Author's Note: This was originally just a story written for my roommate's amusement, but I've decided to put it up here to see if it can break the slump I've been in lately. The idea of Natasha moving Steve's furniture to inches to the right comes from a post on Tumblr. I can't find the OP, or I'd add it in here, but I've taken the prompt and expanded it. If anyone can find it, let me know and I'll add it in!
Also, forgive the incredibly uncreative title. It's been a while.
It was late by the time Steve Rogers stumbled into his Brooklyn apartment, overly exhausted and covered in an unpleasantly sticky goo. Even the bouts of insomnia, caused by gruesome flashbacks and the constant restlessness of his new body, would be no match for his desire to collapse atop his pillows that night. Now that Loki had so generously advertised the inefficiency of Earth's defenses against foreign invasions, many an alien race had flocked to the blue and green planet to try their hands at defeating the six measly defenders standing in the way of total domination. It made for a very long week.
Which looked to be getting longer, Steve lamented, unceremoniously tripping over the umbrella stand beside his front door. It was rare that the Captain fought himself into a state of such exhaustion, but it was by no means unheard of. And he'd always hated that damn thing anyway. It deserved a good kick every once in a while. However, when his pinkie toe crashed into the coffee table situated in his living room—which hurt like hell, super serum be damned—he began surveying his apartment with suspicion, no longer so quick to think it a coincidence.
Steve had lived in this apartment a little over six months, after his comfortable little hole in the wall in D.C. had gotten shattered to bits. It wasn't something he advertised, and even though he was relatively sure S.H.I.E.L.D. had injected a tracker in him at some point, no teammates or agents had mentioned it. Despite this, his new celebrity status ensured that it wasn't hard to find him, and Fury had already demonstrated how easy it was to breach his privacy. Exhaustion forgotten, Steve prowled through each room in the apartment, eyes peeled for anything resembling an intruder or a hidden camera. Coming up empty—and with several bruises that were sure to heal in the next half hour, thanks to some carelessly placed furniture—Steve journeyed back to the living room and flicked on a light. Despite his fruitless searching, he still felt an overwhelming sense of wrong. Despite the many adjustments he'd had to make for this new, gargantuan body, Steve had never been so clumsy. The fact that he'd memorized the layout of his apartment within three days of setting it up also niggled at him. He flopped on the sofa, mouth twisting in distaste as he realized that yes, he was still covered in goo, and propped his shield against the table. Where it landed a couple of inches away from where it usually did. Steve narrowed his eyes. Interesting.
Glancing around the room with this new perspective, Steve realized that everything was slightly out of place. Two inches to the right, his mind supplied promptly. Every possession in his apartment was exactly two inches right of where it should have been. Brows furrowed, he tried to find the angle of this apparently new foe. What villain would break into his apartment just to shift everything a couple of inches? What kind of grudge prompted such an outburst? Would it escalate? Groaning, Steve slumped back on his surely stained sofa. The only thing he knew for sure was that the super soldier in him wouldn't stand for this sort of inconsistency, and so, tired and grumpy, Steve began to carefully shift his furniture back into place.
It happened again three times that week.
The fourth time Steve came back to find shifted furniture, he forced himself to leave it. After a day or two, he grew accustom to the new placement. Then he broke his coffee table when it shifted four inches to the right.
Tired of fixing his furniture and completely at his wits' end, Steve called a local security company. After an awkward conversation—"But you're Captain America!"—a representative was sent out to install a new hi-tech system that Steve couldn't even begin to set up. The representative sent him several dubious looks during the long process of installation, but assured the muscled all-American hero that he would be safe from any assailants.
After coming home to a silent apartment and stubbing his toe yet again, Steve suspected that the man may have lied. The security system hadn't picked up any intrusion, and the alarm clearly worked. It took a very awkward phone call to silence the blaring siren after Steve lost his patience and ripped it out of the wall.
Out of options and, apparently, the ability to deal with his intruder rationally, Steve went to the last remaining option with his pride shattered. Tony had recently taken a cinderblock to the chest—literally—and he was quieter than usual when Steve approached. That didn't stop him from squawking with disbelief when posed the question.
"You want me to what? Cap, you know you can scare anyone off with your muscles and your spandex, right?"
"Are you going to give me the security system or not?" Steve demanded, completely done with the heavy sarcasm aimed at him every time he asked for protection.
"I don't see why not," Tony answered, eyebrows still arched skeptically. "But what are you afraid of?"
"Shifting furniture," Steve muttered. He was clearly losing his touch at the whole whispering thing, as Tony's look got more skeptical. "Someone's been breaking in and moving all of my furniture two inches to the right. It's driving me up the wall."
Tony's reply was cut off by sniggers, clearly muffled, then louder as someone gave up on trying to quell them. The Captain narrowed his eyes at Clint, whose shoulders were shaking with mirth.
"Barton, what the hell have you been doing to my apartment," Steve seethed, marching up into Clint's personal space. Clint, clearly seeing that the normal calm of Captain America had been snapped by bruised toes and long hours of putting furniture back in place, stopped snickering immediately.
"Ah, Cap, good to see you. I was just going to—"
"What do you know?" Steve hissed. The agent was too twitchy for it to be anything good. "Have you been moving my furniture?"
"What? No! No." Clint gulped nervously, glancing around. Satisfied, he gulped and lowered his voice. "It's Natasha. The same thing happened to me, I swear! She randomly breaks in, moves my furniture around, and then takes pleasure in my bruises the next day. I've never been able to catch her. One time, I'm pretty sure she managed to move everything around while I was asleep."
Steve gave him the same skeptical look Tony had aimed at him not too long ago, but he backed out of Clint's personal space.
"Why would she do it?"
"Cap," Clint started, voice heavy with exasperation. "She isn't the most normal of human beings. Why does she do anything?"
He wasn't wrong. Steve looked at Tony, who shrugged and went back over to his new suit schematics. There wasn't any use in getting a Stark security system now; not even the best could catch Natasha. Hell, Natasha was how he tested the damn things. Steve heaved a sigh. Then narrowed his eyes in thought. Natasha had been sending him little smirks for the past few weeks. Steve had just thought it had been because they were friendlier since the whole debacle in D.C., but knowing that she had caused him pain fit the situation more.
"Has anyone ever done the same to her?" he asked suddenly. Clint gave him a very dry look. Even Tony swiveled around to stare. Steve ignored them. Despite Natasha's fearsome reputation and seemingly all-knowing powers, she was still human. Steve had done infiltration missions before; back with the Commandos, he had been assigned quite a few. The prank Natasha was playing might seem harmless to her, but it was irritating the Captain and he was certain she wouldn't be so keen to move things around if she was subjected to the constant pinkie toe abuse he had suffered. Despite the bemused stares that followed him, Steve stomped out of the room, intent on going to his apartment and plotting.
The following week found Steve stealing around the Avengers tower. Natasha was on a mission, and the only residence she had with any permanence—that he knew about, of course—was the team's base. Which made things relatively simple, actually. Tony had been skeptical of his plans, but more than happy to rewire the security footage to show empty hallways while he stole through her complex. JARVIS, once assured that no harm would come of the prank, let Steve in without argument and agreed to keep silent about any involvement in her shifted furniture. Unaware of when she was due back, Steve merely shifted her furniture two inches to the right and left. Natasha's missions could last a few hours to months at a time, and it was fruitless to wait for a response first hand.
Unfortunately, when the team met for a brief training session and meal the next Saturday, Natasha was present and smirked at Steve like she normally did. When he returned home, he found that his furniture had not shifted, but switched which way it faced. Everything that was normally pushed against the right wall of the room was now situated on the left and so forth. Bewildered, Steve checked over his whole apartment. Everything had completely changed direction. Gritting his teeth, the Captain pushed his furniture back to its preferred place and tried to think of something more annoying than Black Widow's newest prank.
After moving her furniture a full six inches from where it had once sat, flipping everything in her apartment to face the wall, lining her carpet with baby powder, and turning everything she owned completely upside down, Steve was ready to admit defeat. Nothing seemed to faze the woman and she gave absolutely no indication that she had even noticed someone messing with her things at all. Her attempts to sabotage his own living space were becoming more creative as well, and the American hero didn't think he could take any more of the constant paranoia. After yet another long battle—these aliens had had a frightening resemblance to cats, but had some extremely powerful laser eyes—Steve limped his way to his apartment complex, already dreading the shenanigans that had surely taken place while he was gone earlier that day. However, the only anomaly he found when he flicked on the lights, was an extremely disgruntled red head lounging on his couch.
"Some days, I just really have to wonder what I'm doing with my life," she commented to him as he set his shield down and collapsed into his (correctly placed) armchair. "Kittens. With laser eyes. What are we going to fight next, babies with excellently aimed projectile vomit?"
"I definitely felt a little more comfortable fighting Nazis," Steve agreed, letting his eyes close. He didn't have to sleep after a battle like this, not really; his super soldier body could keep running for days. The exhaustion weighed on him though. Today had been really fucking weird.
"I had to vacuum my apartment four times to get all of that goddamn baby powder out," Natasha commented, her voice offhanded. Steve cracked open an eye to find her looking vaguely amused and figured he wasn't going to get murdered just yet. He shut his eye again.
"Oh, was that an inconvenience for you? Tell that to my pinkie toe."
He heard a snicker and let his own lips quirk in amusement.
"You did get pretty creative, though. Flipping my furniture right side up again was a pain in the ass."
"So was finding out that mine had spontaneously moved two inches to the right."
"Don't be so dramatic. The fact that you tripped over your umbrella stand should have clued you in."
Steve sat up and stared at the woman across from him. "And how the hell do you know that?"
Natasha shrugged. "It's the first thing in your hallway. Of course you tripped over it."
He considered her for a moment. "Why do you do that? Clint said that the same thing happens to him."
Natasha grinned and stood. "Sounds like you're getting a bit touchy-feely there, Captain." She stepped toward the open window and straddled the ledge. "Why do I do anything?" Before he could think up a clever response, Natasha was gone. Grumbling, Steve moved forward to shut the window. At the exact moment the frame snapped against the ledge, his A/C kicked on. And with it came a shower of glitter.
After the fact, Steve would bet that the whole block had heard him cursing.