia asked, her tone clipped and straight to business.

Natasha closed her eyes, searching her brain for an association to the name. “Can you be more specific?”

“She is— was— a widow,” Nadia said. “A year or two under Yelena. You may have taught her once or twice.”

“It doesn’t ring a bell,” Natasha said. “But there were so many of them. Did something happen? She died?”

“Defected.” There was a weight to the word. “She’s the fourth one since you. The fourth one… ever. I’m being pulled back to work more closely with Madame B. I think they’re really freaked out, Natalia.”

Natasha watched a bird take flight out of one of the pines that bordered Clint’s land. “Were they this scared when Olga defected?”

“Olga wasn’t important enough for them to care.”

“And Oksana is…”

“She worked in Melina’s division,” Nadia said. Natasha felt slow for not immediately catching on.

“And?”

There was a sigh from the other side of the line. Natasha rolled her eyes. “And Melina’s division developed the implant that they stick us all with the second they start treatment. Oksana knows more about their research than just about anyone else.”

“She knows where Melina is?”

“Where she is, what she’s working on, all the fail safes that even you and I don’t know about.”

Natasha thought about Yelena, still deep in the brainwashing of the Red Room. She thought of Nate inside, how Yelena had barely been older than him when she had been taken, how she had never known a life, never known a family, outside of those walls. All of the emotions from her time in Europe washed over her, everything she had pinned back when Tony called them in to track down Strucker.

Nadia had told her the time would come to look for Yelena. Maybe that time was now.

“So you want me to find her,” she said.

Nadia inhaled deeply. “I’m not saying that.”

“But if I want to save Yelena, I have to find her?” There was a flicker of hope in her voice.

“That’s a dangerous road to travel down,” Nadia said. She sounded tired and the weight of her words hung heavy, even through the phone. “But if you still want to help any of those girls, she’s the best lead you’ve got.”

——————————

Natasha mulled over her conversation with Nadia as she trained with Steve. She was unfocused, careless. She tripped when they ran, spitting out blood from biting her tongue. Steve cast her a sidelong glance but didn’t stop, didn’t comment. He pinned her easily when they sparred, taking her down with a maneuver that would have normally been an easy dodge. He raised an eyebrow, but she ignored him, twisting her body and pinning him beneath her when she had regained her wits.

In the main house, Steve flipped pancakes under Laura’s watchful eye. She was only just letting him use the stove again after he had charred their dinner two nights ago and both Clint and her had had to act upset at the prospect of driving into town and picking up McDonalds. Natasha was sitting at the table as Lila showed off the new notebooks Clint had bought for her to take to school next week when he had run into town to pick up a replacement part for their tractor. Nate was crawling around his play pen in the living room—which Steve called his cage—and Cooper was still sleeping soundly upstairs, despite all the noise.

“Do you two think you could watch Nate tonight while Clint and I take Lila and Cooper to Des Moines? We need to do some shopping and figured we’d just stay out there,” Laura said. She was busying herself by cleaning up around the room, clearly trying to distract herself from Steve, who splattered pancake batter across the skillet as he flipped a too-brown pancake.

Natasha looked over at where her godson was trying his very hardest to stuff his entire fist in his mouth. Her chest clenched. “I think we can manage that.”

“What are you guys going to get up to once the kids are in school?” Steve asked. “I’m assuming Clint isn’t going to be busying him too much with anything going on in New York.”

Laura laughed humorlessly. “God no. We have some renovations planned for the house, but other than that there’s not too much on the horizon.”

“We could always have another kid,” said Clint as he walked into the kitchen, giving his wife an affectionate pat on the ass and planting a kiss on her cheek. “Cooper’s on his way out.”

“We are not having another kid,” she said sternly. “Two was enough.”

Nate squawked in protest from the play pen.

“What about you guys? Have you given any thought to what you’ll do once you’re back in New York?” she asked.

“We’ll probably head back in about a week,” Natasha said. Steve glanced over at her, his eyebrow raised, but he didn’t say anything.

“You kicking us out?” he asked Laura. She rolled her eyes.

“Never. I just need to know how long you’re going to be hogging my craft room.”

“Is that why I wake up every morning covered in glitter?” Steve asked.

Clint wrinkled his brow. “What you and Natasha get up to in private is your business.”

—————————

The guest bathroom had recently been tiled to fit the overall farmhouse aesthetic: blue and brown checkered mosaics caulked onto the wall in a rustic fashion. The sink and cabinets stood to the side of the frosted window. In the back corner, a shower was tucked behind a cream curtain. It was small, but just big enough that Natasha and Steve could both fit in it.

“So,” Steve said, reaching above Natasha to grab his shampoo, “babysitting?”

“Are you scared, Captain?” she quipped. He squeezed her side and she laughed, cringing away from him, though limited by the small space.

“We can play parents for a night,” he said, almost immediately regretting his wording when she tensed against him. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m fine.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. Her body was slick with soap and water. She leaned back against him and disguised it as a ply for more water, feeling his hands brush over her scalp and push the soap away from her eyes.

“I see how you look at them, Romanoff,” he said. She drew a breath through her teeth and felt his grip tighten around her. “If I could—,”

“Don’t, Steve,” she said firmly. “Don’t go there. There’s nothing anyone can do anymore, so there’s no use dwelling on it.”

He didn’t say anything, only let his hand continue to wash the soap out of her hair.

“Dr. Cho tried,” she said smally. “She wanted to help, I guess. But then she died.”

“What?” he asked, his hand stilling over her hair in surprise. “What do you mean she tried?”

“Well, the whole issue is that my body kills any foreign substance. She thought if she could develop a serum to reduce the effects for long enough, there could be a chance of me getting-- you know.”

“But no dice?”

“It turns out my immune system doesn’t only target foreign substances, but anything that could threaten my body. Like an embryo.” She swallowed. “The Red Room literally designed me for killing. Any viable pregnancy would be terminated by the time Cho’s serum wore off. There was literally nothing she could do.”

“I’m sorry Natasha,” he said. The water had run cold, courtesy of the farm’s limited hot water supply. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to surprise you, I guess.”

“A pregnancy announcement definitely would have been a surprise.”

Steve didn’t tell her what he couldn’t voice, that even if children were a biological possibility they were not realistic.

Natasha could hear the thought in the silence.

“It’s probably for the best, though. We tried the whole ‘domestic’ thing and we saw how that worked out.”

“‘Pretending we could live without war’,” Steve said. Natasha rested her head against his shoulder.

“Do you really think we’re that bad?”

He paused for a long moment and she could feel his arms wrap around her waist. “I don’t know. We’ve never really had the opportunity to escape it all.”

“Would you, if we had the opportunity?” she asked. “And I mean like a real opportunity, not just moving an hour from the compound and commuting during the week? Like if we could actually escape to a place where no one needed us, where no one expected us to clean up the world’s messes?”

He sighed. “Not if it meant leaving what we have here.”

---------------------------

“Jesus Christ, it’s everywhere,” Steve breathed out, looking around the room. Natasha wiped her face, disgusted.

“Who’s fault is that?”

“You’re the one who didn’t secure his bowl,” Steve said.

Natasha rolled her eyes but picked up a rag, beginning to wipe down all of the surfaces in the kitchen that were covered in smashed peas, which was seemingly all of them. Steve was right, she hadn’t used the suction-cupped bowl, which was her downfall. She had turned away for one moment, and Nate had thrown his bowl against one of the cabinets and covered the room in green sludge. She had shrieked right as Steve had walked back in with the pizza he had gotten from the Casey’s a mile away.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for this,” she said as she gagged while wiping off the countertop.

“But look at how cute he is,” he said, planting his hand on top of Nate’s head and wiggling him around until he laughed. “Were Clint’s other kids this cute?”

“Lila was cute when she wasn’t screaming,” Natasha said. She tossed the rag in the sink and cranked the water up to the highest heat it could reach. “I stayed with Clint and Laura for a bit when she was younger and she had the worst colic of any baby ever, according to Clint.”

“When Bucky’s youngest sister was a baby she cried nonstop. We were probably ten or so when she was born. Height of the depression. His mom got sick when she was one and it was like she knew. She was the best behaved baby after that.”

“How long was she sick for?” Natasha asked.

“A while,” he said. He was staring at the sink, but his eyes were unfocused. “A few years. She died when we were still in school, and his dad was never really around, and then he was-- you know-- deployed. Buck stepped up. He never really knew a life without burden.”

“Until the Red Room,” Natasha said. “He may have been a HYDRA cog, but he had no one to take care of.”

“Too bad he couldn’t enjoy it,” Steve said.

“We had our moments,” she said. “And luckily he doesn’t remember it. It’s like it never happened.”

“Do you honestly believe that?” he asked. Nate had started to fuss and he picked him up out of his highchair.

She pulled her lip between her teeth and glanced away from him. “When I went looking for him years ago, I was so young. Fresh out of SHIELD training, still on a pretty short leash, but Fury let me go out once I had recovered from being shot.” She grazed her hand over the side of her hip, where the scar there had never really healed. She hadn’t let it. It was a reminder of what he was capable of. “I cornered him in Berlin. He let me corner him in Berlin. It was this abandoned train station, only used for storage at that point, and I went in to try and capture him, to reason with him, to do something. I felt so helpless after seeing him in Odessa.

“But it was a setup. He had let me find him, let me corner him, so that he could come after me. He restrained me.” She could still feel the cold grip of his arm around her neck, his breathing hard in her hair and a staunch reminder that hers was so limited. They had been in this position before, under very different circumstances, and yet it was so unfamiliar. It was as if he was a different person. “He asked me what I was doing there, why I was chasing after him. He didn’t remember a fucking thing.”

Steve was quiet, standing still while Nate squirmed in his arms. Natasha tried to smile, as if playing off all of the heartbreaking things she had just said.

“So yes, he doesn’t remember anything. It’s agony, I’m sure, to wake everyday not knowing who you are, where you came from, or what you’re doing, but at least he doesn’t know anything better.”

“You should come with me, Natasha,” he said. “To find him. You could help him.”

She shook her head. “That’s not my fight anymore, Steve. I was a different person then. I had to learn, to grow, or the grief of leaving him behind would have eaten me alive.”

He didn’t address her unsaid accusation: That he would eventually have to as well.

“Besides, I have to find Yelena. I’m worried for her.”

“More than normal?”

Natasha nodded. “They’ve developed some new methods of controlling the girls. Brainwashing them, basically using them like human puppets.”

“How?”

“Melina, I’m sure.” Nate had begun to fuss.

“Your… mother?” he asked, hesitating on what to call her. Natasha reached out and took the baby from him.

“She was always bad at knowing when to say no,” she said. “So smart, and always so excited when they were willing to fund one of her projects.”

Steve stayed quiet, which was probably for the best. Natasha still held a strong affiliation towards Melina, and that would not very easily disappear. Steve could not see the gray scale, only the black and white, but Natasha remembered her as the woman who had cleaned her scraped knees. Not the reason her sister no longer had any autonomy.

“You’ll be safe, right?” he asked her. She nodded. “Of course I will. They can’t touch me anymore.”

Steve pursed his lips into a thin smile.

“When will you leave?”

“When we get back to New York. Nadia has some leads. I don’t know how long they’ll last.”

“So just like that, we’re splitting up again?” he asked. She smiled sadly.

“We knew it would happen.”

He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. “This isn’t going to get in the way of us, right?”

She leaned up and kissed his jawline. “We won’t let it.”

------------------------

Natasha fell asleep on the couch with Nate in her arms, the credits to a movie she had not paid attention to rolling lazily up the screen. Steve watched them sleep, taking in the sight of her face in the gentle moonlight, watching her chest rise and fall and the infant on her chest grasp at the hem of her shirt. He didn’t want to be away from her, kept remembering how lonely life had been when she had been away from him, had been looking for her sister and only contacting him every few days.

He wanted her next to him, wanted her safe in their bed instead of god knows where. He was anxious, twisting a foil wrapper between his fingers, fiddling with it as he watched her sleep.

He loved her, and for a brief, painful moment he saw the life that they could have had.

A house.

A wedding.

A kid.

Normal mornings spent at Little League and afternoons in the park.

But he knew that it would never last. So long as he existed, someone would be coming for him. So long as she existed, there would be people who wanted her dead. Who saw her as a liability, who saw him as a weapon. There would always be war, fighting, evil. There would always be HYDRA and men like Strucker and others who needed their help.

There would always be one last mission.

Steve knew that when he accepted the serum. Not just when he talked to Erskine, when the doctor optimistically explained that he would become the ultimate Nazi Fighting Machine, but when he was in the lab, receiving the serum. There was a moment where he thought of Peggy, right as the liquid was entering his bloodstream, and the realization hit him that once he had accepted the injection that it would all go away.

He would never have the perfect life, the perfect family, the perfect house, the perfect lazy Sunday mornings. He saw that very clearly when he was in the chamber, and it was so agonizing to have that future ripped away from him that he had screamed, had mourned out loud for all that he would never have. He had heard Peggy’s voice at that moment, calling for them to get him out, that it was all too much for him, and he had had a moment of intense clarity.

No matter how much he wanted a peaceful life, no matter how much he had wanted her, he would give it all up to take down HYDRA and defeat the Nazis. He would have given up everything to stop the evil in the world, even if it meant that he was doomed to an immortal horror of impossibilities and hecatomb of futile dreams.

He didn’t know Natasha then, and for the sake of his own morality he wanted to think that he would have still chosen to accept the serum, but the reality was he was unsure. If he could have saved her-- saved them both-- from everything that they would have had to endure, he selfishly would have. He would give up everything he had to protect her.

But she would never have let him, and if she had, she wouldn’t have been the woman he loved.

So Steve watched her sleep, feeling utterly helpless and yet completely resigned to the life that they had. They would never settle down like Clint had, never be homeowners or parents. It didn’t fit their lifestyle, didn’t align with the promise they had made to the world when they became Avengers. There was nothing he could do.

Except…

Steve shook Natasha awake, careful to not scare her as her eyes blinked open.

“What is it?” she asked, glancing around the room.

He held out the wrapper he had been toying with, now tightly coiled into a fine wire and looped into a circle.

“Will you marry me?”

Chapter Text

Natasha froze, aware of the baby asleep on her chest, still blinking out of the haze of her nap. Steve’s gaze was locked on her, his eyes trained on hers, awaiting her response.

“Are you… proposing?” she asked. He nodded. She swallowed hard, maybe a little too hard, as Nate began to stir on her chest.

“Do you mind if I put the baby down?” she asked quickly.

He stood up, blushing slightly as he did. “Of course.”

She hadn’t seen him that nervous around her in years. Probably not since they first met. She rose from her place on the couch, careful not to wake the baby, and climbed the creaky staircase quickly to set Nate down. All the while, only one thought was going through her head:

Steve had proposed.

She knew that he would. He wanted to marry her, he had mentioned it in the past, but she had never really expected him to ask. Life found a way of getting in the middle of their relationship. It always had.

Still, Natasha wasn’t upset. She wasn’t even scared, even if she thought she ought to be, or at least not at the thought of marrying Steve. What worried her was the timing.

They were just about to split up again, and neither of them knew when they would be back together. Natasha remembered the uncertainty of the days after DC. Not knowing if her texts would go through, if they would fall on deaf ears, if Steve was alive to receive them. Logically, she knew this time would be different. They loved each other, they were committed. They lived together for Christ’s sake. This time would be different.

So why did she not quite believe that?

Maybe it was the sliver of doubt that had dug its way into her brain, that maybe love and commitment weren’t enough to keep two people together. Maybe two people who had lived lives as different as they had wouldn’t be able to make it work.

The world and all its problems still existed outside of the farm. There was still an angry world and a frustrated team and Tony Stark to deal with back home. Her and Steve had such different beliefs, such different upbringings, that she worried they wouldn’t agree if the pressure got to be too much. That they wouldn’t see eye to eye.

Only, it would be different.

She promised it to herself: it would be different this time around. They were leaving each other, leaving the team drama and all of the politics of it all behind as they set off to search for their pasts. She had to save her sister. He had to save James. And they would be alone in the world again, without the outside voices and all the noise. Just the two of them on opposite sides of the world, talking through a burner phone, sneaking around when they could.

And really, at the end of the day, he was it for her. He was the best thing she was going to get out of this life, the best thing she was ever going to have. Even if—god forbid—something happened to him, she would never be able to find someone who would fill that same role in her life. Natasha Romanoff had had two great loves of her life, and this one was the last one she wanted.

She wanted Steve.

Natasha opened the door to head back down the stairs and found herself nose to nose with Steve, waiting on the other side of the doorway with a look of concern on his face.

“Natasha?” he asked as she placed a finger to her lips. She quietly slipped out of the room and slid the door shut, gesturing for him to follow her downstairs. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face, couldn’t stop the grin from forming. Her hand reached behind her to find his and she kissed him as soon as they were at ground level, a soft press of her lips against his.

“Is that a yes?” he asked. She wrung her lips into a slight smile.

“You got a real ring for me?”

“Back in Brooklyn. Bought it last Christmas after we spent that day in the city,” he said. She smiled wider.

“Before we had even really gotten together?” she asked.

“Romanoff, I knew since the day I kissed you on that elevator that I was going to marry you.”

She kissed him again, long and hard this time. “You’re such a sap.”

“And you still haven’t answered my question,” he said. His hands found her waist and he squeezed in punctuation with his words. “Will. You. Marry me?”

She grinned. “Of course I will.”

He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips, his mouth folding over hers and his hands pulling her waist gently against his stomach. She wrapped a hand around the nape of his neck and pressed against him.

“Where’s that ring?” she whispered. He took her left hand and slipped the twisted wrapper around her fourth finger, securing is like he would a zip tie.

“Perfect?” he asked.

She smiled. “Perfect.”

He watched as her lips turned upward, into that coy little grin she often donned.

“Kinda of makes wearing other things feel a bit pointless.”

Steve watched as her hand traced its way from his neck down to his waistband. She pulled him closer and tilted his chin back up to find her lips.

“Bedroom?”

He groaned as she pressed herself into him. “Is the baby asleep?”

“Last I checked.”

“What a domestic little life we live,” he breathed out, barely finishing the sentence before his lips found her neck. She let out a low moan as his teeth traced her jugular, scraping her skin between them and leaving a smattering of popped blood vessels that would soon heal over.

His hands were frantic at her sides, pulling at her obliques and hips and anything else he could reach. She was clad in pajamas, soft shorts and a shirt that only barely covered her stomach. His fingers slid under it immediately. Her back was cold against the wall of Clint’s house, her body overwhelmingly covered by Steve’s broad frame.

“I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever needed you more,” she whispered against his ear as his fingers gripped at her ass. The height difference made it difficult, had always made it difficult, but in that moment it was a downright disservice. Natasha could feel him pressing against her stomach through the thin layer of his pajama pants, already so hard, just half a foot north of where she desperately needed him.

“Christ, Romanoff,” he hissed, finally just pushing her shirt up and over her breasts and letting his thumb find the bud of her nipple.

It felt almost ridiculous to Natasha, humping against a wall like teenagers reduced to sneaking around, but she was too desperate for him to see any other option. They were thirty, for Christ's sake, she should not feel like an eighteen year old again when she wanted to have sex with her boyfriend.

Her fiancé.

And maybe that was the difference, maybe that was why she spun them around and pushed him towards the couch instead of towards the door of their bedroom.

“Are we that desperate?” he asked, his breath labored and his hands drawing inconsistent gasps from her plumped lips.

She gripped him through his pajama pants. “You tell me.”

“Take your pants off,” he demanded, pressing her down onto the couch and leaning with her to graze his teeth along her stomach and breasts. His mouth caught up to her hands, tongue running along the seam of her shorts.

“You know that makes it a little difficult,” she said, finally shoving them off and kicking them across the room.

“Shirt, too,” he demanded. “Come on, Romanoff, focus.”

“Bold talk coming from someone who is still very clothed,” she snapped. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it to the side, almost as an afterthought. His eyes were glued on Natasha, the way she was arched back against the couch, her chest heaving as she looked at him. Waiting for him to make a move.

His hands circled up around her legs, tugging against her bent thighs until she was sitting at the edge of the couch. He ran his hand up over the plane of her stomach, feeling the muscles over her abdomen clench beneath his fingers.

Her hand cradled the side of his face, drawing his eyes up to meet hers. “‘You going to put that mouth to good use, soldier?”

“Am I not allowed to take my time?” he asked.

“Baby you have the rest of your life to take your time,” she said, shuffling her hips closer to him. “That’s the point.”

“God I can’t wait to marry you,” he said, leaning in to press his lips against her inner thighs. She wanted to answer, but felt the words slipping from her brain before she could verbalize them. Steve’s tongue was leaving trails of saliva along her skin, his breath drying it as he made his way up her legs.

They hadn’t done this in a while, hadn’t been as needy as they were being. It used to be like this every time, every time they would reunite, when they would try to pretend that they didn’t want each other but she would wake up with him pressed into her, his breath hot against her neck, and she would wake up feeling warm all over— feeling like she wanted that breath of his somewhere else, somewhere much more intimate.

And now she had him, she had him forever, and finally— finally— his tongue traced a stripe directly up her center and it was like all of the need from the past few years— from that first moment that she saw him in Fury’s office and every night they spent together all can to a point as his fingers slipped inside her.

Natasha was never a woman who came quickly, not before she met Steve. But in that moment, with his tongue pressed against her clit and his fingers curling into her, she could already feel her orgasm building.

His tongue flicked over her once more, running the length of her clit. His fingers were sunk to the hilt, her entrance throbbing around him, her fingers gripping at his hair so firmly he thought she might rip it out.

“Natasha,” he mumbled against her, feeling her hips shifting up and down against his face, impatiently seeking more contact.

“Please, baby,” she groaned, and he almost wanted to give in, if only because she sounded so desperate and he knew that he was the only one who would ever hear her like that.

But he didn’t. He pulled away from her, leaving one last bite on her thigh, one last sting of his teeth.

Before she could catch her breath, Steve had pulled her up, catching her as he knees buckled and she collapsed into his chest.

“Fuck, Steve,” she whispered, clawing at his waistband and attempting to pull his pants down even as he held her.

“Be patient, Natasha,” he said. “I want to fuck you right, on the bed, where I can watch you.”

“Well hurry up then, Rogers, we don’t have all—,”

She was cut off as he tossed her over his shoulder, hand coming down on her ass harder than it probably needed to. She yelped but gave up the struggle as he moved towards their room, his steps long but not hurried. He threw her onto their bed, watching as she bounced slightly, falling onto her elbow so that she was able to brave herself into a sitting position.

“We do have all night,” he whispered, leaning down to press a kiss to her lips. “The family’s gone, the baby’s asleep, and I’m going to take my time. With my fiancé.”

He leaned down with her, his arms pressing into the plush fabric of their duvet, hovering above her in the way that he knew drove her crazy. His lips lingered just out of her reach, even as she strained towards him, and he gently tipped them towards her, catching just the slightest bit of her mouth.

She reached up to pull him closer, to wrap her fingers around his neck and pull him against her body, but before she could he caught her wrist in his hand. She found it pressed against the bed, immobilized by the weight of his body.

“I swear to god, Natasha,” he said, his vowels beginning to stretch as he got more pissed off.

He pressed into the mattress, catching her other hand with his and forcing it down near her hair. His lips found her neck, tracing simple patterns down to her collarbone and then biting hard on the skin there. She yelped out, feeling his teeth just on the precipice of breaking the skin, feeling his tongue flicking from between his teeth. His thigh slid between hers and she clamped down around it, starving for any pressure against her core. She could still feel his fingers inside her, still wanted the contact of his tongue flat against her cunt and his hand pressing firmly against her stomach.

She struggled against the grip on her wrists, writhing beneath him as his mouth traced further down her body. She could feel him pressing against her thigh, couldn’t understand why he wasn’t acting with the same urgency she was. As his tongue flitted across her nipple she cried out, struggling with all of her strength to get out from between the grasp of his fingers.

“Romanoff!” he snapped. “Would you let me do this right?”

“We can do it right later, Rogers, please,” she moaned.

He sighed and stood up, disappearing into the bathroom. “I didn’t want to have to do this,” he said, his voice calling out from behind the door. She watched him walk back in with the strap of his robe in his hands, twisted into an intricate knot she had only seen him use one other time.

“You wouldn’t,” she said. He put a knee on the bed, reaching towards her.

“You leave me no choice,” he replied. She struggled against his grip, knowing any semblance of power she may have had would be gone as soon as he had her tied up.

“Keep still, Natasha,” he said lowly. “Be good for me.”

She gave up her struggle as he slipped the cuffs around her wrist, pulling the strap tight so she had no way to wiggle herself out. He tied the strap around the bedpost, keeping her stationary, allowing him full access to her naked body.

“Finally,” he whispered. “Now lie still.”

He kissed her lips once before slowly working them down her body, ghosting over where his teeth were still indented into her collarbone. His left hand found her breast as his lips reached her chest, taking time to swirl his tongue around her nipples, feeling the way she arched against him as he twisted them between his fingers. Obscenities slipped from her lips as he reached her stomach, as he licked at the skin of her inner thighs, as he passed his breath over in a way he knew drove her up the wall.

When he finally made his way to her center, the smell of it practically wafting off of her, she physically trembled beneath the heat of his breath. He ran his index finger between her lips, making way for his thumb to reach up and circle her clit.

She whined and struggled against the handcuffs, pulling at them uselessly. He held her hips and legs down with his free hand, eyes glancing up at her to watch the way she strained. Languidly, he traced stripes up along her cunt, just slightly left of where he knew she wanted him, then moved to the other side and for the briefest of moments let his tongue flick over her clit.

“Fuck,” she cried out, hips bucking wildly. Steve was rapidly losing his resolve, his own need straining against his pants and pressing painfully into the mattress. He wanted to watch her unravel from deep inside of her, to watch her face as she fell apart. He flicked his tongue over her again, ran his hands firmly down her legs, hooked his fingers around her hips and tugged so she was as close to the edge of the bed as he could get her.

One of his fingers slid inside of her, circling the rim of her entrance. He reached down to adjust himself, couldn’t resist stroking his hand over his cock just once. He groaned at the contact, head still between the thighs of his gorgeous fiancé, the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

She was arching into him, pressing her dripping cunt into his mouth, trying to pull him closer to her. Steve’s resolve was rapidly crumbling.

“Fuck, Nat,” he whispered against her, tracing his tongue up her slit. She leapt at the contact on her clit, practically panting as he lapped just below where she wanted him.

“Untie me, baby,” she whispered. “Please, I want to touch you.”

The thought nearly had Steve in tears, especially as he glanced up at those hands that had done so much for him over the years.

He pushed the thought away and dove back down between her legs, lapping at her core just next to all of the places that would drive her crazy. For her part, she was basically weeping by the time he came up for air, his name slipping from between her lips like a whispered prayer, a silent plea for the most earthly of pleasures.

“Please, Steve, I want to finish with you inside of me, please,” she managed to get out. “Please honey, please, please, please—,”

He pulled away, cutting her off with his fingers in her mouth. She happily scraped at them with her teeth, the smell of her on his breath and the taste on her tongue as he worked the cuffs off the bed frame. He shed his pants quickly, pulling her towards him and running his cock along her entrance.

“Don’t come until I say,” he said. She nodded, reaching to grab his neck and pulling his lips to hers. He pushed into her, moaning into her mouth as he did. She choked back a moan of her own, burying her face into his neck.

“Shit,” she swore, feeling his pelvis grind against her clit as he rolled his hips over hers. He took a shaky breath and pulled out, almost all the way, his swollen tip lingering within her.

He pushed in once more, hitting deep, pulling her leg up over his shoulder. She clenched around him, fingernails digging into his back, her ankle locked around his leg. Natasha had to fight hard to not come as he pushed into her, slowly increasing his pace, his thumb digging into her thigh as he held her leg up and out of the way.

“I love you so much,” he said between thrusts. “I can’t fucking wait to marry you.”

Natasha didn’t trust herself to speak, so she didn’t. Especially as Steve pushed up onto his palms and reached between them to thumb her clit roughly.

“Natasha, look at me,” he demanded, grabbing her chin to pull her eyes to his. He pressed his thumb between her lips and watched her scrape the skin with her bottom teeth. She could taste herself.

“We’re a team baby,” he said. “Always. We’re a team.”

She nodded, shifting her hips in time with his. “Always.”

He pressed his lips to hers and rolled his hips, listening to her cry out against his lips.

“Come for me, Natasha,” he whispered.

She instantly clenched around him, her whole body tensing up as the orgasm that had been building for seemingly forever washed over her. He kept his pace through it, wavering only slightly at the end, as he could feel the warmth between them and the goosebumps on her skin and it all became too much for me.

Afterwards, he collected her in his arms and pulled her atop him, shielding them both with the blanket and listening to the sounds of her labored breath.

Chapter Text

They had a simple ceremony on Clint’s farm. Sam flew out to be a witness. He was the only one besides Clint and Laura who knew about the engagement. He brought the ring with him, a simple silver band with a cluster of garnet in the center that reminded Steve of Natasha’s hair. He had bought it from a jewelry shop just down the street from his old apartment building, a little family establishment that had opened up nearly a hundred years ago, when he was a teenager. He had never been able to afford anything there, and he wouldn’t have had a girl to give whatever he bought, anyhow.

Steve stood at the end of the makeshift aisle that they designated with the smooth rocks that lined the stream bordering the Barton’s land. Laura and Sam stood behind him. Laura was holding a bouquet of wild flowers. Sam was as well. Steve had insisted that they match.

It had been a funny conversation to have, telling everyone they were getting married. Clint and Laura had gotten home the following morning, bags in hand, Cooper and Lila lugging in the overnight bag that Clint had packed. It was huge, way too big for one night, but Steve had no doubt that it contained everything they could possibly need if they had to run. There was probably a bow in there.

Natasha was cooking while Steve fed the baby, the sound of the coffee maker humming on the stove. They had one of those old percolators, the kind that spit when it was done brewing and you had to be careful not to get splashed.

“How was it?” Laura had asked, walking over to kiss her son on the head.

“Oh he was fine,” Steve said. “Went right down.”

“And you two?” she asked. “No freak outs?”

“You save the world a few times over, a baby is nothing,” Natasha said. “Steve even had time to propose.”

Laura stilled at the statement, then glanced between the two of them, searching for a hint of amusement.

“Are you kidding?” she demanded. Natasha shook her head, not able to stop the grin that had spread across her face.

“Oh my god!” Laura shrieked, throwing her arms around Natasha while the latter laughed.

Clint came around the corner, out of breath. “What happened?”

After that it had been a trip to town for the marriage license, a call to Sam, and a google search that ended in Clint’s ordination. No one had mentioned it explicitly, but they all moved with haste. They knew that the future was full of uncertainties.

“You’re sweating,” Sam said, leaning over to whisper in Steve’s ear. Steve swatted at him.

“It’s Iowa in summer, of course I’m sweating.”

“Are you nervous?” he asked. Steve shook his head.

“Why would I be nervous?”

Sam shrugged. “Most guys are.”

“I love Natasha,” Steve said. “I want her to know that.”

“With a diamond.”

“With a commitment,” he clarified. “And I’ve been committed to her for a long time.”

Sam smiled. “I’m happy for you.”

“We all gotta settle down sometime.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

Steve wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was looking at the end of that makeshift aisle that they had strewn out that morning, that looked out over the backyard and everything Clint had created in the past twenty years, and he watched as Natasha took that first step towards him.

She looked ethereal. Her feet were bare, the white slip she was wearing hanging off her athletic frame, fluttering slightly in the breeze. She had a bouquet of wildflowers that Laura had picked, the white blooms of wild onion and the spotted yellow perennials that bloomed by the creekside. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, naturally curly, just beginning to grow past her collarbones. Her face seemed almost bare, graced by only the faintest hint of blush. Clint was at her side, dressed in his nicest gray T-shirt and least stained jeans. Steve didn’t care. His eyes never strayed from Natasha.

“Hi, Soldier,” she whispered when she got to the end of the aisle. It was moot, everyone was standing by her, within a few feet from the end of the aisleway. Only Lila and Cooper sat back, in the grass, staining their good summer church clothes with chlorophyll. Nate babbled in Cooper’s lap while his sister took photos on the old pink digital she had gotten for Christmas a few years ago.

The ceremony was intimate, quiet. Exactly the kind of thing that two people who lived under the public’s eye wanted. Steve pulled Natasha to him when she was within arms reach, ignoring Clint and Kaura’s protests when he kissed her deeply.

She was pink as she pulled away.

When it came time to read their vows, Natasha had to steel herself. It was hard to remind herself to be vulnerable, hard to grapple with the fact that the people present here today were the ones she should trust the most in her life.

Steve read his first:

“Natasha, when I signed my life away in 1943, this is clearly not what I had in mind. I assumed I would die in the war. I mean, that was the honorable thing to do back then. Everyone died in the war. When I woke up, I spent a year wishing that I had.

“I had no one to turn to. The world was confusing, and it was loud, and it was bright. Hindsight here, but they shouldn’t have put me up so close to Time Square.”

She laughed softly, not taking her eyes away from him.

“And then, all of the sudden, I had you. I don’t even remember that time in between anymore, that time after meeting Fury and before the invasion. I just remember before you, and after you.

“I was a man who was designed to never die, to avoid death. And yet for so much of my life I have chased it. I have sought it out if it meant saving someone else. As a teammate, it goes without saying that I would die for you. As your husband, I vow to live for you.”

A singular tear traced its way down Natasha’s cheek, a flood held just at bay behind lidded lashes. Laura was openly crying now, trying her best to do so quietly.

“Steve,” she began, doing everything she could to keep her voice steady as she read off the thin scrap of paper Laura had wrapped her flowers in. “I never thought that I would get married. Growing up in Russia, a spoil of the cold war, I knew exactly what my life would look like. Difficult, cold, and unfulfilling. Every experience that I had with love, any chance I had at intimacy, they were ripped away from me. I had accepted my fate, accepted my punishment, knew that I would be built into a spy, an assassin, a killer. I knew that I would be hardened into a shell of myself and condemned to do the Red Room’s bidding for the rest of my life.”

She took a deep breath, hands only beginning to shake slightly.

“And then I got out, and I wasn’t sure of who I was anymore. A SHIELD agent, sure. Still a spy, still an assassin, still a killer. A shell of my past self. I didn’t let my guard down again until I met you. And even then it took a while.”

Steve chuckled hoarsely.

“I always come back to that same phrase. They ‘hardened’ me. That’s what they always told us they were doing. With every injection, they got us closer and closer to immortality, until finally they released us. We weren’t supposed to crack, weren’t supposed to break.” She chose her next words carefully. “We were not supposed to soften. Ever.

“Steve, I promise that I will always be soft with you. That I will always be kind. That I will always allow for intimacy and honesty. I can’t promise you a normal life, or a family, but I can promise that I will always be soft. With you, I am not the Widow, I am not an Avenger, I am not immortal. I am your wife.”

“I do,” Steve said, pulling Natasha towards him again.

“I haven’t said anything yet,” Clint protested.

“I do,” Natasha said.

Steve pulled her close and kissed her, dipping her low. Somewhere in the grass, Lila took a photo.

------------------------------

Laura made dinner and they ate on the porch, laughing, smiling, never once taking their hands off of each other. Afterwards, the two of them went to Culver’s, for the true Iowa experience. Then they pulled over on Route 20 and got off in the backseat of Laura’s sedan.

“First time fucking as husband and wife,” Steve said as they redressed. Natasha’s knees were still red from where the cloth seats had given her rug burn.

“First time getting my ass smacked by my husband,” she said.

“First time getting my ass smacked by my wife,” he replied. She smiled, her eyes wide as she fought the crinkle she had always hated.

They honeymooned in the barn, reliving the night of hay and secrecy that had really not been all that long ago. When they woke up, the sun was just coming through the slats of the roof.

“Laura probably has breakfast waiting inside,” Natasha said. Steve nodded, kissing her cheek softly and stretching. Natasha reached over and grabbed her phone from where it was laying beside them.

“Missed anything?” Steve asked.

“Call from Tony,” she said. She held the receiver to her ear and brushed her hair over her shoulder.

“And you have to pick it up right now?” he asked. He pressed his lips to her exposed shoulder, and up her neck.

“Tell Rogers that I can hear him.” Tony’s voice was tinny, rich with the typical drawl, and his words were clipped.

“What do you want, Tony?”

“Are you still on Clint’s farm? Back in the barn?”

“Tony.”

“I need you both back here tomorrow.”

“Why’s that?”

“Your team is cleared for missions again,” he said. “We picked up Rumlow and his team trying to go for a bio weapon.”

“Rumlow’s alive?” Steve asked. “You found him?”

“Yep. Pack your bags, lovebirds. You’re going to Nigeria.”